Clancy Nacht's Blog, page 25

Feeling ranty

So, here's the thing. I don't want to rain on anyone's rah-rah, but I think the root of the problem with bullying and telling kids that it gets better is that it really only gets better if you don't ever want to get married and don't want to serve in the military.

The problem isn't the bullies. They're the symptom of the problem which is systematic governmental oppression of gays via denial of rights.

No gays in the military equals "gays aren't worthy to serve."

No marriage rights equals "gays aren't worthy to love."

And this comes from the top, guys. It comes from our political leaders. It comes from the jackholes in charge. How do a few Youtube videos, no matter how moving, compete with that?

You want gay kids to feel less ashamed? Give them a world in which they can be whoever they want. They can marry whomever they want. Give them a world where the government isn't the one telling them "you're not okay."

How you do this? Get involved. People wank about how little it means to retweet but you know what? It's something. It's action. Maybe you retweet a while, maybe you get mad. Maybe you start volunteering or giving money.

Even if all you ever do is post about it, someone sees it. Someone thinks about it. Sure, maybe it's not changing John McCain's mind, but maybe some of his constituents are watching. Maybe you make them think a little about it and maybe next time they go with the other guy.

The war is on the status quo and people? They don't like to shake things up so much. Sometimes you have to shake them. Usually more than once.

I can only give you where I tend to get involved, which is the Courage Campaign and the Human Rights Campaign. They are not the only worthy organizations, just the ones I'm currently giving to. Even if you're just on their mailing list to get their alerts for petitions, it's something.

If you are already,

Anyway, what crawled up my butt tonight was the Senate Republicans demanding (blackmailing) us–we the people of the United states–to preserve the tax cuts for their campaign contributors rather than vote on DADT.

They don't care that the military is fine with serving with gays. They don't care that those Bush tax cuts weren't funded to start with and add to the national debt more than the unemployment benefits they're also holding hostage so people can't pay their rent, let alone go shopping for Christmas (oh and don't get me started on how this is going to hurt the economy–our economy is based on people spending money and spending it locally, how many people on unemployment do you jet off to Italy for a shopping spree?)

(oh and if you think giving money to rich people makes them invest more? Tell me and I will explain supply side economics to you and why it doesn't work. It's a nice theory, but we've been trying it for THIRTY YEARS and it hasn't worked yet.)

So, yeah. I'm pretty peeved. I need a drink.

Fun with editing

Warning: explicit discussion of what to call lady bits.  And boy bits which are not so hygienic.

Lest you think editing is all fun and games and that every word isn't sweated over, have a look at our comment discussion between Jules, our Loose Id editor, and my cowriter Thursday,  about the usage and evolution of the term poon/poonis/poontang.

And yes, I'm the spoilsport who says pussy.

If you haven't bought your own copy of Black Gold, allow me to assist you with a link.

Black Gold is out in time for Thanksgiving groping

Now available through Loose Id, my book (coauthored with Thursday Euclid), Black Gold, a m/m story about star crossed rock stars, is available in multiple formats.

I'm so excited about this. It's not just a novel, it's a novel plus, meaning it's kind of long because, you know, writing sexy bits and describing costumes takes a lot of words. Also, we explored the themes of coming out in the media, romance in the spotlight, and the evolution and changing of the music industry.

As with most things I write, there is a bit of political undertone. It's a fantasy, of course, but I hope it makes people think.

And, you know, if you're going to be protesting the TSA this week by refusing scanning and getting patted down, this will not only give you something to pass the time, but maybe make the groping more fun.

Mmm strangers in latex gloves groping your junk. That's how everyone should start their Thanksgiving holidays.

Buy now. Not just for you, but for the security of America. Or something.

Cover image by P.L. Nunn

You and me. Pornography.

I don't know what it is, but lately every time I watch porn I end up obsessing about the stars unfortunate choices in tattoos. Maybe I'm just hardened (hah!) to the whole thing, but I find myself questioning every decision they made that culminated in them working in the sex industry with a tattoo of Spiderman on his ass. I mean, I like Spidey like nobody's business, but unless it's superhero porn where the webbing blasts out of his dick, I don't need to be thinking about Peter Parker.

On competing

So I'm seeing these awesome announcements from gifted writers who not only managed to put out a book, but had the courage to enter them into contests.

I have some of these contests in my bookmarks, but when push comes to shove, I chicken out. I don't know, maybe I just feel lucky to be published and don't want to push it.

I have some vague philosophical notions of finding art and competition a poor mix, but in my heart of hearts I know that mostly I lack the intestinal fortitude to put myself out there like that. So how do you? Is it confidence in your work, or just a 'what they heck, why not?' or a combination?

Or is it from a fiercely competitive spirit?

I admit, I lack the competitive spirit. I remember the day I lost it, too. I used to play basketball and really enjoyed it. It was exciting, there was a lot of movement and strategy. But then, one day, I was running up and down the court. Back and forth. Back and forth. And then I just planted on one side of the court and thought, "they'll be back. I'll just hang out here."

And that was the end of it. Once you decide that chasing the ball isn't actually fun and that when everyone returns from running up and down the court, they'll be more tired than you are, the game is over. Because after that, you think, "What is it, a ball? I don't care about that ball. It's not even a particularly attractive ball, and you don't get to keep it."

Now, replace that ball with the Marc Jacobs handbag I've been eying and you'll see some competitive spirit. You know, until the bag goes on sale and I can afford it. Plus, bags are hard to dribble.

I'm off on a tangent. And I kind of want to go shopping.

Anyway, there is a competition I'm wanting to enter and I'm trying to screw up the courage to do it. Any words of advice would be appreciated.

Or a handbag. I'd like a handbag.

Black Gold Book Cover

It's here, it's finally here! Here is the book cover for my  novel, co-written with Thursday Euclid, "Black Gold." It's coming out on Loose Id November 23rd. Gorgeous art by P.L. Nunn.

Billy "Goldie" Goldean is the biggest pop star in the world and he's harboring a terrible, career-killing secret: he's gay. Even with song titles such as "Astral Glider" and "Winking Brown Eye," few question Goldie's squeaky clean teen heartthrob status. That is, until Jethro "Jett" Black, an infamous womanizer and underground punk icon, names him in the pages of Rolling Stone magazine as the celebrity he'd most like to fuck.

After they hook up at an industry party, Goldie's management dumps him, Jett's exes come back to haunt them, and even Goldie's mother makes a public plea for him to come to his senses. Can Goldie trust his untamed new lover, or will the pressures of fame tear them apart?

Blog hop

Join us for Trail Us Teasers.

Readers - do you want to meet some authors you've never read before? Hop onto the blog hop, stop at each blog and leave comment.

Authors - If you write paranormal, join our blog hop and meet new friends!

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Follow as many authors as you like. Just follow the Linky list and hop from blog to blog. The idea is to find some new to you authors and new  reading material. Leave us a comment as you hop from blog to blog! We'd  love to hear with you!

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Follow the  Trail Us Teasers host, Keta Diablo, along with the wonderfully talented authors on the list. Enter your name and blog url into the Linky tool.
Grab  our super cute button and place it in a post. (THIS IS IMPORTANT!) If  you don't create a post for the hop, your readers won't have a place to  comment, and the hop will stop with you. You have 150 characters. Put the name of your blog, a sentence from one of your books, etc. So create a post, paste in the  Linky code and start hopping!
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Nitty Gritty Down and Dirty – Romance and Erotica Reviews
Brita Addams – Author of Erotic Historical Romance With a Touch of Kink
Keta's Keep – Author of Erotic Romance
Tina Ordone – Author of Sensual Historical Romance That Makes You Tingle
Vampyre Kisses By Elizabeth J Kolodziej. Mix together witches, vampires, werewolves, the gods and you have Vampyre Kisses!
Romance With SASS: Suspense, Angst, Seductive Sizzle
Gianna Simone: The Kinky Side of Love
Emma Lai. . . Worlds of Adventure. . . Souls of Desire.
Great idea! Thanks for the invite! I'm looking forward to reading fellow blog-hopper blogs.
Tonya's Ramblings: Author Octoberfest




A Moment With Mystee
KMN Books Blogspot: Author, Karen Michelle Nutt Time Travel and Otherworldly Romance
The Decadent Side of Sin ~Mahalia Levey
Teresa D'Amario Paranormal Romance
Ciara Dallas: Bedtime Stories Never Felt So Good
An Open Book
Rebecca J. Vickery, Author and Indie-Publisher – Romance with a Twist – writing romance with a twist of the paranormal, mystery, or adventure. Publishing Distinctive stories of the American West, Traditional Romance, General Fiction, Mystery, Inspirational, and Romantic Anthologies.
Marie Beau Wolf!Blog tour with giveaways!
Saige Advice & Other Spices
Clancy Nacht: Pretty boys, dirty words, steamy m/m fiction

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Here is the house

They say time heals all wounds. That isn't true. It just makes you lose sight of the scars. Every so often, missing my father hits me so hard that it's all I can do to keep from coming completely unglued. And the thing is, when you see it coming you can mentally prepare for it. Missing someone can hit you sideways and suddenly the wound seems fresh.

This is great when I'm channeling it for writing purposes. It's highly inconvenient when I'm at my day job trying not to blubber.

So how did I cause myself such great angst? Listening to Depeche Mode.

Yeah, I know, that's what DM is for. I was goth, I have the t-shirt. I knew what I was getting into. But the thing is, it isn't the band or the lyrics. It's me as a teenager listening to "Black Celebration" and "Violator" until the tape wore thin, ignoring my parents, the alcohol, the yelling. Me losing myself in incense and candles and generally checking out.

And my dad complaining about my loud music, about me not paying attention, about me not caring about anything that mattered. The yelling, the general contentiousness of teenage existence and the pain of a dad who didn't have a "little girl" anymore.

Yeah, I know. That's hard for someone to miss, right? Stick with me.

So I hit college and I've secured as many scholarships as I can, saved what I could because I know I'm paying for this myself. I have my own car (mini truck, flannel, yeah, you get the picture of where college was going) and I've carefully calculated how much a month I'll have to make to move out.

And I do. I am so out of there it's not even funny.

Christmas comes and I'm asking my parents what they'd like and my dad says, "I'd really like whatever album that 'World in My Eyes' song was on."

It's funny because surely he'd heard that song from the hallway a million zillion times but for whatever reason, I was shocked he knew it. And it was probably the first moment since puberty I thought maybe, just maybe, my parents heard me. It was stupidly revelatory at the time. But that's what college is for, I guess. The point of the working. So you can see your parents weren't the assholes you thought they were.

Okay, they kinda were, but you kinda were, too.

Anyway, it hit me with surprising force that he was gone. And now, instead of doofy tapes, or even doofy mp3s in portable listening machines the size of my thumb, I'm listening straight from the cloud on Grooveshark. Life moves fast.

I was a bully

I was a teenage bully.

Oh no, not the obvious way. I wasn't one of the mean girls on the cheer leading squad or one of the popular girls trying to maintain her status as HBIC. If anything, I was the weird chick.

But I could, and damn well did lay the smack down. I could rationalize that often it was in response to someone trying to bully me, or bully my collective of weird people friends. You could say I was the antithesis of the gay bashers, defending my friends or assorted people I felt were being picked on.

I didn't report them to teachers. I didn't ask them nicely to stop, to behave, to think about their behavior. Oh no. I went for the jugular. Mean girl was tying her sweater around her waist, obviously insecure about her ass. Guess where teen me went with a retort?

Now, some might call that justice, and at the time, that's certainly how I felt. If I don't think about it too deeply, I could still rationalize my behavior that way. But it's not. It's not right. It's not any better or any fairer.

And to be honest, it wasn't always in response to me or others being bullied. Sometimes I just thought I was funny. Everyone around me was laughing, so it's a joke, right? No. It's not. It's really, really not. Sure, some of those people drove the BMWs and looked down on me with my second-hand Mazda, but that didn't and doesn't mean that their lives didn't have their own complications. They felt the same hurt I or my friends did from comments that came out of my mouth before filtering through my head, or more importantly, my heart.

The more I see extreme homophobes coming out of the closet, the more it gives me pause when I reflect upon my high school days. Was I really helping anyone by lashing out? Maybe in some ways. Certainly no one bothered me more than once or twice.

Then there are those other times. When I felt someone was flirting with my love interest. When I was cranky and needed a verbal punching bag. When I thought that I was funny. When I was jealous. When I felt insecure.

Bullies aren't always the biggest guy on the playground. They aren't even bullies all the time. Sometimes it's the little, more personal slights that cut the deepest. That's where I find my guilt.

And, that's where I still struggle. I try not to judge baby Clancy too harshly. She was young and didn't know better. She didn't have much perspective. Yes, I'm referring to my younger self in the third person. She seems strange to me in a lot of ways, but she had a lot going on. She was almost a statistic herself.

Now I'm in a safer place, an easier place. It gets better, yeah. But not without a lot of struggle, a lot of work, a lot of trial and error (mostly error) and sometimes it doesn't feel any better at all. What's important is finding ways to cope, finding tools to live with yourself and the rest of the world. I relied on being a bit of a bully. I still do. I hate that about myself, but I don't kid myself that it isn't there.

The important thing now is to take care with other people, even when they're deeply deserving of a cockslap. You don't have to agree, but you don't have to engage. I try to practice what I preach. I fail at that a lot, too.

I think we all look at the recent suicides and wish we could talk to them, that there would be some way to stop the trajectory of their lives. There isn't a way to do that. But what you can try to do is be better. Be open. Not everyone has the money to give, or the time to volunteer, but everyone can be mindful of the waves of negativity that they originate or proliferate.

You don't have to be perfect. I'm the last person who could ask or expect that. But try. At least try. If it even stops one negative interaction, that's a victory.

New Release: Smooth: Erotic Stories for Women

I have a new m/f short story in Cleis Press's "Smooth: Erotic Stories for Women" called "Stripped."

"The caress of skin against skin, the warmth of another-s touch, relishing the sight that few others get to see – these are the reasons that disrobing before sex can be so gratifying. The stories in Smooth, collected by award-winning erotic editor Rachel Kramer Bussel, capture the heat of being stripped bare, of flaunting your body, and of reveling in pure sensuality. Read along as women get tattooed, become -the sushi girl- at a restaurant, strip on the subway, go commando, host tea parties, enjoy sploshing and much more. Featuring stories by Donna George Storey, Heidi Champa, Angela Caperton, Charlotte Stein, Louisa Harte, Jacqueline Applebee, Susan St. Aubin, Clancy Nacht, and more, these adventurous characters have more to reveal than just being naked."