As always, General Wendy took her red pen to this book, though it will be noted that one can never write enough Aunt Florence to satisfy her. Thanks for answering my urgent pleas for help. (Again.)
My quilting consultant was the delightful Jeanne, who once casually mentioned quilting in an email to me and had no idea that this offhand comment would spark my imagination. This is a cautionary tale: be careful what you say to your writer friends, lest they come back around six months later and demand to know everything there is to know about quilting.
A tip of the hat to anyone who guesses the historical romance on Cam’s Kindle. Hint: if you follow me on Twitter, you will have seen me sing the praises of a particular series, and beg the author for more.
Keith gets his love of budgeting from me. I know that’s random. But I really love budgeting.
Full Catastrophe Living is a real book, by Jon Kabat-Zinn. The app is also real. (Four weeks is as long as I’ve lasted, but someday . . . someday . . .)
There may have been a pizza place in El Sobrante (or possibly San Pablo) where the lads from Green Day were occasionally sighted. Not that I know anything about that. Or that I have any old concert shirts banging about. Um.
Regarding how you make a quilt with a signature in it, the artist had this to say: “Grief makes doing crazy, impossible things necessary and easy.” You can find more about the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt here: http://www.aidsquilt.org. There are a lot of panels. At least one of them has a signature.
I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to a lot of people for encouraging me to write this series when I wasn’t sure anyone would want to read interconnected queer romance novels with a serial killer subplot.
First, I’m pretty sure this entire project can be traced back to the paper bags of mass market paperbacks traded between the members of my family throughout my childhood. Mingled romances and murder mysteries, ever-present in the trunks of cars, or falling over in entryways, long before I was old enough to actually read them. (If it wasn’t for all the queer, my grandma would love this series.)
Another thing that weaseled its way into my brain is a podcast episode by EE Ottoman called “Six Things,” about the things they would like to see in romance. The entire podcast is magnificent, but I was particularly inspired by a portion in the middle about seeing a broader representation of queer community in queer-centric romance.
In a sense, this series is my answer to that. My grateful thanks to EE for the nudge. The episode can be found here: https://acosmistmachine.com/2015/04/15/six-things.)
A few of the usual folks were more specific in their nudges. Thanks to Wendy, Judith, Roan Parrish, Alexis Hall, J.R. Gray, Ellen Dunn, and any number of other folks who raised their hands and said, “I’d read that!” More thanks to Sarah Lyons and May Peterson, who shepherded these books (and their author) through an often obscure publishing process, and to Alex Whitehall for ensuring I look way smarter than I actually am (and that I know how to use commas).
Most of this series was written at the Columbia College Library, where my fellow library-goers tolerated my mad seated-dancing to whatever Pandora happened to be playing in my ears. (I have somehow programmed the Pentatonix station to play a lot of Linkin Park. Yes, it’s as awesome as it sounds.) And this list would not be complete without noting my delighted appreciation for the folks at my kid’s preschool, who made sure she was safe and fed and happy while I scribbled as quickly as my little fingers would go. I couldn’t have written five books in five months without knowing the kid was being well loved elsewhere.
I also want to clumsily say, here, at the end, that these books were fun to write, and they were also painful. They made me think of all the ways we are not safe, not even from each other. Far more than that, they made me search for the strength and courage and compassion that I have seen and experienced in my community.
We’re still fighting. In some places we’re still fighting for our lives every day.
These books are fiction, and they’re meant to make you laugh, cringe, maybe even cry, because anything that makes you laugh should also be able to twist that part of you until you remember that shit hurts sometimes, too. But if I’ve done my job right, they should make you think a little, as well. About your communities, the intersections that make up your identity, and how we’re all connected to each other. Real life ain’t a soap opera, but you can be damn sure that you and I are connected, however tenuously.
Sometimes even when we don’t want to be. Ahem. We may see Merin again one of these days. I’m not making any promises, but . . .
Queers of La Vista
Gays of Our Lives
The Butch and the Beautiful
The Queer and the Restless
One Life to Lose
Scientific Method Universe
Catalysts
Unexpected Gifts
Take Three Breaths
Breaking Down
Roller Coasters
The Boyfriends Tie the Knot
The Honeymoon
Extremes
The New Born Year
Threshold of the Year
Surrender the Past
The Library, Volume 1
Fairy Tales
The Spinner, the Shepherd, and the Leading Man
The Real Life Build
Take the Leap
The Home Series
Going Home
Home Free
Close to Home
Home for the Holidays
Little Red and the Big Bad
Serial One
Serial Two
The Erotic Gym: Training Mac
The Ghost in the Penthouse
Kris Ripper lives in the great state of California and hails from the San Francisco Bay Area. Kris shares a converted garage with a toddler, can do two pull-ups in a row, and can write backwards. (No, really.) Kris is genderqueer and prefers the z-based pronouns because they’re freaking sweet. Ze has been writing fiction since ze learned how to write, and boring zir stuffed animals with stories long before that.
Website: krisripper.com
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