Andi Marquette's Blog: Andi Land

HI, all.

Hope everybody made the best they could out of the holiday season.

I think I might actually be more fortunate than a lot of people out there, since for the past 15 years or so, the vast majority of my friends are folx who live at great distances from me, and we’ve spent most of our time communicating via email, text, phone, snail mail, and other messaging services for years. So when the pandemic really cranked up, I didn’t miss “hanging out with my friends” because they’re all els...

Hi, friends–

Andrea Grimes, journalist and columnist extraordinaire, just did a piece at Dame Magazine titled “This is How to Survive the Holidays.” Part of that is having boundaries and not buying into the “cancel culture” bullshit that right-wingers are now slinging around if you deign to avoid your family because you don’t want put up with their toxicity.

This is particularly palpable this time of year because of all the holiday stuff going on, and all the expectations that you’ll s...

So, I have realized that I am under an intense amount of stress and I am taking steps to address that and figure out how to bring my levels down because stress can make you sick in a lot of different ways and could eventually kill you.

Everybody is stressed. I get that. Some people are better at dealing with it, and unfortunately, I used to be one of those people but I’ve sort of backslid and now I’m trying to reclaim some zen for myself. The last 2 years have been years of major change ...

And for those of you who commemorate/acknowledge, Días de los Muertos, which is more my jam because I like throwing props to the departed.

Regardless, hope you had a safe and fun Halloween. And in case you wanted some Halloween music to keep on rockin’, I made a playlist. You can check it out on Spotify.

Also, here’s another cool Halloween playlist on Spotify via a Twitter acquaintance! So go get your groove on!

Hope you’ve been having a Happy Halloween.

Hey, friends–

I was talking to a friend the other day. Both of us are vaxxed and we both continue to mask up when we have to leave the safety of our caves and my friend said: “COVID’s with us from here on out. People need to get used to it.”

I’ve been thinking that since the first year of this latest pandemic — yeah, LATEST. Because pandemics are part of human history (see this timeline), and, because humans can also be colossal dicks, there have always been anti-vaxxers and conspiracy the...

HI, friends!

Hope everybody is doing well (or as well as can be). Here are 10 things to maybe get your mind off the hellscape all over the place. There can still be good in the world. Sometimes you just have to look a little harder.

1. Okay, so over at BoredPanda there is a super-cool article with photos about a French artist who creates 3-D art on icky/boring urban structures. Pierrot (Scaf) does some awesome work. Check it out. Another cool element he incorporates into his art before he ...

HI PEEPS.

omg I have a confession to make. Here it is: I don’t read much romance. And by that, I mean I probably read maybe 1-2 of those a year, but if I’m being really honest, I don’t think I’ve read a romance novel since the end of 2019. (having said that, I am currently reading a cute queer graphic novel romance)

I like writing romance (when I’m writing lol; see last week’s post), but as I’ve gotten older, I find it’s not the most interesting thing about characters or narratives or plot arcs or...

So y’all know that the pandemic basically derailed writing in my world. Which is fine; a lot of other things took priority. Like, for example, staying alive.

[lol some of you no doubt have no idea who these dudes are or the year this song was released…anyway, here’s the direct YouTube link in case anything disembeds.]

I tend not to kick myself over not writing because whatever, life happens and what are you gonna do?

I have, however, been doing a bit of writing here and there, and I feel...

Hi, friends–quick post tonight; I’ll probably do a longer one in a few days.

Just wanted to remind people that Hurricane Ida hit the Gulf Coast really super hard including communities like Houma (HOME-uh) in Louisiana.

Here are links to organizations that are helping on the ground; please consider donating if you can; spreading the word helps, too. Let’s not forget that people will be without power for weeks and another storm is bearing down on the area.

Foodtank has links to orgs you probably didn...

So. Look. There are lots of things about publishing and editing and writing that I still don’t know even though I’ve been doing all of that for…um…over 20 years. YES I’M OLDER. WHATEVER. AND I AM CRANKY ABOUT THIS BOOK. DOUBLE WHATEVER.

And I guess I shouldn’t be surprised when I read a book published by one of the big houses that leaves me wondering “how the hell did this even get accepted in the first place?” because well, shit gets through. That’s the nature of the game. And maybe somebody...