writing

It’s pretty typical of 2023 that I should be writing my usual year-end review several days later than planned. It was a year of great highs and horrible lows: I went in with friends on a shared property that will give me a house of my own plus a separate studio/office — and then saw those same friends lose their older daughter in a car accident. Other close friends battled serious and unexpected health problems, and I had some, um, interesting issues of my own. (All fine now.) I got back to some conventions — and, oh, how I had missed cons!

The idea that became Night Sky Mine had its origins in a piece of legal boilerplate. At the time, I was working part time for an older lawyer who was winding down his practice; he needed someone to answer phones, type letters, and prepare a few documents for his remaining clients, most of whom were elderly. (It was through this job that I learned how to read and verify Medicare statements.) In this case, I was typing a statement of trustee powers, and got to the point where the trustee was allowed to sell, buy, mortgage, or hypothecate [the covered property].

I started writing queer characters and themes for the reason that I hear many other LGBTQIA+ writers cite: these were the stories that I wanted to read. When I sold my first novel, in 1984, most of us added, these were the stories I wanted to read, and that I couldn’t find anywhere else. These days, I hear that less, and there has certainly been a boom in queer SF/F. You don’t have to be part of a whisper network to hear which books have queer content, or learn to interpret publishers’ coded references.

I recently stumbled across an inexpensive ebook copy of Arthur C. Clarke’s Dolphin Island, which is a book I read to destruction when I was a young teenager. (Literally. The paperback eventually fell apart, which is why I no longer had a copy.) Going back to those books is always an iffy proposition, or at least it is for me. Tastes change, styles change, and you never know what unremembered dealbreaker is going to appear in the text. But I still had very fond, if blurry, memories of the book, and it was, as I said, inexpensive, so…

I have always been a plotter — that is, in the great debate between the plotters, the people who work out their plot in advance of the writing, and the pantsers, the people who work out their plot as they are writing, I’ve always come down firmly on the side of the plotters. It’s not a moral judgment, or even an aesthetic one, it’s what’s always worked best for me.

It’s time for the latest Pride Storybundle! Once again, Catherine Lundoff and I have pulled together a collection of outstanding LGBTQIA+ SF/F, with five books in the main bundle and ten in the bonus. You’ll find the usual mix of newer writers and new works, plus some older ones, as well as a mix of novels, novellas, and short story collections. There’s science fiction, fantasy, dark fantasy, solarpunk, cyberpunk, and more, ranging in tone from deeply serious to extremely funny, all written by authors who are at the top of their game.

Elise Matheson (aka Lioness) just had an interesting post on her Patreon about having to go back and rework a piece of jewelry because of an unexpected problem with some of the included beads. (By the way, if you don’t know either Elise’s jewelry or her Patreon, I recommend both highly!

It’s been far too long since I last posted, for which I apologize. Partly, it’s that 2021 was not a particularly good year personally. I lost family, friends, and cats, and have been dealing with the fallout ever since. In many ways, I’ve been very fortunate, in that I’ve been able to ride out the worst disruptions, but I am very tired of it. And just very tired.

This has been a busy and often difficult late summer/fall, beginning with an unexpected death in the family that required considerable attention and travel at the height of the latest COVID surge and again during the aftermath of Hurricane Ida. I’m still dealing with paperwork, and will be for the foreseeable future, but at least I shouldn’t have to travel for that for a while. I hope.

You may have heard that Lethe Press is slowing down its work, after 20 years of publishing LGBTQ+ fiction, particularly SFF. As a result, Amy Griswold and I have reclaimed the rights to the two Mathey & Lynes novels, Death By Silver and A Death at the Dionysus Club, and are looking to move them elsewhere. As a result, the ebooks are temporarily unavailable.