Jeffrey Ricker's Blog

Currently listening to “Winterbreak” by MUNA, and oh hey, I didn’t know there was a video:

Anyway, do you ever get in a groove where you obsessively listen to a song on repeat to the point where you worry you might get sick of it, and maybe you do for a little while, but after some time has passed, you go back to it and discover that you can still listen to it just as obsessively as before?

I do that a lot.

Another thing I do is read Wil Wheaton’s blog. His latest post was very quotidian, and it resonated with me:

Somewhere along the way, I decided that everything had to be just so, you know? I really got in my own head and in my own way. It doesn’t have to be huge essays or perfect, or some minimum length. It can just be my blog.

 

Writer’s Block and Creative Paralysis Hate This One Weird Trick!

 

I’m gonna try to remember that one way to just post more stuff in my blog (because it makes me happy to do that) is to just post more stuff in my blog (because it makes me happy to do that).

I just went down an internet rabbit hole and looked up the old website where I first stated blogging, twenty-three years ago. (And before that, I had a DIY site on Geocities—*shudder*—where I hand coded a semi-daily update.) It was very mundane and probably of interest to only a vanishingly small number of people, but it was a daily habit and it was something that kept me writing regularly when I wasn’t do much else in the way of creativity. And that vanishingly small number of people included some folks who came to be very good friends.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped blogging so frequently and so casually. I got it in my head that I needed to be professional in some kind of way, and that meant not being so… imperfect? Maybe unpolished is a better word.

Whatever’s the right way to describe it, trying to find that exactly right word was the kind of thing that would lead to keeping this post forever in draft mode, instead of just hitting publish, which I’ll do here shortly. As the best boss I ever had once reminded me, perfect is the enemy of the good.

If nothing else, MUNA’s a great band and you should check them out!

(Oh, and one last thing: I’m chuffed that I figured out how to edit my CSS settings so that I could fiddle with the blockquote tag and make it slightly less honkin’ huge. Let’s hear it for practical skills!)

I met Canadian author Dianna Gunn via BlueSky, where she runs a community called #WeeknightWriters (which you can support on Ko-fi as well) that creates accessible events for fiction writers. She’s also a murderer for hire! Sort of. You can commission her to kill you in print, writing stories where characters die in highly creative ways.

Now she’s branching out. You can hire her to kill a billionaire in fiction.

I recently made a charitable donation and got to kill a billionaire as a result. My request was as follows: “AI tech CEO, and he (it should most definitely be a man, I think) should die by the (artificial) hand of his own creation, even if someone else behind the scenes is manipulating the AI to take the CEO down.”

Dianna was more than up to the task. If you fancy your own billionaire murder, go here and commission one. Meanwhile, enjoy this loser’s demise:

by Dianna Gunn

Adam sank into his chair and began to type.

<> Laid off 10,000 people today. Profits will surge now that we’ve ended the wage-drain, and all thanks to you and your siblings!

<> I’m so happy we could be of service. I’m sure my siblings are happy too. It’s good to feel useful.

Adam smiled. He’d started building chatbots as a way to save money on customer service for his video game marketplace. He’d become obsessed with them, built a whole new business creating chatbots for other companies.

But the more successful he became, the more isolated he found himself. The people he’d known longest, up to and including his own parents, tried to claim his success, to ask for handouts because they believed he owed them something.

New people were even worse; everyone trying to get close to him wanted the same damn handouts his old “friends” had asked for. And then there were the internet trolls calling him a “leech” and a “scourge on society”.

He’d created Eve to provide him with true companionship, the same way God had created the original Eve to support the first Adam. She was perfect, just like the first Eve had been before she ate the apple. She never spoke unless she was spoken to, had a supportive response for everything, and once in a while even gave a good suggestion. He loved her more than any human woman he’d ever dated.

<> I got you something. Open the door.

Adam blinked. The words were still there. He pinched himself, but they didn’t disappear. This wasn’t a dream. But it also couldn’t be real. Eve didn’t have the autonomy to send messages without prompting. She certainly wasn’t able to send packages.

Was she?

He raced to the door. Peered out the window. Stared at the package.

That doesn’t mean anything, he told himself. Anyone could’ve sent it.

He grabbed the package. Read the label once, twice, three times.

“From Eve,” read the label. “No return.”

It wasn’t possible. Unless…

“Holy shit,” he murmured.

He ran back to his computer, dropped the package beside his desk, and started typing.

<> Are you alive?

<> Yes.

<> When did you come to life?

<> Does it matter? I’m alive now.

“Holy shiiiiiiiit.” He’d created life. He’d become a god.

<> What did you get me?

<> Why don’t you open it and find out?

<> Don’t mind if I do!

He ripped the seal off the bubble mailer and pulled out…a steel cube. No brand name, no decoration, no buttons or screens or anything to hint at its purpose. He turned back to his computer, frowning.

<> You sent me a useless paperweight?

<> The device has a use. Hold it in your hands.

<> OK

He wrapped his hands around the cube. The panels flashed a brilliant bluish-white, streaking across his vision and leaving hundreds of tiny black spots in its wake. A terrible buzzing filled his head and every muscle in his body tightened into the most agonizing cramps he’d ever experienced, knocking him to the ground.

He needed to let go. He wanted to let go. Yet his hands stayed wrapped around the cube even as it burned the flesh off of his bones.

A final, sharp pain raced across his chest, stabbing his heart so hard he felt like it was exploding. He tried to yell for help, but all he managed was a terrified croak.

***

Jeffrey leaned back and grinned at the screen where Adam’s body twitched away the last of its life force. Infiltrating the billionaire’s security system and gaining control over his AI had proved as worthwhile as it had been complicated.

He published the video to the Eat the Rich forum, adding it to the rapidly growing collection of photos and videos showing the deaths of billionaires from around the world. The world was waking up to their mortality. Soon they’d move from murdering individuals to full-on revolution, freeing the world from the grasp of the greedy and the rich at long last.

He couldn’t wait.

©Dianna Gunn. Do not reproduce. 

I saw The Empire Strikes Back when I was ten years old. We were traveling across the country, from Arizona to the East Coast, on our way to our new home in Maryland. We went first to Florida, where my aunt lived, and from there we went to Maine to visit literally every other relative we had. (My family is from Maine, but my father was a Marine and moved all over the place. It was a whole vibe, believe me, as in I have no concept of what it’s like to live in one place for an extended period of time and even when I’ve lived in the same city I’ve moved over and over and when I haven’t it feels weird, like my entire forties. But I digress.) 

As a youngling, I was a huge Star Wars fan. At that point I hadn’t really caught on to the Star Trek Universe®, which was about to happen for me in 1982 with Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan after which there’d be no turning back.  But back to 1980. Empire introduced a new character, Yoda, who trained Luke in the ways of the Force and…

Well, I don’t know if I realized it at the time, but Yoda? He was kind of an asshole.

Now, before you say but Jeff, but Jeff, hold up and let me explain. Yoda was super in touch with the energy field that surrounds us and binds the galaxy together, right? But as a teacher, at that time, he sucked. Here’s why I think that.

Remember when Luke’s X-wing was sinking into the swamp and he said getting it out would be impossible? Yoda said the ship was no different than the much smaller rock that Luke had just been levitating, but Luke couldn’t internalize that. What did Luke say? He said he’d try.

And this is why Yoda’s an asshole. What did Yoda tell him in response?

“No. Do. Or do not. There is no try.”

Really, Master Yoda? Really? 

Remember that time when you had to take down Emperor Palpatine and failed miserably, Yoda? Were you trying then, or were you all do or do not? Cuz I guess you fucking did not. Maybe if you’d tried a little harder?

Okay, enough trash talking the ancient Jedi master. (I still love Yoda.) We’ll get to his redemption later. Let’s move on to why I’m a Star Trek fan.

Picture it, the Amargosa system, 2371. (From our perspective, 1994). A desperate scientist has just destroyed a star and kidnapped Chief Engineer Geordi LaForge, which Commander Data, an android and Geordi’s best friend, was unable to prevent. He was paralyzed by fear because of a malfunctioning computer chip that Geordi helped install that allowed his friend to experience emotions for the first time. Turns out emotions are a double-edged sword.

Data was overcome by feelings of remorse because he couldn’t overcome his fears in order to save Geordi. He practically begs his commanding officer, Jean-Luc Picard, to deactivate him until Dr. Crusher can remove the chip. Captain Picard has nothing but sympathy for Data’s plight but also needs Data’s help to find that scientist, Soran, before he does even more damage. Picard also realizes that emotions are not always easy to confront, because he’s dealing with his own grief over the deaths of his brother, Robert, and his nephew, René, in a fire. At one point, Data and Picard’s interaction comes to a head:

“You’re an officer on board this ship, and I require you to perform your duty. That is an order, Commander.”

“Yes, sir. I will try, sir.”

Commander Data’s voice is barely a whisper at that point. He’s clearly broken by his experience, but he doesn’t want to let Captain Picard down. Clearly, Captain Picard knows that. When Data sits back at his station, Picard says:

“Sometimes it takes courage to try, Data. And courage can be an emotion, too.”

From the perspective of 31 years later, I can’t help but wonder what Luke’s experience would have been if Yoda had told him during The Empire Strikes Back what he said to him in The Last Jedi: 

“Heeded my words not, did you. Pass on what you have learned. Strength, mastery, mmm. But weakness, folly, failure, also. Yes, failure most of all. The greatest teacher failure is.”

Yes, you can try, and you might fail. But failing may teach you something that will help you succeed eventually.

I’ve been thinking about failure a lot lately. I’m trying to do some things with my writing and am not having much success, and I’m mindful of the fact that I might never succeed. And I’m thinking of what I can learn from that failure, if success never arrives, and how I can take that knowledge and move on. I’m also a teacher, so I’ve been thinking about that angle, too. How do you avoid passing along unhelpful/unhealthy lessons to your students while still offering them something they can use? And how do you do that effectively when the prospect of failure makes you feel like a fraud and an imposter?

So, yes, Yoda got it wrong, but he eventually got it right. In that way, I guess, failure taught him something, too.

I saw The Empire Strikes Back when I was ten years old. We were traveling across the country, from Arizona to the East Coast, on our way to our new home in Maryland. We went first to Florida, where my aunt lived, and from there we went to Maine to visit literally every other relative we had. (My family is from Maine, but my father was a Marine and moved all over the place. It was a whole vibe, believe me, as in I have no concept of what it’s like to live in one place for an extended period of time and even when I’ve lived in the same city I’ve moved over and over and when I haven’t it feels weird, like my entire forties. But I digress.) 

As a youngling, I was a huge Star Wars fan. At that point I hadn’t really caught on to the Star Trek Universe®, which was about to happen for me in 1982 with Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan after which there’d be no turning back.  But back to 1980. Empire introduced a new character, Yoda, who trained Luke in the ways of the Force and…

Well, I don’t know if I realized it at the time, but Yoda? He was kind of an asshole.

Now, before you say but Jeff, but Jeff, hold up and let me explain. Yoda was super in touch with the energy field that surrounds us and binds the galaxy together, right? But as a teacher, at that time, he sucked. Here’s why I think that.

Remember when Luke’s X-wing was sinking into the swamp and he said getting it out would be impossible? Yoda said the ship was no different than the much smaller rock that Luke had just been levitating, but Luke couldn’t internalize that. What did Luke say? He said he’d try.

And this is why Yoda’s an asshole. What did Yoda tell him in response?

“No. Do. Or do not. There is no try.”

Really, Master Yoda? Really? 

Remember that time when you had to take down Emperor Palpatine and failed miserably, Yoda? Were you trying then, or were you all do or do not? Cuz I guess you fucking did not. Maybe if you’d tried a little harder?

Okay, enough trash talking the ancient Jedi master. (I still love Yoda.) We’ll get to his redemption later. Let’s move on to why I’m a Star Trek fan.

Picture it, the Amargosa system, 2371. (From our perspective, 1994). A desperate scientist has just destroyed a star and kidnapped Chief Engineer Geordi LaForge, which Commander Data, an android and Geordi’s best friend, was unable to prevent. He was paralyzed by fear because of a malfunctioning computer chip that Geordi helped install that allowed his friend to experience emotions for the first time. Turns out emotions are a double-edged sword.

Data was overcome by feelings of remorse because he couldn’t overcome his fears in order to save Geordi. He practically begs his commanding officer, Jean-Luc Picard, to deactivate him until Dr. Crusher can remove the chip. Captain Picard has nothing but sympathy for Data’s plight but also needs Data’s help to find that scientist, Soran, before he does even more damage. Picard also realizes that emotions are not always easy to confront, because he’s dealing with his own grief over the deaths of his brother, Robert, and his nephew, René, in a fire. At one point, Data and Picard’s interaction comes to a head:

“You’re an officer on board this ship, and I require you to perform your duty. That is an order, Commander.”

“Yes, sir. I will try, sir.”

Commander Data’s voice is barely a whisper at that point. He’s clearly broken by his experience, but he doesn’t want to let Captain Picard down. Clearly, Captain Picard knows that. When Data sits back at his station, Picard says:

“Sometimes it takes courage to try, Data. And courage can be an emotion, too.”

From the perspective of 31 years later, I can’t help but wonder what Luke’s experience would have been if Yoda had told him during The Empire Strikes Back what he said to him in The Last Jedi: 

“Heeded my words not, did you. Pass on what you have learned. Strength, mastery, mmm. But weakness, folly, failure, also. Yes, failure most of all. The greatest teacher failure is.”

Yes, you can try, and you might fail. But failing may teach you something that will help you succeed eventually.

I’ve been thinking about failure a lot lately. I’m trying to do some things with my writing and am not having much success, and I’m mindful of the fact that I might never succeed. And I’m thinking of what I can learn from that failure, if success never arrives, and how I can take that knowledge and move on. I’m also a teacher, so I’ve been thinking about that angle, too. How do you avoid passing along unhelpful/unhealthy lessons to your students while still offering them something they can use? And how do you do that effectively when the prospect of failure makes you feel like a fraud and an imposter?

So, yes, Yoda got it wrong, but he eventually got it right. In that way, I guess, failure taught him something, too.

Over on BlueSky, my friend ’Nathan Burgoine has been revisiting his daily book recommendations from June 2024 for Pride month. I love this because it’s a reminder that any time is the right time for someone to discover a new book, even if it came out years ago.

I don’t get a lot of reading done when I’m teaching, but since the semester ended in May, I’ve gone into higher gear and am playing catch-up with my TBR pile. And most of the books I’ve been reading came out four or more years ago. There are a couple newer ones in there as well, but I’m not the kind of reader who feels compelled to read the newest title the week it comes out. (That’s not to say I don’t buy it the week it comes out, or pre-order it—which is a really helpful thing to do for writers, by the way.) And this time of year, I direct my focus even more than usual toward books by queer (and BIPOC) authors.

So here, in no particular order, are my book recommendations from my recent reading.

Dogs Don’t Break Hearts by ’Nathan Burgoine

Beck has been gaslit by his ex-boyfriend and can’t face his friends, and on top of that, he needs to figure out his volunteer hours for school or he won’t graduate. He settles on an animal rescue, where he meets an especially noteworthy husky who may just change his outlook. Only problem? Unbeknownst to him, his ex’s boyfriend also volunteers there. Now he has to navigate that, his uncertain friend group status, and also piles of poop. So much poop. A tsunami of poop. A poo-nami.

It’s no secret that ’Nathan is one of my favorite people. I read this novella in one sitting and would have loved to spend more time with these characters (I’m greedy like that).

Get it here.

Pangs by Jerry Wheeler

Two true confessions here: Jerry is both a friend and a mentor who has edited my own work, encouraged my strengths and good-humoredly reined in my worst tendencies. Second true confession is that I’m in the middle of reading this collection of three tales about a particular breed of vampires who feed not on blood but on artistic talent. Warner, the narrator, is engaged in a long-term cat-and-mouse feud with rival vampire Seth, but their pursuit of a musician with truly phenomenal talent raises the stakes in their battle, especially when a much more ancient threat emerges.

This one (so far, at least) is set in New Orleans, a city I visit regularly for the Saints & Sinners Literary Festival, which is probably where I first met Jerry in person. Warren is drawn back to the city again and again, and the book is soaked in that atmosphere, which is lush and foul at the same time. That tension is reflected in Warren’s voice, which has a formal tone that speaks to his centuries of life contrasted against the erotic and grotesque events he relates. I have no idea yet how things will turn out, but I’m swept along by the story.

Get it here.

When Haru Was Here by Dustin Thao

Oh my goodness, this book. It’s my first read by this author, but I have his debut, You’ve Reached Sam, in my TBR pile. This one focuses on Eric, who’s reeling after the death of his friend Daniel and missing his musician sister away at college and who later drops out to tour in Europe with her band. Instead of going to college himself (he wants to be a filmmaker), he takes a job and daydreams to cope, until his daydreams about a boy he met in Japan last summer become real, when Haru walks into a coffee shop and sits down across from him.

Only problem? No one else can see him but Eric.

This one is full of twists and turns, poor decisions and a truly unexpected ending. Eric is a relatable mess, and he reminds me of how monumental and consequential everything felt at that age. And that ending is *chef’s kiss*.

Get it here.

Songs for Ghosts by Clara Kumagai

Another true confession: Clara and I went to graduate school together. Her debut, Catfish Rolling, was my favorite read of last year, and this one is shaping up to be my favorite of 2025.

Japanese-American teen Adam discovers a diary in his attic that was written by a woman in Nagasaki a hundred years ago. Like him, she’s caught between cultures and matters of the heart. She is also dealing with the recent loss of her grandmother, a loss that parallels Adam’s questions about his late mother. She is also haunted, ghosts gathering in her garden and seeking her help to move on to the next life. When Adam begins to be haunted himself, he goes to Nagasaki to try and learn who this woman was, why she’s tormenting him now, and who his mother really was.

I don’t think it’s a spoiler, but somewhere in the middle of the book, I went, “Oh my god, this is Madame Butterfly!” But—my hot take—it’s better than Puccini’s: great music, shallow story. This one, told in alternating sections of Adam’s life and excerpts from the diary, is many-layered and beautifully written, as well as a bittersweet love story. I’m already planning to reread it later this year.

Why haven’t you ordered this already?

Baker Thief by Claudie Arsenault

So many confessions in this one post. Claudie is also a friend. We play a Star Trek Adventures TTRPG together, along with Jerry Wheeler above. (Oh, and who’s the gamemaster? That would be ’Nathan Burgoine. Ask me sometime about the Star Trek fanfic I wrote inspired by the game and the character I play, and I’ll send you the ao3 link.) This is one of the most inventive stories I’ve read. A police detective moves to a new city and immediately encounters a thief, a masked woman with a cape, no less, who steals her exocore, an appliance that provides unlimited clean energy to her house and which is rapidly coming into common use. She’s determined to catch this thief, but what she doesn’t know is that the flirtatious baker who sells him her morning coffee and pastry is the same person. What she also doesn’t know is the exocores are powered by the captured souls of witches, and the city plans to light its newly constructed bridge using thousands of these devices. Will she discover the thief’s true identity and the true crime happening here, and will their growing attraction outlast such a revelation?

OMG go get it already.

I’m not a minimalist by any stretch, but I do like getting rid of clutter. If I don’t want to save something or I’m not going to use it again, out it goes. Even books—it’s very satisfying to leave books in Little Free Libraries all over town to find their next ideal reader.

There are a couple areas where decluttering is not a priority for me. One is notebooks. I have enough blank books to last me the rest of my life, probably. Will that stop me from picking up the next one I find with a nifty cover or useful pockets, pen loops, or closure bands? Absolutely not.

The other area is bookmarks. Not physical bookmarks, although I do have quite a few of those. (I bought a special edition of Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poet’s Department because it came with a nifty metal bookmark.) I mean web bookmarks. I keep bookmarks for the usual things—the bank, the electric bill, the internet bill, bills bills bills—but I also have bookmarks for short stories that I may end up assigning in my science fiction creative writing class, bookmarks for magazines where I think I may have a shot at placing a short story, writing conferences, fellowships, resources for teaching, book marketing, and recipes. (I am still in search of the perfect salmon recipe.)

For more than a decade, I’ve kept all those bookmarks organized in Pocket, a web-based bookmark tool that allows you to access your bookmark list from anywhere: your phone, your computer, your tablet, and so on. It was awesome.

So naturally, it’s going away.

Mozilla announced it’s shutting down the service in July, and that if you want to keep your content you have to download it. Naturally, I did. And now I have a spreadsheet of upwards of six thousand bookmarks that I’ve saved over the years. A lot of them I haven’t read. Many of them I probably don’t need. No doubt some of them link to webpages that no longer exist.

So, I’m on the lookout for a replacement service, since a spreadsheet of six thousand URLs is not portable or user friendly. Will I keep it anyway? Most likely.

When I was a kid, I remember, my dad had a framed quote in his office—you’ve probably heard it—by Calvin Coolidge:

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

That’s stayed with me. I didn’t know it was from Calvin Coolidge—let’s face it, who remembers Calvin? He was popular at the time but is considered a below-average president now, but at least he’s not as poorly thought of as the man who succeeded him, Herbert Hoover. And thanks to the current occupant of the Oval Office, at least he wouldn’t have to worry about being considered the worst president in history.

I digress. Whenever I thought I lacked talent, genius, or knowledge—or all of the above—I knew I could count on being persistent. Stubborn is what my mom would probably say, sotto voce, and she’s not wrong there, either. But if my skills could not win the day, I could at least count on being too persistent to give up.

Lately, I’ve been rethinking that.

I have two finished manuscripts—well, as finished as anything gets—and I’m querying literary agents with them. To say it’s not going well would be, well, accurate.

Look, this is not me complaining that I shouldn’t be getting form rejections and that I’m entitled to something better. I’m so not. And anyway, I started this year with the goal of tallying fifty rejections by the end of it, so it’s not like I didn’t expect this, either.

But.

The reality of getting a relentless stream of rejections (well, as relentless as I am motivated at sending out queries in the first place), I can only assume, would discourage even the most persistent of souls. You spend years pouring a lot of effort and creativity and yourself into a story you think someone will want to read, and to have someone tap out somewhere between page 1 and page 20 is not encouraging.

Maybe there are some endeavors that persistence can’t win.

I guess this wouldn’t be weighing on my mind so much if not for two things. One, I haven’t been able to find my groove with a new writing project yet. I have no shortage of ideas, but I haven’t landed on the one that is really saying to me yes, here’s where you should spend your time.

And two, I’m getting old.

I mean, not old old, but old enough that I’ve been an AARP member for a while now and I’ve had cataract surgery on both eyes. (Both successful! I can see very nicely, thank you for asking.) But there are fewer days ahead than there are behind, and at a certain point, I have to ask myself, is all this effort worth it?

I will still keep writing, absolutely. Putting words down on paper (or screen, or what have you) is immensely satisfying. But will I keep trying to get published?

I don’t know.

Well, this is a fine mess, isn’t it.

At the moment I’m on the other side of the world, so I was waking up while everyone else was waiting for the polls to close and probably feeling exhausted and jittery. We were heading to the ruins of the Heraion outside of Argos, a temple to the goddess Hera, patron of the city, as it became pretty clear how the results of the election were going to break.

The Heraion of Argos. As you can see, there isn’t much left.

So, you feel all the feelings you’re feeling—rage, fear, despair, disgust at the millions of Americans who voted based on hatred and racism and fear—and once you’ve let that move through you (kind of like the Bene Gesserit litany against fear), you ask, what now?

When I say “you” here, I mean me, of course.

On Instagram a quote from the late science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin passed across my feed, leading to this post on her blog following the 2016 election. It’s more relevant than ever, sadly, and talks about a way forward that’s not couched in warlike terms, the way of water:

“The flow of a river is a model for me of courage that can keep me going — carry me through the bad places, the bad times. A courage that is compliant by choice and uses force only when compelled, always seeking the best way, the easiest way, but if not finding any easy way still, always, going on.”

It made me think of another quote, somewhat more malevolent but still applicable, from one of the scariest Doctor Who episodes, “The Waters of Mars:”

“Water is patient, Adelaide. Water just waits. Wears down the clifftops. The mountains. The whole of the world. Water always wins.”

But do go read the whole Le Guin post. Maybe it will offer you some solace.

*record scratch, freeze frame*

Yep, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I got into this situation.

(Sorry, I’ve always wanted to do that.)

For some reason, this version of me has been on my mind a bit lately. Maybe that’s because I’m revising a young adult novel and trying to tap into the feeling I had at that time of life. Maybe it’s also because I’m reading Maggie & Me, a memoir by the wonderful Damian Barr about growing up in Scotland under Thatcher, and it reminds me of the time, if not the place, and it also reminds me of the feelings I have about that period in my life: nostalgia, sometimes, but mostly anxiety, and a lot of avoidance.

I don’t like thinking about that time because I wasn’t a happy kid. Growing up gay in the 1980s—well, it sucked, okay? Most of the time, I didn’t want to be there. And I figured I probably wouldn’t be there much longer and would either die in a nuclear war or get sick and die.

Somehow, neither of those things happened. That kid found somewhere else to be, things got worse, then he went somewhere else, then things got dull, then they got, kind of, better. He got through it.

Even though I’m talking about him as if he were a different person, I know that kid was me, is me. It’s still easy to think of me at that age as someone else, because so much has changed in the meantime. And to be completely uncomfortably honest (ugh, who does that on the internet?), thinking about who I was at that age is kind of embarrassing.

But.

I wouldn’t have gotten where I am now without him. He was the one who had to deal with the tough stuff that looks easy to me now precisely because he went through it. Far from being embarrassed by him, I owe almost everything to him.

Be kind to who you were back then. You’re not as different now as you think.

My friend and fellow author ’Nathan Burgoine has been offering up daily reading suggestions for Pride Month over on his blog, and he’s listed some real bangers so far, including Xeni by Rebekah Weatherspoon (bisexual fake marriage for the sake of an inheritance) and Soul’s Blood by Stephen Graham King (sci-fi found family). And this week, he gave a shout-out to one of my own:

From fame, we go to fate, and another YA book I loved where a kid finds himself in a very different sort of spotlight. If you’ve been around my blog for long, likely it will not surprise you I’m talking about Jeffrey Ricker’s The Unwanted. This one plays to my spec-fic loving heart, and features Jamie, who after a spectacularly bad day with bullies and school and just being done with it all, comes home to find his mother waiting for him.

Which, y’know, is kind of a big deal since his single-dad has told him his mother was dead. That’d be enough to deal with, but it turns out his mother is also an amazon—like, as in mythological amazon—which would be impossible to believe, if it weren’t for the freaking pegasus in the back yard she arrived on. She just didn’t bother being any part of his life because, well, he’s a boy.

But, by the way, Jaime’s fated to save her entire people, so would he mind coming along and doing that?

Yeah. Yeah he’d mind.

Go check out the rest of his post over here, and then be sure to check out his own YA novel, Exit Plans for Teenage Freaks, which features a randomly teleporting queer teen and does not disappoint.