The Adventure of Being Ordinary...

William Gedney, Photographer

“What is the adventure in being ordinary? It is daring to love just for the pleasure of giving it away. It is venturing to give new life and to nurture it to maturity. It is working hard for the pure joy of being tired at the end of the day. It is caring and sharing and giving and loving…” -- Marilyn Thomsen


Negativity's been swirling in the air once more in the m/m society, and I've watched with curiosity and discouragement...but a tiny bit of relief to be only a tiny speck in the big scheme of the genre. For once, I was kind of glad to be a nobody.

I just write. Simple as that. I think I like that simplicity.

Simplicity. Just working hard. Loving my uncomplicated life, loving my stories, loving my small fan-ship, loving...just loving my situation as it is.

Coincidentally, while ruminating on this 'settlement' of life, this old fashioned mental publishment (sorry---heard this word in an old American folk song and wanted a chance to use it) that's come over me, I stumbled on the photographs of American photographer, William Gedney.

While studying them, I ached with the beauty I found in the black-and-white candids of a series on rural life in Kentucky.

The subjects of the photos, their lives, tore my heart because they were so damn beautiful. Excruciatingly gorgeous because of their basic, raw painting of ordinary lives. Ordinary days.

The photo essay brought me back to my own roots. A very simple life where, as in the photo above, menfolk gathered around the cars and either worked on them or gabbed around them or both. And they were happy. So damn unwealthy yet abundantly rich. The kind of rich I long to be.

I almost cried over this photo. That's my idea of a lovely moment, there on that porch. Coffee in hand. Maybe sad, maybe just tired. But somehow so serene.

That hidden world where men might be as good looking or better looking than most movie stars, but no one knows them, has ever heard of them. They're just ordinary...men.

Something about the porch, no shirts, babies and bottles...

I've visited this porch a million times in my mind. I've sat on on much like it at my sister and her husband's fishing camp. Solitude. Warm, gritty, comfortable. The bevy of brothers in the photo...well, what can I say?

Something so ungodly happy about the nothingness of doing...nothing. Just BEING.

I long for those days when I was a child---so very much like the folks in these photos---who found so much pleasure in absolutely nothing. Pitching a tent made out of old sheets between two shrubs, the sweet smell of cotton and warm grass within that cozy shelter. The only thing that could ever draw us kids from that magic make-believe world was our parents' call or the clanging bell of the ice cream truck.

Climbing the tree in the back yard and sitting, hidden in the shelter of its leaves, for hours. Or doing nothing but sitting on the porch. Watching the world as it did nothing either. Reading. Reading and more reading.

No air conditioning, just attic fans that made the window curtains billow like silent, frail ghosts while---one some days---I lay in my bed and did nothing but daydreamed. Listening through the screen of that window to neighborhood kids who were also doing pretty much nothing, only performing their nothingness outdoors.

Oddly, this reverie does sort of connect to my writing life. The beautiful, really beautiful thing about these photos is the absence of the clawing to be anything other than what the subjects are. If their lives aren't up to par with society, they seem totally and blissfully unaware of it.

In reference to an upcoming author/writer convention, a reader blogged that she---quite honestly---did not want to pay money to be in the room with 'nobody' (or was it 'so-so'?) authors. Well, being one of those 'nobodies', that slammed reality in my face. That left me feeling this aching lack of something. This need to try to BE a somebody.

And you want to know something? Had it not been for a reader---for anybody--to scramble us authors around like a handful of jacks in the dirt then arrange us into neat categories, wanted and unwanted---I wouldn't even have been cognisant that I AM pretty much a nobody. Sure, I only have a tiny handful of books to my name, but I thought I was important anyway. I naively thought I fit in somewhere in the big scheme of authorly things. This reader kindly, very politely, informed me I am wrong.

It stung for a while. But, then---once my self-confidence washed away the stark truth---I still came back to who I am, to my heart. And my heart is an author's. I'm glad to say that the reader's proclamation of my invisible status in the writing world cannot change that. Damn it, I'm still proud and I'm still going to write. Because I'm not too bad at it.

I want my career as an author to be the simple, beautiful way of these photographs. To just write and be content and enjoy the loveliness that comes with writing to create, not writing to be popular, not writing to BE something. Since I can't STOP writing, no matter how many bloggers inform me I'm not worthy to share the room with the 'must have' authors, I might as well embrace it and do the best work I can. Not to be popular.

But because it's how I do things.

Take That! And That!

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.  -- Albert Camus


I haven't blogged in a long time. But, hey, I've been busy doing writerly stuff. And I've even finished a novella, my story Honor C, which is scheduled for publication at Dreamspinner Press in May/June.

Now that my sneaky pitch is out of the way...

I'm approaching---with caution---a subject that's on my mind. It's on my mind a lot.

Angst. Angst in our writing. My writing included. Remember as I progress that I said, emphatically: MY WRITING, TOO.

All who know me have heard me gripe and moan about my weariness of angst in stories. Authors just can't seem to write enough of it and readers just can't seem to read enough of it.

And the only reason I'm venturing to talk about it today is because I...oh, dear gods, yes, me, C. Zampa...has gone and done the angst thing herself. Yes, yes. I have. I didn't mean to. It just happened. And it fit the story, I swear it did! I repent of my past transgressions of griping about turmoil and drama in stories. For I have fallen into the dark pit myself.

But first...

What is it about angst? Why do we like to cry so much? Why are books given a Klennex rating? The more hankies it takes to get through a book, the better.

Why do we get giddy with anitcipation when an author warns us that we'll need to buy stock in the tissue company when we read this book or that book?

Why do we cheer like lazy, over-fed Roman spectators at a gladiator bout when an author tells us---with a fiendish gleam in their words---that they just offed a character or maimed them in some horrific way?

Oh, the delicious things in my head, all a keystroke away from happening to my characters!

Why is a book that is light on angst called 'fluff'? (Which I kind of find demeaning, as it seems to imply silliness and emptiness simply because it doesn't include trauma). When---in all fairness---books in which nothing traumatic and tragic happens are usually as well written and as good as stories with those elements.

There's a lot of debate on the subject. Some suggest that those who don't like angst in their books are not in touch with real life and, therefore, cannot take the stuff in their reading either.

On that, I can only say. Whoa. Back up, baby. I know angst, I've known angst in my life. Angst and I are old buddies. As a mother who lost her son (son-in-law, but he was a son to me) to a long battle with cancer, I am no stranger to tragedy and trauma. So to suggest I can't handle constant Kleenex use while reading because I'm not in touch with reality? Nuh-uh. Not so. You take that back.

A confession...

My beta read for one of my latest WIP's and questioned me. Seems I'd---oh, geez, I'm blushing---thrown a handicap into the equation and she confronted me. She wanted to know why. She knew my stance on angst-for-the-sake-of angst and wondered why I, of all people, had decided to use this handicap. She cornered me. What did this condition add to the story, she wanted to know? I had to confess. Absolutely nothing. It was, I will admit, for sympathy. I, C. Zampa, confess. I wanted to make it more dramatic.

But the funny part...

My upcoming story, Honor C, does have an angst angle. I didn't take pleasure in incorporating the element into the story. And by that I refer to the fact that I see so much joking in the author community about how we enjoy torturing our characters. The worse, the better, I hear. I'm never sure if this pride---a sort of medal of honor---in maiming and torturing is for deep impact, to make the book so shocking you can't forget it. Who knows? And I'm not saying it's right or wrong, it's just the way it is. And, sugar pie, I'm not even going to say I'll never pull that myself. My earliest and dearest mentor---a lovely Sicilian gentleman---always urged me to kill, kill. They will remember it, he said.

Angst and tragedy have been around for as long as writers have written. It's a tried and true, successful formula.

And now. To the reason I've taken a hard look---a very careful audit---of my own motives when I go the angst route.

I got hit with my personal bottom line. My big internal question.

Are my characters compelling enough, can they draw enough emotion on their own---just by being ordinary humans---without suffering additional handicaps?

In my heart, the crucial factor... 

Character depth. For me, writing a character without an external angst element---whether it be physical or mental---is almost like walking a tight rope without a net. No props to make him/her interesting. Just the naked, pure, ordinary person. Is my writing strong enough to just take an everyday Joe off the street and get to a reader's heart without wounding him?

Can he just suffer plain ol', normal heart aches like any guy and still capture a readers' heart? Depends on how powerful I can paint him.

But can I do that? Like I wondered, is my writing strong enough? Or does he need a physical ailment to grab a heart? Can he just die inside over a dame and you'll want to die with him because you love him so much?

Can he just be so very human that you relate to him just because?

Believe it or not, to carry that off is not easy. To create a character who is that strong is difficult, not to mention scary. To write him without a crutch, a 'sure thing' to grip the mind and heart. Nothing to lean on but his soul.

Please don't get me wrong. I'm not saying physical and mental obstacles are not as real and as huge a factor in fiction as they are in real life. They are, and I use them myself. Remember, I DID tell you I use angst in my writing, too. I truly do.

But...

I crave the challenge of trying to present an ordinary Joe who you just love to love, and cry when he cries, laugh when he laughs. And you do so because you see yourself in him, your deepest self. Not because I threw him off a cliff and injured him to tug your heart. But because I bared open his soul to you, every human bit of it. Warts and all.

He's YOU when you break up with a lover. You're not in a body cast, you're not maimed, but you hurt like hell.

He's YOU when you fall in love all over again and your heart is about to bust with the goodness of it. You're not in physical pain but you cry anyway because you hurt so good.

This quote by Gilbert K. Chesterton hit home with me: Nothing is poetical if plain daylight is not poetical; and no monster should amaze us if the normal man does not amaze.

It took a while for it to sink it to me. But then I saw it. Normal, just plain normal, is a mighty force in itself and can run very, very deep. The character is the foundation. He's got to touch us first, he has to be strong enough to make us care (or hate sometimes) all on his own. The angst should only make us bawl our guts out because it's happening to HIM, not because it's just angst.

So I wonder about my own writing. Can I make my characters that deep? Can I create a guy who---just by being a guy, a real, nothing-wrong-with-him-except-he's-100%-human guy---can still grab a reader's heart?

I'm going to put as much heart as I can into every character I write. I'm going to try to make sure they have enough human element to be recognisable to everyone who reads them. Not their faces, their bodies, their circumstances. But their souls.

Oh, sure, I'll have angst in my books, too. I like it as much as the next person. But my biggest goal will be the characters FIRST. Make them beautiful enough inside---and by beautiful, I mean nothing but pure, simple, glorious human hearts---and anything else that falls into their lives...well...

Winking in the Dark...

“Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing but nobody else does.”   --  Steuart Henderson Britt, Marketing Management and Administrative Action

This is phase three of my Oh,Those Good Old Days of Writing Just to Be Writing phase. 

In earlier posts, I spoke about guidelines set by publishers and by readers in fiction---what's acceptable, what's a hot button, etc. 

Now another aspect of being an author---a very important one, one that never, ever occurred to me in my innocent days of writing just for me and my buddies---is on my mind. 

Advertising. Selling myself and my product. Promo. 

This, I think, is the scariest part of all. Why? Because I'm not a natural-born pitch gal. No matter what it was in my life---whether it was just daily junk in a young person's life or my published books as an adult---I was never comfortable with drawing attention to things I'd done. 

Why, oh, why---so long ago, as I feverishly typed my fabulous stories---did I think it was all a matter of I've written my book, dear publisher, can you please publish it and make sure everyone knows about it? Thank you kindly. 

Lately I've seen or been involved in many discussions about promotion. Just what really DOES sell a book? What's best? Facebook, Twitter, Online forums? Blogging? And, when you've decided that, then how MUCH promo? Does it really work? How can you know which promo venue IS working for you? Who sees your pitches? 

So many questions, and---for me, anyway---no answers. 

I'm that man in the quote above. I'm winking in the dark. 

Oh, I do promo now and then. I throw up an occasional post on Facebook for my books. Even with that, though, I'm not comfortable. It's not easy for me to be the proverbial 'newsie', waving the latest edition of the headlines featuring...me and my books. When my works were still hot off the presses and getting reviews, I probably should have shared the reviews on social networks. No go for me. Just couldn't do it. Who knows why? Not that I wasn't proud. Okay, okay, I'll admit a tiny part of me never believes the good reviews. My internal critic kicking in there. 

I don't blog hop. I'd been reprimanded by a well-meaning friend on that regard. It would be good for me, I was told, it would be a good way to promote myself and my books. But I still just don't choose to do that. 

I hear how others have full-time jobs, just like me---or who don't have conventional nine-to-five jobs but are still round-the-clock busy---and how they still make time to promo because it is necessary. If I care about my books and my writing career, I will make time to promo, I'm told.

If I care.

That's where this issue, for me, is an extremely delicate, confusing one. I do care. But...

Let me explain about ME. 

No, I am not shy, by any means. My inhibition with promoting myself isn't a social fear. But there is that little fragment of me, still left over from the early days of writing simply for pleasure and not as a career, that still lingers. 

I do care about my work. I do want readers to find me, to read my books. Most of all, for me anyway, it's nothing more than this very simple, very childish desire to share my characters with others. I love them, I want others to love them, too.

But then why not push them harder?

Again, it's just not my style. Someday, maybe. One day, when I feel confident to depend on my writing for major income, I'll be forced to navigate the promotional waters. Right now, though, writing is a passion. And that's pretty much just it.

Some claim they'd write for free, they love it so, and that it's not about money. And others don't buy that. 

But you know what? I'm somewhere in between. I like the money. Want to know something true? When I received my first contract and came to the section asking how I'd like to be paid, I actually did a mental double take. Oh, my gosh. I forgot! I'm getting PAID for this! So, yes, for real, I sincerely hadn't ventured into it with monetary goals. The royalties, though, were just a lovely topping to a wonderful cake for me. The writing, being taken seriously by a publisher, sharing my stories was the best part. And it really was. Still is. 

I do feel I have a responsibility to a publisher to promote my work. Being accepted by a publisher becomes a commitment to sell the product that is theirs as well as mine. 

But it's hard. It is so very hard.

I'd love to write in some wonderful fantasy world where it's just a matter of putting a book out there and it just finding its right homes. The right reader linking to the right book. But, yes, that's a dream. My books are just a couple in a sea filled with a bazillion others. To have those readers means doing something to bring that book to their attention. They really won't see it if I only wink in the dark. Right?

Or...

In 1999, I got wind of a Paul Simon concert in the Cynthia Woods Pavilion in Houston. Excited, I immediately called the theatre to see about tickets. Imagine my shock to find the concert had already come and gone. And I'd missed it. I lamented to the ticket salesperson. She advised me that visit had done very little publicity, it had been a sell-out simply by word of mouth. Imagine. 

Aha. So I WAS leading somewhere. No, no, I'm no Paul Simon. But what I AM getting at is...

Could I possibly just keep writing because I love it? Could I maybe just devote my energy to writing the best stuff I can write and...and...if it's meant to be, it will be? If I can produce a good story, can it reach its target over time by word of mouth? Oh, sure, it would be slow, but...

Can I be patient? The modest but beautiful readership I've developed sure hasn't evolved because I've been an aggressive promotional enigma. I'm happy with the status quo. It's come at its own natural timing.

Maybe, just maybe some DO see us if we just wink in the dark?

 

The Road to Flawdom...

David and Bathsheba

She broke your throne, and she cut your hair, and from your lips she drew the Hallelujah....     --- Hallelujah, Leonard Cohen

Something about Leonard Cohen's song, Hallelujah, breaks my heart. The lyrics are raw, pure, and nearly double me over with emotion. It's a lament of pain, disappointment, and things not so pretty in relationships.

Much of the lyrics, such as, I've heard there was a secret chord, that David played, and it pleased the Lord...and...You saw her bathing on the roof, her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you...and especially, the baffled king composing Hallelujah give me the impression of---because they seem to speak of King David---themes of seduction, temptation, betrayal, lust and...cheating. Infidelity.

Which strikes a chord in me, as an author, regarding my recent struggles to meld myself into the romanctic genres, the traditional guidelines of romance writing.

I'd been advised that, when it was hinted that the hero in my novel had cheated, readers don't like cheaters.

Readers don't like...

Last week I wrote about romance guidelines. Not only in m/m fiction (which my book happens to be), but in all romance genres...m/f as well.

So this is, I suppose you could call it, phase two of my grappling with writing in the real world. That world beyond writing for fun like I used to do in the old days. In the days of yore, when I first began to write, my characters could do anything they pleased because nobody could see them except me. They were protected by that wonderful privacy shield of writing-just-for-me.

Now, it's beyond the guideline phase and into issues with what readers do and don't like.

And it is confusing. It is intimidating.

Readers DO, overwhelmingly, like flawed characters. The demand is for flawed characters. These flaws often include bitter dispositions, substance abuse, issues of past abuse which turn them into angry individuals, selling themselves for sex, using other characters to get what they want, physical handicaps. Sometimes even just plain creeps for no good reason. And the list goes on.

But...

The one flaw, one of the most common and emotional imperfections in the world of relationships---cheating---is, I am told, often taboo to write. The never-never-land of writing, the forbidden zone. It's not always avoided, of course, but it is a touchy subject matter.

Once, during a discussion on a forum, a heated debate erupted over the subject, with the majority rising up in arms over cheating main characters. The debate became vicious, names were called, cuss words flying like crazy. It was a hot, hot, hot button. The voice was clear, the people had spoken: NO CHEATING in romance fiction.

Which brings me back to Kind David. An icon in religion, a renowned man of valor and passion in history, a powerful king, a poet, a lover, a husband, a father, a...cheater.

Wait. It gets worse. Not only did David lust for a married woman, but his passion drove him to commit the hugest crime of all---he had Bathsheba's husband murdered. Talk about drama. But it was real. It was no make-believe fictional novel, it was real life.

Cheating. On a big scale.

And yet? David is beloved in history. His poetry, The Psalms, are revered. History adores the man. David was even called a man after God's own heart.

As powerful as he was, this king of Israel, he was flawed. In my mind, he's very likely one of the most perfect examples of flawed human nature I can think of.

And what about fictional characters who cheat?

What about ol' Scarlett O'Hara?

Gone with the Wind

Poor Scarlett. She never got her chance to cheat, but she sure wanted to. I say poor Scarlett because, when she and Ashley were spotted in an embrace, Ms. O'Hara was forced to wear that deliciously devilish red dress as a sign of the harlot the town felt she was. And, yet, Mr. Wilkes---who was just as guilty as she was---got For He's A Jolly Good Fellow sung to him. Double standard, but that's another story.

What about Fatal Attraction?

Fatal Attraction

Okay, so that was a case of cheating gone way wrong. But...but...the hero, who blatantly cheated on his lovely, always-smiling wife still managed to be the hero in the end. He fell from his heroic throne for a minute, but regained his noblity before all was said and done.

One of my very, very favorite films, How to Make An American Quilt, deals with another aspect of cheating. A young fiance having a last-minute fling, therefore cheating on her fiance, with a steamy Latino.

How to Make An American Quilt

And one of the most loved infidelity films/novels of all, The Bridges of Madison County.

The Bridges of Madison County

And don't forget lovable cheatster, Don Draper, from the television series, Mad Men. Oh, my. Mr. Draper has had more extra-marital affairs and rolls in the hay than the modern calculator can compute. And get this. He's not even remorseful. Oh, wait, he might have been apologetic for a minute when he got caught. And yet? The audience loves the man. Somehow, he wriggles out from under his girlfriends' beds the unscathed, beloved hero we just can't stay mad at.

And, oddly, Don Draper is one of my favorite characters. The writers have produced a realistic, extremely unapologetic image of a human complete with every flaw imagineable. Everybody knows a Don Draper. Every office has one. Why pretend the Drapers of the world do not exist, and why pretend they can't actually be just...people.

Don Draper and one of his many affairs, Mad Men

Is it the fact these films/novels are mainstream that lets them slide under the Cheating Hero/Heroine radar? Is it just romance fiction where infidelity is not accepted as a human error? Embraced as a flaw?

I'm not arguing. I'm just confused. I'm not condoning cheating. I'm just frustrated at tiptoeing through the land mines of do's and don'ts in the romantic fiction genre, at the codes used to make the decisions as to which human failures and flaws are forgivable by the reader.

As for David, the King? Even after committing adultery, he was forgiven by God. Oh, the powerful Israelite suffered hugely for his mistake. But he was forgiven.

Although he's no fictional character, he still remains one of the most potent examples of a human to commit such crimes against humanity---which included murder---and still somehow, because we were endeared to him, emerge from the rubble as the hero.

To me, flaws aren't limited to guidelines dictated by a genre.

So my question? Can a hero or heroine commit the act of adultery and still manage to redeem themselves?

I believe they can. It is a challenge, I'll admit, to bring them around full circle. And, if an author can convincingly meet that challenge---to deliver this situation with the delicacy necessary to handle the highly charged emotional explosive it is---then I see it as a human flaw that has its place in romantic fiction.

How do you feel? Have you read books that contain cheating characters? What did you think of them? Were you able to forgive them?

I Never Met One, But...

I’m excited today to have author Dorien Grey visiting in my ‘house’. 

I love Dorien’s writing—whether it’s on his blog, his website or in his books. Mr. Grey has a wonderful gift of putting his heart into his thoughts in such a way that bring such tender yet vivid color to what seems to be ordinary life. I’m always amazed that he says exactly the complex feelings that touch most of us, things we long to say—only he says it in a way that makes one quietly just think, “Ah. Yes. That’s it.”

Here are some ways to link with this wonderful man:

Dorien’s Blog: http://www.doriengreyandme.com/

His Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/Dorien-Grey/e/B001JOWDGU/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1348409285&sr=1-2-ent

And you can Facebook with him at: http://www.facebook.com/dorien.grey?ref=ts

Now, here is he is. Dorien Grey….

“I Never Met One, But....”

For Carol Zampa

I was thinking for some totally unknown reason of an episode of a TV show called The White Shadow, which ran from 1978 to 1981. It was about a high school basketball coach (Ken Howard) mentoring a group of all-American jocks. I watched it only when there was nothing else on that I particularly wanted to watch. But I'll never forget the episode in question, in that it got all sorts of buzz for being boldly daring. It seems that a new player on the team is suspected of being...well, you know...one of those. (It turns out he isn't, of course, thank God, but...) The harassment of the poor kid becomes merciless until the coach bravely calls the team together for a lecture on tolerance. When the word “homosexual” or “gay”—I forget which one was used—pretty daring right there, comes up, the coach says, and I quote: “Well, I've never met one myself, but...” I switched channels and never watched the show again.

My immediate reaction to the coach's incomprehensible response was, You never met one yourself? Look around you, you idiot!

 

That one sentence fragment held the key to the repeal of D.O.D.T., the gradually-being-won battle over marriage equality, and the slow crumbling of intolerance over one's sexual orientation. Our society had been locked in a vicious circle: I'm sure many if not most straights honestly believed they'd never met a homosexual simply because they were unaware they did! And gays were so justifiably fearful of harassment or far worse, that they could not or would not correct this misconception. It was only when gays began coming out of the closet that the tide began to turn. The more straights were made aware that they actually did know gay people—that one of their acquaintances, or friends, or co-workers, or relatives was gay and did not fit the stereotypes society had cast them in, the less fearful, hostile, and judgmental they became.

I'd heard gays say we all hid behind those who did fit the stereotypes—they were our protective coloration: if you didn't fit the stereotype, you were okay. It was, and I'm sure even today is, not unheard of for gays to enter straight marriages for the egregious protection of “But he's married. He couldn't possibly be gay!”

I grew up at a time when homosexuality was a crime in many states, and where gays had no legal rights or protection anywhere in the country; where you could be fired, or be evicted from your apartment for being gay; where gay bars were routinely raided...the arrests providing a steady stream of income for city coffers in the form of heavy fines just for having a drink in the wrong place. I myself was the victim of entrapment in Los Angeles in 1966, when good looking policemen were routinely sent out to lure gays into approaching them, then arresting them for “lewd and lascivious conduct.” (In my case, I was approached by a very handsome young man who then arrested me when I talked to him. I had not propositioned him or said one single word that I could not have said in front of my grandmother. Yet the police report he filed on the incident sounded like the script for a porn movie. I of course protested my innocence, but who would believe the word of a faggot over a solid defender of public morals?

I have been gay since I was a child, but I was never bravely gay like those who fought the police at the Stonewall Inn, or in front of Los Angeles' Black Cat, where a patron had been beaten to death during a police raid. I have marched in gay pride parades, but I have never helped organize a protest march or physically manned the barricades and literally risked my life. 

But I don't fault myself too strongly. I have done what I could to show straights that gays are just as human and decent and worthy of respect as they, and that who one chooses to love does not matter so much as that one does love. I would like to think that John Milton was right when he said that “they also serve who merely stand and wait.”

I would also like to think that were The White Shadow to be on the air today, the coach would know far better than to say “I never met one, but....”

Bonsoir, Petit Garcon...

Patric Michael



“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.” 
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

No long posts today. No points to be made.   I just want to take a moment to say goodnight---no, not goodbye, as this person was just too vital to ever admit he's really just...gone---to a precious friend who lost his long battle with cancer on Tuesday.  

Patric Michael. 

 Petit Garcon? Somewhere, in the course of conversations, I addressed him as Petit Garcon (little boy) and it became my name for him. And, good friend that he was, he let me call him that.  

Patric was a beautiful man. An author, an artist. One of the most brilliant minds I've ever known.  

He was a mentor to so many authors, this gal included. 

What touched me most about Patric was the journey through his illness. Watching a man reconcile himself to the inevitable, witnessing his growth as he faced the challenge, and admiring his peace about what he knew was going to come. If Patric was afraid, he never let on.  

There will be many tributes to him, so I'll not elaborate on my own.   What I want to do, though, is leave you with a glimpse of HIM. Something to share, something that paints a better portrait of him that my words ever could.  

Once, he and I discussed fireflies. Yes, fireflies. He'd authored a story in an anthology in which fireflies were a horrific entity (it was a horror anthology, after all..lol).   But, on the subject of fireflies---to show the tender, sensitive side of himself---he sent me this little snippet once. And I don't figure he'd mind my sharing it.  

So...in my bidding goodnight to my Petit Garcon, my dear friend, let me share this beautiful insight into his mind....  

  When he was a kid, he and his friends spend endless summer nights lurking beneath these same trees playing tag and munching fruit, spitting seeds at each other and laughing. His real father had been alive then. Alive long enough to teach him how to catch and hold the fireflies that even now glittered amidst the tall grass and dark red leaves.

He snatched one out of the air, almost without thought and stared at it cupped between his shaking hands.

“Don’t squeeze too hard, Danny. Cup your hands, like this.” Raymond Ellison demonstrated, allowing his son to peer at the softly glowing insect trapped within the cage of his hands. Faint green light spilled between his fingers. “You try it.”


Danny swept his hands through the tall grass and giggled as his efforts produced not one but two ‘lightning bugs’.

“I got two!” He crowed, holding up his prize.

“You sure did.” His father said, approving. “Look at them for a while, then let them go, Ok?”

“Why?” Danny asked, his small round face clouding with confusion. “Why can’t I keep them?”

“Because they will die if you do.” Raymond said, opening his own hands. The firefly flexed its wings experimentally. “They can’t live in captivity.” He said as the inset flew away, stitching indignant green fire into the warm summer night. He pulled his son onto his lap.

“There are some things in this world that cannot be caged.” Raymond said as he looked at the green light flickering in Danny’s hands. “See how they flash on and off like that? It means they are afraid.”

Danny studied his lightning bugs for a moment, then looked up into the trees. Lazy green light flickered in long, sweeping strokes. He looked at his bugs again, watching the stuttered, abortive light and thought he understood.

“If they are afraid for too long, their own fear will kill them, son. You don’t want that, do you?”

Danny hesitated. He opened his hands doubtfully and watched as the flickers lengthened and brightened. He tossed his bugs into the air and turned to his father. His doubt vanished in the bright gleam of his father’s smile.

“Good boy!” Raymond said and Danny grinned, glowing like a firefly himself in the light of his father’s pride.

The Gospel According To...

If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. (1 John 4:20)


Remember these guys?

I remember, as a young girl in Pasadena, Texas, an incident that didn't didn't make sense to me at the time. I was too young for it to have any mental impact one me.

A neighbor, just a couple of doors down, employed a Negro housekeeper. The friendly local order of the Klan----whose regional headquarters was only a few miles away on Red Bluff Road---paid a visit to our neighbor and gifted her with a burning cross in her front yard.

So young, this meant nothing to me outside the sensationalism of the FBI questioning the neighborhood and the community buzz of the incident.

But I did sense enough to be haunted by it. I'd never been raised to see anyone as anything but human. I'm grateful to my parents for that. Yet only when I grew into adulthood did I actually grasp the meaning of those events---HATE.

I had intended to post a vintage photograph of a Negro lynching from days gone by. But do you know what? They were too violent, they were so heart breaking I couldn't use them. It caused great pain to even glance at them. Bodies---young, old---hanging from trees, charred to cinders from stakes. The horrible denominator most of them had was crowds of gleeful spectators.

One photograph even showed a man, handcuffed and hanging from a tree branch, with a young girl staring up at his body as though she was in front row seats at Ringling Brothers. The photo was taken around 1914, and I wonder---hauntingly wonder---if that child ever, EVER had trouble sleeping at night.

Damn, as a kid, I could hardly sleep after an episode of Twilight Zone. And THAT was fiction, make-believe. This child watched a man hang by his neck until he was dead---and God only knows how horrific that must have been---in real life. And she smiled.

Most of us today are abhorred by this hatred. Churches preach against it. No hate, no hate, love thy brother, love thy brother. Love one another. Love thy brother as thyself.

And yet...and yet...communities band together to do just the opposite. To hate their brothers and sisters.

If you think crimes such as took place with the lynchings were a thing of the past, think again.

If you're like me, your mind quickly makes a path to young Matthew Shepard, who was murdered in a vicious hate crime on October 12, 1998. Tied up, beaten, and left to die.

He was only one of so very many.

The thing that torments me about this hate? So much of is, just like the KKK, based ridiculously on scripture. Multitudes of people have taken something, some out-of-context reference, to justify their HATRED. And it is just that...HATRED.

The sad thing? The person who they so erroneously use as their champion for this hatred---Jesus Christ---was himself a victim of intolerance. He died at the hands of arrogance and hatred. The 'church', the elite religious ones, scorned him, hated him from the moment they heard his voice and his far-fetched, crazy ramblings against arrogance and self-righteousness. His adult life was a constant run from those who willed him dead. For what? For being different.

What the sanctimonious voices who promote hatred do not realize is that, if Jesus walked among them today, they would be protesting him just as their kind did during his lifetime.

For every religious pharisee who condemns the gay community is one who would have barred Jesus from the very church he founded. He would not, today, probably have been welcome in many religious establishments. He would have been just too damn radical for them. He would have suggested they allow gay men and women into their sanctuaries. For that, he would have not been welcome.

Don't kid yourselves, oh pious ones. Jesus never said a lot of things you give him credit for---things you've taken out of context in order to support your bigotry and hatred---but he DID say that to shun those among you was to shun HIM.

So you, the chicken place who pays millions to promote discrimination? Trust me. Jesus, whose name you commit your hateful acts under, is surely not smiling upon you.

And, in closing. I believe in angels. And I believe those lovely stories about how they walk among us. And I believe, with everything in me, that----by shunning those whose gender you cannot tolerate---you are very surely shutting the door on many of those angels who tread among us.