What the Universal Translator Tells Us About Exploring Other Cultures
Science fiction is full of miraculous technology. You've got instantaneous teleportation across great distances, time travel, faster-than-light starships,...
Here's What I'll Do If You Buy My New Book!
Hello everyone! My novel Promises Stronger Than Darkness comes out tomorrow. It's the last, and I think the most fun, volume in my young adult trilogy that...
EVERYTHING You Need to Know Before Promises Stronger Than Darkness!
There's just one week left before the release of Promises Stronger Than Darkness, the final book in my young adult trilogy, which I've been calling...
Don't Say Characters Lack "Agency." Here's Something Talk About Instead.
There's one common term that I was pretty careful not to use in my writing advice book, Never Say You Can't Survive: "agency." As in, "characters in a story...
Here are Some of My Favorite Trans/Non-Binary Books!
Some amazing folks, led by author Sim Kern, are launching a Trans Rights Readathon starting today, to raise money for trans organizations. I meant to tweet...
The First Article I Ever Wrote About Trans Issues
I've written countless articles and essays about trans people over the past twenty or so years, including some recent ones in Teen Vogue, the San Francisco...
Writing Comic Books is HARD. Here's Why
I've heard prose authors say stuff like, "I wish I could just write comics. You just have to write some dialogue and sketch out some action, and the artist...
7 Hot Takes About Star Trek
1. The Federation is most interesting when it has an ideological foil. The original Star Trek pitted Captain Kirk against fake gods, rogue Starfleet...
J.K. Rowling and "Separating the Art from the Artist"
In case you've been living under some kind of magical rock, there's a new Harry Potter tie-in video game out now, called Hogwarts Legacy. I honestly wasn't...
I Still Loathe The Concept of "Careers"
So I used to have a rant that I spouted off sometimes, about how much I hate the idea of having a "career." Back in the day, I was lucky enough to have a day...
Everything you need to know about New Mutants: Lethal Legion!
I've always dreamed of writing superhero comics. I love how colorful and earnestly weird they are, and how well they lend themselves to a mixture action and...
Interview: Assigned Media's Evan Urquhart Explains Why We Need Trans Journalists
Lately I've been so grateful for Assigned Media (assignedmedia.org), a new outlet where journalist Evan Urquhart keeps track of transgender news, and...
Some Ideas for How to Save Short Fiction!
Hey, thanks for reading my newsletter! I don't charge any money to read Happy Dancing, but if you would like to support me, I would be super grateful if you...
I Was a Religious Icon for a Dozen Years (Part 2)
Note: You're reading the second half of this essay about singing in church choirs as an atheist... the first half came out last week, and you can scroll down...
I Was a Religious Icon (Part 1)
I was ten or eleven years old the first time I wore a frock in public. My parents had pushed me to join the choir at an Episcopalian cathedral in Hartford,...
What the Original Star Wars Teaches Us About Storytelling
I think one decent litmus test for any story is: is it about what it's about? This may sound kind of silly --- how can a story not be about what it's about?...
In Praise of Naive Tricksters
Issue #32 of New Mutants comes out on Wednesday, and I'm super proud of this one. (Above is a sneak peek from the four preview pages Marvel just released,...
Don't Just Create One Big Story, Build a Mosaic of Tiny Stories!
Lately I keep thinking about an odd metric for thinking about prose fiction: the amount of stories per story. I really like stories that have a lot of other,...
Not Another Think Piece About Twitter, I Promise!
Okay, I lied. Sort of. This isn't going to be a think piece about the slow decomposition of the birb app, days after everyone else has already written...
What is the Marvel Cinematic Universe?
Two things happened around the same time recently. Marvel displayed a greater willingness to make fun of itself than ever before, with the robot K.E.V.I.N.,...
