Today is my final day as National President of Sisters in Crime. Don’t worry—this post isn’t going to be just a list of what I achieved. All the juiciest tidbits are behind-the-scenes stories which I can’t share anyway. *evil-girl-smirk.GIF* What I will say is the national board accomplished A LOT while I was president. We all had our unique circumstances …
A Funny Thing Happened on My Way to a Writing Career
The year I started querying agents with my first novel, I also started a volunteer “career” as a board member: president of the board for the neighbourhood preschool where my youngest was starting. So, really, it had absolutely nothing to do with a career as an author. Except that having my child in preschool gave me a small number of …
Convention(al) Wisdom?
I’ve written a few convention recaps in the past and, let’s be honest, they’ve never been very interesting for anyone who hadn’t also attended said convention/festival/conference, etc. I mean, I’d be happy to link to an old one in order to prove my (sad) point, but they all disappeared in the great website re-design of ’18… So instead of regaling …
2019: Claiming Space
I’m kicking off 2019 in a new-for-me spirit of claiming my voice and my space in the parts of the ongoing literary conversation which I find of interest. In August 2018, Broken Pencil magazine interviewed me for a cover story article on “The New Noir,” written by Leah Coppella. Very little of my interview ended up in the finished piece published …
Doing the Work: Part 2
Back in October, I did an interview with author Jo-Ann Carson, as part of her Blood, Sweat and Words podcast, which she entitled “Marginalization of Minorities in Genre Fiction.” Listen to the interview, which went live Nov. 20th. Read my thoughts on originally agreeing to be interviewed for this topic here. You know when your mind’s already full of something, you tend …
Doing the Work: Part 1
Why oh why would I agree to do a podcast interview on the “Marginalization of Minorities in Genre Fiction”? After years of avoiding being roped into that conversation—you know, the one you see at “Diversity Panels,” the one attended by many a (/n often cis-het abled) white writer searching for absolution for their culturally appropriative mindset and practices, the one …