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Well, sometimes I worry that my whole life will be based about what's comfortable and easy. I'll care too much about what makes me feel good to ever really reach for anything. And then I worry that even if I do, I won't succeed.

No wonder I want to be Robert Mitchum: big, strong, super-cool, with those Freon eyes of his. That's who I was pretending to be a minute ago - Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past. - Ben

Ya gots to work with what you gots to work with.

Context is everything in both narrative and real life, and while the accusation is never that these creators deliberately set out to discriminate against gay and female characters, the unavoidable implication is that they should have known better than to add to the sum total of those stories which, en masse, do exactly that. And if the listmakers can identify the trend so thoroughly _ if, despite all the individual qualifications, protests and contextualisations of the authors, these problems can still be said to exist _ then the onus, however disconnected from the work of any one individual, nonetheless falls to those individuals, in their role as cultural creators, to acknowledge the problem; to do better next time; perhaps even to apologise. This last is a particular sticking point. By and large, human beings tend not to volunteer apologies for things they perceive to be the fault of other people, for the simple reason that apology connotes guilt, and how can we feel guilty _ or rather, why should we _ if we__e not the ones at fault? But while we might argue over who broke a vase, the vase itself is still broken, and will remain so, its shards ground into the carpet, until someone decides to clean it up.Blog Post: Love Team Freezer

As a fantasist, I well understand the power of escapism, particularly as relates to romance. But when so many stories aimed at the same audience all trumpet the same message _ And Lo! There shall be Two Hot Boys, one of them your Heart__ Intended, the other a vain Pretender who is also hot and with whom you shall have guilty makeouts before settling down with your One True Love _ I am inclined to stop viewing the situation as benign and start wondering why, for instance, the heroines in these stories are only ever given a powerful, magical destiny of great importance to the entire world so long as fulfilling it requires male protection, guidance and companionship, and which comes to an end just as soon as they settle their inevitable differences with said swain and start kissing.I mean to invoke is something of the danger of mob rule, only applied to narrative and culture. Viz: that the comparative harmlessness of individuals does not prevent them from causing harm en masse. Take any one story with the structure mentioned above, and by itself, there__ no problem. But past a certain point, the numbers begin to tell _ and that poses a tricky question. In the case of actual mobs, you__l frequently find a ringleader, or at least a core set of agitators: belligerent louts who stir up feeling well beyond their ability to contain it. In the case of novels, however, things aren__ so clear cut. Authors tell the stories they want to tell, and even if a number of them choose to write a certain kind of narrative either in isolation or inspired by their fellows, holding any one of them accountable for the total outcome would be like trying to blame an avalanche on a single snowflake. Certainly, we may point at those with the greatest (arguable) influence or expostulate about creative domino effects, but as with the drop that breaks the levee, it is impossible to try and isolate the point at which a cluster of stories became a culture of stories _ or, for that matter, to hold one particular narrative accountable for the whole.

pencils racing across paper, a sound I like." Marisol

The more I write stories for young people, and the more young readers I meet, the more I'm struck by how much kids long to see themselves in stories. To see their identities and perspectives__heir avatars__n the page. Not as issues to be addressed or as icons for social commentary, but simply as people who get to do cool things in amazing worlds. Yes, all the __ssue_ books are great and have a place in literature, but it's a different and wildly joyous gift to find yourself on the pages of an entertainment, experiencing the thrills and chills of a world more adventurous than our own.And when you see that as a writer, you quickly realize that you don't want to be the jerk who says to a young reader, __orry, kid. You don't get to exist in story; you're too different._ You don't want to be part of our present dystopia that tells kids that if they just stopped being who they are they could have a story written about them, too. That's the role of the bad guy in the dystopian stories, right? Given a choice, I'd rather be the storyteller who says every kid can have a chance to star.

In general there should be gay characters in YA because a) surprise, there are gay folks everywhere and b) in my opinion as a father, there__ not a damn thing wrong with my child encountering gay folks in her literature, because see point a).

Whatâ__s going on?â_ Ingrid asked. â__isten, nothing bad today, please.â_ She pulled a chair out and sat down. Faye stared at her and said the words as quickly as she could. â__â__m just going to give it to you straight as I can. Mila is a witch.â_ Ingrid busted out with a laugh. â__ wouldnâ__t call her that,â_ she said. â__hatâ__s a little harsh, isnâ__t it?â_ She poured the juice into her glass and took a drink. â__hat did the brat do this time?â_ She set her glass down.

I__ looking to make a miracle

I remember when I was twenty-five,â_ he said. â__o client comes to you when youâ__re twenty-five. Itâ__s like when you are looking for a doctor. You donâ__t want the new one that just graduated. You donâ__t want the very old one, the one shaking, the one twenty years past his prime. You want the seasoned one who has done it so many times he can do it in his sleep though. Same thing with attorneys.

So much of what people believe makes no sense, Wylie.

Popularity is teenage heroin.

I was diamond on the outside, and I would not break.Inside, though, I was already broken.

Bitterblue had never seen a man naked, and she was curious. She decided the universe owed her a few minutes, just a few, to satisfy her curiosity. So she went to him and knelt, which shut him up.

His question is pretty dangerous for me to try to answer, so I don____t continues to hang out there like the stained underwear at a slumber party that goes unclaimed.

Cass pulls from my embrace, her mind reaching into my heart. Pain, anger, confusion pass through her eyes. My pain. My anger. My confusion. She swallows hard. __ecause?___ecause I traded it all, my heart, my memories, everything. For her.

She smiles and snuggles into me as we wait for our table. I inhale her scent. Vanilla and something else. Something different. Smokey almost. Sexy. It drives me crazy with need and I have to move away while I can.