F.E. Feeley Jr.'s Blog, page 20

I’ve yet to see a hearse with a hitch (poem)

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(Photo Sylvain Reygaerts)

I learned a while ago

that know matter what I say

no matter where I go

I am both servant and master

inclined to help people do better

but should also feel comfortable enough to lean

on those who are around me

Because the truth is

despite people talking about the

importance of individuality, and self,

at the end of the day we exist in a community

where I belong to you and you to me

and those that often jive talk about Personal responsibility

thinks everyone else should have it

but their issues, their reason for unemployment, WIC, or food stamps- well, that’s a specialty

An outlier, something so exceptional

which allows them to hoard grace and then rob it

from others.

whether it be a homeless vet or a single mother

it’s that exceptional lie of ‘someone else can worry’

that makes it impossible for our culture to hurry

into its natural next phase of evolution

It’s that lie that makes ‘other’ , hatred of another

so’s they can be denied things given to their brother

on the basis of his faith, class, or skin color

things they want denied to someone else because of whom

they take as their lover

in the meantime justifying their hate by saying, ‘Well, they’re queer.”

No, see, not really

what’s queer is to run counter to your own humanity

things that man Jesus, remember him, talked about

before they nailed him to a tree

things repeated my Ghandi and Dr. Martin Luther King

that said “Yo, treat others like you want to be treated’

this isn’t rocket science

but something that rests solidly in your own conscience

that you have to daily be willing to murder

so you can say, “That man, that man right there with the funny accent. He’s an intruder. ”

Kick him out

Who’s really queer here?

Cause I can guarantee you, it isn’t the Hispanic woman

the African son, the white snowflake you intimidate with your guns

it isn’t the lesbian politician nor the Muslim man who was beaten in his store in New York

No, see queer means something entirely different it means something more

Queer means odd

and denying people their fundamental rights before you dispatch them to their respective God

says more about you than anything said about them

“Behold, this was this sin of your sister Sodom”

She was fat, she was lazy, and she didn’t give a damn

She could have, she should have, but she didn’t understand her own situation nor it’s gravity

of what happens when you willfully destroy your own humanity

and embrace chance, embrace apathy,

that the stone cold nature of mankind’s cruelty becomes ten fold

when the bell you rang or allowed to be rung for someone else

finally tolls for thee.

And it does -without a doubt – toll for thee.

As it tolls for your neighbor, as it tolls for me

see no matter our lot in life, or wealth, or station

our burial plots are all the same size

death is mankind’s equalizer, the greatest of it’s kind

so whether you were born in palatial splendor or ended up dead in a ditch

I promise you in thirty six years of life – I’ve yet to see a hearse with a hitch.

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The Rain Remains the Same (Poem)

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(Photo: Eutah Mizushima)

 

 

There is cool wind and sweet smells on the air tonight


As a storm rolls in from the south


Like a gentle push, the humidity flees and the sweet fragrance that was held down


Is flung heavenward as the thunder begins to roll


The raindrops fall in earnest, and the ground sighs with pure delight


And releases tendrils of white mist like ghosts rising from the tomb


The drops are cool almost cold


On my flush skin


And memory leaps forward in my mind


and drags me back in time to remind me


Of every rainstorm I have ever heard


All at once, I am but a child, watching from my window


And then a young soldier taking shelter in a tank


Soon, a young lover listening to the patter on a breath fogged window after we were spent


And now a married man, with money in the bank


each storm reminds me of


How long the journeys been


So many roads, lines upon my face


And history behind my name


But there’s a comfort in knowing that no matter who, and what, and where I’ve been


The rain remains the same.

Trigger Warnings (Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate)

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(Photo by: Vadim Kaipov)

The whole concept absolutely makes me insane. Especially being a queer man. If I follow writer’s advice and write what I know – or if I follow the advice of the late, great Nina Simone and reflect my world in my work – then I what I write is going to be triggering in its entirety. Which – in a genre of queer books – written for, by, and about so said queer people – adding trigger warnings to content because it may bother straight people is insulting to me. I want you bothered by it. I want you hurt with me. Add in all of the pseudo-religiousness of genre fiction where the ‘rules’ become dogma and you dare not break them lest ye risk the ire of a certain group of readers – I find all of this the height of privilege. How dare you insist that not only do I write a book inside the box of m/m romance which has overtaken anything in the queer lit category, perfectly fashioned toward your sensabilites but then I must slap a warning label for you on it so that you’re senses aren’t offended should I deviate outside of these rules established long before queer lit came around? They would be selling ice cream in hell first before that ever happened. Hubris. Add on top the tacky people who would use these things to insert awful content the way people use *banned by Amazon* as a way to sell trash under the guise of censorship.

At the end of the day my darlings, there isn’t enough money in the world that would make up for trading myself in for your comfort. You don’t want to be triggered – I didn’t want to have to go through the things in my life that would perhaps trigger you in a book that I feel compelled to write about because it’s my truth! Knowing that there is some poor fucked up soul out there just like mine that needs to hear that the shit they went through hasn’t thrown them into the void of loneliness like real mental health issues often do.

I understand is the most powerful phrase in the English language.

This entire genre is so rife with these dogooders that lock you in and hold you at ransom, or filled with straight privileged people who want to know all the FUN stuff surrounding gay people and will accept certain bad things in a book if it furthers a plot point that I honestly have to say I regret ever walking into it.

I don’t understand why gay people put up with this. Why do we allow ourselves to be reduced for the comfort of others? Don’t we do that enough with our families? Haven’t we had to do this at our jobs? Where your other family members are married but you’re ‘married?’

It’s intellectual cowardice. It’s intellectual veganism where your empathy has replaced your biological need for sustenance at the cost of life sustaining nutrients.

It’s Pseudo- intellectualism.

At the end of the day – its fucking homophobia from people who are allying us to death.

My brothers are being rounded up and murdered in Chechnya. I’m triggered. Are you?

Let me (Poem)

[image error]Let me hold myself still

in my well of sorrows

in my wellspring of joy

let me armour my heart

with both pain and rapturous ecstasy

and although the wind tear at my clothes

and the tide threatens to wash me away

let me stand firm, rooted in who I am

with the miles I’ve walked having calloused my feet

and turned them to stone

let me swell my chest and raise my chin

and let my hands rest gently at my side

and although tears course down my time, and weather, and weary worn face

let me smile the smile of a fool in love

who was wise enough to know to only bend my knee

and lower my head at that touch and that touch alone

Let me hold myself, dignified

having lived a life not envied by many

but lived by me carried out with steel strong spine

and  sheer will the sea alone can understand

until I be carried away, nothing more than a twinkle in time

but a twinkle nonetheless.

Objects in the Rearview Mirror (Book)

Hey y’all.

I had a couple of positive reactions and sales from my last self promo – So I figured I’d take a shot again and see if anyone would be interested in another book promotion.

This is another ghost story.

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Blurb: (Still hate that word)

Their new home on Frederick Street in Clay Center, Kansas, was supposed to give writer Jonathan David and his husband, clinical psychologist Dr. Eddie Dorman, an opportunity to enjoy married life. Jonathan has just released his first major bestseller, and he hopes to finally escape his traumatic past and find the quiet existence he has always craved. Eddie has taken a job at the Kansas State University psychology department, and they intend to begin anew.

They have barely settled in when the nightmare begins. Noises, disembodied voices, and mysterious apparitions make Jonathan’s life hell. Part of the house has decided to bare its teeth, show its jagged edges, and bring back the worst of Jonathan’s past. At first, Eddie cannot perceive the spectral events and fears for his husband’s sanity. When he’s also affected by the haunting, he’s unsure of what to do but refuses to be beaten.

Together, they seek a way to fight the forces trying to tear them apart. The world is a frightening place, but confronting their fears plunges Jonathan and Eddie into absolute horror.

 

Buy Links: 

https://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/books/objects-in-the-rearview-mirror-by-f-e-feeley-jr-447-b

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/objects-in-the-rearview-mirror-fe-feeley-jr/1118482872?ean=9781627984287

 

Thanks guys

The murderers of Chechnya

I’d like to say what is happening in Chechnya right now to gay men is the act of animals.

I’d like to say what is happening in Chechnya right now to gay men is the act of demon possessed people.

I’d like to say what is happening in Chechnya right now to gay is the act of mentally ill people.

But it isn’t.

Critters – large or small – aren’t known for murderous rampages. Most animals kill out of necessity. They must eat or defend themselves or offspring.

While I am a religious person and do believe in a spiritual world – blaming the acts on demon possession is a scape goat.

And as far as mental illness is concerned, I believe fundamentalism is a type of mental illness – sure – but understand that fundamentalism often hides sociopath with perfect skill.

No – what is happening in Chechnya is perfectly – and horrifically – human.

Sure they may do what they do in the name of Chechnya, in the name of their God(s), reinforced through religious ideology, but all of this is the excuse that enables them to act and murder their own with impunity.

These people are religious tyrants, thugs, and murderers but at the end of they day – they’re human with no excuses for the blood on their hands.

 

Confidence in Writing – Be true to who you are and what it is you do.

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Writing is an art form and like all works of art – is deeply personal and not for the faint of heart.

Those who write books, regardless of genre, usually find themselves hearing certain things once their first book is released. Often, they are on an emotional high for having accomplished such an enormous task. They are inundated with new and other authors in the same genre wanting to be friends on social media, fans, they start networking through different book review sites, they are introduced to the headache of campaigning and marketing to ‘get their work out there’, etc.

Most writers that I’ve met are introverts. They’re watchers, observers of human behavior. They are the wallflowers at a party. They are the ones who may not be able to stay in a crowd for very long before their social batteries wear out, myself included.

So once we lie to ourselves and type “The End” on our manuscripts – it’s usually a couple of weeks before the quietness of our lives are suddenly interrupted with everything that comes along with writing.

Those who befriend us – when they hear we’ve written a book – often say bullshit like, “I could do it. I could write a book when I have the time.” Blah blah blah – yeah, okay. Let me know when you’re finished pumpkin. We all know these people. And their words often begin to bring us off that high of finishing something.

But they’re not the only ones.

The market, publishers, sales or the lack thereof, editors, and other artists – can suck the marrow of creativity out of your bones faster than anything. In short – the joy of writing has a counter balance and that is in the sheer misery of post production sharing of your work.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been recovering from a string of just shitty circumstances and shitty people that makes the idea of opening up a word document an act of sheer insanity.

It was a culmination of people that made me doubt myself and who I am as a person. See, I identify as a writer. Writers write. And I often identified as a m/m author or gay fiction author.

I’ve been published several times over, I’ve received glowing reviews, and while I may not be the lead story in gay fiction – story wise – this dude can hold his own.

And I’ve always been okay with that. I’m not the most famous name out there. I don’t make much in the way of money, but I’ve always been okay with catching four and five star reviews from people who love my work using that to justify the idea of writing as a career.

I love the idea of touching people’s lives with my work.

However, the past couple of weeks have made something VERY clear to me. Genre specific writing, especially in m/m – sucks. Having to create a world based upon arbitrary rules that surround romance is so destructive of creativity. I mean, how many times can you tell the same fucking story?

Man meets man, man loses man, man gets cute man back?

I totally get why Prince (God rest his Purple Soul) turned himself into a symbol.

The book industry blows chunks because its a fucking machine that devours.

It takes a writer, an introvert, and throws them into the spin cycle of frantically trying to navigate the egg shell laden floor of having to deal with everything that comes after writing “The End” in a book.

No one wants to fucking do this. At all.

It’s a place no one wants to be because post production can be nice to you one minute – it can turn on you and since you invest so much of yourself in the work – can rip you to shreds.

You end up feeling like a slave and the industry feels like a master with a bad temper. And in m/m romance that machine is bloated in identity politics and ambitious authors who dance on other people’s misery be they other authors or the subject matter they write about. In the midst of all this – gay voices are being drowned out in favor of mass production of the same novel repeated for the millionth time – because that’s what is setting the market and publishers go in that direction because – well – capitalism.  Add in the stupid and often insipid drama kicked up by someone who is a D list celebrity (more like Z list) – fuck me with a cactus, batman. No thanks.

Telling an author “This action by your character wouldn’t endear them to the reader,” as a reason why the book won’t be contracted and sold without a rewrite, is garbage. It’s like “So what? There’s a moment of actual humanity?”

Erasure of gay people’s range of experiences , even the bad ones, robs them of equality and robs the reader of learning something more than gay people have sex and fall in love.

There is more to us than that. Far more.  And having to remind people of that – is too exhausting for words.

Also one shitty, bitter, and angry editor who tells you ‘you have no ear for writing’ can wipe all the good that has happened in your writing career.

So – after a couple of weeks of trying to pick myself up off the floor – I’m erasing the idea of writing to a genre, to a publisher, and to an audience.

Essentially, I’ve opted to do my own thing. Yeah, I’m bitter.

But I didn’t used to be. Writing used to be fun. It used to be fulfilling. And I think I’ve been wrong headed about all of this.

I am no longer going to ‘going with the flow’ – not that I’ve really been in that mindset anyway.

I am erasing the m/m author, gay fiction author, and even author for awhile.

I’ll be a writer. There’s passion in that. Truth. Realism. And the ability to reach out of the ether and touch people on my terms and in my time. Make real connections.

I am a writer. I know what I can do and what I do, I do well.

So for other authors out there feeling the sting of industrialized book writing. I feel ya.

The only advice I can give you, that I am taking for myself, is Bill Shakespeare’s age old advice, “To Thine Own Self Be True.” Fuck everything else.

If you have a creative ability – that is something that can’t be taught. That’s a gift to be cultivated. Avoid everything and everyone that wants to chew through that. You may not get rich but you’ll be happy.

The End

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was healthy, the world was not (Poem) Possibly a rap song.

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(Photo by Jeremy Bishop)

 

I always thought I was crazy

that there was something wrong with me

when people threw words in my direction

I ingested them like poisonous candy

With no walls put down around me

I was a house without a family

the bones were good but the content inside

was excrament from transients

who did nothing but critisize.

I believed I was A.D.H.D

that everything wrong – had to be because of me

and if you factored in my sexuality – for those who heard it

made me feel that when bad things happened

I was everything that made me deserve it

For a second, I was scared it was bi-polar

up and down and up and up again

but when I realized I was strapped to a rollercoaster

things began to make sense.

This feeling inside – this anxious mind

was re-acting to the world outside

Gas-lit like a motherfucker

90 to nothin’ like a run away trucker

clinging to the hope that in the next town things

would be better

feeling responsible for everything wrong in the world

including the weather

I was a hurricane raging up the interstate

wanting nothing more than abiding faith, to escape,

the shape and size of my heart – trying to outrun death

trying to outrun fate

I realized I was being chased, raced, and outpaced

by demons set loose upon the world by lips

that curled up in smiles, from those who paid their debt

to society’s desire for Dunbar’s guile

with eyes as cold as tombstones – I realized the only way off was to stop

drop, throw out the window other people’s luggage that I carried with me

and turn around right where I stood

and stare them down

and suddenly….

like smoke they were gone

like the remnants of a song that echoes in your ears

after the tune’s discharged and the last note played

like that lonely stretch of highway that remembers how in the day traffic roared over its pavement, not knowing where the cars went

similarly I not knowing which way my personal ghosts went

stood under the moon emptied out

for the first time in my life

It was then i realized I was healthy and that it was the world that was not.

 

(Watch out Eminem. Ol Freddie’s comin’ up. Imma call myself, “HimandHim”, ahhahahahahha)

Still Waters (Poem)….

Come and see

what lies beneath

this placid lake, this freshwater sea

Come and See

A place where terrible shadow are cast long

a place where birds sing a mournful song

Come and See

this edge of a knife

a small town’s secrets, one family’s strife 

Come and See

where society falters, where ambitions are frozen

and the devil traverses underneath Still Waters

 

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So, every once in a while, I guess I should promote my books. This one here – give ya two guesses what the name is – is one of my favorites.

Here’s the blurb (I hate that word – blurb and moist- bah! – anyway )

Memoirs of the Human Wraiths

Promise, Michigan is very much like every other small town across the state. Built on the edge of a lake, the homes sit in neat little rows in cute little neighborhoods. During the summer Promise bustles with tourists who come to spend their vacation dollars and enjoy the lake’s refreshingly cold water. But Promise holds a terrible secret. In the center of the lake is an abandoned island where a curse is rumored to wait for victims, unabated and deadly. Most think it’s just a story, something used to keep kids out of trouble. Still, everyone gives it a wide berth. Everyone except Bret and Adam. They dare to venture out the night of Bret’s birthday. When they declared their love and promise to get married, they believe no one else heard their whispered words—but they are wrong.

Five years after Adam dies, Bret returns to his family to heal. But someone is killing the people of Promise in random acts of violence. Bret, with the help of FBI agent Jeff McAllister, must discover the identity of a murderer with death on his mind and revenge in his heart.

Here’s some buy links (hint, hint): 

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/reviews/still-waters-fe-feeley-jr/1121539756?ean=9781632167019#reviews-header

https://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/books/still-waters-by-fe-feeley-jr-by-f-e-feeley-jr-2764-b

 

So – obligatory self promotion is done. Back to the Poetry.

 

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!

‘Slumberscythe’ (The Outre War Book 1) by Vance Bastian #LGBT #SciFi #Review

Vance Bastian is one of m/m’s hidden treasures. Not only is he a remarkable Voice over actor, a host for the Wrote Podcast, his writing gives Rowling a run for her money. Seriously loved this book and totally psyched for the second.

Rainbow Gold Reviews

Wendy reviews Slumberscythe (The Outre War book 1) by Vance Bastian. Published by Rogue Ravens Publishing October 8, 2014, 274 pages.

After a series of dreams where he relives a female espionage agent’s 1972 missions, slightly overweight, slightly narcoleptic, slightly middle-aged, chronically single and gay James is shocked to learn the shadowy events really occurred. When operatives with dream-related powers show up in his life looking for him, he needs to find someone who can teach him to use his bloodline’s supernatural abilities.

His strange dreams lead him to unlikely help – a young reaper who fancies herself a Valkyrie. Halldora’s a closeted gamer-chick who grew up in the half-hidden world of the Outré. She’ll show him how to survive if she can get over her own baggage.

With a little luck, and a lot of help, James might just figure everything out.

Right after he gets these Sandman agents…

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