About Me

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Portland, Oregon, United States
Middle aged crazy, a little on the broken side,been to hell and back and still make side trips into Purgatory to indulge the masochistic side of my personality. I'm Texan,Southern,Over-educated,arrogant, temperamental,oversexed but under-indulged.Chasing after younger men and the happiness that has eluded me for most of my life.Music and literature are my passions.Finally living the dream in my idea of Heaven.

Friday, June 22, 2012

Dear Roger: Comfort Zone


When I am working on something, such as my writing, I can be very single minded and focused. I often forget to eat sometimes even to drink or even get up and move around. If im on a writing jag, I will focus on what I am writing about to the exclusion of almost everything else, except my kids, they tend to be very persistent about getting my attention away from anything. 
This single-mindedness sometimes bites me in the ass and I forget to do other things, oh say like, refill my prescriptions for my seizure medications or eat, or even get enough sleep. I have raging insomnia and often get by on less than 4 hours of sleep a night, sitting up working on my writing or reading, lurking in unseemly areas of the interwebz or just woolgathering in the wee hours when I wish I had someone to talk to other than myself. I have been working on trying to become more social and develop better ways of communicating and actually talking about my books in ways other than just blushing and stammering or lapsing into full on stuttering, but its been difficult though today was a little better.
My boss, a woman a little older than me, hit me up for copies of my books the other day, and while I am fairly okay with sending them off to people who are hundreds of miles away from me and who I don’t really have to deal with on a regular basis, I was a bit freaked out about my BOSS actually reading my stuff, but I handed them over and promptly considered moving.
Today, she stopped me as I was out wandering about doing my regular stuff and she wanted to TALK ABOUT MY BOOK,”DRIFTS”. There were other people around and I thought that might give me a way of escape, but, OH NOO! She was adamant! She LOVED IT. She wanted to know about my inspirations and where I got the ideas and then she told me how she related to the character and that it really struck a nerve in her and she imagines that the reason its popular is because it strikes that same nerve in a lot of people.
I had really been wondering. I really hadn’t understood why it was doing so well, but it keeps selling and people keep asking me for copies of it and its the one people ask me about the most. I also get asked if there will be a sequel, and the answer is; I don’t know. I have to get the characters to talk to me again and right now they are kinda quiet. I hope they talk to me again because while it was a pretty dark story when it was first written, it was fun to write. Just like the next story im about to publish. It was a lot of fun to write and it had different inspirations. 
I have been pretty busy getting stuff ready to go and haven’t written too much lately other than my blogs but I have the start of a very dark and twisted tale on my desktop, and while its got a lot of research and observation behind it, its a hard tale to write on ones psyche because its about a side of “Love” and obsession that most are very lucky to escape, and I cant delve to deeply into working on it without my PTSD pinging off the charts, and the research has had me up nights pacing the floor. I’ve gotten one chapter done and 5 outlined, and all the characters developed, even done a quick and dirty outline of it one night on FB with some friends to give them an idea of where I was heading with the tale and they are well aware of how disturbing it is, and what is even worse, is most of  the research has been conducted by observing real people in the small fandom I am a part of. Ill leave that for another day, because I prefer to write the happier stuff, but I am at the mercy of my muse and when he is in one of his moods, it often works for me best to let him lead. He led me along on Drifts and it seems to really speak to people. 
My books and stories are all over the map when it comes to content and inspiration and I never really know when I am going to have an idea strike me just write where I spend days and days in a focused writing jag, even muttering ideas for progression in the plot as I grab a shower or scrawling them on my hand or bedside table in the wee hours of the morning. 
The book that is about to come out was one of those that progressed in such a manner and it was written after my son made an offhand comment about how he respected a man who would man up and be a father to a kid, even when it was inconvenient when his father who was supposedly a macho tough guy, did all he could to hide from a little baby and a woman. It was just the one comment and that was all it took, like so many things.
Trying to learn to talk about my writing is a work in progress with me. I can talk about a great many things, and I think I am getting better talking about my work, and my writing, and I have my temper mostly under control and Lord knows that insults just roll off of me, especially those from women and strangers because they don’t know me or where I have been. I had some heifer try it with me on FB the other day, she tried to insult me by commenting that my picture wasn’t particularly feminine. Uh, no duh? Im 43 years old with 4 kids at home, I have no social life or anything like that and I have lived a bit of a rough life, so I told her to go ahead and say all the things she needed to say to make herself feel better about herself. If calling me less than ladylike made her feel better about herself, well then,”Bless her heart” ,(oh yeah, I did use that), I told her to go ahead and have at it. I’ve been told worse by better.  I took the high road, didn’t use a swear word or a threat or anything like that, I just broke out the Texan/Southern manners and I broke it off in her and left her looking like what she was and funny thing was, she wasted no time in pulling down her comments. Bully’s and mean girls don’t scare or bother me, I see your pissy little teen angst and I raise you a Hells Angel prospect with a straight razor to your throat in a room where your kids are. I have walked through the valley of that shadow and I was the one who made it out the other side. So I guess I will figure out the whole talking about my stuff pretty soon too. 

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