This post is very ranty and sort of angry, so if you’re looking for good vibrations, I suggest not reading this. If, on the other hand, angry and ranty is what you like with your cup of cocoa, read on.

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Sometimes you can’t help things being the thing that they are. In fact, things are at their best when they are what they are. Even if people wished they were something else. Which is another way of me saying that I’m not re-writing Lesbia after all*. Because doing that makes it something it isn’t, which is inherently pointless. If I’d wanted to write a fantasy epic, I would have written a fantasy epic. It turns out I have no interest in writing a fantasy epic. So I suppose the only thing connecting me to Tolkien at this point is our shared love of long beards.

I still don’t think what I write is erotica at it’s heart and I’m pretty much at the point where I no longer care if other people think it is erotica. This isn’t because I have anything against erotica. Erotica is great when it is what it is. But I don’t set out to write erotica, so it’s silly when people insist that it should be erotica, then complain that it isn’t very good erotica. It’s basically the literary equivalent of adopting a pet porcupine and complaining that your cat is prickly.

I think that some people, perhaps vanilla people, don’t see spanking as being anything other than a sexual activity, but we all know that’s not the case. What is expressed in spanking stories is so much more than simple sexual impulses. Good spanking stories are about rebellion and benevolent control, about security and romance, about (and here I’m totally stealing from Devlin O’Neill) innocence and sensitivity. And sometimes, when I’m writing them, they’re also about warriors and sword-maidens and magical elves. And women. And men. And motorbikes. And the odd gym instructor.

*I am still getting editing help though. Because editing is good, and helps things become more of what they are.

Earlier this week, I mentioned forms. I mentioned the volume of forms. The importance of forms. The complexity and paper-delicate ecosystem that forms exist within.

What I did not mention – and I realize now that it was a grave error – was the submission of forms. You see, the submission of forms is almost as important as the existence of forms. Certainly, the gravity of the matter of the filling out of forms pales in comparison to the importance of filing them in the correct place.

That is why companies are insistent that forms are sent to a specific location. We were given very strict instructions as to which branch to send our forms to. It was iterated and reiterated that forms must go to this branch, else risk being lost forever in the formless void. As fate would have it, the branch in question, the branch our forms must go to, currently looks like this:

Some might call this incompetence. I call it a lesson in the Zen of forms. You see, when the forms are existent, the branch itself becomes formless. It’s like in quantum physics, where the exact location of an electron cannot be known. Like the electron, the branch does exist, not in a precise place, but in a cloud state of possibility.

This was never about forms. It was about beauty and truth and the impermanence of permanence, and the mustn’tness of musts. I can only thank the company in question for being so benevolent and guiding us on a journey, not to nowhere, but to now-varna.

It’s been quiet around here lately. That is because I am doing super adult things, like entering into negotiations. And, er, filling out forms. So, so many forms. There are forms for applying for other forms. Forms to email. Forms to sign. Forms to fill out in triplicate. Forms to confirm the filing of other forms. Forms for the formation of new forms. Formless forms.

LOL Forms!

Having been an online freelancer almost my entire working life, dealing with these things is weird. I’ve recently had several conversations with people who were wearing a tie. And if not a tie, a tasteful necklace. And that lady clothing that sort of drapes and isn’t jeans. I don’t even know what you call it. There’s been a steady flow of people wearing business attire and giving firm handshakes. This has been both bizarre and unsettling.

I have responded by wearing t-shirts with cats on them, sleeping a lot, and writing copious amounts of spanking fiction in an attempt to self-soothe. It’s working. I think.

An unlikely couple and a fascinating conversation. (Some of it is complete bullshit. Mental discretion advised.)

Stayed up until the early hours of the morning playing video games, then had jelly (jello for Americans) for breakfast. It was blue. And awesome. Now I am going to nap until midday.

Having just watched all three Matrix movies, I have stumbled across the secret for survival as a woman in The Matrix. It’s a simple formula, easily applied to oneself with a minimum of fuss.

I noticed this pattern starting with Switch, who drew my eye on account of her being something like Thermite personified.

Switch doesn’t survive much longer than this shot in which it’s pretty obvious she’s not wearing a bra.

Saddened by Switch’s death, I felt a tingling of concern when I noticed that the doctor in the second Matrix movie also had a certain butch-y vibe to her (or at least had pretty short hair):

Sure enough, dead not half an hour later.

Having spotted the pattern, I held out precisely zero hope for the very attractive rocket launcher lady with the shaved head:

She know’s something’s up…

Yep, her end was particularly gruesome. It turns out, watching the entire Matrix series, that NO female with hair shorter than her shoulders lives, and EVERY female character with her hair longer than that survives. It would also appear that the shorter your hair is, the quicker and nastier you die in The Matrix universe. (The only exception to this is The Oracle, who arguably dies and simply happens to be reborn, so the short hair rule still holds true.) Interesting, no? One wonders what the Wachowski brothers, or Wachowski brother and sister as they are today, were thinking.

WT actual F?

A few weeks ago, I got an email from someone who noted that I’m bisexual and wondered what it was like being a bisexual author. She noted that there were a lot of lesbian perspectives, but not a whole lot of bisexual ones – especially in the F/F community. And she has a point.

I suspect that there are actually an awful lot of bisexual people in the F/F kink community, but for one reason or another they’re fairly invisible. I can’t speak for everyone, but the biggest reason I personally don’t bring up the bisexual thing very often is because it’s not really relevant to anything 90% of the time. Most of the time I feel as if it would be weird and borderline disrespectful to bring up men in a F/F space, mostly because there are so very few spaces that actually are F/F. When you find one, its nice not to bring up men, just for once.

I’ve personally never hidden the fact that I’m bi, or the fact that I have a male partner. It’s also wildly obvious to anyone with eyes that I write both M/F and F/F books, so there’s another giveaway there.

At the end of the day however, when you’re having an F/F discussion in an F/F venue it’s just awkward and a little out of place to bring up bisexuality in the form of chatting about guys. Most of the time it would be the equivalent of adding an entirely unnecessary ‘also, penis’ to the end of every sentence. Also, penis.

See what I mean?

I do see however, how this bisexual invisibility would be sort of alienating to some people. I know sometimes I feel like I might be mistaken for a lesbian, which wouldn’t bother me at all, but which might not be fair either. I mean, what if people only liked reading my F/F stories because they thought I was a lesbian? What if they felt tricked upon discovering that there was a fellow about the place? Should I disclaimer everything I write with a WARNING: NOT A REAL LESBIAN!

Perhaps a little over the top, methinks.

Being bisexual is a little bit like being a switch, although you know you’re both, quite often you can only express one side of yourself at a time. It’s not possible to simultaneously top and bottom the same person, and it’s not possible to have a monogamous relationship with both a man and a woman at the same time.

Bisexuality does have some additional stigma in the lesbian community too, because more than one bisexual has broken a lesbian’s heart in twain by buggering off to be with a man. And bisexuals sort of get to fly under the radar, avoiding a lot of the hardship that comes with being an out and proud lesbian woman. Both those things could easily lead to a perhaps understandable, if not entirely constructive, resentment of the bisexual.

Having said that, I’ve never personally experienced any of that. Everybody has been lovely to me and those who perhaps weren’t so taken with me were probably annoyed by things other than who I take to bed at night.

So what’s the bisexual perspective? Well from my perspective, it’s pretty great. The F/F community has been nothing but kind and loving toward me, they’ve certainly embraced my work with enthusiasm and I have to say one of the reasons I love writing F/F so much is because I know I’m doing it for people who really love it. There’s an energy in the F/F community that I’ve never found elsewhere. The space, as it were, pulses with a feminine intensity that is invigorating to be around – even digitally.

I don’t know if that answers the question. I don’t know if there even was originally a question to be answered. Suffice to say, I think bisexual women are very welcome in the F/F community and have as much of a role to play as those who identify as lesbian. It’s a space defined by femininity, not sexuality. It’s a sisterhood. And it’s awesome.

There is some stuff that I am excited about that you might also be excited about. Perhaps my excitement will be contagious. Perhaps it will sweep across nations, stopping only when Madagascar closes its port. Here’s what I have planned for 2013:

More F/F stuff. More lady stories. More female protagonists, antagonists. More lady heroes. More lady villains. More stories about women for anyone who cares to read them.

Better F/F stuff. Better lady stories. Better female protagonists and antagonists. Better lady heroes. Better lady villains. Better stories about women for anyone who cares to read them.

Here’s how I plan to achieve this:

Copious amounts of tea.

AND:

Professional editing. I’m hoping to be able to make a formal announcement that Lesbia has a professional editor on board soon. So get your ballgown out of storage and brush off your tuxedos.

ALSO:

Art!

I like pictures. Odds are, you like pictures too. This year there will be much more art to accompany my fiction, custom made for the tale it references. The ball is already rolling on that front, with a lovely artist on board to create some drawings for Lesbia. Check out this draft sketch of Kira (after the jump.)

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