Zoe E. Whitten's Blog, page 78

The Texas juvenile detention system…

Mary Jane Martinez's son Jimmy entered the Texas criminal justice system in 2003 because he missed his school bus. He was charged with truancy and destruction of property (for throwing rocks) and sent to live in a county juvenile detention center for a sentence of six months. After five months, instead of being released, he was transferred to an academy 400 miles away, managed by the Texas Youth Commission, the agency that oversees detention and treatment centers across the state. Jimmy finally came home, four years after he was sent away, a period his mother now describes as a living hell. His best friend had been murdered, and Jimmy had been beaten and raped—both, Mrs. Martinez testifed, by TYC guards.

Read this article, and please consider what will happen if you turn America over to Rick Perry. I just covered how Iraqi police are treating kids, and here's a story talking about a "culture of child rape" in the Texas juvenile prisons. People can't seem to generate much concern about stories like this, and I find this endlessly frustrating. Why is it that peoples' commitment to kids really only amounts to a bunch of angry growling, and usually at the wrong people? Nobody is growling Perry out of this election for his record. Hell, some people are even calling him a viable contender.

Seriously, if you elect another good ol' boy from Texas to fuck everyone in the ass, don't you dare say you're opposed to sodomy. You must like it, because you keep looking for the guys guaranteed to make it a painful fucking. Then you say things like "He's the guy I'd most want to have a beer with."

He's not your fucking drinking buddy. He's supposed to be the guy most qualified to bail us out of this fucking mess, which was made by the last good ol' boy from Texas that you thought would make a great drinking buddy. Pick a better fucking standard for who you elect, for the love of God. And if you can't do it for God, at least do it for your country, or for your kids. Rick Perry has an atrocious education record, and his record with kids in the juvenile system is just as awful. Don't let him do this to everyone else's kids all across the country. For once, have the common sense to turn down the good ol' boy act. Please.

What is art?

I'm sitting here listening to Amy Winehouse. After her death and people talking so much crap about her, I decided to go buy a CD. Funny thing is, I've been listening to Amy for years. Her voice is all over the place here in Italy, especially the top 40 stations. They like her more classical style, which is similar to singers here from the sixties and early seventies. So I've heard almost everything from her album and I just never knew it was her.

And I had a thought to someone on Facebook who said, "Yeah, I listened to her, and she's overrated. Musical genius? I don't think so."

It's easy to dismiss any artist in this way. Don't like the art? Then say, "This isn't real art," or variations of it. Then the object of your disdain is dismissed. No one checks the critic's credentials, because everyone is qualified to decide what art is and is not.

I disagree. People have the right to decide what they like. This much is true, and it is also true that not every piece of art works. Consider Van Gogh's The Potato Eaters, which he loved, but even his brother, his biggest fan, just couldn't see the appeal. Now it hangs in a museum where artists marvel at it for hours. But we marvel it now through a lens of time, and with a filter of Van Gogh's entire career. The viewers of his time had no reverence for him the way we do, so this was just another art misfire.

But, it is still art. It is just art that initially missed its target market.

So, is Amy Winehouse art? Absolutely, yes. Her prose ability is incredible in the album Back To Black, and every song tells a story. Maybe not a happy story, but there are a thousand pop bands cranking out the happy if you need it. But Amy is going to the dark side of the storybooks to talk about loss, infidelity, and addictions.

Every song is a work of art, a short story that I could never hope to craft with such brevity. I suck at short stories, and I'm a lousy poet. So looking at Amy's talent, yes, I'm in awe of her. Yes, she's an artist. She might not appeal to everyone, but she had an amazing level of writing talent, even before you consider her voice. And where painters have brushes to express the inner voice of their muses, Amy created the mood and setting for her stories with her voice. As an amateur writer AND an amateur singer, I can't help but respect that.

There's a lot of artists out there who don't do anything for me, but I wouldn't say they're not real artists. That's because I'm all too aware of the erasing power of the word real. I can be dismissed as not a real woman. I can be dismissed as not being a real writer, or as not a real artist. Again, nobody needs criteria or credentials to get away with this dismissal and erasure. Just, "You're not a real ____", and it's a valid critique.

I can say, "That's a crap artist." I have no problems venting my ire on art that doesn't appeal to me. So, let me be clear. Art that rubs you the wrong way, don't be afraid to vent some. And don't think I'm saying, "Be nice with your critiques." Go look at my reviews for things I don't like. Do I try to be nice? Hell no! But I'm venting at the work. I'm not going to dismiss the artist as not real, or dismiss the fans of the art as "posers who don't know what real art is." I can be pissed off and raving about a book, and still not attack the artist or their fans.

And that's what I'm trying to preach about to y'all. Yes, it is perfectly all right to bet mad. But don't let anger lead to something uglier. You can tear down a crap book without attacking the author. You can criticize a bad album without claiming that the band members aren't real musicians. You can…and now we just have to get you in the habit of actually doing it.

We need to get folks away from this need to invalidate other people because they don't meet up to our personal standards. This is not to be confused with being made to like everything. Maybe you gave Amy Winehouse a listen and decided she wasn't for you. That's okay. But where we've got to break folks of a bad habit is the need to elevate themselves over the object of their dislike.

It's one thing to say, "I tried Amy Winehouse and didn't like her." But it becomes a personal attack when you strip her of her status as a real artist. And no matter how mild you may feel that attack is, it's not a defensible attitude. It's a piss poor attitude, and it's not really a valid criticism. It's a dismissal to shut up anyone who might want to discuss her artistic merits. It shuts down discussions with a final verdict that says, "I'm close-minded and unwilling to hear other perspectives on this topic."

Art is any product crafted by a person with the intent to be shared with others. A five-year-old crafting a clay ashtray for a mother who's never smoked is still an artist, even if her art completely missed the mark. Yes, she's a silly artist, and her career may not last past kindergarten. But she's just as much an artist as Van Gogh.

Amy Winehouse is an artist as much as Eddie Van Halen is, as much as Janelle Monáe is. They're all so talented that every time I listen to them, I'm awed and humbled by their work. And they do all this in five minutes. I need a whole novel to inspire emotions. These folks can do it in a few well placed notes. These are artists who command my respect and get it.

But I am an artist too. I just work with a different media than they do. In my line of art, lots of people have decided to support and endorse corporate art exclusively. They claim art that pleases them takes absolute precedence over art that challenges or offends. Written art should entertain from the first page; nay, from the first sentence, or it is not worth absorbing.

Obviously, I don't agree with this, and obviously, I don't sell very well because I intentionally write books meant to challenge these formulas. I write slow introductions. I write characters who are morally varying shades of grey rather than cast everyone using black and white values. And because of my insistence on going against the grain, I am not a popular artist. I have always accepted that I would not be popular, and I'm not exactly working hard at pushing into the mainstream. I rather enjoy being an alternative indie writer whom no self-respecting big publisher would take on for fear of my mouth ruining my sales.

But am I a real artist? Yes, and nothing anyone says can strip me of my title now that I've taken it for myself. You can criticize me for not "doing it right." You can dump on me for writing about subjects you don't want to read. But you can never take away my title. What I put out DOES create a reaction, and while many of you don't get me, there's plenty of other folks do.

So yes, I am an artist, and what I make is art. Whether it is good or serves a purpose is entirely up to the readers.

Another murdered woman…

Very short post to alert you to this story. I've ranted on it before, and my dainty wrists can't handle the stress yet. This one is at least being investigated right away, and there seems to be another story in the same night about a man who threatened three women on a bus with gun because they were trans. And here again, the D.C. cops are showing no hesitation in calling the crime biased. So, no shouting or pleading. Just go read the story, and please spare just a moment to consider a trans-inclusive ENDA for the next legislative cycle, regardless of who is in office. Human rights should not be a wedge issue for either side.

All Maid Up 2

Anybody hoping for a delightful erotic romantic fantasy romp after the introduction on this story, sorry, but reality has a disappointing way of intruding on my tales. In this case, Ginger's mom has explained that Kevin's bad reputation as a player. Ginger is wary now, but she's also curious about why Kevin seems hurt over being busted.

So here is All Maid Up 2.

"They were animals…"

This won't take long because I'd just rambled about this topic the other day, and this story is a good example of what I was saying, but on a much wider scale. It's hard for a sheltered person to understand how a crowd can snap and become animals, but in countries where government abuse has been frequent, the fearful citizens also become injured animals boiling full of rage. And when there is finally a vent, it's brutal and unreasoning.

The reporter covering his female colleague had good reason to fear that she would be raped, because rape is a tool of war in the Middle East. You want to get mad about children being raped? Then check out the state of Iraq's police after we taught them democracy, via this Wikileak cable. Children are forced to fellate officers or they are sodomized as a way of obtaining false confessions. From children. How much do you feel like chanting about promoting freedom in Iraq now?

These kinds of abuses make angry fighters who will snap as adults. And they've been taught to hate, to understand rape as a weapon. America, YOU have made the next Middle East powder keg by going over there and killing Saddam Hussein. You didn't make things better. You made them much worse. And, it's going to get even worse because your government is still helping the rapists preserve their power. So you can count on Iraqi patriotism to turn anti-American very quickly after they throw off the puppet government you helped build. I'm calling that as happening in 10 to 20 years, after enough people have been tortured and hardened into animals.

And you helped foster this cycle of violence against children in other countries. Every last one of you who insisted that we had to be doing some good over there. You were apologists to an illegal war who ignored every civilian death, and now you can wear the weight of failure for the next generation of violent rebels who can't tell friend from foe. And, there is not a country in the Middle East where you cannot find the US government encouraging dictators and aiding them right up to the day of the revolts. THEN, suddenly, "America can no longer stand these brutal injustices." Yeah, whatever. That speech works on the white folks at home, but it isn't winning any hearts or minds where it matters.

Wake the fuck up, people. You can't hand guns to enraged people and then act surprised when they turn into murderers and rapists. If you really want to change this, then America needs to annex Iraq and ship about 800,000 foreign cops into the area. (Think of all the jobs! Sure, the move is a bitch, but still…) Then, in a bold and radical plan, you insist that cops not only enforce the law, but FOLLOW it themselves. So, no brutal torture of children to get false confessions, no brutal torture for hardened criminals, and no brutal torture at all. I know, radical, but we should at least try it for a few decades and see what happens, yanno?

You send 800,000 teachers into that place, and you set up schools to teach them something besides how to shoot at each other. You're sending over soldiers as educators and can't grasp why this is ALWAYS such a colossal failure. If you want to get something better out of Iraq, you've got to put something better into it than more soldiers.

And one more time, with feeling: You folks who sit at home and tsk about how violent the rebels become don't have enough empathy to understand how abusive the authority figures are in the Middle East. Your government is complicit in propping up evil dictators. Apologists always downplay this, so I'm putting Iraq's kids in your face, and I'm asking, "Why aren't these kids good enough to earn your outrage?"

And the answer, truthfully, is because they're out of sight, and out of mind.

My anti-social stance…

I'm thinking this will be a ramble rather than a rant, because while I feel strongly about this topic, I don't think it's going to get much traction even if I could get a signal boost. But so here's an article about Jaron Lanier, which is in turn taking snippets from a longer one-hour video ramble about how the Internet strips us of options rather than empower us. I rambled a bit on Twitter about this, but I think some of that should be repeated and expanded upon here, for those of you who don't follow my Twitter nonsense.

So first, remember when we used to learn that peer pressure was bad? Well these days, that only applies to real life addictions and teen sex, and now the peer pressure to use this social network or that is enormous. In fact, while I was talking about this, horror writer Jason Keene told me that he'd been harassed after deactivating his Facebook account, with someone emailing him to accuse him of being a snob. Seeing the warped behavior of some sociopaths on Facebook, I have no trouble believing him.

Every new social network that opens, I have a whole bunch of people ask me, "Why don't you sign up over here? All of us cool kids will be over here, and you want to follow us." It worked, for a while. I hated peer pressure and resented people who used it when I was a kid. But as an writer, I needed to generate attention, and this peer pressure posing as marketing advice did seem legitimate. So I went after the cake even though part of me already knew it was a lie.

Let me briefly address the accusation "You're not giving it enough time." Because of the online world's turnover speed, information posted today on social streams will be lost in the shuffle within fifteen minutes. Doesn't matter where you put it, the stream will bury you. It doesn't matter if I repeat the message once a day every day on one network or five, the result is the same. No shared links, and no traffic or sales. These results didn't change if I shared everyone else's links or just spammed my own stuff.

So no, it wouldn't matter if I've spent 6 months or four years on a network, because none of the so-called friends in my friends list are really friends. They're not even acquaintances. Mostly, they're other people trying to sell me something. Should I decide that I'm no longer interested in the daily flood of other people presenting their wares and woes, there's yet more peer pressure to "be professional." Yes, because me watching you post passive-aggressive comments about your day job co-workers is soooo professional.

I'm getting to the point where I'm recognizing that with my mental illness and emotional instability, I can't be a professional even if I wanted to. That I don't puts a serious crimp in the plan. I've also come to realize that what people want from me, a branding effort, I can't give them. I can't make me as a product palatable to you because I'm not a nice personable writer. I'm a cranky crazy lady. And because I can't brand that, I can't sell people my books.

Diaspora is beginning to open up to more users, and already I've been approached by several people to get into it. But I don't see a need for it. For social interaction, Twitter serves my needs. Would I like to find a social network where I hook up with readers? Sure, absolutely. But I've not yet found a network where I could just search for readers and then approach them with a friends invite. Instead, the network friend finder goes, "Oh, you're a writer? Well, here's a bunch of writers to befriend!" I don't want to befriend them, but not because I'm just interested in me, me, me. I just hate redundancy, and odds are good that I'm already friends with these folks on Twitter unless they write in a genre that doesn't float my boat.

So what I need from any other new social network is a way to connect with people who want to read me. Whether that means they're a blog reader or a book reader doesn't matter, but I want the next social site I join to actually connect me with readers interested in me, and not just more writers who don't know me from Adam and wouldn't read my books if I was giving them away with coupons for free blow jobs. (Or with complete strangers who insist that I dance, sing, and juggle before they'll accept a free preview of one book.)

And for asking for a network where I meet up with readers instead of random strangers, I've been called greedy, entitled, and unrealistic. It is unrealistic of me to expect any social network to find me readers. Yet, I am pushed to go on every network and do promotions to people who aren't readers, aren't friends, and won't react to my announcements. So, why should I stick around for this? The only remaining power the networks had over me was that if I left, I lost the microscopic chance that someone MIGHT have one day decided to give one of my books a chance.

Indeed, even as I left Facebook, they made a last ditch effort at peer pressure: "If you leave, you'll miss out on updates from these five randomly selected profiles in you friends list." The list of names they offered were either complete strangers, or were writers who had never talked to me except to thank me when I wished them a happy birthday. It wasn't a very convincing final effort.

These days, I find myself scratching my head at the logic of other people. Even though I've never had the desired results from any network, whenever a new network opens, I should go over there to repeat the same fruitless process and achieve the exact same results. No, I mean I get a list of the EXACT SAME PEOPLE. If I'm promoting and preaching to them on Twitter, why do I need to bug the same people on three other networks? Repetition of a message hasn't exactly worked out well for me either.

My lament over the ineffectiveness of these systems has resulted in people calling me entitled, or in people approaching me about having a poor sales attitude. But the fact is, every sale is a chore. I work my ass off for a few sales per month, and it's never worth the investment of time. If I worked out an hourly wage of promotion efforts to actual income, my monthly income could be measured in fractions of a penny.

I've not entirely given up hope on one day establishing a long tail model of sales, and for this reason I continue to write and publish new works. I've now got 30 books published on Smashwords, and by this time next year, I'll be over 40. I've totally earned the right to call myself prolific.

But I've given up on branding me, and in the absence of a backup plan, I don't see a reason to be on every social network. So maybe for me, the first step toward true empowerment is me admitting that I don't need these networks for promotions. I don't need these networks to find readers, and I don't need them to develop a community around my work.

What I need is an audience that accepts me as mentally ill and doesn't expect an unreasonable level of sanity that I can't give them. What I need is an audience that cares more about my fake characters' lives than my opinion on the price of Kinect games. I want an audience who likes me enough to want to promote me, and I can find none of these things by hanging out on social sites.

It's not that other writers can't do it. I want to make that clear. But a lot of people who bust their asses still end up making a small number of sales, and while they celebrate, they don't do the math to discover that their hourly wage makes slave labor in a US prison look lucrative. (Which is not the same thing as being desirable or attractive. Just slightly more profitable, is all.)

Maybe it's true that odious writers like me no longer have a place in the online fiction world, and the only people who get to play are the people who remain agreeable. But if this is the case, I hardly see a need to go all over the place with my branding efforts. I can put lipstick on a pig in one location and call it a done dealio, yo.

Fucked…

Today has officially been one of my worst days ever. After I got up and wrote a blog post, we left to go to the post office to mail off a contract that should have gone out two weeks ago, but couldn't because not one fucking vendor in our area had a god damned envelope. And today, we finally found an envelope, but they didn't have stamps. No problem, the post office has metered…the post office is closed because the building is in dire need of repairs and cannot be used for a few MONTHS.

So, we got to the paper supply shop for a ream of new A4…and they've sold out. Of course. I'm refusing to give into my temper, so I suggested walking to Saturn for the paper and a shopping trip for music and games. THIS, at least went according to plan, and I got a couple more music CDs, Pornograffitti and Van Halen's first album, and I found Dance Central on discount. (Dance Revolution was slashed to a dirt cheap price, but they really could not pay me to play that shit fest.)

We ate at the cafe in Saturn, and as we went to check out, I told hubby that we should take the bus home to be on the safe side. So we did, and on the way home, we went to the ice cream shop to cool off and rest. The temperature reading outside the shop was 32°.

As I sipped my shake, the first fingers of fatigue started to pull my limbs down. I knew it was happening, but hubby was so engrossed in the paper that he didn't notice until he was ready to go.

We took the elevator. Again, I didn't want to stress myself too much. When we got upstairs, I went to the bathroom, saw the clothing on the floor and remembered our plans to do laundry. So I leaned over to put the stuff in the machine, and when I tried to straighten up, the world went sideways. Every muscle in my body went limp and shaky, and hubby had to peel me off the floor and carry me to my room. He's had to help me all day with trips to my couch and chair, because I couldn't lay for long without severe stomach pain. This despite the fact that I only had a tuna sandwich for lunch.

I've finally got some sleep on the couch, but when I woke up, I actually felt worse and more limp than when hubby laid down. Hubby carried me to the bathroom, and now here I am.

And now, I'm going to tell you a story:

Two years ago, on a show called Che Tempo c'e Fa (What time there is) I saw a transsexual activist who was in her 90s, and who had been one of the fighters who had convinced Italy to change laws and protect transsexuals in every facet of society. Point of fact: Italy, for all its male bravado, protects gender identity. Even the far right would not attack us because it's recognized that we are the most vulnerable members of society.

I was amazed by her full story, but the memory that stands out for me is her talking about hooking in Italy in the 60s. She was forced to go to her home with a man with a knife, and after she revealed her lower half, he kind of freaked out. He still raped her, though. Already started with the plan, so why not? And here the interviewer, incredulous, asked, "What happened next?" And she replied, "I got up and made him dinner, and we talked half the night. And, when he left, he apologized."

I don't believe I have a moral point to make with this. Hold on, let me check…no. What I'm thinking about is how much shit we trans folks have to suffer because of prejudice and discrimination, and then, on top of this, we got other issues. It's not enough to just be trans. The interviewed transsexual had a mental illness. I'm dealing with trans problems, with a mental illness, and with MS eating my body and my brain.

And some people say this pain and suffering is just the trial run, and after I die, God is going to keep punishing me.

Some days, it all gets to be so much, and I just want to ask God, "Can you please just dump some of this bad karma off on a distant, uninhabited planet? Please?"

Rambly Ramble Returns…the Revenge

Weather shifts are so no my best friend. Okay, I don't actually have any best friend anymore, but that's beside the point. Anyway, in the last few days, Twitter news has been relatively quiet. This is not to say there weren't disasters or bad news. But nothing demanded that I had to report on it here, because plenty of people were already handling it.

So for instance there was that brouha over SubTerranean releasing a book from Orson Scott Card, and then couldn't understand with the homophobic rewrite of Hamlet would be offensive to anyone. And yeah, their excuse that they bought it cause they knew his fans would buy it is a really, really shitty attitude. But aside from sending a polite email to the folks at SP, I didn't see a need to wind up a full rant for it. It's their publishing house, and they can publish homophobic stuff if they want. I don't have to like it, and I don't have to buy it. So I won't.

And besides, I'm not really a reader of collectible books, so all of the SP line misses me as a target audience anyway. So I could say "I'm boycotting SP over this!" But that's silly, because to initiate a boycott, I'd at least have to have bought a few books recently. Or, I would think I should. Maybe that's just me.

And finally, I'm reluctant to say "How dare they sell a book that's offensive to me" when I've got people yelling at me for selling a book that's offensive to them. See how that works? It's called self-awareness. I know that my publishing history has some controversy, and so when this other more respected publisher is taking flak for the same thing, I'm not so keen to jump on them.

Which is why my email was specifically about their defense that they didn't know the claims made in Card's work were anti-gay. And that's a bold faced lie. The man's views have been on record for a few years. His work is well known for its blatant homophobia. So the only reason that a GLBT supportive company hired an anti-GLBT writer is because there was a guarantee for profit from his fans based on his name power. It's like selling Mein Kampf because you want to profit off the Neo-Nazis. You're promoting the hate by selling it, and you're specifically pushing it on people who shouldn't be encouraged. How is this not a bad idea?

But aside from that, I'm not complaining with a lack of things to complain about. Or, am I? No, I'm…okay yeah, no I'm not going to complain with some quiet time where I don't always feel so pissed off.

I do like being mad, though, as anger is usually the catalyst for some of my best writing. This is also why some mornings I get up raring to write, because morning is when I'm at my pissiest.

But for now, anger is useless because my wrists still aren't willing to go for long haul fast burst writing sessions. Even in typing this, I keep forgetting myself and writing full speed, only get a warning throb that I've getting carried away.

I suppose that's one of the biggest downsides of my hunt and peck typing style, that I don't just attack the keyboard. I attack myself too. The impact of every keystroke comes back on me and inflicts its own form of a damage. And then there's angry typing.

Hubby can be across the house, and he knows when something or someone has displeased me. Because then every single keystroke explodes though here like a gunshot. If this goes on for more than a few minutes of sustained explosions, hubby comes in to make discreet inquiries about what's wrong. And, I gotta give him credit. He knows his wife well, and he knows when reaching out with a helping hand will most likely result in his being bitten.

And, that brings up a random tangent. I really think it's sad how many sheltered people find themselves the victims of anger from a stranger, and then go, "But I didn't do anything to them! Why did they have to attack me?"

And that's a need to center the story on yourself. Let me explain this with a dog. You take a puppy, and you turn it over to an abusive asshole who makes that dog mean with all the things he does. The person responsible eventually loses the dog, and it goes to an adoption center, where other people pet the dog and try to calm it down. And, to a certain degree, this works.

But then one day, something happens, and it triggers a flashback for the dog. And then it snaps at some innocent person who had nothing to do with the dog's abuse. And, the dog is put down, because we have no patience for things that aren't tame and pleasant 100% of the time.

This same analogy could be applied to any abused group, actually. People look at abused humans and assume that since a human brain is in charge, then we should react differently than the abused dog. They think that, in effect, humans have no reaction to abuse aside from bad memories. And as such, a few bad memories shouldn't cloud their judgment about who is guilty or innocent.

And it's that naive delusion that I fucking hate about sheltered people. "I'm rational and calm, ergo, everyone should be able to do this. People who can't are just wrong and need to be corrected." Again, center the story on you, make anecdotal evidence that ignores 99% of the facts of any situation, and then dismiss the reactions of abused people as having an inappropriate tone.

Maybe it isn't you that beat me up in the schoolyard. Maybe you weren't the school teacher who downplayed every attack. Maybe you aren't the principal who tried to have me kicked out of public school. But all these people have trained me to be a mean, angry fighter, and once I'm in the animal rage zone of thinking, I don't see strangers as good people. I see them as potential threats.

And, as I've tried to explain in previous posts, lots of people who insisted that they were really good turned out to be abusive. So you coming up and saying "I'm different" raises my hackles and makes me even more wary of your intentions. You insisting that you're really good is another knee-jerk. You calling me good is yet another. You're already at three strike on the introduction, so when I snap, it's because you fucked up. But you don't have to admit that. That's the beauty of being sheltered and privileged. Nothing is ever really your fault.

Again, let's get back to the dog. Suppose that every day, the dog's old master would hold out his hand, and when the dog came close, BAM the dog gets punched. Fast forward to an unrelated stranger offering his hand in the wrong way, triggering a flashback. The dog isn't thinking about the person, they're thinking about the situation, and they're reacting to a programmed fight or flight response. It really is not the dog's fault, but that won't stop people from putting it down.

And the world's got no problem "putting down" abuse victims. We don't get put out of our misery like dog, though. (Well, not unless we snap into a psychotic episode. Then, YES, some of us get put down like dogs too.) Instead, people put us in our places with debasing words, and then they walk on, heads high like they'd just done the world a favor with their cruelty.

Yes, cruelty. If you approach an abuse victim and trigger a violent reaction, it means you did something wrong. Maybe it might be something mundane, and you couldn't help it. But you'll never know because you never ask, "what did I do wrong?" You ask, "what's wrong with you, huh?"

The story now isn't how you made a mistake in approaching a mentally wounded person. Now it's about why you were unfairly attacked by someone who just can't see your good intentions. Victims are taught in this way not to bother talking about their pasts. We're taught to withdraw and pull away from others, and we make invisible cages for ourselves. The rules of engagement for these cages change from victim to victim, so what upsets me might not bug other victims so much. You can't lump us all into one category.

And yet, you do. People love lumping others into convenient definitions. It's dehumanizing. It's erasing and damaging no matter how it's done, and despite knowing this, most people rely on this method of organizing all relationships in their lives. Hi, how are ya, and which box do I put you in?

People need to stop making the story all about you, and start thinking about all of us. The world should not be defined by the shared experiences of sheltered people, but you're the ones who dictate every conversation on every topic. Even for those that you're not qualified for and shouldn't speak, you still have an opinion ready. And lately, the answer for a lot of problems is "We should lock those people up and let them kill each other." Do you people spouting this crap who call yourselves "humane" use the term ironically, or do you really not understand what the word means?

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Your intentions may be good, but your actions are flawed. Being angry will not correct your flaws, but it will allow you to dismiss the people you hurt, walk on, and get back to the story of you.

Which is why for the longest time, I preferred the company of thieves, druggies and whores to "good people." Because the scum of the Earth wear their flaws on their sleeves, and you know exactly what to expect. A good person wears a mask of good intent, and you never really know what might be hiding underneath.

Which is probably why so many crazy abused humans have a policy of "snap first, ask questions later" when it comes to dealing with clueless sheltered people.

Let's talk about Wendy…

WARNING: All of this is spoilers for the Campaign trilogy! Do not read if you plan on reading the Campaign trilogy and don't want spoilers.

We're getting close to the release of A Perfectly Empty Vessel, the fourth Wendy Stoffel book. The Campaign trilogy started with The Lesser of Two Evils and introduced readers to this daughter of drug smugglers. Wendy watched her father kill her mother, and then later put a bullet through her father's throat. In that first series, Wendy worked with Jobe McKenzie to uncover a conspiracy to create serial killers using a virus, and then she exposed the real reason behind the ritual sacrifices and encountered her first daemon. She also meets Vicky the vampire and Amber McKenzie, Jobe's half-sister, and she meets Damien Greenfield, the newly elected president and the man behind all of the grisly murders she's been investigating.

Readers of the first series were shocked by the death of Jamie, Wendy's astral twin, and this new book picks up a month after Jamie's death, his rotting body still housed in Wendy's head, slowly poisoning her brain. Her illness causes her to trigger her "pocket time" ability, and she stumbles out of a hospital and across Las Vegas, into a shopping mall. Here, she runs into a young necromancer, Rafael Montoya, who manages to get her back to the hospital.

The road to recovery for Wendy takes many turns quickly, and while this is happening, the book introduces a sadistic serial killer named Phillip Cassidy. Phillip and Wendy served time in the same state mental health facility, and they have a past so troubling that Wendy has blocked out the times that Phillip had assaulted her in her room. But that was in the past, and now Phillip knows Wendy be her media handle, "the hunter of serial killers." And to Phillip, this seems like fate drawing them back together.

This book offers readers their first glimpses into the daemon world of Heil, and into how daemon societies run on an economy of pain, flesh, and blood. It shows more of Marmot's plans for the invasion, and it explains Lucien's reasons for approaching Wendy.

Wendy also has two new guardians, former homicide detective Davis Briggs and halfling Cora Collins, one of the handful of survivors from the Collins Family trilogy. I'd thought before writing this book that Wendy and Cora would get along as sisters, but from the outset, Cora took on a mothering role. And, perhaps more shockingly, Wendy accepted her mothering, even though she had spent all three of her first books fighting with her guardians.

There's so much going on in this book, I can't even cover it adequately in a long blurb. There's a gunfight, a bit of gore, a bit of humor, a hint of young romance, and a host of new bit characters who will become more important to the overall MWW world as the Sin City trilogy progresses.

I've tried to make Wendy's fourth book strong enough to stand on its own. So you won't need to read any of the other books to get into this one. This is a new city for Wendy, and a whole new life to adjust to with her guardians and new friends. Granted, those of you who read this book and then go back to read the first three books will have some of the more shocking revelations spoiled way ahead of time. But you hopefully won't feel like you're missing something by skipping ahead.

So, that's a pitch for the book. It should go on sell in early October, and I'm really not sure if there will be print available, because I haven't seen any print sales from Lulu for any of the titles I've released. But it will have this very lovely cover, with artwork from Taneva Teodora, and with font work by Karen Koehler. (And her design is light years ahead of anything I tried to put together.) Here, take a look at the final result:

Oh, and the book was edited by Lisa Boucher. Good thing too, because this one had some really crazy mistakes. I kept hoping practice would mean less typos, but sadly that's never been true. 'S'why I respect the WebLit folks who can put out a clean draft each week. I have to finish a book and revise it 4-11 times before I can comfortably let the general public peek at the remaining mistakes.

Drifting, sorry. Anywho, Wendy Stoffel has been one of my most popular characters, and the original trilogy has gone over 1,000 sales. Yes, it took me a long, long time to get those sales, but since they started, they've never stopped. Wendy is always picking up new fans. For that I'm so very grateful.

That is why I'm also hopeful that past readers who tuned out the spinoffs for being to dark or too sexual will give Wendy another chance with a new misadventure. If you sign on for the first book, I think you're going to hang on for the full ride. (Or, I hope you do. I'm sincerely not trying to shake you off this ride, even if the book is scary in places.)

Still dragging that dead horse, Zoe?

This morning, I woke up groggy and cranky. Despite heading to the couch at a decent hour for me, I kept waking up from stomach pains or bizarre dreams that didn't make sense. My waking mind would recognize the impossibility of what I was seeing, and then poof, back awake.

I am in a slightly improved mood from when I got up, because I found someone on Twitter giving Peter the Wolf a solid endorsement as a very dark "real" story. This pleases me deeply. Yes, there are people out there who will get that my story is exploring an aspect of humanity that we don't like to look at. Even knowing that, they're still willing to see what the story is about. I ought to be grateful that some people can give me a chance like this.

And, I had a random thought last night: at least my vocal critics never said the book was badly written. Sure, they accused me of being evil and promoting molest, but they didn't say, "And it's horribly written too! Just look at all those mistakes! No wonder she had to self-publish this garbage."

But I suppose it still stings because that first attack was a non-sequitur. We were talking about how GL lobbies ignore BT allies, and he'd jumped in to help a gay friend out in telling me I was wrong. (Even though I'm not, as I think I've documented well recently.) When I wouldn't back down from my opinion, he attacked me first as abandoning my people by moving to live in Italy with my husband. Then when I warned him that he was going too far, he went even farther and said I was pro pedophile. Days later, he said I was a pedophile and a sexual predator. At no time had I called him any names. At no time had I accused him of anything accept ignoring a major civil rights problem. And instead of admit that he was ignoring it, he found an easy out to dismiss me. My opinion doesn't count, because I'm human scum.

And other people tell me, "Zoe, don't let them bring you down. It's just some guy online." No, it isn't just some guy. When everyone else was giving me shit for talking openly about my past, he was the one to write to me and tell me that I should open up to others and learn to trust people. He was the one who invited me to write a story for their imprint, and up until this fight, he was still telling me he wanted to publish it because it was that good. When he and the others at the imprint chose to cut me loose and not publish one of my novellas, I never bore him or the others a grudge for making a business decision based on my actions. (Edited to note: When they cut loose my novella, I asked about the short story, and he said they still wanted to hold it.)

Over the years, I did come to trust him, to see him as a real friend instead of just an online acquaintance. And that extra closeness translated to extra depth for the stab wounds he left behind.

I should move on. I should talk about the next Wendy Stoffel book, or about my gaming progress, or my garden. I should talk about something else besides the stupid fucking P words. (predator and pedophile)

But I can't stop asking, if this is someone who knew me for years and still can't make the effort to understand me, how can I talk to anyone? Why should I bother with being nice and explaining myself slowly if the end result is, people still hate me? I couldn't make him care. Not about the number of my peeps committing suicide, and not about me directly.

I don't understand how people can be so smug and fast in their moral judgments. I never attacked him. I never said, "You're just an evil white bastard." I wouldn't say that now, cause I know his history. I know he had it bad, and that he's got it bad now. I know all about his lot in life, and I wouldn't want to add shit to his karma pile, even after he's wounded me repeatedly. I thought he would return the same courtesy, but in the thick of an unrelated debate, he backed a fucking guilt-loaded dump truck over me, and he dumped all the hate he could into just a few words. I was a friend of almost four years, and he cut me loose in two tweets. This was the depth of his friendship after years, that rather than agree to disagree in a heated debate, it was easier to attack and debase me on an unrelated topic.

And, he was a friend I trusted. If that's what I can expect from friends, how can I trust any stranger not to wound me in the same way?

I've said before how I'm not hiding because I want to be good. I'm hiding because I'm tired of being hurt. I'm tired of people telling me that I can really trust them, and then the moment I start believing it, BAM, it's a lie. I end up nursing a wounded heart, or a bleeding ass, or a split lip. But in the end, the people who promise that they don't want to hurt me are the ones who inflict the deepest wounds. They're the ones who leave scars on my heart. So even if I hide in my room and avoid people in the physical world, somehow some of you still get past my defenses to deliver the worst attacks. And you still don't understand why I have trust issues.

I should move on and talk about something nicer, but all I can think about is, He said I could trust him.