T. Strange's Blog, page 26

A-Z Challenge: H is for Horse

I've always loved horses.

My mom doesn't like animals, so I didn't have a pet until I was nine (okay, I had goldfish when I was four or five, but they didn't even live with me). We used to go horseback riding for my birthdays, and when I was old enough I started taking riding lessons.

I always wanted a horse, but I never really believed I'd get the chance. Even now that I've had a horse for more than three years, I still can't believe it!

My wife and I met a couple through our local BDSM group. The wife was a horse breeder, and when she found out I was interested in horses, she encouraged me to come out and meet hers. She bred Friesians and was just beginning a Drum Horse breeding program. One of the mares she'd purchased for the Drum Horse program had arrived already pregnant and had her foal. The foal's sire was unknown, and she wasn't a Drum Horse, so she was being sold. I leapt at the opportunity. I paid $250 and agreed to help around the farm to pay for board. What could be better than working at a horse farm in return for having a horse?

My baby! 
Jehna as I first met her--a baby moose (she ate that halter)
We eventually moved her to a boarding stable, where she grew and grew and oh dear god she's still growing. She is (probably) at least half Shire, possibly fully.

She loves to jump. I do not. Hence, free jumping

A-Z Challenge: G is for Greece (and Germany!)

I really, really struggled to come up with a G. Because my current fandom is The Hobbit, I kept thinking "Gold", but I don't really have anything to say about it!

I was walking home from work yesterday when the topic came to me. It's amazing how well not thinking about something and a little exercise works for thinking. Anyway, this is a bit of an addendum to D is for Dollars.

I got my first job because I wanted to go to Greece. Every year, my high school sponsored a trip, and when I was in grade ten the trip was to Greece.




I've always been into Ancient Greece, and the trip sounded amazing.

My mom didn't have a lot of money, so I thought, hey, I've got a few months, I'll work and pay my own way!

So I got a job at A&W. And made like $100. And no longer believed that hard work always means success, which has served me very well. >.<

I tried everything I could think of to raise the money. (I also accidentally ripped some people off...but it really was by accident and they never asked for their money back, sooooo...)

Needless to say, I have not been to Greece.

But!

I have been to Germany. Twice.

The first time, I stayed for two months and travelled all over Germany (and only Germany. But not Bavaria because my stepmom and her family think Bavaria is tacky or something). I went to a bunch of different camps, went to school for a few weeks, and generally had a grand old time.

The second time I went for a month with my stepmom and stepsister, without my mom. My sister and I were briefly chased by a man who had filed all of his teeth to points.

There is soooooooo much more I could say about Germany...feel free to ask me about it!

BDSMonday!

It's BDSMonday!

Today, in the spirit of "turnabout is fair play", I'll be answering your questions! Please keep them at least slightly BDSM-related. If I can't answer or don't feel comfortable answering a particular question, I won't, but I'll do my best. I'd also love to hear your answers to your own and others' questions.

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If you would like to write a guest post for BDSMonday, please message me or email me: tq.strange (at) gmail.com

A-Z Challenge: F is for Fish

I am terrified of fish.

I have no idea how or why this started, but I'm so scared of fish that I have trouble walking by the little aquariums in pet stores.

I have a lot of fish-based nightmares. I had one not long ago that was so bad I was having a panic attack in my dream and I woke up hyperventilating.

My wife tried to help me get over my phobia by getting me a little tank of goldfish. They died and no helps were given. But she gets points for effort!

A-Z Challenge: E is for Eggs

I love chickens.

The woman I bought my horse from had chickens, and I ended up spending a lot of time taking care of them to work off my board. (That's a whole other story). I had never been around chickens before. Every Easter, from grade one to grade four, a cage of chicks would be brought to my school and each kid got to hold one for a few minutes (mine always fell asleep and I was very proud of my superior chick-holding abilities), but other than that, I'd never thought much about chickens.

They're amazing. The magic of finding eggs, in the coop or hidden around the yard by more paranoid hens, and then eating those eggs you found. I chose a chicken to be 'mine', unofficially. I carried her around, and she would peck bugs out of the air for me. I kept myself bug-free, and I lifted her up to a whole new strata of bugs, so we were both happy.

She had several different groups of chickens, each with its own coop. She'd keep them in their coop a few days so they'd know it was home. We thought one of the coops only had one rooster...until we let them all out of the coop. All of a sudden, one of the 'hens' started crowing, strutting around, showing off. He'd been pretending to be a hen while he was stuck in the coop with another rooster, but now he was free to express his cocky self. He decided to move in with a group of hens who didn't have a rooster yet, and we let him be.

Also, Easter! Easter is one of my, and my wife's, favourite holidays. It doesn't have the pressure and family expectations of Christmas, so we can usually spend it however we'd like. My wife always buys a bunch of secret candy and hides it for me because I am really just several two-year-olds in a grown-up suit and all of them are completely spoiled.

A-Z Challenge: D is for Dollars

Authoring aside, I've had a pretty eclectic work history.

(For ease-of-scrolling, I'll put everything under a cut)




Normal-teenage-fast-food jobs aside, while in high school I worked at a furniture store. Still one of my favourite jobs ever. My mom thought I was kind of nuts for wanting to work in a furniture store, but once I'd gotten the idea in my head, that was what I wanted. I would usually finish all the cleaning and everything else I needed to do within an hour or so, and my boss was like, yeah, you can just read for the rest of your shift, as long as you pay attention to customers. There were almost never any customers, so I got a lot of reading done! I went to a secondhand bookstore and bought all the Stephen King they had--I discovered that King was the perfect blend of I-enjoy-reading-this and I-can-get-back-into-the-plot-after-interruptions. I was really close with most of my coworkers, and when I left after I graduated, I was given a $200 gift certificate (which I used to buy the dinette set that is more a horizontal storage surface than something used for eating) and the promise that, if I ever needed work, I could come back. Which I did, once. (The store I worked at no longer exists :( )

I spent the summer between graduation and getting a job learning everything I could about the Middle East. I was really sick of hearing the media's extremely slanted, biased reports, so I wanted to learn for myself. I listened to music, cooked food (learned that I hate saffron and that it clings to every dish it's used in forever), got an Iranian penpal, read novels and poetry and nonfiction and formed my own opinions.

My first job out of high school was welding. I took welding in grade twelve, mostly because I was in an advanced academic program and I wanted something...not. I ended up loving it. I had originally only signed up for the grade ten class, but I took every class I could. We went on a tour of an enormous farm machinery production factory that employed welders. It scared the crap out of me. It was so impersonal and, I don't know, efficient? I knew I could never work in a place like that. My mom had (she's still alive but we haven't spoken for more than three years. Trust me--if you knew her, you'd understand!) a weird habit of becoming friends with my ex's moms, and one of them told her about a place that did more decorative metalwork. I applied and was hired. I worked there for about nine months and got a lot of experience--some good, some bad. I was eventually let go, and I strongly suspect at least part of the reason was that I was too weird. I would read Dostoyevsky during lunch breaks, and talk about visiting Europe, and my coworkers would look at me as though I'd grown an extra head. 

After that, it was back to the furniture store for a brief stint, then exactly three months as an Apple technical support person, because after three months I got a signing bonus. 

I currently work at a bakery, where my wife is the kitchen manager. The hours are a little nuts (6 AM when I'm working with her, 4 AM when I'm not), but then I have the rest of the day to myself, and it's nice to work with her. 

A-Z Challenge: C is for Cats

You heard the meme. I have to do my part to keep those tubes full.



I currently have two cats, Phantom and Lee.


Lee
This picture of Lee is a few years old, but it's my favourite. It really captures her...personality. She's got loooooots of personality. The people we got her from told us she had the most personality, and they weren't wrong. We just weren't clever enough to realize that 'personality' was code for 'trouble'. Her full name is Lee Peskypaws (it was originally Diggypaws because she used to play in her litter box all the time, but she outgrew that). She was supposed to be my kitten, because my wife had a Siamese when we met, but Lee turned out to be more my wife's cat. Her favourite thing in life is water--to drink, not bathe in. We have a hamster water bottle attached to her kennel, and she loves it. 








Phantom
I have two favourite pictures of Phantom...so I have to post both of them. In the top one, he posed himself with a teacup. And no one was surprised, because he's such a little gentlekitty. The second is much more recent, taken after he'd been running around like a nut for an hour and had finally collapsed. I'm very, very biased, but the bottom picture is one of the cutest cat pictures I've ever seen. He's very much my cat, and he's very protective of me. The first few times my wife and I played after we got him, he sat on a cat tree in the bedroom and watched my wife very intently. When we did a scene where I was kneeling in the corner, he got between me and the wall and sat there looking up at me, like he was prepared to call 911! (He's since seen enough play to realize it's not something I'm opposed to, so he usually leaves the room.) 

A-Z Challenge: B is for Boots and Leather

Boots and Leather started with a little grain of sand--I wanted to write something about motorcycles and leather. The idea floated around in my head for about six months until, one day, there was Gavin to tell his story: Gavin has been going to motorcycle shows for years, hoping to find a hot biker who will introduce him to the BDSM he craves. After years of searching, he meets Terry, who seems to be exactly what he’s been looking for, and vice versa. Before they can play, Gavin has to learn about the differences between fantasy and reality.

Genres: M/M, BDSM, Contemporary

Read an Excerpt
Buy Link

A-Z Challenge: A is for Amber

Amber was my first published work with its own cover, so it seems like a good way to start my A-Z Challenge!


Blurb: Anthony was a painter until he lost the ability to see color. Worse than color blindness, the edges of objects and people blur together, making it almost impossible for Anthony to interact with anyone or anything. After retreating from the world for decades, he sees a glimpse of yellow that leads him to a musician, Teague.


At first Anthony is frightened and overwhelmed by the color, but he can’t stay away from Teague for long. He finds the courage to confront Teague and explain his unusual problem and Teague’s role in helping him. To Anthony’s relief, Teague believes him. Very quickly, they both realize that getting colors back may be more important to Anthony than his relationship with Teague. If Anthony pushes too hard, he’ll lose Teague, and possibly the colors, forever. 

Genres: M/M, Contemporary

Read an Excerpt

Buy Link




Here's a little bit about how and why I wrote Amber:


I had decided I wanted to write a Color Box story called Amber, and had actually begun (and subsequently abandoned) a completely different idea with the same title. And then, bam! The story that became Amber sprang, almost fully formed, into my head. Then all I had to do was write it down. (Easier said than done!) My wife is an artist, so it’s not too much of a surprise that this is the direction my muse led me.
If I had to use only one word to describe writing Amber, it would be ‘synchronicity’. While writing it (not at the same time, but between writing sessions), I was watching Nickelodeon’s Avatar: The Last Airbender. When I got to the episode The Guru, I was completely stunned. Without any conscious effort on my part, the way Anthony got each color back perfectly matched its Chakra site. It also helped me figure out how he would get the colors I hadn’t written yet, sticking with the Chakra theme.
Little side note: there are two scenes in the story I didn’t realize were connected until I was editing. Shortly after meeting Teague, Anthony has a vision of Teague standing in a shower of golden raindrops. When Anthony and Teague make up, Teague is eating a dripping yellow ice cream treat. And I swear I didn’t have any idea I was echoing the earlier scene when I wrote it! (My wife, of course, knew the whole time and thought I had repeated the imagery on purpose. If only I’d been able to convincingly pretend that I meant to write it that way. I would have come off as brilliant. Instead, flailing. Don’t believe me? How cool would it have been if I’d intentionally set out to have a color/chakra connection. Sadly, it took a really, really obvious nudge for me to notice what I was doing.)

The fortune teller didn't originally have a name, and when I decided to give her one, the name Madam Andromeda popped into my head. Because I'm an etymology/name meanings freak, I had to look up what it meant. The meaning, "leader of men", was eerily spot-on! 
Bonus: a song about chakras from Avatar. 
And, this is Teague’s favorite color. 

As far as I know, there is no condition where a person wakes up and can longer see colour, so there's that tiny bit of fantasy in Amber. Anthony thinks the fortune-teller cursed him, but I don't think she did. I think she just saw it coming and told him. But not even I know! I'd love to hear your interpretations. 

BDSMonday!

It’s BDSMonday!Seeing as it’s the day before April Fool’s Day, I thought I’d do something a bit silly: an episode of South Park, Tsst* “When Cartman’s mom realizes she can’t control her son anymore, she gets help from the “Dog Whisperer.” But Eric Cartman’s not going down without a fight.”Random? Yes. Funny? Also yes. The last time I watched this episode I couldn’t stop laughing because I kept imagining this in a BDSM context (which is kind of wrong, but still funny). Enjoy!*If, like me, you’re Canadian, that link won’t work for you. You can watch the episode here, but there may be pop-ups, just to warn you. I can’t testify to the quality of the American link…because I can’t see it.
Tune in tomorrow as I start the A-Z Challenge!