If you’re just joining us, I post a weekly writing excerpt on “Rainbow Snippets” https://www.facebook.com/groups/963484217054974 where writers share six lines of one of their (or someone else’s) writing with LGBT characters or themes.

Something a little different this week. Two snippets promoting an anthology I don’t have a story in! “Schoolbooks and Sorcery” ed. by Michael Jones is a fine anthology of Y.A. stories with plenty of LGBT characters. And I DID submit a story, but it didn’t get in. So what does a writer do with a rejected story? Submit it elsewhere and (of course) pull out bits for occasions like this.

These two scenes involve Estrella and Xander, students at a school where everyone has some magical talent. They are explaining to the Principal how her gift of “seeing things as they are” let them find a very special book that wasn’t supposed to be there. Or anywhere.

Here’s our first snippet.

“I’m not even sure how old I was,” Estrella said. “I know that I hadn’t even started school yet. We had this full length mirror in the bathroom, behind the door, and I stared at myself and I just had a flash. I knew right then that I wasn’t meant to be male. And for an instant I saw myself as a grown woman, not as a little boy named Jonathan. This was years before I really felt I was different inside, but I knew right then and there.”

Can’t leave you there, here’s another snippet, from a scene in the cafeteria where they took the mysterious book. Maybe a line or two longer than six:

“We were sitting there with the yogurt and the book when Griff walked up, at least I think he walked up, he may have been standing there a while.” Estrella said.

“He’s the only other person who saw the book. Josh Griffin,” Xander said. “He’s in my Algebra class, he’s the one who…”

“Oh, yes. Invisible,” Dr. Saks said. That could be an inconvenient gift, he mused.

Thanks for indulging this double snippet post. Here’s a link to the book (again, which I’m not in!) https://riverdaleavebooks.com/books/5467/schoolbooks-sorcery-an-anthology-of-inclusive-ya-urban-fantasy