Don't Sweat the Small Stuff

And Other Shit Rich Cunts Say When They Dissolve Your Trust Fund. But that's a long headline, no?

Here's some back story. I knew something was up when I found out my aunt had talked my grandma into a joint bank account. Mash up assets and all that. What's one of the ways a trust fund can be dissolved? A quick Google search will tell you outstanding medical bills. So, with her entire millions of dollars' fortune (and I know my grandmother's SMALLEST bank account contained $15 million, btw) tied up with my aunt's and no way to distinguish any of it was my grandmother's... VOILA! Dissolved trust approved.

Now, I wasn't slated to received millions. Actually, a modest but life-changing $20K. I could've gotten my teeth fixed, my future convention booths stocked, my equipment upgraded. 

I know; don't cry over spilled milk. But I hope an elephant sits on the bitch and crushes her.

It makes sense now when my mom told me that my grandma in her last moments, delirious and desperate, kept repeating that she was going to Hell. No one in my family is particularly religious, but her father was a preacher, so I can imagine she had some residual beliefs. Yes, grandma, if there is a Hell, you'll probably be there. If souls have any transcendence or punishment, karma isn't looking good for you. But unlike you, my aunt has no guilt. Only pure entitlement to all the money you squandered in your life.

It's simply something worth venting about but all the more motivation to make it big. Let the bitch try to share a spotlight with me in those moments I make a mark and I'll have her ass kicked out.

Because throughout a life of being the dirty family secret, my mom's love child, I've learned to be sweet and caring, but guarded and vigilant. I've learned that family can be the coldest blooded and that friends can be the family that warms your heart.

My aunt dicked us out of a better spot in life. Not in class or any such societal bullshit, just a chance to fix everyday inconveniences and expedite some dreams.

I don't want this to be only a negative post, but I don't often dig very deep, so I'm feeling generous enough to give a torn piece of myself.

However, I've been working on my dolls. New cape, boot soles made of clay and hardening to be cut later, shoulder wedge built to sculpt the shoulder guards. Writing is coming along. Love me or hate me, I'm feeling my groove again. I'm excited to have found a cheap cube organizer set to organize my craft, writing, and creative stuff better so I'm not always digging in the four corners of my room. You'd be impressed by the game of Tetris this girls works in, but I've always been resilient and resourceful.

Securing a better life for my nephews has always been a priority. I've said before; those boys saved my life and renewed my purpose just by being born into this world. There is no way in hell I'm squandering my life when I have them looking up to me to guide them. They're so smart and sweet and talented and bright-eyed, and it fills me with pride that I am responsible for such wonderful human beings. Sure, I can take credit for how they are turning out, but I think we're all born with something that guides the people we become and I could never take all the credit. They have worked hard to be amazing young people too.

Don't sweat the small stuff, they say. What's difficult is sorting the small from the big piles of shit. From sorting out those who love you and those who just love to torment you. In the end, you must find that guide within and reach for what YOU think is most important in life.

And I hope the stuff that moves you doesn't harm anyone else and helps you and those around you grow and change the world for the better. Be the better person... but maybe don't think you are.

Comparisons don't do you much good. Just be better than who you were yesterday and don't worry about where you rank. Let the ones who inspire you lead you up and the ones who detract you fall behind.

Love, peace and chicken grease!

My Terrific and Terrible Day.

After five hours of sleep, I woke to the sound of my fish tank filter running too loudly and it set off an alarm in my head. After five and a half years of raising my cichlids, I knew what every sound meant. This one meant the water was much lower than when I went to sleep. 

I shot up out of bed and grabbed for the draping below the stand, immediately feeling the wetness, hearing the drip in the buckets below.

The tank was leaking.

After hitting my light switch, I searched the sides and top to see they were dry,  placing buckets under the drips. Because I'm not a total dipshit, I didn't look under the tank. If there was a crack, the glass could burst into my head. Instead, I switched the overhead light of the tank on and pushed aside the gravel to look for cracks. None. So the problem was the middle seal.

I tried to keep the fish in the tank for as long as I could, taking out the rocks and decorations. Around 8 AM, I had to remove the fish into the biggest bucket I had and monitor the temperature. The fish store didn't open until noon and I would be at work, covering for my sister who is recovering from one of many surgeries that saved her finger after a cottonmouth bite. She agreed to check on them and call the fish store.

They were dead before it even opened.

Cichlids, as I've learned over the years, can easily die from shock and stress. Even for a few short hours, they couldn't handle the departure of their tank. I was able to save the algae eater and I gave him to Aquatics and Exotics. He'll have a great life with them or wherever home he goes to.

I'm upset, of course, but after six hours of bailing 55 gallons of water down a flight of stairs one two-gallon bucket at a time, I had to go to work.

It was busy and nonstop but I was more confident. One man stopped me to show me a picture of his adorable grandson and tell me the story of how he was able to get a signed basketball for the boy, who loves basketball. I wasn't aware of how an apron makes some people open up to you like an old friend, but I better understand why they say it's a job that feeds writers. People sometimes see you running ragged and use their grace as a customer to give you an excuse to take a break. Now, the shitheads also use this to hold you hostage but I haven't dealt with anyone that bad yet.

After work put me to the grindstone, I stepped outside to a beautiful sunny day. I laughed and talked with my cousin and aunt, knowing I had music to face at home. I took the bucket of dead fish and emptied them behind the shed, gave them back to the earth. It seemed a more glorious end than a garbage bag in the trash or a trip down the toilet. I cleaned out the filter and scooped the gravel into buckets. A friend of my sister is taking the tank and stand. The rest of it I'm giving to friends. Selling off that which remains seemed too cheap so I only asked them to pay what they would or could. 

I also received about $65 in gift cards doing surveys over the past few months. I met my goal for getting that digital display drawing tablet. So among hard work, heartache and the people who bring joy into my life, what could have been a terrible day was still a victory.

I've loved and lost and still received. I've given of myself and it wasn't one-sided. 

I'll miss my fish. That will hit harder when I'm not so numbingly tired. Pinkie was my six year old fatty and I know I did all I could for them. I knew the hobby was getting too expensive for me and I would have liked to re-home them. Life has other ideas. Death has a few more.

I'm glad I work tomorrow because I truly need to keep moving through the sadness. Those fish got me through tough times. I didn't know I was ready to say goodbye to them until I had no choice. They gave me so much as a writer and an artist.

My fish mama days are over. I won't be getting fish again unless I have more room, more equipment, more preparation. It's a lot of work, a lot of stress when they're unwell, a lot of money. I adored them but I won't take on that kind of responsibility without being prepared for everything. 

It's why I never wanted children. I love them and they love me, but my body, mind and resources mean that I would not subject a life to being an accident. I stepped up for my nephews and became a parent and it only made me more sure that you can't love or reproduce or step up to be a parent half-heartedly. Life deserves better. 

I won't beat myself up about my fish. I know I did all I could with what I had in that moment. I don't play woulda coulda shoulda. I was great at caring for them. It wasn't enough. It's time to move on without them.

I Know, But I Don't So I Wish You Well

While I did have a good relaxing weekend--got to spend time with one of my best friends, Emily--it was also a pretty bad week for an alarming number of my friends that lost pets.

When Frodo, my toy poodle/fox terrier mix, died, the two months after that, I wasn't sane. I was hearing his bark and running outside as if Dad left him out there again. I'd wake up thinking he was cold and needed a blanket when I knew damn well he was buried in our backyard under fresh snow. It wasn't pretty but I'd just lost a dear human friend the year before and I didn't have a gauge for the grief of losing a pet that was a huge part of my day to day life.

As if there is one, but I'll get to that.

My cat died six months later. Both my cat and dog weren't euthanized but if I could go back, I would have taken that route. Watching my dog die of congestive heart failure over a few days and then watching a tumor growing on my cat, lonely in the basement because it kept bursting, were traumatic. I can't imagine they were happy to suffer through it as well. Yet it was because I saw their suffering that I was able to gracefully let my mother go. I don't find in mercy in the kind of hope that makes people dangle those they love on the miserable edges of a finished life. It's not even selfish to say that those who go on living need to let go rather than prolong the grief. I still feel the guilt of how my cat and dog died, but I am at peace with my mom's passing.

As I was saying, there is no gauge, no way to prepare, but I have a hard time bringing people close. I think of the misery of what it would be to lose the family I already have. I even think of their misery if I go first. And then I don't think about it because those thoughts can never prepare me for the reality. 

So while I know grief takes on many forms, I also can't tell you I was ever more or less despondent with any incident. There's not a ranking and I despise when people try to compare grief. It's always a black hole with no edges. Whether you lose a child or a baby squirrel you were trying to nurse back to health, if you ever got the warm fuzzies from that life, then your grief swallowed you. 

Time does factor in. Even though I feel the clench of loss and shed tears for all of them still, my grief is beyond the hole without edges. I can somewhat recall the floating nothingness but I can't tell you I know how you feel. Pain is not something we tend to remember vividly, no matter how much we think so.

Because it's funny like that. At one of my lowest points, I went mentally numb and cut myself but didn't feel it. A sense of wonder crept in and I kept dragging the scissors over the cut and the nerves were dead. It's not the sadness that is most dangerous, but that numbness beyond it. When we're crying and sulking, we are feeling and processing, but when it stops, when someone seems serene, you best believe that is where you have to keep an eye on someone. Pain can reach a point where it simply becomes ineffective in warning us of what is wrong. While severe pain may resurface and feel familiar, it is not ever the same. We do not remember; fresh pain will always just feel like the worst pain. We can even empathize to the point of physical pain, but...

I'll never tell you I know how you feel or pretend I'm an expert on what you're going through. Those places are lonely and the people around us will feel helpless. They'll try to empathize or cheer you up and it will probably piss you off or add a layer of guilt for pushing them away. Let people annoy you and hover on the edges. They're there because they want to be, so the guilt is one-sided. They want to make sure you're feeling, that you're not going numb, that you're not suddenly euphoric and generous as so many people on the edge of suicide sometimes are. Your anger probably makes them relieved that you're exhibiting any emotion at all.

You might push people out of your life. That happens. Sometimes your grief is making them depressed or frustrated and they need to move on. Sometimes you'll also bring people in who understand you better. You will never be the same and you don't want to be. Your life from then on is without the one that died and learning to find the edges and see around it means you can't focus on making everyone else okay with how you adapt. It doesn't make you or them good or bad--it means you're incompatible and you move on.

So all I can do for my friends in their time of loss is say that I hope I can be there on the edges. I hope our paths, even if they separate, will cross again. I want you to find your new life on the other side of the chaos, whether you bring anyone with you or have to leave your old life behind.

I know your pain, but not really, so I just wish you well.

Smart Women Need (Dumb) Love Too

Why not talk romantic and sexual love today rather than wax on the semantics of different kinds of love?

I can't say for certain why women so often want to write about love and romance. Historically, it's what we've been superficially told we care most about but never for the actual reasons. more often than not, it's because what we want out of it is still a kind of social taboo. We're talking about it more now, but our bodies and needs are still dismissed as crass. It's still weirdly acceptable for sex to be one-sided and shallow, but really icks people out if it's emotional and intense. We're allowed to get raunchy in all-girl spaces or with our partner, but we're still shamed if we dare to step outside of those places.

Sex and love are topics we should be able to discuss in classrooms, break rooms, not giggling awkwardly behind hand-covered mouths. Why is it treated so solemnly or so primitively? Is the mystery and intrigue in romance, courting and sex ever truly dulled when we know how to talk dirty, what hole does what, and why consent is pretty straightforward when the chemistry is actually there? 

Why are so many women championing the inclusion of sex in literature without it being reduced to rags? Certainly because men have been allowed to write it any way they please and not have it thrown into the romance pile. Because men can write sex clean, dirty, shallow, deep and end up being called classic, profound, insightful.

Why do women object to being thrown in the romance pile? Because our suspense, nerd fantasy, genre specific work is not light and fluffy. As a smart women who likes light and fluffy, I know that while it's a genre that does inspire me, my shit doesn't fit there. Just because I'm a woman that isn't afraid to write sex doesn't mean every plot is cemented around it.

All love and sex is dumb. It doesn't operate on logic, but it's part of the human experience. It doesn't 'cheapen plots' or 'destroy intent' and, when you're already neck deep in the psychology and plotting, it's not an invasion of privacy to 'go there'. What is awkward, clumsy, confident, aggressive, passive about sex is part of what people sometimes wonder about and making all aspects of it taboo are precisely why cultures try to dance over consent, rape, fetishism and the stigma that surrounds it. Why give these offenders any room to claim they 'didn't know any better'?

So we are allowed to enjoy and implement what is dumb, but don't look down your nose at what is only a persistent and willful ignorance of its place in entertainment. There's a place for all sexy plots in all mediums. Intelligent subjects and dumb ones alike are put in place to offset the other--like light and dark, oil and water, fire and ice. Even if required education starts teaching us about each other's bodies and drives and responses, there are degrees of that understanding that don't fit into textbooks or the dusty, shameful sections of a smut pile. To balance that dialogue, we can't just encourage men and women to join the discussion, but we also have to consider the fluidity of sexuality that exists in all identities and genders.

Encourage writers to incorporate these subjects in more meaningful ways as well. If your knee-jerk reaction is to belittle all sex in literature, especially when the writer is a woman, you are certainly part of the problem.

I love dumb love and I love an intelligent plot. If you're in the same boat, you might enjoy my work.

Love Is In the Air

Let's talk about love.

No, not my love life (or absence of one). If I could lead in with a personal anecdote, then what comes to mind is one of my favorite 'love' songs "Fairytale of New York". And no, not the famous one by the Pogues but the cover my friend Joe introduced me to by the punk band No Use for a Name (with Cinder Block from Tilt doing the female vocals). It's one of those songs where my young dysfunctional experience with relationships really took notice. No matter the version, the song runs the gauntlet of a young starry-eyed couple with less than ideal life choices to their disgruntled older versions sore at each other over their regrets. Even then, the last choral block shows that the blame blankets the underlying reasons that a good life would have meant jack shit without the other after all.

It's a raunchy modern day tale with a timeless theme and that's the beauty of it. You've heard the saying that someone is 'in love with the idea of love'. Or that once it passes, what foundation keeps people together or sets them drifting apart as strangers? When I was younger, I have to admit, the cat and mouse of people resisting their feelings was a huge draw (and still is). I've seen modern angles try to dismantle it as enabling men to keep pursuing a woman who has no interest, that he might win her eventually, but are readily skipping over the subtle signs that the woman DOES show an initial interest but for a myriad of reasons (being hurt before, not wanting to take the risk, overwhelmed by those feelings), she makes a show of being cold and disinterested to test if her initial attraction is both reciprocated and lasting. The person she loves is not being tested so much as she is testing herself. What's even more interesting is when it's not just the man or the woman (or the man/man, woman/woman-- gender is only an example here) putting the brakes on it, but both. Either they sabotage each other's resistance without trying or situations make it unavoidable to trust each other or remove those barriers.

I like a dysfunctional love. Many tales can easily support a natural and healthy love, but there's something clever and stimulating in those antagonistic developments that I've always found irresistible. Probably why, even though it's a horrible situation when taken literally, I find I Love the Way You Lie with Eminem and Rhianna somewhat satisfying. No, not because of the gut-wrenching violence, but because of the destructive qualities of the 'heart wants what it wants' frustration. The terrifying way that love and hate dance just as hot in the same fire.

Writing a love story at all used to be a source of frustration for me. Not because of 'inexperience' but because it's hard to keep a fire burning. I've always hated how at the climax, there was always a 'happily ever after'. In fairy tales, it was quaint, but in books, it was a cop-out. Unfortunately, the aftermath I dreamt for that couple was usually pretty mundane and boring. My mom's parents were best friends and it was beautiful, but it was still... boring. I don't begrudge anyone their happily-ever-after, but what I looked for in a tale of love was the promise that they'd have more heated fights and explosive make-ups.

And how do you do that? You don't want them to be abusers or aggravatingly resistant even after they've become lovers, or purposely contradictory, or prudish, etc. but you get the point. Too often angst is the name of the game, but no matter how much I wrote it, it always fell apart. In fact, even in the most successful examples of it, I got bored just reading it. 

Lasting love in stories seems to thrive on its smart-asses. I don't know what it is, but you need at least one smart-ass in the picture at all times to really keep things going. It doesn't even have to be within the couple itself (although they're going to end up flat if they're always harmonizing).

Again, I know it's a taste thing, but I've just never really been able to jibe with anything short of dysfunction. No matter how straight-laced my friends seem, there's always some underlying dysfunction that seals our foundations. People who are too bright and shiny scare the absolute shit out of me. Namely because we all have cracks and the ones sealed up too tight often burst at the seams in the worst possible ways. Love too perfect is the same way. I'd rather know someone's kinks straight up than be 'surprised' by the sheer horror of an incompatible fetish.

I wouldn't say I've ever considered love to be central to my stories. In edits, I pass over those parts because they come naturally to me, whereas I obsess over the lore and world building and plots everywhere else far more. By comparison to other books, it's probably more than most, but I'm not ashamed to say that if the plot supports a bit of romance, I don't shy away. Too many female writers are shamed or scared away from it, threatened with having their work relegated to the 'trashy' realm of romance. Although 'trashy' was never a catch-all for romance and I've read many with rather brilliant plots. Of course, nowadays all generalizations are offensive. Also, all distinctions are still attempting to be generalizations so it's a fuck-all. Do your thing.

I've written a lot of love sub-plots. Of all of them, there was one particular storyline that visited me quite a bit-- the story of an arrogant young woman and a big dumb blacksmith. Ha, I know it already sounds like a trope that's been done to death, but it's the details that kept tying me into their story deeper along the way. When the reader is first introduced to them, the girl nearly runs into him while he's blocking the entrance. She's talking a mile a minute and he's just nodding his head in awe. She thinks he's incredibly stupid to take her abuse, but he remains grateful when her father hires him since their town has no resident blacksmith. He turns out to be the nephew of her mentor, a librarian there. The young woman has a twin brother who actually befriends him and her dad also likes him. She doesn't really have a reason to hate him so much, but her mother sides with her, which takes some of the edge off of her unreasonable dislike.

As it turns out, the blacksmith had a hard life where he came from. Orphaned as a boy, his aunt was married to an abusive man that refuses to let her take him in. The only thing that saved him from homelessness was the local blacksmith noticing he was rather large for his age and took the boy in as apprentice. The blacksmith was not a kind man, but the boy learned quickly that playing dumb afforded him a sort of advantage with people. When his aunt's husband died, she could no longer stay and she asked her nephew to leave with her, but he refused, insisting that smithing was the only life he knew. She tells him where she is going. Years later, the blacksmith dies and that is what sparks him to look for his aunt again.

As for the girl, life had never been particularly hard for her. Her father and mother were considered heroes after their exploits and they founded the town she was born and grew up in. She and her brother were born both gifted and disabled and their uncle was on a mission to figure out why. She would have been happy to spend every day with her brother, but as a teenager, his interest ran towards other females. The blacksmith coming along was just one place to direct her loneliness and rejection. It doesn't escape her notice that other women seem to be obsessed with him in the same way her brother was interested in other women.

Begrudgingly, she realizes she can't put off getting her bow fixed when the grip breaks. She kind of hopes he'll tell her he's not a fletcher, but apparently he is. He agrees to fix it, but says nothing of payment, which only makes her call him stupid again.

Events transpire in the story which result in the twins' uncle dying and them left with newfound powers that 'fix' their disability, but make it obvious they can't stay where they've lived their whole lives either. Her brother can no longer speak and she's scared of leaving. Her father makes sure they're well-packed but surprises them by telling them the blacksmith will be going with them. She tries to put up a fight, but her usually malleable father is immovable in this. Before they leave, the blacksmith returns her bow to her. Not only is the grip replaced, but it is silver and expertly carved with the image of a bird that has special meaning to her.

It's not a magic moment that forms their bond either. In fact, the more she knows about him, the more reasons she would have to like him, the more she fights it. She begins to hate herself because this man shows he is very willing to die for her, but she can't manage to soften her heart towards him. It's almost karmic how much her own powers penalize her disloyalty, how much they demand from her and how unbreakable his devotion is towards her regardless.

Their relationship is one that followed me more than any others and is one I still visit fondly. I saw them similarly imprisoned in lives that couldn't be more different and ultimately, it was their attitudes that made all the difference. She who had everything starts to see the downside to everything while he had nothing to look forward to and always sees the bright side. 

Now here's the question that sometimes get posed that seems to make all the difference-- did the romance revolve around the plot or did the plot revolve around the romance? In this synopsis, you wouldn't be wrong to assume it's a love story. However, ultimately, the three books in this particular trilogy actually spin around the revival of an old wild magic. The mythology is loosely based on Celtic folklore, namely the strife between the Fomoire and the Danae. Despite the former generation being so keen on finding the truth, they are also bound to conceal a very dangerous secret. The wild magic has elemental qualities but they are broken-- each one carries a very specific penalty for the user, demanding everything from life to death, to free will and memory. While they fight to survive what they never wanted, they fight to find some semblance of a normal life.

The simplest answer is that I never use romance as the plot device. Ultimately, love doesn't conquer all and life just sucks sometimes. I also don't pretend like it's taboo. Giving my characters privacy is absurd (yes, I've heard this as an actual argument). While I enjoy the romantic subplots, it's still more thrilling to build the worlds moving in, around and through them.

I love the chaos of a grand scale. I love diving in and out of detail and the big picture at dizzying speeds. I love love. I write violence that makes me cringe too. What I really want from a book is one that makes you think, so often it's a labor to pull back from explaining too much, to give the reader some room to guess and dream. I read things that piss me off, if only to decide what about it is something I want to actively avoid.

I'm just going to wander a bit from here since love has run its course. 😂

Too often, we see low blows in writing. We see advertising and stories written solely to evoke negative responses because it works, but it's also why it's NOT the kind of writer I want to be. I would take obscurity over infamy. If I am to trigger an emotional response, I don't want it to be because I threw my work in the fire and pissed on it. These days, there is just too much being 'loved' for being mediocre. Yes, I know-- that's a statement that calls to taste. Yet often these artists are willingly admitting that it's crap and it worked. Because of this, advertisers and media have taken to feeding us all that sucks to get our attention rather than the less effective positivity in our work.

But there are still deserving ones that rose through their own appeal. Harry Potter and Game of Thrones, however you feel about them personally, did not rise through calculated negativity but through sheer interest. They reflected the stories that the authors truly wanted to write, not just a marketing strategy on what they think everyone wanted to see. Yeah, we all hope it goes there, but seeing as how there's no guarantee you can successfully just write for a market, I'm still convinced that writing the story you want to read is going to give you the better chance.

Where I'm at in my current book is devoid of any actual romance. Flirting and such, always, but not every plot really has room for it. Probably why I keep coming back to it. In any case, absolutely embrace your love stories. Continue to redefine genres and put your foot down to defend it, if need be. I know I'm always going to deal with assumptions on my abilities based on some pretty lumpy generalizations of my gender, race, lack of religion, etc. 

I do get that stereotypes even exist for a reason, but I've also believed that rather than assuming them to be the rule, they're just something you can laugh at when they prove to be true. I don't hate pumpkin spice, but they're not my white girl crack either. I don't avoid something I love just because it's become a way people can pretend they've figured me out. That's actually a terrific way to lure them in to trap them.

I don't see this ever growing old, but you never know...

Planning Extravagance

Da Vinci is credited to have said that art is never finished, only abandoned. In truth, who said it doesn't matter so much as the sentiment. Because there is ALWAYS something more to be done, it's just as true that there is a time to move to another phase, let it go, share it. 

Control is another point of dispute. There's no cushy line between the claim that 'the author is too controlling and I wanted to imagine it for myself' and ''his might as well be Mad Libs for all the holes in this story!'. 

What if you're using the wrong medium? I covered an answer on Quora that took on video game dreamers for misguidedly translating that idea into a novel.

It could drive you mad, scraping through a story too much. I suppose. I've read my own work more times than I've read any favorite author, so I court madness with open arms. Not just to edit but I've gotten sucked into my words and worlds time and again when I was supposed to be editing. Planning itself can be a siren call into restructuring what might have been nearing completion.

It happens. Embrace it. I'm still on the task of typing out perfectly legible notes. And not word for word. I'm catching inconsistencies in the plans and is it EVER easier to correct a typed document than the battlefield my handwritten copies would become.

It's a beautiful thing, really. To visit a world, even knowing what comes next and feeling differently about it. Sometimes you cringe at a little mistake or you think of something better or you want to change it. That's where publishing seems scary to some of the never-ending creatives out there. If you really feel ten years is what your series needs, ten years it is. If you're ready to set it loose after a few months, do it.

I'm really enjoying this planning though. It's all for UnHeard when UnSung is still in progress. Yet UnHeard is my NaNo baby, so I'm setting it up to fly. Planning can benefit from extra sometimes. As a teen, it was all about different color pens. Even now, switching to a designated tool for a designated task can be motivational to the process. 

Visit your worlds as many times as it takes. It is never finished and it never needs to be.  The art is about flexibility and the need to return. For writers and readers alike. No matter how airtight and done to death it is, a fan can tirelessly both spot flaws and create reimaginings. Even 'ship' characters, which is a term I won't use often because, while the origin story is cute, the concept itself is applied so thick that it's about as unoriginal as another overused word 'love'.

Heyyyy, let's shoot the shit with that one since I'm here... I almost obsessively avoid using 'love' directly when lovers are confessing their feelings. One of my favorites comes from two characters in the third trilogy of my first series. It tickles me because it's an obvious avoidance and a simple truth, but you know it means 'I love you.' In fact, it becomes an endearment, an emotional running joke between them. Lol if it were anyone else's work, I'd tell you their names and what they said, but at this point, I'm a newly published author and I hesitate to run the risk of my blog being the equivalent of a movie trailer that spoils the best parts.

I love writing romances where there is light teasing and quick jabs of tension. Some fantasies keep romance on the side of solemn and intense. The Arwen-Aragorn romance was a big one there. I've never liked seeing love from the 'til-death-do-us-part angle. I won't just brush it off as being done to death, but there are so many books I've read where confessing love or marrying was the height of the story. Or having a child. I won't deny that those are exciting moments for many people, but ultimately it came off as depressing that these very isolated events were given more weight than than the ACT of falling in love through a rich plot, what it takes to make a marriage work or even the beauty of raising a human being into a good person (or the horror of them becoming an inherently bad one). I have never seen love as a quick prize.

Even some romance novels that attempt to make a rich plot, the MAIN plot often still makes the confession the central point of the story. Maybe this is what most romance readers DO want, but when I started reading books where romance was a subplot, it was noticeably richer to me than poetic descriptions of eyelashes and dimpled smirks in books solely focused on it. I might be an odd one here, but romance isn't my favorite genre for romance. I like a lot of cat and mouse, but the juicy kind where the cat catches the mouse but toys with it to give chase again. Some erotica is annoyingly framed as romance so when I realize the plot is lame, it becomes a hunt for the sexy parts, where all the effort was placed. Yes, erotica can have a great plot, but that makes erotica the SUBplot. If you frame a book as romance primarily, I don't even have high expectations for plot. Still, it can't be boring. Even when I want light and trashy, I want to care about it. More often, I say I want romance to be a subgenre, even fifth on the subgenre list because I don't want solid expectations of it being there. I like when it's present. I enjoy the building intimacy and the private insights. At the same time,  I want to see its fragility, know that it can be cut short, know that it might not be returned, or even be passing or not strong enough with other temptation. I plan my own story's romances as carefully as my world building. If it's going to be there, I need to care.

And hey, some people want romance to be insinuated or absent. That doesn't make me hesitate to tackle it if I'm feeling the vibe as part of the story. I can't really help you. Despite or maybe because of its absence in my life, romance will always have a place in the story. Because I'm not fading to black when there's a veritable gold mine of character development (or fun) to be had.

One of the oddest kinds of comments I see in reading groups is along the lines of how much of a thing is generally accepted as okay. Can you poll that? Lol it doesn't stop people from trying. How much _____ do you like in a story? If you like all or nothing, every time, then you're an easy one. When I see these, I input 84% just to throw a wrench in the logic. There isn't a magic number when something is liked. In fact, someone's claim that they've NEVER seen _____ written in a way they like so they avoid it... Often makes me want to try. Not FOR them, but because I embrace the challenge of truly enjoying reading and writing on prompt. I wouldn't say that I aim to be the one who does it right. Most people who think in black and white will never ever try that disliked topic again. I don't doubt they'll still find plenty to read so that they can easily avoid every attempt to expand their thinking on it. They can have that. However, it's still backwards thinking to have not read anything in that category in decades and still make the claim there can't possibly be anything worthwhile. When they can't even frame an opinion as such, that opinion is usually as shallow as their ability to communicate it.

A guarded opinion is often external (this work is awful) as opposed to a more honest opinion actually focusing on their impression (this wasn't to my taste). I've always found that technical critiques can be external, focusing on grammar, punctuation, style, whereas using that same tact on opinion is always where it comes off as dishonest. I believe that some reviewers probably think it sounds stronger or more professional to leave out personal pronouns and impressions. To change 'I think' or 'I believe' into more definite points (this IS or ISN'T). In fact, it's often used in advertising because it's supposed to sound more confident. ('this product changed my life' as opposed to 'I really feel like this product improved this specific task'.) I'm going to disagree though. To me, bold assertions always sparked my skepticism, had me running to research it myself. Does it work? In advertising, the numbers would say yes. However, most people have neither the actual skill to reframe an opinion (to use actors as a scapegoat for something they never directly said) nor the ability to defend it fully. It is often parroted the same way every time, with no new additions, or extremely cherry picked examples (even to the point of purposely omitting knowledge of an exception).

I think I've found a few things to babble on about well enough so I'll return to planning. Got my notes typed out and printed today. Condensed and refined to nine pages. I have the series-arching plot arching over the subs, the book main plot (each one has a pivotal main character or two and a focus on one God and region), character planning, regional development (some idea of the map), and several of the micro systems planned. I also have a sort of running bestiary, but I need to play with a map. The scope is somewhat 3D like one of my locations in UnSung so it will need a top-down plan. These are just aids for me, nothing I'd ever publish (unless by some weird turn of fate there's ever a demand). Mostly done though. I'm excited to start it, even while finishing UnSung.

For some people who fancy themselves novelists, I wouldn't be surprised if some are actually most in love with planning. Those are the sorts of jobs that are harder to land and do start with a solid display of completed writing. I sit in the middle, the pantser that digs big holes and then plans. I'm not afraid of the holes though. I find a lot of comfort in them. They're puzzles I'm happy to solve. Even in a dark story, I find it cheering to get down to the critical fixes.

UnSung can be pretty dark. I wouldn't say grimdark or dystopian but still goes place light doesn't. Grimdark is really about the focus of narration. In fact, I'd love to try a cheerful narration of a dystopia. It's even been done! Twilight Zone had the infamous episode where a guy with a nagging wife and a joyless job finds joy in hiding in the vault of the bank where he works to read. Cut to nuclear destruction and he's the last man alive. It breaks cheerfully into him carefully gathering and sorting every book he can find, his face distorting with a happiness he'd never known before as he plans what to read next. Of course, he's severely nearsighted so it's a cruel turn of fate when his glasses fall off his face and break. For a loner, a solitary world seems ideal until you meet the grim realization that at some point, you depend on society to support the simplest of luxuries. What is a world without the passions most dear to you?

Of course, I'm not even going for the grim reality with my view though. What if survival isn't quite as bad as you think? What if you are actually good at it and the survivors aren't all morally bankrupt or zombies? I wanted to like you, Walking Dead... I really did. Can someone let me know if they ever actually decide to go to Washington DC to see if the virus center is even a thing? Because really, that was what kept me sticking around a few seasons longer than I should have. I assumed they'd wouldn't just keep escalating with a group sicker than the last and actually have an aim again. At some point, I didn't even care who died anymore because they all sucked.

Fish Parenting: Why People Say Pets are Like Children

Aside from notions of species superiority, there are undeniably parallels in being parent to a human being and parent to some creature that depends on you in some way. I can say this because I've been both. I've raised my nephews through most of their lives, from infant to middle schoolers. I've changed diapers, dried tears, taught life lessons, loved to the point it aches.

Before working at Petco, I didn't think much of fish. I had fallen in love with a betta fish when I was a child, crimson bodied, prismatic fins, completely non-aggressive. Be careful-- he'll fight other fish. Except he didn't. Claude made friends with all the fish we put him with. When he met his end because my brother decided to add craw-dads (crawfish to everyone else), it broke my heart, but I never thought much of them after. 

I cleaned fish tanks at work; mostly because everyone else hated doing it, but I found it incredibly calming. We'd get new fish all the time, but it was the cichlids that intrigued me. All the other fish-- tropical flakes. For cichlids, I was told they liked the pellets. While caring for them, I noticed we had one little yellow guy in the bunch (an electric yellow labido) and he wasn't getting sold. He grew bigger little by little and often was the one starting a 'dance' with the other cichlids, a ridiculous up and down flitter along the edge. It made me laugh.

When I went home, I looked things up. Starting a tank, what to get, what they ate. Wasn't planning on getting any fish, but I did want to know more about them. Maybe subconsciously I was preparing to be a fish parent. And then I decided it would happen.

It wasn't the goldfish you get at a fair. I started nesting, so to speak. I shopped for a stand, a filter, a heater, decorations, gravel, a gravel vacuum, food. I set each thing up as I got it, but I was waiting for the large tank sale. However, I couldn't wait because I grew attached to the yellow one and I didn't want him sold. So I bought a little ten gallon set and took it home to set up. I'll admit, I didn't do it 'right'. I conditioned the water but didn't stumble on the nitrogen cycle information. Luckily, cichlids are hardy enough that they survived my beginner's duh. I didn't just get the yellow one, but a lively blue mbuna too.

I set up the large tank properly-- seeding the tank with bacteria to start the cycle off of rocks in their current tank, testing the water until the levels were perfect. Holy crap, the little guys were terrified by the transfer. Perhaps instinctively, they must've thought bigger tank meant they were primed to be food for a predator. They swam cautiously until they began to revel in a world 5.5x what they were used to.

Every little problem was a panic. I would cruise over the equivalent of FishMD pages for every little thing out of the ordinary-- tumors? Bloat? Parasites? Aggression? What the hell did I get myself into? And then they started breeding! It was one of those moments were I actually relaxed-- cichlids don't breed unless you're taking great care of them. But holy hell, how do I take care of the babies? Luckily, nature builds that duty into them the way they were meant to. They worried, they grew, they learned on the fly just like we do. Okay, they also eat the ones they can catch, but fish do cull the population to keep their species healthy. (Oddly enough, they were almost 'reserved' about that part-- I never once saw them eat their young, but you'd notice when the numbers dropped.)

Flashing-- that was another wild card in fish behavior. Most pages worry you with concerns of parasites or aggression or an illness. It's where they quiver or rub along things like a cat. Crap, mine do it all the time! It took a while to observe that this was also a cichlid thing. My dominant especially likes to flash when he's annoyed, angry, even happy and, like any parent, it was an emotional cue and I could tell the difference between them in the subtleties. It's those things you start to fall in love with. You start to know their faces, the way that only they use them, the things they try to tell you when they can't speak. They're sweet and mean and wise and reckless. They watch me too. I'll never figure out what could possibly interest them about me most of the time, but they do little dances when I talk to them, get jealous of whichever ones I'm speaking to and try to cut in front to absorb my affection.

Okay, maybe their deaths aren't as devastating or long lasting in our grieving. Then again, maybe they are. I'm not saying it's a matter of ranking, but with fish, I accept their short-lived nature. It hurts when I do form an attachment. When my dog and cat died, I mourned for months, just like I've done with people I loved, but fish are very different. How, it's harder to say. I worry about them but there's a sort of knowledge about their unpredictable health I've come to prepare for. With our own kind, we tend to develop longer lasting attachments or instant dislikes. 

Love and hate don't feel quite the same, although the intensity can. There are so many different kinds of love that a 'different' love often doesn't have a vocabulary we can make another understand. I always laugh when I hear parents of human children protest with unshakeable arrogance that you don't know 'love' until you've had a human child. They are willing to forget that there are parents who never connect to their children so strongly if at all. There are parents who adopt with not a speck of blood shared between them and love that child as their own. Not all of us need to have people that share our face to feel a real and meaningful connection. Many people even connect more strongly to other species than their own, either through trauma or experience. I could say that you don't know love until it is a choice and you make the choice again and again. It's not about being unconditional or expected or accepted. Love, even short-lived, leaves its mark on how we grow and learn to receive and give it. People will even try to attach conditions on what someone else considers unconditional love, but in truth, we just don't get to define it for anyone but ourselves. My mom and dad, the most incompatible people to outsiders and even people close to them. They fought like children but came together like soulmates even after divorce and drama. It wasn't storybook romance and it wasn't constantly evident, but it existed-- without simplification or reason.

Now my nephews. I knew I was bound to them from the time they were born and it was the stupidest thing I could do to myself. I knew they would be used against me and that I would never have the legal right to decide for them as a legal parent or guardian does. I knew it would be turmoil, sometimes absolute hell, that as much as I loved them, there would be days I didn't like them at all. I knew I had no business being a parent, that I didn't want to risk either passing on my demons nor bringing kids into a world I couldn't vouch for. I didn't choose to love my nephews either, but it happened. Against all reason, against all intentions, I had already felt they were mine. Feelings don't equal the absolute reality, so for years, I couldn't trust like that a regular parent does. 

I have my father to thank for giving both me and them the security to give them that chance. He told me under no uncertain conditions that he would not let them get taken from our secure situation on the whim of their parents. It was hard to get them to trust that I wouldn't leave them or let them get taken away, hard to even step aside so they could bond to their grandpa as they had come to rely on me. I had to build a bridge and help them meet in the middle. My nephews were socially haunted and it took a lot of nurturing to help them build confidence in the validity of their emotions. They want for nothing, but they aren't spoiled either. They understand responsibility and trust. These aren't things that came overnight. It was a battle for all of us, not a fairy tale of starting a family.

Of course, people asked me when I would have 'kids of my own'. A socially acceptable question that really shouldn't be. Another thing I had to laugh about. They ARE my kids. I have no desire to start from square one with 'my own'. They're not 'practice kids' or any less than ones that I might pop out of my own body. Aw, it's such a shame; why is it always the people that would make great parents are never the ones that want them? My situation was something, not exactly tailored to me, but one I tailored into my existence. I can't say I sacrificed anything other than drug addiction or useless wandering. These kids were a wake-up call that made me into the person I am proud of now. I've had to adjust. I don't believe I would have handled 'my own' as well because I think sometimes the supposed guarantees give us room to take things for granted.

Parental affection isn't something universal. It's built on many, many blocks. Things like death or disappointment or consequences of life are not things we can gauge nor can we bear all the blame or understand all its intricacies. When a pet parent says they love their pet as much as you love your child, they do. We all know what our hearts filled to bursting feels like and it's not lesser based on your opinions of it. When people say it's just as hard, it is, because people lose sleep over it just the same as you. Or, as Bill Burr said, the stakes are higher with pets. Your kid bites me and they get time out; my dog bites you and it gets put down. Now, you could put everything on scales and play the 'my misery is worse than your misery' game, but why not just trust that people know what they're feeling. Hell, maybe they will have kids one day and join the 'you don't know love until you've had a child' group, but don't diminish a present claim like you're some fucking clairvoyant of their self-expression.

That being said, I'll break into another short topic: memoirs. I could easily fill a fat book with my stories now. In fact, my life might be incredibly dull in the next thirty years and have nothing more to contribute to it. However, I'm willing to bet that some things age better with time. No, my past won't change, but my impressions and understanding of it may. I often gather pieces of my journey along the way, look at how life made my view of things change. It's not that we can't write them when we're still young. It's just that the most captivating parts are how we come to grips with our hardships and triumphs, how they mapped out our lives. The longer you can wait, the more opportunity for depth and epiphanies you get. Also, sometimes you just want to see if you can outlive anyone who might take issue with it. I know that's morbid and we don't like to think about it, but a memoir is never just our story. There are sometimes casualties we never meant to drag through our truths.

Whatever you take away from this, sometimes you just have to trust your intuition and be okay with people not understanding the depth of your emotion. There will be people who only see the shiny bits you put on social media (or the gritty ones) and judge without really knowing where you're coming from. And that's okay. Sometimes we mean to say something simply and get interrogated when, no, we don't quite understand what we feel. Sometimes you just have to walk away, contemplate, try to develop the vocabulary and try again. Words will just never be able to convey it all. Try anyway.