We moved again. This time, we did it just for us. 

We talked about moving out of the United States before Dani went to medical school. For a long time, we thought that meant Spain for us, but the logistics of that (moving the animals, the long flights from Spain to the US, and the complexity of moving to the EU) led us to consider Mexico. After all, Mexico was where we first visited when we got together, right after Katrina hit New Orleans. Even though we only went to Juarez on that trip (yes, we stayed in Juarez) we found so much that we loved about Mexico once we went into the "real" parts of the city away from the border. 

While we love Oaxaca and Mexico City, we didn't want to land in either at first. When we visited in January to explore Ajijic, we both felt at home in Chapala. On my first visit to the Chapala malecon, I saw Los Valadores de Papantla. Dani and I had gone to Cristiana Park with Butch to try pickleball, and I decided to take a jog. I found my way down to the malecon and got to watch as the flyers made their way up the pole and then took flight.

It was magical. I realized in that moment that as charming as Ajijic is, Chapala was a better fit. While it might be more challenging to live in Chapala than in the largely tourist and expat village of Ajijic, I was willing to take that challenge on.

And the challenges have been plenty. Once we got here, we started rebuilding our household, which included the seemingly simple task of replacing Chester's dog bed. We'd made the trip with one bed in the truck, and the cats managed to not flood their carrier (and the bed under it) until the last day on the road. The first challenge was finding a bed big enough for him. A lot of folks bring their dogs down, but the shops in Ajijic had small beds. Even at Walmart the beds were small.  When we did find some lightweight pillow beds, they are pretty thin.

So, I ordered the bed in the picture above. It's got memory foam in it, so his joints and boney bits don't get irritated by the hard tile floor. 

The complication? Our address with CFE (the electric company) is not a real address anyone can find. Add to that the fact that Estafeta didn't even stop on our street (even when Dani was trying to flag them down), and we got an alert it had been delivered to our house. I could see where someone signed for it. It took a bit, but I realized that the Pepe Guizar was not a person but the location of the Estafeta office the bed had been delivered to. We made our way there in Chapala Centro and sure enough, the bed was there. The clerk gently scolded me for using a US cell number (yes, the country code was right), and thankfully we'd gotten a Telcel phone and account by the time I went in, so we laughed about it and Chester got his bed.

Now we know how to give folks our address for non CFE purposes.

Here's to a month of living here. We're still figuring out the basics, but we've also already had amazing encounters and grand adventures with our new friends. 

Now, if I can just relearn how to cook and how to highlight the ingredients I find here--that's my next big challenge. 

Find out about the upcoming release and what I've been up to.

2022 was a bit rough for me; the rough patch actually started way before 2022, but I mark the beginning of the skid that took up most of my time and energy as November 2021. It was back then that things came to a head and Doc decided to postpone boards. 

Postponing boards was a hard decision, but the best choice. Continuing to approach things the way we were wasn't working. Last Christmas marks the first time Doc managed to get a locums in to cover a holiday weekend. That led to locums to take off a week in January for a much needed break and time to just breathe.

We unstuck ourselves.

By the time we returned to south Arkansas in January, we knew something had to change. You can read about that in my recent Physician Family article "Putting out the Inferno to Rekindle the Fire."  Since making the hard choices, we've moved into a rental (with the house still on the market), D took and passed her boards, and we've spent the last four months figuring out what we want the next chapter to look like.

I am still freelancing. I'm proud of the work we've been doing at Strategies this year. The magazine has grown and has a clear identity now, and the last issue of the year focusing on Survivor Stories allowed me to not only share Garrett and Cathy's story, but to reflect on one of the main reasons we have been making the decisions we have this year--family (or as I often refer to non-biological loved ones "framily.") But, just as the moment called for changes in our living arrangements to maximize family/framily efforts, it also called for me to think about what I want from my freelance work.

When I first left teaching, I considered continuing education in editing. "Do more editing" was on my 2022 business plan. Freelancing in the world of Fiverr and UpWork is hard, y'all. I almost got scammed big time (listen when alarm bells go off when looking for remote work!), and there are a lot of people out there who hang a virtual shingle up as editors who have no training or experience in the field.

And, people want me to work for free (or practically free). I know outsourcing to freelancers and companies in other countries is cheaper, but we really need to start treating our creative service workers better.

With limited growth in my freelance work this year, I made the commitment to develop and refine my skills as an editor by enrolling in The Graham School at the University of Chicago.  I'm doing the Developmental Editing specialization track, so if you're thinking about big projects (non-fiction/fiction) in the next year or two, keep me on your radar.

The decision to uproot took up most of our mental and emotional energy in 2022. Looking back, it's easy to see how and why that happened, as this time last year was a breaking point for both of us. Now that the decisions have been made and we've taken care of things like insurance, I am able to return to my unfinished projects and start to set some goals.

• Signs & Wonders and  Long Weekend both have been sidelined in 2022; my hope is to get both of those finished during 2023 and out into the world. 
• The Octave Thanet Project will be revived and I'll start making regular updates on that blog. One of my goals this year is to get The Dalrymple Mystery out as an eBook and paperback with an introductory essay. Likely, I'll start weekly updates on that process, which I started early in 2022 and then lost progress on after I cleaned off my hard drive a bit too vigorously.
• This blog will be updated more often, as well. I'm working on a clear schedule for posts on #selfpublishing #editing and #freelance as well as other topics.
• Plan more trips! I had a lovely time with my sisters in Hawaii on a postponed trip Renee planned early in the days of COVID. Sadly, our sister Debbie wound up in a horrible wreck and is now spending the holidays in respite care. Doc and I also spent a week in Mexico City during the Day of the Dead festivities. 2022 was the ten year anniversary of my dad's passing, so it was extra special to be immersed in a celebratory cocoon of remembrance. We keep falling more in love with Mexico every time we visit. Because we're both in freelance mode right now, we're dreaming up all kinds of potential excursions for this year.

I wish you all a restful last week of 2022! 

So, I had a Zoom that started at 10 CT today. Obviously, I did not go.  Not only did I not go, I also blocked the organizer and deactivated my account on their platform. 

Let's just say that going into PrepTober that I'm setting some boundaries.

The Zoom I skipped today was for a platform that serves as a job board for freelancers. I had signed up to be "vetted" a while ago and I forgot about it after signing up, mainly because it didn't look like a good fit for me once I started the process. Last week, I got a nudge from their "talent manager" that she'd reviewed my profile and hit "submit" for me.

What?

Let's just back that up a bit. I obviously months ago decided I was not ready--for whatever reason--to submit my application. That this person went ahead and hit "submit" for me. . . well.

So, I logged in and took a look. In addition to telling me she'd done this favor for me by submitting my profile, she also mentioned she'd removed my full name and other info from my portfolio samples. After all, the writing done for clients is basically "anonymous." Translation--this is a content mill that will do nothing to further my writing.

I was also "debuted" at a 4 star rating (6 is the highest you can start at) which sets me up for a max rate of 6 cents a word. But WAIT! Not only would I get that low rate, but in addition, I would take home only 70% of the project pay.

Looking at the jobs on the "casting calls" showed only a couple of things I would even consider bidding on--but the most either paid was 5 cents a word. So, if I did a 500 word piece of copy that only paid $0.05, that would be $25.00. Once the platform took their cut, that's $17.50. And, of course, I then have to pay my own taxes.

I get that these types of platforms are content mills and that for someone who is just looking for remote work who has no writing experience that this is a way to build a portfolio (although not really because the work up on this space isn't stuff you get by-lines for). My advice for aspiring writers, though, is that you're better off pitching pieces for publication that you can add to your portfolio.

In the meantime, I will keep working the gigs I have and waiting with bated breath to see if my invoices are fulfilled. 

From the outside, things are pretty much the same. While we've added three large raised beds in the front, the color profile of the house is the same, and they are finishing up repainting the trim and touching up the paint on the porch and steps as I type this. 

So, before I start with the before and after, note that the master bedroom and back guest room and bathroom are basically unchanged. We did pull the carpet up in the master a few years ago, and found really nice hardwoods underneath. There is a transition/threshold that needs to be added, but we've got someone coming to work on that later this week. The master bath still features a large clawfoot tub and huge granite vanity. 

Let's start with the den/kitchen area. When we looked at the house, it was clear this was an addition, in part due to the low ceiling in the den area. Here are the original pictures.

Everything feels pretty close here, and the ceiling is low. The door to the backyard here led out onto four steps down to concrete. The breakfast nook is pretty hidden there, and there's not a lot of natural light here. Two people in the kitchen area was a bit cramped.

By opening up the back area in the kitchen and taking out a utility room where the washer and dryer were, we were able to create a much larger kitchen area. The dishwasher was in the old island, and we moved it to the main cabinet bank, added more upper cabinets, and brought in an AGA Legacy 36 dual fuel range.  The island is also slightly larger than previously. The old kitchen had one sink, and we expanded that with a double-basin farm sink in the main cabinet area and a round prep sink on the island.  

The ceiling in the den area was raised up to follow the roof line, and can LED lights were installed throughout this two room open space area. The original single door to the backyard was replaced with  center open sliding doors from Pella.  

There are so many things we added to the den. The wood fireplace was completely redone with mosaic tile on front meant to pick up the green in the 1920s era stained glass windows we found on eBay from a shop in Chicago. Built-in bookcases were installed on either side, and they feature outlets inside with access from the mantle. We created a cozy seating area off to the side. The glass door leads into the office. 

We also took out the side cabinets seen in the upper picture and installed a full size freezer and refrigerator, added a large appliance garage, and additional storage, including a broom closet with an outlet for charging my small cordless vacuum. Tile throughout the den, kitchen, and office was replaced with Saltillo tile ordered from Rustico Tile & Stone Company. The lights above the bar are vintage Christopher Wray Murano glass, purchased from Bevolo Gas & Electric Lights.

In the third picture above, you can see into part of the breakfast nook. While that area was open and big enough for a small table, we opted to take out some of the built up area here, put in smaller pendant lights instead of the heavier fixture, and create a coffee and wine bar with additional counter space and storage. Dani mounted the glass shelves using pieces of salvaged flooring that was pulled up when we created the new bathroom with hallway access.

The office was closed off from the dining room with built-in bookcases.  We moved the door from the dining room entry to the den (that's the white glass-paned door you see in the picture above with the two chairs). The office appears to be an enclosed porch (maybe a sleeping porch at one time). We opened up the wall between the dining room and the office and our contractor, Barry Dodson, built arts & crafts style columns on top of the existing original built-in cabinets.  Our cabinet maker, Joe Roberson of Home Cabinets in Magnolia, made Dani's vision of one long desk reality. Flanking the desk are custom corner shelves.   We also installed custom blinds that can be opened from top or bottom, giving us light and showing off the diamond panes without the room and its occupants being visible from the outside.

The cow sitting on the built-in was found in the attic by the contractor.

One of the major improvements we made was to expand the first bathroom so there is hallway access. In the first picture above, you'll see the entire guest bath we started with. This was only accessible through a bedroom, and the space was extremely cramped. The tub was taken out, and a chimney and small hall closet were removed to make way for a large walk in shower. A floor to ceiling cabinet was added for storage. In addition, a new closet was built for the bedroom and the ceiling (which had been lowered to 8 feet for some reason) was raised to its original 10 foot height.

  While we haven't done much to alter the front yard or front view of the house, We did fill in the pool last fall. While it was fun to have in the summer, it was a lot of upkeep and the backyard was completely taken up by the concrete decking and the pool itself. When it came time to either redo the vinyl liner, steps, and equipment, we opted to fill it in. We installed a new deck which also gave a whole new outdoor space with seating and storage.

We've made a lot of other less visible changes and improvements to the house since we've been here, and I detail those in this description.  If you would like to see more, we'll be listing the house in the next few weeks with Ramona Crain at Century 21. We hope it finds the right people who will love it as much as we do. In the meantime, we're wrapping up the dining room renovation, which I'll post pictures of once we get done with it.

I have a lot of tech set up to help me write more, write better, and get more done. And even so, I recognize that all of the bells and whistles aren't what matters. Especially when I see a post like the recent one in a writer's group I belong to where the author suggested it was time to quit.

The post in question was from a writer who, like me, is in her tenth year of indie publishing. The post was a long list of complaints, including that her laptop broke in 2020 and she has been writing on her phone since.

I didn't respond to the post, even though I was tempted to do so. Everyone else piled on, giving the OP advice about marketing, restricting herself to one genre only (and a specific niche within it), offers to review her covers, and a million other things in her post that didn't stick out to me.

Had I responded, I likely would have suggested that she invest in a cheap bluetooth keyboard to make writing on her phone easier. She's got Google docs at her disposal for free, and a keyboard like the one I'm using right now will only set her back about $15. And that's for the cheap kind that runs on batteries and doesn't fold up. They can take a good beating--just don't slop any beverages on them (that's what usually happens to mine). 

Ultimately, though, I recognized that post for what it was--regular venting. The OP has everything she needs to not quit--anyone who writes on their phone and keeps going has the hustle required to be a writer. 

Sales and advertising? Those are different from the actual writing part. Here are some of the different things I have in my writing arsenal. None of these cost more than $100.

• Google Docs: Free. I can access my files there on any device that has internet connectivity. And I can export files as Word and PDF.
• Bluetooth keyboard: The one I'm typing on now (ProCase) cost less than $15 during Prime day and it has the same feel as an Apple keyboard. It runs on AAA batteries and has an off button so when I throw it in my bag to go somewhere it doesn't run the battery down. I snagged another one from my sister-in-law recently during her moving sale and now have one specifically for my tablet.
• An android tablet: I used to have a Fire (actually I had two of them) and I loved it, but didn't love the hoops I had to jump through to get the Google Play store access I really need. I use Google Docs a lot for all of my projects, and I also use Google Books for The Octave Thanet project as I can highlight and take notes in those eBoooks and have them synced to Drive. I'm currently using an Onn Pro 8 inch (32GB  memory and 2GB RAM) with a 64GB SD card in it. The device is far and away better than the Fire for my needs and can do just about anything I need my laptop to do. This device is currently selling for $79.  One advantage of writing on a phone or tablet is that it's slightly more difficult to shift from one tab/app to the other which slows me down in terms of getting out of the screen I am writing in to scroll mindlessly. 
• My trusty NEO2: One of the things I struggle with is falling in a scroll-hole. I think most of us do. You get online to check your email and the next thing you know you've binged six hours worth of whatever it is you're prone to binge. I bought this a couple of years ago after I decided my Alphasmart 3000 was a bit too clunky. The NEO2 was the last version the company produced and they stopped in 2012. I paid around $35 for this one. It runs on AA batteries, can be used as a usb keyboard for any computer, and I recently scored a receiver for it that will allow me to drop my files wirelessly. These keyboards were originally made to teach kids how to type and for kids with issues that made writing by hand difficult. They are pretty indestructible, batteries last a good year or better, and you'll find Reddit and other communities on Flickr and elsewhere devoted to them. Note: Alphasmarts (NEO, NEO2, Dana, 3000) get pricey in the month or so leading up to NANOWRIMO. Do not spend more than $50 on one. 
• Scrivener: The software is cheap, does a great job of allowing flexibility while drafting and planning, and it's so handy in revision. While I do use Google Docs for file management and back up, Scrivener allows me to drag and drop chapters and rearrange without having to scroll through hundreds of pages and copy/paste.  This requires a computer or laptop for me, but if you have an iPad, you can get the app for it. The only downside? There's no Android version. That's ok, though, as I can draft in Google Docs and drop it into Scrivener later. (I know, there are ways to use Jotterly and sync things on Drive, too, but Docs are free.)
• Grammarly: I snagged a year of premium for 1/2 price during Black Friday sales. The key is to turn off the auto-renew so you don't get slammed with the full-price on renewal. And now, Grammarly is integrated into Scrivener!! It also works on my tablet.
  

Do I NEED all of this to write? No. Various notebooks and beloved ink pens (I'm currently obsessed with Pilot Frixion pens) are truly all I need as long as I still have hustle. 

I was contacted today again with a thank you email and link recommendation related to my December 2019 post, "Writerly Resources: Free & Low Cost."​ I'm sharing this post again with the addition of the two student/reader related resources added to the start. Enjoy!

Wednesday mornings, we often have what we call Spanish Breakfast. We make a breakfast board, basically, with hard boiled eggs, cheese, different meats if we have them around, some fresh tomatoes or fruit. We call it Spanish Breakfast because it is modeled on the breakfast spread they served at Masia Sumidors in Sitges when we were there last. Last week, I did the thing I always do: I asked Dani if she wanted a little plate when I set the board on the breakfast nook table between our chairs.

Not surprisingly, she gave the usual answer she gives: "Nah, I don't think I need one."

I laughed and said, "Actually, I need to stop asking you that. I want us to have plates as it makes it easier to clean the table later. I want us to have plates, so I should just skip the question and put them out."

She laughed (and agreed).

Too often we don't ask for what we need--even if it is as simple as my need to have plates out. I'm the one who does the dishes 99% of the time, so I'm not sure why I felt the need for validation or for her to want a plate. I just should own my needs, no matter how small they are. 

But the problem is, we often don't really know what those needs are at the time, or how to express them. Some 30 years ago, I was in a psychologically abusive relationship with both myself and with someone else. That person didn't compliment me, or even really show me any appreciation for what I brought to the relationship. And trust me, I gave it my all, putting my own happiness and sanity at risk in an effort to "make it work" (I use quotation marks here because, as you can probably guess, it would never work. It was a dysfunctional relationship).

Anyway, my sister Renee came to visit and we were going to ride up to our parents' house together for the weekend. As we were in my little Martin Street garage apartment (the one I still have dreams about--the one that often has hidden rooms full of stuff stacked to the ceiling in those dreams) getting ready to hit the road, I put on a shirt I really liked and asked her, "Does this shirt make me look fat?"

Her answer is not really the point, but I will say her answer would make me laugh now. Now that I'm not in that broken place where I need validation for silly things like how I look in a shirt I like, I wouldn't even ask that question now. I might ask a question like, "Does this shirt look OK?" Or, "Do you think this is dressy enough for where I'm going?" Or something like that--an appropriate question to ask about a shirt. 

It's just a shirt, after all.

I wouldn't set a trap for my sister (or Dani, or anyone else) these days that makes my whole self-worth dependent upon the answer about a shirt.

You see, back then, what I needed was to tell her how miserable I was, how run down and how I lacked a clear sense of who I was. But I didn't tell her that, and I left her to try to figure all of that out by asking her if my shirt made me look fat. There are so many questions I could have asked her that would have actually led to a conversation that would have helped uncover what I needed, including:

Do you think X is normal in a relationship?

That one question would have gotten the ball rolling, no matter what shirt I was wearing.

Don't make people mind read. Most of us aren't any good at it. People tend to listen when you tell them what you actually need--and very rarely are they upset about it if you are honest about it. Tell the people you love what you need. Trust them enough to feel empathy for you and to help you. That you put your trust in them will far outweigh any awkwardness or disappointment they might initially feel when you reveal what you need to them.  I promise.

Over at the Octave Thanet Project, I've been working my way through the primary texts in the order of publication. Part of that has involved using Google Play Books versions of those texts because:

1. ​The Google Play versions are the scanned pages of the text. While I can get a Kindle version, I lose the page numbers, footnotes get placed in odd spots (and Octave loves a good footnote on dialect and terminology--in Expiation there are something like seven footnotes explaining Arkansas dialect in the first few pages). Also, there's something special about seeing the text as the first edition readers would have.
2. Highlighting and annotation are a breeze! Google Play Books are incredibly user friendly. Not only are they easy to highlight and make notes on, but the notes and highlights auto-sync to your Google Drive. What this means is that you can easily edit and share those notes. Once I've created a copy of my overall notes, I then go back through and do searches for specific things and create notes for those items. For instance, I'm keeping track of and highlighting instances of racist language and terminology, as French's representations of race are one feature often pointed to as to why her texts are not typically anthologized and why her work fell out of favor.
3. Creating this as a web project has several bonuses. One reason I decided to work on the project in real time as a blog is that is the fastest way to share what I find. (The first reason is that it means I constantly work on it--I don't want the blog to just sit here).  Not only is there an immediacy, but the ways in which I can use category tags in posts is automatically creating an "click and go" index. As the project progresses, I'm sure the index will continue to grow. The idea is that later if I do turn this into a critical biography of French I can easily use those tags to write essays about specific themes in her work, for instance. 
4. Academic non-fiction is not a money maker for the creators. I don't necessarily think it should be--but I do think that the prices and access issues that graduate students and independent scholars are faced with for published academic texts mean a lot of research and ideas never get published and those that do don't get read because the cost to the researcher is prohibitive. Because there's no "loss" to me by creating this project as an OER, why not? If one graduate student or casual reader finds my project and benefits from it, that's a great thing.

Ultimately, this type of work is what my PhD trained me to do. And so far I'm having a blast. 

While I certainly was influenced by Dr. Paul Reuben's Perspectives in American Literature site, I have to think that were it not for Dr. Salda, I might not be approaching this project in this particular way. Realizing that the work he did on those three archives is gone, I am also considering how to ensure that even once I'm gone, the resources will remain. On the bright side, you can still view snapshots of all three (see urls in the top for easy searching--the links in the snapshots do still work, so if you get to one, you can get to them all) on the WayBack Machine on the Internet Archive.​

Hot Springs used to have a huge metaphysical bookstore, The Golden Leaves Bookstore (seen above). It's no longer there from what I can tell, but in the early 1990s I had an experience there that kind of changed my life--just probably not in the way Starr (yes, with two Rs) imagined it might.

 It's been a long while since I told a Baby Huey story, and while he's in this one, he's a very minor player. I remember the year this happened only because when we came back to our Martin Street apartment, my beta fish Taliesin had gotten too cold and died. We only lived in that apartment for about six months in 1992, right after I graduated with my BA.

Despite that period of my life (and the years that followed it) being what I can only describe now as being rather hellish, I loved that apartment. It was set off the street a little and had a huge bedroom downstairs. You went up the stairs and through a second door to the living, kitchen, and bathroom area. I'm pretty sure it had been a garage at some point that was converted. I still occasionally dream about that apartment, and the dreams often have to do with there being a "forgotten room" that I discover while there. Of course, the mystery room is upstairs, and it's usually filled with all kinds of objects, like someone just tossed a bunch of things in it and shut the door. 

Not much trouble in analyzing that bit.

Anyway, it's fall of 1992 and we went to Hot Springs and to the bookstore. I remember it being very wood-centered on the inside, with a long wooden counter and wood floors. I can see the interior even now in my mind, and I remember feeling very self-conscious, aware of someone watching me closely. At the time, I'm sure I was a mess. I'd already been having panic attacks and was convinced I was dying.

The panic attacks started before we moved to the apartment. I'd been having them since I lived over on Helen Street. Time gets really murky for me in those years. I know that we lived on Ash Street for a bit, and I think it had to have been after Martin Street and before we moved into the duplex I lived in during my year off from grad school between my MA and PhD and worked at Edge. So much of my life between 1991 and 1995 in particular is hard to remember, likely in part because I was so out of touch with who I was.

In the early stages, my panic attacks tended to happen at night. I'd wake up on Helen Street feeling as if I couldn't breathe--I'd lurch out of sleep clutching my throat and gasping for air.  Part of my anxiety was likely driven by my lack of direction. When I reached the end of my bachelor's, I had already decided I wasn't going to stay at UCA for my MA, but I didn't get assistantships anywhere I applied, so I didn't know what I was going to do. 

The other more important cause was that I was deeply closeted. All of those things about myself that I refused to voice, that I swallowed and tried to keep down, kept choking me when my guard was down.

By the time we moved to Martin Street, the panic attacks had reached the point that I'd have them any time of day if I didn't keep myself completely busy. And, given the lack of good sleep and lack of direction in my life, it was hard to maintain focus on anything long enough to keep the panic attacks at bay. On top of not having a direction myself, I was also almost out of money and Huey had been working on a losing political campaign for free, betting on the candidate winning and getting a paid job at the end of the campaign. 

At some point early on in that summer, I was diagnosed with bronchitis. I felt a little better knowing there was a physical reality to what I was feeling, but still didn't feel right, even after the antibiotics were done.

I managed to snag a job at the laundromat nearby that did drop off service and I held on to my sanity long enough to regroup.

By the time I walked into Golden Leaves, things had started to calm down somewhat, but I was still a mess. Norbert Schedler had come to my rescue and told me that if I got my application in he'd hire me in as the graduate assistant who organized and promoted the weekly High Table series. I was miserable in that spot (let's face it, I would have been miserable anywhere) and kept rolls of antacids in my backpack and ate them like candy that fall semester. But, I had a paycheck, I was working on my degree, and I had direction--all of those things helped with the panic attacks, at least the overt ones.

But, I apparently still looked like hell.  Starr kept staring at me. I wondered if she thought I was going to shoplift. Her attention irritated me. I don't remember what I bought that day, but when I got up to the counter to check out, she said something to me about helping me figure out what I wanted to know. I remember asking her if I was healthy. She said, "You know you are. The spirits want to know, though, when are you going to write that book?"

As a 23 year old who still believed in all types of magic (which is not to say that I disbelieve everything now) I was floored. Now, of course, I tell myself that a person in a bookstore is pretty easy to read as a wannabe writer. In that way that 20-somethings don't realize how much they say in public, too, I'm sure I had said something or Huey had about my writing.

Still, even almost 30 years later, I remember details about that afternoon. The assurance that I was ok physically comforted me enough that I got my act together. I got out of the job I hated and managed to go back to the Writing Center where I belonged. We didn't live on Martin Street much longer after Taliesin froze and Starr psychically kicked my butt. We moved to Ash Street shortly thereafter, which was a darker time in many ways.

But I stopped having panic attacks. I got angry. I started questioning why I was letting fear stop me from doing what I wanted to do, and I narrowly avoided making some pretty bad choices at the time while still getting what I needed. I realized I could make it on my own. Huey moved out to play house with someone he probably had been seeing back when we lived on Helen Street. I found out that was going on and fell sick with strep throat. I survived it and was happier for having survived on my own. No matter how rotten I felt, I had no interest in him coming back. I have no clear sense of how long he was out of the house, but he did eventually come back.

The thing is, my hypochondria wasn't true hypochondria. Something was horribly wrong, and--not to sound all woo woo about it--the psychological became physical because I refused to deal with those issues properly.

By then, I was wearing a ring I'd bought myself--it wasn't anything fancy, but it was a wide silver band that hugged my finger. It was my armor. I started telling everyone I was married to graduate school. I never did finish that particular novel, but I did workshop it a lot in grad school classes. And, that book was filled with people who weren't who they seemed to be, of dreams where the protagonist disappeared and ceased to exist, and huge questions of identity.

Once I got appropriately angry and let myself feel that anger, I stopped having panic attacks. I also started focusing on what I wanted, rather than focusing so much on what I thought I had to do or be to make other people happy--note that I was careful to say "I started" to do that. It would take a good bit longer for me to fully deal with my tendency to apologize for everything and to try to fit who I thought other people expected me to be.

I think about Starr every now and then, though. About how obsessed I was that there was something wrong with me, some disease, some ailment. Some time bomb about to go off.

The thing is that when the bomb finally did go off, it freed me.

Essentially, this bill sponsored by Representative Lowrey and Senators Stubblefield and Johnson seeks to do at the state level what now defunct programs like The 1776 Commission would have done at the state level. And, obviously, Biden's rescinding of the commission doesn't ensure academic freedom or end the debate over history. HB1218 and similar measures are a continuation of the black-lash that has been going on for years; HB1218 is an attempt to return to life pre-BLM and to return to some unrealistic, nostalgic view of history as clean, peaceful, and free of strife. 

HB1218 is white-washing.

Since 2017, I've lived in Camden, Arkansas.  And, even though our community is nearly 56% black, we elected our first black mayor in 2018.  From the start--even before his election--he's faced incredible challenges by white men in the area, including some who serve on the city council. For instance, during one taped meeting in 2020, Alderman Lindsey attempted to enter an editorial from the locally produced The Parham Report as part of the minutes of the May 2020 meeting as a "transcript of the Mayor's race report." While Lindsey was careful to call the report (not the man) "racist," it was clear he felt Mayor Lott pointing out the intimidation and harassment he has been subjected to was somehow improper and untrue accounting of history. 

Prominent men in the community telling Mayor Lott that he need not run, that he couldn't "afford it," and that they had already "decided" who the next mayor would be clearly shows how many in my current community lack understanding of systemic racism.  That an Alderman would waste time during multiple city council meetings to scold the Mayor for his "race report" and show no shame or embarrassment is astounding to me. His attempts to enter an editorial about the Mayor's report as a "transcript" is a direct example of how revisionist history works.  His repeated statements that the editorial should be entered as "part of the record" are ridiculous--the meeting was recorded and can be viewed on YouTube. If anything were to be added as an accurate reflection of the report, it should have been the Mayor's typed report, or barring that, a transcript pulled from the recorded meeting, not an editorial that claimed the report was a "race report." 

But, that wouldn't have been as showy, I suspect, as trying to literally replace a first-person report written by a black man with an editorial penned by a white man that "corrected" the story. 

Just as Alderman Lindsey sought to change the record and portray the Mayor as the villain who "offended" white people by pointing out his own mistreatment, HB1218 seeks to stop teaching people the history of oppression, lest those not oppressed feel shame for inequity and injustice. In a recent news story, one of the sponsors of the bill, Lowrey, indicated,  “The intention is - so that students, especially K-12 that are captive, are not subjected to humiliation in terms of trying to make a statement about whether there is inequality or inequity and that's been happening in some of these programs using critical race theory." Black students, Latinx students, gay students, female students, poor students already face humiliation daily by being treated as "less than" by their peers and being told their experiences are not valid or accurate.  Acknowledging inequality isn't "humiliating" for those with privilege (in any form). Instead, it is an opportunity to learn and do better. The only reason a white student should feel humiliation in regards to systemic racism is if they do nothing to stand against it, or if they choose to ignore its existence and influence.

I am a product of a small-town Arkansas school. My graduating class of 1988 at Yellville Summit had roughly 60 seniors. Every one of those students was white. Many had never traveled beyond the borders of our state as teens, and I see from what some of them post on social media that even now many of them have not grown past naive viewpoints about race and privilege.  Many still live there and carefully curate their experiences so as to remain ignorant of the history of oppression and the fact that we are not yet post-racial. They fail to see the irony of saying they understand racial oppression when they live within a white bubble. 

This isn't just a small town or rural issue in our state; there's been plenty of white flight in Conway and Little Rock, for instance. One need only learn about the thriving black business and entertainment district along West 9th Street to realize the ways in which so much of state history has been forgotten when people of color were successful. 

For my undergraduate degree and Master's degree, I attended UCA in Conway. While an undergraduate, I was a member of the Honors College. The Honors College was instrumental in introducing me to many ideas and lessons others didn't have access to (that's privilege). I majored in English, and through my classes on African American literature with Dr. Patricia McGraw, I began to understand what white privilege is and how microaggressions work. Dr. McGraw's classes were some of my most important and memorable experiences. 

I went on to earn a PhD and to teach college writing and literature in Mississippi and Alabama, and later online. While USM-Hattiesburg had a diverse student population, they hired few faculty of color (one notable exception was Dr. Juliana Abbenyi). We even at one point interviewed professors of African American Literature; the lack of candidates of color was disturbing to me, and I realized that during my years as a graduate student in English I had known one other graduate student in my area of study who was not white. I also took history courses at the graduate level--again, all white faculty and predominantly white students. 

I bring up Dr. McGraw and Dr. Abbenyi in part because it shouldn't be odd to have faculty of color in literature and history courses; immigrants and people of color are a huge part of America's history and of Arkansas' history. Students should not have to go go graduate school to learn of those contributions. Nor should they have to seek out on their own the truth of the oppression, aggression, and the mistreatment of people based on their race, socio-economic status, gender orientation, or sexuality. 

The scars and ugliness are part of our history, too.

Lowrey's statement about humiliation reminds me of an incident with a student in one of my American Literature courses at USM. I typically gave a quiz at the start of each class as a way to ensure students read the material. On this particular day, students read Flannery O'Connor's short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and a poem by Richard Wright titled "Between the World and Me." The student, a young white woman, stopped me in the hallway and asked if she could be excused from the quiz, as she couldn't finish the reading."It upset me too much." I assumed from her emotional state that she was upset about Wright's poem, which graphically describes the scene of a lynching.

"No, I read that. I couldn't finish the O'Connor story. I just knew the grandmother was going to be killed, and she made me think of my gran. I just couldn't read it."

I was astounded; In O'Connor's story a white family (none of them very likeable characters) drives through an area where plantations used to be. The grandmother makes very clearly racist and dehumanizing comments throughout the story. In the end, the whole family is murdered by a couple of white criminals. I can understand where that might be triggering, sure. The story does have violence. But the student didn't find anything wrong with this scene: 

“In my time,” said the grandmother, folding her thin veined fingers, “children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else. People did right then. Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!” she said and pointed to a Negro child standing in the door of a shack. “Wouldn’t that make a picture now?”

 If HB1218 is passed, these types of experiences will continue. The student identified with the grandmother's nostalgia for the old south. Like the grandmother, she only saw the child as an object for consumption, not as a human in poverty. She was not even a "child" to the grandmother.

The student's response to Wright's poem also astounded me. She reasoned that if someone was lynched there must have been some reason, "he must have done something wrong." The carnivalesque nature of public lynchings didn't seem odd to her. And no discussion of the phenomena and how it was made into a gruesome sport moved her.

The Alderman's objection to Mayor Lott's personal report of the intimidation and harassment he's dealt with came in June. The report was in May, the same month that George Floyd was murdered.

And like my former student, so many cried out that Floyd was a criminal, that his past justified what happened to him. If we do not teach the negative parts of history, we wind up glorifying institutions and achievements built on the backs of others. There's been much gnashing of teeth, for instance, about removal of confederate statues. People  cry that we are "erasing history." That might be true if the statues were accurate, historically. Yet they were built for specific propaganda purposes, many well after Robert E. Lee and others were dead by groups hoping to portray traitors as men of honor and to instill fear in people of color in the Jim Crow era. 

When I taught at Auburn, having had a diverse student population in Hattiesburg, I mentioned one day to my students that I found the racial demographics surprising.  Two students in the class were not white; I watched them slide down in their seats, almost as if to hide or disappear while white male students tried to tell me that "oh, the black students prefer to go to UGA or Tuskeegee." They had no awareness of the differences in the starting blocks for students of color and themselves. HB1218 seeks to stop exercises that teach students how racial, gender, and socio-economic factors create issues for others. Lowrey mentions his opposition to these kinds of lessons in a recent story by KATV: "One of the specific examples is what is called the privilege walk - where all the students start in one line and a number of questions are asked,” said Lowery. “Do you have two parents, do you parents own their home, take steps forward and what it does then - it gives this definition of showing which students are supposedly privileged and which ones are not."

The use of the wording "supposedly privileged" shows Lowrey's true intent--to ignore the very real outside obstacles faced by students who don't have the privileges others have. And, as someone who lives in Maumelle, which is 75% white, why is he so worried about school kids learning they have advantages others don't? I say teach about the local community history with racism, including the woman who sent her neighbor a racist letter,and how the school district thinks only black students need to be told of the dangers of gangs, drugs, and violence. 




NOTE: I watched the videos of the May 2020 and June 2020 meetings on Facebook the day after they were recorded. I cannot seem to locate those meeting videos. Perhaps they have been taken down. If they have, I suspect it's more about removing a recorded version of Alderman Lindsey's actions rather than out of any efforts to silence Mayor Lott. God forbid there be a record of the ways white people are still oppressing and harassing people of color, right? ​

• An Alphasmart NEO 2 word processor. Great for writing or taking notes when I'm away from my desk. Also doesn't allow Internet access, so it helps cut distractions. Often when doc gets called in at night, the NEO 2 is my late-night sprinting partner.
  
• Ear plugs: I first began using ear plugs back when I was studying for my PhD comprehensive exams. Sometimes I need a lot of quiet to work things out. 
• Good Pandora, Spotify, and other stations: I don't write as well with music as I used to, but Sunrise on the Ganges, Lindsey Stirling, Andreas Vollenweider or other non-lyric-dependent music can help. I also keep my MP3 player charged up and handy.
  
• Soundtrack in progress: I tend to develop a soundtrack for the books as I work. So far this project really fits Concrete Blonde's _Mexican Moon_ album, in particular "Heal it Up," "Jonestown," "I Call it Love," and "Jesus." Once I'm done with this list, I'll probably work on my YouTube soundtrack playlist and put those on it. I'm sure from the song choices I just listed, you can guess something about the topic.
• Index cards: I don't always use them for writing, but they are handy for writing something fast and then filing away. Something about writing an idea on a card seems more "serious" than other notes for me. Maybe because of the days when research papers started with index cards. I use them for non-book things, too, like grocery lists or reminders. Because they are thicker than paper, I don't tend misplace them as easily. 
  
• My notebook: I have a large letter sized notebook (in a hand-woven jacket my sister made me for Christmas a few years ago). Notes go in here, too. 
  
• My favorite pens. I love purple Uniball Signo pens, but last year my niece gifted me a huge pack of Pilot Frixion pens in an array of colors. I like those too. And they erase!
  
• Tea. Strong Irish breakfast, usually.
  
• A sweater. 
• Scrivener: A must for me to keep it all together. 

​What's in your survival kit?

The following entry is probably not for everyone. But, since this is a post about gatekeeping--specifically in terms of who *gets* to write books in a specific genre--I can't identify who it's not for. Let's just say that there are discussions within about sexual orientation, gender identity, butch/femme stereotypes, romance vs. erotica, and even what we mean by "relationship" and "relations." 

Some potential trigger words that may appear: TERF, trans, lesbian, LGBTQIA+, gatekeeping, queer--you get the idea. If that list causes you pause you may want to move along.

Also, I totally get if this is a TLDR; for people. I'm going to put in some headings that let you skip around a bit.

Why I started reviewing books on Reedsy Discovery

​You may know that I'm a reviewer over at Reedsy Discovery. My choice to join their review team came about after I submitted Elegant Freefall for review upon release. While the review I got was positive, it was all of three sentences long. Upon seeing the reviewer's bio, I realized their reading preferences were primarily for middle-grade and young adult books. I went on a search to see if there were any reviewers who focus on LGBTQIA+ fiction and nonfiction.

When I came up empty handed, I signed on to be a reviewer.  I am pretty busy in my normal life so I decided my primary goal was to review books by writers who were "like me" and writing in my general area of LGBTQIA+. My focus was on a pretty narrowly defined #OwnVoices category.

How queer is queer enough?
​
One of the first books I reviewed was Cooper Beckett's Osgoode as Gone. Before I picked it up, however, I struggled a bit. I went to Beckett's Amazon sales page and noticed he describes himself as a "queer, non-mongamous writer." Among his other offerings were books about swinging and polyamory. Not really my thing. (In fact, if I were to be "triggered" that probably would have done it, given Baby Huey's manipulations in my past life--a whole different issue, though.)

My conflict came, in part, from this idea that here was this guy in a heterosexual marriage (he's pretty transparent about that) who is writing a lesbian character (Osgoode turned out to be far more likely to identify as pansexual, really). I decided I wasn't going to read the book. 

I kept reading the opening, though. No one else was picking it up to review. So, I read it. And I thoroughly enjoyed it. 

Flash forward from April 2019. In the months between that review and now, I've read and reviewed a variety of books for Reedsy--coming out stories by women, memoirs like Tim Selig's Tale of Two Tims, thriller/paranormal books like Kory Shrum's ​Carnival, and even a cozy mystery written by Steven Schatz that uses the word "dyke" in the title that includes plenty of drag queens and puts the lesbian in girl drag at one point. 

Mia Archer is a MAN!

Recently, someone struck up a debate on social media about how we "feel" when we find out that a writer we thought was female turns out to be a cishet man. Specifically, Mia Archer as the pen name for Andrew Beymer. The responses were fast and furious and included such sentiments as "how dare he pretend to be a woman!" and "men love differently than women." Some readers went so far as to say they would read lousy writing from self-identified lesbians before they would ever give a "man" a penny.

In fairness, before I really jumped into the discussion, I took a little field trip. Here's what I immediately found when I went to Mia Archer's Twitter page.

And when I went to Beymer's Twitter page:

Is Mia Archer another Sorcha Rowan?

Before I go any further, let me give a little backstory. Back in July of 2020, it was revealed that a lesbian erotica writer, Sorcha Rowan, was a cishet man. See Caitlyn Lynch's piece about that controversy. To sum up here, the person who was claiming to be Sorcha Rowan:

1. Did not acknowledge Sorcha Rowan was a pen name.
2. Intentionally interacted with readers on the Internet and through sexting as a lesbian woman.
3. Intentionally posted social media images and on their author page pictures of a single woman (not book covers, not avatars, not abstract images).

So, given this information it's pretty easy to see that Beymer isn't doing the same thing. Still, there were concerns in the group because Mia Archer's sales page on Amazon did not identify Beymer as the person behind the pen name.

As a reasonable human being and writer, I responded in the social media thread about Mia Archer being "a man" by suggesting that people who "felt betrayed" might reach out to Beymer on Twitter and ask him about his sales page, suggesting he update it.

Someone responded and said they didn't feel right doing it because they are not a fan--I totally get that. And, I will admit that while I apparently downloaded a Mia Archer that was probably a freebie on Book Bub a couple of years ago, I hadn't read it. So, I waited, figuring that the OP would reach out to Beymer and there'd be resolution.

What happened instead was a lot of TERF dog whistling. One of the posters who was outraged enough about his "pretending" and "lying" because no man should use a female pen name EVER posted the same question in multiple groups I was in at the time. People were reacting to the OP, agreeing he was a liar and a cheat. Most didn't look at the fact that he was transparent on Twitter, nor did they discuss any merits (or lack thereof) of the books themselves. 

When the discussion just kept going and more cries of "liar" and "exploiter" were made, as well as sweeping statements about all hypothetical books by anyone who is a man, I went on Twitter and asked Beymer myself. You can see the interaction here. And, that interaction led to this.

Victory, right? Well, one might think. But no.  When I shared the good news in the threads that Beymer had been kind, transparent, and thoughtful and had gone out of his way to immediately fix the issue, I was repeatedly scolded for literally saying "private facebook group" and paraphrasing the concerns brought up about his use of the pen name.

The reaction made me think of an old Tribe 8 song.

"Dead Clothed Boys" & Tribe 8: Stop with the Blanket Statements

I do love me some Tribe 8. And, even though the song above seems to suggest violence against men is ok, people should really know more about the band and the context of the song before deciding that. In a world of "truthiness" and in an election year, we owe it to ourselves and each other to be conscious consumers of media. 

Tribe 8 created a huge controversy at the Michigan Womyn's Festival in 1994 after some on-stage antics with a strap on.  From Neva Chonin's article about the documentary Rise Above: 

The trailer for the film is useful here, as is the knowledge that in 2013 Michigan Womyn's Festival banned transwomen from attending.

Breedlove is still an activist and describes in the following clip the ways in which they feel excluded in just about every "group."  She rightly calls for stopping with the "blanket statements."

Silas "Flipper" Howard went on to collaborate with Harry Dodge (author of the recently released My Meteorite and partner of Maggie Nelson who wrote about their relationship in The Argonauts) on the wonderful film By Hook or By Crook. Not coincidentally, Howard has worked on Transparent which had an episode ("Man on the Land" Season 2, Episode 9) about the ban. Note: Howard was not the director of this episode--Jill Soloway directed it.  Howard has gone on to work on shows including The Fosters, This is Us, and Pose.

I bring these things up because it's pretty clear that even self-identified dykes who write songs that play on the language of "live nude girls" and turn it on its head are accepting of a variety of identities and representations.

"I don't want to support men but I don't want to have to research who I read."

This idea (which is my own paraphrase of the IDEA, not a quote of anyone's actual words) is an oxymoron. While I totally support conscious consumerism and deciding who our money goes to, when you make that POLITICAL choice to only support women writers (like it or not, that is political) then it becomes your RESPONSIBILITY to know who is creating the work.

Ironically, because of this aversion to learning about authors, had I not told the group the good news likely NO ONE would have known that I tweeted Beymer. Instead of saying "Oh, cool" and leaving it at that, members of the group attacked me, saying things like "What is said in group stays in the group" even though I didn't quote any words but my own, despite the fact the original question calling out Beymer was posted in MULTIPLE groups, and despite the fact the original post went against group policies and "called out an author." 

I can't keep up! Too Many "Labels" but I only read "Real Lesbian Women"​

Before I talk about male privilege, I want to address some dog whistles. In the discussion that unfolded some writers mentioned that the term "woman" did not apply to them as an identity. Some posters identified as non-binary, others as MOC (masculine of center), and others as transwomen. Because one of the original instigators (the one who cross posted the *question*) decided to tell me that only when men start menstruating or worrying about sexual assault can they start writing lesbian fiction (whatever that is--I mean don't we want diversity in all fiction?), the question of who was truly considered a "lesbian writer" or a "lesbian reader" came up.

Behind the scenes I was being contacted by folx who have had sex with women but never been in romantic relationships with them. Others contacted me about the group being very anti-trans in the past and of feeling like they weren't included fully--that they didn't really interact with the group or had blocked a lot of members because of their "women only space" rules. 

Then the "I don't  like labels" comments started. Apparently, it's ok to say "lesbians only" but not believe in labels.  I'm not sure how that works. Also "real lesbian women" is a pretty narrow definition. 

What you classify as a label, others see as an identity.

One of the last comments before I jumped ship was full of "enough with the labels" and indicated that they thought the group was for all women "whether by birth or CHOICE" (caps mine). Um--what? You can't beat the drum that sexual orientation is NOT a CHOICE and say that transwomen "choose" to be women. You can't say every person assigned female at birth is a "woman by birth" either. 

The thing is you can't say a space is for "real lesbian women" out of one side of your mouth and say "stop with the labels, they are meaningless" on the other. You also can't equate menstruation with womanhood and then say "of course I welcome transwomen." You can't refer to members of the group as "ladies" and say you welcome non-binary folx. You can't keep focusing on things like strap on sex as only being ok if the one wearing the strap is "not too femme" either.  

You also can't erase bi, pan, and asexual people by saying books about these characters can only be written by and for "real lesbian women."

Love is Love.

I am not personally a fan of that statement (just because it is way too simplistic as an argument for marriage equality). But we hear it all the time and queer people often use it to argue that they are fully human--their "love" is the same as hetero-love, for example. Well, if you are making that argument don't come at me or any other writer with "Men can't know what it is like for two women to be in love." Don't come at me with "Men are more physical/sexual and can't write emotional works." These are literally the kinds of arguments in the debate over Mia Archer. Once it wasn't enough that Beymer made it clear and transparent on his Amazon Author Central page, this is the direction the discussion took.

Another problem with this argument? Women did take pen names that were masculine because women were seen as "too emotional" to be good writers, because the "male sphere" was too serious for the ladies. Some readers  even will turn away from a book with gay characters and get real mad about it.  Take a look, for instance, at the outrage over Jodi Daynard's A Transcontinental Affair. This book was written by a cishet woman and was a Kindle First Reads book--which means Prime members got to read it for free. However, they also were not shy about hating it BECAUSE they felt "hoodwinked" by the lesbian romance (even though the blurb makes it clear it is a same-sex love story).

And,  of course, we can't forget One Star Charlie, the person who just rates any lesfic book they find on GoodReads with one star and no commentary.

​We should be better than Charles.

Privilege

A recurring theme in the discussion was "he shouldn't use a woman's pen name because privilege." They argue that it's always dishonest for men to write as women because pen names have a history of being women trying to get published when doors were closed to them.

That might have rung true before indie publishing. Archer is indie. He's not with a Big 5 house, nor is he even publishing through Harlequin or Carina (a subsidiary of HRN). As far as I can tell he's never used the #OwnVoices in tweets or pitches. If someone shows me screenshots to the contrary, I'll address this, of course.

Here are some articles about men using female pen names. Note that in romance (which is the genre identified in the start of this whole *debate*) writers have long been advised to write as women:

• "Meet the male writers who hide their gender to attract female readers." The Guardian, 3 July 2015.
• "Why men pretend to be women to sell thrillers." The Atlantic, 3 August 2017.
• Metafilter responses from 2008. I include this because it has a lot of links to different examples that are lesser known and to also show this is not new, nor is it specific to LesFic or WLW (whatever *label* you prefer) See this Reddit discussion, too.

Several posters were mad because he's making money off that name in a market that is already swamped and narrow.

• Beymer has fewer Twitter followers than I do, and I don't  have that many. Mia Archer on Twitter had fewer than 25 followers when Beymer basically said "I'm over at my regular page and won't update this one anymore."
• Beymer's books are  trope-driven romances about  bridesmaids, quarantine romance, cheerleaders, and some scifi stuff. None of those categories overlap with mine, for instance, and likely Beymer/Archer books are not pushing my books--or anyone else's--out of people's TBRs.
• Because lesfic is a pretty narrow category, it is really easy to hit top ten sales in any specific subgenre in lesfic on Amazon. Even when my books have been in the top 100 for weeks I didn't make a ton of money. Rank lists don't equate to profit--this is especially true when writers shell out for advertising on Amazon, Facebook, and through Book Bub promotions and paid Kirkus reviews and the like.

NOTE: I get that Transparent has critics and that there were issues with casting. That's not my point here--and I'm OK using the "Man on the Land" episode because of the involvement of nonbinary and trans folx behind the scenes--Soloway and Howard included.

In that episode of Transparent, the characters tell Moira that she can't be there because as a seen as male in her earlier life she had "privilege" that AFAB (assigned female at birth) didn't. Her response is "I was in too much pain to experience what you are calling privilege."

The point is made, and eloquently, that privilege and pain are two separate issues. That even though Moira was in pain, as a man others conferred that privilege and all its trappings on her. She was limited by her pain--internal--while still being rewarded for the external perception of her "maleness."

One of the women around the fire says transwomen are excluded, "Because we've all been raped." Moira rightfully responds with, "I didn't rape you."

This scene is important for a lot of reasons, but it boils down to this: individual actions and individual experiences are important--we can't say "I won't read any books with lesbian characters no matter how good they are because they are written by men." None of us have the same level of privilege, none of us have the same pains, none of us experience emotions or even physical pleasure the same way.

I get it. A person who moves through the world perceived as a white cishet male has privilege that many of us don't. But, as someone with disposable income and a level of literacy that makes reading enjoyable to you, as well as the time you spend voraciously reading lesbian romances (or whatever you read), you also have privilege. Because you have access to technology and to a group of "like minded" readers on social media, you have privilege.

But with privilege comes responsibility.

Specifically, don't be a one-star Charlie. Don't call out an author individually and make them the "poster boy" for "exploitative male" when they do everything they can to address the problems you point out to them.

Look, I get it, we all have reading preferences. My time for reading for pleasure is limited when I compare it to the reading I do for reviews, for my academic inquiry, fr my freelance writing gigs, for my work as an associate editor, for my pro-bono fiction editing for people who are trying to improve their writing. So, when I get to CHOOSE what I read with no strings attached, I am choosy. I also am very choosy on what I spend my money on versus what I check out from a legitimate library (versus a pirate site). And when I get freebies from Book Bub and hate the book, I don't review it. And I certainly don't try to get a virtual mob together to burn the author at the stake.

In other words: I can totally understand the philosophical quandaries related to privilege and men using female-sounding pen names. However, we must evaluate individual situations individually.

Identifying ONE writer by name and stirring up people into a frenzy is not the same as a larger discussion of the appropriateness of gender-swapping in pen names. Simply saying "I would never read or buy a book by a man who writes female-identified queer characters" is fine as a preference, but when it becomes a mob mentality and there's no consideration of the actual body of work, the writer's allyship and activism, or of the writer's willingness to address concerns, that's something else altogether.

That's mob mentality that shows a lack of ability to think critically and that places one in the perpetual position of victimhood. And, it is harmful to those writers in the group who don't identify *exactly* the way you assume they should or do.

That mob mentality leads to writers staying closeted and potentially not writing important works of their own because they challenge their reader base to go beyond trope-driven Gold Star AFAB romances.

Why am I so fired up about this?

I care because in a group of THOUSANDS of members it is devastating to a writer when someone calls them out and misidentifies them as a liar, voyeur, exploiter, Sorcha Rowan wannabe pretender. I literally saw people posting "I don't know this person and never read  their work but they are on my NO list now." Given what I said earlier about how little sales are required to be in the top rankings in "lesbian fiction" on Amazon, it would take very little pressure on a writer who is top ranked by people who actually read and enjoy their books to tank because of reviews by people who try to "out" the writer on Amazon by leaving one star reviews and saying "he's a man!" as the reason. 

If you can't see past the "dude writing as a gay lady" issue, just look at how Jodi Daynard's book has 20% one and two star reviews that are based solely on the fact the book is about a couple of lesbians. Even though there is no sex in the book (perhaps had there been people would have not rated it at all and loved it secretly, thus doing that sort of fetishization that others accuse Beymer of).

Finally, I've said this in interviews before: While I often classify/categorize my fiction as "lesbian" I don't really like that category. When people complain that there needs to be better classification to distinguish from "gay" and "lesbian" literature on Amazon, I groan. Shouldn't we be at a point where we all want literature that reflects the progress we've made? And by "we" I mean ALL of US.

​Even the largest awards-granting body for lesbian literature allows books written by men to be eligible. I wonder how mad those people would be if they found out a man writing under an "gender ambiguous" pen name like "Pat" or "Chris" or "Terry" won a Goldie?

While I love to read Vin Packer and Ann Bannon those earlier books don't represent my present or my future (at least I hope not). 

And I would be limiting myself a great deal if I never read books by anyone who is not a "real lesbian woman" who writes female queer characters. Under the sort of criteria expressed in the group, I'd miss out on Poppy Z. Brite, T. Cooper, Caitlin Kiernan, and even mainstream writers like Michael Chabon. And there are a lot of TBRs for when I get time to read stuff that is my choice again by nonbinary writers like Anna Zebo and A. L. Lester.

I know and love a lot of straight cis people. I also write characters that reflect those people, as well as characters who are probably gayer than I am. My current WIP won't be classified as lesbian, lesfic, or wlw. In part, that's because the protagonist who is quickly becoming the focus is a straight cis woman. There are characters who identify as lesbian and pan, too. I think one reason that book keeps stalling for me is because it is totally outside the realms of my other books--straight characters get equal and perhaps MORE time than the gay ones. 

I think that most of us write to "tell rollicking good stories with characters who happen to be gay or bisexual (and sometimes gender ambivalent)." I'd hope that readers would be excited by that rather than finding "reasons" to exclude us from their TBRs that have nothing to do with what's between the covers of the book but that are all about what they assume we have between our legs.

But, I can also say without hesitation that I'm transparent. There are stories here about my past life, and despite the idea that "what happens here stays here" I will confess that there is likely a photo of me on a toilet in a long gone strip club on Bourbon Street somewhere on the Internet. Maybe not. This was before cell phone cameras were everywhere and I think he was using a disposable camera. But decades passed between now and then and I was a bit drunk and just trying to pee when the dude barged in and snapped the picture. Maybe he dropped the camera and it got swept up and put in the trash.

But even then--before I was out to the world and students still called me Mrs rather than Dr and immediately asked how many kids I had and what my husband did--I knew that "what happens here stays here" was a myth.

One final thought--the loudest gatekeeper in that debate has very little digital presence. Whereas Beymer and I have a consistent presence (I even use the same few pics in my media so I'm recognizable regardless of platform, for instance) the person screaming the loudest and name calling Beymer has no actual identifying things on their social media pages. They have no individual website, they have no blog under that name. For all I know that person is a 15 year old cishet guy in the house down the street who is into cosplay and making haunted house videos under a different identity.

Wouldn't that be rich?

Note: I use male pronouns when referring to both Andrew Beymer and Mia Archer, as those are the pronouns Beymer uses.

If you've read this blog before, it probably is no surprise that I love the book and movie Wonderboys. And, in the chaos that is 2020, I often feel like Grady--unfocused, wearing my security blanket (in my case, the recent pair of elephant pants that I bought on a deep sale, rather than my ex's chenille bathrobe), and at a loss for editing my story down to just what matters.

September is where I try to turn that around.
​

When I left teaching, I settled into a pretty comfortable book a year from start to finish pace, with some wiggle room in there. This year, though, I am still slogging at (or not, really) the old manuscript draft for a book tentatively titled Long Weekend. This is just a working title and I am starting to kind of hate it. I never really liked it, but I tend to like having a placeholder.

I started this draft a couple of NanoWriMos ago--after Elegant Freefall was finished. The initial motivation for this book was Andi's character in EFF. After all, she's a pretty cool person who obviously has gone through a lot. She's a widow, she's a former academic, and she's a bar and bookstore owner who has her life in order. I wanted to explore her messy backstory. And for two years of NanoWriMo, this book was my project. I also failed to get more than about 10K in during Nano 2018 and 2019. Last year, I gave myself a bit of a break, as I did get Homecoming finished and out in time for the mid-November release. 

And, that's where the book has been for the last ten months. Just sitting in a folder that I open now and again and resolve to work on. I always get a few days in and then get distracted by a pandemic, by starting to run again, by the fact the house isn't torn up, by the dogs barking (at everything). But, I think about the characters a lot, and I keep trying to get unstuck.

And, so, I started reading Save the Cat Writes a Novel. There's lots of great things in the book, and I created a handy Scrivener template for myself that follows the beatsheet (you can get your own beatsheet here). And, reading that book and creating a template made me realize some of the reasons I'm stuck.

So, now the "ensemble" novel is turning into a more central character-focused book but there will be plenty of interaction with the other characters. And, Andi isn't that protagonist, so that meant I had to go through a bit of a mourning process because while we learn about her backstory, she is yet again a supporting character. Which is ok, but certainly not what I expected.

You would think I would have learned by now that often the characters who are the most compelling are the ones we never planned for. After all Wren in the Olivia Chronicles wasn't supposed to survive book 1, Blood Sisters. But she's still going strong in book 3. 

Another big step toward getting unstuck--accountability. Thankfully, Angela James offered a 30 Day Accountability Challenge for September and I have some specific goals. I'm working toward an average of 1K words a day in hopes of finally getting the whole story down, imperfect as it will be, by the end of the month. Hopefully between the roadmap of my beatsheet and the accountability to my group members I can make some headway.

And, today, I hit my word goal already. And, during the morning jog, I added a song to my book playlist and the stage of character set up I'm at this week. 

After all, I already promised my NanoWriMo accountability partner that I would start something new in a couple of months, so I better get focused.

Scrivener--Drafting

• What it is: Scrivener is a text editor with lots of bells and whistles, including a bulletin board where you can organize and store virtual notecards and a research folder where you can store links and webpages, images, and more. I think of Scrivener as my digital Trapper Keeper. 
• Drag and Drop: If you've ever completed a novel length (or even novella length) work in Word, you probably have noticed that if you need to make a structural change things can get hairy. With Scrivener, your chapters and scenes are easily rearranged with simple drag and drop. 
• Learning to use: Learning the basics is easy thanks to so many wonderful folks who have created video tutorials on YouTube. Be sure to check out free intro classes/webinars, too. You don't have to buy what they're selling but the freebie sessions often show new tricks you can use later.
• How I use it: Scrivener houses all of my projects--from the brainstorming stage through the line editing/proofreading stage. I love the "binder" feature that keeps scenes organized and that I can take notes and write character and setting profiles in the binder to refer back to. Also, Scrivener can export in a variety of formats (.docx, .mobi, .epub, pdf and so on) which means I can still use Word or other platforms for formatting and final versions.
• Free forever? While Scrivener does have a free trial, it's not free forever. Reedsy has a book editor application that looks similar in terms of versatility. This looks almost like Google Docs and Scrivener had a baby. While I haven't used this app yet, I might consider it for NanoWriMo, especially if I wind up with a writing partner/critique partner this year.  See also Reedsy's blog comparing different platforms. 
  

AutoCrit--Revising

• What it is: AutoCrit is an editing tool that will help you identify patterns in your writing. With the free forever account you'll be able to run text through the software and identify pacing issues, repetition, filler words, and instances where you are telling rather than showing. The software runs specific reports and provides you with data regarding your writing. For instance, it will literally show you how many times you use "that" or how many times you use the adverb "swiftly." 
• What it isn't: Some people worry that you plug your writing in and AutoCrit strips your voice out. Or that it will somehow *force* you to make changes. 
• How I use it: AutoCrit works wonders on rough drafts--specifically by showing where my voice lags, where I fall into passive voice, where my verb tenses shift too much, where I'm not putting in enough dialogue. I often see people debating between AutoCrit and Grammarly--to me these tools are used for completely different things. While AutoCrit is labeled an editing application, it actually is more of a revision tool. 
• What NOT to do: Don't freak out if you're not scoring 100% in any area. Note that the website has plenty of "What's the Score?" demos on their blog that show some robotic perfection is not what the tool is for, really. Note that most best sellers fall in the mid to high 70s percentage range. At one point I was in a Facebook group for AutoCrit and I noticed a whole bunch of "score shaming" and boasting about scores with screenshots. The percentages don't really mean anything if the story is not good.
• Should I buy it? I used the free version for a good long time before investing in a lifetime membership at a discount. Before you buy, see how much you use the features in the free version. I found myself wanting more functions, so  when they did their yearly Christmas sale for a three month stint, I tried it out. I loved the premium version so much I invested in a lifetime membership through one of the organizations I'm in and now have full access for roughly half of the current price for an annual subscription. I'm not sure they still have sales or do offers like the ones I was able to take advantage of, but a sane option would be to sign up for a month of paid "PRO" service for the last round of reports before heading into your line editing phase. Then, when you have another finished project later, you can sign up again. Chances are they will start sending you discount codes to try and keep you around more than a month at a time.

Grammarly--Editing

• What it is: Grammarly is what it sounds like--an app that checks for Grammar errors. The free version is far more basic than the premium, but the basic version will help you with errors in punctuation, word choice, and syntax. Think of the free version as being a bit like Word's grammar and spell check on steroids. 
• What it isn't: As with AutoCrit, Grammarly isn't some robot that takes over your writing and steals your voice. You still have the power to reject Grammarly's advice.
• How I use it: I don't run any Grammarly checks until after I've put the manuscript through AutoCrit chapter-by-chapter to get the content and pacing where I want it. I then run chapter-by-chapter through Grammarly Premium, paying special attention to consistency and patterns of error.
• What NOT to do: Don't just accept all suggestions! Take time when using this tool to ensure you know why you make the choices you do.  Dialogue, for instance, often contains slang or nonconventional punctuation. If you just accept all changes to your text you may lose some voice. 
• Is the premium worth it? It is for me. Look for discounts. If you can't find a yearly discount that fits your budget, consider using the free version until you're at the final self-editing/proofing stage and then pay for a single month. Most of us can afford a single month and can get what we need out of it for those final stages of editing.
  

The key thing to remember with all of these tools is that you are in control and these are not quick fixes. Ultimately, using tools like AutoCrit and Grammarly will help you identify patterns of error or weakness in your writing and allow you to build customized revision plans and writing goals. While these tools won't replace humans for editing, they can help you polish your manuscript so it's as solid as it can be prior to paying someone by the hour to identify patterns of error in your work.

Above is my most recent completed project--I feel like I can share the picture now that the two moms these were stitched for have received them (so this isn't a spoiler). But, like many of the stitching projects I signed on for prior to leaving teaching, this one took me way longer than I expected.

Checking my Amazon order history, I discovered I ordered these on January 15, 2015. They sat in my project bin in Kansas City for a long time, then in a box in the attic once I got promoted to a director's position, then moved to Arkansas in 2017. Originally, I went shopping for these because one of the residents in D's program was pregnant for the first time and the nursery theme was woodland creatures. 

Apparently, I double ordered. There might have been some wine involved. It's possible--maybe even likely--these were ordered during one of D's night shift rotations.

So, now that the kid I originally shopped for is old enough to start kindergarten, those bibs went out to his parents this past week. He has a new baby sister, so at least they will get used by someone in the family!

The other set goes to a dear med school classmate who just had her first baby--also a boy. So, I kind of feel like I hit my target, just in a different time loop.

I did manage to get a review done recently of this wonderful memoir by Tim Seelig. If you like memoirs check this one out. Understandably, since Baby Huey has pushed himself further into the closet that is the Baptist church, this book brought up a lot of things for me. Mostly, I am sad that instead of dealing with his issues and coming out like Seelig did, Huey has turned to ministry and is apparently doing some sort of TV ministry now. And life-coaching for men. 

And defaulting on a car loan, if the call I got last week from "loss prevention services" is any indicator.

​Life has to be so hard when you deny who you are.

I'm still horribly distracted by the pandemic and the world being on fire. This is evident in my inability to reread Tryon's Harvest Home within two library cycles. I did manage to finish it after checking it out three times--with six days to spare. I managed to get about 1/2 way through the Hunger Games prequel in a loan period, but even though I knew I couldn't recheck it due to the waitlist, I couldn't power through.

I have a couple of new reviews coming out in the next month, and those deadlines do help.

In other boring distracted news, I am rehabbing an injury. D and I started running again (starting with walk/run intervals) on June 1st and we pretty much made it out every day with a few of those days being walking days. Then, three weeks ago, I suffered an IT band injury. With yoga and changing my stride, I kept going. Until I strained my calf muscle on that same leg (compensation injury) two weeks ago today.

After two weeks of cross training (some jogging in the pool, some marching workouts, yoga, walking, and a step workout or two with some calf strengthening and hip abductor work), I was finally able to start working in some slow jogging intervals yesterday. I'm making myself take it slow and really listening to the hip, though, as limping is no fun.

I hope everyone is being kind to themselves and staying safe.