A Small Accomplishment (and some Midwestern Female Syndrome)

Yesterday, a little bit of networking paid off.

I participated in a writers’ chat on Zoom headed by Debbi Voisey, a writer from England, about publishing tips. One of the topics was publishing in literary journals, and on the panel was Shawn Berman, the editor of an online journal, The Daily Drunk.

When he explained that the journal picked items that were “humorous and quirky”, I realized that I had a piece that might be what he was looking for*, Come to Realize. I don’t write humor much, but a story about a vampire in a Narcotics Anonymous meeting seemed like it might fit the bill. And, apparently it did, because it’s getting published next week.

At less than a thousand words, Come to Realize is flash fic. I seem to have a little luck in flash fiction and short stories and poetry**, and less luck in the novel category. I suspect this is because of marketability instead of skill. It might be that my quirk is more welcome in small, non-lucrative presses than in the big money-making ventures.

This might push me toward self-publishing, because I don’t think my stories are what mainstream fantasy expects. The tropes are not obvious — there are no elves, alternative worlds (well not much, anyhow) I don’t want to write to the trends (which always change anyhow).

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* Midwestern Female Syndrome entails the inner desire to be perfect with external behaviors of self-deprecation and overly qualified statements. Here is an example. In reality, I have been published eight times, not counting the two slop journals publishing everything right and left to make money off of selling copies of the journal.

** Here is another example of Midwestern Female Syndrome. It seems us Midwestern women are always striving to look mediocre.

The Rosetta Stone of my Memory

The things I remember from my past are little clips of little consequence:

My first memory is sitting on a couch right in front of the window. It’s dark in the room because there are midnight blue blackout curtains on the window. Midnight blue with slubs of red. My dad keeps peering through the window. Only the grey of dawn peaks through the curtains. I think I was two.

After we moved into a house, the neighbor boys gleefully stomp up our attic stairs looking for treasure. My sister and I trudge up after them, having never been in the attic with its 50-plus years of coal dust sifting from the crawl space. My bare feet grow very dirty. I believe I was seven.

Many, many evenings, my parents play bridge in the kitchen with Mom’s cousin Dale and his friend Kenny. My sister and I are on orders not to disturb them, but I don’t listen as well as I should. I liked my cousin Dale and his friend Kenny too much to stay away for long. I could have been six, or seven, or nine.

At the Brookfield Zoo, I really wanted to see the snakes. I had read about them, and I wanted to see if they were as terrible as I thought. My parents decide to wait till last to see the snakes, and by then I am so tired and crabby we end up going home before seeing them. Everyone blames me. I was four at the time.

One glorious afternoon, I swing on a swing at the local park, waiting for my mother. The sunshine enchants me, and although my fellow day campers taunt me for singing at the top of my lungs, it doesn’t bother me, because the sky sparkles. I was ten.

These memories fall out when I tug on one of them. The first memory stays with me without provocation like a stone in my pocket, as if it was a mini Rosetta Stone of my memory. The memory itself is so small, with no particular evocation of its own rather than waiting for something.

Perhaps I was waiting for the rest of my life.

Rest in Peace, Daisy Coleman

I didn’t know Daisy Coleman, even though she lived in my town nine years ago, because I don’t have children and thus was not privy to high school culture. Then news had broken out that she had sneaked out to a high school party here in Maryville, been given a large amount of alcohol to drink, and was raped by one or more of the male partygoers while in a stupor.

I believed Daisy Coleman (and still do). I believe that she intended to be around popular boys, perhaps for social cachet, perhaps because one of the boys “liked” her. Sneaking out to stay up until the wee hours, even to drink, makes her not that unusual — there were several teens drinking in the barn of one of the boys’ parents.

But many in our community didn’t see it that way. The boys in question were on sports teams, and many in the schools championed the rapists. The sheriff and prosecutor did not see any way to prosecute the boys because Daisy was drunk. (The fact that the boys were also drunk somehow shielded them.) Many in the town defended the main suspect, who came from good family and whose grandfather was a legislator. So Daisy faced not only the trauma of rape, but harassment and lack of justice.

I, a survivor of rape myself, felt triggered by the series of events, especially the lack of justice. When I was raped in junior high in a different town, one year younger than Daisy, I decided to say nothing, not even to my parents, because I had spent years being badly harassed in the school district and I suspected how much worse it could get. I instead dissociated and made the memory go away. Living in Maryville, though, brought it back. And made me wary of a town that could behave without compassion.

I wish I could tell you that Daisy overcame the rape. However, Daisy Coleman died Tuesday night of suicide, 9 years after the rape occured. Maryville has blood on its hands, and no amount of Chamber of Commerce promotion is going to wash it off.

Rest in Peace, Daisy.

If there was justice, the rapists would dream every night of being stabbed in the genitals. The people who taunted her would dream of being doxxed. I know personally there is not justice, and it makes me angry.

Here’s the news article

’tis a gift to be simple

I had this old song, beloved by Quakers, in my head:

‘Tis a gift to be simple

’tis a gift to be free

’tis a gift to come down

where we want to be

And when we come down

in a place just right

it will be in the valley

of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gained,

to bow and to bend we will not be ashamed

To turn, to turn, will be our delight

till by turning, turning, we come round right.

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But what does that mean?

Simplicity is one of the tenets of Quaker (Friends) belief. The belief is that, if we keep our lives simple enough, we may hear the divine in the silence. We may clear away the clutter to find what’s essential. We may find that we feel better living right-sized instead of large. We may see ourselves as a part of the world rather than centering it on ourselves.

The song is comforting. I still keep my life a little too complex, although COVID has pared back some of that. I still fault myself for not being in the place I want to be (with some renown), but perhaps I’m in the place I should be.

Wish List

I’ve been writing too much about kittens. And COVID. And quarantine. That’s probably been because that’s been my life, in a summer bereft of traveling, going out for coffee, and …

Today, I’m putting my wish list out here for the universe to peruse:

A spa day at The Elms where I can spend all day in the Grotto running between the steam room, the sauna, and cold showers. Lounge on one of their beach chairs with a cool, minty fresh washcloth.
Getting motivated with my writing.
Getting my nails done. I have managed to grow them out and not bite them, and I want fancy color.
A trip to Champaign-Urbana to visit my friends. I know they’re COVID-negative but I don’t know if I will be after the 19th.
At least one of my novels (there’s currently three full ones plus the one or two I have to seriously edit) getting published by traditional press.
Initiative to get back on a diet
Getting one of my short pieces (poetry, fiction, flash fiction) published by a journal
Getting my Surface Book replaced (this will happen soon)

I think that’s enough for now.

Sleepy Sunday

It’s Sunday morning, and I slept in really late.

I need to get back into writing, in-between making a sourdough rye bread and spoiling one little kitty. If I can wake up.

The coffee is on its way. It’s a commercial coffee from a small mill instead of our usual home-roasted. It will wake me up just as well. Hopefully.

Me-Me and Girly-Girl are teaming up on my while I write. Me-Me thinks I’m not clean enough. Girly-Girl just wants attention.

Richard will brine and smoke salmon this afternoon. I want him to make a cream sauce and serve them over sourdough waffles for dinner if he’s feeling adventurous.

This is my Sunday. If I could only wake up …

Life with Chloe

As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, we acquired a 8-week-old kitten who we named Chloe. This is a recent picture of Chloe:

Ok, that wasn’t such a good picture of her. How about this?

Ok, so she doesn’t pose well for pictures.

Chloe is a mixture of sweet and spicy — she curls up with me at night, right before springing over me and attacking my foot. Her acceleration rate far surpasses mine, and she can jump eight inches straight in the air. She licks my face, then nips my nose.

I’m her favorite, but only because she’s quarantining in my room until we can acquaint her with the other cats. So I am the source of food and pettings.

Yes, the other cats are jealous — not so much of the cat, but because they want kitten food too. Given the extra calorie punch of kitten kibble, of course the cats want to eat the kitten food. When one (usually Me-Me) finds their way in, I have to hide the food dish until they leave.

Me-Me and Chloe stalk each other. Today I watched Me-Me sneak up to Chloe until she had Chloe literally pinned up against her cardboard carrier. Then, as Me-Me walked off, Chloe started stalking her.

Someday Chloe will be a full grown cat, without so many of the charming kitten antics. But I’m sure she will be as magnificent and quirky as she was as a kitten.

The Calm Before the Storm

Right now, it’s the calm before the storm for me — school starts in two weeks, and I’m taking what I like to call my vacation, which is a blessed period of doing absolutely nothing important. Time enough to get worked up about immersing myself in small-room teaching for a high risk clientele that doesn’t mask.

But I’m not falling completely fallow. Yesterday, I attempted to get rid of my writers’ block by submitting a few pieces to literary journals through Submittable. This was recommended to me through a graphic artist at Gateway Con as a way to wait out finding an agent and publisher.

I have gotten a couple publications this way — mostly on web sites, an honorable mention on a major journal (on a story that was very much genre fantasy!), and a couple other journals and zines. So surprising to me that my work is finding traction.

So today I will be doing something. Submitting more materials, writing flash fiction, getting back to my book, sending a query letter in for more critique. Something to do with writing.

Try, Try Again

One friend liked my pitch (no, don’t like pitches if you’re not an agent!)

Three followers (also not agents) liked my pitch

One indy publisher with a suspicious business model liked my pitch

No agents liked my pitch.

What is the next move? Right around September or so, I can start pitching the new improved Apocalypse with its new improved query out to agents. I can research small presses to see if some tend more toward traditional and are looking for my kind of stuff. I can look at Manuscript Wish List to target agents to look at my stuff.

Lots of people retweeted me, especially the pitch for Apocalypse. So there’s hope if people recognize its worth.

I’m not quite ready to self-publish yet. I have doubts about my ability to market (which is why I’m wary of “hybrid” presses as well.) But I’m not giving up, because publishing is just the cherry on top.

#SFFpit

Today is #SFFpit, which is a Twitter pitch session for writers of science fiction and fantasy. The idea is one writes a tweet-length pitch for one’s novel and sends it out into the Twitterverse to see if it catches an agent’s eye. If it does, they will ask for a manuscript.

I have done several pitch contests (#Pitmad as well as #SFFpit), and I have never had much luck. But hope springs eternal, as they say, whoever they are. I load up TweetDeck, an automated tweeting app, with 20 pitches (10 for each book I want attention paid to) and wait.

I don’t expect to get any traction from this, because I haven’t before. I

may get moody later today, because nobody likes rejection. I will get over it, because hope springs eternal.