Molly Ringle's Blog, page 2

My most Halloween-suitable books

First, a quick piece of writing news: I recently finished the first draft of Ballad for Jasmine Town, my next book! It takes place on Eidolonia, the island of fae and witches where Lava Red Feather Blue is set, but you won't need to have read Lava Red Feather Blue to understand it. Each book can be read as a standalone. The manuscript is currently incubating undisturbed for a month or so before I open it up again for revisions, but I will of course have more to tell you about it in the future.

M...

I have friends who are trans or NB. I have friends whose ...

I have friends who are trans or NB. I have friends whose kids are trans or NB. I see their love, vulnerability, tenderness, and patient wisdom. When you defend JKR (or others) when she says trans women aren’t women, you’re casually punching these innocent friends of mine.

And you are not convincing me of your “side of the story” at all. You’re only making me more determined to defend them and to represent them respectfully in my writing.

Yes, I’m a cis woman who uses “women’s spaces.” No, I don’...

Goodreads is out. Storygraph is in.

Couple of announcements:
First, an LJ one. I can no longer access my mollyringwraith journal. I did not lose the password; I am a good password steward and I still had it! But when I tried to get in the other week after hearing it was subject to a security hack, LJ helpfully told me the password was too old and I had to change it. Which you can only do by email verification. And the email never arrived, so probably LJ had a defunct email of mine as the contact. And their FAQ says there is no othe...

It's time to move on from Harry Potter

I often see people mourning what Rowling has done to HP fandom. The fandom meant so much to them, they say; they can’t just stop loving it. Ah, but can’t you? If a friend said that about a problematic ex, wouldn’t you say that wasn’t a healthy outlook?

Look, I get it, about fandom being mega-important. Fandoms have kept me out of despair at various times in my life too. They are precious and wonderful and meaningful. All that said…

HP was mostly over as an active fandom producing fresh canon sev...

Best TV watched in 2021

If you're reading this, congratulations! For seriously, getting through every last day of 2021 calls for a triumphant toast, even it it feels like all you have to show for surviving the year is a heap of empty cheese puff bags. (I honestly ordered my family a case of twelve bags of Barbara's Cheese Puffs as part of our Christmas celebrations, so, no judgment here.)

One of the things I was consistently grateful for throughout the year was the pleasant distraction, the laughter, the swoons, and th...

In the US we call it "fall" rather than "autumn" AND THAT'S FINE.

Now that it's fall in the US, let's examine this little meme. And let's ideally stop sharing it because it's ignorant. I shall explain.

Picture of autumn foliage with text: "UK: We call it autumn from the Latin word autumnus. US: We call it fall because leaves fall down."

You know me, so you know I ran a search on the Oxford English Dictionary. Results:

"Fall" is a very old English word, and "fall"...

Misc. editing tips roundup, vol. 1

Miscellaneous editing tips: a roundup

I think I’ll post these from time to time, as I find it fun, and someone out there might find them helpful. This batch consists of tips that I originally posted as tweets over the past year or so. (My Twitter is here, if you want it.) These came from the year-long editing course I took, as well as the paid editing work that keeps me paging through The Chicago Manual of Style on a regular basis. (Hire me if you need a copyeditor or proofreader! As a painfully...

Benign is a wonderful word

[TW: medical; cancer though ultimately not] Today I’d like to thank the absurd amounts of tea (green, black, and herbal) I drink every day, whose antioxidants have kept me safe another year. I bring this up because on Monday I had a breast biopsy, and have just learned the growth in question is benign—a common noncancerous lesion. All good for the time being. Whew.

I’ve been living under the shadow of this since the beginning of July. No, you don’t have to scroll back—you didn’t miss anything. I...

Is Ula Kana an allegory for COVID? Nope. Although...

In Lava Red Feather Blue, Merrick awakens Larkin (and the destructive faery Ula Kana) in March 2020, unleashing all kinds of mayhem on his country. Given the date, you might wonder: does Ula Kana represent COVID-19?

The short and obvious answer is no, I didn't intend that, nor could I have, given I wrote the entire thing before anyone had heard of COVID. I set the timing as the current year (that is, the year it was during the editing phase) so that it wouldn't seem too dated; end of story. HOWE...

Demi ponderings

I only lately learned we demisexual folk count as LGTBQ+, according to many. Would thus like a word with those who sliced stars off All the Better Part of Me because it wasn't #OwnVoices.

Granted, I'm still not a tall cis bi man, so it's still not OwnVoices that way.

One would also be forgiven for being surprised to hear I'm demi, given the general sex-positivity and/or perviness of my writing and attitude. It confuses me too. But it seems to boil down to "perv on the page and in imagination, de...