Shit I Will Never Understand

(Forgive the promotional picture for Christmas With Danny Fit-- it comes out on Wednesday, and I'll chat it up then, because it features a chubby virgin, and I really adore it, and I haven't talked a lot about it, so I thought I'd just get everyone thinking about it first:-)

Anyway...

Back to shit I will never understand...

* How Squish can sleep through the apocalypse, but she can't seem to GO to sleep without flights of angels singer her cherubic little eyes closed.

*. Why Steve can't understand that she is not, was never meant to be, and never shall be an outside cat.

* How the washer works.

* Why it sometimes chooses not to.

* How a reasonably (for us) clean house can self-destruct in the time it takes me to bend down and pick up a scrunchy from the floor.

* How Chicken could have left a book called "Island of the Sequined Love Nun" on the floor of a movie theatre, and nobody there claims to have seen it. (We're on a Christopher Moore kick-- I'm a little disappointed to lose the book, to say the least.)

* Human viciousness. (In the news, in person, in specific and in general, it boggles me. Just does.)

* Human kindness. (When it's aimed at me, and it comes unsolicited, I am always grateful.)

* How people can call a perfectly good ending in which two lovers live together until the end of their days, "bittersweet." (But it pleases me that they do--even if the end of Hammer & Air DID make people cry.

* How soccer season is STILL going on.

* How grammar schools can just cut their days in half for an ENTIRE WEEK and not expect parents to be just SCRAMBLING for day care. (Of course, it's on the week when the EDJ resumes again, so Mate's up for child care. He's not pleased.)

* How I could have nearly two hundred unopened messages on my e-mail. What in the hell am I saving them for? Later? TWO YEARS later? (This does explain why my uncle put a sign up for my grandma over the paper shredder, though. The sign reads: For stuff that you think you'll look at later.)

* Why I keep putting off looking at those messages.

* Why the dog's digestive system started setting it's phasers on 'kill'.

* Why none of my kids can EVER top talking. (Okay... I may have a teeny-tiny little bit of a clue with this one...)

* Why I felt compelled to watch Dead Poet's Society this last week. Twice.

* Why my son loves it as much as I do. (He watched it three times.)

* Why the sweet older man who sent me the most adoring fan letter was forced to wait until his fifties to acknowledge that he was in love with another man. (They spent 28 years together, and his husband passed away in 2008 at the age of 95. One of the most romantic things I've ever read--all truth.)

* How I could cry at the end of Tangled. Am I really that much of a sap? (Don't answer that. And yes--the movie was awewewewesome!)

* Where my rainbow lanyard wandered off to, dammit! I LOVE that thing!

* Why even my knit socks disappear in the drier. (Goddammit, they're the ONLY SOCKS IN THE HOUSE THAT AREN'T WHITE!)

* Why one ply malabrigo hasn't been declared fattening, addictive, or illegal. (Everything else that feels that good has been.)

* Why I love my rattiest sweatshirts with the white-hot passion of a thousand suns.

* Why knitting a sock makes me feel like an uber-genius.

* How sitting on the couch with Squish in my lap can be one of the greatest accomplishments of my day.

* How writing 73K for nanowrimo can be considered winning it when I didn't actually finish the frickin' manuscript! (But I will--it's really close.)

* How to download the frickin' badge so I can brag about it anyway!

Day After

My big kids don't like to do anything on the DAY AFTER. Seriously-- they make BIG plans to sit, play video games, eat leftovers, read, watch whateverthehelltheywant on television, whatever. Unfortunately, the little kids have made no such plans. Is it 48 degrees F. outside? Yeah-- they want to go to the park! Yippee! The park!

Mama said no.

I've had this bizarre...(shakes hands, shrugs, makes weird gestures to unruly lower extremity) THING going on with my leg. See, the thing is, I had that plantar's thing, the facsaeitis (Okay-- YOU spell it!) for the early part of the week. I had no patience with it, right? I walked on it. It got BRUTAL. So I decided to rest it, and I spent, I dunno, all Tuesday, just letting that thing rest, knitting, whatever. You know... being a good little girl and resting with my afflicted foot up in the air.

And then a weird thing happened. We're talking the world's biggest fucking charlie horse, and it WON'T GO AWAY! Now before everyone gets upset about a DVT, my stepmom freaked out about it already, gave me the checklist, and the thing is, the back of my leg is CONSTANTLY stressed and bruised, and it doesn't come and go like a DVT. I broke out the magic vibrating wand (get your mind out of the gutter--it's supposed to work on your BACK--I SWEAR it's not as dirty as it sounds!) and worked on my muscles, and it helped, but... it still just... just aches. I stand and stretch it and sit and put it down and stand and stretch it and NOTHING is comfortable--nothing except laying flat in bed, and, seriously, since that happens around ten o'clock at night, that doesn't lend itself to doing ANYTHING productive.

I've never felt more like a multi-ton banana slug in my life.

But it did give me a chance to join a 'chat' which is fun-- pretty much every writer in my genre on the planet showed up online and chatted to each other and left excerpts and stuff, and one of the things I learned via the chat is that Truth in the Dark is going to come out in audio book, and there's just something so... so... so... ROCK-FUCKING-AWESOME about that. I can't wait to hear someone read Naef and be all prickly and sarcastic, and grouchy. I've got a soft spot for that kind of character, and, well, someday you'll know why this story means so much to me. But until then, just be happy for me--it's totally cool, and this story is going to go on to move a whole bunch of people who would not have known it otherwise, and that makes me VERY happy.

And in the meantime? In the meantime I'm gonna go haul my multi-ton banana slug ass out into the 40 degree night and stretch my muscles in the cold cold air and try to pretend I'm not fat, flat-footed, and over forty. (Pretend with me, yes? Make me 25, lithe, and allergic to fatty foods... it'll be fun!)

And...

And I didn't write a Thanksgiving post.

Don't get me wrong--I've got a LOT to be Thankful for. I do. But you know them all by name, you've seen my birthday cards to them, you've heard their bizarre little stories and their quirks and their idiosyncrasies. Yesterday, I spent my time with my family, and in spite of a plethora of funky bullshit that I shan't bother you with, I was deeply, warmly, eternally thankful. But I was also quietly thankful, and although my heart was overflowing, it was overflowing in peace. For a person who uses words with such joy, even I know that sometimes quietly thankful is the way to be.

Anyway-- some book goodies here that I'm not so quiet about. Enjoy!

Michele'n'Jeff and Whipped Cream both liked Guarding the Vampire's Ghost.

And Elisaliked Making Promisestoo.

The Blog Post That Wasn't

Okay-- I had a beautiful post--I did. I still do. It was an in depth reflection about when we go out and fight battles and when we stay back and protect the home, and it had a crapload of classical references and movie references and some rock-awesome prose, but, for a lot of reasons, it didn't get put out. Anyone who wants to read it is welcome to send me a PM and I'll send it to you individually, but for now, we're going to settle for a really awful joke about effluvia, and a picture of a sleeping animal.

The awful joke about effluvia was really a realization that Zoomboy had about synonyms:

"Mom, mom! I thought of two more synonyms, want to hear them?"

"Sure!" (I said in all innocence.)

"Two synonyms for 'barf' and 'vomit' are 'throw-up' and 'puke'!"

"Your teacher must be so proud." And so am I. Mostly.

And other than that? Tomorrow I'm going to be up to my eyeballs in pies and other cooking shit--and then it's the split family juggle on Thursday. I'm sort of looking forward to the cooking shit--the family is getting a little stir crazy with all this vacation!

A real blog post next time--swear. Sometimes, it's just that discretion really is the better part of valor.

Reflections on To Kill a Mockingbird

Okay--I love this book and this movie. Doesn't everybody? It does (as most of the pundits say) give you faith in community, and karma, and eventual justice.

But watching it tonight, with my children, I was compelled to take a look at the darker side of the movie. I'm not sure why--maybe it was age, maybe it was circumstance, or maybe it was just the early dark of November and being stuck in front of the television with my foot up, (fascaeitis again) and feeling particularly helpless about stupid things like cooking dinner or playing with the short people or going to the bathroom--either way, two cold, hard truths smacked me in the face like big bear steaks as I watched it tonight.

The first was that Atticus lost.

Yup, you heard me. Atticus lost. We've all raged against the injustice, and we've all felt for Atticus the hero, devastated by that loss, but what about Tom Robinson? Yup. The falsely accused, the victim of the prejudice, he ended up dead--dead for (as the movie points out) no reason. For something as small as wanting to help someone, wanting to make his community a better place, the guy ended up having a warning shot fired into his head--nineteen times. *shudder*

The second was that Atticus' children almost paid the price for Atticus' stand against injustice.

And Atticus kept believing in the best of the world, and yes, Atticus' faith was eventually rewarded but Goddess... it was a near thing. It was a near thing, and the forerunners of the next generation, the people who would carry the word that all people WERE people, would have been dead at his feet, and the tragedy would have been downright Greek, wouldn't it?

I can't tell you all why this hit so hard tonight, except to say that the UN just told us that gay people weren't people in terms of genocide, and I was challenged to reflect on young girls in developing countries and the things they needed in order to have life choices, and I still can't bear to read "Reading Lolita in Tehran" because the odds of THAT ending well are just not good, and... and... the list goes on.

And people like Atticus Finch (or Harper Lee's actual lawyer father) fought injustice every day, and very often lost. And the world hasn't changed that much, and, in the words of Victor Hugo, innocence is still the worst crime of all.

I remember the end of Bitter Moon II. Some of you (and Goddess bless you!) told me that Yarri had to live at the end, even the projected end, thirty years after the bulk of the action, because to find out that she was dead at the beginning of the book was just too hard--it threw into shadow all of the other blood sacrifices made in the name of freedom. We just needed hope at the beginning, that eventually it would end well, and, well, Yarri was that hope.

I think it was that moment when I realized that I could be okay with writing romances, where the potential to pull the trigger on my lead characters were minimized by the genre's need for a Happy Ever After. (Yes, that is in capital letters... trust me. Always.)

And there are times I want to pull out the flaming verbal sword of justice and just annihilate all of the horrible hypocrisy, and the blindness, and, yes, the injustice that crosses my path. I yearn to be Atticus Finch--oh, Goddess, I do. But then I remember Atticus' Finch's children, and how they almost paid the price of his dedication, and I falter. Oh yes--I falter. I fear.Okay--I love this book and this movie. Doesn't everybody? It does (as most of the pundits say) give you faith in community, and karma, and eventual justice.

But watching it tonight, with my children, I was compelled to take a look at the darker side of the movie. I'm not sure why--maybe it was age, maybe it was circumstance, or maybe it was just the early dark of November and being stuck in front of the television with my foot up, (fascaeitis again) and feeling particularly helpless about stupid things like cooking dinner or playing with the short people or going to the bathroom--either way, two cold, hard truths smacked me in the face like big bear steaks as I watched it tonight.

The first was that Atticus lost.

Yup, you heard me. Atticus lost. We've all raged against the injustice, and we've all felt for Atticus the hero, devastated by that loss, but what about Tom Robinson? Yup. The falsely accused, the victim of the prejudice, he ended up dead--dead for (as the movie points out) no reason. For something as small as wanting to help someone, wanting to make his community a better place, the guy ended up having a warning shot fired into his head--nineteen times. *shudder*

The second was that Atticus' children almost paid the price for Atticus' stand against injustice.

And Atticus kept believing in the best of the world, and yes, Atticus' faith was eventually rewarded but Goddess... it was a near thing. It was a near thing, and the forerunners of the next generation, the people who would carry the word that all people WERE people, would have been dead at his feet, and the tragedy would have been downright Greek, wouldn't it?

I can't tell you all why this hit so hard tonight, except to say that the UN just told us that gay people weren't people in terms of genocide, and I was challenged to reflect on young girls in developing countries and the things they needed in order to have life choices, and I still can't bear to read "Reading Lolita in Tehran" because the odds of THAT ending well are just not good, and... and... the list goes on.

And people like Atticus Finch (or Harper Lee's actual lawyer father) fought injustice every day, and very often lost. And the world hasn't changed that much, and, in the words of Victor Hugo, innocence is still the worst crime of all.

I remember the end of Bitter Moon II. Some of you (and Goddess bless you!) told me that Yarri had to live at the end, even the projected end, thirty years after the bulk of the action, because to find out that she was dead at the beginning of the book was just too hard--it threw into shadow all of the other blood sacrifices made in the name of freedom. We just needed hope at the beginning, that eventually it would end well, and, well, Yarri was that hope.

I think it was that moment when I realized that I could be okay with writing romances, where the potential to pull the trigger on my lead characters were minimized by the genre's need for a Happy Ever After. (Yes, that is in capital letters... trust me. Always.)

And there are times I want to pull out the flaming verbal sword of justice and just annihilate all of the horrible hypocrisy, and the blindness, and, yes, the injustice that I see on the planet. I yearn to be Atticus Finch--oh, Goddess, I do. But then I remember Atticus' Finch's children, and how they almost paid the price of his dedication, and I falter. Oh yes--I falter. I fear. I am not the man of my family-- I can not go out like John Proctor and expect Elizabeth Proctor to take care of my children and tell them my story. As rock-frickin'-awesome as Mate is, one of the things that Elizabeth Proctor did as she was being hauled away in chains was to make sure the bread would be baked and the children would be made unafraid, and that is my job as a mother, and I have just enough of a control freak in me to fear that I am the only one who could do that right, and as long as I'm on the planet, it's my real duty to make sure that I'M the one who gets to do it.

There is a scene in The Two Towers (the second Lord of the Rings movie) in which all of the men are preparing for the battle of Helm's Deep. I hate this scene. Old men are buckling armor on twelve year olds and women are in the back of the cave, preparing to defend the children to the death should the lines of defense break down. When I first saw this scene, Big T was ten,(but the size of a twelve year old) and I thought, "No way! I'll go out and fight that battle, and my children can be safe in the back of the cave.

The next LotR movie, I saw while nursing a VERY quiet Zoomboy when he was two weeks old. (He ate and slept the whole time--last time in his entire life he was that still.) I watched the movie and that scene stuck with me. I realized that Big T would HAVE to go out and fight with his father, and I would have to huddle in the back with the women and children, and I was rather affronted. I was going to have to be a woman with children. *I* was going to have to be a woman with children-- I was going to have to put people I loved on the front line and cower in the back. Well, Jesus, didn't THAT suck rocks, right?

But, I reasoned, I would not be in child recovery forever. But now I'm getting older, and my older children are getting to the age where I can no longer justify going out to die for them when I have younger children who will need me as well.

And that's when the imaginary role playing merges with the reality of my role as parent once again. I have raised my older children to the point where they want to go out and change the world, and, Goddess forbid that I don't let them. I need to let them. I need to rein in my flaming verbal sword of justice and keep my home a sanctuary where the next couple of warriors who will go out and change the world continue to flourish.

I need to remember that Bethen and Lane Moon stayed home and kept their home safe, as all of their children ventured out into the wide world, and there comes a time when that is a valid part of changing the world too.

I've never claimed to be an elf--I've always claimed to be a hobbit. Every time I've tried to venture out and be an elf has ended in disaster. But the hobbits kept the Shire home, and sometimes, it's that hope of the Shire that's needed for the warriors to go out and do their job. Sometimes the Atticus Finches of the world have to tell the public lie in order for justice to be served. Sometimes, the flaming sword of justice has to be sheathed, so our children can draw it when it's needed.

But that doesn't mean I don't watch that thing, as it flickers in the sheathe in my heart, throwing the darkness of my doubts into stark relief on the wall, and yearn to blind the world.

My Favorite Scorpio

(With apologies to Wendy, Mary, & Chris, who I think would all understand.)


My youngest son, Zoomboy, is a scorpio.

Scorpios are "intense little creatures" and Zoomboy is a textbook case. He has a laser like concentration--he can focus on a craft project he's interested in to the exclusion of everything: drafts on the floor, hunger, the need to pee. NOTHING comes between Zoomboy and the object of his interest, including other people's conversation and logic. When we pick him up from school, he will often review with us the thing he has learned that day or that week, and Goddess help anyone who interrupts with silly things, like "Fasten your seatbelt" or "For heaven's sake, shut your door!"

These last few weeks, he's been studying homophones, homonyms, and synonyms. In the middle of a perfectly logical train of thought, he will suddenly become very excited: "Mom! Mom! They're, there and their are homophones. These are words that sound the same, but mean different things. That's different than words with multiple meanings. Like bat which is a baseball bat and bat which flies around." I always nod, and say good job, even if he's said this before--it's important to him. Very very very important. Everything the teacher says is important--even when she's telling him not to talk and he just can't help himself. Sometimes, he's like a very intense little chihuahua-- he wants to please but his tense, bony little body was just not made to stay in the same place for any length of time.



Zoomboy has always been my "miracle" baby. We weren't digital when he was born, so I can't show you the picture that was taken about a week after he shot out of my uterus, but his entire face was recovering from one big bruise--his eyes were brick red, and everything from his upper lip to the crown of his downy little head was purple, green and yellow. Apparently he scraped his face on my hipbone as he was being pushed out--imagine that. My Zoomboy doing things the hard way. Everybody hold onto your suprise.

After he was born, he spent five days in the hospital, three of them without me. Now since then, I've heard worse stories--in fact, older brother, Big T, was almost one of them, because when he came out, he was all blue and refused to breathe (the little shit--there goes five years off of my life, I'm telling you--and that was when we fist met!) But Zoomboy suddenly decided that his blood sugar was too low to wake up, and he spent five days getting a tube shoved up his nose so he could eat, and getting his heel spiked for blood, so they could see if he'd eaten enough, and getting tested for Strep B because the admitting embryo was too green to see that sticking her hand up my wazoo and pretending to feel me up did NOT yield accurate results regarding the progress in my labor, so I didn't get my antibiotics in time. (People wonder why I refuse to bow down to authority. Could it be because when I have been at my most helpless, authority has invariably pissed on my head and let me down? Could be. Just sayin'. Could be.)

Anyway, five days. I spent two days there at the hospital, and then we came home, returning twice a day to keep feeding the little goober One day we got caught in traffic, and found him in the "control room" with the other nurses, because they hadn't fed him when it was feeding time. Apparently, he was (in the words of the night nurse) "showing those premie babies what a fully developed set of lungs was supposed to sound like, when they got their own."

Zoomboy has been living up to that ever since.



His best friend in the world, Sam, is a quiet, intense little boy too, with a quiet, intense smile. They have been best friends since last year, and will, I hope, continue to be best friends. I don't know of another little boy who could watch Zoomboy pick up a stick, and instantly comprehend that a game of warriors was about to commence. I don't know of another little boy who could play so intensely, and still play nice. (Okay--one. I know one little boy--but he's got his own focuses and I don't know if Zoomboy understands them.) At any rate, I'm glad that Zoomboy has found his childhood kindred spirit, because otherwise, he has the capacity to be a very very lonely little boy. His own head is quite full of his own things, and he can become lost in them with very little effort at all.



Zoomboy plays soccer because it allows him to hunt ladybugs, pick dandylions, and show other little boys how good it feels when they haul the hem of their long soccer shorts up to their chins. He is vaguely aware that there is a ball involved somewhere--very often, behind him, when it is zooming into the goal. That's okay--he still looks forward to being a "soccer boy" even if he doesn't understand that everyone else's passion for the game roughly equals his own passion for homophones, the daily joke, and absolutely matching sets of Happy Meal toys. He doesn't understand them at all, but we all hope that someday, he will.



He still sits on my lap--still treasures that time. He will back up to the kitchen and say, "Are you ready for it?" and then hold out his arms and rush into me across two rooms for a "super big squishy hug". He hugs until it hurts--I've had to limit these to one a day, to minimize the bruising from the sharp and hollow bones of his tense little body. He gets angry when I say he's bony though--he wants to be 'squishie'--he thinks that makes him more lovable.

He does not realize that it would be impossible for me or his father to love him any more than we already do. That would be "infinity plus one"--and he keeps telling us that there is no such number.



He asks me how much I love him, and I say, "Bigger than sky and deeper than blue."

He says, "Do you know who I love more than you (and Arwyn?) I say, "No, I don't." He says, "No one."




And really? I have no words for that. We waited nine years for him, after his big sister. It was an odd time for him to come, but it was precisely, exactly his time.

We wouldn't have him any other way.

Happy B-day Scorpios, and the Trials of Clive

Hammer & Air is out, and I'm thinking that although it's a leetle too early for things to be conclusive, it's possible that it doesn't suck! (I'm nervous-- I forgot my usual supplication to the gods... shall we throw in a quickie? Holy Goddess, Merciful God, LET IT NOT SUCK! thankyaverymuchamen!)

Anyway, I was looking through my favorite Supernatural fanvids for a friend's birthday, and I came across this one after I'd already sent her my top ten favorite.... Requiem for a Dream and my guys... *happy sigh*



And as for kids? We took Zoomboy to pick out his favorite cake--I was all excited for a whole nanosecond when I thought we were going to get Harry Potter this year, but, no... he took one look at the new Spongebob Doohickies available at Baskin Robins, and we're up to our eyeballs in Spongebob all over again. (Okay... we've been watching Spongebob for ten years now. God knows I loves the little yellow man but, can we just say, I need to watch something else in the afternoons? Please?) Anyway, he's all primed and ready for his run in with the six foot rat tomorrow, and I'm vaguely ashamed. It's a HIDEOUS expense for us right now--but Mate... sometimes Mate is as indulgent as I am, and I let him. It's not fair that I get to spend all the money, right? But stilll I can't help thinking that Zoomboy would have been just as happy with his best friend and sister at Chuck E's as opposed to a party for ten. *shudder* (And nobody comes to our parties... we have inconveniently timed children for that!)

Squish is... well, very bright, but also really looking forward to going back to daycare. She NEEDS other kids--and I'm looking forward to hearing her talk about her day, because she is highly entertaining.

Chicken and I went to see Les Miserable at the movie theatre--they were doing a simulcast of the performance at the Met, and it was WONDROUS. Of course, the Met didn't STAGE the play--the singers were costumed and acting and emoting but they weren't blocked or "doing business" as my old drama teacher used to say--at least not extensively--and the stagecraft was evocative rather than useful.

But Chicken didn't care. Neither did I. I filled in the blanks (because it's hard to follow some of the story when you're just listening to the songs) and together, we were moved by the music in astonishing ways. You want proof? Chicken spent the entire next day asking me to replay this:



She adored it.

Of course, the one glitch in the system was that there was a Jonas there, playing Marius. Don't ask me which Jonas... I don't know my Jonases, but I called him Clive. Anyway, all of these highly trained, inhumanly lovely operatic voices were just knocking the music out of the park, and then Clive opened his mouth, looked embarrassed, and pretty much destroyed the roll of Marius. Poor Clive. Seriously-- I felt for him. He tried, he really did, but, like most of us when we're young, he underestimated the power of training, passion, and god-given-talent, and thought he could play with the big boys. I have no doubt that if he trains for another ten years, he could sound like the real Marius... but not this night.

The cool thing, though, is that Chicken noticed too-- she was completely enamored of Alfie Noie, but Clive Jonas? Left her cold. Go Chicken!

Big T managed to successfully rally his father and sister to go see Deathly Hallows. Mate LOVED it-- he said that the best part was that it ended on a cliffhanger... and that the audience, who MUST have known that it would have, and had probably read the book, all screamed NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! at the end!

And now everyone's sleepy and disoriented... and I WANT TO WATCH SUPERNATURAL! I've had one burning a hole in my DVR for an entire week!

Hammer & Air

Okay, at one point in time, I was asked what my favorite fairy tales were. My response was, "A bunch of ones that no one has heard about!" When asked to clarify, I gave the following list:

The Little Goose Girl
Felicia and the Pot of Pinks
The Three Aunties
The Story of the Boy Who Knew No Fear
Twelve Wild Ducks
Snow White and Rose Red
Tam Lin

--See? Nobody knows these! So when presented the chance to write an m/m version of one of them... well... zomg. All of my love, right? Just like Truth in the Dark, this one was going to get all of my love.

And that's howHammer & Air was born.

The story itself is based on Snow White/Rose Red, which is, as best as I can tell, a Grimm's Brother's casserole of the story of Psyche and Cupid, with a little bit of Cinderella, a dash of Rapunzel and some Hansel and Gretel thrown in.

Of course, when I was given a chance to rewrite it, a whole lot of that shit got thrown out, and what was left was...

Well, I love it. Technically it's m/m/m--and yeah, that LOOKS cutting edge and dirty when I write it like that, but for the Little Goddess fans who have gotten to Bound and Rampant, well, you know I've written that before, with some serious /F thrown into the center of that for good measure.

This, oddly enough, is nothing like that--at least it wasn't for me.

There ARE girl cooties--if you go to the link and read the excerpt, you will see a pretty graphic scene featuring a boy in a tree, watching the boy of his dreams going at it with the innkeeper's daughter. The thing is (and it's hard to explain unless you read it) that in spite of the girl, that scene was still all about Graeme (Hammer) and Eirn. Even the m/m/m scenes are all about Hammer and Eirn. It was an INTERESTING book to write from that perspective, because the premise is, "There will ALWAYS be a Hammer and an Eirn." It was also, "We've got to find better words than that."

Now, I've always made my feeling about labels pretty damned clear--I'm against them. But there are some words of such power, such necessity to who we are, that to live without them is to live without a part of ourselves, and at the core of it, THAT'S what this book is about. The fact that the word is discovered by two young men (18 & 19) who have NO, NONE, NADA, ZIP, ZERO in the way of emotional vocabulary?

Well, uhm, let's just say that there's a lot of physical 'communication' before our guys figure out which word they really need.

I, uhm, hope you guys find that word too, when you're reading the story. I fucked with grammar, perspective, HEA expectations, and all of my usual literary victims when I wrote this one.

I'm so very proud. I hope you love it too.

(And thank you everyone who wished Zoomboy a happy birthday--I'm going to reflect on him this weekend. He is, as you all know, a most singular, particular child, who fully deserves his own birthday post.)

In my brain with a fisheye lens...

'kay... tomorrow is Zoomboy's b-day, but all the pictures of cake & ice cream at grandmas are on Mate's phone, and the Six-Foot Rat nightmare is next week, so I'm going to do something different today. I've got a new release on Wednesday (so you can expect a book cover up on the top for a while-- sorry, I know that gets old, but I really like to get the word out!) and in the meantime, the sleeping animal thing continues. What can I say? They were cute. I mean... look at him... he didn't even finish his puzzle!

Anyway, some of you read the interview, and one of the things on it was, (roughly) "So, is Amy Lane the same person who goes and gets groceries?" and my reply was that I was actually too distracted to do a good job of that. This occurred to me today as I was grocery shopping, and I had this idea, right, to make a blogpost about what it's like to have a brain on high-inspiration-alert... and then, well, life-as-irony appeared, and, you'll see what I mean.

Going to get groceries. Need soda first. So.da. soooooooodddddddaaaaaaa.. SODA! OH, bless you McD's, extra large diet coke my savior my drug my mmmmmmm...... (So, what's it like to be addicted to something stronger than caffeine? You've seen it fuck up some perfectly good people... what's that draw like? Smoking? Alcohol? Heroin? What's that feel like? How do you overcome it? My brother has some perfectly good vices, what's it like to not kick those by forty...forty one? Forty two? Hell... when's his birthday?)

OH SHIT! I need to get Zoomboy a birthday card to go with that monstrously horrible birthday present we got for him. Mom will like it... I'll let her go in on it. I'll need to. It cost a frickin' fortune! Zoomboy... God he's cute. Isn't he funny when he's on defense with his talking buddy? Two boys, young, falling in desperate love on the soccer field at seven, ten, twelve, a first look, a first kiss, a disapproving mother, an accepting mother, a boy falling into that chemical addiction to supplant the approval addiction he's been deprived of, another boy heartbroken as he matures and his first love does not, a separation, a funeral, a eulogy, a grieving lover, connection, plotbunny, plot DRAGON... BACK MOTHERFUCKER, BACK! I'M STILL WRITING THE LOCKER ROOM YOU BASTARD AND I'M ALMOST DONE, DAMMIT! LEAVE ME ALONE!

Here we are, at the grocery store. This parking lot looks like ass, but I love this store, and they love me. Oh, look. A bakery. I'm going to have to ask to get a cake for Zoomboy, or a pie. Pie. Cory likes pie. Will she be able to eat pie pregnant? Will Grace even let her eat it? Is she going to have pregnancy diabetes? High blood pressure?Will the twins be affected? Would Green be able to cure that? If I ate pie when I was pregnant, I'd be chuking all over the place... will Bracken hold her head? Will their anger connection make that freaky? Will Green have to step up? Will Nicky be able to deal?

Carrots, tomatoes, avocados, yoghurt... I don't know... do we still have yoghurt from last trip? Doesn't matter. Can never have too much yoghurt. Or crackers. No, I don't know what's for dinner tomorrow. Hey--that manager with my given name is working tonight. She's nice. Grocer. He's smart, got a degree, but likes the money and the people. He's a manager, the kind everybody likes. And then... enter a mad bomber, and a love interest in a hurry for a blind date, and he's stronger than he looks, and he disarms a bomb and then him and Mr. Blind-date misser get it on in the meat freezer... oh shit. Too campy. But maybe I'd have to learn to shop to write it...

Or cook! Look-- cookbooks! No, can't buy cookbooks--I never use them. Yeah... but it looks so good. And you'd have to check out whole sections of the store that you don't usually shop from, and it might stop me from just throwing shit into the cart and oh yeah--friendly pharmacist, wave to him, smile, offer to race the little old lady in the walker, enjoy her laugh, enjoy the pharmacists laugh and What if the pharmacist is her grandson, and she's dying. She just wants to see him mated off before she goes. Hey... he could get it on with the florists, I still like writing het... but what if the florist is a man? Ooooohhh... that could work. And maybe the meat cutter has had a crush for a while. And then we could make the florist a woman but make the meat cutter really manly and aggressive. Could we have the guy who makes the Chinese food into a threesome? I don't know, depends on what he looks like Oh HELL noes! Ewwww! Perfectly nice man, but I may never write grocery store romance again!

Oh wait. Did I remember to buy toilet paper? Fuck. Back around the frickin' aisles again. And wait--I didn't get meat. Or sauce for the pasta. Or... oh, for crying out loud, don't we already have seventy-eleven goddamned cans of chili? Hope not. I'm not putting that shit back. That's another trip around the fucking store. Just throw in some hotdogs to go with that... and some baked beans... and some brown sugar... and... oh hell. What am I bringing to my mom's tonight? And what am I making for Thanksgiving? And whose house am I going to? And... oh shit. Who's getting Alexa and can someone do that one way? When are both dinners? Crap... will I be able to get the house in order in time to cook? Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit...

No, I'm sorry. I don't have my card--but I have my phone number. Yeah, I'll sign up for that internet thing later. I just don't think about it when I sit down to the computer. All I do is write. Oh... wow. I need another cart? Well, I was going to take it all out myself, but if I need another cart, I guess not. Thanks for the help by the way. Wow-- hot today for November. And this wind! Skeery! Apocalyptic weather, actually. With the November light and the wind and the heat, it's almost steampunk. I could write m/m steampunk... I mean really, it's all about the glasses and the scarf, right? And metal bugs and Victorian gentleman who dress in purple and twisted religious iconography and frightening machines made of shiny welded metal with leather joints and faintly magical power sources... that would be cool. Metal spiders with active intelligence? Too evil... metal chameleons? Perfect... I would call it Bertrand, and it would make a noise like Perry the Platypus when I oiled him just so...

Hey-- I know that homeless man... he looks better. Someone must care for him. He always smells of cigarettes and sweat, but his hair is brushed back and trimmed, and his mustache is trimmed, and... Jesus. He's really pissed off. He's yelling and gesturing and trying hard to listen to what the other person is saying. Who is he talking too? They're hidden by that post... I hope he's okay. He seems hostile most of the time, but I'm used to seeing him in the neighborhood... who didn't avoid making eye contact... oh. Nobody. He's having that conversation with himself. Wow. That was weird. He was listening for responses and changing his expressions and everything.

Wow. Paranoid Schizophrenia at it's most frightening. Who knew.

Okay... is it possible that paranoid schizophrenia is really a writer's imagination without the brakes? Must ask Mate what I really look like when I'm talking to myself. Do I wait for pauses? Should I write about someone in love with his Paranoid Delusion? Ohhhh... that could be tragic...

I'm home! No... I didn't remember that birthday card for Zoomboy. Shit. shit shit shit shit shit shit...

But I DID remember soda!

Batshit, bugshit and crazysauce

(Thanks, Chris, for the big ol' link to the sleeping animals. I have now resorted to putting this up on my blog, and I am almost ashamed at how sweet it is. And now Chicken wants a rat. Dammit!)

Okay--I may have mentioned that the woman who brought Steve in to give her away as a rescue kitty was, well, three parts batshit, one part bugshit, and an extra dash of crazysauce. You want proof?

This cat is a real sweetie--but she's also a real squirrel. Getting her to really cuddle--old fashioned, purr in your arms, tilt back her throat and willingly be your bitch cuddle--is all a matter of location.

To wit? The bathroom. Yup... she will follow me down the hall, push her inquisitive little pink nose through the door, take a running jump and catch up on the days events as I am sitting on the commode. She'll stay there through fair, she'll stay there through foul, and she'll even stay there through Squish, who likes to cop a squat on the pile of clean laundry within viewing distance of the commode through the open door--and ask my why the cat loves me more than it loves her... Like I said.. batshit, bugshit, and crazysauce.

And in more news...

Chicken's hair is now blue. Yup. Blue. And for the record, so were my hands. @@#$$ cheap-assed plastic gloves. I used to wonder why nice, middle aged women always had those yellow gloves around. I thought it was so they didn't tweak out their hands as they scrubbed shit (as if that gets done around here) but now I know the truth. It's so they could color their hair. And now we know.

And some shit Zoomboy knows...

He knows about pilgrims and stone soup and where Perry goes in Phineas and Ferb and what tones his new Thanksgiving song involves and what shape pizza is in and why Chuck E. Cheese is cool. (In case you're wondering about that last one? It's because that's where he's having his birthday.

And why Squish is gonna take over the world before she can read...

Mama?

Yeah?

Look, they're taking the plants out of the dirt.

(Mom clears the taking-kids-to-school-haze out of her eyes, and actually looks sideways.) Yup, Squish, they're going to switch them up for some plants that do better in the winter, so that the flowers don't look so sad.

Now, flash forward seven hours...

Mama?

Yeah?

Look, all the new plants are in.

(And, sure enough, we're back at the same intersection, which I had totally forgotten about until she reminded me.)

Well, aren't you clever to notice that.

Mama?

Yeah Squish?

I'm gonna go home and plant a tree. Everybody should plant a tree. Trees are good.

(Well, she's got us there, right? Trees are good!)

And why Date Night was a success...

1. We put it off from Thursday to Friday. (Yes, I know that means we had to DVR Supernatural, but, dammit, there was nothing but crap out last night, and things looked better tonight!)

2. We saw an awesome movie. (Unstoppable. We thought it was gonna be dumb. Turns out, Tony Scott knows how to direct a movie about really big objects. Go Tony!)

3. I saw a Jon Stewart episode that he did not. Something about quoting Harrison Ford when he told Stewart that his movie was "Fucking Brilliant" on the Daily Show made the two of crack up for most of dinner.

Voila! Successful date!

Me, and then some more me, and, uhm...

So I scored a huge-ish interview and I thought I'd share. It's funny how people can get such an interesting impression from interviews--I don't feel like a whirlwind at ALL. In fact, when I plop my big ass down on the stuffed chair, I gotta tell y'all, I feel more like an earthquake! (I may be losing weight though-- this is based on nothing more concrete than "These pants USED to be a lot less comfortable" but, besides the "I was sick for a WEEK" thing, I think this can also be attributed to the "purple twinkies, flying monkeys, everything else has gotta go" thing. Well, silver lining, right? Just don't ask where that thing is showin' up!)

Anyway, I was going to pin down the world's squirreliest cat for my first 'goddammit Steve!' moment, but she was off plotting the demise of a slug, a moth, or someone's toes-- only the victim knows for sure!

I got a chance to nap today--although that wasn't what it was supposed to be. It was supposed to be Squish sitting on my lap while we watched Hunchback of Notre Dame (one of my top 3 Disney movies at any time.) What actually happened was that I snored, and she woke me up every ten minutes to fast forward the commercials. (It's on DVR.) But the best part was when she grabbed my chin in her pudgy, hot little hands, and said, "I love you mom!" before anchoring my arm more securely around her waist. She's a girl who knows what she wants, and what she wants is to be cuddled.

She IS the center of the universe, after all.

Ooh ooh ooh! good television alert! Psych was on tonight, and Burn Notice is on tomorrow night! I can not WAIT for Burn Notice--tonight's favorite line?

"Hello, Sam."

"Michael, you know you're the reason I drink."

LURVE that show!

And other than that? Not a whole lot going on--I'm locked in the house with all four children tomorrow, thank you Veteran's Day, and I need you all to root for me there. Enforced time with Squish has not made me all sparkly and happy about time with my beloved offspring. By summer, it'll be different. By summer, I can leave the EDJ in my dust, but right now? Looking forward to it.

And now, an ambiguous youtube.com essay of my twisted psyche, and I'm back to writing-- The Locker Room awaits.

Frisky Dragons

OKay-- I do admit that I left Thursday's post up for a couple of reasons, one of the most important being that for many of us who write or read romance, it seemed to strike a real chord. I get tired of defending my reading or writing choices, tired of explaining all of the academic reasons why romance is important culturally as well as emotionally--let's just say that post had been building for a really long time.

The other reason is that I've been sick, and although I can write just fine--I've done about 10,000 words in three days for nanowrimo--I haven't actually had the wherewithal to DO anything besides write. And that's not a lot of fun, really. Woke up, vegged on the couch, fielded whining children, tried to fix something to eat, watched a movie that I fell asleep during, decided that I could do something productive in front of the computer, and wrote through the whining children. Uhm, whoopee? Zoomboy's a little sick too, although Squish has managed to escape the worst part of it. (We think she's kind of sick, but we're not sure. MOstly, it's just that she's winning a whinging contest we weren't aware we were running, so we think that might make her sick. Or us crazy. You know, six-one, half-dozen the other.)

Anyway, this nanowrimo thing is a lot of fun--I'm thinking I might actually finish this novel, even though it will probably be about 20-30K longer than the required 50K, and that's good, because that makes it eligible for a print copy at DSP. I love being able to put my stuff in the word counter and go, "Lookie! This time it counts for something!" (Okay-- it counted for something before, but, really, yanno, a website makes it official?)

And, other than that--and Mate's continued stalking of Steve as that damned cat gets into the most destructive places in the house--nothing going on around here. I just had a thought... I'm going to start taking Steve pictures. Samurai did "Sekhmet you fucker" and I LOVED those posts. Maybe I can do "Goddammit, Steve!" and that will be fun. (Well, for me, anyway, right?) Not original, but a great idea is worth making one's own. (And Gordy doesn't DO anything. He's so entirely Chicken's cat that all of his antics are performed in her room, with the door shut, where none of us infidels who are NOT Chicken might see!)

And that's all. I've told myself that tomorrow is absolutely, positively the last day that I can be sick. My spare time goes away as of December first, and I want to spend the next three weeks cleaning shit that ain't been cleaned, and working muscles that ain't been worked. Oh yeah-- and finishing "The Locker Room", which I think is going to be one fantastic little book! (And making some progress on Living Promises, which I think is going to be a whole lot of powerful if I don't fuck it up, right?)

(Oh... and The Dougie? Believe it or not, I'm the last person on the planet who hasn't seen "The Dougie". Just proof, I guess, that I am the least hip person I know!)

I Do Not Write Porn

I've joked about it-- a lot! I'm self deprecating about my writing--I called Vulnerable"my smutty vampire novel" when I was finished with it. When I was working on Jack & Teague it was "gay werewolf porn". I mean, we bloggers, we tend to be a self-deprecating lot, right? It's as though we feel that just putting ourselves out there online, that's a big enough act of hubris. We don't need to do anything else to offend the gods.

We can do amazing things--I have met people online who have DONE amazing things--knit an impossible scarf, or put out a phenomenal number of quilts for charity, or make rumballs for many, many friends, or brave the hazards of cursed yarn, or juggle the demands of a beloved faith and an obsession with fiber, or learn how to sew in order to please an adored child, or earn a degree in a subject way too complicated for me to even remember, or balance a difficult job and a serene, positive outlook on life.

I have met all of these women on the web, and all of them, in some way, shape, or form, take away from the things they have done. "The scarf only looks impossible. Double-row lace is really easy once you get the hang if it," "Rumballs are really easy--here's my recipe. See?" "Well, yeah, it was a project for church, so I sort of had to do it," "Yeah, I'm a science geek," "It was a simple pattern--really easy to do!" or "I really doubt that yarn had it in for me. Mostly." I read your blogs, I boggle at your accomplishments, and I understand what goes into that job, that classwork, that scarf, that recipe, that manuscript, that pattern, that weight loss, that serene outlook, that whatever, because I am a woman, and I try hard not to make too big a deal out of my accomplishments too.

So I get minimum sleep, agonize over my manuscript, my readers' wants, the things pushing at my heart to be written, my genre, my word choices, and my place in the universe and whether or not I'm making the most of what the Goddess gave me to forge a better one. And when someone asks me what I'm doing with all of that sweat and blood, I say, rather shyly, "You know. Writing fantasy or some dumb shit like that. Me and porn, heh heh heh, don't you know it!"

I do not write porn.

Nothing I've ever written or ever shall write will ever fail The Miller Obscenity test. My stories have plot, characters, theme, socially redeeming value, a message, literary devices and some really lovely passages of description. My characters make people cry, make them angry, make them hurt, make them think, and my themes appeal to a truly diverse span of the population, if my fan mail is anything to judge from. People tell me that my stories haunt them, and that my characters feel like family.

I do not write porn.

So what is it do I write?

I write romance--fantasy romance, urban fantasy romance, contemporary m/m romance, you add it all up, and it's romance, and while puckered angry white men (and women--I've been watching the political arena, there are some REALLY puckered angry women out there who have lost all perspective about what they do or do not need to care about in terms of other people's sex lives) will tell you that romance is not particularly important, I would beg to differ.

Hell--so would the entire publishing industry.

25% of the entire publishing industry is made up of romance. Now, again, puckered angry men and women will tell you that this simply indicates the prurient nature of a decaying society.

I think they're full of shit.

People reading great literature for the first time are often startled at the amount of sex in it--and not just in Brave New World or 1984. Patrick Henry told the Virginia Convention that they were laying on their backs "supinely" and getting screwed by hope. Thomas Paine used the idea of German troops coming into frontier houses and raping the women and getting an entire generation of Prussian offspring on them as a goad to keep people fighting. Ben Franklin talks about why you want to shag an old mistress instead of a young one, and Walt Whitman... *whew* brother was bi and proud and descriptive about it. So was Lord Byron. Hell--so was Shakespeare.

It's just that people always assume that great works of literature and the people who spawn them are above sex, and I don't know why. (Well, I do know why, but let's save my rant for why we can expect puckered angry white people from the Puritans, because any people who thought the Dutch weren't white ENOUGH are BOUND to stir up some stupid ass shit for later, shall we?) But assuming that literature is above sex is overlooking the entire nature of humanity, and so, for myself and any imaginary puckered angry white people who would land on this site (and I like to imagine them bursting into flames if they do.  I do have a streak of pettiness in me that I have tried valiantly to hide, but it keeps getting away from me!) I'm going to remind us of why that's not true.

There are four basic human relationships. Four.

There is the filial, the platonic, the romantic, and the divine.

So, there's your relationship with your parents and children, your relationship with your friends, your sexual relationships, and your relationship with the God/Goddess of your choice. (Or all of them--whatever your conception of the divine, well, theryago. Jeff, god of biscuits, hear my prayers, right?)

Only one of these relationships has an age taboo, and that's mostly a physiological thing, right? You don't want to explain sex to your six year old because he thinks it's just naked wrestling, and as long as it's happy naked wrestling that only grown-ups do, you're pretty happy with that. But your teenager? Your young college student? Well, you assume they will grow into the romantic relationships in great literature just as they will grow into their own, and good for them!

But the romantic relationship is actually bigger than the age/sex taboo, and that's something that people forget. The romantic relationship SPAWNS the filial relationship. That John Mayer song, "Fathers be good to your daughters?" Absolutely-- the parents' working partnership (romantic relationship) helps to set the tone for the parent child relationship. It's the alpha--and the omega--of the holy trinity of parent/parent/child. Ah ah ah...

Wait--the romantic relationship just took over a whole other quarter of the relationship building, didn't it?

Because many people see the divine in their families. The other parent or the child--well, that's proof that God/Goddess exists, for some of us. Some people existed in a lonely void, until a beloved's voice or touch awoke them to the possibility of a warm presence in the universe that just might have some use and comfort for those of us in a lonely void. A friend to hold hands with and keep us warm in the night, right?

And there you go. The fourth wall of the relationship cottage, firmly usurped by the romantic relationship. Because our partner is supposed to be our best friend, right? I mean, I'm not about to go all Christian on the diversified and faintly pagan lot I know lurks out there, but isn't that in the marriage vows or something? Our spouse is our friend?

So there you go--this one relationship, this one side of the relationship building, well, it's not just the wall, it's the foundation and the cornerstones for a lot of us, isn't it? Sure, it's POSSIBLE for the human race to accomplish great things without the goad of romantic love... but why would they? Why would they even want to.

Notice, by the by, that there is no room in our little house for government? I don't know... anybody out there, no matter WHAT the outcome of an election, getting the electric buzzy sexy tingles for whoever is wearing Uncle Sam's stilts?

Yeah. Didn't think so.

So there you go. The romantic relationship--25% of the publishing industry, but even more than that to the human race! (And, of course, that "25%" number is completely overlooking those other genres that CONTAIN romance but are not LABELED romance--yet another reason I dislike labels intensely, right?)

And yes. There is sex in romance. There are things that people say to each other when their skin is bare and the world is night-dark and private that define who they are, and what happiness is to them. In order to write successful romance, very often, a writer must needs write successful sex.

But to call it porn is more than self-deprecating. It's damned near a criminal insult to something that I know I have labored over--and that a lot of other people that I know now, have also labored over. Romantic literature is age old, and it's important. No one reads about King Arthur because he wrote political law and set it in stone. They read it because the tortured triangle of Lancelot, Gwenyfar, and Arthur makes our hearts hurt to this day. That terrible angst set in motion wars that killed and treaties that saved and boundaries that defined a people. Even if it never happened, the story itself defines us, and it is not porn.

So the world seems to be crumbling around our ears, and I'm here, in my hole, writing romance and hoping that my words make a difference. Is it futile? Does it make me hopelessly naive?

I'm going off the classics again.

Aristotle said that poetry is more important than history or philosophy. That's because if you change the way someone FEELS about something, you have done something infinitely more important than recorded what has happened or delineated the rules of thought that the world operates within. If you change the way someone FEELS about something, you have CHANGED history, and you have CHANGED the rules of thought that people believe the world operates within.

My romance has the potential to change the world. People have written me and told me that this is so. My work has changed the way they think, and they, in turn, will go out and change the way they treat other people, or think about important issues, or even vote. And that is the power of romance.

And it is not porn.

Mama Got the Bug

Came home with a virus, and then wrote about 8,000 words in two days. (It's nanowrimo-don't know what to tellyou. This year I thought I'd make it official!)

Anyway, I'm sort of sick and really sleepy, so I think I'm gonna go knit, and leave you with the following pictures to assuage my guilt. Enjoy! (Oh yeah-- signed my Jack & Teague & Katy contract today-- the books will be released every other month next year, starting in February. I'm so excited I can't hardly stand it!)