Hi, everyone! I hope your week is off to a fantastic start! I know. I know. No one likes Mondays because the week’s off to a new start. But you know what Mondays also mean? It’s time for Monday Musings! Wherein I ramble about various and sundry depending on my whim or Patreon requests/suggestions. Posts are somewhere below 2,500 words at most and consist of short personal essays and discussions.
Hi, everyone! Welcome to the very first official post of Let’s Read Asexual Academia, a series in which I read, react to and critically discuss academic papers about asexuality. You are cordially invited to join in reading about asexuality.
Currently, the let’s read is focused on Asexuality and Sexual Normativity: An Anthology. Published in 2014, this book collects a special edition of the journal Psychology & Sexuality in 2013. (I messed up the dates in the post announcing the let’s read. My apologies for that.) This post will cover some of the introduction, though its main focus is on the first essay in the anthology.
This first post is available to everyone, to give you all an idea of what to expect, but the remaining 9 papers (or chapters) of the book will only be available to patrons. I aim to have a discussion of a paper up once a week, which means we’ll finish this book around mid-March.
Without further ado, let me offer you the essay! (Note: It’s around 3,300 words long.)
Hi, everyone! Welcome to the new year! I hope it’s off to a great start for you and yours. Today, I’m introducing a new feature (ish). Or at least an attempt at one: weekly, short personal essays about, well, whatever people would like me to talk about or a random topic I came up with on my own. Comments currently remain disabled on the blog, yes, but you can hop on over to Patreon for now.
These weekly posts are immediately available to everyone and hover somewhere below 2,500 words. I try to keep them under 2,000 words, but sometimes you end up with more anyway. This one is 2,100 words! The next one will have a shiny new standardised intro and such loveliness.
This week’s rambly essay is called “Asexuality vs Diagnostic Criteria”. Also known as “But what the heck do the DSM and ICD actually say about asexuality?” Because the answer to that is slightly complicated and the question comes up… more often than you’d think.
Hi, everyone. A few days ago, author Leigh Hellman visited the blog to write a fantastic guest post about their debut release, Orbit, a new adult science fiction novel! Today, I’m upping the book celebrations by sharing an excerpt with you all!
As always, let me give you the plot synopsis first! Author bio goes at the end this time! Because I’m mean like that. But go read this awesomeness!
Ciaan Gennett isn’t green, despite the brand of light hair that betrays her heritage: an Earth mother. A mother she remembers but doesn’t know, who left one day and never came back. Ciaan’s as metal as her home planet—cold and hard and full of so many cracks she’s trying to ignore that she doesn’t have time to wonder about questions that don’t get answers.
After one too many run-ins with the law, Ciaan finds herself sentenced to probation at a port facility and given an ultimatum: Prove that your potential is worth believing in. With help from her best friend Tidoris, Ciaan stays away from trouble—and trouble stays away from her. But when a routine refueling turns into a revelation, Ciaan and Tidoris find themselves forced into an alliance with an Earth captain of questionable morality and his stoic, artificially-grown first officer. Their escalating resistance against bureaucratic cover-ups begins unraveling a history of human monstrosity and an ugly truth that Ciaan isn’t so sure she wants to discover.
Now they all must decide how far they are willing to dig into humanity’s dark desperation—and what they are willing to do about what digs back.
Excerpt content warnings: bullying, threat/promise of physical violence Read More
Hey, everyone! I’m really stoked to say that I’m hosting another guest post today! This time, it’s a guest post by debut author Leigh Hellman. Leigh is here to discuss their book, Orbit. Specifically, the long road this book undertook to getting written and the way it intersects with queerness.
I can only speak for myself when I say that I’m absolutely thrilled to have books where somewhat older people first start to explore and embrace their queerness because that’s honestly not something I see often and I think these are incredibly important stories.
Let me give you the plot synopsis and a brief biography of Leigh first!
After one too many run-ins with the law, Ciaan finds herself sentenced to probation at a port facility and given an ultimatum: Prove that your potential is worth believing in. With help from her best friend Tidoris, Ciaan stays away from trouble—and trouble stays away from her. But when a routine refueling turns into a revelation, Ciaan and Tidoris find themselves forced into an alliance with an Earth captain of questionable morality and his stoic, artificially-grown first officer. Their escalating resistance against bureaucratic cover-ups begins unraveling a history of human monstrosity and an ugly truth that Ciaan isn’t so sure she wants to discover.
Now they all must decide how far they are willing to dig into humanity’s dark desperation—and what they are willing to do about what digs back.
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Leigh Hellman is a queer/asexual and genderqueer writer, originally from the western suburbs of Chicago, and a graduate of the MA Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago. After gaining the ever-lucrative BA in English, they spent five years living and teaching in South Korea before returning to their native Midwest.
Leigh’s short fiction and creative nonfiction work has been featured in Hippocampus Magazine, VIDA Review, and Fulbright Korea Infusion Magazine. Their critical and journalistic work has been featured in the American Book Review, the Gwangju News magazine, and the Windy City Times. Their first novel, Orbit, is a new adult speculative fiction story now available through Snowy Wings Publishing. They also have a historical fantasy piece included in the SWP anthology, Magic at Midnight.
Leigh is a strong advocate for full-day breakfast menus, all varieties of dark chocolate, building a wardrobe based primarily on bad puns, and bathing in the tears of their enemies.
Welcome, Leigh! Read More
Hey, everyone! Earlier this month, author Nicole Field released From the Same Star featuring an asexual love interest, Steve, and today Nicole is here to talk a little bit about the book! In honour of Asexual Awareness Week, Nicole will be talking specifically about asexuality and the way that it relates to Steve’s BDSM play. There’ll also be a short excerpt at the end!
From the Same Star is the second book in Nicole’s Kismet series, following One Last Drop. One Last Drop focuses on other characters, so you don’t have to read that before diving into this one! Both are slice-of-life f/f romances with some BDSM elements but no explicit content.
Let me give you the plot description for From the Same Star and a short biography of Nicole, and then I’ll hand the blog over.
In the aftermath of her mother’s death, Angela struggles to recover and re-enter the world. When she meets Steve, who works in the café across the street, she feels able to take a step out of her grief-filled home. With Steve, she hopes to do D/s as a way to take a break from the pain consuming her, but discovers that in doing kink, you bring all of who you are with you, including grief.
Then Steve’s best friend is in a tragic car accident, and winds up in a coma, and Angela longs to offer support to Steve, as well as receive it.
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Nicole writes across the spectrum of sexuality and gender identity. She lives in Melbourne with one of her partners, two cats, a whole lot of books and a bottomless cup of tea.
Co-creator of Queer Writers Chat and reviewer for Just Love: Queer Book Reviews. Also likes tea, crochet and Gilmore Girls.
Welcome Nicole!
A few years ago, I started reading romance novels with demisexual characters in them. Either they’re protagonists or they’re love interests. That sounds great, right? Asexuality, as a spectrum, is gaining visibility and there’s enough visibility now that ‘demisexual romance’ is a term you can actually successfully look for. I’ve got a whole list of them!
~1,600 words
This month, I’ve got another free short essay for everyone. Based on my experience discussing asexuality and aromanticism and with encountering ace and aro panels online in various ways (which frequently, to be honest, does not inspire me to want to attend any since they often all seem to replicate the same basic issues), I’ve compiled a general lits of Dos and Don’ts. You can probably apply them to more topics than asexuality and aromanticism and more types of content than talks or panels.
This essay on Patreon. Enjoy!
It’s been a few days – feels like forever – but I’m back with another short not-a-guest-post essay on The Ice Princess’s Fair Illusion! This time it’s about 800 words discussing some of what influenced the story and why it is the way it is.
This essay literally took me ALL DAY to write. I have no idea if it’s good or terrible, but it is done and I’m in too much period-caused pain to care about anything else. (Sorry?)
Here’s the post on Patreon too! (Look, I’m actually remembering to add a link to the specific post now!)
When I set out to write The Ice Princess’s Fair Illusion, I wasn’t entirely sure what I was doing. Sure, I had a rough idea. ‘Retell King Thrushbeard, but make it queer and less misogynistic’ is all good and well, but it’s hardly a plot. It took me a fair bit of brainstorming to come up with a plot that would make the fairytale work better for me.
King Thrushbeard is a tale that appeals to me in some ways and just… doesn’t work in others. For one, if it had been a prince who’d refused to marry, we would have had a radically different plot. On the flipside, the domesticity of the tale and the contrast between social classes appeals to me. I just… could do without the whole ‘This proud woman must be humbled through social humiliation and hard physical labour’ aspect of the thing.
It took a fair bit of brainstorming for me to figure out how to retell those aspects of the story in a way that worked for me and I’ll be forever grateful to the friends who listened to me ramble about it and watched me work out the chinks in my mind. But, eventually, I did figure it out.