In the first short story set in the Crossroads universe, meet best friends Dan and Kostyantyn. They share a love of music, though Dan wishes they could share even more. When new fiddler Johnny Reed comes to town, Tyn’s territorial streak turns friendly competition into something more sinister, and Dan must figure out who Johnny really is–before it’s too late.

To celebrate the arrival of summer, The Fiddler’s Fall will be released in multiple ebook formats this Friday, May 24th!

Like in Sarah’s first novel, The Dark Wife, the core of Twixt is redemption, the idea that any of us, no matter our pasts or what others believe us to be, can be redeemed. And that love can bring out the best in us. But Twixt is a much different story than The Dark Wife.

In Twixt, we begin with a mystery. Who is the girl who appeared in the ice and snow, covered in blood? She doesn’t remember. A girl named Charlie finds her, explains about the world of Twixt, about Abeo City. Nobody in Twixt remembers who they are… unless they take Nox, an addictive drug that slowly destroys them. They purchase Nox with clumps of their own hair, though nobody really knows why.

Just when I thought I had the mystery figured out, the story’s twist took me by surprise. When it was finally revealed what was going on, I let out a sudden ‘Oh, wow!’ as I read. Few books have done that for me. The action scenes are suspenseful and masterfully written, and the characters are all so distinct and real. Diemer has only gotten better since The Dark Wife, as you will see when you read Twixt. I love both books, I recommend reading them both if you haven’t, but she definitely kicked it up a notch with Twixt.



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Hardware stores have always been this sort of temple to masculinity. My grandfather would always make such errands, and my grandmother would never even think of setting foot inside one. As a kid I would sometimes find myself tagging along with my grandfather, but it’s not as if I learned anything from these excursions. I followed him, my mind as always up in the clouds, in another world entirely (some things never change). Some of the items on the shelves seemed curious, even mysterious, but somehow irrelevant to my interests.

It was always grandpa’s domain to go and buy things, then fix things around the house. He would recruit me to help if he felt like it.

Which is probably part of the reason why I feel like a Ferengi woman at JC Penney every time I go into The Home Depot. “What is all this and what am I supposed to do with it?”

My goal is simple: I need to paint the walls in my living room so I can leave this apartment more or less the way I found it when I moved in. For this, I require paint. I should be able to go into the store and pick up a can of white paint and be on my merry way, right?

Wrong.

I encountered such things as ‘base’ and ‘satin’ and ‘primer’, words I have heard but am not a master of. Rows of cans stacked messily about, logos in different colours and shades and it was so much it all became a blur. Side to side with little jars of glitter in the Martha Stewart section. Somehow the familiar craftiness of it all brought me no comfort.

Ask for help, said the sane part of my brain.

“And then what?” I asked it. Because immediately I knew how that conversation would go.

“I need paint.”

“What sort of paint?”

“Uh… for the wall.”

“Well, are you looking for base, satin, primer, gloss, semigloss, demigod, lippy tappy too tah?”

“What?”

“How big a room are you painting?”

“Uh… this big.” *spreads arms out as far as they go*

I didn’t ask for help. I grabbed something that said it was self-priming while also being base, and it claims to be ‘eggshell enamel’ so hopefully I didn’t steer too far from my target. Tomorrow I must somehow procure the implements necessary for the task, and then carry it out without creating an even bigger mess.

Suddenly I don’t feel so good.

In 2008 I discovered the band Scythian, four blokes with amazing talent, two of which played the violin. Two fiddles in one band? Amazing! The band was always friendly and courteous to their fans, and they always remembered the last time they saw you even if months had passed. I was impressed, and in love with their music.

I went to shows in PA, Maryland, and even DC and NYC. I made friends I would not have met otherwise. Their music inspired one of my works in progress. I bought all their albums and half a dozen t-shirts.

Then they took a year-long break and my attention turned to other things. But I remained a fan, willing to see where else they took their music.

Then the worst happened. Good As You broke the story that three of the members, Alexander Fedoryka, Danylo Fedoryka, and Ben-David Warner, were performing at a rally by known hate group National Organisation for Marriage. Which really does nothing for marriage, and all it can to keep same sex couples from marrying.

Two members, Josef Crosby and Andrew Toy, were not involved, so the rest adopted a different name, Ultramontane. If you search for it, you will find very little about this ‘band’ and a lot about Catholicism, as the term means total obedience to the Pope or some shit. So not only are they homophobes, they’re papists.

I knew they were Catholic. I was never completely oblivious. But I know plenty of sane Catholics. I know plenty of nutty Christians who are not hateful. The guys were always nice to everyone, I thought, so they must be okay.

When they had to address the issue on Facebook, all hell broke loose. Comments on both sides of the issue argued mainly about respecting differing opinions.

Let’s get this straight. This is not about differences of opinion. This is about hate speech. Homosexuality doesn’t drive kids to suicide, homophobia does. As an individual, you are entitled to being an asshole. But when you make your asshole visible in public, the rest of us have the same right to point it out.

And we have the right to tell you that your services are no longer required. The money we give entertainers is 100% voluntary. We can, and many of us will,  choose to patronize other bands. This doesn’t make us hypocrites, as some on the right have claimed. We would be hypocrites if we claimed to be on the right side of history and allowed homophobia to prevail unchecked.

But the decision was not so easy. I am still struggling with the feelings that have come from this. As I read more angry comments on both sides, I was exposed to a side of the Fedoryka brothers I had not wanted to see. I was presented with a link to some sort of anti-choice thing they are also a part of, and from reading the words from the men themselves, they do sound like religious nutjobs.

I don’t expect either of them to listen to reason, and my stance on abortion has been and will remain this: IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A UTERUS, YOU DO NOT GET TO LEGISLATE ANYTHING HAVING TO DO WITH UTERI.

Perhaps if I had known these things from the beginning, I would not have become a fan.

That is a thought I am ambivalent about. Would I trade all the experiences, the fun times, the festivals, the new friends? Would I go back in time and give it all up before I got the chance to enjoy it? I know what I would’ve done at the time if I’d done a simple Google search. I would’ve avoided the whole thing and I wouldn’t be sad about it now.

So perhaps it is a good thing that I am not a teenager, that I didn’t go looking for all their little details, that I simply let myself enjoy the music and the shows. But it’s broken now. What is known can’t be unknown, what is seen can’t be unseen. Nothing really has changed. These guys are not my friends, so I don’t have to deal with them at all. Josef Crosby and Andrew Toy don’t have that luxury. Both the fiddler and drummer have come out in favour of marriage equality, for which I thank them from the bottom of my queer little heart. And I am aware of the fact that they can’t simply ignore this. This is their livelihood on the line, and they are friends with the other three, so they have to deal with it, and the backlash.

Both of them were kind enough to express their support on Facebook.

Do I hold Alex, Danny, and Ben-David any sort of ill will? Of course not! They are excellent musicians and they have always treated me with respect. Probably because they didn’t really know me, but I can only attest to the facts, not speculation.  Have they at any time given any public indication of holding any ill will towards anyone? Not in my presence, and not that anybody else has indicated to me. So how do I reconcile what I know with what I’ve experienced?

That’s the thing about religion. You can hold beliefs that are completely independent of your reality, or even your actions. By performing at the NOM thing, they may really, honestly, truly think they are doing something in favour of heterosexual marriage, and something that will make their deity happy. It is easy to forget, when you’re making your deity happy, that you may be making humans unhappy in the process. Maybe they don’t know any queer people (though given the size of their family, I do the maths and worry…) so it is easy for them to ignore the impact of their actions.

Perhaps they will never rethink their position. But I feel that I can’t, in good conscience, reinforce their stance by calling myself a fan. I can’t reward that. I can’t ignore it. I wish Joey and Andrew the very best, and for their sake, I hope the band survives. But it’s not without a hint of sadness that I wish it. Because if the band prevails, it will mean they got away with it. It will mean that people in general would rather continue to support a band regardless of what they’ve done to help hold back the progress of all humanity. Or even worse, that they agree. In a way, all people who continue to support Scythian are now suspect. I hate that.

I gave my t-shirts to the dog, tore the posters from my wall (and gave myself a papercut, to add injury to insult), but I have not touched my music collection. I’ve decided to ignore it for now, not to listen to it for a long time. Perhaps in the future I will be able to listen to it without it bringing up all these feelings.

As of this writing, both the Facebook and Twitter profiles for Scythian have disappeared. Nothing else has come from the official source, and I’ve heard of gig cancellations but have nothing concrete on that.

I grew up watching The Next Generation, admiring Captain Picard and everything the Federation stands for. I have to believe that one day humanity will leave greed behind. That we will work not for the acquisition of wealth but for the betterment of society as a whole. So Star Trek is kind of my thing. I find it very difficult to function in society without the hope of a better future, you see.

But it has been a while since I watched all those episodes with my grandpa. I’m a ton of years older, a lot of things have changed. I’m aware of a lot of things that I wasn’t back then. New things mean a lot to me that weren’t even concepts in my mind back then.

I’ve recently started rewatching TNG. At least, I can say it hasn’t been the disappointment a lot of childhood fandoms can be once one grows older. All the values I hold dear are still there: the pursuit of knowledge, letting go of superstition and unfounded prejudice, respecting the differences of others and working together no matter who you are and where you come from. The awareness that greed is not a virtue, that humanity doesn’t need money to drive innovation and progress. And the belief that people are inherently good and are, with few exceptions, driven to evil acts because of their circumstances. That conflicts can be resolved without causing further suffering.

While Star Trek is very good in all those things, it certainly has fallen behind in matters of gender and sexuality. Yes, women can reach any rank in Starfleet. They are treated equally for all intents and purposes.

Or are they?

The patriarchy, as it turns out, is still alive and well.

In the episode ‘Data’s Day’, Data plays ‘father of the bride’ to Keiko Ichikawa, who is getting married to Chief Miles O’Brien. And then, you guessed it, becomes Keiko O’Brien. What in the galaxy is the reason behind this? As a vocal opponent of marriage name changes (I understand some people genuinely want to and that’s not for me to decide, but I reject the assumption that anyone must change their name, and in particular the expectation that it must always be the woman in a heterosexual marriage), I find this assumption troubling. In a universe where equality is a big fucking deal and something Captain Picard has expounded upon on many occasions, this barbaric custom still somehow prevails. What’s stopping Chief O’Brien from becoming Chief Ichikawa if things are so fucking equal? It makes no sense to me.

It made me repeat my mantra: “it was made in the 80’s… it was made in the 80’s.”

In ‘The Offspring’ (an episode that I do admit still makes me cry), Data creates a child, Lal. At first this android has a somewhat masculine shape but no primary sex characteristics and a non-human face. Data encourages Lal to choose what they will ultimately look like. He puts special emphasis on species and gender. Data should know better. He lives in a galaxy with countless species, some of which don’t even HAVE genders. Still, he insists that Lal must be either male or female.

Troubling.

And again I repeat my mantra.

In ‘The Host’, Beverly is willing to sleep with Riker as Odan’s host, but once Odan, a Trill, becomes a woman, she hits the brakes. Oh, she tried to sugarcoat it, but I couldn’t quite reconcile the future I expect with this version of a future. At least in this aspect. In order to reconcile it I had to step outside the narrative and remind myself that this was the 80’s/early 90’s and they couldn’t really help being beholden to the network censors and having the biases of the time period.

It still felt somewhat uncomfortable.

But, I am happy to report that a few years later, Deep Space Nine made it better when they had an episode in which Jadzia Dax, a Trill, reunited with another joined Trill who was the wife of Dax’s former, male, host. The fact that both characters were now physically female played no part in the narrative and was never once mentioned. At all. There was conflict, but it was entirely framed in a Trill custom that no joined Trill should revisit relationships of past hosts. It was the taboo that the characters were breaking.

Yes, it was a glorious gay metaphor, and I think it was very well done.

So yes, Star Trek has evolved with the times, but I can’t help but think that evolving with the times still makes Star Trek fall behind. The original series had the first interracial kiss on television. This is a franchise that has been and must be at the forefront. Ahead of its time in any way it can be. The fact that it falls behind where sexual and gender minorities are involved makes me feel a tiny bit disappointed.

I am not trying to put the show down. I am simply trying to reconcile my own feelings. I am, and always will be, a Trekkie. In my spare time, I write stories with original characters set in the Star Trek universe. But I would love for a new series, one which follows the timeline post-Voyager, and one which reflects the changing tides.

I want my show to BOLDLY GO, present the future as it SHOULD BE, and fuck the haters and the censors and the ratings. I know that’s unlikely to happen, but I lose nothing by wanting it. I lose nothing by writing my own Star Trek stories (I keep those for myself, but I may share them in the future).

Why do I even care? Because fiction drives reality. Stories shape us, and in turn we shape the future. I want us to write the future we need, a future where reason, not fear, shapes our actions. I think Star Trek can still be relevant, can stay relevant, and can be a guiding force in our culture. I call for the powers that be to consider a new Star Trek tv show. Don’t leave it all up to JJ Abrams. We don’t need a reboot. We need the saga to continue. We need to see the legacy of Captain Picard, Captain Sisko, Captain Janeway… the aftermath of the Dominion war… We’ve had three white captains, one black captain, one female captain. It’s time for a gay captain.

If you don’t make it happen, I’ll just have to become powerful enough to make it myself.

But how to do anything new if one has to limit oneself thus?

I’ve noticed a trend in my stories, particularly the epic multi-part ones, where the characters discover their world rather like an onion. What may seem like straight up fantasy at first may end up being a little more sci-fi than originally thought. Why should I not do this?

Why should worlds not be more than they seem?

You tell me.

Seriously? This is seriously what we’re doing?

Here’s what I see: an attempt at inclusiveness that falls short. We’re still a bunch of letters thrown together. Letters that can be rearranged, discarded, ignored on a whim. Even worse, letters that still force you to choose.

I’ve danced my way through the alphabet, and to be quite honest, the only label I would even come close to using on myself is ‘queer’. Yes, it was an insult once, but before that it just meant ‘strange’. And I see nothing wrong with being ‘strange’. I am part of a minority, and I’m fine with that. Being a minority isn’t a problem. Being an oppressed minority is.

But how can we move past that if we’re still putting each other into smaller and smaller boxes?

I would like to see an alphabet-free world. On the other hand, I see how at this point in time there are times when we need the letters. It will seem like I’m contradicting myself, but bear with me.

When I say I’m queer, what do you think it means? To you it probably means ‘gay guy’, because I’m a guy and I date men. But queer could mean bisexual, it could mean transgender, it could mean gender fluid, it could mean asexual or cross-dresser, or tomboy.  Why wouldn’t I want to use a more specific term? Frankly, because—and this is where it gets queer—I’m not always queer in the same way.

Digest that for a moment. I’ll wait.

I don’t think we should be limited, forced into little shoeboxes like the letters want us to.  We need bisexual people to be visible and proud, we need trans people to be visible and proud, we need asexual people and genderqueer people and all kinds of people to be okay with who they are and not be harassed for it. And we need to acknowledge the fact that people grow and change throughout life, and while I’m not supporting any kind of forced change or conversion, human relationships and identities are so complex that changes can and do happen throughout a person’s lifetime. And that is okay.

The letters are supposed to keep everyone visible, but again I see it fall short. We talk about how the T is often silent and the B is often reviled. And that is a whole other rant. I don’t want to come across as wanting to erase the individual identities, but perhaps a paradigm shift is in order.

Perhaps we should actively strive towards a culture where it truly doesn’t matter where on the spectrum you fall on any given day. Where your identity is about who you are, not about what you are or how or whom you love. We’re not there yet, not by a long shot, but I believe we can get there.

Of course, you are free to identify with whatever words or letters you prefer, and I will respect that. Whatever you call yourself, I will call you, but more than likely I will first call you by your name.

I don’t have the answers. Hopefully by posing questions there can be a dialogue that will include sharper minds than mine. And I think we are heading slowly but surely in the right direction. There are young people out there who are rejecting gender labels altogether. It’s still jarring to most, but they are brave and courageous and standing their ground right in the middle of the binary. We need to respect that courage for what it is, and treat them as they wish to be treated.

In a way, that’s what I would like to see with ‘queer’ at least in regards to myself. If you have to classify me, personally, just put me under ‘queer’ and leave it alone. I don’t want to be shoved into any boxes smaller than that. Not because I want to dismiss specific parts of me, but because I want to include all of me beyond the tiny little labels. Does that make sense?

As part of The Next Big Thing Blog Hop, I was tagged by Ingrid Diaz in her post last week.

The purpose of this hop is to introduce readers to writers and works that might be unfamiliar. This includes new releases or Works in Progress (WIP).  This is week 26 of the hop.

According to the rules of the hop, I will be answering some questions (the same ones for every other blog hopper) about either my newest release or my WIP and then at the bottom of the post I’ve listed authors who will do the same thing in their blogs next Wednesday,  December 26th.

WHAT IS THE WORKING TITLE OF YOUR BOOK?

Terra Paradox. I wanted something vaguely Latin, so I picked Terra, but I felt it needed more. It took me a long time to come up with Paradox. At first I was going with a Latinised version of the word, and that just didn’t work.  ‘Terra’ means Earth, and I felt that was appropriate for a book which spans two distinct worlds.

WHAT GENRE DOES YOUR BOOK FALL UNDER?

YA Urban Fantasy? I don’t know. There’s a lot of mythology and magic, but it’s set in modern worlds. I’m really bad with genre, which I know I need to work on.

WHICH ACTORS WOULD YOU CHOOSE TO PLAY YOUR CHARACTERS IN A MOVIE RENDITION?

Not a Scene from Terra Paradox

Bruce Campbell should play every character, because Bruce Campbell is awesome. No, but seriously, I’d love for somebody like Allison Scagliotti to play Nika, but I don’t really have anybody in mind for the narrator. I spent most of my time looking at the world through her eyes, rather than looking at her.

That said, there are specific mentions about parts of her appearance which are important. She looks different from everyone else in her town, even her parents. Casting would have to take that into account.

WHAT IS THE ONE-SENTENCE SYNOPSIS OF YOUR BOOK?

Led by dreams of past lives, a teenage girl escapes the oppression of the modern Roman Empire and embarks on a quest across realities to save the last of her people.

WHAT IS THE LONGER SYNOPSIS OF YOUR BOOK?

Rae Crescenti has never known life outside the walls of the border city of Sant Victus. The Roman Empire has spread to the New World, destroying native cultures wherever it took hold, suppressing any free thought or individuality. Rae, teased and bullied because of her looks and rebellious attitude, has never fit in.  And then she begins to have strange prophetic dreams which take her on an adventure to hidden desert cities and alternate worlds.

WILL YOUR BOOK BE SELF-PUBLISHED OR REPRESENTED BY AN AGENCY?

Self-publishing this one. The format is a little odd for traditional publishers. It’s only 40k words, but has two similarly-lengthed sequels in the works which will be published at intervals.

HOW LONG DID IT TAKE YOU TO WRITE THE FIRST DRAFT OF YOUR MANUSCRIPT?

I guess it  depends on how you look at it. The inception of this book was a wholly different novel I started writing sometime in the dark ages. Must have been in the mid-90’s when that first tale began to take shape. Rae (known as Rikki back then) was a supporting character in a WIP titled Apollo Rising. She ended up being more popular than the main characters, and I always felt I wanted to do something with her. I took the seed of her story arch from there, and worked it between my mind’s fingers like a lump of clay until it took coherent shape.

Terra Paradox itself, though, took about six months to write, while I was unemployed. That’s probably the only reason it didn’t take longer.

WHO OR WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO WRITE THIS BOOK?

Growing up queer and Catholic is one of the more isolating things I can think of. At times it felt like that was all there was to life, that constant oppression that soaked into your soul and sucked out your sense of self. It felt, to me, a bit like being a Stepford Child. Any deviation from the mold set out for me was a scandal. I know I wasn’t the only one, and I know there are kids out there who feel a lot like I did. I write this for the teen I was, and for them.

I worked for years on the world-building, through other projects that fell by the wayside, many protagonists who didn’t make it past the first few attempts. Through it all, there was Rae, a rough-and-tumble girl who dreamed of a life beyond the walled city she grew up in. She feels like an old friend.

WHAT ELSE ABOUT YOUR BOOK MIGHT PIQUE THE READER’S INTEREST?

There’s a talking wolf-dog! And geeky sci-fi sorcerers! And body switching! And lots of queer kids! And Doctor Who references!

Continuing the Blog Hop next Wednesday, December 26th:

My good tweetie Samantha Boyette, author of Morning Rising and Darkness of Morning!

But it was only because at the time, November 1st coincided with a lapse in my writing. Generally, I write every day of the fucking year, so NaNo means nothing to me. But, to those of you about to write, I salute you.

November for me is all about FaerieCon and three-day weekends and waiting for my birthday and Giftmas. It’s about cursing the fact that I live in a temperate zone and the weather turns cold, while loving the colours of the leaves and the break from the heat of summer.

And this year, like in 2008, it’s an election year.

Four years ago, we were almost done suffering through eight years of G Dubya. We had a choice of John McCain, who was frightening but still not Dubya, and virtually-unknown Barack Obama. At least, I’d never heard of him until the primaries. Not even sure I remember how he won that one. I remember being slightly disappointed it wasn’t Hilary Clinton. Now, after four years, I have complaints about Obama, but I have far more praise for him. Nobody’s perfect, and here’s the thing, you can’t expect the president to fix up all your shit. Yes, there is a lot a president can do, and a lot President Obama has done. But there is a lot more you have to do for y0urself. And a lot more we have to do for each other.

I’m a believer in community. That’s why Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan scare the shit out of me. Their Ayn Rand wanking is everything that’s wrong with this world. Every man for himself gets nobody anywhere. It turns human existence into a meaningless struggle. Either humanity deserves to remain in this universe, or it doesn’t, and Mitt Romney’s version of how humanity should behave is a blight on the solar system.

But this isn’t a political post, at least, that’s not my intention. Election jitters just colour everything right now. I can’t help but have vicious thoughts sometimes, when I just can’t understand why anybody would vote Republican nowadays with how anti-everything they’ve become. I think ‘I hope Mitt Romney wins, brings about all this apocalyptic shit down on us, and then all those idiots who voted for him will be sorry!’

But of course I don’t really want that.

On the other hand, we have become so fucking complacent that I think it will take something hideously bad happening before we wake the fuck up.  But if reactions to Hurricane Sandy are any indication, all hope is lost. No, our relationship with our environment has nothing to do with the crazy weather, it’s THE GAYS!!!!

Anyway, go vote on Tuesday. At this point, I don’t care who you vote for, just fucking vote. And when the zombies come, we’ll sort that shit out.

No matter what happens, next weekend comes FaerieCon! And not a moment too soon. I look forward to that like Christmas. It’s one of the few times when I can stop pretending to be normal and just be my crazy elvish self. Rest assured there will be pictures.

And speaking of elves. I’ve come to the conclusion that Elijah Wood is an elf. Not only are his eyes freakishly blue and freakishly large, he hasn’t aged a bit in forever. He’s 31! Does he look 31? No. I rest my case.