Leslea Tash's Blog, page 2

Surprise! Book sale :)

Two new releases and a lot more! 

My latest release is sitting well into the top 100 new releases...

My latest release is sitting well into the top 100 new releases for Western Romance and 20th Century Historical American fiction. Weeee!

The Happy Isles

I’m really jonesing for my next puzzle, The Happy Isle by Magic Puzzles, but I promised myself I wouldn’t start on it until I’m at least 50% through my second pass over my latest WIP. I’m at 45%, so palm trees and aggravating straight edge pieces are definitely on the horizon. 

Besides denying myself the joy of a jigsaw puzzle, another thing I do to try and get myself over the hump of procrastination is allow myself to play a round of PVP on Guild Wars 2 in between 10 minute sessions of editing. I’ll probably draw out the sessions to 15 minutes. I feel like PVP is getting more screen time than Miss Fitz at this point, and that’s really not fair.

It’s not like I don’t want to do the work. I actually really am enjoying the story, the characters, and the process. There is just something hard-wired in me that fights that actual process. Are all writers like this? I think at some point we all are. The fun part of having the idea is like the sex before the baby. Nine long months of labor and 18+ of raising the kid, and you’re like, why did I do this? Oh, yeah.

I fear I have just outed myself as a horrible mother.

There are authors who barrel through the work like a blur. I am not one of them. I’m not going to try to be. I’m pretty happy with my work, but I totally appreciate my superfast friends. They are super cool and I look to their example when I ask myself if I am denying myself the pleasure of writing/editing, or what. Because sometimes I am, and that’s just self-flagellation, isn’t it? It’s okay to not work on a lousy $9/hour project if I’ve got the energy to write, right? And then I do it. Because I can. Sometimes I have to remind myself that other authors are allowed to write, and so am I. We are all allowed to write. It’s not a crime. It’s not a sin.

This particular WIP was possibly my fastest first draft, taking about six or seven weeks from start to finish, and although I always feel like I put a lot of myself into my stories, this one feels like it’s right out of my present life as a mom of four, unlike any other novel I’ve written. So, is that good? Sure. It’s something I’ve struggled for years to try to understand how to do, and I have to thank Emma Jameson specifically for not only encouraging me to write about my life, but also to dabble with fictionalizing it. 

I don’t want to jinx myself because I’m only working through a draft–it’s not like it’s out for sale and getting rave reviews just yet. But I do feel good about it.

So I suppose that is my long-winded way of saying, I have learned that even when I really love what I’m working on, I will still have days when I would rather clean the air filters and the dog’s ears than sit down for 15 minutes and edit my own work.

And to be honest, I have always loved what I’m working on, even when it was really, REALLY awful (and I knew it was awful, and it was meant to be awful). I suppose I’m just accepting that this is me. I have to bribe and trick myself sometimes, but maybe I love that. Maybe I wouldn’t trade that for the world.

Full Moon

I wrote a poem about the Full Wolf Moon today, and I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, but she bit me. I don’t want to go into too many specifics, but while I was howling about one loss, I was someone else’s prey. By the end of the day I had been taken for a small sum of money, and I’m not positive that I will get it back. Maybe I will. Maybe the Full Wolf Moon will turn full circle–I mean, how can it not? And perhaps I’ll be made whole, but…today I felt the sting. I was a good mother, a good wife, a good human being, I worked hard, and still…teeth marks on my buttocks. 

(Whenever you read the word “buttocks,” do you, too, hear it in Forrest Gump’s voice?)

Inauguration eve

Do you enjoy soothing guided meditation? I do, too. So, so much.

I sat down tonight to try and make one. Thought I would do a little test run.

Here’s what happened:

Click to listen.

New year, new ewe

I always hesitate to hop on the annual New Years reset-olution bandwagon, just as I always (yes, ALWAYS) dare not wish away the end of the previous year, no matter how trying it has been. The fact is, life is tough sometimes. I wouldn’t wish it away, though. This is the only chance I have at living, as far as I know. I’m not going to waste my energy devaluing it. So, yeah. Life is a flat circle and all that, let’s just do our best.

It occurs me lately that although times have been depressing, dangerous, and downright scary, I’ve been on the good foot. I’ve been able to work more this past year than in several years past. I’ve been doing things that need to be done around the house instead of ignoring them. I’ve been actively thinking about the future, and how two old GenXers like Tim and me can turn ourselves toward a future of elegant, simplified living, tons of travel, and good food. How we’ll eventually balance our need to get the most of life with our desire to be present for our children as they grow into adulthood. These are some big, heavy, philosophical things to cogitate over, you know? But I feel like we’ll do it. We’ll have so much fun–and we’ll need to focus on that fun, because when all four of the kids have left the nest, I think non-stop fun is the only thing to keep your mind from wondering if they are okay…and if their kids are okay…is everyone okay? How can I help? What should I research? Does the library have books on this topic? Give me a fortnight and I will be right back with a PhD.

One of the more challenging goals I have set for the future is to desensitize my Pomeranian to sketchy television. When I say “sketchy,” I mean any show with an animal on it–or in some instances, a too-realistic cartoon.

I adopted Grantham when I was having leftover grief and trauma from a cycle of miscarriages and familial losses. All my kids were soon to be in school all day, and Grantham was to be my substitute baby. Long story short, my kids ended up needing me a lot more the past five years than I had expected, and maybe I am turning into a serial animal adopter. (As I type that, the kitten has appeared in my office window, mewing to be let into the house.)

So we are now up to three cats, four dogs, and six chickens (well, five + a guinea cock). I feel like this a reasonable amount of pets for a household of six ruralites, such as ourselves, and I make no apologies.

But.

If we’re going to sell this house in a few years and move into something smaller, more streamlined, and dare-I-dream even remotely minimalist, then…I can’t adopt any new furballs. I need to stay on top of the fluff that piles up around here, already. (My allergies require that, as well.)

Acquiring new pets isn’t the only habit to put on hold this year. Acquiring new *things* is, as well. And this one stings quite a bit because I tend to already be a very eco-conscious consumer, visiting estate sales, auctions, thrift stores, garage sales (remember those? miss them) and the like before I buy anything new.

But I look around my house, and it’s full. It’s a HAPPY FULL and for that, I am grateful. It’s time to start back down the staircase. We’ve hit capacity, time to shed. I’m keeping the kids, husband, and pets. That means the stuff has to go. It means more than manually laboring through the house to collect, sort, and distribute, though. It means a change of mindset.

Does that make me a new person? Of course not. But I have to say, I’m pretty excited about the things I’ve accomplished lately, and about the happiness I feel when I think of these modest goals for my future. Not to say that a life-changing goal is a modest goal, because it’s really not–but I do feel like the actions that need to be taken on a daily basis to change my habits permanently are modest, in themselves. Modest steps, modest goals, huge results.

This time next year I hope things are only getting better.

PS Grantham successfully watched Babe with me yesterday. :)

Ready Player Two: The Mysognist’s Love Song

This is a review. Spoilers & typos to follow:

I enjoyed Ready Player One (RP1). It was quirky and fun. The dystopian setting was disturbing, especially as the kid who served as the story’s protagonist didn’t actually do much to make the world a better place, once he became its newest prince. We’re told from the git-go that the world is spiraling downhill, and what does Wade/Parzival do at the end? The bare minimum. He lets the debtors go. He shares his riches with his friends. Well, he was literally just a teenager, and most assuredly a feral one, at that, so you could excuse his lack of vision. Certainly there would be a Ready Player Two (RP2) that would redeem our child champion?

Haha, no.

RP2 is the story of what happens to a neglected impoverished child when he lucks into immense privilege, but lacks the heart, charm, or charisma to be anything other than a hermit and an incel. Where Harry Potter could arguably be said to have started from a similar circumstance, yet grew into an actual savior role in his fight against Voldemort & the Death Eaters, Wade Watts’ character in RP2 is unabashedly a less-loveable version of Donald Trump in a world where he is, in all practicality, king. 

As RP2 begins, Wade owns everything. Not just the Oasis, but a futuristic tech that allows one to record their own visceral experience of being alive. This tech, called ONI, goes even more viral than the Oasis, and makes Wade rich beyond the human mind’s ability to calculate. He has power–so much power, he can control anything. He is literally the richest man in the world, and most assuredly its most envied/hated. Nothing is out of reach for him–and though his friends from RP1′s ‘Gunting days are portrayed focusing on developing real relationships (marriages, babies, etc.), working on improving their environments, and delivering aid to their communities, our dear Wade simply pines for the one thing that eludes him: Samantha, aka Artemis, his fierce and determined love interest from RP1.

He brags about the one week he spent in seclusion with Samantha in a bedroom. He talks way too often of his other sexual exploits via ONI, allowing him to experience sex from the POV of other men, women, transpeople, and non-binary folks. He has done the deed every which way but loose, and author Ernest Cline is as eager to share those details with the reader as he is the spout off acronyms and descriptions of fictional technology. Whereas the latter will have you yawning in boredom, the former will simply turn your stomach. Raise your hands if you were hoping for more cybersex in RP2. Anyone? Anyone? Right. 

Before I delve too deeply in how important it is for even blockbuster authors like Cline to CONSENT TO QUALITY EDITORIAL INPUT, I need to outline some important problems with this story beyond “What’s wrong with Wade, items 1-999.”

Samantha is justly described to have turned her back on Wade over some important issues. She is a woman of integrity, and for years Wade stalks her virtually, even though in all reality he grows a smaller and smaller figure from her past. Think about any woman you know who moves on and gets things done in life: they do not sit around pining for a dickhead ex who they slept with once, years prior. They just don’t. Samantha, however, despite all her success, integrity, and morals…just can’t help but fall back in love with Wade.

All powerful Wade. Involuntarily celibate (in the “Earl,” as Cline calls “in real life,” [IRL]), plugged into the internet from his spinal column or brain stem or whatever, 12 hours per day Wade. Childish destroyer of dissenting user accounts Wade. Stalker Wade.

Although Samantha refuses to make eye contact with him for years, the moment he needs her help…poof. She’s back on his jock like static cling, if I may borrow Cline’s penchant for quoting nostalgia in lieu of creating new content.

While Samantha’s inexplicable change of heart is problematic enough, it is only foreshadowing for a bigger problem with the story. Wade, as owner of the Oasis and all that digital shit, ends up on a quest to restore the Siren’s Soul. This is the “egg hunt” of RP2. Instead of eggs, this time he’s hunting shards, which is fitting, really, because Cline left me feeling sharted on by earlier than midway through the text. 

Where were we? The shards. Right.

The singular essence of Kira Underwood, constantly referred to as “Og’s wife,” has been divided into seven shards and hidden around the Oasis–that is, until the end of the story when Cline mercifully hid the last two together. I might have wept if the story had gone on one chapter longer than necessary. When the shards are collected and merged, they will…? What? Oh, they will coalesce into the actual soul of the departed woman. They will bring her back, digitally.

Now, not only is it creepy on many levels that Wade–let’s call him Parzincel–is repeatedly referred to as Kira’s owner, but his idol before him, James Halliday, is characterized has having created this ONI technology for the main purpose of bringing Kira back, so that a digital version of himself could finally possess her. While “thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife,” is certainly a handy commandment, “thou shalt treat women as FUCKING PEOPLE WITH THEIR OWN INHERENT RIGHTS” would perhaps be a better placard to engrave and set on the desk of Halliday–to then be passed down to Wade. It never seems to dawn on Parzincel that he has no right to possess Kira, or any other ONI user. 

The in-game avatar of Halliday eventually explains that Kira’s “siren” avatar was able to explain to him that possessing her, manipulating her, etc. was wrong–but ONLY after Halliday hooks himself up the ONI and lives some of Kira’s experiences. Cline plays Halliday off in both books as an Aspergian genius, someone very high functioning on the Autism Spectrum, but as the mother of a young man with autism, I am beyond disgusted at the idea that you would have to hook one living being up to another human being’s synapses for them to have ANY understanding that the other person is a free, competent human being with agency of her own. Kira is repeatedly characterized as an artistic genius with a great heart. She, like Samantha, is demonstrated to be loving and kind. Generous. And yet both Kira and Samantha are primarily belongings for men to possess, control, pursue, and lose. Oh, if only they did lose them…because of course, they don’t. In Parzincel’s dream future, the best thing he can do is create a double of himself, so that he can experience the inexplicable love of Samantha in the “Earl” as well as in an ONI paradise. 

Kira, as the “first stable AI,” is never once shown having any sort of existential crisis. She simply loves being a pretty plaything for Wade and Jim and Og, digitally–and naturally she is “still in love with Og.” Okay, whatever. By this point in the story, Og and Kira are nothing more than paper dolls set up to somehow replace Wade’s missing mother/father figures. You can almost see the author sitting spraddle leg on the floor of his study, pushing dolls around. “You are the mommy now, and you are the daddy…and Wade is the baby! Now kiss!”

In a world as technologically advanced as that of RP2, there would be nuances to digital characters, right? If only there were nuances in the humans who created them, I suppose.

Cline’s Parzincel has a weird weird weird way of looking at women. So does Halliday. Even the benevolent Og only barely registers as showing any interest in Kira’s consent, and then, only when he is, himself, close to death. It’s like Cline knew the only decent human being in this story was Ogden Morrow–and possibly Kira. We don’t really get to spend enough time with the Kira character to know. 

But why would we? We are just readers, and she is, after all, Og’s wife.

I won’t get started on the Lo-Five or what he did to Aech. I’ll let Tim take over for that bit.

Oh, to be a writer

To be that tip top, free-thinking, will o’ the wisp of spirit, words set down to flame…

oh, for that sweet freedom, the self-indulgence of massaging one’s truths

into the shape of a man, a woman, a doer, a deed

Oh, to be a writer

to say the things no one else can say

to be truly unique

just like all the other writers

and yet, none

I’m resting because I am tired. I’m tired because I didn’...

I’m resting because I am tired.

I’m tired because I didn’t get much rest last night. The weekend was busy. The news is stressful. Parenting is tiring.

I know I should rest. I won’t be helped in the long run by attacking myself for not writing today, or not leaving the house. I’m not failing myself or anyone else. I have a loving spouse who understands I need to rest.

It is so ingrained in me that being tired is something to be ashamed of. Coping with chronic illness is not a sin. I did not cause this and I can’t control it.

It’s normal to tire. It’s healthy to rest.

I’m resting because I am tired. I’m tired because I didn’t get much rest last night. The weekend was...

I’m resting because I am tired.

I’m tired because I didn’t get much rest last night. The weekend was busy. The news is stressful. Parenting is tiring.

I know I should rest. I won’t be helped in the long run by attacking myself for not writing today, or not leaving the house. I’m not failing myself or anyone else. I have a loving spouse who understands I need to rest.

It is so ingrained in me that being tired is something to be ashamed of. Coping with chronic illness is not a sin. I did not cause this and I can’t control it.

It’s normal to tire. It’s healthy to rest.