The Walk Between Bonfires

Here we are:  sixteen hours and thirty-eight minutes, and we get the NaNo Party started.  I went to my kick off party last night, said hello, got my goody bag, spoke with some of the people who are going to try this.  Everyone there was new:  I was the only hold over, save for our area leader, from last year.  Is this good or bad?  Yes.  Go with it.

The time to write is approaching, as are The Witching Hours.  Time to run the kidlettes around for trick-or-treat, then find something to play at 12:01 AM, when NaNo kicks in and makes life crazy for the next thirty days.

This post isn’t so much about NaNoWriMo as it is about the person writing the NaNo Novel for 2012.  Or what they’ve learned from their writing.  Because we do learn from writing, and from the experiences it brings us.

I’ve got to go back about a year, however–back to the days when I was role playing, back when I was writing about Kerry and his lovely Annie.

Back when I was sick from work–as opposed of being sick of work, but that’s another story–I told people about the issues Kerry had with being himself.  Or should that be, herself?  ’Cause Kerry exists in one world with two genders, and has the ability to switch from one to the other when he feels like it–

Only, come October, 2015, his better half ends up having to deal with menstruation, and that means having to spend time really being a girl, not just flipping over into girldom when the mood strikes, or he’s getting a full physical.  So it’s during this first time of dealing with the Dim Red Tides that Kerry stays his girly self for almost a week, and–at the suggestion of one of the instructors he respects a great deal–she gets renamed Cassidy, which is Gaelic for “Clever Girl”.

The school that Kerry and Annie attend have a Samhain celebration every year, which includes a dance where one can, if they are in the mood, come dressed in costume.  It’s always held on the Friday or Saturday closest to Samhain Eve–or Halloween, as most people know it–but this October, in 2015, Halloween falls on a Saturday.  This means that the dance–which is just a bit of secular fun for the kids to enjoy–coincides with the true festivals that begin at sundown, on Samhain Eve, and continue through the next day, 1 November, the actual day of Samhain.

This also means that Kerry is dealing with another period, and he’s flipped over to Cassidy.  This means she’s attending the dance with Annie, and they’ve both decided to show up in costume.  Since Cassidy is a bit of a geek, and because she wants to have fun and not give a shit about the fact that a lot of people will be looking at her anyway, decided to show up as an Amy Pond Kiss-o-Gram, and Annie shows up in her River Song finest.

They talk, they dance, they enjoy themselves.  Cassidy has a couple of people give her shit, but she blows them off well and good.  In the end, they sneak out of the dance for a bit, talk some more, and steal a kiss in the same spot where Annie and Kerry first kissed the same night they came to the school, and where placed in their coven.

Then Annie tells Cassidy they need to walk between the bonfires . . .

Bonfires are a tradition during Samhain.  People would toss things in, old clothes, food, the bones of slaughtered animals, and watch them burn.  It was all about cleansing, getting rid of the old and greeting the new.  Some places have bonfires side by side, with enough space to walk between, so that one is purified and cleansed, leaving behind the ashes of their old life, and ready to face the new.

This is what Annie and Cassidy have at their school.  In a large field, there are two bonfires, and students are encouraged to dance about them and walk between, a symbol that they are leaving behind one more year, and facing the new, clean and untarnished.

I hear you going, “Yeah, but where is this leading, oh Scribbler of Words?”

Here you go:  characters teach you things, not only about your stories, but sometimes about you.  Cassidy was a character that came to me very easy, because she’s a cute, smart, geeky girl who accepts that there’s really nothing different about her, and that those who see her as a “freak” or “strange” are people who just can’t deal with this thing known as reality.

But then a lot of my female characters came to me easily.  Audrey Dahl was the first, she of psychic ability and fireball throwing.  The same with Jennette Hagart, the Nerd Girl Who Became an Ass-kicking Sorceress.  But Cassidy spoke loudly to me, because she touches me like few others.

Because I am Cassidy.

A few people have asked about the name change that came to my blog, which was the same name change that happened on my Facebook Page.  Some even noticed that the changes came about on or about 10/11/12, which was Coming Out Day.  There is a reason behind this:  it was time to come out.

I’m transgendered.  I’ve been this way my entire life.  But this year, in a year of much change and, in some cases, great hardship and insanity, I needed to get real with myself.  I started seeing a therapist, and I began the journey toward becoming the person I actually am.

I’ve begun taking steps towards being Cassidy, the woman I actually am.  It’s happening slowly, and it’s going gradually, but it’s happening.  In a few years time, the old me will be a memory, and Cassidy Grace Frazee will be a fact of daily life.

Oh, and she writes, too.  She’s very good as well–as good as me, I might point out.

What a surprise.

This is my life.  A few  people close to me have known this for a few months, and they’ve supported me, which is a great thing.  I don’t expect things to become easy, but then, I’ve not known a lot of easy stuff for the last fifty years.  Why should the remaining ones be any different?

Annie and Cassidy walked between the bonfires that Samhain Eve night.  They felt the fire wash over them, felt the heat upon their skin, and when they emerge out the other side, they were clean and new.  They were different people, and they’d never look back from that moment.  One day I’m going to write this story–

But there is another I have to concentrate upon at the moment.

NaNo is a crazy time.  Halloween is a crazy time.

But a certain ginger girl reminds me that life is crazy, and you gotta deal with what comes your way.  Follow your instincts  and you’ll find your way through the fire.  I know, however, I’m never going to get burned.  I’m always going to come out the other side shiny and new.

Because I’m nothing if not a clever girl.

The Deviant Wheel is Way Too Squeaky

If you are reading this, let me warn you: I’m going to say some naughty things below this line.  If you are cool with that, come on in.  If not . . . well, you know the rules.  You can always look at this video on Robosnake.

Onward.

If you are, like me, either a writer, or trying to become more of a writer, or you just like to pen fanfic about what really happened in the Sytheren Commons, then there’s a good chance you have an idea about what’s going on in the world of words.  Mostly, you know about contests where you can submit your stories and get some exposure.

It’s easy to do: contests are everywhere.  If you are like me, you belong to some form of social media that keeps you up to date on things, and you’ll get comments from the peanut gallery about what’s good, what’s bad, and what’s to be avoided.

Well, here’s one you don’t have to worry about any more:  Romance Writers Ink’s 2012 “More Than Magic” contest.  Why don’t you have to worry about it?  Because the rubes at Romance Writers Ink are a bunch of crazy jackasses, that’s why.

Here’s the deal: when RWI put up the info for their rules, they were pretty eager to go all sorts of places.  You could submit in just about every area you could imagine.  I mean, everywhere.  It was even indicated that if you wanted to write about aliens coming down and having tentacle rape sex with unwilling men and woman, hey, we’ll find someone to judge your work!  Now, when I think of romance, I don’t automatically shift over to tentacle rape sex, but hey, whatever floats that boat, right?

However, there was one thing that turned their tummies more than the possibility of a story about someone coating their lover in green slime and fucking their brains out.  And that was:

 

“Note: MTM will no longer accept same-sex entries in any category.”

 

You got that?  Submit a romance about a couple into enema porn; submit a romance about a guy who loves his lady so much he lets her masturbate him with a cheese grater; submit a romance about a guy who’s been blinded by his mistress and loves being her bound toilet.  Submit them all.

Just don’t submit a story about Steve and Marty out on a Valentine’s Day dinner discussing their future.  ’Cause, my friends, that’s disturbing.

Fortunately, these rubes caught so much shit about their little “guideline”, that they decided to take their gay-hatting ball and go home.  (I include this link only because I am in love with that picture of John Barrowman.  Deal with it.)  Yep, rather than find someone who could judge a romance story about a couple of 60 year-old lesbians who’d been together for 30 years, they said, “Fuck it; we don’t get why you people are hatin’ on us, we’re outta here.”

The last time I checked it was still near the beginning of the second decade of the 21st Century.  And while I understand the RWI are based out of Oklahoma–home of High School Lesbians Looking to Turn Your Daughters Gai–I’ve seen reports of similar things.  ”No more M/M, F/F.”  Right.  It’s okay to submit something involving M/M/M/M/M/M/M/F, but lets keep the consensual dick sucking off these pages, got it?

I’ve only been publishing for a while–if by while you mean I have one self published horror story and another story that’s soon to be published by an erotica press.  That doesn’t mean I don’t write.  I’ve been writing for years.  I’ve written a lot of erotica fetish fiction–and within that fiction you’ll find a lot of lesbians.  That’s just the way I roll.

And it’s not all about getting down and getting off; one very old story I found involved a lesbian couple working around an extremely unusual curse, but they didn’t care because they truly loved each other, and they figured out how to make it work, curse and all.  My first attempted and soon to be finished novel, Transporting, is, in part, about a relationship between a lesbian who’s repressed in the worst way, and a guy who is probably the strangest transgendered person ever.

If you write about people, if you write romance and/or erotica, you’re going to, eventually, write about same-sex couples.  Why?  Because that’s real shit, people.  Gay people are out there, they exist!  And they are just like . . . everyone.  Want a good job, want a good education, want love, want their kids to have a better life, want the whole fucking dream.

And you’re telling me there are people and publications out there that don’t want me to write about that?  Get the fuck out.

I can tell you when I started to give less of a honey badger shit about who was and wasn’t gay.  Was in a club in Illinois, late 1976, because I was still 19.  Was with friends who was hanging with a couple of their friends.  We got to talking about music, and I mentioned my admiration for the Queen.  One of my friend’s friends screwed up his face and said, “You know Freddie Mercury’s a fag–”

My response was short and sweet.  ”So?  Who gives a fuck?  He’s a great singer.  You’re crazy.”

And that was that.  I didn’t care.  I like the music, I liked him, and when Freddie died I was heartbroken because he was one of my idols.  It’s been like that with a lot of people I have idolized and respect.  My favorite writer, Arthur C. Clark?  Gay.  Elton John, who I also played constantly?  Gay.  The great skeptic and finder of truth James “The Amazing” Randi?  Gay.  The aforementioned John Barrowman, who my daughter and I love as Captain Jack Harkness from Doctor Who and Torchwood?  Ah, you haven’t figured out where this is going?

It shouldn’t be a big deal if someone loves someone else and they both have the same genitals.  I mean, why should I be concerned?  And if I want to write about it, I will.  I should be able to do that, right?

But it seems that there are still way too many people out there who think Teh Gai is going to bring about the end of civilization as we know it, and they must be stopped.  First off, civilization as we know it could stand to be improved.  And second:  what fucking planet are you living on?  People have been the way they are, straight, gay, transgendered, whatever, for millennia.  Do you think reading a passage from the Bible is going to change things more to your liking?

These hate mongers, these people who don’t want us to write tales about gay people, who would rather we just ignore it and hope it all goes away, they are the real deviants.  Because they are so wrapped up in their hate they can’t see anything else.  As Bill Maher has said about Rick Santorum, “He thinks more about gay people than gay people.”  When it becomes that much of an obsession that you can’t see anything else, and you spend all your energy trying to make it go away–you, homophobic ladies and gentlemen, are the true deviants.

Have a little bit of history: it can be argued that World War II was won by a gay man.  That man was Alan Turing, and he worked at Bletchley Park breaking the German codes, and once that was done they couldn’t take as shit without the Allies knowing about it.  And then it was discovered he was a homosexual, his life was ruined, and in the end he killed himself by, it is speculated, biting into an apple loaded with cyanide.  And said apple with the piece bitten out of it is, according to legend, found on every Apple Computer today.

Just remember when you power up that Mac, or turn on that iPhone, or read this on your iPad, you are honoring a gay man who would have turned 100 this year.

Enough of this shit.  Let people love who they want, marry who they want.  And let us write what we want.

Stop making us have to deal with your perverted outlook on life.

Standing at the Crossroads

Early morning, and there’s snow all over the place.  Was out at 5:30 clearing the drive, and man, I didn’t miss that at all.  Now with a 3 Above wind chill out there.  The only thing that was good is that it’s all light, lake effect snow, and not the heart attack-inducing wet snow that Chicago usually gets.

Today I was suppose to be on the road . . . not going to happen.  Not with snow all over the place, and down to the south of me is where I have to go–or was suppose to.  Calls to be made to let people know I’ll be in their town tomorrow morning, because with the weather the way it is now, I’m not going to travel 300 miles for something I’m not very excited about.

The writing was good yesterday.  Couples Dance moved onward, hitting 2,350 words yesterday.  Ended a sex scene and then proceeded into a discussion of old houses in Massachusetts and eating disorders.  Did I mention that even though this is erotica, there’s a story here?  See, that’s the one thing a lot of people don’t get: just because it’s got a lot of good sex in it–well, only one scene of good sex so far–that doesn’t make it smut or porn.

As pointed out in a discussion I had yesterday–and this is something I like to bring up a lot–if there’s sex in the course of the story, and it plays a part in the story, it’s erotica.  If it’s just sex for the sake of sex, just to watch people get off, then it’s porn.  Frankly, porn is boring: I stopped watching it in the 1970′s when I realized I should be out having sex rather than watching a lot of obviously stoned people having it.  And I saw a lot of porn, because I grew up in a town where the local drive in showed porn flicks every weekend, and getting in was about as difficult as pumping gas, so I knew what I’m talking about.

The story is interesting, because I’m really not viewing it as erotica, per se.  I’m looking at it as a horror story with a lot of sex in it, which is probably why I’m thinking of it as “Paranormal Erotica”.  This might make it difficult to market, but I’m hoping that the story is going to carry the day, and people will enjoy the story, not because it’s paranormal, not because it’s got great sex, but because it’s a good story.

I spent part of the day thinking up another story as well.  It revolves around the role playing character I created, Kerry, and how, after he begins teaching back at the same school he graduated from, he deals with a student who is transgender.  Kerry feels strongly for the boy–mostly because there are many issues in his life that allow him to identify with the student–and he’s also very good when it comes to transfiguration magic.  I’d actually looked at his story here before, months ago, and yesterday was pretty much a retelling of it in my mind, my way of getting all the lines finished the way I’d like them.

Like I’ve said before, Kerry is a character I’ve developed and grown with over the last 9 months–yeah, it’s been almost that long.  And I know as an adult, he’ll go through some crazy things.  But for him, helping this student is an important thing for him, because as time goes on he’ll find himself in a position where he feels the need to want to help.  Help those who are upset, who feel as if they have nothing going on in their lives . . . who feel like they are different.

Hey, you could almost say the same about me.

Tiptoeing About the Fantasy Realm

Write erotica . . . do you guide it, or does it guide you?  Do you have these thoughts in your head, or does it make things happen in your subconscious that aren’t normally there?

Am I driving the fantasy, or is it creeping into my reality?

It’s all very strange for me.  When I used to do fetish fiction I never became excited by it.  Oh, I mean, there was some interest in the back of my head, but the story was really my focus.  I used to get told all the time, “You must get turned on a lot when you’re writing this,” and my answer was always, “No.  Never while I’m writing”.  Which was the truth: I never became excited when I wrote erotic fetish fiction.

And why is that?

Very simple:  do you have any idea how hard it is to write?

Let me rephrase that:  do you have any idea how hard it is to write anything that has a plot and characters that are good and some semblance of a story?  Yes, after years of reading other fiction in the fetish realm it’s easy to see that if it’s a person’s intention to write wank material, then hell, yes, anyone can do it.  There’s tones of it out there.

With my current story, I think the reason I don’t find it “exciting” as I write it is because I’m spending so much time getting everything write that I don’t have time to get horned up.  Yes, I realize I sound like Sgt. Harris going about making his porn movie for a NYPD sting, where he’s more concerned with the sets and cinematography than he is about the actual sex, but that’s me.  If I’m getting the mood and feel and characters right, then it’s gonna be muy atractivo.

But does that mean I’m getting sucked into my erotica at other levels?  I’m thinking . . . maybe.

I’m heading into TMI Territory now, so if you want to bail you can . . . oh, yeah, like if you’re reading this you’re not interested in this part of the story–ha!!

 

 

 

Let’s move on, then–

 

 

 

I finished up some writing last night–probably 500 words getting into the foreplay of my characters in my erotic short–and it was off to bed.  I feel asleep quickly, although sometimes I get into these fugue states where I can’t actually tell if I’m asleep and dreaming or awake and fantasizing, so for all I know I might have been lying in bed thinking about this.

Anywho . . . I was dreaming/fantasizing/imagining being with someone I know, a very lovely person, and she was doing . . . things to me.  Very nice things.  The sort of things I’m kind of writing about in my short story.  The sort of things that culminated in what is known as “Woman on top position” followed by lots of craziness and finishing with her collaping onto and hugging me contently–

Well, now . . . that’s the sort of dreams I could stand to have more.

Now, I’d be happy if that were just that . . . but my mind was apparently working in over-drive last night, ’cause the fantasy fest wasn’t over, not by a long shot.

My friend came back to me–at night as before, in bed as before, and in a state of undressitude.  And she was back doing nice things to me . . . only the words were a little different this time, the tone a little softer, and the phrase, “You’re my pretty girl,” was repeated over and over.

Maybe that’s because, in my dream, I was her pretty girl.  And what we were doing–it all felt really good.

Oi . . . where does my mind go?  I know there are a ton of fantasies up there, and it seems like, of late, they’re all starting to dance around where I can see them.  How will this affect my writing?  In good ways, I hope.

And how will it affect my life.

One can only hope as well as it does my writing.

It’s all good, you know.

Trans Ported

Last night was one of those long drives home late at night, alone past midnight with only my thoughts.  My mind was sort of all over the place last night; I was riding a wave of emotions.  Part of the time I was thinking back to the company I’d just shared; other times I was thinking about a character I’ve worked on for a while; then over to the (almost finished) edit of my last story; and then on to dark things best left unsaid.

About the character . . . I friend–my Trusty Editor^tm–got after me one night to revisit a novel that I’ve let languish for years–decades, actually.  It’s a big book, something science fictiony, and it was my first great foray into writing.  It was also something that got away from me in a big way, because the freakin’ story is huge.  I started laying this sucker out in Scrivener a couple of weeks ago and just in terms of characters, I have 3 major, 3 minor, and 2 who play a part in the story but are really incidental.

It’s a lot of work, and it’s 2/3^rds finished.  And I will finish it–I know that much.  I just have to do it, lay it upon my WiP stack and get on it with the other story I want to do.

But this isn’t about my novel.  Well, sort of . . . but not.  This is about a dream, the one I had last night.

Now, of late I haven’t had good dreams, at least few that I can remember.  The ones I do remember are rubbishy crap where I’m spending all my time driving around a landscape of tall grass and trees, looking for something that’s not there, never really getting anyone.  I had that one the other night, and what made it really depressing was it was done at night.  Fun times I ain’t.

When I have good dreams . . . do I?  Very few times these days.  If I do I don’t remember them well.  And that’s a bummer, ’cause I could use a good dream to hang my hat on once in a while.

But there was this dream last night, something that came to me within the last 6 hours, as it’s 7:33 AM as I write this, and I didn’t get to sleep until 1:30 AM this morning–

Let get to the playback.

First off, it was a 1^st Person PoV, so I was looking out from my eyes.  I was sitting up, my back against a sofa arm, my legs out in front of me.  I’m pretty sure I was in a pull over, probably a tee shirt, and shorts.  My right arm was held out slightly to my right, and was being held by someone–a woman–I know.  She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, and she held my hand . . . and she was painting my nails.  There was this usual sensation as she did it, something I felt on them, and I knew it had to be her applying the polish.

She looked up, smiled, and said, “This color will look great on you.”

Then I sort of took in the whole scene, and needless to say the “me” in the dream was me . . . but not in the same “me” body that I know in real life.

And that was about it.  Yes, you can cue the Twilight Zone music now.

The mind goes to different places when you sleep, I know that.  And for this I’m not all that freaked out.  I’ve had that sort of “body switching” dream before, but not in at least the last 10 years.  It was strange that I’d said to someone 12 hours earlier that I hoped to have a good dream . . . well, that I did, because I gathered from my dream the both of us in the dream were having a good time.

I know it felt good to me.

And this does sort of fall into line with a character from my novel, because part of it does deal with gender identity.  It’s something I’ve given some thought to over the years, and the more I get into this novel, the more it’s going to come up again.  It’s an interesting subject, and the more I read the more I’m going to better define this character.

And as I dig deeper into the subject, I imagine I’ll have a dream like the one last night again.

Maybe next time I’ll find out what the color was that my friend was applying, ’cause . . . does it really look that good?