Culture

Looking back and looking ahead: the year in review

Arts, Blogs, Books, Culture, Movies, Writing

So, 2018 was admittedly not my best year. But there were definitely some highlights. Instead of regretting and lamenting the things that went south, I’m taking the best parts of my year into 2019. I don’t know what the coming year will bring, but I hope to hang onto some of 2018’s good things.

Writings and Ramblings

This year, I only wrote one novel, one novella, and one short story for a collaboration, with a couple of flash fictions that I posted here on the ol’ blog.

Year of the Guilty Soul (YA/semi-historical/slice of life/relationships; Beaten Track, July)

Drumbeat (contemporary/romance/relationships/gay & bisexual; Supposed Crimes, September)

Sparkly Badgers Christmas Anthology (various)

Torsos

Yes, 2018 was the Year of the Torso. Not only did I write a short story, I also created a Pinterest board for my Torso Art. They’ve been used during online promotional events as well. I don’t know whether it makes me happy or sad that my torsos are more popular than my books.

Jobs and Tinkering

This year saw an increase in my editing and proofreading work. Thanks to everyone who sent me manuscripts and/or clients this year. I’ve had the privilege to work with some of the most amazing authors.

I’m also now doing social media content creation for a small press. This is probably the most fun job I’ve ever had. Way back in the day, I had a college professor who predicted this was the sort of work I should be doing. I didn’t like her, so I ignored her. She was right, though. It’s a really rewarding and creative job, and I love it.

Firsts

I had some excitement in the form of my first ever dance recital! My big kid (the one in the picture) encouraged me to take Irish dance, which was not only fun but great research for a novel. In June, I got to be onstage. Nerve-racking but awesome!

My novella Year of the Guilty Soul became my first-ever audiobook. I hope to save up enough funds to do another one in the future.

For the aforementioned small press, I got to curate and edit my first anthology. I am in awe of the talented writers who submitted their work. It was hard paring it down to just 10 stories.

The big one: My family took a trip overseas! We went to England to meet up with some other writers and their families. What an amazing time, and far too short.

The kids were endlessly fascinated with Tesco

The notorious donkey we had to declare at US customs

Kid 2 missed a field trip to the local cemetery. I promised we’d find much older graves.

Media Galore

These are all the books, movies, television, and live shows I’ve seen this year. My favorites in each category are starred. I’ve only included books released in 2018, television with new episodes in 2018, and movies released in 2018 (with the exception of West Side Story, which was a special event screening). Live theater is all shows, including school and local.

Books

Seven-Sided Spy, by Hannah Carmack

Speedbump, by Charli Coty

The Follow 2: Blocked, by Eliza David*

Lander, by J. Scott Coatsworth

Surrogate: Hunted, by Jeanne G’Fellers*

Tomboy, by Janelle Reston*

Rainbow Romances, a charity anthology

Tabula Rasa, by Debbie McGowan

Vanilla Clouds, by Roe Horvat

Seasons of Love, a Beaten Track anthology*

Cleaning House, by Jeanne G’Fellers*

Of Princes False and True, by Eric Alan Westfall

The Gaia Project, by Claire Buss

The Summer Between, by Anne G’Fellers-Mason*

Goth of Christmas Past, by Debbie McGowan*

The Lost Mitten, by J.S. Morley (Debbie McGowan)

Mama, Me, & the Holiday Tree, by Jeanne G’Fellers

Somewhere in Between, by Natasja Hellenthal

The Advent of Reason, by Debbie McGowan*

Defensive Play, by Jamie Deacon

Movies

Black Panther*

Ready Player One*

A Wrinkle in Time*

West Side Story (special viewing)

Bandstand (film of the final Broadway performance)

Ocean’s Eight*

Christopher Robin

Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again

Bohemian Rhapsody*

Television & Netflix

The Good Place*

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power*

Hannah Gadsby: Nanette*

Murphy Brown

American Vandal*

The Toys that Made Us

A Series of Unfortunate Events

The Great British Baking Show*

Nailed It!

Live Theater

Big Fish (okay, this was my kids’ show, LOL, but it was good!)*

Rent

A Bronx Tale (touring premiere, opening night)*

South Pacific (my friend was in it)*

Fiddler on the Roof*

Aladdin Jr. (also a school performance)*

It’s Not About You

Culture, Writing

I’m going to say a thing. Probably a lot of people won’t like it, but I’m really at the point of saying “too bad.” Because this is exhausting and frustrating and I am just plain old sick of dealing with the ongoing fights in queer author spaces, most of which are driven by white people. So here goes.

Dear white queer non-cis-male people, it’s not about you. #OwnVoices is not about preventing you from your right to issue stories about (mainly white) cis gay men having relationships and/or sex with each other. It’s just not.

Dear white cis gay men, it’s not about you either. You don’t have exclusive rights to the hashtag. #OwnVoices includes you, and you 100% have the right to tell your stories as you see fit. I’m with you. I have your back. But do you have mine? I like to hope so, but I haven’t seen it so far.

There’s some value in having a much calmer and kinder conversation with and about cis gay men who are pushing back against other people writing their stories. I also think it’s worth talking about the cis-hetero allosexual (i.e. not asexual) women who are writing exclusively or primarily about gay cis men, even if they are not the majority.

We should definitely have a discussion about how those stories are written and whether they might be perpetuating some harmful ideas. Yes, even queer people with marginalized identities within LGBTQ+ spaces can do harm. That’s a matter of asking ourselves if a particular story, told in a particular way, might not be ours to tell.

Other things worth discussing are the erasure of women and other non-male people in literature and how certain bodies and identities have priority in queer lit. We should spend some time thinking about the number of queer cis women who are deeply invested in writing exclusively about cis gay and bi men. This troubles me as a person who doesn’t fall neatly into binary gender or sexuality categories. I rarely get to see myself in books. On the rare occasion that I do see something similar, my identity is often treated as something like A Very Special Episode when it’s written by a cisgender person.

And that is why #OwnVoices is so vital to me. I am not here to tell anyone, particularly queer folks, who they can or can’t write about. But I am here to say that there are some things distinctly lacking in any discussion that begins or ends with attacking #OwnVoices.

#OwnVoices is not now, nor has it ever been, about silencing white queer people. It was meant to do the opposite as well as making room for people of color, religious minorities, disabled folks, neurodivergent people, and more to tell our own stories in our own words. It was also meant to allow queer women (cis and trans), trans men, and non-binary folks to tell our stories in our own words. And it was meant to make space for people at the intersections of any combination of those identities.

Cisgender men are socially prioritized. In queer spaces, cis gay men are prioritized. So a queer person who is not a cisgender man writing primarily or exclusively about them is, in general, not a massive problem on its own. People have pointed out, rightly so, that transmasculine folk have used writing about cis gay men to explore gender identity. Bi women have written about bi men for similar reasons. Women’s voices, particularly queer women, have been drowned out for a long time, and this is sometimes a way to be heard (though I would argue a somewhat troubling one). Some have compared writing about cis gay men to gay men doing drag, which I think is apt (and has some equally bothersome elements, which has also been pointed out—both of those can sometimes participate in misogyny, for example).

Obviously this writing can still be done in problematic ways, and that should be addressed. I would suggest that those of us who are not cis gay men and yet are concerned by it should speak up about those elements (overuse of certain demeaning tropes, lack of understanding about issues facing gay men, misogyny, and the framing of certain topics like gay conversion, e.g.). We also ought to apply pressure on actual cisgender, heterosexual, allosexual women regarding how they write about and view our community. That’s not to say cis gay men shouldn’t speak up, but we should show our solidarity here and call-in our peers.

Following that, I would suggest everyone take a couple deep breaths and step back. We all could do with removing cisgender male as the default setting. White cis men are not “normal” with everyone else being “special.” Not in hetero spaces and not in queer spaces and not at the intersections of those with race, disability, and neurodivergence. When the primary thing going on in queer lit is boiling fury over who gets to tell cis gay men’s stories, then everyone else is forced to wonder if our stories are even worth telling.

This is particularly true if we’re not writing about cis lesbians (or aren’t cis lesbians ourselves). Lesbian fiction has its own fully-formed community, with its own issues of who is or isn’t welcome. I don’t want to minimize that or the problems some writers have faced when they don’t follow those rules. But lesfic is still by far less popular and less well-advertised than gay lit. This is magnified for people who don’t fit into a binary system and whose writing doesn’t either.

I’m about to release a new novella, a YA story that is very much #OwnVoices in every way. But because so much attention and energy is devoted to playing tug-of-war with white cis gay men’s stories, I am left wondering if anyone will care. Will they want to read about what it’s like to grow up genderqueer, bisexual, and interfaith during the peak AIDS death years? Or do they just want to fight about whether it’s objectifying to write about Navy SEALs fucking each other?

All I’m asking is that we open our eyes to some much bigger problems in both queer lit and queer real-life circles. We are not always good at being inclusive, and constantly hurting each other over who has more right to uphold the white cis male default is harming all of us.

Some thoughts on parenting teenagers

Culture, Parenting

I read this post yesterday: Why aren’t we talking about parenting teenagers? It made me pause because I think it’s true that we’re not offering enough support, but probably not for the reasons this blog post suggests.

Years ago, long before Spouse and I had kids at all, we made an observation while volunteering with young people. It seemed to us that many adults had a fear of that stage, resulting in closed-off relationships and increasingly tight control.

When our kids reached their teen years, I wondered if the issue might have been more specific to a particular stripe of conservative Christianity. The above blog post indicates to me that it is not.

I was troubled by the language used by the blogger. Everything in that post struck me as having a sheen of antagonism. She seems incredibly frustrated by the emotional push-pull of adolescent development. While I understand that some teens can behave badly, I don’t at all think this characterizes late-stage childhood. Or it shouldn’t, anyway.

My sense is that a lot of people like the early years much better. There are probably dozens of reasons for this, but one thing that’s true is how much easier it is to set the rules and enforce them. Sure, little kids can be defiant about some things. But at least on the surface, it’s not as complicated for most people.

Admittedly, I’m a big fan of teens. This stage of my kids’ development seems to me as rapid and exciting as their first year of life. Physically, I used to joke that I could stand there and watch my son gain height. Last year, I bought pants for him as often as I did when he was an infant. He isn’t done growing, by the way, so I may need to learn how to hem a pair of trousers.

Obviously, life is not all sunshine, happiness, and gum. My kids are not adult-level responsible yet, and sometimes they do or say foolish things. Overall, though, I have the same thoughts now that I’ve had all through their childhood. You can ask anyone who knows me well and they’ll tell you it’s true. Since birth, I’ve repeatedly exclaimed every so often, “I think this is my favorite stage!”

I spend a good deal of time around teens due to volunteering. Contrary to whatever new article on “stupid things teens are doing this week,” they are not Tide-pod eating, whiny, entitled brats who can’t face real life because they’ve been coddled. Try again.

The past few weeks should’ve taught us adults a thing or two. Teens stood up to gun culture and spoke passionately about the need to do something to protect them from school shootings. #BlackLivesMatter teens took the floor as well, rightly questioning why they haven’t been heard and their bravery celebrated in the same way.

And what did adults do? Accused these kids of being “coached” on what to say. Told them they should “walk up, not out” and blamed them for being shot at. Repeatedly said “now is not the time” and to be quiet and listen to all the adults.

So yeah, we need to do a better job supporting parents of teenagers. We need to work on strategies for helping adults and adolescents understand each other. We need to honor the hard work kids are doing in their activism, and find ways to encourage their sense of social justice.

What we don’t need are more ways to allow adults to vent which put parents at odds with their kids.

My parenting is far from perfect, as I’m sure both my kids will tell you. But what I’ve found works best are strategies that maximize their physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual autonomy while still keeping my own boundaries intact.

In my opinion, I’m long past the days of wanting to make Mommy Groups based on my kids’ stage of life. I have friends with teenagers, friends whose kids are long into adulthood, and friends whose kids are still little. I have a core group of friends, and we can talk openly about some of the very real challenges we’re up against. I value this far more than a place to expel pent-up frustrations about wayward adolescents and receive well-meant but often misplaced sympathy.

These years are precious and few. It’s March of my son’s freshman year of high school. He already has his whole life mapped out. Even if the specifics don’t fall into place, he still only has a little more than three years until I set him free. It’s a little more than five for my daughter. That’s less than a quarter (him) and a third (her) of the time they will spend as children under my roof.

I don’t want these years to be painful and tense. I want them to be a time when I’m challenged to grow with them every bit as much as I did when they were tiny and at all stages in between. This is my chance to begin knowing them in a way that sets the stage for us to be equals. Yes, I’m responsible for helping them through it and being the adult. But every year brings more maturity and wisdom on their part too.

What sort of support do parents need at this age? I can’t say. Maybe it looks different for everyone, and maybe it’s dependent on each family’s values. As for me, I’ll be here joyfully watching my kids grow.

In case you missed it…

Links, News, Odds 'n' Ends, Writing

It’s been a busy week here. Maybe yours has been too. I’m wrapping it up with the highlights from my blog.

Tuesday, I re-released my short story, Pink in the Mirror. Formerly published with Torquere, it’s now all on its own.

Purchase links:

Wednesday, I offered a snippet of one of my current works-in-progress. The giveaway for Pink in the Mirror is now closed, but you can still read the post.

Thursday, I announced an open call for guest posts and reviews, whether by name or anonymous.

I’ve also done some re-organizing of my blog. You can find the quick links for everything here.

On Saturday, I’ll be back to sharing from my various LGBTQIA-themed work for Rainbow Snippets. You can read past entries here.

Next week, I’ll be resuming reviews and sharing about what I’ve been reading this week. You can see previous posts here or use the form to request a review. FYI, I no longer review much romance or erotica unless it’s atypical of the genres. But hopefully other readers will submit their reviews of those.

Have a great weekend, all!

God Is Not Your Abusive Lover

Evangelism, Music, Religion, Worship

Content warning: God-talk, Christianity, worship music, conservative evangelicals, intimate partner violence, child abuse, bullying, various types of -isms and shaming. Nothing graphic or detailed, but no mincing words, either.

I debated whether or not to write this. I’m still tired from a weekend at a youth event with kids from our church, so my words are running together a bit. Aside from that, this involves one of my kids. I try hard to keep them out of my public writing, and I do ask their permission first when I want to include them. Usually it’s positive stuff like their accomplishments (hey, I get to be a proud mama sometimes!). This time, it’s not so positive, and my Mama Bear claws were/are unsheathed. So there you have it—full disclosure on why this made me furious enough to blog about it.

First, the good stuff. Our weekend trip was great. I didn’t know what to expect, to be honest. I haven’t been to a youth event in years, and my experiences with them are…not good. I recall lots of negativity: wearing kids down until they’re “broken” enough for an altar call (yes, that’s really what we were instructed to do at one camp); assuring youth that they are damaged, sin-sick wretches; providing lists of sins and how they can keep themselves pure. I pretty well figured it wouldn’t be like that, since my older one has gone on this trip before. I was pleased to find that it all had a healthy tone which was outward-focused. And no altar call!

That said, the one thing which rattled me was how upset my older child was after singing a particular worship song.* I’m gonna say it—that song needs to be stabbed to death with a thousand knives, set on fire, and never, ever played at any youth function again.

At first, when my kid was upset, I let him go. He was with a friend, and he talked with a couple of other trusted adults who care about him. Eventually, I caught up with him and asked if he was willing to talk to me as well. Even after he told me why the song affected him, I couldn’t figure out what was going on. I actually ended up asking him if there was more than he was saying because it wasn’t making sense to me. I finally began to piece it together: He is fine. He isn’t hiding some secret he’s ashamed of. (Explaining how I know this would break my child’s trust on private things he’s shared.) No, he’d merely absorbed the negative message of the song and had come to (temporarily) believe that he was unlovable for who he is.

In a nutshell, the message of the song is, “You don’t fit in, people will never love you, and only God actually tolerates your existence. You’re so lucky God loves you!” On the surface, maybe it sounds okay to express a very real feeling of not fitting in. Except this is a twisted way to achieve that, and it makes God sound exactly like the kind of controlling lover who isolates and assures you they are the only one who will ever love you.

Let me just link the words for you. I had to look them up myself, and I cannot even with this song. It’s full of victim-blaming (verse one, which implies child abuse of some type), fat-shaming (verse two), and equating being hurt to being a literal murderer (verse three). All of this is wrapped in a lovely package of telling people they are so terrible that no one could possibly love them except God. And who knows exactly how God plans to show this, since God’s primary vehicle is people. But hey, I guess it’s enough to say “God loves you” while walking on by, right?

While I appreciate the acknowledgment that people in various situations can feel alone and unloved, telling them they literally are alone and unloved seems…well, unloving. In the case of my kid, he ended up dwelling on the fact that some kids at school have targeted him for homophobic and ableist bullying. You know what this song taught him? That the bullies are right, he’s too weird, and no one actually loves him. This, despite the fact that on a day when he isn’t listening to that song, he’s very well aware how many people adore him—“weirdness” and all.

This is exactly the type of thing that evangelicals** use to break people down so they can get in there with their message of “hope.” It’s othering at its finest. Convince people they’re worthless (oh, excuse me, “unworthy”) in order to deliver the promise that God (but not them personally, of course) will love them. At least, God will love them if they make some effort at changing. This is how I got sucked into an evangelical black hole and why I’m still trying to recover, nearly seven years after waking up to the harm done in God’s name.

This is not a healthy message. It’s not even a Christian one. In particular, I’m incensed at delivering a message to our youth which suggests that the hurt they’ve experienced makes them so ugly to others that only God could look on them without being disgusted (and also implies that being abused or being fat are sins equivalent to murder). It offers no real help, no suggestion for where someone could turn. No encouragement to fellow humans to be a shoulder to cry on and a loving presence in someone’s life.

I’m sure this song is powerful for some folks. I’m equally sure someone is going to come over here to comment that I’m intentionally missing the point or that one song can’t deliver everything. If only it were one song! A whole lot of worship songs are in the same vein, designed to evoke a particular feeling for the sake of “winning souls.”

Can we just not? This isn’t a message I want my kids hearing. It’s certainly not the message they hear in our church week after week. Like me, my older child’s spirituality is heavily bound in his love for music, so it’s much more likely he’ll absorb incorrect theology from a song. We need to do better for our kids than this warped thinking. People are not worthless, broken wretches who don’t deserve love from other humans. God is not an abusive lover who isolates us from each other in order to “fix” us.

*I’m not giving old hymns a pass on this either, but my most negative worship experiences have involved pop-Christian songs. There are certainly plenty of examples of hymns with dreadful and equally damaging theology.

**I’m using “evangelicals” to refer here to predominantly white conservative evangelical protestant denominations, mainly Calvinism/Arminianism-based. My denomination, ELCA, has “evangelical” in the name but isn’t an Evangelical Denomination. It’s still considered liturgical and isn’t by any stretch of the imagination Calvinist/Arminian.

A funny thing happened…

Books, Cool Stuff, News, Social Justice, Writing

Imagine my surprise the other day to be tagged in all my social media (multiple times) because a simple idea I posted months ago had become a meme. In fact, it was passed around to so many people, I kept getting pinged with private messages, wall posts, and emails asking me about it.

Short version: I said this in response to something I can’t recall. When I said it, I wanted to capture something common to any of us who have experienced marginalization. It takes different forms, it intersects, but this is the one thing which I have seen to be true across almost every sphere. A few friends asked to share it at the time, and I said that was no problem. Thus a Tumblr meme was born, and I lost track of it because Life Happened.

I took the photo from the Interwebs. I don't know who meme-ified it, but it's my quote, so I think I can be forgiven for pilfering. — I took the photo from the Interwebs. I don’t know who meme-ified it, but it’s my quote, so I think I can be forgiven for pilfering.

[Black text on white background. The quote reads: “This is literally what it’s like to be part of a marginalized group. Politeness is met with a refusal to listen, and anger is met with demands for politeness.” Attributed as A.M. Leibowitz, bisexual author of quirky LGBTQ+ romance (via bialogue-group)]

Fast forward to this week. Franchesca “Chescaleigh” Ramsey posted the quote in meme form on her Facebook page. Now, if you have no idea who she is, please watch pretty much any video at the link I provided. They’re all good. She breaks things down for people like me who don’t have degrees in this stuff. You would think that as a writer I can word good, but I actually have trouble absorbing things I read if I have to look up half the terms. Anyway, I love her, and I spent the rest of my day blushing furiously over the attention.

Which brings me to why I’m really writing this. It’s not because I want to brag on being quoted. (It is pretty cool, though.) It’s because of two things.

First, I do not deserve cookies for this. I stated a fact, and I stand by it. But more importantly, it’s not what I said that matters. It’s what I do. I have to live by these words—be willing to listen regardless of how the person is telling me about their experiences or the way the world works. I have some places where I’m privileged, others where I’m not. Where I do have privilege, it’s my job to do the hard work of being an ally without expecting a big thank you and an Edible Arrangement over it. I can meme-quote all I want, but if I’m a lousy ally, my words are trash.

Second, this pertains directly to my career as an author. (Can I start with how it made me smile to see my books called “quirky”?) Having my words go viral as a meme, with my name and job description attached, means people can find me. They can read my author bio and my novels. They can see me on social media and send me messages via this blog. Which means they are seeing a representation of who I am as a person.

Here’s the thing. I don’t write as a way to play Queer Studies 101 with my readers, and I don’t primarily write with an audience of cisgender (i.e. not transgender) straight people in mind. True, I have an oddly loyal following of cisgender straight guys reading my novels about gay and bi men, and also true that many readers of m/m lit are women of all orientations. However, my goal is always to write with an understanding that the characters represent the real people who are most like them. I have to ask myself whether my friends and family would be angry, hurt, or embarrassed by anything I write or if they would feel proud, honored, and heard through it. This is true regardless of the characters’ race, ethnicity, gender, age, disability, or sexuality.

This is why every word I write means something to me. I want to do right as an ally through my work and in my everyday life. This includes representing those most like myself in a way which is true to me and my kin. It’s possible to be part of a marginalized community and yet have so many internalized -isms that we fail to be allies to our own selves.

I can’t represent every facet of every community in any given book or even in all of them. There will always be people who think I’ve written it wrong, even when I’m writing about my own experiences. There will also always be people who just plain think I’m a terrible writer. That’s okay! They don’t need to give me cookies either. (Though if you like my books, and you happen to want to send me bi-pride or rainbow frosted unicorn cut-outs, I won’t say no.) It’s more important to me that my words not cause harm or uphold damaging ideas.

As much as I’m committed to writing with those values in mind, I’m also committed to reading with them in mind. As a rule, I prefer to review books written by, about, and for their communities. We already have a problem with straight white cis men being overrepresented on our bookshelves, even as early as the picture book stage. Currently, we have an overrepresentation of white gay cis men in our queer lit. The voices and lives of other people deserve to be heard, and our words deserve to be read.

The next time you pick up a book, whether it’s mine or someone else’s, think about who the story is about and who it is for. If you find yourself primarily locked into a pattern, break out of it. If the book challenges your thinking, go with it and see where it takes you. Here’s to listening well, even when that comes in paperback format.

Happy reading!

Looking back and looking ahead: the year in review

Writings and Ramblings

Torsos

Jobs and Tinkering

Firsts

Media Galore

It’s Not About You

Some thoughts on parenting teenagers

In case you missed it…

God Is Not Your Abusive Lover

Let's Be Friends

Sharing

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Supposed Crimes Publishing

Beaten Track Publishing

Writings and Ramblings

Torsos

Jobs and Tinkering

Firsts

Media Galore

More Content

Let's Be Friends

Sharing

Tip Jar

Shopping Cart

Your Shopping Cart

Supposed Crimes Publishing

Beaten Track Publishing