cults happen through information control.

10/1/2025

Dearest readers:

It's been a while since I've written because it's been an exhausting couple of months. I'm downtrodden from the constant displays of cruelty, domestically and internationally. All it does is make me want to write, but then I'm too exhausted to write. I need some levity and light.

So I've decided which of my existing books will be published next: tentatively titled DON'T YOU DARE CLOSE YOUR EYES, a YA sapphic retelling of Disney's "Aladdin" set on an exoplanet with significant Latinx/Mezoamerican cultural influences. I have some vacation time coming up, during which I'll be rewriting the book, and I hope to publish it in 2026 or 2027. Keep an eye out for more! I'm thinking of releasing some excerpts through this newsletter.

All right, I promised you more substance last time, so here it is. Be careful what you wish for, because this one's a long one (but also lovingly curated, so feel free to skip through and check out all of the awesome resources).

combating cults through building community

Anyone who knows me knows I'm a little (understatement) cult-obsessed. I grew up in a culty environment, and I've been obsessed with researching them, understanding them, and recognizing them as an adult. Cults have a reputation of being creepy or evil, with imagery like shiny happy people in all white having mass weddings or group baptisms, but these are misconceptions that prevent cults from being recognized in the first place.

Today, I'm here to teach you a couple of key things about cults.

First off, the word "cult" is actually not super helpful. For one, there's no universal definition of cult -- mostly because it can look like many things. Instead, I prefer to use the term "high-control environment," or HCE, because cults are ultimately unchecked environments -- not necessarily formal groups, since this behavior can be a one-on-one relationship or exist in a smaller familial space -- of coercive control. That brings me to my next point:

Cults are sneaky.

They use words like "love" to dupe you into doing whatever they want so that you seek acceptance. They claim they love you and that's why they're doing whatever they're doing. This is the claim that extremist religions like to use:

god loves you, so he wants to make sure you don't stray far from the path, and that's why I, your human parent, have to beat you. Because I love you like god loves you. I am protecting your eternal salvation. I'm physically beating you so that you'll learn -- so that you'll remember how painful this is and avoid this behavior in the future. Because I love you.

I've said this before, but high-control groups thrive on information control. If a world is all you know, you aren't free to pursue anything different. Your survival starts to depend on conforming to what you know, because the information control starts to turn into behavior control. If you don't know a different definition of "love," you're trained to see this behavior as love. When you see other behaviors -- like parents who don't beat their children when the children have done something wrong -- you start to see that compassionate behavior as a lack of love.

You pity others who are experiencing bodily autonomy. And when they pity you, in turn, for regularly experiencing violence by the hand of people who claim to love you, you doubt yourself for just a second.

Until they judge you.

And then you're back in. Because their judgment is exactly what your parents told you would happen. The outsiders just don't understand what's at stake here. They're just going to burn in hell one day. Everlasting torture in the afterlife for momentary peace here. You pity them again, and you walk away from them. What do they know about you and your family? Your family loves you.

The big takeaway here is that stigma leads to cults. Stigma leads to judgment, which in turn leads to keeping people in cults. When people feel afraid, they double down on their beliefs, because they can't handle the ego hit.

We, the outsiders, in turn, can do one of two things: judge them for not being able to take the ego hit, or give them a safe space to land when they take the hit.

The massive amount of fascism happening right now in the US and worldwide is terrifying. It's debilitating. Somedays, personally, I just can't. But on the days that I can, I remember that fascism happens by way of widespread culture. And culture only gets widespread when each of us as individuals decide how to interact with others, one on one.

When someone says something like "homosexuality should be illegal," you can respond in a few ways.

The judgment way is, "you're a homophobe." This results in the other person doubling down, and makes the situation worse. It re-emphasizes the divide in our culture.

The self-care way is, "sorry, I have a headache and I need to go take care of myself." This results in neutrality, which -- because you have not triggered the other person's defences -- is a net positive.

The compassionate way is, "why do you think that?" This results in the other person having to provide rationale. As a friend, or a family member, this one-on-one interaction is an opportunity to not fight but to understand. Neutral responses with things you don't agree with like "I didn't know that about you" when it comes to sharing their beliefs can result in non-judgments that can (but won't necessarily) trigger self-reflection. Either way, you come away from it not as an opponent but as someone they can trust later on if they want to talk more, if they're curious or interested. It's either neutral or positive.

It's not about giving compassion to n*zis; it's about doing what's effective.

This is not a recommendation for people who are down and just can't. If you can't, you can't. In that case, don't engage at all. Reclaim your space. You don't need to offer your energy to people who drain you.

BUT don't make it worse. Reserve your energy -- and your judgment.

Culture change happens one relationship at a time.

We don't create culture change by approaching groups; we create the change by accepting individuals.

An us/them mentality also helps if you can make the “them” seem unsafe — then the member has to run back to “us” for security.

-- Daniel Midgley, The Word of Wisdom: “A Principle with Promise”

The quote above is from another person who does lots of cult thinking: Daniel Midgley of several initiatives, one of which is Gospel Doctrine for the Godless. The blog is, as the tagline says, an "ex-Mormon take on LDS Sunday School lessons," and I discovered this particular writer/linguist when I was looking for a handwriting font with a free commercial license to utilize in Vessel. He created the font I use for Sol's interludes in the print version of the book! He's got a lot of interesting thoughts on deconstruction and all the idiosyncrasies that come with high-control religion, and I highly recommend giving his blog(s) a read. If you want an amusing place to start, check out his comic on de-baptisms.

Page from VESSEL in Daniel handwriting font.

vessel updates

There's been so much that's happened on the Vessel book tour lately! I haven't really been able to keep up with informing y'all about it. I'm going to bullet-point this so I at least get something out.

In April, I was on a panel with the fantastic Jennifer Yu (whose book, Grief in the Fourth Dimension, is a truly delightful and moving story of life and death and grieving) at GetLit! 2025 in Spokane, WA! Our panel, "Dynamic Identities in YA Fiction," had more attendees than seats, which was such an honor.
In May, I was on a panel with fellow local authors Janet Wertman, Gerry Gainford, Scott Coon, and Anne Louise Bannon called "Morality: Past vs Future" as part of LitFest in the Dena. I had a blast -- so much so that I'll be on another panel with them called "Creating Compelling Characters" at the Studio City Library in a couple of weeks! More info below.
Also in May: I learned that Vessel won the 2025 Literary Global Children’s Book Award for the LGBTQ+ category! The caveat is that this is a very small, new award, and I'm pretty sure I was the only entry in that category. But, um, it sounds impressive, and hey, an award's an award! Bragging rights, etc.
ALSO in May: VoyageLA released an article about me! Find it here.
ALSO ALSO in May!: Vessel was featured in IngramSpark's Pride Month collection on Bookshop!
In other awards news: I submitted Vessel for the Bath Novel Awards, and the longlist results should come out tomorrow! Do you think any of these Bluesky posts describes the book?
I also submitted Vessel for a Lambda Literary Award, and those get announced at the end of July. Wish me luck!

Rie Lee, Jennifer Yu, and Emily Ladd at Spokane Public Library

GetLit! 2025. Photo credit: Annie Burky

Janet Wertman, Anne Louise Bannon, Gerry Gainford, Scott Coon, and Rie Lee at a table with a black tablecloth

LitFest at the Dena, 2025. Photo credit: Brian Biery (https://brianbiery.com/)

Rie Lee on a sunny Spokane sidewalk, featuring green grass, in Browne's Addition

GetLit! 2025, me in Browne's Addition. Photo credit: Emily Hiller

Book display in front of a brick wall. Standing up are VESSEL, TURTLES OF THE MIDNIGHT MOON, and GRIEF IN THE FOURTH DIMENSION.

Book display at GetLit! 2025. Photo credit: Rie Lee

Janet Wertman, Anne Louise Bannon, Gerry Gainford, Scott Coon, and Rie Lee standing holding their books. VESSEL is upside-down.

LitFest at the Dena, 2025. Photo credit: Brian Biery (https://brianbiery.com/)

did you know your library has . . . ?

In other practical ways of preventing information secrecy, I want to call attention to libraries: the heroes we don't deserve.

Libraries support a plethora of public services and are central hubs of information of all kinds. The thing that makes them awesome is that the information is free, and that the resources they have provide support for all folks from all walks of life. They don't limit certain kinds of experiences. They provide access to all kinds of experiences. That's why book bans are so shitty: they want to take away access to these experiences, because those experiences don't fit in with a certain group of people's experiences. They're taking away stuff from the broader group so that the smaller group gets to decide what the broader group gets to be. And that, my friends, is information control.

Which, I'd like to remind you, is a hallmark of cults/HCEs.

The best way to combat this is to support groups like Authors Against Book Bans and -- most critically -- to use your public library.

I love getting to tell people about all the free stuff you can get from libraries. I also like to let them know that they can often get a library card even if they don't live in the area! In California, you can get a library card to multiple library systems. I live in LA County and I was able to get a card for Orange County's system. Check out the systems in your area and see what you can sign up for.

And through these catalogs, you can get access to:

. . . ALL FOR FREE.

You don't need amaz*n to get audiobooks, folks. You can get them for free from your library. You win, the author wins, the library wins. When you get stuff from amaz*n, we all lose.

IN FACT! To show you how free and awesome all of this is, you can read Vessel (again, for FREEEEEEE) from these library resources:

If you want to have physical copies in your local library, request it! They usually ask for an ISBN (979-8-9913862-0-3), title (Vessel: a novel), and author (Rie Lee).

where to buy vessel

If you'd rather have your own copy to keep, you can find Vessel in person, on shelves, at these incredible local bookstores who have my heart forever. They are all queer-affirming bookstores, so if you're in the San Gabriel Valley area and you want to explore some cool bookstores, you ABSOLUTELY should. You don't even have to buy the book; just go and check out their cool spaces.

Now's the time, folks. We combat capitalism by way of mutual aid, and relying on your local businesses instead of corporate giants is the best way to do that.

Find Vessel on online at:

btw, have you heard of . . . ?

Callisto Tea House

wooden board with teacups and an earthenware teapot featuring loose-leaf tea

Image taken from Callisto's instagram (https://www.instagram.com/callistoteahouse/)

I absolutely love this place. I recently got a super-cool Drag King History box from Callisto, and the shop supports all kinds of cool events (including, most recently, Altadena Pride event!). The proprietors make a point of not just selling incredible tea, but bringing historically marginalized people into the tea marketplace -- they "seek out women-owned estates, farms, producers, and distributors of tea, as well as women artists for many of the images on [their] site." If you're looking for a cute place to host an event, or a tea tasting to check out some truly incredible teas, give them a visit. Or if you're not in the SGV area, they ship specialty teas!

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