After a fun, if exhausting, weekend at the Kauai Writers Conference, I’ve started a Substack that will discuss writing and publishing on a more regular basis than this blog. I hope you’ll consider subscribing! It’s free! And if there is any particular issue you’d like to hear about, any questions you’d like answered, please do let me know.
I’ve struggled all my life with being an outsider. Overlooked, unseen. Any crumb of praise or attention from a teacher was a godsend. Most of the time, though, I was just one of dozens, if not hundreds, that each teacher saw on a regular basis. Even as an only child, I was often forgotten. Left sitting outside the dark Girl
A while back, I began to notice a specific kind of YouTube cinema coverage. These videos begin as a “review” of some film but then become the YouTuber’s “fan fix-it.” Like, what they really want to do is rewrite the movie, but they’re too lazy (or untalented?) to sit and actually write anything, so they make a video telling everyone
Over on Bluesky, I’ve been participating in a “game” (trend?) of posting—once per day for 20 days—the fictional characters I would invite to a dinner party. I’ve made some rules for myself in this, such as not choosing any of my own original characters and not allowing more than one character from a fictional world (with one key exception). And
A few weeks ago, I received an unsolicited email from someone offering to make me a Wikipedia page. However, based on his description of why he thought I deserved to have a Wiki, this person seemed to think I was some combination of a chef and humanitarian. In short, he either had the wrong person or was fishing (phishing?), so
Last year, I left Twitter (X). It was a tough decision; I had spent 15 years building and curating a network of fellow writers, readers, film enthusiasts, and the like. I stuck it out as long as I could—longer, really, than I should have. Sure, my little corner of that hell site had remained mostly clean and comfortable, but I
This weekend, I joined the many who have exited X (formerly known as Twitter). It was a tough decision; I’d been on the platform since February 2009 and curated a really great community made mostly of writers but also artists and others. I stuck out wave after wave of bad decisions, keeping to the fringes and my core group rather
Because this subject has blown up recently, and I have feelings about it. I’ve never read a book with a playlist printed in it. I doubt I read the kinds of books and/or authors that would feel compelled to include a playlist. So… yeah. There’s something somewhat juvenile about that, something that (to me) screams “newbie author.” High school mix
A year or so ago, I was encouraged to make an “arrow chart” of each of my books. If you’re an author or reader, you know what this is: an image (often animatic) showing the book with a bunch of arrows describing the tropes in the story. I suck at this kind of thing, but I tried. (The animatic one
I was filling out a form that asked about diversity, and… It felt like the form was asking me to out myself in some way(s). Which isn’t cool. I live a really heteronormative life on the outside, and I don’t think I should be required to talk about private things in order to tick a box. I write diverse books…