Ada Maria Soto's Blog, page 3

If This is High Functioning..?

Since being officially diagnosed as bipolar in my late twenties (no on ones’ surprise) I have been described as “High Functioning” by three different psychiatric professionals. The first was the psychiatrists that gave me my official diagnoses and first medication. I liked him. He understood that as a creative I had a slightly different take on my own mental health than most. He described my brain as a Ferrari engine in an old Volvo chassis, not able to reach its full speed. He also told me that I was High Functioning and the most practical person he’d ever met. I asked him what the hell he met by that because sitting in his office, not looking forward to walking to the train station in the pouring rain, feeling totally out of control I didn’t feel particularly high functioning. I didn’t feel like I was functioning at all.

Apparently, in his experience, people who have been dealing with the level of problems I have since childhood (age four) have been hospitalized, or arrested, or fired from jobs, or dropped out of school, or gone bankrupt by my age. That I’d managed to crawl my way through 19 years of education, allowed myself to get beat down by awful jobs instead of quitting or losing it at my boss, and never been caught doing something destructive apparently was a huge positive. From where I was sitting that just meant I’d been faking being ‘normal’ from a very young age and had gotten good at it. The fear of poverty, public humiliation, or disappointing people I care about had become a frame on which to build a very convincing ‘normal human’ suit.

The second person to call me High Functioning and tell me I was doing ‘surprisingly well’ was a maternal psychiatric nurse. When I got pregnant my doctor immediately referred me to the DHB’s Maternal Mental Health group because I was high risk for postpartum depression. Nice thing about living in a country with socialized medicine is that after giving birth I got seven days in a private hospital room with 24 hour nurses and doctors and daily psychiatric checks in order to make sure I was handling becoming a mom, for free.

I was sent home after five days since I seemed to be giving the right answers to the questions. Truthfully those first few weeks are blurry in my memory. I know I cried every day but I have no idea if it was depression, exhaustion, or the fact that I was a raging ball of hormones. The nurse came by every week for a couple of months. She checked me, checked the baby, asked if I was still taking my medication, and told me I was doing just fine. Looking at my file with Rapid Cycling Mixed Bipolar written on the top she was expecting a much higher chance of problems with me. Apparently postpartum psychosis is a thing.

I’m going to assume I did well. Well enough at least. My kid is four and a half and aside from getting rather combative at bedtime doesn’t seem to be too messed up. I mean I’m sure I’ve fucked up somehow because all parents do but she’s alive, tall, healthy, and incredibly stubborn.

The third person to tell me I was High Functioning was my current psychiatrist who was actually passing on the words of my psychologist. My psychiatrist wasn’t planning on talking on anyone new at the time but I needed someone to write me a prescription since my old doctor had left the country. When this sales pitch of myself as a patient was passed on I asked ‘if this is high functioning what the hell is low functioning?’

I have never in my life felt high functioning at anything. I best I maintain. No, I’ve never been arrested or hospitalized but the thought has crossed my mind more than once that maybe if I had acted out in my teens instead of gritting my teeth and ‘behaving’ I might have gotten the help I needed a decade earlier.

‘Acting out’ hasn’t been a real option in several years now but there is still the urge to just stand in the middle of the road and scream at the world. Though that might say as much about the state of the world these days as my mental health. I get up when my alarm goes off or my daughter decides it’s time for both of us to get up.

This year I received multiple rejection letters on my writing projects, so I went and self-published a short story, a novel, a novella, and had my first two bits of science fiction published by others. I got involved with politics on a local and national level. Technically this has been one of my most successful years to date but I’ve also had to change medications twice.

My kid his hooked on My Little Pony and pineapple pizza because there have been more than a few days when the very idea of going to the park then going grocery shopping has filled me with a paralyzing terror. At some point she’s going to realize that mommy doesn’t function quite the same as the other mommies. I think she’s already starting to clue in that there are days when she can get away with more stuff than other. She just hasn’t worked out why.

Yesterday I stood in the kitchen cutting bell peppers and had a moment where I decided I didn’t want to cook for anyone, ever again, ever, including myself. Even putting something in the microwave seemed too much like hard work. The thing is cooking is one of the few things I am actually very good at and usually enjoy. If I cook for you it means I love you. Or we exist in the same circle and I’m trying to get your attention for some reason.

I finished chopping the pepper and my family had a healthy grilled corn salad with edamame beans for dinner. A perfect summer recipe for a hot New Zealand December day.

This morning I got up, got dressed. Got my kid up, dressed, and off to preschool. Got myself some coffee and a cheese sandwich for breakfast. Took my medication and wrote this. I’ll go grocery shopping later, and I promised my kid we’ll make gingerbread men for the neighbors after school. But I have to say the ‘normal human’ suit is feeling a little threadbare and I ask again if this is high functioning what the hell is low functioning?

Tactical Submission Release Day!

I once attended a lecture on how to write a novel in a month. It was given by an author who had nearly a hundred books to her name and absolutely knew what she was talking about. The talk was geared for Category authors who wanted to or already wrote for the big houses but there were good takeaways for everyone. A lot of it had to do with the kind of structure places like Harlequin and Entangled were looking for. The general theory was that you outlined to the structure then spend a month typing until your hands fall off. Not easy, but doable. One month, fifty thousand words.

The day after this talk I had the opportunity to pitch to a top acquiring editor for a major house who was actually taking non-hetrosexual pitches for the first time, and I had NOTHING! I had just put out Bowerbirds and had a couple of half assed things half started but nothing I could pitch. Fact, I have a master’s degree in pulling bullshit out of my ass. It’s actually a degree in film and television producing but believe me, same thing.

So, I sat down in front of one of the most prominent editors in the romance world and bullshited a story about a SWAT captain and a Medical Examiner. (I have a thing for the jock/geek trope, okay?) The editor in question asked if I could do it in 50 thousand words because they were looking for category length and I said “Sure, no problem, it’s half written already”. I was given a card with an email address, some words of support, and sent on my way.

The next day I sat down with all my notes on structure and outlining, and started trying to write what I had pitched. I ended up deleting the first twenty thousand words in tears and never submitted to that editor. Tactical Submission, Windsor Knot as it was known in the start, was never going to be a 50k naughty romance for a big house. I should have probably just started on something completely new but Jack and Isaac had set up house in my head and weren’t going away until I gave them the story they wanted. More sex, kinkyer sex, more angst, more cuddles, but, of course, a Happy Ever After.

Tactical Submission Now Available on Amazon, Kindle Unlimited, and in Paperback.

“Why don’t you sit down, Jack?”

It was phrased as a question but the doctor’s voice was smooth and calm with firmness under it. The room had two plush antique looking chairs to go with the four-post bed carved out of heavy wood. He felt his face flush and took a seat. This was not how the night was supposed to go. Being recognized was not part of the plan.

“It’s good to see color in your cheeks. If you went any paler I was going to have you lay down with your feet up so you didn’t pass out from shock.”

Jack didn’t reply. There was still a churning in his stomach. He’d had his membership for two months, before he worked up the nerve to come to the Windsor Club. It wasn’t the first time he’d gone looking for a quick fix for the desires he shouldn’t have, but it had been a while and he’d been nervous as all hell. Rightfully so it seemed.

“I’d ask what you are doing here but that is blatantly obvious.” Jack nodded but didn’t want to speak. Speaking had not been part of the plan either. The plan had been to find someone who would take him down and use him enough to fry out the tangled mess of desire and stress his mind had become.

There was a knock on the door. Jack jumped but he didn’t stand. He hadn’t been told to stand. Was the club being raided? That was stupid. He knew from experience that police raids don’t politely knock. Had Dr. Bard invited someone else? That other guy who was talking to him? The doctor stood and opened the door only half way then closed it again. Now he carried a tray with a teapot and two cups.

“My standing order.” He placed the tray on the small table beside his chair. “Jasmin green tea. Would you like a cup?” Jack shook his head. He wasn’t sure if his stomach could handle something even that simple. Dr. Bard poured a cup and the smell took him back to late lunches with his mother at The Golden Palace Chinese Restaurant and Tea Shop when he was a teenager.

“You would be more comfortable kneeling right now.”

He hadn’t taken his eyes off Dr. Bard but now he dropped them. It wasn’t a question but a statement of truth. That was what he had come here for, for someone who’d tell him to kneel.

“Come here.” Dr. Bard gestured to a spot beside his chair. Jack didn’t move. Yes, this was what he wanted when he followed Dr. Bard into the room, but still he hesitated. He always hesitated, his desires fighting with his rational mind telling him it was stupid.

He tried to breathe, tried to keep calm but the thread of panic that was telling him to run; screaming that the world was about to know his secret, was fighting with the part of him that was desperate to let the night happen.

Dr. Bard didn’t ask again, he simply sipped his tea with a patient air. Jack stood and took the three steps to the spot by the chair. Dr. Bard gestured to the floor and Jack knelt. His breath came out of him in a rush as his body relaxed while his heart was still racing. With his eyes down, as was proper, he strained his hearing trying to anticipate what might be next.

He felt Dr. Bard lace his fingers into his hair, petting him softly before gently guiding his head down until his forehead was resting on the doctor’s knee.

Warning: Contains Kink, Violence, and Bacon

A few years back there was a bit of a kerfuffle online over if books should have content warnings. The actual reasonable debate lasted about 30 seconds before it devolved into screams of Snowflakes, SJW oppression, and ‘but if people know what kind of crap is in my books they might not buy them’. I kept out of it and within a couple of days people had something new to get worked up over.

One of the reasons I kept out of it was because I found the idea that people were so upset about kinda weird. The first million (not exaggerating) words I wrote from public consumption were fan fiction, and in fan fiction you put a header on each story, and in that header are warnings. Standard headers look like this.

Title:

Author:

Fandom:

Rating:

Prompt:

Characters/Pairings:

Word count:

Warnings/Spoilers:

Summary:

Notes:

Beta:

And you use them, religiously. When most fanfic was still posted on LiveJournal it was standard for communities to require headers. It made it easy to find and sort stories. And the Warning part was taken seriously. Writers who didn’t got an ear/inbox full. Even now on Archive of Our Own with its drop down menus and tick boxes, the second thing you fill out is the primary warning section. Not using the warnings is one of the few things that can get you bumped off the archive. If you write fan fiction filling out the warnings is just something you do. It’s respectful to your readers.

Getting detailed in your warnings when you’re writing kink is as much sales pitch as giving people a heads up. When you put up that NCIS fic that involves corsets, figging, and jelly donuts you say that’s what is contained. It lets someone who is really into corsets and figging discover you as a new author. It’s also respectful to your pre-existing fans who might consider jelly donuts a big turn off. From there they can decide to wait for your next story or, forewarned, give the story a try trusting you to maybe make jelly donuts non-yucky. It really is standard practice.

Now, everything in the above header you find in a novel, except for the Warnings/Spoilers section.

In less than twelve hours now I have my first original kink book coming out. Hopefully first in a series. I’m self-publishing and that let me do something that I’m not sure a publisher would allow. The very first line of chapter one is a note telling people to go back and read the author notes, because I used the author notes as a warning section. I listed the general kinks, because how could I not? For some riding crops, forced orgasms, and mild CBT are hard turnoffs. For others they’re the perfect Saturday night. I don’t want people spending their hard-earned money on my book only to find the one sex act that’ll give them nightmares. It just seems rude. And a good way to lose future sales.

But the sex isn’t the big thing I warned for. My MC is a SWAT commander. His job, and how he does it, and what it does to him, is a large part of his character. There is a sequence where domestic terrorists try to take over a government building. For the first year of writing the book the scene was pulled out, rewritten, then put back in over and over. We’re in a world where a mass shooting stays in the news cycle for less than a week. Does that really need to be in Happy Ever After romances?

In the end the sequence stayed in the book because I think it makes the ending work better. It’s in chapter 30. It is chapter 30. My author notes state very clearly that it’s okay to skip chapter 30 if you can’t handle it. I’m not sure, if as a professional author that’s a weird thing to do but it’s too late now. When I was writing fanfic and posting a chapter at a time I would write things like ‘this chapter contains a suicide attempt’ or ‘the next two chapters deal with the after effects of a hate crime’ and in all my years writing fanfic, starting in the 90’s, I never once had someone tell me a warning ruined a story for them.

But as I’ve been told the safe(ish) world of fanfic is a bit different from the cold realities of the professional writing world. Still, be warned, Tactical Submission contains kink, violence, and bacon.

~

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His Quiet Agent: When the characters write themselves

His Quiet Agent (formally The Agency) was an accident of a book. Not to say I accidentally wrote a book, but rather that the book I thought I was writing became something completely different. Currently it’s my best reviewed book (with one exception of one dude from Canada) which is nice but also makes me a little uncomfortable. Several people have commented on how nice it is to see ace and demi characters who aren’t “fixed” and have an HEA. Others are commenting about how romantic it is and how touched they are by it.  And I feel like such an impostor.

When I started The Agency, six years ago I figured I was writing just another bog standard, 50k, MM, romance. I’d have two characters, they’d meet, screw, fall in love, live happily ever after. Done. Should have taken six months instead of six years. But for some reason the damn thing just wouldn’t get written. It was years before I could even settle on a name for Arthur. Martin was always Martin.

In Arthur’s first incarnation he was social, outgoing, and popular. Not characteristics I know how to write and he came across as a bit of a dick. I continued to pick away at the story for years, outlining, writing scenes, deleting scenes, restructuring. Still thinking I was writing a 50k category type romance I talked over the issue with the person sitting next to me at the Friday of the 2016 RWNZ conference. Unfortunately, I don’t remember who. I’m bad with names and a bit face blind but they said, “what if John (place holder name) is socially awkward instead”?

Well, you should write what you know, and it helped. I deleted literally everything I had written in the previous years and started from scratch. Arthur became Arthur so I could make a Merlin and Arthur joke (literally that was the whole reason), and he became a raging ball of insecurities because Write What You Know. But even with that I wasn’t writing what I thought I was writing.

Long ago and far away I thought I would grow up to be an actor. I suck at it but that doesn’t mean I didn’t go through years of acting classes many of them in Method acting. For those who aren’t familiar it basically means knowing every tiny little thing about the character you are playing. It means knowing what they had for breakfast last Thursday and the name of their childhood dog even though none of that is in the script. I am an awful actor, but I am on many levels a Method writer. I know a lot about my characters. They often exist in my head as fully formed people before I have a story for them. Characters waiting for their moment on the stage, clambering for their time on the page.

Martin however was different. He was there in my head in his almost black suit, a little too skinny, saying nothing, and seeing everything. You know you’re a writer when you’re pissed the voices in your head aren’t talking to you. But still I pushed on. Had the Meet Cute, First connections, sort of first date. Arthur was starting to flow but Martin was quiet, giving me nothing about his past, who he was, why he did what he did.

“But you’re the Author, don’t you just decide those things?”

Oh, I wish it worked that way. I can start a character one way but any attempt to force it just comes out bad. Did you read Empty Nests? Draft one James was a girl. Gabe was white. Characters change.

The few times Martin did speak up was when I hit a point in the outlining or writing where I thought there should be a sex scene. There was going to be one after the movie date, one after the funeral, one right at the end, but every time I got to a point where it seemed natural for them to just lean in and kiss Martin would say No. I actually did write in one sex scene and it was awful. I mean it was beyond bad. I didn’t even get all the way through it before I just deleted the whole chapter. So, I ended my outline with Martin and Arthur sitting on Martin’s floor then took a step back.

What I had outlined and half written was not what I had even remotely planned on. Stylistically it was different than anything else I’d done and the characters were a vastly different than my previous ones as well. Quieter, more introspective, more careful with themselves and others.

Writers talk to the imaginary people in their heads all the time. That’s how we make stories. Sometimes they are long conversations, sometimes they go like this.

Me: So, sex?

Martin: No, thank you.

Me: Can I at least find out what you like on your pizza?!

For the record I love Martin. I think he’s my favourite if most frustrating person to ever crawl out of my head and onto a page. Not that Martin would ever crawl. He’s got too much dignity for that.

For a lot of writers, myself included, sex scenes can be an easy short hand. They are at stage X in the relationship and you know that because they’re boinking. Not this time. Time to write another draft, this one with story hour and cooking lessons and angsty voice mail left at three in the morning. Not the story I was planning to tell in 2011.

His Quiet Agent was rejected by publishers for not being a romance or romantic. I had a panic attack the day it went live. No one will read it, everyone will hate it, this will kill my career, I’ll have to change my name and go back to writing rejected spec scripts.

People are reading it. People are loving it and responding to it and I feel like such a fraud because these characters very much wrote themselves and told their own stories. I was simply allowed to peak into their lives and take a few notes before presenting it to you. And for everyone asking for a sequel, the 33 thousand words you just read took six years, give me a little time to see if I can get the guys talking again.

Tactical Submission Available for Pre-Order!

Tactical Submission is now available for Pre-Order and will be delivered November 10th!

SWAT commander Jack Burnside is haunted by his craving to kneel before another man. Of all the things he hates about himself – his overtly masculine size and strength, his blue eyes, his insecurities – it is the need to submit that he fears will destroy him.

Doctor Isaac Bard is close to achieving his perfect life. He has a great job with the Coroner’s Office and an open marriage to a loving wife who understands his needs better than he does. The only thing he is missing is a handsome young man to dominate, spoil rotten, and love.

Jack and Isaac might be a perfect match in the back rooms of the exclusive Windsor Club, but will the outside pressures of perception and duty tear them apart?

85,000 words

Tactical Submission Cover Reveal! NSFW(ish)

More examples of why I don’t do my own covers.

SWAT commander Jack Burnside is haunted by his craving to kneel before another man. Of all the things he hates about himself – his overtly masculine size and strength, his blue eyes, his insecurities – it is the need to submit that he fears will destroy him.

Doctor Isaac Bard is close to achieving his perfect life. He has a great job with the Coroner’s Office and an open marriage to a loving wife who understands his needs better than he does.  The only thing he is missing is a handsome young man to dominate, spoil rotten, and love.

Jack and Isaac might be a perfect match in the back rooms of the exclusive Windsor Club, but will the outside pressures of perception and duty tear them apart?

 

Cover by the amazing Tiferet Design.

 

 

 

 

 

If It’s Not One Thing

Last week I went to the optometrist because the UV coating on my glasses was peeling off. This was annoying, to say the least. It made the lenses blurry and it’s coming into summer and any and all UV protection is very important in New Zealand. I have terrible vision to begin with. I’m incredibly near sighted plus astigmatism, and last year I developed posterior vitreous detachment in my left eye which means there are lots of little floaters in my eye now that I have to focus through.

The UV coating was under warrantee but since I was down there I figured I might as well get my eyes checked. Wasn’t due for another six months but I figured why not? I went through the usual questions, looked at the charts, dilated my eyes to get a close look, and then my optometrist asked me if I’d been taking steroids. I thought that was a weird question and said no. She asked again, listing off some drugs that people might not realize are steroids but are. No, I answered again starting to get a bad feeling.

My bad feelings are usually spot on. What she had seen looking into my eyes was cataracts, and not the normal type. Just like having an obscure form of dyslexia, and a sub type of bipolar, the cataracts she was seeing was not the normal variety caused by ageing or injury. What she was seeing was a build-up on my lenses usually caused by heavy steroid use. It hadn’t been there when my eyes were checked in June of 2016 but it was there now, and the only thing in my life that had changed was I switched mood stabilizers because the stuff I was on had stopped working.

Now let me state that changing medications suck. This one was absolute hell because I had to go completely off the previous stuff before starting on the new meds. Previous switches had been rough. This one included having a high energy, stubborn as fuck, four year old in my life. At one point I had to just get a hotel room for the night because I didn’t want my kid to witness me completely losing my shit.

But the new stuff finally kicked in and I’ve been okay. The house is a mess and I’m stuck on my next writing project but I don’t want to kill myself or anyone else so it’s all good.

Except, the new meds might be making me blind.

I need to see and I need to be sane. My optometrist and my psychologist dug into the research and found a study of 30,000 people on this particular medication, and a hundred of them developed cataracts. Aren’t I just fucking special.

And yes, EVERYONE has told me that cataracts surgery isn’t that bad. No one, not even my psychologist seems to appreciate that having things touch my eyes is literally my worst nightmare. Knives at the eyes is a cold sweat inducing, wake up screaming, hell of an idea. I once had to get a sliver of metal taken out of my eye. The ophthalmologist used a tiny needle to flick it out and I had a panic attack. There are reasons I don’t wear contacts.

So, idea two, change medication again, fast. And here we have another problem. I have five options for medication.

Medication 1 – What I was on before. It stopped working because my body had built up a resistance. My body does that with all drugs. It’s kinda annoying.

Medication 2 – What I’m taking now that is giving me cataracts.

Medication 3 – I tried for two weeks six years ago. It’s actually the most highly recommended medication for bipolar except it made me manic as all hell. I spent two weeks climbing the walls and had a constant urge to light things on fire.

Medication 4 – Not cleared to treat bipoloar in New Zealand and has only been used in one small research study. Showed promising results but Medications 1, 2, and 3 are doing a good job covering the market so no one is really looking for alternatives right now.

Lithium – No.

So, do I play medication roulette or do I let my vision deteriorate to the point where I’m willing to let people CUT INTO MY EYEBALLS!?

If it’s not one thing it’s a fucking ‘nother.

All My Couples Live Happily Ever After. All of Them!

Don’t read your reviews is what every author tells every other author. Guess what every author does? We read our reviews. Don’t respond to your reviews, is the other thing authors tell each other. This one is hard but necessary. Apparently even saying ‘thank you’ to nice reviews makes you look like a creep, and responding to criticism, even in a positive way, can lead to social media meltdowns. Reviews are by readers for readers. Doesn’t mean authors don’t read them.

Most of the time if there’s something I don’t like in a review I can shake it off. I have two liberal arts degrees, I know better than most that art is completely subjective. Occasionally there will be something where I grind my teeth and my partner gets stuck listening to me rant for a day.

But there is one comment that seems to turn up every seventh or eighth review that makes me bang my head against the wall.

HFN. Happy For Now.

I didn’t grow up reading romance novels. The idea that something sold as a romance would end in something other than happy ever after never occurred to me. It took me ages to even find out what the acronym HFN meant. However, every seventh or eighth person reviewing my work seems to feel that my couples are only HFN and that pisses them off, usually to the tune of a star, sometimes two.

Like so much of my writing I think this comes back to cutting my teeth on fanfic. You don’t get HFN in romance fanfic. You get smut, hate sex, massive angst at times, but if you are taking the time to write a romance then there are good odds you ship the couple. If you’re writing something that is 120,000 words the couple is almost certainly an OTP (one true pairing) and OTPs live HEA (Happy Ever After).

Now aside from writing a wedding epilogue for every single story, or maybe just writing ‘and they lived happy ever after’ at the end I’m not sure how to get across the fact that if I’ve put the time and effort into creating a believable couple they are going to live Happy Ever After. But that’s my problem. Something to work on. To quote that bastard Kripke

“Endings are hard. Any chapped-ass monkey with a keyboard can poop out a beginning, but endings are impossible.”

I take pride in writing sensible characters in at least somewhat realistic situations, which means I wasn’t going to have James and Gabe get married at the end of Bowerbirds. They’ve known each other five months. They have a lot more work to do but that work is really mundane day to day relationship stuff that I’m not overly interested in writing and I don’t think anyone wants to read. A friend of mine has orders to fly across the planet and smack me if I ever write Insta/True Love or Healing Cock, so that’s out.

But I want to reassure my readers that all my couples live Happy Ever After. Every couple I create is an OTP in my own little head fandom. I wouldn’t have bothered to write them if they weren’t. This next part should be considered canon for all stories unless I officially publish something to the contrary at a later date.

In Chronological Order

Gathered Here This Night (Simon/Anne) – Simon survives becoming one of the undead. He and Anne get married, see a counsellor every six months, and take separate vacations every other year and live happy together long into the future.

Through the Dark Clouds* (John/Robert) – Robert returns safe from the war. He and John set up house together as ‘bachelors’ and are one of the first couples to get hitched when Canada legalizes gay marriage in 2005.

Eden Springs (Aaron/Jonah) – Aaron comes back to winter in Eden Springs and ends up staying longer than planned. Jonah gets driven out of town by a new preacher and a ‘proper’ teacher sent by the territorial offices. Aaron goes with him and they set up house in Sacramento.

Whistle Blowing (Sebastian/Daren) – [Everyone can be forgiven for calling this one HFN. One day I will explain the clusterfuck that was writing this story.] Daren manages to take on his family and at least sort of win. They do have a nasty fallout when Daren starts reverting to some of his dumb rich kid ways, but they are too tangled up in each other and eventually circle back.

Empty Nests/Bowerbirds (James/Gabe) – These two absolutely live happy ever after (and if you join my mailing list you will find a story about them in issue one). James goes back to school. Gabe starts relaxing a little. The have a couple of tiffs along the way but Gabe eventually builds his house with an ocean view and he and James live there until old age.

And Everything Nice (Simmer Anthology) (Angelo/Simon) – Angelo provides good baking and great sex. Simon isn’t going anywhere. He talks Angelo into doing a YouTube channel called Baking for my Boyfriend which is a big hit and spawns a very popular cookbook. He gets offered a food network show but it feels too much like work and he turns it down. They get married and live HEA,

His Quiet Agent (Martin/Arthur) – This story ended where it did because this is where they guys stopped talking to me. People who complain about the short length don’t get that this one was like pulling fucking teeth. But I do know they stick together. Martin buys a couch and a second chair. They read to the kids and get them into good schools. Cook together and even go on double dates with Carol and Jennifer. Their lives are quiet and simple but happy.

Life Saving Dal (Nathan/Kris) Yeah, even these two dorks stick together. Nathan is really bad at having one night stands and Kris is way more of a romantic than he likes to admit.

So that’s that. Everyone lives happy ever after because somebody needs to.

~

*Of everything I’ve ever written professionally this is my favourite and it got mediocre reviews.

Situationally White and Occasionally Other

I have written in my bio that I’m a Mexican American/WASP which is a lazy description of my background but it’s three words where I don’t have space for fifty. The Mexican is the important word for this story. I grew up with a Spanish last name and a tan in California. This means people asked if I spoke English. For the record, I don’t speak Spanish. I got shifty eyes from mall security, probably lost jobs before I even had a chance to interview, got beat-up by white kids at my mostly white middle school and accused of cheating by my English teacher. All the usual bullshit. I grew up always looking over my shoulder and assuming the worst of people because they assumed the worst about me.

In 2005, on a manic whim, I moved to New Zealand for graduate school. I quickly picked up four flatmates to cover the rent in a half rotted, hundred-year-old, Sandringham house that is probably now worth three million. There was another American from New York, a guy from India, and two New Zealanders. One from the South Island and one from South Auckland which is about the same as the energy difference between California and New York.

New Zealand likes to put itself forward as a racially happy and peaceful country. It’s not but it’s a hell of a lot better than many. A few months into my time there there was something on the news about the Police butting heads with some Northland Iwi. I took a deep breath and started on a nice long rant about the oppression of my brown brothers by the White Man when my very, very white, South Island flatmate put a hand on my shoulder, smiled at me and said “Sweetie, we don’t have Mexicans here. You’re white now.”

There is not a gif or emoji in existence that can possibly convey the face I made in that moment. Maybe this one is close. 0.o

I had been working in the theatre for years, shunning the daylight, so had gone fairly pail. I don’t look Maori or Pacific Islander or Indian or Middle Eastern. My look is somewhat ethnically generic, which according to my ginger Cantabrian flatmate meant I defaulted to white. Hispanic wasn’t listed on any form I’d filled out since getting there. I’d been ticking Other. I was now Other, and in my strange case Other meant White.

A little while later I walked into a store that sold expensive things, just to look. The lady there tried to sell me stuff. I smiled and waved at some cops, just to see what would happen. They smiled and waved back. When I hit a point of being so broke I couldn’t afford a $1.50 can of chicken at the corner store the lady let me have the chicken and just trusted that I would pay her back. Things didn’t magically become perfect but they did become just a little bit easier.

Jump forward a few years and I’m heading back to the states for the first time in a while and bringing my pakeha New Zealander partner with me. New Zealand is not a large country. You can walk from coast to coast at its thinnest bit and drive top to bottom in a few days. Less if you didn’t need to take a boat between the islands. There’s even a movie about it. As a result, way too many of them, including the one I hooked up with, have this romantic idea of the Great American Road trip. Days and days of driving. Outside of Yellowstone I was sitting in the little breakfast area of our motel, holding a styrofoam coffee cup, and I noticed that I had gotten a tan. I had been working mostly nights in a windowless room for multiple years and covering myself in sunscreen every day, because it only takes one really good burn to learn that New Zealand had no ozone layer worth speaking of, and half Mexican provides nowhere near enough melanin for protection. I had gotten really white. Two weeks in the states without sunscreen and I’d turned brown again.

I glanced up at the TV on the wall. It was Fox News, Obama vs. McCain. Remember how ugly that was? Remember when we thought it couldn’t get worse than that? There were two other people in that breakfast area, their eyes absolutely glued to the TV and nodding at the things that were being said, and I had a sudden and very nasty realization that I wasn’t white anymore. Not compared to the couple in that breakfast nook.

The first thing I did was take my then long hair out of its braids. I spent six hellish weeks living in Texas and was told by my co-worker not to braid my hair because it made it look like I was fresh over the border. It was amazing how fast all that old fear came back.

A few weeks after this last election my sister was on a bus in San Francisco and a strange, aggressive man told her to go back where she came from. Now here is where the complicated family history comes in. We are where we came from. We have a Spanish last name, which we picked up from one of the first Spanish men ever to set foot in California. We were in California when Missionaries were still crawling up the coast. We were there when it was part of Spain. We were there when it was part of Mexico. We were there for the Bear Flag revolt and when gold was found. And we were there when the US Army marched in. My family didn’t come to America. America came to us. Going back where we came from means catching the BART train to Oakland. I don’t think that explanation would have gone down with the guy on the bus. My father, who doesn’t speak a word of Spanish, has never been to Mexico, and was born in Modesto has taken to carrying around his passport. And that’s not paranoia. An immigration officer asked for his papers back in the 90’s while he was walking out of Starbucks. He answered no hablo espanol then threatened to sue the officer. Those were easier times.

And in a few days, I will be going back. And I am scared. It wouldn’t be so bad if we were just heading back to California but we are going there to see the eclipse and somehow decided on Wyoming as our viewing location. I went through Wyoming before, and people seemed nice, Midwest manners and all that, but that was many years ago now when things were different.

My partner is very white and tall and manly looking. My daughter caught all my recessive genetics and has blond hair, blue eyes, and skin that burns in moonlight. Me, on the other hand, my hair is still brown, my eyes are still brown, and I spend enough time outside at the park that my skin is brown as well. I speak more Te Reo Maori than Spanish (mostly fish and colors). I probably look more like my daughter’s nanny than her mom. Though I’ve been told nannies don’t yell as much as I do.

Maybe I’m just being paranoid. Maybe everything will be fine. Maybe my only worry should be that I’m about to go on a massive road trip with a very active four-year-old who has never driven more than a couple hours at a time in her life. I’m going to try to document the experience. Turn this into a travel blog for six weeks. Travels with Man and Child. Review a dozen different Denney’s along the way.

New Zealand is far from perfect on the racial harmony front, but right now I feel safer in an Auckland suburb than I do in the country that birthed me, and that is seriously wrong.

Life Saving Dal on Amazon

If you didn’t get it while it was free, Life Saving Dal is now on Amazon for $0.99.