READING THROUGH THE WHIRLWIND

So, obvious comment: the silly things I usually blither about are in no way relevant in the face of half of North America getting high off their own hallucinogenic farts and committing to hatred and irrationality as lifestyle choices.

However, you matter, and this is very much a time when you need to do whatever you need to do to get yourself to the other side of the week, day, or moment. And if reading some of the silly things I have written would help with that, I want to make sure they’re in your reach.

If you’re boycotting certain hell sites and want to go independent, you can pick up e-books of any of the books I’ve written at either Bella Books or the Bedazzled Ink Peddler. Print copies are available at Bookshop.

If you prefer audiobooks and are okay with sourcing them from a hellsite if you don’t have to pay for them, then e-mail me. I still have some free coupon codes.

Keep breathing and mocking the terrible people and hugging babies and small animals. We really need to hold on to each other these days.

A giant crayon monster devours Mitch McConnell.

LAW UP YER PLOT

All right, so consider Dracula. The original Dracula, before vampires got all twinkly and learned how to pout.

Why is Dracula so effective as a horror story? For my money, it’s the slowly mounting dread, from vague unease to electric tension. The Count isn’t a monster when he first appears. There are no evil mwa-ha-ha monologues, no showy eviscerations.

A lawyer contemplates a death castle.

No, we get to see the Prince of Darkness and Jonathan Harker in a cosy domestic menage. The locals are disinclined to work menial jobs at the vampire death castle, so Dracula has no choice but to act as Jonathan’s uber driver, housekeeper and personal chef. He picks up Jonathan at the railway station, cooks his meals, serves him coffee, and- in my personal favourite scene in the entire book- makes Jonathan’s bed. One can speculate about other duties Dracula performed for Jonathan that did not make it onto the printed page. After all, there is no way that Castle Dracula had modern plumbing.

Domestic responsibilities.

Absurd? Well, yes. But this is how we get all of those shivery little moments that gradually draw the nerves tight. Jonathan glancing in the empty shaving mirror that should show Dracula’s reflection, but doesn’t. Dracula’s offhand comment that he doesn’t drink wine. The sudden demon-light in Dracula’s eyes when Jonathan cuts himself and the blood trickles down. Then more and more, as the vague feelings of Something’s Wrong turn into a breathless, nameless delirium of fear, as Jonathan sees the coffins loaded for travel, sees Dracula creeping out of a window and down the sheer wall, sees a mother screaming at the castle door for her murdered child. All the while, Dracula keeps playing the polite and attentive host, and the thrum of sexually charged menace between him and Jonathan is enough to turn a person inside out.

This happens a lot while lawyering.

It all happens because they’re living together, you see. If Jonathan just happened upon Dracula mid-evisceration, you’d have a very different book.

And how does Bram Stoker lay the ground for this? How can he justify a bunch of scenes in which his undead fiend tosses salad for his victim, protects him from his demon brides, and (by implication) empties a whole lot of his chamber pots?

Because Jonathan’s a lawyer.

It’s so simple, really. Dracula’s moving to England and when he gets there, he can’t very well stow all his coffins in a train station locker. He needs a roomy place to crash. And to buy real estate, he needs to meet with a lawyer in person, because the law is anal about such things and even a Prince of Darkness needs to go through the red tape.

And after the real estate business is done- well, hell, it’s complicated to move to a whole new country. Dracula has a bunch of questions related to shipping and agency relationships between solicitors. He wants to ask them all before he eats Jonathan’s face right up.

“No, seriously, it’ll take five seconds.”

I love it, I really do. It’s such an effective answer to the question: Why can’t your villain kill your hero- or at least not yet? I am an absolute sucker for relationships between protagonist and antagonist, relationships that lead to shuddery suspense, games of cat-and-mouse rather than full-blooded conflict. And to get those, you need a reason that the villain can’t shoot the hero in the head during the first five nanoseconds of their saucy pas de deux.

In other words: why does the villain need the hero? All right, yeah, maybe they just want to kiss a whole bunch, but it’s good to have other options.

I will admit that I am biased, being a great big law nerd and all. But you can’t deny, the law makes excellent general-purpose plot fuel. In the fullness of its insistent uncompromising bitchiness, the law is always insisting that something just has to happen in a particular way, or that someone must do something that no sensible person would contemplate

Why, after all, does Jonathan toddle off to the death castle while wailing peasants beg him to run in the other direction? Because there are only limited circumstances in which lawyers are allowed to abandon the interests of their clients- and “the peasants were screaming” isn’t one of them.

Why do the Bennett sisters have to get married post haste? Because their father’s property is entailed, meaning they’ll be penniless when he dies. Why does David Balfour get kidnapped? Because he’s the rightful heir of an entailed estate and his wicked uncle can’t scheme or buy his way out of that implacable fact.

Why does Mary Lennox have to leave the country where she was born and hang out in a secret haunted garden with foxes and robins and shit? Because guardianship law makes her the responsibility of an uncle she’s never seen. Why does it matter that Jean Valjean used to be a convict? Because he broke parole, meaning Javert can drag him straight back to the galleys no matter how many little girls he’s rescued in the meantime.

Why doesn’t Mr. Rochester tell Jane Eyre the truth about the woman locked up in his attic? Bigamy laws. Why is Oliver Twist abducted from Mr. Brownlow? Inheritance laws. Why does Heathcliff insist on bringing up his son himself when he hates the kid? Marital property laws, in connection with a REAL complicated scheme that has Heathcliff playing matchmaker for two teenagers for years on end, just to make his romantic rival as miserable as possible.

I could go on ad nauseam. My beloved Wilkie Collins, who trained as a lawyer in part because he was so fascinated with the use of the law for crime, absolutely saturated his plots with this kind of thing. A man protects himself from an assassination plot through the cunning use of sealed directions deposited with a lawyer. A steely-eyed mother protects her naïve daughter from exploitation by a Real Bad Man through a cleverly drafted will. A Wicked Baronet locks his old girlfriend up in an asylum because she knows about the single document that could strip him of his entire fortune.  

Are you intrigued? Are you inspired? Try it yourself, I dare- nay, I entreat you. Let’s have a book where callow Helen Hepplethwite needs to share a ghost-infested tower with a dashing lady woodworker for a year and a day, lest the terms of her eccentric aunt’s will cause her family’s mushroom farm be repossessed. JUST BECAUSE.

OH RIGHT, THAT'S A THING THAT HAPPENED

Somehow, in and amongst switching jobs and assisting with the care and maintenance of queerspawn and tending to an old lady cat, I failed to commemorate the launch of the audiobook of Shell Game on this here website.

So here we go! Let’s commemorate! Let’s commemorate hard!

Just like with Rabbits of the Apocalypse, it is a bizarre but fairly awesome experience to hear characters being brought to life by someone who knows how to do that stuff. The audio for Shell Game is performed by girlfriends (!!!) Blair Baker and Em Grosland, and crap on a biscuit, do they ever give it their all.

Give it a try, maybe, if you like that kind of thing?

AHEM, AHEM

FAR TOO MANY THOUGHTS ABOUT TUNICS

Now, there are few things better than watching a brilliant and beautiful woman deliver a series of brutal put-downs to a man who really, really deserves them.

And there are few better examples of that genre than when the beautiful and brilliant Julie Andrews, as Maria, chews out Captain Von Trapp about his shitty child-rearing tactics in The Sound of Music. It makes one fantasize pleasantly about locking Julie Andrews in a room with a bunch of Republican politicians so she can reduce them to blobs of quivering jelly.

“Senator, you have got to care about something other than oil executives and Elon Musk!”

And yet, there’s one part of the scene that strikes a wrong chord with me, that being the part where she explains why she replaced the children’s uniforms with improvised curtain-based alternatives: “Children cannot do all the things they're supposed to do if they have to worry about spoiling their precious clothes!”

I spent thirteen years of my life wearing a school uniform. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to be skeptical about uniforms: concern about class divisions between uniform and non-uniform schools, distaste for practices that carry a whiff of colonialism. And stupid enforcement of dress codes can mean that girls get told that they’re dressing too sexy or Muslims get bullied or Black kids are forbidden to have natural hairstyles. On the other hand, those problems arise in non-uniform schools as well, and the solution (i.e. not being assholes, letting people wear their religious raiment, letting Black people have hair) would be the same in either case.

Against those have to be balanced some clear advantages, like putting kids at the same school on a level playing field, making income inequalities less obvious. And some other inequalities, too. Well into my teens, all I wore was my mother’s old clothes, complete with middle-aged-lady pleated pants. That wasn’t from any lack of money- I just happened to be an utter thicko when it came to dressing myself. If I’d shown up to school in my normal clothes, I’d have been pelted with garbage until I drowned in banana peels and rancid pudding.

As it was . . . well, I didn’t escape being pelted with garbage, but I wasn’t quite as obvious a target.

Whatever the pros and cons, there’s one thing I’m prepared to scream and gibber and hop up and down and pound on tables about: Uniforms do not have to be stiff, formal, unnatural clothes that keep you from running about and playing in filth. In my case, at least, it was quite the opposite.

Here’s the uniform I wore for thirteen years. The main feature was a garment that would be called a gymslip in the United Kingdom, or a tunic in Canada, or (I believe) a jumper dress in the States. I preferred “tunic,” young dyke that I was, because it sounded pleasantly unisex.

Portrait of the dyke surviving adolescence.

But “gymslip” is a word worth bearing in mind, because it hints at the origin of the thing. Tunics were invented to be worn by girls during physical education classes.

It makes a mighty amount of sense. Tunics are not like dresses or skirts or kilts. The pleats flare out around you, so they restrict your movement about as much as your own skin. You can cartwheel in them, do the splits, or kick a bigoted Supreme Court judge in the goonies without the least trouble at all. And as you can see, there’s no chance of a wardrobe malfunction if the skirt flaps up, because you wear shorts underneath.

Shorts, I should say, are what one wears underneath these days. When I was a very small Benny, one wore bloomers, which were like giant flannel underpants that gathered at the waist and thighs. They were phased out in favour of boxer shorts when I was still in school. I didn’t mourn their loss- the aesthetic was lacking- but I promise you, there are few more comfortable things to wear on your lower half.

Not beautiful. Very comfortable.

So, they were comfortable and non-restrictive, those tunics. They were also bloody indestructible. That was partly down to the design- no crotch to rub, no cuffs to fray, no waistband to catch- and partly the material. They were made of serge, and that meant they lasted for fucking ever. Real talk: you cannot tear a serge tunic. Doesn’t happen. Try it and see. I have quite literally watched my schoolmates use their tunics to drag stacks of cinder blocks over concrete. Dust the tunic off afterwards, and it’s good as new. You could probably recycle old tunics into body armour- only you don’t have to recycle old tunics, because they never wear out.

All of which meant that uniforms were the furthest thing imaginable from precious clothes that had to be kept pristine. They were like boiler suits, a durable thing you threw on before you spent a day rolling on the grass and wrestling Catherine McAvity-Jones and lugging things to the art room and spilling yogurt all over yourself.

I know that girls in school uniform can be fetishized. But I think that would happen less often if people saw more of the real thing. At least in my school, even the most heterosexual fashion-conscious girls treated their uniforms more like welders’ aprons than outfits. They weren’t something that you wore for anyone else, and you didn’t care what they made you look like.

You didn’t revere or reverence them, those tunics, or fret about them, or dread outgrowing them. You just wore them.

I’m glad I had one.

RABBITS OF THE APOCALYPSE AUDIOBOOK! FOR PEOPLE WHO LIKE AUDIOBOOKS! AND RABBITS!

Yup! So- that’s a thing. You can check it out here.

This business of preparing an audiobook is bizarre. When I’m writing a book, I end up reading the whole thing aloud a few times. This is a less than pleasant task. In part, that’s because by the time I’ve finished a book, the contents are unbearably boring to me and will be until I’ve stuffed the whole thing in a virtual drawer and let it languish alone for a year or so. But the larger issue is the fact that my speaking voice sounds like a half-strangled grackle and ain’t nobody wants to listen to that for long.

So thank goodness for professional narrators and actors, sez I. Blair Blaker, who came on to narrate Rabbits, is really quite sincerely awesome and made hearing the story a whole new experience for me.

If you want to check out her other work (and let’s be real, why WOULDN’T you), she’s over here.

SHE'S GOT MY NUMBER.

I'M NOT SAYING IT WORKS

If you happen to suffer from severe social anxiety, marketing your own books be like . . .

BLUH

Evenings seem very empty right after a manuscript gets finished.

CARDBOARD THEATRE IN A PLAGUE YEAR

So I, as I am wont to do, did a thing, and as I am also wont to do, I put perhaps way too much time into it.

Mmm.  Yes.  Behold my very serious artistry.

Look.  When I think of a dumb way to amuse myself, what am I supposed to do?  Not that?  Please.

Anyway, indulge me for a second while I talk about what was actually involved in filming this silliness.

All real artists work out of their kitchens, right?

Doing this alone, under quarantine conditions, was Not The Plan.  I was going to lure people into my lair with nice snacks and drinks so that someone could hold the camera and other people could yank ropes and move levers and I could bustle around pretending to be important.

But that’s not possible under current circumstances, seeing as I am a cooperating citizen who does not want to expose my loved ones to any unnecessary danger, which meant that I had to find ways to do everything myself.

Most of that wasn’t too difficult.  I just had to make a camera-holder out of a bookbinder’s sewing frame, and then improvise a few things with magnets and wires and strings.

But the opening scene was the devil.  As you will have observed, three things have to move in that scene: the waves, the ship, and the theatre curtains.

The wave machine, the little dingus what revolves the moving waves around, takes two hands to operate. 

See?

Were I a better machinist, I would have built it in such a way that it would not require two hands.  Had I the ability to wander thoughtfully and problem-solving-fully down the aisles of a hardware store, I could work out a way to rebuild it now that would not require two hands.  But I’m not and I don’t, so two hands it is and I needed to move the ship and curtains some other way.

Moving the ship was pretty straightforward.  I tied a string to the ship, ran the string through a couple of pulleys, and tied it off to my left big toe.  That done, I could pull the ship across the stage by extending my left leg out behind me in a graceful arabesque.

While also working the wave machine with both hands, of course.

In order to do the yanking without my hands, I made a counterweight (a messenger bag full of foreign language dictionaries), tied it to the curtain cord and hung it over the rung of a ladder.  When the counterweight dropped, it pulled the cord and the curtains opened.

Fun fact: my mother hates it when I play with ladders because they provide me with so many opportunities to brain myself.

But I still needed a way to make the counterweight drop on cue.  To do that, I tied another rope to it and threw that rope over a higher rung of the ladder.  So long as I held the control rope, the counterweight stayed up.  But I had to hold the control rope without using my hands.  I tried holding it in my teeth, at first, but after a very brief time, I realized I was most definitely going to lose an incisor to the experiment and I didn’t particularly want to. 

So I wedged the control rope beneath my right heel, instead.  When I lifted my heel, the control rope slackened, and the counterweight dropped.

For those of you keeping score at home, this is what I needed to do during the opening thirteen seconds of my silly video:

a)    Work the wave machine with both hands

b)    Lift my left leg, ready to extend it behind me in a graceful arabesque

c)    Stand on my right toe so that the control rope would slacken and the counterweight pull the curtains open

d)    Stretch out my left leg

e)    Still working the wave machine

f)     Still standing on my right toe.

Elegance, elegance, toujours,elegance.

Do not ask me how many takes it took me.  You do not want to know.

I am calling my little model stage the Teatro Hello Godot, because I never met a literary reference that I didn’t like and rhymes are pretty spiffy, too.  I’m sure that you have not seen the last of it here, although the supplies at my disposal are not unlimited. 

I’ll tell you what I still have in abundance, though.  My place remains home to the Strategic Crayon Reserve of Ontario. 

That isn't even all of them. Not even close.

Maybe I’ll see what kind of theatre scenery I can make with that.

Gayer, Higher, Stronger

And the sequel to Shell Game is out, and I am a trifle verklempt.  I make no bones about the fact that Shell Game and now Beggar's Flip are very, very silly books about lesbian pirates who happen to like to tie each other up because Reasons.  But that doesn't stop Lynn and Darren's world from being very precious to me.  Plus, there were bits of Beggar's Flip that were a challenge to write.  There's angst in dem der hills.
Angst angst piratey angst

People sometimes label my books as "humour" and are surprised to find so much angst or darkness in them- or they find it jarring to have humour in a book with dark subject matter.  Me, I am a firm believer that life is hilarious, beautiful, amazing, cruel, and brutal all at once, and that you can't stop laughing at the ridiculousness. 

My day job brings me into contact with some rather dark subject matter on a regular basis.  All of my co-workers who deal with the same black misery share my slightly screwy sense of humour. We rely on each other, and we find the brightness, and we treasure the beauty, and we never stop laughing at the silliness of it all.

If you give my silly pirate books a chance, I hope they give you a few laughs too, as well as giving your angst muscles a healthy workout. 

I am so good at self-care

NOT DEAD! WANT SOME MORE GAY PIRATES?

The "B" is for "Book" and the "F" is for "Fuckin' 'ell, a book!"All right, all right, I haven't been the most faithful correspondent of late.  I won't blame you if you assumed that that I was gone for good.  I just hope that you envisioned a suitable end for me.  Stranded on the planet Mercury, maybe, or eaten by a venomous slugbeast thing.  Or maybe you figured that I finally made one too many bad jokes about Her Majesty the Queen, and was mauled to death by her attack corgis.

But in actual fact, I've been on a secret mission of the utmost importance.  I'm not allowed to reveal any details- suffice it to say, someone very evil is down to his last Horcrux.  (We're pretty sure it's his toupee.)

But have I been writing, in my off hours, when I haven't been fighting back against the forces of Twitter-based fascism, or being bent over a desk by Her Majesty the Queen and told what a very bad lawyer I've been?  Or have I aged and seasoned, like...well, not like wine, but maybe like cheese, and decided that there are more productive ways to spend my time than writing many many words about gay pirates?

HA HA HA of course not.  No, my disease is worse than ever, and my doctors have despaired of a cure.  Beggar's Flip, the sequel to Shell Game, will be out this summer, published by the spiffy folks over at Bedazzled Ink Press.  This is the continuing story of Darren- socially awkward noblewoman turned pirate queen- and Lynn- sorta kinda Darren's slave girl, sorta kinda Darren's life coach, and altogether the bossiest backstreet driver that ever set foot on a pirate ship.  The gay is radioactive, the snark is weapons-grade, and pretty much I do not know what I am doing with my life.  But I hope that you like it. 

And now, back to the workshop of the magical lesbian dwarf blacksmith who is forging me a double-headed axe blade out of the heart of a very gay star.  One more Horcrux to go. 

VERILY PINK CRAYON DRAGON GIVETH NO FUCKS

Observe!  It is Pink Crayon Dragon.  Together, let us gaze upon his splendour.

Some might comment that Pink Crayon Dragon's head looks much like a sock puppet crafted by a kindergartener of average ability.  Pink Crayon Dragon is unmoved by such observations.  Pink Crayon Dragon does not give a shit.  Pink Crayon Dragon is secure in his dragoninity.  He does not need any outside endorsements to maintain a positive body image.

Pink Crayon Dragon suffers no spasm of insecurity because of his colour.  If other dragons are so juvenile as to shout homophobic taunts, this will merely reinforce Pink Crayon Dragon's conviction that he is right to be spending most of his time with panda bears.  The panda bears just get him, you know?

Pink Crayon Dragon was born "Maurice," but is thinking of having his name changed to "Martha."  No, Pink Crayon Dragon is not transitioning.  Pink Crayon Dragon merely scorns your artificial, culturally-enforced binaries.  Don't you try to pigeonhole him.

In other news, I'm back.  How have you been?

PSST! I DID A THING! YOU SHOULD GO READ THE THING!

Things are still pretty freaky down here in the law mines, but I have bribed a passing pigeon to bring you this note from my cell.  Lesbian romance writer and generally swell person A.J. Adaire invited me to come to her website and talk too much about myself.  Can I pass up an offer like that?  I cannot.

The interview is here.  You should go and read it!  We touch on a number of subjects including bomb-making and nuclear survival.  Also girls who kiss, of course, because, well, come on.

So: yes.  Go hang out with AJ for a bit.  She is good people.  Go for the nuclear apocalypse, stay for the pie.

Edit: Yes, I know, something seems to be up over at AJ's place and the interview isn't reachable at the moment.  I am tentatively hypothesizing that the site got eaten by a camel.  Sorry 'bout that; I'll relink as soon as things get sorted out on that end.

HER MAJESTY RESPONDS TO RUSSIAN HUMANITARIAN CRISIS

Hello, yes, this is Our Majesty the Queen, and one hopes that you have been substantially less naughty than usual.

One knows that we have a lot of fun here, but one would like to- what is it that the kids say?- “get real” for a brief while on the subject of the situation in Sochi.

One was tuning in today to the BBC when one heard news which made one clutch desperately for one's pearls and shriek for the maid to come running with gin and sal volatile.  The Mayor of Sochi, Anatoly Pakhomov, reports that there are no gays in his city.

One is quite, quite sure that this news is correct and accurate in every particular, because the only other possibility is that a politician is lying, and surely such a thing could never occur.

Friends, friends, dear friends, one is sure you will join one in a moment of silent Anglican prayer for the poor, bereaved citizens of Sochi.  One has oneself known times of deprivation- there was the rationing during the Second War To Which America Showed Up Disgracefully Late, and there were the weeks during which Prince Harry was on one of his benders, during which one was hiding in the most remote of the royal linen closets, trying to avoid the media melee.  But never, never, never, has one had to endure the kind of dreadful privation, the brutal, wrenching want, that those brave Sochihans suffer as a daily reality.

Life without gays?  Life without music!  Life without stars!  How could they possibly cope?  How do they drag themselves through the weary days without the healing rainbow light of same-sex lovin’ or behaviour defying gender norms?  Heaven only knows what their parties are like and who looks after their homeless kittens.

One has rapidly assembled a crack team, liaised with the Red Cross to arrange an emergency airlift, and will be parachuting gay into the areas where it is needed the most.  If you have some extra gay to spare, please give generously.  The amount of gay you radiate whilst purchasing your morning cup of coffee could provide a family in Sochi with supplementary gay for over a week, rescuing them from the grey, conforming numbness of their heterosexual stupor.

Carry on.

WE ARE NOT AMUSED

Hello, yes, this is Our Majesty the Queen, and one has just popped in to let you know that one is putting an end to all of these shenanigans and frivolity.

One is shocked that one’s enemies have stooped to such an unsportsmanlike strategy as assisting a known fugitive to escape royal custody.  As all properly bred ladies and gentlemen know, the polite way to conduct warfare is to dress up in bright red jackets and walk towards one’s enemies very slowly.

In any event, one has repossessed one’s lawyer, and one trusts that there shall be no recurrence of this in the future.  One shall put additional corgis on the mine exits just to be sure, and one had better not see you sneaking around nearby.  Surely you have things to do with your time other than gallivanting around talking about ladies’ private bits.  One trusts you shall not spend any more time on this website shall in no way attempt to access, electronically or otherwise, any subversive literature referenced therein which treats of lesbians upon the high seas or in nineteenth-century Austria.

One also wishes to inform you that one has targeted as the subject of one’s most severe royal displeasure the moderators at the so-called “Virtual Living Room” and the authors and readers who participated in this weekend’s “O Canada” spot-on.  One suspects that all of these individuals, despite their so-called “wit” and “charm” and “brilliance” and “extreme attractiveness to all who behold them” are in fact naughty beyond description.  One may have to take them in hand in the future.  One shall not warn you again.

Shoo.  All of you.  Off you go.  One means it.

OH, LOOK! IT IS AN EVENT! IT IS ME AT AN EVENT!

Goodness gracious, how audacious, whatever have we here?  Why, it is a virtual literature conference!  DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS?  You can talk to authors about books which have lesbians in them and you can get free books from authors and you can ask authors about their most embarrassing experiences involving latex and YOU CAN DO ALL THIS WITHOUT WEARING ANY PANTS AT ALL because it is all on the internet.

IS THIS NOT THE MOST SIGNIFICANT THING EVER?

Spot-On: "O Canada", Jan 3-5, 2014
Lesbian Fiction by Canadian authors

Many authors of fine lesbian fiction are actually Canadians and two Canadians, author Rebecca Swartz and Kathy Brodland, will co-host with the bookgeek a weekend where we celebrate those authors. And the authors graciously offered ebooks for a give-away!

Authors participating will be:

Anne Azel (Tides)
Liz Bugg (Calli Barnow mysteries)
Sarah Ettritch (Threaded Through Time)
Joan B. Flood (New Girl)
Lois Cloarec Hart (Broken Faith)
Benny Lawrence (Shell Game)
AJ Quinn (Hostage Moon, Show of Force)
Tracey Richardson (Last Salute)
Rebecca Swartz (Everything Pales in Comparison)

Join us at the virtual living room for a weekend full of good books and great authors: http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Virtuallivingroom/

Sign up, minions of darkness!  No real downside, what with the free books and the pantlessness.  I promise to be very tasteless indeed.  

THE HELL IS WRONG WITH CHILDREN THESE DAYS?

The problem with violence on TV is not, as they tell us, that children are growing from ravening little monsters into ravening big monsters who lack the ability to function in society.  The problem is that it is getting so damn hard to scare children.

Case in point.  Halloween.  I am standing on Julia's porch next to a giant black widow spider we built together, artfully posed in attack position with its fangs raised and chittering.  Projected over the window we have supercloseup video footage of spiders hunting, so detailed that you can see the venom drip.  The porch is swathed in webs.  I am clad in an alligator suit- yes, I know that a certain amount of thematic unity is lost there, alligator hanging out next to a giant spider, but I had already built my costume when Julia came up with the spider theme and I didn't have the time to start over, what with my weekends being annexed by Her Majesty the Queen.  Whatever.  Nuts to thematic unity.  I had many sharp and pointy teeth and I was stalking around roaring for everything I was worth.  

Reaction on the part of the children?  Zip.  And I do not mean the moustachioed youngsters who would probably go straight from trick-or-treating to studying for their MBA.  I mean the tiny downy tykes.  They looked me square in the eye and shoved their treat bags under my nose as though they were terribly embarrassed by the whole situation.  Not one of them fled wailing, abandoning their bag of delicious candy for me to devour.  NOT ONE.

So obviously I will have to go for broke next year.  What concept is fresh enough to get past the defences of today's jaded youth?  Maybe pterodactyls dive-bombing down from overhead.  I will have to get started on some blueprints. 

BELATED REFERENCE TO AWARDY TYPE THING

I may not have mentioned this, but I am a Canadian and also a British citizen, which, as we all know, means that I am sworn irrevocably to the service of Her Majesty the Queen.  I also work a job which required me to take a personal oath of loyalty to HMtQ, her heirs and assigns.  Most of the time HMtQ is a pretty good boss- she does not personally come gorgoning down the halls to give me the business- but she is a stern mistress.  Shirking your work is not an option when you are indentured to HMtQ.  She will not be amused.

All this to say that the past couple of months, HMtQ has been cracking down on her servants.  Thus I have been chained to my desk in the law mines, beavering away at the Real Work, rather than putting out copy about bondage pirates and ninjas.  I am very ashamed of myself and will try to do better- worse?- immediately.  

Let me start by acknowledging the nice people over at the Rainbow Awards who have very sweetly named Shell Game as a finalist in the Lesbian Fantasy category.  Huzzah!  I hope this means that some people have enjoyed their time spent with my gay bondage pirates- which, to be fair, is about the same thing as saying "I hope that somebody enjoyed this bowl of melted cheese and bacon which I prepared"- but enjoyment is enjoyment, people.  The world can be pretty grim; let us draw around the bright spots without shame, and if the bright spots are pirate-related, so much the better.