Do you remember that scene in the Breakfast Club when Anthony Michael Hall’s character is writing the personal essay assigned by Mr. Vernon? Who am I? Who am I? I – am a walrus.

After this past September’s annual Banned Books Week, I’ve been thinking about the vulnerable position LGBTQ writers are increasingly finding themselves in. Recently, the Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) reported that half of the top ten books challenged in 2016 had LGBTQ themes. Five of the top ten books.

My friend Andrew writes stories about repressed English professors trapped in loveless marriages. Everyone—including his coldhearted wife—thinks they’re about him.

I smiled at the challenge. A ranger friend from Fort Union National Monument trusted my acting.  He wished me to play a career soldier, a corporal in the cavalry. He had faith I could convince others I was a different gender from a different age.

Who would have predicted that the New York Times could bring so much excitement into my life!

This time of year the summer gets thick with memories like fruit ripening. I didn’t go out to Lake Johanna to swim this year. Usually I paddle around with cries and laughter of kids around me and drive home still wet with my windows open, feeling the wind in my hair.

Every storyteller usually has some snippets of truth from their own life, and those around them weaved into their novel. As a tomboy growing up in Central Illinois, who wrote poetry and stories in secret, I never dreamed I’d ever be published.

So, what does an author do on the days she has the attention span of a gnat on crack, a myriad of visiting ghosts, and four – count ‘em – four attention-seeking dogs crawling under her desk, scratching her legs, and begging to be cuddled?

Who could have predicted how Facebook would change the world, connect the planet, and bridge the gaps of creed, culture, and civilization?

Lesbian sheroes in herstorical fiction are viewed with suspicion. How, critics ask, can an author know what lesbians could get away with in times past with only a few first-person records available?