Let Me Tell You About My Mother

ERA YES! Mom in DC, 1978

Let me tell you about my mother.

She is an amazing woman. Not an easy woman, but then neither am I, as my wife would undoubtedly tell you; as my daughters will likely someday agree. My mother is a strong woman–a brave, independent woman who is determined to face death in the exact same manner in which she has lived her life: on her own terms.

At seventy-three, my mother has lived her seven-plus decades boldly. As avid outdoors people, she and my father instilled in my sister and me a lifelong love of adventure. Before we could even walk, our parents took us car camping in and around Southwest Michigan. As we grew older, our family adventures expanded to include dune running on Lake Michigan beaches, camping trips to Northern Michigan, canoe excursions along Michigan waterways, and epic road trips to the East Coast, the American West, and,  memorably, across Canada and Alaska.

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Posted in Death with Dignity, Family, VSED | Tagged , , | 8 Comments

What the Literal Hell is Going On?

Yesterday Donald Trump decided to enact a wide-sweeping ban on Middle Eastern refugees and immigrants that led Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) to detain and even, in some cases, deport individuals arriving in airports across the country. By late afternoon, the ACLU had won a stay of the ban in federal court—the first of many anticipated legal defeats for the week-old administration. What should adanielshave happened next was that anyone being detained should have been released, and all attempts to detain and deport foreign nationals based on the Executive Order should have ceased.

Instead, Homeland Security issued a press release indicating that judicial rulings wouldn’t affect the “overall implementation” of Trump’s EO. Um, excuse me? A FEDERAL COURT ruled that the ban is unconstitutional, and therefore cannot go into effect as currently written. How exactly does that ruling not impact the ban’s implementation? And, sure enough, according to the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), one of the groups that sued the federal government in New York, attorneys at US airports are still waiting for Homeland Security to release people being detained under Trump’s order.

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Posted in History, Politics | 1 Comment

Our New Reality? More Like Same Old, Same Old

Okay. So I have waited a little while to write down my thoughts regarding the 2016 Presidential Election, AKA the day hate trumped love or, as I like to call it, that fucking day from hell. In case you didn’t pick up on it, I’m a little pissed, a fact to which I suspect my wife and children would readily attest. In the past three weeks I have winced innumerable times as I’ve said, “Oh, yeah, Alex, no—umm, that’s a grown-up word, okay? Please don’t say that word, honey.”

I know I’m not alone in my anger. I know I’m not the only one who feels like punching a wall or screaming into a pillow because our uninspired electorate voted into power an unapologetically racist, misogynistic, homophobic regime that demonstrates a little more every day why they are appallingly unfit to lead even a Walmart franchise, let alone the government of a global superpower. And yet, everywhere I go I hear people saying how shocked they are that this happened.

Shocked? Really? I’m not shocked. Disheartened, angry (again), frustrated, dismayed—but not shocked. For those who are, I would genuinely like to know: Are you new here? Is there some part of America’s racist, misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic history that you missed? Because from my perspective, this is pretty much business as usual in the land of the free.*

(*Fine print: “Free” applies only to cis-gendered straight white males who were born here. Or, hell, anywhere else, really.)

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Posted in Black Lives Matter, Equal Rights Amendment, LGBT rights, Women's rights | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Queer Youth: It’s Getting Better. Whew.

So there’s a time in my life that I don’t like to think about, let alone talk or write about. But I recently wrote a YA novel about a pair of high school soccer players, and I discovered that inhabiting their minds for months on end brought me spiraling back to my own teenage-hood, better known as the years-long period of my life when I felt actual despair. Hopelessness, even. Like my character Jamie, if not for soccer, if not for the endorphins, the team goals, the chance to inflict my anger and frustration legally and with encouragement on a small leather ball and larger, less leathery opponents, I honestly don’t know how I would have made it through junior high and high school.

I’ve heard a lot of people say they hated their secondary school experiences, including my own sister. It’s not something we talk a lot about, but as a teenager, my older sister struggled with suicidal ideation, much of it revolving around the two-year relationship she had with another girl. I found out about my sister’s girlfriend from Aaron (not his real name), one of the identical twins who lived in my neighborhood. Aaron was the more dynamic of the two boys, i.e. the one who suggested he and his twin Adam switch clothes and classrooms every so often in elementary school. We could all tell them apart, of course, but the adults? Not so much.

family_1983

Rocking the pageboy in the early 198os.

Aaron was also the boy who, in seventh grade, announced to the lunch table that my older sister was a “dyke.” Apparently he’d forgotten the reputation I’d made for myself in second grade when I beat the crap out of any boy who dared steal my soccer ball or put me down for being “just a girl.” I mean, it had been five years, so maybe his memory lapse was understandable. Or maybe he just thought that now that we were in junior high, I would act more like a “regular” girl and less like a tomboy, despite the fact I favored tube socks, Puma sneakers, and a Kate Jackson pageboy haircut.

Either way, he seemed to realize his mistake almost immediately, because as my fists clenched and my eyes narrowed to slits, his eyes widened and he backed away.

“Take it back!” I roared, pushing away from the lunch table.

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Posted in Family, Gender, LGBT rights | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Game Time Cover Reveal, Release Date, and Jacket Blurb

The cover for Game Time, book two in the Girls of Summer series, took shape this week, and I realized that the Valentine’s Day recreate would be better suited to book three in the series. So here is the final-ish cover for the next book:

GT-front3

I reserve the right to change it–when I self-publish, I often make good use of that right–but this is the general gist. Due to requests (thank you to two readers who contacted me on social media!), I also made it available for pre-order on Amazon. This is my first time using the pre-order option on the KDP publication platform. “Pre-order” means that as soon as the book is uploaded and approved for publication on the KDP platform, it’s automatically delivered to the purchaser’s Kindle app. Seems like a good process to me, both for the author and the reader.

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Posted in Lesbian Fiction, Second Growth Books, Self-Publishing, Soccer | Tagged , , , , | 8 Comments