Ask Nat and Microblog
Simply submit a question, any question. Could be deep, could be ridiculous, could be curious. I’ll answer questions below and on post them on social media. Hit refresh to submit more than one.
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Advice to my son
Advice to my son: “Let the poops fall where they may, preferably in the toilet. So that they may go bloop.”
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From my Twitter archive. Originally tweeted January 1, 2015. Next interview conducted with author Lana Casiello
The interview with author Lana Casiello went great last night. If not a little longer than I’d hoped. I’m trying to pull out some deep thoughts in these interviews and even with a short list of questions, we managed to talk for over an hour. I’ll be happy to jump in and start work on the write up of the interview. I may cut a few video clips from the interview as well. Stay tuned.
In the interview we discussed Lana’s native Hawaiian heritage and generational trauma and why she writes.
Two ideas for leading a decent life
I think two ideas can help people lead a decent life. And that’s “be kind to each other” and “don’t be a dick.” They’re simple ideas. The first is to default to kindness with people. The second is to avoid being ugly to people. Many people fail both concepts on the daily which is sad.
Kim Davis Jokes
Joke 1.
Kim Davis wept.
Joke 2.
Kim Davis finding out she can't ruin a bunch of marriages this morning (only her own): 😭
Joke 3.
Every time a gay couple gets their marriage certificate, Kim Davis divorces her current husband and remarries.
Joke 4.
Every time a judge in Texas refuses to marry a gay couple, Kim Davis is forced to stay with her current husband.
Joke 5.
Just wanted to send out my heartfelt congratulations to Kim Davis on her most recent marriage. I’m sure husband… (checks notes)… number 22 is the one. I’m so happy she could rinse and repeat as many marriage licenses as she wants for herself. That’s her right. Good for her. Now if only she could stay more focused on her own marriage and ignore everyone else’s maybe she could make it work this time around. Otherwise we’ll be congratulating her on graduating from a Clark to a Jordan.
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Which joke do you like most? Sound off in the comments.
Don’t hate what you don’t know
From the New York Times podcast about how women ruined the workplace, Andrews says, “So, I don’t know — I don’t want to say that we all know what wokeness is.”
Conservatives still can’t define woke. If you can’t define what you hate, maybe don’t hate it. 🤷♀️
Publisher Robin Taylor on growing up trans in the Midwest during the 1990s, queer representation in media
Under Donald Trump’s second term as president, there is a movement to remove or restrict LGBTQ+ literature and knowledge from the public sphere, which can lead to making it difficult for younger generations to have access to the literature and resources they need to learn about such topics as gender and gender identity.
Previous generations have had similar knowledge gaps when it comes to information about gender. Owner of GenderWild Press, Robin Taylor, a transgender man, discusses what it was like growing up in the Midwest in the 1980s and 1990s, and the lack of literature that was available to him, where he found representation, and how he’s trying to preserve the voices and stories of transgender, nonbinary, genderqueer, and intersex writers.
When Taylor was just six years old, growing up in Indiana, he had a comfort blanket in the form of a sleeping bag. He remembers wanting to give it a name, but didn’t want to choose a gender for it, because he somehow knew that would be wrong. That the sleeping bag would have to discover its own gender someday, so he gave it the gender-neutral name of Sam.
“It could be boy Sam or girl Sam,” he said. He went on to explain that he knew then that he was different, “I knew I really wasn’t a girl, but it wasn’t acceptable to be a boy.”
When asked what sort of LGBTQ+ literature or media was available to him in the 1980s and 1990s, Taylor initially said, “None.” But thought about it some more and found that he did find some queer representation in strange places, “It’s actually not entirely true that there was none, but everything that was presented was done so in a negative fashion.”
He found queer representation in the characters of Radar and Clinger of the TV show “MASH,” as well as “Xena,” which he said was “queer bating” the queer community and that, “we loved it, because it was all we had.” He also found himself wanting to know more about the men on “Jerry Springer” who had transitioned to women.
“Those were the little places we lived,” Taylor said, “there were no books that I had, that I was aware of. There were certainly no medical books. As a matter of fact, I didn’t know transmen existed until Chaz Bono came out.” Chaz Bono is the only child of Sonny Bono and Cher, who came out publicly as a transman in 2009.
Taylor started his publishing company GenderWild Press this year, and has signed his first writers, though he hasn’t released the first book yet. The goal of his company is to focus on authors and poets who are transgender, genderqueer, nonbinary, and intersex. He wants to tell their stories, so people still struggling to find themselves can find their stories in others.
“There were just no stories to parallel my own,” he said of his own journey, “I felt a sense of direction, something I needed to do.” That’s when he realized he wanted to start a publishing company for queer voices, “I had a bit of an ah-ha moment, ‘Oh, I need to tell these stories.’”
“What we need is a conduit for those stories to be told and be readily findable by a community of people who need to find them,” he said, “including people who are not trans, who are not queer.”
When asked if he thought the current political climate could take us back to the knowledge drought of the 1980s and 1990s, Taylor thinks that we can’t undo the progress that has been made in his lifetime, “It was leaking through then, because it can’t be contained.”
“The truth is you can take the T out of Stonewall but it’s too late,” he said. “The genie is out of the bottle; you can’t put it back. I think we are a little too wise to our history. You can’t make these things go away.”
You can find and follow Robin Taylor on Substack, where he publishes multiple newsletters.
I gave the site a makeover
You may have noticed it looks a little different. That’s because it is. Wanted a fresh coat of paint, especially with the new micro-interviews incoming. Hope you like it.
New micro-interviews incoming
I’m going to be adding something new to this microblog. I’ve got one smallish interview in the can and planning several more. I’ll be interviewing primarily writers (for now, for sure) to discuss writing and other topics. My hope is that each interview will be cross-intersectional with writing in some way. For example, my first guest is a publisher of queer books and we discussed what it was like growing up trans in the Midwest in the 1990s.
I should be dropping two of these interviews this month. The first one, I mentioned above, I’m aiming to drop tomorrow. I’ll share them here and in full on Threads and Facebook (since they suppress links).
I already have seven in the lineup and a few others I want to reach out to. I hope these short interviews can help shed some light on different perspectives and topics from a plethora of writers.
Let me know what you think of the idea in the comments and if you have any ideas for interview topics or even writers you’d like to hear from.
Watching a B movie
Watching a B movie. Alien trying to breed with humans. First victim is a dude. Alien should've done his homework first.
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From my Twitter archive. Originally tweeted December 29, 2014. “The Bride of Usher” completing soon, I swear
I missed last Friday for publishing the next installment in “The Bride of Usher.” It’s funny, because I realized last week that I had planned it silly. For some reason I thought there were only four Fridays in October, and so had planned enough chapters to end it last week. Once I released my mistake, I figured I’d split it into two — Part VII last week and the Epilogue this week. And then, I didn’t even get to that. 🤣
Life has been wild, but I’m trying to slow it down. Wish me luck with that.
That said, I just finished editing Part VII and the Epilogue, and am about to start the process of getting it into the site. I may try to send it out earlier, but worst case scenario, I’ll send it out this Friday.
We’re almost there…
Things I really wish people knew about having a mental illness
Things I really wish people knew about having a mental illness:
There isn’t always a reason you feel down.
It’s not attention seeking.
It’s not being lazy.
You can’t just “get over it.”
It’s not something to be embarrassed about or ashamed of.
It’s not easy.
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From my Twitter archive. Originally tweeted June 20, 2018.Listening to Frost/Nixon interviews
I’m listening to the Frost/Nixon interviews and at the 25 minute mark I’m stopping for the night. It’s so hard to listen to Nixon. What an insufferable sack of shit. I’ve listened to him before but not for this long.
Going places with characters, the psychology of people
This short story I’ve been working on has been quite enjoyable. I’m pretty proud of it. And it certainly took me through some interesting territory in terms of understanding people. So much in writing (and acting) is understanding the psychology of people. Even people you would generally not like or find repulsive. But to write them well and realistically, you have to spend some time trying to understand and explain their behaviors. Especially if they aren’t villains.
I should probably add that when I say “understanding the psychology of people” doesn’t necessarily equate to empathy or sympathy.
It just means I can connect the dots as to why they do what they do or why they tick the way they tick. It doesn’t necessarily mean I can relate or that I may change my view with regards to their behavior — I just understand it on a psychological level. Which I believe is super important in writing believable characters.
Side note: This isn’t about “The Bride of Usher” which I am currently writing and publishing to the newsletter, but another short story I’m also currently writing called “Blood Frequency.”
A poll about my next short story
I’m currently writing a YA sci-fi/horror short story with some comedy. It deals with family drama, growing up gay in the Midwest during the 1980s and 1990s, and is a coming-of-age story.
I should probably figure out what to do with it. I’ll probably wrap up editing in November. Should I drop it in the newsletter as an epub for Thanksgiving? It does deal a lot with family themes, so a Thanksgiving release would kind of make sense.
Use the poll and comments to let me know what you think.
My darn iPhone alarm hates me
My iPhone does this thing where it’ll sometimes randomly turn down my alarm volume. Which means I end up sleeping through my alarm. It’s been doing this a lot the past week or so. Did it again this morning and screwed up my whole morning. So annoyed right now. Did a search and it’s apparently a glitch that comes around a lot on iPhones. Been an issue for years.
So now I’m setting my Echo Dot alarms again for backup. Jeez.
If you have an iPhone, has this ever happened to you?
Modern politics be like…
A lot in modern politics hinges on one political stance:
I’m pro-your-healthcare-choices-are-none-of-my-damn-business.
Thanks for coming to my NatTalk.
#ModernShakespeare
WiFi, thou art a villain!
A racist by any other name is still a racist.
Do you 💩 emoji at me, sir?
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From my Twitter archive — originally tweeted May 17, 2018.Sup.
I need to get better about writing to the Ask Nat microblog. Especially, as social media seems hellbent on ruining themselves by catapulting content moderation, being insufferable, and caving to right-wing extremism.
I really do think this is a good time for folks to go back to blogging, even if it’s owning their own microblogs.
On that note, would it be fun to just have a collaborative blogging space for likeminded folks? Basically a tiny microblogging platform, because the only posters would all know and trust one another. It could even be private. Just thinking out loud.
As always, you can hit me up with anonymous questions in the Ask Nat form to keep me busy.
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The Halloween Serialized Special begins tomorrow
I’m planning to do another serialized story for Halloween this year. Last year, as you may recall, was the first one called The Gentleman Killer which can still be downloaded for free in ebook format.
Tomorrow, I’ll be releasing the first installment of the latest serial called The Bride of Usher, which is a mixture of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher in a sci-fi/horror blend. Much like The Gentleman Killer, this story will feature a heavy dose of feminine rage. Something we could all use a little more of right now in our media consumption, probably.
Last year I released new installments on Friday. My plan is to follow that schedule again.
Here’s a little teaser video to get you excited. Turn up volume for music.