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It’s not easy to write and research, not to mention answer TJB’s reader mail and comment on your LJs, when the cable modem has been going out at least once an hour since last night.
Sometimes technology is an evil thing. Although it has spared you all from my rambling posts or posts full of pictures that make your dial-up sputter and freeze. =)
After a discussion that followed my post about the three-unit town home being built in my neighborhood, I decided to check out the condos on Westheimer (one of Montrose’s main streets a few blocks from me) that were mentioned in the comments. Tim and I drove by there last night and saw lights in only three of the units. I noted how creepy it would be to live in a nearly-empty building.
Today, I went by and took photos of it. Then I came home and Googled “Tremont Tower.” Damn! It’s the stuff of soap operas, with corruption and scandal including shoddy building practices, dead and injured construction workers, grieving parents, fake business names to avoid penalties, financially devastated consumers, and insufficient, inefficient, and inadequate investigations of the alleged guilty parties. Only about ten of the seventy-something units have been sold, and apparently some of them are uninhabitable because of mold (which the builder says is not there). Added to all that is some people’s contention that the building is haunted. No wonder I shudder every time I drive by it: bad energy. Well, that and the ugly red/orange faux stucco.
I have a lot of writing to do, and I sense that soon I’ll be like Gregalicious with nubs for fingers and little time to post. A writer must always negotiate for time because, sad to say, VERY FEW people understand how time-consuming writing can be. It’s amazing some of the things people expect you to do because they just don’t get that you HAVE A JOB, even if you’re your own boss and you’re not making boatloads of money. (It’s even more amazing how money is the single most important standard a lot of people have for defining what is work. Whatever.) There are always hurt feelings from unanswered phone calls and e-mails, postponed and missed meetings–enh, it’s a hazard of the profession. I do my best, and that’s all I can do.
There are a lot of things I don’t do when I go into full-on writing mode. I watch even less TV (though that hardly seems possible). I see no clients. I stop reading as much news, because it agitates me and keeps me in this world when I need to be getting lost in whatever world I’m creating. I confine my book-reading time to little fragments, mostly in bed before I fall asleep.
When I do take breaks, I feel like I should be doing something constructive. Like this.
Yeah. That’d be Christmas presents I’ve been buying for the past five months and started wrapping on Friday. I’m determined that I’ll do this a little at a time while I’m writing these novels. That way, by the time Thanksgiving comes, I’ll not only have turned in two manuscripts, but I’ll be FINISHED with my Christmas stuff. I dare to dream that I could have a relatively stress-free December. We’ll see.
Another thing I cut out is reading most of the blogs that I enjoy. It’s for the best. Friday, one of those blogs linked me to someone who linked me to someone who’s an aspiring writer. We’ll call him A.W. Oh, the things A.W. had to say about the evil of people who’ve been published. Did you know that published authors have HUGE egos and must “know someone” because nearly everything being published is CRAP, unlike his own original, brilliant, and imaginative manuscripts? The ones he’s never finished? Never submitted? Never let anyone rip to shreds?
Maybe A.W. is a great writer. If so, I hope he has what it takes to persist until he gets published, because then maybe he will learn humility. It’s a virtue the world will gladly help an author achieve. Here are a few examples off the top of my head.
Today, April 18, marks the eleventh annual Day of Silence.
From the web site, The Day of Silence is an annual event held to bring attention to anti-LGBT bullying, harassment, and discrimination in schools. Students and teachers nationwide will observe the day in silence to echo the silence that LGBT and ally students face everyday. In its 11th year, the Day of Silence is one of the largest student-led actions in the country.
This day seems particularly poignant to me during this week when we’ve seen hate shatter the tranquility of a gracious campus in Virginia. All of our children deserve to be safe and feel valued in all of our schools all of the time.
I noticed it first when a new acquaintance was sitting with me and two of my closest friends back in the early 1980s. We’d always had a certain way of talking to each other, teasing each other, and she finally said, “Gee, are you sure y’all are FRIENDS? You don’t sound like it.”
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Here’s, like, Reason 234,112 why I admire Famous Author Rob Byrnes. (NO, not his trivia contests. Scroll down on that link!)
There are many reasons to read fiction and a place on the shelf for all the different kinds of fiction that are written. Please never think that because a novel isn’t riddled with anguish and doesn’t end miserably that its author didn’t put as much love and thought into writing it as any Man Booker Prize winner does his or her novels.
I could say a million things on this subject. I’ll spare you.
But I’ll bet if reviewers could read Rob’s e-mail from readers they’d find out the same thing we discovered from our readers. There’s a large population of gay men (and some straight women, and the occasional lesbian and straight man) who can find a novel meaningful and a character engaging even when a book is so-called Gay Lite.
If there’s a best review, it’s one that lets us know if we did a good job with the kind of story we were writing. If there’s a worst review, it’s one for takes us to task for not writing something else.
As Timothy has been known to say in such cases, “Write your own damn book.”
It was uncomfortably muggy yesterday, so I loved it that the temperature plunged during the night. The windows were open, and it would have been a perfect morning to snuggle under quilts with my dogs and sleep in. I wouldn’t be QUITE as bitter about all the equipment that cranked up on my street BEFORE SEVEN A.M. if I didn’t know the end result, after months of noise and dust and a tacky blue portable toilet, would be another CRAPPY THREE-UNIT town house in the neighborhood.
Once awake, I embarked on a fly-killing mission. Today’s last body count: 32 34 38. Nice.
Then I took these to the post office to donate them for NO/AIDS’s use in the Easter parade.
Did you know that I can’t Express Mail from Houston to New Orleans? No, I didn’t either. Hope the beads get there in time. Can’t believe the postal service has not recovered adequately from Hurricane Katrina to be able to guarantee mail delivery by a certain day. I wonder if other shipment services can? It’s not like beads are important, but I think of things like medications that often have to be overnighted. Is this not possible?
I asked a question the other day of authors–whether they went back and reread their old work. I asked because I’d decided to read IT HAD TO BE YOU for the first time since 2001. There were a couple of times I TRIED to read it, but I would start seeing so many things I wanted to change that it disturbed me, so I never reread it in its entirety. This time around, I’ve stuck with it. Things I may have wanted to change at one time don’t bother me so much now. Like the way Daniel is initially mired down in his history. That makes sense, considering his circumstances as the novel opens and who he is (big ol’ Virgo). What I’m struck by is how my feelings about Blaine are different. I see him as much more vulnerable now when I’m reading him. I think that’s because I learned so much more about him in I’M YOUR MAN. Now a whole new set of things is affecting me in relation to WHEN YOU DON’T SEE ME. I don’t know. I’m glad I’m rereading it, but there’s something bittersweet about it.
Note to Shannon: I got the photos. More later.
Note to Lindsey and Rhonda: Y’all are sweet. Sorry about the dentist.
Note to Tim and Rex: The CAR! is home.
The mosquito who has announced that Houston’s Season of Misery has officially arrived by breaking into my office, repeatedly attacking me, and WHO WILL NOT DIE.
Netfirms, which is being wonky and won’t let me send mail to David, Mark, and ‘Nathan. You’ll have to wait a little longer for the promised Beowulf memory. Try not to let this provoke you into going on a quest for some Old English monster of your own to rip limb from limb or behead.
You are welcome, however, to direct your wrath at this mosquito.
This week, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act was re-introduced in the House of Representatives. This legislation seeks to update federal hate crime laws by adding protections for people based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
This is NOT A PARTISAN ISSUE. The bill is endorsed by notable individuals and over 210 law enforcement, civil rights, civic and religious organizations, including: President George H.W. Bush’s Attorney General Dick Thornburgh; National Sheriffs’ Association; International Association of Chiefs of Police; U.S. Conference of Mayors; Presbyterian Church; Episcopal Church; and the Parent’s Network on Disabilities. Poll after poll continues to show that the American public supports hate crimes legislation inclusive of sexual orientation, including a Kaiser Family Foundation poll released in November 2001 showing 73 percent of Americans supporting hate crimes legislation that includes sexual orientation.
This link on the Human Rights Campaign site will help you find your legislators by using your zip code. Let your representatives and senators know that you want to give local law enforcement agencies the extra tools and resources they need to prevent and combat hate violence.
Thank you.
Most of the text of this post was taken from the HRC Web site.
Years ago, I was in an AOL chat room one night when a newcomer came in. We chatted for a while and he finally told me his “real” name: Mel White. I knew who Mel White was. A former ghostwriter for Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Billy Graham, among others, Rev. White had fallen out of favor with his former associates when he came out publicly as a gay man. The reason I knew of him was because he’d written a book about his life called Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay and Christian in America, and I’d seen the book advertised and discussed a few years earlier in the GLBT media.
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