Vaughn R. Demont's Blog, page 6

Two Conversations

I might’ve mentioned before that I’m a professor, no matter how little I’m paid, so I do have students, class discussion, all that. Most discussion is through writing prompts and all of us having a laugh at the sillier and clever efforts, but this is the first semester I’ve been given a lit course, no matter how introductory, so it’s given me the chance to actually encourage the sort of class-long discussions every professor hopes to see in their career. The opening of the course dealt largely with stories, poems, and plays examining the various issues and conflicts faced by women and men, some traumatic, others mundane, all enlightening, and near the end, there are a number of poems that examine LGBT issues as well as gender issues.

I didn’t assign any of them, rather I allowed the class to pick 6 poems from a long list to write reactions to in their journals for discussion, and a few students did go with the LGBT poems. “Crazy Courage” by Alma Luz Villanueva, which examines gender identity, was the one that some in the class loved, but it eventually brought out the reminder that I’m in a rather red part of NY when several students took the time to make it all about gay marriage, and why they didn’t understand why it was such a big deal to the gay community. “Gay agenda” was even dropped, and I did my best to not cringe, and make a smartassed retort that a thousand memes already have about what the “gay agenda” truly is.

“We’ll just say I disagree with you on that point. I’m not going to argue it with you, because right now we’re having two completely different conversations at the same time, so we’ll just wrap up and move onto the next poem.”

William Blake’s “The Garden of Love” proved to be much less controversial.

And yeah, I did want to really put out there what I felt, but I can’t, because let’s face it, fear is still a very real part of the daily gay experience. But, we were having two different conversations, and the odd thing was that I wasn’t angry at the student, because hey, it’s their opinion, and I’ve kind of run into this before.

The student’s conversation was that they simply don’t understand why gay people want to get married, and have it called a marriage, when there are other options. The student was straight, male, and likely never had to even consider why it would be an issue. It’s just not part of the sum of their life experience, they’re largely innocent to what it’s really like to be gay in the US, even with all the advances. To that student, we’re just fighting over a simple word.

My conversation was a little different.

My conversation was about how I refuse to be “less than”. And by “less than”, I mean “less than human.”

I’m not going to be angry at that student, because how do you be angry at someone who honestly has no idea what it’s like? How can you fault them for failing to possess skills that they will never have to possess?

Here’s a short sampling of just a few skills I’ve utilized over the past week:

1. My fiance and I have perfected the unspoken communication to stop holding hands in a nonchalant fashion, separate to at least 3 feet apart, and not make eye contact with anyone approaching, yet still smile in a genial fashion to seem nonthreatening.

2. My collection of gender-neutral pronouns that I use to describe the man I love has quadrupled since I started teaching here, while I’m discussing football, automobiles, and heavy metal with enough knowledge to be considered in the know of generally heterosexual male subjects. I’ve always been a fan of the Seahawks, but I’ve been clinging to that fandom like a talisman to ward off the muttered “faggot” comments.

3. My fiance and I can go to a restaurant 30 minutes after I’ve proposed, and act as if it’s a simple dinner between two good friends.

4. I can keep a countdown going in my head, informing me of how many days are remaining until I can feel comfortable enough to let it slip around my students that I’m engaged to a man. That countdown is to the last day of withdrawing from the course without financial penalty, because I lost five students in one week when I let it slip during the last three days of add/drop.

5. I can recall, at will, a list of people who know, people who don’t, and people who can’t, and can edit, revise, delete, and add to my conversation topics and talking points when talking to them to keep people in the dark a little longer until I can exit the conversation with a sigh of relief.

6. Before I go anywhere I know various people are going to be at, I can remember which version of me I have to be and apply the necessary filters in less than ten minutes. Personal best is four minutes, but I had a soundtrack to help.

7. I can, in less than an hour, successfully remind myself with adequate confidence that I am still, in fact, a human being and am worthy of being treated like one. Personal best is thirty-nine minutes, but that’s largely thanks to Odesza’s Summer’s Gone.

Like I said, two conversations. Two sets of skills. I have to appreciate the fact that we spent time on William Blake, as he had a number of poems exploring Innocence vs. Experience, poems that examined the same issue from both sides, whether it was God, faith, love, hope, or life itself.

Two conversations.

And sometimes never the twain shall meet.

Coastal Magic Con Schedule

So I might’ve mentioned on my Twitter and the Facebook page that I’ll be attending Coastal Magic Con, and who knows? I might even see some of the Damn Coyotes at the con. :) If you’re attending, here’s a schedule of the events that I’m attending, or will be a part of:

Friday, February 6th:
9am: All Creatures Great And Small – Vamps & Werewolves seem to top the list of UF/PNR creatures, but they are not the ONLY paranormals to steal our hearts! A chat about dragons, fae, witches, and more. – Alivia Anders, Vaughn R Demont, Jeffe Kennedy, Stephanie Julian, Rane Sjodin, Tigris Eden, Elisabeth Naughton

8:30pm – 11:00pm – Cinema Craptastique – “The Legend of Hercules” – Damon Suede, Molly Harper, Vaughn R Demont, Angie Fox, Kiernan Kelly, Jess Haines, Jeffe Kennedy, Jordan K Rose, Tigris Eden – and more!!

Saturday, February 7th:
9am: Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The End Of The World – Comedy in UF/PNR – Vaughn R Demont, Molly Harper, Angie Fox, Julie Kenner, Lee Roland

10:15am: Been There / Done That – Stories that bust stereotypes in gay urban fantasy and paranormal romance. – Vaughn R Demont, Damon Suede, Tere Michaels, Poppy Dennison, K C Burn.

12:30pm – 2:00pm – Lunch with an Author  (Still have seats open for this)

2:15pm – 3:15pm (Discussion Panels)

Man Up! – Panel of male UF/PNR authors discuss how they approach storytelling. Is there any difference from their female counterparts? – Eric R Asher, Vaughn R Demont, Elliott James, Christopher Rice


5:00pm – 7:30pm – Public Book Sale / Signing 

I’ll also, hopefully have some download cards to pass out. Hope to see some of the Damn Coyotes down in Daytona!

For the Family

To the trans, queer, intersexed, and genderfluid people I know, and also the ones I don’t:

I’ll start this simply. You’re right. I have absolutely no idea what it’s like. I’ve never felt unsure about my gender, or trapped between them, or felt like one one day and another the next, or lived my life feeling that I was born in the wrong skin, or any of the other feelings about gender that live across the cis line. I’m in the group that raises hackles, the white cis male, so I’m not going to do the idiot thing and imagine I can give you advice on what and what not to do. You have each other for that, so I’m not going to intrude, because that’s what it would be. An intrusion.

Being gay doesn’t grant me any sort of carte blanche or special access, I’m aware of that. There’s Gs and Ls and Bs and Ps and Os and probably a few other ones I haven’t learned about yet, but it’s not the T or the I or the Q, and that’s probably the hardest thing to learn. I came out before gay marriage started making its sweep across the country, when Vermont’s civil unions were a huge deal, and the community was just GL and still working on accepting the fact that Bs existed. It’s not an excuse, definitely, but what it evokes in me is the word that was bandied about constantly in the community.

Family.

That was what you called someone else who was gay or lesbian or bi, no matter who they were, because no matter their life experience, you had something in common with them, something you could commiserate over and know that you weren’t alone. It’s likely what you have in your community, and offer to anyone who finds themselves a part of it. There’s always that unspoken line between the GLB and the TIQ, sometimes boiled down to the oversimplified, “who you fuck vs. who you are”, but it’s not like that. It’s all about who you are, no matter the letter. So, you’re still family.

And like I said, I have no idea what it’s like to feel I’m a different gender, or be unsure of it, or feel I’m both or neither, so I won’t speak to that experience. I don’t have the right to, so I won’t insult your experience by trying. But we’re still family, and even though you’re going through something different than I did, we might have some things in common to commiserate about.

My dad walked out when I was eight, left us for an older woman, my sister and I have been dealing with that in our own ways ever since. He made it clear in the divorce he didn’t want custody, and at first he didn’t even want visitation. We ended up having to move, lose all of our friends, and grow up in a single parent family with a fixed income. Suffice to say, it sucked. If a parent walked out on you and felt you weren’t worth their time, I can commiserate.

School was my own particular brand of hell, like it is for most people. Getting online meant calling BBSs, nothing more, so there was no Dan Savage to tell me to stick it out because it was going to get better. I wasn’t gay then, just a nerd, and on the last day of 7th grade I was walking home, found myself surrounded by six older boys, and they promptly began to beat the shit out of me. They never said anything, I was just there, alone, and I didn’t fight back because I’d been raised to believe that fighting was never the answer, to just walk away. I blacked out on the side of the road and came to a minute later. They were gone, and cars had been driving by from the nearby high school during that period. No one stopped. I limped home bruised and bloody, and spent 8th grade with the chief bully of the group seated right behind me in homeroom. It took all year to summon up the courage to simply ask why he’d beaten me up. His response was, “I dunno. You were there.” If you ever felt you could be left on the side of the road, a victim of random violence, your chest feeling like God reached down and pinched it so you couldn’t take a deep breath without it hurting, I can commiserate.

High school wasn’t much better. I was writing, sure, but it was the kind of cliché-ridden writing you do in high school that I’d cringe to look at now, but it was helping me through a lot. I was in full-on sullen teenager mode, as well as clinically depressed, my studies were doing shitty, so my mom demanded a meeting with all of my teachers to find out what was going on. I had an inkling that I was gay, but I was still in the denial part of it. I had the slightest crush on one of my friends, a friend that a girl would come to me, and told me had attacked her. She was the first person I came out to, because she had trusted me with something like that, so I felt I needed to show her the same amount of trust. I was then promptly terrified that everyone would find out and my life would get even rougher than it was. So, the night before the meeting with my teachers, I went down to the kitchen at two in the morning and took out a kitchen knife, trying to force myself to cut up my wrists and “do it the correct way”, and for a moment, I felt an incredible freedom, because suddenly I didn’t have to give a shit about anything that was stressing me, because I was going to be dead. My sister had left a book on the counter, Anne Rice’s Queen of the Damned, and I figured since I didn’t have anything else to worry about, I could start reading it, and after it was done, I’d kill myself. It wasn’t poetic, sure, but I’d lost the ability to give a fuck at that point. So I read, and it’s not a fantastic book, it’s not a life-changer, it’s just plot sprinkled with a lot of erotic prose, but I read it. I went to school, kept reading, ignored my classes and teachers, kept reading, and eventually I passed the low point. I was still deeply depressed, but I was past the “end it all” point. It was the first time I’d hit that valley, it certainly wasn’t the last. If you ever dealt with depression and it’s lower points, I can commiserate.

College was at first okay, but it was a lot of required general education courses, and people usually don’t figure their life path in any 101 class. I was studying to be a writer fully knowing it would never make me any money, but I wanted to do it anyway, and I took some computer science because programming seemed like solving elaborate puzzles for a grade. After my junior year, I was at home, talking to someone online when my mom called my name and followed it with, “It’s your father!” It was the tone that gave it away. My dad had always had heart problems, he was a smoker, didn’t eat all that good, and exercise was getting out on the golf course down in North Carolina, which at the time was very deadbeat-dad friendly. I didn’t cry when I found out. We piled into the car and drove down for the funeral, my sister read The Green Mile out loud to kill time. Didn’t cry then, either. Mostly, what went through my mind was the last time I’d seen him. I was out to the family by that time, save him, as my mom had convinced me that with his heart, telling him I was gay could kill him. My dad had tried patching things up by that point. My sister welcomed him with open arms, I was pissed off and wanted nothing to do with him. He took me to the mall to see The Thomas Crown Affair and we drove back home afterward. On the drive we took an on-ramp that was a steep curve that he was taking about 20mph faster than he should’ve, and one thought went through my head: I can tell him I’m gay, right now, he’ll lose control of the car, and probably kill us both. I didn’t tell him, unless telling the vacant air and the internet after his death counts. I didn’t cry at his funeral. I still haven’t cried for him. I probably never will. If you lost a parent before you could tell them the truth about yourself, and you still wrestle with whether or not it was a good idea to keep quiet about it, I can commiserate.

I withdrew from college shortly afterward. It’d be a three year hiatus, but I felt done at the time. I went through a string of boyfriends at the time that, looking back with proper distance, I can see was eventually just working out my issues with my dad. After one particularly bad break-up, I fell hard for a guy I met in Virginia, who moved up to NY to live with me, and it all went downhill from there. I wasn’t blameless, definitely, but once the other guy starts beating you, degrading you, causing you to learn how to remain perfectly still so he’ll think you’re asleep, how to go without food for days, hold your bladder for four hours longer than you should, all in service to not angering one person you still think you love despite the fact that he hits you… God, there are things I STILL do despite that he’s been out of my life for years now. And no one even knew until the day he decided he was finished, and moved out, leaving me alone to hold the financial bag while I huddled in my room, clutching a cheap claw hammer, my arms covered in bruises when my mom finally came to the apartment to see how everything was going. WASP family, WASP upbringing, so we just don’t talk about it anymore, but if you’ve ever survived an abusive relationship, I can commiserate.

One year after he left, I was back in school, going part time, dealing with what had happened probably in bad ways. It fucks with your head, self-esteem, identity, too many things to count, and having already been depressed didn’t help, but I had enough experience with it to know that all I had to do was get through the low points and I wouldn’t want to kill myself, and I could make it to the next day out of the hope that maybe it could get better. So I might’ve mentioned the whole “holding your bladder” thing. Turns out that can cause kidney stones. I don’t recommend them. They fucking hurt no matter your gender identity, take my word for it, but I was prescribed Vicodin to deal with the pain, and I hardly ever took them, so I had a near full bottle left after the stone was passed. And then I hit a low point. I was still up on campus, and my mind kept focusing on the bus schedule so I could go home, and empty the bottle, and then that would be it.

So instead I went to the health center, which had a counselor on staff, and I told them I needed to talk to someone because I was having suicidal thoughts and I wanted to ride it out so I didn’t do anything stupid. I luckily only had to wait 5 minutes, and saw a counselor, and proceeded to tell him pretty much everything I’ve told you all, along with the fact that I knew all I had to do was ride it out, and I’d be okay. After an hour, the low point had passed, the tone of the conversation had changed, I asked him if he could contact my professors to let them know I’d either miss class or be late, and then he asked me more questions about my ex. I mentioned I hadn’t seen him in a year, but one of his friends had contacted me online out of the blue, and being a little paranoid, I told him the truth about what his friend had done to me, and then lied to him. The lie? I told him that my uncle had lent me his rifle to defend myself should my ex ever come back, an Enfield 303, because my uncle had mentioned having one once. That was when I learned the rule: never ever ever ever ever EVER say “gun” around a counselor. It’s like saying “bomb” at the airport. Within seconds he excused himself from the room “to contact my professors”, and ten minutes later he returned with campus security. I was handcuffed and escorted out of the health center in front of other students, and put in the back of a police car. They didn’t tell me what I’d done or where we were going until they were pulling into the county’s mental health center. I was scared, humiliated, and terrified to have any sort of emotional reaction because I didn’t know whether to scream in fear or anger. I felt betrayed, especially when I was taken to the upstairs part of the facility to be “given a physical” when I was actually being put in lockdown for a mandatory 3-day suicide watch. I was placed in a semi-private room with a man who was an alcoholic who hated fags, and was in there for beating his wife and threatening to kill himself if she left, but, because I didn’t show any emotion during my “intake interview” (Apparently it’s called “flat affect”), I was the one they were worried about. It was terrible, horrible, humiliating, scary, and I’d never felt so betrayed in my life. By the third day I practically wanted to kill myself purely out of spite. When they let me go on the third day I don’t think I’ve ever run so far or so fast, never wanting to even see the street that the center was on. For the following years I completely believed that if I hit a low point ever again the last thing I should ever do is ask for help. I didn’t get past that until maybe 2 years ago. If you’ve ever dealt with a part of the system you felt hit you with a broad brush instead of actually listening to you, I can commiserate.

So… yeah. You’re right, I have no idea what it’s like to be unsure about my gender, and all the fucked up stuff society brings to bear against those who do. But you might’ve gone through some other stuff too, maybe big things, like not wanting to have sex with your boyfriend but being too afraid to tell him no, or having a one-time thing with a guy and finding he put $20 in your pocket afterward and never having felt so worthless, or maybe little things like trying to reconcile your faith with who you are,or going to some dinner with your future in-laws where half of them know the truth and half of them don’t and you get to dance on the high-wire in-between for five hours, or wondering at what point when you’re at work that you can open up to your boss about what you are. I can commiserate.

Or, if you’d rather, we can talk about nothing to make the day a little lighter.

After all, that’s what family’s for.

State of the Vaughn: 2014

Yep, it’s one of those “year in review” posts, but unfortunately I don’t have any funny or cute pictures, but this is where I get a little personal, so comments will be off for this, unfortunately, so here we go.

The Writing

Breaking Ties was finished up this year, edited, and prepped for publication in April of 2015, and it had so many stops and starts that I can’t believe that I finished it. Still, 2014 is the year where the Damned Coyotes were finally named, I got reviewed by Romantic Times, and got invited to Coastal Magic as a featured author, so while the output for my pro writing was slower than I’d have liked, I took steps this year largely thanks to my readers and fans, thank you.

2014 is also the year I got back into writing commissions, and including commission writing, my total output for 2014 is 312, 992 words, and I haven’t written that much since grad school when my MFA was depending on writing as much as I could, and turning out a version of Lightning Rod that could best be described as a Frankensteinian mess. I’ve written some stuff this year that’s made me outright cringe at my keyboard, but it was for a good cause, namely getting me to the con on the barest shoestring I could afford, but I’ll be there, and I’m really looking forward to it.

 

The Diet

Over the summer I stepped on the scale, looked at the number and how close it was to another number, and decided, “I need to lose weight.” I tried doing some crunches and it didn’t go well, then I found a workout DVD and found that was a lot easier to get through. I started a regimen, cut my calories, and I’ve lost 40 pounds in total since I started, largely running on the minor victories, like how I needed to get a belt because my pants wouldn’t stay up if I moved faster than a brisk walk, then my pants from grad school fit, and now THEY need the belt. I feel better, have more energy, and I’m not spending as much on food, which is good considering my resolution for 2015.

 

The Day Job

2014 is where I finished my 2nd and 3rd semesters as an adjunct professor of English, primarily doing composition courses, and I had some great students and some total nightmares, but it’s really the year where I came aware of just how shitty being an adjunct can be. Don’t get me wrong, I love teaching, I wouldn’t put 150 miles on my car every day commuting if I didn’t, but the pay, let’s face it, sucks. Imagine working a full time job that requires a master’s degree, has zero benefits, and pays less than a server at McDonald’s. That’s the reality not only for me, but for adjuncts all over the country, and the only reason I’m speaking out about it here is because this is the only place I can talk about it.

My pen name isn’t known to my colleagues, only the head of the department who has a copy of my C.V., mostly because it’s a rural area and I don’t want it getting out that I write fiction with gay protagonists. It’s bad enough that I have to wait until halfway through the semester to refer to my boyfriend as someone other than my “friend” because it could result, and has resulted, in someone dropping my class. Yep, this happens even in New York, but you learn to deal with it, keep your head down and your mouth shut, because adjuncts are, by basis, on thin ice. You don’t rock the boat, otherwise you might lose the minimum number of classes you need to make rent, and that’s without worrying about the breaks between semester where the income dries up to purely royalties and commissions.

2014 is where I lost some self-respect too, in regards to my job, because when you’re an adjunct, the only thing on your mind career-wise is making the jump out of Adjunct Hell, and you can only do that when someone higher up leaves, transfers, or retires. So when a colleague disclosed to me that they had just received some troubling news, I did, to my credit, feel bad for them first, but on the way back to the adjunct office, the possible opportunity pulsed in the back of my brain, that a position might open in the next year. I didn’t act on the information, but I felt like a fuck because I considered it, and for considering it, I’m deeply sorry. Here’s hoping I can hold onto that in 2015.

 

The Car

I finally paid off my car this year, it’s officially mine, insured, in my name, all that, so that’s of course when it decided to need a new wheel bearing, new brakes on all 4 tires, and all of its plugs changed. The latter I learned how to do myself, but I swear it’s like the car knew I was trying to save for something, because every time I made headway, something broke down.  I’m saving up again, so one of the wheels is making a knocking sound, because of course it is.

 

The Relationship

Happier notes here. The BF and I hit 2 years in October, and this year I met his family over the summer, and spent Thanksgiving with them. It’s different than the sort of family time that I’m used to, in that it’s more open, the jokes a little more risque, pastimes more geeky, but it’s also more welcoming. It’s not my family wasn’t welcoming, but we put on more of a show of it, whereas my BF’s family just welcomes you in, and you’re, well, there. There aren’t really any roles to play, though at Thanksgiving I had to play the “friend” role, which I’ve got practice with from previous relationships. I’ve covered the plans for February in a previous post, but it’s still on, and 2014 is the year we really pushed our communication forward, talked about serious subjects rationally, made plans and set outlines. It’s the year where talking about the future became more than just a fun fantasy exercise, and actually got into the nitty-gritty of it all, and while the romance of the situation wasn’t pulsating in the background, the reality of the planning wasn’t scary or intimidating.

It’s been an issue for me in past relationships, primarily concerning money, and what I wanted to be sure of was when we took the big steps, I could afford to stand alone should everything go to hell, and that’s the thing we’re working on: me remembering that we’re in this together, and we’re going to do this together, so I don’t have to try to handle it all myself.  Still though, we’re planning contingencies for the worst together, because we’re both past the point of whimsy and naivete. We’re a team, we compliment each other well, because let’s face it, I need his optimism every now and then just like he occasionally needs a reminder to consider the long-term. I can imagine going forward without him, but I don’t want to. That’s one of the many reasons I’m going to ask him to marry me, along with the love thing, because you have to have that in there somewhere.

 

The Resolution

And that brings me to the last bit of it, what I resolve to do in 2015: Spend New Year’s Eve 2015 with my fiancee in our own place. The BF and I are moving in together formally, hopefully in March, April at the latest, and we’ve worked out a budget for an apartment, utilities, food, fuel, all that, the bitch is the moving expenses. First month we’ll have covered, last month and security deposits are pushing the average initial cost to move in well over… Well, like I said, been writing a lot of commissions to stem the tide, and still have enough left over to get through the summer should the worst case scenario happen and the BF is unable to find work. Him and I have been pushing to move in, and the original move-in date was September 2014. It’s been pushed and pushed and pushed, and we decided, “No more.” The monthly budget is figured out for my current income, it’s just that first step, you know?

Luckily, the delays have increased his stockpile, while mine has taken too many hits from the car, insurance, fees, and getting the con paid for.

So I’m going to update my progress as I go, and hell, if you want to kick a couple bucks I’m not going to say no.

Vaughn’s Move Out of the Slum Fund

Progress: $470/$1250

Donations will lead to a .pdf copy of The Last Paladin

 

So, that was 2014 for me, here’s hoping I can keep the momentum going in 2015, and have a draft of Wayward Son finished by the end of November.

Happy New Year!

To My Hopefully Future Daughter

K.T.,

Right now there’s only the idea of you, but I first decided that I wanted you in my life before I even met your Papa. It was in grad school, I was at the library on a cold night, chilly and miserable and listening to MP3s when Weezer’s “My Name is Jonas” came on and it hit me that I wanted to be a father. I really wish I could describe something beautiful and poetic about the moment, imply that time just seemed to stop, and I did know it was an important moment otherwise I wouldn’t remember how rough and scratchy the damned couches were and that the wooden armrest was hard and unpadded and felt like it was cutting all circulation to my kidney. But know I’ve been chasing the idea of you since then, and you’ve always been tumbling around here and there, always a consideration, because if you ever feel like going through your Dad’s old blog entries for whatever reason you’ll read this and know you were wanted.  Hell, I even had your name picked out that night, a strong name that would grow with you as you grew up, because I want you to be strong. Life’s going to throw a fair bit of shit at you, and a person should be able to stand up afterward and still do the right thing. Anything else I tell you is going to sound obvious, but it’s hard-won advice that took a while to really sink in with me.

There’s a good chance I don’t talk about my father much, but if you read my books, you’ll likely notice the common trend of absentee fathers, so you probably were able to fill in some of the blanks on your own. Long story short, he walked out, skipped out on child support, and didn’t try to make amends until the year he died. I didn’t cry at his funeral, it was a while before I could cry about anything, really. I dated some guys before I met your Papa that were… Well, I dated liars, manipulators, and guys with one foot out the door. So yeah, I pretty much dated my Dad. It’s a common thing, I’ve found, so I can only pray I don’t screw you up too badly that it takes you a decade or so of soul-searching to find someone decent and good.

And yeah, that’s about how long it took me.

I’ve never been a spiritual person, I must admit, but I did have one spiritual experience where I received a bit of advice. There’s a good chance it was just my subconscious finally being blunt with me, or maybe something otherworldly decided to do me a solid, but the story is simple: I was working a crappy temp job, typing rejection forms for an insurance  company in the wake of a break-up, and while on a short break to head to the men’s room, I heard a voice say, “What’s wrong?” Without thinking, I replied, “I’m not happy.” The voice didn’t miss a beat, scoffed, and said, “You wanna be happy? Stop dating losers who treat you like shit.”

I know, obvious, right?

I’m really wishing I’d followed the advice considering who the next guy was.

Took me a few years to really let that little gem sink in, luckily before I met your Papa.  I should probably tell you that a relationship is not supposed to be the measuring stick for how fulfilled you are in life, but by the time you read this and really get what I’m writing here, you’ll likely have already figured that out. If not, well, don’t center your life on a relationship. Don’t strangle yourself either, another writer told me that once, since we’re on the subject of obvious advice that never seems to sink in. Have a plan and be ready to adapt, that’s probably a good one too.

Oh yeah, and talk.

For the love of God, Buddha, and as your Uncle Dave will tell you, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, talk. Communicate. And I can’t tell you exactly to what degree because the frustrating part is that there’s going to be a level you’re willing to talk, and a level they’re willing to talk, and sometimes never the twain shall meet. Talk anyway, it makes things easier and reminds you you’re on a team.  And it’ll take you a while to figure that out too, and for a while you’ll think you’ve got it figured out and then you’ve got to retool and tweak and adapt it all over again. If you love them, it’ll be worth it.

I’m telling you this because it’s all been going through my mind, everything I’ve learned, everything I’ve gone through, as I sit here, near the closing of 2014, not knowing what 2015’s going to bring but saying “Fuck it, I’m making plans anyway.” Two months from now I’m proposing to your Papa, even if most of the suspense is gone because we talked about it so much we ended up “pre-engaged” because we both planned to ask and both found out we were going to say yes. Just a matter of making it official, really, but all that obvious advice I just dispensed to you has been going through my head as if to say, “This is why you made it here, this is why you made it this far, this is why the next step isn’t some crazy whim of your 20s.”

I’m asking him at the first convention I’ve ever been invited to, but I’m not thinking about my career. I’m thinking that weekend in February will be about how I took that major step toward being with him, and him with me. It’ll be how it won’t just be me taking a step closer to you, it’ll be him taking that step as well, because I wanted him to be part of that decision. You’re going to have two dads, aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, dozens of people who’ll love you, and want you to be part of their lives.

Just like we’ll be part of yours.

Apologies in advance for that, there’s a fair share of crazy on both sides.

Love you, K.T.

Dad

Justifying My English Degree: The Baby Steps of Always Sometimes Monsters

The Game: Always Sometimes Monsters

Publisher: Vagabond Dog

Genre: Life-RPG

The Trailer:

The Critique: I’ve just been kicked out of my apartment, my boyfriend left me a year ago for reasons I don’t know yet, I’m out of money, low on food, my best friend is teetering on the edge of starting heroin use again, and the last mail I receive before my landlord changes the locks is a shitty royalty check and an invitation to my ex’s wedding, which is in 30 days. So, my quest is to make enough money to get to that wedding and stop him before he marries someone that I’m positive must be all wrong for him.

That’s the opening of Vagabond Dog’s effort, Always Sometimes Monsters, a game that wears its indie badge proudly from its loads of dated references to its always sometimes pretentiously over the top storytelling, but I still found myself up until three in the morning finishing the game because it’s one of the few games out there that casually asks me at the beginning if I’m gay or straight, and while being gay factors into the game itself, the game itself isn’t radically different than if you were straight. It’s part of the normalizing trend that’s started to crop up ever since the option to take a guy as your husband for your male PC popped up in a Dungeons and Dragons video game in 2003. Fable actually became famous for allowing the Hero to be gay in 2004, but even as late as 2005, gay romantic options (which you often found out about through rumor) required a lot of digging through internet forums, scrolling past the flamewars of angry geeks who didn’t want “teh ghey” in their games, to suddenly find out that yes, you could in fact romance the charming rogue in Jade Empire even if you were playing a guy.

The charming rogue in question

The irony was that in order to get into a relationship with Sky, the rogue of Jade Empire, you had to tell the game in no uncertain terms that you had zero interest in the games two offered female options if you were playing a man, and you did so by being a total asshole. You have to tell your childhood friend that she’s an irritating clingy bitch and the Emperor’s daughter that she’s a spoiled brat who’s getting off on playing hero, and that you’d rake yourself over hot coals before you’d date either of them. As a result they’re curt with you for the rest of the story, friendship quests are killed off, and even then, the game first thinks, “Well, he could just be a misogynist who despises all women, but what the hell, we’ll see if he’s got this gay thing we heard about”. So once you’ve decimated the feelings of two of your friends and companions, you’re asked three times by Sky why you’re not interested in women, and very specific dialogue options must be selected, or you’re Forever Alone. Once you jump through the hoops though, you’re home free, and even get to have sex before the big battle as is the Bioware tradition.

See how far we’ve come in 9 years?

But that’s not the issue I’m talking about here, because there’s something rather similar in Always Sometimes Monsters that players would likely never know about if they weren’t paying obsessive attention. The game claims to deal with issues of: racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, mental health, sexual assault, child abuse, animal abuse, drug abuse, and suicide. See #4 there? I played through the game twice before I even found out there was actual transphobia in the game. In the city of Beaton, a stand-in for Toronto, it’s possible to go into City Hall and find someone wanting to change his gender signifier on his official ID, and getting hassled over the paperwork. For most players, it’s a one-time occurrence, but for those willing to go to specific places at specific times, it’s possible to see him again and again, until you finally meet up with him outside on a public boardwalk, and though the conversation is rather heavy with the subtext, it’s up to the player to figure out that the man is a FtM transgender, at which point you have four options to respond with: “I’m cool with it”, “That’s gross”, “My BF/GF is trans”, and “I’m trans”.

Should you pick option 4, the story doesn’t change all that much, maybe dialogue is slightly tweaked by those in the know, but the game doesn’t suddenly become all about your character being transgendered. In other words, it’s for the most part incidental (AKA, the “happens to be”). You have to deal with the same casual bigotry that PCs of non-white races deal with, but the goal of the game is still to get to the wedding, sell your book, and proclaim your devotion to the one you love. It takes some digging and specifics, but it allows for the game to have a transgendered hero, a baby step toward normalization in other media. Granted, the hero’s reward is similar to that which is found in most romance fictions, a normal, happy married life. Still, it’s often where it starts, normalizing the idea that yes, a minority group is worthy and deserving of a happy ending, even if that ending is just having what everyone else can have.

In 9 years, who knows? Maybe by then we’ll see a AAA game with a transgendered PC, or fully-scripted party member, and that character too can have their chance to save all life as we know it, and we can become less attached to the idea that being a hero is a gender or sexuality-specific job.

Seriously? Still Want To Be a Writer?

So there are some of you out there that are still dead-set on becoming writers. You’ve been on Facebook, seen the adorable memes your friends have posted about how professional writers are amateurs that didn’t quit and everything else, bought books like “Bird By Bird” and “On Writing” (and you’re totally going to get to reading them someday ;) ), you’ve got ideas, even read blog posts on the subject, as well as posts on what the industry is like, and you’re ready to stand up and say “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it any-“

Wait, sorry, that reference doesn’t really apply here.

So instead, let me tell you about the 30,000 word novella that I’ve been working on for the last three weeks that none of you will ever get to read, and part of the professional writer experience that we all know about, but probably don’t think about that much.

Today, I’m going to talk about commission writing and a few things you should probably know before you get into it.

1. You Will Never Make As Much As an Artist

This is 101. This isn’t bitching, this is reality you’re going to have to accept. You. Will. NEVER. Make. As. Much. As. An. Artist. Commission work is one of the few industries where artists actually have the upper hand. Art is, let’s face it, instant gratification, and a picture may be worth a thousand words, but an artist will get paid, on average, a hell of a lot more than you’ll get for writing a thousand words because of three simple words: Breasts, penises, vaginas. It does not matter how well you describe them, how much Mills and Boon Prose you pull out, it will never match simply loading an image and enjoying the bounty. Case in point, I have been working on a 30k word novel for the last month for a private client, and I’m getting a penny a word for it. That’s $300 for a month’s work. Roll that around in your head for a little bit. In the same time, an artist friend of mine has done a 10 picture sequence for a private client, and spent about the same about of man hours that I did. He got $2,000. Granted, he went to school for this, got a BFA and is working on some Masters classes, but uh, so did I. I’m not saying he’s overpaid, he certainly earned it, they’re beautiful pics, but it’s an underline of how the written word is devalued online, especially in regards to private patrons.

A commissioned image is a snapshot, a still, a split second in a story. A commissioned story is often, well, an entire story with exposition, plot, buildup, climax, and resolution, with well-defined and likable characters. Both sides take a lot of creative work, but the sad thing is that it’s not going to change. If you want to take commission writing, the pay will be crap, but honestly? It’ll probably pay better than your monthly royalties. And also? You’ll probably be writing porn. Lots and lots of porn.

 

2. You’ll Need New Pen Names, Probably a Few

Upon reading that I had written a 30k word novella that you guys would never read, some of you might’ve taken it as a challenge. There are no secrets on the Internet, after all, but for the most part? I don’t do my commissioned writing as Vaughn R. Demont, I came up with a different name, found a community, got established, and hung my shingle for commissions. It’s a community I’ve been in for a few years, but it’s not the only one I’m in, and I’ve got a different pen name for every one I’m in. Vaughn R. Demont is a gay urban fantasy writer who writes books set in the City with a gay romance subplot. My pen names write gay porn with varying fetishes I’d rather not discuss, largely for gay male clients at a penny a word. Each one has a reputation and a portfolio showcasing the various things I’m decent at writing, simple as that, and every morning I check the communities for commission inquiries. Every now and then there’s a bit of crossover, and I’ll catch myself using a line from a commissioned piece in some of my “pro writing”, which is how I refer to my “Vaughn R. Demont” writing, and have a nice little, “Oh god, that’s from that (insert nasty fetish here) story I did last week” moment. I would say that outside of your pro writing, be active in two to three communities, no more than that, or you’ll never have time to work on your pro writing, and your fans will keep asking you when you’re coming out with your next book.

 

3. You’ll Be Amazed at What You’re Capable of Writing

So here’s my little squick thing. The weirdest commission I ever wrote? Well, I was young, I didn’t know any better, I needed the money, and it started out as an innocent fan-fiction job. Yes, replace “fan-fiction” with “modeling” and it does sound like what a lot of people say how they got into porn. I’ll just blurt it out in one go.

The crew of the Serenity from Firefly  is infected by lycanthropy (River does it because of… reasons?), all turn into werewolves who are all going to die from inflating with opalescent goo (the client was VERY specific about the color), and several of them burst before realizing the only way to stop it is by having physical sex with the ship itself, which had somehow become sentient and have all the necessary appendages to do the deed.

And I got $30 for writing that. And yes, I did cry alone in the shower for about half an hour after finishing it. And yes, I’ll probably need another after writing that. If you need to take one, please, go ahead. I can wait.

Welcome back. That… I’m loathe to call it a story, that… piece, represents my rock bottom of writing. Whatever I’ve been asked to write since, it’s never been as bad as that. Most commissioned pieces are fetish content, and the entire reason that they’re commissioning a writer is because you can’t just log onto Amazon and find something like that, of if they do, it’s not gay, straight, lesbian, bisexual, trans, whatever they’re specifically looking for. That’s where you’ll come in.

Fetish writing is all about the slow-downs. They like muscle-growth? You’ll spend about 1000 words writing about muscle fibers growing more dense and the character reveling in their newfound strength. They’re really into crushing cockroaches with their bare feet? Guess what you’ll have to find 800 words to describe an action that takes less than a second. You’ll have to learn to slow down the action and get hyper-detailed and descriptive about what’s happening, and the mindset of the character as it’s happening. Once you get good enough at it? You’ll be able to knock out an 8000 word commission in one day and pocket $80 for your trouble. Just remember that for the most part, the slow-downs are the sex for the client, and the better you write them, the better chance you have of scoring a regular client.

4. You’ll Be Working For Free in the Beginning

Remember what I said about getting established in a community? I’m a published novelist, I’ve got two writing degrees, I’ve even been given the honor of being invited to a convention to speak on a panel as a featured author, but you know what that is as a post in a new community? Words on a screen. And kinda uppity ones too, let’s face it. Considering I don’t want to mix my pro writing and my commission writing, I can’t exactly give them links to my books, and I don’t want to take commissioned work set in the City, I have to do something else. That means researching the community, finding out what types of stories are popular, what sees the most views, all that, and then seeing what I’m capable of writing. After that? I write a lot of stories for free. Either it’ll be gift stories, story-trades, or just plain posted for free. It’s exposure, getting your name out there, showing them what you can do, and hopefully wowing the potential clients by showing that you’re a professional as opposed to the high schoolers and college kids they’ve been paying exorbitant prices to. And you’ll have to take less than them until you’re established. You’ll also have to write freebies to post as well, because if you post only commissioned pieces, you’re not going to get a lot of viewcount. Thriving in a community is all about getting your name out there and keeping it out there, even if it’s just in a group of 30-40 people who all happen to be into the same fetish.

 

5. The Money is All About Confidence

It’s funny at first, but then makes a lot of sense that I learned about how to set my rates from reading a testimonial article on how to be a prostitute on a comedy website. I had a client who’d read a previous story of mine and essentially wanted a redux of that story, only with a few things I could write, but wasn’t really into. It wasn’t like the rock bottom story, but this time around I had some experience under my belt, and I told the client, I would do it, but I’d have to charge him more based on a “squick penalty”, or asking me to write something I wasn’t comfortable with. As a result, I got an extra $20 out of the story, because at the end of the day, there weren’t a lot of other options for him, and I’d demonstrated I could give him a better story. After two months of commissions, I raised my rates. I was terrified that commissions were going to dry up, but I knew that as a professional writer, my time was worth more than what I was getting. As that above article says, “You have to go in there and believe you’re worth it.” And I’m still getting work. The money still sucks, but it’s still more than I was getting when I started, and it makes the edge of monthly bills a little easier to handle.

 

6. It Will Make You a Better Writer

Sure, I’m writing fetish porn, and hardly any of it will see the light of day outside of a fetish community, but at the end, it does make you a better writer. Most of those books on writing will tell you to try to write every day, and you’d be surprised how easy it is to knock out 2000-3000 words a day when you know you’ll be paid for it, no matter how little. Then, when you return to your pro-writing, you’ll find that getting to 1000 words down on the new chapter is cake. You’ll likely be better at spotting cliche phrases, more ways of describing actions thanks to all those slow-downs, and when the time comes for a sex scene, well, it’ll be a lot better than you thought yourself capable of. Just remember to keep working on the actual novel, okay?

It’s A Coastal Magic Countdown Interview And Giveaway With Vaughn R. Demont

Originally posted on The Novel Approach:

Hello all. This is Lynn, and I’m coming to you as a featured blogger for The Coastal Magic Convention. This PNR/UF con is happening in February in Daytona Beach. My featured author for this month is Vaughn R. Demont. I had the pleasure of reading his novel House of Stone a while ago and absolutely loved it. He’s an author not to be missed. For our spotlight post, Vaughn was kind enough to answer a few questions for us…

View original 1,768 more words

Thank You All

God, what do I say?

Most days, people only come to the blog to read an entry on how to date Scorpios. A month ago the semester had finished, paychecks dried up for the summer, and most of my cash reserves went into paying the summer’s bills in advance while I worked on my budget for the fall. I’d registered for the convention as a promise to myself that I would do everything I can to make it there, even though there were several times I was on the verge of e-mailing the organizers and asking for a refund.

Since the rights to “The Last Paladin” had reverted back to me, I took a page from some artists friends and put it up on the blog as a Pay What You Want, got a little money here and there, and worked on commissions for private patrons in the meantime, putting every dollar made into the con fund. In a moment of vulnerability, I blogged about, and included the PWYW link at the bottom, and generally forgot about it save the occasional notification that someone had tossed a few bucks my way, which would give me encouragement while I worked on the next piece of commissioned porn.

And yesterday morning I got a notification from Twitter that this has been tweeted:

.@vaughndemont doesn’t know me from a hole in the ground—but you do. let’s make something awesome happen for him. http://t.co/SAg8ES6Xml

— Julio-Alexi Genao (@agenao) June 18, 2014

And the rest of the day, this guy was doing everything he could to make that post go viral and get people to donate. When I checked my e-mail this morning, I was over the amount I needed, and I’m not ashamed to say I cried, not just because of the money, but because of the sheer volume of them, all the lovely notes of encouragement, and that it showed me that my readers (who now call themselves the Damned Coyotes) aren’t just in my circle of friends, or people I went to college with, or friends of friends, but that they’re all over the world. It’s humbling and honoring, and so many other descriptive verbs that can’t approach the gratitude that I feel.

All day yesterday I worked on Breaking Ties, the 4th book in the Broken Mirrors series, and I finished the draft at 81k words. It’ll be dedicated to all of you, even though that can’t even come close to thanking you all properly.

Send Vaughn To The Con Fund

Progress: $1,005/$850(Updated 6/19, 5:16pm)

Donations will lead to a .pdf copy of The Last Paladin

Note: The button’s only here because the PWYW for The Last Paladin is still going on, and I’m still doing commissions to boost the fund amount as well. If I can make enough, I might be able to take my boyfriend of two years to the con, but I am NOT asking for help with that. You guys got me there, and I won’t ask for anything more.

“There’s Always Next Year”

Apologies up front, this isn’t really a happy post.

Once you get out of college, you usually have a lot of dreams, some of them wild, like moving to Hawaii and living there or buying season tickets to the Seahawks or something, and some of them not as much, like getting a nicer car or a bigger TV, but you stay realistic, work on what you need, and for the dreams, well, there’s always next year. For some of us, it’s a literal promise, a year passes and things get better, and you walk into an electronics store and wander around, looking at the TVs knowing that if you really wanted, you could walk up to the wall of displays, point at a 48″, tell the guy behind the register “I’ll take that one” and mean it. You don’t, of course, but the fact that you could does wonders for your self-esteem.

When you’re a writer, you’ve got similar dreams, honestly, and yes, after a particularly fat royalty check coinciding with my tax refund, I had a moment just like the one above. Didn’t buy the TV, but I was walking on air because I could for about four days. Then there was a financial emergency and that money was wiped out in one fell swoop, but hey, there was always next year.

So I’ve been invited to a convention, might’ve mentioned it, it’s the Coastal Magic Convention for which I received an info packet this morning, most of my attention was on the panels and about 7 of them I would love to be on, 1 of them I would demand to be on, but for an author like myself, who doesn’t have a big budget and writes, let’s face it, pretty obscure fiction, having a convention organizer e-mail and say, “We’d love to have you down here” is mind-blowing and humbling and makes me feel like, “Damn, I’m really making it, aren’t I?” The fact that people outside my family and friends read my books is just flooring for me, especially when they take the time to e-mail me or post on my Facebook wall or read my essays on popular media.

And it’ll run about $850 to go. I’m pretty sure some will look at that number and wonder how that could be difficult to come up with, others will suck air through their teeth and mutter it might as well be ten grand. You’ll likely notice that I’ve disallowed comments for this entry, because posts like this tend to attract trolls, and I don’t feel like going over my monthly income and expenses, I’m not here to shame pirates (because that never ends well), and yes, I’ve opened for commissioned pieces in a few communities so I’ll be writing some dignity-shredding porn at a penny a word, no need to suggest it.

I’m doing this post because I’m tired of “there’s always next year”, I’m tired of putting off things in my life out of some thin hope things will get better if I can just survive another few months. It’s not about going to a convention for me, well, it is, but it’s also about finally having something good to look forward to, not hope for.

 Send Vaughn To The Con Fund

Progress: $104/$850(Updated 5/24)

Donations will lead to a .pdf copy of The Last Paladin