point of view

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Point of View: Inherent Goodness

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Inherent Good - deposit photos

These are the times that try a gay writer’s soul. The last eight years have been an unending roller coaster of horrible things – scandals, setbacks, vitriol and verbal assaults, norms smashed to bits, wars, and to top it all off, a once-in-a-century pandemic that changed everything. Despite all that, I was caught off guard by the results of the US election last month. No, if I’m honest, it was far worse than that. It was like a freight train full of bowling balls and anvils had crashed into me and smashed me against a brick wall. Before all of … Read more

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Point of View: The Great Escape

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Man staring at buildings made of books - deposit photos

I can’t bear it. I can’t let myself think too far ahead right now. I know the awful is coming, and for a few more precious weeks, I just want to bury my head in the sand like they say ostriches do (even though they don’t, really). So I’m looking for a few all-encompassing escapes. One of those is popular entertainment. Mark and I are binging the whole Ally McBeal series, which was from the late nineties and dealt with grand themes like misogyny in the workplace, which thankfully no longer exists (this is where I really need a sarcasm … Read more

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Point of View: My Life is Still Political

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vote buttons - deposit photos

I originally wrote this column on the day after President Joe Biden exited the presidential race. At that time, we didn’t know yet that Kamala Harris would be the nominee. All we knew was that we’d been given a once-in-a-lifetime chance to change things, to shake up a race that until then seemed to be inevitably going in one direction. In the days that followed, Harris consolidated her support and jumped into the race with an agility, grace, and joy that few of us suspected she possessed. As the race progressed, she spread a message of optimism, while her opponents … Read more

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Point of View: Stuck in Life’s Elevator

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stuck in an elevator - deposit photos

I have to admit, I’m at a bit of a loss on what to write about this week. Everything feels… stuck. Like we’re in an elevator that never makes it to the ground floor. I’m in the middle of writing three different books – a problem of my own devising, I’ll admit, and one that lets me range through different genres and keep my multi-tasky brain happy. But it also means I’m in three different muddy middles at once. Stuck. I’ve been looking for a new job for a full year now, and though time and time again I get … Read more

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Point of View: Seasons of Change

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Autumn forest - deposit photos

Fall is finally here in Northern California. Officially, it arrived a little over three weeks ago, but we had temperatures into the hundreds until early last week. Now at last, the days are milder and the Delta Breeze brings us cool air in the evenings. There’s that indefinable sense of change in the air, when the leaves slowly start to yellow, the days grow noticeably shorter, and many of our favorite television shows return, creating a train wreck in our streaming apps. The seasons of life are slowly changing too. Mark and I just said goodbye to two dear friends, … Read more

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Point of View: Loss, Hope, and Life Journeys

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lighted path - deposit photos

It won’t be long now. A dear friend of ours is in hospice care, on the final steps of her life journey. It came on suddenly, and her decline has been shocking and heartbreaking. Yesterday, we saw her for probably the last time. While I wouldn’t have missed it, I couldn’t help thinking that the person we used to know was already gone. A few days ago, I had a phone conversation with my Mom, who had just lost one of her beloved dogs, Jake. She talked about loss, not just of the people and fur babies in her life, … Read more

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Point of View: Filtering Reality

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writer staring out window - deposit photos

Reality informs everything we write. We grow up in the real world. We learn the real names of things, we navigate our way through real life and real school and real relationships. Our lives are lived solidly in the real world, and we can’t help that, as writers, our fiction is shaped by it. And yet… Books (and TV and film) are by their very nature escapist mediums. They let us turn off our brains to escape reality for an hour (or three) and immerse ourselves in someone else’s version of the world. During the great Depression, movies were one … Read more

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Point of View: Living In the In-Between

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Inbetween - Deposit Photos

Everything feels… suspended. For nine years, Mark and I have lived in a rental that we planned to inhabit for one, planning to buy a house – something we’ve never been able to manage. For two years, we’ve been in a state of political suspension, broken only when President Biden stepped down and Kamala Harris jumped into the race. For more than a year, we’ve watched as friend after friend battled cancer, some of them succumbing to this horrid disease. For eleven months, I’ve been searching for a job, poring over thousands and thousands of job listings – often hundreds … Read more

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Point of View: Sac Anime!

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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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Point of View: Ruminating on Joy

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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