So I’m writing my first sex scene. This is me we’re talking about, so it’s definitely a necessary, character-driven sex scene–my people are acting according to their natures and this is what must happen. I didn’t intend to set it up this way, but it’s what they would do, so it will be done. And… this is me we’re talking about, so it’s between my two gay magicians. And one of them is a person in a wheelchair. I’ll say this: the research is interesting. […]
In which we receive zombies
Dozens of them, in fact. Hundreds. More zombies than I can easily describe. Why? Because I asked my brain to supply the solution to a writing problem. I asked it to give me the solution in the form of a dream. This strategy has actually worked, in the past, now and then. This time? Well, I am not writing a book about zombies, so this answer was not exactly what I was looking for. They did, however, explode quite satisfyingly when I shot them with my crossbow. […]
In which I have elderflower nectar
As of an hour ago, I have five stories out on submission. This is a new high water mark for me. (Two of them are reprint submissions, but still.) I also had the jawdropping realization this week that I have a personal theme. All of my novels, and many of my short stories, are about pairs of magicians, one mentoring the other. In trying to trace back the origins of this very persistent meme in my own life, I came back to the Vasilissa story. This story has been interpreted by Clarissa Pinkola Estes as a story about women’s intuition, as Wikipedia reminds me; I remember reading Estes at the direction of my therapist, when I was in university, and thinking that she basically took a whole pile of interesting old stories about women and said that they were about intuition, which galled me a bit, since I don’t possess much of that thing. To me, this story feels like it’s about power. Not necessarily feminine power, either, not in some essentialist way: we’re talking about flaming-eyed skulls, people. Clear, burning sight. Baba Yaga, the elderly witch who lives in the forest, teaches Vasilissa, the young seeker, how to wield […]