The Maenad's Bone Garden

Lupercalia Press has (formally) folded. Which means that my first publication, the Ishtar Cycle, is now completely out of circulation.   While I suppose I could try to find another publisher to keep it in print, it's not like it's going to sell monstrously better just because it's got a new publisher. I will, however, be selling (ha!)  digital copies as soon as I can get a storefront set up.  I do wonder what happened to the rest of the hard copies but honestly, it's maybe for the best that I don't think about that.

Please give this article a solid read.  The blog is a recent discovery and I have been reading it voraciously there is tremendous insight to be found here. (But then, if people listened to us, and valued our (authentic) voices over 'the familiar,' I think the world would not be in the situation it is today Content and Trigger Warnings for homophobia, transphobia, trauma, childhood abuse, shame, sex work, and (especially) our currently active culture of transphobia and anti-trans hatred. "The thing about this sort of propaganda is that even when we know it’s untrue, members of these demographics are still terrified of proving them right. One more individual who has been abused and is gay or trans or a sex worker is not evidence that childhood abuse is the cause, and yet the idea that people will say it is makes us terrified to discuss our own abuse histories openly lest they be used by bigots. This is compounded if our abusers were gay or trans or sex workers themselves, b...

 The video for the January reading from the December issue of Writers Resist has gone live. I know many of you will want to know when I'm in there - I read twice, I think fourth along and then toward the end. ALL of the pieces are good and I urge you to please watch the whole thing - I especially was fond of  Yvonne Patterson's reading of hegemony: footnotes in future history , Kathy Kremins' Ode to My Reflection in the Mirror (on just one day)   and I was completely blown away by Tara Campbells reading of Prolapse . Watch the whole reading here. 

A rant.  There are two things I’m never ever going to write unless presented with specific kinds of sell-out money – something six or seven figures. Transition narratives and some meandering plodding thing talking about how much I resent being a mother.  Each is 'the pigeonhole' – the thing that as trans people and women respectively we are "expected" to write. Fucking ew. The second one is soaking in biological essentialism and women as second class citizens. Also, I’d have to actually lie – I’d have to have been able to have a say in raising my child for me to be able to hold it in contempt. I don’t, and never have encountered a single one of those that didn’t leave me with a feeling of “must be nice to be that much of an asshole.”  My kid wound up with her Trump voting relatives for high school because birth-mom had better things to do.  Now she runs with Godslurping dipshits and wears an NRA hat.    Besides, I'm from Texas. There was NEVER a p...

 If you follow the kithbooks page on Insta, you will be rewarded by the absolutely stunning and just totally spot on reading of my poem, Column E, from Flying the Jolly Scarlet, Gambling with the Gods ( Available March 6!  Pre-orders available now! )    as read by Katherine, my editor and chief collaborator on this project.   I think she put the story up late last night or this morning.  I am not *super* familiar with navigating that aspect of Insta tbh but if you are following them it should be right there at the top of your feed.  Maybe one or two back (or more if you're following a bunch of active accounts).    Give it a listen, it's amazing!    By the way, if you go to the Get in Touch page on the kithbooks website, there is a montage at the bottom of the page that just makes me giddy happy.   

 So much on my plate now.... the second (full) issue of the Viridian Door dropped a few days ago. What kind of editor am I? (Rhetorical question - save those cards and letters thanks.) Get it here by scrolling down and clicking on the lovely issue 2 cover by Syreeta Muir.  Be sure to check out her work within the issue as well! the Viridian Door To download it directly walk thorugh the Door by clicking here, though some people are apparently having a problem with this. We're researching the problem. I suspect Google is being Google.  As always back issues and more about the Viridian Door on our website.    https://theviridiandoor.wixsite.com/main

this is a cool magazine. (Not just, or even because I'm in it. Okay yea that helps but not what I'm talking about. At all.) But I am banging the proverbial joy buzzer about being in any way part of this action. rather literally now that I think about it. hah     *a chorus of squeeing weasels* Read it my children.   Not just this one, but read it all.    Cream Scene Carnival the Maenad is reforming the pink ladies as a mob.  And she's pissed. 

Super pleasing news this afternoon; my review of Beyond the Silk Roads has been vetted and is now live, available for your viewing pleasure.  Beyond the Silk Roads: Trade, Mobility, and Geopolitics (A Review)