My lovely and delightful author friend Melissa McTernan was one of my early readers for Ballad for Jasmine Town, and said recently that she found herself still occasionally thinking about the book, months later. Which to me is such a high compliment! And it has led me to ponder: what is it that makes a story, be it book or show or film, stick in ( Read more... )

As a fandom-loving person, one of my favorite sites at which to go down rabbit holes (that saying itself being a fandom reference, of course) is TVTropes.org. Despite its name, it does not confine itself to TV shows, but encompasses all of popular culture: video games, literature, music, theatre, anime, you name it. It has accurate and often ( Read more... )

To me, Pride is important, and queer people of all types are important all year, because they make ALL of us think about traditional gender roles and sexuality norms and whether our cultures really need to be the way they are. Those are issues that too often go unquestioned.

(My undergrad degree was in cultural anthropology, so I can assure you ( Read more... )

It recently occurred to me that Howl’s Moving Castle is kind of another retelling of Jane Eyre. No wonder I love it.

HMC is of course in the fantasy genre and is more whimsical, not gothic and set in the real world like Jane Eyre or other novels that also retell it (e.g., Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, or Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden- ( Read more... )

The other day my younger sister mentioned Phantom of the Opera and how chaotic it is, plotwise. This led me to write a very quick parody in the style of a Reddit AITA post. Enjoy. :)

#AITA

I’m a music tutor (53M) and a guard of sorts at the opera house, and have been seeing a singer there (23F). She started out as a student of mine, then gradually ( Read more... )

I was just talking with a writer friend about the difficulties of wrangling all the threads of a big novel, in its early stages-something we both have plenty of familiarity with. It got me looking back at my notes for Lava Red Feather Blue, which I struggled with for the first several months of trying to write it. And this note was the turning ( Read more... )

I've gone back to this post and added the following paragraph to the beginning. I'm posting it by itself here in the hopes that it sets the record straight and reaches more readers. Thank you keeping me honest and humble out there, truly.

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Just to clarify, All the Better Part of Me, the novel mentioned below about the 25-year-old bi man, is a ( Read more... )

I just watched the new Lady Chatterley's Lover on Netflix. I wasn't expecting much, since adapting this book tastefully is always tricky, but I actually loved it. Yes, there's nudity and sex aplenty-that's an integral part of the story's territory-but to me it felt natural, lush, and highly romantic. In fact, I'd guess that the most valid ( Read more... )

Today, on a whim, I leafed through some of my high school journals. And this bit kicked me in the gut. I was writing about my boyfriend:

"I even began talking to him about breaking up. Needless to say, this upset him so much that I was knocked back into my senses. Especially the way he pointed out that there was no one else who would take me."

Oh ( Read more... )

First, a quick piece of writing news: I recently finished the first draft of Ballad for Jasmine Town, my next book! It takes place on Eidolonia, the island of fae and witches where Lava Red Feather Blue is set, but you won't need to have read Lava Red Feather Blue to understand it. Each book can be read as a standalone. The manuscript is currently ( Read more... )