Want to meet me in person, wearing any one of my Author Hats?

(Caitlyn Lynch, sexy contemporary or Catherine Bilson, sweet historicals… or even @ozhawkauthor​ , queen of Marvel crackships)

I’m signing at ARRA Brisbane ONLY on Friday 6th March, but entry is FREE as it’s in the Brisbane City Library. You DO have to book a ticket, link here.

Lots of other very fabulous authors will be there too, please take a look at ARRA’s event site for full details!

If you would like to pre-order one of my books - and pre-ordering is pretty essential because I can only physically carry so much - PLEASE fill in my pre-order form by TUESDAY, 18 February. You’ll even get a special free gift!

And yes, you CAN order a paperback copy of the Weird & Wonderful Holiday Romance anthology, also featuring stories by @thebibliosphere​ and @christinaroseandrews​ among others, AND GET IT FOR ONLY AU$25 (less than Amazon’s pricing!!!

Get those preorders in to make sure you don’t miss out!

Okay but think about how, in the alternate 2012 timeline, the Time Heist Squad left behind an entire elevator full of Hydra agents who think Captain America is one of them. Think about how Captain America just had his patriotic butt whooped by a doppelgänger who told him Bucky’s still alive and then complimented his ass. He must be so confused. The Hydra agents must be so confused, but like, they’re Hydra. It’s probably in the Secret Evil Organization Handbook to never, ever talk about who’s in it. It’s like the very first rule of being a successful sci-fi Nazi: If you somehow get a guy called Captain America to join a secret Nazi organization, you do not talk about it. You keep that on the down low so that you have the ultimate double agent on your side. So Captain America is probably wandering around in the Good Ol’ 21st century, confused out of his mind, likely wondering what WiFi is and how he can find Bucky and where he can find Bucky and how could Bucky still be alive and is it America’s ass, really? And then one of the SHIELD agents that he’s met maybe like, twice before walks up to him and before Steve can even give so much as a How Do You Freakin’ Do the motherduffer is whispering Hail Hydra in Steve “I committed multiple felonies for the chance to punch Hitler in the face and I never actually got to do it” Rogers’s ear and shoving a briefcase full of soldier enhancement serum and Pentagon secrets and like, the secret recipe for Coca-Cola or whatever it is that secret Nazi organizations care about into his hand. And Steve. Steve may not know how Twitter works. He may not know emoji etiquette yet. He may not know why bananas are suddenly so weird or why having a lot of people following you is now a good thing. But Steve. Steve knows how to fight him some Nazis. He takes the suitcase. He Hail Hydras back. And then he busts his (America’s) ass back to Avengers Tower like guys you will not believe what is going down I thought we were done with Nazis in the FORTIES. Cue the Avengers trying to take down Hydra super early in the game without anyone knowing it’s the Avengers that are attacking the Hydra bases so that Steve can keep playing the double agent. Cue them trying to figure out who they can trust and who they can’t in SHIELD. And every time—every time—they bring someone else into the fold, they have to explain to them they have an agent who’s infiltrated Hydra, and every time, the person in question thinks it’s Natasha.

And no. It’s Steve.

“How in the hell did you convince them that Captain America is a Nazi?”

And that’s the best part.

Because they have no idea.

Trying to condense 110k words into a one-page synopsis like: 

Originally posted by usedpimpa

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So my son needs $7,700 worth of orthodontics and since my credit card is maxed out and last month’s royalties were under $200… I’d really appreciate it if someone wanted to read a steamy contemporary or a sweet historical and chose one of my books to read.

This feels so horrible and pathetic compared to people who can’t afford their insulin or put food on the table, but he’s my kid. I want to give him everything he deserves, every chance to get ahead in life, and I’m in tears here trying to figure out how the hell I can make this happen and I have to somehow pull myself together and go to work today.

I’m really tired of having to hold myself together and put on a brave face when the financial stressors are piling up and burying me, so… if I came home this evening and found even a few book sales, I’d be forever grateful.

You can find my sexy contemporaries here

and my sweet historicals here!

So, I am deeply disorganized person. I have ADD and executive dysfunction; I get bored incredibly quickly with the mundane and will invent lots of complicated reasons why I can’t or needn’t do something.

This becomes a problem when you’re 3 years behind on your tax returns, for example *ahem* (looks shifty).

So a while back, I instigated what I call the 5 Things Method. It might not work for you. Mileage may vary. The Things you can do will vary depending on your amount of spoons/amount of available time. But this is how I do it.

1. Get a pad of sticky notes. The regular 3-inch square ones work for me.

2. On one note, write down 5 things you need to do. They need to be SMALL tasks which you can complete in NO MORE THAN 15 minutes each. If it’s a big thing like “do my taxes” break it down into small tasks. Here’s mine for tomorrow…

(photo of a post-it note with list of 5 items on it: Pay car insurance, Clean shower, Finish reading book, Write book review, Drop forms off to Liz)

3. Choose the quickest thing to do. The one that’ll only take a couple minutes. Do that one as soon as you possibly can and cross it off. You’ll get a nice little buzz of satisfaction. Do a little victory dance!

4. Choose the most URGENT thing. The one that really HAS to get done ASAP. (In the example above, it’s the car insurance. It’s due in 2 days.) Do that one and cross it off. The relief you’ll feel will be HUGE.

5. While you’re on a high, pick one of the three remaining things and do it. Cross it off, and look at that! You’re more than half done!

Originally posted by gifsme

(gif: couple jumping on a bed, spraying champagne)

6. If you are out of spoons/time/energy, that’s OK. You got more than half done. Today was a BIG win (especially if you’re just starting at this).

7. If you CAN do the 2 remaining things, go ahead and do them, or at least one of them, and give yourself all the pats on the back. You did really, really well.

8. If you’ve got energy or inclination for one or two more little things? Well. You’re literally a legend. YOU GO, YOU WONDROUS HUMAN!

9. Get a fresh post-it note and write tomorrow’s 5 things. If you have anything left from today, you must carry them forward, but your total is still only 5 things.

… and here’s the kicker.

10. You MUST do those things you carried forward from yesterday FIRST. What this means is nothing gets to hang around long enough to become a monkey on your back. It’s done, no more than 48 hours after you put it on that list. Isn’t that a HUGE relief?

I personally throw out my ‘finished’ post-it notes when I’m done with them, but you could, idk, stick them on a spike on your desk or something? So you can look at the growing pile with satisfaction? I like the satisfaction of throwing them out because they’re DONE, but this is a personal choice thing. You might like to write them in a planner for permanent record, but, uh, if you’re the kind of organized person who keeps a planner, you might not need this method.

How you use this is up to you. At least in the beginning, I recommend giving yourself at least a couple of ‘easy wins’ every day. Stuff you were gonna do anyway, but now you get to triumphantly cross it off. Try to always prep the ‘tomorrow’ note before you go to bed and put it where you’ll see it first thing in the morning.

If you miss a day, or a week, or a month? Not the end of the world. Start a fresh note and get going again. Get that to-do list, not just under control, but OBLITERATED. You can do it! I believe in you!

Originally posted by giantmonster

(gif: two drink glasses clinking together in a toast)

Hey guys. Okay, so, a few weeks ago one of my coworkers asked me this question. And it has been bothering me ever since. 

Y’see, there’s this problem about explaining fanfiction, or fandom for that matter, to people who have never been a part of this culture. And, no, I don’t think that culture is too grandiose a term. The problem is everyone wants to rationalize fanfiction, justify its existence. Anyone who is not a part of fandom, literally any fandom, wants you to explain why you use your time this way, why you create this way, and why you feel entitled to do so. People struggle over basic things like creation existing outside of monetary gain or copyright, but even that’s not the intrinsic thing outside people don’t understand. 

I spent minutes trying to explain to my coworkers why as they pestered me with the same series of comments we’ve all been called to answer a hundred times before, “Why do you do that?” “But it’s not yours!””Who don’t you write your own work?” “That character wouldn’t do that!” etc, etc. And between trauma flashbacks to 2004 when I was 12 years old and we had the wars of What Is And Is Not In Character, I realized what the problem is: fanfiction is for fun. 

That’s it, plain and simple. I do it because it’s fun. You do it too! You draw or write or read or make or remix or whatever! You participate because it’s fun! That’s really all there is to it. And you and I don’t ask for more reason than that. But I was talking to outsiders. 

And here I should explain that I work in a college. I was talking to academics. Hell, I am an academic, I teach college English. And English professors, god help me, English professors are the absolute WORST at justifying fanfiction. You get two flavors of English professor when it comes to fandom: 1) that’s stealing or 2) that’s deconstruction. If the first, fuck you, I don’t have time for your precious proprietary sensibilities, learn what derivative means and then tell me if your near-and-dears are so goddamn original. If the second, I love ya, pal, and I know you’re trying, but you do too much. You do too much. 

For all of us in fandom, we understand that for every meta-critique, every genderqueer retelling, every better rewriting of a poorly articulated story, there are fifty hackneyed, hand-on-the-crotch, author-kink-specific “adult content” fics (Just in case tumblr got any ideas about censoring this post). And THAT’S NOT A BAD THING!

If you haven’t yet, you will meet people who will go out of their way to defend fanfiction’s literary qualities, but they Bowdlerize it! Sanitize! Clean! Purify. Intentional or not, and sometimes it is definitely intentional, many people feel that in order to justify and defend fanfiction, they must eliminate the porn, forego the smut, ignore the self-indulgent, half-crazed teenage lust that is the life’s blood of fanfiction. And that is some hypocritical, restrictive horseshit. Never mind the fan that chooses to throw the first stone, but what a fundamental misrepresentation on behalf of the authority! 

One of my favorite professors of all time offered fanfiction as an assignment option in every one of her classes. But she always did this with this fundamental misunderstanding of what fanfiction is and what it is for. Yes it CAN be incredible critical thought. Yes it CAN be a literary revolution. Yes, yes, yes. But it is not only this. And it always made me cringe to listen to her sing fanfiction’s praises without embracing all of the gutter trash that is my heritage, my home. I am by no means saying that fanfiction should not do all the meta-analysis and social critique that it can, will, and does do. But that is not all that fanficiton is nor should it be. Fanfiction is also the 18th coffeeshop AU you’ve read for the same ship. Fanfiction is also the soulmates AU for your rarepair. It’s the LOTR crossover. It’s the character death fic that serves no purpose but to make you sad. And it’s the OOC crack nightmare that you wrote at 4 am when you were 13 and don’t share with anyone, but it gave you joy to write. I will never defend fanfic without defending these also. 

And this is what my coworkers struggled with when I tried to explain. They could not accept this simple fact that fanfiction exists, primarily, for joy. And I would not treat fanfiction as high art existing only to hold a mirror up to media. Absolutely fuck that ivory tower bullshit. And they could not wrap their heads around enjoying this. 

One of them understood why I might write fic, but did not understand why I might want to read another’s. For this I can only cite his ego as the reason he would perhaps not like to read from someone else’s imagination. Another insisted that I ought to write my own work, rather than manipulate someone else’s characters. And this was someone who espoused death of the author and freedom from censorship! But still I could not convince her why it would be fun to play around in someone else’s sandbox. And the answer I gave at the time was not what I wanted it to be. I played it off as cowardice, fear of judgment about my own work. And, to be fair, that is one of the reasons I balk at original fiction, but again, fanfiction needs no justification! It is NOT second best! It is a full and legitimate art form in its own right, requiring new and different skills every bit as nuanced and delicate and time-consuming to acquire as those for any other kind of writing. Social acceptance does not make a creation good. Nor does profit or being studied by institutions. These things are accolades and easily recognized to mean value, but they themselves are not what make a creation good. You already know what does that.

And this is why it is so terribly hard to explain why fanfiction? You may as well ask why art?