Well, howdy 2023. What is up? Are you gonna be slapping us around like 2022 did? Huh? Are ya??
It’s been raining here. Raining. When not snowing, sleeting, foggy or raining.
You know, January weather.
Rejections flying in like dead birds thrown at already broken windows. Yeee haaaaa.
My cat is a sleek, complaining rascal. She sniffs at her food bowls and resigns herself to snack a bit, after pitiful calls for the ‘good stuff’. She enjoys meowing until someone lets her out the front or back door, so she can zoom about to my window, let herself in and have another go at getting someone to let her out a door so she can zoom about outside a bit before returning inside for a nap or several. She is, in other words, a total cat.
My country is, um. An embarrassment? A total eye-rolling puke-inducing stench lately? I should get my passport renewed and get the hell out for several years until it falls or somehow rights itself a bit? Haven’t looked at those teaching abroad jobs lately…
I got myself a pair of avocado platform boots. Because I had to. The compulsion to get them WOULD NOT GO AWAY. You see something wildly not suited to your lifestyle and work needs, and yet, you MUST HAVE IT. I was haunted by these damn boots for months. Such a high heel but it’s a platform, so that negates the heel height. I can do shoe math.
I resisted. I resisted so hard! No, okay, I didn’t. I finally succumbed. They were out of the size I wanted– a size over my actual size 8 because I have wide feet and sometimes things like, oh, boots, don’t fit. And yet…these fit. They fit. Oh. Oh! Anyone not a shoe fanatic will not understand but those that do…! You get me. You feel me. You know.
Writing? Oh that. I am…sure. I’m writing. I feel defensive writing this! My mind seems tired and utterly smooth of ideas and notions about plot, character, setting, genre and theme. Should I attempt a steampunk splattergore sci-fi western set on a planet a thousand years in the past? Should I be pushing out female-only stories that deal with political issues oddly parallel to our interesting times yet no actual real world stuff happens because it might trigger a slush reader and my story won’t pass muster and the rejection will say I need sensitivity schooled and…? Should I just write cute poems about elves in my patch of sage that persists in surviving no matter what? Or write essays about man’s inhumanity toward everything ever?
I don’t know!
I go over what’s acceptable and not for a story and…yeah, I get it but sometimes, when you live in, oh, say a rural place full of people convinced the government under Biden is about to round them up for CRT-re-education camps and about to geld the local kids…well. Yeah.
I went to lunch with a friend the other day. He was spooked to be out. It was in our mutual home town. He was afraid to say stuff because he’s gotten death threats because he’s, you know, a liberal. And a pacifist and very vocal, in the past, about everything wrong with home town. The local crank, in other words. And these days, the handful of liberals in a small, very conservative town might end up shot to death or run over or hurt in some way.
So, I have to shake my head over some of the restrictions placed on what can be in a story. Or just send that story anyway, with the trigger warning. But I do understand why the list is in place, when you see the rising crimes and vicious hatred directed at marginalized groups.
Anyhoo!
Back to 70’s era platform boots or what?
Had to. Look at them!!!
ANN WUEHLER 