• Trusty Gavel

Let’s Talk About…Authority in Writing

A lot of conversations have been had lately about writerly responsibility to accurately represent in their books cultural experiences they have not had. There are a lot of things that...discomfit me about this conversation. Like the fact that apparently some writers need to be told this is a thing? When let's be clear: we have always been a hundred percent responsible for not writing racist bullshit. (Unless, of course, that was our goal. Presumably I'm not talking to anyone here for whom "inciting race war" is a goal for fiction.) Also: I'm all for people writing characters who are not

May 6th, 2016|Categories: blog|Tags: , , |

Let’s Talk About…Paranoia

I'm a paranoid motherfucker. Some of this is genetic, I'm assuming, because I come from paranoid. My dad was the creepy kind of "You're all scheming against me" paranoid. My mom is the "Don't blow up that balloon because this one time I heard this story that a balloon backfired into someone's throat and they suffocated to death" paranoid. I try not to get crazy with it, but I'm paranoid. And my imagination tends to run wild. Case in point: I'm taking a run on this property and it's pretty rad. I can run trails instead of streets, which is good

November 20th, 2015|Categories: blog|Tags: |

Let’s Talk About…Bisexuality

I occasionally get myself into a cyclical conversation with open minded bisexual folks. I'm all for the folks who identify as bi meaning "I am attracted to all the people across the gender spectrum". That's cool. That's fantastic. But I'm a little bit sick of being treated like I'm irrational for not assuming that a hundred percent of bisexuals mean this, and further, for calling out people who act a little entitled about it. It has been my experience that a great many people who identify as bisexual mean that in a binary way. See what I did there? They

October 11th, 2015|Categories: blog|Tags: , , , |

Let’s Talk About…Budgeting. Like Nerds.

Hi, I'm Kris. And I fucking love budgeting. I came to budgeting the first time my hours were cut after I had a kid. I'd planned so well! I had a job from which I could work from home, and health insurance, and I'd paid for sperm with cash. Man. I had my shit together. Then my insurance deductible more than doubled while I was pregnant. And when my kid was not quite a year old my hours were cut (before I'd managed to pay off that clusterfuck of medical debt from my totally healthy pregnancy and delivery). I sat

August 12th, 2015|Categories: blog|Tags: , |
  • Sossi loves books by bibliothekarin, on Flickr

Let’s Talk About Love Affairs: Author Edition

Let's talk about falling in love. With an author. God, that new author feeling, the thrill of discovery, that moment poised at the brink, knowing you're falling and just fucking going with it. The best moment, even after falling, is looking that author up and finding out they have a backlist. Even I love that, and I'm maybe the stingiest person you've ever met. I stress over a buck ninety-nine gluten free yogurt covered pretzels. How do you find this new love, this brilliant door leading to all the new worlds? Maybe you find them through a friend, online or

February 26th, 2015|Categories: blog|Tags: , |

Video Podcast #5: Let’s Talk About Anxiety!

Wheeeeeeee. I made another video, y'all. Something very intriguing about this process. I'll work out the psychology behind it later; for right now we'll just say if I had more time outside of toddlerland, I'd record more videos. It's...fun? Fun. It's totally bizarrely fun. I cut off beginnings and endings of words in this one. Because I never close my goddamn mouth and I slur my words. Sheesh. I'll get better, I swear!

June 23rd, 2014|Categories: blog, podcasts|Tags: , |

Let’s Talk About: Happily Ever After

When I used to read romance in fanfiction, HEA endings were automatically subversive. With the exception of Jack/Ianto in Torchwood, I never read canon couples. (And, not to spoil anyone who hasn't finished out Torchwood, but the lads most certainly did not get a HEA.) In original romance, HEA makes me uncomfortable. HEA in many ways runs opposed to the things I want to actually promote via art, via life, via every single time I express myself: be here, now. Don't live in the future. Don't try to know how something will work out before you commit to it. You can't

March 26th, 2014|Categories: blog|Tags: , , |

Let’s Talk About Literary Merit

I've been considering perceived quality a lot, with this erotica-publishing adventure. When I was in high school and we could "choose" our books for a certain project, the rule was always that the book had to be "of literary merit." No Stephen King, no Anne Rice. None of those literary bottom-dwellers, in other words. As a young writer, I internalized the notion that anything written for "the masses"--anything popular, anything with fast pacing, anything my English teachers couldn't read dozens of Biblical references and Jungian archetypes into--was inferior. If I wanted to be a real writer, I'd write in a detached

February 13th, 2014|Categories: blog|Tags: |