National Poetry Day 2017 – the boy in the shell

Today is National Poetry day 2017 so I decided to share a rough first draft of narrative poem I’m working on. Hope you like it!

the boy in the shell – 9/28/2017

the witches wanted a child
but held no want of men
or their seed
so they prayed to the sea
and loved each other in the waves
when they returned home
one of the five found a small lump below her belly

the boy was born in a tiny shell
iridescence transferred to skin
he grew up brown
he grew up rainbow

his mothers cared for him
he soaked their love in
and returned it in kind
laughter filled their small house
and outsiders, those on the road
noticed

he cared for his mothers
the boy was polite and helped others where he could
and as his mums curled into age
a town sprung up around them
folk arrived, carried by whispers and tales
they rode with expectations between their thighs

the boy did not learn his mothers magic
instead he took ordinary and made it magic
clothes he mended learned to protect
meals brought tears and joy and hope
and for some death
though those were buried quickly
the boy was good, he could be nothing else

then his mothers began to die
and the boy began to withdraw
the town had become a city
the neighbors of the boy became merchants
his labor and favors sold to make them rich

when the last of his mothers died
a crowd gathered at his home
they begged him
to continue to mend for them
to help the city thrive

“I did not ask you to come.”
they yelled and gnashed their teeth
“I cared for my mothers because they cared for me.
Now they are gone and I will be too.”

they cried out
boy
Boy
BOY

“I have not been a boy for many a year.”
they fell silent
they looked at him

finally he spoke
“I will stay…”
they cheered
but he held his hand up
“…if one of you can recall my name.”

the city took the boy as their patron
parents struggled to forget
children refused to remember\

the boy was born in a tiny shell
as he grew the shell stayed stuck to his body
at 2 it sat on his head like a cap
at 5 cupped his bottom
at 10 it covered his right eye
at 14 it acted as elbow guard
at 17 it sat on his tongue like a candy that would not dissolve
at 20 it was his pinky nail
and there it stayed
until the day he died

Patreon Launch!

Some of you know that I’ve had a Patreon for a while but I haven’t really advertised it. Originally I wanted to do a launch at the beginning of 2017 but circumstances meant I really had to focus on deadlines and moving across the country. So it was there and I have some patrons (thanks!) but I haven’t really been doing anything with it. Since I have now moved and am working on getting my life in order one of my priorities has been revamping my Patreon!

That is going to change starting next month!

The main thing that I’m going to be offering is draft chapters of an ongoing high fantasy novel I’m working on. If you follow me on twitter then you’ve heard me talk about Batomi as my queer brown girl mafia revolutionary YA novel. Though as it’s conceived now it’s more like three multiple chapter novellas that tell the main character’s story. So every month a new draft chapter of the first novella will go up until it’s complete and then the second novella and so on. There will be more posts about the story and the world in this space and some exclusives on Patreon before the chapters start posting on November 1st.

There are also some other exciting things I’m going to be doing. Some will be patron-exclusive only but some will be patron-exclusive for 6 months and then I’ll share them here or elsewhere.

You can check it out here.

I’ll still be fiddling with the tiers and goals a little bit so if you have feedback please let me know

Tiers
$1/month (PATRON)- access to a draft chapter of the ongoing novella every month

$3/month (X-RAY SPECS)- access to a draft chapter of the ongoing novella every month
+ a blog post about the worldbuilding/writing (exclusive for 12 months)

$5/month (RAVENOUS READERS) – access to a draft chapter of the ongoing novella
+ a blog post about the worldbuilding/writing (exclusive for 12 months)
+ a daily draft of a poem/piece of flash fiction! (exclusive for 12 months)

$10/month (NEWSIES!) – everything from the lower tiers
+ a monthly newsletter with updates on my projects, short entertainment
recommendations, calls for submissions y’all might be interested in & other
miscellaneous things.

$25/month (QUESTIONERS) – everything from the lower tiers
+ a monthly Q&A video answering your questions – writing, recommendations,
even personal advice if you want (no guarantee its good)! (exclusive for 6
months)

$50/month (SEEKERS) – everything from the lower tiers
+ two short story critiques a year (first available after six months of
patronage, second after a year of patronage)

$100/month (EPHEMERA PROTECTION SOCIETY) – everything from the lower tiers
+ a yearly bound and illustrated chapbook of up to 6 Patreon pieces (mails
in May/June)

$500/month (COLLECTORS) – everything from the lower tiers
+ an personalized signed author copy of everything I publish that year
including anthologies.
 
$5000/month (BUY A BLACK FRIEND!) – everything from the lower tiers
+ I’ll be your black friend this includes one phone call a month of up to
30 minutes (after your monthly patronage comes through) and one tense
filled family dinner/gathering a year (after a year of patronage).

(Note – That last one is mostly a joke but if someone rich pays it I’ll definitely come through.)

The ones from $50 up are limited by number but if demand is a lot and they fill up I’ll think about adding more slots as a stretch goal. Speaking of stretch goals there are also goals based on $/ per month that have cute little prizes and here they are!

Goals
$500/month – a monthly drunk live tweet of a sf/f movie or TV pilot decided by Patreon poll!

$1000/month – the monthly Q&A video will become available to patrons at all levels (though questions will still come from patrons of levels $25 and higher)

$1500/month – all digital content will be come available for all patrons
+ there will be a draft of a short story posted every month

$2000/month – a monthly Spotify playlist will accompany each short story with a blog post explaining how each song fits in with the story
+ plus an downloadable audio version of one of Patreon pieces every month

$2500/month – a new monthly video series on writing marginalized identities and being a marginalized writer (exclusive for 12 months)

$3000/month – I don’t think we’ll reach here but if we do I’ll think of something awesome to do for y’all!

So there it is! Keep an eye on this space where I plan to tempt you into becoming a patron of my work so that I can keep creating work and y’know eat and stuff.

Fix It Jesus – Mother!

So “Fix It Jesus” is a new series I’m going to be doing sporadically. Where I apply my imagination and problem solving skills to a movie or TV series or game and write out how I would change the plot to make it less offensive, or less or just less bad.

In this first post we’re gonna talk about Mother!

Now I did not see Mother! because I love myself but I did read Bitch Magazine’s wonderful and informative review. Now the main problems I see are the same old suffering woman trope and the idea that exploring that means relying on it even more. She suffers and suffers and dies which…no thank you. The movie also suffers from what I saw as a problem in one of Aronofsky’s previous films – Black Swan. Aronofsky loves metaphor, which is fine, that’s great. I love a metaphor myself but he piles them on like some self-important 90s film student who doesn’t know when to stop or something James Franco would make today.

In Mother! he also mixes metaphors and mythologies very weirdly. Mother Nature gives birth to Jesus? All the power is given to the man and she only seeks to serve him until others intervene? WTF is that?

FIX IT JESUS!

I would erase all that shit about Adam & Eve and Cain & Abel stuff which just serves to overstuff the narrative. We keep “Him” – and give him a fucking name for God’s sake! Let’s say Bob. So Bob is a metaphor for some divine creative force. Then there’s Mother – except it’s super creepy for anyone but someone’s child to call them Mother unless it’s a formal title. So let’s just name her Jackie.

The basic beginning is the same. Bob and Jackie are living alone in an isolated house where he is obsessed with creating a singular poem and she is still obsessed with the house. Except that it’s framed as all she has to do and does not derive true pleasure from it. By excluding any other people in the lead in it becomes more of a creepy horror narrative about the labor women do to support mediocre men who never appreciate it. We see Jackie wanting to break away from this situation and from Bob but she is trapped by their isolation and her lack of any support. The psychological horror of her increasingly small world is shown in detail as it drives her mad. When she reaches her breaking point and decides she has to leave or die she discovers she’s pregnant which serves to isolate and trap her further. She stays trapped by the child she never wanted and by Bob’s overbearing personality and increasing neediness as he reverts to a more and more child-like state.

Jackie begins to carve the house into a nest, destroying many of the things that Bob enjoys about it. When Jackie finally gives birth it’s to a multitude of children of different ethnicities and genders and ability-levels meant to represent the emergence of humanity as a whole. It is these children, not the party guests which begin to destroy the house. They enslave one another and kill one another. The visuals of children performing these acts are shocking and horrifying to the viewer which serve to underscore the horror of humanity and its disgust with itself. Seeing all this Jackie falls into a deep depression which Bob of course ignores as he sees nothing wrong with their children and increases his demands on her. Finally Jackie cannot take it anymore. She starts to hunt down and kill the children in horrible ways but they continue to raise up from the dead and in fact seem to multiply. They haunt her and hurt her in various ways. Finally Jackie realizes there is only option. She gathers Bob and all the children in one room – Bob’s private work study, which she’s never been allowed into. She then sets the house on fire, fighting and keeping them all in there while they all burn.

After the conflagration there is only Jackie, burnt and hurt but alive and surrounded by the charred skeletons of Bob and their children. The ground around her is also burnt to blackness but as the audio focuses on her strained breathing another sound starts to break through the sound of growth. Next to Jackie’s head a flower begins to push itself from the ground she struggles and turns her head and as the black skin flakes off to reveal healthy brown skin (did I mention in my version Gabby is played by Gabourey Sidibe?) and she sees the flower. The camera zooms out as plant life begins to grown around her and slowly fades out on Jackie alone, surrounded by a beautiful garden, her laughter the last sound we hear.

There it is – my take on Mother!

Writing Updates!

Hey all!

So in news, as some of you know I have been busing moving my whole life from the West Coast to the East Coast. I just arrived last night and am getting over my travel fatigue and trying to get my life in some sort of order.

Anyway while I was traveling a couple of pieces of writing of mine were published and I wanted to let y’all know about them!

Firstly my flash piece “Culture House” (which was originally published in Eleven Eleven) has been collected in The Best Small Fictions 2017 which was released just a few days ago! The 2017 edition was edited by Amy Hempel while the series editor is Tara L. Masih and you should pick it up!

Secondly my review of the delightful Martha Wells’ novel The Harbors of the Sun (the final book in the Books of the Raksura series) was published by Strange Horizons. You should check that out as well.

Also check this space out for more updates and announcements of projects I have in the planning stages right now.