point of view

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POINT OF VIEW: 2021 Is Here – What Now?

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2021

Last week, I talked about some writing successes during an otherwise bleak 2020. Today I’m turning my gaze ahead and pulling out my crystal ball (and my planner). Here are some things I am hoping for and preparing for in 2021. In January (1/10), I am rereleasing Between the Lines, my River City Chronicles prequel. I have re-edited and extended it a bit, and it will be available in print as a novella for the first time. It also has a spiffy new cover, which I am previewing in this week’s newsletter! In February (2/10), I’ll be rereleasing a short … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: What Went Right in 2020

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Make no mistake. 2020 was a dumpster fire inside a clusterfuck inside a horror film. And yet, some good things still happened for the LGBTQ community. Switzerland and Northern Ireland finally got marriage equality. Trans, gender fluid and non-binary representation in entertainment got a big boost. More jurisdictions banned conversion therapy. And the Commander in Thief got kicked to the curb. Wikipedia has a great list of many of 2020’s LGBTQ advances here. Personally, a lot happened for me and my writing career too. 🙂 In January, I started submitting Dropnauts, the follow-up to the Liminal Sky: Ariadne Cycle trilogy … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Breaking Through the Wall

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breaking the wall

Sometimes we just get stuck. Writers gotta write, but life has a habit of getting in the way. Maybe a particular project has you stumped. Or maybe it’s a general sense of malaise or a bad review, or a book that didn’t sell like you hoped it would. As I write this, we’re at the tail end of 2020, a year that offered enough pain and distraction to stop the most dedicated of writers dead in their tracks. Whatever it is, you need a way to break through the wall. If you’ve never read it, I’d like to recommend a … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Updating Your Golden Oldies

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It happens to all of us published authors, eventually. We sell a story, it lives out its initial life with a publisher or magazine, and then it wings its way home, ready for its next act. And sometimes, if it’s a really old story, it needs a little love to bring it up to your current writerly standards. As authors, we are always learning and refining our craft. The way I write today is different from how I wrote last year, and waaay different from my writing in 2014 when I was first published. Which brings me to my current … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Writing in the Margins

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writing margins - deposit photos

Growing up, I was an insatiable reader. Starting with the Lord of the Rings in third grade, I moved through the canons of Asimov, Clarke, Silverberg, McCaffrey, Heinlein and many more by the time I hit junior high. It wasn’t until I was in eighth grade and realized I had crushes on other boys in my class that I noticed the lack of diversity in speculative fiction. And it wasn’t until much later – after I came out at twenty-three – that I started thinking about actually writing my own queer characters. My very first one was a gay, winged … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: My Squad

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the squad - deposit photos

Writing is a solitary prospect. We sit in our little writer caves and come up with words that evoke worlds. It’s a lonely pursuit, but one we do gladly. Many of us writers are introverts. That means we get energy from being alone, as opposed to extroverts, who get energy from being among other people. I’ve always thought of myself as an extroverted introvert. When I was young, I was scared of people. I remember hiding behind my mom’s pantsuit when we met somebody new, scared to see them face-to-face. In high school I forced myself to become more outgoing. … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Following the Plan

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Last January, I announced that I had a plan. Going all in on my agent search. Writing every morning from 5:30 to 7:00, to maximize my writer productivity. And putting together another novel. So here we are, almost at the end of 2020, and I figured it was time to look back and reassess. In March, COVID-19 took us by storm, and nothing has been the same since. But I stuck to my plan, through the lockdown and everything that followed. I submitted Dropnauts to more than 140 agents, and so far I’ve had two full manuscript requests to show … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Navigating the Interregnums

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interregnum /ˌin(t)ərˈreɡnəm/ noun1) a period when normal government is suspended, especially between successive reigns or regimes.2) an interval or pause between two periods of office or other things. The world is holding its breath. As I sit here writing this, I find myself living through a number of nested interregnums. We’re still in the throes of the Great Pause, as the world tries to figure out how to live with, and ultimately get to living without, Covid-19. Here in the US, we’re in the interregnum between administrations, holding our breath and waiting for the madness of King Trump to come … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: After the War

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So I didn’t “win” Pitch Wars. My regular readers will know that I first entered this annual mentorship contest last year with “Dropnauts,” hoping to snag a mentor who would help me rework the manuscript for the Pitch Wars Agent Showcase in the spring. I didn’t even get a request from my four chosen mentors last year, and it sent me into a spiral of despair and not-writing that lasted for months. I wasn’t even going to enter this year, but a friend encouraged me to try again. So I buckled down and powered through my latest novel, wrapping up the … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Writing Hope

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As a sci-fi author, I have written a number of times before about our responsibility to forecast the future, both to warn the world about what might be coming, and to share my hopes for what we might become. In these last few years, I have written four separate columns about the idea of hope and writing. In these fraught several weeks before the US election, I find myself hoping against hope for change, and then fearing the worst. Every day, there’s a new poll that reinforces that hope, and a new piece of news that dashes it. Biden’s up … Read more