Author Guest Blog – Page 5

Don’t Judge A Book By Its Description

By Nadia|2020-03-28T13:40:37-05:00June 25th, 2016|Categories: Author Guest Blog, Blogathon 2016|Tags: LGBTQIA, Queer Girls, Queer Guys, Representation|

by Zac Brewer I have to admit, I may have squealed a little when I read the email inviting me to write a piece for Gay YA. It’s an honor to be included, to feel like my voice matters, on the subject of being queer. Growing up, there wasn’t really any YA to speak of (this was the 70s/80s—yeah, I KNOW THAT WAS A MILLION YEARS AGO, OKAY?—so we pretty much had Judy Blume and then went straight into adult fiction), and there certainly wasn’t, at least within my grasp, any queer fiction available. If there had been, [...]

Comments Off

What My Queer YA Means To Me

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:40:37-05:00June 23rd, 2016|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, Blogathon 2016, Writers on Writing|Tags: Bisexual, Speculative|

by Erin Bow I will be honest. I didn’t set out to write a book in which girls kiss each other. As a novelist, I’m not much of a planner. Even the few things I do have planned don’t always work out, and that was certainly the case with my 2015 book, The Scorpion Rules. I came to it with some original equipment, some seeds from the writing gods: the character of my narrator, Greta Gustafsen Stuart, Duchess of Halifax, Crown Princess of the Pan Polar Confederacy, came to me with her smarts and braids and stoicism fully [...]

Comments Off

Bury Your Cliches

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:40:37-05:00June 21st, 2016|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, Blogathon 2016, Writers on Writing|Tags: lesbian, Queer Girls, Representation, Speculative, tropes|

by Kiersten White Although as the And I Darken trilogy progresses the stakes get higher (that’s a little Vlad the Impaler humor for you), here are two things I can promise you: 1. There will be no vampires. 2. No lesbians will die. Now, maybe that sucks out some of the tension (not literally, because again, no vampires). I don’t care. My lesbians are 100% guaranteed to make it out alive. The dead lesbian trope is one I’m fully committed to avoiding forever. But that’s an obvious(ly terrible) way that LGBTQIA+ characters are constantly done a disservice in [...]

Comments Off

A Particular Invisibility

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:40:37-05:00June 19th, 2016|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, Blogathon 2016, Writers on Writing|Tags: disability, Intersectionality, Representation|

by Kayla Whaley The first essay I ever submitted won an award. A group of writing professors at my university read the piece, described it as written with “delicate emotion,” and handed me a check along with the certificate. I called home as soon as I found out, literally breathless with the news. I told Mom I’d won a writing contest, and before she could even react, rushed to say she couldn’t ever, ever read the essay. A few days later my sister told me to call home. “Mom’s freaking out,” she said. “She doesn’t know why she [...]

Comments Off

Where They Never Bothered to Go: Hiding Queer YA from the Mainstream

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:40:38-05:00June 16th, 2016|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, Blogathon 2016, Writers on Writing|

by Shaun David Hutchinson To say I've been overwhelmed by the response to my latest book, We Are the Ants, is a bit of an understatement. I didn't start out writing books with queer narrators. It wasn't until my third book that I worked up the nerve to do so (and that courage came in part from splitting with my first agent and feeling like my writing career was all but dead, and therefore I had nothing left to lose). My first two books had queer characters in them—a gay best friend that comes out in Deathday, and [...]

Comments Off

At the Crossroads of Identity: Intersectionality in Queer YA

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:40:38-05:00June 13th, 2016|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, Blogathon 2016|Tags: disability, Intersectionality, Race, Representation, YA Community|

by Tristina Wright The other day a friend sent me the link to a book review. It was short—maybe a few sentences—but one phrase in particular stood out to me: “…too diverse for me.” The phrase was in reference to the main character’s gender identity, skin color, and sexual orientation. Merely three points of identity. Count them on one hand. Three really isn’t much when you think about it. Three pieces of candy. Three slices of pizza. Three books to read. However, they were three-too-many different from the socially-constructed baseline of white, cisgender, heterosexual, abled, Christian (or similar [...]

Comments Off

I Volunteer As Tribute: Writing the Book I Wish I’d Had As A Teen

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:40:50-05:00June 4th, 2016|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, Blogathon 2016, New Releases, Writers on Writing|Tags: lesbian, Queer Girls|

by Chelsea M. Cameron “So, are you just going to write books about lesbians now?” This was usually the third or fourth question I got from people when I came out. After “how did you know?” and “what did your mom say?” “Um, no?” was usually my response. I’ve been publishing books (first independently, then also traditionally, aka, being a hybrid author) since February of 2012. Every single one of them was about a heterosexual couple. Because I was heterosexual. Until, in October of 2015, I realized I wasn’t. Twenty-nine years of denial, down the drain. It was intense, it was terrifying, but it was [...]

Comments Off

The Love That Lives Here: On Queer Girls, Transboys, and Sex on the Page

By admin|2020-03-28T13:40:50-05:00June 1st, 2016|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, Blogathon 2016, Writers on Writing|Tags: Latinx, PoC, Trans|

by Anna-Marie McLemore Sex-on-the-page. Doesn’t that sound like some kind of drink book lovers should come up with? Like sex-on-the-beach, but more bookish. (Paging Dahlia Adler, because I think she would have some ideas about what should go in this.) The fact that I'm talking about drink recipes probably gives away the fact that I'm a little uncomfortable with what I'm gonna talk about right now. But I'm gonna do it anyway. For anyone who doesn’t know, I’m a queer girl of color, and I'm married to a transgender guy I met as a teen, and who I [...]

Comments Off

Why We Need Editors (AKA Writing While Demi-Sexual)

By Vee|2020-03-28T13:40:55-05:00April 12th, 2016|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog, Writers on Writing|Tags: asexual, Demisexual|

by Janine A. Southard My editor gently reminded me that not all my teen characters can be ace. And she's right. As someone on the asexual spectrum, it doesn't occur to me to put sexual tension (or interest) between strangers into my books during the drafting phase. That's the drafting phase, though. In editing, I can't assume all the characters will be just like me. Sure, some characters may never have romance plot lines, but many will have sexual thoughts. For instance, I once wrote a novel where my teenage protagonists find themselves in a brothel. (Hive & [...]

Comments Off

Truth in Fantasy and LGBT Heroes

By Marilla|2020-03-28T13:41:15-05:00October 12th, 2015|Categories: Archive, Author Guest Blog|Tags: LGBTQIA|

by Andrew J. Peters I don’t know how I got into writing fantasy exactly. I certainly didn’t follow the popular advice: write what you know. My books tend to involve ancient world settings and characters from myth. Not much from my everyday experience to draw on there. I guess it’s been a matter of what feeds my creative soul. I like earthy mysticism and imagining what it would have been like to live in an ancient time. My writing takes me through a lot of research, and when I read books about ancient history and myth, sparks ignite [...]

Comments Off