July 2021

“It’s an universal law– intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.”

― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

The duality of “str8 chaser

What if the homos and heteros HAD to work together to survive?

Fair warning, readers, this has got to be my subtlest political work in the LGBTQ realm of science fiction. However, I must confess that I took the events of my ex-communication of a friend as the inspiration for this one. I spoke to my brother and best friend, Tyler, about it and they felt that it was a story worth telling. But, as usual, I’m getting ahead of myself so let me dial it back and tell you how Can We Ever Be Friends came into existence. It’s actually one of my favorite sources of inspiration.

“Life is an awful, ugly place to not have a best friend.”
― Sarah Dessen, Someone Like You

The duality of coming out

My Best Judy was always meant to be a cute little story about a teenager being guided out of the closet by a gentle soul. So, I took quite a liking to writing this story after meeting a foreign exchange student from Lebanon who I helped realize who he really was in the community. It was a gentle nudge where I got to answer all his questions without poking and prodding into his mental state. This was the very essence I wanted to compass the story around. The “science fiction” part of it came in the oddest of places.

“Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

The duality of murder

I must confess that this story, A Killer’s Confession, was something that was going to be incredibly dark. But the original writing gave me enough pause that I had to redo it. There’s a delicate balance between light and darkness that has to be maintained in my theme of duality. This story was no different from the others but the process was a bit more difficult than the rest.

“Race, gender, religion, sexuality, we are all people and that’s it. We’re all people. We’re all equal.”
― Connor Franta

The duality of gay-bashing

Now, when I began writing Who’s The Bitch, Now?, I found myself in a position where I get to play out a lot of my darker fantasies. One of them being that a homophobe gets his arse beat by a gay guy. Granted, I have knockdown my fair share of homophobic bigots during my time as security. I’ve never been a fan of bullies – of any kind. They have always been a plague on my youth and I’ve always found them to be pathetic cowards who always need an entourage to make themselves feel important.  Even though there was a specific order in which I was writing the stories, when I got the chance to write this story, I went all in.