Tag: YA Romance

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Interview with Sunny and Gloomy, Creators of RAINBOW!

Sunny Funkhouser Aka Sunny (they/them), is a neurodivergent, queer creator who has been writing ever since they were a teenager. Sunny is autistic with ADHD and likes to collect dolls, make reborn dolls, crochet, act, and sew. They love learning how to do things creatively. An avid table-top gamer, Sunny is a big fan of Dungeons & Dragons and Magic the Gathering. Musical theater is their other love aside from writing and Gloomy. They’re also an ENFP for people that like that sort of thing.

Angel Aka Gloomy has been making comics since they were 10, starting with a lovingly crafted Sailor Moon rip-off. Despite the soft magical girl influence in their work, their favorite genre is horror. Besides drawing, Gloomy loves to bake and garden (in theory, if they could only keep things alive), as well as collect merchandise from whatever is currently suiting their fancy, typically cutesy things like Ghibli or Sanrio. Opposite Sunny, they’re as introverted as they come, but consider themselves friendly anyway. They’re also obsessed with bagels.

CW: Brief discussion of post traumatic stress disorder and maladaptive daydreaming.

First of all, welcome to Geeks OUT! Could you tell us a little about yourselves?

Angel: I tend to keep to myself most of the time– it can be difficult sometimes to get me out of the house and away from drawing. When I’m not drawing either professionally or for personal pleasure, I’m usually playing gamecube-era games, watching horror movies, reading webcomics or baking.

Sunny: I’m the reason Angel gets out of the house. I’m a nonbinary writer, and I love to be constantly doing things. I love theater and learning how to do things myself. I love to sew and crochet. I enjoy spending time with people. I like going to restaurants and amusement parks, and just playing Jackbox with my friends. I work at a special needs elementary school, so I’m always busy running around with the kids. I only really sit still to write and to binge shows with Angel. I’d never be able to work an office job.

What can you tell us about your debut graphic novel, Rainbow!? What was the inspiration for this story?

Angel: When we first made RAINBOW! when I was about 14, there were a lot of boys-love type comics getting popular on the webcomic hosting sites I visited, but almost no comics about girls to match them, and what little there was were usually sexualized. We wanted to see something that reflected ourselves more (at least, who we were at the time anyway), and so, RAINBOW! started. The characters were even originally based a bit on us, though I wouldn’t compare myself at all to Mimi anymore!

Sunny: RAINBOW! started as a way to explore our queer identities we were both just figuring out. Over time, RAINBOW! became a way for me to tell a story about a girl like me (though I wouldn’t compare myself as much to Boo now) finding her place in the world and rejecting the influences in her life that were hurting her. It became something really special to me. Boo is a girl that tries so hard to be good that she doesn’t really consider herself and her happiness beyond fantasies that are a way to cope with the difficult parts of her life. She learns to stand up for her own happiness and to fill her life with people that help her grow.

Can you give us any trivia (that hasn’t already been given) about the characters from Rainbow!?

Angel: Way back when we created them, Boo’s fashion sense was meant to be heavily influenced by fairy kei, and Mimi’s by scene fashion. Boo has stayed quite similar, though toned down since she couldn’t realistically afford many fancy clothing pieces. Anything particularly cute or detailed in her outfits, she more than likely made or altered it herself. Mimi, on the other hand, completely changed her fashion sense since her inception. Though it happened slowly over time rather than all at once.

(Spoiler) From what I’ve seen of your comic, it appears that Rainbow! explores some elements concerning mental health, including depictions of maladaptive daydreaming. Could you discuss your decision to include this in the comic?

Sunny: While we never intended Boo to have any specific condition as far as her daydreaming is concerned, it has been very interesting to hear from people that can relate to Boo and her issues with daydreaming. Her daydreaming is meant as a coping mechanism to deal with her less than ideal life. Boo likely suffers from some form of post traumatic stress disorder at the very least, but her daydreaming represents her desire to escape from reality and enter a fantastical realm where she is something special and important because that isn’t how she feels in reality. She loses control of her coping mechanism when her real life problems become harder to ignore. A fantastical land that once brought her comfort starts to become corrupted. It takes healing her real life to heal her inner world.

As creatives, what drew you to the art of storytelling, particularly to comics/graphic novels?

Angel: When we met as teenagers, we both drew and told stories individually, each with a specific interest in anime, manga and comics. My first comic was at 10, and was essentially a Sailor Moon ripoff. Sunny would often write and was more skilled in telling a wider story, but they were less interested in drawing them, while I was more focused on drawing and better at smaller character details than full plotlines, so we decided to combine our strengths to make comics together instead.

Sunny: In a way, I think it’s magical the way Angel can take my words and paint such beautiful pictures with them. I see my own words in picture form and suddenly it isn’t something I created, it’s something we created, and it’s better for it. Angel adds so much in beautiful backgrounds and subtle expressions. It’s incredible the way they make me see RAINBOW! in a completely new way.

How would you each describe your creative process?

Angel: I’d say I can’t quite turn mine off, it’s always in the back of my mind when I look at just about anything, when I’m doing anything, it’s always churning in some way or another.

Sunny: I agree with that! My creative process is just a part of who I am and the way my mind works. If I’m listening to music, I’m imagining my stories. If I’m taking a walk, I’m stopping to jot down ideas in my phone notes app as they come to me. I like to write down every idea I have, but I don’t often look at what I write down. I see what stays with me while my ideas turn and turn like a rock in a tumbler getting smoother. I lose a lot of detail, but Angel has always been better at remembering details.

As a creative, who or what would you say are some of your greatest creative influences and/or sources of inspiration?

Angel: For me, Naoko Takeuchi and Osamu Tezuka’s art influenced me a lot growing up. Nowadays I really love the art of Leslie Hung and Rii Abrego.

Sunny: I grew up really loving to watch any anime I could get my hands on and it’s probably still obvious in what I write now how much influence anime had in my early development. Actually, the thing that has been most influential to me, Avatar the Last Airbender, was also inspired by anime.

Growing up, were there any stories in which you felt touched by/ or reflected in? Are there any like that now?

Angel: I’m sure I’ve mentioned Sailor Moon enough, but… Sailor Moon! Still one of my favorite things to this day. Also, Treasure Planet was one of my favorite movies as a kid and still is. I always found its story and protagonist to be more unique and relatable than a lot of others that I saw as a child. He quite influenced the protagonist of our next adventure, even.

Sunny: I have a bad memory, especially in the moment, but I’ve already mentioned Avatar the Last Airbender. What that show was able to do truly made me a better writer just from experiencing it. It was one of my earliest fandoms. I used to make amvs for it. I love how they were able to make something that was accessible to a young audience, but didn’t talk down to them. Avatar the Last Airbender told a story of trauma, loss, friendship, doing what you believe is right when no one else will. It is special and I aspire to make something so special. I hope RAINBOW! is also able to make certain conversations accessible to a teen audience in the same way without talking down to them.

What are some of your favorite elements of writing/illustrating? What do you consider some of the most frustrating and/or challenging?

Angel: I find laying a comic out to be the hardest part— just planning out the panels, where the speech bubbles will fall, etc. It can make starting an episode difficult sometimes, but it’s all smooth sailing for me once I’ve finished sketching. My favorite things to do is probably coloring and designing outfits to suit each character’s different fashion senses.

Sunny: I tend to struggle with the finer details. Some people have to take a lot out of their first drafts, but I have to add a lot in. I start out with laying out the critical parts of the story. Angel often tells me to flesh out things I gloss over so they will be easier to convert to comic form. My favorite thing is to put together the plot like it’s a mystery to be solved or a giant puzzle. I love to sort out how it all fits together into a meaningful story.

Aside from your work, what are some things you would like readers to know about you?

What’s a question you haven’t been asked yet but that you wish you were asked (as well as the answer to that question)?

Sunny: I base a lot of my work on my own experiences, but usually by taking just enough of the real experience to make what I write more real, so I can make a lot of experiences work for a lot of different scenarios. If someone were to ask me if RAINBOW! is based on my life, in a way it is. Anyone that feels seen by RAINBOW! know you aren’t alone!

What advice might you have to give for other creatives?

Angel: Whatever art you want to create, start it! Planning is necessary of course, and it’s good to have a solid path laid in front of you to start with, but all of the planning in the world will be no help if you are always waiting to start because you think you aren’t ready, or you aren’t good enough. The best way to learn is to get experience!

Sunny: Always remember the reason you create. Never lose sight of the childhood wonder that causes you to pick up your creative tool of choice. I started writing because I wanted to read what I wrote. I wanted to create for me, and soon after I met Angel and wanted to create for them too. I might not be as far along with my writing if it weren’t for Angel reading my writing over and over and begging me to write more. I felt so motivated. If possible, find yourself an Angel. If you can’t, just write for you. Never lose sight of the initial spark that made you want to write in the first place. Childlike wonder is so important.

Any specific advice for those hoping to make their one graphic novel one day?

Angel: Start a webcomic! I’d suggest starting with a shorter one-shot to get an understanding of your own process, what parts you like best, what parts you struggle with, how much time you need, etc. It might be hard, but try to resist starting with a project that is your “baby”— experiment with things that you won’t stress the need to be perfect and that you can be more malleable with.

Are there any other projects you are working on and at liberty to speak about?

Angel: We have plans to begin another webcomic after RAINBOW!, and similarly, it’s also a story we’ve had together since we were teenagers. It’s a ghost story, but not one that is particularly scary despite our affinity for horror. Rather it’s about friendship, love, loss, trauma, and perseverance, and has a larger cast and story compared to RAINBOW!.

Sunny: That story has been a challenge because of the large cast! I’ve always been better at telling small stories, so I can’t wait to spread my wings and finish a story to that scope. I’m so happy when I work on it, and I can’t wait for people to read it!

Finally, what LGBTQ+ books/comics would you recommend to the readers of Geeks OUT?

Angel: I’m a little behind on brand new ones, but I love The Prince and the Dressmaker!

Sunny: I am a fan of The Witch Boy series by Molly Ostertag. I own those books! Love them!

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Interview with Sher Lee

Sher Lee writes rom-coms and fantasy novels for teens. Fake Dates and Mooncakes is her debut. Like the main character, she has made mooncakes with her favorite aunt and has an abiding love for local street food (including an incredible weakness for Xiao Long Bao). She lives in Singapore with her husband and two adorable corgis, Spade and Clover.

I had the opportunity to interview Sher, which you can read below.

First of all, welcome to Geeks OUT! Could you tell us a little about yourself?

Hi! I’m Sher, and I write rom-coms and fantasy novels for teens. I live in Singapore and have an abiding love for local street food. Fake Dates and Mooncakes is my debut novel, and I also have two YA fantasy novels in the pipeline.

What can you tell us about your debut book, Fake Dates and Mooncakes? What was the inspiration for this book?

Dylan wants to win the Mid-Autumn mooncake-making contest in his mom’s memory—they had wanted to enter the contest together—as well as to bring much-needed publicity to his aunt’s struggling Singaporean Chinese takeout, Wok Warriors. Dylan hasn’t had much luck in love, nor has he had much time for it, as he’s busy with senior year and helping to deliver food—which is how he meets Theo.

Theo’s the boy with the wealthy, absent dad, and he has everything he could ask for. He and Dylan come from completely different backgrounds, but he’s attracted to Dylan’s down-to-earth personality and self-deprecating manner. He asks Dylan to be his fake date to a glitzy family wedding in the Hamptons, where Crazy Rich Asians-style hijinks ensue!

The Mid-Autumn Festival is celebrated on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, and it’s a cherished part of my childhood. I have fond memories of walking around with lanterns under the full moon as a kid and, when I was older, making snow-skin mooncakes with my favorite aunt. The festival also celebrates love and families, and the full moon is a symbol of reunion. These are all major themes in the book, along with coping with loss and finding love in unexpected places and against the odds. Opposites attract, and even though the boys’ worlds are sun-and-moon apart, eclipses happen every now and then!

Food seems to be a particularly important element of this book. How would you describe your own connection to food and how that might affect your creativity?

One recurring comment from readers has been: don’t read this when you’re hungry! “Clearly the universal love language is food,” Theo’s aunt remarks in the novel, and food is a big part of this story. All the major events invariably take place around food—from the first time Theo and Dylan meet when Dylan delivers a wrong order to Theo’s friend’s apartment, to Dylan’s determination to re-create his grandma’s lost mooncake recipe that has been passed down for generations.

As my author bio confesses, I have an abiding love for local street food, including an incredible weakness for xiao long bao. Dylan’s aunt’s takeout, Wok Warriors, also sells all the local dishes I love: chye tow kway (fried radish and egg pancake), satay, fried Hokkien prawn mee, stir-fried egg fried rice, and more!

As a writer, what drew you to the art of storytelling, specifically young adult fiction and romance?

I was a mentee in Pitch Wars 2017, which was my first serious step toward traditionally publishing my stories. I love writing YA fiction because it’s about firsts and discoveries, be it first love, first heartbreak, or first attempt to save the world. And I gravitate toward stories with a strong romantic plot, so writing a rom-com was a natural choice! I am also a huge fan of YA fantasies, which is why my next two books are fantasy novels.

How would you describe your writing process?

I nearly always need to have the major beats and the end of the story plotted out before I can start drafting. But the journey—how the characters make their way through the challenges—is a discovery during the drafting process and often includes some unexpected detours. In short, Act 1 and Act 3 usually turn out according to plan but Act 2 is an adventure.

Growing up, were there any stories in which you felt touched by/ or reflected in? Are there any like that now?

As a teenager in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, there wasn’t a great deal of diverse children’s fiction. Gladly, the landscape of children’s literature has taken a positive turn in terms of inclusivity—diverse readers of different races can see themselves reflected in popular stories, and New York Times bestsellers include more diverse authors than before.

As a writer, who or what would you say are some of your greatest creative influences and/or sources of inspiration in general? 

Although I love to read, my primary source of inspiration is TV shows! I just love being immersed in the serialized format of episodic TV, binge-watching season after season of each new show that I fall in love and become obsessed with. I also watch shows in different languages, and recent favorites include: The Umbrella Academy, Shadow and Bone, Heartstopper, Word of Honor (Chinese), Alchemy of Souls (Korean).

What are some of your favorite elements of writing? What do you consider some of the most frustrating and/or challenging? 

As masochistic as this may sound, my favorite part of writing is revisions! There is something magical and thoroughly fulfilling about watching the draft take shape, deepen, and grow with each revision. The most challenging part of writing for me is drafting—a blank page is daunting, and I am a rather slow writer. Some authors can write 3,000 to 5,000 words a day, but a more modest goal for me is a thousand words—and sometimes I don’t even manage that!

Aside from writing, what are some things you would want others to know about you?

My husband and I have two adorable corgis, Spade and Clover (yes, I always wanted to name my pet corgi Clover, which is why Dylan’s trusted corgi confidant is also named Clover!)

What’s a question you haven’t been asked yet but that you wish you were asked (as well as the answer to that question)?

No one has asked about my dream adaptation of Fake Dates and Mooncakes, and my answer is: a Netflix movie! I think that a streaming platform has more reach than a theater release, especially for rom-coms, and it would be an absolute dream come true if Netflix acquired rights and produced Fake Dates and Mooncakes!

What advice might you have to give for aspiring writers?

Don’t chase trends, because they rise and fade fast. Write what you love, what you want to read, and can’t find on shelves. The authenticity will naturally shine through.

Social media has become increasingly important for authors, published and unpublished, to get noticed—but don’t push yourself to engage or participate at the expense of your mental health.

Are there any other projects you are working on and at liberty to speak about?

I have two YA fantasy novels coming up! The first, Legend of the White Snake, is coming out in Summer 2024 from Quill Tree, an imprint of HarperCollins. It’s a gender-flipped reimagining of one of China’s four famous folktales, in which a teen boy must hide his true identity as a white snake spirit when he falls in love with a prince hunting for a white snake for the antidote to cure his dying mother. It has the xianxia vibes of A Magic Steeped in Poison by Judy I. Lin and the queer romance of Dark Rise by C.S. Pacat (who’s also published by Quill Tree!)

We’ve also sold UK and Commonwealth rights to Macmillan Children’s as well as Italian, Spanish, and Russian translation rights. I’m so thrilled to have the chance to continue bringing stories with authentic aspects of my heritage to readers.

Finally, what LGBTQ+ books/authors would you recommend to the readers of Geeks OUT? 

I love THE CHARM OFFENSIVE by Alison Cochrun, an amazing author I admire, who also gave a wonderful blurb for Fake Dates and Mooncakes!

WHAT IF IT’S US by Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera is one of my favorite YA rom-coms, with an adorable accidental meet-cute. It’s also set in New York City. Don’t forget to check out Becky’s latest book, IMOGEN, OBVIOUSLY!

I also really enjoyed SPELL BOUND by FT Lukens, as well as her earlier novels, IN DEEPER WATERS and SO THIS IS EVER AFTER.

TEACH THE TORCHES TO BURN by Caleb Roehrig is the queer Romeo+Juliet remix I never knew I needed!

There are also some great queer books coming out this year from my fellow 2023 debut authors: THE WICKED UNSEEN by Gigi Griffis (June 2023) and GORGEOUS GRUESOME FACES by Linda Cheng (November 2023).

Find Sher on social media:

Instagram: @sherleeauthor

Twitter: @SherLeeAuthor

Preorder links: https://sherleeauthor.carrd.co/

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Interview with Melissa See

Melissa See is a disabled author of young adult contemporary romances. When not writing, she can be found reading, baking, or curled up with her cat, most likely watching anime or 90 Day Fiancé. She currently lives in the New York countryside. You, Me, and Our Heartstrings is her debut novel.

I had the opportunity to interview Melissa, which you can read below.

First of all, welcome to Geeks OUT! Could you tell us a little about yourself? 

Hi! Thank you so much for having me. I’m Melissa See, the author of You, Me, and Our Heartstrings and Love Letters for Joy. I write young adult contemporary stories the feature disabled teens falling in love, being messy, and being loved for exactly who they are.

What can you tell us about your latest book, Love Letters for Joy. What was the inspiration for this story?

Love Letters for Joy follows seventeen-year-old Joy Corvi—a fat, disabled, queer girl—who wants to become the first disabled valedictorian of her elite New York City prep school. She just has to beat Nathaniel Wright, her academic rival of the last four years. But when she realizes that she may have missed out on having a high school romance, she reaches out to her academy’s anonymous love-letter writer known as Caldwell Cupid. But as she begins falling for the mysterious student behind the letters, she might be risking her dreams at valedictorian—as Caldwell Cupid is the last person she ever would’ve expected.

The inspiration for Love Letters for Joy came from Cyrano de Bergerac—which is also why Love Letters for Joy is a retelling of the play. Me writing a Cyrano retelling was completely unintentional, but when my friend made me realize I had, I decided to really delve deeply into aspects of the play: love, withheld identity, and letters being the strongest aspects I drew from.

As a writer, what drew you to the art of storytelling, specifically young adult fiction and romance?

Well, I knew that I wanted to be a writer by the time I was just seven years old. (Spending summers going up and down the east coast while my sister was on a traveling softball team, I carried bags of books with me wherever we went.)

As for young adult fiction and romance, when I read Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins, an entire new world had opened up before me. I knew that writing young adult romance, specifically, was absolutely something I wanted to do. (The love confession scene at the end of Anna and the French Kiss remains one of my favorite scenes in all of fiction.)

As an aspec reader, I was really excited to read about another ace book coming out into the world. If you feel comfortable, could you tell us what having asexual and disabled representation in your writing means to you?

Thank you so much! Having asexual and disability representation in my books means a lot to me. Growing up, there really weren’t a lot of books that included disabled characters—or queer characters—so I am elated to see that representation increasing. In providing both disability and asexual representation through Love Letters for Joy, I’m hopeful that readers will get to see themselves reflected in the pages of a book in a way I didn’t get to growing up.

How would you describe your creative process?

I genuinely do not have a creative process. I write whenever I can and try not to put pressure on myself. (Such as not needing to write every day, especially if I don’t have the spoons to do so.)

As a creative, who or what would you say are some of your greatest creative influences and/or sources of inspiration?

Some of my greatest creative influences are authors whose books I love, such as Jonny Garza Villa; David Levithan; Emily Lloyd-Jones; Jen DeLuca; Brian D. Kennedy; Daniel Aleman; Andrew Joseph White; and Stephanie Perkins (who I mentioned previously). I also just recently finished Into the Light by Mark Oshiro, which I loved.

Growing up, were there any stories in which you felt touched by/ or reflected in? Are there any like that now?

As far as stories I’m touched by now, the first one that comes to mind is The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White. It’s an incredible gothic young adult horror that tackles ableism and transphobia in such a brilliant way. Getting to see Silas’ autism on the page and having it remind me of my own experience being autistic was something I’d never had up until I read this book. It comes out in September, and I cannot recommend it enough.

What are some of your favorite elements of writing? What do you consider some of the most frustrating and/or challenging? 

My favorite element of writing is character creation. It’s one of my favorite aspects of anything creative I get to do. It’s this awesome place of endless possibility, and I love exploring it.

I think the most frustrating element of writing for me is when I can’t figure out how to work a plot. A large part of that is me being a character driven writer. But talking to my author friends about that helps immeasurably!

One of the hardest parts of writing a book is finishing one. Were there any techniques/ strategies/advice that helped you finish your first draft?

I didn’t use any techniques or strategies to finish my first draft of Love Letters for Joy, as writing it was a whirlwind. (I’d been moving to New York City during a good amount of it, so a lot of the process has become a blur to me.) Writing as much of it as I could, whenever I could, but also knowing how to balance myself, was what helped me the most, I think.

Aside from your work, what are some things you would like readers to know about you?

I’ve been involved in performance spaces—from music to theatre—for most of my life. And now, I’m a TTRPG performer. What that means is I appear on Twitch streams to perform in actual plays of different TTRPG systems. Having a creative outlet like this has been such a joy!

What’s a question you haven’t been asked yet but wish you were asked (as well as the answer to that question)? 

Question: Without giving spoiler-filled context, what was one of your favorite scenes to write in Love Letters for Joy?

Answer: The Valentine’s Day scene. It’s one of the earliest moments of romantic tension, which are some of my favorite parts of any story I get to write.

What advice might you have to give for other aspiring writers?

One of my biggest pieces of advice is: You don’t need to write every day. Write when you have the spoons to do so.

Are there any other projects you are working on and at liberty to speak about?

I’m currently drafting a young adult contemporary that can best be described as Dungeons & Dragons meets Paper Towns. It follows a group of friends—bonded together by a fantasy TTRPG—who embark on a cross-country road trip to find their Game Master when he goes missing.

Finally, what LGBTQ+ and/or disabled books/authors would you recommend to the readers of Geeks OUT? 

Ander and Santi Were Here by Jonny Garza Villa; Hell Followed with Us by Andrew Joseph White (which has both disability and LGBTQ+ rep); A Little Bit Country by Brian D. Kennedy; The Bone Houses by Emily Lloyd-Jones; and Into the Light by Mark Oshiro.

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Interview with Mari Costa, Author of Belle of the Ball

Mari Costa is a Luso-Brazilian cartoonist with a bachelor’s degree in Character Animation. She’s in love with creating stories and populating them with people who have very messy interpersonal drama. Some of her work includes Life of Melody, The Demon of Beausoleil, and Belle of the Ball.

I had the opportunity to interview Mari, which you can read below.

First of all, welcome to Geeks OUT! Could you tell us a little about yourself?

Happy to be here! I’m Mari! I’m luso-brazilian, currently based in Porto! I love fashion, cute things, the colour pink, telling stories and making people happy! My Sun is in Cancer.

What can you tell us about your latest project, Belle of the Ball? What was the inspiration for this story?

There wasn’t so much a concrete inspiration as there was just the desire to play around with familiar tropes and character archetypes and make them my own! I got the idea in my head during a family holiday that I wanted to make characters that represented different high school stereotypes and from doodling them in my sketchbook and putting them in all kinds of situations I eventually developed them into something that could later be shaped into a fully-fledged story with an actual plot and stakes and all that stuff!

Can you give us any trivia (that hasn’t already been given) about the characters from Belle of the Ball?

Ooh! Now you’re asking the right questions, I love random character trivia! Let’s do one for each.

Gina is the oldest of the girls! At the beginning of the story, she’s the only one of them who is already 18 (Belle and Chloe turn 18 as the plot progresses, though I couldn’t tell you their exact birthdays without doing some very deep thinking ahaha). This is mostly reflected in how she assumes she’s the most mature person in the room at any given time.

Chloe speaks fluent Japanese (don’t ask her to read or write it, though), but because the only people she communicates with in it are her grandparents and she doesn’t consume a lot of untranslated media her dialect is super stiff and formal.

Belle actually has been in a lot of different clubs along her high school career. She’s been in creative writing, anime, yearbook (to get closer to Regina, which she failed at) and D&D. However, you will not find a single scrap of photographic proof of any of this having taken place.

Also, everyone is welcome at any time to shoot me an ask on tumblr or an email if they want specific character trivia. I love ruminating on my little paper dolls.

As a creative, what drew you to the art of storytelling, particularly to the realm of comics/graphic novels?

You’d be surprised at how much easier it is to draw a background or character than it is to describe it. I’ve managed to transition into prose over the past couple years, but for most my life I really struggled with description when writing while dialogue always came to me very naturally. From then, I could either get into scriptwriting for radio (prohibitively difficult for a Brazilian preteen) or I could copy my favourite mangakas and draw little comics in my roughed up sketchbook. I chose the latter and the rest is history!

How would you each describe your creative process?

Vaguely chaotic and mostly inside my head unless I truly need to commit it to paper ahaha.

In general, I’m a pretty visual and visceral person, so I keep my notes extremely brief and extremely undecipherable to most people but myself and some keen-eyed editorial until it’s time to actually start drawing. I know a lot of people write scripts before they lay out their pages for comics, but I just can’t do it without becoming verbose or forgetting about the visual minutiae that’s meant to make comics so engaging!

As a creative, who or what would you say are some of your greatest creative influences and/or sources of inspiration?

Everyone says this, but it’s for good reason! I’m greatly inspired by Ghibli movies and magical girl/fantasy anime. My favourite author is and will forever be Diana Wynne Jones. As for comics, manga did play a big role in my personal development as an artist and I’m forever grateful to names like CLAMP and Peach-PIT especially, but if it weren’t for Gigi DG’s Cucumber Quest webcomic, I don’t think I’d be giving this interview today.

This might be a bit of a call back, but an older work of yours I’ve really enjoyed in the past was your comic, Life of Melody. Could you talk to us about the inspiration for that story?

I swear to the high heavens this is true: I watched Kung Fu Panda 3 and got unreasonably mad it wasn’t more about the odd couple co-parenting between Po’s two dads.

That’s it. That was the inciting incident that made me want to write about an odd couple who’s forced to co-parent a child and eventually develop a blossoming romance.

Growing up, were there any stories in which you felt touched by/ or reflected in? Are there any like that now?

Hmm, this is a tough one. I don’t think so, off the top of my head? Not that there weren’t any stories out there about lesbians or growing up the awkward, nerdy kid, but I can’t remember deeply resonating with anything I had access to! I’ve always loved stories, but mostly it’s been as a third party observer into a window of different experiences (which is also good! You don’t have to relate to works all the time!).

Currently, though, there’s so much more on the market that seems catered specifically to the kind of person I am and would like to see in media, it’s really heartwarming! One recent example is I read the first couple volumes of She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat and it really tugged at my gay little heartstrings how much of a dream relationship the main couple has! I, too, like to cook (and frequently, I like to eat. We contain multitudes).

What are some of your favorite elements of writing/illustrating? What do you consider some of the most frustrating and/or challenging? 

I just love drawing people! Character work is some of the most rewarding kind of work I can do! I love drawing bodies and faces acting and emoting. For that same reason, when writing, dialogue is my favourite part! Honestly, my dream project to work on would actually be a character illustrator for a visual novel (please get at me).

On the other hand, if I never have to draw a car again, it’ll be much too soon. I’m pretty awful at giving inorganic environments/objects a personality. I have heard practice makes perfect, though, so I might give that a shot sometime.

Aside from your work, what are some things you would like readers to know about you?

Oh, but isn’t an aura of mystery just so much more appealing?

What’s a question you haven’t been asked yet but that you wish you were asked (as well as the answer to that question)?

Yes, I would love a million dollars.

(Alternatively: I think lesbian media should be allowed to be way more messed up than it is, as a treat.)

What advice might you have to give for other creatives?

Everyone knows all the platitudes about doing what you love and sticking to your guns, so here’s something more practical: It’s better to have a finished work than a perfect WIP that lives inside your head. Especially if you’re like me and crave validation. It’s okay to cut corners and it’s okay if some parts of your work look messy or rushed, so long as you’ve managed to put out something that you’re overall proud of sharing at the end of the day!

Also, stay hydrated.

Are there any other projects you are working on and at liberty to speak about?

When am I not working on other projects! I’m very much a storytelling shark in the sense that I’m pretty sure if I ever stop allowing stories and concepts to run around the hamster wheel in my brain I’ll shut down entirely.

That being said, my current darlings are The Demon of Beausoleil, which you can find being crowdfunded by Hiveworks right now and is an M/M gothic story about a half-demon exorcist and his reluctant bodyguard exorcising baddies around their city.

Forgive-Me-Not is a bit more distant in the horizon, but it’s another graphic novel being published by First Second about a changeling and the princess she’s replaced at birth working together to prevent a political coup.

And next year I’ll be coming out with my first ever Big Words Prose Novel called Shoestring Theory, about a royal wizard who goes back in time to stop his husband, the king, from becoming a despot (by murdering him). A real eclectic mix!

Finally, what LGBTQ+ books/authors would you recommend to the readers of Geeks OUT? 

She Who Became the Sun and The Darkness Outside Us are two books I’ve read recently that changed my brain chemistry so completely I’ll be seeking compensation for emotional damages. If you’re looking for recent comic reads, The Moth Keeper and A Boy Named Rose also come highly recommended from yours truly!

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Interview with Author Lio Min

Lio Min writes about music, magic, and sadness at the nexus of queer youth culture and metamorphic Asia America. Their culture reporting and fiction have appeared in The FADER, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Nylon, and many other outlets. They live in California.

I had the opportunity to interview Lio, which you can read below.

First of all, welcome to Geeks OUT! Could you tell us a little about yourself?

At various points in my life, I’ve been a boba barista, mailroom attendant, summer camp teacher, floral clerk, and call center operator. Throughout it all, I’ve reported and written stories all over the internet and a few times for print. The things I most write about are Asian American youth and music. Beating Heart Baby is my first novel.

What can you tell us about your most recent book, Beating Heart Baby? What was the inspiration for this project? And where did the title come from?

BHB is about boys, bands, and Los Angeles—and also internet friendships, anime, viral stardom, historical trauma, and modern Asian America. The summary that I personally feel is most accurate comes from a writer for the Chicago Review of Books, who described it as a story that shows “the violence and ecstasy of what it means to become an artist, to really be seen, both as and beyond a young adult.” My joke/not joke synopsis is, imagine if The Song of Achilles was actually about a song, set in our contemporary world, and ended with something more ambiguous than death.

So. Back in 2018, I worked at a summer camp, primarily with kids aged five to thirteen. There were a couple of kids there who left an impression on me — as an adult, you can too easily build an idea about who kids are and what they want out of life, and lose sight of the wonder and mischief and dangers and desires of childhood as it plays out. (Which, of course, you lived through the whole circus yourself, but at a certain point you begin to slip into the binary thinking of “my” generation versus “other” generations.) So I came into this job thinking I knew about kids and left the job much more tender-hearted about the trials and tribulations inherent in modern childhood. Some of the kids are, based on honed intuition, definitely going to go through “gender stuff” in the future, at a time when that vector of children’s autonomy is more and more surveilled if not outright criminalized. I found myself wondering if/how I could build a vision of the future these kids deserve, one that’s set in “the real world” but imagines what could be as the template for reality. 

Re: the Asian American POV centricity, there are unique cultural frameworks within the multitudes of Asian Americas that I wanted to blow up (as in photography, not explosives) and examine as someone who lives in, critically observes, and conflictingly loves the coalition and histories suggested by the term “Asian American.” Re: the music element, I wanted to play with ideas about ownership, visibility, and identity (as an aesthetic influence but also as a commercial imperative) within the music world, focusing specifically on the increasingly more meteoric journeys that increasingly younger artists have to navigate with infinitely more eyes watching their every creative but also personal move. 

The name of the book comes from a song released in 2004 by the pop-punk band Head Automatica. I liked it a lot when I was a kid; I definitely downloaded it off Mediafire or some site like that and revisited it every so often, usually as a running song. A decade later, one of the editors at my then-job polled the newsroom for their favorite crush songs. That was my contribution, and when years later I tried to figure out what to name the manuscript I couldn’t stop working on, I eventually thought of “Beating Heart Baby” — its relentless pacing and pleading as the singer sounds like he’s about to get crushed by his crush.

As a writer, what drew you to the art of storytelling, specifically young adult fiction?

Growing up, I was an avid reader of pretty much everything. The stuff I wrote in my spare time was also pretty much anything. But once I got to high school, I stopped being encouraged to read widely and was definitely not encouraged to write, period. So for the most part I just didn’t. I eventually found my will to write (or rather, couldn’t keep it muzzled), but it took me well into my twenties to start reading regularly again, and then yet another internal push to start reading literary fiction again, which was a precursor to writing fiction not just for myself, as I’d done as a child, but to be read by other people.

I actually thought I was never going to write fiction as an adult. Then I started experimenting with some short stories and was like, “Okay, that’s it.” Then I had that fateful summer experience and realized that the only way I was going to export all of these ambient influences and ideas out of my brain and into the world, given my limited creative toolbox, was through…sigh…long-form fiction. 

There was an early crossroads for BHB, whether it would be a YA or an “adult” book. What pushed me to choose YA was because the only time in my life when I read like my life depended on it was in childhood, because in some ways my life did depend on the worlds and ideas I only encountered and imagined through reading. And while plenty of adults read YA, there are some people who will only ever be able to (for a variety of reasons) read like their lives depended on it during childhood, and who will only have access to books through portals like teachers and librarians tasked with the job of curating books “for them” specifically. So I made that choice “for them.”

In addition to writing fiction, you are also a pop culture and music journalist. How did you find yourself getting into that line of work? 

I’ve always loved music but I wasn’t allowed to go to shows as a kid, so once I moved from suburban New Jersey to Los Angeles for college, I gorged myself on all of this culture that I’d only been able to admire from a far distance. Through a stroke of divine intervention, the journalism school (of which I was initially not a part) had just started a new digital outlet and was actively soliciting writers. (This is different from most college newspapers as far as I know, in that you normally have to have more samples/experience and formally apply. I did not have to turn in a serious application and sometimes that makes all the difference.) Through another stroke of divine intervention, my editors had no interest in covering music outside of celebrity news, so with their complete blessing/indifference, I took my college press credential and shared use DSLR into LA’s music scene and never looked back.

How did you find that connecting to your work with Beating Heart Baby?

I’m generalizing wildly here, but I think music is the most galvanizing and popular force within modern youth culture. Maybe all culture throughout history, but I can only really go to bat for the “modern youth” modifier. To some extent, the relationship between artists and fans has always had the potential to be downright religious with obvious cult overtones, but these associations are growing stronger and starting younger. Those relationships are then intensified in ways both affirming (as with the markedly more gender/race diverse pool of working musicians creating art on their own terms) and debasing (cult overtones are not good!), all filtered through the distortions of social media. When you combine this with the traditional coming-of-age narrative, specifically the somewhat traditional queer coming-of-age narrative, you have an endlessly replenishing powder keg of conflicts and desires. 

Also, I love describing music through writing, even though it’s a Sisyphean endeavor. You don’t always have the full creative freedom to get weird/go deep with those descriptions in reported work, but in fiction, you have that freedom and in fact must follow it in order to get readers to imagine something that, by virtue of its existence, is impossible to pin down into words alone. 

As a writer, who or what would you say are some of your greatest creative influences and/or sources of inspiration in general? 

I always tell people that BHB is the novelization of an anime. I grew up reading manga and watching anime, and the intentionality of animation is my single greatest artistic inspiration. As with writing, nothing exists until you place it just so; there are no accidental symbols, no ambient scener and sounds, or improvised moments. Every sunbeam was designed and drawn and its movement over and against someone’s outstretched hand is choreographed in sync with that hand, with the leaves that swirl in the languid late summer breeze— You get the gist. My favorite anime series simultaneously leave nothing and everything to imagination; you sense the impossible world beyond the impossible frame and long to step into it.

So, anime. And then there’s music. As I wrote BHB, I obsessively curated three playlists: one for the events of the book from the protagonist Santi’s POV, one for the events of the book from the protagonist Suwa’s POV, and one from my authorial POV. There are sequences of the book that are beat-by-beat soundtracked by a specific song; for example, the ending of Track 7 is synced with Mitski’s “Geyser.” On a structural level, the moment when the POV switches halfway through the book was my way of pulling off a beat switch; the song that inspired that choice was Frank Ocean’s “Nights.” Pretty much all of my writing is “scored” to, rather than inspired by, what I’m listening to.

And then of course, other writing. Specific to BHB, I meditated on Bryan Washington’s Lot, Cynthia Kadohata’s The Floating World, Andrea Lawlor’s Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, and Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko.

What are some of your favorite elements of writing? What do you consider some of the most frustrating and/or difficult? 

I love writing sensory immersion and crescendoing a scene toward a specific action or line. Dialogue is fun to refine; I imagine it as parrying myself until both of “my” weapons have been honed to gleaming.

The most frustrating part of writing is getting not just a first draft down, but connected, which is a bear no matter if I’m reporting a story or writing something personal, and especially gnarly when I’m both the conductor and the train, so to speak. An exquisite corpse is still a corpse… 

Aside from writing, what are some things you would want others to know about you?

I did marching band for three years at a big football school and learned all of my music by ear because I couldn’t read/translate the sheet music. (The double-edged sword of perfect pitch.)

What’s a question you haven’t been asked yet but that you wish you were asked (as well as the answer to that question)?

“What, if any anime was the main inspiration for Mugen Glider?” (The fake anime in BHB.)
In terms of imagery/mood, From the New World, specifically this ending credits sequence. In terms of story, the films 5 Centimeters Per Second and Millennium Actress, directed by Makoto Shinkai and Satoshi Kon respectively.

What advice might you have to give for aspiring writers?

Live. Both as an imperative and as a person beyond writing. 

Are there any other projects you are working on and at liberty to speak about?

I’m doing a residency soon wherein I will supposedly be working on Book 2… More generally, I write a monthly-ish column for Catapult called Formation Jukebox, in which I deep dive into songs and relate them back to transness/transitioning, a process I am currently…undergoing? Living? 

Finally, what LGBTQ+ books/authors would you recommend to the readers of Geeks OUT? 

David Wojnarowicz’s memoir Close to the Knives cleaved me to my core. There’s my writing and like, life and thinking pre-Knives and then post-Knives. I like their books too but I go up for the “other writing” (short stories, essays, criticism, reports) by Bryan Washington, Andrea Long Chu, Alexander Chee (especially this, oh my god), and K-Ming Chang. Anthony Veasna So’s “Baby Yeah.” (RIP.) If it’s a cliché to recommend Ocean Vuong, I don’t want to be original. Our Dreams at Dusk by Yuhki Kamatani is a gorgeous and tender manga for those of y’all searching in that world, as is Blue Period by Tsubasa Yamaguchi (which is also about becoming an artist, in this case within the unique ecosystem of fine art). 

Header Photo Credit Bao Ngo

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Interview with Author Sarah Lyu

Sarah Lyu grew up outside of Atlanta, Georgia, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. She loves a good hike and can often be found with a paintbrush in one hand and a cup of milky tea in the other. Sarah is the author of The Best Lies and I Will Find You Again. You can find her on Instagram, Twitter, Tik Tok, and Facebook.

I had the opportunity to interview Sarah, which you can read below.

First of all, welcome to Geeks OUT! Could you tell us a little about yourself?

Hi there, I’m Sarah Lyu, YA author of The Best Lies and the upcoming I Will Find You Again. I write books about love and loss, trauma and hope. 

What can you tell us about your latest book, I Will Find You Again? What inspired the story?

I Will Find You Again is the story of two girls, Chase and Lia, childhood best friends who fall in love and fall apart before one of them disappears. It’s about how far we’re willing to go for love, what sacrifices we’re willing to make, and what happens when it’s just not enough. It’s also about the idea of choosing to be internally happy or to be externally successful in life, about suffering when you’re young for some undefined golden future. And it’s about sleepovers on a yacht, playing hooky in NYC, and the pure, unadulterated joy of being with someone who sees the real you and loves you, flaws and all. 

I was initially inspired by some of my high school experiences—all-nighters spent cramming for tests, intense pressure to be perfect all the time, the abstract fear of failing at life. This sense of never living in the moment and always chasing a future defined by achievements and outward successes when we think we can finally be happy. But that happiness never comes because all we know is the chase so if we ever catch the thing we thought we needed, we just move on to needing something else. (There’s a reason the main character’s name is Chase, ha.) I wanted to write about that feeling of never being enough but in a way that’s empathetic to anyone who’s ever struggled with it because I’m still struggling with it myself. 

What drew you to storytelling, particularly young adult fiction? Were there any favorite writers or stories that sparked your own love and interest in storytelling?

I love young adult fiction so much because the teen years are such a wonderful and terrible period of transformation and realization. So many firsts and so many intense emotions! It’s often the time when we start to see the complexity of the world and when we start to figure out how we fit in that world. My favorite author is E. Lockhart, and I read The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks about once every year or two. 

How would you describe your writing process?

I usually start with a concept I’m intrigued by and it can take a while for the characters to speak to me. I do outline but only the major plot points to keep the writing fresh. I like the advice that the first draft is for telling myself the story first and subsequent drafts are for telling the story to readers. 

What inspires you as a writer?

I find human beings fascinating, particularly when we do things we know we shouldn’t do. When we self-destruct or hurt the people we love even though we never intended to. The ways we mess up and the ways we try to fix things. The ways we lie to hide how we really feel, even (or especially) to ourselves. I’ll spend my whole life trying to uncover why we do what we do and I’ll still never get to the end, but that’s part of the fun. 

What are some of your favorite elements of writing? What are some of the most challenging?

I love getting lost in a conversation between characters. Sometimes when I’m deep in a scene, it feels like there’s a movie playing in my brain and I’m just trying to keep up with what everyone’s saying. That’s how it often felt when writing I Will Find You Again—the love between these two girls was palpable and I was sometimes just a third wheel watching Chase and Lia argue and make up, fall in and out of love, find each other again and again. 

I find plot and structure to be a huge challenge. Both I Will Find You Again and The Best Lies are thrillers with complicated plots and I facepalmed a lot during the process because I had no one but me to blame for choosing to write such un-straightforward stories. 

One of the hardest parts of writing a book is finishing one. Were there any techniques/ strategies/advice that helped you finish your first draft?

If I’m completely honest, I managed to finish the first draft only because of a deadline. I think in theory I like the idea of touching the book every day and trying to write something in the story so that it stays fresh in my mind. In reality, I write in spurts and stops, and I’m trying to just embrace it because we can only be the person we are, right? 

What’s a question you haven’t been asked yet but wish you were asked (as well as the answer to that question)? 

How does love fit into your books? To me, love is the whole point of life. Not falling in love or romantic love necessarily, but the love that connects us to each other and more than that, to ourselves. These connections are what give us meaning in a world where nothing really lasts. They’re what reveal us and preserve us, what we crave in good times, and what sustains us in bad. And for Chase, someone who believes in the sandcastles she could one day build (money and power and possibly fame), love is something she takes for granted because what she has with Lia has been there since they were young and so she thinks true love is something that comes easy. It takes losing that love for her to not only appreciate it but to understand the honesty and attentiveness and vulnerability it takes to build a relationship that feels like home.

Besides your work, what are some things you would want readers to know about you?

I have two dogs that I absolutely adore. I love going to new places and meeting new people and hearing their life stories—if you end up sitting next to me on a plane or train, there’s a good chance I’ll walk away knowing the names of your family and pets and all about what drives you and what you hope the next five years will bring. I also love painting and lug brushes, tubes of paint, and blank canvas panels with me wherever I go, much to the annoyance of my travel companions, ha. 

What advice might you give to other aspiring writers?

This is advice for me too because I am constantly reminding myself: write for yourself first. What is something that’s troubling you? What are you struggling with? What do you love and why? What are your dreams and what gives you hope? What haunts you and what soothes your soul? Each of my books are stories I needed for myself, and often when I’m struggling with something (an old trauma, my perennial perfectionism), I’ll think, hey, I wrote a whole book about that. Fiction is how we learn through imagination—writing is self-exploration first to me and a way for me to work through the ghosts that I carry and understand the world in a different way.

Are there any other projects you are working on and at liberty to speak about?

I’m currently working on a story about clones but it’s in the very early stages—more soon, I hope.

Finally, what LGBTQ+ books/authors would you recommend to the readers of Geeks OUT?

Nina LaCour, David Leviathan, Victoria Lee—they’re all wonderful!

Header Photo Credit Anna Shih

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Interview with Actor and Writer Aislinn Brophy

Aislinn Brophy (they/she) is an actor, writer, and arts administrator based in the Atlanta area. She was born and raised in South Florida but made her way up to the frigid northeast for college. Their hobbies include pawning off their baking on anybody nearby, doing funny voices, and dismantling the patriarchy. Aislinn has a degree in Theater, Dance & Media, and her experiences as a performer consistently wiggle their way into her writing. In all aspects of her work as an artist, she is passionate about exploring identity and social justice issues. Their debut YA novel, How To Succeed in Witchcraft, is available now with a second untitled novel to follow.

First of all, welcome to Geeks OUT! Could you tell us a little about yourself?

Thanks for having me! My name is Aislinn Brophy, and I’m an author and an actor. I’m originally from South Florida, but now you can find me living in Atlanta with my lovely partner and our two cats. When I’m not working, I love dancing, making playlists for my friends, and playing D&D. 

What can you tell us about your debut book, How To Succeed in Witchcraft? What was the inspiration for this story? 

How to Succeed in Witchcraft is a YA contemporary fantasy that follows Shay, an overachieving witch at a prestigious magical magnet school in South Florida, who has to decide between getting the scholarship for magical university that she desperately needs or exposing the predatory drama teacher who controls the scholarship. It’s got potion brewing, a queer love story between two academic rivals, and magical musical theater!

I think my biggest inspiration for this book was the many years I spent at very intense schools. At this point in my life, I’ve thankfully fled academia for good, but I used to be a student who really bought into the idea that what I had to do to be successful was run myself into the ground. When I was writing How to Succeed in Witchcraft, creating Shay’s character was one of the easiest parts. Overachievers and their various hang-ups are very familiar to me. 

Your book is said to be based on a practical magic system, interrogating the power dynamics of a world based on witchcraft, particularly within a system of dark academics. Could you talk about how you approached the world-building within the book?

The world-building was the part of the book that took the longest to come together. I revised the details of the history and magic quite a lot between the first and final drafts! As far as the history went, I wanted to create a world that had similar systems of oppression to ours, because that would be most useful to me in addressing the themes I wanted to touch on. I thought the best way to do that was to have a specific point in history that was recent (but not too recent) where magic was discovered. Then I wrote an alternate timeline for how history progressed from that point onwards. I identified some key historical events—wars, political movements, etc.—and then figured out how the presence of magic would have changed them. I think the big idea I had behind crafting the history was “what if magic just made capitalism worse?”  

With the magic system, I started out with the idea that it was going to be very practical. It was going to be a system where skill with manipulating magic was quantifiable, and you could compare a witch to her peers and definitively say who was stronger. I also wanted magical skill to be practice-based rather than innate. You become more powerful in this world mostly by doing magic a ton. All of these elements were meant to play into the dark academia parts of the story. If you can quantify how strong witches and wizards are, and how good you are at magic is based on the sheer amount of hours you spend working at it, then all of that would make a cutthroat academic program even more toxic. 

On social media, you’ve discussed how much it means to you that the main character of How To Succeed in Witchcraft is biracial and queer like you. Could you talk about what that representation and what representation in general means to you?

Of course, it’s incredibly important to see people that share identities with you represented in media. At this point, I hope that’s not a ground-breaking thing to be saying. I want everyone to be able to read books that speak to their experiences, as well as books that reflect on lives they’ll never lead and things they’ll never face. Personally, I don’t remember reading stories with characters that shared many identities with me when I was younger, and that shaped who I thought could possibly be the main character in books. A lot of my early writing had straight white protagonists, because I had got it in my head that those were the people who got to be the heroes in fantasy. Now that I’m creating stories that are more authentic to who I am as a writer, I realize just how much that mindset was getting in my way. 

What I love most about the current moment in publishing is that going into the bookstore and looking at the shelves now feels very different to me than it did ten years ago. Obviously, there’s still a lot of racism, homophobia, and other oppressive forces at play in the industry. But now I can look at the shelves and see many more hugely successful books by marginalized authors. That’s no small thing. 

I’m really proud to be adding How to Succeed in Witchcraft to this current publishing landscape. My goal is to build a body of work that shows a lot of different facets of being a queer biracial person. This book is just the start. 

How did you get into writing, and what drew you to young adult fiction, specifically speculative fiction? 

I’ve been completely and utterly obsessed with speculative fiction ever since I started reading it as a kid. The reason my vision is so terrible now is because I spent a lot of my time as a child reading fantasy books in near-darkness after my bedtime. So when I started writing novels as a teen, I knew I wanted to write something that would make other kids feel that totally earth-shattering excitement that I felt from reading a really good YA fantasy. 

I have to credit fanfiction for getting me seriously into writing though. Before I made the switch to creating original work, I learned a lot of practical craft skills by writing a massive amount of fanfiction. That was a very formative experience for me as a writer. Fanfiction let me be unapologetically enthusiastic about creating stories, and it gave me a non-judgmental space to be bad. And honestly, you have to be a bad writer for a while before you become a good one, so I’m glad I got to do that in a place where nobody was really evaluating the quality of my work. 

How would you describe your writing process? What are some of your favorite/most challenging parts for you?

My process is probably best described as controlled chaos. I learned early on in my writing journey that I get lost during drafting without some kind of road map, so now I make an outline of what is going to happen in the book before I get started. Usually that outline starts out detailed and becomes more and more vague as it goes along. By the end, my notes on the plot end up being things like “Character A and B talk about something????” or “resolve subplot here maybe.” I do my best to draft a book based on that, it inevitably doesn’t go the way I’ve planned, and then I revise the resulting draft into something actually good.  

I struggle a lot with drafting, so that’s probably the most challenging part for me. I write slowly, and it’s hard for me to focus for long periods of time to get words on the page. On the other hand, I love editing. Thinking about the world I’m creating is tremendously fun for me, and I find that I get to do the majority of that once I have my bad draft on the page. 

As a writer, who or what would you say are some of your greatest creative influences and/or sources of inspiration? 

The two authors that I would say are my greatest sources of inspiration are N. K. Jemisin and Tamora Pierce. I’m the biggest fan of N. K. Jemisin’s work. I just think everything she writes is brilliant. The nuance she brings to exploring power and oppression in her books is something I hope to achieve in my own work. And Tamora Pierce is a writer that really shaped how I viewed fantasy from an early age. I loved The Song of the Lioness series and the Beka Cooper books. All the female protagonists in her novels were powerful in a way that always stuck out to me. 

Aside from your work as a writer, what would you want readers to know about you?

I’m an actor! I mostly work in theater, which is why musical theater is such a big part of How to Succeed in Witchcraft. Most recently I had the pleasure of playing Rosalind in a show called Playing Mercury, which is a medieval-period comedy inspired by Shakespeare’s As You Like It. 

What’s a question you haven’t been asked yet, but wish you were asked (as well as the answer to that question)?

Here’s my question for myself: What’s your biggest dream as an author? 

I would like to write something one day that inspires people to write fanfiction about my characters. Honestly, I can’t imagine a bigger achievement for myself. If I created a story that people liked so much that they felt compelled to make their own art about my imaginary people, I could die happy.

What advice would you give to other aspiring writers?

Find what works for you, and do more of it. There’s no “one way” to be a writer. Actually, the only thing required to be a writer is to write sometimes. There’s a lot of advice floating around out there for writers. Read all the popular books in your genre. Write every day. Don’t write a prologue. Etcetera, etcetera. But if some of that common advice doesn’t seem like quite the right fit for you, that’s cool! Maybe it’s hard for you to read in your genre while you’re writing. Maybe you need to take lots of breaks to refill your creative well. Or maybe you want to write a novel that’s exclusively made up of prologues. These are all valid ways to write. What matters most is that you identify what you’re good at and what type of writing process works for you, and then do that stuff on purpose. 

Lean into your strengths! And if you write that prologue book, I want to read it.

What advice would you give for finishing a book?

Get something on the page. You can edit something, but you can’t edit nothing. This is advice I have to give myself regularly. 

Are there any projects you are working on or thinking about that you are able to discuss?

I’m currently drafting my second book. I can’t say much about it at this point, since it’s still in early stages, but it’s set in a different world than How to Succeed in Witchcraft. The premise I’ve started with is that the book follows a witch and a non-magical girl who become trapped in a cycle of breaking up and getting back together after a memory spell goes wrong. We’ll see where it goes from there!

Finally, what LGBTQIA+ books/authors would you recommend to the readers of Geeks OUT?

I’ll limit myself to the YA space since I always have way too many books that I want to recommend! Aiden Thomas’ The Sunbearer Trials, Jas Hammonds’ We Deserve Monuments, and Riss M. Neilson’s Deep in Providence are some of the newer/upcoming releases that I’ve been excited about. I also love Ashley Shuttleworth’s A Dark and Hollow Star and H. E. Edgmon’s The Witch King, which both kick off incredible, ambitious queer fantasy series. 

Header Photo Credit Nile Scott Studios

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Interview with Author Linsey Miller

Once upon a time, Linsey Miller studied biology in Arkansas. These days, she holds an MFA in fiction and can be found writing about science and magic anywhere there is coffee. She is the author of the Mask of Shadows duology, Belle Révolte, The Game, What We Devour, and Prince of Song & Sea. 

I had the opportunity to interview Linsey, which you can read below.

First of all, welcome to Geeks OUT! Could you tell us a little about yourself?

Hello! Thank you! I’m Linsey Miller, the author of a handful of books, most recently What We Devour and Prince of Song & Sea. I enjoy writing about grief and morality in magical worlds, and I love books about queer kids saving the day. Outside of authorhood, I read a lot, bake a bit, and write less often than I probably should.

How did you find yourself becoming a writer? What drew you to young adult and speculative fiction specifically?

I read and wrote too much as a child to the point where I was banned from reading books in class a few times. In middle school, though, I read a book about a forensic pathologist and decided that was my ideal job. I stopped reading fiction while in college and tried to be a good student and focus on my studies. However, my father died after my first year, and I realized that I wasn’t sure if medical school and pathology were exactly what I wanted to do.

After I graduated, I didn’t really know what to do. I lived with my now-husband and our best friend, and they convinced me to try writing a book. So I did, and it was terrible.

But then I wrote another one, and the rest is history.

Young adult fantasy appeals to me because it provides a way for kids who may not get to triumph and be celebrated in the real world to win against their villains. The young adult category wasn’t bare when I was a kid, but it wasn’t very large. I decided that I wanted to write the books that teen-me needed and would have loved.

Growing up, were there any books or authors that touched or inspired you as a writer?

I think I read the Circle of Magic series by Tamora Pierce and the Abhorsen series by Garth Nix five hundred times as a kid. I loved Crown Duel by Sherwood Smith, Gifts by Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia E. Butler’s short stories,  His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman, and though I was older when they came out, all of N.K. Jemisin’s works.

Can you tell us about the inspiration behind your book What We Devour?

Of course! I call What We Devour my extremely ace book about eating the rich. I think the main concept for the world was the first thing that came to me. I was drove home late one night, looked up at the full moon, and thought, “What if that were an eye?”

Most of the inspiration for the plot came from two things—my desire to insert an ace girl into the “girl plans on killing/taking down the prince but he’s hot” fantasy romance trope and my childhood with a very pro-union father. I think magic provides an exceptional medium through which to explore morality and ethics, and the tropes I wanted to use had such interesting power dynamics that it felt right.

So all of that came together to inspire what I hope is a gripping book about aceness, workers’ rights, and how fantasy worlds which focus on revolts often don’t go far enough into dismantling systems of power.

Your next upcoming project is a book centered on Eric from The Little Mermaid? Can you tell us how you become involved in this project, as well as any personal connections you might have to that film and character?

The Little Mermaid came out the year I was born, so I jumped at the chance to work on it. While I didn’t see it in theaters, I liked it a lot as a kid because I thought Ursula was great. There is something extremely relatable in Ariel, Eric, and Ursula. Prince of Song & Sea provided a chance for me to explore that relatability and bolster Eric’s character, which was a wonderful challenge.

Also, I will take any excuse to sing “Poor Unfortunate Souls.”

How would you describe your writing process? What are some of the best/most difficult parts for you?

My writing process is structured but not set in stone. I will usually let a concept stew for a long time before committing it to paper. When I start working, I’ll rewrite the first few chapters until they’re what feels right for the tone and characters, and then I’ll write the climax and/or epilogue. I prefer to only seriously start working once the beginning and ending are figured out.

The most difficult part for me is definitely writing the initial draft. I get caught up too easily in making it “good” to the point where I’ll stop writing. My favorite part happens once that is done—rewriting. I love rewriting a book from start to finish. It feels very refreshing to create a new draft from the initial one and include all of the small details and foreshadowing. That’s when writing is the most fun for me.

Since Geeks OUT is a LGBTQ+ centered website, could you maybe tell us what queer representation means to you?

It’s a letter to the Linsey that could have been. I don’t think I saw the word ace outside of playing card references until I was in my twenties. Seeing the queer literature that’s available now across genres and age group is everything, from vengeance to hope, to me. 

Mask of Shadows, Belle Révolte, and What We Devour specifically are my attempts to write the books that would have saved me some confusion and tears growing up. There the books I didn’t know I needed as a kid. I hope they can be the book for a least one reader now.

Besides writing, what are some of your other interests?

I do a lot of baking, mostly cinnamon rolls and cakes.  Though it’s on hiatus now, I play D&D with a group of other authors on the Spell Check podcast. I also play a lot of video games, though I’m mostly working through the new Pokémon Snap right now.

What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

Writing is a curious occupation because we often do it alone without any feedback for long periods of time, and that isolation can be challenging. Find your people and stick with them.

There’s a degree of failure that writing requires constantly, not just at the beginning. Write what you love and what you need, and don’t twist your work into knots to try and shove it into what you think is marketable.

Also, please backup your work and activate the “unsend email” option.

What’s a question you haven’t been asked yet but wish you were (and the answer to that question)?

Oh, no. This is delightful, but I don’t know. I guess: Who are your favorite minor characters you’ve written?

I am equally fond of Isidora from Mask of Shadows and Franziska Carlow from What We Devour. They’re very different, but that’s mostly due to them responding to their trauma in different ways. At their cores, both are driven to help others to their own detriment.

Are there any projects you are working on or thinking about that you are able to discuss?

I have a few projects that I’m working on, but there aren’t any that I can talk about. I hope I have more things I can talk about soon!

Finally, what LGBTQ+ books/authors would you recommend to the readers of Geeks OUT?

All of them! Some authors I love are Jordan Ifueko, Adib Khorram, Laura Pohl, L.L. McKinney, Katherine Locke, A.R. Capetta, Julian Winters, Linden A. Lewis, Ryan Douglass, A.M. Strickland, Alechia Dow, Rosiee Thor, and Ryan La Sala.

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Interview with Author Priyanka Taslim

Priyanka Taslim (she/her) is a Bangladeshi American writer, teacher, and lifelong New Jersey resident. Having grown up in a bustling Bangladeshi diaspora community, surrounded by her mother’s entire clan and many aunties of no relation, her writing often features families, communities, and all the drama therein. Currently, Priyanka teaches English by day and tells all kinds of stories about Bangladeshi characters by night. Her writing usually stars spunky Bangladeshi heroines finding their place in the world—and a little swoony romance, too. You can connect with her on Twitter and Instagram @BhootBabe. The Love Match is her debut novel.

I had the opportunity to interview Priyanka, which you can read below.

First of all, welcome to Geeks OUT! Could you tell us a little about yourself?

Hi, I’m so happy to be here among fellow geeks! My name is Priyanka and I’m a writer and educator from New Jersey, where I live with my family and my dashing tuxedo cat, Loki! I am a big fan of romance and fantasy novels by marginalized creators, Webtoons, Marvel movies, Final Fantasy games, Kdramas, and food!

What can you tell us about your upcoming book, The Love Match? What was the inspiration for this story?

The Love Match is a young adult romantic comedy about a Bangladeshi American teen named Zahra Khan who is struggling to help support her family and follow her dreams of college after her father’s death. When her meddling but well-meaning mother decides setting Zahra up with the son of a wealthy friend will be the end of all their financial woes, Zahra and Harun, her supposed “perfect match,” decide to fake date in an effort to please their families—while also slowly sabotaging their relationship and hiding Zahra’s growing feelings for her decidedly unsuitable coworker, Nayim, a young man from Bangladesh with big dreams.

It’s got all the cuteness and drama of a Jenny Han novel, but with the social politics of a modern Jane Austen, inspired by the vibrant Bangladeshi diaspora community of Paterson, New Jersey where I myself grew up.

What drew you to storytelling, and what drew you to young adult and romance specifically? 

As a kid, I was always seeking an escape. I grew up in the wake of 9/11 and frequently felt torn between two worlds. I faced the same Islamophobia, xenophobia, and racism as the other Bangladeshi kids in my classes, but I was one of the few who were born and raised in the U.S., so I didn’t quite fit in with them either. I’d hide away in the school library as much as I possibly could to avoid my bullies, with my nose in a book, but also loved other storytelling mediums—shows, movies, video games, comics.

It wasn’t long before I started writing fanfiction and that cemented my love of telling stories, but the world of fandom still isn’t very inclusive and particularly wasn’t during my childhood, so I never saw characters like myself on page or on screen. It took me a long time to realize we belonged there just as much, so it became my dream to push toward the goal of publishing books that center Bengali characters. Moreover, I’ve always wanted to center them in stories about things other than simply facing bigotry, because that’s already reality for so many kids and they deserve escapism in stories as much as anyone else. Instead, I like to write escapist books that touch on very universal conflicts, like grief, but ultimately give readers a little light in a challenging world.

I was drawn to romance for that reason. I feel like it’s one of the most escapist genres. There’s a reason romances sell so well. They allow readers to believe in happy endings and that they are deserving of love, but while there have been authors fighting to diversify romance for a very long time who have been breaking more and more ground recently, it doesn’t feel like enough just yet. I don’t know if it will ever be enough. I can probably count diaspora Bangladeshi authors writing romances on one hand, perhaps without even needing every finger, and that’s across age categories. I also wasn’t seeing very many that centered Bangladeshi male characters as romantic heroes, particularly darker-skinned leads, so I set out to write not one, but TWO Bangladeshi love interests in The Love Match who are very different, to at least touch on the vast spectrum of what it means to be Bangladeshi, to be diaspora, to be Asian, and whatever other facet of identity. 

Zahra wonders often what it means to be a “Good Bangladeshi Kid” but I wanted to show there’s lots of different ways to inhabit a particular identity so you don’t have to conform to one ideal.

How would you describe your writing process? What are some of your favorite/most challenging parts for you?

I’m very much a characters first author. While I might get a small nugget of the plot before anything else, it doesn’t start to feel real until I know the characters and what drives them.

I’m a massive plotter, and a relatively neat first drafter, but that doesn’t usually mean the book is good to go as is. Some of my earliest drafts are very indulgent with the characters and their relationships (as well as random food scenes, haha) and then I end up trimming down the filler to hone in on the plot that best shapes their arcs, fleshing things out as I go.

Rewrites can be difficult for me for that reason. I know they’re necessary and that they’ve always improved my work, but after indulging in everything fun for me in the first draft, it feels a lot like I’ve worked really hard to build a tall but very precarious jenga tower and am suddenly being asked to move pieces around without everything collapsing on top of me.

I’ve noticed my most favorite moments, where characters are deepening their relationships and coming to realizations about themselves, usually tend to stick around. In The Love Match, the date chapters are all among my favorites and have changed from iteration to iteration, but the details I love most about them have always stayed.

As an author, who or what would you say are some of your greatest creative influences and/or sources of inspiration? 

For The Love Match, my upbringing in Paterson was a great source of inspiration. It’s, I believe, the second largest Bangladeshi diaspora community in the United States, but there’s not a lot of media that explores the nuances of living in a place like Paterson, with its working class population, or focusing on the beauty of its diversity and history.

I also think it provides an interesting, untapped perspective because a lot of South Asian American authors tend to write about the experience of being surrounded by “Americanness,” especially white Americanness, and what it’s like for this character who is the only brown person in a room. There’s not as much exploring when you’re very much American, but a particular sort of American that is enmeshed in a microcosm of your family’s heritage even if you’re thousands of miles away from the motherland. I can speak Bengali, often eat the food, wear the clothes during every holiday, etc. So I see a lot of South Asian American authors move away from those things, and it’s great, but for me, while my Bangladeshiness and Americanness don’t always fit together perfectly, the puzzle pieces have always been in the same box. There would be an irreplaceable hole left behind if I only focused on being one thing.

I am, however, deeply inspired by the authors who have come before and chipped away at the glass ceiling so I could creep in too. If not for Jenny Han and Sandhya Menon and Beverly Jenkins, for scores and scores of authors of color who reinvented the idea of what romance is allowed to be and who is allowed to exist in it—as well as all the Bangladeshi authors who proved to me that I have a place in this industry, like Adiba Jaigirdar and Karuna Riazi—I know I wouldn’t be here.

Here at Geeks OUT we’ve interviewed quite a few diaspora writers who’ve talked about the ways they’ve explored the multiple cultures that exists in their lives in their work. If you wouldn’t mind, could you talk to us about what representation means to you?

I’ve talked a bit about it already, but to me, representation is so important! Even when I escaped into the pages of a romance or a fantasy novel as a teen, they were often authored by white writers who would sometimes use subtle microaggressions that would jar me out of the story and make me wonder if that was all that was possible for someone like me, even in a made up world—to only be present to be the villain, or for the sole purpose of uplifting the white protagonist, or to die for them, or to just fade into the background.

I grew up in Paterson, which is extremely diverse. I hope that Paterson comes alive in The Love Match and feels a little like a character in its own right, because I set off to bottle just a bit of that vibrancy. The entirety of the main cast is populated with people of color, the majority of them South Asian and Muslim (and while the book explores the characters’ Bangladeshiness more than their faith, different characters have different relationships to their faith). There are also intersectional identities represented on page, like my protagonist Zahra’s best friend Dani, who is a queer Pakistani Muslim girl.

So I hope readers pick up The Love Match and know, even if the characters’ experiences might not be exactly like their own, it’s a story about brown girls deserving to be at the center of epic love stories if they want to be, about “tall, dark, and handsome” belonging to an actually brown-skinned boy for once, about an ensemble cast not needing a white character to anchor readers because themes of experiencing grief and coming of age and embracing change are universal enough even when the characters aren’t white. I hope what readers take away from that is that they’re enough too. That they’re complicated and nuanced and so many wonderful things all at once. They are more than a side character or villain in anyone else’s narrative.

Aside from your work as a writer, what would you want readers to know about you?

Honestly, I’m pretty boring! Teaching high school full time while juggling writing doesn’t leave me much time or energy for anything aside from enjoying other media… (Case in point: Abbott Elementary is very realistic, in my opinion) But readers can find me on most social media accounts under the @bhootbabe and I will provide them with cute cat pics in return!

What’s a question you haven’t been asked yet, but wish you were asked (as well as the answer to that question)?

Hmmm…maybe what recurring themes, tropes, and motifs do you find in your work? I very frequently end up writing books that center complicated families. In fact, I am working on a book right now that I sort of hate myself for, because so many characters why do I do this to myself, but when it all finally comes together and these characters leap from the pages like real, fleshed out people, when readers tell me that they loved the whole cast and felt they were written with love and nuance, I feel such a deep pride!

But in the meantime, there are many tears involved, haha. I also tend to write a lot of Tired Oldest Daughter heroines, somehow always fall headfirst into love triangles, and tackle themes like grief or pursuing ambitions.

Oh, and cats. I want mine to feel represented, haha.

What advice would you give to other aspiring writers?

Find your community. It may take some time. Not everyone is a good fit for you and your work. But having trustworthy people you can run your questions by, get feedback from, and can vent your frustrations to will help this lonely industry feel a little less daunting.

Also: you’ve got this! Don’t give up! We need your words!

Finally, what books/authors would you recommend to the readers of Geeks OUT?

I’m going to shout out some recent books by authors of color that center QPOC, which I’ve either read or are on my radar!

A MILLION TO ONE and THE DO’S AND DONUTS OF LOVE by Adiba Jaigirdar

THE LOOPHOLE by Naz Kutub

SHE IS A HAUNTING by Trang Thanh Tran

DRIZZLE, DREAMS, AND LOVESTRUCK THINGS by Maya Prasad

THE IVORY KEY duology by Akshaya Raman

FLIP THE SCRIPT by Lyla Lee

WHERE SLEEPING GIRLS LIE by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

SORRY, BRO by Taleen Voskuni

DEEP IN PROVIDENCE by Riss M. Neilson

THE BRUISING OF QILWA by Naseem Jamnia

THIS IS WHY THEY HATE US by Aaron Aceves

BLOOD DEBTS by Terry J. Benton-Walker

FAKE DATES AND MOONCAKES by Sher Lee

DAUNTLESS by Elisa A. Bonnin

THE BOOKEATERS by Sunyi Dean

Header Photo Credit Prithi Taslim

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Interview with Author Adib Khorram

ADIB KHORRAM is the author of DARIUS THE GREAT IS NOT OKAY, which earned the William C. Morris Debut Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Young Adult Literature, and a Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor, as well as a multitude of other honors and accolades. His followup, DARIUS THE GREAT DESERVES BETTER, received three starred reviews, was an Indie Bestseller, and received a Stonewall Honor. His latest novel, KISS & TELL, received four starred reviews. His debut picture book, SEVEN SPECIAL SOMETHINGS: A NOWRUZ STORY was released in 2021. When he isn’t writing, you can find him learning to do a Lutz jump, practicing his handstands, or steeping a cup of oolong. He lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where people don’t usually talk about themselves in the third person. You can find him on Twitter (@adibkhorram), or Instagram (@adibkhorram).

I had the opportunity to interview Adib, which you can read below.

First of all, welcome to Geeks OUT! Could you tell us a little about yourself?

Sure! My oldest fandom is probably Star Trek, followed closely by The Transformers, both of which I was introduced to around second or third grade. As I got older I fell into Marvel (specifically the 90s cartoons) HARD but I fell right back out of Marvel when I realized how expensive collecting comics can get. Like many people, Yuri!!! On ICE was the only thing that got me through the darkest part of 2016, and during the pandemic, I plunged headlong into obsession with The Untamed. Also, I still think Chrono Trigger is the greatest game of all time.

How did you realize you wanted to be a storyteller and what do you think attracted you to young adult fiction?

I don’t think I ever had the conscious realization that I wanted to be one, so much as I accidentally fell into it. I had a dayjob with occasionally intense bursts of hurry-up-and-wait time, where I couldn’t leave but I couldn’t do anything else, I was stuck at my desk or at a computer, and I found myself writing. When I was younger I wrote some fanfiction with my friends, and as I got older I dabbled in playwriting and screenwriting, but novels really felt like the right fit. YA in particular is such a vibrant, exciting space. Adult life can often feel painfully pretentious; YA is visceral and honest.

How would you describe your writing process in general? What inspires you to write and finish writing?

Bold of you to assume I have a process! So far every book has been different. But for the most part, what I try to do is write from about 1:00 to 5:00 PM every weekday, because that’s when I feel most creative, and give myself the weekends off. I’m a pantser by nature but I sometimes try to plot things out if the story seems to require it. Sometimes it works; sometimes not. And my bills inspire me to hit my deadlines! I got laid off from my day job during the pandemic so I’m a full-time writer now.

What are some of your favorite parts of the writing process? What are some of the most difficult or frustrating?

I love, love, love the initial ideation process—when a story starts coalescing in my brain, in random notes scrawled in notebooks or my phone. And I really like revision (usually)—taking something that’s not working and making it better. First drafts, especially beginnings thereof, are always difficult for me. Of all the books I’ve written (both published and unpublished), I can only think of one that I got the right opening on the first try.

Something that many people admire about your work is your honest and touching portrayal of mental health, specifically depression in your first book, Darius the Great is Not Okay. When you first started writing the Darius books was that something you had always wanted to explore or did it just organically evolve that way?

I wouldn’t say I knew it right from the start, but very early on I realized I wanted to explore depression. I started drafting the book in 2015, right when a whole bunch of books involving suicide came out, in ways I felt both romanticized and stigmatized it. I wanted to push back against the narrative that depression (or mental illness) is or should be the defining characteristic of a person, a life, or a story.

When we think of Hollywood’s or any mainstream corporation’s idea of “relatability” their first go-to is the average relatable “Joe” who’s usually a cis white guy of no particular origin. Yet (and this is on a quick personal note) as a queer person coming from another diaspora background reading Darius the Great is Not Okay felt so familiar in the sense of being able to relate to Darius’s struggles to balance different cultures while never feeling quite “enough” in certain ways and always feeling out of place. What are your thoughts on cultural specificity reaching the universal?

This is such an interesting question. On the one hand—the US, where I live, is becoming less and less cisgender and heterosexual and white. And so what was once marginalized is now majoratized. (Spell check informs me that this is not a word, but it’s too late now.) But more to your point, I think there is something special that happens when you showcase a specific experience, even if it’s foreign to a large portion of your audience. For example, literally, no one is a half-Vulcan, and yet Spock continues to be one of the most beloved and related-to characters in modern geekdom. Because even if people can’t relate to his Vulcanness, people can relate to feeling like the other; or to being torn between two cultures; or to having a fraught relationship with one’s father; or to having best friendship laden with homoerotic tension. And so I think Darius draws on that—that through being hyper-specific, different readers can find different ways to relate.

A while back you wrote a children’s book called Seven Special Somethings: A Nowruz Story about Persian/Iranian New Year. I’m curious to hear your thoughts and process behind the book if you wouldn’t mind sharing?

No thoughts, only vibes! To be honest, I owe a lot to my agent, Molly O’Neill, for inspiring this story. She mentioned to me one day that many readers seemed to love the celebration of Nowruz in Darius the Great Is Not Okay, and noted that there wer-en’t many picture books on the subject, and asked if I would be interested in trying my hand at one. What followed was a crash course in the subject (I read over a hundred picture books over the span of about two weeks!), and what I would consider a decent attempt at a first draft. Process-wise, it’s shorter: no matter how you size it up, no matter how much deep thinking goes into the best-crafted picture books, at the end of the day there are less words and that means less physical typing. But what surprised me most about picture book writing was how it related to my screenwriting days: leaving room for a collaborator to interact with the text, embolden it, elevate it.

And, aside from that: children are the toughest audience! I wanted to do right be them. And also make them laugh so they didn’t think I was boring.

Aside from writing, what are some things you would want readers to know about you?

In my thirties I’ve become a Vinyl Person™ in that I’ve started collecting vinyl records. Some of my favorites are video game soundtracks, Studio Ghibli soundtracks, and of course the discography of Pink Floyd, which for some reason I resonate with, even though it was recently described to me as “dad rock.”

What advice might you have to give to other aspiring writers?

I’m always wary of giving advice. Everyone is unique, as a person and as a writer. So instead I tell people: try taking a lot of advice, but on a limited timetable. Try lots of things: where to write, when to write, how to write, how often to write. See what feels good to you. See what sparks joy. And reevaluate often. Every book is different. Sometimes, within a book, every draft is different!

And the one universal piece of advice I give is: don’t let your sense of self come from your writing. You are a full, complete, fabulous human being, whether you never write another word or not. Whether you ever get published or not. 

Can you tell us about your latest book, Kiss & Tell?

Kiss & Tell has had a long journey. From when I first conceived of it in 2014 (when it was concerned with coming out, and murder!!) to 2020 (when it became concerned with the pressures of being out, the performance of queerness for the masses, and what it means to be an ally), my own life changed drastically, both personally and professionally.

As someone who both exists in fandom spaces, and is occasionally the object of those spaces, I’ve become increasingly aware of the way that identity, queer identity in particular, can be commodified and consumed. And I wanted to interrogate that.

And, also, I love boy bands, and music in general. I wrote the book in 2020 and revised it in 2020 and 2021, and writing about concerts and travel when I was cooped up at home was quite a balm.

Are there any other projects you are currently working on and at liberty to talk about? 

I just announced my next picture book, Bijan Always Wins, about a boy who turns everything in life into a competition to be won—and the toll it takes on his friendships. It’s really cute and I’m so excited for it!

Finally, what LGBTQ+ books/authors would you recommend to the readers of Geeks OUT?  

I will literally always recommend Julian Winters’ complete bibliography to anyone and everyone who asks. His latest, Right Where I Left You, was luminous: friendship and love and lots of fandom and super-geeky and happy, happy, happy in the way only Julian Winters books are.

Tessa Gratton’s Moon Dark Smile comes out later this year, sequel to Night Shine. I’ve said it before, but if you ever wondered what would happen if you put Spirited Away and a bunch of rainbows into a blender, Night Shine is it. And Moon Dark Smile expands upon that world, introducing even more queerness, and at the end, leaving this beautiful message about how love can transform us in ways we never anticipated.

And my latest bookish obsession is Lio Min’s Beating Heart Baby, which is about music and anime and internet friends and toxic masculinity and the way that as we grapple with our queer selves, our anger can explode outward and hurt the people that we love (and that love us in turn) the most—and that there’s a way back, if we can be honest with each other, offer and accept grace, and always try to be better tomorrow than we were yesterday.

Header Photo Credit Afsoneh Khorram