Very very slowly, summer is morphing into my favorite season. I know, season of death, blah blah. But it’s in September that I feel like I’m finally waking up after a long and disturbing sleep. Everything is getting ready to hibernate, the ants are all burrowing their way back into the ground, and I’m bizarro-reverse-nesting. I will be wearing ALL THE WOOL PLAID ITEMS, and drinking ALL THE SPICY HOT RUM-LACED CIDERS. Well, by the end of the month, anyway – right now it’s still too fucking hot.
In the meantime, I’ve made a few significant changes IRL and online. As of last week, I am officially no longer on Livejournal. My account will still be active, so that I can comment on a (very few) journals, and so that people who are interested can read my old posts. But I won’t be posting anything new there. I think my problem with LJ is that when you link to (“friend”) other people there, your blog becomes less of your own personal space, and more a sort of forum where the people who friend and read you feel they have a right to dictate what you can and cannot say, and how you are supposed to present that content (i.e., trigger warnings, LJ-cuts, etc.). I don’t feel comfortable doing those things, and I cannot guarantee that anything I say won’t “trigger” someone or create an “unsafe” space, so I think it’s time I leave. I’ll remain here, where I’ll blog about what I want to because this is MY space, and where people aren’t forced to read it and be permanently traumatized and violated by whatever I have to say. I’m pretty sure the five people who read this blog know what I write about (insects, shitty apartment, writing, occasional traveling, bitching about my health and the inevitable heat-death of the universe) – if those subjects haven’t already violated you, then nothing else I write here will. And, so now I’m here. To be honest, I feel as if a great weight has dropped off my shoulders.
I’ll be making some changes here over the coming months, too. I know, this website has a boring-ass design, but I’m not making that change until sometime next year. But I’ll slowly add a section with links, to publishers, people, organizations, etc. I know I don’t participate in that many cons, readings and events, but I’ll be adding a page for upcoming appearances, few as they are. Maybe seeing a blank page will compel me to actually get off my ass and do some shit. Who know, greater miracles have happened, right?
And, as of next Friday the 7th, I’m going to start posting bits of the FrankenNovel, which is officially titled Powerhouse. I don’t know how long each bit will be, but I’m just going to keep posting until all of the first and second chapters are up. For those who still give a shit, which I think is maybe down to one person now (but I know who you are and you mean more to me than ten thousand), I’m now in the revising/polishing/telling myself I wrote an unpublishable mess that will never sell phase. Plans are to finish this phase on Thanksgiving Day, when I shall traverse across the rabbity marshes of Jersey and over the iron grey waters of the Hudson River into Ye Old Manahatta, buggy across the soaring arches of the Bridge into the quaint cobblestone and brownstone-lined streets of Breukelen, where I will hand the manuscript over to my bff Robert Levy (along with some crackers, cheese, and an egg-shaped bar of Lady Gaga FAME soap). Once I get his crit and comments back, I’ll make final changes, and hopefully send it out sometime in January. Or, burn it and salt the keyboard of my laptop with my tears. And then, start again…