My Favorite Things with Day Al-Mohamed

They might not be raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens, but that doesn’t mean that we love them any less. Welcome back to My Favorite Things, the weekly column where we grab someone in speculative circles to gab about the greatest in geek. This week, we sit down with Day Al-Mohamed, whose Baba Ali and the Clockwork Djinn (co-written with Danielle Ackley-McPhail) was released in April by Paper Phoenix Press!

What does Day love when she’s not writing about steampunk fairy tales? Spoiler alert: tea time, pushing herself in an unlikely sport, and a different kind of Easter Egg. Curious? Read on to learn more!

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My Favorite Things is the hardest blog posts I’ve ever had to write. No, really! I love so many things and there’s never just ONE favorite. It’s like asking for my favorite tea. The answer you’re always going to get is, “It depends,” which, if you’ve ever met a lawyer, is our stock response to EVERYTHING.

Favorite Tea (But Not Really, Because There Isn’t One)

Since it has now been brought up…I love tea. I love most teas, especially black teas and white teas and green teas and…okay, that’s definitely most teas. I start with an English Breakfast in the morning, then move to a powerful dark Assam during the day, have a malty Darjeeling in the afternoon with tea biscuits, and a light white tea or rose in the evening. Greens are for when I’m feeling poorly, I’m not a fan of rooibos, and I loathe Earl Grey; hot, cold, and anywhere in between.

Of course, all that tea-schedule goes out the window whenever I find something new to try. And there are so many blends out nowadays. I think I’ve got somewhere around 33-34 different teas in the house right now. Currently, I am enjoying one of Novelteas’ original blends, Don QuixoTea, The Man of La ManChai.

In my backpack you can usually find a carry tin of tea along with a strainer, some sugar, metal tumbler, and a heating element. Yep…I’m that sort of tea-fool. And I have to share my robot carry-everywhere tea strainer. Isn’t he ADORABLE?!

Favorite Sport: Fencing

You know how in some romance novels they talk about finding your “one true love”? Or the quote that gets bandied about that says, “If you find a job you love, you’ll never work a day in your life”? Both talk about finding the thing — whether that is a partner or a job — that is perfect for you. Want to hear something strange? I found the perfect sport for me. I love fencing.

That seems an odd choice for a blind woman, but perhaps not as outrageous as it sounds on first glance. When I was losing my vision in college, I remember having a conversation with someone — honestly, I cannot remember who because none of my friends are that much of an asshat — and they were trying to impress upon me that now, because of my vision loss, I needed to understand my limits. They’d pointed to the far end of the gym (I couldn’t really see that far), “See those guys over there? Fencing? You can’t do that. You’ll never do that.”

F*** you. Whoever you were.

So I joined the fencing club. There were about half a dozen of us; a ragtag little group with almost no funding from the university, no equipment, no coach, and half of us absolute beginners. It was a wonderful time in my life.

No one knew how a blind person would or could fence but they all decided, “why not?” and we went from there trying to find ways for all of us to learn and grow and get better and compete. And isn’t that what any sport is about? The camaraderie, the support, the competition, and the desire, always, to improve.  And the best thing about it, we did it together.

I fenced. 

Within three years, we had secured a grant from the university for $10,000 worth of equipment, a locked storage room from the Athletic Department to store it in, regular space with fencing practice two nights per week, and even a small budget for travel and competitions. We traveled not only within Missouri, but also to neighboring states: Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Iowa, Nebraska, and even as far away as Wisconsin, California, and Massachusetts. While we weren’t a formal team representing the university, we competed against “real” fencing teams like Northwestern, Ohio State, and Notre Dame. Just FYI, those guys were NCAA teams. We lost. A lot. But we also weren’t last.

I fenced better.

I will always carry with me memories of the year we qualified for the US Fencing Nationals. We somehow got five of us out to California for that week and it was amazing. We learned so much, not just about the sport, but about each other.

Example #1: Alison, has an UGLY penchant for getting up at 5am, being cheerful about it, and then SHARING that cheerfulness with the four other people who were not yet awake or caffeinated.

Example #2: I have an obsession with Annie Lennox and that while I was the only one who remembered to pack a CD for our rental van, SIX HOURS of the Eurythmics Greatest Hits was enough for the entire team to threaten to leave me on the side of the road if I ever played it again.

That has been more than 15 years ago, and I still love the sport. It makes me feel good about my body. It makes me feel good IN my body. And as we all get older I think it is important to find those things that make you feel like your best self.

I keep fencing my best.

Favorite Oddity: Easter Eggs

I love Easter eggs. No, not the chocolate kind. ☺ I love Easter eggs in books and films, those little nods and winks to the reader/viewer. These can be pop culture shout-outs, references to other works or creators, additional trivia or even intentional errors.

One of the most talked about Easter eggs in film is from Fight Club. In the 1999 film (yes, I know, I’m old but it was a big deal when I was young), Director David Fincher sneaks a Starbucks coffee cup into almost every single scene of the film. “When I first moved to LA in 1984, you could not get a good cup of coffee in Los Angeles to save your life. Then Starbucks came out, and it was such a great idea: good coffee,” he said. “And when it became successful there were like two or three on every block.” There are entire Reddit threads on spotting the ubiquitous green-logo’d cups.

Another of my favorite examples are Morley cigarettes in several television shows and films. I won’t bore you with the details of which films but you CAN discover a few of them here.

But I can’t just leave you with examples from other people’s work.☺ While they’re more along the lines of background information and fun historical tidbits, I actually crafted several “Book Secrets” for both The Labyrinth’s Apprentice and Baba Ali and the Clockwork Djinn. And just to give you a teaser, Baba Ali and the Clockwork Djinn has, like many steampunk novels, an aerostat, the Thaddeus Lowe. It’s described in some detail in the book; the lounge, the cabins with their bunks and so on. While the Thaddeus Lowe isn’t real, the descriptions of the interior of a luxury airship are.

We modeled our aerostat on the Graf Zeppelin, the most successful airship of all time. Almost every old photograph you see of a zeppelin — over the North Pole, floating over Jerusalem, in the skies over the pyramids — those are all the Graf Zeppelin. We pulled out photographs of the interior and video of the ticker tape parade welcoming her to New York City. And I provided those in a blog post as a “Book Secret.” There are several more of these secrets, about the language, the translations, the characters’ names, maps, and technology. I like to think of them as the extras on the DVD.

I know Favorite Tea, Favorite Sport, and Favorite “Oddity” aren’t quite a cohesive collection but I thought they’d be something fun and a little unexpected. Thank you for taking the time to read!

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Day Al-Mohamed is an author, award-winning filmmaker, and disability policy strategist. She is co-author of the novel Baba Ali and the Clockwork Djinn, to be re-released in April 2020, is a regular host on Idobi Radio’s Geek Girl Riot with an audience of more than 80,000 listeners, and her fantasy/mystery novella, The Labyrinth’s Archivist, was published in July 2019 from Falstaff Books. Her short film, The Invalid Corps, a documentary about disabled veterans’ contributions during the Civil War, has screened at several film festivals both in the US and internationally, securing several award nominations and two wins. The documentary will have its broadcast debut later this year with Maryland Public Television.

She is a member of Women in Film and Video, a Docs in Progress Film Fellowship alumna, and a graduate of the VONA/Voices Writing Workshop. However, she is most proud of being invited to teach a workshop on storytelling at the White House in February 2016.

Day is a disability policy executive with more than fifteen years of experience. She presents often on the representation of disability in media, most recently at the American Bar Association, SXSW, and New York ComiCon. A proud member of Coast Guard Auxiliary Flotilla 24-01 (5th District Southern Region), she lives in Washington DC with her wife, N.R. Brown. She can be found online at www.DayAlMohamed.com or at @DayAlMohamed.

Author Photo by Rachel Ellis

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