Ada Maria Soto's Blog, page 9

Warning: This Blog Post Has Not Been Spell Checked

Warning: This blog post has not been editied in any way. I have not right clicked on any squggly red lines or had this post read back to me by the computer to search for missing words. I haven’t even let Word autocorrect anything.

I am dyslexic, this is about my life as a dyslexic. My dyslexia is a fact that is not only in my offical bio but blatantly obvious to anyone I trust enough to read the raw versions on my work. This is a problem (and I do consider it a problem) that has been dogging me since day one. In might not have been such an issue, I might have gotten help or suport if I had standard dyslexia but I had to go and have special dyslexia that was only named a few years ago.

My mother (and I am aware how many blog posts I write with those words) worked in the learning resources section of my elementary school. It was her job to test and help kids who were dyslexic or had other problems. I never ended up in this groupe because I could read, I just had lousey handwritting, couldn’t read out loud, and couldn’t spell.

When I was 25 I ended up part of a research study where I was diagnosed with having dysgraphia and phonlogical dyslexia. Then the researcher had me lay down in an fMRI machine and took pictures of my brain while I looked at shapes and letters. They got very excited. Apparently I perfectly represented their hypotisis. The part of my brain that should have been reading, the left frontal lobe, was doing nothing. However the rear part of my brain designed to recognize the difference between a triangle and a hexagon was going nuts.*

Here is where I made some scientists very happy.

My family is full of readers, the house was always covered in books, there was no question that I would learn how to read and I did. My brain adapted so I processed words the same way I would process a stop sign. What sound does a stop sign make? It doesn’t. How do you spell an octagon? You don’t. But you see that red octagon and you hit the breaks. You don’t read the word STOP then break. So up to a certin level I can read very quickly with excelent reading comprehention. As long as was I’m reading is in particular fonts. The more complicated the font the slower I go until there is no point.

I can tell one shape from another.

But obviouslly I must have failled all those tests in elementary school because I wasn’t trying hard enough and the sloppy handwritting was just lack of focus. Thursday nights in my house were screaming and tears as I failed one practice test after another.

How were you taught how to read? Someone at some point probubly said ‘sound it out’. Fuck that. I can’t sound it out. That bit of my brain just doesn’t compute. I can know a word, use it, on a good day even spell it but then comes to moment to read in front of the class. I swear public education systems were designed around the concept of public humiliation. Maybe if all your classmates laughed at you and called you an idiot you would try harder because all your problems come from being dumb or lazy. Can’t be anything else wrong. I’m okay sounding out words like cat and dog but once you get into sion sounding exactily like tion or gh and ph sounding like F. Then add in the words stolen from the French and you get a whole special nightmear. If we could perge the English language of French spelling I’d be so happy.

For many readons, not the least of which was being informed I was either lazy or stuped repedidly, I gave up somewhere before high school. I got three Ds in English. I kept transposing numbers in math and science. Occationally there would be a teacher who would ask why I hadn’t been offically tested so I could get help and extra time, and I’d explain that it was an expensive test, that I’d taken some of the unoffical tests and passed (because I can read), and I was a district trasfer and in order to avoid going back to a school that had metal detectors I needed to not make waves. I was to fail as quietly as possible.

I did get into a four year college that had full open admission but I didn’t tell my school counsilor that. I got my mother to edit my essays for those four years. I had a Freshman English teacher tell me that she could guess the exact reading system I had in elementry school by my first essay. She pegged it exactly because my writing was good and interesting but the spelling and gramer needed work. I really liked her. I brought her coffee when she got divorced mid semester and she gave me a coby of Shrunk and White.

I got through college and graduated with honors as a theater major. My ability to spell was not as important as my ability yell at actors about the importance of being on time.

Then came the great job hunt. I read somewhere recently that most women will only aply for a job if they meet 100% of the criteria where as men will aply if they reach 60%. I’ll leave the analisys of that for another blog but I had an extra weight. There were and are to this day tons of jobs I am incredibly qualified for and would be good at except under communication skills there is often a line about spelling and puntuation. In my last job one of my more minor duties was to write up the graphics that pop up on the tv screening tell you what you’re watching and what show is next. I sweated bullets over this every damn time.

It turns out that in the state of California in order to become a substitute teacher all you need to have is a baturlars degree, a clean background check, and a blood test. This explains so much about the substitute teachers I used to have. I also learned that the worse and more dangerous the school district the better the pay. But again with the crushing imbarrisment of public education. Writing end of day notes to the main teacher in my aweful chicken scratch and spelling that only hits a seventh grade level on a good day. Not being able to read half the kid’s names at roll call.

After a year of the soul crushingness that is substitute teaching I decided to take a swing and apply for grad school. Fuck knows how I got in but I did. I had my first script teacher send me up to the disability center to get a script spell checked. They told me they didn’t do that there and I had to be listed as having a disability. I managed to beg and the nice lady there fixed a couple of errors and told me she liked the script. Here’s the thing, it’s not just about spelling a word, it’s about spelling the right word. Tinny or tiny. Wich menas something small and which means a particular type of sound. Run a spell check and immagine that you can tell the difference between the list of correctly spelled words on offer. I had one senior professor call me illiterate to my face in front of another student, teacher, and staff member. And this is at a world ranked university in a top program. This is how little respect you get in life if you can’t spell. I was reading college level books in sixth grade but because I regurally mixed up college and collage I was an idiot.**

It’s not always easy telling one word from another.

But I’m a writter now. A real live publishing compney is publishing my work and have paid me money in advance for it. How can I be a writer putting out the mess you see above? I finally clued in that writting isn’t about the spelling it’s about the story. The spelling is for good friends who are willing to do a once over before you submit it in exchange for knitting. Then spelling is for the editor picked by your publisher. When the editorial department and Dreamspinner Press got a hold of me I explained my problems and suggested that they work time for an extra spelling and grammer pass into the production schedule. They actually thanked me for the worning and made sure several different people went over my manuscript for spelling problems, then my senior editor went through the marked spelling errors and made sure they were replaced with the right word so I wouldn’t be stuck trying to work out which one was right. For the final go over where it is suggested I read aloud the manuscript I got the Speak feature on Word to read it for me.*** And every time I get a royalty check, even a tiny one, I think ‘fuck you’ to a whole list of teachers over the years.

There are still problems despight a bit more confidence. There are glaring mystakes in my blog or on facebook posts. Twitter is evil about misspellings. There are still jobs I don’t apply for. I have a kid now and I live in fear of the first time I need to quickly write a note to a teacher. I’m also dreading the day I have to read The Hobbit or Harry Potter aloud. I’m doing okay wiht Hop on Pop and can even manage Oh Say Can You Say if I’m awake enough but I don’t want my kid to assume that my poorly sounded out complete misspronceations are correct. And for all manner of reasons I hope she inharited her father’s left front lobe and not mine.

 

 

 

 

*The left front of the brain is also a prblem area for bipolars like myself. Someone should really do some research on that.

** I really hate those things that pop up on the internet sometimes demanding that people learne the difference between your and you’re. It assums that everyone on the net speaks English, that they speak it as a first language, that they haven’t been fucked over by a crapy public education system, that they have full ussage of their eyes and hands and aren’t using a speach to text program, and they have a fully funtioning left frontal lobe. If you reblog one of those things you really need to go fuck yourself.

***There is nothing as boaring as a sex scene read out by a computer.

Now What

Two days ago I finished the third and, in theory, final edit of Bowerbirds, the sequel to Empty Nests. They were originally one book that clocked in at a completely unmanageable and inconsistent 130,000 words. And as of two days ago that giant unmanageable book is now complete and the second half is being formatted for publication.

This leaves me with one question.

What do I do now?

I started Empty Nests in 2010. In preparation for my blog tour I’ve been answering some interview questions and one of the common ones is ‘where did your idea for this book come from?’. Flat out truth is I don’t remember. I have scraped at my memory and I have no clue. I know lot happened in the five years between starting and now. I finished that first mammoth draft somewhere in late 2011 in between completing some very lengthy works of fanfic, my first published novella, international travel, teaching myself to knit, and the Rugby World Cup. I sent it to a friend to edit in 2012. By the time I got it back I was pregnant with the worst case of pregnancy brain and bouncing emotions. After I had my kid the brain melt just continued for another year and a bit when I declared that the kid would be in daycare two days a week and I got back to it in July 2014

Now Empty Nests will be out June 12, 2015 and Bowerbirds in late August/Early September. That’s five years which is a long time to be working on one project.

Now What?

I guess I should write another novel. That’s what you do when you’re a professional writer, right? One novel after another. Except which one? This next bit isn’t an entirely rhetorical question.

I have a M/M BDSM novella which is already 30k and not even half way through the plot I have planned. My evil enabler, Cooper West, has bet me it’ll be at least 90k by the time I’m done. It’s contemporary, domestic, with lots of sex and a slow emotional Friends to Lovers to Possibly Love build.

There is the M/M interoffice romance taking place in the halls of a vague, yet menacing, government agency (bonus points if you get the reference). That’s looking to be the polar opposite of the BDSM one as every time I try to write a sex scene in it the main love interest says no. I’m starting to think I’ve accidently created an asexual love interest. Is anyone even going to want to read a romance where at the most there will be some really passionate hand holding?

There’s my YA novel which has become a bit of a monkey on my back since I think it could be good but I’m missing the better part of an act two. It has a bisexual main character and it’s mostly about her relationship with her step mother and by extension her father.

Or I could finally cough up a sequel to Eden Springs. I’m not sure if it’s got much of a story arc. What I have is mostly a list of scenes as the two main characters get snowed in for the winter. That came out in 2012. Will anyone still be remotely interested?

And I have my big non-romance, urban fantasy, murder mystery which will be completely out of any other genre I’ve written in.

A part of me just wants to go back to fanfic where I get almost instant feedback and I don’t have to rewrite if I don’t want to.

I could say fuck it for a few months and just watch TV. I half a season of Agents of SHIELD to catch up on. I haven’t seen any of Agent Carter. I started watching Forever on an international flight. I’m only up to episode 8 and I’m already pissed it didn’t get a second season. And I haven’t had a chance to listen to Welcome to Night Vale since November!

So this is it, my big What Next. What keeps the ball rolling? What fills the back catalog the best? What justifies those two days a week at the fancy, private, daycare?

Northland

My entry for the 2015 Magpie Award for Poetry from Pulp Literature. I made the shortlist this year, which is something considering I’m not a poet.

 

Northland

Ada Maria Soto

 

Whakaangi

 

February cicadas in full, desperate, mating frenzy

Drown out even the western winds

Screaming over Doubtless Bay.

 

The birds have given up trying to sing.

Even the tui,

Who jealously guards his territory

Between the gum tree and the overgrown hibiscus.

 

 

 

Waitangi Day

 

The baby, no longer really a baby

Stands on the back porch

Overlooking the tall summer grass.

Her babble isn’t high and sweet

But rather low, with a heavy driving cadence.

She may be addressing an army of her own making.

The words ‘No’ and occasionally ‘Bubble’

Are scattered through her commanding speech

Rallying her troops to action.

 

Later grandmother will lead her down the track

Through the bush,

Between the mānuka, palms, and cabbage trees.

Every five steps she stops and squeals

Pointing out a curl of fern or bit of stone.

 

She tries to pull off her cheap sandals,

The Velcro on the left proving surprisingly troublesome.

The rough gravel and sharp prickles

Beneath her soft baby feet

Do not distract from the wonder

Of a daytime moon in the blue sky.

 

 

 

Tārū Kahika

 

The night wind shifts then is gone.

There is an unreality in the soft, even,

Near silent, fall of rain,

Caught and cradled by the earth.

Hushed as if it did not wish to rouse

Any who might witness its gentle moment.

Empty Nests Blog Tour Stops and Dates

Empty Nests Tour Dates & Stops:

12-Jun

Carly’s Book Reviews

16-Jun

Prism Book Alliance

My Fiction Nook

19-Jun

Bike Book Reviews

Butterfly-O-Meter

Love Bytes

23-Jun

Hearts on Fire

Kimi-Chan

26-Jun

Amanda C. Stone

MM Good Book Reviews

30-Jun

3 Chicks After Dark

Mikky’s World of Books

Inked Rainbow Reads

3-Jul

Happily Ever Chapter

Scattered Thoughts & Rogue Words

Rainbow Gold Reviews

BFD Book Blog

7-Jul

Bayou Book Junkie

TTC Books and More

Molly Lolly

Multitasking Mommas

Arranged by Pride Promotions there will be samples, Q&As, and a give away for not just one book but the entire Nested Hearts series. Hope to see you all there.

Cover Art Reveal and Release Date – Empty Nests

Presenting the cover art for my upcoming book Empty Nests, created by the amazingly talented Paul Richmond.

Empty Nests is also now available for pre-order in paperback and ebook format. It will be released June 12th.

 

Neither James nor Gabe has ever had a real relationship. They might make a connection if they can get past their differences—and their fears.

At age fourteen, James Maron decided to prove he wasn’t gay despite vast evidence to the contrary. Now at thirty-two, he’s getting ready to send his son to college and wondering what he’s supposed to do next. Outside his son, his life consists of an IT job he hates and watching telenovelas with the women in his apartment building.

 

Gabriel Juarez is the CFO of a technology giant. He has looks, charm, fantastic wealth, a workaholic personality, and a string of boyfriends who only stick around because he’s too busy to tell them to leave.

A bad laptop/projector interface causes James and Gabe’s paths to cross. Friends, family, and coworkers jump to match Gabe with a nice guy, and James with anyone. But are they too different? Everyone will have to tread very carefully to keep things from ending before they start.

 

Noodles and Spam – Regular and Posh

This is another recipe from my upcoming book, Empty Nests.

I need to start it by saying I love my mother, I really do. We have a good relationship, that’s gotten better since I moved out. And when it comes to special occasions she can cook. If you think my A&P baking was insane you should see her at Christmas. Literally hundreds of cookies. I’ve seen her set down a Thanksgiving dinner for twenty-five and a Christmas morning brunch for fifteen. Day to day cooking on the other hand is not one of her primary skills.

Every time my dad went on a trip and my mother took over the cooking the first thing she would make is Noodles and Spam. It involves Spam, cream of mushroom soup, and noodles. Usually served with peas. I always figured this was something she came up with when poor in college. I called her up the other day to confirm this.

“No. No. Oh, no.” Was the answer I got. “I learned that from your grandmother.”

Apparently Noodles and Spam is an actual thing. I’m guessing it was one of those war/post-war recipes designed to get good little housewives to use canned goods. Looking back on it a good deal of my grandmother’s cooking involved cream of mushroom soup. Soup on chicken breasts, soup on pork chops, and apparently when my mother was growing up, Cream of Mushroom Soup on Spam.

My upcoming book is dedicated to my parents (even though I’m not letting them read it because, sex), and Noodles and Spam puts in an appearance. So here it is, Noodles and Spam. Also a posh version of Noodles and Spam that doesn’t actually involve Spam.

1 can SPAM

1 can Cream of Mushroom Soup (Campbell’s)

1 pack dry noodles – Use a wide egg noodle or large spiral noodles, something with structural integrity. DO NOT USE RAMEN NOODLES. Trust me on this.

1 onion if you’re feeling ambitious.

Pre heat oven to 350F/175C

Boil noodles and drain.

Chop and sauté one onion (if you want to)

Mix with noodles

Cut spam into little cubes

Mix with noodles

Open can of cream of mushroom soup

Mix with noodles

Put everything into a baking/casserole dish and bake for about half an hour.

Serve with frozen peas (heated)

Or if you don’t have the patience to bake just stir it all up on the stove until it’s warm and serve.

Now

Posh Noodles and Spam

1 Packet of Pork cubes or stake that can be chopped up. Or better yet some of that yummy leftover pork roast.

Mushrooms

Onion

Flour

Butter

Milk

Strong Noodle

Seasonal Green Vegetable

Pre heat oven to 350F/175C

Make a cream sauce, then set it to the side.

At the same time cook the noodles, making sure they are still just a little firm. Drain and set aside.

Chop the onions and mushrooms. Sauté the onions until soft then add the mushrooms. Cook until the onions are lightly browned. Add them to the cream sauce.

Cube the pork then in the same pan cook the pork or simply heat up the leftover roast pork. Add this to the cream sauce as well.

Mix in the noodles the place the whole thing into a casserole dish and back for half an hour until golden on top.

Serve with a seasonal green vegetable or salad.

And if anyone asks it’s Pork Shoulder in a Mushroom Cream Sauce over Pasta.

It’s Like Living with a Monkey – My Grand Personal Analogy for Mental Health, Treatment, and Getting Through the Day

It’s like living with a monkey. Not one of those cute helper monkeys, or even one of those little plague monkeys from the movies. It’s living with a big, angry, wild, possibly rabid, monkey.

It spends every day throwing shit at your walls. It pulls all the dishes from the cupboard and smashes them on the floor. It yanks the books from your shelves and shreds them. It pulls the clothes from your closet and pisses on them. You can never find anything or have anything nice. You give up even trying. And at night it screams and thrashes around the house keeping you from ever sleeping well.

But still you go through your day. You see other people smiling and laughing, having careers and relationships. Since you’ve lived with this monkey your whole life it never occurs to you that other people don’t have a monkey. You assume everyone has a monkey and if they can do all those things then you must be able to as well.

So you smile and laugh and have relationships and hold down jobs spending every spare moment fighting that monkey.

But after a while you start talking to people and you realize that not everyone as a monkey, and that’s just not fucking fair. You realize that other people are laughing and smiling and are able to focus because they don’t have a monkey chronically screaming in their head. They’re not faking it.

Still you go through your days because even if other people don’t have a monkey you are still expected to smile and laugh and have a career and relationship.

Later you learn that there are other people with monkeys. Not everyone and not always the same kind of monkey. Some of the monkeys are a little nicer, some are worse. You learn to recognize other people with monkeys. You don’t necessarily want to associate with them. If they are doing better than you with a monkey then they must be stronger. And if they are doing worse it’s a reminder that you could lose your daily fight with the monkey at any point.

But among the monkey people you start to hear about things that can get rid of the monkey. Or at least make it a little better. You ignore it at first. It’s almost a matter of pride. Look at how far you’ve gotten living with a monkey. All those non-monkey people couldn’t have done that. And when you think about living without the monkey it’s strange. You’ve had the monkey your whole life, it’s a part of you. A horrible shit flinging, book shredding part of you.

But you start doing little things. You read books that tell you you can get rid of the monkey by running marathons and living on fish oil. Sometimes they quiet the monkey a little bit. Other times it just makes the monkey mad.

And one night, in the darkest hour of the morning, the monkey gets extra mean, or maybe you are just too tired. The monkey gets violent like never before. You realize it’s going to come down to you or the monkey. Then you realize it’s YOU or that fucking monkey.

You start asking around and talking to people about monkey pills. You have to get the right kind. Wrong type of pill for the wrong kind of monkey just makes it mad. It knows what you’re doing. Finally you get what you hope is the right kind of monkey pill. You take it and it doesn’t seem to do anything, but it’s not making it worse so you keep taking it.

Then when you’re about to give up you wake up and the house is quiet. You carefully creep through it, tiptoeing around the broken plates and torn books, sure the monkey is going to jump out at any moment. Then in the distance you hear the monkey shrieking. You peek into the backyard and there is the monkey in a monkey cage. It’s not happy, not at all, but it’s in a cage and for the first time in your life you’re not spending your morning getting hit with monkey shit.

You don’t quite know what to do at first. You spend the first few days convince the monkey is going escape, but it doesn’t. You start putting books back on the shelves, even putting them in order. You sweep up the broken dishes and get new ones. You buy new clothes and sleep through the night.

It’s not perfect. Occasionally the monkey gets out and makes a mess but now you’ve got some tricks for getting it back in its cage. Sometimes it screams loud enough even from its cage that it wakes you up. And in odd weird moments, for half a second, you even miss the monkey.

You are always aware that the monkey lives, and that non-monkey people will never truly get it, but you’ve gotten this far with a monkey and that’s more than many can say.

Roast Pork with Garlic Gravy

In honor of the release of my next book, Empty Nests (Nested Heart #1), this coming June I will be publishing a few recipes for dishes that appear in the book.

The first one, which will be the base for a later recipe, is Roast Pork with Garlic Gravy.

Ingredients

1 Pork Roast (Large) – Get the largest possible roast, shoulder is good, on the bone with skin.

1 Large Head Garlic

Onions – 1 for every 2 people, if they like roasted onion

Root Vegetable – (Red Kumara if you can get it, potatoes, carrots, etc)

Olive Oil

Rock Salt – regular table salt will give you a weird result. You want to use salt in larger chunks.

Flour or other thickener for gravy.

Green Vegetable of some sort.

Pre heat oven to 180C/325F

Put your roast in a large roast pan with a lid, skin side up. There should be enough room to fit all the veg in as well. Make sure the pan fits in the oven before you even start.

The skin might come pre scored. If not take a sharp knife and cut through the skin and fat but not the meat under it. Some suggest that the crackling comes out better if you pour boiling water over the roast at this point to tighten up the skin. In my experience it works either way.

Rub the skin with olive oil and sprinkle evenly but not thickly with sea salt. This is not a recipe to use if you are on a low sodium diet, or really any kind of diet.

Make sure everything fits in the pan and the pan fits in the oven.

Break up the head of garlic and put the cloves in the pan. DO NOT PEEL THE CLOVES. You’ll be fishing them out later.

Red Kumara

Cut the onions in half and toss them in the pan. Then cut the root vegetables in half and throw them in as well. If you can get Red Kumara use that. It’s sweet like sweet potato but not too sweet and with a better texture when cooked. Keep in mind that if you use carrots or roast pumpkin it will transfer some of the flavor to the gravy. Pumpkin can transfer quite a lot of flavor in fact.

Place in oven.

According to The Joy of Cooking 20th edition, bake for 25-35 minutes per pound at 325F.

According to Edmonds Cookery Book 57th edition bake for 25-35 minutes per 500g at 180C

You can work out the rest of the math from there. You’ll want to time things so it comes out a half hour before you plan to eat.

Now go off and do something else.

Welcome back.

Take the roast out of the oven. Do not cut into it, just leave it alone, it’s time to make crackling.

First carefully remove the skin from the roast. You do not want to cut into the meat. If things are properly cooked you should be able to use a pair of metal kitchen tongs to peel it off. Use your kitchen shears to cut it into manageable sizes that should lay flat.

What do you mean you don’t have kitchen shears? They are the most useful kitchen tool ever, you will use them for everything, go out and get a pair right now I will wait. Seriously. Go.

Next, turn your oven up high. Not as high as it can go but pretty high. Higher than you would use for anything else. I usually do it at about 225C

Lay the bits of skin on the bottom of a pan. It needs to be something with an edge. If you use a flat cookie sheet the oil and fat, and there will be oil, will run off the edge and your oven will be smoking for weeks.

Place the bits of skin in the pan, sprinkle in a little more olive oil and a bit more salt. Place in a hot oven and keep a very close eye on it. Depending on how hot your oven is you can go from perfect crackling, to burnt, to slightly on fire, in about two minutes. However if the oven is too low it won’t crackle up at all. Don’t try to crackle it while it’s still on the roast. You’ll just dry out the roast.

While that’s happening fish out the cloves of garlic and put them into a separate cup or bowl. They will be hot and you want them to cool for a few minutes.

Put the green vegetables on so you can feel like you’re eating something healthy.

Check the crackling. Poke it with something to see if the top is firm and crunchy.

Pour the juice from the bakepan into a pot. If you know how to deglaze the pan and you want to do all of that go ahead.

Check the crackling.

Next squeeze each clove of garlic into the pot. This is why you didn’t peel it, so it stays nice and mushy. Put in a little black pepper if you want. Put the whole thing on medium heat and begin to thicken with flour, corn starch, or whatever your preferred gravy making method is.

Check the crackling.

If you’re not going to have enough gravy to go around here are a few tricks. If you’re boiling the vegies you can add a bit of the vegetable water. It shouldn’t dilute the garlic flavor too much. If you have beef stock you can use some of that. Don’t use bouillon cubes. This gravy is going to be salty enough as is.

If you’ve used vegetable water, and flour and now your gravy is pale and pasty looking, here is a weird trick. Vegemite/Marmite. Yes, that nastyass shit that antipodeans scrape off the bottom of beer vats then spread on toast. Take a little, like half a teaspoon, and mix it in. The brown coloring will make your gravy look a little more like gravy and it will get a bit of extra, more or less unidentifiable, flavor.

Check the crackling. If it’s crispy and not burnt congratulations.

And after all that I forgot to get a picture of the crackling.

Now cut the meat and plate everything up nice and pretty. I like to serve it with sliced oranges as well.

Unless you have a big family or a small roast you should have lots of leftovers. Wrap them up and put them in the fridge because you are going to use them later.

The Q Word – A Personal Sociological Linguistic History

Let’s start by putting this all into correct context.  I am old by internet standards.  I was born in 1981.  Ronald Regan was in his first term. The Space Shuttle had its first flight.  Harvey Milk had only been assassinated two and a half years earlier.  Most states still hand antisodomy laws on the books. AIDS was clinically observed for the first time in the US.  It was referred to as “GRID”, gay-related immune deficiency.  All anyone knew about it was that it was killing gay men and drug users.

Anyone under the age of thirty who is reading this, keep that all in mind.

I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area.  I had lesbian aunts, and hippy parents.  I knew what gay was and that there was nothing wrong with it.  At the nice, liberal, elementary school I went to there were words you could not say.  There were all the standard four letter words.  There was also the N word, the S word, and the Q word.  The Q word being queer.  If you used these words in regular conversation you got sent to the vice principal’s office for a lecture about hurtful language and your parents got a phone call.  If you used these words in anger you got sent to the vice principal’s office for a lecture about hurtful language and your parents got a phone call.  If you used them referring to yourself you were sent to the vice principal’s office for a lecture about hurtful language and your parents got a phone call.  You didn’t use the Q word, just like you didn’t use the N word.  It was a Bad Word.

Let’s jump forward to 1995, the year I started high school.  Twenty Years Ago.  Ellen DeGeneres was still two years away from coming out.  Will & Grace would not go to air for another three years and it would be considered controversial.   It would be nine years before Gavin Newsome directed the county clerk of San Francisco to issue same sex marriage licenses.  And while there were some treatments for HIV/AIDS is was still killing at an alarming rate.

A couple of friends at my high school decided they were going to make a stand and start a GSA (gay/straight alliance) with the help of one of the teachers.   It wasn’t much of a stand because no one objected or cared but we did it and we were proud.  The very first meeting we changed it to the GLBTA Alliance. Please note the lack of Q because the Q word is a Bad Word.  We were proud of our extended acronym because at the time a lot of G and L groups were having serious debates as to if they should let in B and T.  A wasn’t on the radar for most.  Please remember, 1995.

Another quick jump to 1998.  The class of 1999 showed up for the first day of senior year and looked over the incoming freshmen, class of 2003.  The freshman I remember the most, who showed up for the first GLBTAA meeting with a bunch of his friends, had worn leather pants, a pink top, and a carried a glittery purple shoulder bag on his first day of high school . First Day Of High School People!  And at the meeting some of his friends referred to themselves by the Q word.  Somewhere between the class of 1999 and the class of 2003 the Q word had been reclaimed.  I fully expected the vice principal to pop out of the floor and deliver a lecture on hurtful language.  Our faculty adviser who was openly gay and in his mid-40s was appalled.  He’d seen some shit go down in his life and could not understand why someone would refer to themselves by such a horrible word.

But what were we going to say to kids who were fourteen, out, proud, and totally comfortable with themselves, when we had seniors who were still in the closet?  The language had changed without our permission or input and all we could do was squirm in discomfort.

Now, at time of printing, April 2015, the acronym is as far as I can tell LGBTQQIA+.  It’s starting to look like a keyboard smash and I’m sure I’m missing at least two letters.  Not only has the Q word been solidly reclaimed but the acronym above is often just referred to as the Queer community.  As a someone who falls into the above acronym (no you may not have my sexual history) a little part of me still cringes listening to all those young whippersnappers throw around the Q word as if it has never been used in aggression.  Honestly, the first time I saw the word Genderqueer I thought someone was trolling.

So where does this leave a writer?  Especially one who has characters within the queer community?  How much of my linguistic baggage do I carry into my modern work?  I love the English language for its flexibility and ability to evolve with the times, but it does require authors to evolve along with it.

With my upcoming novels the youngest of the lead characters is thirty two and because the book takes place in 2011 (for reasons) he’s older than I am.  The other lead is pushing forty and does use the word queer once in a fit of annoyance.  He also uses the word heteronormative while having a rant as some guys he’s stuck playing golf with.  With the ages of the characters I can side step the issue since it’s easy for my discomfort with the word to be their discomfort as well.

Then there is the Young Adult project.  It’s a bit stalled but I have hopes for next year.  The lead character is sixteen and there is a Greek chorus of LGBTQQIA+ high school students I need to write dialogue for.  That’s going to mean the word queer just as a start.  There are words that didn’t exist when I was in high school for communities and groups that had zero recognition.

Younger readers want younger characters to have a voice they recognize as their own.  I have a feeling I’m going to be spending a lot of time on tumblr reading posts by kids who hadn’t been born in 1999 if I want to do that right.  And I have no doubt that the language will keep evolving; that the acronym will continue to grow.

My kid is just figuring out how to talk.  She’s convince the word ‘sit’ has as H in it, and stringing three words together is a neat trick.  She will be a teenager one day though, and if I continue to write at some point I will probably have to shove some writing in front of her and ask if that’s still how kids talk.  There will be eye rolling and whatever her generation’s version of lame is, and I will not be surprised if as some point she hisses at me and says ‘mom, that’s a Bad Word’.

Free Read: Riverbank

Pulp Literature Magpie Award for Poetry 2014

Honourable Mention

 

Riverbank

Autumn

The walnuts split simply

between two stones

under the pomegranate tree.

Winter

We never found

the toy soldiers

sunk in the irrigation mud

between one summer day

and the next.

Spring

Mary mother

in the garden.

Pale stone

and virgin,

beneath the red roses.

Summer

The chickens

climb

the jasmine

bush

And try to

fly

on perfumed

air.