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I read a lot.
This year, I'm at 130+ novels or novellas, 60+ comics or graphic novels, and 40,000 pages across mediums. (Thanks, covid, I guess.)
But I'm not reading just anything — rarely bestsellers, or whatever's trendy. I spend hours each week hunting and curating. Exactly two-thirds of my current reads center queer characters, or are written by queer authors, or both. Many of the others have something resonant and weird about them that feels queer, even if there's not exactly on-the-page gay.
And that's probably the only reason I read so much: I spent years figuring out where to find queer fiction, and now that I've found it I have a lot of catching up to do.
So, this blog is a bit of an attempt to platform some light reviews of queer speculative fiction. For those unfamiliar, that's fiction, across genres, that asks “what if?” and envisions the answers, instead of dealing in things as they are. Think the worldbreaking — apocalypses, alien invasions, secondary worlds, branching histories — and the intimate — body swaps, true names, hauntings.
I plan to prioritize new-releases with non-binary and/or trans authors and stories, but also trawl through a long backlist of queer classics.
I'm still figuring out the format. You'll probably see quick reviews of this and that, longer essays on trends and peculiarities, the occasional year-in-review post. Still working on getting consistent ARC access. I might dip across mediums into short fiction, video games, and films. (Weigh in if you'd like to see something specific.)
At any rate, seeya around.
-Petrin
I'm a data journalist and media educator based in the Pacific Northwest. Follow what I'm reading live on Storygraph. You can subscribe to this blog via email or via the Fediverse @stetting@write.as. Find me at @petrinkae on Twitter or on Mastodon.