Self-indulgence is good...

The job is packed and ready for pickup, tomorrow, and I am a wreck. Mainly from age, I know that. Feet hurt. Back, too. Brain fuzzy. So I found a McDonald's and had a Quarter Pounder Meal, sized up to large for a late dinner and found myself wonderfully decompressing.

I'm going to have as much fun as I can reworking The Beast into Dyarvos and the Cannibal Queer. For example, part of the reason Dirc winds up becoming Dyarvos' helper is because the ET was messing up the instructions on a cookbook it had. 

Dirc was dead but being rejuvenated to be alive enough to feed Dyarvos' space craft...only the process shifted his entire psychological, emotional, mental and attitude enough to where he became the missing ingredient in prepping men to be nourishment. And he continues to be after Dyarvos deserts him.

Later, Dyavos verifies the recipe with Irin, who becomes another helper while Dirc is being tried as a serial killer. The ET needs someone to furnish supply for its interstellar diner. Now I'm not toning down on the sex, so much as clarifying it. Making it simpler. The best meals come from regular ingredients, not all them foreign ones...and buff guys are as basic as it gets.

That's why diners are usually better fare than 4 Star restaurants. Simple food, well-made and filling, unlike haute cuisine, which is more pretty than nourishment.

I'd always rather have a BLT than Châteaubriand...

Warning?

Damn, the powers that be did not want me to come to Seattle. Flying into Chicago to change planes was smooth and easy. Arrived to the airport an hour before boarding began. Checked my bag and had a muffin. Left on time. Arrived on time. All well and good.

But the part actually taking me into Seattle? Jesus, Christ, everything that could go wrong did...pretty much. The plane boarded on time. Packed flight in a smaller 737, but I got a good seat. Two people sat next to me with masks on, but kept to themselves...

And once the plane was loaded, it all came to a screeching halt. And not one word about why we were just sitting there for over an hour and a half. Finally, the ground crew said the plane was overweight and they needed 7 people to get off, and offered $2500 to each one. BAM! They got their seven.

Then the bags of those seven had to be removed from the hold. Finally, after minimal explanation and lots of irritated people grumbling and moving about, we got the okay to leave. Went out on the tarmac...and sat for another half-hour. In total, we left two and a quarter hours late.

Then...this plane that only has 2 toilets, is suddenly down one. The only lavatory working is the one by the cockpit, where you're not allowed to congregate. So there's a line all the way down the aisle of people needing to go after sitting there so long.

Of course, in the seat in front of me was a crying baby...and that couple also had a toddler who'd been given an accordion-like tube and she was compressing it together then pulling it open. Very loudly.

Fortunately, the crier cried herself to sleep, and I almost joined her until accordion child grew tirde of

When we landed, we had to sit on the tarmac for another 15 minutes because a plane was at our gate. Then the person operating the jetbridge must have been a newby because she inched forward, inched back, inched to the side, inched forward, again, and inched left, again...so that it took ten minutes for the door to even open.

On top of this, it took half an hour for my bag to show up. Then came 40 minutes in line waiting to get a bus to the car rental facility...only to find when once there they'd had a power outage. The only reason I was able to get the SUV I needed was because I'd printed out the reservation.

Even more fun? I used GPS to take me to the warehouse we're using so I could pick up some boxes...only to be taken to a spot on the other side of some railroad tracks from it and told to walk, because the road they were on was closed to through traffic. I had to use Google maps to work my way back to where I could get to them...and they didn't know anything about why I was there.

I had paperwork with their own job order on it. Which they finally began to pay attention to. But I still had to get the office to email them saying it was okay for me to get the boxes so I'd have something to work with, tomorrow.

Of course, on Southwest there is no food, just snacks. And foolish me had figured, since we were due to arrive in Seattle at 10:15, Pacific Time, I'd hold off lunch till we got there. I went from that 5:30am muffin to finally having dinner at, effectively, 7:30pm.

If that is not the owners of the ether telling you, We'd rather you not come. Be careful. Back away, slowly. Everything is dangerous. Then I don't know what is. But stubborn little me is here. God knows what will happen, tomorrow.

Gettin' on a jet plane...

At six-fucking-am, so I have to leave at 4:30, latest. But it's that or I don't get into Seattle till evening, going from Buffalo. That's traveling by Southwest. JetBlue isn't any better, while American and United are too restrictive and more expensive. Same for the return trips. I'm at the point I'd rather drive than take a plane, right now.

I am driving to the job in Detroit. It's not that far, like going from San Antonio to Dallas, and doing that is one hell of a lot more flexible. I can get there through Canada and come back by way of the 90, if I have leftover packing materials.

It was one of those days where things kept messing with me. Including my car. Its muffler is making noises that make me very uncomfortable, but I can't do anything about it, right now. I saw a doctor about my liver who didn't have much to say except, "Lose weight and exercise more."

The medical office I go to says I have an outstanding balance, for which I've never been billed. And I can't figure out how much it is because the receptionist gave me one total, my online chart said something else, and my insurance doesn't have that information yet because it's not put together till the end of June.

So I treated myself to ribs at Chili's...and regret it. $25 for a half rack, a handful of fries and a small bowl of mac & cheese, with a Coke Zero (add $5 for a tip). Not even a fucking beer. I could have made me a burger at home with cheese and onion and everything, and fries, and Kraft Mac & Cheese for less than a third of that. And felt better, afterward.

Now I'm about to hit the bed for a nap, setting my alarm for 3am. Grrr.

Sometimes I hate adulting...because I don't do it well...

Quick turnaround...

I got the eproof for the paperback edition of APoS-HNH and submitted the corrected PDF...and it was shot back to me within the hour. Looked great, so I approved. Now I also need to order a physical copy to make sure. And that will be that.

Dealt with the guy setting up my website...and learned WordPress won't let him do it unless I upgrade to their $300 a year business model. He's looking into options, right now, but this is going to take a lot more effort than I thought. And money. But I've already sunk $108 into WordPress, and I don't want to lose that.

When WordPress says you can work up your own website without any trouble, they mean so long as you're a fucking techie.

Also started the online push for my paperback editions of APoS on Instagram, Facebook and I linked them to Xitter. I'm also pushing them in Ingram's catalogue and, once the website is up, really slamming them through that.

Which is draining me, financially. So I can't stop working, yet. Going to Seattle on Wednesday for one job and the end of the month driving to Detroit for another. A third is upcoming in August. And even though they tire me out, I need the money to give APoS a solid start.

I guess I could return to playing the lottery. It's got as much chance as anything at making me solvent.

It's a Universal Law...

My writing is a pier jutting out into the ocean, and typos are the fucking fish beneath it, there but unseen...until they're caught...

I uploaded the text and cover for A Place of Safety (vol. 3) Home Not Home, and all went fine. The only hiccup was I had to do a reload when Ingram's site went a bit wonky, but that took care of the issue.

Then I went onto Bowker to update the assignment of the paperbacks' ISBNs so they can go into Books in Print...and started thinking I might have misspelled McGabbhinn in the text of the book. So I went back in and did a Find, to check...and sure enough, I did. Twice.

Shit.

Now that it's uploaded, I can't change it until I get the e-proof. Then I'll have to reject it and upload the corrected pdf. Which puts me behind, a bit...but better to notice now than if it's already been printed.

Now, of course, I'm wondering if I did the same thing in the hardback text and the ebook. Both of which are on an external drive that I have to dig up and plug in and deal with. TBH, I'm nervous about checking that because it will cost me more money if I correct the hardback text. So still thinking.

It's really not all that big a deal, I guess. If I did go in and update them, I'd need to do all the typos and I didn't keep track of them. So I'd have to go through the books, again. Which makes me feel like an uptight freak. It doesn't matter in the telling of the story. Or does it...?

God, I don't know! I feel like such an idiot...because I'm pretty damned sure these typos were made after I'd had the book proofed and I made some changes.

My first protest...

I went to a No Kings protest in Tonawanda, a suburb of Buffalo, and stood on a sidewalk holding a sign that said No King in America that I'd made myself. It was a busy intersection by Boulevard Mall, and cars were whipping past, most honking for us, some drivers flipping us off.

There were a few pro-Felon47 cretins across the street from us, but we outnumbered them at about 100 to 1. It was a lovely day, still I should have brought an umbrella for shade. I positioned my sign in such a way as to provide cover for my head, which grew tiring holding it up that high.

The crowd was very joyous and unwilling to be brought down in any way. And I managed to make it through without needing to pee till after it was done. What's nice is, my car was two blocks away and a Wegman's was close by so I could have something to eat and relax.

I'm now back to going through APoS-HNH and will upload it to Ingram, tomorrow. I hope to get an online proof by Tuesday, since I'll be off to Seattle early Wednesday morning. But once this is done...once I have a physical copy of the book in hand...it will be completed and all that comes now is getting it read.

I whine about the money I've put into it, and having APoS be a best-seller would be nice, but what matters most is people read the books. That's what will make it worthwhile.

Shift focus...

I got the file for the cover of A Place of Safety-Home Not Home and it looks great. So I went into the Word doc of the text to make sure everything was set...and found a fucking typo. Those things are out to get me.

A bit of dialogue did not have a quotation mark at the end of it. So being paranoid me, I'm reading the book at 200% size and verifying nothing more is there...and did find a word that should have been deleted. That, however, was in a bit of dialogue by Brendan's mother so almost seemed to be deliberate, to emphasize the confusion in her drug-addled mind. Except it wasn't. So it's out.

So...I'm through page 130 of the book and so far that's it. Still I'm not uploading it until I've rechecked every page that I've rechecked and had proofed. Then the fucking typos will have to really be sneaky.

Which I'm sure they will be. It's a law that when I get the physical copy of the book I find at least one typo still in it.

I'll be back on it a bit late, tomorrow. I'm attending a demonstration for No Kings over by Boulevard Mall for a couple hours. It's not enough just to fight the growing fascism in this country online; sometimes you have to show up in person.

I'm not changing the text in the hardcover or ebook. I'm already thousands of dollars into publishing and promoting this novel...and I just can't afford it. I can barely handle the coming costs of two packing jobs in the second half of this month...not to mention two specialist doctor visits. 

June's turned into a work of madness...

My usual thing...

I'm rewriting and rewriting the first section of this new book. Current title still being Dyarvos and the Cannibal Queer. I'm acting as if it's on the level of Les Miserables or A Tale of Two Cities.

I'm clarifying how Dirc gets started in his escapades and setting up what's to come in the later parts. Very, very important.

I may offer it up like I was doing with Blood Angel, in short bits on Smashwords...which is now D2D. But there's no guarantee they will accept it. I've already had one run-in with them when I tried to set up Carli's Kills as a paperback through their system...and they turned it down.

Can't say they were being homophobic; it's very heterosexual...but also very violent. Which surprised me. Straight people love the ultra-violence. I guess they didn't like a woman in control of the death and destruction instead of a man...or maybe they were upset she castrated some of them. You never know.

Of course, I actually have two women doing the violence thing, one being Carli, the other being the Sheriff. The bitch who initiates the situation that brings about so much death dies in the first chapter.

Maybe that's what upset them. She's just finished fucking her married boyfriend when she gets pushed off of a 25th story balcony, naked, and crashes to the pool area. I wonder if the nude death offended their delicate sensibilities?

Kirkus Review for APoS-Home Not Home

APoS-HNH preview of cover

I'm not displeased or unhappy with this review. Overall, it's very positive and has some quotable statements to use.

In Sullivan’s historical novel, a young Irishman flees the violence of his native land for America but returns years later to see his dying mother on a trip fraught with danger.

Brendan Kinsella grows up in Derry, Ireland, during the tumultuous years of the Troubles and does his best to avoid the acrimonious partisanship despite his mother’s rabid nationalism and his father’s likely ties to the IRA. Nevertheless, he is drawn into the fray, and after he is involved in a bombing gone wrong that nearly kills him, he escapes to Houston, Texas, to begin a new life under the assumed name Brennan McGabbhinn.

When he discovers that his mother is soon to die from cancer, he comes home to see her, traveling under yet another alias borrowed from a friend—Jeremy Landau, a Jewish American conducting academic research. Brendan, who was 16 years old when he left, now returns to a “city of ghosts” eight years later— “eight bloody fucking years of death and destruction” —in a grim homecoming powerfully described by the author in this emotionally piercing novel. Brendan’s siblings don’t even know he’s alive (his bother Eamonn is in prison for his work against the British), and his mother receives him with an icy coldness, still embittered because he never wholeheartedly joined the cause (a reluctance she interprets as “superior and condescendin’”).

Sullivan poignantly depicts Brennan’s immense psychic struggle—he is torn apart by the discovery that his murdered father might not have been who he believed him to be, and that the girl he loved and presumed dead might still be alive. Moreover, he is still a hunted man in Derry, by both the Irish and the British.

The author brings the crackling volatility of the times to vivid life, especially the infamous hunger strikes. Unfortunately, Sullivan’s prose can lose its luster when he turns, somewhat ponderously, philosophical: “We are born. We live an existence of meaning to ourselves, alone. We die. All else is illusion.” Still, this is a moving portrait of a tragic cycle of violence and the lives it consumes.

A historically exacting and dramatically arresting novel.

I do have to admit I'm a bit taken aback, because it's the first time I've ever had some of my writing referred to as ponderous. And he used something Brendan says in the last paragraph to make that comment.

I'm almost...damn, I am...I'm actually finding it charming.

Officially changed...

Draft2Digital, which owns Smashwords, has migrated all my ebooks to their new platform. I'm still navigating it because not one part of it is similar to what I had. So this will be fun.

I also am getting a new FB page, KMS Writes, going, through someone who knows how to do this, and this is my new banner. Which she came up with and I really like.

So here are the new e-book links for my mainstream books. The gay erotica I'll deal with, tomorrow.

A Place of Safety-vol 1-Derry

A Place of Safety-vol 2-New World For Old

A Place of Safety-vol 3-Home Not Home

Bobby Carapisi

The Alice '65

The Lyons' Den

The Vanishing of Owen Taylor

Carli's Kills

New title?

As I'm reworking this massive book about a man helping aliens set up an outer space restaurant where they can eat people, a possible new title popped up. Dyarvos and the Queer Cannibal. It's a bit goofy, and Dirc never actually dines on any man, but I can't say he doesn't eat guys because that would be a lie.

This book, as depraved as it is, gives me a respite from the chaos building in this country. Felon47 called out 2000 of the national guard to take over LA, bypassing Governor Newsom, even though it was unnecessary. Then Pretty Pete of the racist tatts, who heads defense, called in 500 marines from Camp Pendelton. So Felon47, not to be outdone, called in 2000 more national guard.

What's insane is, those two assholes aren't even providing supplies to the national guardsmen. No funding for food or shelter. They're sleeping on floors. It's completely unacceptable.

All this to take over a city that is resisting the Gestapo tactics of ICE. This is a deliberate escalation of violence meant to instill fear and uncertainty in the US population, and it's cheered on by the MAGAt Class. I don't see how it cannot lead to death and destruction.

Democrats are talking a lot about how wrong it is, and Newsom's filed a lawsuit against TACO to stop him, but that's been it in the way of political pushback. There is no more GOP, it's all MAGAt, so nothing to be expected from that group of cowards and whores.

All I can do is post about it, attend a demonstration on the 14th against this, hope that doesn't go wild, and focus on a book that not only talks casually about killing men for food but also rips into the government for its cruelty, corruption and collusion. There's violent non-con m/m sex in this, but also anger at how fucked up our system of justice is.

Which there is in all my gay books. Nothing new about that.

The Dyarvos Bones

I'm liking the new title and the story is coming together in a much smoother way than what I'd posted on GayDemon. Dirc is a bit snarkier but I need to punch that up. I'm not good with humor, but I'm trying...

I like this illustration by Moebius, who did some elegant work for Heavy Metal Magazine, back in the 70s and 80s. Sort of has the feel of Dyarvos' travels.

---------

It's funny. I called it the alien for lack of a better name...till we settled on calling it Dyarvos. Which I think sort of compares to U N Owen in its manner of communication.

Meaning, if you haven't figured it out by now, it was an ET, not some being from Satan's domain. Though it never did tell me where it’s from. Hell, it never actually told me anything. The way we communicated was, one of its whips would circle my head and tingle against my right temple, and then I knew whatever Dyarvos did, almost like I was remembering it as it remembered it.

While it had been on earth. More than that was blocked from my brain. The only other thing I knew was, it was neither male nor female; they didn't have that designation in their world.

It had developed some kind of trouble, I'm still not clear what. Earth was seen by its kind as sort of a pit-stop to go to if you needed food or fuel, both of which humans could provide. Like a 7/11. The problem was, it had crash-landed into the cave under the motel before it could send out an SOS for help, and it needed sustenance to begin rebuilding itself.

It had been lucky and caught a couple of hikers who were following the Manasseret Trail up into the hills. A trail that wasn't really popular because it was just rocks and desert. Not even pretty vistas as you went higher.

Those two were male, in their twenties, both indigenous. One with longish black hair, piercing eyes, golden skin and a fine physique. The other was more basic but still attractive, his hair longer, his face not as finely etched, and his body more average. He also had more hair on his chest, arms and legs than his compatriot.

They had camped on the hill above the cave, overlooking the old motel. No tent. Sleeping under the stars, fully clothed. Backpacks as pillows and no blanket. Really roughing it like real guys do.

Dyarvos had slipped up and wrapped its tentacles around them both. The pretty one had managed to get a knife out and cut a tentacle off, but the whips took full control of him. Both guys had been carried down to the entrance, but were struggling so hard they almost got free before they were in the ship. At first I thought Dyarvos hadn't worked out how to fully control them, yet, but then I realized it had simply been weakened by the wreck.

Long book...new title...

I've gone through 50 pages of what I've begun to call The Dyarvos Bones, up to the point where the alien and its ship abandon Dirc to the police. They leave behind a huge pile of bones that used to be human beings, stripped of all meat.

This flummoxes the legal system because they can't figure out how Dirc could do that. Instead, they decide to just ignore anything that doesn't fit with their narrative that he's a queer serial killer.

Dirc tells them about Dyarvos and is declared incompetent for trial...for now. Part Two picks up after he's been found guilty of multiple murders and sentenced to death. But he knows Dyarvos is returning with a business proposition so he's not too worried.

There's a total of 310 pages in this book. Works out to around 102,000 words. That's a bit long for a book of erotica; I may want to split it up. I'll think about that.

This may all be moot. I might not be able to publish it. It's far more sexually violent than any other book I've written, and a couple of them are not available through Amazon and Barns & Noble due to that. Even my heterosexual one, Carli's Kills has had issues.

The MAGAt Class is in the process of taking the country over, and Democrats are doing little more than protesting. Which Felon47 is calling rioting and all that bullshit. His coup on January 6th didn't succeed, but this one might.

Because LA had lots of protests, so he now has his excuse to call out the National guard, bypassing Gavin Newsom, and use them against demonstrators who were cursing the gestapo goons of ICE.

Someone's going to get killed in this deliberate chaos, but it won't be the fascists. They have military hardware and protection. All we have is our voices and ineffective leaders.

The Battle for Bogside was pretty chaotic, at the beginning. Residents just wanted to keep the Constabulary out of the area, and were doing it with rocks and petrol bombs. It wasn't till people like Bernadette Devlin came in and started organizing things that they proved to the Protestants they would not be taken down. Westminster had to send in the British Army to separate the sides.

Catholics won, for the moment, but then came thirty years of death and destruction. We may be aiming for that, here.

Dyarvos comes...

Worked out a name for the beast/creature/alien, finally, and kind of like it. As Dirc puts it...

--------

I was referring to it as the alien for lack of a better name. It never told me who or what it is, or where it’s from...though we did settle on calling it Dyarvos. Which I think sort of compares to Unknown in its manner of communication.

Meaning, if you haven't figured it out by now...it was an ET, not some being from hell.

Oh, and it wasn't possible for me to talk to it, nor it to me. The way we communicated was, one of its whips would circle my head and tingle against my right temple, and then I knew everything Dyarvos did. Almost like I was remembering it as it remembered it. While it had been on earth. More than that was blocked.

The only other thing I knew was, it was neither male nor female; they didn't have that designation in their world. So it wasn't interested in sex, except as a way of prepping its meal.

It had developed some kind of trouble, I'm still not clear what, and had crash-landed into the cave under the motel. Earth was seen by its kind as sort of a pit-stop to go to if you needed sustenance or fuel, both of which humans could provide.

The problem was, it hadn’t had the chance to grab anybody before it went down, and there were very few humans around in is area. It had been lucky and caught a couple of hikers who were following the Manasset Trail up into the hills. A trail that wasn't really popular because it was just rocks and desert. But that was nearly a year ago...and it had been hungry when it grabbed me and my pack.

---------

Dirc continues telling about how Dyarvos managed to survive and wasn't happy about the meals Dirc's friends made. It wanted to turn one of them into a familiar to provide it with more men but that wasn't working, either...until it happened to think about bringing Dead Dirc back to life. That made all the difference and turned him into an amoral monster.

Something unexpected...

I haven't showered in two days. Haven't gone out. Haven't done anything to make myself presentable. Normally, if I don't bathe before bed, I have a hard time getting to sleep. This time? No big deal. And that surprises me.

I slept till near noon, yesterday, and ten-thirty, today. Pulled together the last of the pricing for one job, and have yet to hear back about the other. And worked on Hunger...which might become Deadly Hunger or Murder for Hunger or something silly like that. The Hungry Hunters? I'm still working on it and am up to chapter four, and it's far more vicious, now.

And irreverent. Dirc makes flippant comments about his victims. For example, he's murdered by a cop named Molinaro, who becomes the first man he helps the alien kill.

His description of it is raw and detailed...and very self-centered in how it makes him feel good. Then once he's done and the man has been fed to the space craft for sustenance, he snarks, The son-of-a-bitch shouldn't have killed me.

Even as he acknowledges his own death was really unintentional. Molinaro was freaking out at seeing the alien and his gun went off and hit Dirc in the back. But he was being a dick before that, and had 88 tattooed on his left bicep. So he deserved it. (88 is a nod to HH, as in heil Hitler.)

I need a name for the alien. I don't like just calling it the creature or beast. And a title that really grabs the feeling of the book. I'd say it's black humor but don't know if I can pull that off. Maybe. Depends on how hard I push it.

But this has my attention, now. We'll see how far I go with it.

BTW, that picture is of Garrett Nolan, not me...but he does offer a nice idea of what Dirc looks like.

Madhouse day...

Spent most of the day working up costing for two rush jobs. Both have deadlines of getting done within the next month, and both are fair-size libraries. I'm trying to work around a couple of doctor appointments I have in the second half of June as well as the Fourth of July, but it's going to be tight.

I was still at cross purposes from everything, yesterday, so this was a good distraction. Then for some reason I read the first chapter of The Beast Dines Out, my gay erotic SCI-FI horror story posted in parts on GayDemon. And the casual viciousness of it made me feel better.

Dirc, the MC, is killed by a cop but gets brought back to life by an extraterrestrial trying to feed and heal its space craft. It's experimenting on how best to do that...and happens to conclude Dirc is the perfect vessel to bring it what is needed.

Healthy men. Well-marinated by him raping them. It's like a seasoning, which the space craft likes. This gives the ET an idea. Once the craft is healed, it opens a restaurant in space, an otherworldly truck stop, and makes a deal with Dirc to bring it more men to go on the menu.

Eventually he finds out he's not the only supplier, but he does bring the highest quality guys...

I'm going to rewrite it. Smooth over the story. Tighten up the timing. See if I can put in some more irreverent humor. Right now, it's kind of a mess...but does wind up getting to an HEA point, which I'm keeping. I also want to polish up the inconsistencies and removing some repetitions. Then I'm going to publish it as a whole book under a new title. Maybe Hunger...though that's kind of lame. So are Feeding the Beast and The Beast Dines Out.

Any suggestions would be welcome.

Overwhelming...

Funny thing happened as I tried to work on PvSH. I grew too angry to focus. Then depressed. The murder of Jonathan Joss in a town I lived in for decades has affected me in ways I'll need to work through before I can return to the story.

I kept telling myself to channel my anger into what happens with Simon, and I did manage to get a few pages done. Adding in the police getting a warrant to search Simon's apartment based on a complaint about a man who only vaguely resembles him. Seeking child sexual assault materials.

It happens after Simon is killed but before his body is discovered, which is not supposed to be found. But it is due to him having an AirTag in his backpack and his new attorney's phone in a pocket. They lead ReShawn, his attorney, to his grave.

ReShawn blames himself, thinking he should have taken Simon straight home. At least kept him at his house. And it's becoming clear the local media has been fed the story about the pedophilia investigation and is running with it. Like they are in the smearing of Joss' life. Making his murder his own fault.

It was at this point everything became overwhelming and I had to stop. I was close to losing it...or something. I don't know what. I just didn't....couldn't handle it. Which makes me wonder if I'd be able to handle the coming culture war between the MAGAt Class and the rest of us.

I don't know. I just know...have to acknowledge those people do not care who they hurt or how. And I'm afraid I would feel the same way about them. And if that happened, I feel I'd become as sub-human as them.

I think that would kill me.

Murder

Gay Pride Month began with the murder of a gay man, after his home had been burned down and his dog decapitated. In San Antonio, Texas! A town I lived in for much of my life. And this was after he and his husband had complained to police, consistently, about the homophobic harassment by a neighbor. Of course, the cops did nothing about it.

I don't understand this. Even back in the 70s and 80s, with the sodomy laws in force, San Antonio's gay community was strong and vibrant. Very Latino based, but the bars were open to everyone, and there were also a couple that mixed gay and straight. Like the Bonham Exchange.

Same for Austin, just 70 miles northeast of San Antonio. When you got tired of the vatos, you could scout out the frat boys, 90% of whom were as WASP as they come. Pun intended.

I had very Catholic tastes, back then, which probably stemmed from me being an Air Force brat and growing up around all kinds of kids. I'd hook up with Latinos, Jews, blacks, anglos, and once with a guy who I think was Japanese...if I liked you, I was up for it.

But that is no more. Thanks to that Felon in the White House and the MAGAts in his coven, it has become open season on us...on anyone not white, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant. Don't you dare think you're safe if you're a white Catholic; too many Protestants still see the Catholic Church as the Whore of Babylon.

I know this because when my mother lived with me in LA, she would watch a Presbyterian minister named John Hagee with his sermons on cable, Sunday mornings. I came home one day to see him doing a presentation that explained why the Church of Rome was the seat of evil.

I loved my mother, and she could watch anything she wanted without complaint from me. I'd just go to a laundromat to do my laundry so I wouldn't hear that vile man's shit. He was our version of Northern Ireland's Ian Paisley. Both of them diseased, hateful monsters who used fear and prejudice to build their power and wealth.

Ian Paisley helped prolong the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Those like John Hagee have given the haters ground to believe their evil actions are just. And it always winds up in murder.

Always.

Pride Month

It's the first of June, which is Pride Month, and shortly will follow all the whining straight WASP men asking why there isn't a Straight Month...as if the whole goddamned year isn't theirs. Selfish, pathetic lads pissed because we want a slice of the pie they have chosen to keep for themselves, only. Well, fuck 'em.

Just for fun, I made crepes for brunch. Out of Bisquick. I actually have a recipe. And I have Nutella and bananas, so I made 6 of them wrapped around those little beasties, and they turned out very nicely. Not as nice as the ones I'd gotten at the Farmer's Market, in LA, or a kiosk in London, by the Thames, but still damn good. They weren't pretty, so no pictures...but belly very happy.

I wrote another 1700 words on PvSH, today, and am having fun fucking around with the straight male psyche. Brian Walstead arranges a secret meeting with Frank Paley about the story Simon wrote and they commiserate over ribs and beer, and without saying it come to the decision Simon must be killed. Then Brian tells Judge Denton about the story and they come up with a strategy to minimize it, as if nothing else has been decided.

Something else came up in Brian's talk with Denton that I'm not crazy about so will probably cut. I had once thought of having Denton and his wife be Brian's godparents, but that seems a bit off. Still considering it...but now it's like an unnecessary distraction.

Anyway, what this has done is cut away about 20% of the outline I'd worked up and dumped having the prosecution present falsified evidence to claim Simon had been arrested before. It was coming across as awkward, and now is no longer necessary. So bye-bye.

Since I have no travel plans, now, I may get a first draft of this book done this month.