• The Q Review

    The Q Review: The Room Already There by Gerry Cota

    I met Gerry Cota, the author of The Room Already There at the Austin Independent Book Fair in September, where he had a vendor booth. I was looking for something to buy, and since I’m not much of a genre fiction reader (which makes up most of the indie book marketplace), the pickings were slim. Cota’s book stood out from a distance. A simple white cover featuring a minimalist design. I asked him what it was about, and he gave me a short elevator speech: ‘It’s about a guy from Austin who goes on a trip to Washington and discovers…

  • The Q Review

    The Q Review: The Fall of David by Nakia Jackson

    If you know me, you know that I love murder. Ok, maybe not murder – but definitely murder mysteries. One of my favorite characters in all of fiction is Miss Marple, so I was delighted to pick up this new novella by Nakia Jackson featuring one Halima Abdulmussawir, a Black Muslim auntie from Philly with a very similar vibe. This is a short book. I read it in one afternoon. Jackson’s prose is clean and well-edited. The story was easy to follow, and the cast of characters, all from Halima’s neighborhood, felt real. As the story opens, we find that…

  • Events

    See you at GAB Fest!

    Each year, the Austin Public Library hosts GAB Fest (Greater Austin Book Festival) to highlight and connect readers in central Texas. I’m thrilled to be participating as a vendor at this year’s event. There’s a full day of programming featuring panels and activities for all ages. Stop by the Author Hall and say hi! I’ll be sharing a table with my partner-in-crime, graphic memoirist Ilene Haddad. We’ll be selling and signing books, and we’d love to see your faces and take a few thousand selfies. (We promise to brush our hair!) See you there!

  • Creativity - Media

    The Internet is the Opposite of Zen

    Periodically, I take long breaks from the firehose of social media, and it’s during these times that I realize, with great poignancy, how little value there is in the constant drumbeat of self-analysis (personal and communal) that has come to dominate public online discourse. As an enthusiastic consumer of all types of media, I have started to feel as though we are drowning in egos, dissolving into a million fragments of artless navel-gazing and opinion. With every ‘think piece’ and ‘long read,’ I feel less informed and more assailed by someone else’s desperate need to be seen and heard. With…

  • Creativity - The Bizniz

    10 Things I Learned Self-Publishing My Debut Novel

    Last week, I had this exchange on Threads with indie author-artist Raul Sauve (@sauvesauve), and another author-artist, Elena Catherine, popped in and asked the question about what we’d learned from self-publishing. I didn’t have time to respond in the moment, and truth be told, I don’t think I’ve had a chance to sit down and account for all my learnings over the past two years. So this week, I decided to write a blog post about it. I’ll start by saying that the decision to go the indie route and self-publish was not taken lightly. I don’t think my choice…

  • Creativity

    We Need Your Vision for Something Better

    During the 2010s, there was a marked rise in dystopian fiction in both print and film. Stories like The Handmaid’s Tale and The Hunger Games gained enormous popularity as millennials became increasingly disillusioned in adulthood. More recently, fantasy – including but not limited to the overwhelmingly popular categories of romantasy and vampire fiction – has taken over as readers seek escape from a world where dystopia is no longer fiction. But I want to talk about a different genre today: science fiction. Specifically, the kind of science fiction that my Boomer parents adored and raised me on. Star Trek. Star…

  • Media - The Whole Enchilada

    The Whole Enchilada on Reedsy Discovery

    I was delighted to wake up this morning to a five-star review of The Whole Enchilada on Reedsy Discovery. Reedsy is a platform for authors, publishing professionals, and readers to connect and discover one another’s work. It’s a great place to find indie works that you may not run across in your searches elsewhere. I have been fortunate enough to find some great reading on this site, so it’s wonderful to see my own novel featured as a ‘must-read’. I’m grateful to reviewer Abha S. for their thoughtful, enthusiastic reception for my debut: “When I watched director Denis Villeneuve’s film Arrival a…

  • Media - The Whole Enchilada

    The Whole Enchilada Reviewed at Diary of a Reader

    Big thanks to Dominique over at Diary of a Reader for her review of The Whole Enchilada. This is, in fact, my first blog review, and I’m delighted (and encouraged) by it. Dominique is fair and honest, and kind with her words, which is all an author can really ask for. But what makes this so special is that she understood the unconventional and intentional structure and pacing of the novel, and embraced it as a literary experience, sitting with the parts that were uncomfortable or unclear, trusting that I – the author – had a reason for telling this…

  • The Q Review

    The Q Review: Kittentits by Holly Wilson

    Imagine, if you will, that James Joyce and Hunter S. Thompson had a love child, and that it was a girl, and that she was living in 1992, keeping a diary, and also, she had a personal vendetta against punctuation. I learned about this book from my fellow author and friend, Roanna Flowers, during a conversation we were having about book cover design. She said she hadn’t read Kittentits yet, but she saw the cover and wanted it on a T-shirt. When I looked it up, I immediately concurred, then hopped onto my Libby app and found, to my great…

  • The Q Review

    The Q Review: Fireflies and Zeroes by Liz Larson

    I found Fireflies and Zeroes by Liz Larson on Reedsy Discover. Since I like a good mystery/thriller, and I love music, a novel about one member of a popular pop-punk band disappearing just as they were about to make a comeback seemed like just the ticket. I’ll start with what I loved about this novel. First, Larson’s writing is technically very good. Tight, fluid, and easy to follow. I threw this thing back in just three days of light reading. Additionally, her character development is aces. I quickly got to know and care about all the characters in this book.…