To put our faith in tangible goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. So we do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES.

But don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that we can’t BE firemen, bankers, or doctors—but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal. In every man, heredity and environment have combined to produce a creature of certain abilities and desires—including a deeply ingrained need to function in such a way that his life will be MEANINGFUL. A man has to BE something; he has to matter.

As I see it then, the formula runs something like this: a man must choose a path which will let his ABILITIES function at maximum efficiency toward the gratification of his DESIRES. In doing this, he is fulfilling a need (giving himself identity by functioning in a set pattern toward a set goal) he avoids frustrating his potential (choosing a path which puts no limit on his self-development), and he avoids the terror of seeing his goal wilt or lose its charm as he draws closer to it (rather than bending himself to meet the demands of that which he seeks, he has bent his goal to conform to his own abilities and desires).

In short, he has not dedicated his life to reaching a pre-defined goal, but he has rather chosen a way of life he KNOWS he will enjoy. The goal is absolutely secondary: it is the functioning toward the goal which is important. And it seems almost ridiculous to say that a man MUST function in a pattern of his own choosing; for to let another man define your own goals is to give up one of the most meaningful aspects of life — the definitive act of will which makes a man an individual.

Sauce.

We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain.

By its very nature, every embedded spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies – these are all private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.

– Aldous Huxely, The Doors of Perception.

This is an M/F romance, but I wrote it quite a while ago for Blushing Books and I rather like it, so I’m posting mention of it here in the hopes you might feel the same way. This is my first real historical romance, involving a criminal British heroine sentenced to transportation and sent off to Australian shores.

(Cross-posted from Lokirenard.com.)

Young Jane Wilde was once a noblewoman, but the coming of a dark plague and winds of ill fortune have led her to the streets of London where she survives on her wits alone, stealing enough food to eat, and fencing enough pretty jewelry to keep a roof over her head.

Unfortunately for the once Lady Wilde, the British empire is still in an expansive state and intends to settle the far off Australian continent not only as a penal colony, but as a lawful outpost of the empire. To that end they need women to sate the lusts of the criminal men already languishing in that desolate place. When Jane is caught stealing bread and put before a judge, her sentence is inevitable: deportation.

Once aboard the transportation ship Jane catches the eye of Master Roake, the man charged with overseeing discipline. Jane thinks him cruel and harsh, but her fear does not quell her natural defiance. Indeed, her rebellious nature sets her across his path many times – and equally many times across his knee.

Jane’s proud nature cannot bring her to submit to the man who wields leather as naturally as he breathes. As for Master Roake, he is not a man given easily to sentiment, nor his he accustomed to finding true ladies on his ship and under his lash. And yet, each time they meet in a clash of wills and reddened flesh, a fondness grows.

Soon they will make land. Jane will be forced to serve her sentence in one of the female factories and Master Roake will once more set sail for England. Love is no match for the mighty British Empire.

Or is it?

Check out a sample and download the book here!

EDIT: Lesbia update here 🙂

Five.

Dogs.

Three of them are under six months old.

The chaos is everywhere, and it is beautiful.

Three of these dogs are ours. Two of them are not. A couple of weeks ago these puppies were dumped on the side of the road. They came to me with massive worm swollen bellies, little stick limbs and ear-piercing shrieks which would erupt from their throats every time they were left for even a minute because they were scared and they thought they were alone.

They’re not alone anymore. They have three older dogs to play with, they have a warm, clean bed to sleep in and these days the only times their tummies are swollen is when they’ve eaten too much.

I’ve fallen in love with these two little fosters. They live for affection. If you sit down with them for even a minute they will climb into your lap and fall asleep from sheer contentment. (As pictured above.) And they’re smart. Raptors from Jurassic Park smart. They don’t look like much and nobody is rushing to adopt them, which is a bad thing because not only do they not have ‘forever homes’ as yet, but every day they’re here they become more a part of the family. It’s going to be hard to see them go.

Puppies, like most juvenile animals, are pure expressions of joy. They’re so helpless and so trusting and so curious and such little embodiments of everything that is good in the world – which I think is what makes the notion of dumping them so viscerally abhorrent. Mistreating an animal isn’t just a case of cruelty, its an act which rejects everything that makes us good.

These are two of the reasons I’ve been busy of late, but I think it’s worth it. I thank you for your patience 🙂 And I promise there will be more updates in the not too distant future.

Okay, one more video post and tomorrow I promise I’ll post something on Lesbia. Most likely. It’s the weekend after all.

Oh, and possibly the worst, or is it the best cover of Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance.
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Challenging the ‘women, cattle and slaves’ narrative.

By Kameron Hurley

I’m going to tell you a story about llamas. It will be like every other story you’ve ever heard about llamas: how they are covered in fine scales; how they eat their young if not raised properly; and how, at the end of their lives, they hurl themselves – lemming-like- over cliffs to drown in the surging sea. They are, at heart, sea creatures, birthed from the sea, married to it like the fishing people who make their livelihood there.

Every story you hear about llamas is the same. You see it in books: the poor doomed baby llama getting chomped up by its intemperate parent. On television: the massive tide of scaly llamas falling in a great, majestic herd into the sea below. In the movies: bad-ass llamas smoking cigars and painting their scales in jungle camouflage.

Because you’ve seen this story so many times, because you already know the nature and history of llamas, it sometimes shocks you, of course, to see a llama outside of these media spaces. The llamas you see don’t have scales. So you doubt what you see, and you joke with your friends about “those scaly llamas” and they laugh and say, “Yes, llamas sure are scaly!” and you forget your actual experience.

So you forget the llamas that don’t fit the narrative you saw in films, books, television – the ones you heard about in the stories.

What you remember is the llama you saw who had mange, which sort of looked scaly, after a while, and that one llama who was sort of aggressive toward a baby llama, like maybe it was going to eat it. So you forget the llamas that don’t fit the narrative you saw in films, books, television – the ones you heard about in the stories – and you remember the ones that exhibited the behavior the stories talk about. Suddenly, all the llamas you remember fit the narrative you see and hear every day from those around you. You make jokes about it with your friends. You feel like you’ve won something. You’re not crazy. You think just like everyone else.

And then there came a day when you started writing about your own llamas. Unsurprisingly, you didn’t choose to write about the soft, downy, non-cannibalistic ones you actually met, because you knew no one would find those “realistic.” You plucked out the llamas from the stories. You created cannibal llamas with a death wish, their scales matted in paint.

It’s easier to tell the same stories everyone else does. There’s no particular shame in it.

It’s just that it’s lazy, which is just about the worst possible thing a spec fic writer can be.

Oh, and it’s not true.

Read more…

From a commencement speech by David Foster Wallace

This has nothing to do with kink, but then again, neither does half of what I post here. You’re used to it by now – or you just got here and you don’t know what to expect, in which case, you won’t be surprised.

So we went to buy an oven. Because we are moving into our new house soon and the current oven is 1970’s original and I’m afraid it might be possessed. Or prone to electrocuting people. More the latter than the former, if I’m to be honest.

We were in the store and then, in the middle of all these fridges and dishwashers and things of that nature, I completely forgot what we were there for. I knew we were there for a box shaped appliance of some kind, but I couldn’t remember its function or its name. Fortunately my boyfriend knew. He’s like a satellite brain, holding all sorts of interesting information, like where we are going, and why we are going there.

Anyway, so we found ourselves an oven that seemed to suit our requirements and then we went and purchased it and the lady said “That will be $1200 exactly.”

And then the little eftpos machine came up and it said “1199.99.” And then I had a ‘what sorcery is this?!?’ moment in which I demanded to know why there were so many 9’s and what they had done with the 2 I was expecting.

I vocalized this and was swiftly reassured that it was all correct and in order. So now we own an oven. And I’m a little less certain about my brain. I think it is stress. In moments of stress, the human brain is programmed to think about things that matter, like writing more Lesbia, and omitting less important information, like what an oven is. It makes sense.

This is an oven. (For the author’s reference.)