So recently I went digging in my closet and escavated quite the collection of poems and stories I wrote during my junior high and high school years. This is quite the haul. I'm talking hundreds of poems alone. Starting around 7th grade I believe, I became quite the prolific poet. I'll be 50 this year and I've been carrying these around with me my whole adult life, but it had been years since I really sat down and looked at them.

I've really only scratched the surface so far, I haven't even begun on the mountain of religious poetry I churned out during my brief but intense Jesusy period. However what I've been reading has really produced a myriad of conflicting emotions in me. 

Some of the poetry is just kind of funny to me now. Inadvertanly, unintentionally hilarious. I went through a phase where I was super concerned about all of society's ills. And for every ill, I wrote a poem or five about it. We're talking homelessness, war, gang violence, AIDS babies, drug addiction, sexual abuse, censorship. You name it, I was writing about it even I didn't have a firm grasp on the complexities of all the issues. I mean, a little sheltered boy in Gaffney, SC, writing about gang violence??? And I was dead serious about it all, an earnestness that comes off as comical now. However, I also have some admiration for that boy who was trying to think beyond the narrow borders of his small town, his small life. 

It's Pride Month again. Of course, for members of the queer community, every  month is Pride Month. I am always working to elevate queer voices in the literary community, preaching representation and visibilty until I'm sure people are sick of hearing it. And yet I feel like right now more than ever, when queer-themed books are under attack all over this country, it is more important than ever.

And Pride is the one month a year that society as a whole kind of gets on board that train — at least theoretically. I still see lists of books people recommend folks read for Pride that contain cishet authors. And look, I love that so many cishet authors are including more queer characters and themes, and some of those books are very good, but I always say that if you can't only recommend queer authors during Pride Month then you aren't reading enough queer authors.

I think by and large, people don't realize how rich and varied queer literature truly is. And until relatively recently, I included myself. I grew up reading what was most available to me, what was front-facing in the bookstores, what got the most press, and in my youth that was by and large straight white male authors. Not saying the novels they produced weren't fabulous, but that was all I read because that was all I saw and that became a habit for me.

Some of my favorite reading recently has been by Carlos E. Rivera. His White Harbor books are amazing pieces of cosmic horror fiction. 

Not only are they terrific, rich stories filled with outstanding characters and top-notch suspense, but they also have several queer characters front and center. That is so important, now more than ever. I asked Carlos if he would be kind enough to stop by the blog and share some thoughts with us, so I am going to step aside now and let Carlos speak for himself.

When I Was The Only Queer Person in the World

By Carlos E. Rivera

There’s this loneliness associated with being queer.

It might not be as intense nowadays as it was for my generation, thankfully, but it’s still there, lingering, like ghosts of dead tenants in what should’ve been your dream home.

I’m a gay Gen-Xer. If you’re queer and belong to my generation or a previous one, you probably felt at some point like there was no one else like you. Society and media wanted you to feel like you didn’t exist. I’m from the Generation that saw Marvel finally allow one of their mutants (NorthStar) to openly come out as gay… only to kill him immediately after… in every version of the multiverse. Fine, they eventually brought him back, but the message was clear: queer characters were disposable. If they even existed at all in the mainstream.

My newest collection from Unnerving Press is entitled Portable Magic.

I was so excited when Unnerving asked me to do another of these themed collections with a wrap-around story to tie it all together. I instantly knew I had enough stories about stories and storytelling to put it together rather quickly. The collection isn't horror, but more gentle fantasy, magic realism, meta-fiction, and I think it's some of my strongest stuff. 

As a reader I love collections with story notes, so for this collection I am offering those notes here. I will talk a little about each story, the inspiration or the process, something that I hope will be of interest.

"Portable Magic" — The wrap-around story isn't just a framing device with this one but a complete story unto itself. I find the act of writing somewhat magical, and I wanted to do a tale that explored that concept. I came up with a teenager with dreams of being a writer who wondered where that magic came from. Inside him or from some outside source? 

"The End is the Beginning" — I love to write stories about characters who know they are in a story. I was musing about stories with ambiguous endings, how much I like them but how much others hate not having everything tied up in a neat little bow. Made me wonder about the characters in a story with an ambiguous ending, how they might feel about the lack of resolution.

Another year comes to a close, and here I am for my annual year end review where I talk about my progress with my writing and also some personal milestones.

Honestly, 2023 was a rough one for me personally. My husband and I were still adjusting to the death of his mother last year, then early this year his oldest brother passed. Then this autumn we lost both my grandmother and my precious mother. There has been a lot of loss in a short time, but it makes us more determined to enjoy the lives we have and to have as much fun together as possible.

When it came to publishing, I had my first major release in May of this year. My novella "Septic" appeared in the Crystal Lake anthology Against the Clock. I was very excited for this one, as the idea had come to me years ago and I finally had it written and out there. I think it's a very tight suspense novel that is still character-driven, and my character work is one of my favorite things about this one.

Today is the release day of my newest collection, Haunted Places and Other Stories, out from Slashic Horror Press.

This is an eclectic bunch of tales that span the course of many years. As a reader I always enjoy when writers include story notes, so I thought I'd include them here. I would recommend you read the stories first then read the notes.

"Haunted Places" — The title story is a bit of fun flash, a brief ghostly tale in which I had some fun with the idea of what a spirit might haunt besides a place. Also, not many people notice, but in this tale I never mention the gender of the main character so I'd be curious to know what gender you imagined when reading the piece.

"Walk a Mile in Another Man's Face" — This one is a bit older, an idea I played around with for years before finally writing it. I liked the idea of exploring bullying, but also of delving into what childhood trauma and abuse can do to a person. 

"O Little Town" — This one was a lot of fun to write. Slightly Lovecraftian but not really. I loved the idea of doing a Christmas horror story with a queer couple at the center. I actually have a post on this blog about this particular story and how I wanted the importance of queer visibility in the horror genre.

I have been writing since I was a kid. I have been publishing since 2005. In fact, July 4th marked eighteen years since I got my first short story acceptance. It was for a story called "Jam" to a now-defunct ezine called Nocturnal Ooze, and I was paid the princely sum of $14.61. Yet nearly two decades later I can still remember that excitement and elation sitting at my computer and reading that acceptance letter. Hell, even as I type this, that acceptance letter is framed and directly to my right. It was the first step on a journey that has been nothing but joyous.

That isn't to suggest I don't have rough days where the words don't want to come, where I get stuck on a story, where I realize I've gone in the wrong direction and have to cut a large chunk and start over. But there is even joy in that as part of the process. For the most part, when I am creating a story, I am having the most fun. It's like I never grew up, that despite being nearly 50 years old, I still get to play make-believe every single day of my life.

Over the years I have worked with many wonderful publishers, gotten some nice reviews (some not-so-nice ones as well, but that goes with the gig), and heard from readers who enjoyed my stuff. I have even been lucky enough to make a little money here and there. I appreciate all of that, I don't want to give the impression that I don't, but honestly none of it compares to the sheer pleasure I take in the act of creation.

I am so ecstatic to be a part of this new book, Dark Tide 8: Against the Clock. This book contains three novellas from three different authors, myself as well as Shane Nelson and Brandon Ford.

Shane and Brandon are two writers I have admired for a while, so I am thrilled to be sharing a TOC with them. For this book, released by Crystal Lake Publishing, we each came up with a novella of mystery and suspense. Below I thought I'd give you a brief little insight into what inspired each of us to write our respective tales, and I thank Shane and Brandon for providing me that insight for their own stories.

There are a lot of "rules" out there for writers. You can find them all over the internet, people telling writers what they should or shouldn't do. And these things aren't presented as mere suggestions but as objective rules that if not followed will result in horrible dreck that offends and horrifies readers. Everything from people who say writers should never use prologues or dream sequences to the fact that I've been told that semicolons are out! The fact that you can find any number of successful writers who routinely break these commandments makes me suspect the very notion of objective rules is oddly subjective. 

If you need any proof of this, you need look no further than in the literature of the past. It shows you how what people tell you are the rigid dos and don'ts of writing today were not so in other eras, meaning what we think defines good writing today likely won't be the case in the future.

What got me to thinking about this was a book. The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley. The book was originally released in 1919, and the edition I'm reading was produced in 1951.

The book is rather charming in the way a book from over a hundred years ago can be, and part of that charm is that it makes you see that what people consider good writing can change over time.