<h1>Sex's Meme!!!!</h1>

One of my favorite people/writers in the world asked me to play, so here it is:


What does writing giveth you and what does writing taketh away?

Writing gives me the freedom to express things I would normally never express otherwise. It's strange but I have this inability to converse verbally what is always wanting to be conveyed in my mind, the heart of hearts y'know? But when I attempt this feat verbally out comes the diarehea. (still not sure how to spell that word goddammit!)

Writing takes away.....hmmmm. My emissiary force field of mystery & shadow. I am a shy/quiet person by nature, but when I write, NOTHING is held sacred from these fingertips. There are parts of me that hate other parts of me for this, but it is what it is, right?

What characteristics do you share with your characters and their lives?

My ability to see right through the heart of humankind. All my characters possess this quality to some degree or another. Other's bullshit detectors are more finely tuned than other's though, I s'pose.

What was your hardest story to write and why? Give us the rundown.

I think the hardest story to tell was my husband's in my memoir 'Fartsmeller by Day, Bounty Hunter by Night (Autobiographical Confessions of a Bi-Polar Mother). He's a very private man with even more private thoughts. He isn't comfortable with having his life story spilled all over the canvas that is the artwork of 'my' storytelling. If I do nothing else in my writing, I will have liked to have said that I was honest to say the least. And it was hard for me to be honest, but at the same time, respectful of my husband's wishes for me to be considerately gentle of his story. It was like footsteps in the dark for at least a year, and my everytime I read that draft I fucking cringed because I knew there was more that needed to be said, I just didn't know how at the time. Finally I decided to put myself in HIS footsteps, instead of trying to tell the story from MY point of view, and the words came flowing forth. I tell you though, that was a very scary road to go down, seeing the world through Snookms' eyes. I STILL don't know how he gets up to face the world everyday & still manages to show me his beautiful smile when all is said & done.

Tell me about your writing community or "tribe."

Hmmmm. Well, I started this blog as a sort of secret 'therapy' almost two years ago. I had no desire to reach out to others or for others to do likewise. I wanted room to say whatever I wanted to say with no judgement from others. I danced that lonely dance for a year, & then let the stalker in me take precedence over any sense of reason I had left to keep my dignity intact. I happened acrossed SexScenes' blog when I found John Robison's blog (he has her on his link-list fer cryin out loud!) & I fell in love at first sight. She's cutthroat. If writers were pirates, she'd be that writer. She doesn't judge you, but she'll tell what time it is any day o' the week if you catch my drift. I started 'noticing' other like minded individuals commenting on her blog & slowly fell in love with a small handful of those fellers too. Stephen Parrish, Erica Orloff, Jess Watsky, to name a few. Jess was a jewel I found without the help of Sex, but I DID happen acrossed her way when I noticed a comment from her on John Robison's blog in regard to a Land Rover. I figured any teenager gal that knows anything about anything when it comes to Land Rovers is MY KIND OF GAL. Life has been ever more beautiful than it ever would since Jess had been brought into my life.

So you wanna know the ties that bind this small handful? Quirky, got a mouth on them, will fight you tooth & nail if you drive em to a corner, but have a heart of gold underneath all that bark. And GOD DAMN can they WRITE.

And they didn't judge me. I had a heart full of hate & didn't know what to do with it, but they didn't judge me. They saw through the rust of unforgiveness & stayed with me for the long haul.

What sucks worst about the business of writing?

The time man. The motherfucking TIME. And the rejection. I'll hafta agree with Sex on that one. I can see why that shit could drive one to drink. Thank God I don't drink anymore.

What's the scariest thing you ever wrote, maybe something that nudged you in places best left untouched? What have you realized about yourself through writing?

A work in progress titled "Jupiter's Scar". It's a memoir being told from the different parts of me, chronicled from the first time I lost my virginity, all the way until I met Snookms & decided to started riding his jock. I sat down one night, with only the desire to write an introduction to the first chapter & about shit myself when I realized it was 4 hours later & 3 thousand words to boot. 30 pages flowed forth from the different parts of me & I hadn't even realized any time passing. THAT'S how much I had been denying those parts of me to tell THEIR half of the story. I haven't gone back to it since because I am still afraid of what else they have to say. I realize that I have denied my all the different parts of myself to be integrated into a full functioning unit, & that they want their fucking turn to tell their story already. Exciting, but yeah, S-C-A-R-Y.

What is your career going to look like in five years? Ten?

Five years? Emerging writer. 10 years..... in a dinner conference with this lovely community of writers, patting each other on the backs on a job well done for our almighty worldwide publications. A girl can dream can she not?

What writers influence you?

Betsy Dornbusch's writing, Jess Watsky's writing, Mordicai Knode's writing, Erica Orloff's writing, Stephen Parrish's writing, Katie King's writing , Neil Gaiman's writing ( I won't even bother with a link, everybody & their GRANDMA knows who this dude is now), Weis & Hickman's writing (same here for the most part), the music of Amanda Palmer (here too), Augusten Burroughs writing (you get the point right?), Nicola Griffith's writing, Kelley Eskridge's writing (if you don't know of Nicola's or Kelley's works, YOU REALLY REALLY SHOULD!), & the scripts for Richard Kelly's works. Those are the ones that come to me without giving it a second thought.

What are you working on now?

A graphic novel called 'Teenage Wasteland'. I just recently wrote what this all is in a previous blog, but I'll sum it all up again here:

If you toss much of the artwork & style of Persepolis, Crazy Jane & all 64 (plus
others!) of her magnificent personality superpowers, & the backdrop of The Cult of
the Unwritten Book into a ring, & let Carnage work his might
& magic of symbiosis, well then you have Teenage Wasteland. Add a luck
dragon, a handful of ForestMasters, & a few oldskool NES character cameo
appearances & there you have it.

So there THAT IS.