Thursday, December 28, 2017

Cancer and the positivity police


I think I feel good about chemo, because I can feel it helping. Last summer, when I had an undiagnosed tumor, I could feel that something was wrong when I was hiking. I felt more tired and depressed. I think depression is a symptom of cancer.

Two weeks after my first chemo, I could feel that lifting. The same thing happened when I was in chemo before.

I think this business about positive attitude helping cancer patients mixes up cause and effect. If the treatment is working, the patient feels better and is more positive. The patient who is not benefiting from treatment is still feeling down, because the cancer is still dragging on their system.

I find this whole positivity police thing very oppressive and abusive towards cancer patients.  Cancer patients should not be told that they are at fault for their disease because of their poor attitudes.  This is absurd and cruel.
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Saturday, December 23, 2017

In preparation for the cover of Elves in Detroit: Book 1

This is definitely backwards, blogging about decisions about the book covers in reverse order.  But once I had done it for book 3, I thought that I should do it for books 1 & 2.

My ideas for the cover of book 1 were related to conveying the concept of having Laurielle build a miniature version of fairyland under domes in Detroit -- and catching glimpses of Detroit from that mini-fairyland.  Here were some candidates.


















The trees in these pictures were photographed in the White Mountains of NH.

I drove around places near me to try to find row houses that would be suitable for conveying urban decay in my fictional Detroit.  Obviously, row houses in the NYC metro area don't look like Detroit.  That's one thing I'm realizing is that even in fairly unremarkable areas, the architecture is nevertheless unique.  Anyway, I created a google photos album with some of the pictures I took.  As you may notice, I ended up preferring one block in Yonkers, which had a particularly decayed looking building.  Here's the link to my album

google photos album of row house photos

I also found a couple of places in Harlem, which might have been suitable, that were interesting, including one building that was isolated in a lot, just like Laurielle's building in the book, and even surrounded by a community garden.  Here are some images





I ended up going with the one in Yonkers -- but, if this book gets made into a movie, This would be a great place to film

I also thought this backyard was promising


And this abandoned building





 I could go back and change the cover.  Kindle will let me do that.  I may have gotten unduly excited playing with transparency in my Sketchbook Pro program -- and let that get me carried away in what I chose as a cover.

I wanted to have a picture of Laurielle, but when I tried, that exceed my artistic abilities -- or so I thought, but maybe I could do something with distortion, the way my son taught me with the third book, to make her face so terribly thin.  This was as far as I got:




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Principles before Personalities in OA

This was in response to a sponsee who wanted a sponsor whose religious beliefs were similar to her own

We have a saying in program, "principles before personalities." 

In this program, at one time, I had simultaneously a step sponsor who was a conservative, Republican Roman Catholic and a food sponsor who was a radical lesbian goddess worshipper. I've had sponsees who were orthodox Jews, Muslim, Baha'i', Hindu, fundamental Christian, and uncommitted. 

When dealing with the conservative Catholic, who wanted me to study the Bible instead of the Big Book, I tended to correspond with snail mail, rather than by phone, because I didn't want the proselytizing, and she didn't have e-mail. But I did call her from time to time, and she had the strongest program of everyone I knew. I stayed with her for seven years, until she had a stroke and couldn't sponsor any more. At the time of the stroke, she was abstinent 36 years. She had the best emotional recovery of anyone I met in program. I treasured working with her, even though there was the minor inconvenience of being told to read the Bible, which just wasn't program and wasn't on my to do list. 

I've had sponsees suffering from major psychoses. I've visited sponsees in hospitals and prison.   I had a sponsee who was running a donut shop while trying to work program. I've had to attend business meetings, phone meetings, and f2f meetings with people for whom the word "unpleasant" would be a major understatement. 

But I stay here, because I need this program to save my life. 

There is an important alternative version of the serenity prayer

"God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, courage to change the one I can, and wisdom to know that one is me."

This is about taking my own inventory, and cleaning my side of the street. It's not about cleaning other people's side of the street. 

I did grit my teeth a bit, when one Muslim sponsee told me she wanted to work to spread Islam in the world, but that didn't drive me off. I knew she was going to do a more palatable version of this after working the steps.
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Saturday, December 9, 2017

Ideas about cover for Elves in Detroit, Book 2

This is a bit out of order, but I'm trying to document my cover thinking for the second book, like I did for the third.  I went through some different ideas about the dragon.  First it was bat-winged.  Then it was a pterodragon.  I'm trying to embed tweets here, but I'm not sure that's going to result in transferring the images into the blog, so I may have to try something different

The embedded tweets do seem to be working, but there's a slight delay, before the images come up.  So just wait a tad.









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Sunday, November 26, 2017

Cape Stills

working on the cover for Elves in Detroit: Book 3. I got really dizzy trying to get these.







I don't know.  Maybe it's dumb to use myself as a model for this cover, when none of the characters in the book really look like me, but it's supposed to represent a generally elfin presence dashing off into the multiverse.

So here are some proposed covers.  



I've sort of been considering dark green a theme color for my books.  The cape is reversible. It can be green or purple.  Even though it's not the same green as my preferred theme color, somehow I feel that the green side looks better.

Here are some foggy & smeary effects -- but not trimmed yet





Ah, yes, with some help from my son, the genius



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Monday, November 20, 2017

Farinelli -- and casting

I've long been fascinated with castrati.

Psychoanalyzing myself, I think this is due to things my mom said about my dad's unwillingness or inability to have sex with her after she was 40.  He also had a higher and higher voice as he got older, while she had a lower and lower voice.  It was very curious.  People calling in couldn't tell who was answering the phone.

I saw the movie about Farinelli.  Now there's a new Broadway play coming out.

I was, at one time, obsessed with the idea that maybe Michael Jackson was a castrato.  Now I don't think so. I heard him singing baritone and I heard him speaking with a low voice on a YouTube video, but at one time I was obsessed with that thought.

So it's been part of my sexual anorexia, being obsessed with men who are unable to have sex, like my dad -- be it gay men or men with emotional or impotence issues. I've been fascinated with that.

Of course, it appears from the historical literature that castrati could, in fact, have sex.  They just couldn't get women pregnant.

In any case, I've been frustrated with the casting: actors chosen to play Farinelli. Here are some portraits of him:


http://www.gettyimages.com/pictures/farinelli--singer-1988299#corrado-giaquinto-portrait-of-farinelli-italian-castrato-singer-picture-id122336133

Now it seems to me that a man who hasn't had testosterone since age 14 is not going to look at all like a man who has had.  He's not going to have as masculine a face. He's not going to have well-defined muscles, like a normal male body builder.  I think you see that in these pictures.  There is an androgyny about his appearance.

I think Michael Jackson cultivated that kind of appearance with his makeup and surgeries, as well.

Yet the actors that play Farinelli don't look at all androgynous


Also, in this photo, I think you can tell that the actor even has facial hair (well shaven, but still detectable, if only from the appearance of the skin and pores), which Farinelli would not have had.


I think they could do better with this casting. Maybe they could cast a trans-woman, or something.

For comparison, here are some other images of castrati:

Allesandro Moreschi







Carlo Scalzi: when I was obsessing about Michael Jackson, I particularly noted this posture, which was similar to one that Michael Jackson also took -- which I now suppose was a coincidence.



Francesco Bernadi


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Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Political meme

I didn't write this. I saw it on FB and agreed with it

(This. Stay woke. This.)

If sharing please cut and paste and attribute to Jennifer, not moi.

H/t Jennifer Reitman

While everyone is out there b******* because a woman wrote a book, here’s what else has been going on in the past couple of days:

1) Motel 6 in Arizona is turning in hotel guests to ICE.
2) The CDC has been instructed to NOT speak to the press.  Wanna know about diseases, too bad.  Trump and his cabal say nope, you aren’t allowed to find out.
3) Using the White House Press Podium, the spokesperson for the President* suggested that a journalist should BE FIRED for sharing her opinion of said fake president on social media. That's not authoritarian or anything...
4) The stolen seat of SCOTUS struck down Texas move to protect the state from gerrymandering. So, good going 3rd party voters - not like elections have long term consequences or anything.
5) We’ve learned that Trump officials met with the UAE crown prince and UAE previously tried to set up a Russia-Trump back channel communication
6) the water left from Hurricane Harvey is a toxic sludge of sewage, fuel, pesticides and other delights.  And oh, yeah, see #2 - the CDC isn’t allowed to tell you what diseases you may get from this
7) That swamp that trump claims to have drained, Steve “I’ll foreclose on little old ladies”  Mnuchin asked for a government jet for his honeymoon.
😎 Parts of the florida keys have been completed destroyed by nature, thanks to climate change.
9) Session’s DOJ won’t let the Senate interview FBI officials.
10) We learned that when he was running for office, fake president concealed a huge deal for a tower in Moscow.
11) DOJ has declined prosecuting cops for the murder of Freddie Gray

And that was just inside our borders...
but hey, a lady wrote a book so.....
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