So, here we are again, one year later.

Things are changed yet pretty much the same. 

My son- yes, I still love saying that, my son is amazing.  Every day he gets more and more involved with the world. He wants to run everywhere.  He wants to touch everything.  And chew on it.

You know how parents will get this odd look on their face, and say "kids change your life."  And you've probably thought that was some sort of stab at an emotional epiphany they had since having kids?

Well, that's not it.  What they really mean is "Kids, they change your life in a very literal and real fashion. Whatever you were doing before, you ain't doing it now.  Hope you had fun."

So, yeah, kids change your life.  And for the better too.

OH, and I've sold more works under my pen name. Fantastic, I know.  You'll be able to buy them on all the more fabulous e-book retailers. 

So, yeah.  Life is much the same as it was last year, and that's a damn sight better than it was the year before that. 

See you next year!

One year later

So, it's been a year.

And holy crap have things changed.

I've gone from just one short published to having 4 of them, and I just finished a novella for a collection from a publisher. AND I have been invited to contribute to a summer collection of steampunk short stories.

I know, right!

But the biggest change of all?

We had a baby!

No, we didn't steal it. It's ours. And we have the paper work to prove it, thankyouverymuch.

It's amazing what a year will bring, right? I mean, last year I was all down in the dumps because my father had just died, my sister was moving to South Africa.

Oh yeah, she got married to a really nice guy from South Africa. They live there now.

back to amazing. ooo, and I picked up a pen name. Always wanted one of them. Now I have one.

Isn't it amazing what a year will bring?

Mylie Cyrus vs Twilight

So, I'm a compulsive reader, and that means I read through most of the news sites on an hourly basis. Today I run across a tid-bit of something I usually file in the “who cares” section. Mylie Cyrus is caught on video giving a 45 year old man (who isn't her father) a lap dance.

My first thought was, whatever followed closely by I really don't care but I continued reading. It seems this was lap dance was given back when she was 16.

My new first thought was, “Wow, her dad needs to be doing a better job of being a dad.” followed by “If I had a 16 year old daughter, that sure as heck wouldn't be happening.” Then I moved on to the next news headline, which had something to do about Twilight. Which I can care even less about than Mylie Cyrus. And that is really hard to do, get me to care about something less that I care about Mylie “Hannah Montana” Cyrus.

But then something occurs to me; Bella from Twilight is a high school girl that engages in a relationship with Edward, a man old enough to be her father.

This is followed closely by, “Why is it okay, encouraged even, in the Twilight novels for a young girl to engage in a sexual relationship with an older man but it's not okay for Mylie to do the same thing?”

Now before you answer with some trite line about men being pigs keep in mind that the primary audience for Twilight isn't men in their middle years. In fact, I could be safe in saying that men are so far down on the target demographic list that the only middle-aged men who've seen or read the books was either as part of a job or because their wives made them.

Which leaves women, young, middle aged, and older, as the audience.The author is a woman. Women are not only engaging in this fantasy they are paying money for it. Women are the center of the story, they are creating it and they are expanding it.

With some further thought, this older man/vampire involved with a young woman thing isn't isolated to Twilight. Buffy was in High School when she met Angel (Joss Whedon is the creator/writer of the series). It's in most of the vampire stories, and it's not just a girls and men relationship. There are fewer examples of young men and older women, but they do exist. It's almost a trope of vampire fiction that the human protagonist be a late teen.

By comparison, Mina in the original vampire story, Bram Stocker's Dracula, is in her twenties and has a career as a school mistress. Which makes this younger protagonist thing a modern development.

So, why is it okay for our fiction (which is the mirror of the real) to reinforce the young woman and older man relationship but it's not okay when it happens in real life?

For the record, I have yet to fully read any of the Twilight books, watched the movies, I am a fan of the Buffy series, and I am not advocating having sex with underage teens, male or female, under any circumstances.

Help a spider out

Science Fiction author Spider Robinson's wife Jeanne is fighting cancer and they're both fighting to pay the bills. 100% of any money used to purchase Larry Santoro's excellent e-book, "Lord Dickens's Declaration," will go directly to the Robinsons. Here's the link:

http://www.starshipsofa.com/shop/lord-dickenss-declaration/

Dec 31st is the last day that people can buy Larry's story. I'd like to end the fundraiser with a bang. Let's get the word out all over the web to let people know on December 30th, there's only one day left to help. Why December 30th? Because if there's only one day left people won't put it off and say, "I'll do it later. I still have time." Make sure you link to the purchase page!

My dad

So, my father died last month.

He died alone in a hospital bed with no one who knew him nearby to mark his passing. My sister found out a few hours later, and then called me.

It's hard, even now, not to shout at someone complaining about something. I have to restrain myself from screaming, "How the fuck is that important when my father is dead? Huh?"

I don't, because they don't know and it's not their fault. Maybe I should, but it won't change anything and I doubt it would make me feel better.

I loved my father, even though he was a drunk. It's what killed him, really. He died because his body couldn't handle the withdrawal this time.

I think the saddest part is that my life won't change very much at all. He hadn't sent me even a card for any holiday or birthday for years, and never offered anything more than a vague promise to come and visit next year, "when he had more money." He was never much in my life, and these last years nothing more than a voice on a phone. Toward the end, I was calling him every week to talk to him. Mostly I got his answering machine.

I don't recommend having an answering machine for a father. Sure, they're great listeners but they don't teach you how to shave, change a tire, or take a punch.

I love my father, and I wish he could have stopped drinking. I wish that he loved me more than he loved gin. But he didn't. I think it would have been very wonderful to have him in my life.

But now I'll never know.

Steampunk

So, I've been shopping around a new short story I wrote.

Well, not so new, really. I wrote it originally for a Star Craft anthology, but it was turned down.

I'll vent more about what I lost out to later.

So, I re-wrote it and punked it up a bit, and shopped it to some online publications.

And, steampunktales.com picked it up for publication!

I know! Freaking sweet!

So, yeah. One more short story in the bank. Pretty soon I should write a novel and shop it around.

Birthday

I have come to hate my birthday.

Not because of the whole getting older thing, but because I am reminded of all the things that didn't happen in the last year. It's that day I can look back and say, "Yep, one more year of failure. Good job."

Well, it's not total failure. I still have a strong and happy marriage. I have a fantastic relationship with my father's answering machine. Which, I have to say, is great. I can call it at any time, day or night, and it always picks up. Usually on the first ring. It listens to whatever I need to talk about, provided it's in short sentences. And it never gives bad advice.

Of course it never gives good advice, but that's okay. You can't have everything.

My wife struggles every year to make it a happy day for me. I really love her for it, but she's flogging a dead horse, I think. Although, this year she really pulled out the stops. She got my sister and mother to come down to Padre Island with us for a few days of hanging out at the beach.

Luckily, my birthday is in what the weather people call "hurricane season" so rooms were plentiful and cheap. And, frankly, if you're not into running around on the beach, drinking, and having sex in your condo while looking at the beach there isn't much to do.

Thankfully, I'm down for at least 2 out of those three.

I tell my wife that each year is better than the last, that she has once again succeeded in making me happy on my birthday. I lie to her to help her feel better about the horror story that is my family relationships. I haven't lived within 600 miles of a family member since 1995. And that's on purpose.

I just don't get along with them, aside from my sister. She lives in another state, miles from family as well so that tells you how she feels about things.

I want to tell my wife, "hey, there's no way you can win this. today will always be a shitty day. Let's ignore it, and it will go away tomorrow." But that would make her try harder, so I keep it to myself.

If I could make my birthday go away, I would. That would be very liberating, I think.

And, since that's not going to happen, I'll just wake up tomorrow and it'll be over.