Real Talk

I Had COVID. It Sucked.

Last month, the doombug finally hit my home. I guess we got careless and, after two years of dodging it, we thought it couldn’t happen to us. After all, we’re both vaxxed, and we’re both in reasonably good health. We were gonna be fine, right?

Wrong. (duh)

It started off as a sore throat. I thought nothing of it. Summer colds, right? (I always get summer colds.) Or maybe it was allergies (I get those, too).

Then, the husband »

Real Talk

It’s Fine To Disengage

Marcus Aurelius once said, You are not compelled to form any opinion about this matter before you, nor to disturb your peace of mind at all. Things in themselves have no power to extort a verdict from you. Wise words, especially in this day and age. Not that the man himself could have ever foreseen the advent of social media some two thousand years later, but the notion that most of us are indeed free from the obligation to »

Author Musings

The One With Too Many Names

I’ve always believed in reinventing yourself.

In my mind, it always starts with a name. In the early days of my Internet presence, I used to style myself The One With Too Many Names. I was a lot more active in fandoms back then, and I whenever I changed forums or fandoms, I’d pick a name, stick with it for a while, then let it go. That slowly crept into real life as well; I’d never been a fan »

Author Musings

On the Cast of Gifted: Nikki and Zack

This post contains spoilers for my book, Gifted.

Everyone I know came up with a book, a series, or a world of their own at some point in their lives. It’s a rite of passage, I’m being told: that’s when you make peace with the fact that you have made-up people living in your head, then set them loose into the fictional world you made for them.

My world had layers. Some of them ran parallel to reality; others »

Flash Fiction

Preventable Tragedies

I don’t go out of my way to be a dick to people, usually. Some folks, though–they think they can keep fucking around and never find out. But here’s how it really is: if you shit on my sunshine, you’ll get a spot on my forever list.

I might cross you off if you say you’re sorry. Fact is, though, owning up to a fuck-up is kind of a lost art. I can count the number of genuine apologies I »