Disingenuous

Apology and prospectus

Photo by Jasper Garratt on Unsplash

Hello beloveds!

It’s been a long time since I posted — about four months.

Here’s my conundrum: everything I write now seems disingenuous.

If I write about God with a capital G, it feels cringy and I’m not sure I believe it.

If, with dear Virginia, I write about those-ruffians-the-gods with little gs, it feels sloppy and inaccurate and possibly dangerous and again, I’m not sure I believe it.

Love: even worse.

Politics: I suppose I’m a states’-rights leftist. But what the hell is that?

Friendship: I mean, occasionally I lunch with some ladies? I could write about ladies-who-lunch? I lunch with my mother, too. Or sometimes it’s brunch.

My tiny evil boys have started to feel like caricatures. My big idiot-savant girls are definitely caricatures. Those stories were good, but I wouldn’t write those stories again. I’m still afraid of boys and sex and God or the gods and the government and more or less everything outside my door. I still sail out like Don Quixote to conquer the latest windmill. But I’m tired of it, tired of fear, tired of desire, exhausted to death, maybe hoping middle age will take the edge off this longing and longing that meets nothing but blank, unanimous rejection like the gates of Heaven itself clanging shut.

(While the angels peer over the battlements: Eew! Icky girl! Go away!)

And at that point, you see, when I start to write something that feels true, my writing devolves into unheroic mewling.

Poor me, poor crazy plant lady, that’s what happens when you give them too much education, somebody better call JD!

But is heroism any truer?

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Meantime, I’m about to take the Sad Guy on the Bus stories, the first story cycle in The Sanguine Experiment, down. I’ve made Sad Guy on the Bus into a novella and I’m going to self-publish it because, well, I need to call it done and move on. I’ll let you know when that drops if you want a hard copy. If you like horror/surreal/magic realism/fairy tale with lots of conversation and an absolutely deadpan little serial killer as a leading man (ie. if you’re a harpy gooner girl) you’ll love it.

I’m still a harpy gooner girl, but that’s you know, just a starting point for me any more.

I’m going to send paid subscribers a hard copy of Sad Guy on the Bus if you want one. I’ll ask for addresses when it’s ready. Next up will be Love Letter to a Sock Puppet, which came to 125K words as a story cycle and is going to be a longer as a novel. It needs lots of work, but work is never a problem.

And I do have an essay coming soon. It’s about books and death, so, you know, you might like it.

Sign up so you don’t miss it.