lgbtq fiction

Insanity Girls Redux

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It’s here! Insanity Girls Redux is finally ready for publication.

Summary: Insanity Girls takes place in a modern Canadian city, where the nightlife is wild and those that roam its streets even more so. One night, Silveira, a quiet university student finds herself transported into a world she never imagined. Envy, the punk rock chick that takes her there, is fascinated to find that their worlds might be able to cross over after all.

InsanityCover_HD

 

I self-published this short, and am looking to hopefully put up even more short stories and novellas that need new homes. I will be waiting until at least July 31st, as LT3 is in the process of taking down their book listings.

This amazing cover artwork was done by an awesome artist who happens to be open for commissions! Their name is Reina, but I will let them introduce themself!

Reina is a full-time freelancing digital artist with a professional focus on character design and concept art. They also produce illustration works. They are currently based in Malaysia.

@ArtofReinaV

Mich_lms@live.com

I had a really great experience hiring Reina to do my cover. And, as you can see, my cover looks beautiful.

Specs for Insanity Girls Redux:

Lesbian

Contemporary

16 000 words

$1.99

LT3 Closure

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The news is out: after ten years of successful business, Less Than Three Press is closing its doors.

across borders

I was 23 when I was first introduced to this publisher by my good friend J.K. Pendragon. They were getting their first story The Fairy Gift published there. I was nervous at first, because I’d never thought that I could publish anything. But I did it, I submitted my first ever published work to Less Than Three Press, and to my unending surprise, they accepted my novella Across Borders for publication in The Bestiary collection.

Since then, I published multiple stories in various genres, mostly sci-fi and fantasy romances. Less Than Three Press was a good place to start my writing career. Because of them, I gained confidence in my writing, attended several writing conferences, and met many different authors from all over the world.

So, now what’s going to happen?

For a lot of my novels and novellas, this sad occasion is not the end for me. I received the news before the general public, and I’ve been planning out what to do since I first found out.

Love Rampage - cover2-01

First of all, I have two shorts: Insanity Girls and Love Rampage. I will be self-publishing each of these shorts and advertising their release fairly soon. To be honest, Insanity Girls is already published, but I’m waiting on a cover release in order to advertise it. If you want to see my awful placeholder cover, then I’m sure you can find it if you look on Amazon or the like. Love Rampage has a beautiful cover made by a Less Than Three Press cover artist and will be released as soon as I reformat it.

Second, I have a few novellas of less than 50 000 words, which is the unofficial novel length. These are Hakusan Angel, Sky Knights, and Across Borders. Two of these have lovely cover art already done, and I am fully satisfied with them. I will re-release Hakusan Angel and Sky Knights as self-publications as well. Across Borders is currently being re-written and may reappear as a full length novel at some point in the future. That one will also need a new cover!AlltheKingsMen

Lastly, I have two full length novels: Rangers over Regulus and All the King’s Men. I would like to find a new publisher for both of these novels. This means resubmitting them to a new LGBTQ+ publisher and possibly revamping them. I would love anyone’s suggestions for where to republish them!

That is all for now. I will announce each new short, novella, and novel as it is rereleased so that everyone knows.

Thank you!

Alex

Camp NaNo 2019

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It’s almost that time again!

It’s time for the July Camp NaNoWriMo writing challenge. I haven’t partaken in a while, but I’m up for the challenge this year. I have chosen to try and write 50K words in 31 days.

My project is one which I’ve been planning out since May. I am hoping to finish this novel and get it published. I love the concept and setting. My protagonist is in Vancouver, Canada, and they go to UBC.

My protagonist is genderfluid, and the idea is that they are just starting to come out as trans. They are trying to start dressing in traditionally feminine clothing for the first time as well, and while they are doing that, they run into the love interest who I haven’t named yet (oops). I’m modelling the love interest on actor Bradley James.

BradleyJames

For those of you who have seen the show BBC Merlin, you know that Bradley James played Prince Arthur. I love his acting in this show, but I’m only modelling Bradley James’ looks and not his personality.

As for our protagonist, I don’t really have any particular person in mind to model them after. A severe lack on genderqueer actors is one of the main reasons for this problem. I really wish that there were more to choose from!

Anyway, my protagonist Ashley (or Ash for short) runs into the love interest while dressed as a woman and then again while dressed as a man. In either case, this Bradley James look-alike seems to be flirting with them. Chaos ensues.

So that’s the story. Hopefully you’ll see it released later!

Weekend Girl

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Hello all! 

I’ve been outlining a new project! This one I already have a title for, which makes me so excited, because titles have always been the hardest part for me. This one is called Weekend Girl and features a nonbinary protagonist named Ashley who uses they/their pronouns, but who is also struggling with coming out. It is a romance, so there’s going to be some very funny misunderstandings happening in the future.

I have the outline complete, so I am aiming to start writing during the month of July, which is Camp NaNoWriMo month. I’m hoping to complete this novel as part of that challenge, as I usually write better under a deadline. 30 days should be long enough for 50K words, right? I’m also hoping to outline another story to write for November NaNoWriMo, but I’m not sure what yet. We shall see.

I’ve gotten a lot better at organizing since being in grad school, which is great for me. My thesis project was about 40K words long, and it went through 5 rounds of revisions. Wow, that was tough, but I finished it! But to organize all the research I did, I had to be very meticulous. I’ll talk about my new method of organization in my next post!

Anyway, if you have any questions about Weekend Girl, feel free to comment or chat with me on Twitter! (@aa_powell)

Hiatus over?

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Hello all!

It’s good to be back!

I’m sorry for being gone for so long. I was mostly working on my education, so I hope you will forgive me. I am graduating from UNBC with an MA in English on May 31st!

Anyway, that’s exciting for me. But what’s exciting for you guys is that I am back to work on creative writing stuff! I am currently finishing up dev edits on Yaliana that I was supposed to finish up over a year ago. Now that it’s back on track, I will probably be able to give you an update on publication dates soon!

Not only that, check this out!

Read and Write with Pride Turns 5

I’m doing a reading event in Edmonton again! It’s the annual Read and Write with Pride happening with some great LGBTQ writers in attendence. I’m excited about that, but I still don’t know what I’m going to be reading! I’ll let everyone know closer to the date.

There are so many things I’m working on right now, but I will have time this summer to work on creative writing, and hopefully taking a gap year between MA and PhD will give me lots of time to write.

I’ll tell you more about projects as they develop!

For now, glad to see you all!

Pride Prince George

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Hello everyone!

Just this weekend, I was able to attend Prince George Pride! I had an author booth at the festival, which I thought was fun. I saw a lot of people I know in the community, and it was great to see everyone out in celebration and resistance.

I think my time at the Pride festival was moderately successful. I sold a few books of mine, including a copy of Geek Out, which is a collection of trans romances. I’m going to try and get more involved in my own community, which will be fun. Up until recently, I have only ever participated as a queer author in online communities. I think Prince George needs to know that our city has queer writers and that we are writing queer lit.

I had the interesting experience of meeting lots of queer youth who had no idea that there were queer romances out there. They also had no idea that their voices could be heard, and that their own stories could be put out there in the world, too.

So, to those of you in Prince George, please feel free to chat with me. I’d love to connect with more queer writers in the community. I think at some point I will establish a queer writing club as well, to connect writers together.

I’ve done a lot of activism, but I think it’s time to join my online presence with my actual physical presence on the ground. After all, I’ve been dividing my time and presence between two places, and now it will be one. 

So welcome new followers! I will try and keep in touch with everyone! And if I can establish a queer creators community, that would also be great!

Happy Pride!

LGBT WIP

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Hey everyone, long time no see!

I’m just writing in to tell you about the #LGBTWIP tag going on via Twitter this month. A lot of LGBTQ authors are responding to this tweet to talk about their latest WIP. I guess I’m band-wagoning onto the idea, because here I am.

So one of my WIP is about agender plant-aliens who are meeting humans in order to do a trade deal. The story goes that they are trying to make a trade, with a secondary goal of making an alliance, but then a radical xenophobic group gets involved and tries to mess up the tentative agreement. My MC is a scientist who does a lot of her own experiments on herself. She is a biotech engineer who is working on making their species more hardy in order to survive longer, healthier lives. Because of her work, she is added to a diplomatic team that includes her “mother,” the main diplomat and negotiator. 

The premise came from a very famous Tumblr post about how aliens might see humans as the scariest ones in the universe and not the other way around. My plant-aliens are very peaceful people who worship nature and the balance of life. Meeting war-like and aggressive humans is a bit of a culture-shock for them.

Anyway, a lot of the plot is yet undecided, and there’s a lot of work to be done on it. 

If any of you are wondering about my Across Borders rewrite, I haven’t exactly worked on it in a while, mostly because of grad school. 

I’m also working on a free read on Wattpad called Text Me. Feel free to check that one out, since it’s free. Notice I’m using the word “free” a lot? Yeah, it’s free. It’s not finished yet, but I’ve been updating it fairly regularly.

Anyway, hopefully I will finish my thesis fairly soonish and I will be able to write again. 

I keep saying that, but “soon” is a relative term.

Anyway, drop into the comments if you have anything to chat about!

Ttyl

Rewriting Part 1

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I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on rewriting, as this is my first project to be rewritten, but bear with me, my friends, and we’ll get through this thing together.

The first thing I had to do was reread the original novella. It didn’t take long, as it was only 26k words. It was interesting in some ways, because it was almost like reading something that someone else had written. It’s been so long, that I’d forgotten some of the details, and it was like reading it anew.

The next step for me was to decide what I wanted to keep. I made a sort of list in order to make sure I didn’t forget. It went like this:

  1. Characters. Almost all of them, obviously my two main characters, plus Mai-hua (my main character’s foster sister), her brother Jie-kang, the Emperor, Elder Breena, the Huo-long prince, etc.
  2. Premise. The two nations of the Shui-long and the Ceffyl Dwr are at war. Mai-hua wants to put an end to the war.
  3. World-building. What I had, I decided to keep. Both the Shui-long and the Ceffyl Dwr are somewhat amphibious beings that live on both land and water. There are five dragon nations.
  4. Tone/mood
  5. Some scenes from the original story.

Then, I decided what I wanted to revise. Another list. Can you tell that I like lists? I’m generally not a very organized person, so lists are good for me.

  1. Character roles: In the original story, Xin-jian didn’t know Mai-hua’s plans to make peace with the Ceffyl Dwr and only found out when she nearly died. In this story, I made them both a part of the plot, and made it so that Jie-kang’s entrance into the story is also rewritten, because in the original, he is only very briefly mentioned.
  2. Narrative arc: the whole story changes, with the exception of a few scenes that I think I will keep. Some scenes I want to keep, but am not sure how to fit them in to the new narrative arc.
  3. World-building: needs a vast amount of improvement. The original had a facade of world-building, but wouldn’t hold up under pressure or a more detailed examination.
  4. Length: this story needs much more room. It will probably span at least two novels.

There you have it. As I go on, I will definitely let you know more of what’s happening with that. Also, if I finally finish my dev edits, you will be the second to know (the first being my publishers/editors).

Thanks for tuning in!

Across Borders Take Two

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THIS IS NOT AN APRIL FOOL’S DAY JOKE

Hello all,

I have yet to finish my dev edits. Such is my shame. However, I am starting yet another project, which some of you may have already read about in previous posts.

I am going to do a complete rewrite of Across Borders, which is the first novella that I ever wrote for Less Than Three Press as part of The Bestiary collection. It’s since gone out of print, and I thought it would be cool to revamp it and resub it to the same publisher. For some reason, it was a fairly popular novella, even if it didn’t get the same ratings as some of my other work. 

Here’s what it looked like on its first go around:

bestiary4across

This cover was done back in 2012. Back then (in the olden days), Less Than Three Press didn’t do separate covers for every novella, so every novella in The Bestiary volume 4 had the same cover. Some of you probably remember, even! I was fresh out of my BA, and was ready for anything. Ah, my youthful idealism. 

Anyway. That’s the first cover art I ever received, and I can tell you that I was thrilled with it. Nowadays, LT3 has all sorts of lovely cover art and talented artists. We’re spoiled, really. But as a newbie author, I was happy with it. You can even see the little kelpie symbol in the top corners. 

I still do like my first published work, the original Across Borders, which was a romance between warriors of two warring states, but it is, admittedly, a juvenile work. One thing I can improve on in the story I want to write is world-building as well as narrative story arc. I’m looking forward to it.

These are my characters Xin-jian and Tiernan. The art was done by V. Rios for the 2012 publication.

across borders

My characters from Across Borders

As you can see, the two of them are shifters, one is a Chinese dragon shifter, and the other a kelpie. As a few of you probably realize, Celtic Ireland/Wales/Scotland is pretty far away from China. I also didn’t really think of time periods/historical accuracy. I just wanted to tell the story of two people who are from vastly different cultures falling in love. I think it’s the love story that carried it, because the story-telling needed improvement.

Not to say that I wasn’t a good writer in 2012. My action scenes are pretty epic, and continue to be one of my stronger points to this day. 

The long and the short of it is that I think the story I want to tell needs to be fleshed out more. I’ve already outlined what is probably going to be two novels, and it’s turning out a lot different than the first one. But the core remains, that is, the love story between two cultures is still there.

I will keep you all updated! I’m doing the first rewrite I’ll ever do, and it should be a fun journey for me. I’ll probably release another blog post on rewrites soon!

Until then!

Dev edits

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Hello everyone,

My dev edits are currently driving me up the wall. Dev edits, or developmental edits, are supposed to help you with the structural aspects of the story you are trying to tell. My story, Yaliana, is a sci-fi lesbian romance. I love this story, but right now, it’s making me crazy.

First of all, I have an issue of nomenclature. I am talking about a different planet with different animals and plants. They are not really named, and my editor tells me that I need to come up with a system of naming these things. The main problem is that these characters have no frame of reference for these animals and plants. My characters have never lived on earth, and most of these animals are dangerous, so my characters’ main concern is not calling them by a name, but rather, staying alive.

Secondly, I have a character who I created who contradicts himself with his actions and words, and this was not done on purpose. I have to rewrite dialogue and different scenes in order to make him more consistent.

Thirdly, I have two stubborn characters who need to either show or reflect on their feelings for one another more openly. Right now, most of the story is focused on the action, whereas romance readers are concerned with the relationship. I need to get them to talk more to each other and more to themselves about their developing love story.

Those are my three problems, and as you can see, they are rather extensive and systemic problems. I’m pretty sure that I can fix them, but it requires a lot of time and energy. Dev edits are really important for worldbuilding, especially in sci-fi and fantasy worlds. I hope to ensure that my novella makes sense by the time I finish.