First of all, I must reach out to my beloved Marissa for bringing me an image of the day; her Netflix queue lined up the most perfect mashing to create the best TV show for me in all of existence. Baking is Futile.
Now, onto deeper topics: the state of me, and how I haven’t posted in ages.
Most importantly: the personal, as it’s distracted me from everything else since January. My father became quite ill and was on hospice for many months, and my mother’s illness finally and rapidly progressed into heart failure. My mother passed in May; my father hung on until August. Both my husband and I were temporary caregivers, and the loss has been felt very deeply. I’m thankful for the friends and family who offered succor during what has been a terrible year for me.
Onward to happier things. “The Eighth Bible of New Egypt” is currently up for serialized purchase via Kindle Vella! Please take a moment to check it out if you haven’t already read it before in anthology form; it’s just in time for Halloween. 🙂 PS — give it a thumbs up! It needs some love on the new platform.
Now, the bigger questions. WHERE’S LENNA? WHERE’S MORE JACOB? WHERE’S THE JANET PROJECT?
Well, those are all really, really great questions and I can answer them all!
Freewoman (scheduled for 2021) is being pushed back to 2022 just because of the sheer insanity of my life these days, but over the next few weeks I should have TEASER ART from my beloved cover artist to tide you all over with.
“Jacob Orange” short stories. I actually have three more coming! One is complete, and two more on the way. There are hijinks with Napa cabbage, Eyeballs (yes, they must be capitalized here), and the divine wrath of Victoria’s high heels. Keep your eyes peeled for a release of the next story, “The Progenitor Machine.”
The Janet Project… I haven’t abandoned you, my beloved retelling of the Scottish ballad “Tam Lin.” I have good news: it’s pretty much done its first round. Then it goes through an edit (or two) from me and some peer review, and fingers crossed, you’ll see it at Barnes & Noble in a couple years. I’m hoping to ship it off to some agents/agencies by year-end, so maybe even earlier than 2023. Ambitious, huh?
I’m going to try to keep the blog up-to-date as time permits. The day job that’s paying the bills is a little intense at the moment, but believe me… there’s more to come!
As a special treat after the break, there’s a writing sample from me for a creative fiction publication. If you’ve stuck around this far, go ahead and read it!
The fire should have taken me, not my brothers. They were normal, the everyguy: good at sports, rakishly blonde-haired and blue-eyed, and loved by everyone, especially my parents. My parents, well, they died in the fire too – I was away. I still can remember the quick pat on the head, a rat-tat-tat of love as my mother wished me good luck on my way to camp.
But it wasn’t just any camp. It was a Jesus-y camp, the kind you send young boys to to get “fixed,” or at least that’s what Dad said. He smelled of tobacco and coffee beans, and my mind still wretches with the thought of the scent.
I wasn’t an everyguy, though I wanted to be one and wanted to be with one all the same. I had dark, curly hair and steely eyes – a throwback, my grandmother called me – the Black Irish. And I liked boys. That, my parents led me to believe, wasn’t so much of a throwback as a mutation. They could deal with pockmarked skin and untamable locks, but not the gay part.
When did I know? Long before the flames took away everything I knew: I grew up with My Little Ponies and Barbie and was none the wiser for it being wrong. Even to this day, long after the embers turned to ashes and ashes into a demolition crew of my life, I still carry a pony in my pocket for good luck. I needed it.
Camp was where I was sent to drive away my carnal desires toward my best friend, Richie, who at fourteen was probably the epitome of what my parents had hoped for in their third son. He was a little tall and gangly for his age, with wicked ginger hair and a face mottled with freckles, but had a heart of gold and excelled at everything he tries, from violin to rugby. I carried our middle school year book with me to camp and hid it under the pillow, just so I could pretend he was with me at night.
When the pastor, whose name I don’t even remember, woke me the night of the blaze I sat up in my bed in pure, non-distilled disbelief. Dead? All of them? I thought of my brothers, of whom I never had reason to hate, and my wretched parents: Mom, clinging her hands together in prayer and wracked with guilt and Dad, puffing away on a cigarette on our porch telling me, “Silly faggot, dicks are for chicks.”
I couldn’t help but love them, all the same. Camp ended early for me, without curing the “disease” that my mother was certain Christ could save me from and my father thought could be exorcised with a good whipping. I loved them, all the same.
I was abnormal, I thought at the funeral. Looking around at the crowd, I was an aberration. A scar across the family name. Poor little Joel, their looks said, he should have died in that fire. I clutched my pony and watched on.
