Krista D. Ball's Blog, page 17

People can change

With the tragic suicides of the young gay men in the US over the last several weeks, I feel that I need to speak up about my own history and choices in life. For people who know me, work with me remotely, or follow my blog/Facebook fan page/Twitter/blog tour posts, or even my work, you know that I'm a pro-choice, pro-equal rights kinda gal.

Former co-workers have seen me rip strips out of volunteers who make gay jokes or made comments about limiting the rights of "the gays." I write different sexual orientations into my work so that different peoples are represented in an everyday light. I don't vote for people who are against equality. So, it might come as a surprised that a good part of my life was spent thinking gay = sin.

I'll give everyone a minute to recover.

I grew up in an evangelical community where pastors taught me that people chose to be gay, just like you choose to smoke. God does not hate gays, of course, but he hates the way they live. We should never support their sins.

I was young and, frankly, didn't know any better. That's what I was taught. It wasn't until university that I met my first openly gay person. Somehow, we became friends. He would always challenge my beliefs and I'd simply spout what I was taught, but I couldn't come up with my own answer as to why he was a sinner other than "God says so."

As life when on, I came into contact with more GLBT folks who just had the same everyday lives as I did. They worried about their waistline, their jobs, their partners. And then, they'd talk about the harassment they'd receive.

I remember the moment where it all changed for me. A woman I knew talked about how her and her partner had spent their entire savings on a lawyer to keep their foster child. The social worker found out that they were lesbians and yanked an 8 year old child from them, a child that they had raised since infancy. I was so angry.

Do you know what she said back to me? "You're that kind of person, too."

In that moment, I saw her as a person first, and not a lesbian. And I saw myself for what I truly was and I did not like it.

That happened a long time ago, but I still remember the lesson I learned. I've come to believe that most of the hatred towards sexual orientation is simply a lack of exposure to different kinds of people. It is easy to fear and hate a stranger. It's a lot harder when it's someone you know.

Why am I saying this? It was due to courageous GLBT people that befriended me, challenged me, and answered my questions that I was able to grow as a person. If it wasn't for those brave people, I might not have been shoved to move past what I was taught as a child. I could be a person of hate today.

To Jim, Randy, Sandra, I say thank you.

To those struggling right now with harassment, bullying, and mistreatment, I say people can change. I did.

Starring me! Only way cooler.

In daily life, I get asked a lot if I write "me" as the main character. The gut reaction is to shout of course not! God, can you imagine?

I've been thinking about it more lately and I realized that I do write me as the main character. Or, rather, a part of me. In fact, I think all of the different portions that make me -me- are somewhere in each of my characters. After all, I'm not a one-dimensional personality. I have dominated aspects of me (taking charge, bossing people around, organizing p...

Drum Roll – New Book Review site

I've been getting book review requests lately, due to my resolution to review some small press and self-published books, magazines, anthologies, etc. I've decided to keep the blog over here more for my authorly life (is that even a word??) and set up a blog spot address for the reviews.

Announcing…Sleepless eReader! http://sleeplessereader.blogspot.com/ A review site for all things eBooks! I plan to review all genres except horror (I just can't read it…I either get nightmares or dry heaves)...

Steven Spielberg or Joss Whedon?

Who would you rather be – the Spielberg of books, or the Whedon of the speculative fiction world? (Joss Whedon is the creator of Firefly, Buffy, Angel, Dr Horrible's Sing Along Blog, Dollhouse…)

My dream is to be the Joss Whedon. I know that my work doesn't have mass appeal. I'm ok with that. It's a bit twisted, odd-center, different.

People don't generally see Spielberg movies just because they are Spielberg movies. They recognize the name and assume that they will be good. Whereas fans of...

Are you NaNo'ing this year?

Once again, I'm gearing up for NaNo.

(Have no idea what I'm talking about? National Novel Writing Month – NaNoWriMo, NaNo for short – is an annual writing challenge to pull off 50,000 words of fiction in the month of November).

This year, I'm doing short projects. My goal? Six short length projects.

My first attempt at a romance. Why? Because I like a challenge (for me, romance is the hardest genre to write). Also, I keep being "accused" of being a romance & erotica author because I hang out...

Ooo shiny blog things!

I managed to steal a few moments of The Engineer's time from world domination to get a few blog updates. If you see to the left, I have made the book covers larger so that you don't need a magnifying glass to see them [image error] Also, when you click on them, they go to buy pages for all of your impulse purchasing needs. I've also added Flying Kite, Crashing Ship's book cover with a link to the teaser.

The "tear out" to the left will be fixed on the weekend to go to the "published works" page on the...

No Time? No Problem!

Several years ago, I read this life-changing book called, "I'd Rather be Writing." Marcia Golub talked about my life, how busy it was, how unstable and inconsistent, and how impossible writing had become. Then, she told me how to make it work.

Skip forward many years and here I am. I'm still busy, with an unstable and inconsistent schedule, and bemoaning how impossible it is to write…and I'm writing.

One of the key things in those early days was learning to write anywhere. Also, that writing...

Drumroll…The Winners Are…

The Grand Prize of 1 copy of Harvest Moon and a copy of Wicca Dog goes to

Lizzy!

And, because I'm nice and fuzzy feeling about having Harvest Moon release early, I've decided to give away 3 more copies of Wicca Dog to:

Zita

Seriousreader

D.Septer

Thank you to everyone to stopped by and entered. It was great having you and I hope you stick around. On occasion, I'm funny. Very rarely, I can even be insightful (admittedly, I'm usually drunk those nights).

Congratz winners!

Harvest Moon Launches!

..and it couldn't have been a crazier time.

Harvest Moon launches on Friday, just as I was leaving for the weekend. Also, this weekend happens to be BlogFest 2010. And, to top it off, my web guru hurt himself so can't update my website and blog.

So, I apologize for the mess over the next week while I sort out updating all of the buy links and moving covers around on the website. At least I managed to update all of my publications over on the website (www.kristadball.com), though I admit that I ...

Blogfest 2010 Contest!

[image error] I am one of the participating blogs for Blogfest 2010. I'm really excited because, as it happens, Harvest Moon is set to release earlier than usual.

So, I'm giving away a free copy of Harvest Moon AND The Amazing Transformation of Wicca Dog in any digital format that you'd like, including epub and kindle. On the 12th, I'll have my step-kids put everyone's name in a hat and pull out the winner…with the help of a corgi, of course. (Dogs are always trust-worthy).

Contest rules? Simple. Just...