News:

No writing news, but in personal news, I’m walking, swimming, and up to 30 minutes on the elliptical, so I decided to take a chance on playing pickleball with my next-door neighbors. Everywhere else hurt, but my injured leg did not (although with compensating muscles stiff and aching, my leg ended up having some trouble for a few days).

It’s a helluva hellish season to start playing, and I need to figure out how to better protect my face from the sun, since it burned again despite sunscreen, but I’m already getting better second time around. It’s a lot of fun. (And hopefully less stiffness and aching this time. After the injury and due to other experiences, I suspect I’m slower than normal with muscle recovery in general. I feel like I’m not old enough for it to just be getting old, but with 40 creeping up in the next few years, maybe I’m wrong.)

Works in Progress:

I did the math and wished I hadn’t. Here, halfway through the year, I only have an 8% acceptance rate, two of them no-pay and only one was HWA pro rate. It generally hasn’t been a very successful year, and when I’m unemployed, the rejections hit harder from a financial standpoint (I did recently have a very nice personal rejection, though). There’s still another half year to go, and I know this is just how it sometimes goes. I have to keep reminding myself that the universe doesn’t actually punish desperation.

I’m this close to finishing Masque at almost 110K words. Period and post-flu fatigue got the best of me and pulled my daily word counts farther back than I would like. I will not be able to finish writing and editing the novel this month, given that we’re only a few days from July, so I’ll set it aside to edit later, which I think might be for the best. Sometimes I like it, but sometimes I think I’m the most horrible writer ever, which tells me to put some distance between us. I’m not entirely happy with the ending, but I get the feeling I’ll like it better upon the next read-through.

I am, however, really proud of myself for writing Masque, for taking the chance on a freaking ambitious story—in style and scope, given historicals (even alts) are not my forte—and committing myself to it with exceptional discipline (until ill health hit, but that’s not my fault and I shouldn’t penalize myself for it). More importantly, for finally tackling something I’ve wanted to do for a long, long time. I don’t know if anything will come of it. I came up with the idea pre-COVID, but there’s no getting away from the influence of COVID in the novel, and people might simply not be interested in plague stories for a long while. But I’m still proud of myself for doing it.

Books I’m Reading:

Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin
The Tommyknockers by Stephen King

Things I’m Listening To:

Nocturne playlist
Old Favorites playlist
Bach organ music

Things I’m Watching:

The Little Mermaid (2023)
Ghosts (US) series (finished)
The Rookie series
Kitchen Nightmares series
Summer Baking Championship series
The Amazing Race series
America’s Got Talent series
Abbott Elementary series
CSI: Miami series
CSI: NY series
CSI series
Supernatural series
Murder, She Wrote series

Poem of the Week: This lyric poem was written last year as a way to process the 2016 Pulse Massacre, 49 dead. I’m always late to the processing party. But it seems like a good way to conclude Pride Month.

a moment to remember
lifetime to forget
branded brass and
dust to dust
envy to ecstasy
a crater of regret

karma in a coma
mad fate lurks with teeth
slaughterhouse wild
kills and cries
an indifferent sky
and carnage beneath

you taught us to die
you’d rather we lie
so we fight to live
what more blood and sacrifice
would you have us give
no matter where
we need to hide
we are still alive

mirrors shatter
to spiderweb glass
on the dance floor
let all of the
othered world burn
a multicolored mass

heads held high
under brick-dust rust
a hundred needles
dirty for nothing
silent genocide
held breath hushed

you taught us to die
you’d rather we lie
so we fight to live
what more blood and sacrifice
would you have us give
no matter where
we need to hide
we are still alive

a moment of silence
what did quiet get us
dance dance revolution
blow out your eardrums
no thoughts no prayers
don’t let them forget us

we’ve both got rings
show us where to sign
where you get yours
and we get ours
and no one else
gets what’s mine

maybe sometimes we’re sex
and sometimes we’ve love
nothing wrong to hold
to sink and close
eyes in the dark
can’t that be enough

you taught us to die
you’d rather we lie
so we fight to live
what more blood and sacrifice
would you have us give
no matter where
we need to hide
we are still alive