Red State

A stack of aged hardcover books sits on a plain wooden shelf beside a blank notebook and a pen.

Writers weep and howl and pour out anguish in the form of words

Wanting to be seen and wanting others to be heard

Seek the neglected beauty in strange thoughts and hopes and faces

Fantastic worlds where power lurks in unexpected places

Where the wicked is the one who doesn’t see the witch,

While the open hearted hero is the one who will be rich

I want it all, the universe, contained between these pages

Where happiness belongs to those who have wept in other ages

Alone, I am surrounded by the ghosts who I invoked

A symphony of voices that in other times were choked

I am not worth of this message, this divine immanence

This way of saying damn the guards as I reach across the fence

Please take my hand, we haven’t long, I see their fires on the hill

If we don’t save these books from burning

Who will?

(Will Forrest, 2023)

Crunch Time

I owe the world a novel in 70 days.

I see no reason why this can’t be done.

Modern authorship is a make-your-own-rules kind of game. Self-published, mainstream, hybrid, neither (ask me about subscriptions to The All-Hearts Cabaret) and it’s up to you, the author, to decide how you want to play it.

Me, I’m doing my freaking best under the weight of my neurodivergent, gender-baffled self-awareness. I want to be/do/know/have/eat/encompass everything that exists, and this is a real problem when it comes time to make decisions.

And yet…

On Tuesday I visited one of the very nice nurse practitioners at my doctor’s clinic. No knock to the NP, y’all are keeping Western Medicine functioning, but this poor child doesn’t know me from a hole in the ground. So she went ahead and prescribed me medication that I (and many of you) expect will make me want to unalive myself.

Baby…I don’t do speed.

I just don’t. That class of drugs is Bad For Me. And when the popular literature tells me that no one knows *why* this particular drug works,? No. Just no. I’m not that messed up, TBH. I *like* my neurodivergence for the most part. It’s fun to have this many ideas. Maybe I could do better at keeping appointments and finding my keys, but the last time I tried this class of meds was a nightmare. I made a vast number of bad choices, while totally ignoring the work I needed to do, and ended up sobbing under my desk more days than not.

So…fuck you.

Fuck this.

Please, please don’t take my experiences as advice. You do you, as we say, and decide for yourself. Me? I’m going to just learn how to be this shambolic, well-intended, heartfelt and whole and every now and then problematic neurospicy genderqueer who gives no f’s for ordinary people’s comfort because I’m having too much fun.

There is no right way to do life.

I’m trouble, but it’s the good kind.

Sentient Glitter

a black sphere streaks across a black background, trailing a purple and blue aurora like a comet streaking through deep space

“The thing is, none of that shit is real.  Nothing is real, and I can prove it.  Pick any molecule in existence.  If that molecule was a solar system, that is, if some atom in a molecule in a mitochondrion in a cell in your body was the size of the sun, its electrons are somewhere out past Pluto. Most of you is empty space. 

Wait, it gets worse.  I can prove you don’t exist.  Science is fantastic.  I mean, I get why people think they’re just making stuff up, because quantum physics is bonkers.

Because if you get down that small, if you’re looking at electrons, first of all you’re using the most advanced science we’ve ever scienced, machines the size of cities, billions of dollars of infrastructure.  And it still barely works.  You’re trying to catch ghosts.  Really you are because the only way you see quantum particles is smashing them into each other and taking a photo.

I’m not kidding.  This is science.  That’s what they do at the CERN super-collider, which is why they call it a collider.

But think about that.  They’re seeking the building blocks of all we know, and you’d think it would be obvious.  I mean, we’re made of atoms, everything is made of atoms, but atoms don’t really seem to be made of anything at all.

You can know where a quantum particle was, or you can know where it’s going.  You cannot, cannot by the fundamental structure of the universe, know both.  They’re like cockroaches: if you turn on the light they disappear under the cabinets. I mean it, if you locate a quantum particle, the act of looking at it makes it change direction.

Imagine you’re at a baseball game and you’re looking at something else.  Like there’s someone on the jumbotron who doesn’t know her nip has slipped or whatever is distracting you.  And you hear the crack as the batter hits the ball and so you look and you looking makes that sweet long drive to the unguarded right field suddenly in midair veer to the left and land in the midfielder’s glove.

That’s what doing quantum physics is like.  At a million bucks a throw.

Here’s the even worse bit:  in the end the odds of finding any one particle in any one given state or location are just that, odds.  There is no certainty at the bottom of reality.  Just chance.  Your particles come and go, fluctuate in and out of being, are at best potentialities that walk and talk and wear pants and think they’re in charge of some shit when you don’t even really exist. You are seafoam on an ever-cresting wave sweeping through time and space, sentient glitter that winks in and out of existence faster than you or I can imagine.

So why the fuck does it matter which bathroom I use?”

WHY I READ* ROMANCE

TL:DR because I don’t trust other fiction.

I toddled down a rabbit hole this morning.  I say toddled because I got myself out so quickly instead of losing 2 hours to doomscrolling.

I was following a series of increasingly strident flags declaring that THIS  is “the great gay American novel.”  And I mean, I like great novels and gay people and am interested in America and anyone who has the nerve to lift the curtain.  But like I always do, I started by reading the worst reviews. That’s where the gold is, the truth, the ick, or in some cases “this was too horny for me and had too many queer characters” in which case it’s a one-click buy. But sometimes it’s:

“FUCK. THIS. BOOK.” 

That’s a one-click read, that review. If it inspires such vitriol then either it’s a masterpiece or a steaming turd.

Ah.  The latter.

Because I’m absolutely not a little bit sorry, but The Great Gay American Novel is not allowed to be a goddamn Kill-Your-Gays trope.  Not a fucking chance.

We’ve heard those stories. They’re called queer history.  Despair, isolation, mental illness, and often the only defence is to destroy all human feeling in your soul so you don’t have to cope with the fact that if everyone knew you for who you are, they wouldn’t just hate you, they would want you dead.

Boring.

Boooooooorrrrrrrring because it’s horrible and spiritually deadening and it still happens in real life all the time and so we don’t need a 700 page novel about a loser who spends the whole book being awful to everyone and experiencing zero emotional growth but he just happens to be a gay man in a book about gay men so that makes it THE GREAT GAY AMERICAN NOVEL. It just feels like more trauma porn: look, here’s a walking, talking tragedy, let’s zoom in closer on all his faults. Now closer. NOW CLOSER. 

Look, I haven’t read this book and under no circumstances will I ever read it (ok, a million dollars but I get half in advance.) I am basing my opinions on one review and the blurb of the book. And an interview in which the author said they didn’t believe in psychology and that people who were broken should essentially just stay broken.

That’s when I realized I’d *never* read the book, nor probably anything else this author has written. The way to help someone who is broken is to see them, hear them, love them, help them. “I see your pain.  Your pain is real.  Pain ends.  I trust you. I believe you.” You don’t shrug and then take character notes.  I refuse to read 700 pages about someone who refuses to grow, who gets no help, and whose main characteristic is being an irredeemable piece of shit.  Just sounds like a novel about straight people.


*and write

Disorderly Conduct

scrabble letters arranged on a plain white surface to spell the words "life will not wait"

I told WordPress to notify me twice a week that it was time to post something.  I began immediately to resent this, and have ignored several notifications.  This is me all over. It doesn’t matter if an event is in a calendar, on a chart, in my phone, in an email.  As soon as I’m told to do something I’m not already happily doing, my RSD and defiance disorder go on high alert and I start deliberately, some might say belligerently, ignoring the notifications.

Which is why I have yet to discover an author business planning system that sticks.  No matter how carefully I craft my quarterly plan, my weekly schedule, I just don’t do the dang work.  I’m so good at ignoring important things that I started asking myself if I have Asperger’s.  I so often refuse to do what’s best, even when it’s obviously what’s needed and would be really easy to do, though I genuinely do like myself, in a compassionate, c’mere you dumb-ass kinda way.

I think and think and think and in truth I probably just spend too much time alone.  I can overthink anything, which can be good when you’re doing big vision work, and much less helpful when you’re trying to pick a task and stick with it until you can call it done. 

Because I have so many things to do, it’s a struggle to prioritize.  Everything feels like a priority, and I don’t want to spend all my time planning, but I’m not achieving much with the time I have so maybe what I really need is to get the heck over myself, sit down and do the work *I know* needs to get done, and let the rest fall into place.

The place where I get all of it right is just over the horizon. I have a flat tire and I’m fucking hungry, but if I can get this wheel back on, I can start rolling again and get to where I want to be.

Do you use a planner? Google calendar or similar? What works for you?

Throwing Darts

they sold the lot on Main St where they never built that high-rise 

but good luck building anything in this economy 

the air is too hot

the scent of cigarettes boiling off the other passengers

as I wonder what’s the point of poetry 

what can we make from words?

what words 

still let themselves be made into anything?

I told her I only read poetry 

that reading a whole book

takes years

the feelings stacked one atop the next

gravy over cake

no differences between sorrow and a theorized joy beyond the writer’s means

a poem is a mouthful 

a minute’s grace

a massacre in millimeters

the barest bruise

a slap in the face 

remorseless 

starving

true

if only all truths were so easily digested 

instead of sticking in your gut

dragging you along with them 

to end up inside out 

yet in writing poetry 

we feel that same laceration

spilling ourselves

spoiling the calm completion of a blank page

for nothing more than one vain moment’s proof

that we existed

(2023)

Common sense

Daily writing prompt
Describe something you learned in high school.

“High school?  Shit, I’ve been trying to forget it.  All I learned is that everyone’s so steeped in their own BS by the time they get there that most of us don’t learn a thing. Sure, it’s good for kids to be taught not just science and math but how to read, how to think, how to get to know other people. But the way most high schools are run, they’re not much better than jail.  Just a way to keep kids off the streets so old people feel safe walking about and adults don’t have anyone coming after their jobs.  I mean, if everyone really gave a shit about kids, they’d pass some gun laws.”

Unconditional

You know the feeling that someone is standing nearby watching you? What if they were doing that not to make you afraid but because they love you?


I generally like all my characters. If I’m going to spent fifty thousand words or more with someone I have to like them, right?

Then there’s a few who get inside your heart and never leave…

But that’s the thing with love: it’s not always up to us.  Sometimes love comes out of nowhere and takes over.  Makes you want to take chances.  Do things you never thought you could.

And yes, romantic love does this, but so does true friendship.  So can mentorship when given with a pure heart, in the spirit of service.  So does love for yourself.

That’s all my characters are.  Little bits of myself I set loose in worlds I created. 

That I can feel such love both for and from these unreal avatars of my unconscious is part of the mystery of the human mind.  I’ll take it, though.  Unconditional love? We should all be so lucky.

Photo by Roman Kraft on Unsplash

I have no idea what to say

Hugely enticing, right? Relax, I’m just conducting another experiment on you.

Two years and a bit into this blog (which surpasses every other attempt I’ve ever made at journaling both privately and publicly) I have given it a Facebook page. A little test, to see if I can trick the machine into giving me some joy.

Attention in: attention out.

Don’t follow me unless you really want to. I don’t expect to post anything other than, er, these posts. The experiment part? To see what kind of noise I can make by posting *inside* Facebook. The machine doesn’t want you to leave. It doesn’t want you to mention (i.e. link to) the outside world. The more you post its own output, the more it rewards you.

A dangerous game, but only if you can’t step back.

I’m betting my life on next to nothing. Writing as a career is often terrifying. It’s all on me. I must, if I’m serious, use every weapon at my disposal to defend myself, to stake my claim. To get noticed.

And then to be unforgettable.

PAT YOUR OWN BACK or CHEAT ON YOUR GOALS AND WIN!

MILLION WORD MILESTONE

CURRENT WORK IN PROGRESS:  “THE OLD RAZZLE DAZZLE” final editing

# OF DAYS TO GO: 134

TOTAL WORDS WRITTEN:  934,411 (of 1,000,000 = 93% OF MY GOAL)

# OF WORDS TO WRITE: 65,589


A lot of benchmarks are not useful because they achieve a specific practical goal but because they make you feel better.  This is true in writing as much as anywhere else.  A few weeks ago I thought it would be fun to set a goal of writing a million words by the middle of 2023.  That’s not lifetime, not spotty rough drafts, but fully formed pieces of writing I’ve completed in the last three years. 

I had about 110k to go to reach this, and I was feeling confident.  That’s only two novels, and I have two novels in the planning stages which shouldn’t take more than a few months to bring together (to all the writers who never seem to do any writing: another world is possible.) 

Then I found out that WordPress logs your word-count.  And that I’d written 52k words for this blog over the last three years.

You better believe I counted that.

So now the total stands at a thrilling 934,411 words written (and most of them published) since the start of the pandemic. If I wanted to show off, I’d dip back into 2015 and pull the numbers on the two standalone novels and the five part contemporary series I completed while tending the reception desk at one of the country’s biggest real estate brokerages.  Thanks, Joey.  I couldn’t have gotten this far without you.