Pavlos C. Hunt is a New York CIty based author and poet. You can follow him on Twitter as well as Instagram. I had the opportunity to interview Pavlos, which you can read below.
First of all, welcome to Geeks OUT! Could you tell us a little about yourself?
Thank you for having me at Geeks OUT, it’s an honor! I am Pavlos C. Hunt, author of Little Beach, Little Bitch, a queer poetry collection that explores the themes of love, loss, and hope, through the lens of a queer immigrant. I was born and raised in Nicosia, Cyprus, and I moved to New York ten years ago to pursue my creative dreams. I’ve worked in TV, theater and book publishing, but my dream is to get to a place where I can wake up and write until the sunset.
How did you find yourself drawn to the art of poetry and storytelling?
It started as a need to understand myself better. Every poem has a part of me, something I once felt, or something I once was. The same goes to my characters in fiction. They are all a reflection of me to some extent.
What can you tell us about your latest book, Little Beach, Little Bitch? What inspired this project?
Little Beach, Little Bitch started ten years before I was even aware of it. I was in the army in Cyprus back then, hiding my sexuality, and finding escape in the poetry of Walt Whitman, drafting my own poems at the watch tower to kill time. When I moved to New York, I thought everything would suddenly be wonderful in my life, but I was naïve, and I threw myself into bad relationships. Again, I used poetry to navigate all that. A few months ago, I was packing to move apartments, and I opened a box with more than a hundred notebooks in it. I read every single page, realizing that my entire life story was in there, and I decided to do a selection together and see where it takes me.
As a queer author of Cyprus descent, do you believe your background has influenced your poetry or writing in any way?
The older I get, the more I understand the depth of the connection I have with my motherland. Certain cultural aspects are engraved in me, so my point of view in life is always filtered by my experiences growing up in Cyprus. Even after ten years, I still feel like an outsider in New York. I don’t know if I belong here. There is a poem in Little Beach, Little Bitch about Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus and my birthplace, and there are a few other poems with references to my heritage and the topography of Cyprus.
For many years I resented Cyprus, because I was in the closet there, and I saw New York as my gay sanctuary. I didn’t come out to my parents until last year, at 27 years old, and it’s only now that by being my authentic self, I have completely transformed my relationship with Cyprus in a positive way.
How would you describe your writing process? Is there anything you do to help yourself in terms of motivation or creativity?
I revisit my work a lot. I edit and I re-write sometimes for years; it’s an endless process. However, a few of the poems in Little Beach, Little Bitch flew out me so naturally that I kept them intact since their inception. I stay motivated because I want to improve myself. I know my limitations, and I notice my improvement with every new piece of writing. I can only hope that by keeping at it, I’ll one day write something great. I believe that when a good poem touches your soul, it can transform your understanding of the entire world. And if I can do that even just for one person, then it’s worth it to me.
As a writer, who or what would you say are some of your greatest creative influences and/or sources of inspiration?
I observe how human relationships change through time. I lost friends I thought I’d had forever, and that was a catalyst in my writing. The queer community and culture are also an inspiration to me, and I try to find the connections and the nuances, and how the queer experience expands and how it diverges. In terms of people that inspire me, Cavafy was an archetype for me and my poetry. He has a poem about running away to a new city in hopes of change, but ultimately bringing yourself with you, which means it’s all just the same. That poem sums up my life. I also love reading lyrics to songs without the music, as if they were poems.
What are some of your favorite parts of writing? What do you feel are some of the most challenging?
It’s cathartic. As I mentioned above, my favorite part of writing is that it helps me understand myself and the people around me. The most challenging part to me is finding an audience and making them relate to something so personal. All the logistics that come after the creative process is a challenge to me as well, but I made a conscious decision recently to let go, put myself out there, and trust the process.
Aside from your work, what are some things you would want people to know about you?
I love drag shows. I even tried to be a drag queen in the past, but I didn’t commit to it. Doing drag takes a tremendous amount of time, and so does writing, so it wasn’t a viable option for me. I couldn’t give my heart to that craft. The drag queens that I love have a wildfire inside of them. I’m thinking of Pixie Aventura and Jasmine Rice now.
What’s a question you haven’t been asked yet, but wish you were asked (as well as the answer to that question)?
I think it’s fun when people talk about what superpower they’d like to have. I’m obsessed with everything magical. I hope to write fantasy one day, if I can bring my voice to the genre. So, the answer to that question for me would be teleportation, so I can close my eyes and, in a blink, appear in Cyprus and then back to New York. I’m just terrified of planes, and I always have to take two of them to get home.
Are there any other ideas or projects you are currently working on and at liberty to speak about?
I wrote a screenplay called MISS MYKONOS about a teenager that goes to the island of Mykonos with his grandmother and competes in a drag queen pageant with her help. It’s a light comedy; very different in style and aesthetic from Little Beach, Little Bitch, but still very queer. I am also writing a novel loosely based on my sexual experiences in New York City. The themes are very similar to my poetry, but the novel has a love story that carries the plot. It’s the journey of an innocent soul slowly getting broken into pieces by all the wrong people he lets in his life. In the end, there’s not much to give to the one he loves. Lastly, I also write lyrics for musicians, and I would love for people to check out another queer artist named Louis Bluehart who has some very fun songs out on Spotify and all other music platforms.
What advice would you give to other aspiring creatives?
I don’t think I have accumulated a lot of wisdom yet, but what really helped me stay creative was giving up the idea of perfection or originality, and just embracing every step of the way. Personally, I’m not sure if I have natural talent in writing, but I thought, “It’ll get better if I keep doing it, anyway.”
Finally, what queer books/writers would you recommend to the readers of Geeks OUT?
I already mentioned classics like Cavafy and Walt Whitman. Another book that I loved recently is The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. I also want to read A Previous Life by Edmund White and Memorial by Bryan Washington.
ADAM SASS began writing books in Sharpie on the backs of Starbucks pastry bags. (He’s sorry it distracted him from making your latte.) His award-winning debut, SURRENDER YOU SONS, was featured in Teen Vogue and the Savage Lovecast and was named a best book of 2020 by Kirkus. THE 99 BOYFRIENDS OF MICAH SUMMERS is his forthcoming novel from Viking. He lives in Los Angeles with his husband and dachshunds.
First of all, welcome to Geeks OUT! Could you tell us a little about yourself?
I’m dachshund-obsessed. I’ve got two little ones—Marty and Malibu—with my husband. We just moved back to LA after spending the first year of the pandemic in North Carolina with family. LA is our forever home, though. Something in the air out here just clicks with us. We’re not ourselves when we live anywhere else!
When did you know you were first interested in writing, and what drew you specifically to Young Adult Fiction?
I actually started my writing career in movies and TV, so I shifted out of screenplays and into novels when I started reading YA (shout out to Andrew Smith’s Grasshopper Jungle!) and fell in love with the imagination and story possibilities I was seeing. Also, I first started writing in the years I was a barista at my local Barnes & Noble. I’d scribble ideas on the backs of pastry bags as I looked out on the bookshelves, imagining my books in there one day.
Were there any stories (queer or otherwise) that you read or watched growing up that had touched you or felt relatable in any way? What stories feel relatable to you today?
Like most queer people my age, I had to find my queerness elsewhere growing up. Buffy was obviously core, queer-friendly media. Christopher Rice’s books were really important to me in high school. These days, I love seeing queer characters have darker edges to them, even in an unflattering light. I think The Other Two is maybe doing that the best right now.
How would you describe your writing routine or process? What are some of the enjoyable, hardest, and strangest parts of the process?
It’s not just about writing, you have to think as well. A hard and strange part of that process means showing your loved ones that seemingly irrelevant activities are feeding the creative process. For instance, I often do a puzzle while thinking through a story structure problem.
Your debut novel, Surrender Your Sons, was hailed as a gay thriller novel, dealing with horror, conversion camps, and queer survival. What draws you into to horror and what it been like writing this, including some of the realities of our world, distorted or reflected through the lens of fiction?
Horror helps us express our worst anxieties, and for me, the most therapeutic way to express mine is dig deep inside my terrified heart and spit out what I find there. Surrender Your Sons depicts several cruel people and puts many innocent people through unimaginable horrors, so that was difficult to put down on the page. However, the light in the dark is that I always gave these characters dignity and agency, and sometimes, they got big victories. My favorite part of Surrender Your Sons is the characters and the bonds between my queer teen campers. Writing them, letting them have laughs and sweet moments and kick-ass scenes where they worked together gave me all the joy I needed to survive writing the dark scenes. Surrender Your Sons shows that love and hope can never be killed, not even when everyone and everything seems to be against you.
Unfortunately, censorship of queer books is on the rise, which seems to be a topic you’re pretty passionate about. What are some ways as readers we can fight against us, and what is your take on what representation in books means to you?
Authors can only put the book out—that’s all we can do. Readers and parents hold the power in a way that even librarians and teachers don’t (because their employment is at stake, and they’re frequently a cudgel in this war). Readers and parents must email, call, text, show up in person to voice their support for challenged books and for diverse reads in general. They must do it often and loudly, because the other side never runs out of energy trying to pull us out.
What advice would you give to other aspiring writers?
Treat your work like you’re starting a small business, or an Etsy shop. Writing is not a job, a job has health benefits, 401k, and paid time off. You will not have that. Ever. You’ll have to give yourself that, and the way you do it is to understand you are a salesperson. Small businesses take years to take off and require you to put in more money than you get back. For a while! This is the first year where my business has turned a profit, but it took years to get to that point. Don’t despair that you don’t have the respect of a square job. You’re building something else!
Aside from writing, what are some things you would want others to know about you?
I’m a theme park fanatic. I collect books about Imagineers and often use their physical space storytelling techniques in my written work.
What’s a question you haven’t been asked yet and wish you were asked (as well as the answer to that question)?
Who is my favorite character I’ve ever written, and without a doubt, it’s Marcos Carrillo from Surrender Your Sons. I miss writing him and his goodness so much.
Can you tell us about any new projects or ideas you are nurturing and at liberty to discuss?
My second book, a YA romcom called The 99 Boyfriends of Micah Summers, comes out in September! It’s about a queer boy who draws his crushes (and imagines his life with them) before putting them away. When he decides to finally ask one of them out—Boy 100—he has a great connection, but they’re cruelly separated by fate, so he embarks on a quest to find his mystery boyfriend!
Finally, what LGBTQ+ books/authors would you recommend to the readers of Geeks OUT?
Jason-June’s Out of the Blue, Dan Aleman’s Indivisible, Andrew Joseph White’s Hell Followed With Us, and in Spring 2023, keep your eyes out for Terry Benton-Walker’s Blood Debts! All of these show different ways to be queer, different types of queerness, and have us at the center of stories that have little to do with being queer.
Alexandra Rowland is the author of several fantasy books, including A Conspiracy Of Truths, A Choir Of Lies, and Some by Virtue Fall, as well as a co-host of the Hugo Award nominated podcast Be the Serpent, all sternly supervised by their feline quality control manager. They hold a degree in world literature, mythology, and folklore from Truman State University.
I had the opportunity to interview Alexandra, which you can read below.
First of all, welcome to Geeks OUT! Could you tell us a little about yourself?
Hi, thanks for having me!
I’m Alexandra Rowland (they/them), and I’m a very queer fantasy novelist writing very queer fantasy novels, all set in the same expansive world. I have a degree in world literature, mythology, and folklore, which definitely informs the sort of stories I tell and the ways in which I tell them. I’m also the person who coined the word “hopepunk”, and a four-time Hugo Award nominee as a co-host of the podcast Be the Serpent, which discusses tropes in literature/media and particularly the role of fanfiction in the broader literary conversation.
Please link to this article, *NOT* the Vox one: https://festive.ninja/one-atom-of-justice-one-molecule-of-mercy-and-the-empire-of-unsheathed-knives-alexandra-rowland/
What inspired you to get into writing, particularly romance and speculative fiction? Were there any writers or stories that sparked your own love and interest in storytelling?
When I was eight years old, a friend of my parents said to me, “Wow, you really love reading, I bet you’ll be a great writer someday!”—whereupon I, outraged and affronted at the very suggestion, told her in no uncertain terms that I hated writing and that I would never be a writer. (So that’s clearly going well, LOL.) If I had realized at the time that the little stories I made up in my head or wrote down in my diary totally counted as writing, I might have had a different answer—because I’d been doing that for as long as I can remember.
Likewise, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love speculative fiction. My parents were both geeks, and my dad in particular really loved fantasy, so I grew up with those books being read to me or readily accessible around the house. My dad was also a bit… voluble, shall we say, especially once he got going on topics he was interested in (of which there were many), so oral storytelling was a great part of my childhood as well.
In terms of specific authors who have shaped me, I’ve probably been most influenced by (in no particular order) Diana Wynne Jones, Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, Neil Gaiman, Lois McMaster Bujold… And, of course, KJ Charles for the enormous epiphany that I did like romance novels, it’s just that I needed to be reading queer romance novels, not straight ones.
What’s probably been most influential on me, though, is two decades of reading fanfiction. Now, there are still a lot of people who turn up their noses at fanfic and who might be sneering and scoffing at the mere mention of the fact that it’s been that influential on me. But the truth stands! Fanfiction is a part of the broader literary conversation, and there is absolutely no better school for teaching you how to do incisive literary criticism through the medium of really, really deep character work—and, as it happens, characters have always been what I am most interested in.
Reading fanfiction also taught me a great deal about how writing can be a joyfully self-indulgent thing, that self-indulgence and your own personal pursuit of what delights you is not something shameful or embarrassing. There is a strong tendency in our culture to assume that things that make you happy are also things that make you weak or worthy of scorn—why? Why make such an effort to conceal the things that bring us simple, uncomplicated joy? Why spend so much energy trying to convince people that we’re aloof and disinterested and without human feelings? Why perpetuate that toxic bullshit?
Self-indulgence and the personal pursuit of joy was a hugely influential thing with this book in particular, whiiiich… seems to lead us to the next question!
What can you tell us about your upcoming book, A Taste Of Gold And Iron? What inspired this story?
There’s two ways to answer that!
First, the surface-level answer: A Taste of Gold and Iron is about an Exquisitely Beautiful Prince and his Hyper-Disciplined Stoic Bodyguard investigating some counterfeited coins—and then they fall in love! It’s got heartfelt oaths of fealty, erotic handholding, and a scene where they wash each other’s hair and talk about ethics. If you’re looking for big, epic, swoopy action scenes and multi-kingdom battle sequences, this might not be the book for you, honestly! But if you are looking for lots of deep, intimate character work and all the quiet, soft moments of two characters realizing their first impressions of each other might have been wrong, and then doing the work on themselves to grow as people, come closer together, and have extravagant feelings, then this is definitely the book for you. Also a little magic system, as a treat.
On a deeper level: A Taste of Gold and Iron came about because back in 2017 or so, I was mulling on some of my favorite tropes in fiction—and, in particular, my personal hands-down favorite, the Benevolent Liege/Devoted Vassal romance (which is a specific aspect of a broader category, the classic Courtly Love trope). Then I had that grouchy thought, as so many writers do, that nobody had yet written that trope in precisely the way I wanted to read it, so I had to do it myself. (I have taken to calling it “Fealty+Feelings”.)
This was unusually deliberate in comparison to my general writing process—I started from a place of “I’m going to write this favorite trope of mine in exactly the way I would want to read it,” and then it was sort of a natural progression to, “Okay, what other tropes do I also love which would underpin and support the main one to best effect?” and thence with increasing giddiness to, “What if I just cram as many things as I like into one book?”, and then further to, “Now let’s dig in even deeper to interrogate some of those tropes and unpack them, so that they’re complex, intentional, meaningful building-blocks of story.” (For example: “Kissing to avert suspicion” is a great trope—why do I like it? What makes it so appealing? What’s the realistic, logical aftermath? How would two people navigate that, when there are so many other factors in play?)
But then, that’s the sort of thing that I really, really love—not just going through the motions to recreate a trope as if I’m following a script or a recipe, but also interrogating what underpins it. It’s the difference between “In making bread, we must knead the dough for ten minutes” and “In making bread, first we must understand how gluten is formed and what the act of kneading does to the end product.”
The entire writing process was like that—not just finding the things I liked best, but asking myself questions about why I liked them, and then about what could be tweaked or emphasized to make me like it even more. It was an exercise in the exploration of my own delight, and long before I ever sold the book, I used to tell people that I’d already gotten paid in joy, just from the time that I got to spend with this story and these characters.
This novel is said to be set in a world inspired by the Ottoman Empire. Did any particular kind of research go into making the world you created?
To be specific, it is only this particular kingdom of the world which is inspired like the Ottoman Empire! In terms of research, much of it was of the “read seven Wikipedia articles, glean two or three interesting pieces of information, and extrapolate outwards from there” variety. I’m not trying to replicate the Ottoman Empire (But Make It Fantasy), but rather create a new setting that has enough of the the flavor, the vibes, the texture—whatever you want to call it—that someone with a working knowledge of that period/area of history would find it comfortably familiar and hospitable.
For research on general flavor/vibes/texture, one of my favorite methods is to watch foreign movies or TV shows (ie: in this case, I watched several dozen hours a Turkish period drama, Magnificent Century, as well as a couple other Turkish shows). The key thing I’m looking for with things like this is, again, not to do an empty recreation, but to catch really visceral details of everyday life (like how and what they eat, or what the architecture looks like, or how people move when they’re wearing the clothes), but also, more importantly, how a story oriented to an in-group audience chooses to depict itself: What is the implicit scaffolding that the story is leaning on? What does it frame as romantic or epic or scandalous? What does it consider so normal and mundane as to not require any explanation whatsoever, and what does it go out of its way to inform the audience about?
The one thing I did borrow directly from the Ottomans is the governmental structure, particularly in regards to the janissary corps and bureaucracy—in particular, the fact that their soldiers and ministers were “recruited” as children and provided with years of education and elite training, after which they were appointed to government office and could potentially rise to be the second most powerful person in the empire after the sultan himself. Of course, the Ottomans, being an empire, were doing this “recruitment” in usually non-consensual ways (as empires so often do), by which I mean “forcibly taking children from their parents and enslaving them.”
While obviously I strictly avoided replicating that particular aspect, I did find it interesting to think about a system of governance that relies so heavily on investing time and money into educating the next generation of ministers, soldiers, bodyguards, and other servants of the Crown, especially when juxtaposed against the book’s themes of the ethics of power (both theoretically and in practice), and specifically the question: “If a vassal owes his loyalty to his liege, what does his liege owe in return to him?” We currently live in a society where we can expect to be actively and carelessly exploited by anyone who is in power over us—we regard that as no more than the mundane cost of earning a paycheck! So asking questions about power and responsibility and what fealty really means is a juicy subject.
What can we expect from the main characters of A Taste Of Gold And Iron?
[slaps the roof of Kadou and Evemer] These good boys can hold so many feelings!
Kadou is Exquisitely Beautiful, the prince of the richest nation in the world, very tenderhearted, and lightly traumatized. He is pretty much permanently worried about whether he is taking care of his people sufficiently, or whether he is inadvertently causing harm. Part of this is due to the fact that he has one hell of an unmedicated anxiety disorder; part of it is just very real philosophical concerns about the ethical expectations and responsibilities of his position.
Evemer is Beefy and Stoic. He has shoulders like a hero out of legend, an extremely rigid and unyielding sense of right and wrong, a tendency to be quite harshly judgmental of others’ shortcomings in the privacy of his own mind (or so he thinks). He has never failed at anything in his life. Hell, he’s rarely even felt ill-prepared for a challenge. (Spoilers: He is very ill-prepared for dealing with Kadou.)
They both have big, big feelings about responsibility, obligation, duty, and serving something greater than themselves.
Evemer: [wistful sigh] My most romantic fantasy is that I will one day be able to dedicate myself to the service of a worthy lord, throw my whole self into his service, and then maybe… just maybe…. save his life and die tragically in his arms, in the rain, while he cries on my face. Like in an epic poem.
Kadou: ??????? UM… Sorry, but why does this so-called romantic fantasy involve you dying? Can we revisit that???? Because that’s one of my dealbreakers.
What are some of your favorite elements of writing? What do you find to be some of the most challenging?
I love writing beginnings, unusual worldbuilding, vividly emotional scenes, introspective characters, and tangents about fantasy economics. I love characters that are complex, by which I mean “capable of accessing a broad range of feelings”—I don’t really enjoy books where everyone seems to feel only one thing in a sustained note the whole way through the story, so I don’t write books like that. I like it when characters have the capacity for a variety of different emotions, where they might get a chance to be funny, or tease a friend, or feel insecure, affectionate, fascinated, bored… All the things people feel.
The most challenging part of a book for me is the middle,particularly just before and during the “darkest right before the dawn” part. You know, the bit when the main characters are facing setbacks and feeling disheartened and discouraged and all seems lost. I haven’t yet quite figured out how to dodge that, partially because the temptation to write all the juicy emotions of a character being really sad is nearly irresistible (love those vivid emotions!). But that section always makes me grind to a halt and lose a lot of momentum, and it’s not nearly as much fun as other bits.
In addition to being a writer, what are some things you would want readers to know about you?
I haven’t the foggiest idea how to answer this question, so I have chosen to willfully interpret it as a request for Three Quirky Facts About Me:
1. I grew up on a sailboat in the Bahamas.
2. My superpower is to intuitively Perceive when someone is on the asexual spectrum and hasn’t twigged to it yet (this is kind of ironic because it took me until age 28 to grasp that I was not “just really picky”, that was in fact demisexuality I was experiencing).
3. I’ve done every fiber art you can name, and some that you can’t
What advice would you have for aspiring writers?
From a craft perspective: Ask questions. Always. About everything. Especially when you think you understand something innately and effortlessly, ask questions about it. Push yourself to think deeper and go a step farther. When you think you’ve walked all the way to the end of Understanding a thing, turn around and walk back to the other end and interrogate it all again from a slightly different perspective. Your whole job is to see something in the world that nobody else sees and to then tell people about it, so don’t ever accept the obvious answer without turning it around and peeking underneath to see what’s there.
From a career perspective: I know it feels icky to think of writing as a business, but getting out of that mindset is an essential part of protecting yourself, giving your work the best chance that it has, and slowly encouraging this industry away from the ways that it so egregiously everybody working within it. You can still be an artist when you’re all alone in a room with the manuscript, but having a business brain is invaluable.
Additionally, whether you decide to go for traditional publishing, indie publishing, or hybrid, take some time to look at the ways other people are doing it—on both sides of the aisle. Learn the tricks and tools the other side has, and see if any of them are useful and applicable for you and your situation.
Most importantly: Be a cockroach. This is a hard career, and for most people, it takes a lot of time to see results from the effort and time you’ve invested. Be a cockroach! Refuse to be squished, survive the nuclear winter, spread your cockroachy dominion across the earth when all others have perished—ok, this analogy is getting away from me a bit, but you get the picture. This game isn’t over until you decide you don’t want to play anymore.
What’s a question you haven’t been asked yet, but wish you were asked (as well as the answer to that question)?
Q: Favorite line of the book?
A: Hard choice, it’s between “I got you this door” or “Oh, fuck, I think I just got religion.” You’ll laugh about this later, I promise. 😉
Are there any other projects you are currently working on and at liberty to talk about?
Yes! I’ve branched out into hybrid publishing this year (that is, a blend of both traditional publishing and indie publishing), and I’ve been releasing a novella series called The Seven Gods (of which the first book is Some By Virtue Fall), and it is chock full of disaster lesbians, fantasy-Shakespearean theater intrigue, dapper fancy hats, and arson. Right now, I’m putting the finishing touches on another installment of that series—The Light of Ystrac’s Wood, a small spinoff about a secondary character who will be quite important in book two of the series—which due to be released in early May.
I’m also hard at work for another book for Tordotcom, and while I can’t quite tell you any solid details yet, I’ll give you a fun clue: One of the Three Quirky Facts I gave you earlier will be, ah, relevant. 😉
Finally, what LGBTQ+ books/ authors would you recommend to the readers of Geeks OUT?
Victoria Goddard’s The Hands of the Emperor, ALWAYS—if A Taste of Gold and Iron sounds good to you, this one will probably also appeal! It is about a god-emperor who doesn’t want to be emperor and his incomparable secretary, and together they institute Universal Basic Income, have a deeply romantic friendship/queerplatonic relationship, yearn at each other from across a room because there is a taboo against touching the emperor, and… eventually… hold hands. GASP. Scandalous, I know. (Lots of queer rep throughout the series—the two main characters of this one are bisexual (the emperor) and somewhere on the ace/demisexual spectrum (the secretary).
I’ve also recently loved Seducing the Sorcerer by Lee Welch and The Bachelor’s Valet by Arden Powell, which are both M/M romance novels. And for authors in general, I’m always delighted to boost Tasha Suri, Jenn Lyons, Freya Marske, Everina Maxwell, Alexis Hall, AJ Demas, and Cat Sebastian!
Tessa Gratton is genderfluid and hangry. She is the author of The Queens of Innis Learand Lady Hotspur, as well as several YA series and short stories which have been translated into twenty-two languages. Her most recent YA novels are Strange Graceand Night Shine, as well as the forthcoming Chaos and Flame. Though she has traveled all over the world, she currently lives alongside the Kansas prairie with her wife. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram.
I had the opportunity to interview Tessa, which you can read below.
First of all, welcome to Geeks OUT! Could you tell us a little about yourself?
Hi! I’m thrilled to be here. I’m Tessa Gratton, author of several SFF books in both young adult and adult categories. Most recently the adult fantasies The Queens of Innis Lear and Lady Hotspur, magical, queer retellings of Shakespeare’s King Lear and Henry IV part i. My YA tends to be quiet, weird, and queer, like Strange Grace, a dark fairy tale about a town that sacrifices a boy to the devil every seven years and the three teens who decide to change the rules. My work has been translated into twenty-two territories, which makes my basement a real international library. I live on the edge of the Kansas prairie with my wife right now, but have lived on two other continents at different points of my life.
When did you know you were first interested in writing, and what drew you specifically to the Young Adult medium and speculative fiction?
I’ve been a writer for all of my life, though I didn’t realize I wanted to be an author until I was in college. Then in graduate school I was having a really rough time—it was 2004, we were deep in the Iraq war, and my dad was part of the 3/25 Marines battalion. I was struggling with my family because of my queerness and just starting to pull apart my understanding of gender and how I relate to it. I also didn’t get along with my graduate cohort or professors. School and politics and culture wars were wearing down on me, and I realized that if I stayed on my path and went into politics, probably feminist lobbying, I’d just lose myself. So I had to step back and look at what I wanted, and decide how I could do it without giving up my integrity. I wanted to challenge privilege and make the world better, and I realized that what made me that way besides how my parents raised me to question everything, were the books I read as a teenager. The SFF books.
I realized I could write the stories I’d always loved reading and writing for fun, and write them for and about teens. That was a way to do the work I needed to do. I’ve diversified into adult, but my heart is and always will be in kidlit. Teens are out there choosing who they’re doing to be, struggling with authority and fighting every day. I like to write for those kids, to give them stories about choice and love and longing to make the world better. And monsters and kissing, of course.
How would you describe your latest book, Moon Dark Smile? What inspired the story?
Moon Dark Smile is a genderqueer YA fantasy about a lonely heir to the throne and the dangerous great demon she kidnaps for a road trip through spirit-infested rainforests and volcanos ruled by ancient sorcerers in order to find a way to free themselves from the magical injustice that has been the foundation of their empire for generations—and maybe discover who they truly want to be, to the world, to each other, and even to themselves.
In the book before Moon Dark Smile, titled Night Shine, one of the main characters is Kirin Dark-Smile, the Prince Who is Also a Maiden. He ascends to the throne, and makes a lot of changes to the court and how his people think about him and gender. I wanted to write the story of his daughter, both because the great demon of the palace was a loose thread from Night Shine, but also because I’m interested in intergenerational activism. In how change changes. Kirin changes a lot, but mostly cultural and personal, not much that is structural. Those structure flaws are the ones his daughter Raliel, the MC of Moon Dark Smile, sees. The conflict of the book comes from consequences of the personal and political choices that Kirin and his friends make in Night Shine. It’s very possible to read Moon Dark Smile as a stand-alone, because Raliel and Moon’s story is their own, but taken as a duology the two books tell a more complete story.
Were there any stories (queer or otherwise) that you read or watched growing up that had touched you or felt relatable in any way? What stories draw you in today?
My favorite books when I was a young teen were Jurassic Park, The Vampire Lestat, Swordspoint, and the entirety of Robin McKinley’s works. I loved JP for how freaking cool it was, and I was a huge dinosaur nerd so the idea of it inspired me to really tear open my imagination. All of Anne Rice’s books felt queer to me, even when they were not overtly—especially the vampire books and the Mayrfair witches. There was something about the relationships and transformations that made me believe in queerness even before I realized that’s what I was getting from Lestat (and his awesome, oft-forgotten mother). Ellen Kushner’s Swordspoint is about a bisexual swordsman in a fantasy world and his wild queer lover—it’s the first book I read that was overtly queer, and weird, dangerous, and wonderful. And it had a happy ending! I’ve been lucky enough to work with Ellen as an adult and meeting her was incredible. Robin McKinley is a hero of mine, because of how she has always maintained her voice and vision in her novels—they are crafted delicately and center relationships and a hero who is coming into their own. They’re perfect fairy tales.
I can’t ignore the influence Vanyel Ashkeveron, the gay wizard in Mercedes Lackey’ Valdemar series, had on me. I was obsessed with him, and with the unapologetic way those books depicted gayness. It was part of the fantasy culture, and Vanyel was not only so gay, he was the most powerful wizard. It was possible to be both! That blew me away as a kid. I didn’t hold on to Vanyel as long as the others, I think because at the end of the day it was a tragedy. Beautiful, meaningful, but still awfully sad. I needed that when I was figuring out who I was, but once I got it in myself better, once I had tasted a little bit of queer joy, I wanted that more than I wanted the catharsis of tragedy.
These days I watch a lot more television than I used to, and it’s very balanced with my reading. I am drawn to stories about relationships and magic, and always have been. My favorite current shows are The Untamed, a Chinese drama based on a xianxia boy love web novel filled with rival families and betrayal and dark magic and very soft queers, and Star Trek: Discovery, which not only has some of the best writing and acting on TV today, but just keeps getting more and more and more gay! That’s fitting, because the first time I saw myself really on TV was in Jadzia Dax, from Deep Space Nine. She was absolutely canonically genderqueer in the late 1990s. The way the show used her alien species to be overtly queer blew my mind—it normalized genderqueerness in a way that, honestly, I still barely can find on TV. Unless it’s on ST: Disco.
Did you draw on any resources for inspiration while writing, i.e. books, movies, music, etc.? Where do you draw inspiration or creativity in general?
In general I draw inspiration from my daily life—from nature and exercise and my wife and family. I draw it from music that makes me feel a certain way, or from shows and books that make me ask questions and wonder how I would do it, and what I am desperate to add to that conversation. For Moon Dark Smile I listened to a lot of dreamy music, piano and strings, some dramatic soundtracks like Sunshine. I wanted the world to feel like Spirited Away or Princess Mononoke and I listened to those soundtracks and watched interviews with Hiyao Miyazaki to remind myself that I could still create when burned out or stressed (I wrote the whole book from proposal to finished draft during the pandemic). I read a thousand fanfics about two specific characters to be inspired by how a relationship can be inherently the same, inherently satisfying, even if the circumstances and entire world changes every time. To break myself out of the habits that were no longer serving me.
What advice would you give to other aspiring writers?
Follow your curiosity. Learn everything you can about whatever you want. Write, but write anything. Just keep doing it, and redoing it. Go on adventures when it’s relatively safe, whether it’s to a neighboring river or the other side of the world. Don’t be afraid to take the occasional risk, as long as you aren’t risking others. Talk to people who aren’t your neighbors or family or friends. Then listen to them. Read books in translation. Read books that have been popular for hundreds of years or just a few in other countries. Read whatever sparks joy. Practice being yourself, then practice still when who you are changes.
Can you tell us about any new projects or ideas you are nurturing and at liberty to discuss?
I am deeply excited to say that I wrote a Star War! It’s called Path of Deceit and it comes out in November. I can’t tell you anything else about it, except there are queer characters filling out that galaxy far, far away.
Next March I have another book I co-wrote with my friend Justina Ireland called Chaos and Flame. It’s an enemies-to-lovers romance fantasy book with dangerous prophecies, mad princes, velociraptors and kraken, lots of sword fights, assassination attempts, ancient magic and, of course, kissing.
Finally, what LGBTQ+ books/authors would you recommend to the readers of Geeks OUT?
Justina Ireland’s Dread Nationand the sequel, which are about what might have happened if the zombie apocalypse started during the Civil War.
Adib Khorram’s Kiss & Tell, about the gay member of a popular boy band.
Natalie C Parker’s Seafire trilogy, and her upcoming middle grade debut The Devouring Wolf, about some queer kids who also happen to be werewolves in Kansas.
Of course Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner and the other books in that series, especially Tremontaine, which I also worked on for a few stories. Everybody is some flavor of queer, and it was glorious to work on, and I hope even better to read.
Frankie Castanea has been a practicing neopagan and eclectic folk witch for seven years. They are more commonly known as “Chaotic Witch Aunt” on the internet, where they run a tarot reading business and host classes on divination, protection, and deity work.
I had the opportunity to interview Frankie, which you can read below.
First of all, welcome to Geeks OUT!. Could you tell us a little about yourself?
Thank you so much for having me! My name is Frankie Castanea and I am a content creator, author, and folk witch.
What can you tell us about your book, Spells for Change? Where did the inspiration for this book come from?
I created “Spells for Change” as a book created for those interested in the practice of witchcraft, as well as those who are starting their journey with witchcraft as beginners. I wanted to create a book that was accessible and easy to understand for all different levels as readers, as well as create a resource for a lot of foundational topics. If someone knew they were interested in witchcraft as a practice, but had no idea where to begin – that is what “Spells for Change” is for. I was inspired to write “Spells for Change” due to limited resources on witchcraft when I began my journey with my practice – I namely had some badly researched online resources and authors that wrote primarily about Wiccan practices.
How did you find yourself getting into writing and magic?
My dad jokes that I became interested in writing when he dropped a book on my head when I was a baby, but in all reality I’ve been writing since I was a kid and writing anything I could think of. I still have stacks of notebooks filled to the brim. Magic came a little later when I felt pulled to researching animal symbolism, especially as I was receiving particular animals when I asked for a “sign” from the universe. Learning about animal symbolism pulled me into ideas associated with Wicca, deities, and more, and from there I continued learning and started my practice.
As a writer, who or what would you say are some of your greatest creative influences and/or sources of inspiration?
As a writer, I always found my strongest creative influences within nature, my own experiences, and the experiences of others. I enjoy reading nonfiction and fiction alike, especially other witchcraft writers like Juliet Diaz, as well as non-witchy authors such as Madeline Miller and Joan Didion.
What’s a question you haven’t been asked yet but wish you were (and the answer to that question)?
I always loved the idea of being asked what my creative process was like. Especially as a witch, I feel like bringing in creativity is such a personal process for each writer and witch, and I feel as though there’s always inspiration to be gained from learning the creative processes of other writers and witches – as well as hoping to inspire other writers and witches by sharing my own. While I don’t wake up at a specific time and write for straight hours like other well known authors, I do create very specific playlists for phases of my writing – creation/brainstorming, in-the-process-of-writing, and even editing. I pair this with a few choice crystals (sodalite and clear quartz are my favorites), and an incense or herbal bundle to burn with specific associations to memory and creativity. I tend to write for as long as it feels natural, and if I experience specific bumps or places with writer’s block I do my best to give myself space away from the project before returning.
What advice would you give to other aspiring creatives?
My best advice to other creatives is to follow what makes you feel passionate. Passion is the match that creates the fire of creativity, and I honestly believe that following your heart and what you are truly passionate about leads to success.
Are you currently working on any other projects that you are at liberty to speak about?
At the moment, I am brainstorming a second book! While it’s still in its early stages, I plan to bring in ideas like budget witchcraft, folk magic, and working with plant and animal allies.
Finally, what books/authors would you recommend to the readers of Geeks OUT?
For those interested in witchcraft, I always recommend Juliet Diaz, author of “Plant Witchery” as well as “The Altar Within”, as well as “Grovedaughter Witchery” by Bree NicGarran and “Of Blood and Bones” by Kate Freuler. For those interested in witchcraft or just looking for a good book to read, “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer continues to be a book full of lessons that I continuously return to again and again.
Rebecca Burgess is a comic artist and illustrator working in the UK, creating award winning published and small press work. Along with drawing comics for their day job, Rebecca also loves drawing webcomics in their free time. Being autistic, they are particularly passionate about bringing more autistic characters into comics and stories! Outside of drawing comics and cuddling their cat, Rebecca also loves playing RPGs with friends, going on deep dives into history and growing vegetables in their humble Bristol garden.
I had the opportunity to interview Rebecca, which you can read below.
First of all, welcome to Geeks OUT! Could you tell us a little about yourself?
Thank you for having me! I’m an illustrator and comic artist- I’m a little too obsessed with comics, I draw them both for a living and in my spare time too, and spend half my time reading other people’s comics haha
How did you find yourself getting into comics? What drew you to the medium?
I got into comics back when I was a kid in the late 90s/early 2000s- thanks to Pokemon blowing up, Japanese comics became really big over here in the UK and really drew me in more than any comics I had read before. In comparison to the UK comics of the time that were solely focused on gag strips or self contained sci-fi aimed at ‘boys’, manga had long running story lines, cinematic pacing and a wider range of genres/characters! When I was 14 I started selling small press comics and through that found the even wider range of art styles and genres that came out of indie and web comics! Back then these kind of comics appealed to me because they were telling stories and themes I hadn’t seen any where else, and I’d say this is why comics still inspire me the most today too.
How would you describe your creative background/ artistic education?
I have a Uni degree in ‘sequential illustration’ (basically comics lol), but to be honest the course was a bit of a mess for various reasons and I generally got more out of it socially than I did in terms of artistic development.
For me personally I would say I learned the most from the small press comic world. Way back before modern social media, all the small press/indie artists in the UK would use the same few forums to make friends and learn from each other. We would critique each other’s work, discuss/share published comics and give each other tips on new sources for printers or conventions. I learned how to develop my art through these friends, and as my older friends managed to get into the publishing world I then learned how to get into comics professionally too!
As an artist, who or what would you say are some of your greatest creative influences and/or sources of inspiration?
In terms of overall inspiration, I think it changes over time depending on what I’m interested in. My drive to create comics generally comes from wanting to explore various things going on in my life!
Artistically, I have a few favorite artists that have really stuck with me in how I do comics. I love how Osamu Tezuka applies very cartoony/exaggerated expressions to big, serious stories. It’s a style that many people don’t get on with lol And I know some people don’t ‘get it’ with my art either. But after reading Buddha I realized that when an expression is exaggerated it just adds to the emotion of a moment or the personality of a character in those very serious moments and makes you care more, so I’ve always kept that.
Kaoru Mori’s style of pacing also has a huge influence- she effectively uses panel layouts that create very cinematic pacing. They look deceptively simple but flow beautifully. I admire comics with inventive and elaborate page layouts hugely, but for me nothing beats a comic where the layout is clear, simple and easy to read. If someone was able to eat through my comics within a couple of hours and all in one go, then I know that I’ve executed it well!
My other big influence is Posy Simmonds- she started as a satirical cartoonist and moved that style into long form stories. This makes her artwork and characters incredibly observational. She captures the variety both in how people look and how they move and act. I like to try to keep that attention to differences in body language in my own work! Posy Simmonds is also very loose and free in how she tells stories, she changes the medium and style a lot even within a single comic depending on what is working for the story. This has taught me to be more free in my process too (over the years, as I get braver doing that haha).
What inspired you to write about your own experiences in How to Be Ace: A Memoir of Growing Up Asexual? Was there any conflict in how personal you allowed yourself to be with this story, particularly in regards to asexuality or mental health?
When the subject of asexuality comes up, alot of people both in real life and online say things like ‘Why do you need to make this into a big thing when its literally doing nothing?’ or ‘Its a sign that there’s something wrong with you, you should go to a doctor to see how to fix it’. I thought if I put the topic into a memoir, it would help asexuality seem more ‘human’ to people who dont see it as human, and more ‘relatable’ to people who think its about people just being over the top.
There was a lot of conflict over how personal to be. It was quite scary bringing the mental health aspect more into reality via the comic, its something I find hard to talk about in general. I also worried about shaping too much how other people in the comic were viewed (theres always more than one side to each story after all!). In that case though I was very careful to keep it all about me, change names and ask permission if I could from those who were featured more prominently in the comic.
Regards asexuality I was scared that even after the story was published people would respond as they often do by saying I’m being over the top. Thankfully I’ve only had positive comments about the comic, mostly from other ace people saying how nice it was to find something they could relate to! I’ve also had a few really nice messages from non-ace people saying they understand the experience better now which is especially nice!
What are some of your favorite parts of the illustration/ creative writing process? What do you feel are some of the most challenging or frustrating?
I like the ‘thumbnail/planning’ stage best- for me that’s the part where I basically write the comic, as I don’t generally write a script. It involves scribbling down interactions between characters and coming up with fun plot ideas, and then stitching that together into tiny thumbnail sketches where you can see the entire comic in front of you before its made. I also really like the ‘inking/line art’ stage. It’s very relaxing because its almost like drawing but without having to think too hard as you’ve already done the hard part in the sketch stage.
For me the hardest part of a comic is perspective and interior backgrounds. I still haven’t mastered either of these things and I also find them a little boring compared to drawing outside scenery or drawing characters- but they are often essential to telling a story and setting a scene, sometimes you just have to trudge through the things you find boring even when you’re being creative!
Aside from your work, what are some things you would want people to know about you?
I’m super interested in everything, it changes on a regular basis and always with the same intensity haha. Right now I’ve joined a Show Choir where we are singing musical numbers, and as spring comes round my yearly obsession with growing vegetables and flowers will return (I especially have a natural knack for growing good tomatoes!!)
As of now, are you currently working on any ideas or projects that you are at liberty to speak about?
I’ve been doing a few comics that are more focused on autism, another personal topic to me as I’m autistic!
I’ve been working on a graphic novel that’s coming out in September called ‘Speak Up!’- this is a comic about an autistic kid who is leading a double life. At school she’s treated certain ways because of how people assume her to be. But online she is a singer/songwriter who is going viral, and there she’s able to express herself more easily. Also in terms of lgbtq themes, one of Speak Up’s main characters is non binary (and very fashion-minded, I had a lot of fun coming up with various outfits for them haha)
I’m also making a webcomic called ‘The Pauper’s Prince’ that you can read online for free! With this comic I was watching Bridgerton last year and thought about how I want to see a light hearted regency style fantasy romance that looks like my own relationship with my girlfriend- I love regency dramas but they’re always with straight couples haha. The two main characters form a gay-asexual relationship, and one of the main characters is autistic too, so it deals with how that kind of romance might look. Being a drama there are various relationships in it, most of them lgbtq in various ways to keep with the theme!
In comparison to How To Be Ace, both of these comics are pure fiction and really focused on making fun, light hearted stories with these themes rather than tackling the hardships that come in real life.
What advice would you give to other aspiring creatives?
Learn to be okay with not being perfect, and to be okay with having ‘off days’. This is a very hard hurdle to get over, but once you do it helps in multiple ways- You improve more quickly because you learn to make mistakes and move on from them. If you’re looking to do art for a job, you will find it easier to maintain healthy boundaries and not overwork yourself/work long hours in order to make something ‘perfect’ (trust me the people paying you will not notice either way!) Most importantly, art becomes fun and a source of self expression, as opposed to a source of anxiety and pressure.
What is something you find enlightening or joyful about being asexual or being in the ace community?
Many people find this surprising, but I have found the asexual community to be extremely sex positive, and I’m really proud of that! I think this primarily comes from asexuality being so invisible, that asexuals have had to put quite a lot of work into researching sexuality in general in order to prove to themselves and other people that their experiences are ‘real’. We end up dissecting things like sexuality, kink, attraction, and libido a lot in order to better understand our under-researched experiences. So for me at least, I have found that I am often much more educated on sex in general than most non-asexual people I know!
I also think a lot of the concepts ace people are familiar with, such as the Split Attraction model or the different kinds of relationships you can have with partners, would really benefit everyone as a whole no matter what sexuality they are- so to me the asexual community has been contributing to sex positivity in a really meaningful way!
Finally, what LGBTQ books/comics (or comics in general) would you recommend to the readers of Geeks OUT?
My favorite asexual themed comic is ‘Shades of A’ (this is for 18+ only because of the themes). Its funny and cute, depicts perfectly the pressures of being ace and how you navigate relationships with someone who isn’t ace, and talks about the intersection between kink and asexuality- a topic that isn’t talked about enough or widely understood!
Buuza!!Is my current favourite lgbtq small press comic. Pretty much all of the characters are lgbtq in some way, and the creator is passionate about sharing their Central Asian/Middle Eastern culture within the comic, which gives it (for me, as a westerner) a fresh perspective in many ways in its story style and setting.
In terms of traditionally published comics I think my current favorite is ‘The Witch Boy’- beautiful artwork and so nicely paced, the themes are great and spun into a fantasy setting so that many different people will be able to relate to it in different ways.
Francesca May grew up in the middle of England where she spent her childhood devouring fantasy books and brewing potions in her back garden. She currently lives in Derby with her family, three giant dogs, and two black cats. By day she works as a bookseller at Waterstones. By night she accidentally kills every house plant she touches and writes novels about gothic mansions, witchcraft, and queer love. She also writes psychological thrillers and gothic suspense as Fran Dorricott. You can find her on Twitter @franwritesstuff.
I had the opportunity to interview Francesca, which you can read below.
First of all, welcome to Geeks OUT! Could you tell us a little about yourself?
Hi, and thank you! I’m Francesca May, the author of Wild and Wicked Things. I’m an expert bookseller for Waterstones by day, where I run the YA, SFF, crime, manga and graphic novel sections, and by night I spend far too much time taking photos of my pets, killing my plants (oops) and writing stories about gothic mansions, witchcraft, and queer love.
Where did the inspiration for your book, Wild and Wicked Things, come from?
I love writing fantasy books, but I hadn’t had the nerve to try to publish one until WAWT. The idea came from a silly prompt on Twitter, when somebody asked “What is the book you wish you’d written?” I thought about the answer to that question for far longer than I should have and finally settled on The Great Gatsby. It’s a book that had a profound impact on me when I first read it, and which has impacted me every time since, especially with its themes of reinvention and discovery. Plus, I adore morally grey characters. But I knew my version of Gatsby would be… well, not very Gatsby-like at all. It would have to be genderbent, and sapphic, and I would want it to be speculative fiction—which in my book nearly always means witches. And I guess you could say that Annie and Emmeline’s story just grew from there, really!
What are some things readers can expect from the book?
I like to describe WAWT as a creeping, gothic tale of first love, inner darkness, and what it means to be powerful. It’s slow-burn in more than just the romance, with strong themes of belonging, coming of age, and found family. It’s a book full to the brim with morally grey characters—and I mean that, because like in The Great Gatsby not one of these characters is 100% (or even 50% if we’re being honest) nice or good. There’s my take on an Only One Bed scene, badass ladies in suits, dark magic and a healthy dose of murder. Yay!
How did you get into writing, and what drew you to writing fiction and historical fantasy specifically?
Honestly I’ve been a writer for as long as I can remember, but I started taking it seriously as an early teen, right around the time I learned about the existence of NaNoWriMo. What started out as a fairly isolated hobby became something I was encouraged to take seriously, while still finding incredibly fun and rewarding. After that I was truly hooked! As for writing historical fantasy, I think in some ways it comes from a melding of two of my favourite kinds of fiction. I love historical fiction, the way it can so effortlessly (it seems as a reader) transport you to places you have only ever wondered about. Historical fiction often truly succeeds in invoking the sounds, the smells, the desires of a time and people that are so like us, and also not at all. And fantasy is a further extension of this. I love the way that historical fiction comes with its own set of challenges for the characters, and in a fantasy world this is often dialed up to 100. Plus, on a writerly level, I just love the aesthetic of historical fiction. Those clothes! Those old-fashioned customs! They’re so elaborate and fun to adapt.
It would seem that a bit of historical research has gone into this book. How would you describe the researching process and how it intertwined with the actual writing of this book? Also, why World War I?
The process was actually a lot of fun! The 1920s are a time period I’ve been interested in for a long time because of the growth in female independence and the wealth structure in different places after the war. I think there’s a lot of fiction that focuses on the impact of the Second World War, but in the UK especially WW1 had a huge impact, societally and economically, as well as emotionally. There’s quite a difference in the way that Americans felt during that period and the way the Brits felt, largely because the war led to more British deaths than American ones, and I wanted to explore what a Gatsby-type world, with a prohibition, might look like from a British perspective. The Jazz Age was unlike any period that had gone before and that wildness that we often know and see in film and TV wasn’t the reality for a lot of people, so I found it really interesting to splice together the New Age with the Old Age, as it were. Of course I did a lot of non-fiction reading, and read a lot of fiction that was written by British and American authors in the 1920s before I started to write—and then obviously gave everything my own fantasy spin when I began my drafting.
What inspires you as an author in general? What helps you keep motivated to finish a book?
I think the main thing that inspires me to finish projects is just the feeling of having a complete book. I write primarily for myself, so the fact that I could sit down at the end and read what I’ve written is a great motivator for me. But I also have a group of really supportive friends who read snippets (or whole novels sometimes) and cheer me on endlessly. Inspiration, I find, can come from anywhere. I find it in music, in other books, in television and movies or just from talking to friends, listening to the customers I have in the book shop. Most of my ideas stem from a “what if…?” idea that lodges itself in my brain and just won’t let go.
How would you describe your writing process?
Messy! Haha. I tend to write first drafts very fast, and then edit slow, so the drafting process can sometimes take as little as four weeks. I tend to burn through my ideas really fast, desperate to get my thoughts on paper in chronological order as fast as possible, and then I go back through much more slowly, layering in details about world, character etc. I know some writers prefer the editing process, but for me drafting is my favourite part. There’s no pressure for the book to shine yet, it just gets to be a story I’m telling myself—which is why I got into writing in the first place.
When you’re not writing, what do you like to do or research in your free time?
Because I spend a lot of my non-writing time bookselling I still use a lot of my free time to read. It’s my main hobby! But outside of the book industry it’s mostly activities like walking, swimming, anything to give my brain a break or to encourage plot ideas to come unstuck, and the rest of the time I’m usually looking after the hoard of animals I have. Right now we have two newfoundland dogs and three cats, so it can be a bit of a handful! But a very fluffy, lovely handful.
What’s a question you haven’t been asked yet but wish you were asked (as well as the answer to that question)?
Ooh this is a tough one! One question I get asked a lot is “who is your favourite character in Wild and Wicked Things?” and, honestly, I would also like to talk about my least favourite character. Bea. Bea is Annie’s childhood best friend who has since moved to Crow Island with her very rich new husband—and honestly, if readers don’t dislike Bea by the end of the novel then I have not done my job properly! She is selfish, oblivious, and focused on nothing but achieving her own frivolous goals… but she’s also scared, vulnerable, and has been affected very badly by the hand she’s been dealt in life. Her naivete in the past has caused her a lot of problems, made her wish for autonomy over herself and her life, and that means she was also one of the most challenging characters to write. Bea doesn’t mean to hurt other people, but she also has reached the point where she has been hurt so repeatedly by her own poor decisions that she doesn’t much have the capacity to care if she hurts others as long as she perceives that she’s helping herself. In a lot of ways she’s like Daisy in The Great Gatsby—primarily out for number one—but of course the path to reach this point is a complex one.
What advice might you have to give to other aspiring writers?
My biggest piece of advice to aspiring authors is always “if you can do nothing else, think of nothing else, if writing feels like it is in your blood, then you are a writer”. And I don’t mean that writing should always overtake the other things in your life, but if you always come back to writing, then you are a writer, and the first step to a career in writing (if that’s what you want) is treating yourself seriously. I say don’t use the phrase ‘aspiring writer’ because if you write, then you are already a writer! Giving yourself permission to take the writing seriously, to invest time and effort and resources in that writing, is the best way to a career in it. My second-most important piece of advice is “make as many writer friends as you can”. Friendships within the writing community are invaluable. We learn from each other, we support each other, and that makes a sometimes isolating thing so much less lonely.
Are there other projects you are working on and at liberty to discuss?
Yes! As Francesca May I am currently working on my next fantasy novel, which will be coming out with Orbit in 2023. It’s a fun blend of Stepford Wives meets The Witches of Eastwick, in which a young woman returns to a small Cornish town where she spent summers with her aunt growing up to find the town, and its inhabitants (including the girl she used to know very well) subtly changed—and now everything is far too perfect… Spooky stuff! I’m having such a blast writing this pastel-goth witch book and I can’t wait to share it with everybody.
Finally, what LGBTQ+ books/authors would you recommend to the readers of Geeks OUT?
A book I absolutely adored recently if you like queer fantasy is Malice by Heather Walter. It’s basically Sleeping Beauty but what if the villain gets the girl? So good! Other LGBTQ+ books I loved recently are Malinda Lo’s Last Night at the Telegraph Club(historical YA), Margaret Owen’s Little Thieves (YA fantasy), Emily Danforth’s Plain Bad Heroines (adult gothic fiction), and Tasha Suri’s The Jasmine Throne (adult epic fantasy). We’re in such a golden age of LGBTQ+ fiction right now and there is so much amazing stuff out there, the bookseller in me could go on for hours!
I had the opportunity to interview Will, which you can read below.
First of all, welcome to Geeks OUT! Could you tell us a little about yourself?
Hi hi! Feeling star-struck to get to be here! I’m Will (or Liam sometimes when I feel like living the other half of my name). I am gay, biromantic, gray ace, and enby, or, as a teacher friend once dubbed me, multidisciplinary queer. I’m a dual US/UK citizen, though I’ve lived around Seattle my whole life and don’t get to visit my family over there nearly enough.
I write mostly Middle Grade, but I’ve got several picture books doing the editor rounds and am piecing together a super gay murder-mystery-musical-romcom which I’m crossing all my fingers will turn into my first YA. (Let me tell you I am daunted, but if it comes together it’ll be so fun.)
How would you describe your upcoming book, The Language of Seabirds? Where did the inspiration for the story come from and where did you come up with the beautiful title?
The Language of Seabirds is the book of my heart, and also a real departure for me. My first four books are all silly, bouncy romps full of pillow forts and ghost mooses and evil slime and dogs who think they’re people. Seabirds is a contemporary romance about the first big feelings of love, and how the time and place where they arise (in this case summer on the Oregon coast) gets woven into our hearts. My own first big feelings happened in fifth grade and were immediately drowned out by shame and the fear that someone would be able to tell I liked a boy. I wanted Seabirds to be a book where the good feelings win, and where a kid who’s not super certain of anything yet gets to just feel and celebrate and be.
And hey, thanks for the kind words about the title! It came to me as I was lying on the couch eating mac and cheese and watching cooking shows on Netflix. (My natural habitat.) A Danish chef was saying something about “the alphabet of Nordic cuisine,” and all in a flash I saw a boy watching another boy running along a beach in my mind, with birds wheeling and crying overhead. The title showed up in the same moment, just there suddenly, and as I got into writing the book I discovered that the language of seabirds is actually a code the two boys come up with, a way to say what neither of them is quite ready to say out loud yet in the big noisy world. I feel like I can’t take any credit for the title; it definitely felt like a gift!
How did you get into writing, and what drew you to Middle Grade fiction specifically?
I was that kid who preferred the library to the playground, so the love of books and stories was always there. I started writing in seventh grade when a fabulous English teacher liked a poem I wrote and encouraged me to keep going, and I was lucky enough to get more fabulous English teachers in high school who pushed me to work hard at it and grow. I stepped away from writing for a decade or so after college as I bounced around trying to find my place in the world, but when nothing else seemed to fit I came back to it, found I still loved it, and got to work.
As for Middle Grade, oof, that’s a big answer. I guess at a core level my heart is still eleven years old, and the sheer magic and wonder I remember books giving me access to at that age has never gone away.
The field of LGBTQ+ Middle-Grade literature is slowly, but steadily growing. What are your thoughts on the medium as it stands, and can you name any titles that stand out to you?
I cannot express how excited I am to see this field finally expanding! I wrote Seabirds because it was the exact book I needed as a kid. Not to sound all own-horn-tooty, but speaking as someone who didn’t feel safe enough to come out until after college, I guarantee my life would have been different if I’d had access to this book in fifth grade. With every LGBTQ+ Middle Grade book added to the shelves another kid in our community gets a mirror to see themselves and feel good about who they are and who they’re on their way to becoming.
I’ll save my book recommendations for the question at the end, but I have to shout out absolute legend Kacen Callender here, who has 100% led the way with LGBTQ+ Middle Grade. Their work is extraordinary, and I’ll remember the first time I read Hurricane Child for the rest of my life.
How would you describe your writing process? What are some of your favorite things about writing?
Once my agent has approved one of the endless ideas I send him (*blows kisses to Brent Taylor at Triada US*) I usually spend a few weeks getting all the themes and arcs and characters in place. I’m definitely a plotter; I write best knowing where I’m going and trusting that I’ve already done the heavy lifting to make sure it will all work. After that I tend to set up a checklist system so I have a certain doable amount to get done every day, which builds into a positive sense of momentum—another thing that’s essential to me doing my best. Writing’s hard enough without feeling like I’m behind all the time!
I should say it’s taken several books to figure out how I like to write, and I’m sure it will change along with me in the future.
Favorite things about writing: I love the way scenes and pages stack together and accumulate. Putting words into a blank space is such an act of faith, and it’s always magical to see the threads you’ve laid down start to weave together, to see the characters learn and change, and to be able to channel your own emotions into something other people can experience.
Were there any stories or authors that inspired or touched you growing up?
Oh, so many. I think the ones that really stand out in my brain are the ones about strange, overlooked kids being summoned by mysterious forces to worlds where they are powerful and needed. (Strong resonances for LGBTQ+ kids in that archetype for sure!) Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising was huge for me, as was A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin. So You Want to Be a Wizard, by Diane Duane; Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson; A String in the Harp by Nancy Bond; the Redwall series by Brian Jacques; everything by Rosemary Sutcliff, especially The Eagle of the Ninth and The Shining Company… so, so many.
Besides being a writer, what are some things you would like others to know about you?
Ha ha, oh nooo, this is like filling out a dating profile! I’m sorry but I’m honestly so boring! I spend the vast majority of my time reading kidlit, writing kidlit, comparing movies and TV shows to kidlit, talking about kidlit, or hanging out with kidlit friends. I like to bake, is that cool? I have a degree in sacred architecture… I’m blind in one eye… I collect teacups…
I guess it might be worth sharing that if I weren’t a writer I’d want to be a garden designer, and that I did static trapeze for a good chunk of my twenties. Somewhere there’s a video of me doing a solo performance as a merman to Part of Your World from The Little Mermaid in a blond wig and teal lycra. I’m sure it will resurface at some completely embarrassing time.
What’s a question you haven’t been asked yet but wish you were asked (as well as the answer to that question)?
Ooo, okay: What one person alive today would you want to have lunch with if you could?
With absolutely zero hesitation, Kate Bush. I was introduced to her music at a very young age by my British family, and it’s irreversibly woven into my creative DNA and imagination. I don’t know of any other artist who describes so perfectly the world I’m always writing toward.If I could write a book that had one-tenth of the intimacy and grandeur of her songs I would be happy forever. It was Kate Bush who taught me that it’s possible to be both deeply romantic and fiercely independent, and I’d give a lot to eat tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches with her.
What advice might you have to give to other aspiring writers?
Read! Read as much as you can, and as widely. The more you read the more your imagination has to work with. You’ll know what you like and don’t like, what works in story and what doesn’t, and what kinds of people and experiences you’re genuinely interested in exploring.
The second half of that, of course, is write! Write as much as you can. Above all, finish projects, even if they stay as rough drafts. Give yourself first-hand knowledge of what it feels like to go from a blank page to the words The End. Build those pathways in your brain, reinforcing that this is what you love and want to do, and with every piece or project you complete it will be that little bit easier to embark on the next one.
Are there other projects you are working on and at liberty to discuss?
Well, there’s that ridiculous YA idea I mentioned before, but at the moment I’m on the third draft of what I hope will be my next Middle Grade: a 12th-century historical escape adventure full of castles and frozen rivers and swords and stolen jewels.
I’ve also got another Scholastic book coming out the month before Seabirds, a silly, heart-achy, overlooked-girl-and-her-doggo-best-friend story called Catch That Dog! It’s based on the real-life dognapping scandal of Masterpiece, the toy poodle who helped set off the poodle craze of the 1950s. There’s no sweeping summer romance in this one, but there are a whole heap of feelings, well-earned comeuppance for nasty grownups, and hopefully plenty of laughs. Think Kate DiCamillo’s Because of Winn-Dixie crossed with Christopher Guest’s movie Best in Show, all set in fabulous small-town New Jersey. I’m really proud of this book, actually. Preorders welcome! Comes out April 5!
Finally, what LGBTQ+ books/authors would you recommend to the readers of Geeks OUT?
Oh! One big resource I want to recommend is LGBTQreads.com, run by the fabulous Dahlia Adler who also makes sure LGBTQ+ books get plenty of love on Buzzfeed. She’s curated a stunning and incredibly searchable list of books that encompass the whole spectrum of our community, and it’s always growing as our options on the shelf grow. Dahlia is a total champion, and so is her site. And of course so is Geeks Out! All the very biggest thanks for having me today! It’s been a dream!
Kevin Christopher Snipes is a New York-based writer who was born and raised in Florida. He spent his early career in the theater writing such plays as A Bitter Taste, The Chimes and Ashes, Ashes. Later, for Gimlet Media, he created the queer fantasy podcast The Two Princes. He can generally be found watching reruns of Doctor Who and The Golden Girls in his spare time. Milo and Marcos at the End of the World is his first novel.
I had the opportunity to interview Kevin, which you can read below.
First of all, welcome to Geeks OUT! Could you tell us a little about yourself?
Hello! I’m a New York-based playwright and novelist, though most people probably know me as the creator of the queer fantasy podcast The Two Princes, which ran for three seasons on Spotify.
How did you get into writing, and what drew you to young adult fiction and speculative fiction specifically?
My mother told me recently that when I was a child, I used to walk around the house carrying a dictionary that I would study, so I guess I’ve always been curious about language and words. I certainly grew up in a storytelling household. My mother read to me before bed, and my father would make up fantastical stories during long car rides to keep me entertained. Eventually, as I got older, I just started telling my own stories.
For the first twenty years or so of my life, I was primarily focused on playwriting. Theater was my first love. Then one day, about ten years ago, a friend gave me a copy of Andrew Smith’s YA novel Grasshopper Jungle, andit blew my mind. If you don’t know the book, it’s a story about a bisexual teenager who’s having trouble deciding if he’s in love with his girlfriend and his male best friend. On top of that, the world gets invaded by giant killer praying mantises and then all hell breaks loose. I loved it. And it made me realize that I wanted to write stories like that—stories that blended romance, action, sci-fi, and a queer sensibility into one seamless adventure.
What can you tell us about your debut book,Milo & Marcos At The End Of The World? What inspired the story?
Milo and Marcos at the End of the World is about two boys who fall in love and who then have to keep that love a secret from their very religious parents and conservative community. Things get even more complicated when a series of unprecedented natural disasters strike their city whenever the boys touch. This leads the boys to consider the seemingly impossible possibility that maybe God is punishing them for being gay and that if they don’t stop seeing each other, their love might just bring about the end of the world.
The book is primarily inspired by my experiences as a closeted queer teenager growing up in a small town in Central Florida. High school (as I’m sure most people will agree) can be an incredibly fraught period in our lives. We’re still figuring out who we are and what we want, and we’re terrified of getting it wrong. It’s a time when every emotion is heightened. Every choice feels like it’s life or death. You think you’ll die if the person that you like doesn’t like you back. You think the world will end if anyone finds out about your secret. It’s a lot. So I wanted to write a book that captures how exciting/terrifying/earth-shattering that time of life can be for a young person—especially a young person in love who is coming to terms with his sexuality.
How would you describe your creative process?
As a mild form of insanity. Basically, I hear voices. Most of the time I ignore these voices, but every once in a while, they’ll happen to say something interesting, and I’ll write it down. That’s how most of my plays were born. From conversations or questions that popped into my brain while I was walking down the street, minding my own business. Of course, after that initial gift of inspiration, it then becomes up to me to sit down and build a proper story around it. That’s when the real work begins. Even so, I’ve never written anything that didn’t start as a little voice in my head saying, “What if…?”
As a writer, who or what would you say are some of your greatest creative influences and/or sources of inspiration?
The first YA novels that I ever read were by Andrew Smith and Adam Silvera, who are both masters of queer speculative fiction, so I can only imagine how much my own writing has been shaped and influenced by their work. I’m also a huge fan of the Russell T. Davies era of Doctor Who. I love his approach to writing science fiction, which is to use fantastical or futuristic stories as metaphors to comment on our world today and address issues of race, class, sexuality, and oppression. It’s science fiction that matters. Science fiction with a purpose. And that’s something I try to emulate in my own work.
What are some of your favorite parts of writing? What do you feel are some of the most challenging?
Perhaps it’s because of my background in playwriting, but I love writing dialogue. Especially quick, witty banter. For me there’s nothing more enjoyable to write or sexier to watch than two intelligent, charismatic characters engaged in a flirtatious war of words. It’s a great way to show attraction, chemistry, and desire without having to make anyone take their clothes off.
On the other hand, I find actual sex scenes incredibly awkward to write. I don’t think of myself as a prude, but my characters are my babies, so when they start to get amorous with each other, I want nothing more than to give them their privacy. Instead, I’m forced to become David Attenborough narrating some erotic nature documentary. It’s very embarrassing, but it’s part of the job.
Aside from your work, what are some things you would want people to know about you?
It’s an irony not lost on me that despite being an atheist, I am obsessed with Christmas. If it were up to me, I’d keep a tree up in my apartment from November to March. I love the decorations, the lights, the music. I love the cheesy but oh-so-satisfying Hallmark movies. I love the Rankin/Bass Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer claymation special, especially the character of Hermey the Elf, who’s an OG gay icon if ever there was one. I love it all.
What’s something you hope readers will take away from Milo & Marcos At The End Of The World?
I hope they’ll feel seen. When I was a teenager, there weren’t many books or films or TV shows with queer characters. I almost never saw people like me represented in pop culture (unless it was as the butt of a joke). So my hope is that young people who might be struggling with their identity or questioning their place in the world, will see themselves in my book and not feel quite so alone or out of place in their own skin.
What’s a question you haven’t been asked yet, but wish you were asked (as well as the answer to that question)?
Milo, the protagonist of my book, has an obsession with The Golden Girls that very much mirrors my own, though we disagree about who our favorite character is. If you asked Milo, he’d say Rose Nylund. But if you asked me, I’d say Blanche Devereaux. Obviously only one of us can be right. And since I’m real and Milo’s not, I think I win.
What advice would you give to other aspiring creatives?
I wouldn’t presume to give anyone advice. I barely know what I’m doing myself.
Finally, what LGBTQ+ books/authors would you recommend to the readers of Geeks OUT?
Lin Thompson (they/them) is a Lambda Literary Fellow of 2018. An earlier version of this novel was workshopped in Pitch Wars and it also received the Travis Parker Rushing Memorial Writing Award at Emerson College. Lin grew up in Kentucky but now lives in Iowa with their wife and cat.
I had the opportunity to talk to Lin, which you can read below.
First of all, welcome to Geeks OUT. Could you tell us a little about yourself?
Hi! I’m a queer middle-grade author of The Best Liars in Riverview. I grew up in Kentucky and now live in Iowa with my wife and our cat. The pronouns I’m currently most comfortable with are they/them, and I identify as a trans nonbinary person.
What can you tell us about your debut book, The Best Liars in Riverview ? Where did the inspiration for this story come from? Did you draw any inspiration from other author or books while writing it?
The Best Liars in Riverview is about twelve-year-old Aubrey’s journey to find their best friend Joel after Joel has run away from their hometown on a raft the two of them built together. Along the way, Aubrey is piecing together everything that’s led up to Joel running away, and they’re also finding the space to really question their own gender for the first time.
The book grew out of a short story I wrote in college about two kids who want to run away on a raft. I’d been writing lots of stories before that about people wanting to run away from home and start over someplace new, away from the expectations and assumptions of everyone they knew—but it took me a long time to realize why I was so pulled to that idea. It wasn’t until I was starting my own queer journey that I started understanding the discomfort I’d been feeling when the people around me were assuming a gender for me that wasn’t right. The story about the kids and the raft was the one I kept coming back to as I was figuring out these huge pieces of my identity.
On yourwebsite, you described this book as “the story of my heart,” writing that “it’s grown and changed as I’ve grown and changed.” Could you tell us what you mean by that?
When I first started working with these characters, I was very early in my own queer journey—just barely even beyond “I want to be supportive of my queer friends” and moving into exploring my own identity. As I started realizing I wasn’t straight, and then later realizing I wasn’t cis, this was the story I kept coming back to and using to work through some of those feelings. I worked on this book on and off for about seven years before I ever started trying to get it published, and when I look back through the older drafts now, I can definitely see each step of my queer journey. In that original short story, the character who eventually became Aubrey was really just trying to figure out how to be a good ally, and then the story shifted with Aubrey having a first crush on a girl, until eventually, it became the version it is now, with Aubrey realizing that they aren’t a girl.
When did you know you were first interested in writing, and what drew you specifically to middle-grade fiction?
I’ve been interested in writing for as long as I can remember. My parents read to me a lot when I was little, and then I read a lot on my own, and I was telling everyone I wanted to be an author when I grew up from at least kindergarten onward. Middle-grade has always been really special to me, because the time in my life when I probably read the most was in middle school, and the books I read during that time have stuck with me in a way no others can. Middle school is such a confusing, transitional, formative time. I don’t remember reading about any openly queer characters back then, but I’ve thought a lot since about how much of a difference it might have made for me if I’d had access to the wide range of queer MG titles available now.
While I was writing Best Liars, I was also working as a children’s librarian, so I was seeing every single day just how important it is for kids to have queer stories available to them. The kids I was working with were always looking for recommendations, and it was so exciting to see the genre keep growing and to keep having more stories to offer them.
How would you describe your writing process?
Honestly, my process is pretty chaotic. On the plotter vs. pantser scale, I’m probably a chaotic plotter—I always want to be organized, and I have to know the story pretty thoroughly before I can really start writing, but I also jump around constantly as I’m writing and very rarely write chronologically or follow the plans I made. I love making outlines, but I also love changing the outline constantly as I go. I spend a lot of time feeling like my brain is trying to hold onto too many pieces of the story while I frantically try to get them into place before I forget them. I was diagnosed with ADHD fairly recently (as I think a lot of us have been—the pandemic really messed with the coping strategies a lot of us had in place before!), and I’ve also been realizing that my process for writing one book doesn’t necessarily work for writing the next one, so I’ve been trying to embrace the chaos and to find strategies that work for me.
Since Geeks OUT is a queer centered website, could you tell us a bit about the LGBTQ+ characters/themes featured in your books?
The main character, Aubrey, is questioning their gender and over the course of the story admitting to themselves for the first time that they’re not a girl. It was important to me that we leave Aubrey in a place of questioning without finding a clear, perfect label for themselves by the end of the book—I like to describe the story as less about finding an answer and more about learning to ask the question. I was definitely in that questioning stage of my queer journey as I was writing—in some ways, I still am in that questioning stage—and I wanted to get to show a character becoming more okay with not knowing exactly the right way to describe themselves, but still being able to accept themselves and find support.
And while Aubrey is looking for Joel, Joel is also doing his own questioning and (minor spoiler, I guess) realizing he’s gay. The characters live in a fictional town in Kentucky, and while Joel has been facing a lot of overt homophobia at school, Aubrey is also picking up on the ways people in their community signal their disapproval of queerness by just never talking about it. I wanted to explore how both those loud and quiet kinds of queerphobia can be damaging in different ways.
What are some of your favorite elements of writing? What would you say are some of the hardest or most surprising for you?
I really enjoy the early stages of a story, when I’m still mulling over all the different parts of it and haven’t put many words down on paper yet. I love how malleable it all feels, and I love the excitement as I figure out each new piece and see how the story can come together. I think that sometimes as I get farther into a story, it’s really easy for me to get stuck on one way of writing it and forget that there are so many possibilities, so I really love the moment when I realize how I can change the pieces to make something work—when I remember that, at the end of the day, the whole story is made up, and I can change whatever I need to make it into the book I want it to be.
The field of LGBTQ+ Middle-Grade literature is slowly, but steadily growing? What are your thoughts on the genre, and can you name any titles that stand out to you?
I’m so excited about how many more queer MG books are coming out every year! I think it’s so important to have LGBTQ+ stories for kids, because again, the middle-grade years can be such a formative time—it’s so important for kids who are figuring out who they are to have a wide range of queer stories to potentially see themselves in. I think Kacen Callender has been truly pushing open the doors for what’s “allowed” in queer middle-grade stories, and I’m so excited for their upcoming Moonflower. Kyle Lukoff’s Too Bright to See had me crying within the first fifty pages because the way the main character experienced gender made me feel seen in a way I’d never been before, even as an adult. Other titles I’ve loved recently are The Best At It by Maulik Pancholy, Almost Flying by Jake Maia Arlow, Thanks a Lot, Universe by Chad Lucas, and This Is Our Rainbow, an amazing anthology put together by Nicole Melleby and Katherine Locke!
What advice might you have to give to other aspiring writers?
Experiment and figure out what works for you! I definitely used to get discouraged by people saying you needed to write every day or that you need to have a certain routine or whatever, because the thing I’m most consistent at is being inconsistent. It turns out everyone’s process is going to be different, and the best thing you can do is figure out how your brain works and how you can best make stories.
Besides your work as a writer, what are some things you would want readers to know about you?
I love baking, embroidery, making music, playing video games, gardening…I tend to cycle through hobbies, picking up new things and doing them obsessively for a month or two before I get bored and move on to the next interest. I also absolutely love being in the woods, and I have a very special place in my heart for the Kentucky woods I grew up around.
What’s a question you haven’t been asked yet but wish you were (and the answer to that question)?
Honestly, I’m very new to being interviewed and these questions have been great! I’ll say that I’m always excited to be asked if I have any pets, because then I get to talk about my cat Nasa who’s allergic to everything and who I absolutely adore.
Are there any projects you are working on or thinking about that you are able to discuss?
I just turned in my revisions for my second middle-grade book, which is about a trans boy and his siblings investigating their grandmother’s possibly haunted house. The main character, Simon, is much more secure with his gender internally than Aubrey is in Best Liars, and I’ve really enjoyed writing about him and his family and exploring the gender euphoria Simon gets from this new name that he’s chosen.
I’m also working on a YA historical fantasy about three queer teenagers in the 1840s who find their way aboard a sailing ship with a majority-queer crew. It’s obviously a very different age group and genre, but with a lot of similar themes around self-discovery and found family. I’ve been really enjoying figuring out how to write in a time period when the language we use now to describe queerness didn’t exist yet, and when even the framework of queerness as an identity hadn’t really come about yet—it’s been challenging but also a lot of fun!
Finally, what LGBTQ+ books/authors would you recommend to the readers of Geeks OUT?
In addition to the MG titles mentioned above, I’m so excited for these books for YA readers coming out this year and next: When the Angels Left the Old Country by Sacha Lamb, We Deserve Monuments by Jas Hammonds, and If Tomorrow Doesn’t Come by Jen St. Jude. Sacha, Jas, and Jen were all Lambda Literary fellows with me, and their writing and characters are all absolutely stunning, so definitely keep an eye out for these queer books in 2022 and 2023!
