A Whole Week

So, I've managed to blog every day for an entire week! Wow.

Reminder; go check out today's prize on the Smutty Advent Calendar. Natasha Blackthorn has some stuff for you, including a free e-story just for participating.

And further reminder: Tomorrow is my turn! There will be a free prize to everyone who participates, and some give-aways for a random winner. Or two. I think two. I should check my email to make sure I'm doing what I said I was going to do...


I wish I had a picture of my great-grandmother. I mean, I have one wallet-sized pic of most of the family, but Mimi is tiny in that picture. Also, it's not a computer file, just a regular picture, and I don't have a scanner anymore. Maybe I'm glad I can't scan in that picture. You'd get to see me in all my sulky, over-done eyeliner and lipstick, 13 year old glory. And I do so totally not look like I want to be there. Emo, before emo was the thing.

But that's not really what I want to talk about. Mimi was my mother's mother's mother. Her full name after marriage was Nell Ardel Longwell Hall. Or, as a friend of hers called her, Nelly Ardelly Longwelly Hallelly. We called her Mimi. At the time of her death, she had 2 children (my grandmother and my grandmother's sister, my Aunt Kit), 5 grandchildren (my mom, her two sisters, and Kit's two sons)  8 great-grandchildren (me, my 5 blood-relative cousins and 2 adopted cousins) and 1 great-grandchild (my oldest male cousin's daughter).

That same summer that my sulky picture was taken by a professional photographer, Mimi started to lose her sight. She could see around the edges, but she had cataracts in both eyes and she could no longer read or watch television. She was a bit sly; if she didn't know you were watching her, she could make her own coffee, get her own breakfast, but if she happened to see you, she'd badger you into doing it for her.

I didn't mind. I thought it was kinda cute, actually. She always looked so mischievous, like she was getting away with something. Mimi's been gone a long time now, and I still remember how she liked her coffee. I made it for her often enough that year.

Because she couldn't read, we got into this habit, that last summer. I checked out books from the local library, and got some of the old radio plays on cassette tape. Sometimes we'd listen to broadcasts - several seasons of the original Shadow radio plays. And sometimes I'd read to her.

We would sit on the back porch at my grandparent's lake home, which was screened in against the mosquitoes, and faced west. The sun would set over the lake, and we sat in canvas deck chairs, and I read Wuthering Heights to her. It was the first time I'd read it.

I remember getting to the "I am Heathcliff" speech from Chapter nine.

"I think that's the worst motive you've given yet for being the wife of young Linton."

"It is not," retorted she; "it is the best! The others were the satisfaction of my whims: and for Edgar's sake, too, to satisfy him. This is for the sake of one who comprehends in his person my feelings to Edgar and myself. I cannot express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is or should be an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation, if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it.—My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. So don't talk of our separation again: it is impracticable; and—"

I love this piece. I tear up every single time I read it, and sometimes even when I think of it. It's those things that make me want to write, make me want to feel, make me want to be. If I believed, truly believed, that I could affect even one person as much as this paragraph affected and continues to affect me... well, that would make everything worthwhile.

In my head, I'm thirteen again and I have no idea what love really is. I won't know it until I've lived at least as long as I already have. But on some other level, I understand what Cathy is saying. Tears are streaming down my cheeks and Mimi's hand is hard on my shoulder. Her grip is surprisingly strong, given her age. I steal a glance at her out of the corner of my eye. Her milky eyes, mostly blind, are looking directly into the setting sun. But she's no more seeing it than I am. She's far away, in England, or the landscape of her own youth. I rest my hand against hers, feel the parchment texture of her skin along her fingers.

I keep reading.

I've been reading ever since.

Ten Inch Plushie Dick and the Muse

First off, it's the 6th day of the Smutty Advent Calendar. M. A. Stacie is giving away a bag of Starbucks coffee.

Today I want to talk about the crap on my desk.

This is my 10-inch plushie Dick. He's probably not what people have in mind when I say I have a plushie Dick, but hey... I like being able to make the joke.

I have a lot of cute, weird, or just touchable stuff on my desk. My Jane Austen action figure, my tacky octopus Christmas tree ornament, my three dancing mushrooms...

Now, admittedly my desk is the repository for a lot of crap, but the actually decorative stuff... a lot of thought goes into that stuff. I want to feel both relaxed and inspired in my work-space.

I've always loved the dancing mushrooms... and a few years ago, my mom finally found these figures for me. (If I was a major tattoo person, I'd probably get these guys on my lower back. As it is, I'm still trying to talk myself into getting an octopus on my leg.)

I have stuff from Star Wars (2 lego copies of Slave 1 because in the whole show, no one is more badass than Boba Fett.) and a teddy bear made from an old mink coat and a totoro (with his arm in a "cast". He was a get-well present from a friend when I broke my leg in 5 places) and a geode, and some tiny pirate ships from a defunct card-game.

Every single one of these things has associations for me. Everything I keep has a story behind it. 

And nothing has more meaning to me than this:

This is my muse.

He lives on my desk, no matter where that desk is, no matter where my home is. No matter what. If I'm going to go somewhere else and do some writing, he goes in my bag. (The cage was initially to keep my cat from eating him, back in the day, and as his little sticky feet aren't sticky anymore, and haven't been for decades, this is a good way to make sure I don't lose him. 

I started writing stories when I was in fifth grade. In 7th grade, my parents bought me a word-processor for some holiday or other. Keep in mind, this was the 80's. This was a tiny little thing, grey, with a two-line "saved" window. You could actually go back and edit up to two lines of text before it would print those lines out. It used a sort of punch-out tape to stick letters to paper (and if I wasn't careful, you could peel those letters right off the paper) and had a very, VERY basic spell-checker. I typed out about two dozen short stories and one completely terrible, derivative horror novel.

Muse was a birthday present from the girl up the street. Yes, she gave me a homemade fuzzy ball with feet and eyeballs as a present. She had a ton of the things stuck to her ceiling in her bedroom, and I used to like to lay on her bed and stare at them.

I stuck him to the top of the word-processor and he watched me typing up stories for most of high school before my WP died a smoking, fiery death. (When the magic smoke comes out of the machine, it stops working!) I cried. 

And then I carefully peeled Muse off the smoldering machine and stuck him on my desk. My cat promptly jumped onto the desk and batted him onto the floor and under my bed. I recovered my Muse, stuffed him in the little cage (which is actually a leftover cat toy and probably wasn't the best idea I've ever had) and tied the whole kit and kaboodle to my desk lamp, so it hung down directly over my work space. 

And there he's been. Since I was 13 years old. He's lasted through seven computers, two marriages, five cats, three rats, two lizards, a turtle, probably ten hamsters, dozens of boyfriends, three girlfriends, tons of novels, short stories, really bad poetry and a few disastrous attempts on my part to write song lyrics.  

Interviewie Thingie

I meant to have this out earlier, but I woke up ill today. Or, more specifically, I went to bed sick last night and I'm still sick. Blech.

But I did this yesterday.

I am still completely weirded out by what my voice sounds like. It sounds completely different in my head.

I answer a bunch of questions, pitch a good dozen or so writers, talk about coffee and the process as writing... lots of fun stuff.

And you get to see the husband in the background there. (He was sort of grumbly about that...)

Also, don't forget to stop by the Smutty Advent Calendar. Sommer Marsden, who is mentioned in the interview, is giving away freeeeeeee stuff today!

Update: The video has been changed slightly to add in my author pic and book covers. None of the actual audio content is new, so if you watched this yesterday, great!

Book Trailer!

So, Elizabeth Brooks, who is one of my best friends, and she's also my primary beta reader, one of my editors, and you know all around can't live without her girl... has made a book trailer for "He Loves me for My Brainsss" (which as a side note, I've been spelling wrong for months now... since I like to stress it the other way. Braaaaaains. Braaaaaaaaaaaaaaains.) Wait. I lost track of what I was saying...

 Book Trailer.

 
 

So, there's that. Pretty awesome, yes? That last story, Two Guys Walk Into an Apocalypse by V.L. Locey, sounds amazing... can't wait to see the finished collection.

I'm going to take a minute to talk about W.O.L., which is my story from the antho, mostly because I like to talk, and I have to write a blog entry every day this month...

W.O.L. takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where genetic engineering and nanobot technology got out of hand. I first invented and visited (as a metaphor!) this world when I wrote about four chapters of a novel called Rains in Eden that I never finished, which was sort of a Handmaiden't Tale knock off, except at that time I'd never heard of Handmaiden's Tale and was being all clever. In Rains in Eden, the main character is an Eve, a surrogate womb. Her job is to basically to have baby after baby, none of which are hers, for the various citizens in floating cities. At the start of a new job, she's raped before the embryo can be inserted and gets pregnant in the very basic way - after all, she's on tailored hormones to be a receptive mother.

Part of the idea was something out of a class discussion in college. In a Jane Austen seminar, we were talking about the relative value of Mr. Darcy's "Ten thousand a year!" It was difficult to calculate what that would mean in today's society, since in the 1820's, you couldn't really buy a lot of the stuff we spend money on these days, new televisions and laptops, private planes and yachts. I mean, a wealthy family would have a carriage, or two, and certainly the tailor bills could get excessive for a dandy. But one of the things that's difficult to calculate is the power of purchasing people. Butler. Valet. Housekeepers and maids, cooks and grooms and footmen. Those people were often considered part of the family - and were often inherited along with the house. "I worked for the Darcys for forty years, and my mother before me." Their room and board, and often their clothing, were considered part of their employers' responsibility. They worked for very little spending money - it might take a groom a dozen years or more to buy a ticket to the Americas to make a new life there.

So, with that in mind, I made up the world that W.O.L. occupies, with Pure Humans - who have not been genetically modified and don't have any nanobots - and a lesser class of Altered Humans. Cities are walled off, or sealed, or on gyros and they hover above the ground, since some of the altered humans have grown wild. The Lazarus virus - which is actually a nanobot technology gone amok - creates a zombie-like horde in the unprotected spaces between cities.

Rains in Eden took place in one of the huge, mega cities that float above the ground. (There were originally seven, but now only three remain functional. Eden, Valhalla, and Mt. Meru.) W.O.L. on the other hand, takes place in the western part of what was once the United States, somewhere around where Sacramento used to be. It is entirely surrounded by a spherical shield wall, basically the post-modern version of a fort town.

I also worked the idea a bit from the fact that the Red Cross keeps calling me. I've given blood a few times. I don't usually like to do it, and sometimes it makes me ill - I have come pretty close to fainting - but I've also had a transfusion, so I like to pay it back. And just recently they've been pretty desperate. Supplies are at an all time low, and they call me about once a week. I'm scheduled to go in on the 19th, so maybe they'll stop calling me for a while - more persistent than a siding salesman, they are. I was thinking... what might happen to an organization like the Red Cross, when the whole world is mostly destroyed. Where moving between one town and another is likely to get you killed?

Thus, Korin, Knight of the Red Cross, came to mind. (Ok, I confess, I was also re-reading David Eddings for the nine millionth time, and church knights figure prominently...)

W.O.L. is one of my favorite stories - well, of the ones I've written. It was a decided stretch for me, and I admit, I'm still a bit surprised at the way it ended.

So, while I'm at it, here's your reminder to go see what FixSation is up to at the Smutter's Advent Calendar.

And, while you're at it, go to the Red Cross and give some blood.

Singer/Songfighter

It's the third day of XXXmas and my true love gave to me... one of my favorite people, Kristina Wright - editor of Fairy Tale Lust, Steamlust, Lustfully Ever After, Duty and Desire, Dreamlover and a bunch of other anthologies that I can't think of off the top of my head, as well as some stand alone books and collections of her personal short stories.

Well, no, my true love didn't give me Kristina... that would just be weird. Or the beginning of a threesome bondage piece that I haven't written yet. Hmmmm.

FOCUS! Ok.

Right.

Moving on. For today's advent calendar, Kristina is giving away some stuff. So go check it out, enter to win, etc, etc.


For those of you lovely people who were at my Jonah Knight Creepy Christmas party, and even for those who weren't, but who are curious about his music, I thought I'd post the set list... Some of these are available for purchase at his website, and some are... not yet available in a recorded format (*cries* including Bacon & Beer.) I'm sure if we all winge loud enough, he'll get back in the studio...

Set the first:

Santa Claus is Coming
Time Machine
The Window Frames
Bad Moon
The Krampus
The Ghost in my Guitar
What Christmas Means to Me
The Dead Crawl From the Earth, Alive
Doomed (not available to purchase...)
Once Around the Sun

Set the second:

Sleepy Little Creepy Little Town
Someday We'll all be Ghosts (in particular, I really liked the story he told about this song; "When I started thinking about moving from bar songs and songs about my ex-girlfriend, I told my wife, 'hey, I'm thinking about writing songs about ghosts and monsters,' she said 'does this mean you'll stop singing about your ex? Then I fully support your decision.'")
Dakota Moon (not available)
Bacon & Beer (more whining)
Yuletide Lads
Empty House
Math
Oh, The Places
Nuthin' For Christmas
Pirate Song
King of Nebraska (There's also a more acoustical version of King of Nebraska on the Age of Steam album... it's the 9. ? bonus song. Which is good, because I find the video game noises in the original recording of King of Nebraska to be a little disconcerting.)

Anyway, those are the songs he performed.



Here's a little sample video that I did with my phone. I think it's sideways, or at least it was on my Facebook page, so I dunno about here... if so, I'm sorry. It's my favorite song by Jonah, The Window Frames.

As a side note, Elizabeth Brooks, who is editing the m/m zombie antho which will frontline my story "W.O.L.", is in the process of making a book trailer for He Loves Me for My Braaaaaaaaaaains, and will be featuring "When the Dead Crawl from the Earth Alive" as background music for the video. So there's that, which is exceptionally cool. I'll let you know as soon as that's available...

And just because I'm feeling generous... if you comment on this blog post, I'll give you a copy of Jonah's Creepy Christmas Album. Please comment by Dec 15th, so I have time to mail you your copy before Christmas.

And, bonus, if you send me an email at lynntownsend (dot) writer (at) gmail (dot) com that includes your snail mail address - I fully promise that I don't bite or stalk people, and I will send you a Creepy Christmas Christmas card. (limit 15)

Happy Holidays, y'all.

My Brief Life as a Folk Music Groupie

Don't forget, it's the 2nd Day of XXXmas... and today Alison Tyler has some fantastic smutty prizes for you. Go check it out...

(Do you know what this means? Because I want to remind you all of the fabulous advent calendar that Victoria Blisse has put together, I may well write a blog post every day this month... holy shit! Merry Christmas!)

So... as usual, it began with a joke.

Like I said yesterday, I had a Christmas Party, and Jonah Knight came to sing at my party. He has a wonderful album just recently out; Creepy Christmas...

But about a week ago, the husband said "Ask Jonah if he needs anything to perform, extension cords, crash space, groupies, etc."

And I did just that. Including asking if I needed to provide groupies...

So yes, electrical sockets, groupies, and a place to sleep. My wife would prefer that the groupies and I do not sleep in the same place :) 

The husband and I batted that around for a while. I'm probably the only one of our friends with a tendency toward groupie-ness... but we were making dirty jokes, as we are wont to do, and cracking ourselves up. Eventually the husband suggested that we take a groupie-style picture and mail it to Jonah's wife.

Being myself, I couldn't help but make the suggestion to Jonah. I was astonished, however, when he agreed. Which is how we ended up ushering every adult female guest at my party into the bedroom and taking a picture.

Seriously, my bed has never gotten this much action!

On the first Day of Christmas....

My true love gave to me...

A Creepy Concert and a house party.

So, you know, I'm awesome.

This is Jonah Knight, and he's going to be playing Creepy Christmas songs at my party today. How freaking awesome is that?

But! It just wouldn't be a party without presents, right? Well, I won't be giving out my presents until the 8th, but you can get presents from someone else.

The completely more awesome than me, Victoria Blisse, is doing a Smutters Advent Calendar. You can go every day and enter for chances to win gift cards, free e-books, free dead-tree books, and the grand prize...

So, go see it, and stuff. Don't worry, I'll try to remind you to visit every day, either here or on Facebook, or both. Probably both.

In the meanwhile, here's my Christmas wreath. I cannot tell you how it fills me with joy. Probably because I'm afraid it's going to eat my face.