Quasirandom: Blog

Truth in fiction: The Alternatives to Violence Program that Dana mentions is real, though she has heavily adapted the conceptual framework to a particular situation and dramatically compressed what is usually a three-day workshop into one. My local chapter has been successful with it in prisons, rehab centers, and high schools, and I've personally found AVP tools and concepts useful in many parts of my life. I've assisted in several workshops but am not yet an AVP trainer - we were trying to get trainer training scheduled for a couple of us when, ahem, the pandemic lockdown started.

(Gosh, that last phrase sounds familiar … )

Dana's difficulty explaining how the workshop experience is so powerful matches my own.

The long-promised novel-length story about Dana, Teri, and Mike starts posting tomorrow: Together and Apart. It's the end of the school year and changes are coming -- and big changes mean big challenges, but this time they learn they can't always be there for each other.

I had fun writing this one. Snarky teen drama for the wins. The working codename was Teri Florez and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Fucking Bad Day, but in the end it needed a title that's a little more on point. I think it can be read without the previous installments in the series, but knowing what the three have been through so far certainly won't hurt, and earlier details echo through this one.

FWIW, because the kids start traveling through an expanded world, I finally had to nail down where they live: in the fictional ranching-and-resort town of Elkton, Colorado, about halfway between Laramie and Steamboat Springs as the hawk soars.

Story is complete, with initial chapters scheduled for daily -- I hope to keep that pace up, but we'll see how quickly I can proofread as we go.

Another short story of queer teens, this one more erotica than romance: Tangled Up, Halfway Between You Both. Well, there are romantic feelings, but events run faster than my usual slow burn (when I'm not writing NIS, anyway) to the point I don't think of it as a romance.

It started out as an early stab, quickly abandoned, at the story that became They and They, but even after I set the opening aside, Jim kept niggling me to finish his tale, too. Which is a hint: if you didn't like T&T for content reasons, you probably won't like this either. It's not written in my usual style -- but this is how the narrator wanted to tell it.

Regardless, I hope you like it.

Despite the main characters' comments about this fashion choice in Testing, I am proud to wear Hawaiian shirts with matching masks. No shame.

(And no, the kid isn't embarrassed by this-one of my sets was a Father's Day gift.)

I've posted another short teen romance, Testing, this one an actual short story. It's the first thing I've finished that is definitely of our times: it takes place in the United States in May 2021, when vaccination efforts were still progressing and Delta wasn't yet widely known.

Please, get vaccinated, stay masked, and stay safe. We're all in this together.