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Point of View: Sac Anime!

Scott cooked after Sac Anime

Hey all… a short one today. I spent the last three days at Sac Anime – which is a really big deal. Who knew? Over 30,000 people showed up for the con, including the voice of Sponge Bob! We felt very welcomed – so many queers in anime. 🙂 So since I’m a bit cooked today, I thought I’d share some photos. Enjoy! Back to the usual POV next week.

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Author Spotlight: Joseph Picard

Joseph Picard

Welcome to my weekly Author Spotlight. I’ve asked a bunch of my author friends to answer a set of interview questions, and to share their latest work. Today: A generally creative type, a lifelong interest in writing became a greater focus when a short story spawned a sequel… and another sequel… and a prequel. Fleshing them out and cleaning them up eventually became his first novel, Lifehack. While cycling to a computer repair job in 2001, Joseph was struck by a car, resulting in T5/6 paraplegia. Since then, he has married, and had two children, Caitlin and Lachlan. Later dealing … Read more

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Serial: Down the River – Chapter Eighteen

Down the River Header

I’m finally revisiting the characters from The River City Chronicles nine years after their original timeline. I’ll be running the series weekly here on my blog, and then will release it in book form at the end of the run. Hope you enjoy catching up with all your faves and all their new secrets! Today, Ben ends up somewhere he never expected to be, and gets a little unsolicited advice… < Read Chapter 17 | Read Chapter 19 > Join my email list to get my weekly newsletter with notifications of new chapters. Chapter EighteenBen and the Drag Queen Matchmaker … Read more

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Point of View: Ruminating on Joy

joy - deposit photos

I’ve been ruminating (we writers don’t just think about things… we go the extra mile and ruminate) on joy. It’s no exaggeration to say that the last eight years have been a dumpster fire. Slogging through four years of an administration diametrically opposed to me and Mark and everything we believe in, followed by a pandemic from hell and years of inflation… it’s been hard to feel anything other than rank despair. This long interregnum has been punctuated by brief windows of hope – when our new President entered the Oval Office, when a vaccine let us creep outside of … Read more

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Author Spotlight: Jess Mahler

Jess Mahler

Welcome to my weekly Author Spotlight. I’ve asked a bunch of my author friends to answer a set of interview questions, and to share their latest work. Today: Jess’ weird fish-out-of-water life has left them with an enduring love/hate affair with common tropes. The relationship counselor recommended they break it off, but they just keeps coming back to play with tropes (and fuck them up) some more. In between their tropic indulgences, they write queer fantasy with aromantic, neurodivergent, and generally ‘weird’ characters, take care of their family, argue halakha, and try to do a bit of educational activism on … Read more

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Serial: Down the River – Chapter Seventeen

Down the River Header

I’m finally revisiting the characters from The River City Chronicles nine years after their original timeline. I’ll be running the series weekly here on my blog, and then will release it in book form at the end of the run. Hope you enjoy catching up with all your faves and all their new secrets! Today, Marcos, Carmelina, and Marissa all deal with Brad’s loss in different ways… < Read Chapter 16 | Read Chapter 18 > Join my email list to get my weekly newsletter with notifications of new chapters. Chapter SeventeenA Little Deathy Marcos stared at the tortelli, sizzling … Read more

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New Release / Giveaway: You Can Save Me – R.L. Merrill

You Can Save Me - R.L. Merrill

R.L. Merrill has a new MM paranormal romance in the Carnival of Mysteries series, the sequel to You Can Do Magic: You Can Save Me. Sixties folk singer Dane Donovan vanished from a desolate highway rest area in 1979. Forty years later, he’s found hitchhiking in the California desert on a cold winter’s night. He hasn’t aged a day, but the roadmap of scars he wears tells a chilling tale. Veteran detective Walter Muse took over the case twenty years ago, but his haunting connection to Dane Donovan goes back to a peculiar run-in as a child with The Troubadour and his … Read more

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Point of View: Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned - Deposit Photos

I’m fifty-six years old. I’ve watched this planet swing around the sun for 224 seasons, seeing winter melting into spring, spring blossoming into summer, summer sizzling into autumn, and autumn falling headlong once again into winter. When I was eighteen, I knew everything, and each new year since has been an exercise in realizing just how much I don’t know. And yet, I have learned a few things on this long road, life lessons that have served me well. I’ll share some of them with you here, in no particular order, i they hope that they might be helpful. Almost … Read more

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Author Spotlight: Mike Karpa

Mike Karpa

Welcome to my weekly Author Spotlight. I’ve asked a bunch of my author friends to answer a set of interview questions, and to share their latest work. Today: Mike’s fiction, memoir and nonfiction can be found in Tin House, Foglifter, Oyster River Pages and other magazines. He is the author of thriller Criminals, which was a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2022 (Indie), the upbeat scifi romance Red Dot, and comic novel The Wealthy Whites of Williamsburg, which won Best LGBTQ Book at the San Francisco Book Festival. He lives with his husband and dog in San Francisco. Thanks so … Read more

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Serial: Down the River – Chapter Sixteen

Down the River Header

I’m finally revisiting the characters from The River City Chronicles nine years after their original timeline. I’ll be running the series weekly here on my blog, and then will release it in book form at the end of the run. Hope you enjoy catching up with all your faves and all their new secrets! Today, a stranger enters the scene, and food is prepared in loving memory… < Read Chapter 15 | Read Chapter 17 > Join my email list to get my weekly newsletter with notifications of new chapters. Chapter SixteenTortelli alla Lastra He sat in his non-descript Honda … Read more