personal

  • National Coming Out Day 2019: An Announcement

    This post is a bit personal, and is probably the sort of thing I would ordinarily share on my Dreamwidth rather than here, but since I’ve been so open about my identity on my social media profiles and on this website for so long, I wanted to share it here so that everyone would see it. Five years ago on National Coming Out Day, a friend of mine came out…

  • Status Update

    It’s been a while since I’ve posted on here, so I wanted to give you all an update on what’s new with me. In April, I met with my endocrinologist and we made some changes to my medication that have helped a lot with controlling my seizures and minimizing the accompanying brain fog. This helped me get out of the slump I’d been stuck in since February—I’ve had a much…

  • Everything you wanted to know about Lyssa but were afraid to ask

    After procrastinating on it for quite some time, I’ve decided to post a little bit of an FAQ about myself so that if you see me mentioning something on social media you won’t be like, “WTF is she talking about?” Writing & Book Stuff Q: Who designs your book covers? Most of my covers are created by the ever-awesome Qamber Designs. The exceptions are Magic at Midnight, which was designed…

  • November is on my list

    At this point I’ve pretty much decided that November is the worst month in the calendar. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, I’m sure you’ve noticed that this November has been particularly crappy for the usual world-event reasons. But it seems like November really had it in for me on a personal level this year. It actually started on October 29, when I was supposed to go to a Halloween party…

  • #NationalComingOutDay reflections and a way to give back

    Two years ago on National Coming Out Day, a friend of mine came out as ace. The courage he showed in doing so made me re-evaluate my own decision to stay in the closet, something I’d done since college, and is what ultimately inspired me to be public and vocal about my identity, and to work for ace representation in fiction. Coming out isn’t a one-time thing, though. There are…

  • An adventurous trip

    I just got back from a week-ish long trip to California. I had a great time, especially because I got to meet up with not one, but two author friends! It was a wonderful treat. First, I got to see the fabulous T. Damon… I actually went to college with T., many, many years ago (Okay, maybe not that many, haha), but I hadn’t seen her in person since we…

  • Why indie?

    This is a post I’ve been wanting to write for a long while. I’ve thought about it time and again in discussions with other authors, with friends and family, and with readers. It’s about why I decided to go indie for my first YA series, Fourth World—consciously, from the beginning, without even attempting to find an agent or work with a traditional Big Five publisher. Even with the explosion of indie…

  • End of November progress report

    November was a month of ups and downs for me. Like I mentioned in my last post, it’s always a hectic month with my birthday and the holidays, and this year I knew it was going to be even more crazy because I was having a friend come and stay with me for several days right before Thanksgiving. What I didn’t bargain for was an unexpected stress: my oldest dog becoming…