How are you feeling about rejoining the workforce after such a tumultuous year in politics?

Anonymous question submitted December 22, 6:13am. 

This is an intriguing question. I mostly feel excitement as I’m ready to go back. Politics does play a role in my job search, though. I try to carefully vet companies and organizations I’m looking at applying to. Mostly, I look towards organizations that are making a positive impact in general as I would like to feel like I’m working on something useful and good each time I clock in. And this excites me as well. That doesn’t mean I’m looking at jobs that are political or have some cause, it just means I do look at ones that are gonna have a positive impact on those they serve. And I avoid organizations that may play into the awful things currently happening in politics, whether directly or indirectly.

Back in the Mercedes saddle again

Today, I jumped headlong into the work of writing the next Mercedes Masterson story. It’s a short story called The Book of Jude that will come out before the next novel. I like planting little stories between the novels to whet the appetites of the readers, especially since it takes me a few years to release the novels. You may recall Her Last Halloween was the first short story and it fell between the first two novels.

I managed to write chapters two and three today in full. It felt good to be back in the Masterson universe, if you will.

And because I’m nice, here’s an excerpt from tonight’s writing.

THE BOOK OF JUDE, Chapter 3 Excerpt.

Dr. Klein stood up and kicked the stool away again. “I think we’re good. I’ll call you in a few days about the bloodwork.” Jude stood up awkwardly. “The fatigue still being a bitch?”

“Always.” 

“Well, Jude, I wanted to tell you I’m working with some guys. Some vets, some docs, a few nurses, and a couple of state senators.” He grabbed the folder and handed it to him. “We’re trying to get some movement on legalizing marijuana for medicinal purposes.” 

Jude opened the folder and it had a document about the goals and purpose of the group written on the first page. There was a stack of maybe ten pages behind it. “Yeah, that’s good.”

“I’d like you to join us,” Dr. Klein continued, “so you can tell the state senate about your experience with Gulf War Syndrome and using cannabis to manage your symptoms.” 

Jude scoffed, “I’m not going before the state senate to confess my crimes. That’d be about the dumbest thing I could do.”

“You can tell your story anonymously.” Dr. Klein rested a warm hand on Jude’s wrist. “Just give it some thought, will ya?”

“Sure, I’ll think about it.”

Outside the VA’s office, the wind had picked up and the temperature was dropping. Jude flipped the collar up on his military green jacket to block the brisk wind from his face. He pulled out a cigarette and stuck it between his lips. He lit it with a lighter that said John on it, using the folder to shield the flame from the wind. After he got the cigarette lit and took the first puff of smoke, he discarded the folder into the combination trashcan and ashtray. 

He climbed into his van and dreaded that the trip home later would be cold as hell without the heater working. He rolled the window down, letting in the wind, but also letting out the smoke. He turned over the engine to listen to the radio while he smoked his cigarette. A song by Canned Heat was playing on the radio and that immediately took him back to John’s bedroom.

A note about Graveside Press and my short story

Heads up about the Graveside Press stuff. I too had a piece of fiction that was planned to be released by them. It was a short story that was part of a Middle Grade anthology. It hadn’t released yet, so I’m not suffering from lack of royalties like other authors.

I did get the rights back to my story and it will no longer be published by Graveside Press which is really just Steven now (the owner), I believe, who seems to be the reason authors were not getting paid.

If you have a work published or planned to be published by Graveside Press, you can request to have the rights returned to you. There was a FAQs that Steven made in Google Docs that addressed this, but after about a week he made it private. Not sure why. He’s kinda gone silent. Which as I understand is pretty typical behavior for him.

The email for getting your rights back or if you have questions about anything: rights@graveside-press.com.

When asked for details about what happened and why authors weren’t getting paid, Steven has chosen to not divulge. Telling authors it’s none of their business basically. He also has offered no apologies.

But he’s still planning on publishing works and taking more submissions. So authors beware of that.

Last but not least… there are many good folks who worked inside Graveside Press, often volunteers, who are good people. They have done great work and continue to be an inspiration. But they were all out of the loop on the business side of things. They are good people and it is these people who read and believed in my short story. Many of these folks have left Graveside and some are spinning off their own press @deadfoxpub — give them a follow.

Moving forward with the story.

I haven’t decided yet what I’m going to do with the short story as I was happy to have it published in an anthology. It’s a Middle Grade sci-fi horror, similar in a way to Blood Frequency and even features an alien that appears in that as well. I’m open to suggestions. One thought would be to make my own anthology of short stories around Blood Frequency. I had been considering doing that. Maybe I should just make this one more piece of that puzzle. The anthology idea was to write a series of short stories that take place in Rolla, Missouri, during the 1990s. This was where and when I came of age, which is what makes it a lot of fun for me. There’s a lot of nostalgia in it.

What do you think? Should I roll with the YA sci-fi/horror anthology idea? Submit this story somewhere else? Publish it here on my own? Sound off in the comments.

—

Updates: Steven at Graveside Press moved the goal posts since I made this post. He is now requesting emails be sent to rights@grarveside-press.com — this change has been made above. Also, after having the FAQs unavailable for a while, he has made new ones available that are completely rewritten.

Super Cool Stuff (end of year review) coming soon…

Last year, I started a new thing called “Super Cool Stuff” that was my take on Spotify Wrapped or Apply Music Replay (if you listen to Apple Music like I do). I made fun graphics about different stats and such regarding that year in the newsletter. My favorite part was finding ways to shout out to the community here and put ya’ll in those graphics.

Well, I’m doing it again. I put together some graphics already and just need to see if I can come up with anymore category ideas before publishing it in a week or two.

I also used last year’s end of year review to set some goals for 2025, so I’ll examine how I did, and make some new ones for 2026. One extra bonus for 2024’s Super Cool Stuff was that I chronicled the origin story of Weaver’s Deep Thoughts — spoiler: it wasn’t originally a newsletter, it was a hashtag on Google+.

If you have any ideas for categories or stats to include, let me know in the comments. Or maybe you just want to ask me some questions about my behind the scenes process of doing the newsletter, you can ask those questions below, and I’ll answer them in the review.

A message for Christian conservatives about violence

In this video clip from Fox News, Greg Gutfield makes his case for indiscriminately killing people at sea labeled terrorists by the Trump administration, even when they pose no threat. Fair warning, it’s hateful and gross — which is no big surprise.

View on Threads

Here’s a fun quote for these conservative Christians, “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13).

Here’s another fun one, “And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth” (Genesis 6:13).

Your god hates violence and literally destroyed the earth because of people like you.

Thanks for coming to my NatTalk.

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.”

—

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.

—

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.

—

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?