Rachel Spangler's Blog, page 16

25 Songs of Christmas – Coventry Carol

Yesterday was another sad day of American gun violence.  The sadder fact is that virtually every day is a day for American gun violence. The mass shootings in​ Savannah and San Bernar​dino are not uncommon.​ ​I​n fact they are the very definition of commonplace. I am simultaneously horrified and not at all shocked. I completely understand the reaction people are having to the canned “t​houghts and prayers.”  It’s frustrating to see, time and time again, the discussion end there.

Still, condemning thought and prayers just makes for another scapegoat and another convenient argument for us to have that does nothing to offer actual solutions. The problem isn’t that people offer up thoughts and prayers​;​ the problem is they leave it there.

Both that mindset and those who condemn it have a fundamental misunderstand​ing​ of prayer. I’m star​ting to get the sense that much of the American population views prayer like they view the drive up window at Taco Bell.  Like we just roll up and give our order to someone we can’t see, th​e​n pull forward to collect what we wanted.

God: What can I get for you today?

Us: I w​ant​ one order of no mass shootings, and one end to hunger.

God: Would you like to make those a combo?

Us: Sure, but make the drink a diet.​ ​A​actually,​ can you just go ahead and make all of it diet? Preferably no calories at all.

Sorry, but that’s messed up.  Prayer doesn’t work that way.  God doesn’t work that way. God has never worked that way, and I don’t think we have any more powerful example of how much God doesn’t work on command than in the Christmas story.

The people of Israel lived in an occupied state.  Their government basically enforced martial law, and the religious community was corrupt and overblown. The general population was poor and undereducated and hopeless. They prayed for a king.  They prayed for a warrior. They prayed for the mighty hand of God ​to ​come down and smack the crap out of everyone hurting them.

They got a baby.

They had to wait 30 years, and then once he finally got old enough​,​ He didn’t even strike anyone down.  He didn’t raise an army or take political power.  He did a few party tricks like the whole water-​to​-​wine business and then he asked them for a great deal in return. He asked them to give up their wealth. He asked them to examine the plank in their own eye before condemning the spec in someone else’s. He asked them to love their neighbors and even their enemies. He didn’t come to free the people from the Roman army.​

He came to free them from themselves.

I hear people crying out in condemnation of thoughts and prayers right now, and to some extent​ I agree. Thoughts and prayers are not enough.  They will never be enough on their own. The Bible tells us,​ “Faith without works is dead.” Thought and prayer are only the first steps.  Still,​ the first step is an important step. An essential step. It’s the step that keeps us from lashing out in rage and fear. It’s the step that allows up to contemplate something other than our own basest needs.  It’s the step that allows us to center our intent away from ourselves in the moment and onto the bigger picture.  Prayer, at its best, should also remind us we live in conversation, and that we are not alone, but that if we wish to hear we must first listen.

It’s the listening that’s the hard part. We like Taco Bell God.  We want to ​place our or​der and to hear​,​ “Okay, please pull forward.”  We do not like to hear, “Okay, here’s what you’re going to have to do. It will be hard and inconvenient,​ and it will take decades worth of work.”  Nope.  No one wants to go through that drive-​thru​. So we don’t.

Christmas reminds us of Emmanuel, God with us. But it should also force us ​to admit that​ God with us is not the same thing as God in our own image. The God of Christ is not God the short order cook. The God we meet at Christmas is God with us for the long haul. The God who asks a great deal from us. The God who says faith without works is dead.

I do pray about gun violence.  I pray that God comforts those left behind.  I pray that God makes Her presence known​ in the moments of terror and years of grief. I have faith that God knows how to do those things better than I because God had been doing them si​nc​e the dawn of time.  The harder prayer, and perhaps the more important one​,​ is the prayer where I ask, “God what can I do? What do you require of me in this moment?”

What if we all acknowledged today that God isn’t just with us, but God is waiting for us to ask what part we are to play in the solution? What if we each asked the question,​ then truly listened to the answer? Or the answers, because we’re going to need more than one.

I have my own political beliefs about what should be done.  You might have yours. Another person will have others​. One of us might work for common sense gun laws. Another might work to secure funding for the mentally ill. One might work to promote peace and reconciliation between different religious and ethic groups. One might seek to root out racism and inequality in our political structures. One might even run for office and actually live up to the promises they make along the way.

All of them would help. Each one could start with one prayer and one person who decides not to stop there. Every solution could begin by listening for their answer and actually put it into action, no matter how challenging or frightening or inconvenient.

Faith without works is dead, and Emmanuel means nothing if we don’t seek God’s will.

The problem is not prayer.​

T​he problem is our unwillingness to listen to the response.

25 Songs of Christmas – Emmanuel God With Us

I got off to a heavy start with yesterday’s blog, and I’m going to lighten up a little bit today, but I want to stick with the same theme for a while.  Emmanuel, God With Us, That’s actually the title of the song I chose for day two, because I’m not yet ready to let go to this idea as the center of The Christmas message and perhaps even the entire Christian message, being that God is so moved by our trials that he was willing to experience them with us.

In a sense it changes nothing. We still have war  We still have terror. We still have divorce. We still have sadness, and hunger, and poverty.

But might it alter our perception of those experiences to know the God of all creation loved us so much He took on all of those things and more so we didn’t have to face them alone? How would we better handle the worst life has to offer if we knew the savior of the whole human race was right there with us? It wouldn’t end any of the bad things, but might it make them a little less lonely?

Likewise, what would it require of us to know that God has, and is, and always will reach out to us, call to us, as us to recognize her presence and act accordingly? There is both a comfort and a challenge there.

As the song says:

And still He calls through the night

Beyond the days of old

A voice of peace to the weary ones

Who struggle with the human soul

A voice of peace and a call to continue the struggle with the human soul.  What a beautiful summation. God is here. God understands. God knows exactly what you’re going through and will never let you go through it alone, but God is also calling for you to continue. There is too much at stake to stop now. God is as close as a whisper asking you to carry on the struggle for the sake of the collective human soul.

And the years they come and the years they go

Though we may forget somehow

That the child once born in Bethlehem

Is still among us now

Emmanuel.  God with us.

25 Songs of Christmas – Oh Come Emmanuel

Well it’s song blog time again. I have to admit, I find the prospect a little daunting. It’s a lot of work, it takes a ton of time, and it forces me to reflect, sometimes on things I’d rather not think too hard about.  The thinking part is of course the reason I keep doing it though. That,​ and you all keep asking me to. I’ve actually been thinking of this particular blog for a couple of weeks. Last year at this time I was in a dark space, and I used my blogs to work through those emotions. But this year I’d hoped for something a little happier, more traditional, a little pep and holly.

Sadly,​ when I reread my blog from a year ago today,​ I found not much had changed. All the problems weighing on my mind then are still heavy in my heart now, not to mention the added concerns of death and disease close to home, a global refugee crisis, violent xenophobia, and terrorism both foreign and domestic.

Merry freaking Christmas.

I have read the entire New Testament this year. I took part in our c​hurch book club. I prayed and donated food and clothes and money to charity.  And while all those things did lighten the load,​ I still don’t have any hard solutions. I don’t have definitive answers for why we keep killing ourselves and each other. I don’t have any cute sayings about God​-​shaped holes, or everything happening for a reason. I don’t want to bide my time in hopes of a distant heaven. I want help and peace and change right here,​ right now. I am scared and I am tired and I am impatient. I want all-powerful God to swoop in and fix the whole world.

But what if God doesn’t work that way? What if Jesus didn’t come down to offer answers? What if He wasn’t born to give simple solutions? What if we have free will, and we will always have free will, and we will always use that free will to hurt and harm and destroy until we fix ourselves? What if God simply won’t force us to follow Jesus’s teachings and there’s no religious text or act in the world that can make us choose life?

What’s the point then? Why have a Christmas at all? Why even come down off that heavenly throne? Why take on the ​frailty of the human body and the vulnerability of infancy? Why  be born into abject poverty? Why live homeless under foreign occupation? Why be run out of one’s own country by both a violent army and social condemnation from one’s own religious community? Why suffer pain and loneliness, a corrupt justice system, betrayal by those you love followed by government-​sanctioned murder?

I understand why people doubt this story. It’s pretty hard to believe the God of whole universe looked down at a world like that, a world God made and then watched us destroy, and felt so much compassion He thought,​ “I have to go to them.”

“The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him ​”​Emmanuel” which means “God with us”.

God with us.

What if that’s all the answer we get. What if that’s the whole point? What if the entire Christmas story is simply meant to show us that God can and does exist in this broken,​ flawed,​ complex world?  Here amid the sadness, pain, and violence we can still find the divine, if we only remember to look. What if God loved us so much God left heaven and took on the fullness of the human experience simply to show us we are not alone. Not God the all powerful, but God the all personal.

Emmanuel.

God with us.

What if that’s God huddled with doctors or patients or concert goers when the gun fire explodes? What if that’s ​God on a raft escaping Syria? What if God is in the hospital bed at the cancer ward? If God were young and black and poor and working a minimum wage job would we know it?  Would we recognize God in a stable? In a manger​? On the road to Egypt in the dead of night?  Can we learn to sense God’s​ presence when we’re frightened or confused or when we simply have no room in the inns of our hectic lives?  What if God is there, in all of it? What if the whole point of the story is to remind us to seek God’s​ presence and to show us how to find it even in the most unlikely places?

How would that change us? How might it change everything?

Emmanuel. God is with us. What if that’s the meaning of Christmas?

Speaking About Sandra

I’ve been quiet on social media since I received word of Sandra Moran’s passing. I said that I didn’t have any words. That wasn’t quite true. I’ve had a lot of words. They just haven’t been the right ones. And as a writer finding the right words matters to me. Words make meaning and shape understanding. When it came to Sandra all the words I had were laced with pain, sadness. They were honest, so I don’t think they were bad or even wrong. And still they weren’t right, because what I wanted wasn’t what Sandra wanted.

I wanted to relay stories about how we didn’t really get to be close until this past year, until it was almost too late. I wanted to prove our closeness by telling of the many conversations we had in private during our coinciding transitions to Bywater Books. I wanted to share nicknames we had for each other and the slogan we used for talking about all the great things we’d do now that we both worked for the same publisher. I wanted to scream about those plans. I wanted to shout about what we’ll never get to do together. I wanted to beg someone to tell me what I’m supposed to do now. I wanted to make sure everyone felt the pain, and the sense of loss, and my fears about moving forward without her as part of this rebuilding process. I wanted someone else, everyone else, to feel my crushing sense of regret for not starting sooner or doing more. I wanted to make everyone understand how little they really understood about how bad this hurt me.

And while all those things might be real, and even useful parts of the grief process for me personally, they aren’t the emotions I ultimately want to project to the world about Sandra Moran. Those emotions aren’t really about Sandra at all. They are about me. They are self-centered, and most importantly they are not what Sandra wanted.

I don’t pretend to know everything about her final wishes. I defer completely to her wonderful wife, Cheryl, on those. We were only able to talk a few times after her diagnosis, and all of the conversations were brief, but over the last months she made a few very strong statements about what she wanted and what she didn’t want.

She understood people’s sadness, but she hated to be the cause of it. She did not want to be remembered as a tragic figure. She did not want to be remembered for how she died. She did not want to be talked about as an object of pity or despair. She did not want to be a convenient example for all of life’s unfairness. She was so much more, and she wanted to be remembered for so much more. One thing she told me virtually every time we talked was that she wanted to be forever known as Sandra Moran, the writer. She wanted to known as an advocate for queer literature and queer history in all its breadth and depth. She wanted to be known as someone who lifted up the best and the brightest voices, and while she never said so, I think it would honor her to be counted among those voices.

Sandra Moran left us a legacy that means so much to and for our collective queer family. She left us her work, and she left us with the challenge of following her example. GCLS is accepting donations for a scholarship in her memory. Ann McMan and Salem West are carrying on with Sandra’s plans to help raise money for the Lambda Literary Foundation. The LikeMe Lighthouse is naming their library in her honor. Marianne K Martin is continuing on with their work on The Legacy Project to capture and preserve the pioneer voices in Lesbian literature. Sandra’s passion inspired so many of us, and that inspiration will not fade simply because she has passed the torch. She will live on as a big-tent, big-heart, big-talent woman, and each of us is now charged with carrying her light forward in a million different ways.

I am still not sure exactly which pieces of her legacy I will pick up. I’m still lost and confused, and I think she’d forgive me for that, but I don’t think she’d forgive me if I ended things here, or even if I stalled for too long in my memories of her, because my pain, my insecurities, and my fear may all be valid, but they are mine, not Sandra’s. So I will cry, I will grieve, I will wonder what might have been, and I will probably worry too much, but I will always remember that I’m doing those things out of my own fragile sense of mortality, not as part of my friend’s legacy.

Sandra was better than all that. Sandra’s memory is better than all that. So, when I speak of her, I will not speak of what I lost. I will speak about what she brought to our lives. I will not talk about how she died. I will honor the purposes for which she lived. I will not dwell on the unfairness of it all. I will emphasize how she touched more lives in 47 years than most people ever do in twice that long. I will not obsesses about the work left undone. I will cling to the work she left behind, and I will acknowledge its unique power to teach, to inspire, and to move every one of us forward.

That is more than what Sandra wanted. It’s what she deserves.

On the Road Again

It seems like I just got home from my summer travels, but lo and behold, it’s October already!  And October means more travel for the Spangler family.  I’m not ready, I’m not packed, and I haven’t picked my readings yet, but tomorrow I leave for Scranton, Pennsylvania, where I will have the honor of speaking with the awesome students at the University of Scranton.

Thursday and Friday I get to do one of the things I love best–hang out with college students.  I actually got my Master’s of Education in college student personnel administration, so when I find myself talking on college campuses, it always makes me feel all full-circleish.  Over those two days I will get to meet with students from Multicultural Affairs, Women’s Studies, Campus Ministries, and counseling as well as doing a formal reading/author chat. In other words, I will be in heaven.

Then after we’re home for only a few days, we’re going to hit the road again, this time on our annual pilgrimage to Provincetown.  Oh Ptown, how can I even speak all the ways I adore thee?  I could honestly write a novel-length love letter to Provincetown, and maybe someday I will, but for right now I just want to tell you about what I’ll be doing at Women’s Week.

Here’s my schedule as it stands so far.

Wednesday, October 14

10:30-11:30 (God willing and I arrive on time) I’ll be hanging out with Bywater and Friends at Womencrafts (376 Commercial Street)

Thursday, October 15

9:30 – 11:00 – I’ll be reading with a great slate of authors at Napi’s restaurant (7 Freeman Street)

3:30 – 4:30 – I’ll be on the “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” Panel at the Ptown Library (356 Commercial Street) with Marianne K Marin, Lynn Ames and Georgia Beers.

Friday October 16

10:00 – Bywater and Friends Meet and Greet at Womencrafts (376 Commercial)

11:00 – Author chat and signing at the GCLS in Ptown event at the Sage Inn (336 Commercial Street) with Georgia Beers, Melissa Brayden, Lynn Ames, DeJay Garden, and Carren Stock.

2:00 – Sweet Romance readings at the Ptown Library (356 Commercial Street) with Melissa Brayden, Rachel Spangler, Jackie D, Nell Stark, Holly Stratimore, and Jean Copeland

4:00 – Signing books with Melissa Brayden, Rachel Spangler, Jackie D, Nell Stark, Holly Stratimore, and Jean Copeland at Recovering Hearts (4 Standish Street)

Saturday October 17

8:30 – 9:30 – Annual Readers and Writers Wiffle Ball Game (104 Bradford).  All are welcome to play or cheers us on!

11:00 – 12:00 – Bywater and Friends Meet and Greet at Womencrafts (376 Commercial)

So there you have it, my full slate of events for the next two weeks.  I’m kind of exhausted after typing it all out, but I know I’ll love it when the time comes.  I hope that those of you who will be in Ptown will join me for some (or all) of the fun things I have planned.  And even if you aren’t going to be there, I’d love it if you’d comment and let me know what scenes you think I should read at my various events!

Sweet Hearts

Hey friends, I know that lately I’ve been focusing on new adventures with Bywater and signing my next novel, Perfect Pairing, but one of the wonderful parts of this transition is being able to keep some of my ties to Bold Strokes Books. As you likely know, I have 8 novels with BSB, but my time at BSB was so much more than “my books.” It’s a place where I learned and grew, and most of all it’s where I made the connections that shaped my experience in the lesbian fiction world.  I made so many friends and gained so many mentors during my time with BSB, so many names that will never appear on the cover of a book, but without them my name would have never appeared on the cover a book either. I know where I came from and who helped me to get where I am, and I’ll never forget it, which is why I am so proud of my last project with BSB.

The Sweet Hearts anthology is a group effort of some of BSB’s finest. Melissa Brayden, Karis Walsh, and I each wrote a novel that fits the theme “sweet hearts.” Each of our contributions is a stand-alone story that follows a minor character from a previous book. My story is titled Getting Serious, and it follows Lisa Knapp and Marty Maine from LoveLife. I had a blast getting to hang out with them (and see Joey and Elaine) again. I’d been thinking about their story for years. I knew where I wanted to take them, and I believed their story was compelling enough to be told, but how? They were too much for a short story, and I didn’t know for sure if it could fill the space of a whole novel. Getting to write their romance in novella form fit them, and me, perfectly.

All three novellas were then put together and edited by Ruth Sternglantz.   I hadn’t worked with Ruth much before this. She had asked me to write the foreword for Lee Lynch’s American Queer anthology, and she’d gone over that with me, but having her edit Getting Serious was fun. I consider Ruth a friend, someone smart and thoughtful and trustworthy. Getting to work with her helped me cross off one of my BSB bucket-list items, and I think you’re going to really like the results.

Now Sweet Hearts is in the hands of the printer. It will be officially on the market in December, but it’s going to make its paperback debut in Provincetown for Women’s Week. I love Ptown, and I love the energy that comes from reading, so anytime I get that chance I’m happy, but this time around it will be extra special for me. I’ll be reading from Getting Serious as part of BSB’s Sweet Romance Readings alongside fellow Sweet Hearts author and close friend Melissa Brayden (Along with longtime friends Ali Vali and Nell Stark as well as new authors Holly Stratimore, Jackie D, and Jean Copeland).

I’m happy to have kept these ties to friends and colleagues at BSB. I am proud of the entire Sweet Hearts anthology and my piece in it, and I am really looking forward to celebrating the culmination of this project in Ptown next month.

I hope those of you who are at Women’s Week will come share the moment with me, and I hope those of you who can’t make it to Ptown will still go preorder Sweet Hearts now.

Sweethearts

Hey friends, I know that lately I’ve been focusing on new adventures with Bywater and signing my next novel, Perfect Pairing, but one of the wonderful parts of this transition is being able to keep some of my ties to Bold Strokes Books. As you likely know, I have 8 novels with BSB, but my time at BSB was so much more than “my books.” It’s a place where I learned and grew, and most of all it’s where I made the connections that shaped my experience in the lesbian fiction world.  I made so many friends and gained so many mentors during my time with BSB, so many names that will never appear on the cover of a book, but without them my name would have never appeared on the cover a book either. I know where I came from and who helped me to get where I am, and I’ll never forget it, which is why I am so proud of my last project with BSB.

The Sweethearts anthology is a group effort of some of BSB’s finest. Melissa Brayden, Karis Walsh, and I each wrote a novel that fits the theme “sweethearts.” Each of our contributions is a stand-alone story that follows a minor character from a previous book. My story is titled Getting Serious, and it follows Lisa Knapp and Marty Maine from LoveLife. I had a blast getting to hang out with them (and see Joey and Elaine) again. I’d been thinking about their story for years. I knew where I wanted to take them, and I believed their story was compelling enough to be told, but how? They were too much for a short story, and I didn’t know for sure if it could fill the space of a whole novel. Getting to write their romance in novella form fit them, and me, perfectly.

All three novellas were then put together and edited by Ruth Sternglantz.   I hadn’t worked with Ruth much before this. She had asked me to write the foreword for Lee Lynch’s American Queer anthology, and she’d gone over that with me, but having her edit Getting Serious was fun. I consider Ruth a friend, someone smart and thoughtful and trustworthy. Getting to work with her helped me cross off one of my BSB bucket-list items, and I think you’re going to really like the results.

Now Sweethearts is in the hands of the printer. It will be officially on the market in December, but it’s going to make its paperback debut in Provincetown for Women’s Week. I love Ptown, and I love the energy that comes from reading, so anytime I get that chance I’m happy, but this time around it will be extra special for me. I’ll be reading from Getting Serious as part of BSB’s Sweet Romance Readings alongside fellow Sweethearts author and close friend Melissa Brayden (Along with longtime friends Ali Vali and Nell Stark as well as new authors Holly Stratimore, Jackie D, and Jean Copeland).

I’m happy to have kept these ties to friends and colleagues at BSB. I am proud of the entire Sweethearts anthology and my piece in it, and I am really looking forward to celebrating the culmination of this project in Ptown next month.

I hope those of you who are at Women’s Week will come share the moment with me, and I hope those of you who can’t make it to Ptown will still go preorder Sweethearts now.

Lessons from Power Yoga

Hi friends,

Many of you know my friend/editor/neighbor/fellow author Lynda Sandoval recently opened a yoga studio in our little corner of Western New York. I had the privilege of helping her do the renovations to the space, which is to say I talked to her and occasionally handed tools to other people. Still, I feel a sense of pride in the studio, and I want it to succeed. And by all accounts it is succeeding. They are offerings tons of classes in so many areas with so many amazing instructors, and people are responding. Attendance is growing every week. People who have never done yoga before are practicing next to people who can effortlessly pop into handstands. Our little community has thrown itself behind this endeavor, and there is a place for everyone in the movement.

I knew where my place was from the beginning. I would take the slow, not hot-classes where Lynda talked in soothing tones. I would downward dog, and salute the sun, spend lots of time in my beloved child’s pose, and to prove I wasn’t a slacker, I would do some planks. Then I would hang out in the lobby and welcome folks like a goodwill ambassador. Wooing is what I’m good at. Exercise, not so much.

I had the best of intentions, but those of you who follow this blog know I’ve had a busy few months. I’ve visited new places, accepted a new job, started a new novel, and signed a new book contract with a new publisher. So much newness. And of course I want to embrace those changes or I wouldn’t have accepted them, but as schedules got tighter and the pace of life got faster, I felt myself pulling back. I needed order. I needed routine, the familiar. I made a list of areas I wanted to anchor myself in and posted the list on my Facebook page as part of a 30 day challenge.

Here’s my list:

Health

64 oz of water x 30

60 servings Fruit and veggies

Detox bath x 4

Fitness

Yoga classes x 12

Run x 12

Plank x 30 minutes

Mental Health

Read Acts and Romans

Hang out with friends x 4

Donate to the Food Pantry

Work

25,000 words

Edit Perfect Pairing

4 blogs

Family

Family Tennis x 4

Family dates x 4

NYC Vacation

Fun

Inflatable 5 K

Movies x 4

Try a new restaurant

It might look like a lot, but most of the items are basic. They’re things I should already be doing on a regular basis. Taking care of my health and my family and my job, these are the things I know. This list was meant to help me hone in on what I know is best for me. I love my list.

By the middle of the month, I was either on target or close to on target in all my major areas. The only thing I’d had a hard time with was the 12 yoga classes. All those slow, easy, not hot-classes I wanted to do didn’t fit with my schedule or Jackson’s schedule, so I fell behind. I wasn’t going to be able to catch up and stay in my comfort zone, so with a little prompting from Lynda, I agreed to take the power yoga class during the free community-class time slot. I figured I would be in over my head, but there were 20 people between me and the teacher. I hid my mat in the very back corner next to Lynda and planned to slip into child’s pose frequently, or make excuses to sip my water any time things got too hard.

Well, they got hard pretty quickly. I was sweating within 15 minutes. We moved quickly from one pose right into another. I didn’t have time to find an exit ramp we were moving so fast. I stayed up with the group largely out of frantic fear of not being able to untangle myself. Everyone else in the room seemed to be in the same boat. People laughed a lot as we forgot our right from left. Some guy in the front popped into handstand. Someone else tried and crashed. Still, the instructor calmly moved step-by-step through directions upon directions. I couldn’t see her, but she gave beautifully detailed verbal cues. Suddenly I didn’t know a pose looked complicated. I couldn’t see that “crow” was way over my head. I didn’t even have a full picture. I only had one explicit piece of the puzzle on top of another. She said “Put your hands down,” and I did. She said “Look out in front of you,” and I did. She told us, “Bend your arms.” I bent mine. She said, “Use your arms as shelf and hook one knee on.” Once I’d done that, she said to do the same thing with the other.

And I did.

(It looked like this…in theory)

I was in crow, a move I would have never tried if she’d shown it to me and asked, “Do you want to do this?” In fact, I had been asked that very question in the past and politely declined, taking either a modification or child’s pose instead.

But now, here I was, knees on elbows, feet in the air, completely stable and totally in my body instead of my head. I laughed and made Lynda look at me. I know, not very zen, but major progress. And one little accomplishment I didn’t even think I was trying for opened up a world of possibilities. I left feeling much more exhilarated than sore, and two days later I went back to Power Yoga. In fact, I’ve gone back four more times since then. Now I do “crow,” and “bird of paradise,” and supported head and handstands (Someday I will do them unsupported.), and today I got “side crow” for the first time.

(Side crow looks like this…in theory)

Each time I go into class open-minded and let go of all the fears and body image limitations I thought I had, I find I can do so much more than I ever thought to aspire to.

It’s been in a good lesson for me in this time of change. What if I didn’t try to get back to normal? What if I didn’t make reasonable goals? What if didn’t look at a whole problem and decide it couldn’t or shouldn’t be tackled. What if I just took everything as it came without anticipating it, without worrying about the fall or bowing out before I even got started?

What if we assumed we were all capable of doing the things that inspired us and meeting the challenges of the world around us?

What if we approached every step in a calm, matter-of-fact voice that implies everything is possible?

Who could we be then? What could we accomplish?

I don’t know, but I’d love to find out.

GCLS 2015

I promised a few weeks ago that I’d give y’all a blog about GCLS, and I’ve been thinking about it for a while, but I’m having a really hard time with this one. It’s not that I don’t have anything to say about GCLS. The opposite is true. I want to say all the things. Books, readers, literary icons, old friends, new friends, stories, pictures, New Orleans, the whole conference was off the hook.

Let me back up a bit. The GCLS or the Golden Crown Literary Society is an organization dedicated to education, promotion, and recognition of lesbian fiction. If you aren’t a member yet, you should really think about joining. The organization is fantastic, and there’s no better chance for readers and writers of lesbian fiction to interact with each other.  I think that’s the thing I love most about their annual conference: I am there as an author, and I am there as a reader. I got to have dinner with the likes of Dorothy Alison and Lee Lynch one night, then lunch with some fellow readers the next two days. I can be signing autographs one minute, then dashing off to get someone else’s autograph the next. Of course when I leave my seat during the autograph session, someone else takes my spot and signs in my place.

 

Like any other conference, there are also plenty of formal sessions to attend. This year I got to be part of several cool events that ranged from the serious to the silly. I was part of one panel on the coming out experience. Then I moderated a session on graphic novels. Both of those were educational and engaging. They each left me thinking about either the genre or my place in it in new and more thoughtful ways. On the purely fun side, I got take part in a Liar Liar panel with some really creative authors. We took turns telling stories, and the audience got to vote on whether or not they thought we were lying. I suppose that session was plenty educational in its own right (authors are wilder than you’d think), but there was also a lot of laughter all around.

I also got to do a reading from Heart of the Game. It was at 8:00 in the morning…in New Orleans…the morning after Karaoke Night…and yet we had a full room of awesome engaged readers asking great questions. I think that really goes to show you how much these readers and writers love the books we share.

Aside from my official duties, I also got to enjoy some really great sessions. So many of them stood out, and every one of them taught me several things I could take back and use in my own writing, but the one I will likely use the most from was Melissa Brayden’s workshop on to how to write faster and sell more books. She shared a great list of tips or “nuggets” for writers at all stages of their career. The audience was filled with a mix of people ranging from aspiring writers to people with more than 20 books in print, and every one of them was taking notes.

Photo Credit Aurora Rey.

GCLS also offers two guest speakers every year. This year the special address was given by New Orleans local and enthusiast Ali Vali. I’ve known Ali for years, and she is one of the most naturally gifted storytellers I have ever met. She gave a hilarious powerpoint presentation on tips to enhancing the writing process. The keynote address was given by literary great, Dorothy Alison  I don’t know what I can possibly say to do justice to her speech other than this: It was the best speech I have ever been privileged to hear. No exaggeration. I genuinely hope GCLS will be able to make the recording public because I think every reader and writer of lesbian literature needs to hear this speech.

Photo Credit Watty Boss

The culmination of the annual GCLS conference is the awards ceremony. This is the time when everybody gets all spiffed up and honors not only the best work of the year, but also those writers and works that paved the way for us to do what we do now. This year Rita Mae Brown accepted the Lee Lynch Classics Award for Rubyfruit Jungle, and Joan Nestle was given the Trailblazer Award, which Dorothy Alison accepted on her behalf.

Then we partied. We danced, we laughed, we took so many selfies our head spun, and we shut the place down. What’s not to love about that?

As usual I had bast, I learned a lot, I got recharged, and I left New Orleans already counting down until I get to do it all again next year at GCLS Washington D.C.

A New Book and A New Home

Happy belated Labor Day, all. I am always grateful to the men and women who came before me and fought for workplace rights. I am proud of my grandfathers, aunts, uncles, and cousins who still pay their union dues faithfully, and I am particularly proud of my union-member wife. She works hard in a critical and often contentious academic climate at a time when her union is increasingly under attack from right-wing politicians trying to censure academic freedom and privatize education in order to cut off access for working classes. It is only because she continues to do her work and reap her union benefits that I have the freedom and stability necessary to do jobs that I love.

And I do love my jobs. Both of them. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, I accepted a position as the social media director of Bywater Books over the summer. I am really enjoying the work of helping to foster better relationships and communication between authors and readers. But I am, first and foremost, a writer. Writing is the work that sustains my soul.  That is the work I feel most strongly called to do. Writing is the work that makes me feel grateful every single day for the opportunities I have.  It is also the work I am most proud of. Which is why I found it a little disconcerting to have a new social media job and a new book to be published, but nowhere to publish it.

I finished my 9th novel, Perfect Pairing, in July.  It’s a story I can’t wait to have out there, but because my new job at Bywater created a conflict of interest with Bold Strokes Books, we decided it would be best to part ways.  I am and will always be eternally grateful to Radcylffe and the amazing team she built for the start they gave me and the wisdom they imparted over the last eight years. I will always consider the people at Bold Strokes my friends and colleagues, and I am thrilled that we were able to part company amicably. (So amicably, in fact, I will be reading with them in Ptown, but more on that later)  However, with one door closed, I had until the past few weeks not opened another one.

I considered self publishing, but as so much of my work, both writing and otherwise, revolves around relationships and relationship-building, I’m not inclined to “go it alone” in many areas of my life. I love being part of a team, which led me to look at the team I’d just joined in the business capacity in a new way. I already knew that I liked and respected the management team at Bywater, or else I wouldn’t have started doing their social media, but the more I worked with their authors and publicized their books, the more I grew to respect the creative work they do. Everyone I interacted with had a passion for good books, for quality writing, and for the larger lesfic community. Bywater has published everyone from trailblazers like Marianne K. Martin and Katherine V. Forrest to bold new voices like Carol Rosenfeld and Wynn Malone.  They published established genre fiction writers like Georgia Beers, Ellen Hart and Baxter Clare Trautman and some of the funniest women I know in Ann McMan and Mari San Giovanni. They don’t shy away from nonfiction either, with writers as diverse as Julie Marie Wade and Fay Jacobs. The more research I did, the more I became certain that no matter what you write, if you write it well, there’s a space for that writing at Bywater Books. I am thankful that Kelly, Marianne, Salem, and Ann felt that my work qualifies as quality writing.

I am proud to announce I have contracted with Bywater Books to publish my next romance novel, Perfect Pairing, for release in June of 2016.