I was reading this essay by Joanna Russ, “The Wearing Out of Genre Materials” – it’s a quick read, but I’m not sure it’s freely available anywhere – I got it on Jstore. Yay working in academia! Anyway, the gist of the essay is: Stories feed an emotional need. They Read more
My house was built in 1930, an era when people did not accumulate quite so much stuff. In particular, I suspect the 1930 wardrobe was quite a bit less varied than today’s, because my closet is about the size of a refrigerator. My friend Nyla recently asked me, “How do Read more
“This is well-written,” the rejection letter read, “but time travel isn’t science fiction. I suggest you send it to a fantasy magazine like Beneath Ceaseless Skies.” A newbie writer, I had never gotten such a direct referral to another magazine before. Surely it meant this editor knew more than I Read more
How did I go from a person who submits a lot of stories for publication to someone who gets acceptance letters? Did I just… get better? If so, how? And how can I pin the process down in a clear way to serve as advice for others? When I look Read more
When I was a wee child, picking a topic to write about was easy: I wrote COOL SHIT. Like… bicycles that transform into helicopters or space ships or motorcycles or maybe power armor and I should have a cool robot friend who is sarcastic and transforms into like a briefcase. Read more
Mild spoilers for two movies and Steven Universe below. This week I saw two movies that dealt with childhood bullying. One was Naoko Yamada’s A Silent Voice and the other was J. A. Bayona’s A Monster Calls. Both show middle-grade children getting bullied, but their points of view are almost Read more
There was a scandal in the Steven Universe Fandom a year or two ago. A young fan artist posted a picture on her Tumblr of Rose Quartz. She’d drawn Rose skinny, although on the show she is quite chubby. The fandom was full of people overjoyed at Rose being fat, Read more