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…
Not all opinions are made equal. Everyone is entitled to one, of course, and now that pretty much everyone in the world has a public platform via social media, everyone is able to broadcast their opinions to the populace. In many ways, this is a good thing. Hearing various points of view, getting different “readings” on a text (as we