Point of View: What Would You Like to Know?
Point of View
Point of View: Everyone Hurts
Everyone I know is hurting. There are still flashes of beauty and love and triumph all around me, even moments of great joy. But the whiff of depression, the sense of things having moved beyond our control, hangs over everything like a sulfurous smog. Many of our friends and family are facing health issues right now – some short-term, others more dire and in some cases life-threatening. Other friends are facing imminent eviction, or just can’t seem to find a steady place to stand. Friends who find that what was once a dream-come-true is now proving to be more of … Read more
Point of View: The Delicate, Ever-Changing Art of Wordsmithery
Today I thought I’d take you behind the scenes, to give you a sort of how the sausage is made look at my writing. Writing styles are constantly changing. Take a look back at the classics you read in high school – would any of those be published (without drastic revisions) today? Even the way we write fiction now, with all its accepted “traditions,” is very different than what folks wrote a couple decades ago. Take the common “said” dialogue tag. In the past, it was sprinkled liberally throughout manuscripts, and was considered to be invisible to the reader. It … Read more
Point of View: Enough
I usually use this column to talk about writing – things I’m working on, my approach to the craft, and other random thoughts that occur to me about stories and books and publishing in general. Every now and then, I veer off into a little hope punk – the inspirational side of things, reminding folks that there is still good in the world, even when everything seems so dark. But today, I have something heavy weighing upon my soul. A month or so ago, Pastor Casey Tinnan, a local gay pastor here in the Sacramento area and a man who … Read more
Point of View: Cords for Everything (or Why I hate Going Into the Garage)
Warning: heavy-handed metaphor ahead. Nine and a half months ago, I had an accident that could have snapped my neck. My bike tires slipped on something on the pavement and sent me flying fifteen feet though the air to slam into the concrete sidewalk. As bad as it was – my orthopedic surgeon said the top of my femur looked like it “exploded” – it could have been far worse, and I am properly grateful that it wasn’t. Mark and I decided it was probably time for new bikes – something a little steadier and harder to tip over than … Read more
Point of View: Rebuilding a Community After Pandemic
Four years ago, we had a good thing going her in SacTown. Our local LGBTQ+ writer’s group – the Queer Sacramento Authors’ Collective – was almost fifty folks strong. We were doing readings at the Lavender Library four times a year, meeting in person for lunch every other month, and had an ambitious plan to put on Sacramento’s first book festival. And then Covid struck, and obliterated it all in an instant. The festival was cancelled. The readings were too, though we managed to continue them sporadically on Facebook Live, in videos that few watched. And we managed occasional zoom … Read more
Point of View: Drag Queens in Space
One of the most loathed questions among my writer friends, and the one asked by almost every interviewer, is “Where do you get your inspiration from?” This question comes in many forms: The honest-to-God short answer is that no one f@cking knows. Writer’s brains are a little like those mazes the white coated lab scientists train rats with – dark, twisty, and with a bit of rat fur (and quite possibly droppings) around almost every corner. Writer brains are like a complex piece of machinery handed to a two-year-old child, who shakes it up and down energetically and turns it … Read more
Point of View: Coming Down
Release week is over. The Dragon Eater came out last Thursday, and it was a freakin’ amazing experience. Although it didn’t top the Amazon charts – TY, Amazon algorithm, it sold well – my best new book launch in years. But it wasn’t the sales that fed my soul. It was the Zoom book launch on Saturday that Steven at Water Dragon Publishing set up for me. Steven says that normally they get 5-10 folks at these things, and have reached as high as twenty. We had double that, a wonderful cross section of folks from the various parts of … Read more
Other Worlds: The Origin Stories (or By Golly, We’re Almost There)
This is the last newsletter before my first novel release in almost two years. I am beyond thrilled to finally bring this series to you – I think it’s my best work to date. It takes so much work behind the scenes to get here – coming up with the concept, writing the story, rewriting the story, working it over with beta readers, finding the publisher, edits edits edits. And then the whole marketing machine – crafting a blog tour. Recruiting friends to help push the book. Buying ads for librarians and bookstores finding ARC readers/reviewers. Writing guest posts, interviews, … Read more
Point of View: The Dragon Eater Teaser #6
Hey all… we’re just 10 days (and counting) away from my first major release in twenty months. I’m thrilled to bring The Dragon Eater (Tharassas Cycle Book 1) to you, thanks to Steven Radecki and Water Dragon Publishing. Each week I’ll share something special about the book and/or the series. In the first excerpt, you met Raven the thief (and titular Dragon Eater). In the second excerpt, I introduced Aik, Raven’s loyal friend (and inconveniently for a thief, part of the Gullton city Guard). In the third one, it was their friend Silya, an aspiring Hencha Queen who has a … Read more