Category: Background Checks

  • Some stings

    Some stings

    Hello friendly people: I have a few upcoming publications. I’ve recently looked at galleys for stories in WE MOSTLY COME OUT AT NIGHT: 15 QUEER TALES OF MONSTERS, ANGELS & OTHER CREATURES (ed. Rob Costello) and Out of Our League: Sixteen Stories of Girls In Sports (ed. Dahlia Adler and Jennifer Iacopelli). My story in…

  • What trans women need is more and better hair

    Hello gorgeous and friendly people. I got new hair yesterday. The people at the Hair Club (formerly for men, but now for all people) glued the hair to my head, so I can sleep in it and wear it all the time. I am very satisfied with the hair for now–although it remains to be…

  • Reading Randomly, Envy, and Paying for PR

    Reading Randomly, Envy, and Paying for PR

    You can’t live in the SF Bay Area for fifteen years without learning to use phrases like “optimizing my workflow.” It’s just something I’ve learned to live with. Anyway I finally figured out how to publish directly from my Obsidian app to my WordPress site, so I don’t need to go through that fiddly copy…

  • Notes on a recent facial feminization surgery

    Notes on a recent facial feminization surgery

    As soon as one stops working, one feels as though one had never worked.— Jules Renard Hello friends. Much of my upper lip and my cheeks are still numb from the surgery, but I’d say that I’ve more or less recovered. This morning was my first stint taking care of our child where I didn’t…

  • Rebranding this blog. Not moving to substack. Still hate transphobes

    Rebranding this blog. Not moving to substack. Still hate transphobes

    I started my personal journal in 2008, when the format was already dying. Now after fifteen years it’s come back again–Twitter is done, newsletters rule the roost. I subscribe to like ten paid newsletters! And I’ve thought, you know, I probably shouldn’t ignore this phenomenon entirely. At the same time, the only reason I am…

  • A short description of how I came to write for Tablet

    A short description of how I came to write for Tablet

    This week, I had two pieces published. One was in Tablet. The first is my review of Matthew Salesses’s Craft In The Real World. I read the book a year ago and was profoundly unimpressed. I simply didn’t believe most of the things the author said about how fiction in other cultures works, and it…

  • Other stuff that happened this year

    Normally at the end of the year I write about what’s happened in my personal life this year. I suppose it’s been a good year. I’ve signed contracts for two books, and I’ve delivered my third YA novel. If we count my cynical guide to publishing, I’ve got six books out or under contract. Transition…

  • Not an awards eligibility post, just some random year-end back-patting

    Hello friends. I don’t do awards eligibility posts anymore, because I’m a literary author now and all our awards are juried awards. No, I’m just kidding–it was because I was terrible at awards log-rolling, and it never went anywhere for me.1 But I did publish a lot of stuff this year! I published, umm, three…

  • My decade in love, friendship, and publishing

    It was in late January of 2010 that I quit drinking, which means that the close of this decade also means I’ve had almost a decade of sobriety. At this point I’ve been sober twice as long as I was drinking! The number of people in my life who knew me when I was drinking…

  • Wrapping up 2017!!!

    Every year, my wrap-up blog posts get shorter, which I suppose is just a part of life. This year is one where I’ve stopped doing many of the little habits and rituals that were once an inextricable part of my life. I don’t track my progress in various spreadsheets with nearly the assiduity I once…