Creating this five-minute video somehow took all freaking morning (and beyond), but I’m fairly satisfied with the result, so I suppose all is well. :P In any case! A look at my ongoing LGBTQ+ fantasy series, Chosen, and the general state of queer and powerful ladies in media, accompanied by a great many gifs because a video of just my voice + a black screen would probably be less than scintillating.
I’ve recently had a few short fiction pieces accepted by literary publications, and the first one is live, live, LIVE!
You can now find “Jump,” a short action piece, on Flash Fiction Magazine‘s website, direct link here:
“Jump,” T.J. Baer.If you read it and find yourself overflowing with love and admiration, feel free to leave a comment. :P
Greetings, friends. Today I found myself faced with a truly monumental decision: Should I watch The Jeffersons marathon or the Supermarket Sweep marathon?
Sometimes life is hard.
In other news, I’ve been doing some work on Chosen (also knows as the LGBTQ fantasy epic I’ve been chipping away at since approximately the age of the dinosaurs), attempting to inject some more action and awesomeness into the book. It’s going pretty well so far, and I’ve also done another experimental gender-switch and transformed the main love interest, Nicholas, into a female character who is primarily attracted to women. This wasn’t something I planned, but it makes her romance with Kaine (biologically female but male by every other definition) all the more interesting and complex, and also ups the number of main female characters.
IT’S BACK.
…on a Saturday, because no calendar tells me what to do, yo.
For the uninitiated, Fighting For the Galaxy is the epic science fiction masterpiece* (*citation needed) composed by my Star Wars-obsessed thirteen-year-old self. It features Commander T.J. Baer and her struggles to defeat evil aliens, save the planet Earth (and the galaxy, one would assume), and have happy kissy times with a violet-eyed boy named Rendar she apparently has heterosexual-type love feelings for. (13-year-old me was still somewhat in denial on that front, alas.)
To read Fighting For the Galaxy from its glorious beginning, you can check out the FFtG main page here: Fighting For the Galaxy: Main Page
In our last installment, T.J., Jess, and Captain Abrigio were forced into the scantily-clad service industry in a fine home on planet Sffonia; Rendar, Mark, and Jen busted out of jail with an exceptional degree of violence and snappy comebacks; and Rendar said, “Damn, damn, DAMN!” because 13-year-old me thought “damn” was the height of swearing, and damn x 3 was bound to be 3x as cool.
Today, we once again visit the alien planet of Sffonia, where T.J. leads a daring escape, Jess makes yet another unfortunate decision that leads to gunfire and general mayhem, and Rendar, Jen, and Mark wander around the city arguing and wasting time. ONWARD TO EPIC SCI-FI!
Kaine’s kickass mother Hema, pictured here instead of Kaine because she’s far easier to draw in doodle form. :P
Long-time visitors will recall that I’ve been working on an LGBTQ+ fantasy novel called Chosen for approximately the last 17,000 years. Its main character, Kaine Ikarra, is a fifteen-year-old transgender boy who is struggling with magic, identity, and the fact that most of the people around town want very much to kill him. It’s tough being fifteen, man.
As I’ve mentioned before, this story started out during my teen years as a cookie-cutter White Dudes Doing Cool Stuff In A Fantasy Setting book, but it’s since evolved into a series that features mostly LGBT people of color doing even cooler stuff in a fantasy setting. Since this is a fantasy world entirely of my imagining, I can do what I want with it, such as making the dominant religion a pantheon of gods and goddesses, many of whom are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, etc., and this thus makes LGBT folks entirely normal and unstigmatized in this world. Likewise, the inclusion of a female chief goddess (and various other awesome females in the pantheon) encourages more gender equality, which means that gender roles in this society are far more equal, and that gives me the opportunity to have kickass ladies all over the place and not have that be at all weird.
The latest I Can Do What I Want aspect of the story has involved my going through the book and subtly altering what everyone is eating so they subscribe to a more plant-based diet. It’s not something you see often in fantasy books, I’m willing to bet, but given my own commitment to avoiding meat and animal products, I figured…why not? WHY NOT HAVE THEM ALL BE VEGAN. MUWAHAHAHAHA I’m drunk with godly writing power.
So. Chosen now features a transgender, pansexual, vegan person-of-color as its main character, and I am quite pleased about that. :D
In which I cook stuff, Darla tries to burn down the house, and I get a new cookbook (and a shiny new proof copy of Talking About Fungus). Such good! Many excitement!1!
