Day Two of the Page a Day Challenge. 300 wordsish makes up a page.

I promised to stick three pages up a week. Oh, I'll write seven, but c'mon. Even I don't want to read some of that. I don't know what all the pages will be, since I'm working on a couple of different things, but here's one from the Neo-Victorian novel that I'm middling my way through. It's near the end of the middle, and it's the prelude to a fist fight. It is almost entirely as it is from my notebook. So, um.... Well, here it is.......

Les was not pleased at the number of names on his list. Twelve shopkeeps this week would need convincing. Twelve.

He hoped that his size would be all the convincing they would need to pay up.

He wondered what Adella was doing. It was just as well she wasn’t here to see him set off to begin his duties. She wanted to believe he was better than Vicktor—so did Les, but the truth was they had been the same once, and the bad man still lived in Leslie, no matter how deeply buried. He wanted to leave it buried, but he knew if he wanted to kill Vicktor, he couldn’t.

So he set out to find his the first name on his list.

“Afternoon, Mr….” Les paused to consult is list. “Cabbot, is it?”

The man rose from is chair and stood eye to eye with Les. “It is.” He answered. “Who’s askin’”

“You can call me Mr Fordham. I’m here on behalf of our mutual friend, Mr. Ketchem.”

“No friend o’ mine.” The other man’s eyes narrowed to slit.  “And neither are you, if you’re his man. I’ve no interest in what he’s sellin’.”

Les smiled sharp and said, “You’ve already bought it. Now Mr Ketchem needs his cred.”

Cabbot looked Leslie up and down and laughed. “Or what?”

Leslie stepped closer to Cabbot. He widened his smile to show teeth. He did not what to be this man again, yet he was slipping into the role quick. “Or I go to work. And then you pay.”

“I don’t need protection from the likes of you or him.” Cabbot told him. As he spoke, he caught hold of Leslie’s right forearm, gripping hard enough to prevent him from side-stepping the punch.

So here's the thing: I might be crazy.....

My friend Melodie Bolt posted a thing on Facebook about how she was going to write at least one page a day in August. That seems okay. I mean, it's a page. It doesn't have to be good, right?
As it happens, I'm having a little bit of a problem getting stuff on paper lately. I mean, the summer's been great, and I've been selling books--no, I know I ALWAYS sell books, at the book store, but this time I'm selling my book. That's weirder than I had anticipated. Great, but weird.
But I've had problems concentrating lately. After Black Light, I couldn't find my way back into my actual work in progress.
This week, though, was my annual trip to Gilchrist Retreat Center with my oldest best friend, Loren Rhoads.  I was really looking forward to it, but....  I was really scared that I wouldn't write  anything. The first day went badly. I couldn't stop thinking about bills that waited at home, about work, and general crap that was stacking up. I was so stressed that when I sat in my little cedar back porch with my notebook  I kept falling asleep mid-word. Maybe I was starting to get Alzheimer's?  I couldn't keep any thoughts in my head. I went out, took pictures of butterflies and decided that I was done with writing.
Luckily, Loren brought a bottle of wine over, and talked me out of that. And told me where to go next in the book. Thank Goodness.
I'm not done. And of course, Gilchrist is my favorite place to write, it's so beautiful and peaceful. I feel like I can breath there when sometimes it's hard to in the world.
So.... Remember what I was saying about Melodie and the page-a-day challenge? I said, hey, me too, almost without thinking. I mean, the pages in my notebook are pretty little. How hard could it be?
I better make it harder. Well, not for me, exactly.
So here's what gonna happen. I'm going to write a page a day.... Well hopefully more than that. And I'm going to pick out three of them a week and stick them up here, as well as into the book. No, not every one of them. That would be crazy.
But I can do three.
So I'll see you next week.

What is goin' on?

One the the weird/cool things that has happened since the book came out is that people have asked me a whole bunch of questions that I don't usually get. Okay, I'll be honest, nobody's ever asked me anything about what  write before. I did, over the last month, a series of interviews about  Black Light, and about writing in general.  I thought I'd put the links in below.

Shels Walter asked me about nail polish, and music. Coreena McBurnie wanted to know, pants or plot. I bet you know which one I chose, right?  Fiona McVie let me talk about religious experiences. And Terrie Leigh asked me about the nature of writing. 

Also I was interviewed by the Flushing View, which is my home town newspaper. This, out of anything else I've done in my life would have made my mother proud. 

Oh, hey, and my writing group, Flint Area Writers, has a swank new website, created by the amazing Melodie Bolt. You should totally go look at it and find out what the rest o FAW is up to.

So that was my June. July started with the signing, which I may have mentioned, at my B&N, and it's going to end with a trip to Gilchrist with my oldest best friend, Loren Rhoads, for writing and wine an lots and lots of quiet. I can't wait for that. 

My First Signing!

This has been weird. I have been to signings before, sat next to my friends while they signed their books for people. I've even signed my name to an anthology or two that I've had short stories published in. Today was different. Today I got to sit at the table at the Barnes and Noble put Black Light into other people's hands, all day. It was great. But weird. But great!

With me are Kacey Vanderkarr, Brian Thomas, and AJ Tupps. What great company to be in.  I saw a couple of old friends, which was amazing, and make a whole bunch of new ones, and even recruit a few for Flint Area Writers! And!! You guys! I even got to sell the book to people who were complete strangers! How much fun is that!

So, in celebration of my first signing, I'm doing a Goodreads Giveaway, starting at midnight tonight. ( July 9th). You can enter to win one of three paperback copies of Black Light from now until July 31.

Y'know what? This is another first for me!!. Wow......

Anyway, just click on the link over to the right of this blog, okay? And go enter!

Black Light: Repeating Themes, Nail Polish and an excerpt

Asia looked away.  He didn’t answer, because as much as he wanted to believe everything Trace said, he knew it wouldn’t do any good in three weeks when they got evicted.  Still, when Trace was so close to him, he couldn’t concentrate on that.  He found himself leaning in, letting their arms almost brush before he pulled himself back.  He stared at the chunks of nail polish Trace had flicked onto the sidewalk at his feet.  As Asia watched, an army of ants converged on them, bickering over them, picking them up, carrying them off.  Trace continued talking, not even noticing.  He had no idea that he was the god in their world, casting pieces of sky down to them.

It’s been mentioned that I have a fascination for blue nail polish (the color of Trace’s polish here) that could be evident in this book. That might be true. In high school nail polish at the drugstore wasn’t a reality for me yet. My mother didn’t approve of the colors I saw boys wearing on Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert. Iggy Pop wore black nail polish—that was certainly not in the approved pallet. I wore Avon, in colors of Blush and Pinkly. Yes, that was back in the day of the Avon Lady that came to the house. 

Black, though, was elusive, even after I started driving. At least is was in my small home town.  The color I remember wearing most, was that metallic light blue that Wet and Wild made. It was .99 cents a bottle, and it flaked off as soon as you put it on, no matter how many coats you gave the job.

What does that have to do with Trace? Because things repeat themselves. Trace wears that same blue nail polish, and then later, Asia notices, after Trace, that Mica is wearing it too. It connects what was to what will be for Asia.

 And fiction echoes life, even if that reflection is sometimes distorted. This little excerpt above is actually an echo of my childhood. I have a clear memory of sitting with my best friend on her parent’s front porch, in the cool of a Michigan evening. I don’t know what we were talking about, but I remember watching her chip off that sky blue polish, and the ants racing from the sidewalk cracks to drag it away. It is also the only clear memory I have of thinking, “I’m in love with her.”  As the ants stole the polish I thought, “I can never ever say that out loud.”

The scene wasn’t in the first draft of Black Light. Somehow it re-surface when I was writing the end. It’s memory that comes to Asia as he regrets his silence and dreams about what he should have said.  

Black Light: Loren Rhoads, David Bowie and Ziggy Stardust.

I didn’t begin this story alone. In 1983, Loren Rhoads was my best friend. She still is, though we’re separated now by the width of the country. But back then our world was MTV. It was Adam Ant and the Police. It was used records from Saturday trips to Ann Arbor. And most of all it was David Bowie. It was the year of “Let’s Dance.”

With his bleached white hair, asymmetrical smile and deceptively bouncy pop music, this was a vastly different Bowie than I’d met years before in the middle of the night. That shrill and jagged Bowie that had been there no one else was. Still, since I was aspiring punk rocker, I might have given Let’s Dance a pass. But it was inescapable, spilling out of every car window that passed my open bedroom window that summer. And what it did for both Loren and I was lead us to the past. I remember that Loren bought albums. She bought all the Bowie she could.  We listened to Diamond Dogs on her stereo in her bedroom, puzzled over the lyrics, let the imagery color our imaginations. For Loren, Diamond Dogs was a starting point for short stories. For me, it was farther back. For me it was Ziggy. “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars”. Trace, Asia, Weird and Tommy were all born from that album. But the story, Trace and Asia’s story, began with one song.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UQvBzo_rJA

In the words of “Lady Stardust," I saw Asia, standing in that sweaty, hungry crowd, listening. I watched him feel what he could never say aloud, and I felt him lose the chance to ever speak up. Asia became the unnamed character in Bowie’s story for me. And then it became a different story. The membes of Black Light are from Michigan, because we were from Michigan, they are from the ‘80’s because so were we. Asia became a place to hold all my feelings of Midwestern repression. Ziggy became Trace; beautiful, and human, but completely unattainable. Even now when I listen to the Ziggy Stardust album it's full of energy and bravado, still a candle against the night.

Eventually, Loren's writing and mine took different paths. She has gone on to write more than anyone I know, and you can check out her blog here: httpp//:lorenrhoads.com/  

In fact, go look at her newest novel, Lost Angels, co-written with Brian Thomas: http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Angels-Above-Below-Book/dp/0963679422  It's an amazing book, and you need a copy, believe me. 

She's still the only person in the world who I can spend five hour in the same room with, just writing....with occasional tea breaks. And I don't think I'll ever be able to thank her enough for that first copy of Ziggy..... 

Building My Own House

It took me years to sort out my own sexuality.  I could tell you that was because I didn’t have Google when I was a kid, but I feel like that’s too flip an explanation. I’m glad that there is so much to see and hear these days. There are so many more safe places to go in the real world and online now. Don't get me wrong, I know it's not a perfect world. Way too many of us still can't marry who we love, and  I used to think that the closet had just gotten bigger.  Now I think that’s not the case. I work with twenty and thirty-somethings now, and I am amazed at the combinations and relationships that I see.  A woman my age at work, even told me that her child had told her “in an email” that they were pan sexual. That “no Mom, that doesn’t mean I’m attracted to pots and pans….” This woman didn’t tell me this because she was angry or ashamed. She was proud of her child, and working actively to get the pronoun of choice down.

Wow.                                                                                                                             

But, what was I talking about? Yes. This. I spent my twenties and thirties, desperately trying to fit somewhere. I wasn’t comfortable with most men, and I did love women, but I felt out of place as a lesbian, like it wasn’t quite the right skin.  I didn’t want to be alone, needed intimacy, and sex was something that seemed necessary to get that.  But I wasn’t ever really much for it, you know? In my head I’ve always heard a well-meaning ex of mine saying to me, in what I’m sure she didn’t intend to be a condescending tone, “It’s okay if you’re asexual.” When it was very clear it was not okay.

I couldn’t have been asexual, I thought because clearly it’s not okay.

That was thirty years ago, and I’ve made a lot of mistakes over that time. It’s taken decades to come to the place I am now. It took a long time for me to be comfortable straddling the line, instead of trying to fit myself into one box. 
I completely understand that there are always reasons you make the choices you make. That sexual preference is just that, and it's fluid.  Now? Now I know that I'm bi-asexual. Did I just make that up? Maybe. and I'm okay with that.