Truly. Deeply. Madly

“Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness.”
— Alejandro Jodorowsky

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Sunstar by `scotto on deviantART

See you all at sunrise tomorrow!
May you set aside your sorrows on the Holly King's pyre tonight, and wake to find in abundance the hope, the strength, the patience, the cleverness, and the courage you need to see your way to Spring. May your songs ring truer, your step fall lighter, your pride answer honestly in your favor, and your shame serve only to teach you better.

May the work of your mind inspire you.
May the work of your hands please you.
May the work of your voice encourage you.
May the work of your heart comfort you.
May the work of your back shelter you.
May the work of your feet carry you to where you need to be.

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cathouse_mary sent me a note about her friend cfchica, who has a one-year old kitten named Noelle with some terrible vet bills mounting up around her. This is an all too familiar story of someone with little resources and a good heart doing their best to see that an innocent is given at least a fighting chance, and while I don't know the lady personally, I do know and sympathize with the painfully familiar story.

So I will direct you to cathouse_mary and cfchica for the precise details -- a game of 'telephone' from blog to blog can only distort things, after all, -- and ask that if there's flex in your flow, see if you can't help out a little.

Cheers, and here's a prayer from me that all your loved ones, whether in skin, feathers, or fur, are well, happy, and safe this holiday season.
Slainte.

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So... that noise a little while ago? The high pitched one that woke your pet up or maybe sent it scurrying to hide under the bed? That was the sound of me opening the e mail that just told me that my book, One Saved to the Sea, has won a FIRST PLACE 2012 Rainbow Award for best Lesbian Paranormal/Horror!!!

Cue Clue losing her SHIT, y'all!


Here's what the reviewer said about it: Wonderful. The plot did reach a point of expectancy for me, until then, I was delightfully unsure where this story was going. The writer’s superb imagery pulled me into each scene. I would read more from this author, and this is the first time I have said that during this contest. I am that impressed with her work. –David

I just! I can't! I just -- there are no words! I can't even -- the ability to can; I have lost it! HOOOLLLLLD MEEEEE!!!!!

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Since it's happening ON my birthday again this year, I'm considering the Troy Victorian Stroll to TOTALLY be my very own birthday 'do. And thusfar, here's how the costuming is laying out as of right now.
will wear his Dragoon's coat as usual, with the shiny new pith helmet he got for it at Arisia last year.
Me -- It's supposed to be around 50 tomorrow, so I should be fine in the green linen walking suit again, so long as I can keep people off the goddamned train this time.
naturespirit will be in the cranberry coat with the brown and red walking skirt, and the brown pillbox hat. (Note to self: She'll need a hat pin!)
hotspurre has the tweed suit and brown bowler, and needs nothing from my closets to make his outfit go.
dulcinbradbury is going to be joining us this year, and she'll be in the Red Queen skirt with my green Turkish shawl over top, a black velvet jacket, and the new green hat we made for her this week. Her man, if he joins us, won't be in costume, so I don't have to worry about him, though I could produce a newsie and peacoat do for him easily enough if he changed his mind.
Roommate of the above has his own naval officer's coat, and I can loan him a top hat if he decides to go.
shankyknitter will be borrowing a bonnet, and the grey wool spencer jacket to go along with the rest of what she already has.

That leaves only light_in_motion and blimix, if they decide to come, and if they decide they'd like to dress up with the rest of us maroons, and I still have my green hat for her, as well as the painted velvet opera cloak, and I'm fairly certain the green piper's jacket would fit him better than it fits me, if he wanted to wear it.

So yeah. This is totally do-able, so long as I can make a few more hat pins before tomorrow -- I've only got the one, and there's only the one bonnet that can stay on without a pin's intervention.

I might just be excited about this!
Whee!

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It's been years since I last did this, and I feel like giving it a go again. The world is full of things that remind us of failure, of insufficiency, and of the up-fuckery we never forgive ourselves for. We don't need more of that, really, because all that cack is vastly overweighed by the ways in which we are all of us, each of us, unutterably competent, brilliant, resourceful, and awesome.

You are good at something. You are REALLY good at something. Everyone is, and you aren't an exception here. Maybe, like Spider, you can bake bread under any circumstances barring vacuum. Maybe, like Stasia and Marion, you are a total domiknitrix and can make anything out of yarn and needles. Maybe, like me, you have a way with words that can really move people, make their lives better, make the world better. Maybe, like Ken, you're an amazing driver who can all but make a car dance. Maybe, like Neevel, you have a skill with a camera that makes people spontaneously break into dreamstate. Maybe, like Shelley, you're a rocket scientist. Maybe, like S00j, you can sing people into tears. You can do at least one thing really, really well.

I want you to tell me what it is. Tell me what your talent is. Tell me how you're awesome. Tell me how you rock.

Don't be shy, because I already know that you do.
Yes, shill this post.
Yes, send other folks over here to tell me what's awesome about them too.
Yes, answer more than once.
Yes, agree with, second, and witness other people's replies.
Yes, believe it.

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You guys are amazing. First night of a possible 55 to raise the money and we're halfway there, between Indiegogo and the paypal donations.

a. mazing.

You've made me cry this morning. (Dominus, too!) I hope you're proud of yourselves!!!

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Godric was transferred from the emergency vet's care to the cardiologist's care this morning. Ultrasounds of his heart revealed that in addition to fluid in his lungs and pericardia, he also has quite advanced heart disease, and a blood clot about a centimeter wide in his left atrium.

That said, his night in the oxygen box improved his breathing substantially, and he's begun to respond to the diuretic drugs they've got him on to try and drain his lungs. He's alert to his surroundings, able to eat, and able to lick my wrist when they let me visit him, (and chew at his catheter, the little punk), but he still starts to pant when they take him out of the box for too long. So he's staying there today while they get him started on the drugs that he'll be on for the rest of his life. And that could be a year, or it could be three days. With that clot in his heart, it's impossible to know.

So those of you who are sending energy, praying, and doing long distance reiki, there's your target: that blood clot, and the fluids that are keeping him from getting a breath.

This is also, obviously, going to be a hideously expensive process. So please don't be surprised or offended if I sling up the tip jar on some poems and stories and songs in the next few weeks. We'll have just about maxed our pet credit card by the end of today alone, and with me generating little to no dollars, that's a lot for our budget arrangements to soak. There's never a good time for it, but against the ongoing recession and the devastation left in Hurricane Sandy's wake, I am conscious that charity is getting hit pretty hard right now. I like to tell myself that tips are different, but we'll see how that works out.

In the meantime, the take-away point to all of this is;


"I'm not dead yet!"

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This is just about the very last post I want to be making tonight. Or any night, in fact, but I do not get a vote on it, so here goes.



Brother Godric, my mighty hunter, my kinky bondage boy, my flaky, flighty flame point siamese basket case who drinketh of the waters and knoweth nothing, is fighting for his life in the emergency vet's office tonight.

He is in profound heart failure, with fluid in his lungs and his pericardia; weak, cold, and barely able to breathe. The vets are treating him as they can, with drugs and oxygen, and in the morning, if he's still with us, they'll do an ECG to see what more they can determine. It could be a matter of a year or two, a few more months, or sometime tonight. We really don't know, and I'm just incapable of the objectivity needed to make any kind of prediction on it right now.



We knew he had a trick heart, and that someday it would fail him. We knew it would most likely also be sudden. But there's really no way you can prepare yourself for something like this, no matter how much you 'know'. And right now, all I know for sure is that I can do basically nothing useful at all for him, though I'd give him a year off my life if it could possibly help him through tonight.

That's not how it works though.
I'll let you know what happens.

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Weather, man. It's a weird, weird thing.

Apparently, Sandy literally tiptoed around the Hudson River valley last night. I mean, kind of hooked right around us so that we got at most a couple of wind gusts and a gentle, soaking rain overnight. Today we have some gentle breezes, a gorgeous blue sky with a few high, white clouds overtop, and a fairly giddy sense of a bullet dodged.

NYC, however, got whalloped.

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This is all dulcinbradbury's fault. And it's BRILLIANT!

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I have some new Friends reading these lists, so I figure it's only fair to point out that I have a tradition of avoiding all Internet reading on September 11th every year. This is so I don't begin to froth at the mouth, destroy whole nations with the power of my mind, and generally Use My Powers For Evil over the radiant, foetid heap of Stupid that inevitably crawls out of the cracks on this date.



So if you've posted anything today that you think I ought to read, or that you'd just like for me to read, you'll need to tell me about it in as many words. Otherwise I'm just not going to see it.

Sorry!

On the good side, I'm getting words again today, so it's not ALL bad, is it?

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People who go looking for seamstresses to make costume pieces for you -- you do know that asking openly for an artisan to copy another artisan's design for you on the cheap is kinda shitty, right? You're asking for custom made clothing, NOT churned out in a sweatshop. There is no 'on the cheap' available for this kind of shit, unless your seamstress pays herself significantly less than minimum wage for her time and efforts. On top of that, the person who actually created the design and is selling it on the website where you found it has already done the heavy lifting -- that is, drafting the pattern, running the slopers, testing the fit and sizing, and making sure everything works. That is where the money goes, that 'profit' you're imagining tacked onto the end of the coat you don't want to pay $300 for -- it goes for the weeks of work and burned materials it takes to make a garment look that good.

And then there's the fact that you're asking an artist in their own right to rip another artist off, and even if they have no real ethical problem with it -- which I have a hard time fathoming, -- it's just fucking insulting to the artist in front of you. Have you even thought of asking if maybe THEY have some designs of their own that you'd like to see, or did you just march in with your photo of a velvet Elvis painting and say 'I want one like this, but in blue'?

When you go looking to commission a seamstress, you are either getting a professional, or you're getting a passionate hobbyist. Both of these deserve more respect than that. Both of them have to cover the costs of upkeep on their equipment, both of those have to pay very high prices for fabric, (you know, not having the corporate purchasing power of Tommy Hilfiger, who can get his fabrics at pennies per yard because he's buying a few miles at a time, and getting it from sweatshop fibermills in third world countries too, for instance.) even higher prices for things like buttons and buckles, and at the end of the day, they don't usually even get the fame for what they've done, because the person WEARING it is going to get the attention.

The price for a custom garment is going to be higher than what you'll find at Wal Mart. So either cope with that, plan for that, and respect the rights of local artisans to make a basic living on the fruits of their labors, or get your ass to Goodwill, find something not too far off, and pick up a glue gun, stapler, some safety pins, buttons, and brass paint and learn to fake it yourself. You'll probably spend about as much either way, but at least that second way you might come away with some respect and understanding for what it takes to make the clothes you wear.

(Rar, dammit!)

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I remember kid-who-was-me being scared of all kinds of things.
Scared of spiders, scared of dogs, scared of people shouting, scared of tall people looming,(gosh, where could those last two have come from?) scared of falling, scared of bats, TERRIFIED of being lost, or of fingers pointing near the face...

It's odd to remember that, how paralyzing her fear was, how she'd collapse into helpless tears at someone who wasn't much bigger than she was, merely threatening to make her put her hand near a spider web. How she'd hang back on the sidewalk, freaking out because she needed to get past a yard with a barking dog in it, and she couldn't, just couldn't do it.

One of the... hmm, can I legitimately call this a benefit of Multiplicity? Yeah, I think that's actually fair. One of the benefits to how I came together is that that terrified child was a casualty. I 'lost' one person out of the collective, and it was her -- the one who was paralyzed at the slightest terror. I've told this story before; she was a suicide when I was 13, left alone in the exam room after the doctors took the rape kit and went to talk to my mother. She checked out, quit, and went under, never to surface again. Her replacement... well, let's just say that Righ had a personal vendetta against fear.

After that time, whenever anything made me so much as tremble, Righ would be turning on it, staring it down, and taking apart its power, and spitting at the pieces. She caught spiders and put them gently outside. She shouted down barking dogs, and chased them off when they charged at her. She gorgon-stared and spat venom when people tried physical intimidation tactics, and often made them flinch and cower with how vicious she could be. She even went through RK surgery on her eyes, trembling and holding her breath all the way, but determined that that phobia was going down, dammit.

About the only one she didn't manage to really take apart was the fear of being lost, helpless, dependent on the goodwill of strangers to find safety. That button got shorted out in Munich, when I was trying to get to Vienna by myself, and while that's a funny story (in retrospect,) it's also a long one. I no longer freeze up when I'm lost, though I do fumble, make bad snap decisions, and get flustered trying to sort it out. Bats still bother me though. I'm not scared of them, but I think I'm probably always going to flinch when they're flying near.

And so the fears I have left now are abstract ones. Fear of the madness of human crowds; fear of the cruelty and sadism of which humans are so readily capable; fear of the consequences of my species. Fears that can't be disarmed by trapping spiders or shouting at dogs. It does explain some of my more... hmm, Gryffindor tendencies though, I guess, that habit of turning and charging into my fears with hobnail boots set to 'crush'. Righ was definitely a Gryffindor though, so it's fitting that her legacy to me should be a sort of courage -- even if it's selfishly motivated. It's in my best interests that my fears not be tools available to people who want to hurt me, and so they must be tools in my own hands instead.

Which, I guess, leads me to the actual point of this long, self-reflective screed; a point that is, I feel, somewhat critical to consider and meditate upon in this election year. Fear, and the motives of people who want you to be afraid.

My philosophy is this: People who want you to be afraid have something to gain from it. This is almost always to your own cost and detriment, but those who preach fear are doing it to take something away from you. And when you comply, when you buy into the fear, you are giving it up to them without contest.

People who preach economic fear this year are hiding the fact that the stock market is essentially two points down from an ALL TIME HIGH. And they're doing it because if the middle classes actually realized that, they'd have irrefutable proof that trickle down economics is essentially a pyramid scheme, and they're being robbed. Deliberately, systematically, maliciously robbed. But so long as we all believe the recession is happening in the finance world, we won't stand up and demand an accounting of where our money's gone.

People who preach immigrant fear are hiding the fact that most Americans lose their jobs to foreigners because their employers send the jobs overseas, not because immigrants come here and take them away. They are sheltering those who send American jobs to overseas sweatshops, and deferring blame onto people who are doing jobs that most white Americans consider beneath them, and which couldn't support a family anyway, because those employers won't pay above sweatshop levels when they don't have to. And they don't have to so long as Americans consider immigrants scary.

People who preach vagina-fear and breeding control are (poorly) hiding the fact that they know damned well they can't get along without women, and that terrifies them. They are outnumbered by their mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters, and dependent upon them in ways that make them scared, and so they want to control their women as resources and subjects rather than meet them as peers.

As for the women who preach the above? I have two words: Stockholm Syndrome.

People who preach fear of the devil are hiding the fact that humans are horrible enough without some invisible goatman to suggest horrid things to them. While people who preach fear of god are hiding the fact that every time they tell you what God wants you to do, it actually profits them.

Even the mother teaching her kid to be afraid of the lit stove is profiting in the small matter of controlling potential injury to her child. But teaching respect for power or risk, and reason-based deduction of potential consequence is not the same as preaching FEAR. Because respect is based in understanding, whereas fear is based in assumption. The chemistry teacher who tells you what liquid nitrogen can do to human flesh is attempting to instill respect for the tools. The pundit that tells you that all Muslims want to kill you because you're white is preaching fear, and he definitely has an agenda in mind. (As recent history has handily proven, I believe.)

People who preach fear are profiting from your belief in it. Always. Sometimes the profit is tangible, spending green, but more often it's just in the coin of power, but there's always someone who's walking away the richer for your every sweating moment. Like taking candy from a baby -- easy, when you don't care about a little crying, or when you can get the kid to think they don't want the candy. Maybe because the candy is 'dangerous.'

But children grow up, and the fear response should grow up too. So in this election year in the US, I suggest that we all examine the fear responses our would-be leaders are asking us to have. Examine just who is it that profits from your flinch, from your hesitation, from your cautious refusal to engage. Who is it that's getting rich from your fears, and what could you accomplish if you were to refuse compliance with that fear? The answers to those two questions, more than anything, will point you at the truths you can believe.

And with those truths in hand, you should then cast your votes -- with your brain, not your jerking knee.

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So I just, on a whim, sent Medusa's Comb to Strange Horizons.

Now, it's entirely possible I might be punching well above my weight there, but I figured what the hell! It can't go over worse than when I tried to submit Hoard to The New Yorker. And hopefully I'll actually get a rejection out of it if they don't want it, instead of a deafening, soul-crushing silence.

Luckily though, if they don't want it, there's a fair chance that Goblin Fruit might like it. It's neither too long, like Hoard, nor is it in rhymed verse, like so much of my work, (and can I just say how sad it makes me to learn that most publications are already so prejudiced against structured verse that they say so outright in their submissions? I'm good at rhyming verse -- I love rhyming verse, and it just kills me that the publishing world doesn't want to see it. But ah well; I made more in tips for Normal City than I got paid for my last short story sale... but alas, that particular strength is an irrelevant one in the modern poetry market, it seems.)

Still, I've sent my newest baby off to fly. Here's hoping she doesn't fall on her lovely, wriggly head before she gets her wings under her, eh?

*Crosses fingers and hopes not to suck.*

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So my book released today.

No wait, I didn't say that right.

MY FUCKING BOOK IS AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE! TODAY!!!
So... um. Yeah. I'll just leave this here then.

One Saved to the Sea by Catt Kingsgrave. (from Circlet Press.)

One Saved to the Sea by Catt Kingsgrave. (On Amazon.)

One Saved to the Sea by Catt Kingsgrave. (On Barnes & Noble.)

One Saved to the Sea by Catt Kingsgrave. (On Smashwords.)

Also available on Smashwords, All Romance e books, and Rainbow e books, and soon at the Apple store, Fictionwise, and Google ebooks too.

All yours for literally less than a cup of coffee!

(PS: Shill this post, darlings! Shill it far and wide -- E books from unknown authors need all the word of mouth help they can get!)

(PSS: Reviews are love!)

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Yesterday had the kind of heat and humidity that drove me out of Texas -- the kind that forces me to hide behind a shield of artificial air so the migraine fairy won't crush my brainmeats again, like she did on Saturday. Then there were storms. And now it feels like home again.

I didn't realize how beautiful it was until the power went out (squirrel suicide, alas. he had so much to live for...) and I had to move my laptop outside. Power's back on now, but I've opened up the house, put fans into all the windows, and am still doing the day's work on the front porch, about three meters away from my shrub-rose-niggurauth (she's trying to take over the world, you see,) listening to movie soundtracks on my ipod, and reveling in life's small scale while the large scale will let me.

I want to remember days like this. Days when the air is perfect, and the horribleness of people is out of sight for just a little while. Days when people don't use their friendship with me to hurt and shame their lovers. Days when people don't deliberately confuse religion with hate crime in my hearing. Days when people debate the political ethics of shooting unarmed people as if it's ever all right to do somewhere else, and I don't have to listen to them and die a little with every word. Where danger isn't here, where terror isn't here, where rage isn't here. Days when Peace holds sway, and even the squabbles of the cats are minor and playful.

These are the days that matter; the template upon which I build the future -- aiming past all the strife and flame and noise to this calm stretch of green hours. I do not aim for ignorance, or even blindness in the future, never think that; instead, what I'm aiming for is that this sense of peace, this sense of being able to handle what will arise, of not living in fear will become Real. The genuine truth of the future for the world I consider my nation. That the peace today's full of will become the baseline for us, and the strife, stupidity, hatefulness and evil that we're capable of will be the exception rather than the rule.

Today feels like a blessing to me, like a benediction from my Mother, who thought I might need a cookie after a rough time at school. Here; cookies are better when you share them, right? So have a wish from me.

I wish you calm today, I wish you peace today, and the smell of wild roses.

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adistantsun contacted me today, to tell me that she's done my story, Angels of the Silences as a Podfic.

I've gone out and listened to it, and dear Reader, I could not stop grinning! It's a lovely reading, and I feel the utmost confidence in saying that you'll simply love it. I know I did.

So here's the link to her post. Go and have a listen if you've got ten minutes and want a smile and a bit of Puppy-Love to warm your flinty little hearts. (It can't all be Snarry, after all, can it?)

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Happy Lughnassadh!

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The Summer edition of Goblin Fruit</i> is now available.

And this is very important, because I have a poem in it!

Tit Tot is a little something that none of you have read, but which all of you SHOULD go and read, especially since it will cost you nothing to do so. Also, there is a recording of me reading the poem, which I think many of you will quite like.

So yeah. Go! Click! Read the whole issue, because there's some awesome stuff in this one.

Aw, who'm I kiddin? Go read my poem because of Reasons!!! Just go read it. And love it. For Reasons.

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