Darren Endymion's Blog, page 3

The Tower Has Fallen

This week I received some terrible if not wholly unexpected news: my publisher, Torquere, is closing. Yes, it was a small publisher. Yes, it was once a lot better than it became. Yes, there was drama. However, they were always good to me (under both sets of owners), and so it is sad to see a once good publisher with a good reputation crumble into nothingness.

I started my publication journey reading other gay novels and finding them somewhat lacking — to me, at any rate. I read two that were, in fact, so terrible that I absolutely knew I could do better. I wrote something I still think is far better than either of the trash novels I had the misfortune to read.

I shopped it to agents, naively thinking that anyone would want to represent a long novel about gay werewolves. I was turned down with form letters in almost every case. One agent said that I have talent and (I think) that the story was good, but it wasn’t what she was looking for. Still, personal feedback from an agent on a book I had no business searching for an agent for was and remains encouraging. I think I went through 8 or 10 agents before I wised up.

I made a list of publishers from most wanted to least desirable. Torquere was, at the time, the first stop on my list…and the last, as it turns out. They accepted the novel, and I got to brag (if only to myself…and here, I guess) that the first publisher I tried wanted my novel. That road was rocky and I ended up writing only two short stories more for them.

Life hurled curveballs at me for a long time, and I started writing more, telling myself that I should diversify, that I should write for other publishers and establish relationships with them, even though there was no indication that within three years Torquere would be closing. I did not do this and I regret it now.

Soon, I will have my rights returned to me for my novel (which I just signed another three year renewal contract on, alas) and the one short story I didn’t already get back. I am eyeing several opportunities and other publishers. One is a very attractive option, but they don’t take previously published work or series without special dispensation from their editor in chief. So, my wolves would be out unless I managed to get in there or send them a letter persuasive enough to make them change their minds. Another publisher was actually my first choice originally, but they didn’t print books over a certain word count, and mine was definitely over that. Having my book in print was, at the time, very important to me. However, this latter publisher nearly shut down earlier this year, and I really don’t want to go through this crapola again. However, I do know someone who publishes with them, so I just might bug her.

There is, of course, always the possibility of self-publication. I dislike this option because it lacks legitimacy (to me), but also because I suck at marketing myself, and would prefer a professional company do this for me.

Yet there is something in me that has grander plans. Gay novels and short stories are fun and easy for me (yes…that is bragging and I am sorry to have subjected you to it). It was never my intention to stop there. My intention was to gain experience and then break into mainstream fiction, possibly under a different pseudonym. I still want more experience, but why not try? I have enough non-gay-centric stories to fill roughly eleventeen tomes. Why not start now, still write my gay werewolves (because I love them), and edit for a year if I have to in order to get the mainstream feel I want? I will likely never not have a gay storyline or characters, but I don’t see the need to make their sexuality or romance the only story. Hell, my wolves were about more than all that anyway.

My future is uncertain, my writing habits are shaky, and my heart is heavy. But I have possibilities. Lots of them. I’m sad Torquere is closing, but this is not the end of MY journey.

In fact, I suspect my journey is just beginning.

My First Snow Day

Last week it snowed here in Oregon where I now live. Not only did it snow, which only happens four or five times a year where I am, but it SNOWED. It caused freezing rain, slick roads, frozen everything, and even some black ice, all of which are atypical for this region. Several inches of snow covered the ground in something both miraculous and completely foreign to me.

I have been to the snow twice in my life…I think. I know of at least once I can remember vividly, and the other time is more of a suggestion of a memory, like, “Wasn’t there that one time…” but nothing I can conjure a picture of.

For those in real areas with real weather who get this all the time, you can’t really relate all that much unless you were old enough to remember it when you first saw snow. I work at home and sit right next to my window. First there were little spots of whiteness that melted before even hitting the ground, and that came to an abrupt halt. It reminded me of rain in California, where you get a smattering for about an hour or so, and then it’s over. Anything more and the news gleefully blares “Storm Watch 2016!!!” from every media orifice they can get away with.

It snowed a bit more, and then a bit more, and then it was finally fully snowing. The random way the snow floated down was fascinating and beautiful to me. It was almost in elliptical patterns rather than from top to bottom like rain. The wind-blown snow reminded me of some magical dust that laughed at gravity like a certain Witch we have all come to love, sometimes floating upward on a random gust as if determined to defy all laws of physics.

It was beautiful, and something I will look forward to every time it happens.

However, I did need to go to the leasing office to get a package and nearly slipped and ate shit. (My ever-strengthening legs not only jerked me to a stop and held me, they were strong enough to keep me from falling or coming close again.) Something happened in the apartment below mine which caused my water to be turned off for the better part of two days. Turn your water off for two days and see if you don’t feel like a savage, ready to poop in a jar and set fire to a bookshelf for warmth. You feel primitive in a way that makes you glad for every drop of clean water that issues from your pipes, forever and ever, amen.

It’s supposed to snow again this week and some of next and maybe even on Christmas. Assuming my water remains on, I’m excited for this experience. It’s one of the many beautiful things I get to look forward to in my new home.

Anchored to Sorrow?

Does the human soul seek out what it’s used to, even if those things are bad for it? I’ve heard that, in relationships, we attract not who we think we deserve, but rather who we feel we deserve. Isn’t that an extension of the same principle? Conversely, if we are in a good situation, will we change the circumstances to fit our possibly jaundiced view of the world, or will we change our expectations to aim for the positive?

Hope can be painful, usually when it is snatched away. For those who hope and have it smashed, the inclination is to either set your expectations lower or to abandon hope and all the paths to it entirely. Hope makes one vulnerable, it exposes your underbelly, it’s the chink in your armor, the missing scale in a dragon’s breast.

I wondered this recently. I went for a walk, something I haven’t done enough of since moving here. December may have started, but autumn is holding onto its tenacious grip on the surroundings here. I passed a bush whose leaves were a bright orange and red. I stopped to admire a towering tree with leaves such a bright, vibrant red and red orange, that it looked like a parody of autumn, more like a drawing of flames on a tree, almost too vivid to be real. The sky overhead was slate gray and roiling, threatening to drop rain on me at any moment. The temperature couldn’t have been higher than 50 degrees. These are things I have desired to be immersed in, things I have wanted for years, possibly my whole life.

It was too much. I swear, I thought I was going to cry right out there on the street. It wasn’t just the beauty around me, it wasn’t just that I’ve wanted this forever, it was that so many of my problems have evaporated, and this is what’s left — this beauty, this scenery, this lack of problems, and this ease of wellbeing.

I find myself getting mad at stupid things. I get riled up over small stuff that would never bother me before. Is it that these things bothered me before and I was just besieged by more significant things? Or is it that I am finding problems and blowing them up because anger and stress and negativity are all I’m used to? Am I filling myself with directionless anger, latching it to myself like an anchor, a counterweight to all this beauty and unfamiliar happiness? Or am I stronger than that, and will I cut this anchor loose and allow myself to climb to greater happiness?

Fear kills hope. It is my job to defeat fear and to cut this anchor loose.

Back to Basics

Sometimes we need to go back to go forward. Yes, this seems like contradictory offal, but hear me out.

I have mentioned (ad nauseam) that I have had a difficult few years. I learned a lot, but in some ways I feel like I lost more than just the time it took for me to get over those humps. I lost a lot of passion, some of that creative spark that has been present from earliest childhood. Hell, I even lost the desire to make time to read, and now get my books through audio (though I go through at least 50 novels a year this way). This is dangerous territory for a wannabe writer who would like nothing more than to make a living through writing fantasy and modern life with a fantastic twist.

Now that my blood is flowing again, now that I am starting to feel that drive and that passion once more, I still feel somewhat hollow, as if my tribulations have dried that well of wonder and child-like possibility in me. I don’t think this well ever truly dries up, but sometimes we need to do a little work on it — drill deeper, fill the stagnant water with life, line the well with the magic that created it (or at least allowed it to thrive).

Therefore, I am returning to childhood. I am rereading and re-experiencing some of the things that made my imagination what it once was. I’ve mentioned that I have mentally been traveling the yellow brick road lately, but I plan to reread some of my favorite Oz books by L. Frank Baum himself. I’d love to read them all in order and they are so short and with such pretty pictures for my inner child… Whatever. From there I graduated to Narnia. And then to Prydain. And Xanth. And eventually to Hogwarts. I plan to visit all these places again, some more than others (Hogwarts has been desperately asking me to visit, and I’ve put the trip off for over a year. I don’t need a Howler sent to my door so I will be attending soon enough). Some places will only get a one book stay, others will be visited longer, and some I may take up residence in for some months.

In so doing, and in pursuing adult fantasy (Lackey, Martin, Tolkien, Sanderson, and Mistress Vinge spring immediately to mind in no particular order), I hope to replenish that inner well, to allow it to fill up once again. It’s worked before…and if it doesn’t this time for some reason, well, at least I’ll have several wonderful  journeys.

But it will work. And I’m excited to move forward by revisiting my influential past.

Writing Loss

My first novel was published a while ago, but due to a distressingly long recovery from what seemed to be a minor injury, some serious life changes, and my own undeniable mix of procrastination and laziness, I have done little work on the second novel.

The editing of my first novel was…contentious. Some of the rules imposed on me I considered senseless at best and arbitrary dogma at worst. The editor herself was most often kind and sweet, but unflinching in these pointless rules. Then she became condescending and somewhat insulting. I called her out on it gently, and we worked it out, and things ended on a pretty positive note. However, the changes enforced and the demeanor of superiority set me off that publisher. I told myself to suck it up — nobody said that writing was going to be an easy business or that I was going to like my editor(s).

Curious, I decided to ask a writer acquaintance of mine — someone who is apparently something like the industry standard for the genre I was writing in (unbeknownst to me) — and she said that these arbitrary rules and the treatment I received were not only not normal, they would never happen at her publisher, and that if those limits were imposed on her it would drive her insane.

My publisher changed ownership and the previous editor left, too. I published a short story with them and the editor was great. Didn’t really have much to say as far as corrections. I published another short story with them and hit editor jackpot. I LOVED this editor. She was funny, amazing, hilarious, warm, and she was good. She pointed out things I didn’t know I was doing, she helped with content, she said there were very few changes to make (always a compliment from an editor), she confirmed the stupidity of the experience I had before, and she agreed to edit my future projects. She revived in me the desire to write, to be with that publisher, and to stick with her.

My publisher is going through some serious issues at the moment, and there are plenty of signs that they may, very sadly, close down. The latest, and a very dire blow to me, was discovered this weekend. I e-mailed my editor a question — we e-mail in a non-business, friendly manner from time to time, so this wasn’t entirely out of the ordinary. She responded within an hour or so, answering my question while being helpful and friendly as always.

Then she told me that she has resigned from my publisher. The editor I get along with so well, who has done so much for me, who has taught me so much, has left. She says she welcomes any questions from me, she’s doing freelance editing, and she’s offering a discounted rate on editing for those affected by the probable collapse of the publisher. I’m lucky to have someone like her around, but I’m still very upset.

I’ll continue on — I already have made progress, in fact — but I am doing so with downed spirits. She will be missed almost more than the publisher itself. There’s a Pollyanna-grade optimist in me somewhere, and I definitely hope for the best, but I still plan for the worst. This was one of those worst-case scenarios.

I’ll move on, but it will be with a heavy heart.

Thanksgiving Wallow

I have eaten too much. Not enough to burst out of my pants as though I was morphing into some fatted hog-beast that the savage children from the Lord of the Flies would be interested in, but enough to where I might gain a few pounds. My friend made a chicken, potatoes, and a bunch of other stuff. I made the apple pie…by which I mean I popped a Marie Callender’s into the oven, culinary genius that I am. Now she has gone to bed and I am watching A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving as the rain pours down outside. I already watched Planes, Trains, and Automobiles yesterday, but I may watch it again. Why not? (And who can watch that movie and not think about how much we all still miss John Candy?)

I have a great deal to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.

I’m out of the horrid situation I was in before my move. I am in a wonderful, beautiful city in a nice apartment. I work from home now, which has made such an improvement on my outlook that the word “dramatic” wouldn’t begin to describe the transformation. Though I still think about him occasionally and though he occasionally still haunts my nightmares, I am 800+ miles away from my ex and his astonishingly self-destructive path and negative influence on me (it’s hard to see someone you care about slowly destroy himself and shut you out…and it’s hard to realize that there’s nothing you can do to help). There are huge problems with my publisher, but if they go down, there are always other options, however sad that makes me and however much of a pain in the ass it will be. I have to work tomorrow, but all I have to do is roll out of bed, watch movies or listen to a book, work, and make double time and a half for eight hours. I’m thankful that my will to write is thundering back. I’m thankful that I actually like what I’m writing.

I’m thankful for so many things right now, but more than anything, the single most important thing in my life that I am thankful for is this: there are positive and negative things going on, there’s so much work to do, and there is so much to see and learn and do and work through, but for the first time in longer than I can remember, I am actually, truly happy. This isn’t the end. There are many more things out there that will make me even happier, but right now, I have a platform, a solid place from which to act. I am not drowning, desperately kicking to keep my head above water.

I am happy.

And that is truly something to be thankful for.

Recycled Childhood: The Land of Oz

What is it with the Land of Oz that inspires so many rehashings, reimaginings, and recyclings? Is it that there’s nobody on the planet who hasn’t heard of the Wizard of Oz? Is it that there’s something in the collective conscience that makes us want to return there? Was it that L. Frank Baum wrote something so magical and personal that it needs to be revisited? Or is it that the Oz books were always told through the sheen and magic of a child’s unquestioning perception and therefore begs to be seen through the eyes of an adult?

Why not Narnia? Prydain? Mount Olympus? Middle Earth? What is it about Oz that keeps people coming back to it? Is it just so endearing? If it’s a part of all our childhoods, then why do we seek to add a dark, gritty, evil tone to it? Maybe Oz is so endearing that we want to go there again and again, but we’ve outgrown that simplistic childhood joy, so we need to taint it with our adult worldview so we can still experience the magic of our youth while being able to accept it with our aged sensibilities.

Or is it simply that the Oz books are in the public domain and therefore open to revisit in any way an author can imagine without the threat of crippling lawsuits? Oz is something we all know, so a good writer with a good twist has a whole world to draw in and one we all know.

I am in the middle of a rabid revisit to Oz. The books touched me as a child and were something I returned to over and over. I’m listening to the audio book for Wicked and plan to make my way through all four of Gregory Maguire’s Wicked Years books (some of which I have not yet read). Just today I’ve found another series of books by Danielle Paige, the first book of which is titled Dorothy Must Die, and it tells of another Kansas girl blown to Oz who finds that Dorothy is now the ruler of Oz…and has gone evil.

There’s a game for the iPhone called Oz: Broken Kingdom which I’m playing the hell out of. The developers of this game did their homework, and any fan of the Oz books will squeal in joy at all their old friends making an appearance: Pollychrome, Jack Pumpkinhead, the Shaggy Man, Ozma, H.M. Woggle-Bug T.E., the Sawhorse, and many others. There’s an old game for the Nintendo DS, The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road, which I have had and may play sometime soon.

The original books are available for the Kindle with all the original pictures beautifully rendered for the eBook format, published by Eltanin. Also, there are the beautiful comics by Eric Shanower, which I own all of (unfortunately, they seem to have stopped just before doing The Patchwork Girl of Oz, my favorite Oz book). If you have any interest in Oz, you owe it to yourself to check them out.

I’m mixing the old and the new, the childish magic with the adult themes, the old wonder with the new discovery. And I can’t get enough. Does anyone else have a series like this you can dive into again and again, one which can satisfy your craving for the peace and wonder of childhood, yet stimulate your adult mind? Or, rather, how many can you return to? Hogwarts, Narnia, Oz, Middle Earth, any of them…or all of them. Who has the magic portal?

Progress Delayed is Still Progress

Earlier this week I was talking about how relaxing and detoxing from the horrid life I left behind allowed me to really reevaluate what I wanted to do and start doing it. However, it’s now something I want to do rather than something I feel I need to do in order to sort of make my life even out from all the madness. So, I’ve started.

With preparing for the move, moving, settling in, going through all the work changes and personal changes what I was writing was not a refuge, it was a distraction. Then, as mentioned, it became something I wanted to do. It’s not like I’ve been totally without action. I hashed out a new deal with my publisher for a possible re-edit of my first novel, e-mailed with my editor, found the original document, made the last minute changes I had done before I sent it off to be published, and sent it off to my editor. She is doing some stuff now and I’m last on the list, but after that I also get to work with the great new cover artist to get something new, better, and cohesive since I plan to write 3-4 books in this series and would like a theme of sorts. I’ve done what I need to and am now waiting for further word.

However, in order to move on with something new, I needed to reacquaint myself with the material I had written out for the second book — character profiles, synopsis, notes, etc. With all the life changes I’ve been through, I lost some of the finer details of what I intended and they sort of sifted out of my consciousness.

I date everything I write so that if I find two copies in different places, I know which the latest version is. I opened the old character sketches to remind myself of some of the character alterations and where they have been since the first book…and do you know that document was started almost exactly a year ago? A year, a week, and two days, actually.

My first reaction was to get on myself, to mentally berate myself about the lost time and opportunities. Then I stopped that crap. With all the positive life changes I have made, with all the personal work I’ve done, and with all the time and effort it took to dig myself out of the Hole of Misery my life was in, and considering my natural inclination for procrastination I need to congratulate myself if anything. I won’t pretend that this was the best I could have done, but given the circumstances, it was pretty damn good. After all, progress delayed is still progress.

Vacation Revelations

Being away from the awfulness that was my life back in California, I have lost a great deal of the urgency with…well, everything. I’ve barely explored the city I have been aching to move to for over 3 years, I go out only under duress, I’m not chatting much, I’m not actively writing, I’m not meditating to find inner wisdom…I’m really just relaxing.

Something had changed inside of me, and to sort of find out what that was, I took some days off work. This is when I noticed a difference. When I took days off in California, I felt pressured in a way. If I did not write, clean, relax, tour Middle Earth, watch movies, conjure up Elphaba for afternoon tea, go out, clean, lose 5 pounds, learn how to turn into a merman, meditate, play a video game from start to finish, discover the lost continent of Atlantis, and read three books, I would feel as though I had wasted my time off and had essentially squandered all the wonderful things in the Universe.  It was as if I was so pressured to squeeze more than my fair share of productivity and love and happiness out of a single day off that anything less than impossible perfection felt like I was only…aging. Nothing more.

Blaming work and my sequestered social life, I expected to detox from the negativity, rise up like Phoenix from the water, declare I was fire and life incarnate, and then descend into the tenebrous  morass that encompassed my life. The pressure I put on myself was both immense and utterly unrealistic. What I would normally end up doing is popping in my headphones to drown out the nonsense, point my fan at my taint, and space out, daydreaming of a better life. You couldn’t even call this positive visualization. It wasn’t anything as fancy or pretentious as all that. It was nothing more than wasting time, wishing for something better and doing absolutely nothing to make that dreamy future come about.

Since arriving here little more than two months ago, I have detoxed. Under little pressure to do anything, I allowed myself to relax and let the poison leech itself from my psyche, however theatrical that sounds. You know what I found? All those things I used to pressure myself to do started to become not chores, but things I wanted to do in a mild sense. I took Friday through Tuesday off and discovered something else. In the midst of that break, I found myself looking forward to doing all those things I felt duty-bound to do before. I’ve accomplished a great deal in a short period of time. I wasted time, had a Hunger Games marathon, and relaxed…and did not get down on myself for one moment.

I explain it this way — I’m in a better place, and that has allowed me to return to myself, to live and even thrive rather than struggle to exist while drowning in a potent and problematic mix of despair and rage. I’m happy. Do you have any idea how long it’s been since I have been able to say that and really mean it?

Here’s the thing — I’m happy, but not content or satisfied. There’s so much I need to do and am actually, genuinely excited to do. Now that I am not fighting just for emotional equilibrium, thinking anything better might be forever lost to me, and now that I am in a place of normality and calm, I can move forward, truly progress in life.

It’s about damned time.

Why, America?

I was wrong. So much of the country was wrong. We thought that progress and unity would reign and that Hillary Clinton would be our next president. Instead, anger and bigotry won, and our president-elect is a divisive, utterly inexperienced man who won by bigotry and appeals to xenophobia and a sense of self and other. Trump has no experience in politics. It’s like having a bus driver give you a vasectomy.

The irony is that Trump railed against the Electoral College just hours before it handed him the win. You see, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, meaning that by the numbers, more people voted for her than voted for Trump (over 301k). There are several examples, but the Electoral College really screwed us with Florida.

Florida, we’re sick of your shit.

Clearly, this doesn’t seem right. With all the modern technology, it seems absurd that every vote doesn’t count when we can tally them so accurately and so quickly. It’s time to do away with the Electoral College.

What I’m so ashamed of is bigoted white America. I am Caucasian and I would never vote for that man…because I’m not a bigot. Everything about Trump’s campaign runs contrary to common decency, progressive thinking, treating each other like humans rather than obstructions, and basic human respect. I guess I can understand the fear. The country, the whole world, in fact, is changing, and when you’ve been on top for so long, you don’t want to give that up.

Gods forbid you get treated like you have treated others. Let the straight, white, Midwestern or Southern male be treated like a black person and handcuffed or shot at a routine traffic stop, have someone come up to his children and tell them that Trump is president and they have to get out because their skin is brown. Let him be denied the right to see his wife in the hospital simply because he is straight. In fact, tell him that he can’t even have a wife because straight white people aren’t as important as everyone else. Have a huge, muscled man overpower him, drug him, and brutally rape him, then get only a few weeks in jail because it might mess with the rapist’s college experience…when he has ruined part of your life.

— Van Jones said something so striking on CNN that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. He said, “This was a white-lash. This was a white-lash against a changing country.”

— Patton Oswalt said, “Happy 78th anniversary of Kristallnacht Eve!” This was an early Nazi moment when they “cleansed” an area of Jewish schools, synagogues, etc. by burning them down.

— Seth MacFarlane said, “Some didn’t like Bush. Some didn’t like Obama. But this is different. Forget dislike. Many are genuinely fearful now. This is new.”

— Peeta Mellark, Josh Hutcherson said, “As an American if trump is elected… I am deeply sorry. This is not the world I dream of.”

— Sherri Shepherd said, “8 years ago, I kissed my son & cried bc I felt he could be President…now as I kiss him, I am praying my new President won’t harm him”

— Captain America himself, Chris Evans said, “This is an embarrassing night for America. We’ve let a hatemonger lead our great nation. We’ve let a bully set our course. I’m devastated.”

— Paris Jackson showed remarkable insight for someone so young when she said, “…i don’t hate you if you voted for trump…but i would like to point out that if you did, you not only voted against my family, my female friends, my brethren in the lgbtq+ community, me, and other families of different races, you also used your vote to throw our rights away.”

— However, I think Kristin Bell (a.k.a. the voice of Anna in Frozen) best summed up my initial reaction when she said, “Anyone else wanna puke?”

— Finally, Sarah Silverman tweeted out a quote that I agree with internally and that I am trying to cling to. She quoted Anne Frank, and though Anne later died in a concentration camp, put there by people who wanted to kill her just because of who she was, I’m tempted to think that she still felt the same. I want to believe it with all my heart, so I will close with a quote from the Buddha and then with Anne Frank’s words.

— “Hatred will never cease by hatred, but only by love. This is the eternal rule.” — Buddha

— “Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.” — Anne Frank