Henge

I was three when my biological mother left me. I don’t remember her leaving. I don’t recall a feeling of loss. I remember a book from my childhood, Are you My Mother? A baby bird hopped between animals asking, “Are … Continue reading →

Dear Marie Calloway

I’m no angel. Hold yourself with care. I’m old enough to be your mother. But I’m no one. Lidia Yuknavitch, Rachel Resnick, Cheryl Strayed, Chelsea G. Summers, Antonia Crane, Susie Bright, Kerry Cohen, Sue William Silverman, Ethel Rohan, and Dylan … Continue reading →

A Christmas Cheer

Admittedly it’s uncouth or uncool, perhaps even tacky to write about my financial straits, but it’s bugging me I can’t afford to buy my son a Christmas gift this year. Do you ever want to give up? Well I do, … Continue reading →

If I Were A Poor White Single Mother

I read something at Forbes today because several of my friends on Facebook had linked the article. Here it is. If I Were A Poor Black Kid. The author, Gene Marks, describes himself as a “short, balding, and mediocre public … Continue reading →

First Impressions (Or A Letter to My English Composition Students) (Or “We’re Not Hesher.”)

Before we go any further discussing objective versus subjective descriptions or read essays by Heather Rogers and EB White or beat ourselves over the head with anymore comma splices or discuss how some of you begin a paragraph in past … Continue reading →

Do You Know The Meth-od Man? It’s Three A.M.

A man nearly died on my driveway last night. He’d done a huge amount of some naracotic then wandered the trailer park before ending up at my house at three a.m.  The man fell against the front of my house then knocked on the window. … Continue reading →

I Believe I’ll Write My Way Out of This Hole

You know how you almost always have someone who’s got your back? That person, since I was three years old, was my grandmother, granny; Mama Bear is what I called her. Because I didn’t have a mama  until I was ten, and then unfortunately, … Continue reading →

Happy Birthday Lidia Yuknavitch

Yours is The Book generations of women will press to a beat beneath their left tit as they brave college classrooms the first time, or the next time, or the last time even; it’s with them between classes, between sentences, on … Continue reading →

Dear Tracy Morgan

Dear Tracy Morgan, By now, everyone probably knows you stated during a recent stand-up routine in Nashville Tennesse you’d stab your son to death if he was gay. That was probably the worst of your homophobic tirade. I guess. You also said gays are pussies for whining so much about being bullied … Continue reading →

Hardwired

The day is warm and windy in Republican country. I’m surrounded by churches and liquor stores, desert hugged by mountains. What does a person’s sexual preference have to do with his or her professional ability, his or her professional integrity? … Continue reading →

Touching Kiefer Sutherland (1)

In 1989, I broke up with my first boyfriend. I touched Kiefer Sutherland. And I won the title of Miss Coors Extra Gold. My first boyfriend was older than me. He drove a Corvette, owned a house, owned a business. … Continue reading →

Post Rapture

In graduate school, when I began a novel about Eva Braun, I had books all over the place about World War II, about Adolf Hitler, about Eva Braun, about Nazis, about concentration camps, about Holocaust survivors, and my seven-year-old son … Continue reading →

Three (About the Body) Rough

When I was three, my mother left my father and me. When I was five, my father told me he was driving to Denver to pick up my brother. I didn’t know I had a brother. I knew I didn’t have a … Continue reading →

Dear Donny Thane

  Last night I sat under a fan staring at the TV wondering if this might be the night I slept longer than four hours, then over the sound of the fan and TV I heard my son crying down the hall in … Continue reading →

Crabs

Today is Tuesday and I transmit from a trailer in a trailer park on the southeast of town. The sun shines. The wind has tapered down. Weather’s about to turn for the warmer. I love warm. And my trailer is awesome. Did I mention … Continue reading →

14

My son’s first girlfriend was Alyssa Milano. He was three. She was twenty-seven. Alyssa was on the cover of Cosmopolitan Magazine that year and my son cut her out with his child-safe scissors then stuck her to the refrigerator with a couple of … Continue reading →

The Greatest Gift of Your Life You Insist You Don’t Want

Thirteen years ago today, my son’s grandmother on his father’s side died. They never met. I hope she rests well. Crystal was a beautiful woman. I remember that. She intimidated me. She wasn’t mean. I was just young at the time. … Continue reading →

Light

Jeff and I used to go to the gay clubs in Denver. I was a model then; Jeff was a model too. That was how we met. Anyway, we recognized each other right away. At clubs, we were brother and sister. Jeff was … Continue reading →

Two

I saw the film, “Showgirls,” with a friend in 1995. We were alone in the theater. I loved the movie from the get go, my instant-fierce love. The film received terrible reviews though; everyone said how bad Elizabeth Berkley was as Nomi Malone. I’ve seen … Continue reading →

One

My mother died March 20, 2011. Her name was Lydia Kathleen. She married my father when she was seventeen. At eighteen, Lydia Kathleen gave birth to me. My father tells me about the snowstorm in Durango that night. They were scared … Continue reading →

Fluffer

The first erotic story I ever wrote published was in 1995. I called it “Private Investigation” and had Fox Mulder and Dana Scully in mind when I wrote it. They fucked on a mattress at a crime scene. Playgirl Magazine published it. … Continue reading →

Breeding and Writing: I don’t know what to call this

I don’t know where the time goes. I’ve been desperately grasping the holes where it used to be, clawing to save bits of burnt straw. Continue reading →

Doing Dishes

I dreamed once a person took a shit in the middle of a room and then left it there, and I just stood looking at it like, I’m supposed to clean this up?  I used to live in this apartment complex where a guy … Continue reading →

Not Vegas

So it’s Thursday everyone and I realized at 5:49 this morning I hadn’t written my column this week. Wow. Time flies. It’s Friday, 7:11 a.m., and I’ve still not finished my column. Slacker. Actually, I’ve got stuff happening and probably could have skipped this week, but … Continue reading →

Poison

When I leave work traveling north on Highway 50 over the bridge I see the same billboard each day. “Heaven or Hell: Where Are You Going?”  It’s a ridicules question. Hell is eighth grade. Or if you’re a writer, it’s having no time to write.   … Continue reading →

Breeding and Writing: Does your choice of profession outweigh your rights?

I’ll make this brief. I read two news stories today that piss me off as a professional, as a parent, and as a human being. Because you know what? I am all of those things at the same time. Story … Continue reading →

Breeding and Writing: Big-bottomed girls and other playthings

When I was a kid, I was weird and lonely. My friends were my pets and my toys, in that order. Looking at my kids’ toys now, though, I think something big has changed. Girls’ toys, in general, are role-playing … Continue reading →

Higher

I’d like to write another story for Best Women’s Erotica; I’d like to publish that story in another edition of Best Women’s Erotica. Over the years, editors for the annual erotica collection have rejected my work once, shortlisted my work … Continue reading →

In Response to Kirsty Logan’s “Youth Is All” Who Wrote In Response to Amber Sparks’ “Writing Under the Influence of Anxiety.”

Today is Monday. I transmit from a cottage in Republican country. I’m tired because I worked all day and now listen to a  soft rock mix on I-Tunes because I’m forty-four but sometimes forget and have to ask my son, “How old am I?” If … Continue reading →

Breeding and Writing: The problem of first loves

The first time you love, you’re invincible. The outside world falls away. Your pairing and your faith are all that matter. But you lose something serious when it’s over; you lose the lack of sight. Continue reading →

Castles

Today the sun shines upon our cottage, the air outside is warming, and I canceled our cable television subscription.  My son’s idea. ”Mom, why don’t we cancel cable?” Sure, yeah. Done. It’s all crap anyway. Television, gads, it’s Crack. The only thing I still love about cable television is True Blood, and … Continue reading →

Breeding and Writing: The people I can’t be

I don’t have creative energy and love at the same time. They seem to be mutually exclusive. Either it’s dishes or dharma; laundry or literature. I can’t seem to (pardon the pun) marry the two women I intend to be. Continue reading →

Breeding and Writing: The words that fuck us up

Thinking back on my own formative years, there are words I thought I knew and have found out later that I completely don’t. Continue reading →

Quake

My Kiddo was  sick today. At seven a.m. this morning he said, “Mama, will you stay home with me?”   I called my  boss and  left a message then lied down with my son on his bed and rubbed his … Continue reading →

Breeding and Writing: Suck it up and change anyway

We’re rearranging my kid’s room in the aftermath of that which is Christmas. Among the haul, he got a play kitchen, a talking truck as big as he is, a train set with eight feet of track, and half a … Continue reading →

Still Alive

When I was three, my mother abandoned me. She  gave me up to become  a stripper at the Clown’s Den in Denver, and then she became a hooker.  When I was five, she  went to prison for solicitation.   That … Continue reading →

Wilderness

Yesterday I felt like I edged ever near a nervous breakdown. I had one of those in college, you know, a near-nervous-breakdown and began seeing a shrink and took meds, the whole thing. My primary fear, always, is I’ll become … Continue reading →

Breeding and Writing: Mourning for a stranger

I can’t think of a parenting slant to this, but here are the words I want to say today. I just heard that Cami Park died. I didn’t know her. We never crossed paths even once. Apparently, she was a … Continue reading →

Breeding and Writing: The only two things I want

Anytime I see this question in one of those legacy journals  at the bookstore or philosophical posts on a “mommy forum” (gag), I have the same answer. What do you want for your children? Personally, I want them to be: … Continue reading →

Breeding and Writing: Holiday horror stories

So, yep. It’s Thanksgiving. That’s the current elephant in the room, right? I’ll go with it. Happy Turkey Day, youse guys! It’s time for big parades and football games and warm fuzzies and appreciation and tryptophan and pie, extra whipped … Continue reading →

Breeding and Writing: Psycho families are just more fun

Thanksgiving’s closing in quickly. Enter the holiday season, with all the familial insanity it always brings. I used to wish I had a normal family. You know, as a kid. Back when I thought there was such a thing. Cookies … Continue reading →

Breeding and Writing: Be awesome or die

What’s more important: being perfect or being kind?  Should you encourage writers even though they suck? This issue has been on my mind today after reading Carolyn Kellogg’s rebuttal article up at the LA Times site today called “12 reasons … Continue reading →

Breeding and Writing: Mortal fear combat tactics

Yeah, it’s hard as hell. And yeah, it’s raw to write them. But we all have nightmares. It’s sharing them that releases the fear into the ether and strips its power over us, and of course, if we do it right, the fears belonging to our readers, too. Continue reading →

Breeding and Writing: A peek into new territory

Talking with folks who have successfully charted in YA waters, I realized quickly that none of my hard-wrought publication credits matter. I mean, sure, I can say that I’ve sold tons of work to someone who isn’t my mother and doesn’t have to like me. There’s that, and that helps. But in juvenile book circles? I have no pull. I know no one well. Nobody owes me favors, has read my work, or remembers meeting me at a workshop. They don’t. They haven’t. They wouldn’t. I’m a novice all over again. Continue reading →

Breeding and Writing: Who are you writing for?

When you create art, it’s moving toward someone. And it’s an uber-specific individual. Who will remember you? Continue reading →

Breeding and Writing: Bowling your heart out

Since it was a typical Saturday morning in our small town (read: nothing much else going on here), there were a few families bowling together. As I watched them, I saw a pattern.
Continue reading →

Breeding and Writing: Murder by default

As a parent, I can’t bow out. I can’t decline. It never matters whether I want to. It’s non-optional and there’s no point in arguing. I clean. I wipe. I wake. I comb, I dress, I make lunches, I sign notes and make appointments.

I’m also a writer, but that identity usually gets brushed off. I’m just too occupied.

That’s not right. I was a writer first. Continue reading →

Breeding and Writing: Awesomely disturbing kids’ books

There are lots of publishers out there with some nauseating stuff, but we’re not talking about Elmo or (god forbid) Spongebob paperbacks and coloring books.

So sick of those. Ugh.

Anyhow, not them.

No, what we’re discussing today, boys and girls, are some supremely messed up, real-life books for kids. These books exist. They are not photoshopped gags–I checked. Continue reading →

Breeding and Writing: Giving away your baby

We know our writing better than anyone else ever could.

We were there the day it came into being, and we know the thousand other ways the ending could have gone, the phrase we didn’t pick but almost did, the names and where they came from, why they mattered. We want to qualify our decisions, so the editor will see things our way and make them the way we would.

It takes an editor two seconds to delete a line you made with your blood. Continue reading →

Breeding and Writing: Mother-friendly places to submit

Parenthood takes a lot out of you. (Today, for example, it took most of my time today, so I’m just now writing this.)

Between cooking, feeding, the subsequent and never-ending cleaning, bathing, reading, Band-Aiding, diapering–and oh yeah, squeezing the suckers out in the first place–there’s not a lot left at the end of the evening for mom and dad, of energy, nookie, or anything else.

It’s rather all-consuming.

But in that consumption, those of us who were writers before engaging our wombs in the “on” position have found whole new worlds of emotional and personal pleasure and baggage (yes, both) to be blessed and/or plagued with.

Add to that, motherhood can be rather isolating. Very few moms ever say what they really feel, because quite a lot of it is frightening, truth be known. Commiseration is a beautiful thing; thus the major-dollar, let’s-parent-together, hive mind sites like BabyCenter and CafeMom.

It makes more than a little sense, then, that mama-magazines would pop up to publish the diatribes of those who feel a little more literary.

Here are some of those, for anyone inclined, and what they want: Continue reading →

Breeding and Writing: Sally Mann and the ethics of being a parent artist

Many accused photographer Sally Mann of either choosing her craft to the exclusion of her kids or her kids over her artistic credibility.

Tough place to be.

Mann’s most controversial work was Immediate Family, a book comprised of pictures of her kids in the twilight of their childhoods as each teetered between innocence and adolescence.

The alarming bit? Many of the photos are nude shots. Yes, they are all breathtaking, arresting pictures. Does that make it right to publish them?

As artists, shouldn’t we document life as it really happens? Are all things to be filtered for political correctness? Does that change when we become someone’s parent, or are our lives still our own? Continue reading →

Breeding and Writing: Why nobody cares about your relevant crap

When you’re thirty, those younger than you don’t care because you’re not young. Those older than you don’t care because you’re not old. Those you are thirty with are your closest allies, your commiserators, your siblings through life.

The cruel reality of it is that when you’re seventy, then eighty, then ninety, there will be increasingly fewer of them left. The generational conspirators will die off and leave you in a swelling world of new children and younger-than-you adults who make no sense and don’t remember anything you do.

How do you write to and for a world of readers who are not you, haven’t lived your life, and eventually will find you totally outdated? How do you matter when it’s all so impermanent? Continue reading →

Breeding and Writing: Teaching your baby to swear

I’ve written some dark shit. I’d hope I’m not as fundamentally deranged as every character I can imagine. But obviously I’m still the person who thought that stuff in the first place then, aren’t I? And I could have (theoretically) chosen not to write those more troubling thoughts down for preservation. Right?

Who’s at fault?

The twisted author? The ignorant masses? The collective unconsciousness, the hive mind, the overextended self-help book section, the all day CNN reports of raped children and looted buildings? What makes dark things happen in a story, and are they real if they do?

Does fiction have a moral obligation to be responsible?

Or does it save us from everyday obligation and free our minds?
Continue reading →

Breeding and Writing: The Uterus Monologues

Why does having a vagina mean I have to love my work less?

It’s more passive aggressive than it was in olden days, to be sure. We’ve come a long way. But that mostly-unspoken bitterness is still there: I thought you were a mother.
Continue reading →

Breeding and Writing: The fast-food joint at the end of the universe

What happens if the foil-wearing pyramid people are right, and something drastic happens in 2012, leaving all of our technology obliterated? Who would we be?

Say we all survive and start over. Could you help your kid with a science project without Google? Stand reading a single newspaper once a day, or worse, once a week? Could you permanently remember how your favorite songs go, even without being able to listen to your iPod for the rest of your life? Continue reading →

Breeding and Writing: Why you aren’t ready to be a writer

I don’t want her to die yet. I want another Christmas. I want family pictures, and her attendance at my son’s graduation in seventeen years, and her hair to have the chance to turn grey. I need it all to stop for a minute and let me catch up, let me breathe.

We don’t get that chance in the writing world, either.
Continue reading →

Breeding and Writing: Grandpa knows what you’re doing in there

If you’re comfortable with something you’ve written, it probably sucks.

Yet no one can make us as uncomfortable as our families. That’s what they’re for. Watch any Thanksgiving episode of any sitcom. It happens.

That’s the real question I’m asking. As a parent, as a sibling, as the adult child of someone else who will likely be hurt by your actions—how do you marry the two worlds? Continue reading →