Warning: Political Post

This is what I learned this week from the Republican Party about sexual assault:

It only counts if you weren’t drunk.
It only counts if you weren’t dressed attractively.
It only counts if you fought back.
It only counts if you reported it right away
It only counts if other men saw it and sided with you.
It only counts if the assailant was not white, powerful, and wealthy.
It only counts if it won’t ruin the man’s career by prosecuting it.

Otherwise, it’s not sexual assault.

****************

Sexual assault is assault. It’s violence. It’s being used to keep women “in their place”. It has to stop.

Old song today

There is music that goes with this:

Turn the corner
to a street beyond a map,
walk much further
till our feet forget the path.
We have walked here,
but only in our dreams;
then we wake up
never knowing what it means

Turn the handle,
slide back the creaking door
as I wonder
if you’ve been here before.
Weathered iron
is rusting in its sleep
as we sit here
in the silence that we keep

In the morning
if the snow has turned to gold
does it matter
in a story never told (2x)

Turn the corner
to a street beyond a map,
walk much further
till our feet forget the path.
We have walked here,
but only in our dreams;
then we wake up
never knowing what it means

In the morning
if the snow has turned to gold
does it matter
in a story never told (4x and fade)

I don’t know what to write!

NaNoWriMo is approaching, (November 1st)  and I don’t know what to write.

I’ve been in editing mode — Apocalypse is a good amount of the way done edit-wise, while I just got handed back my first novel, Gaia’s Hands, from the developmental editor. I have enough editing for the next couple months at least.

But NaNo is about writing, not editing.

I haven’t written new for a while because of my editing needs. Although I haven’t finished Whose Hearts are Mountains, there’s not enough material left to make the 50,000 word total for NaNo.

I need an idea for a new novel by November 1.

I have a couple on the back burner: the sequel to Voyageurs, where our two characters time travel to stop the end of the world due to climate change, but that doesn’t appeal to me. In fact, I feel like I’ve backed myself into a corner writing a book that obviously has a sequel. It’s not just the research I would have to do, but the fact that I don’t know if I have enough plot to support the 80,000 word minimum for whatever genre it is.

The other involves an Archetype war with hideous implications for humans. I am so far away from the Archetype universe right now that I don’t know if I can create this.

I need inspiration — help!

Muse, if you’re out there, inspire me!

Autumn

I woke this morning, and something in the air had changed. For one thing, a chill had appeared and I had clutched extra blankets to myself in the night. The sun shone with a subtle golden aura that presaged what would come — the glorious russets of maple leaves, the burnished brown of oaks, the golden rain of locust trees, the delicate yellow of gingkos.

Autumn will always be my favorite season. The pagans I know believe that it is ruled by Herne, a powerfully built, dark protector of the forest, the Horned God. It’s easy for me to believe, as autumn broods in its mists and rainstorms, in-between its golden sun and clear, cool nights.

Autumn, even in its fiery glory, whispers: This will end soon. This will end in white, and cold, and you will huddle in your homes waiting for the world to renew again, as it has before.

Crazy cat lady

Six cats now reside in my house.

I don’t know how it happened — Richard and I had vowed to stop with four, which already put me close to the category of “crazy cat lady”. Our four — the fat curmudgeon Stinkerbelle, the shy flower Me-Me, the calico lady Girlie-Girl, and the diva Snowy (or Ironic Cat, given she’s totally black) coexisted in mutual disdain for each other.

Then, a student of mine brought a kitten to my office and asked me to watch it for her. The kitten was a mangy, skinny ginger boy who acted as if he’d never gotten affection in his whole life. Naturally, when the student couldn’t keep Chuckie, I volunteered to adopt him. — who am I kidding. My husband told me I had to (that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it).

Chuckie, a year later, is this immensely lanky cat who greets people by running up to them and digging his claws into their butt. He chases Girlie around, and she grunts and snarls at him. For the most part, though, the other cats are used to him.

Then we had to adopt another cat. Dreamsicle, an orange and white cat, started taking up residence in our garage this last summer. He had clearly adopted us as evidenced by his morning greetings, and we fed and watered him outside daily. Then he showed up one day with a long laceration at the base of his tail that looked like something tried to take his tail clear off. The vet who stitched him up told us that we’d have to keep him inside three to four days.

“This cat isn’t going back outside, is he?” I asked Richard as said cat cuddled in my lap.

“Nope. He’s an indoor cat now.”

“We have six cats now. That’s too much.” I didn’t protest too vigorously, because there was a little purry creature in my arms.

“It can’t be helped.”

Dreamy gave me his most ingratiating look. The other cats gave me dirty looks.

************
 The cats are still readjusting to each other. Chuckie still chases Girly, although I sometimes think her protests are just for form given how she waits for him to arrive. There are still occasional snarled conversations between cats at the food dish. But sometimes they sit near each other, which is the closest I figure they’ll ever get to cuddling.

No more cats after this. I promise.

In case you know anyone who might be interested …

I’ve been getting lots of rejections for Prodigies, many of which tell me how beleagured the agents are with all the queries they’ve been getting. So I’m going to try this for fun:

Dear Ms. _________:
My name is Lauren Leach-Steffens, and I was recommended to you by an attendee of the Pike’s Peak Writers’ Conference as being open to fantasy with strong women of color as protagonists.. My novel, Prodigies, 92,000 words long, is a literary fiction/magical realism crossover. This book covers young adult themes with an adult focus. The intended audience is well-read women who enjoy intelligent, strong protagonists and magical realism themes.
Prodigies tells the story of Grace Silverstein, a multiracial teen musical prodigy, who flies to Poland to perform in a showcase for young prodigies. However, nothing is as it seems, and Grace must flee with Japanese graphics prodigy Ichirou Shimizu and his chaperone Ayana Hashimoto. Before long, Grace and her companions grapple with the fact that they are Prodigies, people with preternatural talent.  An emergent threat against the United Nations on General Assembly Day leaves Grace and her compatriots a choice: weaponize their talents or watch people die.

I am new to the fiction writing world. When I am not writing, I am an associate professor of family resource management at a regional Midwestern university. I have written several research articles under my name (vita available upon request). I have written several manuscripts in the magical realism/literary crossover genre. My work is distinguished by its roots in psychology and sociology, emotional honesty, consequences of actions, and poetic word use.
Sincerely,
Lauren Leach-Steffens

Finding time

This has been a busy, busy semester.

For example, this is what I wrote this morning:

This course focuses on the concept, practice, and issues of case management.  Students will develop skills in communicating with clients, discerning intercultural issues in practice, and using best practices in documentation. This class will prepare students for case management positions in a variety of venues including geriatric case management, psychiatric case management, and disaster case management.

**********

I am becoming frustrated, because I’m having trouble finding the time and the brain cells for my writing. I don’t even know what I’m going to write for NaNo in November!

I need to find time. I think I can schedule after school, except on those days I have meetings (every Thursday, every Friday, and occasional Tuesdays). You see the problem, don’t you?

I need to plot some sacred “you can’t touch this” time.

I used to do this early mornings, but I’ve managed to put work-work (you know, work-work as opposed to writing-work?) into that time because I went to sleep thinking about that course description. My semester is busy enough that I think about work at night.

I’m thinking about evenings, from 6 to 8, at the Board Game Cafe. Every weekday. Even if I can’t write on my story, I have a routine going.

Let’s try that.

Sleep Hangover

Sometimes my body just decides to take over in scheduling rest into my life.

I was sleeping, body, honestly. I was getting eight hours of sleep a night. Why did you decide I needed to take a 20-hour nap?

I’m still a bit sleepy today, probably hung over from all the sleep. The coffee has done no good. I need to WAKE UPPPP!

Donations for more coffee will be accepted. Send pictures of coffee.

What I’m working on

Rewrites are harder than I thought:

Lilly Doe thought she’d have a nice quiet evening at home.

 She sat in her sanctum, the soothing living room of her Chicago bungalow. After looking through a research paper on modern Archetypes and the female psyche, Lilly strolled over to her bookcase to find a mystery novel to read — and dissolved into a sparkling mist.

When the molecules that made up her body realigned themselves, Lilly found herself in an eerily perfect coffeehouse.  Black walls, dark interior. Scattered shelves with bric-a-brac — a stuffed armadillo, a badly tarnished coffee urn. A small stage, enough for three musicians, but perhaps not enough for four. A dusty upright piano, which she suspected was in perfect tune. Lilly felt as if her insides were still sparkly mist and her legs about to dematerialize once more. But stubbornness would not allow her to shrink from the emergent situation.

The coffeehouse, however, stood silent, and nobody sat at the tables. If Heaven had a coffeehouse, Lilly reasoned, this would be it. Who knew Heaven would be so empty?

Lilly felt goosebumps form on her arms. Her knees buckled, and she collapsed into a chair. She pinched herself and felt pain.

Just then, a man glided up to the chair across from her and sat down. The man had fine, straight, black hair pulled into a loose ponytail, wide Asian eyes, and a graceful nose. He wore unrelieved black, which almost blended into the darkness of the walls.

The man looked at her expectantly.

“Am I dead?” she queried.

“No,” he replied, in a silky tenor. “I suppose you could be dreaming, Lilly.” He  rested his chin on his elbows, watching the emotions play on the woman’s face.

“I don’t dream,” she snapped. “Do we know each other?”

The man raised his eyebrows. “I know of you.  You have touched me.” He studied her again: a short, curvy woman with sunny curls, a button nose, and at the moment a scowl on her face.

“How could I have touched you? I don’t know you!” Lilly shivered.

“I heard a story about you once. It touched my heart,” he murmured. A long-fingered hand gestured toward his heart.

“I don’t know you,” Lilly snapped, standing up.

The man gestured her back down gracefully. “Think of me as an Archetype,” he said. “An Archetype who holds a cultural pattern for humans – thousands, even millions of people at once. Without their cultural DNA, their anchoring in the world, humans will die.”

“Millions of humans? ” Fear replaced skepticism, as though the words resonated with a buried part of Lilly’s memory.

“Pretty much. Archetypes generally live in spaces between worlds, a bleak place called InterSpace, so they can be called to be the template for a human in this world. Archetypes seldom visit Earthside, except in our case.”

“If this is a dream, why are you in it?” She held her breath to keep from screaming. “People can’t dream of what they haven’t seen before.”

“Did I say it was a dream? I called you here, to the ideal coffeehouse, a space that would reassure you, so I could talk to you.” His hand touched hers, and she jolted.

“This isn’t reassuring me,” Lilly sighed.

At that moment, two large lattes appeared on the table.  Lilly took a sip; a perfect latte. “Are these real?” she asked.

“Is this not the best latte you have ever tasted?” He smiled as if he’d made the lattes himself.

Lilly remembered the setting finally, a Chicago fixture whose eclectic shabbiness had earned it renown. It had been years since she had been — Lilly shivered. This compelling man – Archetype – spoke in riddles. “So why are we here?”