Queer writer of speculative and YA fiction
[TL/DR: social media delights in distracting you and wasting your time. Minutes/hours spent tweeting or posting are minutes/hours not spent writing. Is that how you want to be spending your time? Also, commenting on a trending hashtag brings out the crazies like you wouldn’t believe. Don’t feed them, whatever you do. Their appetite is bottomless.] …
I'll be honest. I had a little freakout this week. I don't even know if anyone but me noticed it, since so much of my life happens within the confines of my skull. (For this fact, the rest of the world should probably be happy.) Suffice it to say, on my lunch hour when I …
When I was planning a workshop at the community college on creating characters, it got me thinking: What makes our favorite characters our favorite characters? It’s never quite the same thing every time, is it? If you follow me on any social media, it’ll be no surprise to you that I am a big fan …
My friend ’Nathan came across this post on the website of a literary agency about a topic that's somewhat close to my heart. If I'm honest, it's probably closer to my spleen. As I've discussed before, I have a love/hate relationship with social media. But, dialogue is always a goal of mine with writing, and …
Continue reading "Stop worrying about your brand. You are not cereal."
I didn’t want this to be one of those “so I left Facebook, look at how above it all I am” post. So I asked myself: “Self,” I asked, “what does ditching a social media profile have to do with anything?” It goes back to grad school. Back in 2014, when I was getting my …
Happy New Year! That’s less of a declaration and more an expression of hope, as in “wow, I hope 2017 will be happy.” Because 2016 was a bit of a Dumpster fire, wasn’t it? Between a horrific election cycle and the way the year killed off so many actors, musicians, and artists, by Dec. 31 …
Continue reading "Goal for 2017: Actively seek rejection. (Yes, really.)"
Wow, what a week. I normally try not to get political when I write these newsletters (although it could be argued that, as a writer of fiction primarily with a queer bent, my work is inherently political). I like to have a focus, and that’s usually on the things I write, the things I teach …
Some days, I feel more than a little guilty if I'm not spending every spare minute possible working on my book. Which is not to say that I do spend every spare minute working on it, just that whenever I do something other than write (which is often), I feel as if I'm somehow betraying …
I’m not going to lie, 47 sometimes feels pretty old. Joints are creaky, I can’t jump as high or run as fast as I used to, and eating a whole pizza in one sitting is far behind me. (I probably shouldn’t have been doing that in the first place, but yes, there was a time …
This is a post about pirates. No, not pirates of the "arr matey" and "shiver me timbers" and walking the plank variety. These are the digital kind. I'll explain. It probably seems pretty egocentric of me to have a Google alert set up for my name, right? Not so fast, though. First of all, I …