The Stark Divide

I live with my husband of 26 years (Mark, below right) in a leafy Sacramento, California suburb, in a little yellow house with a brick fireplace and a couple pink flamingoes out front.As a writer, I've always occupied the space between the here and now and the what could be. Indoctrinated into fantasy and sci fi by my mother at the tender age of nine, I devoured her library. But as I grew up and read the golden age classics and more modern works as well, I began to wonder where all the people like me were.After I came out at twenty three, I decided that it was time to create the kinds of stories I couldn't find at Waldenbooks. If there weren't many gay characters in my favorite genres, I would reimagine them myself, populating them with men who loved men. I would subvert them and remake them to my own ends. And if I was lucky enough, someone else would want to read the things I wrote.My friends say my brain works a little differently - I sees relationships between things that others miss, and get more done in a day than most folks manage in a week. Although I was born an introvert, I learned to reach outside himself and connect with others like me.I write stories that subvert expectations, that seek to transform traditional sci fi, fantasy, and contemporary worlds into something new and unexpected. I also run both Queer Sci Fi and QueeRomance Ink with my husband Mark, sites that bring people like us together to promote and celebrate fiction that reflects our own reality.I was recognized as one of the top new gay authors in the 2017 Rainbow Awards, and my debut novel Skythane received two awards and an honorable mention.¿My writing, whether queer romance or genre fiction (or a little bit of both) brings a queer energy to my stories, infusing them with love, beauty and power and making them soar. I imagine a world that could be, and in the process, maybe changes the world that is, just a little.