Hi all and Happy Friday! This week is Transgender Awareness Week, November 14-20. Instead of me talking about this, I want to signal boost The Trans Fiction Week blog project that Matthew Metzger spearheaded. The blogs this week focused on inclusion, on non-binary issues as writers, and on getting writers past that “can’t” mentality one often hears from cis-gendered writers. Some of the wonderful and informative blogs include: Beyond Punctuation: Editing Diverse Content Safe Spaces, and Safety Writing from the Closet (a non-binary writer’s view) Gun Control (a cis-gender writer’s view on the importance of inclusion) If it’s Cis, It … Read more
Apologies for being a day late with my post. I thought I’d already scheduled this one ahead of time, but clearly I was thinking of last month’s post instead. Oops. Anyway, without further ado….
It’s summer here in Australia, and with the weather hotting up, it seemed a good time to talk about writing sex scenes. Plus, it conveniently ties in with one of our recent discussions. Below I’ll outline the four points to keep in mind to ensure your climax goes off with a bang.
I’ve written this way in advance, because November is going to be absolutely mad. Right now, I should be right in the middle of the madness. :) Anyone else involved in the month long writing dash known as NaNoWriMo? For those of you who don’t know, National Novel Writing Month is when you try to complete 50000 word manuscript within a month. It’s difficult. I had to work extremely hard to make it last year, when I didn’t have nearly as many literary and online obligations as I do now. Juggling this project, along with jobs, deadlines, and other obligations … Read more
The image of the Amazon–whether by that name, or associated with it by tropes and functions–has served a changing variety of roles in fantastic literature over the centuries. With renewed interest in Amazonian sexuality sparked by the official admission by D.C. Comics that the all-female home island of the Amazonian heroine Wonder Woman is not entirely a fortress of heterosexuality, it’ a good opportunity to look at how Amazon sexuality has been viewed over the ages. Many historians have tried to identify the historic and cultural origins of the Amazon myth, but it’s the myth that we’re concerned with today. … Read more
Author’s Note: I had planned to run a review in this monthly space, but recent events seemed to call for something else. The review is saved for next time, and Happy Thanksgiving!—-Jeff. Armageddon or Not by Jeff Baker I’ve been a political observer for much of my adult life, and actually a performing political satirist (think Mark Russell) for a little of it and so I think I can speak with a little authority on the recent and not entirely unjustified anxiety over the results of the recent election. We don’t know yet what the world will be … Read more
Well. This has just been a dreadful year and the past week wasn’t any improvement. Usually, I’d write a Friday thing about some aspect of publishing or marketing. It just doesn’t seem appropriate. Everyone I know is angry or frightened or depressed. Or all three. So. Let’s talk about what to do. The best way to combat the evil out there is to get involved, right? But how do we get involved? Donate. This is both the easiest way to get involved if you have the funds and the hardest if you don’t. Of course, it’s not always about money … Read more
To start this post, I must make the disclosure that I’m a Pagan. Yep. Not really a surprise, but I feel I must mention it all the same. A lot of Pagans believe that the Earth is sentient on some level and to some extent, and in a lot of ways, science has proven Pagans aren’t exactly wrong in this idea. Through a neat combination of radiation and rotation and oscillation, our blue marble as its own voice. So do all the other planets that share the light of our Sun. Its music, in a way. Heartbeats even, of the … Read more
It’s a nasty, ugly word, isn’t it? Plagiarism. It rears up with shocking regularity in every writing circle – academia, journalism, fiction, biography. Every time I see a new case pop up in the romance or SFF writing communities, far too many people wail about their particular genre being plagued with it. It’s not true, of course. It’s everywhere. But there are some odd misconceptions about it and some predictable reasons why authors do it. According to USLegal.com, “Plagiarism is taking the writings or literary ideas of another and selling and/or publishing them as one’s own writing. Brief quotes or … Read more
Paranormal – those stories that fall outside what can be explained using what is known about the universe. Ghosts. Vampires. Werewolves and so on and… What’s that? All queer paranormal fiction is the same? All tropey and stuff so you don’t want to read it? There’s nothing wrong with tropey fiction of course. We all have our favorite comfort tropes and types of stories we enjoy reading. But what I’d like to do today is take a look at some examples of queer paranormal fic that doesn’t adhere so closely to the tropetastic side of things. Please note that these … Read more
People have always told me to write about what I know. I wanted to write stories about magic, but magic didn’t exist. Not for me. What seemed supernatural was usually a hoax. There was always a logical explanation. Don’t accept a world of superstition. Don’t be one of the people who blames magic for their problems. Don’t expect to use magic to solve your own. I read these warnings, listened to them, and absorbed them. They created the reality I lived in, a cynical reality, which wasn’t going to accept anything supernatural too quickly. In spite of these warnings, I … Read more