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The THEN and the NOW: The Stars May Rise and Fall turns three

Three years ago, not quite today, I finally published the book of my heart. That both seems like a very long time and a very short one. Three years is definitely enough to make a book “old news”.  And it’s not nearly enough, apparently, to inspire floods of fanworks. (Y’all feel free to get on that, though, if you want.) It’s also enough to upend the entire world. The Stars May Rise and Fall is set mostly between June 2000 and January 2001. Although I was in Japan for that particular New Year’s Eve, I didn’t get seriously into the visual kei scene until I came back as a student in September 2001. But I chose to set my book a year earlier, specifically because I didn’t want it to touch 9/11. Now, even if I had set the book in 2001, I wouldn’t necessarily have needed to mention it. The number of newsworthy events mentioned in the actual book is zero (unless you count, like, Luna Sea breaking up or something?), and while even my not-terribly-worldly characters would’ve gotten news THAT bi
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[SPOILERS] Yes, it’s really an HEA

  To be classified as a romance, a book must end with an HEA (happily ever after) or at least an HFN (happy for now). Simply put, that generally means that the main couple needs to end up together—in a committed relationship, living together, getting engaged or married, expecting a baby… there are different ways to show that they’ve found happiness together, but that “happiness together” thing is key. Now, a lot of romance novels (like a lot of novels, period) also have subplots. Maybe the main character is struggling at work or school or with family issues. Maybe a supporting character is also looking for love. There really aren’t any genre rules that say those subplots all have to end happily… but at the very least you want a romance to end in an overall uplifting place, so even if the characters don’t get what they initially *think* they want, they still tend to end up with a satisfying alternative. But what if a romance includes something that can’t be fixed? (Or at least, that can
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Video game review: Sally Face

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Hey there folks, looks like it’s time for another video game review because... WOW, I really need to shout about this one to the world. Tiny bit of background first: I had actually never heard of Sally Face before, as far as I remember, although I LOVE point-and-click adventures (which this is), and obviously have a very special place in my heart for blue-haired, mask-wearing, disfigured musicians. That’s actually HOW I learned of this game, when my good friend and fellow writer Adam Wing (his books are amazing, please check them out here !) @-ed me in an RT of a gorgeous drawing of a blue-haired guitarist that looked almost, but not quite, like my Rei. (I’m not sure if the artist would be cool with me screenshotting the tweet, so please check it out here .) And it was hashtagged #SallyFace.   So of course I clicked the hashtag, because I had to find out who this character was... and the game he was from sounded EXACTLY LIKE MY THING.   (By the way, if you somehow found this blog beca
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Why I didn’t write the sex scene (spoiler-free)

So. This was sort of   immediately  inspired by a random tweet about how not all M/M is erotica.   But it’s something that I’ve been facing ever since I first started trying to get  The Stars May Rise and Fall  published, and it’s something that authors of queer fiction have been facing for even longer: this weird assumption that just because a book is M/M (or F/F), it must be sexually explicit.   My book is not. That’s not a spoiler, as far as I’m concerned—it’s fade to black, please use that as you wish to help you decide whether you’d like to read it or not. I know that fade to black is a negative for some readers and a positive for others. And that others read all heat levels and don’t really care.   And to honest, the choice to do that—to fade to black, rather than writing the sex scene—was one of the ones I agonized the most over. But in the end, I think it was the best choice for THIS particular book. And here’s why.   So first, the points in FAVOR of writing the sex scene. Poin
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Mobile game review: Night in the Unpleasant House

  Let’s try something a little different today: a game review! Since “ Night in the Unpleasant House ” is interactive fiction, it’s not THAT far off from what I usually write about, but still. First game review! I found this game by googling “iPhone games like Edith Finch,” for what it’s worth, and the two games are not entirely dissimilar. They both take place in weird, creepy houses, both involve Dark Secrets of the Past… but the gameplay in Unpleasant House wasn’t entirely like anything I’ve played before. You play an unnamed, genderless (as far as I can tell) narrator, whose father disappeared ten years ago in the mysterious Mayor’s house. As one of the earliest choices in the game indicates, you’re either there for revenge or answers (maybe both). As you explore the house, you learn more about the mayor snd what happened to your father. Good stuff! This is basically a text adventure, and I’ve played quite a few of those back in the day, but the game here gives you actions within t
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On Mourning Jim Steinman

  As you probably know by now, at least if you follow me on social media, the world lost an amazing songwriter and storyteller on April 19. Jim Steinman was best known for writing all of the music and lyrics for Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell (the best selling album EVER with all music and lyrics written by a single person), as well as hits like “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now.” He also wrote Tanz der Vampire , Bat Out of Hell the Musical , and lyrics for Whistle Down the Wind . He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and won a Grammy and the BMI Song of the Year (you want to Google that speech, by the way). It’s very hard to explain how much more to me he was than that. There are millions of stories out there by people who were blown away the first time they heard Bat Out of Hell . I’m not going to bore you with mine, except to say that it was one of those formative things for me, one of those things that I think we all have that just… make us
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