Happy Dancing

I've Finally Arrived as a Short Story Writer!

November 9, 2021

One of my long-time dreams is about to come true next week. I'm about to have a real, proper collection of my best short stories, out from a major publisher....

Three Factors That Make a Community Fall Apart in the Face of Disaster

November 1, 2021

Thank you for checking out my newsletter! You can read the archives and subscribe. I have three brand new books: my young adult space fantasy Victories...

Pop Culture Lied To Us: Shared Dangers Don't Always Bring Us Together

October 27, 2021

Thank you for checking out my newsletter! You can read the archives and subscribe. I have three brand new books: my young adult space fantasy Victories...

Why Is It So Hard To Imagine The United States Staying United?

October 5, 2021

Thank you for checking out my newsletter! You can read the archives and subscribe. I have three brand new books: my young adult space fantasy Victories...

Animal-Based Superheroes, Ranked

September 27, 2021

Thank you for checking out my newsletter! You can read the archives and subscribe. I have two brand new books: Never Say You Can’t Survive: How to Get...

I'm Proud To Be a Bad Trans Person

September 8, 2021

Thank you for checking out my newsletter! You can read the archives and subscribe. I have two brand new books: Never Say You Can’t Survive: How to Get...

I've Been Trying to Imagine a Fascist United States for Nearly Twenty Years

September 5, 2021

Thank you for checking out my newsletter! You can read the archives and subscribe. I have two brand new books: Never Say You Can’t Survive: How to Get...

Everything I Learned From Working on Season One of Y: The Last Man

September 1, 2021

Thank you for checking out my newsletter! You can read the archives and subscribe. I have two brand new books: Never Say You Can’t Survive: How to Get...

How "Bending the Landscape" Helped to Queer Speculative Fiction Forever

August 15, 2021

Thank you for checking out my newsletter! You can read the archives and subscribe. I have two books coming out soon: on August 17, I’m publishing Never Say...

Prepare to Fall Outrageously in Love with Blake's 7

August 13, 2021

Thank you for checking out my newsletter! You can read the archives and subscribe. I have two books coming out soon: on August 17, I'm publishing Never Say...

4 Good Pieces of Writing Advice (That Are Often Misinterpreted)

August 10, 2021

Thank you for checking out my newsletter! You can read the archives and subscribe. I have two books coming out soon: on August 17, I’m publishing Never Say...

Here's a Deleted Scene From Victories Greater Than Death!

August 6, 2021

Hey everybody! My young adult space fantasy novel Victories Greater Than Death is just $2.99 in all of the ebook formats right now, which means it's a great...

You Don't Always Slay Or Flee Your Demons — Often, They Just Shrink Down

August 1, 2021

Thank you for checking out my newsletter! You can read the archives and subscribe. I have two books coming out soon: on August 17, I'm publishing Never Say...

If You Like The Suicide Squad, You Ought To Love John Ostrander

July 16, 2021

There are a bunch of reasons I’m over-the-moon excited about The Suicide Squad, including the stacked cast and the hilarious trailers. And I’m always here...

The Hottest Trend in Entertainment Right Now Is Meeting Yourself

July 15, 2021

Marvel finally gave the trickster god Loki his own TV show, but with a major twist: there's more than one Loki. In addition to Tom Hiddleston's charmingly...

Useful Writing Advice Is a Little Like Therapy

July 2, 2021

The other day, I was tweeting about my upcoming book of writing advice, Never Say You Can't Survive: How to Get Through Hard Times by Making Up Stories. And...

Some Vital Formative Experiences All Cis Women Share (Which Trans Women Don't)

June 26, 2021

We are once again debating whether trans women are really women, becuase it's a day ending in shrieks and blood-spattered mirrors and cries of damnation....

Superhero TV Shows Are Way Better (And More Varied) Than People Give Them Credit

June 24, 2021

Last week, everybody on the internet was freaking out about this Variety article on superhero TV shows — purely because Harley Quinn producer Justin Halpern...

Here are the Things That I Love Right Now

June 22, 2021

So sorry I've been so slow about posting newsletters lately — I'm hoping to put out a bunch in the next week or so, and then keep cranking 'em out regularly....

How to Write a Space Opera That's Not Quite So Messed Up

June 7, 2021

Below is a somewhat revised version of a Twitter thread I posted a couple months ago. I was on a panel the other day and was citing some of the points I made...

Don't Let Genre Tropes Boss You Around

May 30, 2021

Ever had a story that you were dying to write, for years and years? And then you finally had an opportunity to write it, and... you couldn't make it work at...

We NEED a Squirrel Girl TV Show Immediately If Not Sooner!

May 27, 2021

Marvel has announced approximately five billion TV shows, including long-awaited live-action incarnations of Ms. Marvel and She-Hulk. But there's still one...

The Truth About Literary Fiction

May 16, 2021

The other day I tweeted something about literary fiction that caused some, er, spirited discussion. People started asking me to define "literary fiction,"...

What Samuel Johnson Can Teach Us About Separating Art from the Artist

May 11, 2021

In the fifth episode of the wonderful sitcom Rutherford Falls, Nathan and Regan help to judge people's projects in their local History Fair, and end up...

10 Hot Takes About Star Wars

May 4, 2021

It's Star Wars Day for another few hours! I know, I'm super late, and everybody else already shot a womp rat, or whatever you do to celebrate this holiday,...

Yes, You Are Trans Enough. Yes, Your Identity is Valid. No, You Shouldn't Police Other Trans People's Identities.

May 3, 2021

Lately I've been having, or witnessing, the same conversations again and again with fellow trans folk: people confess that they feel like imposters, or like...

To Survive a Year of Covid, Indie Booksellers Had To Reimagine What It Means To Be a Bookstore

April 19, 2021

Like many other booksellers, Margaret (not her real name) was forced to shut down her store a year ago. When she reopened, she mostly sold books online,...

The Horrible Endgame of the Legislative Attack on Trans Kids

April 15, 2021

Image: Ted Eytan/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0 I was privileged to be able to write about the horrendous new wave of legislation that aims to punish trans kids in...

Not Having An Answer Is An Answer

March 15, 2021

Back in 2019, in the before times, I was lucky enough to be guest of honor at Wiscon, the world’s first feminist science fiction convention, alongside the...

The Paradox of Breathing While Trans

March 8, 2021

Detail of the cover of Pinned Down by Pronouns, ed. T. Amato and M. Davies I didn’t transition gracefully — executing all the steps from boy-life to girl-...

"Literature's Most Famous Transsexual" Is a Rapist

March 1, 2021

Raquel Welch as Myra Breckinridge There aren’t any words for how much I loathe Myra Breckinridge. I first read Gore Vidal’s novel probably 15 years ago, and...

The Alt Ending of All the Birds in the Sky (Part 1)

February 22, 2021

Japanese cover art to All the Birds in the Sky, by artist Akane Malbeni. For years, I’ve been promising to reveal ALL about the alternate ending that I...

7 Wrong Lessons That Creators Learned from Game of Thrones

February 15, 2021

This is a picture of Game of Thrones, which belongs to HBO and stuff. Hard to believe we’re coming up on the tenth anniversary of Game of Thrones’ premiere...

I Used To Stand On a Stage and Tell Lies About Famous Authors

February 8, 2021

image: Litseen Today is the one-year anniversary of the last Writers With Drinks, which happened on Feb. 8, 2020. (Writers With Drinks is a live spoken word...

The Hottest New Trend in Brazilian Speculative Fiction

February 1, 2021

Sertãopunk book cover art by Jorge Ribas One thing I love about science fiction and fantasy is that we’re always adding new subgenres to the mix, as writers...

I wrote a book that I hope nobody reads

January 25, 2021

Lately, I keep having the same conversation with other trans artists and activists who were around in the early 2000s. I always tell them that their work...

Lupin Has One Huge Advantage Over Superman

January 18, 2021

Netflix’s Lupin Arsène Lupin, the famous French gentleman burglar, is having a moment right now. There’s a hit Netflix series, featuring a dazzling...

Discovery Has Become the Queer Star Trek I Always Wanted

January 11, 2021

Sometimes I wonder about the alternate reality where Star Trek introduced its first openly LGBTQ+ characters in 1987. This definitely could have happened....

No Movie or TV Show Ever Portrays the 1980s I Remember

January 4, 2021

The eighties! They sure were great, weren’t they? We had classic video games, everything was neon including the clothing, kids rode bicycles, blockbuster...

The Story I Like To Tell About My Father

December 29, 2020

My father died last spring. We think he had covid, but we'll never know for sure. I didn't talk about it much at the time, because I didn't feel up to having...

Some Good Things That Happened In 2020

December 21, 2020

Remember that movie My Favorite Year? I saw it as a kid and all I remember is Peter O’Toole being super-drunk in like twenty directions. Well, needless to...

Most Television From Before 2000 Is Trapped in the Uncanny Valley

December 14, 2020

I recently broke down and bought a bunch of classic Doctor Who stories on Blu-ray, and then figured out how to watch Blu-rays on my computer monitor. I had...

In Praise of Burnout

December 7, 2020

I used to think burnout was this mythic thing that happened to some unlucky people somewhere else. But over the course of my life, I’ve gotten pretty...

I Can't Get Over How Gorgeous This Character Art Is

November 30, 2020

I’m so jazzed for you to meet Tina! She’s been living in my head for nearly five years, and she’s only gotten bigger and more fascinating. Tina Mains is the...

LGBTQ+ Civil Rights Laws Won't Protect Us From Hyper-Capitalism

November 23, 2020

I’ve been using fiction to deal with my political anxieties for a long time. After George W. Bush was re-elected in 2004, I decided the only way to deal with...

I'm So Freaking Grateful For My Trans Communities

November 16, 2020

Trans March San Francisco. Photo by Marlo Gayle. It’s Transgender Awareness Week, and I wanted to take this opportunity to say: trans people are beautiful...

The Year of the Woman... and What Happened Next

November 9, 2020

I was in Washington DC the night Bill Clinton won the presidency. I had just voted for president for the first time ever, plus I had also volunteered for his...

Save your local bookstore. It's more important than you know.

November 2, 2020

Today's newsletter was almost a political screed, because politics are on my mind, for reasons. But instead, I decided to offer a bit of a distraction, and...

Why Secret Identities Are Still Super Important

October 26, 2020

Why do so many superheroes have secret identities? It’s a huge part of the genre—but at times a superhero’s alter ego seems to be nothing but a throwback to...

The Teacher Who Saved My Life (and Made Me a Writer)

October 19, 2020

Over at Tor.com, I’ve been writing essays about how to use creative writing to get through tough times, and I’ve included some stuff about my writing career....