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The Blog

  • Shifting the scales on gender bias

    Just now I was working on a minor transition scene: our heroes were sitting in a diner and unwittingly witnessed the villain making a deal. In order to more subtly plant the villain in the diner, I listed off the restaurant’s other patrons: a boy in a college hoodie, a homeless man, the villain’s henchman, Read more

  • What is Demisexuality?

    Let’s start with a vocabulary lesson: A person who is Demisexual typically doesn’t experience sexual attraction to someone unless they have a strong bond with them first. On a similar note, a person who is Demiromantic typically won’t fall in love with a person without that same kind of strong bond. It’s on the same gradient Read more

  • The tricky thing about relationships (and not the ones you’re thinking about)

    I don’t know what your childhood was like, but when I was a kid, the world was divided into very few categories. The people I knew were either friends, family, that amorphous mass that comprises my extended family, and teachers. That was it. Fast forward twenty years. Now I have online friends and local friends, I Read more

  • Getting from a concept to a story

    The amazing thing about being a writer is that you learn to spot the ideas and ‘what if’s that other people would normally pass by. They’re everywhere, and they’re incredible. And they can also be incredibly frustrating. You can get incredibly intricate and detailed ideas in your head, but for the life of you, you Read more

  • The problem with Lawful Good

    ((image via Know Your Meme)) If you’re a nerd, you know a nerd, or you’ve spent any amount of time on the internet, you’ve probably seen some variation of the above image. It’s a chart of the standard Dungeons & Dragons character alignments, which goes by the theory that any given character can be charted a Read more

  • The case of the mistaken love interest

    It’s our protagonist’s first day at a new school. She’s frazzled and distracted, her mind heavy with plot-relevant drama– and BAM! runs headfirst into someone, sending her books flying. She and this stranger look into each other’s eyes, and the readers are given a lavish description of how good-looking he is. Their hands brush as Read more