lgbt characters

Gay Romance Northwest 2016

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Hello all,

Bringing to you today the events from the Gay Romance Northwest meet-up that happened yesterday. 

The event started off with everyone registering for the conference and finding the people they knew. I found the trans panel contingent as well as some other friends, such as Kelly Haworth, a Riptide author.

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Then, we started off with an intro from the Seattle Public Library, which was hosting the event. Then Tracy Timmons-Grey, our lovely and dedicated organizer said a few words.

Then, we moved on to the terrifying part, which was the keynote speeches. Richard Compson Sater went first, and he talked about being a young man and falling in love with some of the non-queer characters in books, such as Atticus Finch. Then I went, and I talked about being young and not being able to find queer characters in books to reflect who I truly was. Then Tobi Hill-Meyer went and talked about trans issues in the queer community. Our speeches will be posted on the GRNW blog as well as the recordings of the speeches.

Then, we moved right along to our panel, which was Trans Authors on Characters, Stories, and Industry. The moderator of our panel was Austin Chant, and our panelists were Tobi Hill-Meyer, Laylah Hunter, E.E. Ottoman, J.K. Pendragon, and myself. We had a great time with our panel, and some of the questions asked were things such as how being trans affected our writing and what were our experiences with publishing as trans authors. I felt like some of my answers were more basic while other panelists such as Tobi had more in-depth answers. But I still had fun with the panel, especially talking about our favourite tropes.

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After that, we went to the Erased no More: Bisexual Characters in LGBTQ Romance panel. The moderator was E.J. Russell, and the panelists were Dev Bentham, Charley Descoteaux, CJane Elliot, Amanda Jean, and Morticia Knight. I’d wanted to check out the panel about writing a series, but that discussion was full. The bisexual panel was still fun, touching on issues such as stereotypes, pushback about writing bisexual characters, and the gay-for-you trope, which Amanda suggested should be changed to the bisexual revelation trope.

We went to the bookfest on the 4th floor after that, which was fun. I got to talk to a lot of people, sign some books, and give away some swag. I was sitting next to J.K. Pendragon and E.E. Ottoman, so we got to talk a lot. During the last part of the bookfest, I went and bought some books, The Mechanical Universe trilogy by E.E. Ottoman, and The Admirer, a murder mystery by Karelia Stetz-Waters which I got signed by the authors.

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Then we went to the Rendezvous for the after party. Last year we missed the after party because we were so tired. There were several readings, and I went up and read from Rangers over Regulus, which was an impromptu reading. 

And that’s all folks! We had a great time and were exhausted afterwards, but I think this year’s Gay Romance Northwest meet-up was a great success.

Magic and Mayhem release date!

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Hello everyone,

Today is the release date for the Magic and Mayhem charity anthology which benefits the Gay Romance Northwest meet-up!

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The anthology includes my short story Charmed by Chance, which is a cute little story about a cyborg who meets a mage and is instantly smitten. I’m really excited about this story because it features a genderqueer character and a bisexual character. It’s supposed to be short and sweet, so I hope it delivers! 

You can buy the anthology on Amazon or on Smashwords.

Charmed by Chance

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Hello everyone!

I’m really excited, because my short story Charmed by Chance is coming out in September! September 6th, 2016 to be exact, for the Gay Romance Northwest charity anthology Magic and Mayhem, which can be preordered here.

Look, here’s the cover!

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There are going to be seven other authors who wrote stories for the anthology, as well as essays from past conferences. The theme for the anthology was either the pairing of mage/cyborg or soldier/tattoo artist, which were the character match pairings from previous years at the GRNW meet-up. It should be a great anthology. Here’s the line-up for the anthology:

STORIES:

“Broken Art,” by Dev Bentham
“Caroline’s Heart,” by Austin Chant
“Demonica,” by Megan Derr
“The Hollow History of Professor Perfectus,” by Ginn Hale
“Fade to Black,” by Josh Lanyon
“Charmed By Chance,” by Alex Powell
“Sun, Moon, and Stars,” by E.J. Russell
“Slack Tide,” by Karelia Stetz-Waters

ESSAYS:

“Romance for the Rest of Us,” by Jessica Blat
“Sad Queer Characters and the Revolution of Joy,” by Austin Chant
“Dear Rose,” by Rose Christo
“How to Get LGBT Romance Books Into Libraries” by Marlene Harris
“So What is “Character-Type Love Match” Anyway?” by Nicole Kimberling
“My Road to Romance,” by Susan Lee
“To My Future Self,” by E.E. Ottoman
“What I’ve Learned,” by Jordan Castillo Price
“Dear Len,” by Radclyffe
“A Letter to My Former Self,” by Rick R. Reed
“Five Things We Learned Running A Queer Romance Event (and the One Thing We Still Need to Do)” by Tracy Timmons-Gray

That’s all I wanted to announce! Have a good day everybody!

All the King’s Men release day!

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Hello everyone!

Today is an exciting day, because it is the release date for All the King’s Men!

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All the King’s Men is now available on the Less than Three Press book market! Check it out!

Also, don’t forget to check out the mini blog hop going on right now for a chance to win a signed copy of All the King’s Men as well as a $20 gift certificate to the Less Than Three Press book market! All you have to do is comment on one of the blog posts and then enter the Rafflecopter draw. There is a stop on my blog here if you want to enter, and today’s stop is at Hearts on Fire!

Unfinished projects

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We all have them, sadly: half-finished ideas that weren’t really thought through or that we got bored of before we could end them. Some of them we got stuck on and never got back into writing on again. Some of them, we had a really good idea, but we jumped into it without much planning or research, and they fell to the wayside.

Authors have tons of unfinished projects. I have lots of them. Steampunk sky pirates, cross-dressing soccer players, and sorcerers-turned-cats (accidentally) are all there waiting for me to pick them up again and finish them. I even have a couple from when I was in my late teens (I am now in my late twenties) that are salvageable (so described by one of my very good friends) that were pretty long before they petered out. 

What do we do with them? Sometimes, the motivation and creative juices have just stopped, and others, the daunting task of outlining and research is too much for us right at this moment. Sometimes, it was so long ago that we wrote them, that we’ve forgotten where we wanted to take our protagonists. Possibly, we’ve also lost the voice of the characters that we were writing, a true tragedy.

They’re stored there in our computer files, in our notebooks, sometimes just in our brains, waiting for us to get back the motivation to finish.

One day, I would like to come back to them. I have mentioned that I have three projects on the go right now, just because I’m a ridiculous person who can’t stop it with the plot bunnies hopping everywhere. But maybe after I’m finished those three, then I’ll be able to come back to some of them.

I loved those ideas, as I’m sure we all did at some point. I don’t want to just abandon them to time, to let them gather dust and eventually disappear.

Maybe it will help me regain motivation if I describe them.

The steampunk sky pirate story takes place in a world of floating islands in the sky, and our hero is a young man who foolishly intercepts a message meant for the high command of the royal navy. He then has to escape with the help of – you guessed it – pirates. 

The cross-dressing soccer player story is about a guy from England who wants to find work while he’s in university in America, but the only job is a female server position. So he cross-dresses in order to get a job and ends up on the female soccer team as well. His name is Ashley, which is how he managed to fool everyone.

Lastly, the sorcerer story is about a young wizard in college who is in a rivalry with a fellow student. He accepts a challenge to create a familiar, and he planned on using a cat. However, he accidentally uses the wrong spell, and instead turns himself into a cat. Now, he’s stuck as a cat without a way of turning himself back (that he knows of, heh heh.)

Anyway, those were my projects. Feel free to share some of your projects that have fallen by the wayside!

NaNoWriMo Close

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This is it, everyone. The last day of NaNoWriMo 2015. I did it!

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Some of us finished in the third week, like my friend Laurence. Some of us were madly writing away on the very last day with only a little bit more to go, like me. Some of us weren’t even close to finishing, but kept on writing anyways.

Congratulations to all of us. It’s a difficult challenge to write 50000 words in just one month. Even the decision to try to write a novel is a hard challenge to face, so I hope that you can look back on your work this month and be proud of yourself for what you have accomplished.

I had an interesting time of it. I wasn’t expecting to follow the set pattern of 1667 words a day, but I’ve stuck to it, which I haven’t done before. This is my third year participating in NaNoWriMo, and in the past, I’ve fallen behind and tried to finish thousands of words in one day. One year I managed to finish, and one year I didn’t. So I’m proud that I made a goal and I stuck to it this time.

This was definitely a year for firsts. This time, not only did I attend a write-in for NaNoWriMo, but I was the one to organize it. Now that I’ve done it once, I think I can possibly do it again.

Also, I did the first third of my writing in the hospital by hand, which was yet another challenge. I think that I’ve done pretty well.

So, yet another year comes to a close. I’ve got an entire 50 000 word novel to revise and get beta readers for. I already have all sorts of additions in mind, and it was difficult not to go and correct them during the writing process. But now I have scads of time to go do that.

So I’ll see you again next year everyone, and until then, I hope you can meet all your writing challenges with determination.

Geek Out Blog Tour finished!

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Hello everyone! As promised, the whole Geek Out Blog Tour is here with all the links to every post. Check them all out, some of our blog tour stops still have giveaways going on! Not all of these are blog tour stops, actually, some are just blog posts by the authors about their books, but I thought I’d include them as part of the post so that everyone can find out more about this awesome collection.

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Alex Powell

Geek Out Blog Tour

Why Unicorns

Love Rampage Release Date

Love Rampage Blog Tour

Cecil Wilde

They is Awkward, but Important

Available for Preorder – Defying Convention

Alden Lila Reedy

Geek Out Collection – Alden Lila Reedy’s Manifest

J.K. Pendragon

Guest Post and Giveaway

Release Day: Double Take aka “Oops, I’m Dating Twins”

Kinks and Content Warnings

Caitlin Ricci

Writing Trans Characters

Guest Post and Giveaway

Francis Gideon

Geek Out Collection Tour – Sext-based Adventures

Guest Post and Giveaway

Alessandra Ebulu

Guestpost – Of Anime and the Baeci

Alison Evans

Knowing the Words

The Geek Out Collection is now available with Less Than Three Press!

Sky Knights cover release

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Hello all, I hope you’re having a good 2015 so far!

Just giving everyone the chance to see the cover for Sky Knights, done by London Burden!

Sky Knights - cover-01I love this cover a ridiculous amount. As you can see, the outline of the plane is meant to look like the plane my protagonists fly, a wooden biplane called the Po-2 Polikarpov.

Sky Knights is part of the Damsels in Distress anthology, and is currently up for preorder!

I’m also excited to see the stories by my fellow authors who will also be part of the anthology. I’m glad to see that so many people submitted a story to this anthology, because we really need more awesome lesbian and bisexual ladies. Usually, there’s one or two stories about queer woman in anthologies published by Less Than Three Press, but it’s great to see an anthology dedicated to showing how awesome our female characters can be.

Sky Knights is about two Soviet pilots during WW2 who are part of the infamous Nightwitches squadron, night bombers that flew perilous missions in tiny little wooden planes. This story is a historical fantasy, because I couldn’t resist with the magic. However, the part where women were allowed to be pilots in the Soviet army during WW2 is historically accurate. There really was a women’s bomber squadron that the Germans called the Nachthexen who risked their lives harassing the German front lines. They were also snipers, sappers, tank drivers, and battle medics.

With this story, I wanted to show that there were women in real history that did amazing things, including become part of one of the most feared bombing units of the war. Women are so often left out of history, their accomplishments glossed over to make it seem like women can’t do anything. This is doubly true of queer women.

Keep that in mind when you are reading, that all the women in this story were based on women that really did those death-defying things.

Sky Knights will be released March 25th, 2015.

Happy New Year everyone, happy writing and happy reading.

 

I’m on Wattpad

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I recently signed up with Wattpad.

I’ll probably be adding writing odds and ends on there. Little drabbles that don’t make it into my novels, outside POVs, things like that. Maybe I’ll even do a full-length story on there, but for now, I’m still working on a novel I want to submit to Riptide Publishing for their submission calls.

So, just short stories and drabbles for now.

Anyway, that’s the latest news.