Five Minutes, an online literary magazine that previously published my 100-word-long micro-memoir pieces “One Phone Call” and “Say Goodbye,” has now published another piece of mine: “Parallel Park.” I’m especially glad about this because my previous pieces in Five Minutes were about particularly traumatic events in my life, and “Parallel Park” is much happier, describing the time someone I met on a dating app re-taught me how to parallel park after I’d forgotten. Read it here.

My debut novel, The Girls Will Be Okay, now has a cover by none other than Venessa Kelley, the author-illustrator of the smash hit illustrated historical adult romantasy When the Tides Held the Moon. We’ve been working on the cover for a few months, and now it’s ready!

The Girls Will Be Okay is a nerdy, interfaith queer YA novel about a bisexual Lutheran girl coming to terms with her sexuality and her crush on her lesbian Jewish best friend by writing fanfiction about their favorite detective show.

Seventeen-year-old Solveig has life figured out. She’s mostly recovered from her mother’s death three years ago, she’s an excellent student, she loves her Lutheran church and family, and she’s a straight ally of the queer community—or so she thinks. She and her two best friends, Sarah and Heidi, are even in the same fandom for the first time in years. Senior spring is shaping up to be a wonderful last hurrah, never mind her tension with her middle sister, Berit.

But then Solveig realizes she has a crush on Sarah. 

When Solveig’s obsession with and fear of her own feelings blow up both of her close friendships, her family—including Berit, who’s harboring a queer crush of her own—is the only place Solveig has left to turn. Can Solveig grow up enough to salvage her final semester of high school, or will she stay stuck in the rigid place she’s been since her mother died?

Pre-order links and other information will be coming soon! (Like really soon. I’ve uploaded the final files and everything.)

I am one of three featured readers at the 5th Wednesday Reading Series this Wednesday, December 3, at 6 pm at the Merriam Park Library in St. Paul. I’ll be reading my own poetry for about ten minutes, and after the featured readers have read, the event will transition to an open mic where anyone can read. I hope to see you there!

Find out more: https://www.facebook.com/events/1523086499013435

A bunch of authors on Bluesky, myself included, are offering to send people their ebooks and/or audiobooks in exchange for donations to food banks. This is being organized now because SNAP, the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, aka the US government’s food aid program, will not be funded starting November 1 due to the US federal government shutdown.

The thing I’m offering to send people is actually a short story (around 6,700 words) because I don’t have any books quite ready to send yet. Specifically, I’m offering a queer superhero romance called “Sonic Boom of My Heart.” It’s about an anti-establishment but really very nice villain falling for his nemesis, a hero who’s escaping an abusive relationship. It answers the question, “What if your nemesis showed up at your house in the middle of the night with injuries you know you didn’t cause?”

Send me a receipt (sensitive information blocked out) that says you’ve donated at least $1 to a food bank, and I’ll send you the PDF and EPUB files of the story!

Here’s the spreadsheet of all the books available from various authors. If you’re an author who wants to be added to the list, here’s the Google form for that.

My essay “No Leads,” about being disabled/chronically ill and having test results come back negative, is in the latest issue of FLARE Magazine, a literally magazine focusing on experiences of disability and chronic illness. Read the essay or check out this whole issue, which is focused on health scares!

My poem “Doctor Roulette,” which is about medical gaslighting and the challenges that chronically ill people face while trying to access appropriate diagnoses and treatment, appears in Issue 3 of FLARE Magazine, a literary magazine focused on the experiences of disabled, chronically ill, and mentally ill people. Two other poems of mine, titled “Worthy” and “Re-learning,” were included in the inaugural issue several months ago.

I am now offering freelance copy editing and sensitivity reading services! If you’re a writer looking for someone to help improve clarity, grammatical correctness, and flow in your writing, contact me about copy editing. If you’re writing an autistic character and want an autistic person’s insights on that representation, get in touch about sensitivity reading. Rates and testimonials are available in the editing section of this site.

If you missed the preorder window for A Truth Universally Acknowledged: Queer Fanworks Inspired by Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, the book is now available from Duck Prints Press and other booksellers, in both paperback and eBook forms!

This anthology contains my first published piece of fiction, a short story called “Lyd, Not Lydia.” The story is a modern adaptation of Lydia Bennet’s “scandal,” featuring Lyd Bennet, a nonbinary high school student who visits their older sister, Lizzy, at college and gets involved with frat boy George Wickham . . . who turns out to be transphobic.

I’ve read the whole anthology by now, and it’s fantastic! I’m so happy to be published alongside such talented writers telling such delightful stories–so get yourself a copy!

I’ve got two poems out today in a literary journal called FLARE Magazine, which focuses on the experiences of folks who are disabled, chronically ill, and/or mentally ill. Both of my poems focus on autism; the first is a free-verse poem called “Worthy,” and the second is a sonnet called “Re-learning.” Read them here.

The Kickstarter for the anthology I’m in is now live! You can back the project at the $20 level to get the e-book version, at the $40 level to get the paperback version, at the $60 level to get the paperback plus some merch, and at the $115 level to get the paperback plus a LOT of merch. I’m so excited about this anthology–both for people to read my story and for me to get to read all the other stories and see all the artwork! Go check out the Kickstarter for more information and to order your copy.