Month: March 2018

Blurrrgh

I have a nasty cold, y’all. Actually staying home from Day Job to lie on the couch with the dog and occasionally moan piteously.

Hoping my head clears enough later to write a bit, although right now there’s no room in there for ideas, what with all the phlegm.

One nice thing about the morning thus far: I finally started reading KJ Charles’ writing blog, which is both useful and delightful: kjcharleswriter.com . The writerly tips (and publisher…y? tricks) are funny and helpful, and her lists of recommended books make every single one look like a MUST.  (I can never refer to anything as a “must” without hearing Michael Stipe saying it on “Voice of Harold.” Which is him singing the liner notes of a gospel album he found in the studio over the music of R.E.M.’s “7 Chinese Brothers.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tb6jjEApfmg You’re welcome. )

She doesn’t update it all *that* frequently, looks like, but what’s there is cherce.

The blog also reminds me that somehow I have only read ONE of her books, a situation that requires immediate remedy. But first I will totter around the block in an abbreviated dogwalk, and then probably take a nap to recover from this herculean effort. BLURGH.

A bit of Rough Draft in Progress

Here’s a bit of my current project, which I’m hoping to finish and self-publish within the next few weeks. It’ll be a short, sweet f/f paranormal romance between a werewolf and a low-powered fae. Here’s a scene from a first date that’s going really well:

 

She pulls back and looks at me and then looks up and laughs delightedly. It’s only then that I realize that not all the good warm tingly feelings rushing through me are just because of her—some of them are from my powers going off without me even noticing. Multicolored lights are sparkling and shifting and flitting above my head.

“Yeah,” I say, “behold my extensive fairy powers.”

“Don’t put yourself down, it’s beautiful,” she says. “I feel like I’m standing in a magic firefly grove in an anime or something.”

That’s when the lights double and spread to surround her too, which has never happened before. She gasps a little and holds her hands out into them, fingers flared, and some rush together and then pour through her fingers like water. “They feel,” she says, “pepperminty, somehow.”

“They’ve never done this before. I guess they, uh, like you. Or…I do.”

She smiles, broader than I’ve seen, kisses me again, and murmurs in my ear, “Let’s you and me and the peppermint fireflies go to bed.”

In Medias Media

Media I’m in the middle of! Or not done with anyway.

Trying to catch up on Kevin Sonney’s excellent Productivity Alchemy podcast. (I listen to it when I’m either cooking or unfucking my habitat, and I…clearly need to step up on both of those things, because Kevin’s podcasting faster than I’m listening.) Finally nearing the end of the 23-disc audio version of Lillian Faderman’s (also excellent) The Gay Revolution. Which has taken me most of February and March because that is car listening and I have a quite short commute. (NOT a complaint, believe you me.) I am glad to be past the sections that focused on Harvey Milk, AIDS and Sharon Kowalski all in a row. That was a grim dang week in the car. (I’ve read two other books about Harvey Milk and I still was having jury-strangling fantasies while driving. Ugh.)

Also nearly done with Sorcerer to the Crown, by Zen Cho, on paper. I haven’t quite figured out how I feel about this one. I thought from the first couple of chapters that the heroine, Prunella, was going to be a kind of wearily practical character, like the ones I love in Ursula Vernon’s work, but that wasn’t what she ended up being, and I’m head-tilting a bit at her. Possibly I am unconsciously biased because the title includes the one word in English I just cannot freaking pronounce. Sorcerer is a stupid word and it should go away.

Also! Done with another hitchhiker scarf except for weaving in the ends. (What, yarn is a medium.) That hitchhiker pattern is ADDICTIVE, yo.

 

 

Hello!

And welcome to my site! I’ll be posting snippets of my writing–romance and fantasy, most with an LGBTQ focus. And talking about what I’ve been reading. And wondering why the heck agents and publishers haven’t responded to that query I sent THIRTY WHOLE MINUTES ago.

I may also be waxing rhapsodic about knitting, theater, live music, and how great my dog is. She’s pretty great.