Samhain Publishing

Greetings Kittens,

It’s come to my attention several times over the last while that I live in a bubble. Not like the boy in the bubble, but more of a wondering what happened when he reached his twenties and wanted to have sex, and all my friends think that’s a perfectly good story idea, kind of bubble. You see, the majority of my friends are writers. The majority are also gamers and geek-lovers, but that’s another blog entirely. Those who are writers, run the gamut between inspirationals, to hardcore bdsm erotica and a few even do both. Many are liberal, some are conservative, most of us are independents; we’re also Pagan, Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, Unitarian, Human Secularist and Other. The thing that all of these people have common is a surprising and inspiring lack of being judgmental.

Don’t get me wrong, they’re an opinionated, passionate, fiery bunch to be sure, they just don’t think they have the right to tell other people how to live, if no one is getting hurt. Those who write well and write often, live their lives standing in the shoes of other belief systems, other cultures, other paradigms and very simply, other ways to be in the world—regardless of the world they write about. The research and conversations, the active practice of being several other people, going through several other things, makes it easier to see those who are different, as those who are us. That fundamentally changes ones world view.

When you’re surrounded by people with an altered world view, you forget you’re in the minority. You also forget that everyone in your outer bubble, isn’t necessarily in your inner bubbles and that’s when all the interesting conversations happen. Every sixty days or so, I have a long, involved conversation about sexual fluidity, gender identity, hetero-normative privilege, polyamory relationship dynamics and sensual domination. I don’t hold a degree in any of these topics, I’m just the person that’s always open to the conversation and never shy about passing on my research, anecdotal information and personal experience to someone who really wants to know. That amazing thing is how many people really want to know.

My innermost bubbles are filled with people who break gender-normative, hetero-normative, vanilla-geared mainstream parameters. My outer most bubbles are filled with people who don’t know what that means, but who eagerly await information. Every time I leave the bubble of sexual educators, cultural studies professors and feminist theory majors, I float through a sea of individuals who lull me with their similar knowledge, until I’m strike an outer wall and find someone who has no idea what I’m talking about. I look at the calendar and realize it’s about that time again and off we go into the idea of being dual-gendered or pansexual or lovingly dominant or female sexual freedom vs. female sexual oppression as demonstrated in the emergence or disappearance of pornographic niches such as femdom, gay-for-pay and women behind bars. It’s a lovely few hours to few days, and sometimes the conversations never end. Every time we talk, some new bit of research or experience comes up and it just keeps going and evolving and it feels like the way it should be. Then I see the news…

Now for me, “the news” is the internet and television where I’m alerted to all of the things that happen in my spheres of interests, especially the LGBTQ community. When I read stories and watch segments on the things happening that are being justified with gross misinformation and scare tactics, I’m struck by the remembrance that there’s another bubble still, beyond my outer one. Beyond writers and avid reader and actors and producers and artists of all stripes, there are those who only stand in their own shoes and never want to acknowledge that other people even have feet. I’m an activist that writes letters, makes phone calls and goes to rallies, but even with all of that, I forget. I mentally misplace the rest of the world because my Bubble of Awesome works to convince me that everyone who doesn’t know, wants to learn and wants to teach me something I don’t know in turn. The news forces me to remember that my bubble is much, much smaller than it seems.

But that’s okay.

I think most of us from time to time, need to venture beyond our comfort zones, but if you’ve surrounded yourself with the right people and are open to all things, well, your personal Bubble of Awesome is just a fine place to call home.

Happy Weekend,

~Xakara

Happy Holiday, All!

Usually these posts are meant to bring you news of new novel(la)s, share random author ideas or give you a glimpse into the world of writing. Today, with the holidays upon us, I have a different use for this one. Rather than give you insight into me and my upcoming release, I’d like to turn your thoughts to everyone else this winter and beyond.

No matter which holidays you celebrate this winter season, it’s a time for giving of ourselves to others with less. Operation Santa opens all those dedicated letters to the North Pole each year and allows volunteers to help make Christmas wishes come true for children. This year, children and parents alike, have asked for a few things above all others, basic clothing and food. Children have pulled out there pencils and crayons and carefully formed their letters so that Santa Claus will know that they need socks, shoes, coats, hats, jeans and shirts. They ask not for Christmas dinner, but dinner at all. They want their parents to smile and be like they used to be before every day was a fearful phone call from bill collectors or worse. They ask and Santa would answer if he could, but he’s a little overwhelmed and needs you.

You can call your local post office and see if they are part of Operation Santa or a more local organization that will allow you to pick up a letter and fulfill a Christmas Wish. If you’re in a tight situation yourself this year, you don’t have to do it all your own. You can get your family and friends together to help one household this year for less than $5 each. But what if even $5 is too much or your town doesn’t have any letters?

ABC News has become part of Be the Change: Save a Life. Over the next year they will bring attention to global health initiatives to save lives around the world. You can do your part now. For $50, that’s $5 from you and nine of your friends, you can provide a week of in-patient care for a malnourished infant through Casa Jackon. You can also work with Save the Children Clean Water Fund to build wells, latrines and water pumps to provide sanitation and drinking water for school children around the world. That amount also provides medicine to prevent a mother from passing the HIV virus to her baby through the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation.

Perhaps you only have seven friends to pitch in with your own $5. Save the Children will turn that $40 into a goat for a family in Guatemala, providing protein rich dairy, fertilizer for produce and a valuable source of income. If that’s too much, for just $25, or $2.50 from ten of you, you can provide antibiotics to five children suffering from malaria, TB, or upper respiratory infections through Community Health Africa Trust. Or you can provide a full month-long nutritional treatment for a child through Edesia’s PlumpyNut, a peanut paste packed with calories and nutrients that have brought malnourished children from the brink of death.

That same $25 can treat tuberculosis in India through Operation ASHA. It can send out ten birthing kits with six basic items through Birthing Kit Foundation of Australia, or provide a birthing kit and the training to use it through IMA World Health. Let’s drop down to $20 and you can work with Embrace to bring alow cost infant warmer to a vulnerable newborn in a country where incubators don’t exist because there’s no electricity to run the $20,000 machine if they could afford it.

Still too much?

For $15 you can provide a month of life-saving food supplements to a family in Paquip, Guatemala through Wuqu’ Kawaq. $14 can provide 2,000 chlorine tablets to treat dirty water in the developing world through UNICEF. $11 buys three birthing kits through the United Nations Population Fund. Even one dollar from everyone you know would put the Charity: Water fund closer to its goal of $40,400 to provide a community of 250 with clean drinking water. Those same dollars to CARE given before December 31st will be matched, up to a million dollars, to help the world’s poorest women and their families.

Look at what you were going to spend this season and see whether or not you can spend just a little less and make a world of difference to someone around the globe. If you find yourself like me, living through a double-layoff and breathing a sigh of relief now that the Unemployment Benefits have been extended, perhaps you can pull out those coupons and switch to that store brand and eek out that extra dollar or five for clean drinking water elsewhere around the globe. And if, by all misfortune, you find yourself needing that extra help this season, may you bask in the charity and goodwill of others that you may be able to pay it forward when you can down the line.

A Spirited Solstice, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and Blessed Kwaanza to All.

~X

P.S. All links save CARE are to the charity specific pages at GlobalGiving.org

My online presence as Xakara goes back more than ten years. I have friends who have never called me anything else and likely couldn’t recall how to properly spell the name on my birth certificate if you paid them. In addition every convention I’ve attended since just after I started attending them has had Xakara printed on the badge and thus been the only name I’ve answered to for weekends at a time. So when someone asks me if it’s my real name I say yes. I mean it certainly isn’t fake, but of course that’s not what they mean.

What they’re really asking is whether or not the name Xakara appears on my birth certificate or some other legal document that would make the government happy. The answer is no, it doesn’t. However, even if I really am as special as my mom and grandma seem to think, I’m not convinced my birth certificate is the barometer for what is real in the world. I also posit that some 99.976% of things that are real in the world don’t appear on any of my official government documents either. Therefore I reject the premise that by failing to appear on my birth certificate or W-2s that Xakara is not my real name. It’s just not my given name.

Correction on their terminology often leads people to the question of why I don’t publish under my given name. Well for the same reason I don’t publish under the name of anything else given to me. “Geometric Comforter” although warm and nifty just doesn’t have that Erotic Paranormal Romance Author ring to it. The same is true of “Green Apple 3-D Puzzle” and “65cm Balance Ball”; and where “We-Vibe” is much closer, I just can’t see answering to it at a convention, not to mention I’m pretty sure it’s trademarked.

Now there’s nothing wrong with my given name—aside from sounding like I should be anchoring the evening news. But since I’m convinced a few of my local evening anchorwomen also write erotic romance, that works for me. Also my initials are JDC which looks good scrawled as an autograph and makes a good charm on a necklace. My first name is famous thanks to a very lovely actress currently starring in a nursing drama on TNT, and we spell it the same way so that takes care of both the pronunciation and typo issues I grew up with. No, my given name is a great gift I don’t at all regret or wish to trade in. I just don’t use it.

I always tell people what I write and point them towards my novella, so I’m not embarrassed or otherwise in need of hiding my identity or separating my erotic writing life from my the rest of my life. So then, why a pen name? Convenience. As I’ve shared before, I had an online stalker millennia ago and took my given name off of any and everything I did online. When it came time to publish, an online presence was touted as the end-all be-all for any author serious about their career. I had an online presence, online friends and convention acquaintances I looked forward to seeing yearly who all knew me as Xakara. Using my given name would have meant starting over from scratch, undoing ten years of effort and community attachment. I’m just not that industrious.

My official birth certificate has four names on it. My temporary hospital birth certificate has six names on it, (that pour, tired, confused maternity nurse). One social security card has three names on it while the reissue has only the initial of my other middle name. My school records have two names on them and alas my published works have one name. It’s all real and it’s all mine, it’s just not all the same and that’s okay.

The idea that a name is only real if they stuck you with it in the hospital or you’ve changed it in a court of law is a myth. And like any good mythbuster I reject that reality and substitute my own. My name is real and so is yours. Don’t let anyone tell you different. But if it’s new just remember at the next convention I’m talking to you so turn around.

Saturday afternoon I clocked in, I worked my shift, I signed the confidentiality papers, I clocked out and—it was over. My company officially closed its doors the next day and I became a statistic of the recession. Everyone who heard about the company closing quickly offered their condolences and support. I felt touched, grateful and…guilty.

The first few hours of learning I would no long have a day job, (evil or otherwise), were rough. I had long term plans, including transferring out of state within the network next year. To go on a mini-vacation with not a care in the world on day and come back to know it was all gone five days later, well there are no words and too many of you don’t need words because you’ve lived some variation of it. Knowing the hardship others are experiencing is what makes me feel guilty.

After the first few hours I thought about all my works-in-progress and the sense of loss slowly transformed to a sense of excitement. The current average I’ve been quoted is three months to find a new job in the non-profit sector, for a town this size maybe six. Things will be tight, but doable and that means three to six months of writing full time while I search.

I was among the countless writers that lamented the writing hours lost to the Evil Day Job, (which by default is any job, not matter how rewarding, that is not writing full time). “Oh, if only I could spend the ten hours of work and travel-time writing I could get each WIP done and truly devote myself to my writing.” It’s a phrase I’ve heard and said some variation of numerous times. When we said it I’m sure we were all dreaming of lotto numbers and big advances that let us retire to write, but what we got was a struggling economy and the consequences of living in such. But time is time.

I spent a day writing up a new budget and figuring out ways to tighten our belt. I’ve spent weeks organizing open call deadlines, prioritizing WsIP, (or is WIP its own plural?), and clearing out my writing space. As January became February I was beside myself waiting for the end of the month. By February 23rd I was all but bouncing up and down as the days ticked by. Everyone around me grumbled, railed, ranted or wailed about the coming end while it took everything in me not to clap and holler the final week.

I wouldn’t have chosen this path to much needed writing time, but it’s the one laid out before me and so I’m going to walk it with a smile and enjoyment. We all have to make the most of the time we have while we have it. Goodness knows we need the money I was bringing in, but being depressed and angsty won’t put me back in the workforce a single day sooner. On the other hand, accepting this as exactly what I asked for—a chance to write full time—will get me well ahead on my project list and get more submissions out there for consideration where they belong.

If you’re a writer, every bit of time you get that you complain about is time you could be writing. Waiting in line, at the doctor’s office, during gridlock, picking kids up from practice, waiting to be called for jury duty, and even sudden “redistribution of personnel resources” are all chances to finish what you started or start what you’ve been talking about.

If you’re a reader I don’t have to tell you how to make the most of those times. What I will tell you is that every opportunity to pursue what you love is the right opportunity, even if it’s a stunning one you would have never chosen.

For those of you like me, I wish you the best, and I hope this change is one that reveals a chance for all you’ve ever dreamed about. For those of you still caught in the EDJ, congrats on the steady income, and good luck on taking advantage of every nook and cranny to pursue the dreams we often lose to the daily grind.

To everyone who’s ever wanted anything but thought there wasn’t time, there is. Good Hunting.

~Xakara

Since opening on October 2nd, 2009 Zombieland has made back almost three times its production budget domestically. When it opens in the foreign market it will break the 100 million dollar mark, guaranteeing a sequel of some kind or another. The 2008 film Quarantine did less than half of that, but that’s still nearly four times the production budget and Quarantine II is shambling down the long road to a theatre near you. On the literary front David Wellington’s Monster Island did so well it spawned Monster Nation and Monster Planet. And one cannot speak of zombies on the page without speaking about that lovely gem Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith with Jane Austen credited as co-author. Left 4 Dead, the first person perspective cooperative shooter game for Windows and Xbox360 is set in post apocalyptic landscape with four survivors fighting against an infected zombie horde. Since its release November 21st, 2008 the game has sold some 3 million copies and has a sequel coming November 2009.

These few drops in the Great Lake of the zombie genre are among the many to incite the phrase “zombies are the new vampires” time and again. They’re not. Really.

Okay, admittedly I’m a little grumpy, perhaps even disoriented from being off line for so very long, (back three days and counting so still recovering); it’s the kind of thing that could leave a person in a less than generous mood. I also may or may not, (definitely may), possess a deep and abiding bias on the subject as a long time paranormal fiction fan, so take it this in the best way possible—zombies are the dumbest horror movie monster concept ever!

The idea of a rotting, putrid creature shambling about eating and/or infecting every human it comes across because it hungers for brains or flesh irritates me to within a half mile of hostile. You are not hungry Mr. Zombie because you are dead, not undead, dead-dead! You have no digestive system, no nerves endings sending impulses to the brain of hunger pangs, no survival instinct that causes you to defend yourself and no desire to propagate your species because by being dead none of these things are possible. There is no pack mentality that keeps zombies from attacking each other because they are not a pack and possess no mentality! Creatures form packs for survival— as a zombie, you have already failed the survival portion of this program!

Now I know there have been “living zombies” to come out in the last ten years where an infection of one type or another causes rage induced rampages or an irresistible draw to the lifeforce of others (28 Days Later, Left 4 Dead). There’s also the standby of curses, necromancers, and dark magics afoot in mysterious lands, (White Wolf Games, The Mummy, anything concerning Cthulhu). I’m okay with all of that. Magically/supernaturally compelled corpses running about like a horde of undead locust to destroy their master’s enemies and consume all life works simply by the fact that preternatural forces are at work. In turn, a still living creature chemically, psychically or supernaturally enhanced can in fact possess a survival instinct, pack/mob mentality, and hunger both for food and the destruction of all things. I can suspend disbelief in these scenarios and root for the heroes or feel sorry for the poor victims that can’t be saved.

But the shambler, even when the shambler is a runner, is beyond me. The traditional zombie, magic or otherwise, and it’s slathering living infection-spreading cousins will never touch the enduring love/lust/longing inspired by the vampire mythos. Ever. Zombies are not the new Vampires!

I know that just like brown and grey were the new black; shapeshifters, demons, angels, witches, wizards, ghosts, faeries, and more will be declared the “new vampires” every time a book or movie in the genre does well. And if the success of movies like I Am Legend and Thirty Days of Night, and books like David Wellington’s Thirteen Bullets, 99 Coffins, Vampire Zero and 23 Hours are any indication, the biggest contender for “New Vampires” are “Old Vampires”.

While young girls and women swoon over the likes of Twilight’s Edward Cullen and True Blood’s Eric Northman (Alex Saarsgaard), young boys and men are taking a bite into the vampire’s origin as nosferatu, a monster to be feared and hunted to save the damsel in distress and the very world. The romantic figure is replaced by the horrific one, a guy’s monster with enough violence and gore to justify the price of the popcorn or protect against male-bonding, (read harassment) when his friends find out he actually reads for pleasure.

But in the end, no amount of resurrecting the ghoulish origins of the vampire or embracing its distant cousin the zombie will ever erase or replace the modern vampire as valid object of lust, and therefore as romantic or erotic fodder. The Edwards, Erics, Angels, and Ashers are here to stay. And even if a world in flux with fear for the future should repress the heat-filled hero for a while, it will only ever be temporary. Our fanged wonderboys, (and girls), will always be able to bring sexy back—zombies or no zombies.

Among my friends there has been much conversation as of late on the merits of the lighter, “quiet” book. Opinions vary, as opinions should, but the one thing agreed upon is that they have their place, especially in romance. Unfortunately, I think romance is where we tend to see the fewest lighter books, definitely in paranormal romance.

Secret babies, marriages of convenience, cruel bets, accidental deception, intentional deception, supernatural mysteries, mundane murder sprees, impending doom, all of it has been a background in romance for our couples, trios, and so forth getting together or being torn apart. The line between urban fantasy and paranormal romance has been blended, (or skewed depending on your viewpoint) to such a degree that nearly any catastrophe could befall our beloved main characters, sweeping us to the highest highs before plunging us to gut-wrenching lows. And I get as caught up as anyone in it, but I don’t always need it.

Stories satisfy cravings just as food does, and sometimes you don’t even realize you were craving something until you find just that right thing that hits the spot. Unlike walking into your kitchen or strolling down your grocery store aisle, there’s less variety to choose from in paranormal romance thus far. Much of what’s out there is quite good, but this would be a situation of too much of a good thing.

I love pizza, but I don’t want to eat it every day. Wait, okay that’s a bad example, I actually could eat pizza every day. On the other hand, that makes it the perfect example. Crust, sauce and cheese begin, (and depending on the mood end) the building of a good pizza, and each day brings an endless combination of possible toppings. I’m asking for a few more toppings out there, a few more paranormal romantic comedies where the emphasis is on the people not the angst.

I like my angst, (sometimes a little less angsty than my favorite authors slather it on), but I like my laughter too. I like getting wrapped up in the characters and the smaller daily turmoil present in any relationship. Sometimes, (probably most times), the big bad standing in the way of our heroes happiness is the heroes themselves. Insecurity, past relationships, family, friends, all the things we’re familiar with that cause relationship pressures in daily life, would cause it in paranormal relationships; and like in daily life, it would rarely be as bad as it seems to people involved. Some mountains in the distance are just hills when you get close enough to check them out. Where are those stories?

Does anyone remember My Big Fat Greek Wedding? For Toula, the story is nothing but angst. She’s the oldest unmarried woman in her family, she’s in a rut working for the family restaurant, she’s attracted to a man she considers out of her league, and she’s embarrassed by her boisterous, culturally proud family. For the audience, the story is a feel good ride about a woman taking control of her life and her happiness and how we’re all reduced to children when our families get to throw in their two cents. Toula learns to appreciate her family and their Greek pride through the eyes of her fiancé being pulled in the great boisterous mess Toula herself would like to escape from. Without a single terrible dark moment of will they/won’t they, the story manages to captivate and make us laugh and cringe and cheer for the couple to the closing credits.

I’ve read different anthologies, (My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding and My Big Fat Supernatural Honeymoon among them), that go for the laugh over the deep dark depths and I enjoyed them. But I want more. What about the Erotic Romantic Comedy? What if My Big Fat Supernatural Honeymoon had actually touched on exactly what happened in that honeymoon bed? Don’t laugh, I write open-door romance and sometimes, (often by accident, it’s the characters not me), I write comedic romance, why can’t those exist together? Where are more of those stories?

No, seriously, I’m actually asking, where are they? Beyond MaryJanice Davidson and Lynsay Sands, (and maybe Katie MacAlister) which authors have you read that manage to mix laughter, smiles and sex and keep you turning the page? I’d love to add them to my reading list. Currently I have all the angst and chaos I need in my real life, I’d like to smile a bit more as I escape into a book these days.

So readers and writers alike, what are your opinions, suggestion and favorites?

“Erotic Romantic Comedy Ramble” Done

~Xakara

The title says it all. Despite my inherent bloggy nature and everything to happen over the end of 2008, I’ve got nuthin’.

Mayhaps, I’m still taking it all in right now. It’s been a year come the 26th, that Shifting Passions has been out and people are still reading it. It’s still real. I haven’t woken up and realized I’m just planning, and wishing, and hoping, I’m actually doing.

Okay, there wasn’t nearly as much doing the last eight months as there should have been, but then again, I moved cross-country and started my life over from scratch. I’m embracing the stressful standstill and taking it for what it was at this point. But it left me doing triple duty now, trying to meet deadlines both external and self-imposed before winter’s gone and summer brings new stories I can only guess at.

I’m working toward two, very reasonable, mildly stressful, novella deadlines. I’m elbow-deep in a rewrite of book two, and knuckle-deep in book three, of a series where I have yet to sell book one. I have four freelance offers that I want to give serious consideration to help pad a bank account drained dry from the move. And I have an Arthurian poly-romance pulsing at the back of my brain as a free read for my website.

And this is the upside of losing over half a year to this little adventure in relocation.

So with the revelation that I’m still a real writer, and the accompanying responsibility of staying such weighing on me, I’m not on that blog-ramble plane of being I usually need to hang out on to converse with you all. I also just watched the Doctor Who Christmas special on youtube and I’m once again in deep mourning that David Tennant is leaving the show. How does a sci-fi geek even think past something like that?

So yeah, I got nuthin’.

“A Bit of Nuthin’ Ramble” Done

~X

They cancelled Pushing Daisies, David Tennant is leaving Doctor Who, Stargate Atlantis is in its last season, and even in the face of True Blood, I’m still mourning Blood Ties. I’m suffering serious abandonment issues here folks.

A great many folks I know gave up on television years ago, preferring to catch everything on DVD rather than get attached to a show only to find reruns of [insert dreadful reality show here] in its place. I understand their disenchantment and admire their patience, I however, can’t do it.

I love television, it’s my fix of paranormal and procedurals to tide me over as my favorite authors write as fast as they can. There’s nothing better than tuning in every week and catching up with favorite characters you’ve come to know as friends. It’s like picking up your favorite series and getting a short story every week, (and couldn‘t we all think of authors we‘d love to supply that kind of awesome).

But throwing ones self into the thrill of unfolding stories week after week and season after season means risking the heartache of cancellation. How many times can a broken heart mend? How many times can you step up and take the leap only to find there’s no net beneath you and no coming season to catch you? How often can—wait, I need a minute…

I think as a reader and writer I’m drawn to television and the readily available escape into other worlds, because I live in my own head so much of the time. The shows of others draws me out of my head and into theirs for a while. And I take the passing of a show personally, because I know how the writers feel to have their babies kicked off the bus too soon. The potential in shows that have come and gone is enormous and I can only ache in empathy with writers who foresaw ten seasons in something that barely made it to two.

I guess that empathy leads to wanting their success as deeply as I want my own. And the eternal hope I have for my novels to come, keeps me leaping every season to fall in love again the way I want others to fall in love with my worlds on day. How many times can the broken heart of a loyal fan break and mend? In my case…just enough.

What are the favorite shows you’ve lost to the Demons of Cancellation? And how excited do you get each season when new shows begin?

I am always writing. Always. This is not an exaggeration on any level, I am always writing. It’s just not always on a page.

Everything I watch, read, and experience sets off an alternate scene in my head that my brain must follow to one conclusion or another before I can let it go. Visual stimulation is the best because I can take in what I’m watching and keep the brain-edits to a minimum. I disagree here, rework there, and tweak a bit of dialogue as I go, but for the most part I’m watching the movie or television show in front of me with 50% to the maximum 87.4% of attention I can give to anything that isn’t writing.

In contrast, reading is the worst activity. I have to stop every few scenes and work out what I would do differently or how I’ve just been inspired to fix something I’m working on, or how I can now do an entire series based on one throwaway line I’ve just read. This makes reading take forever and so when I have deadlines and other obligations, reading is the pleasure that’s sacrificed first. It’s also the one I fall back to when I can’t write for one reason or another as it’s impossible for me to get through a book, (fiction or non-fiction), without coming away with a story idea. It will fix any block, (read, lack of motivation), of any kind within the space of a chapter guaranteed. Of course sometimes this leads to a feverish writing of twenty pages—on the wrong story—but hey, progress is progress.

Speaking of the wrong story, music is the end-all/be-all of inspiration and the absolute worst and best source in my life for story ideas and head writing. Every song is part of a soundtrack and I can place myself back in a world with just the first note of the right playlist. Which, as you can guess, can throw off an entire day of writing on one story as a song slips in that drags my brain over to another. It usually won’t let go until I’ve at least handwritten a few (dozen) notes so as not to forget this new brilliant twist on things, never mind the edits patiently waiting to get out of the queue and on their way to submission. Yet as bad as it is, I can’t help but foster it by my habits.

I work out to music, walk everywhere to music, wait in line to music, ride the bus to music, read to music (when I’m trying to distract myself from writing to reading), and write to music, which turns my entire world to a music video unfolding in my head. Ten percent of all that will make it to paper and become something others take in and embrace on one level or another. The other 90% just keeps swirling, waiting for a time when something in its depths will work in a completely unrelated story with just the right tweaks.

I have entire fanfic seasons of my favorite TV shows in my head with spin-off shows and other manners of craziness because I couldn’t let an idea go. I have four book series all vying for space with the worlds moving and tumbling along without me as I do other things. My fingers are trying to edit the second short story while my brain is busily constructing the third novel in the same world and has moved on to book two in a completely different world for something I only have a page of notes on.

My Muse prefers productivity over patience and he will leave me behind to keep unfolding things as necessary, hoping I’ll catch up as I can. It’s overwhelming at times because so much is happening in my head that I have to fight to leave it enough to play around in the heads of others and soak in their creativity and joy. It’s a blessing because I know that if I open a document and leave it staring at me long enough, I’ll write something. It might not be the next scene but it’ll carry me through a day’s writing if I let it and leave me to bridge the gaps as the ideas come. It means there’s no fear when it comes to writing for me, just the deep desire that I wrote faster and slept better so that everything could have its day.

With all that said, I’m not a planner and outliner except for in the vaguest sense. I sit down with a scene or bit of dialogue in my head and a story grows around it. Sometimes I have an ending, other times a middle, every so often a beginning, which is nice as it gives you a place to start. But nothing is preordained and I write my stories the way you read them—wondering what will happen next. Yet by the second day of writing, although I can’t tell you what happens on the next page, I can tell you how many books are in the series for the current story arc being laid down and give you detailed background on characters that won’t come up for ages.

It’s all there. In my head. A liquid entity conforming to the shape of a given container on a given day, finding cracks and channels to work its way onto the page when I get that far. Keeping me company as I move through a world that doesn’t look quite the same to me as it does to everyone else. It’s a—well, it’s a lot of things. For now however, it’s another story to be told another time.

Head Writing Ramble Done

~X

Whether you celebrated Hanukkah on the 5th, Yule on the 22nd, Christmas or Mithras yesterday on the 25th, or will light your first Kwanzaa candle today, I hope your Holiday Season has been blessed.

We’ve grown ever more multicultural in our American celebrations over the years, with Kwanzaa as the newest kid on the block to be incorporated into the national December Holiday Extravaganza. Established in 1966 by Maulana Karegna—current chair of the National Association of Kawaida Organizations (NAKO)—Kwanzaa has been described by its creator as a journey not only of what it means to be African and African-American, but what it means to be human. In the last decade it has begun to expand beyond the African-American community more and more every year.

Kwanzaa is built on Nguzo Saba, seven principles that guide daily experiences and shape human community. In looking at those principles, I feel that they are also a wonderful example of what it means to be part of a small press community, a readership community, and the Samhain community in particular. The principles are Unity (umoja), Self-Determination (kujichagulia), Collective Work and Responsibility (ujima), Cooperative Economics (ujamaa), Purpose (nia), Creativity (kuumba), and Faith (imani). If that doesn’t describe the atmosphere here at Samhain, I don’t know what does.

As holiday gifts go, I’m happy to have found someplace where I can write heroines that look like me, heroes that are more than an uber-alpha one-trick pony, and alternate relationships that are as valid as any mainstream-ready-for-prime-time pairings. We are different in our genres, styles and experience levels, and yet we are Unified in the fact that we needed to express something true to us, and that truth was nurtured and brought to fullness at Samhain Publishing.

May our paths of Self-Determination lead us to greater inner truths and to greater success in our careers.
May our Collective Work and Responsibility increase the positive image of epublishing.
May our Cooperative Economics skyrocket our small press to large press numbers.
May our exploration of Purpose bring forth maturing works that speak to our readers on every level.
May our Creativity fuel us through even the darkest moments. And may our individual Faiths light the way to places of strength we didn’t know we had.

Happy Holidays to one and all.

Holiday Ramble Done

~X