I'm Still Here

I’m here. Still.

Which isn’t significant for a normal October the ninth, but it’s a significant day to me.

You see, two years ago and a few hours later from now, I sat sobbing in my truck, wracked with emotional and mental pain, and decided to clear out my shop, put my truck inside, close the door with it running and take one of those forever naps.

It was so dark that day, despite the warm weather and clear skies. There was no light left that I could find, no happiness I could touch. The exhaustion and anxiety had ground me into dust and I was ready to be done.

If I’m writing this and you’re reading it, I think it’s obvious that, in the end, I didn’t. My life was spared by one stark thought—if I did what I planned to do, nobody would check on the dogs for days. (And basically if you ever think I give too much to my dogs, well---suck it, Trebek, I owe them my life.) When I realized that, I chose to go inside, have a nap, and if I still felt like dying later, I’d revisit. Instead I chose to give myself comfort, snacks, and people who supported me. I didn’t tell them, that night, what I’d almost done, but let their love wash over me and let myself be calm in their presence.

I don’t talk about it too much because…well, it’s hard all around. It’s hard to say. It’s hard to hear. I think it’s worthwhile though, in case someone out there needs to hear that there is life after, and that it’s possible, if they find themselves on a similar precipice, to step back. A small step. For any reason.

For me, because it wasn’t fair for the dogs to suffer and starve because I was hurting.

That wasn’t my only brush with such ideation, but it was the closest to acting I’ve ever gotten. And it was a wake-up call that I was pretending to be so much better than what I was admitting. After confessing to my therapist, we ramped up my therapy schedule. I tried being more honest with people and myself about what I needed. I started walking through the fire instead of standing in it and resenting the burn.

I keep October 9th in my head and try to honor what has happened since then. Where I am now compared to then. In the past two years I’ve changed everything. I sold my business and physically, if not entirely, removed myself from a work environment that was unhealthy for me. I got divorced. I explored a handful of cities and picked a new one to call home.

I bought a house. I moved across the country. I proved to myself that I could make the changes I needed to, even if it terrified me. Even if it still terrifies me.

It’s a bittersweet anniversary to say the least. That day was horrible. Today, however—I’m Okay. Okay isn’t Great, but it’s a world apart from that all-consuming darkness. I can manage Okay. I can function with Okay.

I still have panic attacks, but I know I’m not dying. I still have waves of depression and loneliness, but I can differentiate *right now* feelings versus universal truths and forever feelings. The lies from my brain, the fits of pique from my anxiety—I can survive those, and I can do it without wanting to die.

Things aren’t perfect, but they’re a world better than they were.

So I’m going to figure out how to be kind to myself today. I’m going to let myself feel all the things that come with a day like this one. I’m going to celebrate how far I’ve come, and have grace for the me of two years ago, and love that person with all my heart. I resent that I lost so many years to my fear, to my insecurities, to my anxiety, but that doesn’t mean I can’t honor the steps I’ve taken to finally put myself and my happiness first.

Young me, who knew what she wanted and still dreamed, would be proud of what I’ve done over the past two years.

And, at the end of it all, I’ll eat cake, for there is no true celebration without cake.

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been one day since I last started shit on Twitter...

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been one day since I started shit on Twitter…

There’s a lot going on lately and since I’ve been accused of senseless shit-stirring and bullying, I thought I would get into the hows and whys.

For starters, if you’re not on twitter and have no idea what I’m talking about, bless, good work, save your sanity. Have you ever seen what a baby vulture looks like? You should google that, it’s incredible, and will make you happier than this tripe.

There are a few factors at play here. The largest is that conflict used to make me physically ill and as much as I wanted to wade into situations that needed calling out and shout down wrongs as I saw them being committed, I couldn’t. The physical toll was never worth the fight.

That has definitely changed, thanks to personal mental work, therapy, and the right cocktail of drugs, I’m not ashamed to admit. None was done for this reason, but instead to manage a deep, dangerous depression and daily panic attacks that left me wanting to hide in dark, small spaces. At least once a day I’d be so panicked I’d stop breathing and be frozen in place until I could calm down enough to get back to work.

Better living through chemistry and, as an aside, if you see yourself in the above, things can improve. I didn’t believe it either, yet here we are. I’m laughing again. I missed laughing.

The other factor was watching some of the things pass me by while I sat on the sidelines and the deep shame than accompanied that. Time after time, the burden was carried by BIPOC, and, most often, women. Women who already had to fight long-standing systemic racism & sexism in the publishing industry. Women brave enough to take a stand for what was right even when it risked their sales and contracts.

I am a successful, cishet white woman. I have no publishing contract. I have a successful career working full-time as well as a business that’s been profitable for 13 years now.  You could call my boss, the city, my friends, and tell them all about what I say online, and nothing would happen. At worst, they’d be confused. At best, they’d laugh at you and tell you to stick it up your ass.

I have nothing to lose. Letting writers of color do the heavy lifting is something I should feel ashamed of. It places the burden on people who already have an uphill battle. Watching a friend withdraw his name from consideration for an award while all the other white contenders just let the transgressions slip by uncommented on fucking hurt me. It hurt me so deep that I hadn’t fought beside him in that that I couldn’t even tell him. I’m still ashamed I sat that out, even though he likely doesn’t even know I cared.

Letting this trend continue chases people from the community, and stops them from engaging. It scares women, who become concerned for their own safety and sanity. It silences important, diverse voices, through sheer exhaustion. Voices that bring the equality and representation it’s so easy to say we need, and easier yet to not fight to keep involved.

So now that I can engage without making myself ill, I’m choosing to.

We’ve all had bad opinions, written dumb shit, and espoused harmful ideas. Products of our guardians and of a society that devalues anyone not a straight white man, it can be hard to age into a compassionate, open-minded adult without a strong guiding hand.

To that end, I’m thankful to everyone who ever called me out for my shitty comments and opinions (Thank you, Mickey, even this far down the road.) To rape survivors, who shared how rape jokes and stories made them feel. To my LGBTQA+ friends, who took the time to explain what mattered, and trusted me with their identity and concerns. To every minority who shared their encounters with cops, with assholes and racists, with angry men in grocery stores. Guys who speak about the pressures and consequences of toxic masculinity.  

Everyone that I finally learned to stop and listen to, and everyone that was patient and shared with me, taught me what equality meant. Listening and thinking and reflecting let me grow into a more compassionate human. I don’t want to hurt people, even accidentally. I don’t want to add to somebody’s struggles.

This should be where we are as a community. We should shut our mouths, open our arms, and listen to those around us until both our ranks and our fiction are as welcoming as they can be to everyone. In a field so long predominated by straight white men perpetually telling variations on the same stories, we’re long overdue for a change.

The same growing pains have swept through every community I’ve ever been involved in, and always with the same result. TTRPGs, Sci-Fi, stand-up--you name it. A group of die-hard white men (and a few scattered women) act like being asked to not be a sexist, racist, transphobic, exclusionary jagoff offends their very dedication to their art. That all stories deserve to be told and this is censorship and stop being a bully, Kristin. A dear friend even told me that including queer/trans/racist jokes in their set was being inclusive. That being an asshole to all marginalized groups was, essentially, the finest example of equality.

I’ve talked at length about aiming punches and why it’s important to punch up but since this isn’t “Gov throws down on stupid ass comedians insulting transwomen” I’ll skip it this time.

I can’t believe this actually has to be said, but perpetuating harmful content in your writing without hearing the voices and pleas of those it harms and accounting for that within your fiction is not just lazy. It’s not just ignorant, or apathetic. You are willfully doing harm, perpetuating a system that already penalizes people and authors for their gender, sexual orientation and color of their skin, and telling those people that you just don’t give a fuck.

You are coding into your fiction that their truths don’t matter to you. That you wanting to revert to these lazy, sexist, racist, transphobic, homophobic, tropes and stories is more important than their actual experiences, those of their parents, and those of generation after generation before them.

You, my friend, are being a willful and willfully ignorant asshole.

As a caveat, we all fuck up. I’ve fucked up. Again, I am grateful to everyone who pointed at my fuck-ups and went, “No.” And what do we do when we fuck up? We hear what we’re being told. We apologize if we need to and if somebody is gracious enough to hear it.

And then we fucking do better next time. That’s the gift of writing. We get a next time to do better. Be better. Make better choices. Be an ally, not an enemy.

On that note, I want to talk about something that surprised me yesterday. In a DM with a fellow author, I mentioned that the men fighting everything I’ve been talking about signaled that, as a woman, they are not safe people to be around, and he responded that he’d never thought about it like that.

I do not fault that author. I get it. Much as I’ll never know the life of macro- and micro-aggressions that accompanies being a woman of color, I do not expect men to understand the caution women in general have to exercise when it comes to judging men. I thought I would explain that part in particular as it will inevitably lead to cries of “I’m a safe man!” and “Not me!” and “I haven’t done anything but I’m being painted as an abuser!”

Women are very keyed into men and have to make constant calculations and adjustments about a man’s perceived threat level. This is often born of a lifetime of experience, mistakes, and abuses suffered.

I was alone in a car one night with a man. I laughed at something, and he almost broke my wrist. It was our first date. If I had told my parents about that, they would have said it was my fault for being in the car alone at night with him. Instead, I bought tickets for friends to come to every remaining night of our show so he could never get me alone again.

We learn that men aren’t safe, and not to ignore warning signs. Red flags flap for a reason, and we learn to heed them. When that happened? I was a teen. I was ignorant, and excited by this older guy interested in me. I learned. I became cautious.

One thing in particular we learn to pay attention to is whether or not men stop to consider womens’ experiences and the threat men pose to us. This includes hearing us when we ask to stop being fridged. When we ask to be portrayed as anything but sex objects. When we ask to stop being mere motivation for men to do big brave things.

Women are asking to stop being as motivational of an object as a stolen car. You want to know how to write well-rounded, strong women?

First, have you stopped to consider that we’re fully actualized people instead of objects to be owned?

Men who can’t even hear that much without getting sand in their taint are immature and willfully ignorant.

Men who hear that and fly into a self-righteous rage about how they’re being bullied, cancelled, targeted and discriminated against might as well be a peacock with a whole tail of red flags.

What would they do if laughed at alone in a car at night? Break my wrist? Something worse? Nothing at all?

I don’t know. But I know enough to not get in a car with them, or let a friend get into an elevator alone at a convention with them. Am I saying they’re abusers? No. Am I saying that they’ve shown enough warning signs that I’d feel unsafe alone with them? Jesus Christ, yes. Unequivocally.

But why bother, and especially on twitter? Because people are watching. Younger and/or newer writers are out there, seeing what’s going on and what the community is like. I want the shitty content and behavior I’ve been calling out to be seen as unacceptable. Credit to the community, it already is to a large degree. But letting assholes shout on unchallenged just because I know they’re an asshole is a dangerous gambit, because the next observer might not catch it.

These voices can come off as alluring. The speakers may seem like easy friends to make. And why wouldn’t you feel bad for this struggling author who is being bullied and targeted by gang of playground mean kids who are trying to control voices in the industry? What bullshit! They seem so nice and earnest and welcoming, they surely must be the victim they say they are.

As long as you ease nicely into their ideology and never question their claims of bad-assery.

I want this community to do better. I want everyone to be accountable for what they say and the way they choose define themselves. I’m going to tell my friends as much as I will a stranger that their behavior is unacceptable, and their stories are problematic. I want to see convention panels full of women that aren’t titled shit like Women in Crime Fiction and panels with BIPOC on topics other than diversity. I want rapists and abusers named, shamed and shunned instead of their victims ignored, doxxed and blacklisted.

I want you to answer for the words you choose to use, and the labels you claim without merit.

I want people to know that their lazy, harmful bullshit will not be quietly tolerated.

I am angry.

I am no longer afraid. I have spent so long afraid that it broke something inside of me.

I am done letting shitty men be shitty just because they’re men. I am done listening to guys talk about how fucking brilliant they are and how everyone else is wrong for not seeing it.

I am fucking over it. You cannot hurt me. You cannot touch me. There is no publisher you can complain to, no insult you can hurl, no one who will hear you whine except the echo chamber housing your circle jerk.

I’ve got infinite matches and a line of bridges. May the flames burn out the darkness until a new brighter day dawns.

My Heart, The Hare

You ever worry about your heart competing with your brain for what’s truly good for you?

I’ve been searching for a dog and my track record with dogs is…not great. I’ve adopted three over our 11 year marriage and they have all been, shall we say, special. The first was lovely but would sprint out any door, gate or window and run away from you, joyously, for hours. He was all of 15 pounds and delighted in biting cows and chasing horses.

The second, Jack, is a beagle who had three homes before I took him.

Worst. Dog. Ever.

He ate our couches. He screams constantly. He smells like he’s dead inside and after 10+ years, we still can’t keep him from getting on the table.

And then there’s Sadie, who the internet knows affectionately as Derpy. Derps is half lab, half rottweiler, and a total anxiety filled dork. We like to joke that she loves me so much that she wants to live in my skin, but it seems less of a joke when you see how she looks at me. She’s 110 pounds and can open doors. At 9, she’s got about one and a half good legs left, an overblown sense of self-importance, and opinions on when she should be fed. She possesses the rottweiler gift of gab but does it in high-pitched yaps and whines.

She is also the most accident-prone, most expensive dog I’ve ever owned.

Having not learned my lesson, I’m looking for another dog. For many reasons. Honestly, in part because I know Derps won’t live forever and that’s a pretty big hole to have in my heart.

Also, the town is getting rough. Just last Thursday I had somebody reverse directions and cross two streets to walk up to me as I got out of my truck. They told me they were carrying a socket set around, and then wanted to chat about how the wood in my gutter was in my way (we’d had a tree removed.) It was just one of those encounters where you leave it knowing that wasn’t a normal, sober human interaction. It’s becoming a very frequent occurrence, too, along with the break-ins.

So I want a dog. A big, fuck off dog to come running with me and go on car rides. I’ve been searching German Shepherds and Belgian Malanois specifically.

All this to say, I caught myself explaining my excitement to my husband on the phone as “my heart moves faster than my head does, I need to calm down and let my brain get caught up.”

That’s stuck with me over the last week. As somebody prone to intense passion about projects and life decisions, I can see where that fact-the hare of my heart versus the tortoise of my brain-keeps getting me into trouble. I follow a heart which loves too quickly and never learns from old hurts. I make impulse purchases if they make me laugh. I bought a giant house that I have no hope of keeping up the maintenance on. I adopt stupid dogs because they’re the first ones I meet and I instantly love them.

When you realize your heart is racing out ahead of you and all your time is spent trying to hold together the pieces of everything its crashed through, it puts some interesting perspective on your desires.

I want a convertible stick shift two door. I can’t fit dogs in a car like that. I can hardly fit my family in a car like that. But does that make me want it any less? Hell no. It’s going to be 75 degrees tomorrow, of course I want a sporty convertible.

I want a horse. I want to get swole like Thor. I want to write and shoot movies and live on multiple continents and live on the ocean and publish books and have ten dogs and fast cars and talking parrots and learn how to sail on tall ships. I want to go fishing in the ocean and whitewater kayak and eat in fancy restaurants and hike through the rainforest. I want a horse. I want to be so busy that somebody else is booking my flights and hotels and I just have to show up places and be fabulous. I want to plant a garden and quilt and paint and luxuriate in bed for hours every morning. I want to do everything.

I’ve been told I can’t do everything.

Lately one specific, picturesque ideal in my head has been troubling me. I’ve always wanted to have a house out in the middle of nowhere, much like my grandparent’s home place. Dirt roads. Miles from everything. Low light pollution, and quiet at night.

No trains. No cars. No neighbors shouting at each other. No 2AM motorcyles and constant sirens.

Stars, solitude, and self-sufficiency.

Space.

And yet, I don’t know. It sounds perfect. I know I like being alone, and being away from the bustle would be nice. This is where my heart gets into things.

Because this is what my heart wants, what it keeps coming back to. A solitary place where people don’t just show up unannounced. A place with acreage and not another home in sight. Where I can make as much or as little noise as I want and, save for nature, that’s the only noise there is.

I also know that isolating is what I do when I get depressed. I like being alone regardless, but solitude like that is not a good thing if you’re mentally struggling. Last night it gave me pause, and I had to question—which part of me has painted this picture, my heart or my brain?

Or, on the other hand, is this what my heart and brain need together? A place of quiet, with more time, less noise, and as much calm as I can handle? Maybe this is my heart telling me it’s tired of running recklessly about and needs to find a calm center. Maybe this is my brain finally talking sense into my heart and requesting it go a little slower.

I was talking with a therapist (not mine) and she mentioned that people have a mid-life crisis for a reason. That when you’re like me, type A, an over-achiever, striving to be the master of all you do, eventually you get tired. The return is not worth the investment and it wears you down until you break, because you don’t know how to change but you also can’t continue.

I don’t want to get to that point. There has to be a balance between passionately chasing dreams and taking time to breathe, but I don’t know where it is. I don’t want to get to 45 or 50, look back and go, “It wasn’t worth all that work.”

I want to learn how to slow down before I break. To temper my heart before it grinds itself to dust and blows away.

So I look at this country fantasy and wonder. Is it a depressive lie? Is it another fanciful dream that I think I want in principle but would hate in reality? Or is it some combination of heart and brain trying to apply the brakes before we crash headfirst into the wall we know is around one of the upcoming corners?

It’s going to take much more thought but I do know one thing—nobody tells you how many dogs you can have when you live miles from everything.

My Private Public Love Letter

This isn’t the post I intended to write this week, I’d meant to write about my shattered perceptions of a Sedaris childhood and how validation does/doesn’t affect who we become, but this is what I was moved to write so this is what you get.

I heard the words “I want to grow old with the man I was young with” and only thought of you. I choked up. I’d never heard what I feel about you put into words so precisely. 

It’s really weird because I don’t want to say “we’ll be together forever.” To me, it feels like making a birth plan for a painkiller-free, natural birth, and then having an emergency c-section. We have ideals in our mind but writing them down is tempting fate. 

I’m too much of a realist to say now, in my 30s, that we’ll be together forever. Lives change, people change, and things don’t always work out. Even for a skeptic like myself, promising myself a forever feels like cursing what we have now, and makes the very idea of not being with you more unbearable. 

Like, if I promise myself a forever and it doesn’t happen, it’ll hurt worse than if I hold in my mind that forevers don’t always happen. 

But I want what we have right now to grow into our forever. Our love will change as much as we do, but I want to cling to it, wrap it around us and mold it like a blanket to our frames to ensure it warms us until we’re old and tired (dibs on being tired, you have to be old.)

It feels like things have been difficult the past few years, what with my stupid wonderful house purchase, with you going through school, business slowing down, and my mental health. But the weirdest thing is that I feel closer to you. The things I thought would push you away only showed me your strength in a new light and reminded me why I love you so much. 

We don’t always agree. You don’t like my girls with pianos music, and I still think the Henry Rollins Band would sound the same if you listened to it played on underwater speakers. I love horses, the country, and being alone. You like the city, apartments, and sidewalks. I want to read and hike and camp. You want to play video games and make things on your computer. 

These things feel like they’d be too different, but it works because we make space for what the other person needs. You showed me how to do that, mostly when I began getting up at 3AM to write every day instead of curling up with you and watching TV every night. 

You hold me up when I’m having panic attacks over lawn work and phone calls. You tell me you’re proud of me when I sell stories. You read 80% of what I email to you, begging you to read, and that’s more than I expect. 

I only hope that I’m being an equal partner in this relationship, and giving you the same care and consideration. 

There’s that line in The Princess Bride (I almost typed The Princess Pride and omg let’s make that story, too,) the famous “As you wish.”

Your as you wish is, “We’ll figure it out.”

Can I leave for an entire summer and do sail training in Long Beach?

We’ll figure it out. 

What if I applied to med school?

We’ll figure it out. 

Hey, I’m going to go camping alone for half a week. Will you be okay with house, kid, pets and business?

We’ll figure it out. 

I’m not getting the writing done I want. I want to book an AirBnB for a few days to just write. Will that be too hard with your class schedule?

We’ll figure it out.

You even said I could have a puppy, you beautiful monster, you. I won’t, I know how complicated our lives are already, but still. You said yes when you saw how much joy other people’s puppies brought me. 

You encourage my every passion and make space for every wild whim. You let me set off across half the country with our kid, a tent, and no solid plan, then made KOA reservations when I panicked. 

You let me book tickets for nearly three weeks on another continent, with our kid, and without you. 

You listen to me vent, you validate my feelings, you survive my wild moods, and you love me. 

You love me, and I know it. 

Why else would you put up with… gestures at self

All this, 700 words just to say, I love you. 

Enough to post this as an open letter and be all sappy and gooey and lovey on the internets. 

So though I won’t promise you a forever, I’ll secretly want it. There will always be a door, but I’ll do everything I can to keep from ushering you through it. 

Here’s to our now, and my hopes for our tomorrow. 

Uncle "Jim" and the bull that hurt its dick

Of course you want to read a blog post with a title like that.

I have a story coming out with Tough Crime on Monday that started with me reading a whole ton of Cormac McCarthy, and then thinking about the concept of write what you know.

And accountancy is really fucking boring.

If you’ve met me or have seen pictures, it’s probably not obvious that I love westerns. I’m dying to own my own horse again and if I didn’t have to consider anyone else in my decisions, I’d have a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, miles from everyone, with a menagerie of animals and huge garden. Yes, I would miss Netflix, but my library would be vast and I’d take in every sunset.

Also, I’m a descendant of homesteaders and cattle ranchers. I have relatives that were, in fact, born in a barn, and many family members that still make their living running cattle over thousands of acres. I myself was born in Gillette, Wyoming, and we moved to Cali when I was six.

I consider California my home state. It’s in my blood and I will forever be grateful I grew up here. Though not the most diverse end of the state, the exposure to other ideas, other ways of life, helped me to form my own opinions away from the narrow-mindedness I sometimes find back in Montana.

That said, I love my roots. Or, better, I love the country they’re sunk in. My childhood is filled with memories of spending the summer at my grandparent’s house, of moving cattle and riding through the hills, of the horse I owned the front half of and my grandpa telling me to drink like a lady (yeah that one never stuck.)

We usually went back once or twice year, depending on what was going on with the family. It’s about 1500 miles from Northern California to Ekalaka, Montana, the town my mom grew up outside of. It has a tiny little main street, a great dinosaur museum, a population under 400 and is the county seat. She grew up in a smaller place called Mill Iron, which is mostly where two gravel roads happen to meet. They had a one-room school house and I believe the teacher lived on-site.

One of my favorite memories of driving back, I swear to god, is getting yelled at for laughing with my siblings, but that’s a different story all together.

Having family that runs cattle in an isolated part of Montana can be complicated. I love my family but like I said, the privilege of growing up in California allowed me to form a worldview that includes people who aren’t carbon copies of myself in skin color, beliefs, and/or sexuality. It makes for interesting visits at times, but if you just nod and go mmmph enough times, you get through it.

Part of what I love in that area is the land itself. It’s wild and beautiful and spacious enough to get lost in. So long as you close the gates behind you, you can roam as far as you like, across hills and through forests and up amongst the sandstone.

Probably not what you picture when you think of Montana forests and prairies, but one of the best features of the area is the sandstone. As seen and modeled here by the wonderful Trex. Those pictures are specifically of Medicine Rocks State Park and worth wandering through if you’re ever in the area. Or, more realistically, making them a destination because there’s not many reasons you’d be passing through.

One place in particular is called the Ludwick pasture. I’m sure at one point I knew who Ludwick was, but hell if I can remember now. Still, it’s been a source of great memories for me and most of my cousins.

Did I mention my grandparents had 9 kids? There’s a lot of cousins.

But throughout the years we’ve spent a ton of time out there. Once we camped for days. Other times we’ve had picnics and barbecues. Very few trips are made to that part of Montana without visiting the Ludwick pasture at least once.

Picture hills and the scraggly pines of southeastern Montana. A steep climb levels out into a plane of prairie grass, almost in a private, forest-hidden valley. On one side towers great columns of sandstone, eaten away by rain, wind, snow and time. There’s arches, holes, caves, and pathways the water flows off the stones. If you can find the right one or climb up, the tops are vast and flat, usually close enough to hop from one pillar to another. One one side you can walk right up onto the rocks while there’s a good 20-30 foot drop on the opposite end, leading into the small valley.

With the wind whistling through the trees, there’s a misleading sound of water at all times, though the country is dusty and dry most of the summer. Sage and pine scent the air while sand and pile needles wheedle their way in between your soles and socks. There is not a thing to do out there except whatever you like, and it’s a perfect place.

That, essentially, is where I set the story that’ll come out in a couple of days. That dust, the dirt, the pines, the sandstone and the baking summer sun-that’s what I wanted.

“Okay but this has nothing to do with the promised bull dick!” you complain, because that’s what I know you’re all about.

I’m getting there. I just got caught up writing love letters to some of my best childhood memories.

If we circle back to my family being more conservative, we’ll get to the bull dick.

The reason such a tiny town has a great dinosaur museum is because it’s part of something called the Hellcreek Formation. If you’ve heard about Badlands dinosaur digs, and Sue, that’s in the same area. There’s so many dinosaur fossils popping up out of the ground that sometimes it takes a couple years after reporting one for a crew to come dig it up.

One of my uncles, we’ll call him “Jim,” owns land that includes what people call the Chalk Buttes. The chalk buttes, when wet, get gummy and slick, easily eroded by the water and snow. The buttes are full of various fossils, though usually in tiny pieces due to the instability of the buttes themselves. They shatter and roll down through the mud but sometimes, things like talons and femurs pop out of the hillside.

When visiting with fossil buffs and younger family members, the buttes are a wonderful place to explore. If everybody takes a sandwich bag, you can spend hours picking little bits of fossils and stones from the dirt, all over the hillsides.

That’s how I found myself riding in a side-by-side with Trex (my son) and Uncle Jim. We’d already ridden horses and picked wildflower bouquets and were now heading out to the Chalk Buttes, leading a procession of pickups full of cousins, aunts, uncles and Grandma.

There had been a lot of talk from Uncle Jim and his wife about a vet visit the next day. They were checking how successful the IVF breeding had been versus the bull breeding and were going to have an early morning of it. I could tell he was a little careful picking his words when he answered my questions about what all was involved, and how the vet would be able to tell the difference between the two, but didn’t think much more of it.

We picked fossils and minded a couple rambunctious young boys on the edge of the buttes, caking our shoes with mud and trying to find cooler items than everyone else. When we went back for dinner, we traded my sister for Trex, who hopped in the truck with his grandma.

Conversation drifted back to the next day’s events, the farm, and some of the wildlife we saw along the way.

Turning back towards the house we spotted one bull alone in a smaller field and inquired about it. The answer, very simply, was “Oh he got injured so we’re giving him some time to see if he gets better.”

Which leads naturally to, “How’d he get hurt?”

“Oh, it happened when he was out with the herd.”

Weird answer, Uncle Jim, but maybe I’m bad at taking hints. Also, like I said, I grew up in California and generally fail to be the tender, virgin-eared wilting flower some people expect woman to be.

“Did he get in a fight with another bull?”

“Kinda. Not really.”

Me, continuing to be as dense as possible: “So what’d he hurt? His leg or something?”

Uncle Jim, shifting uncomfortably, says, “Well, no.”

Clearly, I can not take a hint at all. “What happened to him?” I quite innocently ask.

“Well, it happened when he was mounting a cow.”

“Okay. Did he fail the dismount?”

“Sorta.”

“But he didn’t hurt his leg?”

“No.”

“What did he hurt?”

Then Uncle Jim caved, but only sort of. “Well, we think another bull hit him and and knocked him off the cow, that’s how he got hurt.”

“Ohhhhh,” I say, and we move on.

At least until I get alone with my sister, at which point I fall apart in laughter and inform her, who had no idea what my uncle meant, that the bull was mounted on a cow, doing what he’s supposed to be doing, when another bull rammed him off.

His dick. The bull twisted his dick when he fell off the cow and in no way could my uncle find the polite, appropriate words to tell us that.

To this day it remains one of my favorite memories of that uncle, and a great reminder of the divide in what we find socially acceptable.

What bearing does that have on the story I wrote? None, really, though calving is involved. It’s just something I remember and laugh about every time I think of that visit in particular.

I hope you check out the story on Monday and support Tough. Have a great weekend, friends.

November 2019 Letter to Myself

I’ve been having trouble writing and my mind was racing one morning, so I wrote down what was in my mind instead. It helped me express what I was struggling with, and helped my therapist figure out which directions we needed to head. I sat on it for a while but like I said in yesterday’s post, other people talking about their struggles inspired me to seek my own help and if I can do that for at least one other person, it’s worth it.

I have trouble labeling myself as depressed, as somebody with depression. I don’t know why. It feels false, it makes me feel like a phony. I’ve never self-injured I don’t think, I’ve never been unable to get out of bed for a week.

Then again, sometimes I do just want to lay down on the floor and cease existing. Sometimes it takes every last ounce of anger and pushing to get myself to get up and keep going another day. A lot of days I feel like what I’m doing is all just busy work, it doesn’t matter, and I can’t see the point in continuing.

Not suicidal-ly. More like, why am I working so hard and exhausting myself for nothing that matters.

A lot of days, I feel flat and emptied out. I can’t read. I can’t write. I can’t do anything but stare at my phone until it’s time to go to sleep.

I see the things that are slipping around me. The bathrooms in the house are atrocious. Not unsanitary, but the sinks haven’t been scrubbed in months, the floors unwashed, the ledges dusty.
I feel like my whole house is like that. It’s slipping. My boundless energy has flagged and now I get home and do nothing. It’s all I can do to stay awake through dinner and go to bed.
My houseplants go unwatered. I haven’t watered the lawn in over a month. I don’t want people to come over because I’m ashamed of the state my house is in.

I listened to a short audiobook called The Burnout Generation and saw myself in its pages, in the inability to stop working even when it comes to my personal life, to getting so low that all I can do is stare at my phone.

I’ve started listening to Furiously Happy, and it upset me even more. Not the book, the book is wonderful and a stark look at anxiety, depression, and surviving. And bad taxidermy.

What upset me, however, was the dawning realization that this might be my new reality. That all the disappointment I felt when I started feeling bad again could be the cycle of the rest of my life. And honestly, has likely been the cycle up until now.

I’ve always had anxiety. I have panic attacks when I go into stores alone and have since I was in middle school. Malls are my personal nightmare and home improvement stores a step behind.

Going new places is the hardest thing I ever do. I stick to the same routes, the same restaurants, the same grocery stores. My anxiety dictates what I can and can’t do, and what days I can do it.

For example, I’ve gone to play soccer twice in another town. The first time, I had to actively push myself every single inch of the freeway to drive up there, to find the right field, to park, to actually put on my cleats. Now, the mere thought of returning is enough to give me panic attacks. Why? Who knows. I sure as hell don’t.

I understand that the depression could be temporary. That it could be a culmination of my fluctuating health and constant anxiety. Or it could be a permanent part of me, a hereditary inability to adequately deal with serotonin, exacerbated by my health issues. Looking back, I feel like I can see the pieces of it that have always existed yet failed to coalesce until now.

I don’t know why this feels like such a hard shift in my personal identity. I don’t tell people because it feels cliché. “Depression? Who doesn’t have depression by this point?” Also, because it feels commonplace and cliché, I worry that something that absorbs so much of my energy and focus and waking hours will be dismissed. I don’t think I could bear it. I feel like I’m scrambling to duct tape my pieces together so I don’t crumble apart and I can’t impress that upon people. I can say “I’m struggling with depression” but they don’t understand.

Depression is like my own personal Mike Meyers, always one step behind, and if I stop being vigilant or dare rest, it’ll catch up to me, raised knives and shrieking music, the works.

 I’m a little more open about my anxiety but only when pushed. “Why did you run ten miles?” “Because physically exhausting myself is the only way to keep my near-crippling anxiety from overtaking me.” “Why didn’t you come to my barbecue?” “Because anxiety won that day and I couldn’t leave the house.”

Absorbing depression into my identity, pointing at that little chunk of myself and identifying it thusly, is proving very hard. Coming from a background of self-blame and unreasonable “personal responsibility” (i.e. what did you do to make that person insult you/creep on you/hurt you,) I feel like I don’t deserve the diagnosis, that it’s my own fault and I just have to work myself out of it, that I’m attention seeking, that I’m a liar, that I’m being dramatic, and on and on. That if I just stop thinking about it and not make it about me, it’ll go away.

Rationally, I know that all those things I just wrote are bullshit and if somebody came to me and said them, I would tell them as much. Unfortunately, that doesn’t translate. Knowing they’re bullshit doesn’t help me internalize the fact.

So I guess this is my letter to myself, as I see the truth in between the lines I’ve written.

I know things get better from here. I know that I’m taking the right steps, and I have a great doctor and therapist on my side. I know that I’m fortunate to have those things, and to have the medications to stop me from crawling any further down into that dark hole.

I know that I have friends that love me, and the world’s most wonderful husband who supports me, hears me, and holds me while I cry over missed social engagements and my own brokenness.

Someday I won’t feel flat. I won’t feel like a bleached dishcloth, wrung out and tossed in the back of the rag cupboard. Someday I’ll enjoy talking to people again, I’ll enjoy seeing friends. Someday I won’t just feel anger as somebody tells me about their day.

But for now, the anger makes me feel alive, because at least I can still feel that.

Until that someday, however, this is my reality, and I’ll celebrate the fact that I’m here. I’m getting better, and doing the right things. I’ll work on absorbing this new title, this new piece of me into my identity, placing it like a tattoo you only want to show certain people.

My name is Kristin, and I have depression.

My name is Kristin, and I have overwhelming anxiety.

My name is Kristin and this doesn’t change who I am, but only defines parts of me that already exist so that I can get better.

My name is Kristin, and this is my depression. I’m doing my best to dress it up in coattails and a bow tie, but it’s a work in progress. Bear with me.

2019: Bye, Bitch (Also, ABBP)

No, that about sums up my relationship with 2019. Not that it was all bad but goodbye 2019, can’t miss you ‘till you’re gone, don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.

From emotional turmoil springs growth and wisdom, but why can’t we have the latter without the former?

I haven’t really talked about it, and I’m still hesitant to approach it. I don’t want to type the words and the only thing driving me forward is the bravery of others who have discussed it, as their candid confessions convinced me to seek my own help.

Even if you know me, what you don’t know about me is that I have near-debilitating anxiety. Everything from answering the phone to driving someplace new leaves me sick to my stomach. You don’t know, because I’ve never let it stop me. To me, that was my failure point-once my anxiety dictated what I couldn’t do, I was no longer the master of it.

Boy was I full of bullshit. In 2019 I learned that just because I can push through something doesn’t mean I’m doing so in a healthy, beneficial way.

Last year found me overrun by my anxiety and health issues until it beat me down to nothing. I knew I was in trouble when I’d find myself immobilized with fear in a spot, staring into space and wondering if life was worth living.

Then hustling to get moving before somebody saw me so nobody would know.

I really want to delete all that. I don’t want to talk about it. But on the off-chance somebody reads it and goes, “Hey, I see myself in those words,” I’m going to leave it. Because there’s hope beyond those dark moments.

From deep emotional turmoil springs growth and wisdom. If you can survive the turmoil first.

I saw a therapist for the first time in 2019. I had what matters to me pointed out, and what heals me. I had open, painful discussions with my husband of what I was battling and instead of him shying away, he stepped up and was exactly the person I needed.

I’ve discovered better living through chemistry, with a wonderful, non-judgmental doctor who all but held my hand and told me there was no shame in needing help. I mean, she thanks me for being ‘brave’ enough to send her emails when I’m struggling with medication side effects. Where has she been all my life?

Things aren’t peachy, but they’re better. I’m in tune with what’s happening in my mind now, and the thoughts and actions that lead to darkness. I’m more at peace with relationships in my life, even when I still struggle with them. I’m learning boundary setting, and how to be kind to myself.

I’m enjoying things again.

That sentence alone makes me want to cry.

I’m laughing more.

I’m looking back through my life and seeing how depression and anxiety have been a life-long struggle, and getting frustrated at how long it took me to seek help. Mad at all the years I spent feeling like seeking help was shameful, made me less strong, meant I was broken.

Now, however, I know that I’m assembling a toolbox full of everything I need to survive. That I can live happier, co-habitating with my anxiety without letting it take the wheel. I know the things that bring me peace, and am working on not feeling selfish when I take time to give myself those things.

2019 was the year I experienced the deepest, darkest depression of my life. It was also the year I overcame stigmas about therapy and mental health. Also in 2019, I found a few doctors who not only believe I’m sick, but set forth a plan of action for finally getting a diagnosis after 8 long years.

I sold a few stories I love in 2019. I was published in a second anthology, and got to do my first book event for that anthology.

I took a job that has improved my life. I went camping a lot. Found inspiration in my home. Adopted a bunny.

In 2019, I survived. In 2020, I want to thrive.

In 2020, I’m going to stop apologizing when it takes me a day or two to answer an email.

In 2020, I’m going to work to create more spaces I love inside my house.

In 2020, I’m going to go to Borneo, and Bouchercon, and probably to the coast a bunch.

I’m going to find out how to work out without as much pain (after my Utah half-marathon in March!) I’m going to declutter the house.

I’m definitely going to bake more pies. ABBP-Always be baking pies.

I’m going to work on being kinder to myself, and loving those who are kind to me even harder. I’m going to try to be a better friend, and to stop moving all the damn time (No promises, miles to go before I sleep still.)

So 2019: Get the fuck out of my house. Thank you for the changes you brought, for the growth and wisdom, but you better cross the street if you ever see me coming after this.

Happy new year, friends and readers. May 2020 bring you joy, growth, wisdom and love, and leave all that bullshit emotional turmoil back in 2019.

Tomorrow, I’ll likely post something I wrote to share with my therapist a while ago.

And if you feel yourself struggling, too—get help. Tell somebody. Email me. You’re not alone, and there’s no shame. This is a moment in your life, but it won’t be every moment forever.

If you’re in Crisis, or just need an ear, text Home to 741741 to speak immediately with a crisis counselor on the Crisis Text Line.

Medical Gaslighting, Soccer, and Little Old Me

I jokingly refer to this as my “I could have gone pro if I hadn’t blown out my knee in the championship game” story. I don’t tell it much, because it feels…hard to say. Whiny, I guess? Mostly because there is an element of “I missed my chance” to it, which feels petty and stuck in the past.

But in truth, it’s not what I missed. It’s more a story what wasn’t done, and something I’ve started referring to as Medical Gaslighting.

Why talk about it now? The world cup definitely brought a lot of this bubbling back to the surface. I used to play against Rapinoe; we were in different city leagues & traveling teams that competed against one another. She’s so fucking fierce and proud and amazing, and I don’t even have words for what it’s like to see her dominate as she has. She worked hard to get where she is and I love watching her.

But also, I find myself fighting the medical establishment again. This new fight, along with the knowledge of how doctors tend to dismiss women, has inspired some reflection. And the only conclusion I arrive at, time and again, is anger. Rage. The kind that heats in the pit of your stomach until it sparks and consumes your whole chest.

To start, I was a soccer player. A very, very good soccer player. As much as that sounds like braggadocio, I can back it up. I had a lot of great coaches over the years that helped me grow, and in high school I further refined my skills playing on the boy’s team, eventually as a starter. When I was awarded All League my senior year, I was the only girl to have ever been given the honor in our division.

I had a coach ask me to play for him my freshman year of college but due to switching schools last minute, I didn’t that year. Instead I took a soccer class for fun, and that coach begged me endlessly to join the women’s team until I relented. So my sophomore year of college, I joined and unseated the current sweeper as a starter (I don’t think she ever forgave me.)

That’s where it really starts, that season of soccer I played in college. I hurt my back early on and played until I couldn’t walk upright anymore. Game after game, fighting the constant spasms, hardly able to walk across campus during the day. Things weren’t good on the team, due to the coach I agreed to play for departing and leaving a couple assholes in his place, but I tried, pushing through so much constant pain and agony, spasms nearly dropping me between classes.

Until one day, I couldn’t anymore. I couldn’t run more, I couldn’t hurt more. It’d been months and I had no more to give. If you know me in person, that’s saying a lot. I’m physically a “go until failure” sort, and I hit the failure point.

I think about this point in my life a lot with my current doctor fight. As of right now, I can safely eat a very limited variety of foods. The list of what I can eat is shorter than what I can’t. “What’s causing it?” people ask. I don’t know. “You should see a doctor!” they helpfully* say. “What does the doctor think it is?”

Well. A doctor would have to actually listen to me when I tell them I’m not okay. That would be a good starting point to diagnosing why I can’t eat but so far… I’m still waiting for that to happen. And even if they listen, I don’t have a few thousand dollars sitting around to lob at tests (Go American medical establishment!) So the doctors go “Well, you look healthy enough,” and dismiss me, time and again.

After a while, if nobody thinks you’re sick, you start to believe that you’re the crazy one.

I’m fortunate in that I have a supportive group of people to lean on, who remind me that what I’m dealing with isn’t normal. Who assure me I’m not losing my mind. Who want to go strangle the doctors who dismiss what I say out of hand, doctors who ask “Have you considered cutting ‘x’ out of your diet?” while holding the list I’ve handed them of everything I’ve cut out of my diet, including ‘x.’

Even so. Am I the crazy one here? It lingers in my mind, dogging my every concern, whispering just accept this, there’s nothing wrong, this is just how things are now, even as I lose weight and go through bouts of being too sick to eat at all.

Not to mention the exhaustion. I have a very hard time fighting for myself and when I work up the gusto to do so only to be called a liar by a doctor, it’s crushing. I’ve been fighting for…what, 3 years now? 4? Eventually, the bastards do wear you down. I’m nearly too tired to fight anymore. A part of me wants to haul my family with me to every medical visit, just so they can fight instead. I don’t have much left in me to do it myself.

Which is more or less what happened with my back. Eventually, I became the crazy person, attention seeking and making things up. And if I’m bad at fighting for myself now, it was even worse when I was younger.

It started with a lot of shrugs in the Sports Medicine building. An intern almost solved it, I know that now. She stretched my hips a certain way and the pain let me know she was on to something. But then her boss said “IDK, here’s a chiropractor to go see,” and kicked me out.

A chiropractor who ran through my insurance money like it was a challenge, hurt me worse, and then told me “Well it’s going to spasm a lot more before it starts getting better.”

Then a doctor who shrugged and said, “I don’t think you really know what a spasm is.”

Then the next doctor, who looked at an X-ray, shrugged, said “You know, a lot of people suffer lower back pain,” and dismissed me from the exam room. He said that to a 19 year old woman, in good physical shape, who couldn’t walk upright.

There was no help. No relief. No suggestions of what else to do. Just apathy, disbelief, and dismissal. I was benched the rest of the season and the woman who’d been scouting me for the university team disappeared. It took my back another three months to stop spasming once the season ended.

What I know now, nearly 15 years later? One good physical therapist could have helped me. One person looking at 19 year old me, laying on the ground, nearly unable to get up, and taking me seriously could have saved me untold amounts of pain. I finally saw a physical therapist at 32, and we dealt with what happens in my hips to make my back go into spasms. I can stop things now before they get bad, without having to spend four days in bed every time, as I’ve been forced to for years. At 32. After I finally sat in a doctor’s office and told them I didn’t want to talk about it, I just wanted a referral.

The bitch of it is, if you talk to your female friends and loved ones, this isn’t an uncommon story. Almost all of us have tales of misdiagnosis, dismissal, and outright being accused of lying by doctors. It keeps us from going to the doctor when we should. It makes up put off visits for too long, ignoring dangerous signs, risking our lives.

Women die from this. This kills people.

Couple that with what we know now about how medication’s effects on women isn’t studied, how we’re not given the correct dosage because nobody bothered to figure it out, how a medicine designed to stop a woman’s pain was deemed better used to make men’s dicks hard, how for years nobody bothered to understand how heart attack symptoms manifest differently in women…on and on and on.

There’s a malfeasance in medicine and when I stop to look back on what it’s cost me, in terms of pain, in terms of opportunities, in what it’s cost the other women in my life, I want to simultaneously weep and break things. Fall apart, and march in the streets. It’s as heartbreaking as it is rage-inducing.

The good news is that it’s becoming a known fact. We now know how women have been excluded and ignored, especially women of color. It’s a problem that’s in the public’s consciousness, which is necessary if we’re ever going to address and correct it. I just hope we manage to do more than nod sagely and admit it’s a problem fast enough to keep more women from dying from neglect and dismissal.

I worry a little bit every day that I’m going to die from a doctor not believing me.

Plus, it’d just be nice to eat a real meal like a human again.

I miss beer.

On Writing the Strong Male Character

Times are certainly changing, aren’t they? Women action heroes. Women judges. Women (woman, singular) late night host. We’re witnessing a female renaissance, a time when women feel powerful enough to stand up on their own and shout, “Hey! I’m a Woman! I’m Strong! I’m Proud! Maybe Don’t Sexually Harass Me At Work And Black-list Me When I Say No!”

The day clearly belongs to the women. Thrillers aimed at women, written by “women” (Shout-out to Scarlet!) Female villains. Female CEOs. Everywhere you look, women own a good 1/8th of the conversation, of the top jobs, of the success and accolades.

And in this time of unprecedented focus on women, it’s easy to leave everyone else in the dust. It’s easy to get so caught up in the progress, that we forget who held all the power up until now.

That’s why I’ve made a concentrated effort to put Well-Rounded, Flawed yet Strong Male Characters into my novels.

Why? Because it’s a hard time for men right now. They’re being told no, and having to accept that. They’re having to give up marginal amounts of space they previously fully, independently occupied. They’re being told that they’re not necessarily entitled to things just because they were born with a penis.

They’re facing unfathomable challenges right now, and who better to prop them back up in fiction than me, a woman?

A lot of mistakes have been made in writing male characters previously, and I’ve been very careful to navigate the terrain. Broad, sweeping generalizations about men and male behavior help no one, though they’re easy traps to fall into. Luckily, I have an all-male team of people to explain to me how to write better, and I’ve been fortunate that they’re not afraid to tell me when I’ve gotten masculine details wrong, and to point out how cute it is that I tried.

I think it’s important men see themselves reflected in current fiction so they feel like they still have the majority of the space in this world. Everybody deserves to see people like them in their fiction, and that revelation has been especially hard on men. They’ve gone from seeing only themselves, to having to give up token roles to women and POC, and accepting that equality matters has strained their relationship of entitlement to the world. All my efforts are going to soothing that, to making sure men see themselves included in important, representative roles.

So how do you write a strong male character? The best advice I can give is to start with a human woman, and make her a man. We all know that in this pro-equality era, the best character archetype we have is a female one. So start there, with a really well-rounded human woman, and then give her a guy’s name. Make sure to define him as a man, too. A great way of doing this is to have him analyze himself in the mirror at some point, worrying over his features individually. How his calluses are holding up with age. If he could pass for a younger lumberjack. What his penis is doing, and how much of a “good size” it is (Not too big! Remember, we want flawed characters.)

And for their behavior, think about how men act in real life, and dial it back by about 50%. I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but it makes your strong male characters more palatable to men. They want to see themselves as level-headed and rational, and presenting men as many act in real life—brash, petty and terrifying—leaves a bad taste in men’s mouths and attacks the very core of their self-identification as men. Though we want accurate depictions, writing men as men creates unlikable characters that your male readers will reject.

Remember, this is fiction and you do have artistic license, and this is the area you should flex it in. Step back from what you as a writer know of rejected men in bars, male bosses in office settings, and men whose pride you’ve injured. Go instead towards your ideal for how men should behave in real life. Have them walk away after a woman refuses to hand over her number. Have them cross the street when they find themselves walking alone behind a woman late at night. Have them mind their business when alone in an elevator with a woman. This will help men see themselves as the good-guy hero type in your fiction, and will therefore please them.

And most importantly, of course, have fun! Your enjoyment of working to make the world an even more man-friendly space will come through in your writing. If you enjoy writing your male characters, men will enjoy reading them.

And if not, they’ll be sure to tell you.

Wilderness Years

I like to joke that my mental health was better before I was a writer.

Laughing is one way to deal with hard truths, right?

Though, to be frank, I’d probably be this tightly wound no matter what I was doing. Writing and submitting and querying has just provided me with a laser-point focus for it. If I had a different hobby I’m sure it would shoulder the brunt of the blame just as writing does.

I also like to say that I’m the most prolific writer you’ve never read. A part of me wants to claim an affinity with Kilgore Trout but I’m pretty sure those dudes I know with their stories in Playboy have more a right to that honor than I do. I like those people, but I’m also going to say they’re *s for taking that from me.

It’s a struggle to keep plugging away when success seems perpetually out of reach. That’s the problem with being friends with so many writers. All around me people are getting book deals and accolades and interviews while I spend 4AM to 7AM every morning, doing this thing the best I know how.

I have the files to prove it, too. It’d take two hands to count the full-length novels I’ve written. Probably a bucket of hands (if you can’t make your own at home, store bought is fine) to tally up my short stories. Multiple movie scripts. A ten-minute beat poem (no, seriously, it seemed like a good idea at the time.) Other poems.

I like to joke that I’ve got all the hustle and none of the talent.

It’s at times disheartening, knowing you can churn out the words but also knowing they lack the quality for them to mean much of anything.

Sometimes I lean into the hill I’m climbing, sure if I just work hard enough, I’ll top it. That it’ll build my endurance for the next hill.

Sometimes I sit on my ass, stare down how little I’ve climbed and debate just packing it in and declaring that hills can go fuck themselves.

I never mean it. I don’t quit things. But not everything is sunshine and beard daisies and sleeping puppies. Plus, I know I’d feel worse if I quit, so eventually I get back up, dust my ass off, and start climbing again.

Anybody fighting to create something the world wants understands this dance. It is the best of endeavors, it is the worst of endeavors.

Let’s change directions a bit.

Recently, I listened to Eddie Izzard’s book Believe Me. Read by Eddie Izzard. That last fact is important. I have no idea how long Believe Me is in text but I’d wager it’s nearly twice as long as an audio book. I mean, he googled stuff during the recording and every glorious minute of it is in there.

At first, I wasn’t entirely on-board. It was entertaining, sure, but rambley, as you would expect from Izzard. It was fine but just not as engaging as I was looking for in an audio book.

Then he got to talking about his early performing years and managed to say every single thing I needed to hear at that exact moment.

Izzard uses the term “Wilderness Years,” coined to describe the years Winston Churchill spent without a government position, to talk about his own early struggles. He writes about the attempts, the failures, all the bad he sludged through before he found what he was good at.

How those years taught him how to deal with a crowd. How they showed him his strengths, taught him what he did and didn’t want to do. How he hustled tirelessly, taking his blows and pushing on regardless.

How ten years of struggling taught him perseverance, and showed him who he was.

And that it’s okay if you’re struggling. It’s okay if it’s not working, so long as you’re still pushing. That success taking time doesn’t mean you’re a failure, that you suck and should quit. You’re just in your own wilderness years. Learning. Growing. Finding who you are and mastering it.

It was what I needed to hear. It was the sign I was looking for to keep me leaning into that hill and fighting my way up. I don’t care if it sounds superficial or cliche, it was help when I needed it.

I am still learning. That was honestly the hardest thing for me to process in my writing, that you don’t come out farting glitter and shitting gold from the get-go. Sure, some people do, but those people are unicorns, rare and ethereal, and most of us are not. There are things I do well, and many more that I don’t yet. Internalizing that I can learn, that I can get better, has helped me drastically.

Now the mental language isn’t that I’m bad at what I’m doing but that I’m not as good as I will be if I keep working at it. Every critique, rejected story, every blow to my ego shows me where I can improve.

Every time I get on stage with a mic and people don’t laugh, well, I learned something about those jokes, didn’t I?

Izzard’s book helped me understand that I’m not wasting my time. I’m forming the base I’ll eventually stand on. I’m learning how to make the parts of me as good as they can be.

I’m learning to keep my eyes on the top of that hill and push until I get there.

I’ve got the drive, and the staying power.

These are my wilderness years. They are not a stumbling block, but a building block. I am going to enjoy them, and wring every lesson I can from them before I cast them behind me, withered and fully used up.

A Cure For The Melanjollies

Christmas is a fraught time for me. I tend to say I don’t like it. I commonly find myself anxious and sad all through December, despite all my decorating, despite putting up multiple trees, despite enjoying the lights and songs and smells and excitement.

I’ve dubbed the condition of both enjoying the holidays and being made sad by them the melanjollies, a nice little portmanteau of melancholy and being jolly.

Can’t enjoy Christmas because you’re stressed about family? You might be melanjolly!

Terrified of the credit card bill once you’re done buying gifts for everyone and their cousins? You’re probably melanjolly, too!

So why do I get the melanjollies every year? Easy. I don’t like being told I need to buy things. I think it’s a season out of hand, and people have lost their god damn minds over it. It’s rabid consumerism and that rubs me all the wrong ways, not to mention stressing over the money outlay and making sure I remembered everyone under the sun. Oh, and don’t forget to make sure each gift is thoughtful and useful and something they’ll like.

My cure for the melanjollies used to be tying one on every Christmas eve—drinking a lot of whiskey, trying to get other people to drink with me, and doing things like falling up the stairs. Yeah, you read that right. I fell up the stairs. But now I can’t drink, and where does that leave me? Why, stewing in my own emotions, of course. One big ol’ pot of Gov’s Christmas Depression.

Fun.

This year, when I was griping I didn’t like Christmas, my husband called bullshit on me and he wasn’t wrong. There’s so much I do actually enjoy about the holiday. I like the lights. I love the trees, the foods, family. I love the anticipation leading up to Christmas day, and the excitement it holds. Most of all, I love that everybody stops, even if just for the day. Stands still. Feels joy and love together. There is truly is so much to enjoy about this holiday.

And looking back on ours this year, it was really nice. Simple and low-stress, exactly what I wanted.

So what gave?

This year, our goal was to limit the gifts and the spending. My siblings and I asked the families involved if we could not exchange gifts (save for the kid.) My husband and I got each other one thing. For my son, I painted him a picture, and his dad got him one gift.

It was amazing how much that lowered my stress instantly. Without having to buy dozens of presents, without feeling obligated to spend a ton of money, I felt more able to just sit back and enjoy all the things that make the season great. We didn’t go to the malls, we didn’t hit the stores, didn’t order boxes full of stuff from Amazon.

We watched movies together. Listened to to the kid butcher Christmas songs with reckless abandon. Drank tea and read books by the fire.

It really was everything I wanted for Christmas.

I’m hoping that we can continue this tradition going forward, remember that keeping things small is key to getting the most out of the holidays.

And if not, well, maybe one day I’ll be able to drink again.

The Problem of the Goddamn Barbara

When I started querying agents about two years ago, I made a huge mistake. In my excitement, I thought I’d want to be notified immediately if I received an answer because of course, agents would be falling over themselves to acquire my novels and shove stacks of money at me, right?

Right?!

(Dear Reader, I am still querying, fwiw)

But in my optimism and excitement, I did one thing terribly, terribly wrong—I changed the alert tone for my querying email address to one distinct from every other sound my phone makes. Something beautiful called “Salacia” to the rest of google’s “Default Notification Sound.”

Because I like giving myself heart attacks. I like jumping for my phone to see if I got another rejection, the truth of that ending still not enough to damp down the little itty bitty tiny hope that blossoms and dies with every zen-like chiming of Salacia.

You know what the real problem is, however? You don’t, so imma tell you. The real problem is one that has become known as The Goddamn Barbara.

Now a really smart person would have an email dedicated entirely to their writing endeavors. Me, though? Absolutely not. I also use that address for business emails, health insurance updates, and the true source of all my misery—my son’s school communications.

Yes, love, I hear that dreaded Salacia in my sleep now. Literally, if I leave the sound on my phone up. With every chime my heart races, my palms sweat, and I stop everything to grab my phone and see…

Was it one of the agents

Is it a rejection

A short story response

A FULL MS REQUEST?

Never. It’s almost never that. So what is it?

Ninety percent of the time, it’s the school. It’s picture day reminders and weekly newsletters and monthly newsletters and spelling words and updates and just saying hi emails.

Every damn day.

And for a time, ninety percent of that ninety percent came from one culprit. Barbara. Salacia would chime and I’d dive for my phone to see query responses but no, it’s not from any agent, it’s the goddamn Barbara reminding me that they’re selling hot chocolate before school tomorrow and it’s pizza day and it’s crazy sock day and did I remember the forms?!

Barbara isn’t even with the school anymore I don’t think but her name lives on in my realm and has become one of those things that has taken on a life of its own.

Salacia

Query Answer?

No! Health Insurance Payment Confirmation!

“It’s the goddamn Barbara!”

Salacia

IS IT ABOUT MY BOOK?

No! It’s the phone bill!

shakes fist at the punishing sky “I’ll get you, goddamn Barbara!”

And, dear friend, do you know the worst of it? Barbara is a grade-A human. She was wonderful and kind and a joy to see at the school every time.

But I swear, if I get one more email…

What about you? Who is your Goddamn Barbara?

Men Make Me Talk To Them, AKA: Pretend I'm A Cheetah In Your Car

I have a problem. Not that one. No, not that one either.

Okay Jesus stop guessing, just submit a list of my problems via email, dammit. Last time I take you into my confidence.

No, I have a different sort of problem. Picture this:

Me, walking back to my work vehicle at a rest area along the freeway.

Also me, seeing a man whose path I will intersect on the sidewalk.

Also also me, moving more out of the way and looking everywhere else. Fucking anywhere else. I looked into the distance at the temporarily green hills. I gazed upon the barren rice fields. I watched the starlings in the trees, fighting and singing and flitting about.

Me, giving every indication possible that I in no way wanted to have a conversation with the strange man at the rest area. And still.

“Nice that spring’s finally here, right?”

AYUP SIR YOU FORCED ME INTO THE TALKINGNESS DIDN’T YOU?

The fuck was the value of that conversation? But now we’re having it, ships passing in the night screaming about the weather at each other.

I think that’s how that saying goes. Anyways.

This is a pattern of behavior I’ve notices amongst, well, men. Sorry dudes. I’ll hear your protests but only submitted in hand-written triplicate on carbon copy paper that smells just right.

When I finally recognized it, it struck me as so odd. So entitled. So willfully ignorant of another human being’s body language.

But Gov! you say. How harmful could it be to remark on the loveliness of the weather with a fellow weather-enjoying human? Maybe you could see it for the kind gesture it is if you stopped being such a cold-hearted bitch!

First of all, I’ll never stop. Second, this clearly isn't about the weather. This is about a pattern of behavior that boils down to demanding acknowledgement from the opposite sex because... well, just because, as far as I can tell.

Picture this:

Me, putting a bag of soccer balls into my truck.

Also me, studiously ignoring the men working on the landscaping next door.

“Oh no, a soccer player!” I hear yelled over at me.

And what do I do?

What do you think I did? I ignore it because not only is it desperate, not only is it obnoxious, but also, what do you even say in response? “Ayup. You got me. These are in fact soccer balls, and I am stunned by your powers of observation.”

So long as I don’t respond, he can feel like an idiot and we can both pretend like I didn’t hear and I won’t be forced into an unwanted human interaction.

So he drops it and goes about his business and I HAHAHAHA who am I kidding?

“You guys are sure doing a lot of work to that house,” he shouts at my back next.

Sigh. And now it’s obvious Sir Brilliant Conversations isn’t going to just go back to his own damn business.

Again, a man has demanded I, merely a woman who should be thankful for his kindness and attention, talk to him.

Why even care? These are small incidents but they’re indicative of much greater, much deeper-rooted problems. It sounds petty. I know. I know it sounds petty. But this behavior can’t just be written off as being social or being kind. Dudes don’t do this to each other. Men do it to women, and it only spirals out from there.

Up close, it’s a small transgression. Harmless, if obnoxious. Men seeing women, women who are actively censoring their behavior to convey no interest or desire to interact, and putting them in a socially awkward position anyway. Society dictates I return a kindness, right? Answering “Nice weather, huh?” with a “Fuck off, shitstain” is a little bit frowned upon. Yet it takes a person who was trying to just go through their day uninterrupted and suddenly there’s this other person who has interjected themselves into that day, demanded they be acknowledged, and they’ve done so in such a way that they’re in the right. They were being polite and friendly.

But what men need to understand is that when you do that, not only are you being a dick, you’re forcing a woman to evaluate you as a threat.

I’ll say that again.

If I’m avoiding talking to you and you demand my attention, I am now eyeing you as a potential threat.

A trustworthy human reads body language and doesn’t start unnecessary and, to be frank, fucking idiotic conversations with strangers. A trustworthy man sees a woman alone and respects her avoidance of him.

Men who become problems start with this behavior. They start with friendly and I was just being polite. No. Polite is not doing this. Because the really bad ones? It ramps up from this point.

I ignored a man doing this in a gas station once. He put his arm around me when I tried to check out.

We ignore men and they hurl words like “What, you’re too good to talk to me, you ugly bitch?” at us.

They get in our space. They put their hands on us. Sometimes, they hurt women. Sometimes, they kill women.

Maybe the weather was nice, Rest Stop Dude, but now I have to look at you and wonder if you’re going to follow me back to my car.

Not to mention, maybe I just didn’t want to talk, yet apparently your desire to remark on the weather to a stranger supersedes that.

So now, The Mens reading this, you’re probably wondering: Have I done this? Willfully or not? And how do I avoid doing it in the future?

I can’t answer the first part, but I got you covered on the second. There was a video that popped up recently of a person on safari, in a Jeep, with a cheetah in the back seat. He doesn’t move, doesn’t make eye contact, and most definitely doesn’t interrupt that cheetah’s very good day with bullshit small talk about spring weather.

Women are the cheetah. Next time you pass by a woman who isn’t looking at you, who is finding every way possible to distract herself so she doesn’t slip up and make eye contact, remember this cheetah. Because we’ve had enough of this bullshit and are likely to start mauling people who force us to talk to them.

GovCrest out.

Announcing: Hotties and Bazingas Book 1!

I made a video talking about the release, and you can find it right here:

But! If you don't want to watch me talk excitedly for seven minutes, I'll sum it up:

I've written a novella! It's a satire police procedural with two very fine ladies who, uh...bang. They fight crime, sleep together, and fight crime by sleeping together.

Without further ado, I give you: Hotties and Bazingas and the Murder Cult Murders!

Detective Officer Alexus Hotties is a dedicated policewoman who works alone, with dedication. Yet her dedicated working-aloneness is quickly challenged when the FBI sends cybercrimes officer Major Porsche Bazingas to help solve a bizarre, bloodless murder, only reported after the video of which was uploaded to YouTube. Hotties is quickly impressed with Bazingas' body, and her FBI skills, as they uncover evidence that even worse is coming. Can they solve the murder and bring the killers to justice before they can kill again? Can Hotties open herself up to a partner again, both in her squad car and in her bed? And can Bazingas accept working with a partner who works alone?
Find out in the inaugural adventure of Hotties and Bazingas!

Hotties and Bazingas will be out February 14th. Because I believe in love, and this is a love story, of two women who love. And solve a murder. Oh, and maybe there's a cult or something, and hi-jinks. For $0.99, how can you pass that up?

Pre-order your copy today at Amazon, or pick up your choice of formats from my web store on Valentine's Day for just a buck.

Early review are in and friends have had the following to say:

• "I hate you." - Editor Brian White
• "Jesus Christ. That was horrible, but that was enjoyable." - Tara Whittle
• "You should be proud and ashamed." - Matthew Fredrickson

I am, Matt. Oh god, am I. 

If you enjoy a good laugh, make sure to pick up a copy. If you don't, well, you'll hate this and write me nasty emails and I'll have to mock you online. Either way, enjoy it or not, I think we're all going to have fun with this one. 

See you Valentine's Day. 

<3

Solstice Babies and Winter Birthdays

Trying to kick this blog off right, let's start with a birthday! 

I hear a lot, from other people with birthdays near Christmas, that it's the worst time to be born. The issue, it seems, is that family likes to roll your birthday and Christmas into the same event, and therefore you don't get a proper birthday. 

I'm waiting to hear that one from my son, who is 7 years old today, 4 days before Christmas.

Because he was due the 8th of December. This isn't my fault. 

But 7 years ago he arrived, disrupting everything like a rambunctious puppy that eats your home. That child didn't sleep through a night for, oh, somewhere between 13 and 18 months. He spent the first 6 months unable to sleep anywhere but on my chest, with me sitting up in bed. 

But once he could walk, his world changed. Our world changed. He became so happy, as if the first 9.5 months he'd just been held back from the world he wanted to see. No more 13 hours straight of crying. No more only resting when being bounced and walked around. 

Now, 7 years later, he's a phenomenal young kid. He can read. He's excellent at math. His favorite part of the day is having his dad read books to him. They've read The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings and they're almost through the 4th Harry Potter book. 

He tells stories, constantly. I make stabs at writing and although I do my best, I'm outpaced by this tiny, brilliant mind.

He wants to be a scientist. He wants to be an astronaut. He wants to be a cop.

He wants to be an Engineer Astronaut Cop. That's amazing. Now you want to be an Engineer Astronaut Cop too, admit it. 

As sad as it is to realize my little bundle of rage and fury, my tiny, bald baby, my happy, bumbling toddler, is gone forever, the little boy he's grown into is a delight. He makes us laugh every day, is always up for an adventure, and I never thought I'd have to beg one human so often to stop talking about Minecraft. I'm proud of who he's grown into, and can't wait to see the man he becomes. 

So happy birthday, bitty Trex. I promise to do everything I can to always make your birthday a separate event from Christmas and though you're not getting that god damn Hatchimal the TV told you to desire, I know you'll have a grand day anyway. 

And it could be worse, child-mine. You could have one of the rare February 29th birthdays. Gasp. 

Welcome, Friends!

It's looking pretty darn schnazzy around here, if I do say so myself. 

Welcome to the new home of Govneh.com! The launching of this site means a lot of things. It means that I finally admitted my lack of technical know-how and moved from Wordpress to Squarespace. It means I have a pretty decent site that functions how I want it. It means that I'm paying money to a completely different entity. 

But most importantly, it means I am launching new adventures and have access to a web store that supports digital downloads! I don't want to say anything YET, but I do have something I love very much in the works. I need to push a few more buttons, turn a couple more knobs, and hustle just a while longer before announcing it. Soon, my loves. Soon! 

In the meantime, poke around the site, make yourself comfy, and hopefully I'll have announcements for you soon. Not everything is quite polished up yet. The store isn't functional, and I don't have my stories loaded. BUT! Now you know I'm here, so when I finally announce things, you'll be able to say you were part of the Famclub before it was cool. 

Cheers!

-Govneh