Give me it.

I am really greedy when it comes to books. Out of everything else in the world I love having and buying my own books most of all.

Yes I think libraries are awesome but sometimes I need my own copies of things.

I’m hoping that my partner and I will be able to move in the fall and one of the first things we talked about was me having proper bookshelves.

If things go the way I’m hoping I will have budget for some of the little beautiful indie books I see other people have. I might be able to afford lit mag subscriptions.

So yeah.

I’m fantasizing.

In other news I released a short story on Smashwords.

I decided to experiment and use a plain no frills no models cover. You can get some hot hetero smut for a dollar.

A couple of people have read it. One somewhat close friend said that she thought it was hot but too dark and it made her uncomfortable that it’s dark and still erotic. I kind of had to laugh a little bit. I had to tell her my writing is probably not for you and she fell over herself for a minute trying to be nice.

It wasn’t such a bad moment.

I came to the conclusion a long time ago that my audience is not everyone and not everyone is my audience.

It’s okay.

That was one of those (at the time) earth shattering realizations about ten years ago. It upset me at the time but as I get older it feels good and right.

I was going to talk about something else entirely today and I forgot. Tomorrow I’ll come back and see if I can remember.

Between the lines.

I got a new poetry rejection.

Nothing like the super speedy ones that clock in way under the usual time for a zine. The way I’m feeling I’m going to take that form rejection as a good old fuck you for making me read that shit type thing.

I really need to send two queries today. On one hand I’d like my rejections sooner rather than never but on the other I always feel like such a dick sending those notes.

Bleh.

I was looking at my rejections list and it had actually only been ten days since my last one and yet I’ve been jonesing for the next ones like it’s been months. Once upon a time even two rejections a month or more than one or two submissions a month was enough to make me an anxious mess.

These days I just want my no so I can get it all back out into the wild.

I also find that in the cases where two or four or six (YES God damn) issues of a magazine I’ve submitted to have come out and I read them because I like them and then..then I read and I have that moment where I’m half like MY WORK SHOULD BE RIGHT THERE and then on the other hand I want to write the editors and say I’m sorry.

It’s such a weird new feeling.

Speaking of feelings I tried to do some work on one of the essays Sarah helped me with. I was trying to tighten up the one about the first time I did sex work and all that came out was as follows:

RAGE RAGE FUCK RAGE HATE RAGE RAGE HATE HATE HATE FUCK SHIT SHIT FUCK RAGE RAGE….SAD.

I’m really not sure where this disconnect is happening. It’s not the same kind of digging at the wounds pain I had while writing the essays. I can only chalk it up to the fact that my actual life is really fucking stressful right now and I can’t keep that out of places it doesn’t belong.

This being what it is I’m going to write in the bad place. It’s better to write there than it is to live there and I’m trying really hard not to live there.

So it’ll all be violet filthy sex, junkie love and other things for the foreseeable future.

Speaking of I wrote something gun and sex centric that I really honestly have no clue what to do with. I think I’m going to tinker with it today. See what I can make happen.

I think that’s all for now. I need to make myself some tea, calm the fuck down and write some things.

Close my eyes.

First I urge you to listen to Sir Anthony Hopkins reading T.S Eliot.

There are few things I love more than being read to by someone with a beautiful voice.

It’s probably not super clear reading my work but I am heavily influenced by a lot of poetry.

Go read this post by Roxane and do read the comments.

Reading this, I stand by my suggestions from my previous entry about the VIDA count/inclusion.

I still shake my head when editors want to say they don’t know what to do.

I have faith that editors are smart and understand that it takes work to make change. It takes being really uncomfortable and sometimes yes your feelers are going to get hurt because the shit is fucking hard.

I am honestly at the point with the intersections of race and gender etc where I just want to shake people and tell them to put their big girl panties and hard hat on, deal and shut the fuck up.

Get Metal. Get Punk. Get Gangster. Do what you gotta do but seriously. Put on a cup and take it then work it out.

I can’t with all that right now.

I need to not let that percolate anymore today.

I’m going to write instead.

Junkie love.

Sometimes a voice, a narrator pops in my head. This one she’s soft spoken but insistent. It started earlier today as I was watching a couple of old old junkies. They reminded me of this junkie I used to hang out with in my early 20′s. He was one of those NY impossible to kill types. I remember he used to buy me breakfast every now and then because I actually liked his stories. Most of them were probably bullshit but I loved them.

My favorite thing about him though was how straight he was with me about being a junkie. We talked at length about drugs and the drugs I was doing and the ones he was doing. We talked in that very straight forward way that is the best.

I digress.

So this couple was counting out their pills for the rest of the day and deciding whether to buy two more or go buy some cookies.

I realize that no their relationship is most likely not like that all the time. That said, sometimes between some people that moment is really sweet. Again my fucked up view of romance wins the day.

So I’m writing this story.

Junkie love. Girl Girl -Sugar Daddy weird fucked up love.

I still haven’t decided if it works.

What I’m reading.

Since I posted last night I just want to do a little round up today of what I’m reading right now.

First up, y’all know how I feel about Jerry Stahl. Go read ALL the things over at the Rumpus by him if you’re not familiar with his literary work. I can’t with him today, the third installment of OG Dad made me want to smooch his girlfriend then do as she did and laugh in his face.

Next, I read about this first on facebook and have been following it. Please, take this as a cautionary tale. What happened to this poor authors work is awful. Check out the stuff Nick Mamatas (another author I dig) has written about it.

Muumuu House posted this link on tumblr last night and given that I’m not a Thought Catalog fan, I missed it when it was posted originally. This piece by Megan Boyle just delighted me to no end.

This piece by Roxane Gay at the Rumpus, god damn it. God damn it this is why I can’t be talking to other authors because I keep just stopping myself from sending her another gibberish filled fangirl squee email of doom. This essay, you need to read it.

Via Alt Lit Gossip  I found TMD writes on Tumblr. I really enjoy seeing what other people are reading (as in I’m really nosy) and what they like.

My friend Athena has started a new lit mag called Linden Avenue. They are open for submissions for the debut issue. Check it out.

Blackberry lit mag is also still open for submissions. They are the place for Black lady authors.

Remittance Girl made an interesting post about her own work years after the fact. Interesting tidbit, Gaijin was the first piece of her work I ever read. As they say in rom coms the rest is fangirl ass over tea kettle love history.

Over at Zouch there is an essay called Six Songs for Crying In The Shower by John Thornburg. I really like it a lot. If you don’t reach Zouch you should check it out.

I think that’s all. I have work to do and stuff to read. No lit news of my own right now.

Radio Silence continues. Later this week I’ll do a calls for submissions round up of things I find interesting.

A dirty story.

I’m not posting the whole thing but here’s a bite of what I’m working on.

I want this gentleman to be an echo and mirror of another narrator (I know I’m being vague)  he is her mirror etc etc.

A bad boy for a bad girl.

A scene. A thing.

I’m not totally making sense I realize this but I do have a purpose. With notes from my dearest RG I have been playing with the oppositional voice in this erotic novella scrap I’ve been diddling. I need to know in a visceral readable way how this man reacts and hear his voice in my head before I can continue with the story.

Also- I’m toying a little bit with language. I want to get a picture of him that isn’t from the bottom. I want to hear this Top and feel how he’s straining to keep himself in check while he is fucking the nasty out of the female counterpart.

I want to toy with why the other story ended as it did.

I have a plan y’all. It’s weird but my gut says this is how this novella wants to be born and I’m not going to fight with myself about it anymore. It is going down.

Under the fold, read my favorite part of this scene as told by the man in the situation. Also I want to know if it comes across that his patter is helping him not come when he doesn’t want to because this particular thing is not about that.  Or is that something that needs to be said more explicitly? Warning it’s not quite violent but close.

What Had Happened was.

Do you ever have one of those days when the shit people say to you or around you is so crazy and stupid you can’t even be mad?

I kind of feel like the whole internet is that today.

Between the crazy fucking racists proclaiming they aren’t racist whilst they are making Trayvon’s death into a meme a la planking, to the Trayvon shooting range targets to a friend of mine getting countless baseless bizarre racist messages from some self confessed suicidal pretend skinhead, I want to try putting heavy doses of Lithium or something into the internet because I am either way too crazy or not crazy enough for all that shit.

Aside from seeing all that shit everywhere, I got a very nice highly complimentary rejection for poetry today. It was probably among the most complimentary rejections I’ve ever gotten. The word haunted was used. Good times.

I’m feeling really needy lately. Not in a needy with people way but rather there are so many things I would like to have access to that I don’t right now. I’d like to go out dancing without having to throw elbows at horny frat boys who think my snakey hip movements mean I want to fuck.  I am that girl on the dancefloor, as much as yes sometimes I do like to dance real close with strangers, not every stranger can be all up on my ass. There are times when I could go without feeling some strange hard cock in the middle of my back.

Thus the elbow throwing. I’m only 5’3″ so for most men when I throw it, it hits them right in the sweet spot in the diaphragm and they grunt and back away. I’m also notorious for accidentally spilling drinks on crotches and stomping insteps.

I’m not really a nice girl.

I will throw all my fatness around if I need to.

I also want to spend these warm late afternoons sipping iced coffee outside somewhere and reading or writing.

I spent a little while doing that today and it was lovely.

Pictured is the fits and starts of a sci fi/dystopian story idea I’ve been pecking at.

Today I need to get out a couple of submissions and finish work on a few things.

I’ve been writing a lot from my mean (not in a gossipy teenaged mean girls but in an aggressive I want to punch you place) angry girl place. Aggressive fucked up and fine with it lit.

Cunt lit as I deemed it a few entries ago.

I think that’s all for right now. Tomorrow I”ll post a round up of some of the stuff I’ve been reading around the internets lately.

I highly suggest reading Jerry Stahl’s second installment of OG Dad on the Rumpus. Shit I love that man.

Rejection Farm: The Everyone Ignores me Month.

Actually to be more precise this is not Rejection Farm this is LALALALALA I CAN’T SEE YOU FARM.

I have not recieved any new rejections or news since 4/8 and I have 7 pieces outstanding.

I am 98% sure that the most delayed (42 and 55 days past those zines usual rejection times) are going to be marked as lost/never responded on my Duotrope thingy. I will do that while I sit and go through the fifteen minutes of Anger, Butthurt, Hurt feefees and finally acceptance that no, no those stories really are probably awful and the editors were actually personally offended at having to read that bullshit.

I envision very dignified beardy men printing out my stupid email, they distribute pieces of it to staffers, interns and random strangers and everyone poops on the pieces. Then with an air of calm enraged dignity they flush.

As the echo of the flush dies, I hear a stentorian voice say, “and fuck you too little missy.”

….

Clearly I’m still really tired and crazy.

I was cleaning up some code on my website and see that (and yet I left the links up..fuck sake) some of my things are no longer available to read on the internets. That being what it is I think I am going to put some of those together and release them on smashwords.

Last night when I got home I tried to work on my essays.

I wanted to vomit and cry simultaneously like I was some poor knocked up girl in an after school special.  Lately I just can’t do it. I have tons of notes for the essays that Sarah helped me with and new ones. I keep wanting to write them but it’s all still to raw. I’d rather try and shove a pine cone up my ass sideways without lube than write them.

Gross I know. I’m feeling that flavor of honest today.

I think I am going to get together some more poetry submissions. I still feel funny submitting poetry given that I am not a proper poet.

Okay 6 submissions out. I just realized that one of my poetry submissions went to an editor who no longer works at that zine at all.

Now time to grind.

 

 

Hustlin. Grindin..y’all know how I do.

Okay.

So I am still crazy exhausted.

I should confess this means I am about 40% more crazy than I am usually which is really fucking crazy.

That being what it is I’m trying to make enough $$ on Smashwords to make having my book up useful.

To that end I’m running another coupon code through June 7.  Go here, drop my book into your cart and then use this code to get it for 3$, ZM25R.

What else?

Last night I started reading The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. I read Flaubert’s Parrot when I was in high school and loved it. I was really happy to get a copy of this book for Xmas and it’s lovely.

There is something about the alternating very British loveliness of the prose with occasional very British vulgarities that delights me as a reader. So far I’m enjoying the book, it is very much a pure pleasure read.

I’m still sitting on Ayti by Roxane Gay. It is such a pretty little book/I am torturing myself.

It occurred to me recently after doing my first phone interview (only tangentially related to writing I”ll explain later) I think I should be writing more non fiction. I need to finish my essay collection even though every time I look at a couple of the essays I want to barf on them. Why is writing the good shit so fucking hard?

Fuck.

Right.

I forgot what else I was going to say so nevermind.

You are ruining writing.

On Sunday I got an anonymous note about my collections.

The writer of said note stated they didn’t read them but, they are really angry about them.

This person said verbatim that I am ruining writing, that I am part of what makes all of “us amateurs” look stupid.

Ahem no.

See here is the thing. I did not present unedited work as being edited work.

Being that this person didn’t read my collection here’s a pro tip. I made a point to introduce the work the way I did. I deliberately did it this way.

It was not after the fact, it was not done as a way to hide my flawed “awful” writing.

The thing is Anonymous Angry Person, I am not ashamed of my first drafts, failed things and imperfect things. I’m just not. Some of those things were written more than a decade ago and it does make me happy to reread them and go, awww look at baby me.

I do stand behind and believe that honesty is often king and for me in this context it was needed.

If you really wanted to engage me or give me advice, or give any writer advice or admonish them try being accurate about what you’re pissed off about.

Come on dood, at least bring me something good.

Moving along.

I finally finished reading Sententia #1 from ADP.

When I buy a collection or anthology from a press this is what I want. This book is a diverse collection, there are different visual aesthetics, the stories and authors are diverse. I enjoyed all the stories got me in different ways. Shit I left the actual book at home but the last story in the book, yes. Yes more please.

I have been a fan of ADP for a while and I just realized how many PDF’s you can get from them to read. Go here. Read them.

Next up I read Shannon Peil’s new collection and shit I love his work. Get the PDF for free right here. I really love the illustrated PDFs athat authors are doing and I really dig Shannon’s work not just because he’s a Shannon too, nor just because he put me in Amphibi.us.  Via this (which I caught on Tumblr) I found Deckfight who is the press that put this out. Now I dig them too.  This bit from the collection, the phrasing fucking delighted me. I lingered on this bit:

if it was me in that box tomorrow and everyone was looking at you waiting for you
to talk about me what the fuck would you say

I saw on facebook that Len Kuntz got a book deal for his collection. I am super excited about this for purely selfish reasons.  Also you should go check out his work where you find it. It’s good thing.

There is a post over at HTMLGIANT about Marie Calloway. Read the post it’s a good one. Per usual some of the comments there are kind of beyond me but Marie herself said something I really like:

If you really think think that the struggle to not conflate sexual attention with worth as a person, for (some) women, equals “that is more like the ending of a television sitcom where the daughter who just turned 16 learns about her sexuality” I really hope you will not attempt to write about feminine writing ever again.

This part of her comment strikes a chord with me. I remember when I was first blogging on the internets and often wrote a lot about the sex I was having, fantasizing about etc I got some criticism from mainly other women trying to get me to confess to wanting sexual attention from the entire universe as if I’d been setting fire to puppies. It never fails to not amuse or surprise me when people decide how and when it is okay for women to talk about their own sexuality or the sex they are having or want to have or did have.

Also in the comments I saw some things I read as being really condescending. All because Ms. Calloway is young and some things have happened. I hate that part of internet culture. Also she seems to be a lot nicer than I am right now or when I was her age. I probably would have torn that person a new asshole for being an asshole. I don’t like how a lot of people talk to/about her. She is a person and if people don’t like how she writes or what she writes why are they reading it?

I really just don’t like it.

I don’t understand the need some people feel to be like that from some anonymous on high position. As much as I enjoy some critical conversation I can’t take it when it turns into some kind of neener neener I don’t like you circle jerk.

Fuck sake.

Okay I think that’s all for today. I’m not sleeping well again (shocking yes I know) and I feel mean and crazy.

Oh no wait one more thing. I have joined the cult of instagram and want to follow more people because I’m a nosy bastard. You can find me on instagram @weebeasty

What the challenge brings.

The other day my darling friend Remittance Girl posted a challenge on her blog. See that here. 

There is something special about her brain because she has the ability to be galavant around in mine naked and giving me ideas without her knowing it. In a nutshell this was her challenge:

So, here’s my challenge: Have a go at writing the exact same sex act, using nothing but the tone of language and the POV of the narrator to present it as either kinky or vanilla.

At the time I was already sort of playing with this.

I’ve probably mentioned it but one of the things I am very into when I write kinky things is playing with using language , setting etc to present a definately kinky situation without using the standard kink vocabulary.

What actually happened was that as I mentioned the other day I hit the spot.

I found The. Voice. For a narrator/story I’ve been trying to write for months.

I’ve been groping and starting and failing to find Her. I have this incredibly specific story and manner of presentation. I have had this character built and ready in my head to tell a very certain erotic story but I couldn’t hear her actual voice.

RG’s post and then further conversation I had with her and there it was.

I have this habit where if I can get the voice (when I’m feeling like there is this specific thing I have to get for a story) I will write a little scene or flash piece to solidify it so I can see it. THis hasn’t worked for months and then magic.

I have very grand designs for this. I want to make this a novella and submit it to someone. I want it to be literary and hot. I want people to both get a special tingle in their pants AND love the prose.

I want it all.

I talked to Remittance Girl about it and she saw the same things I saw when I reread the thing after I wrote it delights me.

Let me express publicly again  how much I value her and love her.

I wish we lived on the same continent I would ask her to read me her stories and be her dedicated housegirl.

Seriously.

So I am not posting the whole thing but here is a bit of it.

So here is my kinky without the kink language precisely/potential novella.

~

The last time we saw each other nothing was okay.

 

This is how it always happens.

 

It starts with a phone call from one of us, this time it was me.

 

“Hey, I want to see you are you busy?”

 

He is quiet for so long I think he hung up. I bite the inside of my lip, waiting him out.

 

“Fine. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

 

He hangs up and I lay back, everything is going to be okay.

 

Two hours later he’s at my door, frowning down at me. The scar through his right eyebrow is bright white against his summer tan, he reaches out and puts his hand around my throat.

 

His eyes burn; lust, hate, self-loathing. We are mirrors for each other and hate each other for it. Yet here we are again.

 

His fingers tighten and he leans over so we are nose to nose, I take a chance and flick my tongue against his lips. I want to push him; I want him to hurt me just one more time.

 

For a second his eyes close then he shoves me back and walks inside, closing the door behind him.

 

“Take your fucking clothes off.”

 

I turn my back to do as he says, pants first because I know he loves my ass. I can hear him grumbling and he grabs first one buttock then the other, he squeezes and kneads them. Slaps one hard enough to make me yelp.

 

“Oh I guess you’re feeling-“

 

before I can finish he has my arm twisted behind my back and he’s whispering calmly into my ear.

 

“Shut. The. Fuck. Up. I don’t want to hear your voice right now.”

 

He holds me still while he finishes taking his pants off with his free hand, he holds my arm at an angle just on the brink of pain and my cunt throbs. I close my eyes and relax.
Daddy is home.