I went to a conference in Florida recently called Smut Lovers and it was so useful. I learned so much in such a short period of time that I felt like my head was swimming. I was happy to be introduced to such a kind community of BDSM and appreciated what they showed us, which was how to do things the safe and right way so we will write things correctly in order for no one to get hurt. Knife play was the biggest shocker to me on how it is really done, Violet Wand play intrigued me the most, and interestingly I learned that I am not that into fire play because of the amount of set-up that goes into it for so little.
This group respects humans to their core and consistently preached how important consent is all around. Honestly, it was a little triggering because of my background, but it is an event that I think is important for most people to go to in order to help get rid of stigmas, talk about what needs to be talked about, and to understand safety and oneself.
Tonight, I listened in on an event with Meet Cute Bookshop, which featured Natalie Naudus, the author of Gay the Pray Away and an audiobook narrator. The conversation between Natalie Naudus and Travis Baldree was very natural and flowing because they were both on the same page regarding what they found important in writing and reading.
One thing the conversation led to was talking about why Natalie wrote Gay the Pray Away. She said that when she became a parent, she had to dig in deep about stuff left over from her childhood that she didn’t realize was an issue or was there. So, the tipping point of her story being put on the page was her needing to get an issue she had out of herself and process it. When she was writing, she told herself she didn’t have to publish it, but after writing it, she realized that it might help other people, so she decided to put it out there.
When she published this story, she received what she called validation. She received so many messages from others saying they now felt seen, which made her feel not alone and like she had done the right thing.
Natalie explained that to write the book, she had to write around her work and kids’ schedules. She started the book as a raggy memoir but then wrote it as fiction, which gave her the freedom to write her feelings and made writing what she needed to write easier.
She said that she may not write another book soon because narrating pays more, and she has kids in hockey, so she has to make money. But she may jump into it when her kids are older. She does know, for sure, that she wants to write a poly relationship because she has a lot to say on how love should grow and not be limited and finite.
A few other things that were discussed were how writing creates empathy and connection to someone’s life. Also, how found family now-a-days is becoming so big for so many people because people are realizing that finding the people who love you the way you always wanted to be loved is such a fulfilling experience in life.
From this event, I learned that Natalie is such an inspiring writer and person. She said how she knows she won’t be able to write as beautiful of prose that she reads from some authors, but all she can do is put out something that is her. She also mentioned that as she is getting older, she is becoming more attracted to the truth because she reads such a large volume. So, for her, she needs something real to consume or something that hits hard because then it feels true and sticks.
Thank you so much Meet Cute. I feel so lucky that I was able to listen into this conversation.
Okay, let’s talk about how amazing it feels to meet such kind people whose goal and purpose is to help improve society and continue to grow.
Wow.
This was my first time at Booknet Fest, and I was blown away by how different it was from other conferences for a variety of reasons. One, they wanted to ensure everyone knew that everyone was on level playing ground. That we are all people. Two, they focused their panels on how to help the world and help each other. Three, monster romance! Yes!! And four, this was the only conference I felt I belonged so far, even though it was my first time. Maybe it was because we were all similar in age, or we were all young or kindred at heart, you could say. But it was amazing. I was complimented so many times on my outfits (Pokemon and Sailor Moon,) which had never happened before and made me feel so seen. I had such great conversations. I received a little blue therapy duck and attended a prom where we could all dress how we wanted to. It was honestly how I wish prom was when we were in school.
But truly, it was terrific and I would suggest anyone to go to help them grow because their vision is spectacular. Also, even though I was very drained socially and down coming straight into this conference because of a funeral at the beginning of the week, I was lifted back up by the end, which I was not expecting.
Booknet will be in Orlando, Florida, next year, May 23rd and 24th, 2025!
Fountain Bookstore hosted a historical fiction panel that I was able to listen to with Chanel Cleeton, author of House on Biscayne Bay; Denny S Bryce, author of The Trial of Mrs. Rhinelander; and Eliza Knight, author of Starring Adele Astaire.
This was such a cool panel to listen to, especially when it came to the authors discussing their research. Denny S Bryce said that history guides historical fiction writers into their stories and went onto explain how sometimes they find characters in history that people didn’t even know existed, like a brother or a sister of a famous person. They all also expressed exciting forms of research that one may not think about when it comes to researching the past, like diving into the songs and movies of the historical characters they are working to voice in their books. Bryce talked about how she really enjoyed listening to one of her character’s albums, especially the live versions, to learn the character’s personality by how they interacted with their audience. She also talked about how she and Knight were out one day and came across a few stories about Marilyn Monroe and then found a picture of Monroe with a friend, which made them both want to work together to write a story about the picture they had seen. That story is called Can’t We Be Friends.
On the topic of Marilyn Monroe, Knight watched all of Monroe’s movies for research. She said through doing that, she could see when Monroe’s acting began to change once she got more training and then again when she started getting into drugs. She was also able to see and understand how one of the films she did for her husband hurt her because she had to relive hurtful past events while being a method actress.
Cleeton talked about her upcoming book House on the Biscayne Bay, a dual-timeline book in which the past and present intersect in a gothic house, and how she had to do research for both of the time periods it is set in. She also explained how hard it is for a historical fiction author not to use modern phrases because the brain sometimes automatically inputs them.
A cute and exciting thing that Knight said she learned through research, which she tied into one of her books, was that Queen Elizabeth had a Keeper of the Queen’s Corgis. Because Knight is obsessed with dogs, she dove into writing a story about the queen, the Keeper of the Corgis, and the Corgi herself from the Corgi’s point of view. That book is called The Queen’s Faithful Companion and will be out this year.
It was also very cool to hear how Denny S Bryce had worked toward being a full-time writer, which is her fourth career, and that she loves it. She said that even though it has its bad days sometimes, it is a life she has always wanted. She used to be a professional dancer and through her other careers she wrote fan fiction to relax, now writing her own stories is what she spends most of her time doing.
Thank you, Fountain Books, for organizing this cute and insightful event.
I had such a great few days in Chicago at Let’s Just Write! This was a very honest conference with very respectable people. The last panel was absolutely amazing because we obtained a real, hard look at the industry. During this conference, I connected closely with more people than I have at other conferences. And the best part is that most of these people are close to home for me! My favorite thing at this conference was getting kicked out of the dining room because two other people and I were talking well past hours, even after everyone had already left. That conversation was amazing. I learned so much. We discussed generational differences, culture, media, and how everything ties together.
I love this community so much that it’s hard to explain. Being able to discuss everything in life back and forth and deeply is such a win for me and something I have always craved. There was not a single person at this conference that I ran into who wasn’t respectful, caring, and empathetic. It was great to learn I can be respected for my mind and me as a person and it was great to be surrounded by people who just want to help make the world a better place and who love to write.
The organization also did amazing with the structure of this conference. You could tell they really cared and wanted to keep us all together. There were only two panels that were not master classes each other, which was great because then, during meals, we were able to discuss what someone may have missed that was important. Also, by the end of the conference, we were comfortable enough to have lunch with other people outside of the hotel after having been with them nonstop for multiple days. Not only that, but we discussed topics that I had never thought to dive into before, like personal essays, I finally took a class on back blurbs, which I have been looking for, and learned more about social media.
I am very thankful that I went to this conference and cherish the friendships and memories that came from it. It is amazing what can happen in just a few days!
This year was the first time my husband attended a writing conference with me! He arrived the day after it started and definitely left an impression, at least on my heart.
This is the third conference I have attended and it was vastly different than any of the others. This conference was not just for writers but also for readers, which made it so much more intimate and cute. It was also the smallest conference I have been to so far!
Some of the amazing activities that they provided was a Murder Mystery Event! You can see above that my husband came dressed for the party just like he had for the pajama party. Along with those two events, where the authors participated greatly to entertain readers, they had a bestie night, author lunches, alone time, and a signing event where my husband and I bought so many books. The authors’ participation really had our appreciation and love for them growing.
This conference was also right on the ocean, so I had my first experience with the tide, which was terrifying!! I didn’t really understand or know how the ocean could be so close to the hotel in the morning and then crawl so far out at night. It definitely made me more terrified of the ocean.
But anyway, this conference was such an eye-opener. We learned so many things about relations and just how feeing writing can be in general. Honestly, I came away from this realizing that I can be more of who I am than I already am. I can fully explore myself and the real me without being afraid. I can finally welcome my true self to the world.
With that, expect our writing and business to not take a turn but to branch off. The branches later will be called Kasverse in the Dark and Lockdrest in the Dark. Those stories will still take place in our universes but the stories will be more adult themed. There will also be another branch later that we will be calling Kasverse After Dark and Lockrest After Dark, where I will be putting stories you cannot find elsewhere that are a little too mature for the eyes.
After this conference, I signed up for two more conferences I will be attending this year on top of the two I have already signed up for. One will be to train me to write our ‘In the Dark’ and ‘After Dark’ pieces of our universes correctly.
I have many more pictures and a video posted on my social media accounts if you want to check out more that this amazing conference had to offer. I am very thankful for all the authors, writers, readers, and staff who put this amazing event on for us. It gave us many memories, friends, and helped us make life-changing decisions in order to grow.
I attended a panel event hosted by Loyalty Bookstore with the authors KJ Charles, T. Kingfisher, Malka Older, and Martha Wells that I thoroughly enjoyed.
The theme of this panel centered around comfort reads and how they are important at trying times, like how they are now with everything going on in our world.
Mostly everyone agreed that how to gain comfort in a book is by earning it so that the comfort is grounded.
Martha Wells described comfort in knowing that life can be put back together. She said that there is no comfort without discomfort. She loves when there is bad going on outside for a character but comfort going on within. For her, happy endings are harder to do than bad ones because putting things back together after tearing them apart is the hard part. She loves mystery because she expects solutions at the end of the story and for everything to be set right. The Rivers of London Series is her favorite comfort read because it brings order to chaos compassionately and reasonably, which is what she looks for.
Malka Older said that when you encounter a comfort read, it is nice knowing that a good thing will happen at the end because it puts the reader in a good place. She believes that there needs to be potential for justice and that the reader needs to be with someone competent so that way the main character doesn’t stress the reader out.
It was interesting because then everyone built off the topic of competence. Apparently, there is even a thing called competence porn, which is when many characters are component and accomplishing difficult tasks with great aptitude.
T. Kingfisher is one of the ones who added to that conversation in saying that it is comforting to know that terrible things are happening, but as a reader, you know you are with a character that can deal with it. One of the things they love in books is knowing that they can relate to what bad things are going on. She writes mainly horror and prefers horror with happy endings otherwise she feels like she went through everything for no reason. For them, when they write horror, they always write it in the first person to bring the horror closer to the reader, and for dark fantasy, they write in the third person.
One of the very interesting things that T. Kingfisher pointed out was that the horror section at Barnes N Noble changes to reflect what is going on in society. It grows when more bad things happen because people are looking to relate to the moment and looking for comfort in seeing people getting out of the bad. There was a time when the horror section was even smaller than the western section because not much was going on in the world, but now, it has grown a lot bigger.
KJ Charles agrees that horror is sought to comfort and find happy resolutions. Lately, she has been reading Deep Sea Horror after the recent submarine incident. But that comfort can be taken away if the story is labeled wrong. She described it by opening a book expecting it to be a rom-com, but then encountering it being serious, and one’s taste buds are all wrong for it. It is also interesting that to her horror is romance’s evil twin because they do the same thing by emotionally messing with someone. T. Kingfisher added that horror and romance are the only two genres defined by how they make you feel.
This panel held a fascinating conversation, which I enjoyed and was happy to listen to. Thank you, Loyalty Bookstores.
I was able to attend an event hosted by Mysterious Galaxy, where David Ferraro, the author of The Alchemy of Moonlight, talked to Devin Greenlee about his newest release, Evergreen.
It was a cute conversation, and how both authors interacted made me feel like I was in a coffee shop, sitting in while they conversed.
Evergreen is a retelling of Rapunzel. During the conversation, Devin discussed how hard it was to decide how much to drift from the real story, but he feels he gave the best of all worlds. Without giving any spoilers, it is 75% romance, and then the whole story takes a turn.
Devin is known for writing books in six weeks; once, he even wrote a book in eleven days, although it was a mess. After he wrote this book, he was ready to self-publish it, but one of his friends convinced him to go the traditional route and find an agent, which worked!
Devin Greenlee expressed how he felt writing has been a part of his life and gave some cute stories about his journey with writing. One was how he combined efforts in middle school with a friend who loved manga, and they then created something together.
Devin Greenlee went on to explain how when he was growing up, he craved queer books, and the only one he found for the longest time was Rainbow Boys by Alex Sanchez. It made him sad how hard it was to find books he could identify with, so he decided to write what he couldn’t find when he got older. He hates how now queer books are being taken away and believes that adults need to give as much info as possible to guide lgbtqia+ kids through situations and expresses how he doesn’t get it because they will find that information anyway.
He lastly went into the process of how he writes books. Interestingly, he has a song playlist he has been working on for fifteen years that is ten hours long that he uses not just for writing but also for relaxing and sleeping. He also writes in waves. At first, he writes out the dialogue and the bare bones, and then he will go in and add the more flowy prose and emotions.
This was a very insightful conversation with many thanks to Mysterious Galaxy!
The Ripped Bodice bookstore hosted an event panel with three authors, Jennifer Mathieu, Nadia Mikail, and Linda Cheng, with the interviewer Amanda McCrina to talk about their romances that circled the theme of finding love in hopeless times. All three of their books are not just romances but a commentary on the world we all live in.
Linda Cheng wrote Gorgeous Gruesome Faces, an awesome genre blend of sapphic romance, Asian horror, and K-pop. Linda explained that writing it was a cathartic experience that helped her see the light during the dark time of covid. She chose to combine horror and romance because they are two of her favorite genres and both are about deep visceral feelings where one can really get into the core of a character when they are introduced to vulnerability.
Linda set K-pop as the background of this novel because she grew up in Taiwan during the hype and rise of pop. She loved seeing it become a worldwide phenomenon and listened to pop during the pandemic to feel better. She also loves survival shows and said that there is so much stuff underneath the surface of the K-pop industry with so much darkness to be explored, so she thought it was the perfect setting for a horror story.
Nadia Mikail who wrote At the End of the World talked about how her book was a pandemic baby. That she started writing it right before the pandemic because she was studying overseas and really missed her family. Once covid hit, she didn’t know when she would see her family again so she started writing this book where all the scary things flowed into it subconsciously. For example: being estranged from an older sister and the world ending. It is set during an asteroid collision with Earth. She wanted to place it there because she wanted to write an end-of-the-world story because it is during the end of the world when one thinks about what is really important to them. She stated that she knows that survival corrupts some people and that she wanted to dive into what a character would do when it came to thinking about what is important to them and what they are going to keep living for.
In Nadia’s novel, her main driving relationship is between the main character and her sister. The romantic love story was the easiest for her to write but the hardest was between the sisters because she had a sister growing up and knows how complex a relationship can be between siblings.
Jennifer Mathieu who wrote Down Came the Rain said it was dedicated to her friend who wanted her to write a YA about climate change. She went on to tell about how she lived during Hurricane Harvey in Houston where she knew twenty-five people whose houses were flooded. It was very traumatic for her and she wanted to make sense of all of it, so she began writing. During the floods, there was a time when it didn’t look like they were going to go back to the school where she taught and that they were going to have to share space with another high school. That didn’t happen, but it did happen to a different high school in the suburbs. Her book is about finding love when two high schools had to share space and combine during Hurricane Harvey. It dives into climate change because while living in Houston they have had to deal with so many different events involving the climate and things their homes are not set up for. She knows people whose homes have flooded in the span of two years and was there during the Texas Freeze. She feels like Houston is speaking as a character trying to tell people climate change is happening. She loves living there and loves the diversity so this book is her love letter to the city. She hopes that people who don’t have a connection to her part of the world can look at their communities after reading it and that this book can act as a window or a mirror to spark conversation.
This was a very deep interview panel that I am thankful The Ripped Bodice could provide us.
I attended an event with Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore discussing The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport by Samit Basu.
First off, it was cute how much Samit loved the book that the interviewer Valerie Valdes wrote, which was Where Peace is Lost. After congratulating her and telling her it was amazing, he went on to explain that when the characters in her book first met, he knew the ending he wanted. And that meant a lot to him because it formed the central framing to where he questioned whether everything that was happening would affect what he wanted to happen at the end. I thought it was really cool that he took the time out of his interview to talk about her book that it was obvious he looked up to it.
When Samit was asked where he got the idea for his book, he explained that the idea had come from Aladdin. He felt that Aladdin was a fable that had no home and needed one and thought it had good relatability because it was known throughout the world. The biggest prompter for him to want to write his own story influenced by Aladdin was because he always had a problem with the original story. He didn’t like the wishes Aladdin made and didn’t like the character’s actions. He didn’t care for how Aladdin lied, stole, and cheated, and especially how he didn’t care about his city. He wanted all of that fixed. He wanted to see what would happen if Aladdin actually cared about where he came from, so he used the city where he grew up to inspire the city in the book.
To write a story, Samit explained he starts with a very complicated and detailed plan but is well aware that his plan will change. And that when it does, it means the book is talking back to him, and what he is doing is working. His novel is about a revolution where he wanted to use robots. He wanted to explore how robots could fit into society, their feelings, what drives them, and the bonds they make.
Apparently, what he did with the robots worked because he found them to be the most relatable as told by readers. Valerie added that she believes it is because it is a normal human impulse to side with the underdogs, which is what she was doing when she read it. She expressed multiple times how much she loved the robots.
Samit has some NDAs, but he did say he is waiting for a few things to fall into place regarding his writing and career. Valerie said that she is planning a sequel to her book, Where Peace is Lost. She is just waiting to see how many people buy that first book first.
The discussion between these two, especially their in-depth talk about robots across genres and media, was heartwarming. Thank you, Mysterious Galaxy, for the great event.
Regaining Lost Aspects: Mind and Soul 