To Offend or Not To Offend?

I recently read aloud the first two chapters of my work-in-progress, Part Time Lesbian. It’s a story I’m working on the side of another that I’ve uncovered and will eventually strive to publish, because I do think the other is my best work. But we’re talking about something else, so let me get back to that.

Anyway, when I had finished reading the chapters, I was greeted with a small round of applause and several blank stares. I understood that I would probably receive this type of response considering the nature of PTL. I mean just the title itself is controversial even to lesbians! Not to mention, at the end of the first chapter the main character explains how she gets pissed at her mother and says she’ll probably go to hell for that along with all the other blasphemous things she’s said. The topic of gay rights and acceptance and tolerance is a touchy one, but by writing this story I’m hoping to change that in soe way. I know it’s a long shot, but I have to try the best way I can, and what I’m good at is writing.

I really need to just get to the freaking point.

After the meeting, a woman approached me and said she didn’t agree with what I wrote. She said it was offensive and didn’t find it funny at all (it’s worth mentioning the story is told in a sarcastic tone). What she was saying was that  because it didn’t match up with her beliefs I should not have written it. To which I replied, “If I cared about offending anyone then I would have written nothing.” I took a line out of my own book and threw it back in the woman’s face. I left feeling really irked about the whole situation. Who was she to tell me what I could and couldn’t write, or what is acceptable. If all writers worried about offending someone then nothing would be written, because on some level every book is offensive. It could be in the form of a whiny teenage girl who enters an abusive relationship with a vampire, or it could be in the form of a girl who goes against her extremist parents who are part of the church of LDS. You have to not care whether or not you’ll offend someone, because only then can you make something meaningful. If you never challenge a belief, you will never move forward. And remaining stagnant is pretty boring.

In Which I Do the Usual

If I have any readers out there at all, which I’m pretty sure there is exactly one, then I’d like to clue y’all in on something rather interesting. When I speak to you, I picture it in my mind like I’m a crazy person talking in the middle of a vacant room. I could care less if anyone is actually interested in what I have to say, but I need to get it out. Because when I feel the need to speak on a subject or about nothing at all the feeling will not cease until I write it down.

I recently watched the movie ANONYMOUS which speculated about the true identity of the famous playwright we call William Shakespeare. In it, the character (who actually lived) who writes Shakespeare’s plays says to his Puritan wife (Puritans view playwriting as worshiping false idols and nonsense like that) that he must write to relieve the voices in his head. This is sort of along the lines of what I do. The thoughts will not leave me until it has been released into some other form, even that form isn’t necessarily physical.

Now, some people might think I should do promotion for this blog, but honestly it’s not for anyone but me. Go ahead and read it if you want, but I’m not trying to please anyone or rally support for this. I likely won’t do any contests. Nothing to promote because this is my little corner of the internet where I can galavant around however I choose without ruining it by welcoming others. I realize that sounds incredibly antisocial, so allow me to amend that statement by saying: I welcome all readers with open arms and a free box of cookies, but do not expect me to reel you in because I feel you should hear what I have to say. If I want someone to listen, I’ll stand on their doorstep and picket until they do. So, now that my little anti-promotion spiel is over, I’d like to get to the heart of things.

A while ago–though I’m not entirely sure how long a while is–there was a bit of an uproar concerning the use of the words vasectomy and vagina during some sort of congressional fladoojey or something. I’m not quite sure. All I know is that a group of conservative republicans got their panties in a bunch because they thought that was uncalled for. Um… HELLO! Vasectomy and vagina are the proper terms! If you’re going to legislate vaginas then at least be able to hear the word, as my friend Momo commented.

Another thing about that: Where do politicians get off trying to tell people what they can and can’t do with their bodies? If it’s not affecting or harming anyone else then why should it matter? You do not speak for me when it comes to my body. Don’t try. I know I offend people when I claim I’m for abortion. That’s not necessarily what I mean. It’s easier to say it that way, but I’m really for the right for a woman to be able to choose whether or not to have an abortion. I’m not going to say I think they should have one every time they get knocked up, because that’s just irresponsible. But I’m not saying they should be forced to bring a child into the world that they won’t be able to raise, feed, clothe, house, or that will kill her on the way out. And if the child will be handicapped the rest of its life then why bother? That in itself is a form of torture, I believe. Unless that child can overcome that disability and contribute to society, it’s just cruel to carry it to term.

So, I am for freedom of the body and freedom of the mind. The government should not be telling people what they can and can’t do with their personal lives or personal areas. Views should not be imposed on an entire country. Hate those who oppose all you want, but do not try to legislate something that you have no right to.

I would like to start a movement for the freedom of the body and the individual. And now, I’m off to do that.

Maggots,

Alex.

Somedays

The title of this post really has nothing to do with it. It’s just that as I’m writing this I’m listening to Regina Spektor’s song which–as you may have guessed–is called Somedays. If you’ve never heard of it or even her, you definitely should do a quick youtube search because she’s amazing.

Anyway, I’m posting because it’s almost ten o’ clock (though, by the time I finish writing this it will be much past that time, I’m sure) and my nose is stuffed up. The rain is pressing down on my sinuses, and it seems like I’ll be bedridden the next day or two. Boo!

I have a comment to make on my previous post. Though I know very few people (if any) read this blog, I’m going to address you all has a whole. What y’all saw was an incorrect synopsis. The beginning has changed and is working smashingly. Leon and Ava are no longer from Theta. They are from Alpha–the warrior province where being a pacifist is something that could get you killed. This change allowed me to explain why later on Ava will be able to fight decently, and why she talks the way she does. A self-respecting Theta girl would not be so badass. With this change I also found a better chemistry between Leon and her, which helps later in the story.

Now, because I find the clicking of my keyboard soothing (don’t give me that look! You do too!), I’m going to keep writing and explain prepositions to each and every one of you.

A preposition is anything that you can do to a box (or a bridge, depending on your preference, but can you really go in a bridge?). You can get on a box. You can go over a box. You can even go in a box! You get the picture. It’s a pretty simple concept, right? Well, there’s 200+ of these prepositions, so if this sparks in insane interest in you, then look up a list. I would be so flattered (almost wrote flavored there. Nyquil is setting in)!

I’m going to sign off now, my dears, before I do something incredibly stupid. Then again, isn’t a blog somewhere you’re supposed to be able to be stupid? Whatever.

Maggots,

Alex

P.S. It’s 10:02!

Delta (Or the story that wouldn’t sit still)

I believe I posted quite a while ago about a novel I’m working on called Delta. At the time it may have been titled differently. Since that time this story has undergone several revisions of plot and I’m looking for some feedback on this newest change because it could determine the fate of this novel. So, if you wouldn’t mind taking a moment out of your day and giving a little feedback that would be incredible and you will receive a cookie. (Yay for cookies!)

Ava Grenill is a citizen of Alpha on the cusp of adulthood. In her province, all seventeen-year-olds must take part in a final Evaluation where they are observed by a Board of Evaluators to judge where their strengths lie and to decide where each would best be suited. For Ava, she’s known all her life there are only two choices: accept a role as Mediator (guard) and live a lowly existence, or apply for the Exchange and hope she is selected to journey to a foreign province.

When she takes the place of her childhood friend in the Exchange, Ava is relieved to leave behind her home where violence rules the streets and people are bred to be fighters. It is only when she arrives in Delta that she feels truly at peace. Delta is a province that is elegant, bright, and dependent upon medicine. It seems everything is perfect until she suffers a painful withdrawal from government prescribed pills. It is this that leads her to ask questions about Delta’s past and present. What she finds could shake the very foundation of her world–that is, if she can make it out of Delta alive.

So, any thoughts are greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Something I find disturbing

As many of you know, I root for Marriage Equality. But I’ve decided that I no longer want to root for that. No. It’s too specific and I root for something that covers a broader scope. So I’m not for Marriage Equality. I am for Equality. Plain and simple. Or at least it should be.

I recently read an article about North Carolina considering eliminating domestic partnerships and civil unions between people in their state and I was astonished at the comments it received. It seems people don’t know when to stop spewing the same argument over and over.

You’ve all heard it. The–as some people might put it–Cafeteria Christian rant that “The Bible said being gay is a sin and therefore gay people are abnormal and should not be granted the right to marry.” The term Cafeteria Christian refers to those of the religion that would pick and choose which verses to quote and abide by. These are typically the ones that also judge despite the fact that the Bible says to leave the judging to the higher power, they probably eat shellfish which Leviticus takes a stance against as well (I should mention Leviticus is the one who said homosexuality is a sin), and they seem to only focus on one argument: Religion.

First of all, not everyone follows your religion. And–as it’s been repeated often–religion is like a penis. You can love it and be glad you have it. Hell, you can even pray to it! But just don’t wave it in my face and shove it down my throat like it’s the only fakking penis in the world. Now that I’ve said that, I can move on to my argument about how just because a man who was said to be influenced (hear that? INFLUENCED! Which is not the same thing as being told directly.) by God wrote a few lines about how men cannot be with men and women cannot be with women does not mean you’re right. Besides, it shouldn’t matter to you what other people do. Didn’t your mother ever teach you to mind your own business? Gay people don’t need you to try to save them. If they want you to then they will seek you out. But do not feel like you are obligated to inform them about something they’ve heard all their life. But since we’re on the discussion of sin, I can almost guarantee that if I go into a church I can find at least ten people who sin regularly and don’t even really feel bad for it. Not to mention divorce. Half of all marriages end in it. That’s a sin. Yet you don’t see the Cafeteria Christians running after the divorced couples. Instead their coddling them and sending prayers. Well if the Bible is truly what God wants then he’s not listening to those prayers. He’s shouting, “SMITE THEM ALL!” So I guess if you want to stay in God’s good graces you better uphold your promise of til death.

Now that we have religion out-of-the-way, let’s move on to the unnatural part of homosexuality. It occurs in more species than I can remember. Upwards of 4,000 I believe. Which species is the only one that claims it’s unnatural? Humans. I believe a ” ‘Nuff said” is in order.

Next, we arrive at the political aspect. I can go on about the “All men are created equal” stuff but I’ll just be met with the whole “Yeah, but you know the Founding Fathers didn’t actually mean that. They meant…” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Guess what! I don’t care. The Founding Fathers were not stupid in the way of law and new that specificity is key. However, they must have been having an off week when the Constitution was written because they left out the subtext of “All men…” that says, “Except anyone who is different.” Regardless of what they may have really meant, the sentence speaks for itself. ALL MEN. However, since then we have grown to include WOMEN. So now we have ALL MEN AND WOMAN ARE CREATED EQUAL. That’s a pretty broad statement and since we can’t exactly contact the Founders to ask them to be specific we have to take it as it is. A blanket statement must be treated as one. After all, it is what this country is based on. So who cares what was meant. Guess they screwed up and left something out. Too late now.

It’s sick what we do in this country. Denying people the right to marry because of personal beliefs. When did we let the government decide who we marry? When did we give them so much power? And when did we become such a herd of sheep? I’ve had enough. Things need to change and we are the ones to do it. Let’s get started.

“You have to understand what humans can do to each other”

I’ve recently had a review over WWII. It began with the coverage of the war itself. Why certain nations participated and how others were pulled in. War is an incredibly strategic venture. You have to know what you’re doing and feel like you can succeed to even last a minute. Without that confidence you would surely cripple under the arms of your opposition. What I reviewed was nothing new. I’d seen the footage, heard the stories. I had become desensitized to the entire thing.

Now I try to stay away from desensitization of these things. I think it’s important to be able to feel one another’s pain. And that is something people seem to be drifting away from. You can find a thousand reasons why and yet the message is the same. Humans are heading toward total emotional blockage. I don’t mean we’ll never feel anger or sadness or happiness. I mean when you see a horrific sight on television such as the terrorist attacks of 9/11 or footage from any war you don’t think anything of it. You just continue to channel surf, unfazed by the event you just witnessed.

I pride myself in being affected by these things. It reminds me that I’m still human and it allows me to remember how truly terrible these things are and why they can never be repeated. Which is why when I sat in class the first day of the Holocaust review I knew that I was likely going to leave the class completely stunned at what has happened.

The first day was not as bad as I had anticipated. We viewed a program created when the Holocaust museum in D.C. opened. It told the stories of several survivors. At the time of the taping these people were elderly though not quite to the end of their lives. These people were the children of the Holocaust. They told of the harsh conditions in the ghettos and the miserable scenes that were their daily life for quite some time. And then came the introduction of the killing squads. The pain in these people’s voices as they recounted memories of such a frightening time was palpable. I wondered how anyone could do such horrible things. Then I wondered if everyone else in the room was asking the same question. But when I looked around I found only a few faces directed at the screen. Everyone else was drifting to sleep or fiddling with a pencil or whatnot. What was wrong with these people? Then I realized how desensitized to this event they were.

When you spout off statistics it makes no impact. What are 10 million deaths in words? How do you carry over the sheer terror from the event to your words? It’s difficult to do because we are a visual society. We must see it to believe it. It is not enough to be told. We must be immersed.

My instructor’s hand came down so hard on the projector that I thought she was going to crush the machine. She was fuming as she stood in front of the class. “Everybody up! Now!” she bellowed. “Can you tell me why when I look out across this room I see people sleeping with their heads down? No? Then I shouldn’t have to ask. Now, do any of you know someone who survived the Holocaust? No one? I figured, because likely if you did you would know why this is important to know about. So let me put it into perspective for you.” She became animated and pointed at people as she demonstrated her point. “I’m going to take a three-quarters of this class and say you’re all free to go. The rest of you I’m going to tell you that you need to cooperate or I’ll shoot you where you stand. You’re going to listen and do what I say because now you’re afraid for your life. Then I’m going to load you all into a train where there’s not enough room to move around. I’m going to send you on a journey for three or four days with no food, no water–only what you have on you at this moment. There are no bathrooms on this train and it’s hot. Now you’re on a train sweating, starving, dehydrated, and standing in human feces. Occasionally the train may stop only for me and my friends to laugh and throw a piece of bread in to watch you all fight for it even though it’s not even enough to feed one person. By the time you get off the train, most of your friends are probably dead.

“So now I’m taking you into a camp. I tell you to strip down and tell you that if you just do what I say you’ll be okay. Just do what I say. So you do. And then I hand you new clothes that smell and are dirty. I tell you to put them on and you don’t want to. But you’re going to do it anyway because if you don’t I’m going to kill you anyway, just like I threatened when I put you on the train. Once that’s done I’m going to sort you out. If your friends survived with you, I’ll probably separate you now anyway. I take the strongest and send you to work for long hours each day with little food and bunks that are nothing more than wooden shelves. Maybe in the soup you get a piece of meat but from time to time you also find lipstick or other inedible junk. Why? Because you are not worthy of anything better to me. Those clothes you’re wearing? I took those of a corpse and gave them to you because I view them as more valuable than you. Now that I’ve got you beaten down and weak you’re going to do whatever I say because I’m stronger and you can’t fight back. And in the back of your mind you might think you’re still going to be okay because I said you would be.

“As for the ones I didn’t send to the work camps, I’m going to tell you to take a shower so you don’t infect the whole camp if you caught fleas or something like that. You do as I say and then you wonder why you’re in the showers for so long. Then you drop dead because I just sent you to a gas chamber. Now your buddies in the work camp are going to be ordered to throw your bodies into a mass grave that they dug. Or maybe I’ll just have them throw you into a crematorium. That way there’s no evidence.

“Those of you that are free to go, do you see what just happened? Yes, you did? Then why aren’t you saying anything?” She asked this as she held a pretend gun in their direction, waving it back and forth. She relaxes her arm. “That’s because you’re afraid, and fear is a powerful thing. It can make people turn the other way. It can allow a madman come to power. Now everything I just mentioned actually happened to these people you’ve been watching. This was a reality for them and they didn’t know if it was ever going to end. They didn’t even know what they did wrong, which was nothing. I’ve only just scratched the surface with this example. But do you see now how awful this was? Don’t dismiss this topic as something that just happened. Looking back at our whole history, this was not that long ago. And you might think this will never happen to you, but it can. People will let an authority figure do whatever he or she wants if it means they are safe. People will stand by if they are afraid. People will say nothing if their lives are endangered for saying something. None of these people ever thought it could happen to them. But it did. So why would you think it could never happen to you? You have to understand what humans can do to each other and that’s how you prevent something like this. Not by saying it won’t happen, but by making sure it doesn’t.”

Needless to say, everyone paid attention afterward. The point she made should be spread everywhere. It resonated with an entire class. What about the entire world?

Soulbound (Or as I like to call it: the best thing to hit the shelves in a long time)

You’ve waited for this review and now I am finally allowed to post it! But where do I begin? There are just so many things about this book that I loved. Okay, well let me start with this:

In the world of Tril, there are two populations of people; the skilled and the unskilled. The skilled are made up of Barons and Healers. Every time a Baron or Healer is born, their Baron or Healer is born at the time therefore making them Soulbound and creating a special bond that cannot be replicated.

Kaya lives with her two Baron parents in an unskilled village. Since Barons are not allowed to be with other Barons, her parents were forced to run away from the skilled world and by doing so also kept Kaya from her Soulbound Baron.

When Kaya’s father reveals he is a Baron, the Zettai council contact her family explaining that Kaya’s Soulbound Baron has been killed in battle and she is to attend Shadow Academy so she may be Bound to a new Baron (which creates a connection, yet weaker than being Soulbound). If she refuses to attend, her parents will suffer.

With no other choice, Kaya leaves her home and attends Shadow Academy where she learns of a “Healer’s Place” and that on the battlefield she will not be allowed nor able to defend herself if her Baron neglects to protect her. Being the strong girl she is, Kaya seeks help from her Bound Baron, Trayton, and a young teacher, Darius. Only one agrees.

That sounds epic, right? Well that’s because it is! Kaya is a strong-willed, hardheaded, intelligent girl who won’t conform to the ideal Healer image. She doesn’t want to be a frail flower waiting for her strong Baron to rescue her. Instead, she takes matters into her own hands and proves she can fight with the best of them.

However, Kaya’s hardheaded-ness also gets her into trouble with one known as Professor Baak–the Healing Professor. Almost everyday since her arrival Kaya finds herself in the rose bushes tending to them for extra duties. But she doesn’t let this get her down. No, she has her hilarious and loyal guard, Maddox (who I have fallen in love with!) and Bound Baron, Trayton to keep her company while she collects thorns.

In an effort to not give too much away, I can only say that the ending leaves you hanging. Heather Brewer, the Queen of Young Adult Horror, has proved that she is also a Master (or Mistress?) of Suspense with the ending to this book. From the second it begins, the climax of Soulbound snowballs until you’re left with an enormous pile of cliffhanger in your face as you turn the last page. It’s an ending that only Auntie Heather herself could deliver and it packs so much punch you’ll be scrambling for the sequel. Unfortunately, we’ll likely have to wait another year for that, but all good things come to those who wait. And trust me, I’m sure the sequel is going to be quite the thrill ride because in the back of my ARC it names the title of the next installment, and OH MY KAYA IS THAT GOING TO BE GOOD!

So, if you’re into fantasy, adventure, strong heroines, cute boys, and Auntie Heather’s classic touch of sarcasm, then Soulbound is a book you must run out and preorder now! The Graplars are waiting! Just don’t let them bite you because then it could get infected and nobody wants Gan-Graplar.

Until next time,

Alex (Todd)

P.S. I had the strong feeling that Soulbound should be turned into an anime of some sort.