Kayleigh Sky's Blog, page 4

My Post-Apocalyptic Heaven

To me, one of the beauties of dystopian and apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic stories is in the ability to point a finger at a concept or idea rather than at a specific individual or institution. The concept or idea targeted for the story and finger-pointing is usually culturally entrenched and/or imposed on us now, in our current time. But rather than a contemporary story that might hit closer to actual individuals, policies, nations, religions etc., the dystopian and post-apocalyptic story strikes more universally. It is a problem not of one, or a group, but of all.

What works for me in the best of dystopian/post-apocalyptic stories is the combination of macro and micro themes. There’s no end to the creative, impending, likely and unlikely ways, in which we can annihilate ourselves. We can even abdicate all personal/social responsibility and lay blame to a meteorite. But no matter how it is we build and design our after-worlds, we must confront ourselves.

To me, the real value of a post-apocalyptic society as opposed to a true dystopian society is the reduction of the superfluous. Dystopian worlds paint portraits of a facet of our society gone hugely wrong but often civilization survives. In a post-apocalyptic world civilization has generally been laid waste. This allows for a macro thread to the story following what the writer might view as one of the greatest threats to our civilization. In my book Backbone I had multiple reasons for doing what I did. A world without viruses allowed me to dispose of the necessity of condoms (purely for the luscious freedom of writing sex scenes without them). It also allowed me to weave a thread of human arrogance into the story by showing how our reluctance to understand that every action we take on this planet has repercussions can spiral into devastation. We live in a world that is failing under the weight of a progressive nature that doesn’t take into account the permanence of our achievements. Our disposable culture has turned our planet into a dump. We have deforested huge tracts of land for homes, fences, furniture, decks, paper, and driven untold species into extinction. Trust me, I am a fan of our modern conveniences, which allow people like me the leisure to write books that people like you hopefully want to read, but we tend to do what we do without adequate and imaginative forethought. And because of that tendency—I hope you like hot weather—a lot—and aren’t too fond of water.

I chose to work with viruses (disclaimer: I am not anti-vaccine; I am anti-careless) and water/global warming for Backbone. I’m a Californian. Water is a big deal to us. In creating a post-apocalyptic world for Backbone, I had a canvas on which display, front and center, the micro thread of our interior landscape as individuals. The good, the bad. The heroic, the cowardly. All the things that follow us no matter where we run. Not subtle, but fun to write, and maybe meaningful. Truly, I am fascinated with people who are good without social pressure. Think of the atheist who practices daily acts of kindness. In Backbone, both Brey and Hank were those kinds of people. Hank was more affected by the ugliness of the new world. Brey never lost hope or courage. I believe that hope is an act of will and defiance. It is an easy thing to lose, an easy thing to succumb to the darkness. Giving in to conditions, even immoral, brutal conditions, can bring a kind of light and ease to one’s life. Hang with the stronger group, and you can rape and steal and take the little pleasures that beat back the horror and struggle for you. It’s a dog eat dog world out there.

Hank tried to control the dark. Brey defied it.

Am I partial to Brey? Yes. I’m partial to rebels. I’m partial to stories that strip away the trappings of the good life and leave only those things that people will fight and die to keep. For some people, that comes down to their life at any cost. For others, like Brey, it’s about family and love and the best of who we are.

Evil Is A Bitch

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.

Joseph Conrad

People often ask writers who or what is their muse. What inspires you? I guess they are asking. Something akin to where do you get your ideas. I suspect that the creation of the muses was a way to explain forms of expression—dance, music, poetry—that were not universe gifts, and therefore, probably seemed divine to ancient peoples. Yet, there is likely something of that idea that still exists in the minds of artists today, a certain humility and reluctance to take credit for something that seems to generate out of nothing. It’s a peculiar process to lay words on a page and tell stories. To see the barest impression of a character acquire shape and substance, to become so real that he or she forces a story in strange and unexpected directions. Of course, we know that that is our subconscious at work. But we can’t see our subconscious and can only obliquely affect it. We lie down to sleep and concentrate on a particular problem to let our subconscious solve it. And the solution comes in dreams. All ephemeral and otherworldly. So it is easy to see why the ancients created muses, and why it is, to some writers and artists, difficult to take credit for things that occur out of our sight.

Now to the quote—why am I talking about muses when the quote is about evil? Recently I answered the question about muses by saying that I didn’t have any, or if I did, they were my guys, those phantoms of my imagination, my characters. They were my muses. I was being somewhat facetious.

But here is the thing—I write about evil. Evil is a complicated, polarizing subject. Not everybody believes in it. To some its source is psychological—a chemical imbalance, a genetic anomaly—the purview of science. This is opposed to those who believe that evil has a divine purpose, and that we are free agents able to choose our own paths. Free will too is a topic on which people often do not agree. The thing is, we can’t prove that there is free will. Nor can we prove that there isn’t. We can’t prove that evil is an entity with which we make our beds or is merely a defect of birth. It’s tempting to say that evil is an act or acts, and that people are complicated mixes of both good and evil. Yes, it’s tempting. The argument would go, “Of course, I’m capable of evil, but I’m also capable of good, so I am not entirely evil. I can not be called evil as long as I also do good things.” Hitler liked animals. I’m perfectly comfortable with calling him evil. Was Hitler’s will free? If it was, he chose acts of such enormous evil that they defined him. If he wasn’t, he was condemned to commit evil. In either case, evil exists. Most of us don’t live at the extreme points of this argument. My characters struggle against the evil that besets them. In every story. Story lends itself to this conflict. At its best, villains become complicated. The potential for redemption appears. We fight our inner demons and our outer enemies.

This is often story—good versus evil. It’s also real life—just another lousy week at the day job. I am dealing with the destruction of a good guy by a bad guy. A life of service to others means nothing when it gets in the way of personal gain. All I can do as this unfolds before me in my other life is make note of what I see. I write it down. I have my next villain. I can’t exorcise the spirit of wickedness that allowed this guy to wait for the weapon to appear that would allow him to wreck a life and blithely go on with his church-going certainty of justification, but I can put the bastard in my book.

My muse is real life. And this week, she’s a leprous bitch.

 

Who Wants To Brave The Dark With Me?

Am I the only lover of dark and terrible stories out there? Okay, I get it. Backbone is not a romp in the park. It discomforts. It disturbs the status quo. That’s because I play in the shadows. I go where the heart and soul don’t want to go but must go to heal the wounds that this world inflicts. I know that it isn’t easy to dwell in dark places even for the space of a book. But reading shouldn’t always be easy—even for readers of romance. Surely romance isn’t only about sweetness and light and everything nice. Where would this world be without Jane Eyre? That tragic and painful but ultimately up-lifting story. Which is not to say that fun and light don’t have their place. We all have that child of faith still living inside us that thrives in the bubble of innocence and joy. But there is also power in doing battle with ones demons; though, I admit, it’s easier to slip by that war, if possible, and ignore the wounds that won’t heal.

I write about a happiness that comes as a gift longed for but given up on in the long trek of torments that can beset a person. I write about a happiness that my characters can’t have at first because it must come after the struggle that purifies and transcends crimes and regrets and loss. Yes, there is darkness. Yes, there is ugliness. Yes, my characters look into the abyss, and the abyss doesn’t just look back at them but yanks them in. But can there ever be a transformative victory without the struggle?

I must believe that even people at the absolute nadir of their lives and hopes will rise and share in the happiness that is strangely, and possibly unfairly, one of the only experiences some people will have. Those lucky, charmed people. My characters aren’t charmed, or at least they aren’t charmed for long. But in the end, they rise out of the muck and flame like brilliant suns. Of course, people have to be willing to go on my character’s journeys with me to share in this. They have to bear the discomfort and not look away. I know that you’re out there. But how do I find you, my kindred spirits?

Who wants to brave the dark with me?

Yeah, The Bloom Is Off This Rose

I am embarking on a rant about this. It’s a pet peeve, really, and NOT MEANT AS A REAL CRITICISM!, because I am well aware I might be the only writer/reader out there pitching a fit about this. Plus, I’m sure I write my own fair share of cliches. But this one—“… a dance as old as time” to describe a sex scene? Hate it. For one thing, it’s extraneous, unless of course, it’s meant to be the sole descriptor of the scene. Then I think it’s just plain lazy.

Of course we all know what that phrase is supposed to convey. We can picture it; it is, after all, a cliché.

And yes, I am such a slut for erotic books that I will continue to read the offending (to me) material and love it anyway! Which just happened, giving rise to this particular rant. I hate the phrase, and I’m betting a lot of you have come across it before. Multiple times, probably. I suppose at one point there was a certain lyricism to it, a kind of ethereal poetry. Now the bloom is off that rose. I’m not saying writers need to write graphic sex scenes. That’s both a personal and story decision. I write graphic sex. I like it. I like to read it. But I also read sweet and sensual, so it’s not like I see euphemisms to be cheats. I do see an oft-repeated, beaten down, worn out phrase in the middle of a descriptive sex scene, however, to be completely and utterly rant-worthy.

Why do it? What the hell does that phrase really even mean anyway? Let’s imagine one guy riding his lover. He’s planted himself on boyfriend’s cock and… here comes that phrase! They rock/grapple/thrash in a rhythm/dance/battle as old as time. Rest assured I am not singling anybody out with this or any version of this phrase, and I think it’s gone way past plagiarism at this point—I really have read it that many times. But what does it really mean? They rock, thrust, undulate, grind, roll, swivel…stroke, bite, nip, lick, suck. Any and all of these acts might appear in—and here it is again—a dance as old as time.

We (writers) are all guilty of writing clichés. We’re in a hurry to write/type it down. Our brains work a hell of a lot faster than our fingers. So we go for it, pat phrases and images can be short-hand for what we really want to say. And during our edits—and yes, there had better be edits—maybe we don’t catch them all. Especially the subtler ones, but—a dance as old as time? It’s so egregiously cliché. I’m telling you—don’t write it! The minute you feel that urge, the moment it rises up into your consciousness—beat it death with a baseball bat. Put it out of its descriptive misery. And if you can’t do that—RUN!!

I get it too. Writing sex is easy. Writing good sex—just as sweat inducing as having good sex. It ought to be as fresh as your characterizations, which means it should be a tool for character and plot development. Here’s another cliché—there’s nothing new under the sun. Yep. This one works for me because it’s true. Well, okay… Maybe a dance as old as time is true too. I don’t have to be logical. Rants are emotion-based. And I get that there are certain limitations built into describing the mechanics of sex. Only so many variations, so many positions, so many ways. But the emotions and desires of the characters have limitless permutations. To use a cliché to describe sex is to skip the work of revealing the inner lives of the characters. Skip the sex. Focus on the emotions. But don’t tease me into anticipating sex then pull the old switcheroo with a dance as old as time.

It pisses me off. Write good sex. I like it.

Much Abuzz About Nothin’

So…

Backbone went into general release on July 28th, and I did not do backflips or jump for joy. I felt really bummed out about it actually. All this build up and—now what? Luckily I have a now what. My next book will be out in February, hopefully. I still have the edits on that one, I’m working on a new one, and brainstorming a couple others for my pipeline. Gotta have a pipeline. I get a little freaked out at the thought that I might run out of ideas. No ideas? Oh, my God! 

With all of this it’s easy to lose sight of the ball—it bounces so fucking erratically anyway. I have to remind myself that the process doesn’t end with publication because the process isn’t about one book. It’s about writing, offering stuff up. Of course, that just churns up the worry/fear/dread/certainty that nobody’s going to read the damn things.

I don’t want to obsess about reviews and sales. But maybe I’m supposed to. I feel like I just hurled my book into space and strolled off without a care about where it lands. But I haven’t moved on from it. Don’t want to. Brey and Hank still resonate with me. I’m sure they always will. I want them to have a happy life—in the readers’ hearts. Your heart.

But I also can’t dwell on it. As I just wrote above, it’s a process, a journey. I am experiencing both an ending, a middle and a beginning. The writing of Backbone is over. Now is the challenge of generating interest for it and working on my WIP—the middle. The beginning? Just that all of this is new, and I suspect will be new book after book. A resumption of anxiety and hope for all of those thoughts and emotions on the pages of the newest story.

And what really sucks is that Backbone went out to about nine review sites, and nobody has offered to review it! Backbone? Kayleigh Sky? Never heard of ’um. I guess that’s how it works, and why not, it works that way with pretty much everything else. You have to already be somebody to get the interest. Another thing to add to the mix of all the things to keep working on. Process, process.

I feel a little suspended in wonder at this whole experience. A lot of it is out of my hands. It’s in everyone else’s hands now.

I have other voices wanting their share of consciousness. They have stories I’m happy to tell. Yeah, happiness. That’s what this is supposed to be about.

Can’t lose sight of the ball. Be happy. Write, write, write…

And soar!

Dark Stories and the Power of a Kiss

“I can’t write without a reader. It’s precisely like a kiss – you can’t do it alone.” –John Cheever

My book Backbone is going into general release on this July 28th. I’ve just signed a contract for my second book, and I’m smack in the middle of my third. So, outside of the day job, my life has been writing, writing, writing…

Just so you know. I write dark books. The inside of my head is a scary place. On paper my guys suffer. I put them in harsh worlds and confront them with cruel people. But they dream, and through their struggles they give their dreams life. I give them the happy ever after. I also give them a ton of hot sex and lots of love. Soul-satisfying, meant-to-be love. And there is always a shining light at the end their black tunnels. I dread these stories in a way though because I’m not sure anybody else really likes dark in quite the same way I do.

Just write, I tell myself. Keep writing.

The point to this is—I get absorbed. I fixate on the writing but there are other things I need to do.

For example, I just picked a new theme for my website in preparation for Backbone’s release. No major changes to the site, but in the process of revamping it, I realized that I hadn’t posted anything since June 7!

Which got me to thinking—I really don’t have a vision for this thing. There are so many good blogs out there offering incredibly helpful content. Blogs I subscribe too. Blogs I tweet links to whenever I think other writers can benefit. There’s a lot of great advice out there. I actually have some advice to offer too but not today. Today is about setting a goal for this blog… until I discover a better goal.

Backbone is my first traditionally published book. What I mean by traditional is that I have a publisher that is offering the book in both electronic and print formats. I have an editor—amazing. Cover art—amazing. They are involved in marketing my book as well. Maybe not in as targeted a way as in days gone by but a sight better than a lot of publishers now offer. The process has involved a lot of unknowns. Giddy highs have devolved into a daily grind of sorts. Publishing and writing are entwined but entirely different things. This entwinement creates a symbiosis that might not have a lot of appeal for aspiring writers. For some people writing is the only thing. For me, the gift of my writing to others is the ultimate thing.

I want to affect people with stories that will hopefully touch them in deep, maybe secret ways. So I write my dark stories and put them out there in the hopes that they will find a home in the hearts of strangers. Maybe these strangers won’t stay strangers. Maybe somebody is reading this blog right now.

So, I can’t promise you content that will absolutely change your writing or transform your life in any particular way, but I am letting you in on a journey of small things in a newly published writer’s life, the daily surprises that spring up as I work to make my dream come true. The dream’s the same as it always was but the reality is WORK! Not that that’s a bad thing. Writing is work. But reaching readers is a different job. For now—this blog will be about the things I notice on my trip to fame (yeah, right) or obscurity. So if you’re an aspiring writer or a reader interested in how writers work, I hope you’ll stick around. ☺

Little posts. That’s what we’ll do for now.

Soar!

Thanks, Sweaty Frustrated Guy!

The other day while I was stuck in traffic, I saw a guy on an island of a busy intersection trying to fix something on his bike. The bike had a cart filled with bags attached to the back—the kind of thing people with kids like to ride around in. This guy was scruffy and looked hot and frustrated. The cart had overbalanced the bike and knocked it over. He got it back up again by himself, and I speculated while I waited in that knot of cars that if he’d been a cute girl, guys would have been jumping out of their cars from all over to go help her.

Cute young girl, mind you. Not average looking girl. Not a fat girl.

My point here, however, has nothing to do with sexism or fairness or simple human kindness. Believe it or not, this is a post about ideas. The first draft of my current work in progress came out more as a glorified outline than a story. That’s okay. Secrets and delightful possibilities keep surfacing. At the time that I saw the guy and his bike, I was working on a section that needed a little backstory added to get my guy from point A to point B realistically. Smooth as the flow of water.

We’ve all read those stories that come out as clunky as hell as the writer tries to force a connection between points A and B in order to move the story along. Awkward is a first draft situation. It’s not supposed to stay like that. It needs to be reworked. I needed my guy to reflect on his current predicament through the lens of his past, and I wanted his reflection to occur organically, to be spurred by something in the natural course of his day. I didn’t want to rely on He remembered when… or That reminded him of… I wanted some agency. I wanted him to deliberately think of a particular incident in his past but in away that he almost couldn’t not think of it.

The guy on the bike helped me do that. I don’t want to reveal too much because this is a work in progress, but that guy on the bike led me to think about the privilege of looks and the power it can hold over us, either because we have it or because we admire it. That got me to thinking about how we immortalize looks, which led me to the solution to my problem.

Ideas are everywhere, but sometimes they camouflage themselves. It never fails to amaze me how writers think what they think—and how tenuous the process of storytelling is.

I’ll be forever grateful that a sweaty, frustrated guy at an intersection could lead me to a contemplation of physical beauty and its questionable value.

Winging It

My brain makes bizarre connections sometimes. Just a couple of days ago I put together a book shelf that I bought unassembled—just writing “book shelf” makes me smile happily. Book shelves, books… Oh, my God—happiness.

But anyway, I put the thing together. Depending on the manufacturer, this process can be anything from an hour long chore to an “OMG, did they write these directions on Mars?” kind of torture session. A chore—that was my experience. But while putting my new book shelf *smile* together, I started thinking about writing with or without an outline. This is where the bizarre connection comes in. I’ve always been a “pantser” but I’m beginning to rethink that, and here’s why…

In my younger days, I’d have put that book shelf together with either no, or a quick, glance at the directions. I mean, really, how complicated could it be? It’s a square or a rectangle. We all know what a book shelf looks like. Usually, I’d get all the pieces in the right places, but one would be backwards or upside down, and I’d end up with an unfinished surface facing outward or something. Really? Dip shit. So apart it would all come, and I’d redo it. No big deal, other than it took longer than it should have.

But a book?

Winging it with a book is often exhilarating because you don’t know where you’re going. It’s fun, nerve-wracking, enlightening. It also means, at least for me, that a lot of the time all the unfinished surfaces are facing outward—and well, shit, that doesn’t work. Redo. Rewrite.

When I say unfinished surfaces, I mean backstory, character development, foreshadowing, plot devices. I’m working all of those out as I’m writing, which is a legitimate way of doing things, and a lot of writers do it that way, but that means that my first drafts are heavy, heavy, heavy with narrative. I end up with a story I just “told” almost all the way through. Plus, I might realize midway that the bad guy is really a good guy or visa versa. So I’ll have to start yelling out stage direction—“Okay, everybody switch positions!” (Wow, that just brought up a happy image—but I digress… )

Telling—bad, showing—good. I rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. I don’t know about anybody else who does it this way, but usually I start getting sick of my story. I’m kinda done. I want to move on. I have other people in my head yammering at me to get a move on and tell their story. Their usually exciting and compelling story that’s sitting in a corner waiting for me to take apart the book shelf and put it back together again the right way.

This time I think I might try to get all of the front end stuff done in the—Oh, I don’t know—the front end of the writing process. Just for a change. Just to see how I like it.

After all—if it ain’t an adventure, it ain’t any fun!

Gender–And Who the Fuck Cares?

The internet is a veritable playground for fun little quizzes. Facebook introduced me to the quiz that informed me I should be a Motivational Speaker. Yeah, right. Motivate this.

If I were a character on the Walking Dead, I’d be Hershel. Correct me if I’m wrong—I haven’t watched the show for several seasons now—but isn’t Hershel dead? That kinda sucks.

Some really interesting quizzes though are those that use a variation of the BEM Sex Role Inventory to assess gender identification. I took one of the quizzes I found, and the results got me to thinking about a more common complaint that I read about women writers of M/M romance—that their guys don’t act like real guys.

How does a real guy act?

How does a real girl act?

I look physically like my biological sex is “supposed” to look. I dress, groom, and appear according to expectations for a female. I scored as androgynously as it is possible to be on the gender scale. What does that mean? What does it mean for guys who don’t act like “real guys”?

Biological sex does inform some of our behaviors—there’s no getting around that. Males and females process information and emotion differently. But—if you extract cultural expectations regarding behavior—these differences are not very significant. We are programmed to behave in certain, rather than other, ways.

The gender quizzes measure traits. Gender is a cultural construct. In order for the concept of gender to exist and have effect, it must be defined. Society—our heteropatriarchal society—has assigned certain traits to each sex. These traits aren’t perceived as existing on a continuum—although they do. Males are aggressive, confident, risk-taking. Females are communicative, compassionate, affectionate.

Are they? Always?

Our place on the continuum depends on our mix of traditional male and female traits. Arbitrarily defined as one or the other by society.

In my day job, I work with several hundred men who risk their lives to help others every day. They are aggressive, confident risk-takers. They also take care of people. They are compassionate, empathetic, and communicative. In between calls, they talk—translation: chatter—gossip, and complain about every little inconvenience known to man or beast.

Are they androgynous? Is it possible that they’re not “real men”? Is it possible that we don’t have to accept our assigned traits just because of our biological sex?

Wow—can we just be? Any gender? No gender?

Can an M/M story about a guy who loves to receive flowers from his boyfriend or husband and bawls when his feelings get hurt still be a “real guy”? Maybe not like you or me—or maybe exactly like you or me—but “real” anyway?

Wouldn’t it be fucking nice if we could just be who we are without caring about male/female checkboxes and where we all fall on the gender continuum?

I’d like it.

Finally. Fucking. Fabulously free.

A Sad and Violent Goodbye

This isn’t really the kind of post I imagined writing for my blog, and maybe it’s not something anybody really wants to read, so if anybody does see this, it’s probably a once in a lifetime kind of post for me, but it’s something I needed to put out there. Writing my life is what I do, though I usually hide it in stories and characters. Today, no hiding. There is probably very little that should be kept in the dark anyway.

A week ago I lost my uncle, Chris. We were raised together. Chris was only four years older than I am, and he killed himself on a beautiful sunny day.

My understanding of this act of his floats somewhere with my memories in an amorphous, gray drizzle. I remember the sweetest of times—drifting, delicate, fragile memories—as fragile as life. I remember a day after Christmas years ago. Chris and I were heading into the city (San Francisco), sixties and seventies “oldies but goodies” on the radio of a brilliant yellow Toyota (his first car). We listened to the Beatles, Jefferson Airplane, and Led Zeppelin on our way to visit our friends. They lived on Twin Peaks with a gorgeous view of the city. Since then, one of those friends has died of AIDS, and one has disappeared into the world. I wish them both happiness wherever they are.

I remember that it rained that day and was gray and sweet and intimate in their warm little apartment. We were so young. Mid teens to mid twenties.

I remember other foggy days in Carmel and Monterey. We’d drive down from Santa Cruz where Chris lived then. Windy, gray, salty, wonderful trips.

In Santa Cruz he lived in a little cottage with his then girlfriend, later wife. The floor was cement, covered in a thin carpet. The place smelled of mildew and the rabbits that lived out the kitchen window. I remember the slow swirl of flies in the little living room, the smell of animals and slightly salty air.

He used to come pick me up from school carrying a bottle of something illicit in a paper bag. He adored his dogs, and when they died, his cats. He liked rock hunting and Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple mysteries. He was orphaned, emotionally adrift, then married and settled. I based a character in one of the first books I ever wrote on Chris, on the simple, honest and kind way he lived his life.

But he wasn’t kind in the end—I guess people aren’t when they’re in pain. He walked away from the cats and the wife he loved on a beautiful sunny day.

Was he suffering from depression? Maybe. It’s a guess. This is something I know about. This is something my family knows about. We suffer from depression and addictions. We have our demons.

But the thing I keep thinking about is that day. The beauty of it. How sad to forget that the only beauty anybody ever promised us is here in this one moment in time. Chris followed his pain into the dark, and I can only guess that he never saw the sun or heard the singing of the birds on that beautiful day.

All I can do now is say peace to you, Chris, and hope that you are surrounded by light and love and the sweetest of songs forever.

I will miss you.

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