Month: November 2020

Christmas Giveaway!

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Hello all!

I have a Christmas giveaway going on for exactly one month starting today. I will make the draw on December 25th, 2020. The prize for this giveaway is a $25 gift certificate to JMS Books.

So, how do you enter? Easy peasy. I have three different places you can enter by leaving a comment. The first is here on my author webpage on this post. The second is on my Twitter post announcing this giveaway. The third is on my Facebook post announcing the giveaway. I will write your name on a piece of paper and draw it out of a hat, old-school style.

What should your comment be about? I have a list of questions for you. Choose one and answer it in the comments of whatever platform you like. You can enter up to five times by answering different questions in separate comments. Please don’t cheat and leave more than five answers on different platforms. I have no way of making sure this doesn’t happen, so I’m appealing to your sense of fairness.

Here are the questions!

  1. Who is your favourite LGBTQ+ author?
  2. What is your favourite LGBTQ+ book (with LGBTQ+ MC)?
  3. When did you start reading LGBTQ+ books?
  4. Do you have a favourite romance trope? (ie “there’s only one bed” or “pretend relationship”
  5. Where’s your favourite place to read?

Okay! Make sure to share with friends!

Merry start of the Christmas season everyone! (And other winter holidays too)

Writing the Erotic

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Hello everyone

Some of you know me as a romance writer of LGBTQ+ romance stories. I am, and I wanted to talk in this post about writing about sex. A lot of my stories have some pretty hardcore queer sex in them. Some people may question this decision, and I wanted to address it.

Why sex?

First of all, I think of sex as something fairly ordinary. Not normal, as that erases ace identities, but not something terribly out of the ordinary for romantic entanglements. Sex happens. So, the question from some people is – why do you write the actual scene? Why do you not just let it fade to black?

Several reasons, actually. One of the reasons is that I want to try and normalize queer sex. The mainstream media has many many options when it comes to straight sex scenes, and often queer sex or even queer relationships are still seen as taboo. And I do understand that sometimes queer relationships are sexualized in order to keep them away from children, even though queer relationships are not necessarily sexual. But by writing queer sex scenes, I want to give queer people something that they might not have access to in mainstream media.

Another reason is for my characters, it’s important sometimes for them to actually develop their feelings for one another. And for some, the erotic is empowering and gives a person or character agency. Take this quotation from Audre Lorde for example: “Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence, forcing us to evaluate those aspects honestly in terms of their relative meaning in our lives” (57). I write about the erotic because to be able to just be in our bodies as queer people is something that I think empowers us.

The erotic is a source of power, especially for marginalized identities such as our queer ways of existing. Now understand that the erotic does not necessarily mean sex. It means the sensual, the bodily way of existing, sensation, pleasure. That’s something that I also try and portray in my stories because it’s so important.

That’s why I write queer sex scenes. My queer erotics are for other queer people, to give them something, to show other people that we are allowed to exist in pleasure.

I hope you understand.

Works Cited

Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider. Crossing Press, 1984.

Hakusan Angel and Sequel

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Hello everyone!

Today I wanted to give some love to one of my older works Hakusan Angel, which I had republished with JMS Books. I wrote this novella when I lived in Vancouver in the summer of 2013 for a submission call. The call was for a mecha theme, and because I drew a lot of inspiration from Japan, I decided to set my novella in a Japan-esque world.

In this novella, there are people who can wield their own energy as a weapon. These people are called Sources. The military recruits Sources to power huge war machines. The Sources power the machines, and then pilots drive them.

Kaede is a Source who has been hiding her true abilities. She is working as a Level 3 Source, but her powers are stronger. One day, an accident happens, and Kaede must deal with the consequences.

Mariko is a pilot, who recently started training as a Level 1 driver. She and Kaede butt heads until bigger problems surface and the two of them have to work together in order to overcome them.

I recently accidentally started a sequel to this novella, which will be a full novel. I’m looking forward to diving into this world again after 7 years. This novel, which I’ve tentatively titled “Key to Tateyama” has a complete outline done already.

I hope everyone is having a good November!

NaNoWriMo 2020

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Hello all,

It looks like NaNoWriMo has started for this year already! It’s day 4 of the yearly challenge to write 50 000 words in only 30 days. It’s definitely a difficult challenge, and new and seasoned writers alike try their hand at beating it.

This year, unfortunately, I will not be participating. I am in the first year of a four-year PhD and am currently deep in coursework at the moment. I am taking three graduate-level courses, and am focused on writing papers this November.

Some of my past NaNoWriMo challenges have borne fruit, however. In 2015, I finished writing Far Patrol in 30 days and in 2012 I finished writing Rangers over Regulus. Far Patrol is slated to be published in July 2021 with Ninestar Press and Rangers over Regulus was published last year with JMS Books.

Maybe I will take part next year. I hope so. Even in years that I lose the challenge, I still manage to get a good chunk of writing done. That includes All the King’s Men, which I failed to finish in 2013, but still got published by JMS Books in 2019.

What I’m really trying to say is, don’t give up! Even if you’re behind in writing or you’re not sure you’ll finish, it’s still worth it to try. And even if you fail this time around, you’re still trying to write a novel, which is a difficult task, but you’re doing it anyway.

I’m rooting for you all!