K.E. Skedgell

QUILTBAG. What does that mean? Here's the definition according to the Queer Dictionary : QUILTBAG is an acronym. It stands for Queer/Questioning, Undecided, Intersex, Lesbian, Transgender/Transsexual, Bisexual, Allied/Asexual, Gay/Genderqueer. It is meant to be a more inclusive term than GLBT/LGBT and to be more pronounceable (and memorable) than some of the other variations or extensions on the GLBT/LGBT abbreviation. When I first came across this acronym, I thought, what the hell does QUILTBAG mean? It can't mean a bag made out of a quilt, because, you know, silly me, that's the first thing that popped into my mind. So I looked it up and it all made sense to me. The acronym itself is befitting, like a quilt it represents patches of the different aspects of queer life, all wrapped up into one acronym like a bag. The representation of queer folks in entertainment has grown in the last several years as the world becomes more accepting: from books to TV and mo...

A s of last night, I could finally say, I had completed the first draft of the rewrite of my novel! Pretty exciting stuff for me. Even though the original intent was to rewrite the entirety of the ancient first draft, it just isn't going to happen in one book. It is going to have to be split into two. Which is okay. As long as the first sells. But I'm getting way ahead of myself here. At 189,600 words, the story is too long according to publishing standards for a first time author. There are those, like Elizabeth Kostova (I'll use her as an example since her novel is also based on Vlad the Impaler), whose first time novel— The Historian —clocked out at over 200,000 words and got a pretty good chunk of change for an advance, say, the seven figure range. That doesn't mean it'll happen to me. I'm pretty sure it won't, no matter how much I fantasize over it. My chances of getting published only increase with a smaller word count. Even at 150,000 words, whic...

S o I took a break from writing yesterday because I had the itch to draw something, but when I got pencil in hand and paper on desk, I couldn't get my hand to draw what my mind was seeing. Hate that! I wanted to draw this image of my character Izsák, servant boy to my main character Vlad, sitting in a window seat gazing through the window with a leg bent upon the seat of the bench and his foot tucked beneath his other leg, holding onto a pillow. I can still see it in my mind, but I'm so out of practice with drawing the human form, which used to come so easily, that I couldn't get the position right. I drew comic book characters back in the day, all the time, and that was how I got used to drawing the human form in many positions. Nope, couldn't do it today. I made several sketches trying to get it right but I gave up and went to trying to draw his face. Key word, trying . Eventually, though, I hit the jackpot, sort of, and came up with this profile sketch: Izsák, ...