Point of View

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Point of View: The Trouble With AI

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Artificial Intelligence - Deposit Photos

I’ve avoided writing this particular column for months, in part because generative AI is such a hot button topic at the moment, and partly because I needed to work through my own thoughts and feelings on the matter. And maybe because I suspected it would be one long-ass article. I’ve been feeling this weird sense of jamais vu, that is, increasingly feeling that what should be familiar no longer is. We’re moving rapidly into a “sci-fi” world, and the things that used to excite me in the abstract – like self-driving cars and missions to Mars – no longer do. … Read more

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Point Of View: Dogs & Puppies

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keeshond - deposit photos

Last week, I asked my readers what they wanted me to talk about in this column, and got a wide variety of responses. I’m going to take them all seriously, even the first one: “More dogs and puppies.” Very well. Funkel Blue Sen, this one’s for you. I grew up in a “dog house” – in my family, we had dogs for as long as I can remember. While there was a husky and a samoyed in the mix at least once, most of these were keeshonds (pictured above – not one of ours). Keeshonds are sweet and super intelligent … Read more

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Point of View: Everyone Hurts

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Depression - deposit photos

Everyone I know is hurting. There are still flashes of beauty and love and triumph all around me, even moments of great joy. But the whiff of depression, the sense of things having moved beyond our control, hangs over everything like a sulfurous smog. Many of our friends and family are facing health issues right now – some short-term, others more dire and in some cases life-threatening. Other friends are facing imminent eviction, or just can’t seem to find a steady place to stand. Friends who find that what was once a dream-come-true is now proving to be more of … Read more

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Point of View: The Delicate, Ever-Changing Art of Wordsmithery

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steampunk typewriter - deposit photos

Today I thought I’d take you behind the scenes, to give you a sort of how the sausage is made look at my writing. Writing styles are constantly changing. Take a look back at the classics you read in high school – would any of those be published (without drastic revisions) today? Even the way we write fiction now, with all its accepted “traditions,” is very different than what folks wrote a couple decades ago. Take the common “said” dialogue tag. In the past, it was sprinkled liberally throughout manuscripts, and was considered to be invisible to the reader. It … Read more

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Point of View: Enough

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Enough - Deposit Photos

I usually use this column to talk about writing – things I’m working on, my approach to the craft, and other random thoughts that occur to me about stories and books and publishing in general. Every now and then, I veer off into a little hope punk – the inspirational side of things, reminding folks that there is still good in the world, even when everything seems so dark. But today, I have something heavy weighing upon my soul. A month or so ago, Pastor Casey Tinnan, a local gay pastor here in the Sacramento area and a man who … Read more

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Point of View: Cords for Everything (or Why I hate Going Into the Garage)

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cords from our garage

Warning: heavy-handed metaphor ahead. Nine and a half months ago, I had an accident that could have snapped my neck. My bike tires slipped on something on the pavement and sent me flying fifteen feet though the air to slam into the concrete sidewalk. As bad as it was – my orthopedic surgeon said the top of my femur looked like it “exploded” – it could have been far worse, and I am properly grateful that it wasn’t. Mark and I decided it was probably time for new bikes – something a little steadier and harder to tip over than … Read more

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Point of View: Rebuilding a Community After Pandemic

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Green sprouts - deposit photos

Four years ago, we had a good thing going her in SacTown. Our local LGBTQ+ writer’s group – the Queer Sacramento Authors’ Collective – was almost fifty folks strong. We were doing readings at the Lavender Library four times a year, meeting in person for lunch every other month, and had an ambitious plan to put on Sacramento’s first book festival. And then Covid struck, and obliterated it all in an instant. The festival was cancelled. The readings were too, though we managed to continue them sporadically on Facebook Live, in videos that few watched. And we managed occasional zoom … Read more

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Point of View: Drag Queens in Space

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Drag Queen in Space - Deposit Photos composite

One of the most loathed questions among my writer friends, and the one asked by almost every interviewer, is “Where do you get your inspiration from?” This question comes in many forms: The honest-to-God short answer is that no one f@cking knows. Writer’s brains are a little like those mazes the white coated lab scientists train rats with – dark, twisty, and with a bit of rat fur (and quite possibly droppings) around almost every corner. Writer brains are like a complex piece of machinery handed to a two-year-old child, who shakes it up and down energetically and turns it … Read more

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Point of View: Coming Down

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Coming Down - teen on floor with book on his face - deposit photos

Release week is over. The Dragon Eater came out last Thursday, and it was a freakin’ amazing experience. Although it didn’t top the Amazon charts – TY, Amazon algorithm, it sold well – my best new book launch in years. But it wasn’t the sales that fed my soul. It was the Zoom book launch on Saturday that Steven at Water Dragon Publishing set up for me. Steven says that normally they get 5-10 folks at these things, and have reached as high as twenty. We had double that, a wonderful cross section of folks from the various parts of … Read more