( Cut for late-night visitations  )

 
I have strong fears this is a novella. 

( Cut for lack of climate control.  )

Persephone has gone down to the Underworld, and I am freezing my tits off.

...uh by which I mean I hope everyone had a happy Mabon if that's their thing. Team Judaeo-Wicca is now going to gear up for Simchas Toyre, and then take a nap until Halloween.

Quieter around here than it's been in years, though. And very early this morning/very late last night I sang for myself -- for my wife -- for no other reason for the first time I can easily remember.

She said I had a lovely voice.

This comes by way of Ellen Kushner's Twitter and Malinda Lo's tumblr and by winding roads to a comment chain in the Printz contender blog (for YA books).

Basically, a commenter said -- and it didn't start out inflammatory, but its casual, callous tone was worse to me -- that there were "too many" same sex relationships in a book, and that same-sex relationships didn't "feel organic" in the world the writer had built (over the course of three books, I believe.) The commenter felt the author had "strong ideas about what [author] wanted to write about" and that the same-sex pairings, because they were neither depicted as Twue Wuv, nor ended tragically, magically, or diabolically -- in fact, they were just kinda casual the way things are in real-life YA -- were part of an "agenda" the author wanted to sell to readers.

I didn't join in the comment chain because it's about a month old at this point, and also because they've been warnin' me about my blood pressure for years now.

My kid is the daughter of a great romance. Why should I not reflect that in what I write? Why do we not get that connection, that magic, that serendipity of love in our narratives without it "pushing an agenda"? Why do the queers always have to do it Karenina-style? We don't all end up driven off cliffs, incarcerated, or in unhappy heteronormative cages.

On the other side of that coin, not every relationship is going to work out. Sometimes people cheat, sometimes partners drift apart in a desultory, friendly way, sometimes a pairing is more bread and butter when what you both wanted was laksa, and sometimes us queers are going to fuck around happily as people do and not think about the morning. When that happens, no one has to commit suicide. Or even take an epic road trip. I promise. It's fiction. Things can come up roses, as opposed to coming up herpes.

And may I say, of course the author had strong ideas about what she wanted to write about [sic, I'm pretty sure.] It was her own damn book. Books do not get written without strong ideas to drive them. We'd all just blog instead.

I suppose it could be said that visibility is my agenda -- mine personally. I've always written about same-sex characters, and usually there's been an element of contented romance (or okay, an element of porn). But mostly, I write that way because when I try to write about the straights, it sounds no end of dumb and I look gormless -- all out of gorms to give -- as a person who has ever seen the sun or felt an emotion ever or stubbed her damn toe. It's just not true enough for my writing if I'm trying to write something I don't know. And it sounds bad in my ear and I delete it. DELETE DELETE DELETE.

I never thought of it as an agenda before, though; I thought of it as a weakness in my craft as an author.
Now I suppose I'll have to get some goddamn buttons printed up.

Also, what is with the catastrophic new posting design on LJ??

ETA: I have scads of Renaissance music -- bring on the shaums, bring on the citterns, I gotcher branles and gaillards right here -- why is Kit Marlowe so seemingly partial to Florence + the Machine? Inexplicable. 

Now I have four projects going, because that's completely appropriate. Do I ever finish anything? Hahaha, that's funny. 

The insomnia isn't helping. I'm being visited by Spuckles, the Newfie of Dysthymia (ashlyme, he's Shuck's erratic, hormonal cousin. You can tell him because he's got a hankie tucked in his spectral collar) and pecking out maybe fifty words at three in the morning, which is super efficient, let me tell you. 

I suppose the point of this post is that I hate the tug-of-war between mental health, adult life, creative output, and medication. When I'm unbearable as a human being and an asshole to my wife and kid, I can pull pages and pages from my veins like nothing. Whether they are good, useful, valuable pieces of art we could argue until morning; but at least the words come. 

It's a thing.

Also, it's autumn soon. FIVE POUND BAGS OF SALT FOR THE ENTIRE READERSHIP OF THIS ELLJAY.

It's so versatile. As in, Really, do we have so flimsy a community that we would really turn and start devouring ourselves over things that really should be clear cut?

Otherwise known as, I always want to think the best of authors, I really do, but some people are really and truly just assholes who should not be allowed a piece of the big, sticky Battenberg that is the internet.

I am going over here.

From asakiyume, sovay, erzebet and others! This looks very subversive and cute and diabolical and interesting.



"The Cinderella jump rope rhyme was in actual use in the United States at least as late as the 1970s and 1980s: "Cinderella, dressed in yella/Went downstairs to kiss her fella/By mistake her girdle busted/How many people were disgusted?/One, Two, Three, Four..." Fast forward to nowadays, and put that rhyme in the hands of speculative poets and short-story writers and their friends. These are people with a lurid sense of humor, a color palette not limited to yellow, and a deep interest in imagining for Cindy some life-changing experiences beyond snake kissing and girdle busting. The rhymes found in Cinderella Jump Rope Rhymes were written in a collaborative freestyle whimsy, with each author adding a rhyme until a delightful series had been created. Add to that the illustrative powers of artist Adam Oehlers, and the final product was this little chapbook. Cinderella Jump Rope Rhymes shows you what a childhood pastime looks like when you dial macabre up to eleven. If playground fun got married to the genetically engineered child of Joss Whedon and Neil Gaiman, their offspring would be Cinderella Jump Rope Rhymes. Go ahead, nourish your inner Victorian orphan - or buy a copy for the Wednesday Addams in your life. Cinderella Jump Rope Rhymes is a Cabinet des Fées production. All proceeds will be used to support Cabinet des Fées and charities of its choice."

I have lost to February.