I'm taking a break from working on my valet story for a few minutes while I try to decide if it's going to be a genuine historical or fantasy. I can't quite decide whether the fantasy route makes the story work, or whether it lets me be lazy. In the meantime, I'm going to make a quick confession of all the other thoughts clogging up my brain. 

Confession: I will probably die from eating too many sour gummies. I have no point at which they make me feel ill, and they always taste delicious to me.

Confession: When I fall asleep while reading, nine times out of ten it is during a sex scene. Oh, the clothes are coming off now? Zzzzz....

Confession: I am a total trope-buyer when it comes to ebooks. Friends to lovers? Buy. In love with best friend's brother? Buy. Nerds in love? Buy.

Confession: I will consider books with tropes I normally avoid if they have other elements I am looking for, but they have to come strongly recommended. And if anybody wants to write a non-binary POC historical fantasy with characters who aren't traditionally attractive and don't think penetrative sex is the only kind of "real" sex/sign of love AND that includes any of my favorite tropes, I might get so excited that I click buy ten times. 

Confession: I really like ninth graders. 

Confession: I have the absolute worst sense of direction. I started college classes at a new campus last week. I was twenty minutes late for my first class, despite arriving on campus ten minutes early, because I couldn't find the building. (In my defense, it wasn't on the campus map. Still, twenty minutes? The campus isn't that big...)

Confession: I do not judge books by their covers because I rarely even look at the covers. But really beautiful ones I use as the background on my technological devices. 

Confession: I really, really dislike covers with people on them. Not just naked torsos; any part of a person. It makes me feel like a horrible misanthrope.

Confession: For someone who is trained in and performs classical music, I like some really terrible music. I should probably be appalled by what's on my iPod.

Confession: I have become a much worse student since graduating and becoming a teacher than I ever was as an undergrad. 

...And I've made up my mind about the valet story. Back to it after lunch!

In which I briefly poke my head above water

So that blog post I said was going up April? Yeah... It's half written and sitting in my drafts pile because every time I think about posting it, some sort of kerfuffle arises that is closely related enough to the topic that I worry people will think I'm jumping on board a topic unrelated to what caused me to write the post in the first place. So there it still sits, twiddling its thumbs and waiting for me to let it out. Perhaps soon, if the internet can avoid frothing at the mouth for a while. (Or perhaps never.)

In terms of writing, I have been equally unproductive. I don't think I've put two words together outside of my head all summer. My valet menage is calling my name most insistently, so I think that'll be first on my list of projects when I have some time to myself. After that... well, we'll see. Sometimes I contemplate turning these little snippets into something more substantial; sometimes I think I prefer them just as they are. Another possibility is a trans Cinderella I got about a quarter of the way into before it informed me that wants to be rewritten on a different continent, which consequently requires quite a bit of research on my part.

So what on earth have I been doing with myself? Sometimes it feels like nothing, while simultaneously feeling like I haven't had a chance to catch a breath in months. Some factors:

1. The Kid: I was really looking forward to having some time to write over my summer vacation. Then my once-a-week daycare got cancelled. Then my backup daycare got cancelled. I love my son to pieces, but he doesn't exactly want me to sit around and write all day when we're together; he'd much rather I read Is Your Mama a Llama? and teach him how to walk (which he can now do all by himself). After this summer, I have even greater admiration for those who spend all day with small children, and a greater appreciation for the secondary students I spend my days with at work.

2. Work changes: I did not renew my contract for one of the schools where I was teaching. We parted with a few nice words, a pink devotional, and a chocolate Jesus fish. Given that the school closed over the summer, this seems to have been for the best. Losing two-thirds of my personal contribution to the household income, however, meant I was looking for other employment for the first part of the summer. Work for uncertified teachers with bachelors degrees in Latin and Greek is difficult to come by, and I desperately wanted something that would let me get my homework done for the two evening classes I'm taking each semester of this school year. Solution: I am now the study hall proctor for 7 out of 8 study halls at the school where I still teach Latin (in that one remaining hour). Although this has gotten me many sympathetic looks from my colleagues, the first two weeks have gone quite well and I'm really enjoying it, to everyone's surprise. I do a lot of writing hall passes, sending students to the peer tutoring center, proctoring make-up tests and quizzes, and walking around the room to make sure that laptops are open for the sake of homework and not for the sake of playing Minecraft. And now I know almost all of the freshmen by name and feel much more connected to the school community, which is something I've very much missed while working just a couple of hours each at two schools so far apart from each other. I must confess one of my favorite bits of my new schedule is that lunch break is a full hour, if teachers' office hours are included. The break at my last school was 14 minutes.

3. Family: In November, one of my mom's younger brothers went to the doctor because he was having some issues with his depth perception. They discovered stage four melanoma in his brain and lungs, and he passed away in February. My mom was devastated. Then her older sister, her best friend, died quite suddenly at the beginning of August from a blood clot following a routine scope of her knee. She spent about a week and a half in Colorado with her sister's family while various members of my family went out to visit and help with arrangements; then she came home and I helped her set up a memorial open house here for all of the rest of her friends and relatives. It's horrible to see my mother so lost and grief-stricken. I'm doing whatever I can, but losing two siblings in 6 months is not the sort of thing that a few lasagnas can heal.

4. Going to college: Thanks to my English minor being a linguistics minor rather than a literature minor, I have to finish up 5 prerequisite classes before I can enroll in the one year certification program to get my state teaching license with an English endorsement. I'm taking two classes this semester (Critical Theory and Teaching Secondary Writing) and two more next semester (Multicultural Children's Lit and Literary Genres), and hoping to finish the last one over the summer. Then I'll take the required education courses, do my semester of student aiding and semester of student teaching, take the state tests and be certified by June of 2015, an official teacher at last after only a full decade of teaching. (Insert rolling of eyes here.) I've got my fingers crossed that I can get an exemption for the student aiding, at least, if not the student teaching.

5. Health: I've had a ventral hernia at the sight of an old surgery scar since my son was born last July. I didn't know what it was until fairly recently, and then I didn't know what to do about it. (The answer from the surgeon, in case you're wondering, was "Don't worry about it until you're done having kids, or I'll just have to fix it again.") I also had a miscarriage at the end of June, which is my second and therefore involves more consultation with the OB/GYN than the first one. It looks as though the issue is with my progesterone level, though it's hard to tell whether that's a symptom or a cause; in any case, I get to do all sorts of fun testing while attempting to get pregnant again. If I have a third miscarriage, then we really get to do all the fun infertility investigation. I'm hoping we won't come to that.

My husband, bless his soul, is a worrier of the needs-medication-to-function-at-all sort. He has been attempting to wean himself off his antidepressants for a couple of years, but has recently acknowledged that he has succeeded primarily by replacing his meds with beer, and that drinking 8+ a night is not healthy. So he decided to quit drinking a week and a half ago. Within two days, he was convinced he was dying of cirrhosis or advanced liver cancer and would not make it to see the end of the year. His reasoning: flu-like symptoms combined with a history of alcohol abuse must equal a non-functioning liver. My reasoning: all of his symptoms are symptoms of the anxiety disorder for which he started taking the medication he is no longer taking. Fortunately, he got the results of his blood work this morning, and I am right--his liver is perfectly healthy, and his doctor recommends restarting his anxiety medication immediately. However, for the last two weeks, I've been living with a man who truly believed, deep down to the core of his being, that he was about to die and that it was entirely his own fault. It's been... stressful. And time-consuming. But he's feeling much better today, and I think he will be right as rain in another week.

6. Vacation: That's what summer is supposed to be for when you're a teacher, right? I spent ten days in Minnesota with my in-laws at the beginning of July, a couple of weekends up at my parents' cabin two hours north of where I live, and a week on an island in the Great Lakes with my choral ensemble (see picture above for a hint of the sort of view I enjoyed each morning while sipping a hot beverage on the deck). Eight of my best friends living in a house together on vacation for six days = awesome. We performed five concerts in four days, tallied up 26 hours of rehearsal, and stayed up well past my bedtime every night. It was fantastic.

Now I'm going to enjoy a few hours of solitude, thanks to Labor Day weekend starting a day earlier at school than at daycare, and try to get some writing done. I think there's a yearning valet whose heart needs a little wringing...

What's Happening, Hot Stuff?

So I've been rolling blog post topics around in my head for a while now, trying to think of something that I can write about that a) hasn't been done multiple times, b) won't make me sound like a jerk, and c) is something I have interest in and/or knowledge of.

Then I checked what my last post was, saw the date, and cringed.

Admittedly, I have felt a lot like my head's been buried in the sand, full of the day-to-day fribble that somehow always sucks away any extra time I thought I had. But this is ridiculous. So I offer some tidbits to sustain my poor blog until I finish my next real post:

I should probably mention, for the sake of acknowledging when I do these things, that I had an interview at Top 2 Bottom reviews, and though it went up last fall, it's still embarrassingly up to date.

I'll be visiting Raine O'Tierney's Hat Party soon, showing off the hat I got for my birthday and answering some silly questions. I'll share the link when the post goes up.

I am currently formulating a real blog post on the separation of art from artist that I aim to have up within a week or two.

Plotting is occurring behind the scenes for a blog hop I've been pondering for nearly two years. It's unlikely that it will occur before late spring, but I'm really excited (and nervous) to see what comes out of it. But I am keeping my lips sealed about the rest until there are real details to announce.

My writing lately has been primarily a fun story about a bigender person who intends to woo a duke through secret admirer letters, enlists the valet's help, and then falls for the valet. It's not very serious at all, which makes it very enjoyable for me to write, and checks several items off my "some day I want to write..." list: bigender, May/December, (shoddily researched) Victorian, asexual, menage, secret admirer... Jes Pendragon has been an amazing resource for discussing what it's like to be bigender. I can't wait to actually get this one done. Right now it's hovering around 11,000 words; I'm guessing I'm about halfway done.

In closing, since I have no decent excerpts of my own to share yet, I will offer this moving tale written by two of my Latin I students:

Maximus was the brother of Paul. The boys were in love with Octavia. Octavia did not love Maximus or Paul. Maximus waged a war to save Octavia. Octavia did not seek out Maximus. 

Paul wrote a song: 

"You are a queen
I will never forget you.
You are my rose,
Octavia, Octavia!"

Octavia saw Paul's spirit and she loved Paul. Maximus went away and acquired a cat. Maximus gave the cat the name Tiny. The end.

Poor Maximus. I think he deserves a story of his own, don't you?

Release Day and Giveaway!

My vampire Snow White is all grown up and hitting ebook vendors all over the Internet. *sniffle* *dramatically wipes eyes*

If you had told me two years ago that I was going to write a version of Snow White with vampires, I would have laughed in your face. I hate vampire lit, with a very small number of exceptions. It drives me crazy that these creatures supposedly inhabit the natural world but violate so many of its laws, everything from walking around without a pulse to keep bodily fluids from gathering permanently in the feet to getting erections without blood pressure. And the whole blood drinking thing confounds me: why do they need it? Do they digest it? Can they digest things? How do they do it? Are their fangs like syringes, or are they like enlarged animal teeth? I want to know not only how they ingest the blood, but what happens once they've swallowed. None of that even addresses the issue of how to write a vampire in our post vampires-sparkle-in-the-sun world without making people gag, or at least compare.

I'm also not a huge fan of Snow White. The original fairy tale is mildly interesting insofar as the stepmother and her bizarrely feminine murder weapons are concerned, and her fate is one of the more unapologetically painful ends to a fairy tale villain. The title character, however, leaves something to be desired. The sanitized animated version I grew up with is one of my least favorite Disney movies, and not just because Snow White sings like an operatic chipmunk. She is simply the kind of character that does not interest me: practically perfect in every way, without a magic carpet bag or a mysterious past. She's the fairest in all the land. She's a princess. The huntsman loves her. The seven dwarfs love her. The prince who happens to be wandering through the forest stumbles across her body in a casket and decides he wants her (love seems far too strong an emotion for a complete stranger, not to mention the necrophilia). Her only flaw is that she is too good, too beautiful, too innocent, too trusting. The villain has potential to be interesting, but she's generally a completely flat character whose entire personality is boiled down to "vain, jealous, evil bitch".

Then, just for fun one Sunday, I decided to write a completely silly spoof of the story for a Sunday Snuggle. Instead, I ended up with a melancholy version about 5000 words too long for a Snuggle and a revived fascination with the huntsman, whom I had killed off in my version but liked quite a bit. I tried again the next day with more success at ridiculousness, but got stuck on the part where Snow White never seems shocked or disturbed to find herself in a coffin at the end of the story. Between the two, I started thinking about the essential elements of the story and suddenly had a revelation: Snow White is a vampire. It seemed so obvious in retrospect. Deathly pale? Check. Impossibly beautiful? Check. Manages to live through attempted murder time and again? Check. Sleeps like the dead in a coffin? Check. Issues with a reflection in a mirror? Check.

There was my story: borrow the basic plot of Snow White, keep the vampire elements, explore the huntsman as a more major character--and obviously he's a vampire too, because who hunts better than a vampire? All I had to do was figure out how I could keep the evil stepmother from being a two-dimensional villain and decide what kind of creature might sneak unnoticed into the royal family yet pose a threat to a vampire. Thus was born For the Sake of the Kingdom.

To celebrate its release, I'm giving away a copy of the ebook. All you have to do is leave a comment with a way to contact you and tell me which fairy tale you think is harboring a secret paranormal. I'll pick a winner sometime on Nov. 1.


Available from Less Than Three Press. Goodreads link here.

Prince Erik's life is grand: his father has taken a new wife, a beautiful and sweet woman who charms all who meet her, the kingdom is prospering, and there is no shortage of men and women to keep his bed warm. If he wishes for the one person he cannot have, well, at least he has accepted it.

But then everything begins to change, a shroud falling slowly over the kingdom, darkness creeping in and leeching his father's life away. Strangest of all, the kingdom's artists all begin to create works along the same strange and frightening theme...

The Current State of Things

It occurred to me earlier this week that I hadn't updated this blog in many a moon. A handful of times have passed since my last entry when I finally devised a topic about which to babble a bit, but each time I've found another blogger who's said just what I wanted to say, and probably better and more publicly, so I've let them slide. I'm a firm believer in not wasting people's time by telling them things they already know. :)

Writing has not come easily to me for the last few months. I've been busy and undergone a rather significant life change with the birth of my son and subsequent return to work, so time has been at a premium. But my classes are going well so far, my new schedule is actually rather nice, and I could not ask for a better baby.

Who could be upset with this face?

I have a new cover to show off for those who haven't seen it yet! My vampire Snow White story was submitted and accepted for Less Than Three Press' Proud to Be a Vampire collection, and it will be available October 23. In the meantime, I have to finish wrangling it into the story I think it deserves to be. Admittedly, I rushed my initial draft because I  first got behind schedule and then had to hurry to make up for it before my baby was born (who then had the gall to be nearly two weeks late, the little stinker). But I've had the story rolling around in my head for quite a while, so the first draft consisted primarily of alternating between transcribing what I'd already written a few times in my brain and trying to figure out what should go in the parts I'd cast aside with nothing more than a mental "then some stuff happens here" marker. I'm very nervous that the story is not going to be as good as I think it should be, but that's usually a sign that I actually have a good story on my hands. I'm hopeful it will cooperate and come out well.

This story is also a little out of my comfort zone in that, as much as I enjoy reading the occasional fantasy novel, I tend to avoid writing things set entirely outside of the real world. Part of that is my tendency toward obsessiveness with world-building (I need to know all the details and all of the whys behind the way things are; Halloween Trick gave me kittens, because I needed to know how Robbie became a ghost, why he was still lingering on earth, what it would take to banish him, etc., even though none of that was even remotely necessary for the story I was writing) and with making sure that all aspects have logical consequences, and while that's a fun mental exercise, I also find it a little exhausting to sustain. And while the titular kingdom is very much a normal fairytale place and not at all unlike the real world in most aspects, Prince Erik discovers that there is much more to the world than he realized, and part of the plot revolves around the removal of his ignorance of things like vampires and dream demons and magic mirrors. Which is another uncomfortable thing for me--I don't do sinister very well. I don't even do unhappy. (I had a middle school student once point out when his class was misbehaving that my "face looks weird when [I'm] not smiling" since he'd never seen such an expression from me before.) I like my characters, like myself and my real life companions, to be calm and logical and make things work. But in this case, the darkness comes from an external source Erik can't control, and so I've had to face it head on. I think that, more than anything, is the aspect of the story I fear ruining. So I've tried very hard not to make my villain too purely evil and entirely unsympathetic, but not to be afraid to let the Evil Stepmother character be worthy of her fate.

I'll post again about the story when the release date is a little closer, probably about the Snow White aspects that inspired me to write a story involving my least favorite paranormal creature and what elements of the fairytale I've tried to keep. In the meantime, enjoy the pretty cover. :)

Goodreads Link

In which I wonder why everybody has to be gorgeous to be loved

Reading E. E. Ottoman's recent fantastic post on how our books' content paints a picture of a world in which whole populations of people don't exist spurred me on to write out a few of my own thoughts on a loosely related issue: our books also, by merit of what they show and what they don't show, contain the underlying implication that only the exceptionally attractive find true love. I know that this is not a stunningly original idea, but it's one I think bears repeating and reexamining from time to time. (My apologies if this post is a little incoherent. My laptop has crashed five times during the writing of it, so I'm having a little trouble remembering what I've said in which version of the post. I'd take it as a sign, but it's pretty much par for the course these days with this machine.)

Someone will put this guy in a story and give him some love.
(Creative Commons Licensing)  

Besides containing two young, white, cisgendered males built like Olympic swimmers as heroes, it seems like most of the m/m books I read also feature the improbability of two young, white, cisgendered males built like Olympic swimmers, who are just as beautiful of face as they are of form, not only meeting but also falling in love. Now there's a lot to be said for beauty lying in the eye of the beholder (don't we all think the people we love are attractive?), the fantasy aspect of reading romance, etc., but let's be honest: how many people do you know that look like they stepped from the pages of one of our books? How many of them are in love with someone equally gorgeous--and the same kind of gorgeous? I'm willing to bet the number is pretty small. For that matter, how many of you actually find that kind of man—and only that kind of man—attractive? I'll be honest; apart from Thelma and Louise, I've never seen a movie in which I found Brad Pitt remotely attractive, but clearly plenty of other people do. I fell in love with a skinny, short, redhead in high school, then a broad-shouldered, bearded blond in college, and married a balding brunet with gorgeous blue eyes. One of my best friends' husbands is a short, tattooed Korean man; another is a tall, fit, African-American man with the prettiest smile I've ever seen; another is a significantly overweight white guy who makes fantastically expressive faces. We all think our husbands are attractive. Tastes vary in real life. They vary a lot less in fiction, it seems. And that creates a view of the world, like cannibalistic llamas, that simply isn't true or representative of reality.

Yup, totally thinking about eating my young. Can't you tell?
(Creative Commons Licensing)

In real life, everybody—especially women—knows that we as a society place a huge value on appearance and attractiveness. We have a very specific idea of what a woman should look like. We're creating a very specific idea of what a man should look like. And we're definitely, by our choice of heroes, intimating that only people who fit those images get the guy at the end of the story. One of the things linked to these thoughts, perhaps oddly, is my current pregnancy. I'm 32 weeks along with my first child, and I've been sort of stunned to discover how very much this process, which I've always thought of as a womanly thing, is the polar opposite of "feminine" by modern Western standards. A good friend of mine just had a baby in April, and she struggled with the uncontrollable changes that made her into what she had been trained over the last thirty years not to be. Consequently, her entire pregnancy, she felt "gross—I'm always belching and scratching my belly in public." That's not to mention the constant farting, the inability to cross her legs, the reduction of high heels to flats, the loss of her size 0 waist, the increase in body hair, or the other delightful side effects of carrying a baby. Personally, none of those things bother me; I've never been an overtly feminine woman, and most of the time I just don't really give a shit what people think about the way I look. But it did make me stop and think all over again about what women are told about who we are—not our roles, but at our core. Any girl over the age of eight who stops to think about it for two seconds can probably describe exactly what she's "supposed" to look like, since the message is pervasive for anyone who reads magazines, watches TV, goes to movies, looks at billboards, or interacts with people who do any of these things. We're supposed to be elegant, delicate, thin but just the right amount of curvaceous (especially in places that aren't naturally curvy unless you're carrying some body fat), hairless except for our carefully arched eyebrows and the hair we've used a vast amount of time and product to make appear as though we've used no time or product at all, pale skinned but not too pale, existing entirely without embarrassing bodily functions (my husband still chooses to live under the delusion that girls don't poop, though after 8 years of sharing a bathroom with me, not to mention growing up with two sisters, the evidence is overwhelmingly to the contrary), ankles crossed, skinny legs, no hips... In other words, we should strive to look essentially like a prepubescent girl for our entire adult lives. Once we hit puberty and start to look like women, we should be filled with shame and try to pretend that embarrassing process never happened, so we shave off all that new hair, try to exercise away all of those body shape changes, and do our best to look like we're never going to graduate high school, much less own up to our real age. And this goes with a strong sense that we should be seen but not heard. A woman is the way she looks, because that is why she exists. She is for looking at. Nothing else about her is of value. 

This is not a new issue by any stretch of the imagination. I'm always a little startled by how many women know they're being sold this lie, and yet still do everything they can to conform to it. Listen to Annie Lennox sing "Keep Young and Beautiful" if you want a reminder of how blatantly old ads used to tell their audience about the importance of keeping up their looks if they wanted anyone to love them. Now I see it being couched in new ways, paraded as a campaign to tell women they're great just the way they are whilst still communicating the same old story. For instance, Oil of Olay still needs me to buy their products, so they still need to convince me I'm not okay the way I am, but they try to make me think they're saying the opposite by telling me to "love the skin [I'm] in." I'm encouraged to love myself and my body! Hooray!—just as soon as I recognize that there's something wrong with my skin and find the right products to help me fix it so I'm worthy of loving.

I love myself just the way I am... or at least, I will once I fix this mess of a body.
(Creative Commons Licensing)

Just recently, Dove's Real Beauty Sketches took over my Facebook and twitter feeds while women gushed about how moving the video was, but I felt vaguely queasy after watching it. It took me a few days to pin down exactly why, beyond the obvious cynicism regarding a company telling me that I'm great the way I am when they make money from convincing me that I need to control the way I look. What I realized after some thought was that a) these women weren't being told they were beautiful because people liked them the way they perceived themselves, but because they were actually thinner, whiter, closer to the accepted standard, etc. than they had perceived, and b) these women honestly believed that learning they were prettier than they realized would—and should—change their entire lives, indicating that their entire lives rest upon their attractiveness. This deeply disturbs me. I happen to think that what other people think about the way you look shouldn't mean jackshit to who you are and how worthwhile you are. I hate that I see the objectification and focus on appearance spreading to male bodies as well. Men have always been valued for their deeds, their thoughts, their contributions to society; are we really going to take that away from them rather than give it to the rest of the population?

What does this have to do with m/m fiction, or any other QUILTBAG fiction? Well, for one, there's my concern that rather than fighting against the idea that women's value comes from their appearance, and that their appearance needs to be X, we're simply broadening it to include men under the same blanket appearance = worth value system. I'm all in favor of equality, but not through equal degradation, objectification, and superficial judgment for all.

Could these dudes fall in love and be loved in return?
Not in most m/m fiction.
(Creative Commons Licensing)

 Then there's that by choosing heroes who are consistently stunningly attractive young, white, cisgendered males, we're not only excluding the rest of the population from having their stories told and their voices heard, but we're also implying that the people who have great love stories are the stunningly attractive young, white, cisgendered males. Do our main characters fall in love with the plain guy, the chubby girl, the trans* character? The older man? The person of color? Are our main characters themselves the average looking ones who also maybe aren't young, or white, or cisgendered? Or do we perpetuate the "hot guys meet hot guys, fall in love and have hot sex; meanwhile, nobody wants the rest of you" narrative? Do we continue to ignore most of the world's population, continue to tell them that in order to be loved, in order to be worth reading about, they have to be handsome because even if they are young, white, and cisgendered men, nobody cares unless they're sexy, too?

Dude, you're good. You're not white, but you're still hot.
Somebody will love you.
(Creative Commons Licensing)

Finally, I think this issue also impacts the quality and universality of our writing. I read a book earlier this year that I hated, in part because the sole draw to the love interest seemed to be that he was irresistibly gorgeous, and I am not generally attracted to any of the features attributed to him (sounded sort of like Brad Pitt, actually). It left me with no other reason to like him, and no idea why the main character was so head over heels. It's a poor romance to me that depends solely upon physical attraction, and a boring story. I wish I could say I haven't read any others like it, but that would be a lie.

Obviously there are exceptions to this. I've read some, I've tried my best to write some. But, like books in which the women are heroes in their own right, they are few and far between in this market. I would love to see more, and better, books celebrating the everyday love stories of everyday people of all shapes, colors, ages, and bodies. They might be less sexy to some, but they'll be more sexy to others, more relatable, and more interesting because they'll be more real.

The Power of the Word to Create

Staff devotions at school #1 this morning got me thinking, and not just about spiritual things. The basic message was this: 

To speak is to create.

I love that. To put something into words is to invent something new, to breathe life into something that has never before existed in quite that way, if at all. My favorite part of language has always been its infinite capacity for generation. There is no need to ever say the same sentence twice, and very rarely do we repeat ourselves verbatim without doing it on purpose. An idea requires words to be fully formed and communicable. Whatever we say is the unique product of our minds, whether it be a carefully planned speech, a presentation at a meeting, or just a conversation with a friend. The things we write, whether they be test essays, grocery lists, or novels, belong to us. No one else could have written them in quite the same way as we have done. But sometimes the things we create would have been better left formless and void.

Can anybody identify what book I'm reading? 

There is also power in the things we do not say, because those are things we have allowed to remain intangible, unexpressed, unreal. Sometimes that choice is wise; sometimes it's hurtful. Particularly in this age of insta-global communication, I think we often speak when we ought to remain silent, to the detriment of ourselves and others. We create what should not have existed.

The chaplain this morning posed these questions: Do your words bring food to the hungry and healing to the hurting? Do your words support the weak? Do your words create life, or do they cause death?

It got me thinking, not only in terms of my interactions with the people I encounter on a daily basis, but also in terms of what I write and how I portray myself. Do the things I write or say contribute in some way to filling the hungry ache in someone's soul? Some lovely writers contribute portions of their royalties to literally feed the hungry, but I've chosen to interpret the issue more metaphorically since the full amount of my daily royalties could maybe, almost, manage to buy one person a meal at McDonald's. So do I feed the hungry with my words? I certainly hope so. When I write, my goal is not to make a million bucks. It's not to show off. It's not to gain fame and acclaim. It's so that someone will read whatever I write and have a slightly brighter day because of it. People suffer from a variety of hungers, but I hope my words will feed at least one of them. I cannot heal all my readers' hurts, but I want my words to provide at least a little relief from the pain of life and bring back a little of the joy. It doesn't need to be dramatic for me to have succeeded; I'll settle for knowing that what I wrote made someone smile.

Do my words support the weak? Well, they try. It's one of the things I love about the QUILTBAG genre, and why I get annoyed by people who refuse to read anything that's "not my kink"; the things I write and the things I read show support, however implicitly, for a group of people all too often marginalized or discriminated against. (That being said, I recognize the reader's right to spend time and money on whatever s/he enjoys. I just hope that there's still an element of support for all people of the entire spectrum, and not just support for the sexy.) 

Do my words create life, or do they cause death? Oh, there are so many ways in which a word can kill. But there are also so many ways that a writer can create life with words. I hope never to say something, verbally or in writing, that makes someone die a little. I undoubtedly fail at this, since I am human. But it is my goal to keep my mouth shut against those snide or thoughtless remarks that wound unnecessarily.

This question has also got me thinking about a story. Might I have read something in which this idea of speaking things into existence/not speaking things to keep them from existing is a key component, or is that just something in the back of my head clamoring to be written? Anybody have any idea?

Why Fluff Isn't Just For Dessert

It's a beautiful snowy weekend here, which I'm spending with The Cold That Just Won't Die, a few new books, and my Sandy Relief auction story, which has been languishing in the exposition for a few weeks and needs a bit of a kick in the rear. Now that I'm not scrambling madly to get exams and papers graded in time for first semester report cards to go out, I'm looking forward to finishing it up. It's going to be fairly short (10-12k, I'm guessing), quite sweet, and a little bit sci-fi, which is also getting me excited to tackle the space cowboys/rustlers/pirates I promised to write for Samantha Derr this summer. Reading this article earlier in the week also got my brain spinning (slugs that have hermaphroditic sex and then discard their penises entirely? So fascinating)... but at the moment, Evan and Sean are first in line for my authorial attention.

CC photo courtesy of St0rmz

On to my real topic of the day: so-called "fluff" fiction. This is something near and dear to my heart, as there is nothing I would rather read or write. (Be warned: that means this post is going to be long!) But it comes with a bit of a reputation. Just the term "fluff" implies that it has no substance, that it's some sort of uninteresting but mildly useful polyester pillow stuffing at best and and a cavity-inducing, calorie-laden bit of sugar at worst. (My best friend refers to it as "brain candy".) And I don't know what it's like for you, but in the circles in which I live, people talk about "fluff" in fiction with condescension or in shame-filled whispers as if it's something that belongs only in the territory of the unattractive, uneducated, and unattached, and even there ought to be hidden beneath one's mattress. Even a ridiculous and offensive term like "mommy porn" often comes across as a more acceptable choice than "fluff". There seems to be a pervasive attitude that perhaps a single girl might understandably want to read about a happy couple in love, and an ugly girl might want to fantasize about what it would be like to be pretty, but every smart girl--even the single, ugly ones--know better than to think any of that fluff and nonsense is worth their time.

This drives me absolutely, bat-shit crazy.

There are so many unkind, false, and problematic things about that approach toward fiction--and toward life, and other people--that I want to stand up on my soapbox for a moment and explain why I think "fluff" belongs in a literary diet right alongside the beans and Brussels sprouts. I won't presume to speak for the world; plenty of people have plenty of differing reasons for reading what they do, most of which boil down to "it's what I like." I will, however, speak toward the characteristics I possess that seem to make people think I shouldn't read "fluff", and which I think are the very same reasons why I must.

Before addressing these characteristics, there is the question of what, exactly, constitutes "fluff": is it truly a literary piece without substance, or is it just a derogatory nickname for something that doesn't grapple with Nobel prize-winning issues? As far as I can tell, depending on who is awarding the name, a piece may qualify as fluff if it includes any or all of the following:

1. a happy ending
2. characters who have lived relatively average lives, free of abuse, rape, torture, getting shot, scientific experimentation, etc.
3. a romance as its central plot line
4. a central conflict which lacks sufficient angst or drama to please the reader
5. not enough explicit, on-page sex to qualify as erotica

I'm sure there are other qualifiers missing from this list, but these are a few that immediately stand out to me. What I don't understand is why these qualities automatically make for less nutritive reading than their "substantive" counterparts, and why these stories should be treated with such disdain. (ETA: this post was not actually inspired by the usual "literary fiction hates genre fiction" argument, but by a few reviews of m/m works by m/m authors and readers. Just so we're clear as to where i'm seeing the disdain.) Perhaps it is simply that these things are ordinary, everyday things that surround us everywhere we look, and so they seem too common to be the topic of a good story, too obvious to teach a lesson, too easy to provide a struggle worth the reader's investment, too universal to build empathy. Personally, I think that is exactly why we need these kinds of stories: they are examples of real life when it turns out well, and that's something we all need to understand deep in that place where we store the lessons we learn from reading.

CC photo courtesy of andrewmalone

So here are the reasons I hear about why I shouldn't like fluff, and the reasons why I think that's a big ol' bunch of baloney:

A. I am happily married.

This one comes from an unspoken assumption that reading romance is a search for something we're not getting from our own real lives. That's why it's perhaps just a teeny bit okay for a single woman to read romance, or for a dissatisfied, middle-aged housewife who's been stuck at home with the kids for the last fifteen years and feels frumpy and fat and unsexy all the time. But for a thirty-one-year-old married woman who's still relatively attractive and still very much in love with her husband? The interest is baffling. The other half of this objection is the assumption that there is something akin to emotional or sexual infidelity in reading about another couple's romance, particularly if there's explicit sex involved. Therefore, I must be looking for something I'm not getting from my own marriage. Worse, I'm actively harming my marriage by reading it.

This assumption makes me sad. First, it means I'm hesitant to tell people what I read and write because of what it may cause them to think about the state of my marriage and/or my own commitment to it. Second, it reinforces the idea that it is always better to be in a relationship than not, because it implies that real life romance is better than fictional romance is better than singlehood. Third, I think this reveals a deep insecurity about trust within committed relationships. Why doesn't anyone worry about a married woman reading about the terrible, disintegrating marriages in much of modern fiction? Because no sane woman wants to leave her own marriage for one that's worse. Why do people worry about a married woman reading about happy, successful relationships? Because there's nothing crazy about wanting a marriage better than the one she already has. The sad part is assuming that wanting a better marriage is going to lead to infidelity or divorce instead of improving the relationship she already has.

Why do I think the happily married woman not only may, but in fact should, read fluff? Because I think she is exactly the kind of woman who is going to see in it reminders of her own marriage's success that will strengthen her commitment, and she is going to see faults she or her partner has and be looking for the solutions to them rather than ways to escape. I think people's fear of what reading romance does to a marriage comes from what reading romance can do to a woman who is looking for something she's not getting: she wants the romance, the spark, the whatever she's lost, and becomes more convinced her marriage is a mistake; she sees Hero/Heroine X and wonders why her husband can't be more like him, and she resents him a little more; she remembers the days of being Hero/Heroine Y and feels nostalgic for the days when she was wanted and pursued, and thinks about how she can get back there again. There is definitely danger in that. But the benefit of fluff for the married reader is when she sees the romance, the spark, the whatever she's lost and remembers how it felt, why it was there, what it was like, and remembers why she fell in love with her spouse; she sees Hero/Heroine X and sees her spouse somewhere in him, and she falls in love with him a little bit more all over again; she remembers the days of being Heroine Y and yes, remembers the thrill of being wanted and pursued, but also remembers all of the obstacles and misunderstandings she and her partner have already overcome and which she has no desire to ever experience again. Sometimes I read books, see the shortcomings that are causing friction in the fictional romance, and I recognize that I have the same faults. Suddenly I want to change them. Or I see my husband's faults, but through another set of eyes, and I have more sympathy and patience with them. My husband is my best friend and I love him with my whole heart, but sometimes he drives me crazy; a little fluff is usually a guaranteed way to get me to the forgiveness or apology I owe him. I truly believe that I am happier with my husband, and quite possibly more in love with him, because I have a healthy dose of fluff in my reading diet.

B. I have a career, and therefore better things to think about than that drivel.

Really? Because I happen to think my career is pretty awesome, but also pretty mentally and emotionally taxing, and when the work day is done, I haven't got the energy or the mental capacity to ponder the world's problems or to put myself through the wringer. I'd rather curl up with a cup of tea, the dog or one of the cats, and a book to help me relax, recharge, and refocus. You know what would not help me do that? Reading about pedagogical research. Reading about the intricacies of Latin grammar. Translating a particularly thorny passage of Tacitus. Those things are interesting to me, but they're also exhausting and do little to help me keep a sane perspective on the importance of work versus being a decent, well-adjusted human being. You know what will? Reading about ordinary people dealing with real problems in a positive way and getting a happy ending. Nothing about that will make me tired, stressed out, or out of touch with the living human beings in my life. It does a lot to build empathy, and although it may not create empathy with life experiences I will never have, it helps with the life I do have.

C. I'm smart and well-educated.

This is the one that I see kicking hardest against fluff reading. It's also the one that leaves me most in need of fluff. Here's the thing: cynicism is king in the world of the educated. Things which are popular must automatically be crap; things which are widely trusted are probably false and untrustworthy; things done by many people must be old-fashioned, bourgeois, and without merit. The better educated one is, the more one's loathing for anything put out by a major record label or major studio, and one's respect for anything produced independently should vary inversely with its popularity. Amanda Palmer tweeted something recently I found quite apt about how strange it is to live in a world in which being aesthetically pleasing is an artistic liability. Historical figures who have been widely admired are often presented in modern academia as terrible people and liars to boot; the government is at worst a corporately owned conspiracy and at best an irredeemable failure; things like monogamy, religion, and the consumption of animal products are for the ignorant and easily duped. There are plenty of reasons for this attitude, and cynicism is certainly warranted in many instances. But a diet of constant cynicism is neither a healthy one nor a happy one.

CC photo courtesy of CeresB

So why read fluff as an intelligent, well-educated woman? In a social context that constantly argues that the only thing that shouldn't be doubted is the need to doubt everything, fluff reminds me that are some things that ought to be trusted. When biographies seem to say that there is no such thing as a truly good and admirable person because all heroes have dirty secrets in their pasts, fluff reminds me that there are plenty of good people in this world worthy of my love and respect, even though they come with flaws and failures. Despite the academic presumption that emotions are unnecessary hindrances (a presumption all too easy for me to embrace, given my natural inclination toward distrusting my emotions and operating solely based on reason), fluff reminds me that emotions are good, and healthy, and even beneficial. And when other books try to persuade me that there are no happy endings, only temporal moments of happiness, or that I am the only thing in which I can believe or hope, or that the world is crumbling around me, fluff reminds me that I can forge my own happy ending. Love may not be enough to fix the universe, but it's an awfully good start to fixing my own life and motivating me to care about fixing all the rest.

So if you made it all the way to the end of this giant post, thanks for listening to my two cents. I love literary fiction too (I'd be a pretty terrible lit teacher if I didn't), and a diet of all fluff wouldn't be any better for you than a diet of all oranges, but I really believe that fluff is more than just an unhealthy snack. Someday, maybe it can gain a new name and take its rightful place as part of a well-rounded literary diet instead of being relegated to a single, guilty bite after dinner.

Birthday, Release Day, Giveaway!

It's my birthday!! :~D You can still enter my celebratory $10 giftcard + ebook giveaway here by commenting with your favorite Happily Ever After song.

It's also release day for Can Anybody Find Me, a story I started writing nearly a year ago with two entirely unrelated motives:

1. The Boring One: I had these two characters I'd created for a 100 word snippet in response to a three word prompt who wanted a story of their own, and I was dealing with some angst regarding my own thirtieth birthday, so I decided to set Will and Andrew's story against the backdrop of Will's thirtieth birthday.

2. The Silly One: I had finished reading a pile of m/m romances that all seemed to rely on the same devices and offer the same unrealistic fantasies, and I was sick of it! On my livejournal, I posted a list of a few things I wanted to see in a romance some day in reaction against what I'd seen in all of the books I'd just finished, and then several other people contributed a few of their own wishes in the comments. Here's what appeared:
--a man with a disproportionately small dick
--a man who is bad at sex
--a couple who both fall below the mean average of attractiveness
--first time sex between the main couple that is not mind-blowing, eye-watering, and/or miles beyond any other sex the previously promiscuous characters have ever experienced before; ideally, sex worse than one or both of them has had with someone else, but since the sex isn't what keeps them together, who cares?
--a "newly gay" character who doesn't immediately turn sex god
--BJ where guy doesn't like the taste and refuses to lick his fingers... extra points if the more experienced character is not blowing like a pro but is clumsy
--smaller/prettier character is the strong one who doesn't need rescuing while stoic cowboy/cop character is the one new to town and in need of assistance
--story where the sex isn't magical and mind-blowing but clumsy, sticky (not in a good way) and awkward... but the love still prevails

As usual, I looked at the list and thought, "Well, if somebody's got to do it, it might as well be me," and decided to see which of those I could work into my still-nebulous Will and Andrew story. (Undoubtedly the rest will make their way into something else in the future.) Perhaps I should have seen it coming, but to my surprise, the silly list didn't add humor; it added realism. Stripping away the Gorgeous, Sexy, and Perfect that tends to come with the territory of writing romance meant I was left with characters who were just average guys, men who love each other not because they're mystic soulmates, because the sex is so hot, or because they just look so good side by side, but because they just plain want to be together.

I have been thinking recently about why I like to read romance, and why I think that even--perhaps particularly--happily married, well-educated, intelligent women with careers need fluff in their diet just as much as they need things like calcium and folic acid. That's a post for another day, but one of the things I have realized is that my favorite books are the ones that capture something of my experience with Happily Ever After, something of what I believe True Love really is. My wish for Can Anybody Find Me is that readers will catch a glimpse of that, and smile a little at the way the smallest things sometimes make all the difference.

It's (Almost) My Birthday and I'm Celebrating with a Giveaway!

Happy New Year! I hope you had a fantastic holiday season. I certainly did, courtesy of my parents taking all of their children, children-in-laws, and grandkids on a fun, surprisingly relaxing family vacation.

Great as my break was, I'm really looking forward to the next week. Not only will I be returning to work after two weeks off (which is a good thing, I swear), tomorrow marks the beginning of my second trimester of pregnancy and end of the evil progesterone supplements I've had to take for the last several weeks (and they are, let me tell you, everything that sucks about being pregnant in one convenient daily dose), and Wednesday is not only the beginning of a serial fic I've been looking forward to immensely AND the release of Can Anybody Find Me, my short story in Less Than Three Press' Kiss Me At Midnight collection, but it's also my birthday! This calls for celebration.

<--Please help yourself to the champagne in that glass over there.

Can Anybody Find Me, more than any other story I've ever written, has a definite soundtrack in my head. Queen's Greatest Hits makes it into the story a few times, as you may have guessed from the title, since it's Andrew's favorite album. He's a fan of pop/alt rock with a definite soft spot for the 80's; I suspect he listens to Ludacris when he wants a laugh. Will, on the other hand, is a bit more of a music snob; he listens at one point to his playlist entitled "Regret", which I'm certain features some Death Cab for Cutie (Title and Registration and A Lack of Color at the very least), Janove Ottesen, probably some Pete Yorn, undoubtedly some Gotye, a little Patrick Wolf, and a handful of other acoustic tracks and/or indie artists. But even Will needs a little Freddie Mercury sometimes. ;)

In light of this, my birthday giveaway includes, in addition to a copy of the e-book (a whopping $1.99 value!), a $10 gift certificate to iTunes, Amazon, or whichever vendor the winner prefers for book/music purchasing. To enter, you must leave a comment with some means by which I can contact you if you win AND the name of one (or more) tracks you think belong on a "Happily Ever After" playlist for my two main characters (and between the two of them, pretty much any artist or genre is welcome). What's your favorite song about Twu Wuv? The giveaway will be open until midnight EST January 12. Good luck!

(If you simply can't stand to wait until the giveaway's over and need to read Can Anybody Find Me when it comes out on Wednesday, you can purchase a copy of the book by clicking the cover and following the link. If you do it before Tuesday night, you'll even save 30 cents, which you can use to size up your next latte, buy a gumball, or put in your piggy bank to save up for another book.)

Almost time for Fire and Lightning!

On Wednesday, Fire and Lightning is coming out at long last. This story is near and dear to my heart, if for no other reason than because it and I fought so much to wrangle it into shape. 

Originally, this story was supposed to be a cute little bit of fluff about a linguist studying Herodotus in the shade of a tree, researching ancient texts about the phoenix. I hadn't quite decided whether he was the phoenix, or whether he was going to meet the phoenix. Instead, I ended up with an epic about a female tree spirit tied to her oak and a free-spirited phoenix who spends her life traveling the globe. Not quite what I envisioned. 

Then I had a grand plan for how everything was going to be structured. It worked great on paper, but it made a terrible story. It just dragged on and on, painfully repetitive, and full of things I thought were interesting but weren't related to the real story I wanted to tell. Much hacking and chopping later, I came up with something better. And then I got it back from the editor and hacked and chopped and rewrote some more. Now I think it tells the story I wanted to tell.

One of my favorite things about writing Fire and Lightning was getting to play around with all of the old Homeric epithets and mythological references, sneaking in little bits of history here and there (and taking a few--fairly minor--historical liberties). One of my favorite bits is this scene involving two incredibly minor characters:

One night after Helios had gone to bed, while the Tri-Formed Goddess wore her darkest form, two unfamiliar men slipped into the grove.  

"Did we have to come when Hecate rules the sky?" one of them grumbled. "I can't see a thing. I'm starting to lose track of how many twigs have poked me in the face."

"Hush!" the other commanded in a harsh whisper. "The only thing worse than the darkness of Hecate's witchcraft is becoming the focus of it. Hold your tongue and help me find a way into this enclosure."

A soft scuffling sound was followed by a thump as the first man came hurtling over the wall and tumbled into the dirt on the other side. "Ow. You needn't have pushed quite so hard, Argus," he complained, rubbing his hip with a grimace. "My ass is going to be the color of a Samian grape by dawn."

"Good. You'll give Aurora something to smile about when she passes over," Argus retorted. "Now how am I supposed to get in there?"

"I should give you a good hard yank for the sake of fairness, but there must be a door somewhere around here. Doesn't the priest have to get close to the tree to ask the questions? I can't imagine he vaults in every time like … Oh, here it is." The gate swung open with a slight creak, admitting a man slightly older and stockier than the first.  

Argus closed the gate after he entered. For a long, tense moment, he silently stared up at Drys' oak. "How in all Hades are we going to cut a plank from this tree, Tiphys?" he murmured. "It's got to be at least ten times as tall as you, and I'm not sure my arms can reach all the way around."

They were going to cut a piece out of her? With a muffled shriek, Drys fled from her bark and cowered in the farthest corner of the enclosure. It wouldn't make any difference if the men cut the oak, but her instincts were pushing her to run. She knew the men could not see her or hear her, so there was no use begging them not to touch her tree. Trembling and afraid, she wrapped her arms around her legs and dug her toes into the earth, seeking comfort from her mother.

Tiphys snorted. "Did you think we were just going to march in, chop down Zeus' sacred oak, and saw it into pieces? I'd prefer not to die by lightning strike, thank you very much."

"But Athena says the Argo needs to have a plank in the prow cut from the sacred oak of Dodona. That's this tree. Apparently it's going to prophesy to the sailors and protect them from danger."

Tiphys barked out a laugh. "That has got to be the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. A bunch of sailors are going to kneel down with one ear to the deck and wait for the prophetic floorboard to tell them what to do whenever danger arises?"

"It's what Athena says, and I know better than to argue with a goddess." Argus shrugged.

Regarding the oak with narrowed eyes, Tiphys asked contemplatively, "Does she say how big this plank needs to be?"

Argus shook his head. "What are you thinking?"

"This branch here might do." He ran his hand up the trunk to one of the lowest boughs. Drys shivered as an echo of his touch ran along her side. She began to shake when Argus slowly nodded his head and they raised the saw.  

I really love this story. I hope those who read it do, too. <3

Fire and Lightning will be released by Less Than Three Press on November 28, 2012. Until then, it will be available for preorder at 15% off here. 

All my shinies!

So many shinies this week! I'm just going to make a list. :)

1) The Sandy Relief Auction is almost over! The stories are going for fantastic amounts, and all for a good cause. I'm proud to be part of it. As for my story, well... Thanks to all who have bid on me. I'm very curious to see what I'll be writing about. :-D

2) Previous to last week, I had never spent more than $10 on any piece of jewelry in my life, aside from my husband's wedding ring. Then Freia Inguz (aka Amara Devonte) posted a picture of this necklace, and I had a serious case of insta!Love. As soon as I saw it, I thought, "Look! That's my tree! I wrote that tree!" so I splurged and bought it for myself as a reward (for a variety of things). Last night at parent-teacher conferences, one of the first parents came in, introduced herself, and immediately started gushing over my beautiful, handmade necklace. I fondly think of it as my Fire and Lightning necklace, and I am reminded of Drys every time I see it. I love it very much. <3

3) Dreamer's cover has made it to round 6 of the Rainbow Awards Cover Contest! The competition has been incredibly stiff--there are a stunning number of really beautiful covers out there this year--which makes me even more proud. Of course, London Burden did the cover, so I can't really take any credit for how lovely it is, but it's still got my (pen) name on it. If you feel so inclined, go cast your vote in its favor. Honestly, I'm just pleasantly amazed it's gotten this far. I mean, I knew I thought it was gorgeous and perfect, but I figured I might have been slightly biased...

4) Speaking of covers, look what went up on Goodreads this week! This is coming out on my birthday, it's set around my MC's birthday, and there will definitely be a giveaway of some sort come January. Keep your eyes peeled if you're interested.

Official blurb:

Will is panicking. In ten days he'll be thirty, and his life isn't anything like he imagined it would be at that age. As he considers his future, he sees the possibility for failure. When he thinks of the past, Will sees all the opportunities and loves he's lost. The only thing he can't see is what's right in front of him.

Hurricane Sandy Relief Story Auction

The lovely Piper Vaughn is hosting a story auction to raise funds for disaster relief. Bid on a story, get one written just for you by the author whose auction you win! I think it's a fabulous idea, and I'm excited to be both bidding and bidden upon.

All told, there are twenty authors participating, a few of whom are unfamiliar to me and several whose work I've read in abundance. To find a list of participating authors, rules for bidding, and to hop in the fray or just make a donation to a good cause, see the official post here.

To all those out there three days into NaNoWriMo, good luck! Persevere! Have fun!

To all those those opting for sanity instead... well, so am I. Good luck to us, too. :)

Ghost Rentboy Release Almost Here! *\o/*

On Wednesday, my short story Halloween Trick is being released. It is the direct result of some Twitter shenanigans involving a suggestion that rentboys + Halloween would be pretty great, thereby unwittingly volunteering myself to write such a thing, and then Megan Derr proposing, when I asked for ideas, that I make my rentboy a ghost. Since I thought that sounded fun and totally out of the ordinary for me, I set to work. Five to ten thousand words of fun Halloween fluff? Piece of cake.

Really, I should know better.

I forgot that there is a reason I avoid paranormals unless I really love the author writing them. I am the sort of woefully literal person who reads vampire sex and gets distracted by thoughts like, "Wait, if you don't have a beating heart and blood flowing through your body, how did you get an erection?" (A shameful waste of perfectly hot vampire sex, I know. No one regrets this more than I.) When reading, I can mostly set these things aside for the sake of the story. Trying to write a paranormal, on the other hand, was a whole other ballgame. By the time I finished the rough draft, I was practically twitching from all of the self-correcting thoughts of "delete this--a ghost can't sigh, because he doesn't have breath; oh, erase that too--he can't blush if he doesn't have blood."

Over-think much? -_~

But now that the hard part is over, revisions are done, and I get to just enjoy the finished product, I must admit to a definite fondness for my poor dead rentboy, trapped forever in his work clothes from 1987, tethered to a teddy bear named Mr. Snuffles, and totally dependent on the man he's in love with to set up his tricks.

  In place of a blurb, which you can find if you follow the link to the book, I offer you the opening of the story:

Three hundred sixty-four days a year, the average john is just looking for a hot little ass to stick his horny dick in. That's why I usually wind up with the criers, the ones desperate enough to pay somebody to nod along as they pour out the woes of their conflicted, closeted souls, but who aren't quite sure they're up for the physical deed. I swear death has turned me into more of a shrink than an escort.

That three hundred sixty-fifth day, though, I suddenly get all the business... 

Halloween Trick is currently available for preorder at 15% off, along with nine other Halloween Rentboy stories.

Happy October!

My favorite month of the year has arrived! I have absolutely no good reason to love it above all others other than the beautiful blue skies, crisp, cold weather, and gorgeous fall leaves. I love my home state for the trees above all, and I have the most magnificent maple tree in my front yard--right up until I have to rake all the leaves off the grass in the two seconds between the time they fall and the time the snow starts to fly. ^__^

School is also in full swing. The two schools where I teach at about a 30 minute drive apart from one another (and then a 30 minute drive from home), so I spend a lot of time in my car with a travel mug of tea, my iPod playing, and my brain full of thoughts about classes, errands to run, and things to write/revise. I finally finished my Fire and Lightning revisions, so those are (mostly) out of my head. It's definitely not a story for everyone (it's f/f, for starters, involves no sex at all, and isn't exactly a whirlwind of action), but I'm really pleased with how it came out. Of course I would love for everyone to read it and love it, and I think people interested in history, mythology, and the development of a friendship with a side of forbidden love will enjoy it, but I've reached the point where I'm proud of it regardless of what other people think. That leaves me doing the last fixes to Halloween Trick, which is completely different and a pleasant change of pace. I'm excited for the rentboy collection to come out at the end of the month--I think it'll be tons of fun. 

All of this listening to music I've been doing always gets my muse whirling with new ideas. For me, certain phrases and words trigger entire stories. For instance, I've always wanted to write something based on the Cake lyric (from It's Coming Down) "she's gone/ and she's wearing your red sweater." I promise myself that someday the story that evokes in my mind will make it to paper. And my characters in Can Anybody Find Me got their personalities, relationship, and physical characteristics (and an entire scene) from my favorite Patrick Wolf verse: "Oh I love the curling of your hair/ gives me the greatest peace I've ever known/ I see Dylan Thomas in your face/ reciting Butler Yeats within your grace." (Speaking of Patrick Wolf, his new album Sundark and Riverlight is absolutely stunning if you like well-crafted acoustic arrangements.)

The flip side of this is that sometimes when I'm reading, certain phrases cause me to burst into song. Any time I read "right here, right now", I start humming Jesus Jones. "Shot through the heart" gets me singing Bon Jovi without fail. Even just "call me" is enough to get Blondie playing on cognitive repeat. 

What about you? Are there phrases that make you break out in song? Or are there songs that make you want to sit down and write a story about them?

Performing Literary Surgery

I've begun to make revisions to Fire and Lightning. Normally I look forward to the first round of edits. As soon as they hit my inbox, I snatch up my scalpels (aka "delete" and "backspace") with a maniacal cackle and set to work eviscerating my baby, or at least performing some sort of linguistic plastic surgery. There's something deeply satisfying--a sort of adrenaline rush for me--in devising ways to reword a phrase, smooth out an awkward passage, or hack out something that simply doesn't need to be there.

This present job, however, is not just a nose job or a kidney transplant. Oh, those still need to be done. This is also, however, going to require something closer to a full body skin graft. The meat of the story? Still love it. The writing style? Well... it has its moments, but let's just say I whipped this manuscript out in a hot hurry to meet a deadline, so it lacks a little in eloquence in a few places. That works out in my favor, really (or so I'm telling myself), because sometimes I can get so caught up in what I want to say that I forget to pay attention to how I say it. Now I'm going to be thinking about every single word.

All of this to say I've got work to do on a story I'm really excited about. (Good thing the husband is going off to his friend's house to shoot lots of guns and work on his truck's brakes all day tomorrow, because I'm going to be busy this weekend.) Since I'm a helpless perfectionist who can't leave well enough alone, by the time I finish, I will undoubtedly go back and change half of the revisions I made, and then make several more adjustments once I next see the manuscript again. But there's nothing better than the read-through after the revisions are done when I can finally think, "That's the story I wanted to tell."

Have a little sneak preview of the opening:

Instinctively she fought up, up, up through the darkness. Warm earth yielded to heat and light just as the last of her acorn crumbled away, and she stretched taller, her radicle rooting deeper into the soil to steady her tender young body. The light made something in her soul sing, made her spread her cotyledons wide and raise her face to the sun. When she was still deep within the dirt, buried inside her seed, this brightness had called to her more powerfully than a siren's song and filled her with the joy of life.  

Drys, a voice not her own whispered deep within her consciousness.  

That is my name, she thought. Pleased, Drys whispered back to the earth her recognition:  Mother.  

*~*~*

The first drops of rain terrified her. Each giant sphere of water, fully the length of one cotyledon and with much larger mass, fell with nearly enough force to break her in half. Yet when the storm raged, she remained firmly rooted in the earth, as straight and tall as she was able only three days out of the acorn, and her fear abated. Although she was merely a seedling, she was strong.  

Drink, her mother's voice commanded, gentle with the love she bore for all her children, yet stern enough to be heard over the crashing fall of rain and the wild whistle of wind through branches and leaves far above. Drys stretched forth each tiny filament of root she had grown and drank deeply.  

No fear greeted the first flash of lightning. The sharp, metallic scent preceding it, the dazzling streak through the sky, the shaking of the air that followed all left her trembling. A shiver of excitement rippled down her stem, and a throbbing filled the buds that had begun to swell with her first leaves. 

Masculine laughter rolled through her mind. You enjoy the bolts of Zeus, do you? The voice was deep and dangerous, rumbling like the thunder that cracked the night open in the wake of his lightning. I knew you would, my child. You do not fear the storm. That is why you will be my mouthpiece.

Mouthpiece? she asked, quivering no longer because of the lightning.

Listen carefully for my voice while you grow, he commanded. I shall speak through you.  

Breathing deeply, she stilled her trembling cotyledons. Yes, Father.

Okay, back to work I go. ^__^  (Fire and Lightning is due for publication November 28.)