Leta Blake's Blog, page 74

Naked Rowing! It’s for Charity! #ohbrits #butts

I think that Buzzfeed has explained this calendar better than I ever could in their post RIGHT HERE. Go forth and click. Look at the hot naked dudes. Help them fight homophobia! It’s for charity! So it’s okay!

Possibly a bit NSFW because of their butts, but there are not packages on display. Also, check out the video promotion of the calendar below!

Skates, Body, & Cold! Training Season by Leta Blake #mmromance

I’m excited to reveal the cover for my upcoming book, Training Season. The cover was completed by Dar Albert of Wicked Smart Designs and I’m wickedly pleased with it.

The release date will be announced soon, just as soon as I have all my ducks in a row. But, psst, rumor has it that it will be December 7. Keep an eye out for that.

 

Five Shuffled Songs for Wednesday! #music

Eric Arvin does this on FaceBook and it inspired me to do it daily, too!

Romany Caravan by The Church

I Love You (Me Either) by Cat Power and Karen Elson

This cover of Mercy Street by Ritchie.

When I was writing my short story Falling, which has been submitted to an anthology call and will hopefully see the light of day one day, I listened to various covers of Mercy Street on repeat for hours and hours and hours. This was one of them.

This live version of Tori Amos singing Etienne. It’s a super clear recording. Very impressive.

But, ya know, this Y Kant Tori Read version doesn’t suck balls for a 1980s recording, so I’m going to include it, too. 

Mariel’s Brazen Overture by Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s

Four Shuffled Songs for Tuesday #music

Inspired by Eric Arvin, here’s five shuffled songs for Tuesday!

Diminished by REM

Jennifer Niceley

Truly, the next song was “Monster” aka “Strong Man’s Daughter”, an old original song that Jennifer recorded with my husband in his apartment, oh, five million years ago now. But, alas, no one has that song but me. I’m not even sure Jennifer has that song. So, uh, here, have some random Jennifer performance at The Family Wash in Nashville. You should eat there, by the way, if you haven’t ever. It’s yummy and one of my dearest people works there.

FWIW, none of Jennifer’s best songs seem to be on YouTube. She’s actually kinda fantastic. Check her out on Band Camp. Looking there, holy crap, it seems like my favorite albums of hers aren’t listed. Por que, Jennifer? Por que??

Cornflake Girl by Tori Amos

Hotel Plaster by Nicole Atkins

Settling by Tara McLean

Oh, man, haven’t heard that last one in years. It’s kinda a heart-breaker in that old, adolescent angsty way that feels a lot like autumn to me.

Welp, it’s been fun again! See ya tomorrow!

Five Shuffled Songs on Monday #music

Again, inspired by Eric Arvin, here’s five shuffled songs!

1. 

Unprepared by Superdrag

2. 

Light Year by Gregory Alan Isakov

3. 

Awake my Soul by Mumford & Sons (but the album version, not this live version)

4.  

Body of Work by Mynabirds

5. 

Let’s Go by The Cars

Is KDP Select Worth It? #mmromance #selfpub #kdpselect

So, I just read this blog post and this blog post which made me start to question whether or not I should do KDP Select for my upcoming self-published book, Training Season. My fellow m/m romance authors, what is your experience?

*chinhands*

Tell me what to do, oh wise ones?

Five Songs on Shuffle Play #music

Eric Arvin has a ritual on Facebook of posting five shuffled songs to start his day. I love music and I love shuffle posts and thus I thought, “Why not do that on your blog, Leta?”

So let’s try it out.

First five songs on my shuffle play! Music brought to you by the powers of YouTube! If you like the music, go forth and buy it!

1. 

Sort Of by Ingrid Michaelson

It’s not a Gaga song, I promise. It’s the song set to the most wonderful Kurt fanvid ever made. The kind of fanvid that you’ll never forget. Watch it.

2. 

The World Spins Madly On by The Weepies (Animation by Ryan Woodward)

Stunning animation to a wonderful song.

3. 

Take On Me by A-Ha.

No explanation needed, amiright?

4. 

Goin’ Places by The Jacksons

Uh, I didn’t even know I owned this song? *confused*

5. 

Whatshername by Green Day

Bonus American Idiot Version!

Well, this was interesting! Gotta say! I’ll be curious to see what comes up tomorrow!

Let’s Talk #Degrassi and yay #Canada!

So, awhile back, Bird and I started watching Degrassi: The Next Generation via Amazon’s Instant View. (It’s free to Prime Members! Yay!) It seems we go through periods of binge-watching it followed by weeks of not thinking about it at all. But this past weekend, we totally watched almost all of S4 and started S5 together, and I found my attachment to the characters growing exponentially with nearly every episode.

First, one thing I love about Degrassi is that it truly is an ensemble show. So many scenes involve many different characters, even if the storyline is focused at that point on just one or two. I like the sense of community it gives in that way, and how it is character-driven in terms of how each character reacts to their own problems and to their friend’s problems. In fact, that’s probably why I’m growing to love it so much. So far, no one has really pulled a complete 180 in terms of their expected behavior given what we know about them and what they actually do on the screen. Except maybe Dylan.

Seriously, Dylan? Cheating? Open relationship? Who are you these days?

Another thing I love about Degrassi is that it’s an “issues” show, which gives me a lot of excellent lead-ins for important topics to talk about with my daughter. So, I appreciate how they, for the most part, deal realistically with issues like unexpected pregnancies, abortion, rape, underage alcohol, body image, anorexia, making smart choices about technology, etc, etc, etc. (I especially appreciated the abortion episode! Thank you, Canada, for being sane and safe! If you’d stop being so cold in the winter, I might consider moving to you!)

Most importantly, aside from the events of the very first episode, which were, in my opinion, handled badly in terms of lacking any aftermath whatsoever, the issues and their resulting arcs play out over multiple seasons, so that a rape that took place in S2 is still remembered and factored into a girl’s life/relationship in S4, and an abortion that took place in S3 is referenced in the first episode of S5.

And then there’s character building! Let’s look at Craig for example. He’s introduced in S2 very early on, but it isn’t until nearly the end of S4 that he’s diagnosed as bipolar, though his behavior over the prior two seasons was so erratic and often horrible that I swung (rather like the characters) between liking him and hating him. The actor who played Craig deserves all kinds of props because he plays mania so well that it’s terrifying and beyond uncomfortable to watch. This comes from someone who has witnessed mania up close and personal during college when my roommate was bipolar. He nails it.

Craig, manic, and saying the most Canadian of all words over and over.

Of course, there’s also Marco who has, admittedly, had some very bad hair years. (VERY bad hair years!) But he is otherwise my favorite character on the show. (Except for maybe Ellie? and the grumpy dark-haired bad-girl who becomes vice-president and whose name I can’t recall…so, uh, she probably isn’t actually my favorite?) He’s empathetic, driven, loyal, a good friend, and my heart was won over by his conversation with the above-mentioned Dylan, his then-boyfriend, who proposed an open relationship while he was at college. Marco seemed to genuinely believe that Dylan still loved him and that Dylan still felt the same way about him, but he said, “I know it doesn’t change how you feel, but it would change how I feel…about myself.” And that kind of integrity is what I love about Marco.

Marco having bad hair…as usual.

So, I love Degrassi, as everyone said I would. And I’ll keep on watching as I get a chance. If you’ve not seen it, I recommend it for viewing with kids. Obviously, it depends on your child what age you should begin-what their interests are and how willing you are to talk about various things including sex (especially sex). My daughter is very interested in the show and I take it as an opportunity to talk about the issues at length, to get my values planted into her early, and to point out solutions to various problems so that she can hopefully avoid some of the pitfalls of puberty and adolescence. I’m a big believer in “the younger they learn, the better it sticks.”

Also, Degrassi has great cultural and ethnic diversity, as well as LGBT characters. Go Degrassi! Go Canada! Get on that warming up thing so I can move to you!

Heroin Sucks #drugs #corymonteith #heroin #od #depression #glee

I wrote this awhile back but didn’t post it because, well, I didn’t know if I should. Today, I decided that I should.

There was a guy back in high school who used to follow my now-husband, then-boyfriend around like a puppy. It was vaguely annoying, a little humorous, but mainly just how it was. For the purposes of this post, let’s call him Mitchell.

Mitchell was socially inept in a lot of ways and didn’t know when to walk away and when to come around again. He was short and odd-looking and not exactly well-liked by almost anyone. He was on the fringes of groups, darting between nerd and rocker, and accepted by neither.

Eight years later he was in college and was a bit of a joke in the world of local bands. People talked about how Mitchell would borrow their guitar pedals and then never return them. It was a running joke because it was true and also because people wrote it off to Mitchell being a dumbass more than being a thief. People would joke about how Mitchell would never, ever, ever be cool despite his best efforts. People were assholes.

Let me repeat–people were assholes, okay?

I’d like to say that my then-boyfriend and I treated this guy wonderfully back in high school. I’d like to tell you that I never rolled my eyes when I saw him coming. I’d like to say that my boyfriend was never shorter than he needed to be to get the guy to go away. I’d like to say that in college we never laughed when someone said this guy had taken off with yet another guitar pedal or felt more empathetic when we heard that another of his bands had been ill-fated. I realize now that we added to the culture that surrounding Mitchell–the one telling him he’d always be a buffoon and a loser.

There are a lot of things I’d like to be able to say. I’d like to be able to tell you that despite all that he rose above and showed us all that we were wrong and we were assholes.

Instead, what I can tell you is that he began using heroin at some point and died from an overdose locked in a friend’s dirty bathroom. That’s what I can tell you. I can tell you my husband went to the funeral where the most recent picture his folks had of him was his high school graduation shot. I can tell you that people still talk about him to this day and shake their head with this sense that it was inevitable but also so stupid–and thus so like him. I can tell you that most everyone wishes they’d done something differently when it came to this guy. I can say that almost everyone who ever knew this fellow feels a little culpable in how his life ended.

I know I do.

When I heard that Cory Monteith had died, I immediately knew it would be heroin given his most recent history. I also assumed that the fact that he’d supposedly been sober since April would play a role in the OD. I don’t know if it did or not, but my lessons on A States and B States in college had taught me that the person most at risk of an OD is someone who’s been sober awhile because their tolerance has dropped. This means that the same amount (or even significantly less) of drug that they’d taken before getting sober, combined with an unfamiliar setting like a hotel room or a new house, can (and sadly often does) result in their body being unable to anticipate and defend itself against the onslaught of poison coming its way. It’s the perfect recipe for overdose. And it seems like Cory fits that bill.

I don’t intend that information to be a discouragement to sobriety. If anything, it should be another weapon to stay sober.

In my personal life, I’ve never had an issue with drugs, but depression? Oh, yes. Depression has been something I battled off and on since I was eight years old. I’ve been able to fight the bitch off for about 8 years now and I will continue to fight her. This article, though, about Cory Monteith’s death really hit home for me. This man talks about addiction the way I talk about depression. I’ve always believed they were similar diseases. The way they work is so similar, and so is the path away from them.

To quote:

I’m only writing this because I sensed a fatalism in some of the replies I received from people, suggesting they believe that some folks are destined to OD and die. Fuck that. Fuck you if you think that. Addiction is a brutal, cunning, shapeshifting enemy, but I’ve seen people from every walk of life kick it in the fucking mouth. But if you want to beat it, you must ACKNOWLEDGE ITS STRENGTH and work out in your basement every day, including weekends and holidays, and then when you encounter it on a country road or a city street corner or a weekend barbecue or a subway platform, beat its fucking skull in before it gets the chance to do the same to you. Because it will, because that’s its job.

Yes, that is addiction’s job and depression’s job. They are killers and that is what they do. No doubt.

But it can’t be just the individual who fights. I think back to the callous young people, invincible and stupid, that we all used to be and how little we did for Mitchell. I think about all the things that contributed to the culture around him that helped turn him to drugs. Mitchell never wanted anything more than to be “cool” and I can imagine that if someone he admired offered him heroin, he’d do it just to impress them. Maybe if we’d given him the message he was cool all along he wouldn’t have needed that.

I’m not delusional and I realize I could never have had the power to fix the culture around him–it was so big, and so pervasive, and operated entirely outside of me–but there’s still the part of me that wants to know if there was something I could have done that would’ve prevented Mitchell’s choice to shoot up that night while locked in a friend’s dirty bathroom, if there was something that would’ve prevented him taking it the first time, the next, the rest. I don’t know. I doubt it. I honestly feel like he was so entrenched on this highway that the only one who could have saved him was himself. But, fuck, none of us helped. None of us. I know of no one who ever really helped him.

I’m honestly not sure where I’m going with this. Whenever I hear of someone ODing on heroin, I think of Mitchell, remember his funeral, and think of how we all still shake our heads and I wish I could go back to my 21 year old self and tell her to say something profound to him. I have no idea what that would have been, though. Even now I don’t know. In face of that kind of youth and vulnerability, while so young and vulnerable myself? I just don’t know.

Cory Monteith reminds me of Mitchell in other ways besides his death. Of all the Glee actors, I’d say that he was the most joked about, most lovingly-scorned of the bunch. At least from a fannish perspective. I’ve seen more people make him the butt of jokes than make him a idol. I’ve seen scorn about his (very real) inability to sing or dance (on a show about singing and dancing). I definitely agreed with those comments. But, all in all, there was just something about the actor–some sense of discomfort and vulnerability–that reminded me of the way Mitchell was when I knew him way back when.

I guess just…heroin sucks, and people sometimes suck, and there are these vulnerable people out there and we need to find a way to help them. And if we are those vulnerable people we need to fight our own demons. And we need to have a game plan to fight it–for ourselves, for others. I don’t know. I just want people to stop dying from this crap and for me to not feel like it was, in some ways, because of how the world related to them.

Rest in peace Mitchell, and rest in peace Cory Monteith. I wish you’d had more peace while you lived.

Fanwork Friday: We Didn’t Start the Fire: Fifty Years of Fandom #fandom #fanvid

Password: fandom! (

You know, the immensity of this one is pretty huge. There’s a lot of emotion for any fan in watching these images flash by. When one of “your” fandoms comes up, the swell of joy is so sweet, and then the wonder of seeing the little glimpses of how passionate fans are–like the Avatar: The Last Airbender movie protests. Oh, fandom, I love you!

I strongly recommend this vid for a shot of feels in the morning. Also, check out the vidders’ comments HERE.