Going Against the Granola

Happy December and a pre-emptive Merryween, y’all! I suspect this will be my last message for the year, so buckle in – there is more than my usual one-paragraph parable here this time.

Actually, what I have for you today looks an awful lot like a box of granola bars. Exhibit A:

This box box of granola goodness was gifted to me at Bouchercon at the beginning of November. And you know, you just can’t keep a thing like that all to yourself.

So I brought the box with me to Steampunk November, where it provided excellent snacks for the ticket booth volunteers.

But there were lots left over, so then I brought the box to my guest-lecture at Collin College the week after.

And to the corporate training seminar after that.

And to the Dallas Makerspace class after that.

I even brought it with me to the Fort Worth Writers meeting before Thanksgiving, but they had an ENORMOUS cornucopia of goodies already there, so my little snack-box was entirely superfluous to requirement. (Seriously, y’all. The FWW is for REAL.)

Now it is almost empty, and I could not be more delighted. It’s such a good feeling to know that my little snack-box has been so many places and fed so many people.

The thing about a box of enthusiasm like this (and you knew those shelf-stable carbs were going to be a metaphor for something, right?) is that it’s meant for sharing. And when your enthuse-o-box gets low, that’s a good signal that it’s time to leave off giving for awhile, so you can rest and replenish yourself. I always look forward to resting at this time of year. Winter is when all the conferences and conventions are over, the publishing world is shut down, and I get to enjoy a whole lot of house time.

But a funny thing happened earlier this year. I got another box in the mail, with ENTIRELY different goodies.

There are tweezers and pins and plastic baggies aplenty in there, screws and cams and plugs galore. These new treats are mechanical, analytical, procedural – nothing at all like the creative story-shaping stuff I’ve been dealing in for so long now. And I have more of them than I know what to do with.

Y’all, it is so strange to be typing this, but I seem to be turning into a little baby forensic locksmith. I got my AFL (ALOA Fundamental Locksmith) certification earlier this year. Joined the IAIL (International Association of Investigative Locksmiths). Signed up for forensic science classes at the local college. And I am now several weeks in to my new job as a bench tech at the local lock shop.

You may refer to me as "The Keymaster" :)

I found out recently that there are 49 Certified Forensic Locksmiths in the world. And I am just passionately, hell-bendingly keen on becoming CFL #50.

I’ll be the first to admit that this does not fit the narrative of my life at ALL. In every locksmithing course and conference I’ve taken this year, it has been STUNNING to find myself the only squishy little lady-wordess in a room full of top-tier tradesmen, my ignorance as pure and deep as the driven snow next to these fellas with 20 or 40 years of experience in the industry. (They have all been tremendously kind and welcoming, by the way.)

I have struggled mightily to justify any of this to myself. It has been humbling and refreshing to enter a world so demographically different from the creative-writing community in which I’ve spent my whole adult life. It is also hard not to feel like the very silliest of no-hope impostors in this new company. Almost everyone in this business seems to have come from a police, military, or family-locksmith background, and my two semesters of Latin feels mighty out of place here. It’s been an eye-opener into how some folks must feel when they dip a toe into our creative-writing world, for one thing. Whenever you consistently find yourself the only (X) in the room, it’s awfully hard not to wonder if you’re in the wrong room.

One of these things is not like the others...

I tell you what, though, y’all – and this is the part that I hope will be most relevant to you. I’ve noticed something really interesting happening here of late. When I am among writers, I am the only locksmith present. When I am among locksmiths, I am the only writer. And that has made a POWERFUL difference. I’ve already made friends in high places by transcribing and reformatting the IAIL training manual – because they didn’t have anyone who could do that. I’ve already been invited to give a hands-on lockpicking workshop at a writers' conference that's turned me down three years running – because they didn’t have anyone for that either. I have stood out and been noticed more in the last six months than I have in the past six years. And I think you can too.

Posse, the bigger and more anonymous our world gets, and the more we feel like helpless specks competing against millions of other author-hustlers for that coveted buy, click, like, share, or follow, the more I am convinced of this truth: if you want to be the best, be the bridge.

It feels truer the more I think about it. Mister Rogers was the bridge between the exciting new television medium and the timeless care and patience needed to nurture young children. Julia Child was the bridge between classical French cooking and everyday American households. My friend Bud was the bridge between me, a writer, and Shane Richmond, a master-class swordsman and outdoor events impresario – and now we have Writers in the Field. And so many of our favorite genres - urban fantasy, romantic suspense, and alternate history, just to name a few - are a fusion of others.

Or tequila suckers, which are a fusion of candy and regret.

Bridging is not an easy thing to do, I'm discovering. Sometimes your blending results in a masterfully delicious beefy cheesy chili-mac - but just as often, you are left with a quivering pile of meat jello. It takes courage to scrape the bowl out and start over - and over, and over, and over.

In the meantime, have no fear: my granola-box is not empty, and I have no plans to discontinue my regular brand of literary ruckus-raising. I’ll be travelling less in 2020 while I work on building up the far side of my bridge. But I’m really looking forward to keeping up with you and your own building projects – and if I can be helpful with those, I hope you’ll let me know. (My plotting and developmental-editing brain is ever at your service!)

Anyway - I hope you’re proud of your year, y’all, whether your win was total domination or just getting through it. And I hope you have something already set up to look forward to on other side of the holidays. Regardless: rest up, write on, and don’t give away the last of your snacks – you will need them for the road ahead!

Rapping on the A-Train

So while I was in San Francisco, I took the subway to go visit my friends. It was the end of rush hour, so not very crowded once we got into the city proper. Then a guy got on, carrying a little portable speaker and a microphone, and arranged his gear in one corner.

And then he started rapping.

The song was something about peace and harmony - it wasn't very loud, and I couldn't quite make it out. Of course, my first thought was "God, what a jackass. Doesn't he know nobody wants to hear that?"

When he was done, he walked up and down the aisle, soliciting donations with his white-papered can. Everyone ignored him. And my second thought was, "How pitiful. This is like, the saddest and most awkward thing I've ever seen."

He got off at the same stop I did, but before I headed up the stairs, I waited - and watched him get on another train heading back the way we had just come. His microphone fell and dragged on the ground as he boarded, and my last glimpse was him gathering it up and turning on his speaker as the train doors closed behind him. And my third thought was, "Oh God. That is me. That is what I do. That is what my author-friends do. We are all just hapless schmucks belting our hearts out to a crowd of indifferent strangers and trying to get paid for it."

So today's thought is: let's do what we can to be kind to each other. Some of us are more skillful or subtle about it than others - but at the end of the day, most of us are just rapping on the A-train.

The Happy Human Game

Well, 2017 is officially in the bag, which means my time spreadsheet for the year is all finished. Final count: average 66 hours worked per week for the past year. Highest was 96.5 hours in one week (the Tornado Alley Tour) and the lowest was 41.5 (the week before Thanksgiving, for some reason).
Y’all, I am not proud of that. I spent a whole lot of that time being wired to the moon and miserable, and not following through on promises I made to people I really care about. I AM proud of the things I accomplished in that time (more on that in the next couple of days) – but I do not want to die of stress and fat. 

So I’m going to start doing things differently – and maybe this will be useful for some of you guys too. This year, instead of making resolutions, I made a new spreadsheet. I’m calling it my Happy Human game, since that's what I'm trying to become. I listed all the stuff I want to make a habit of in 2018, and assigned each one a points value. There’s 365 points possible – funny how that worked out – and for January, I want to see if I can get 50 points a day. I’ll see about ratcheting that up to 100 in February if it goes well, and maybe tinker with point values as certain things get easier.

Anyway, if you want to try making your own Happy Human game, you can download mine and mess with it. (Please do change the entries around; the things there are the things I personally tend to struggle with, and I'm sure yours will be different.) Here is the link!

You might also like to check out Habitica, if this kind of thing sounds appealing - it's a similar idea, but rendered as an actual, playable game, and I've heard good things about it.

Regardless: good luck out there, guys. The year won't stay pristine for long, but I've loved seeing all the can-do-itude on my feed today, and I am so looking forward to meeting your bad-ass future-self!

2017: The Post-Hocalypse

One year ago today, my last book came out. The copies got a little held up in transit, but we had a TREMENDOUS launch party, and took the leftover credit-cupcakes out for an epic bar crawl afterwards.

I didn't write anything in 2017 (it's been hard to feel like another book is really what the world needs from me right now). But as I psych myself up to get back on that horse, I can't even regret the lapse. I've had the most fantastic adventures, with more terrific people than even I can handle knowing. It's such a treat to know you, and I can't wait to see what kind of ruckus we can raise next year.

Click here for the whole album.

Move over, Mickey Mouse Club...!

Take a hike, Hugo Awards. Smell you later, New York Times. Today, I have officially Made It - because today, I have become a Halloween costume. Love you to the moon and back, Anne!
(I dressed up as a muggle. Shirt by Jodi Thompson . Body by McDonalds.)

Not #MeToo

Not me. Somehow.

I have no idea why. Can't take credit for having unbearably great parents and upbringing. Maybe living as a sedentary suburban nun had something to do with it - I never drank or dated, didn't socialize, lived at home until I was 24. It probably helps that I live in a fat suit, make zero style effort, and dress like a fourteen-year-old boy. (Thank you for loving me anyway.) Also, having mostly dude-friends for the first 20 years definitely equipped me with a "one of the guys" cadence, which may put out dickhead-deterrant signals I'm not aware of.

But that's the point, right? You shouldn't have to be an hourglass John Candy to avoid the bad touch. You shouldn't have to be a teetotalling sexual dustbunny to keep from getting hurt. My experience should NOT be the exception to the rule.

Anyway - nobody should apologize for having a great life. I'm just sorry I haven't had more to say when this subject has come up previously. I'll try to be a better listener and advocate. Regardless, please let me know whenever I can send some surplus goodness your way: if there's one thing I love about being human comfort food, it's getting to share it.

Sailing My Failboat Beautifully Onward

I woke up today and was 35. (You're not supposed to put that kind of info out on the Internet, but Equifax has already scrawled my data on every virtual truck-stop toilet wall from here to China, so whatever.) I would like to celebrate by taking off the professional enthusiast's hat for a minute and indulging in some reflective realness.

Lately, my entertainment indulgence has been watching the infuriating greatness that is Silicon Valley. And despite my aversion to cringe comedy in all its forms, MAN do I empathize with Richard. Working 80-hour weeks for months on end with a ragtag bunch of iconoclasts who have somehow bought into your mapcap vision? Constantly circling the drain, curling up in a fully-clothed fetal position in the bathtub, convinced that THIS time you really are fucked? Absolutely SURE that you could knock the world on its ass, if only you could stop being your own worst enemy long enough to make it happen? Oh yes.

We occupy the best and worst of all worlds, simultaneously.

Granted, I haven't invented a revolutionary compression algorithm, and my little proto-company isn't getting multimillion-dollar funding offers. Nor can I pretend that any of what I'm killing myself trying to do will ever put a roof over anyone's head. Honestly, it's a great day for the WORD crew if we can throw a good party and still break even. And sometimes it's hard to justify the effort, if it's never going to make you rich OR save the world.

But I gotta have something to hang my hat on in order to keep moving forward, and lately - in the year of our lord 2017, in which we're all stumbling through a neverending shit-blizzard of murder-suicide madness - it's this:

You know who doesn't tend to end up as a mug shot on the evening news? People who can take pride and pleasure in what they do - whether it's writing or gardening or fixing houses or dressing their dog up as Batman.

Or folding tiny little rainbow origami books, like my friend Frank.

And I worry that we're losing emphasis on doing in favor of *being* - in favor of swearing allegiance to a group, a tribe, a label, and then walling ourselves up behind like-minded individuals and the institutions who cater to them. You'll never hear me say that being and belonging isn't important - shit, I spent three books exploring just that - but my notoriously unbalanced self is at least Libra enough to commit to tipping the scales back toward the joy of doing.

Because people who feel like they're accomplishing something, be it ever so small or silly, are so much less likely to hurt themselves or others. The demons that haunt creative people are real and dangerous, but not as dangerous as those who whisper to people bereft of purpose.

So that's why we're doing WORD, concocting all these madcap schemes to get writers fired up and connected. That's probably why you and I are friends. And that's why I'm so glad that you are still out there fighting to do the things you care about, even when it feels like you're killing yourself just to tread water.

Hang in there, y'all. Do your small things with great love, and try to make sure that at least some of them are projects of your own devising. It's the only way I've found to make all the tired worthwhile.

Acknowledging the Cost

Man, I'm going to regret writing this. But here goes.

Sooner or later, we all have to take a turn defending the status quo. And it sucks.

Sooner or later, something (or someone) crucial to our value system is implicated in a disaster or a tragedy, and we have to take a turn in the cognitive hot seat, saying "well, let's not be hasty here - you can't use this as an excuse to XYZ - the *real* problem is ABC."

Nobody likes to be in the hot seat. Nobody likes to be put on the defensive. And in moments like those, our brains actually, literally defend our worldview harder than ever. We double down as instinctively as a pill-bug rolling up under a three-year-old's inquisitive poking. It's what we're neurologically wired to do.

Today a white guy with a shitload of guns is in the spotlight, and the right is on the defensive. Eventually there'll be another ISIS attack, and the left will take its turn.

But y'all - the thing I wish we could ALL do? (Besides hold hands and sing kumbaya.) Is understand that when we say "well, hang on - you can't just up and ban these people/things - that would be a betrayal of the greatness America stands for" - what everyone on the other side of the fence hears is "and that's why we have to let this keep happening."

Guns are a constitutional American right - and that's why we have to let this keep happening.
Immigration is what this country was founded on - and that's why we have to let this keep happening.
The free market is an essential cornerstone of our democracy - and that's why we have to let this keep happening.

Any time you try to deflect criticism of your thing (that you are deeply invested in) over to some other thing (that you are not invested in), without offering any specific, meaningful skin-in-the-game plan of action, your statement always ends with the unspoken "and that's why we have to let this keep happening."

(Example du jour: "it's not guns, it's mental illness" - but I'll wager the percentage of the people saying that who have personally called, written, and/or voted to advocate for improved access to mental health care is slim at best. The left-side equivalent is probably "it's not Muslims, it's radical Islamic terror" - which rarely comes with a solution more nuanced than "pull out of the Middle East and hope that in twenty or thirty years everybody will have settled down and stopped hating us.")
And that's why your argument wins no converts.

I wish our neural wiring would allow us to straight-up admit our feelings this way. I wish we could psychologically afford to stand up and say "I accept this blood as the cost of doing business." I mean shit, maybe we can. We've long since done it with cars. Being an automotive society means that there WILL continue to be fatal accidents, DUI manslaughter, kids forgotten in hot cars, and cars/trucks used as weapons of terror... but the only way to completely prevent those deaths is to stop driving, and we are not willing to do that.

That does not mean we're bad people. It means we've weighed up the pros and cons, and accepted a certain number of auto fatalities as the cost of doing business. We'll happily do what we can to *minimize* that cost (what company doesn't want to reduce its operating overhead?) - but only so long as it doesn't impede the business itself.

So when your goal is to vent, to commiserate with the other people on your team, to express your feelings - absolutely go for it. No criticism here.

But whenever it's your turn in the hot seat, and you feel obliged to defend the value/importance of your thing to the unpersuaded world at large, your efforts will be so much more fruitful if you start by acknowledging its cost.

The End of the Tour

Not gonna lie, y'all. Lately it feels like we're living under a darkening sky - so many people in such dire straits - and even the best acts of solidarity seem microscopic compared to the enormity of the need. I've really enjoyed my little tornado alley tour, but it's hard not to feel like the whole exercise is a bit privileged and frivolous. Who can get worked up over the finer nuances of playing with story-barbies when the whole world is underwater, on fire, or both?

But I just got this beautiful message from a beautiful person whom I met on the tour, and she said it would be all right if I shared a part of it here.

"I don't think you realize what a difference you actually made for me on Sunday. Frankly, I attended your presentation not expecting much. I don't know you. I haven't read your writing; although, I certainly intend to. I went simply to get my mind off of my son. He recently found out he has testicular cancer. The prognosis is good, but I must tell you I've been terrified, and I thought by attending your presentation I would be able to think about something other than cancer for a few hours. You provided that for me, and your enthusiasm and funny disposition actually made me smile which is something I haven't done a lot lately."

It's a hell of a thing, isn't it? And even though it showed up in my inbox, I'm thinking maybe it was meant for you too. It is so unfortunately unacceptable to be anything but "fine" in front of other people, even when we're really, really not - so you just can't know when that one little thing you did or said made all the difference for a person that you weren't even thinking twice about.

It's so good to see so many people putting themselves front and center to help with the fallout from the hurricane - but I hope you are also giving yourself credit (and doing things that let you give yourself credit) for helping the people right there in front of you, whether you knew they needed it or not. Those needs don't tend to show up on the 6 o'clock news, and if you don't catch them, it's likely nobody will.
 
Also: I know gas and time are in short supply here in DFW, but if you would likewise enjoy a couple hours of "and now for something completely different", the last stop on the tour is tomorrow at 10AM - The Plate Tectonics Theory of Dialogue at the Roanoke Public Library - and I would be heartily glad to see you.

How Not to Evacuate a Texan

New proposition: instead of naming hurricanes on an alphabetical boy/girl system, let's call them according to whatever will appropriately intimidate the people who need to evacuate. If we had called this one Hurricane Post-Game Traffic, Texas would be deserted clear up through Abilene.

Also: 'evacuate' is a wussy word. Nobody with a Winchester and an ounce of self-respect wants to think of themselves as retreaters. Next time you need to move a mass of rednecks, NOAA, drop the Frenchery and call it a 'Yankee raid'.

Now lock up and light out down there, y'all - shit's going to get Biblical.

A Living Word for a Human Superlative

You know that thing, where somebody’s clock runs out and then we all get together and talk about how cool and rad they were, and how much we enjoyed them and what a difference they made in our lives?

It’s pretty much the most bass-ackwards thing ever, and I’m not up for it. Present tense verbs, people. We have them for a reason.

So here’s the thing. Sandy Thompson is our family’s human superlative. He is a filthy bleeding-heart hippie, an aggressively phlegmatic social instigator, a chronic iconoclast, a mainliner of books and a freebaser of big ideas, a gratuitous hollerer of inappropriate things at inopportune moments, a hot-sauce sommelier and a study in joyful cootery. He is also the most infinitely thoughtful, relentlessly generous, inexhaustibly kind person I know – and that is a tall order.

And of course he didn’t get that way without having to make some hard choices. It’s not as if we make it easy to balance being a sensitive, enlightened sapient AND a belching, snorting, unapologetic man-savage even in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Seventeen – and that had to be doubly true back in the Eisenhower days, when both parents wore combat boots and raised the kids with a strictly liver-and-onions lifestyle.

And now more than ever, I’m so glad my generation of Thompsons have gotten to grow up with his living example – because he’s spent his life being what I can only think of as a professional American – a truly artisanal citizen. He reads omnivorously, and re-evaluates his conclusions accordingly. He doesn’t buy into the “four legs good, two legs bad” knee-jerk tribalism that has so many of us treating our preferred political party like a gang membership. He volunteers at the local radio station, signs petitions and makes phone calls on behalf of his local candidates. Most importantly (and this is a mark I STILL can’t hit) he knows how to passionately, absolutely, fundamentally disagree with someone, without losing his temper, his sense of humor, or his respect for the other person’s basic humanity. 

That is so hard to do, y’all. That is the endangered art that we absolutely cannot let go extinct. We need fierce, educated, articulate activists who will go to the mat for their principles. But we also need those same people to fight just as hard within themselves and their own movements – to hold on to empathy and compassion for the people on the other side, to ask questions and listen and consider what unhealed wounds, what legitimate, unaddressed grievances, are festering underneath all the obnoxious rancor. Neurologically speaking, it is one of the hardest things in the world to critique your own team, to admit that the other guy has a point, to deliberately flunk your group’s purity test and risk being ostracized on all sides... and yet that is the test we cannot afford to fail. We can’t afford to sign away our own good judgment and let our team’s dogma machine do the thinking for us. We can’t afford to become the club that it uses to beat down our fellow citizens. Singular self-directed human beings do not trample their neighbors. Stampeding herds do.


Sanford has known that longer than I’ve known how to tie my shoes – and so much more that I haven’t even begun to clue in on. I STILL don’t know how to roll a joint or play a guitar or wear the same tie-dyed T-shirt for a funk-free solid week, and my zydeco-and-birkenstocks game is total weaksauce. And no matter how far I make it in the long run, I will never match the bigness of our Lebowski – our family’s exceptional, irreplaceable, once-a-generational gonzo-humanist Renaissance man.

But my belch-fu is at least good enough to hold the line – and as long as you and me and the rest of us rabble-rousing Yankee wastrels are willing to hang out, drink the beers, shoot the breeze, and give until *somebody* hurts, I expect he’ll be all right with that.


POSTSCRIPT: We got to enjoy Sanford for another four months after I wrote this post. It still wasn't nearly long enough.

Midnight Confession II

I don't know why, but I'm having a really hard time taking off the red hat and being a real person again. It is just such a thrill to go out into the world to delight and disgust the unsuspecting masses - and SO hard to go back to all those other less-fun feelings that you just can't put off forever. Fear and sadness are dragging me something fierce today.

I tell you what, though: this weekend was just a hell of a thing. It was such a revelation to meet someone who is everything I want to be when I grow up - who has built her identity on love and realness and unstoppable charisma, both as an author and a teacher - and who is massively, awardfully, bestsellerly successful as a result. I mean, I was going to keep at it regardless... but what a blessing it is to have artisanal human proof that it CAN be done.

Tangentially: it is a special kind of shocking when you meet somebody who seems to see your entire self. We are so accustomed to spinning our hexagonal heads around to meet the world with whichever face the present audience expects (partner, employee, parent, friend, whatever) - and not at all prepared to encounter someone who speaks affectionately and directly to our raw living core. I totally get it now, and I’m sorry I didn’t before.

Anyway. Keep at that relentless, visceral person-work, y'all. Riding herd on all those stampeding feels will wear your ass right out, and STILL beats the alternative by a country mile.

For Eleanor - A Life Unlidded

So there was this one time when I was visiting my grandmother up in Oregon, and all of us ladies went out to lunch together at Shari's. She ordered the nachos (an appetizer) and got an ENORMOUS plate of chips and cheese - enough for any five ordinary humans to eat.

Unfazed, she ate some and then piled the rest in a to-go box. After we left, we stopped at McDonald's drive-through so that she could get a drink. My aunt Molly was very sure that Gramma needed to put the lid on the soda, and said so several times. Gramma listened patiently, and then replied, "I'm going to do whatever I darn please." At which point she calmly reached into her purse and paid with a nacho.

(Which turned out not to be the quarters she was looking for. She found the money on the second attempt.)

That's the goal, you guys. You might not get to beat her record - 96 is a hell of a number, and none of us knows how many good days we'll get. But if you can roll up to Mickey D's and tell your well-meaning friends and family exactly who's in charge of your senior Diet Coke, you are Doing It Right.
Thanks for showing us how it's done, Gramma. You didn't always know what to do with the likes of us, and we sure as heck don't know what we're going to do without you.

Eleanor Mayhugh (1921-2017)

Announcing Candidate Campolo

You may have heard me describe myself, very modestly, as “simply the finest human being who has ever lived.”

That is no longer true.

The title now goes to my sister, Allison Campolo, who has just thrown her hat into the ring to run for the Texas state senate, in District 10. (That is basically the southern half of Tarrant County – Konni Burton’s district, for those of you who keep up with these things.)

And you guys, I just can’t even imagine the guts it takes to do that. You know, to put your face out there KNOWING that people will say horrendously ugly things to and about you. To volunteer yourself to spend the next 18 months knocking on doors and making phone calls and wearing out the bottoms of your shoes, all for a ‘maybe’. For a job that literally does not pay a living wage. (Texas state senators make $7,200 per year, plus a per diem when the lege is actually in session – which is four months out of every two years.)

But, you know. She sweated her way to a black belt in kung fu. Started, ran, and sold a business. Got her master’s and is working on a PhD in veterinary biomedical science. She’s spayed cats, researched fish farms in Thailand, smashed bricks, blood-typed horses, built a barn, broken bones, played in a band, doctored an epileptic beaver and a squeamish brother-in-law, and probably BASE-jumped from a breaching whale off the coast of Nicaragua while I wasn’t looking. She’s even more of a ridiculous Mary Sue than I am – and if that’s the kind of person you would trust to road-trip down to Austin and kick our Lone Star shit into shape, then I hope you’ll join me in backing her bid.

You can start by following her on Facebook and on Twitter. She’ll be speaking at the March for Science in Fort Worth this weekend, and will need our help in collecting donations and signatures to secure her bid. It’s going to be a long, uphill slog, y’all – but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from living with Al, it’s that bravery is contagious, and ‘badass’ is a verb.

Midnight Confession

I miss regular life. I miss sleeping through the night and not needing 5-hour energy to get through the day. I miss wearing my smaller clothes and caring about what I eat. I miss going to movies and baking funny cakes and being a good friend. I worry about what will happen at next week's doctor's appointment, and I feel guilty for letting my haphazard book promotion efforts lapse. I'm afraid maybe they'll cancel the UK edition of the last book because the sales haven't been good enough. I worry sometimes that I'll never have the wherewithal to write another book, or that nobody will want it if I do.

But y'all, we sure have pumped a lot of goodness into the world lately. And that's solid enough to sleep on.

All the Stately Ladies

Whew! That’s enough “please” for one day. Now let me bust out a very particular “thank you”.

I don’t know whether it’s because I’m getting into heavier stuff or just a random coincidence, but lately I have been knocked acock, almost on the daily, by this cavalcade of bad-ass elder stateswomen in my life. I’m talking about Marsha Hubbell and Stephanie Chambers and Jane Lumsden and Chris Weiler-Allen and Trayce Primm and even and especially my own dear sweet brick-busting dane-wrangling ultramom, Shirley. They are just so *potent*, y’all. They don’t get hung up on the little things. They don’t get heartburn worrying about what other people think about them. They are just 100% occupied with serving up their glory to the world. And I cannot WAIT to get old enough and real enough to be like them – to stick to my guns and ride for the brand and have not one single thought to spare for what somebody else might have to say about that.

Actually, while I’m at it, let me add Rick Amitin here too. Men of his generation have not been encouraged to wear their hearts on their sleeves, but he has stitched that sucker on there with day-glo nylon. He walks through the world with the assertively kind, unflinchingly affectionate realness that I can only marvel at. He has spent his life becoming the change he wanted to see, and not many folks can say that.

Anyway: gals, I know today is ‘our’ day – and that is as fabulous excuse as any for us old-ladies-in-training enjoy and appreciate the people who have helped us to discover our muchness. It’s a hell of a job, and we are so fortunate that they have hitched up their wonder-wear and waded in to do it.

Just a Little Pat on the Back(yard)

I saw an article in the NYT today about a restaurant in Japan, operated by a senior care specialist, that makes special gourmet meals for people who can't chew or swallow well. It's high-quality food that's artfully arranged and presented, so it looks and tastes like first-class fare - a big deal for older and disabled people for whom eating is a crucial pleasure.

I also saw a video this week about a guy who had a horrible time in foster care as a kid. Now he's adopted four of his own, and started a company that makes "comfort cases", so foster kids don't have to haul their belongings around in a trash bag.

And right here in my own backyard, David Doub is hard at work erecting tentpoles for geeks and creators of all stripes. He runs Dusk Comics, the Creative Women's Conference, the Texas Creative Community FB group, and now he's helping with the Texas Latino Comic Con (and probably even more things that I don't know about!)

And I just love it when somebody sees a problem in their own backyard, suited to their own expertise, and decides to solve it. Fixing the little things is how we fix the big things.
Good job, world. Good job, team. Keep thinking about you-shaped solutions to us-sized problems. We can do it!

Living at One Minute to Midnight: A How-To Guide for the Whelmed

I haven't posted much of anything about politics, for a whole tiresome list of reasons. But I am foremost a student of humans and human emotions, and I'm seeing a *lot* of my favorite humans getting fried by the bug-zapper that is our news right now. So if you are feeling burnt and crispy, here is something to think about.

Whenever you are involved in something significantly larger than yourself - a club or group, a company, a family, a nation - it is essential to understand your role. If your job with your company is to get and keep clients, then that is what you do. You pay attention to marketing and budgets insofar as they touch your own work, but you don't stay up all night worrying about the 401ks. That's someone else's job.

The problem with the intersection of politics and social media is that nobody is handing you a clearly-defined role. And without that, it's easy to think you are supposed to do everything. Every outrage that comes across your virtual desk is somehow your responsibility. Every worthy call to action has to be acted on, every objectionable comment replied to, every feed fed. And that is too much, y'all. No wonder we are getting overwhelmed and dropping out.

But nobody is going to come over to your desk and dump half your virtual inbox in the trash on your behalf. You are going to have to decide for yourself what is and isn't your responsibility. Right now, I can see two ways of organizing your give-a-damns:

1. Filter by cause. Let's say you are all about minority rights, healthcare, and gun control. Those aren't just issues you have opinions about - they are the three hills you are willing to die on. So you go to the mat for *those causes specifically* - you call, you march, you research, you debate - and let everything else pass you by. Climate change is somebody else's job. Economic issues are somebody else's job. You are fighting in the Pacific theater, and you can not worry about Europe.

2. Filter by role. You know, a medic does not do the job of a sniper. If somebody needs some killing, don't call the medic. Conversely, the medic does not sign on to treat only a certain kind of soldier. They will use their specific skillset on *everyone* they can, to the absolute best of their ability. Maybe that's you. Maybe you have zero stomach for Facebook arguments, but you will gladly call your representatives and give them hell at the town hall meetings. Good! Appoint yourself the legislative muscle of the movement, and leave the diplomacy and debate to someone else. Or maybe you can't blow up phones and streets, but you are a rational, persuasive *boss*. Good! Be an outpost of reason and kindness here on the virtual frontier - help people understand each other, dig up the facts and figures that are getting buried under the hyperpartisan headlines, and add to the ranks of the thoughtful and enlightened. (God knows we need it.)

Regardless, y'all: it is essential, now more than ever, that we tap our individual talents and strengths, and trust our fellow-humans to do likewise. Don't do the things that hurt you. Don't let yourself get so tired and frazzled that you pass on the hurt to other people. This may be a war, but you are not the only soldier - and nothing proves that you have smart, sustainable passion for a cause like a list of ten other things you gave up to pursue it.

Three Random Wishes

Three random wishes for a random Tuesday:

1. I wish I could make a living just helping out. Not selling services or whatever. I would just go and help the old lady clean out her garage, or spend an afternoon helping somebody fix up their first chapter, and rent would pay itself.*

2. I wish I had a manager. Somebody to do all the arranging and setup and coordinating and promoting, so I could spend my time actually doing the thing that I am actually good at.*

3. I wish I didn't like sugar.

*I think this is a huge part of the attraction of roleplaying games, by the way - Everquest and Warcraft and whatever the kids are playing now. We want so badly to live in a world that wants & rewards the things we're good at.

The GPALPBBFA2016 - Redux!

It happened, y'all. And it can never be undone.