Lines Are For the Restroom

I’ve always preferred to color outside the lines. No matter how awesome the box, I’m not good at staying inside it. I can’t march to anyone else’s drum. (Can’t really march at all, but anyway.) Perhaps it’s no surprise I’m awful at cramming my writing into a genre. As a reader, I find genre highly useful. I know what I’m getting when I grab a space opera, a military SF, a cozy mystery, a Big Fat Fantasy. I want some surprises, of course, but I also want to know what I’m getting into. That what I’m picking up is the sort of book I’m going to enjoy. That’s as a reader. As a writer…I have a serious genre-problem. I can’t help it—I like to cross lines. At the Alamo, I’d have been doomed for certain.

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Evoking Memory

I play a game with myself at work. My bosses play a classic rock station on the radio, and I try to identify as many songs and artists as I can. What’s scary is that I’ve been able to identify almost all of them. What’s interesting is that they evoke so many memories for me. For instance, any song by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons brings up memories of my childhood at our old house. It’s summer. Dad’s working on one of his cars. Mom’s in the kitchen cooking. My sister and I are in the living room dancing to Dad’s Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons tape (yes, this was before CDs and DVDs). I remember vividly “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Walk Like A Man,” “Rag Doll,” and “Sherry.” There are many more.

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Market Choice

I find myself in an interesting position now, and I suspect my Turtleduck compatriots are feeling much the same. Never before have I really thought about where a story will end up while I’m still in the planning or writing stages of a project.  It’s always been “I’ll write this, and worry about what I’m going to do with it later.”  

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Dancing My Passion

I’ve long been interested in all kinds of dance and music. Over the years I’ve taken piano lessons, played in school bands, sung in choirs, gone to concerts and dance performances. More recently I’ve taken a variety of dance lessons, looking for the kind of dance that would speak to me. Hip hop and salsa weren’t it. Flamenco was closer – all that drama and Spanish guitar, and the close attention to technique. Belly dance held some of the same attraction as flamenco, but I didn’t fall in love with either one. Then I discovered contra dance.

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Bleeding Stars

  Dreams settle into shadows as we cling to each other –   Our time is finite damp with absence, a wish thrown into sunset. How I want to see you, as you rise from mundane hours and find me, trapped in the satin of sky, holding starlight promises.   We steal small eternities – the pieces of existence we can’t mold into words, the shape of regret.   Love is only a memento plucked from our somber nights and pressed into memory. It haunts us in our dreams; it whispers through dark spaces.   Eyes like pendulums, we’re dancing shadows, bleeding stars.  

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