A little bit of something of my own

I pointed out the Ascension contest at Clarity of Night last time around and I thought I'd post my entry here as well. I did ok - into the 40's club (which means that by his scoring methods I was over 40 points of 45) so that's not bad.


Going Up
By Sarah Wagner


A simple errand thrusts me into the bowels of hell, the press of people, their eyes shifty and staring. I try to remember that its all in my head, these strangers have no reason to look at me, no reason to stare. I’m plain, certainly not beautiful enough to appraise. I lack the curves that make a man stare, that make a woman jealous. I am nothing.

My thoughts compound the issue, whispers of imagined voices, judgmental words and snickers. But the doctor says its just my imagination that causes my blood to heat, my skin to flush, my words to trip uselessly over each other.

But they are looking at me. It isn’t my imagination. And I check my shoes - tied up tight. I check my jeans - just as they’re supposed to be. My temperature rises, blood thundering in my ears so loud that I can’t help but wonder if the people staring at me can hear it. I feel my hair, my face, but nothing seems amiss. I walk faster, frustrated that I’m not getting anywhere and there’s nowhere to hide.

How far is it to the second floor?

And that’s when I realize, I’m going the wrong way. Walking up the down escalator like a damned fool idiot who watches her feet instead of where she is going just to avoid a stranger’s smile.

I resist the urge to sit and cry and let the escalator take me back down.

First Prompt of 2009

And it's not one of mine! Clarity of Night is running a photo prompt contest - better hurry deadline is closing in - Find it here: Clarity of Night

Happy New Year and Other Stuff

2008 has gone the way of all the years that came before it and we've slipped into 2009. I'll remember 2008 fondly for the most part - the sale of Hardwired Humanity and a slew of other things that saw print in 2008 made it my best year, professionally speaking, to date. It's been a bit of a roller coaster otherwise though - some really great things happened but my oldest, he's had some issues that have been a bit on the frightening side for a mama. Pneumonia is nothing to take too lightly. And we finally have him on a new med that we are hopeful will keep him from cycling back into the pneumonia again. We're very hopeful but we're also only on day two. So, we'll see how it goes. Returning to what passes for normal in my house should bring back the prompts too, as well as more interviews. I have thoroughly enjoyed the interviews so far and hope to have many more as the year goes by.

So, here's to 2009... may it be all the things you hope for. Now that my office is a bit more accessible, look for the prompts to become a little bit more regular.

Science Fiction...

I wrote a little post for BetterFiction.com and thought I'd share it. All the reasons I love science fiction...

http://www.betterfiction.com/blog/

Interview With Jaime Samms

In general, I read very little romance. I suppose I prefer my romance real. In general, I tend to read romance of the plain vanilla sort. In general is a very important phrase here - it is not limiting nor restricting. I like to sample new genres and themes whenever I can. I've read some of Jaime Samms' stories and I'm glad to have done so. I'm honored that she took the time out of her schedule to answer a few of my questions. I enjoy her writing a great deal - her descriptions are vibrant, her plot lines moving and enjoyable and her style is unique. She writes with a delicate touch and it never fails to amaze me that she can pull me into situations so far removed from what I would assume I'd enjoy and make the story move me. It's authors like Jaime Samms that emphasis the point I keep trying to make - setting limits on your reading is a horrible thing to do to yourself - you might miss the story that changes your life. Experimenting with all the flavors available at the literary buffet can only be a good thing.





SW: When did you first begin to write and why?

JS: I think the first thing I wrote was a fantasy story about tree dwelling creatures with a mysterious inheritance. I never finished it, but it did spawn Vigilante Justice and the sequels that I have in mind. I don't think I'll ever entirely leave those characters behind, though they certainly have evolved from when I invented them when I was fifteen. And no, I'm not telling you how long ago that was!

Why did I write that story? Really simple answer. I was fifteen, had no money, and had read everything in the house. If I wanted a new story to read, I had to write it myself. This, I'm sure, is why I write the way I do. I didn't want to know how the story ended, so I didn't think very far ahead. I still don’t.


SW: Was there a particular story or writer who has inspired you over the years or who sparked that initial push into writing?

JS: Kind of a three part answer.

First, my sixth grade teacher read The Hobbit to us, and part of his English class was for us to write and produce a play. He was brilliant. His encouragement showed me another way to express myself.

Second, that introduction to J.R.R.Tolkien set my reading preferences for life.

Third, before Tolkien, there were the Hardy Boys. I read every one. I don't know how much influence those books had on my writing, but they fostered my love of reading, and that's always the first step, isn't it?

SW: Of all the stories you've ever written, do you have a personal favorite?

JS: I love the very first story I ever had published, When I as Three, but doesn't everyone have a fond place in their heart for their first? Besides that story, I do hold my on-line novel heroes, Mojambe and Clancey, rather dear. I worked very hard on developing those characters, their dragons, and their world, and soon, I plan on filling out their story and posting on my website.

SW: Do you have any projects you're working on now that we should be looking out for in the future?

JS: Well, I just finished edits on Poor Boy, and it will be out on the 23rd, of course. I also have a short Christmas story ready to be published, and it will posted as a free read at Freya's Bower in the next few days. As for other publications, I have hopes, but only time will tell. I've completed a re-write for Drollerie press, so that might pan out, and I do have things I'm working on, that will be offered to Freya's Bower when they're done. We shall see!

I am also in the planning stages of a sci-fi queer anthology with three or four other authors. If the project gets off the ground and we find a publisher interested in it, that will be huge for me. The other writers are people I have a great deal of respect for, and to share pages with them will be a great experience for me. That's always assuming I can pull off sci-fi. Might be picking your brain there.


SW: When writing, do you have a specific method? Do you use an outline or are you more organic?

JS: Method? Besides plant ass in chair? Not really. The spark for a brand new story is often fragile and smoky. Finding a calm, quiet place to nurse it into something brighter, but that's about it. I like peace and quiet to write, something that's in short supply around here, but the family does their best to help me out.

As for outlining, not very often. One or two stories have started out that way, for instance, the sci-fi one I mentioned id pretty well blocked out, but there's no saying I'll stick to that. LOL. Usually, I just start writing and see where it goes. About three fourths of the way through, I usually stop, or slow down, and figure out the ending, which, again, I may stick to, or I may not.

SW: Why do you write boy/boy romance? (please correct my genre phrasing!) What first drew you to that pairing?

JS: This is a very good question, because it's very hard to answer, and I guess it won't do to say 'I don't know', will it? The first time I wrote a gay couple into a story was when I was reincarnating my tree creatures into the Prince and his Spy who now reside in the sequel to Vigilante Justice. I can't say why I made that decision, but I can remember the first time I wrote a scene with them together and realized they were more than just friends. It was a revelation, and each story I write with a m/m relationship deepens my understanding of the dynamic a little more.

Which doesn't answer why. All I can say is that I'm compelled to. Maybe it's an outlet I didn't have when I was younger and trying to figure out my own preferences. Maybe it's my way of giving voice to what I couldn't then and feel needs a voice now. I don't know. I write it because that's what comes out.

As for your phrasing, it goes by many names, depending on the particular bent, and audience. Relationships between men and aimed at men is usually referred to as gay romance (and often written by men, but not always) Romance between men and aimed at a female audience, which is more my niche, is often refered to as m/m romance. Personally, call what I write stories with a GLBT theme, because I guess I'm including my own identification in the definition.


SW: I figure most people were introduced to this particular genre with Brokeback Mountain – do you think that movie, and other independent films of a similar nature, are beneficial or detrimental to the public perception of the literary genre and the GLBT community? Why?

JS: There's a lot of debate over this, actually. Some say yes, some say no. Yes, I'm personally thrilled to see a face on a love story that isn't twenty-something, wealthy and straight. The trouble is, in a community rife with defensiveness, it almost seems no representation is good enough. A story ends badly, there's no happily ever after, characters are cliché, trite or bitter, all things that are also true in straight movies, but no one complains about it. If we're talking about reality, none of it, gay or straight, is really very realistic, but it almost seems sometimes like the GLBT community demands more than what is delivered even to straight audiences, if that makes any sense. In my opinion, putting a face on love, any love, can't be a bad thing. How the world views the GLBT community is never going to change if we keep hiding our faces and being ashamed of something that has no shame in it.


SW: Where do your story ideas come from?

JS: Thank goodness. Back to the writing stuff. Less chance of putting my foot in anything! Everywhere. When I was Three came from watching my son at a story time for toddlers at the library. There was another boy there, the same age, who made him furious, and yet, every week, he went and sat beside him. I always wondered if the other family hadn't stopped coming to the half-hour read in, would they have really become friends some day? And since I can't know the answer to that question, I wrote the story. It isn't a story about anyone in particular, it just flowed naturally from the 'what if' I posed myself. Most of them come from the same, simple beginnings, like a song lyric, a back road we like to drive on, a dream, once, Red Lipstick started from the look on a little girl's face when she glanced through the window at my daughter's dance studio. She was miserable, but she smiled and her mom just waved at her. She didn't dance very long, but it gave me a story.

SW: Do you think there will ever come a time when publishing is made entirely electronic?

JS: No. Do I think print publishing will get any more accessible to the struggling writer? Definitely not. I think it will only get harder to get into print. However, I also think e-publishing is going to become much more 'respectable'. The division between brick-and-mortar and e-publishing is going to diminish in the same way everything has gradually begun leaning more toward the electronic. How much paper money does the average person carry around with them anymore? The general public will buy e-books because they are cheaper and more easily accessible, but I don't see the complete death of print publishing. I, for one, still want the feel of a book in my hand every now and then.


Website: The fictional world of Jaime Samms: http://www.jaime-samms.net/
Blog: The Fictional World of Jaime Samms: http://jaimesamms.blogspot.com/
Live Journal: Rambling of a Resident Writing Mom: http://dontkickmycane.livejournal.com/
Fiction Journal: About a Streetwise Punk... ...and his irrepressible sidekick: http://mycaneoc.livejournal.com/ (This journal hasn't been updated in a while, but it is the story that I am working on bringing together to post as a free novel my website)

Last Day

Today is the last day to enter to win a signed copy of my book, Hardwired Humanity. The rules are simple - blog about the book, include a link to my publisher's website, and let me know you've done it! More information can be found on my Contest Page.

Good Luck!

Interview with David M Pitchford

I have a great soft spot for poetry. Poems are as close as we get to living in another skin, seeing through other eyes. More so than fiction. With fiction, we're on an adventure (usually) and there is a touch of vicariousness but poetry is a far more intimate thing. For me anyway. As it happens, poet and editor, David M Pitchford was kind enough to give me a few moments of his time to answer a few questions. When I asked these questions, I did not realize how close to the bone I would go and I am very grateful that he answered the way that he did.



SW: When did you first begin to write poetry? And why?

DMP: I wrote something vaguely approaching poetry in high school. I’ll refrain from the Freudian analysis, and just say that it began as a path toward a Romantic idealism. My first serious efforts were miserable failures to emulate Shakespeare’s sonnets – I think in about 1987 or so. Later I got caught up in Jim Morrison and from there to Rimbaud and Blake, later to the Beat Poets, and eventually went back to college to learn about poetry. My first really good poems, in my educated opinion anyway, start around . . . 1999. I write it now because my muse is a monkey on my back with a wicked cat-o-nine-tails whipping me like a runaway miscreant.

SW: Was there a particular poem or poet who has inspired you over the years or who sparked that initial push into poetry?

DMP: My love of poetry is most likely rooted in the Bible, especially the Psalms and the beatitudes part of the Sermon on the Mount. I used to have to memorize verses . . . Then there was that Seuss character. And Ms. Brenda, a student teacher, read the Tales of Ulysses to us in second grade—some kid’s version of it, and she told us it was written as a poem. I’ve had different ‘periods’ I guess, pretty much as a serious artist might. For a while it was Bukowski and Jack Keruoac. Later the Confessional Poets. A lot depends on who I’m reading at the time. I read a broad spectrum these days just to fool myself into believing I won’t have to deal with “fear of influence” that way. I was very much a fan of Billy Collins, though I am not impressed with most of what he had published by the BIG publishing house – his UP Press poems were by far more rich in content, and to me a great deal more valuable as well as being much more fun. As far as any particular poem: Coleridge’s “Kubla Kahn”. It is currently the only poem I know by rote.

SW: Of all the poems you've ever written, do you have a personal favorite?

DMP: I’m funny about the whole favorites thing – too moody or whatever. Maybe its something we can attribute to me being a Cancerian on the cusp of Gemini? Most times, I would give you some glib answer about “the one I’m writing now” or “the one I just wrote” or “the one I’m about to write”. To be honest, I can’t think of one offhand. Also, I’ve written in so many different personae (under pseudonyms that have such resonance in me that I cannot say with any conviction that they are not a person separate from myself), that I should likely choose a favorite from among them. But I’m not ready to give that game away just yet . . . Let’s just say that my favorite poem is the one that touched the most people – and I’ll likely never know which that is.

SW: How did After The Vows come about? What inspired the creation of the collection?

DMP: Well. It was kind of a misunderstanding of mine, and a sort of friendly competition. Basically, I wrote Sio a sonnet and she replied with a sonnet. Then we started passing sonnets back and forth like notes between lovers in classrooms. At some point, it just sort of occurred to me that we could have our own little version of “Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning” with our dialogue of sonnets. It just sort of evolved on its own from there over the next four or five years or more.

SW: What did you find most difficult about creating After the Vows?


DMP: Nothing. It was very organic, almost growing itself. Most of the challenge was in being patient enough to find a publisher instead of going the self-publishing route.

SW: Did you and Siobhan find it daunting to share words so personal, so intimate with the whole of the world?


DMP: Not at all. Not for me, anyway. For my part, I’m just sort of talking about things I think lots of other folks experience but maybe have trouble articulating. Siobhan’s much more intimate as a poet than I am. Much more natural. She speaks, I think, much more to the heart and soul of things. I’m just a guy that sorts things out intellectually so that it makes sense to me, and then put it out there for others to see if maybe we can learn to understand ourselves and each other a little better. Besides . . . how many folks out there really have any idea of who I am other than the name of the front of a few books and a bunch of words and ideas shared here and there? I’m embarrassed as heck by my own tendency toward road-rage because that to me is very ugly; however, I think that showing love and affection and understanding and tolerance should be encouraged and practiced every chance you get.

SW: Do you have any projects you're working on now that we should be looking out for in the future?

DMP: I’m working on a collection of ekphrastic poems. Two collections, actually. They are mostly sonnets written ‘about’ paintings (lots of examples on my blogs). One collection is dedicated to the nude works of William Adolphe Bouguereau. The other is a hodge-podge mostly of paintings that deal with classical themes, especially mythology.

Most of my writing time, though, is dedicated to fiction these days. I work best on novels, but occasionally manage to restrain myself and write a short story. It may be a while before anyone sees my novels, though. I’m still too close to them . . .

SW: When writing your poetry, do you have a specific method? Do you chose form first and then find the words or is it the other way around?

DMP: I use whatever method is working. I’m a pluralist pretty much about everything, so I really like to have several ways to approach whatever I’m approaching. With poetry, that means being able to sit down and improve, to outline first, to riff on a picture, to plot out . . . whatever works for that particular poet. Catharsis. Expression. Exploration. Form should chose itself according to content. I write very well lately in the Petrarchan sonnet, and I think it is largely because I think in the manner of Petrarchan sonnets. In sort of an intuition-toward-rhetoric direction or the other way around.

SW: I have noticed a thread of mythology in your work that really appeals to me, as a lover of myth myself. Did you set out to work lore into your poems or is it that the myths inspire you?

DMP: The mythology simply gives me a way to express more via allegory and allusion. I love mythology. I’m a big believer in the power of archetypes, and most of them are found in mythology – all mythology, not just what we consider Classical Western Mythology, i.e. Greek and Roman. Mythology is both the root and the mother of poetry. It takes a long time to get really comfortable with it as a tool for poetry only because it tends to draw a great deal of attention and, often, criticism. Inspiration is all around us. I take it from whatever is at hand or on top of my head, the tip of my tongue, the shallows or depths of my heart . . . but mostly these days it comes pretty much straight from my subconscious onto the page. The conscious part is usually done before the fingers hit the keyboard – or the pen the paper.

SW: Making Dust Angels in the Middle of an Unkempt Floor at Because We Write really spoke to me, made my heart ache a little and I have to ask, what inspired it?

DMP: I was looking back at myself as a small child. I think that poem was partly inspired by a Ted Kooser poem about an abandoned house in Kansas (hold on, I’ll go look it up) . . . Poot! My copy of Signs is out on loan. Anyway, the poem came from a feeling I had one morning that somehow combined the Kooser poem with that Kidman movie The Others. Bobby was my name for the first 3.5 years of my life and changed when my stepdad adopted my half-brother and me. Okay . . . it’s autobiographical, except Mom caught me trying to sneak the Bobcat pistol into the bathroom with me. It is very difficult for an undergrown six-year-old to hide even a small pistol in his briefs. I was going to the bathroom with it so that I wouldn’t leave a mess for anyone to clean up. The poem is kind of a “what if Mom hadn’t caught me” scenario. I have no idea what actually now stands at 900 South Delaware Street in York, Nebraska. I’d likely freak out to find that York College erected a daycare there. I’ve not been there since . . . 1973-ish. Not even sure York College survives to this day; it was the Christian community college my dad went to before we moved to Searcy, Arkansas for a whole new concept of Southern-fried hell while my folks attended Harding College – now Harding University.

And, seriously, even into the 90s, my folks would tell me someone had contacted them to say the old stump was still producing coins, coins which I had stolen from the Helping Hands thrift store across the street and from my mother’s Avon cash (this all took place over several months in very small quantities). So how do you feel about the poem now? That one really was a hard one for me to share – far more intimate than a few love poems or a sonnet about anything true and good and worthy of reliving.

Thank you, Sarah. Answering your questions has been a delight. At times a bit nostalgic and melancholy, but a delight nonetheless. My greatest hope and ambition is to inspire others and maybe teach them a little insight or a new perspective here or there or anywhere. I want to share what’s good in me so that it grows. Poems are the spores of me, dandelion seeds windblown to bless others’ yards with yellow flowers. Sure, not everyone likes those yellow flowers, but they get some use out of them one way or another . . .

David M Pitchford
21 November 2008

I'd like to make a note here about Dust Angels - the poem spoke to me. I've battled depression for a very long time and Dust Angels resonated with me, stuck to me, in a way that was at once too familiar and separate enough to be not me. I'm not sure if that makes sense to anyone but me but it's a poem I'll remember for a very long time to come.


David M Pitchford: http://www.fringemonkey.org and http://bitterhermit.wordpress.com
Siobhan M Pitchford: http://mother2rah.wordpress.com
After the Vows: http://www.cyberwizardproductions.com/diminuendo/vows.html




Read some of his poems:

Making Dust Angels in the Middle of an Unkempt Floor

Bathing Before Degas