Category Archives: News

Completed New Short Story: “That Story about Fortune Cookie Girl”

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This is just terrible.

In October 2013, I started writing this short story. It’s been one of the most annoying, slippery pieces of crap I’ve ever had the misfortune to handle. I guess that’s weirdly appropriate, considering its subject matter.

So. I wrote this story’s beginning back in October, but I abandoned it because I wanted to write this other story that got my attention. I did write and complete that other story–it’s called “Her Mother’s Child”–and it ended up selling to a magazine a while after that, so hey, time well spent. But this story? It just kind of languished.

Part of the problem was that it involved a character getting injured in an accident and I wasn’t so sure about the medical stuff, and even though I talked to my nurse BFF about it, I didn’t really feel all that confident. And then on top of that, I was having trouble with the escalation in the middle. I knew the story needed to have something more “serious” happen beyond the initial conflict. I just couldn’t figure out what, realistically, the characters would do. Mostly because the entire thing existed to blast holes in romantic comedy storylines, so I had my doubts about whether I should even care whether it did what stories are supposed to do.

I went back and finished it in mid-June. Or at least, I thought I finished it. Then I got some feedback from people who were torn on its meta aspects, and I decided to tilt it toward MORE meta instead of backing off the meta. It’s that kind of story and Miles is that kind of protagonist.

Of course, then I couldn’t think of a title.

I called it “Heels Over Head” for a while, because that makes reference to a ridiculous line in the story. Then I called it “Head Over Heels” for a while, and then I called it “Head Will Remain Firmly Over Heels,” and then I gave up and started calling it “That Story about Fortune Cookie Girl.”

If I were Miles, I think that’s what I’d call it.

Considering the meta nature of this jerk of a story, I’m just going to let him have his way.

He can tell it while he’s drunk as many times as he wants now, and I don’t care. I wash my hands of it.

Except now I have to try to find this thing a publisher and it’s 12,000 words. :/

Pitch Wars Contest: Mentor Wish Lists Announced

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I’m a Pitch Wars mentor in Brenda Drake’s contest this year.

More than seventy mentors have volunteered to accept applications from aspiring authors. We have posted our wish lists and mine is posted over on my blog (if you didn’t know, my Blogspot author blog is chattier and more active; this site primarily posts the biggest news and milestones).

Authors who are trying to get an agent will read our bios, find mentors who are accepting what they write, and apply to us. We’ll pick an author (and an alternate) and help them refine their pitches and spit-shine their manuscripts.

I hope I get to meet some amazing authors, and I’m anticipating some great opportunities for whoever becomes my mentee. 🙂

New Video: On Content Theft

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“What if someone steals my work??”

I’ve been getting that question a lot lately so I decided to do a video about why your work is not likely to get stolen–primarily because people who are too lazy to come up with their own ideas are VERY unlikely to steal yours just so they can go through the hard part of editing, pitching agents, and getting published. However, if you’re still unconvinced that getting your work stolen is unlikely, there is a suggestion in the video for how you can safeguard your content.

Featured and Quoted: The Varsity and The Daily Dish

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I was featured a couple places today. In The Varsity, Jasleen Arneja wrote about the WorldPride-affiliated asexuality conference and quoted me, using my book table photo as the featured photo. You can read the article in “Toronto hosts second-ever International Asexuality Conference” on their website.

thevarsity

And this was just a quick mention, but The Daily Dish decided to excerpt my The Toast article and that’s pretty cool:

“She’s Just Not That Into Anyone.”

 

Article: “Enjoy Your Houseful of Cats”

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I got an article published in The Toast today.

Please read “‘Enjoy Your Houseful of Cats’: On Being an Asexual Woman.”

This article is about my personal experiences being asexual in a very sexualized world, discusses the intersection of femininity and asexuality, and examines the prejudices and misconceptions behind some of the poor treatment I experience.

International Asexuality Conference, Toronto

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I had the pleasure of attending the International Asexuality Conference in Toronto, Ontario, at the end of June 2014. As a WorldPride-affiliated event, we got some pretty amazing coverage and attention, with something like 300 registered attendees!

I was on the Asexual Leadership Q&A panel with Sara Beth Brooks and David Jay. Video here!

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And later I was on a Visibility and Content Creation panel. You can see video of it here.

But what’s also great is it was the first appearance I made with my book!

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I asked attendees to enter their names to win advance reading copies. Around fifty people entered and I got to talk to quite a lot of amazing people who were really excited about the book coming out. And there were a few who treated me like a celebrity or excitedly told me how much they like my videos online. How nice!

And after attending sessions and sitting on panels all day, I rounded out the night by appearing on Canadian national television.

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Click to watch the video!

So yeah, that was a good experience. Hanging out with new and old friends was also fun–I was staying with asexual friends in a hotel, some of whom I’d known on the Internet before and some of whom I was getting to know for the first time.  I didn’t stay for the parade–just the conference–but I’m glad I got to go.

Hooray for visibility and connections!

Review (Mark Carrigan): The Invisible Orientation

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I got a pretty super review for my book The Invisible Orientation, provided by sociologist and researcher Mark Carrigan.

Please read it here on his website.

This is a long overdue book, offering the general purpose introduction to the subject which has heretofore been lacking. It is an essential addition to any academic reading list that encompasses asexuality and should be required reading for any therapists with an interest in sexuality. It provides a sense of what it is like to be asexual that can sometimes be missing from academic work and engages with the literature while nonetheless refusing to be constrained by it. It is also immensely readable, providing an authoritative overview that sign posts the reader who is keen to explore further. I can’t recommend The Invisible Orientation highly enough and hope it has a wide readership.

 

New Video: Rejection

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Now for a video on one of the most universal subjects for authors: REJECTION.

In this video I discuss my personal rejection experiences, share my first rejection letter and laugh over my most condescending one, and give you an idea of how and in what capacity I’ve been rejected over the years–from the perspective of a person who did eventually get to “yes.”

Feature and Excerpt: TIME Magazine

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My book The Invisible Orientation has been featured in TIME online with a six-hundred-word excerpt. They titled the article “How to Tell if You Are Asexual” and showed a bit of my intro and a bit of my section addressing asexual people on how to decide if it’s the label for them.

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As of this writing, the feature contains a couple of inaccuracies.

[1] The article’s introduction claims that “[Decker] explains that asexual people can become sexual later in life, and that doesn’t mean they were not asexual before. Similarly, sexual people can become asexual,” and this is misleading. I discuss both sexual fluidity and label experimentation in my book, but it is part of a more nuanced discussion; I do not say “asexual people sometimes ‘become sexual’ later” or vice versa, and I think including it in this introduction contributes to the damaging perception that asexuality is just a phase. For most people, sexual orientation is a lifelong piece of identity, and the invalidation asexual people experience at the hands of the “you’ll grow out of it” myth makes this at best inaccurate.

[2] As for “Decker has written for the Huffington Post, The Daily Beast and Salon”–That’s incorrect. I have been interviewed in all of those publications but have never written for them.

Published Short Story: “Your Terms”

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“Your Terms” was published in Timeless Tales today.

Read it here.

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As you should be able to tell from this cover, Timeless Tales is a fairy tale magazine and all of the stories for this issue are Pandora’s Box–inspired. It’s the last story in the pack, with a page following it that explains my inspiration along with some bio stuff. My contribution takes an unusual look at Hope, casting her as a modern woman with a case of agoraphobia. The story makes a point about invisible disability/illness and why it’s so important for people to stop framing such things in the context of “inspiration” for others. People with illnesses and disabilities need their stories and lives to be about themselves.