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The Joy of Pride
I’m an introvert and suffer from social anxiety. I don’t generally go out of my way to attend events where there are lots of people, especially when I don’t know them. But one of the things I will always do when I can is attending Pride. This year was my second at Sunshine Coast Pride Festival’s Fair Day as an author, and although it was exhausting, it was also inspiring, humbling and amazing in equal measure. Now that I’ve recovered from the inevitable introvert hangover that follows from attending an event like this, I wanted to share some thoughts on why Pride events are still important, even though we’re evolving…
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Brisbane Pride 2018 is almost here!
Brisbane Pride is one of my favourite times of the year. It’s loud, it’s proud and it’s wonderfully colourful. Usually, my wife and I travel down for the weekend, walk in the march to Newfarm Park and then spend the day wandering around eating, checking out stalls, catching up with our city friends, eating, listening to music and watching the drag queens, eating … you get the picture. At last year’s Fair Day, I met a wonderful author, Lesley Dimmock, who had a stall at Fair Day selling her books. Since then, we’ve become firm friends and had a stall together at the Sunshine Coast Pride Fair where we…
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The Invisibility Cloak of an LGBTIQ YA Author
I’m preparing to give my very first author reading in a few weeks, which means I’ve been spitballing ideas on what to talk about that won’t bore the pants off people and maybe, hopefully, even convince them to buy a book or two. After asking for advice from friends, thinking about the books I write, and reading a good friends brand new blog, I settled on my theme for my pre-reading talk. Invisibility. Invisibility is a superpower for those of us who are introverts. It comes in particularly handy for those of us who write in tiny niches, which LGBTIQ YA stories certainly are. On the one hand, we wish…
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Queer fairytales to celebrate a fairytale wedding
In case you’ve been living under a rock, Hollywood royalty married into British royalty over the weekend, and yes, although I am in favour of Australia becoming a republic, I stayed up to watch it. I do love a good wedding, to be totally honest, and who hasn’t ever dreamed of being swept off their feet by royalty? If that’s totally your bag, then I’ve got some books that might see you through to the next royal wedding, whenever that may be (and who knows, maybe we just may see one of the future royals making a huge break with tradition and marry someone of the same gender). Fairytales aren’t my…
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Here’s how you can help people find queer fiction
I was procrastinating catching up on twitter news when I saw this tweet by Malinda Lo: It’s becoming ever more clear to me that many books with queer female characters are published with little to no marketing around queerness, especially when those books are genre fiction that don’t revolve around coming out. I want this to change. — Malinda Lo (@malindalo) May 4, 2018 There’s a whole thread and conversation going on over on twitter so if you’re so inclined, head over and check it out. It got me thinking, though, about how hard it still is to find teen fiction with queer main characters. It certainly doesn’t help when authors…
