Daisy Harris's Blog, page 25

Envy (It’s Not Easy Being Green)

It’s a brand new year, and I’ve been batting around resolutions. The first one I considered was giving up social media other than to announce books and sales and the like. But then Double Dick Dude came along and blew that one out of the water.

Then I saw an article on envy and I thought to myself, “Oooh. Envy. I hate that. Wish I could give that up for the 2014!” So I read the article, and lo and behold the thing the author was struggling with jealousy over was her friend’s trip to Hawaii.

This struck me as funny for two reasons. 1. I assumed the only thing a person could be jealous about was book sales. And 2. I’m actually in Hawaii right now, and I hadn’t considered that could inspire such envy. Of course Hawaii is gorgeous, but my husband is a nature and wildlife photographer, not to mention his only sibling lives out here. So as much as I appreciate coming to the islands, it’s part of my life. The way hot running water is part of most Americans’ lives, yet they don’t really think about about it unless the power goes out. Or how most people take for granted having four functioning limbs.

What people imagine I’m seeing.

The truth is that cooking, cleaning and watching kids while my husband works is not all that different in Hawaii than it is in Seattle. Some aspects of it are better (downtime involves beaches! Clement weather rocks!) And some aspects are worse. (I’m in remote places with no access to a car at least 7 hours a day, and the kids are far from their friends.) But the article I read made a great point: when we feel envious we don’t imagine that the person is living in *their* reality, we somehow imagine they are in *our* reality, stealing something owed to us.

What I’m actually seeing.

Jealousy makes us imagine that a person is in “my Hawaii” or experiencing “success that should be mine.” We forget that their Hawaii or success or whatever is their experience. And we as humans have basically zero idea about other peoples’ experiences.

Take Facebook. Most people post either joyous stuff that makes it seem like their whole life is awesome, or miserable stuff looking for support and sympathy. Or cats. But it’s impossible to know what that joy or sorrow feels like to them. One person I’m friends with posted recently about her thyroid surgery and she seemed pretty upset about it. Whereas I had the same surgery about 15 years ago, coming out with the same results, and I don’t remember thinking it was such a big deal.

Does that mean she’s wrong? No, of course not. How am I to know what the loss of her gland means to her? Maybe she hates having scars or taking meds. I have no way of knowing what she’s going through. Not really. Even though I’ve gone through the same thing.

Well, it’s like that with success, I’m guessing. If someone has a top selling book, we really have no way of knowing what that experience is like for them. Maybe they worked years and years to get there. Maybe they ignored their kids, or broke ties with a loved one in order to find the time to write. And heck, maybe they really did stumble into success without much effort or fanfare, but even then, we don’t know what that experience feels like for them. Not even if we’ve experienced something similar ourselves.

The funny thing about envy, is that we only really bother to feel jealous of people who have things we *could* ourselves have. Or that we’re close to having. Like, none of us are really jealous of celebrities, because they are so out of our league there’s no shame in not being anything like them. That’s why jealousy is such an insidious thing for authors. We only really feel it for the people who should be our friends and colleagues.

Do I struggle to quell my jealousy for Steven King or JK Rowling? Not hardly! But, man, if my book is #4 on the Amazon Bestseller list for Gay Romance, it’s hard not to be annoyed at whoever is clogging up that #3 space and keeping me off that coveted first line.

The problem is, #3 author is likely my friend. Someone I *should* be happy for. What’s more, I’m sure they’re busy trying not to feel annoyed at whoever is taking up the #2 and #1 spot. It’s a sad fact of life that we’re always looking ahead of us, not behind. At the people who have just a little more, not the multitude of people who have much less.

This article had some interesting suggestions for quelling envy when it rears its ugly head. The author prescribed that when you feel jealous, you should stop imagining yourself in that person’s shoes, but really ground your thoughts in *that person* instead. What does it feel like for Heidi, or Piper or Eli or (insert MM author here) to be where they are, experiencing what they’re experiencing? Channeling our friends, working on empathy and the ability to relate to other people can help us be happy for a person, because we understand they are experiencing *their* experience. Not ours.

the yoga I imagine everyone else is doing

Anywho—this article was written by a practicing Buddhist and is pretty cool stuff. Maybe I’ll read up on Buddhism and think about adopting some practices. Or maybe that’s just Hawaii getting to me, and I’ll think better of it once I’m back in Seattle.

My family’s yoga on Christmas morning. It may not look like much, but I’ll take it.

Good luck in the New Year, book ho’s!

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What the Duck? Finding Meaning in the Rise and Fall of a Dynasty

Okay, I admit—I really just wanted to write a blog post with the title “What the Duck?” I actually have never once seen Duck Dynasty, so I don’t have much of an opinion one way or another about the show.

And yet…the news, Twitter, Facebook, and even some members of congress are determined to FORCE me to have an opinion. Hence, I’ve been thinking broadly about this show and it’s downfall why in the duck any of this matters.

This is what I’ve come up with…

First off, Americans want, deep in their hearts, to be unified. Yes, we have differences. Yes, we are a tapestry of wildly different cultures sewn together like a slightly-more-disturbing human centipede. But we desperately want to believe that there are core values that make us whole.

In some ways, there’s nothing more American than a tightly-knit group of people struggling to defend their territory and their lifestyle on the edge of civilization. I always explain America thusly to my non-American friends—we all think we’re cowboys. Because of this, Duck Dynasty (and shows like it) draw us in, and make us feel like we belong, even as we realize the people we are watching are actually very much not like us.

I had this same feeling as a kid when watching Little House on the Prairie. Laura and her family were alone in the wilderness of a Los Angeles filming studio-cum-western-style frontier. Pa was stern, yet always right. Mom was reserved, yet always caring. The kids were good, despite their sometimes mischief. As a kid growing up in a New York City high rise surrounded by bankers and taxis, the vision of life on Little House was addictively compelling.

And yet…on seemingly every episode of that show pa would pull his belt off the wall and head out the door to beat one of his kids.

Now—I know that for many people growing up in the US in the 70′s (and who grew up in the 50s and 60s) this might not have led to any cognitive dissonance. Getting walloped by a well-meaning parent was par for the course and as American as Apple Pie and Freedom.

But in New York City in the 70s, it was already illegal for teachers to use corporal punishment in schools. My parents, for the most part, didn’t believe in hitting kids—and neither did any of their hippie friends.

Smacking kids with belts was wrong. And not just silly, cute, funny, endearing wrong. But Wrong with a capitol W.

So how did I bring together these two disparate facts—that Little House was about everything that was good and right about America, and yet it promoted what I already believed to be child abuse?

I’m not sure I ever did bring those two ideas together in my head. Like the much beloved grandmother who occasionally said things that were racist, or the favorite soccer coach who was a tad homophobic, or the parent you love to death who THINKS ITS OKAY TO TALK DURING MOVIES, you struggle with the fact that you love them, even though they believe in something you can’t agree with.

Well, Duck Dynasty is the same way.

No one in their right mind could have believed Phil supported gay rights. And while I haven’t watched the show, I know how these shows work—they find the most outspoken and crazy people they can and wait for them to self-destruct. The only thing different about Duck Dynasty this week and last week was that this week, Phil said something we all knew he was thinking anyway.

But it still hurts—because we wanted so badly to think he was good people.

I get that. I really do. I wanted Pa Ingalls to be the perfect father. Luckily, my own father has always been flawed enough that I never had to deal with the let down. He was always human to me, and maybe that’s why I idolized Charles Ingalls quite so much.

The truth about America is that it’s not perfect and it’s not cohesive. Our fathers, like our heroes, are flawed—and a lot more deeply than we want to admit to ourselves. To quote Jayne Cobb from Firefly, “Well, there ain’t people like that. There’s only people like me.”

I support A&E’s decision to take Duck Dynasty off the air. Because it was one thing for Pa Ingalls to insinuate corporal punishment was okay or even good, it would have been another for Michael Landon to wallop his own kid while standing in like at the grocery store.

The truth was, people were divided in the 70s on a number of things—the rights of children among them. A show like Little House let us forget for an hour a week.

Duck Dynasty let us believe we were together in the swampy wilderness, fighting for survival and dignity. It allowed us to forget our differences and focus on where we were the same. It allowed us to love our neighbors even though deep inside we knew that we didn’t agree with them.

Phil Robertson didn’t make the mistake of speaking his mind in a world too PC to allow that anymore. He ripped away the happy fantasy we were all enjoying, one where dads are good and noble, and moms are sweet and caring. One where kids respect their parents, even as they get up to light-hearted mischief.

I’m sad that Duck Dynasty fell, actually. I was planning to give it a watch. And the truth is, I want to believe as badly as anyone. Heck, a cynic like me wants to believe worse. That’s probably why so many people who are smart, savvy and should know better are up in arms about Phil Robertson. They’re not just offended, they’re hurt.

Goodbye, Duck Dynasty. For what it’s worth, I’ll always think you were good people. Flawed, yes. But undeniably entertaining. Thanks for being the heroes we needed, if only for a little while.

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Goals For 2014: Stretch the Mind Not the Ego

Given that 2013 is ending, I’ve been feeling like I should write a 2013 round up—go over all the things I’m thankful for in this past year.

A lot of great things happened for me in 2013. I contracted my first book to Samhain, then went on the contract three more. My first Samhain release, From the Ashes, hit as high as #2 on the Gay Romance bestseller list on Amazon—which was a really big deal for me.

I also learned that being forty means that if I don’t work out I feel like crap, but if I exercise harder, I still feel like I’m thirty. 2013 was a good year—but what about the future?

Up until yesterday, I’d been thinking of 2014 in terms of what I’d accomplish—how many books I could write, whether I could garner more recognition and how I could battle with the inevitable process of aging. But then something happened that changed my perspective.

I was in barre class getting my ass worked by a Russian instructor and when it came time to grab our ankles and stretch our hamstrings, she barked, “Stretch your legs not your ego!”

Boom. Epiphany.

The instructor went on to say, “It’s 2014. Time to try something new. Maybe time to get a new perspective.” But she didn’t need to add that on, because I knew already what she meant. Every goal I’d thought I’d had was about feeding my ego—making myself feel good enough about myself and NOT about making me a better writer.

Of course, this is a business, so sales matter. But sales are a natural consequence of writing good stories with a good publisher using tropes people like to read. Words-per-day? Popularity? Recognition? All that is ego, and not worth aiming for. The only goals I’ve ever found that helped my career were these:

Stretch your confidence

Stretch your understanding

Build your skills

Work out your writing muscles

The rest of it is just noise, and the more I worry about my ego, the more soothing it seems to need.

I’ve been really lucky in 2013 in that I’ve made and kept some good pals in this business. It’s great to have friends dear enough that I can share with them my momentary lacks of confidence. But I’ve seen that it’s super easy to sink into the sand trap of ego-stroking pity parties. I’m forever grateful that my friends care about me enough to tell me when to get over myself.

So, basically, that’s my goal for 2014—to get over myself. I’ll write 4 or 5 books, probably. Hopefully, one or all of them will knock your socks off. Whats more, I’ll work on stretching my imagination, my knowledge base, my understanding of myself and my craft. I’ll stretch how well I understand readers and trends, and then I’ll power through that knowledge to write things that resonate to me. I’ll stretch my mind, not my my ego.

I bet my brain thanks me for it later.

(BTW) My 2014 Release Schedule:

Feb 11 – After the Rain (Logan and Henri’s story)

June 10 – Nothing But Smoke (Michael and Nicky’s story)

Sept – November Rain (Joe and Elias’ story ((no, you don’t know them yet:))

November (hopefully) – David’s Selfie (a Christmas story!)

 

 

 

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Sex, Love, and Power: Writing from the Other Side

I still remember the first time older boys took notice of me. I was maybe nine. My friends’ brother and his friends were 14. They caught sight of me, sensed my fear the way a pack of animals senses prey, and laid chase.

I don’t know how far they chased me, but I remember riding my bike as fast as I could to my grandma’s house, falling off when I couldn’t ride any further, and sprinting across the lawn, then hiding under the bed until a grownup found me.

To this day, I don’t know what I was so scared of. All I knew was that in a group of boys lay danger. So much danger that my heart was in my throat as I hid in the dust crying.

A couple years later, I was eleven, and riding my bike around my neighborhood in shorts. A group of men in a car shouted at me out the window, scaring me into falling off the bike.

I rode home confused. By then, I knew what I was scared of—sex. I knew when I reached adulthood, men would find me interesting and I’d have to protect myself. But I didn’t understand why those men had laid in already. I was only 11—in my mind, a child. Apparently, my body didn’t agree with me on that front. But it took until around 14 before I realized how badly my curves were planning to fuck me over.

By fourteen, I’d grown accustomed to teachers rubbing my shoulders as they passed, to older boys pushing me into lockers so they could whisper mean and nasty things into my ear. To the constant litany of “Gee, you don’t look fourteen!” and “They didn’t make fourteen year olds like that when I was fourteen” from men who thought that even though they were 30, it was acceptable to express their sexual fascination with a girl below the age of consent.

One night, while lying in bed and fuming as I so often did at that age, I remember thinking, “When I grow up and get married and have kids, if my husband ever lays a hand on my daughter, I will buy a gun and kill him.”

Now—my parents never abused me and my dad certainly never molested me. But in my mind, at that age, the question of what I would do if someone took their inappropriate attention to the next level was constantly on my mind. I was always a hair’s breadth away from someone sticking their hand up my shirt or down my pants. And I decided then and there that I would NEVER allow a man so much power over me that I couldn’t defend myself or my kids from him.

Fuck waiting for Prince Charming. I didn’t trust Prince Charming any further that I could throw him.

14 was the year I went from “Why are you looking at me?” to “Yeah, I have big tits. Wanna suck it, asshole?”

At 14, I went from “Do you love me? Please, please, please?” to “Of course you want me, I’m smart as fuck and I’m built like a brick shit house. Now show me some respect.”

14 was the year I turned badass.

What does all this have to do with writing romance? Oh, so VERY much.

See, the vast majority of romance novels center on the idea that the hottest relationships are between an incredibly powerful man and a woman (or man) who is all but powerless. Bosses with secretaries, doctors with nurses. Rich vampires with penniless high school girls who can barely walk without falling. Older men and younger woman. Doms and subs. That’s what sells, in gay romance as well as straight. While there are definitely exceptions to this rule, I’ve gotta say—writing from the point of view that equality is hot can be an uphill battle.

Man, I wish I could write huge power differentials! In my most recent submission, I actually have a May/December pairing. It’s between a thirty eight year old cop and a twenty-four year old shop clerk. That said, for the first 90% of the book, the cop is recovering from a gunshot wound, and hence adequately crippled so he’s not a threat to my sweet younger man.

So often in romance novels, fear is equated with excitement. The beta character is both frightened of the hero and also intrigued by him. The trouble is, I simply cannot write that. At least not in contemporary romance. In my early paranormals, I dabbled with that dynamic a bit, but I can really only pull it off in fake worlds. In real life? Scary people are scary. And not hot-scary. Just scary-scary.

All this came to a head for me yesterday because I found out about the Olympic Diver Tom Daley being gay…and that he’s dating a 39 year old screenwriter.

Now—Tom Daley is 19. And though I agree he’s totally adorable, in my mind he is a boy. He’s the type of guy who if I saw in person I’d want to feed up and offer a ride to the mall. I’d ask him if his mother knew where he was and what time his curfew was. I’d make sure he brushed his teeth before bed.

Sure, I’ve looked at his Speedo shots online, and yes I agree his butt is super cute. But my 11 year old’s butt is super cute, too! Flipping adorable. But like my 11 year old’s behind, Tom Daley’s behind is something I can appreciate, and yet not want to imagine bent double and having sex.

I can honestly say I’ve never imagined Tom Daley having sex. Neither have I imagined Harry Styles (who I’m sure is a complete slag) or anyone else under the age of 25. Doing so would make me a creepy old lady in my mind. It would make me no better than the 30 year old men who’d look down my shirt as they said, “But, you seem so MATURE for your age.”

Oh…all the come backs I wish I’d thought to say back when I was a kid…

“My tits are fourteen. Just like me.”

“Funny, you seem really IMMATURE for your age.”

“Why thank you, I’ll tell your wife you said that.”

Anyhoo—Tom Daley. Cute? Undoubtedly. Okay to objectify unabashedly? No. Not so much.

I have no idea what’s going on between Tom Daley and his lover. Maybe they’re happy together. Maybe it’s true love. Maybe, like most romance writers and readers, Tom Daley totally gets off on the power differential in the relationship. In fact, it’s very likely Tom Daley DOES, because there are a jillion kids his own age who’d happily have sex with him, and I’m sure he’s been fighting off the advances of older men for every bit as long as I had been at his age.

Tom Daley may be perfectly content. He and his bf may get married and live happily ever after. And I know in my head I should support it, but my gut still clenches.

Maybe it’s that part of me that turned angry momma bear at 14, wanting to defend someone who has no need of defending.

Or maybe the problem is I don’t like to see eighteen and nineteen year olds having sexual relations with much older people normalized. For every one healthy, happy relationship between a teenager and someone over 30, there are hundreds of kids crying in their bedrooms because their mom’s boyfriend won’t leave them alone, or their teacher keeps trying to get them to “come to their office.”

For every Tom Daley, there are uncounted kids hiding under the bed.

And for every Tom Daley, how many kids are there whose claims of rape are ignored because they “seemed so old for their age” or “they didn’t look 16″ or “they were 18, so technically legal”?

The worst thing I could do as a writer would be to pretend that the terror those kids feel is somehow a normal part of sexual excitement. Or that the man their gut tells them to be scared of might actually be Prince Charming. Are some pirates secretly princes? Yeah, occasionally. But most are just going to slit your throat.

In closing, I wish Tom Daley the best. And Mary Kay Letourneau, too, and everyone else who’s ever had a relationship that broke the rules of age and culture. Personally, I’ll stick to enjoying the sight of men within 15 years of my age, and at least old enough to buy their own beer.

And yes—I’ll keep writing books from the wrong side of the power divide. At least a few readers seem to like the light stuff. Because I’ve gotta believe that guys don’t have to be scary to be hot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Righteous Rage—High and Mighty or High as a Kite?

As so often happens when I spend time on the Internet, I’m in a lather. But this time, I think my worked-up-ed-ness is worth exploring because in this days and age of 24-7 news coverage and real-time feelings-fests, righteous anger is the most easily scored drug out there. Man, it feels good to be angry. Mostly, when you know you’re right. Hell, especially when you know you’re right!

I’m reminded of a quote from Randal in the movie Clerks…

: And I hope it feels good.

: You hope *what* feels good?

: I hope it feels so good to be right. There’s nothing more exhilarating than pointing out the shortcomings of others, is there?

(got this snippet here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109445/quotes)

This need to feel oh-so-superior comes out repeatedly in authors-behaving-badly discussions, message boards, twitter, etc. Heck, I’m pretty sure Fox News makes it’s living off outrage. But that’s okay, because if you’re liberal and need to feel outraged all day long you can turn to MSNBC. Half the headlines nowadays involve the word “SHOCKING” though I’m fairly sure we’ve all lost our ability to be shocked long ago.

Of course, being angry is only so effective when you’re doing it alone. To get really furious, you need like-minded people to jump into the mosh pit and party with you. We’ve all seen the formation and disbandment of Internet mobs. Hell, I’m pretty sure I accidentally started one on Twitter a while back when I allowed my rage-fest at some blogger about whom I did not give a shit anyway to funnel into my twitter stream. Next thing I knew, there was a letter-writing campaign against this person. And honestly, *I* was only pissed off for maybe 15 minutes.

(If you want to read more about Internet mobs, this is a great article and will really get you thinking: http://annerallen.blogspot.com/2013/05/gangs-of-new-media-twitchforks-hive.html)

Also, it’s been proven that drama and anger are addicting. 

Here’s a quote from the above-linked article:

When you participate in drama your sympathetic nervous system increases: blood pressure, fuel availability by metabolizing fat, adrenaline, oxygen circulation to the vital organs, blood clotting to minimize the loss of blood if you’re wounded, pupil size and peripheral vision (improves vision), while decreasing fuel storage (decreases insulin activity to store glucose, for example), digestion and salivation.  Recent studies show that when this occurs, the brain produces dopamine (in the substania nigra) which makes this process more pleasant and rewarding, thereby making humans more likely to participate in it. 

So, yeah—getting pissed off feels gooooooood. Which is why there is a multi-million dollar entertainment industry set up to give us all the anger we can handle whenever we feel like it. Cool, huh?

But I did have another point about this…

My personal righteous rage of this morning is about a Christian, authoritarian child-rearing book that has been cited as the cause in the deaths of at least three children. I don’t want to mention it here because to even type the name of it would overload my nervous system with so much fury I would likely pound through my keyboard like the Incredible Hunk.

Basically, this book advocates starting to whip your babies before they even learn to walk, and inflicting pain, hardship, hunger and even thirst on them in order to totally break their will and make them mindlessly obedient.

Now—what does this have to do with Righteous Rage, you may ask! Well, I’ll tell you…

I recall reading in Josephine Myles’ book Screwing the System that the Dom in the story really need the sub to call him Sir (or whatever. I can’t remember exactly) because it took a measure of “oomph” to really hit another person. And the Dom couldn’t get into that headspace without a layer of authority and personal distance. In other words, the Dom needed to be able to work himself into a lather. A controlled, finely tuned lather, perhaps. But a lather nonetheless.

I’ve hit precisely four people in my life. Three of them were men. One I was dating, one was trying to molest me, and one was some guy I knew who was just annoying the shit out of me. And I have to say—in each and every instance I was in A LATHER. A hissing, spitting, hysterical fit. It’s no co-incidence that all three of those instances happened for me between the ages of 16 and 21. Ages when I didn’t have self-control, and when I didn’t understand that blind rage was something I actually had control over.

Back then, I thought it someone else was WRONG it was fine if I enacted hurt upon them.

Okay—in the instance of the potential date-rapist, maybe I was right to sock him. But I’m sure if I were older I would have navigated my life so as to not have ended up on hittin’ terms with him in the first place.

What does this have to do with The Most Evil Book of All Time? Well, I posit that as much as the authors claim they are teaching their disciples not to “hit in anger” they are training them to simply live in a constant state of righteous fury, where they can overcome even the most basic human desire to care for and nurture their own children.

Most people do not want to hit babies. Certainly not for the kind of minor infractions the books’ authors suggest. Most people, if not under the influence of mad amounts of dopamine, feel guilty as shit if they hit their kid and their kid starts crying.

Most rational, sane adults realize that their anger is something to be controlled and faced and hopefully minimized. And most parents realize that their children end up being the unwitting recipients of parents’ anger even if the child has done nothing wrong. (Heck, even good parents take shit out on their kids. We all do. It’s not “right” but it happens.)

The problem is, we live in an era of glorification of anger. Plenty of people in politics seems to believe that they should get their way simply by showing they are more angry than the other side. As if somehow rational thought and the rule of the majority are secondary to the pure, exalted joy of white-hot rage.

We need to stop this.

Just because anger feels good does NOT means it’s good for you. Just because it feels good to spank your kids does not mean it’s the right thing to do.

The author of The Most Evil Book of All Time commented once how his small granddaughter laughs as she spanks her babydoll for being naughty. (Well—my toddlers shoved their babydolls under their shirts to pretend to nurse them, but to each their own!) He goes further to say that houses where parents discipline their kids so ruthlessly are “filled with laughter.”

The kids laugh when daddy comes home. They laugh when they see grandpa. Grandpa laughs, and even though he doesn’t know why he is laughing, the kids laugh with him.

Well, I can tell him why everyone is laughing—it’s NERVOUS LAUGHTER YOU DIPSHIT!!!! According to Wikipedia, “Nervous laughter is a physical reaction to stress, tension, confusion, or anxiety. Neuroscientist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran states “We have nervous laughter because we want to make ourselves think what horrible thing we encountered isn’t really as horrible as it appears…”

Le sigh. People are idiots.

Anyhoo—anger. It’s the drug of our times. It’s peddled by churches, rap music, Sarah Palin, listserves, and even parenting manuals, and It. Must. Stop.

There is nothing “righteous” about anger. Feeling pissed does not make you a good person. It just makes you more likely to hit or hurt someone. Quite possibly someone you love.

Not sure what else to say on this topic, so I leave you with the immortal words of Billy Joel…

(http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Angry-Young-Man-lyrics-Billy-Joel/86A973E0FB610D0A482568700025B91D)

 

There’s a place in the world for the angry young man

With his working class ties and his radical plans

He refuses to bend, he refuses to crawl,

He’s always at home with his back to the wall.

And he’s proud of his scars and the battles he’s lost,

He struggles and bleeds as he hangs on the cross-

And he likes to be known as the angry young man.

Give a moment or two to the angry young man,

With his foot in his mouth and his heart in his hand.

He’s been stabbed in the back, he’s been misunderstood,

It’s a comfort to know his intentions are good.

He sits in a room with a lock on the door,

With his maps and his medals laid out on the floor

And he likes to be known as the angry young man.

I believe I’ve passed the age of consciousness & righteous rage

I found that just surviving was a noble fight.

I once believed in causes too, I had my pointless point of view,

Life went on no matter who was wrong or right, ohhhhh

And there’s always a place for the angry young man,

With his fist in the air and his head in the sand.

And he’s never been able to learn from mistakes,

He can’t understand why his heart always breaks.

His honor is pure and his courage as well,

He’s fair and he’s true and he’s boring as hell!

And he’ll go to the grave as an angry old man.

http://youtu.be/bpMv76SIUhg

 

WANT TO CHANNEL YOUR RAGE RIGHT NOW?? –>  Sign the petition to get this book removed from Amazon!

 

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Beating the Feels (AKA What to Do When Things Actually Suck)

So, my husband is out of town most of this month. The way his travel and work schedule pans out he’s been gone since the 1st, is home this weekend for a little under 72 hours, and then is going to be away again until Thanksgiving morning.

Basically, it sucks donkey balls.

And yet, this is a type of donkey-ball sucking I’m accustomed to. (Yeah, that sounds dirty. I don’s care!) I’m used to my husband being gone a lot, particularly in the winter. But the problem with things that suck is they continue to be shitty even if you are used to them. Yes, this is just the way my life is. And yes—it’s annoying as fuck.

I’ve learned a lot over the years, though, about how to make my life better  during these phases of sucktasticness. In fact, I’m still learning. This last bout of the husband being gone I picked up an entirely new method of dealing with my stress. Which just goes to show that no matter how much you’ve put up with something, there’s always a way to deal with it better.

So here, in no particular order, are my tricks and tips to help mitigated the effects of suckyness. Take from it as you will.

Rule #1 of Dealing with Suck: Do Not Take On More!

One of the worst things I used to do when DH was out of town was to actually pick up MORE things to do. I’d try to work MORE, take care of the kids MORE. Take on difficult projects or finally get around to fixing things around the house. OMG—this was the worse thing ever.

Seriously, when things are going to suck for reasons outside your control, the best thing you can do is make sure you don’t add to your general stress level.

Rule #2: Get Rid of Anything Unnecessary

Thinking about volunteering at your kids’ school? Or offering to run a campaign for your friend who’s running for city council?

Stop thinking about that right now, ya idiot!!!! (Unless, of course, you really enjoy those things. But don’t lie to yourself. If you don’t enjoy it, everyone around you will know it, and you’ll be one of those crazy people who creates their own problems and then wonders why they are miserable.)

Rule #3: Find Something You Like And Do The Hell Out Of It

Like the mall? Spend a lot of time there! Like gardening? Now’s a great time to plant bulbs! When my husband is out of town I spend a ton of time organizing, and even more time exercising. I cook, too, but I don’t really like cooking so much when the husband is gone because me and the kids don’t eat that much. So instead I’ve been exercising my little tuchus off.

Feeling slow in the morning? I jog around the block. Getting worried I won’t get my words written? Time for 10 minutes of yoga! And every, every, every day I go to my pretty, nice-smelling exercise place and do a 1-hour class. After pushing myself, I’m sore, sweaty, and the endorphin buzz has me feel a hundred time better.

Your mileage may vary, but everyone has something they like to do. The trick is remembering to do it!

Rule #4: Watch Your Health

The odd alcoholic indiscretion or brownie for breakfast is not going to make you want to murder your children, but over time living on coffee, sugar, and red wine will seriously impair your ability to cope. This may pertain to other people more than me, but when I feel bad physically, I feel bad emotionally. I remember several episodes when my kids were little and my husband was gone that I resorted to living on coffee and power bars—and it worked….for a few days. But after a couple weeks of that my nerves were so shot that one wrong look could send me into a fit of temper.

Rule #5: It’s Not the Situation, It’s How You Cope With It

It’s always easy to attribute our bad moods to circumstances, but when it comes to a chronic thing like a spouse being gone, or dealing with an illness, or other long-term matters of suck, most of the other stuff you’re going to get upset about is really inconsequential. Your kid not finishing their homework? On a good deal, you’ll say a few stern words and arrange to have them go in early to school to get it done.

On a bad day you might slam doors, throw things, cry, pout, threaten to give them up for adoption… The possibilities are endless.

The trick to dealing with chronic suck is to realize that although the situation may not be in your control, you DO have some degree of control over your reactions. We all control what time we go to sleep and what time we wake up. What media we chose to enjoy, how we spend whatever free time we can carve out of the day.

As for me, I’m way over worrying whether I’m spending too much time on myself with the husband is gone. There is no such thing as too much relaxation when your circumstances are inherently stressful. There is no such thing as too much “me time” when the alternative is for me to be biting my kids’ heads off every five minutes.

So next time you have something tough going on in your life, I give you permission to be utterly selfish. Take that extra bath! Drive by your favorite store and look in the window. Leave your kids with their grandparents and just go for a walk. I promise, it won’t make you Big Suck any less awful, but it’ll make all the tiny annoyances of your day fade to the background.

Cheers and Happy Reading,

Daisy

 

 

 

 

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What to Do When You Can’t Be Awesome

I’ve been struggling lately with a distinct lack of awesomeness in my life. Not in my actual life—that’s pretty cool. But in my mindset. Maybe it’s fall, maybe it’s menopause…maybe it’s the fact that I don’t have a book coming out until FEBRUARY, but that happy, joyful energy that helps me  be useful in the world of books? That get up and go has got up and went.

(That said, I did get a book finished and submitted. If you want to read about that, it’ll be at the end of the post.)

So I’ve been trying to figure out how to deal with my pissy-pants mood in productive ways. The downside of feeling truly pissy-pants is that it’s hard to focus on anything, since pretty much everything annoys me. Zombies cheer me up, but there are only so many zombie TV shows and movies. So here, in no particular order, are the things that I’ve been doing to bide my time until I’m less (let’s just call it what is is) depressed.

1. Exercise

I’ve become somewhat addicted to Barre classes at my gym, so I’ve decided to seek out other ways to do Barre work outs. The nice thing is that the ballet movements are complicated =enough that I can’t think about anything else for the hour I’m exercising. YAY for reaching a meditative state!

2. Filling my brain with the good stuff

Learning new stuff always makes me happy, and though most of the random things I’ve decided to investigate in the past month will no in any way help my writing, at least they make me feel energized. The Vlog Brothers, Malcolm Gladwell, National Geographic, Wikipedia, hell—even the dictionary—all make me feel like there are plenty of interesting things in the world.

3. Cooking

If y’all follow me on any form of social media, you know I love to cook. Now that I think about it, I should take up a new cooking style. So far, I’ve been into Thai, Indian, and Ethiopian. What should I learn next?

4. Cleaning

Nothing makes me more grumpy than having a messy house. So the opposite also holds—i.e. that having a clean house makes me happy! Also—and this is counter-intuitive—the act of cleaning makes me happy in and of itself.

5. Staying away from Internet Outrage

I’ve noticed something lately about the Internet, namely that it can be a force for good or for evil. The good stuff is like informational videos and news stories—things that broaden your knowledge base and open your mind. The bad is the Outrage. The stupid, stupid, meaningless outrage. It’s a time and energy suck, and having an opinion one way or another on Miley Cyrus’ latest tweet does nothing to make me a better human being.

6. Getting enough sleep

This is important. Tired=unhappy.

7. Wearing make-up

Life seems better if the person I catch in the mirror doesn’t look like death warmed over.

8. Calling friends and family

See? I DO have friends!

9. Realizing that this will pass soon enough

 

If any of you are similarly suffering from winter blues, feel free to steal my ideas or add some of your own. I’m sure you’ll be back to being awesome in no time.

 

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Dinosaurs, The Just World Hypothesis and Why You Can’t Let Success or Failure Ruin Your Day

In the past couple days, I’ve become completely obsessed with Vlog Brothers videos on Youtube. Those vids, if you’ve never seen them, are information-dense clips on every topic from “What the fuck is up with Syria?” to “Human Sexuality is Complex,” and for an info nerd like me that is the coolest thing ever.

A clip I saw yesterday got me thinking. There’s this thing called the “Just-Word Fallacy” in which people (wrongly) assume that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. Hence, if a person (let’s say an author) is successful, we want to believe it’s because they are “better.” If they fail, we want to believe it’s because they suck. Of course, we all know this is not true. Circumstances determine success or failure as much as skill. But this fallacy persists, causing all sorts of problems.

First off, it makes people pissed at “mediocre” writers who experience spectacular success. Professional jealousy is one of the hardest things to deal with as an author and in many ways the reason it’s so difficult is because we want to scream into our pillow, “BUT THEY AREN’T A BETTER WRITER THAN ME!”

Well…no, they’re not. Or, they may be, but that doesn’t matter. The reason for someone else’s success is multifactorial and may or may not have anything to do with how well they write. A book may sell well because it has an awesome cover or because it’s about a timely topic (like, say, 9/11 or WWII right around the time of some major anniversary.) The book may have come out with the right publisher, or a character may rub the public consciousness at the right angle and NONE OF THAT has anything to do with what the author does or doesn’t deserve.

Take another example—the author (or TV show or movie) that doesn’t get the praise and recognition it should. *cough* Firefly *cough.* That book may be technically awesome, but for any number of reasons people may not buy it.

I’ve written a number of books that were out-of-left-field enough that no amount of writing skill or marketing or great covers could convince a wide number of people to read them. Why? Well—probably because I have an extremely out-of-left-field way of looking at the world and it didn’t occur to me that other people don’t.

But an out-of-left field book CAN be mega successful. At the right moment, or in the right circumstances. But we, as authors, can’t control the weather. We can’t control tastes or trends (unless we are so mega successful we start MAKING trends, but even that is a bit like being struck by lightning.) We can’t make people want to read things they don’t want to read.

Take Native American Romance—in the 90s, there was a trend in romance in which white chicks in the American West found their inner Indian Princess by taking up with some “savage” brown man. Personally, I think this had something to do with Kevin Costner and Dances with Wolves, but whatever.

Can you imagine trying to sell that kind of historical today?

How, exactly, do you think that would go over? Would it matter if it were well-written, or engaging, or sexy? Or would editors immediately turn it down without even cracking the synopsis?

Last year, everyone was up in arms about 50 Shades of Grey. Right now it’s Dinosaur Erotica. What do these books have in common? First off, that they are popular due to incomprehensible market trends. Second, they are about women powerless in a sexual dynamic.

Now, woman as powerless in sex has ALWAYS been eroticized. It WILL always be eroticized. It’s a romance mainstay, if not the cornerstone of all romantic literature.

It ain’t rocket science. Rape is hot. But the difference between now and the 90s is that back then a prairie chick was being raped-ish by a “savage” Native American. Right now, she’s being raped by a dinosaur.

I’m here to tell you, neither seems particularly sexy in real life. But if you’re an author with a crystal ball wondering why no one wants to read your alien romance or elephant romance or predator romance or glacier romance—keep guessing! There are markers and predictions, but in the end there’s really no way to know.

Some authors hit it out of the ballpark with their first stories, but I’ve always argued that early success can be as much of a curse as it is a blessing. Why? Well, if you try something and you’re good at it right off the bat, you have no idea WHY you’re good at it. You don’t know what you’re doing right and you have no idea what you could do wrong. You’re like a person shot off a catapult thinking you can fly.

That was my entire childhood. I was one of those smarty-pants kids. In today’s parlance, I’d be “gifted.” And while I want to believe my mother and think I’m some kind of genius, it certainly doesn’t hurt that my birthday was January 21st.

Back in the 70′s, the cut-off for starting kindergarten was that you turned 5 by December 31st of that year. So my January birthday made me older than every other kid in class. Those of you who’ve read Outliers know what happens next. I was good at school, so I was praised for being smart. This made me FEEL smart, and study harder in school. I got put in advanced classes… Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Was this good for me? Sort of. I did really well in school. However, once I got into life, I found I wasn’t always going to be the smartest. In fact—sometimes I’d feel really dumb.

Real skill takes years of work, dedication and perseverance—NONE of which I learned from being able to rattle off answers on tests. Out of school, I took just as long as anyone else to develop real mastery and that was a tough pill to swallow.

Back to writing…

My current release, FROM THE ASHES, is kicking ass. It’s been out two months as of today, and currently it’s ranked around 3,400 on Amazon. That’s by far higher than anything else I’ve written. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that most days it’s been available, I’ve sold more copies of FROM THE ASHES than I did any of my other books on release day.

Why? Well, it’s certainly not because I magically transformed into a better writer.

FROM THE ASHES has a great cover, it features a firefighter, is vaguely NA, has a dog, and is with a GREAT publishing house (Samhain.) I’m here to tell you, NONE of that was accidental.

The world is not fair, but it DOES follow patterns. Writing more makes you a better author, as does working with great editors. Watching what’s popular can help you delve into uncharted parts of your psyche to be able to write more on-trend. All this is possible when you’re willing to realize neither your successes nor your failures have much at all to do with your inherent worth as a human being.

You didn’t succeed because you’re “better” and you didn’t fail because you’re “worse.” Anyone can do better if they keep striving to be better. Anyone can suddenly start sucking if they refuse to adapt.

Bottom line? Someday you may have your uber-popular dino-erotica moment, but if it happens you’ll probably stumble into it like a drunk person picking up a lottery ticket off the ground. Work hard, pay attention, then work hard some more. That’s all any of us can do, and it’s the only thing I’ve ever found that makes me feel like I’m actually getting “better.”

Cheers and Happy Reading,

Daisy

 

 

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Everyone Wins

There are a lot of times when I feel like the West Coast of the USA is the best place on earth, and tonight is one of those nights. Why? Because tonight my younger daughter was scared of going to her track meet on Sunday and she asked if they were handing out ribbons. I could tell her, without hesitation, that yes—EVERYONE would get ribbons. Just for showing up.

See, we on the West Coast have learned a secret–one that most people seem to think is a communist plot made up by hippies who’ve smoked more than their daily allotment of Mary Jane. That secret is this: people are much more likely to show up and do their best when everyone wins.

Does it means that people on the left coast are less competitive? I’d think Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Jess Bezos would argue not. We’ve just learned how to win without making the other guy lose. Well, okay, sometimes the other guy DOES lose, but we try to be nice about it.

The ideal, though, is that Everyone Wins. My daughter, who is undoubtedly one of the slowest runners, if not THE slowest, wins by showing up, doing her best, and finishing. Other kids win by keeping a jog the whole time, or running a good pace, by beating their friends, and yes, maybe by actually being the fastest. That way, the race is full of winners, not losers. Proud parents instead of brow-beating rage freaks. Success instead of dismay.

For a person like me, with a Polyanna-ish notion that people are inherently good, the win-win mentality works wonders. I don’t have to be a better writer than everyone else, I just have to be the best I can. In fact, I don’t WANT to crush other authors under the weight of my mighty talent, because then, what would all those ravenous romance readers have to read? I like living in a world full of winners, where everyone is the best they can be on their own terms. Why would I want to live anywhere else?

So I’m going to show up on Sunday and cheer on my kid—whether she’s the best runner or the worst, the fastest or the slowest. Because honestly, who the hell cares who wins a third grade track meet anyway?

The trick in life is showing up. Doing your best. And doing it again, even if you suck.

After all, if she runs that half mile every day from now until she’s forty, she’ll be the fastest mom in the pick-up lane at elementary school. She’ll live longer and be healthier and even happier. In the end, that’s what “winning” is all about.

 

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Writing and Self-Esteem

Being a writer is hard work.

Not the writing. That’s the easy part.

Not even the editing. That’s harder. More stressful, slightly more emotionally and psychologically draining, but no.

Editing is kid’s play relative to the real challenge…keeping your chin up even when things don’t go your way.

Because here’s the thing—writing is full of failures. Whether you’re having manuscripts rejected, or publishing but having lousy sales, or having good sales but bad reviews, or having good sales AND good reviews but are getting panned by some random section of society or your family, or even your own brain providing words like “loser” or “why do you even bother?” or “God, you suck”.

You WILL fail. Either that, or you’ll get death threats.

(MAN, I wish I were successful enough to get death threats. You know you’ve arrived when you piss people off that bad.)

You’ll need to gather the strength or the courage or even the stockpile of antidepressants that’ll force you to open that manuscript tomorrow. And the tomorrow after that.

Because no matter how well you think you’re doing—because your book sold well, or you got on some famous list, or you got some kind of critical acclaim—someone will say to you what I heard today…

“That’s great! Now you should start thinking about writing The Great American Novel. You know—like a REAL book. Of course, you’ll have to work on your writing a whole lot first…”

…and the wind will go out of your sails.

It won’t matter who loved your work or what your critique partner or betas said. It won’t matter if your editor thinks your great, or your agent thinks you have quite a future. (You know, they say that to *everyone*, the doubt-crows whisper in your head.) It won’t matter WHAT success you’ve had, because that one fucking arrow, if aimed correctly, will spear right through your heart.

You’ll feel like you suck.

The real challenge of writing is that moment. Those things that brings you down again and again.

Because the hard fact is the only person who can truly convince you that you don’t suck is YOU.

Sure, you can beg the internet for reassurance, or a group of sweet people who’ve agreed to stroke your ego. But in the end we all know the truth. You’re the only person who can lift your own chin.

Only you can straighten your spine.

Only you can get yourself up and dust yourself off and even kick your own ass.

It’s you versus your self-esteem, and fuck it, you’re not going to get that whiny person inside you win.

That person is weak, and annoying.

She can’t write for shit.

And those naysayers—have THEY ever written a book? No? Then fuck ‘em.

In the end, it’s you versus every person or thought that gets in the way of telling the stories you want to tell.

And THAT is the real challenge.

Oh, and if I DO I ever write The Great American Novel? It’ll have sex in it. Lots of sex. And it’ll be GOOD sex. Hence…a romance novel.

Cheers, Daisy

 

 

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