Cherie Noel's Blog, page 25

Saturday Delay: Redux

I swear, a Wonder Woman's work is never done...



I've made promises this week, and I've got deadlines staring me in the face... so here's what I'm gonna do for you all. I hereby declare tomorrow DP day... *oh, not that kinda DP you slutbunnies* ... Double Prize Day! Leave a comment for each part of the post, and I'll enter you in the drawing to win free books for a year from Rooster and Pig publishing twice... plus you get two ah-mah-zing posts by yours truly. *grin*

First off, I'll put up the regularly scheduled Sunday Snog, but with a Hopping against Homo/Trans*phobia shimmy and a twist, making it a 2k sneaky peaky into the world of the Common Grounds Cafe... and what the boys and girls who hang out there do when faced with Homo/Trans*phobia from both within and without their community.

Secondly I'll put up another Trans*family Tale... realio, trulio.  See you all tomorrow.

For now, I'm off to honor some promises, and walk the walk I've been talking. Ciao for now, babies. Enjoy the hell out of your day, and I'll catch you on the flip side.

Saturday Delay: Still Hopping against Homo/Trans*phobia

Hey, babies, just wanted to let you know I'll be a wee bit late getting today's planned post up... likely afternoonish here on the east coast. So, in the mean time, here's a consolatory pretty pack of pics.
 Oooh, sign me up to wake this way!!
Yummy puppy pile!
Work it darling, work it! 


I just lurve the attidudinal beauties, don'tcha know...
Pretty, pretty... wonder what this person is like on the inside? Are they as pretty there as they are outside. I'd love to meet him/her and find out.
Oi, I have to run out and finish up a few errands... be back soon though, and then I'll get a little snip of Common Grounds written up for you.

Fabulous Friday: Speaking Out Against Transphobia

Home of the Hop with links to all the other Hoppers... yeah, baby, we're rocking this theme until Sunday!

Yesterday I addressed Homophobia... my take on what it means and what I'd like to do--what I've done about it. Today I'm talking about Transphobia. This issue, the desire to fight against it, to see it wiped from the face of the earth lives right next to my heart. Makes it hard to breathe some days. I found this clip of Andre Pejic over on Tara Lain's blog, and I thought--OMFrackingG, this is PERFECT. He says exactly what I wish the whole world could say and mean, and does so with a grace and charm most of us only dream of achieving. Enjoy.




Gender doesn't make me who I am...


Ah, if the world at large could think this way, what a different place this earth would be. 


And really, at the end of the day, what does it mean to be a woman, or to be a man? No, I'm not being flippant here, I'm asking a serious question. I know what it means to be Cherie. I know what it means to be a sister and a mother and (more often than not) a father. I know how it hurts my brother when the teller at the bank gets hung up on his legal name and repeatedly calls him by the wrong pronoun. 


So if we lived in a world where it just didn't matter... perhaps people wouldn't make assumptions. Perhaps they would wait to see what was inside the gift-wrapping of flesh. Perhaps boys who got wrapped in pink paper and girls who got wrapped in blue wouldn't hurt with every breath they take. 


Today, just today, try to walk through the world like a child. Pretend you've never seen a leaf unfurl in the spring. Pretend you have no preconceptions about who the person looking at you from out of your mirror is, and no way of knowing who the other looking back at you as you pass them in the street is until you get close enough to see what lives behind the blue, brown, green, gray or lavender of their eyes. 


Try.


Just try, and see if maybe, you learn something new about you.


I double dog dare you.

Thursday Think Tank: Hop Against Homophobia

Hop Against Homophobia main page with links to all the hoppers!

First of all: read to the bottom, babies... or at least scroll down. There are prizes involved. :)

Second of all: get ready to get edu-mur-cated. See, it needed the extra 'r', cause as Medea would say... I'm verry sincerre about this. 

ho·mo·pho·bi·a    [hoh-muh-foh-bee-uh]
noun
unreasoning fear of or antipathy toward homosexuals and homosexuality.

So... nouns can be people, or things. Yeah, yeah, nouns can be places too, but as I've yet to run across a town, county, state, province, or country called Homophobolandia, we'll concentrate on the two things I've actually had some experience with. So for the purposes of this particular blog post, the nouns we'll concentrate on are people, and things. Cause I was taught those two things are both considered nouns.Well, at least according to the teachings of every English teacher, Composition teacher, and Literature professor I ever took a class with. They could have all been wrong, but somehow, I doubt that. 
A person expressing this unreasoning fear would be a Homophobe. A person with a fear that keeps them from seeing those individuals among us who were born homosexual as people. A homophobe is a person lost to their own fear. A lost person is a very sad thing in my book, regardless of the cause of their being lost. Sometimes they are merely annoying, sometimes they grow past their fear, and sometimes? Sometimes their fear drives them to be dangerous. A person drowning in water can bring their potential rescuer down with them... and so can a person drowning in fear. Which is why lifeguards are trained to approach drowning victims obliquely, or from the rear. Yep, they get taught to sneak up on the folks they are trying to save, and you know, it's not a bad approach. They get to save two for the price of one, both themselves and their rescuee. I call that well done. 
Hold onto your panties and jockstraps, babies, I do have a point here. 
I'm all for saving folks who can't save themselves... I just want you to be aware that if your going to attempt this it's best to get some training. And it's also a good idea to have a battle buddy, cause make no mistakes out there my friends, it's an ugly, ugly battle complete with crimes against the innocent and a perilously high death rate.
Homophobia is a thing. It is the fear which rules the actions of the person lost to it, and can occur through either simple ignorance, or willful ignorance. Simple ignorance is lack of exposure, and has the easy fix of education. Willful ignorance comes into play when someone holds a lack of information, or the wrong information dear to them, and fights vehemently against any attempts to change their unreasoning fear for knowledge. 
Whew... long way around the barn, but really all I want to say is this. Homophobia is real. It is dangerous. In my opinion it's as dangerous a disease as the Bubonic plague or Schizophrenia combined with Sociopathic Tendencies... yes, all the capitalization there was totally intentional because what I'm attempting to emphasize is this is as serious as a heart attack, or cancer.
Homophobia kills. It's wildly contagious. Take it seriously. In some cases it's curable, and in some treatable... and in a few particularly virulent cases it ought to be simply quarantined for the safety of all concerned. And just like the plague, or the treatment of mental illnesses we all need to stand up and take part in finding a way to decrease the risks associated. And we need to be smart about it. Today's Hop is one step in the right direction. 
Use the links to the International Day against Homophobia, the Hop Against Homophobia, and the one for Embrace the Rainbow at the upper left of my blog. Get informed. Get involved. Get a battle buddy to watch your back, cause there are folks out there who want you dead or safely neutered either physically, spiritually, or mentally. Be smart. Be safe. 
But most of all, be yourself.
Don't give a rip about what anyone thinks about who you love, except those you love... and chose your family wisely. No, no, not the one you were born into. We get no choices there. Choose carefully the folk you will walk through this battlefield we call life. Choose those who will accept you for who you are. Choose those who will understand, or empathize, or at least cheer you on in supportive incomprehension. My biological mother never got a lot of things about me, but I chose her as part of my family of choice nonetheless, because she always cheered me on, even when she didn't understand, even when she couldn't personally empathize. Surround yourself with people like that. Be a person like that. Because, babies, tolerance is catching too.
***~~~***~~~***
For more information, and to get the tools and training you'll need to deal with homophobia, check out the links below. Because baby, even if you aren't homosexual, homophobia hurts you too.
Please, if you have any links to places where folks can get educated, or get help in dealing with homophobia--leave them in the comments.
http://www.homophobiaday.org/default.aspx?scheme=1204http://hopagainsthomophobia.blogspot.com.au/http://www.thetrevorproject.org/   
The Part About the Prizes: okay, here's the prize deal. If you leave a comment, you get entered in a drawing to win a copy of one of my books. If you leave a comment with a link to a previously unlisted (on this blog) place to get information about combating homophobia, you get entered in a drawing to win a free copy of every book my publishing house, The Rooster and the Pig Publishing, puts out for the next year. And every additional link (not posted previously in this blog) you put up gets you entered again. How's that for fun prizes? 
Entries for both drawings will be open until midnight EST on May 20th. I'll post the winners here. Be sure to leave me an email addy, because if you don't, I'll be unable to reach you with your prize, and have to give it away to someone else. 
Leave an address. :)




Oh, and here's the clickable link for my sneaky surprise from comment #1. *grinning*


Vicktor Alexander Hops Against Homophobia/Transphobia


     

Wednesday Work in Progress~~Out of the Box: Climbing the Walls

Goddammit.How did he keep getting into these situations?Right in front of him Jason flipped up over the edge of the concrete wall blocking their way, the glint of his golden hair dropping away into nothingness. Shit.Where the hell did he—Lee leaned forward to gain momentum, pushed off the ground hard and grabbed the top edge of the wall, straight arming himself up. Holy Christ. There was a run off canal carved into the side of the hill here, and Jason was bouncing back and forth off the walls. Lee’s lover dropped farther and farther away. The base of the structure looked to be at least a hundred feet down. Jason was easily two-thirds of the way down. This was way beyond his level of expertise. Lee flipped himself up and over the wall in the seconds it took to assess this, and let himself fall as far as he dared. He could only hope that Jason managed to pull this one off, because they couldn’t stop, not with the gang of white slavers hot on their heels. Seriously.Real deal white slavers, for fuck’s sake. They hadn’t expected to find anything like this when they went looking for Michael’s missing cousin. They’d found the boy and gotten him out of the dingy apartment he’d been tied up in. Sam had him, and Michael was giving them backup while Jason and Lee played bait and drew the dickheads who’d stolen the boy off. They just hadn’t expected the set up they thugs had to be so high tech, nor for them to have so many bodies available to throw into the chase. Lee and Jason were running for their lives. Jason reached the bottom, and nailed his landing on the narrow ledge next to the fast moving water rushing along the bottom of the man-made gorge. He took off running along the thin strip, and Lee turned a hundred percent of his attention to getting down as quickly as he could without killing himself. He figured he had about twenty to forty more seconds before the guys chasing him caught up and climbed the wall at the top of the gorge. They had guns, and he was pretty sure they wouldn’t hesitate to shoot him. Voices echoed from above.Lee ran flat out, clearing the corner in five seconds.“Naw, man. No way they went down there. Why you even looking? If they jumped that fence they dead anyway.”“Shut the fuck up Niki. They got skills man. I seen them.”A guffaw sounded, and then a loud cracking noise echoed dimly down. Jason jerked Lee up against him into the shadow of an overhang. Lee grabbed Jason’s face between his roughly callused hands, tilting the smaller man’s head up. He whispered against Jason’s lips.“I—damn babe, you scared the shit out of me.”Then he kissed Jason with everything in him. Jason just opened up, sweet and easy like he always did. Lee sucked Jason’s tongue into his mouth, stroking it with his own. He pulled back slightly. “We need to get back home. Get Michael, Sam, and Ryan and get the hell out of this place.”Jason nodded, and then they were running.

find Climbing the Walls in downloadable formats at Silver Publishing as part of the weekly Free Reads: Get the Silver Shorts HERE

Tuesday Teaser

This one goes out to Thorny. Thanks for the tip, babe.

Monday: Mayhem & Foolishness

Off and running.

Will pop in later with updates.

I've got about 92k to edit today, and about 6k that MUST be written. LOL. Let's see what I actually accomplish. Oh, and in other news? I actually put the Christmas tree away early this morning... Like around 0100hr. Thanks to the encouragement and support of my little brother:

VIC: Is that what we're calling it? *eyebrow raised*

CHERIE: Well, you did kinda encourage... and you did most of the work... and you made fun of my redneckness for wanting to keep the tree up all year... er... that's encouragement right? *sunny smile*

VIC: *shaking head* Do you see what I put up with from the Women Folk here?

Tuesday's Triumph

Today's Triumph is short and sweet.

I resisted the urge to tie the cute cable guy to my bed, thereby avoiding a jail-sentence. Whew. He looked like this--->
No, really. Just... with a mustache, and a little bit more padding.
Yum.
Yum.
Yum.
Yum.

That is all.

Monday Madness

Sorry about the late post, was in the hospital from noon yesterday to about two in  the afternoon today with chest pain. No mania today, just a lot of tests and a little i.v. potassium. All is well in Casa Noel now, however, and we will resume our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow. :)

A Snog from William Neale's final book~~ Hope

EXCERPT FROM HOPE BY WILLIAM NEALE:


“Can I carry him?” Spencer whispered a few minutes later.

“Sure, go ahead. He’ll just be pissed tomorrow when he finds out he slept through it.”

Spencer carefully and gently lifted the sound-asleep boy from the daybed, cradling him in his arms. Like a lightning bolt from the sky he was struck with awe. It was a totally unexpected feeling of love and paternal protection he’d never imagined existed in him. In the flash of a second, he understood every reason why Hunter had adopted this boy. He wanted to hold Ethan in his arms like this and watch him sleep for the rest of the night. He looked so innocent and even angelic; it was the most beautiful sight he had ever seen.

“Uh—Spencer,” Hunter whispered with a knowing smile, “we need to go. The door’s this way,” he pointed as he pushed Ethan’s wheelchair in that direction. Whispering their goodbyes to Harvey and Marge, they quietly returned to the warm yellow light glowing from the cracked-open door of the stone cottage.

Just as Spencer began to ever-so-softly lower Ethan onto his bed, the boy opened his eyes and blinked twice in disbelief. “Oh, just wait till I tell Dad what I dreamed,” he murmured groggily. “My friend Spence tucked me in.”

As his head hit the pillow, Ethan’s eyes closed again but a smile remained on his sleeping face. Knowing there was always a chance that Ethan might never wake, Spencer could no longer contain tears in his eyes. He leaned down and kissed Ethan’s forehead and then looked up to see Hunter watching, standing close, smiling.

“My God, what just happened?” Spencer said a minute later, now returned to the living room sofa where they both sat. He brushed his eyes with the back of his hand.

“That, my friend, is why I get up every day.”

“I’ve never felt anything like that in my life. Never. For just a few minutes I felt like he was my son too. It was like an epiphany. Gosh, I hope that doesn’t offend you.”

“Do you know how many potential boyfriends have run away from here as fast as they could as soon as they found out about Ethan?” He paused, blushing. “Not that you’re a potential boyfriend, of course. I’m saying this badly, but know that I’m pleased and honored you like him so much.”

“Would you like me to be a potential boyfriend?”

“Well—uh—I can’t imagine why someone like you would be interested in just a plain looking, ordinary cello player with a sick kid.”

Spencer scooted closer to Hunter and looked him closely in the eye. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more beautiful and extraordinary man than the one I’m looking at right now.”

He gripped Hunter’s neck with one hand and pulled him closer so that their lips touched first tentatively and then with certainty in the emotions Spencer wanted to communicate. And with the connection of their tongues and the dulcet sounds of soft, small moans coming from both their throats, he wrapped his arms around Hunter and pulled him even closer.

Seconds, maybe minutes later, they parted, both breathing heavily. Spencer could feel his erection pressing urgently inside his jeans and he had to force himself to pull away and take a deep breath before things went any further. He felt an attraction for Hunt unlike any he had ever known.

“Wow. Oh wow—I wasn’t expecting that,” Hunter gasped.

“I’m sorry, Hunt. God—I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me. That was way out of line and I apologize. I’ll leave right now.”

“No—Jesus—don’t go. I didn’t say I didn’t like it. It’s just—damn—I haven’t been kissed like that in a very long time.”

“You mean you’re okay with it?”

Hunter smiled with a tease in his eye. “Well, maybe to be sure, we should try it again.”

Their second kiss melted into a third, fourth, and fifth until keeping count was entirely a meaningless exercise. Spencer was painfully erect and at some point, he realized Hunter’s hand was gripping his cock through the taut denim fabric of his pants.

“Maybe I really should be going,” he breathed into Hunter’s ear, “before things get out of control.” He couldn’t resist biting lightly on the soft, pink lobe before pulling away.

“Mmmm,” Hunter moaned. “No—please—don’t go.” He lifted up to meet Spencer’s eyes. “Listen—I haven’t asked a man this question in a very long time and that’s the God’s truth…” Hunter glanced away for a brief second to steel his courage. “But would you like to stay the night?”

*****
William's final book, complete with a moving forward by his longtime partner can be found at MLR Press***** 
The original Sunday Snog by Victoria Blisse will lead you to a wealth of other talented snoggers.http://victoriablisse.co.uk/blog/sunday-snog-tvc/
Go On. Get You Some.