Christmas Greetings!

Dear friends,

I suddenly realized that, if any of you were to visit the blog during this week, there would be nothing for you to see!

I'm still one of those pesky agnostics / atheists, and as such don't celebrate Christian festivals with the believing crowd.  But I was brought up in a family that went obsessively to church, and sang hymns and stuff until our heads came off, so I still (surreptitiously) send greetings to anyone who happens to be around, and it cheers me up, and it cheers them up, and ... you know?  It is full of goodness!

Earlier today, one of my friends mentioned that she had heard Chanticleer singing on the radio while she was driving over.  Chanticleer is an awesome a cappella ensemble from California, whose records are to die for.  So I looked on Amazon for a Christmas CD.  I have one Christmas CD from them, so I thought, I'll send out for this latest one.  Well, guess what.  They have a dozen Christmas CDs!  Now I feel ignorant.

I wish I had put together a Christmas playlist consisting of all the music I mention in connection with Christmas in any of my stories, but I don't know how to do that.  One can't be a recluse and know all about technology as well.

This year, viewed against the background of the past few years, stands out as a really great year.  Not a fantastic year, but still a good one.  I don't want to appear to be a Pollyanna, seeing something good in every situation, but I am a sort of glass-half-full kind of person, though it was tough to be me these last few years.  (Even now, I'm horrified to read about the women in Iran who are being bullied and killed by government-sanctioned violence.) I firmly believe that it would be wrong for the US to interfere militarily.  But it is becoming clear that it is wrong for any government to enforce religious behavior.  (And some folks in state governments in the US are doing exactly that, with abortion.)

I fervently hope that the goodwill of the holidays will extend to Washington, but I'm afraid that many of the most aggressive actors are preoccupied with winning elections and nothing else, and they'll continue to make points as long as they can.

Kay

 

Stories Set in the Distant Past

One of my earliest stories was Prisoner!, partly inspired by a story by G. A. Henty, a successful author of the last century.  My story was set in the Bronze Age of an alternate earth.  What's interesting about it at the moment is that, quite unconsciously, I began to slip into a voice that was slightly old-fashioned; a little stilted, as if to emphasize that the story was set far back in time.  I didn't do it deliberately--at least, I don't think I did.  One of the ways I did this was to use the word 'indeed' a little more often.  I wrote two stories set in an alternative earth, in a bronze age, and now I have got to go back and check whether I wrote in a stilted idiom in both stories.  I think I used contractions very sparingly (writing 'do not' instead of 'don't', and so forth).  Most readers would not even notice that I was doing this.  I wonder whether 'writing gurus' frown on this sort of thing.

Anyway, that's all I've got; hope my readers have a happy holiday season!

Kay.

Being Consistent

I'm not the most consistent person I know, not by a long shot.  But I'm noticing that young people today---people younger than me, anyway---take being inconsistent to alarming new lengths.  So the place on the Web to which I go when I want my daily dose of (indirect) human contact is DeviantArt, which is a sort of poor man's social media exchange.  At base, it is a center for artists to display their work.  If you're a young artist, and you want your work to be seen, and you can't get your work shown in the Louvre, for whatever reason, DA is where you go.  So I'm subjected to a stream of art that's not really bad art, but art drawn essentially by amateurs, kids who like to draw or paint, and usually don't like to do anything else.

Now, that's a very broad generalization; there are lots of DA members who are erudite in their own way, especially artists from Japan, China, Thailand, Indonesia, The Philippines, Asia generally, who seem to be well acquainted with the classics; alarmingly so.  Just a quick look at some of the names of Manga and Anime heroes will reveal dozens of names happily borrowed from Greek and Roman legends, with casually swapped genders, and so on.

To make matters worse, there are countless young people in Europe and America, who are absolutely devoted to this neo-mythology manufactured by Japanese artists and their admirers, who know even less of the classical mythology from which it derives.  So there is a huge variety of degrees of consistency in their work.

Poseidon, people who know their Greek myths well know, is one of the most ancient Greek gods, the older generation than Zeus and company.  But it is quite possible that a young artist would create an artwork depicting a young, female, modern-looking Poseidon, with wings, and a halo, brandishing an elaborate sword, and sporting a holster with a revolver in it.  Well, it's all art; none of us believe (and pray to) these gods anymore, so who cares?  How important is it to be consistent about imaginary personages?  Is it important that Poseidon was a sea god, and would never be seen on land?  But people brought up on the Greek myths will wince if Poseidon's essential maleness is not preserved.

Leaving all that aside, an aspect of consistency that is most frequently violated is with anachronism.  Venus, wearing platform shoes.  Luckily, the Virgin Mary has--so far--not been represented wearing a leotard and a bra, with stilettos.  (DA artists seem respectful of religious figures from modern religions.).  The female characters invariably wear heels, even if they're supposed to be ready to fight.

You have to have a robust sense of humor to take these peculiarities as a matter of course.

Kay

Misspelled Words

Today I saw--after a long time--a word that is often misspelled, and by implication, mispronounced.  Why?  Because people (or is it mainly women?  Haha; don't hate me unless you must!) often spell their words somewhat influenced by their pronunciation.

The word of the moment is arctic.  In other words, things and happenings described as in The Arctic.  The Arctic is a sea surrounding the North Pole.  But there is (or used to be, anyway; who knows what's going on now?) a thick layer of snow and ice over the water, which meant that many folk thought it was a continent.

The (wrong) spelling I saw, and which has kicked off this tirade (or Rant, if you prefer,) was artic, which is one letter short.  The missing letter is 'c', which is often not pronounced by our (American) fellow-countrymen--and -women--and so the word is frequently misspelled.

I wish I knew the etymology (the derivation and origins) of the word, because knowing that usually makes it easier to remember the correct spelling.

There was another instance of a horrible substitution, a wrong word that sounded vaguely like the right one.  But I can't remember what it was, so I have to reluctantly let it go.

Also, added to the end of 'Homonyms' : glimpsed vs. glanced.  I forgot to say, though, that glanced needs an extra preposition, like glanced at, or glanced through.  Glimpsed doesn't need an extra word, but you might want to use one for some extra purpose.  (I need to add some italics to this post; hope I remember!)

K.

Not in Our Stars

The fault is not in our stars, but in Amazon.  The time has finally come, for me to abandon (literally walk away, which I guess from the musical term andante, which means at a walking pace) Goodreads.

Goodreads was initially quite a reasonable idea: to be a website where readers reviewed the books they read.  But, inevitably, Amazon bought the site, and now it is powered by the online bookseller, whose programmers are less interested in making the site (and its software) robust and easy to use, than it is in driving up the reviews of books that Amazon sells.

I headed up to Goodreads earlier today, hoping to leave a glowing review of Nancy Springer, the author of the Enola Holmes series of books about the younger sister of the fabulous Sherlock Holmes, the first two of which were adapted into a fine movie on Netflix, starring Millie Bobbie Brown.  But I could not even find a reference to Ms. Springer, who is a celebrated author of fiction for young adults (and even their older cousins and aunts).

I suppose it could be that I was trying to navigate the site on my phone, rather than on a computer.  Amazon's programmers write such clunky software that it's hard to believe that it's ineptness.  No, they're trying to pull off some dastardly sneaky tricks on both their shoppers, and on these reviewers.

For years, they hosted reviews of their books right on their site.  But now they vet the reviews, and remove both the insulting ones (in line with 'hate speech' principles coming out of Washington) and unflattering reviews, which discourage sales.  All their books just cannot be excellent; at least some have to be clunkers.

I'm not clever enough to argue the case against allowing Amazon to police it's own reviews, but Goodreads is no longer any use to me.

Robotic Art Creation: AI

I'm finally talking about something that's been around for a year or two, namely art using Artificial Intelligence.  The basic principle--as far as I can understand it--is to give a program lots of images to 'eat' and digest, after which you can ask it to make a picture of a certain kind.

Obviously, it isn't enough to just shove a pile of images down it's throat.  The images have to be categorized.  For instance, if you're giving it geometric shapes, you've got to tell it: these are triangles, these are squares, and do on.  (This is an explanation for complete laymen; if you're an AI insider, you can stop reading now!)  So after digesting enough shapes, you would have succeeded in teaching it what the names of these shapes are.

This was back in the old days; modern AI Programs can be taught--what is the most exciting word for the guys who wrangle these programs--a girl!  (For some obscure reason, all the images of girls these programs are familiar with are those of girls with very ample chests, so naturally if one of these programs is requested to supply a picture of a girl, it's going to be one of a woman that appears to have been breast feeding for a while.)

The amazing thing about these programs is how they are able to combine different elements together.  Spitting out an image of a girl is not going to be a problem for a program that has access to a file with a few dozen pictures of various girls; similarly for an image of a tree, if it has a database of a few score of trees.  But you can see that it isn't simple for it to make a picture of a girl and a tree in the same picture!  The designer of the program must give it rules about how to combine images together in a satisfactory way, and they have certainly done this; this is why AI art is such an immense achievement.  Clearly, people have worked on the problem for a long while, and it isn't all the achievement of a single individual.

A while ago, I posted an image of a face I wanted to use as a selfie.  In the interests of complete disclosure, I made it clear that the image wasn't exactly me.  How did I pull it off?  Well, there's a free online app that combines faces, to produce a single face.  You give it two or more jpegs of faces, and it somehow averages them.  How does it do that?  It distills each face into a sheaf of numbers.  (For the moment, let's imagine that these are measurements, e.g. height of the nose, etc.)  Then, when it's given two faces, it just averages the numbers together.  Just as it can boil a face down into a vector of numbers, so it can "reverse-boil" the numbers back into a face, and that's what it did.  Now, I don't know exactly how all this is done; in fact, it's quite possible that some of the numbers aren't lengths, but angles, or ratios.  As you can imagine, averaging ratios might not work as easily as averaging simple lengths.  I'm just making sure we don't oversimplify the problem, and the solution.

Kay.

New Word for our Collection of Homonyms

 I have been reading an (incidentally, very interesting) lesbian retelling of the Robin Hood story, called Heart of Sherwood.  It isn't easy to get enough of the idiom right, to convey a feeling of distance in time, without confusing ordinary readers who may be unfamiliar with the speech of medieval England.  This author does an amazing job of it, but she confused the words "might" and "mite", which leads me to believe that she was using a voice-to-text program.  So there's another entry in our Homonyms list.

In addition, she presents some of the interesting historical characters of the time, including Eleanor of Aquitaine, in addition to the usual suspects of the Sheriff of Nottingham, and Sir Guy of Gisborne, and of course, Prince John.  (But, if I'm not wrong, it was the dastardly John who put in place the Magna Carta, which set out the rights of English serfs.)

The author of this book is Edale Lane, an American author from Mississippi, now living in Canada, reportedly.  She has absorbed the features of the speech of old England very well, at least as found in Sir Walter Scott, and other writers of historical fiction and fantasy of those times.  (Some modernisms have crept in--which I believe should be weeded out--but even with those minor flaws, this book is a remarkable achievement.)

Finally, I must place on record that Edale's characters have a vitality and a realness that are amazingly convincing.  It seemed to me that her depictions of Robin Hood, Friar Tuck, Maid Marian and Little John are all true to various types I have encountered.  Robin and Marian, in particular, seem to be the sort of women we would like to have known, but rather uncomfortably modern!  Marian's sunny disposition was exactly as I had imagined it all these years.  When I wrote an alternate Bronze Age story a decade ago, I too had to compromise my firmly anti-anachronistic stance, in order to permit a little of the intimacy that would drive the story along.  The story was Prisoner, though a more accurate title would have been "Slave".)

Vampires?

Why are young people of a certain age fascinated with vampires?

What is it about vampires that captures people's imagination?  Is it because they drink blood?  Is it because they live for ever?  Is it because they sleep in coffins?  Is it the main elements of the vampire myth that fascinated them, or is it the numerous details?  Is it the tragedy of their lives, the romance of it, the hopelessness of it, or the fact that they're fugitives for most of the time?  It saves authors from having to set up a dramatic hostile situation; it's all done for them.

Then, there's the comedic aspect; one of Terry Pratchet's characters is a vampire, Otto Chriek, who has sworn off human blood, joined something analogous to Alcoholics Anonymous, and goes to regular meetings, etc.  He is the photographer for a newspaper, and when he takes a photograph, the virus* thinks it is daylight, and reduces poor Otto to a small pile of ashes.  But, each time this happens, he carefully arranges to spill a little of his own blood on the ashes, and whoosh, he rises from it (unfortunately without any clothes on), and continues as before, only with a severe headache.

* The latest theory about vampires is that vampirism is caused by a virus, which also gives vampires all the special powers they are reported to have.

Something I Just Realized

I have been reading a whole lot of romances on Kindle, re-reading a few I had whizzed through before, and I'm noticing:

their covers aren't very satisfying.  In fact, my own covers, by and large, are far better than these professionally produced book covers!

I guess that's only to be expected; after all, I had the final say on my own covers, and these authors must have controlled their own covers, to a large extent.  I was trying to think of a reason why this was happening, and I could not.

My biggest sorrow is that I could never find an image of Helen, my favorite OC, as we on DeviantArt call them.  Helen's signature feature is that she has a long blonde braid.  It was longer when she was young, and gradually got shorter.  Her hair was tightly curling when she was a kid, and straightened out over the years.  But DA artists could never draw her to my satisfaction.  But my covers were definitely superior.

Kay.

And Another Thing ...

Well, maybe I'm showing my age.  But this has bothered me for years and years.

"I couldn't care less." Writers today, old and young, misquote this saying as "I could care less!". The obvious retort is, well, why don't you just go ahead and (care less) and stop bothering us?  The whole point is that being unable to care less, you've already arrived at the nadir of your caring.

I don't want to include this in my Homonyms post, for fear that someone would spot it from the corner of their eye, and carelessly use the wrong phrase.  (Even articles intended to be helpful can be inadvertently misused.)

Ok, bye bye until I get annoyed at something else!

Kay H. B.

Elfed!

Erick Schubach (?) has written a fantasy trilogy about Elves living in New York--and all over the world--and I just finished the first book in the trilogy, and I'm halfway through the second.

He writes good, colloquial prose, steeped in the idiom of millennials and younger readers, with really snappy dialog (which I can't write for love or money).

However, Eric uses the word tenant to mean something like axiom, a sort of basic principle, which puzzled me, until I realized he meant tenet.  I wonder whether tenet is a common enough word for readers to understand what he intends, in the first place, and for them to infer that he means tenet when he writes tenant.  'Basic principle' might server him better. 

Outed! Hide, hide, hide

I'm not out, dear friends.  I write as though I'm fearless, and don't give a damn.  But that's because I write under a pen-name; people who actually know me only know me as a weird recluse, and not as a lesbian, let alone a lesbian author of lesbian romance.

Well, this changed over the weekend!

I have a lady friend, of whom I'm very fond, and she had visitors over the weekend.  One of them was a man, whom I knew from previous visits.  He sat me down, and wanted to know what I did all day long (as I'm sure many of you would like to know too).  I hedged for as long as I could, and then revealed that I read.  What do you read, he asked.  In a moment of foolishness, I said I'm a writer, and I love to read my own books.

He was now very interested, thinking he has just discovered an author--well, I suppose he had, really--and he wondered whether I had written anything he would like to read.

The answer, of course, was no; not unless he was into lesfic.  I mean, I don't write porn; but just like I cringe at the thought of two guys cuddling in bed (though I probably shouldn't, at this point), I assumed this guy would be uncomfortable reading about lesbian intimacy.

So I thought furiously, and happened to mention that I had written a 255-thousand word piece of science fiction (Galactic Voyager), and presently he was looking at my Smashwords page, with all the titles, most of them offered for free.  He was amused that I wrote under a pen name, but then lunch was announced, and the conversation moved on.

Man, save me from inquisitive men.  I should have said something like: I'm sorry, but I'm unable to satisfy your curiosity on that point; or I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.  I would not have so much trouble with a woman whom I didn't know.  It just struck me that I didn't have to reveal that I had written Galaxy, but only that I was reading it!!  I had got flustered.

Anyway, as soon as the visit was over and I was back home, I opened up Galaxy, and examined it from the point of view of what a guy who knew me slightly would think of it, and now I'm in the thick of reading it yet again.

Kay.

Another Look at Galaxy, and Other Stories

Hi, readers!

(Edited to insert 'so'.)

So I've often discussed some of the true novels within my opus, but this is from a slightly different point of view.

To explain it, I have to start by saying that I watched Lightyear, the movie about Buzz Lightyear, who first appeared in Toy Story.  Contrary to some of the harsh evaluations of the movie by fans of Disney, I found the movie quite watchable.  The character of Buzz had the usual types of shortcomings that a cartoon hero would have been expected to have.  But the story was given a surprising degree of depth from a surprising source, namely Izzy, the grandchild of Buzz's fellow astronaut.

Às you might have expected, the overall story has plenty of masculinity from Buzz.  From Izzy came, more than femininity, a lot of enthusiasm, warmth, optimism, spirit, and a little hero-worship.

One interesting fact is that Izzy's grandma was a lesbian.  Quite apart from the problem of conceiving a child that has the genes of the two women (all finessed in the movie), we have to admire how Pixar approached the challenge of relating to this diverse, and, er, woke generation.

So I began to think about my own fiction: are the characters representative of the genders that readers might want to find in the story?

The situation in Galaxy is a little troubling.  The main characters, at the outset, are Cass Hutchinson-Holt, and Alison McCormick-Warren.  In earlier drafts of this story, these two were far more intimate, but I felt that all that intimacy did not move the story along very much, and the first version I published had all that stripped out.

Once Helen is revived, she has several encounters with women, which are a little more intimate than a completely platonic relationship would be: with Daisy, and with Lucy, the Dropout girl, and later with Sissy, Cass's granddaughter.  All these women are bisexual (or at least we would call them so).  The story is, interestingly, set in a culture in which strict gender roles are beginning to break down; subconsciously my own attitudes were beginning to loosen up.

I was also reading Helen's Concerto, and two things struck me: firstly the small number of men in the story; it's wall-to-wall women.  Secondly, most of the females are lesbians.  The exceptions are Gena, who is in a trio with a girl (Kristen) and a man (Marcus); Trish was in a lesbian relationship, and is now married to Lalitha's son Suresh; Marissa, Helen's long time partner, leaves Helen to marry Larry, the oatmeal man.

In both these books, I have to accept that the first third or so is, in the case of Galaxy, very slow moving, and in the case of Concerto, boring and redundant.  I shudder to think how many readers might have gotten bogged down in this earlier part, and never make it through to the more exciting, and better-written latter part. 

[To be continued. ]

Weird Aspects of Cosplay

I was just getting used to cosplay.  Cosplay isn't just dressing up; it isn't just putting on makeup, and trying to look like a favourite character from a book, a game, a movie, or a comic.  Cosplayers take their avocation very seriously.

I was startled by how some cosplays stretched the character, and sometimes the actual scene they were trying to represent.  Can you imagine a female Superman?  A female Flash?  A mellow Harley Quinn?  All of these seemed to be reasonable at some level.

But m more I'm seeing a totally nude cosplay.  Wait a minute; what is left of the character if you take away the entire costume??  Suppose you take the character Tifa Lockhart, and submit a photograph of her completely nude?  Without even her characteristic suspenders?  The very universe should howl in protest.

There's a lot of nudity on DeviantArt; the site tolerates a lot of weirdness, and nudity is one of the least objectionable of those.  I'm just saying that if someone is playing the role of some character from the popular media, one is

Centered Paragraphs?

I'm just reading a story with a weird characteristic: every paragraph is centered!

What kind of weirdo would do that?  I suppose I should not impute peculiar motives to new authors, but hey, they ought to take the trouble to set out their stories in a professional way.  Sometimes I get the feeling that kids write stories for their high school magazines in a certain way that passes for 'creative' when they're in school, and continue to write the same way professionally.

Quite honestly, I have to stop thinking that LGBTQRSV++ authors writing e-books are professionals, exactly.  I can honestly say this because when I wrote my first story for Smashwords, I was far from being a professional, except in the sense that my grammar and syntax might have been fairly good.  I had to fix up almost every story at least once, and re-upload it.  And I did not feel comfortable letting any of my friends look at my writing, precisely because I was on the queer spectrum myself.

Pets: What are they thinking?

I'm babysitting the pets of a friend.  When I was growing up, we had a dog, and a cat, too.  But I never was really close with them.  But I find my friend's pets utterly fascinating!

From time to time, they need to be sent outside, to take care of calls of nature.  Usually I do it by the clock, but sometimes they want to go out a little earlier, and I find the process where they let me know "Out, quickly!" amazing, and amusing.  Then, of course, I want them to come back in.  (If they stay outside, they feel that they have to bark at all sorts of imaginary enemies, which is considered bad form.). So I call out to them, and they stand all the way at the back fence, and stare at me, as though I'm out of my mind!

It's an interesting adventure, me trying to get them to understand what I'm thinking, and them trying to get me to understand what they're thinking.

I often think that it would awesome if they and I could actually converse.  In fact, I once read a book called 'The magnificent Wilf,' in which there was a dog who could speak to its owners telepathically.  I have thought about this a long time, and I have changed my mind; what's neat about this particular set of pets is precisely the communication problem!  If they could talk, after a while it would get boring.  Struggling to be understood is interesting to me (maybe not to them).  When they can't make me understand, it's just business as usual, because their whole lives have been spent with humans who only have the merest inkling of what is needed.

Clueless Woman

A couple of days ago, I was reading a story about a clueless grad student, who is set up with a beautiful highschool teacher.  Most of the reviews on Amazon were negative; I believe mostly because grad students are an unfamiliar type for readers of lesfic.  It's hard for a typical person to understand how much tunnel vision is lurking in the confused brain of a PhD student.  I found the story really believable,  so I rated it high, and gave it a polite review. 

It turned out that the book I had read was actually a prequel.  The next book had been written first, and after it had been written, the author seems to have smoothed out the harshness of the MC.  In the book I'm reading now, the MC is an asshole.  She's a two-timing wretch with no conscience, and the sanitized prequel manages to downplay this.  So now I must get on  GoodReads  and humble myself, and explain how it was that I was fooled, and to make it clear that not all graduate students are two-timing bitches.

Kay the Gullible

Stories With Fighting

In my distant youth, I attended a class in self-defence for a few months.  It might be said that fighting is like riding a bicycle, but I can't remember a thing from that class!  But I have written a few stories that involve the heroine engaging in combat, of one sort or another.

Helen and Sharon, for instance, involves both unarmed fighting—Helen showing the director what she could do—as well as sword fighting.  In Alexandra, Jane has an encounter on the beach with troops from 'Bernia'.  In Prisoner(!) Maia fights with the sword on several occasions; also in Jana, which I have not published yet, but which has been serialized right in this Blog.  How did I do all this?  Pretending.  I have read a good many books about hand-to-hand combat, enough to have a few (theoretical) ideas about how it should go!  You might not know, but Alexandra is set in the distant future, in a colonized planet.  This does not enter the story directly, except that there are vague references to Earth culture, and artifacts that are clearly ancient, and with Earth technology, now lost.  The culture on that planet has reverted to early 19^th century science, and they fight with rifles, crossbows, and swords.

In Jane, or at least Jane - The Early Years, Jane and Heather learn Karate, to make a Scorpia video.

Well, I just wanted to make clear that I was writing about violence under false pretences, and not with any personal knowledge.

Kay

Framing Her Face

Here's another rant.

I've been reading so many instances where, when an author describes a girl getting ready for an occasion, or arriving for a date, or whatever, they make a point of describing how "two strands have been separated from her updo, to hang down to frame her face."

Really?  Is this so important as to be remarked upon?  Is is such a travesty for a girl to not frame her face that an author would heap insults and ridicule on her?  I began to read up about this, and it appears that using two "tendrils" to frame a woman's face became popular around the year 2000, and now any woman who looks in her mirror is not quite satisfied unless there are two strands, one of the left, and one on the right, that narrow her face a little.  I believe that women with a narrow face don't feel that the 'framing' is unnecessary; at this point, the two strands are sort of their own thing.

Listen, any authors out there, who're reading this.  Some girls look perfectly fine with their faces framed by their ears.

Authors would do better to focus on how interesting the girl's manicured nails are!  This sort of thing brings out how much the author has gotten carried away with her story, and the sort of trivialities that she is preoccupied with.

Maybe the author wants to emphasize that she's 'regular people', with the same silly concerns as her readers.  It annoys me just as much as minute descriptions of the height of the heels one girl wears, so as not to be too much taller than her date.  Or how many sequins her gown has.  The women I have hung out with, even if totally girly, and even if they do calculate the lengths of their hemlines, so that they're visible under their coats, don't bring up those sorts of issues in girl talk!  Oh God, am I getting old?  I'm also put off by the elaborate patterns girls have their nails done up with, probably with stick-ons, or something like that.  I didn't like the style of painting their fingernails with that little arc of white at the tip, to begin with.  Now these stick-on styles are just weird.

Kate, noticing her wrinkles ...

A Book I Would Like TO READ

Oh my FREAKING GOD!!!

Why am I screaming, after so many years of talking calmly and collectedly?  Because I'm going out of my mind, reading some of the formulaic crap that I get from Kindle!  Why do I go to Kindle to buy books, if I hate it so much?  Because it's easy to find the sort of books I want (well, it has been easy; they've suddenly decided not to sell books on the app.  Fine), and I don't know where else to go.

Ok.  I'm fine.  What do I hate about some of these books?

They're about Big Shots.  Ok, I've done it too; written about a queen, a princess, various celebrities.  But I've also written about regular people.

There's a ton of sex.  Does it all have to have so much graphic sex?  Don't lesbians have any imagination?  Is the only interesting thing about two women falling in love the sex they're having?

The main characters have super white names.  (The exceptions are stories written by Brits; I get the impression that Brits are a lot more loosey-goosey than Americans.  Good for them.  Except that they use British colloquialisms that throw me off.  Luckily for them, I don't grade them down for that reason alone.). The pen name I chose for myself is Brown.  Ok, it's a white name.  It could have been Braun, or Bruno, fine.  But I remember my parents watching some prime-time soap opera, back in the eighties, and the main family's name was: Carrington!!!  Talk about white!  And that name simply drips of fake upperclass-ness!

There's a lot of gratuitous swearing.  It's all fucking this, and fucking that, and fucking her and her sister.  Of course, sometimes it's unavoidable; romances lead to fucking, eventually.  But it's almost as if these authors are afraid that they'll lose their readers unless there was some fucking in the first sentence.  (Maybe that's why my books don't sell ...)

Kay

Reading Lesfic / Dating Sarah Cooper

     You won't believe the trouble I had, typing in that title; each time I tried to type in 'Dating Sarah Cooper,' I ended up typing Dating Siera Maley instead! Simple mistake?  I think not! 

     Too often, when I read a story with really 3-dimensional characters that jump out of the page, I gradually imagine myself in a relationship with the author!  I have to believe this is not necessarily a welcome state of affairs from the pint of view of these authors, who are presumably happily settled in stable relationships.  I, on the other hand, am blissfully unattached--mostly-- which explains what is happening here.

     In related news, the basic story of this book I'm about to describe is closely related to an MTV TV series called Faking It, and if you watch that show, you will know most of what happens in Dating Sarah Cooper, author: Siera Maley, available on Amazon Kindle.

     I have not watched Faking It--I don't watch a lot of TV; any TV, really--but I doubt whether it is as imaginatively written as Dating.  The book is about a pair of BFFs, Katie and Sarah.  It is a first person narration in the voice of Katie, who describes crazy Sarah so perfectly that it gives the reader great insight into the character of Sarah, and also of Katie herself.  This is the second time-- maybe even the third-- of my reading this story, and it seems to me that Katie is as cautious as Sarah is impetuous.

     The story opens on Katie helping a gay classmate who has just been knocked down by a homophobic jock after school.  Katie texts Sarah, who is a nurse wannabe, for help with first aid, saying Got you a patient.  Sarah replies with: Omg who??  That, right there, deliniates the girls perfectly!

     I strongly recommend this book, though in some parts of the country the mores of both the adults and the kids might well be too different (from the mainstream) for the story to make sense.

     Kay 

Straight-male-centrism

I think I'm--at least mentally--a little too old for the japanimation-centered culture of MMORPG (massively multiple online role-playing games), and all related media.  I stumbled on this thought as I was going through the daily input-stream of art on Deviant-Art.  The culture on that site is certainly a lot broader than the manga culture, but I have to reluctantly accept that all the art there, with a few exceptions, is male-centered.

I'm not absolutely convinced of this.  The art they show me is according to their algorithm, which shows me artwork similar to images I have clicked on, and liked, in the past.  I like looking at women, so they naturally show me lots of girls.  But I like girls who are moderately endowed, or slim girls.  But the vast majority of girls I'm shown are heavy-breasted girls.

Why is this?  Partly it is the sort of image that Asian guys like to draw.  There is another reason though.  The cosplayers on the site are often girls who are curvaceous--a global phenomenon--having to do with the diet of families of leisure.  American girls tend to be well-endowed, and a lot of the cosplayers are American girls.  I tend to 'like' them, along with the bosomy Russian and Ukrainian cosplayer girls because I've got to know them, and I can't resist checking their boxes the same way I automatically like posts on Facebook!  So there's a chance that if all my DA girl buddies were built like guys, I'd be fed images of nude girls more to my taste.

For whatever reason, I'm getting an overwhelming number of heavy-chested, blue-eyed, white-haired, enormous sword-wielding girls wearing stiletto heels.  I'm not sure it's the guys who like heels; I think even the female artists tend to draw their female characters with heels.  My (slight) training in anthropology hasn't prepared me to analyze this phenomenon!

But, if this is the world in which I spend my time, these are the artistic values I have to be inured to.

K.

Homonyms, and other Denizens of the Vocabulary Jungle

I'm definitely not the best writer in the world.  There are scores of writers that write so much better than I do.  But there are some mistakes they make that I think I have been able to avoid, and avoiding them is actually easy.  They mostly have to do with words that either sound similar, or a word choice that seems reasonable, but is just slightly wrong.  I'm not infallible, but this post is a starting point; if I don't do anything else that's useful for my fellow-writers, at least I can die happy that I did this much.  I'm not being very exact here; I'm trying to squeeze as many words as possible into this brief post, especially since it isn't alphabetized!

Also, these are only some of the meanings of these words; just enough to make readers understand the difference between the words.  Lead, for instance, is both a noun, the metal, and a verb.  But it has a couple of other meanings, which would usually not enter into a discussion of lesfic.

Words that sound the same, but mean different things

Flare, flair.  To flare is to become wider, like a cone, or a skirt.  It's also used when taking a photo of a light, when the image spreads out.  In contrast, flair describes a way of doing things, to make something attractive, to have skill in creating beauty. 

Peddling, pedalling.  Pedalling is powering a bicycle with your feet.  (She looked over the wall, and saw Jill pedalling down the street as fast as she could.)  Peddling is selling.  (Jill wondered what the guy was peddling now.)

Peaking, peeking, peeping.  Also piqueing.  Peaking means to have reached the very top of your skill.  (Jill's speed had peaked; it was downhill from here on.)  Peeking is to spy on a scene from in hiding.  (Jill peeked on Santa eating the cookies.)  Brits and Commonwealth folk---and occasionally someone from the Northeast---use the word peeping instead.  To pique is to grab the interest.  (Jill's interest was piqued by the colorful book cover.)

Moose, mousse.  Moose is a big critter, like Bullwinkle.  Mousse is stuff that some people put in their hair, to make it lie flat.

Past, passed.  The past is an earlier time.  (My grandmother dwells in the past.)  Passed is a verb, signifying that you've overtaken something, or succeeded in a test.  (The paper was so good, Jill passed the course.)

Queue, cue.  A queue is a checkout line, e.g. at a grocery store.  A cue is a signal for something to take place.  ("That's your cue to leave.")

Pouring, poring.  Pouring is to spill a liquid out of a container.  To pore is a rare usage; it means to study a book closely, looking for something.  (Jill pored through the agreement, looking for problems.)  Added later: pore is often used with over.  Jill was poring over an article in Wikipedia.  Pouring is also used with over; coffee drinkers will know that pour over coffee with a cone filter is considered especially great.

Lead, led.  This is tricky.  Lead is a soft, gray metal.  Stainglass windows have the colored glass separated by lead.  To lead a group means to take the guiding position.  If someone has been a leader in the past, we say that she has led a group.  Led is simply the past tense of the word lead.  There is a word called leaded, which has nothing to do with the verb lead.  It is the word for glass that contains the metal lead, or paint that contains lead salts, or stainglass windows.

Come, cum.  Come is simply to come towards somebody or something.  Cum is a relatively uncommon Latin word that means also.  (Jill was a housekeeper-cum-nanny.)  I pronounce the word cum as "coom", but that may not be a universal thing.  Catholics familiar with the Latin liturgy might recognize the phrase cum Sancto Spirito, which means [who,] together with the Holy Spirit ...

Illusive, Elusive.  These two words are close in meaning, but the first one should not be used at all.  An illusion is something that looks different from what it is.  Saying something is illusive means that it isn't what it appears to be.  Illusory might be a better choice.  In contrast, elusive means something that's hard to pin down, like Zorro.

Pedals, petals.  Pedals are the gadgets that you press with your feet, e.g. the accelerator / gas pedal in a car.  Petals are the cute little things that are in a flower.  These words should not be pronounced the same way, but unfortunately many people do.

Conceded, Conceited.  I was stunned when, in a story I was recently reading, the author had confused these two words!  Or her voice-to-text app did, which is the more likely possibility; especially if her speech didn't distinguish between those words.  Conceited means thinks very highly of him- or herself.  Conceded means accepted--maybe somewhat grudgingly--some fact.  (Such as having lost an election.)

Discreetly, Discretely.  Discreetly is an adverb, meaning to do something quietly, or without causing alarm or offense, or attracting too much attention.  Discretely means separately, a word that has more technical usages than colloquial ones.

Leant, lent, Lent.  Leant is the same as leaned, the past tense of lean.  Lent is the past tense of lend.  (Jill, I need back the hammer I lent you.)  Lent is also a season of the Christian calendar, lying between Ash Wednesday and Maundy Thursday.

Gate, gait.  A gate is essentially a large door, perhaps in a fence or garden wall.  A gait is a manner of walking.  Most people have a fixed way of walking; and someone watching from a distance can often recognize a person from their gait, even if their faces can't be seen.  Horses have many gaits; a trot, a gallop, are all different gaits.

Rung, wrung.  A rung is a step of a ladder;  To wring something is to extract moisture from it:  you wring out your laundry.  Wrung is the past tense.  This laundry has been wrung out.  I feel wrung out!  It is a way of saying that a person feels stressed. 

Your, you're.  You're is such a frequently used word that, I think, people have trouble thinking of it as a contraction of you are, which is exactly what it is.  So many really good writers, making no mistakes at all, unexpectedly screw this one up, and get me all depressed.  Your, of course, is a possessive pronoun, like mine, or his, or hers.  (This is your sheet.  You're welcome!) I would encourage writers to use you're correctly whenever possible; it makes the speaker sound fluent, like a native English speaker, rather than someone who has learned English as a second language.

Role, roll.  The word role means a part.  'The role of Deniece is now being played by Leandra Page.' Or, 'Meredith settled uncomfortably into the role of wife and mother.' The word roll--in this instance--means the class list, so when someone takes attendance, it's called roll call.  They're going down the roll, calling the names.  The reason I'm giving you this extra information about where the word or phrase comes from is to help you understand the word in context.  It is better to understand something, rather than merely remember it!  (That's my teacher background getting up on its hind legs.  Down, boy!)

Balling, bawling.  The phrase "bawling her eyes out" simply means crying her eyes out.  Balling is a crude way of describing engaging in sex, and clearly has nothing to do with crying.

Here, here; Hear, hear!  I don't know where the phrase "hear, hear!" comes from, but it is a cheer, which means something like What he said!  It's heard a lot during wedding toasts, and so forth.  "Here, here" is just a misspelling, quite understandable when people hear the phrase, but don't see it spelled.

Might, mite.   Might means power and strength, as in "The village was up against the might of the Roman legions." Mite simply means a small contribution.

Waled, wail.  I'm not sure "waled" is a recognized word.  It is usually used by guys, and means punched really hard.  Quite unrelated, Wailed means cried.

Jamb, jam.  A door jamb, is the part of the doorway to which the hinges would be attached, if there were hinges, of course.  Jam is a sweet preparation to eat with bread. 

Peace, piece.  Well, most people know the difference between these words; peace is the absence of war, strife or disagreement.  Piece is a portion of something, a section, a part.  When someone says: there, I've said my piece, this is the word they intend.

The next several items are just words with usages that some people get wrong.

Elicit, Illicit.  These words are completely unrelated, and so are their meanings, obviously.  To elicit a response from someone is to prompt a reaction or reply.  Illicit is an adjective, which means illegal.

Social, Sociable.  The word social simply means: having to do with society.  In some places, it means a party.  Sociable is a word used to describe someone who likes to get together with others, and has lots of friends.  (Jill is a reclusive girl, but Jack has lots of friends, and is a sociable fellow.)

Bare back, bareback.  Bare back refers to someone's back, without a covering.  To ride a horse Bareback means to ride a horse without a saddle.

Easygoing, easy going.  Easygoing describes someone who is relaxed, and not particular or picky about things.  Easy going means some task that doesn't give you problems.

Anymore, Any more.  These two are well established distinct but related phrases.  "Do you have any more coffee?  This coffee is really good!". That sentence just won't work with anymore' instead.  "Will you please turn down the music volume?  I can't take it anymore!"  Here the phrase means, formally, 'from now on.'

If, whether.  The word if is a word of logic: if you like horror movies, stay with us!  But some people use the word if to indicate uncertaintly:  I don't know if you like horror movies!  The more conventional word to use is whether.  "I don't know whether you like horror movies!"

Everyday, every day.  Everyday means ordinary.  "Oh dear, I wore everyday clothes; I didn't know it was an occasion!"  Every day simply means each day.

Hangout, hang out.  Hangout is a place.  To hang out is to spend time with someone.

Creep, crept.  Crept is the past tense of Creep.

Kneeled, knelt.  Knelt, and kneeled are both past tenses of kneel, but they have slightly different usages.  Still, I think using them interchangeably is not really unforgiveable!

Sat, seated.  I just notice the use of the word sat to mean seated, by British writers.  (Jill was seated right across from Jack.)  Let's be clear; any wrong usage will eventually be accepted.  The grammatical universe is heading in the direction of not caring too much about correct usage.  But if clarity and understandability are your goals, it makes sense to tweak your writing a little bit, so that it is not confusing, even if you sacrifice a few colloquialisms that are dear to your heart!

Alright, All right.  Alright is an expression that is still growing out of all right.  "Man, he walks just like his dad, alright."  For that sentence, I think alright is the right word.  "I think it'll come out all right in the end."  Here, I don't think alright will really work, but sure; go ahead if you think you must.  At this time, in 2022, I think using all right in every instance will not upset anyone.  Using alright instead would make some people uncomfortable.

Thing, think.  These aren't words that are usually confused, except in a particular instance: the phrase "You've got another think coming!"  This is a phrase of the 19th or early 20th century; the idea is You thought wrong, so think again.  But people of our generation who have heard this saying, but not read it, seem to assume that it is 'you've got another thing coming,' and use it in dialog that way.  It does have a lovely sarcastic ring to it!

Site, sight.  Site means location.  "This was the site of the old town hall."  The word website uses this word in that sense.  Sight means appearance.  That pizza is a sight for sore eyes!

Lax, lacks.  Lacks means doesn't have.  "This paragraph lacks a lot of necessary punctuation."  Lax means too relaxed.  "I can see your parents have been lax with your manners."

Champing at the bit.  This is an expression that derives from (probably) horse-racing, and is often misquoted as: "chomping at the bit." I don't exactly know how to champ at a bit, but I suspect it is a lot like, well, chomping.  The expression "champing at the bit" is a lot older than the word 'chomping', so if you want to sound conventional, you'd use the older expression.

Glimpsed / Glanced.  Glimpsed something means you saw something, often through the corner of your eye.  Glanced at something means you took a quick look at it.  If you noticed in passing that there was someone looking through the window, you glimpsed them.  If you took a quick look at the clock, you glanced.  They aren't interchangeable words.

This a work in progress is.  If I have the energy, I want to order the entries alphabetically, and maybe group things in some way.

Hope this is useful!  --Kay

U-Haul Lesbians

Have you ever heard this phrase?  What does it mean?

I thought I had some insight into the phenomenon crudely alluded to with this phrase, but maybe I should think some more.

Because of the evolution of public opinion about homosexuality (not by any measure uniformly positive, in case you were wondering), it's a lot easier for a woman to discover that she prefers to associate with women than with men in this century, than it was 20 years ago.

It is quite a step from there for a girl to arrive at the conclusion that she would prefer to pursue a romantic relationship with another woman than with a man.  (This isn't made any easier by the fact that the culture of young men and boys still leads them to behave in crude ways.  Girls wonder---I certainly did---whether the fact that boys behaved like assholes was what was putting me off, or the fact that I'd rather be Touched by another woman than by A man.  As I grew older, my tolerance increased; I could give a boorish young man a second chance, and a third chance, but I began to feel that it was a waste of time.  I was the bigger problem, and not they.

All this takes time.  And when that blessed day comes when you realize that you can relate to most girls a lot better than to most guys, it is soon followed by an even more blessed day on which you encounter a girl who looks at you in a special way.

I can easily imagine the sort of desperation that takes hold off a queer woman when she meets someone who could be special.  I have, but I've never had the courage to take the first step, though I have wanted to do so very, very much.  I can't provide more details without endangering my anonymity, but it is a sort of desperate relief, like a drowning woman, I can imagine that the instinct to capture that welcome prospect, and bind to her with bands of steel is irresistible.

But I could be confusing my own feelings for universal lesbian instincts, and we must be careful.  But what's to be done?  Maybe life is too short to be waffling about whether you've found your soulmate.

What I Would Like in an Editor Program, as an Author of Ebooks

As you can see, today's post is a little unusual; I want to gripe--or rant--about editing / word-processing software with which I have to work, to create the disasters (or miracles) that my stories are.  The software I use is MSWord, which is perfectly fine, if I were printing out the stories.  But I'm converting them into ebooks, which Word does not directly support (as far as I know), and in any case, ebooks do not usually support everything that a typical author wants to use.  The e-readers I use do not even support an embedded font, which is frustrating.  My phone shows some of the stories in a font that I like, but my tablet does not--sometimes--and other times, it's the other way round.  I do not have the patience to investigate what the software companies--both Microsoft, and the e-reader manufacturers--imagine authors and writers want or need.  I'm going to tell them, right here.

What A Basic E-book Word-Processor Should Provide

Fonts:  There should be a minimum of 2: Firstly a serif font, such as Cambria, or Garamond, or Droid Serif, or Palatino, which are the fonts I principally use.  If they want to, they could give the user a once-and-for-all-times choice, at least for each document, for which font is going to be their serif font.  Secondly, they should also supply a fixed-width, or a sans-serif font.  They are not the same, but they do provide an alternate regular font face, if one is needed, e.g. for displaying a letter.

Font Effects:  By these I mean such (essential) things as Italics, bold, subscript, superscript.  Less important (not quite as essential) are strikeout, underline, and colors.  I could use a gray of a medium level.

Line and Paragraph Spacing:  There are two main ways to indicate paragraph separation: by indenting, and by extra paragraph spacing.  I like to do the latter; this post, for instance, has paragraphs indicated by a little vertical space.  I think both options should be provided, but I don't think it makes sense to give the writer control over how much spacing, or how much indentation is provided.  Every additional thing the software sets out to provide is (A) one more thing that could go wrong, and which the writer could inadvertently use to get into trouble, and (B) one more reason the software will become larger, and more unwieldy, and slower.

Special Characters: I would like an m-dash, a cedilla (for spelling words such as façade, or soupçon).  If the software provided the option for ligatures, such as ffl which would be used in words such as shuffle, that would be a plus, but I can see where most authors would look at such a thing cross-eyed, and feel that it is unnecessary.  There are a whole set of those, all of which I would like, and most other authors would never miss.  Also ñ, which comes in useful in words such as mañana and señorita.  The tilde is readily available, but not to attach it to an 'n' easily.

Hyphenation: this is really a function of the e-reader; it ought to split words on the fly, so that when the text is not justified (i.e., when spaces are not expanded to make the right margin even), the presence of extra-long words doesn't make the right margin look totally stupid and ragged.  Slight raggedness is, of course, inevitable in un-justified text.  In justified text, the presence of un-split long words results in entire rivers of white flowing down the text body, which is almost worse than ragged right margins.  So writers of editing software (or word-processing software, whichever is the current term preferred by you folks): disregard the issue of hyphenation.

That's enough for the moment, but I can see myself adding to this list after I have had a little think, as she said in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Kay

Louisa Alcott: Little Women, Little Men

I was given Little Men by Louisa Alcott when I was about 13, and somehow it was the perfect book to get me started on reading.  Of course, thirteen is a little late for learning to read, but I was reading "children's books" until then, and Little Men was a sort of transitional book.

It was transitional in a way that Little Women never was.  To this day, I don't know what it is about Little Women that sets it a little apart from other books of that time; even the Laura Ingalls Wilder books were---different---from the Louisa May Alcott books.  I could try to put my finger on some differences, but they may not be the crucial ones.  Little W. had a large palette canvas; as far as I am concerned, it tells me almost all that I need to know about Louisa M. Alcott and her times, and her concerns, and her values!  It taught me about people, and about how life is so unfair.

In contrast, Little Men seemed to speak about simple things: decency, generosity, honesty, responsibility, and industry, and also greed and indolence!  Little W. was also about heartbreak, and patience, and rebelling against societal norms; both books are about that, I must concede.  I ought to go back and read Little Women, but I seem to remember a lot less editorializing in that one, whereas Little Men, I'm sorry to say, has lots of embedded sermons, as though LMA didn't trust her audience to draw the right morals from the story.  But that was the state of the art at that time; authors were obliged to underscore the morals in their work.  Some authors, such as Jane Austen, would point out obvious and superficial morals, while there were deeper implications hidden between the lines, which she left alone.  Maybe I'm imagining it, but I thought I saw numerous values that Jane Austen didn't care to, or dare to, draw attention to.

Today we know---have known for years---that Louisa's father, Bronson Alcott, was a friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and is considered a transcendentalist.  Many of the values that Louisa embeds in Little M. are ahead of their time, and flow from the ideas of the transcendentalists.  For whatever reason, I have to confess that though I am not a practising Christian, in the sense of being subscribed to an accepted denomination, I broadly accept the moral teachings of Jesus.  But from a practical point of view, I recognize that my morals are derived largely from Little Men by Louisa May Alcott.  ('May' is actually Louisa's mother's family name.)

There are a few clichetic features in both stories; they both propagate the principle that it is good and innocent people who die young.  In Little Women, Beth, the pianist, the sister whom everybody loves, dies of scarlet fever; in Little Men, John Brooke, who is initially introduced in Little Women as the long-suffering tutor of young Teddy Laurence, who eventually marries Meg March, Jo's oldest sister, dies.

Jo (Josephine) Bhaer (nee March) is, without doubt, Louisa Alcott's most brilliant invention.  There are some amusing surveys in Good Reads for readers to vote for their favorite character in each of the Little books, and I shake my head at any choice but Jo.  Of course, all the characters are painfully wonderful, and eminently worthy of being 'favorited'.  But the transformation of Jo's character is just too beautifully carried out to leave me the option of choosing anyone else, though Meg, Beth, and Laurie, and Amy, and even their mother, 'Marmee', are all perfectly reasonable choices.  (Apropos of nothing, Christian Bale, who plays Laurie in the Winona Ryder version of Little Women does such a good job, that no other version could possibly work for me!  Apologies to Saiorse Ronan.)

Though I have criticised aspects of these two books, and it is tempting to speculate whether they can be edited to conform with 20^th-21^st century literary norms, I am certain that modifying the stories in any way would be to their detriment.  But I could be wrong; someone might do it, and we might marvel at the success of the experiment!  These are amazing books, and if you anticipate that there might be moralizing to be found, you could safely skip the offending paragraphs if you're reading the books for the first time.  Warning: some of the moralizing is essential, but I can't think of how to identify those portions.

Kay

Thanks to My Readers

I just checked my "sales" for the last 360 days, and all my stories have sold well.   (Which means people have been downloading them enthusiastically, cost being essentially no hindrance.)  Many authors would probably be despondent not to be making money with their books, but I don't depend on my writing for a living--- at least not at the present time.

Once again, let me urge those of you who haven't read Helen and Lalitha yet to read it.  I would like to be judged as a storyteller based on that book.  I just know that there is great scope for improvement in that book, but I'm afraid that if I touch it, I'll ruin it. 

Helen at Westfield,  and Helen on the Run are both important from the point of view of the larger Helen story, but not as stand- alone stories in their own right (though both have interesting episodes).

I'm going to stop here, else I'll go on forever. 

Kay

Am I A Girly Girl?

Yes, totally!  I love to wear skirts, I love to wear sandals, but I hate to fool with my hair, I hate to do makeup, I hate to have my photo taken.

But all the stories I've been reading have one chick who's thin and tall, always wears pant suits or jeans or slacks, does all the butch-y things, and another one who's the cook, puts up the pictures .... is the more 'nurturing one,' a clearly demarcated separation of roles.

And at the weddings?  It's always one with a tux, and the other one a dress.  Come on!  When will I read of two girls, both in gowns?  I don't even mind both in jeans.  I just don't like both women pretending to be a straight couple.

For the record, I had Helen (a recurring character in my stories) once marry an Indian woman, both of them dressed  in sarees (and believe me, Indian sarees run the gamut from embarrassingly showy to stunning but understated).

In another story (Alexandra), there is a wedding, with both brides in gowns.  So at least I've put my brides where my mouth is.

Kay

Oh Nooo! Kate McKinnon Leaves SNL!

For several years, I did not have a decent TV set, or service, so I was unfamiliar with Kate mcKinnon.  And then, someone took me to Ghostbusters 3, or whichever one she was in, and I saw Kate and Leslie.  First chance I got, I went over to watch SNL, and ROTFL-ed my way through the shows for a season, and then watched scenes on YouTube, and I was in love.

Kate wasn't the only cast member on the show that I loved, but her characteristic parodies of characters from the White House made it possible to bear the Trump years.  I don't write about humor, so I never got the ch ance to out myself as a Kate McKinnon fangirl, but I am, and now the facts can come out.

She's also an incredibly beautiful woman.  Unfortunately her parodies are so off the top that the SNL sketches don't get to go into too much depth, because Kate details them, for which I forgive her, because I am in 💕.

Kay

DA: a new insight

As many of you know, I have joined the DeviantArt site basically to buy cover art for my Smashwords books.  But this is a good website to view new art, though the quality is not uniformly good.

Unfortunately, I can't scroll through the images like I suppose one is expected to; in each case, I study the image, trying to imagine the character of the model, and his or her mood!  This is impossible, because often the image is the product of the model and the photographer and all sorts of people working together!  Cosplay images, particularly are a team job today; some of them have an immense amount of thought put into them; in contrast, some of them are just a light-hearted homage to some manga character.

I have to laugh at myself for investing so much effort in examining these images!

Kay

A Review of A.K.Rose: 'Slightly Addictive'

Two of the things that prevent me from having more experiences in common with you, my readers, are smoking, a habit which doesn't spare anyone, and alcohol, which spares very few :(

I suppose many of you know multitudes of friends who drink and / or smoke, and you wonder what the big fuss is.  I, in contrast, have never smoked, and drink only very sparingly.  I cannot give you too many details about the drinking and smoking genes that have come to me through genetics for fear of compromising my state of being incognito, but let me reassure you: the story is dismal.  Many of my friends are recovering, and recovered, addicts, who have parents and family who have battled various sorts of addiction, some with success, and others with less success; and many of us have friends who are still battling addiction, and we just don't know how to deal with those situations.  In theory, there are experts who say that they know exactly how to deal with addicted---and partially addicted---friends.  In practice, though, these experts have no clue, or only minute clues.  So, that's the background of my review of A.K.Rose's Slightly Addictive.  In case you were wondering, there is no tried and true advice to authors, either, about how to go about writing a book about addiction, that an addict would find helpful.

Slightly Addictive

Slightly Addictive, by A. K. Rose, is a thoroughly enjoyable read, especially for those who would recognize themselves, or a friend or lover, in any of the main protagonists: Gia, Roxy, and even Jennifer.  It's a little intimidating to review such an unassuming book, but which is potentially bound for great things.

Though the typical reader might not be looking for 'a slice of life' story--and I wasn't--this relentlessly upbeat book just brims with optimism, and follows the bootstrapping adventures of a woman whom life has 'kicked to the kerb,' and has simply decided to turn over a new leaf.  In Gia, the author has invented a unique hero; at once both simple and outgoing, and also focused and stern.  In Roxi, Gia has the perfect foil, but of course she doesn't know this; Gia has climbed up the wrong palm tree* once too often to take chances.  And (from where Gia sits) what does Roxi have going for her?  She's just cute, and a tease.  And constantly tosses Spanish phrases at Gia, which alternates between being hilarious and annoying!  Luckily, Roxi's sterling qualities are gradually revealed.

Being an author, I must say 'Slightly' is a story I wish I had written myself!  But I could never have done it; I just don't have the background.  Gia is a great invention, and little details reveal how carefully Gia's character has been put together.  For instance, Gia has a dictum: Three strikes, and you're out.  What kind of person has to lean on a principle like that?  One who blames her failures on her tendency to be too helpful, and too forgiving.  We wonder what Roxi sees in Gia, beyond their chemistry.  Perhaps chemistry is all one needs, in the end--NOT!

Two thumbs up, and I wish I had more thumbs!  Note: an all-new HEA is reportedly in the works.

*The story is set in Palm Springs, California.

Obviously, that's not all I have to say, given that I don't want to scare off any potential readers.  Most Lesfic readers don't want to read about anything except flirting, and gentle hands moving down to hips.  The author does her best to accommodate readers of that description, but she can only go so far; there are regular scenes with AA meetings, and Gia and Roxi longing for a drink, or longing to jump into bed.  Very few lesbian romances are set in apartments that are, let's say, very sparsely furnished.  (Most of the movies we see, either in theatres or on TV, have fabulous houses, or even apartments, where even the toilets have gold fittings.)  This is a very down-to-earth story, except for the fact that Gia is such a lovable, decent character.  I can only hope that that doesn't throw off anyone from reading the story.

Early in the opening chapter, it is revealed that Gia took up drinking to wean herself away from smoking, and sex to wean her away from drinking; basically a stack of addictions built on the lines of the House that Jack Built.  (That's an old allusion based on a pre-19th century nursery rhyme.)  The fact remains that often this sort of chain of dependencies really happens to people.

The conventional wisdom about socializing is that you have to drink, in order to dance.  This probably explains why I don't know how to dance <sad face>.  I can waltz, though, without drinking.

So, go out and read this book; it's priced very reasonably, and I hope it doesn't begin to sell so well that either the author or Amazon decide to raise the price!!

Kay

[Added later:] If any one of my readers has a parent or relative who drinks so much that you can't tell that they've drunk at all: avoid drinking at all.  Some people have a metabolic system that warns them in good time, each occasion, that it's time to stop drinking.  Other people don't have this; they can continue to drink without any apparent ill effects, each and every day, until they can no longer function without some alcohol in their systems.  This means that they'll eventually destroy their livers, which is a painfun condition.  Read up about it, because I'm certainly not an expert.  But one of my closest friends--a guy; incidentally, the one who got me into writing seriously--used to drink this way.  He's dead, now, in his seventies.  He didn't die of cirrhosis, but I wonder whether his alcoholism affected his neurological functions in ways that we could not see.

Kay

Cosplay?

Deviant Art is my only window into this popular form of self-expression.  Normally, we don't examine the reasons as why an author gets started writing fictions, let's say, until and unless, they become well known.  In the case of Cosplay, though, I want to know.  Every day, numerous girls get dressed up as various characters from the movies, or Manga, or Anime, and get themselves photographed, and publish the images on DA.  If you look on the DA page of each of these people (incidentally, the girls heavily outnumber the guys, for some reason, probably financial), you see that the photograph actually published in the main DA page is just one of those that the cosplay artist has uploaded to her own page.

So these cosplayers spend enormous amounts of time, sewing their costumes, and a lot of money, paying for skilful makeup artists and photographers, and sometimes graphic designers, to fit them into a scene from some piece of theatre or movies.

In some cases there is a definite element of self-indulgence; some cosplayers identify so much with some character from, say, The Witcher, that they pose for more than a dozen photos as that character.

The occupation of being a model---a fashion model, or an artist's model---is definitely one that is an allied art; but a girl without exceptional beauty seldom tries to model.  In the case of Cosplay, though, this factor is no hindrance; it is sort of the equivalent of vanity publishing.  (I shudder to cast the first stone since I am published on Smashwords, and can be accused of the same crime.)

I'm typing this up on my phone, so will continue the post later ...

A Review of Malinda Lo's: Last Night at the Telegraph Club

I seldom read stories that are what I would call heavy---after all, what does heavy even mean?  If you know, then you don't need a definition.  But if you want to use the term precisely, you need a definition.

Yesterday, I finished reading Malinda Lo's celebrated novel: Last Night at the Telegraph Club, a complex story about a teenage Chinese girl growing up in San Francisco.  I didn't call it a coming-of-age story, because on one hand, it tells you a lot about the story, but it also cues in lots of prejudices on the part of the reader, that might not help my review, because the idea of prejudice, and even racism, is so central to this story.  Even those who are sick and tired of prejudice and racism will take something good away from this story, because viewed from where we are today (the spring of 2022), it is so wonderful to take stock of how far we have come, and to brace ourselves to ponder how far we have yet to go.

The main protagonist is a child of Chinese immigrants, a father from Shanghai, and a mother from somewhere else in China, Christians both, who have met in San Francisco, married, and had three children, the eldest of whom is Lily (Li-Li, in Chinese).  Unlike her stereotypical fellow Chinese girl classmates, Lily is fascinated by space travel, and to this end, she is avidly reading up on Arthur C. Clarke's The Exploration of Space, one of his earliest non-fiction works.

When Lily meets an American classmate, Kathleen, who isn't scornful of Lily's fascination with space, and who herself is eager to become a pilot, the two girls form a bond based on their common interests.  Very soon, the girls discover that their mutual attraction goes beyond mere platonic interests, and they realize---separately---that they are sexually attracted to each other.

Very realistically---remember, this is the 1950's, when homosexual activity was still illegal---the girls do not express their feelings to each other.  They even sneak into a lesbian bar (The Telegraph Club) together, under the benign eye of a friendly doorkeeper, to listen to a sexy male impersonator (a woman who dresses like a man, and sings torch songs to the other women in the audience).  Male impersonators were all the rage back in that era.

The first person story reveals a great deal about the thoughts of Lily, whereas we have to see Kathleen's feelings only through the mind of Lily, and so we aren't aware that Kathleen has been attracted to Lily for two years.

I can only say that my own heart was wracked with sympathy for the young couple; who knows how anyone else would respond to the same story?  There are a couple of friendly adults, who help the girls---or at least, Lily---deal with the dramatic upheaval of the last few months in the story, among them Aunt Judy, Lily's father's sister; and a progressive teacher at their school.  Malinda L. draws a pretty detailed picture of what Lily's life is like, and her family, which---though not typical of Chinese life at that time, is at least generally representative---and Ms. Lo is at pains, throughout, to give historical background, in the guise of establishing the chronology of Lily's family's life events.  There is a little skipping backwards and forwards in time, exploring the events surrounding the meeting of Lily's parents, which explains their ambitions, and the degree to which they feel betrayed when various horrific things happen to the family, through US government retribution for not cooperating with espionage against their fellow immigrants, who are suspected of being communist sympathizers.

The mix of sexual repression, anti-communist paranoia, gender conformity, distaste for hard science, the intense American patriotism of immigrants, police brutality, and similar forces make this story difficult to palate, but not impossible.  In contrast to what we expect in intelligent and strong-minded protagonists, in our times, Lily is painfully submissive to her family's unreasonable demands, especially those of her mother.  The use of alcohol and cigarettes to handle apprehension and fear is a constant motif.

Malinda Lo has delivered a complex (did I mention that already?) multi-faceted story, which is almost more than a sensitive soul can handle.  The book has won several awards, and one can appreciate why.  Highly recommended.

Kay

One of my Earliest Stories: Jane

Jane was one of my earliest stories.  At that time, I had hardly any idea about how to set up a story to make it easier on a reader.  (I still don't, ha ha.)

The original manuscript started with Jane meeting her first model, or models, and then I found that the story began to write itself, based on the personalities I had given Jane and her models.  (That was the first inkling I had that stories would essentially write themselves in a way that I found satisfying; whether readers would find it equally satisfying is still open to doubt.)

For some reason, I found (or found myself writing the story in such a way) that two major characters died in the attack on the Twin Towers of 2001, and in the HIV epidemic that was affecting the US at that time.  I suppose the facts had just gotten registered in my brain, and I couldn't ignore them any longer.  That event had implications for Jane; not just one of her lovers, but three of them were affected.  Two actually died, and one broke up with Jane.

Suddenly, without my consciously planning it, the story I had initially conceived to pander to my own craving for (imaginary) sex, became a tragedy.  I had to come up with a way to make Jane emerge from this situation.  I just couldn't make Jane simply bounce back from it; it had to happen naturally, and that took a little longer than a year.

Besides being a photographer, Jane is also a painter, an artist.  This was an avenue for me to arrange for Jane to meet with a woman who could 'save' Jane.  From this point, the story trundled on, occasionally getting a bit fantastic, until I sort of didn't know what to do with it.  So, working from the end, I backed up to a point at which I could sort of close the story out, and ended it.  From the beginning, too, I looked for a point at which I could begin the story, and decided to start shortly after 2001, with one girl dead, along with two other supporting characters; and one estranged girlfriend.

It seemed to me, at that time, that everyone reading the story needed to know all the characters in the story so far.  This was a mistake, but I painfully inserted little stories that introduced all the characters, and then jumped to the point where the third person dies of AIDS, and picked up the story from there.  So that's how Jane rests.  I think it's a poignant story---or at least, poignant in spots---as Jane meets the girl who becomes her lover, and then meets her sister, and so on and so forth.  There's an episode which features Jane's niece, Heidi, who is about fifteen.  If you don't like kids, well, what can I say?  Most of my stories feature kids, because I like kids!

As it happened, I eventually thought that all that omited material from the beginning was pretty interesting, so I packaged that into the story Jane, the Early Years, that has one of my favorite home-made covers.  (The cover depicts Scorpia, which is Jane in disguise.  There is actually a part of a story with Scorpia and Lisa Love, which hasn't been published yet.)

Most of the Helen story, if you've read any of it, is concerned with (classical) music, and many of you might find that either distracting, or actually annoying.  Worse, Helen is a soprano, and a violinist, and a conductor, so Helen's achievements are unavoidably front and center!  In Jane, however, there are very few hifaluting elements; Jane is very much a girl-next-door type---and so are the Twins, even if the modeling brings Gillian a lot of money.

I just wanted to make you guys aware of the Jane story, because though it is essentially incomplete and is sort of a bleeding chunk, many of you might relate to it a lot better than to the Helen story.  I'm beginning to realize that Helen the Genius probably sickens a lot of readers!

Kay

Doing Something About My Pet Peeve

Hey, I'm back, to continue with one of my rants that leads nowhere.  Well, usually nowhere, but hopefully somewhere, this time.

Have you heard me carrying on about how, in most lesfic (OMG, I'm beginning to adopt Millennial Lesbian terminology.  Kids, man) stories---I don't want to call it literature---it is always a butch (or a top) with a femme (or a bottom).  Always.  Why?  Why can't lesfic be more satisfyingly symmetric, and equal?  I am convinced that this Butch/Femme dichotomy was created by and for men.  I have little against men, as such (though I hate testosterone-infused guys, who further the stereotype that the inarticulate guys who communicate mostly with grunts and loud pickup trucks are attractive to women).  So I have always dreamed of writing a story of a romance between two femmes.  But a lot of my stories are, in fact, stories between femmes.

Guess what!  I decided to write a story of a romance between two Butches!  But not the stereotypical butches riding motobikes or driving pickups, but sweet, sensitive girls, who nevertheless give off femme vibes (there I go, adopting Millennial lingo!  Kids, man), but stop short of being actually girly.

I recently read a lovely story by, er, Kallie Mont (not her real name), about a woman who---having broken up with her career-obsessed girlfriend---moves to a somewhat rural New England seaside location, and meets a lovely local.  The somewhat Butch newcomer to the village is a lovely, protective person, and it made me realize that I have written about Butch characters often; it's only that I have rarely been conscious of it.

Kay

Things I Want to Do Better!

It's been a long time since I posted here---more than a month, possibly---and I want to touch base with my readers, about what has been happening to me.  (I will not remark about World politics, except to say that the Russians seem to be acting in their own interest, which is not new.  This only makes sense if all that they need can be supplied from within their sphere of influence.)

OK, let's get back to my reading.  I have been reading up a storm; these books are not difficult to read, because they're seldom more than 20,000 words long; often a lot shorter.  I do get the impression that the authors---most of them women---seem to depend on their book sales in order to make a living, so they have to strike a balance between satisfying their needs to tell a certain story, or a story in which certain things happen, and a story that grabs the reader.  To make it worse, I never buy an ebook that costs more than $4, so it is possible that I'm not getting the best books.   (On the other hand, I seem to see that there is no connection between the quality of a book and the price the author sets; and maybe we shouldn't expect there to be one.  After all, like L'Oreal, it all depends on how much each author think she's worth!  Haha.)

I have been making some of the points below for several posts, so some of them may come across as Old News.

First of all, many of my own books were excerpts of a single story; a lengthy biography of a fictitious person.  But that biography was not conceived to be readable, or have any of the properties that an author of commercial fiction would be ruled by.  I made Helen have lots of girlfriends, lots of sex, lots of talent, travel a lot, be athletic, be beautiful; in short all the things I wanted, and could not have!  But all these desires did not make for a good story.  When I started chopping the Big Helen Story down to little chunks, I began to see how a few chapters here, and a few chapters there, made a story on their own; especially the early adventures of Helen and Lalitha, which form a beautiful story, for which I really cannot take any credit, and reveal a lot about Lalitha, and Helen, and the children, and Lorna.  The other chunks just barely qualified as stories; and many of them suffered, without the earlier episodes to round out Helen's character and personality.  In contrast, the professional authors who write for Kindle/Amazon, really try hard to make a story with a happy ending, and for the most part, succeed.

The adventures that summer at the beach were also important, but that doesn't mean that it was interesting to read.  But I wept at the foolishness of Helen, which resulted in so much heartbreak for Amy, and Hattie, and the lawyer Miss Pearson, just as anyone who might have read the book would have. 

The Kindle stories  varied widely in the mechanical quality of the writing; some authors wrote beautiful, expressive, fluent prose, that really nailed what they wanted to say.  I could tell what they wanted to say, just from the context, and being just a step or two ahead of the typical reader, knew what they wanted to say, and I could tell whether they got it across.  However, some authors really struggled to do it.  Some of them got tripped on homonyms.  For instance, the words bear and bare sound the same, but there were instances where an author would write something like "the unbareable agony of having to wait".  There were occasional difficulties with plurals: flys, instead of flies; and with tenses: swum, instead of swam.  As I said before, in a previous post, some of these problems---especially with the homonyms---can be explained by the authors using Dragon Speaking software, or something like it, which takes dictation, and converts it into text.  And if this software is now created by non-native English speakers (or had been, all along), that fact would explain why there might not be routines to eliminate those sorts of problems.

Obviously, from the point of view of these sorts of mechanical aspects of writing, I would find it easy to pick faults with any writers who were less inclined to absorb mechanical aspects of writing than I was.  Someone who was being trained to teach English would be more likely to submit to being drilled on mechanics, than someone who was not.  (That's sort of a moot point as far as my own training was concerned, because I was not trained to teach English!  Oops; the embarrassment.)

In every story I have written, the romantic thread of the story was always an add-on at the end, except, maybe, in Alexandra, where the lovers meet right at the beginning of the story, and are ripped apart halfway through, and struggle to reunite over close to a 100,000 words.  Any literary masochists ought to read that one.  I should take that one apart, and rewrite the whole damn thing.

Well, I totally haven't (or "totes" haven't, as the millennials say) set down specific things I want to do better; I think the only thing I can do is to write a decent love story from scratch!

Kay

Kristen Zimmer, Natasha West, and others

As many of you guys know, I have been furiously reading the less expensive Girl-Girl stories on Amazon, and thoroughly enjoying myself, for the most part.  Some of the outstanding authors I have encountered there are:  Kristen Zimmer; Olivia Waite, Siera Maley, Natasha West, (I'm going to add to this list as I remember the other names).

Here is a review on Kristen Zimmer's story When Sparks Fly. When Sparks Fly by Kristen Zimmer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was a wonderful book, nicely written, and certainly was a lot of fun to read, though it was suspenseful at times.

I'm comparing it to a number of other stories that take place in the senior year in high school, and what sets this one apart is that the two girls are thoughtful adults. There's a lot about (1) photography, which caught my attention, a lot about (2) high school education, a lot about (3) finances and economics, and about (4) the foster care system. All, or most, of these topics were handled seriously by Kristen Zimmer.

What I did not know much about, at all, was the geography of the greater Boston area, the restaurants, the parks, the tourist attractions, etc, and at times Kristen seemed to think of these as background information that anyone ought to know! Of course it was quite possible to follow the story along very closely without this added information, but that doesn't make it any less annoying!

But the personalities of the three main protagonists, and the parents, were brilliantly delineated, and it was they who kept me riveted. I have read other books by K.Z, but none came close to the quality of this one; and I conclude that this story was based on girls that Kristen knew well—fortunate woman!—and how fortunate the author who has led a life rich enough to have it as a source for delighting her readers.

Let me add that the title of the story: "When Sparks Fly" reveals less than nothing about the theme of the story.  70% of the books on Amazon have nondescript, or actually misleading titles.  Amazon must have a policy of requiring crappy titles from its authors.

A word about British author Natasha West.  This woman is insanely funny!  Of course, those who live in Britain will find the stories even funnier, because of her extensive use of colloquialisms, in particular, catchy net words and expressions, used by young people, which doubtless convey associations and meanings we can't even hope to catch.  (On the other hand, Brits might well be jaded enough to simply read right through these expressions, since they might be so familiar.)  But the humor is only interjected to keep our attention; there are fraught situations that the more emotional reader might need a tissue to handle.  One thing I love about Natasha West is that she writes about couples both women of which are definitely femmes.  The story of hers I read most recently is about two girls—women, really; they're about 28—who are girls through and through. One is a little more combustible, but you could never imagine her as a guy; you simply couldn't.

Another of these authors that I love, is Siera Maley.  I have read a half-dozen of her books, but the one I love the most is: Dating Sarah Cooper.  This one is funny, just thinking about the story, and the characters, especially the aforementioned Sarah Cooper, a crazy BFF who launches herself headfirst into almost any project, however risky.  You're wincing throughought the story, in anticipation of what Sarah might do, but you have to love her.  I had friends like that, and I loved them to pieces!  Luckily, none of them were as heedless as the fabulous Sarah.

Kay