Hey! You Guyz!

It’s been pretty busy around Chez Chaos. Summer break has started and Tam and I have decided to make the most of it. Get this; we slept in until 6:30 one morning! Of course, the next morning we were both up at 3:30 because she says MY muse woke HER up with an idea for MY book! Rude. That meant Tam had to wake ME up to share the idea. Rude again. But it was a good idea however it really messed with our internal clocks because neither of us could get back to sleep, so we started our day in the dark hours.

Then there was the day Spawn came over. She was carrying something small and furry. It was a guinea pig. She found it wandering in the road a few streets over, so she picked it up and tried finding the owner. No one in the area knew anything about it, so she brought it to me.

Because I am a moosh for critters, that’s why, although she says she simply didn’t want to leave it in the car while she came in to visit. We ended up keeping it because Tam and Li’l Red took a fancy to the beast. I’ve not seen anyone take quite this fancy before. His name is George and he has a lovely new cage with lots of things to chew, he gets fresh fruit every day, and fresh greens as well as regular guinea pig food. He’s gotten round and silly and very spoiled. Silly pig. Oh, and the bird thinks she’s in love with him.

Then there was a bunch of other stuff that happened, but the big news is: Tam and I attended our very first Gay Pride parade, and WOW! We were invited to go by Tam’s daughter, the Hair. She lives there, and has been to pride parades before, so she was kind enough to escort us around. We were also accompanied by Thing. He’s straight, but he supports his moms. He is awesome: Straight but not narrow.

Anyway, you guyz we were only slightly prepared for what we were about to see. There were the usual suspects: drag queens and kings, transgendered folk, gay, lesbian, bi, straight, you know… the typical people who attend these functions, the ones we expected to see. We were not disappointed.

Then there were the furries, the leathers, the S&M, the NAKED PEOPLE RIDING BICYCLES, the guy with a sock on his, uh, penis that he was waving around (typical male, once they find it, they never stop playing with it), and the politicians.

Oh my gawd, the politicians… At least they were fully clothed.

There was lots of swag flying around and I managed to snap a marriage equality ring AND a rainbow string of beads RIGHT OUT OF MID AIR! You guyz! That was SO AWESOME, they actually cheered for me!

Did I mention the guy behind me was wearing genie shoes? I wanted to ask him for three wishes, but got distracted by NAKED PEOPLE AGAIN! Naked! People!

I am not exactly a prude, but having someone playing wig-wag-the-weenie in front of me and a crowd of strangers is a little bit out of my comfort level. I realize others don’t give it a second thought, nor do they do this kind of thing at work or on any given Sunday in Seattle, after all, this was a special occasion. But…wow. I just… wow.

We stood and watched for two-and-a-half hours before we’d reached our physical limits. My feet, legs, hips, back…all dead. Same with Tam and Thing. The Hair was willing to stick around a little longer, but she acquiesced when I mentioned food.

My favorite thing about today was when I realized I was totally comfortable being me in public. I didn’t shy away from holding Tam’s hand or kissing her right there in front of everyone, mainly because no one cared. Our children weren’t uncomfortable, or even fearful for us, as they might have been if we were in Our Fair City (which is smaller and not exactly gay friendly… occasionally gay dangerous is more like it). Today, we did not stand out in the crowd.

I felt no fear until I picked up a campaign sign to put up at home. I carried it around and to be honest, I was kind of afraid to do it. Not because it had LGBT in big, bold letters, but because it supported a political candidate.

I’m not well-read when it comes to news. News depresses the hell out of me, so I tend to be woefully uninformed of current events and political platforms. I was more concerned that someone was going to come up and start debating me about my choice of candidate than I was about having to support my sexual orientation! Seriously… But I did come up with a retort: I may not agree with everything he’s done in the past, but I can say the same thing about my partner and I still like both of them.

Today was great. We had a wonderful time at the parade and a fabulous lunch of Thai food. There were new experiences for all of us, after all, I don’t know if Thing has ever had Thai food before, but he seemed to like it well enough to eat his share.

Seriously though, I’m still debating whether or not to tell his dad that he went with us to the parade. It will probably set his hair on fire, so I won’t do it today, after all, he’s still on his honeymoon and I’m not that... mean…wait… Yes I am, but I promised my son I wouldn’t say anything that he’d have to defend.

Anyway, it’s been busy and it looks like there isn’t much of a letup in sight. I’m starting the second book (again, because there have been some serious, but excellent, changes) and I’d like to get it done by the end of summer so I can release it by the first of next year (or sooner…). We have a trip planned to visit my parents, then spend a few days at the beach to recover from said visit. There is yard work, housework, and a business to discuss. Oh, yeah, we may have an investor for the hat shop…

Life. Busy shit, you guyz, busy shit.

What’s Up?

Hi. It’s me. I’m still around, although with the close of school looming on the horizon (eight days, including the weekend!) it’s pretty much all I can do to hang on and crawl through the week.

Plus there was the editing, and the acceptance of the manuscript, and taking the cat to the vet because a half Siamese in heat is about as much fun as…what? The manuscript? It was accepted? Well, yes. Yes it was.

After a lot of thought and noodling over the independent vs. traditional publishing houses, I decided on going the independent publisher route. My ego kept begging me to try the traditional houses first, just to see if any of them would bite, then I remembered: when they buy your manuscript, they own it. All of it, all of those words you so painstakingly put together and edited and polished and loved and titled…and since they own it, they can change whatever the fuck they want.

I? Do not want that.

So, I shopped around. I researched lots of options, settled on a free ebook site, then looked again, because my mother couldn’t read it without a computer and she wouldn’t be happy about that. I looked at P.O.D. publishers and, well, wow. But there was one out there that just called to me. Unfortunately, they are picky about who they accept. Unlike some of the other P.O.D. presses out there, they won’t put their name on anything that they don’t think will sell. The other guys know they’ll sell some of your books, because the author has to buy about a thousand dollars worth of books.

Um, I’m pretty much fresh out of wealth at the moment, and I’m not sure when my shipment of barrels full of money will arrive. Last time, they got the order wrong and I ended up with barrels full of monkeys. You cannot buy groceries with monkeys; it makes the store clerks mad.

Anyway, I decided to try that one publisher. I sent it in and waited. After a couple days, I received the acceptance email and the REAL fun began.

The contract (I read it) and now the reformatting. Unfortunately, I chose a slightly smaller size book and now I’m looking at something HUGE because the page numbers are climbing (thanks to bizarre margins). I’m a little concerned what the price will be for said tome once I’m done fiddling around with it. Will anyone be able to afford a copy?

I may have to do some adjustments on paper quality etc, providing that’s still an option. If not, anyone need a slightly entertaining door stop?