News - Thea van Diepen

I Wish I Didn’t Have to Think About the Political Implications of My Characters

Thea van Diepen

When I started writing, I didn’t think about how people would react to my characters for simply existing as themselves. This is partially because I was eleven and partially because I wrote characters no-one in my social circle would really object to (except maybe in the case of their gender). To be blunt, I wrote straight, cis, able-bodied white characters who were, by default, Christian. And if they weren’t Christian, it was either because they’d never heard of Christianity or

One Question We Will Never Fully Answer (and That’s a Good Thing)

Thea van Diepen

“Who here has spent time thinking about the question ‘who am I?’” my professor asked the class. Most of us, myself included, raised our hands at once. “Well, I suppose I’m going to get a biased sample because you’re all in this class.” The class was Personality Psychology, and this was in my first or second year of university. I remember my bewilderment as she went on to explain that there are people who don’t really think about those kinds

I Don’t Have to Hate My Breasts to Know I’m Not Cis

Thea van Diepen

When I was about six or seven, my brothers were roughhousing and took off their shirts in order to more appropriately wrestle. Since I was playing with them, I also went to take off my shirt. One of my older brothers, who was in his teens, protested and said I should keep my shirt on. I didn’t understand this. Both our chests looked the same. What was so objectionable about the situation? Our mom came by the room and my

Works in the Works (and a call for Alpha/Beta Readers!)

Thea van Diepen

For most of the years since my first book came out, I’ve been somewhat aggressively been focusing on one project at a time. This is mainly because, when I started publishing, I was still in university and it was really only the summers where I could focus on writing and publishing in any meaningful way. Which meant, in order to get a something done in those four months, I had to be really specific on what that something was and

Everything I’ve Written in One Database (Including Free Titles!)

Thea van Diepen

I’ve been working with Airtable lately, which is a platform where you can really do all kinds of things with, but what I’ve done with it the past few days is put together a database of everything I’ve written that’s available somewhere (whether to buy or read for free). It also features a nice little workflow showing where various books are at in the process of getting them published. For example, right now it has a new novel at the