“Time, of the Essence”
This was written (but not used) for an anthology of stories set in a specific Southern town on Halloween in a year of the author’s choosing (pre-1950, if I recall correctly). I wanted to play with the idea of costumes or masks as veneers hiding what was really going on underneath, but also the idea that the real veneer was perhaps the one you didn’t know you were wearing. I also wanted to tie that in with the conflict between progress (both social and technological) and conservatism, by throwing in references to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the beginning of the end of slavery, and the theme of machines replacing human labor. (By the way, I made a two-part YouTube video of me reading this story aloud, if you’re into that sort of thing; just do a search on the story’s title.)

“On the Halfshell”
This was also written for an anthology, but not used; the theme was basically giant animals or giant monsters. I wanted to think of an animal that wasn’t perhaps the most obvious choice for a rampaging beast, i.e. one that’s pretty much completely sedentary. I thought it turned out pretty funny, without completely losing the horror element. Of course, your mileage may vary.

“Three Stories Down”
Basically this was an attempt to write something in a rather David Lynchian vein, where I took a character’s mental state and made it manifest in reality, though I chose to keep the tale rather dreamlike and ambiguous, so that the reader was never really sure if what was happening was real or entirely in the protagonist’s head. I enjoy reading those types of ambiguous stories, so I thought I’d try my hand at writing one.

“Yellow Wings”
I have a very vivid memory of going on a camping trip as a kid and seeing a freakishly large yellow and brown moth just hanging out in one of the campground’s bathrooms. Until then I had no idea that moths that large existed, so the experience stuck with me, and served as the germ for this story.

“Living Fossil”
An attempt to take the “human transforming into animal” trope and do something a little different with it. Plus, Nazis.

“The Expulsion”
Because the whole concept of exorcism is sort of hilarious to me, and with a nod to the Leslie Nielsen film Repossessed, this was just a jokey little confection I penned on the idea of a for-profit exorcism outfit with no religious trappings whatsoever.

“Homunculus”
I’m enchanted with the idea that, before the concept of sexual reproduction was completely understood, there were actually serious theorists who believed that each sperm cell contained a fully-formed (if impossibly tiny) human being, which would then simply grow bigger in its mother’s womb. If this were true, I reasoned, then every male masturbatory session would result in enough tiny people to populate several armies, and the story just wrote itself from there.

“Auto-da-Fé”
I wrote this quite a few years ago, around the time of all that brouhaha in Kansas about the teaching of evolution in public schools (a battle that depressingly went on to encompass many other states as well). Anyone who knows me well knows that creationists are really my main bete noir, so this was a kind of dystopian vision of what I thought a future run by fundamentalist creationists would look like.

“Tempest in a Teapot”
This one is actually a sort-of sequel to a story I wrote called “Spreading the Love,” which is available in the ChimeraWorld #3 anthology from Chimericana Books. It posits a future where religion has been wiped out by a drug, but in this installment things take a strange turn involving particle accelerators and the whole Russell’s teapot idea (look it up on Wikipedia if you don’t know what I’m talking about).

“Three Sides to Every Story”
I’m not a huge sci-fi fan, though I do like to use some sci-fi elements in my stories and cross-fertilize them into relatively mundane situations where they don’t really belong, ha ha. So in this story I used the concept of overlapping parallel universes and applied it to a rather straightforward domestic violence/murder type scenario.

“’Til Life Do Us Part”
Growing up I often developed hopelessly romantic obsessions with various rock stars and so forth, so I wanted to write a story in which everything my teenaged self wanted to believe about these unobtainable people actually came true. But then, because it’s a horror story, I had to go and fuck everything up with a ridiculously tragic ending. Or not, depending on your perspective, I suppose.

“At the Gates of the Serpent’s Garden”
This was straight up based on a dream I had years ago; the description of the abandoned building and the ghostly women is pretty much exactly how I remember it from the dream, and the character of Ruth is based largely on how I perceived myself growing up.

“Component Parts”
The idea for this came from a book I read about unsolvable or unprovable mathematical hypotheses; I’ve always had a fascination with codes or mathematical proofs that resist solutions for many years (or forever). Of course I had to gore it up, because it’s a horror story, but I did like the idea of a mathematician becoming so obsessed with his work (in this case, trying to prove the Riemann hypothesis) that he goes completely batshit.

“Neither Rain, Nor Sleet…”
I live in Florida, and we get hurricanes every now and again. One summer we had four of them within a month and a half, and the woods behind my house were pretty much torn to shit. One day while I was contemplating the carnage, I thought how eerie it would be if all the downed trees revealed some structure out there in the woods that I hadn’t known was there.

“Fates and Furies”
I remember wanting to write a sort of subtle psychological study of three very different women that wouldn’t even seem like a horror story at first, but would slowly ramp up the tension until this big shocking revelation at the end. I also sort of saw it as writing separate characters that would roughly correspond to three different aspects of my own personality.

“Heartworms”
The germ of this story was another strong memory from my childhood. When I was a kid, my uncle made this kick-ass dragon mask for Halloween; it was basically a masterful papier-mache sculpture covered in glitter (hence the mention in the story about the glitter being in the house for years afterwards, which is completely true). For some reason that mask so terrified me as a child that I refused to go upstairs at my grandparents’ house while it was there, because I knew it was in my uncle’s room on its tall stand, lurking and contemplating my demise.

“Slumber”
I wrote this a very long time ago, so I’m not sure where exactly the idea for it came from. The character of Jilly is again based on my own self-perception as a kid, of being one of those quiet, shy, not-terribly-popular children that never got invited to parties. There’s also a strong “Carrie” influence, though it’s more obvious to me now than when I initially wrote it.

“Relieving Osiris”
Yet another story based around my longtime love affair with Egyptian mythology, this time tied in with an almost absurdist zombie motif.

“The Vulture’s Egg”
I’m a bit of a pervert, I admit that, which is why quite a few of my stories have elements of erotica.This one I wanted to be just sort of borderline pornographic, in my own lyrically schizoid way, with an added dollop of that whole sex/death symbolism thrown in for added spice.

“The Process of Elimination”
I apologize in advance for this story, which was basically my attempt to write the grossest thing I could think of, something that would make me gag even as I was writing it. I got the idea to go scatological from this other story I read (can’t remember the title or the author, sorry) where this fucked-up dude keeps his wife chained in the basement and makes her lick shit off his ass and various other horrible things (and yes, I gagged when I read that too, although it was a damn good story nonetheless).

“Quarantine”
Other than the supernatural ending, this story is a pretty much straightforward retelling of an incident that happened to my ex-husband and I a few years ago when we were visiting his family in Wales. And yes, the Cefn Golau cholera cemetery is absolutely real, and looks very much as I described it in the story.

“Winter House”
I really like haunted house stories that are sort of low-key and unsettling, so this was my homage to the genre; a subtle ghost story without an obvious ghost.

“Trip-Trapping”
Another thing I like to do in my own stories is to take an established trope or genre and try to do something not-entirely-obvious with it. So this is essentially a crime story, but one in which the crime isn’t actually what it appears to be.

“Alpha Canis”
A pretty much traditional werewolf story set in the somewhat unconventional milieu of the BDSM fetish scene.

“Pale Sire”
This story took me a long time to write, because the initial idea for it came out of a very personal situation in my own life, though I think the tale became sufficiently bizarre that the circumstances that inspired it would not be obvious to anyone but me. I wanted to play with the idea of guilt as infection, and again explore the fascinating (to me) theme of ambiguous perception, of never knowing if the protagonist is experiencing the events in reality or only in her own imagination. This is probably my favorite story in the collection, by the way, and it is also the most recent.

In case any of you were concerned about the dire financial situation I described a few posts back, I’ll give a brief update. I got a part-time job back at the place I used to work before moving to Orlando; it necessitates driving back and forth between O-Town and Daytona three times a week (about fifty miles one way), but it’s better than no job at all. It’s only a temporary measure, though; next week might be the last week, though I’ll have to see what corporate has to say, if they’ll allow the manager to keep me on longer. I’m still looking for a full-time position closer to home; I’ve had a couple of job interviews, but neither have come to anything. I’ve done some freelance work, but have yet to be paid by the business-owning scumbags who apparently want graphic design services for free. Sigh. I’ve been doing okay, though, considering; money’s tight, but I’m used to scraping by, and I’ve still been able to afford going out to the clubs and having fun with my boyfriend a couple nights a week. My birthday was a couple weekends ago, and that was a stellar time; I couldn’t believe how many of my friends went out of their way to come out to my parties, make me cakes, buy me drinks and presents, and do various other nice things. Awwww. So in spite of all my worries, I’m still enjoying life to the extent that I’m able, and I guess that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?

Turquoise and Silver Antique Style Necklace

Silver and Carnelian Antique-Style Necklace

Silver and Jasper Antique-Style Necklace

Silver and Marbled Calcite Antique-Style Necklace

Silver and Jasper Antique-Style Necklace

So I got laid off at the end of July; the company I moved here to work for had a bad few months and could no longer afford to pay me. They say that if things pick back up and they’re able to pull their business back from the brink, they will give me my job back, but I’m very, very skeptical that that’s going to happen. Supposedly I’m eligible for unemployment (a measly $275 a week, even though I’ve never collected any unemployment before and have been steadily employed for the past fifteen years), but I have yet to see a penny of it (how goddamn long does it take, anyway???). I’ve been applying for every graphic design job I see — full time, part time, freelance, contract, anything — and have got a grand total of one interview which I haven’t heard anything back from. I had a couple people supposedly interested in interviewing me, but after a few initial contacts have so far not answered or followed up on my queries. I’ve also been bidding on logo design jobs on Crowdspring, designing three or four logos a day, but so far have got nothing to show for these efforts either.

One of my credit cards is maxed out ($2,000, which I used for a partial car down payment and a computer when I moved to Orlando months ago). Luckily I received a new credit card ($2,500 limit) two days before the layoff, but I’ve already racked up almost $1,000 on it paying bills and buying gas and groceries. I applied for a credit limit increase on the first card and was denied; I just applied for one on the second card, but I can’t see myself getting that either. I’m down to less than $20 in my checking account, and $250 in my savings. I have an old IRA with about $2,300 in it, but taking that out would saddle me with so many taxes and penalties and fees that it wouldn’t be worth it for the paltry amount I’d get. I had applied for a loan for a boob job (before the layoff, obviously), but of course that fell through; that’s not the main priority at the moment, but it was something of a bummer when I already had the surgery scheduled and so forth. I may also have to pay the surgeon a rescheduling fee because I had to cancel. Joy.

My boyfriend suggested that I take out a personal loan using my car title as collateral (since the paid-off car that I left with my ex-husband still has my name on it), but when I researched that whole process I was scared off by the unbelievable interest rates and the speed with which they expect you to pay the shit off. I can’t take out a loan against the house I still co-own jointly with my ex-husband because we still owe way more on the house than what it’s worth. I don’t have anything else of value that I could sell. In desperation I bought a bunch of cheap wholesale jewelry that I hope I can turn over for a decent profit on eBay (perhaps the dark cloud of financial ruin may have the silver lining of small business genesis?), but of course it will be a while before I start to see a return on that, if I even do (psst, hey, wanna buy some pretty silver and turquoise bracelets?). I’ve got my website selling my designs (please buy stuff! Great holiday gifts!!!), and my books (please buy and read!!!), but the sales of those are so minor that the money they bring in is just a few drops of water in a vast ocean of debt. The situation is making me so tense that I’ve been unable to sleep or to write articles or do any of the stuff I would normally be doing, and I’ve basically chewed my fingernails down to nothing. Now, don’t get me wrong — I definitely DON’T regret divorcing my ex (not that he would have been any help in any case, as he got laid off ages ago and is poorer than I am) or moving to another city where, I must admit, there are more job opportunities than where I came from. It’s just that I’ve never been in a situation quite this dire before, and I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do about it.

The only thing keeping me from completely going off the deep end and just curling up into a ball and crying my eyes out is my dearest one, the love of my life. It may seem inconsequential when my entire financial future appears to be crashing down around me, but just the fact that Tom and I finally, FINALLY got together after more than a year of strange friendship, of hemming and hawing and skirting around a romantic relationship, is monumental. He makes me happier than anyone has ever made me, even aside from all the monetary help and advice he has given me since I moved here. He let me stay at his house for the past ten days so that I would save on food and electric and laundry costs and what not, and he bought me groceries for my house when I didn’t have the bucks. He offered to apply for a credit card in his name to help me pay off some of my bills, even though he’s never had a credit card in his life. He’s listened to me wigging out and told me everything was going to be okay. I hate to have to lean on him, because he isn’t exactly rolling in cash either, but just the fact that he’s there for me makes a huge, huge difference. Without him I would be well and truly lost. Add to that the fact that I have so many great friends here who commiserate with me, who buy me the occasional lunch and loan (or even give) me things I need, and I suppose I can’t complain too much. But wow, I would hate to think what would become of me otherwise. I know many people are in the same boat as I am these days, or are far worse off, and really I do think I’ll be able to pull myself out of this, but today the entire weight of the world feels as though it’s on my shoulders. Thanks, blogosphere, for allowing me to vent about it. And yes, I actually do feel a teeny, tiny bit better. Slightly.

Yes, I could use the extra money that getting rid of my car payment would allow, but I feel as though having to argue with my ex about it and further involve myself with him when I want nothing more than not to have to speak to him ever again, will cause me more stress than the extra money would be worth. Even if I did “sack up” and drive to Daytona in the dead of night to “rescue” my car, I would henceforth have to worry about my ex finding me and simply taking the car back, vandalizing it, and so forth. As I said, I wish to keep drama and heartache to a minimum, and taking my car back, while I have every “legal” right to do so, would simply entangle me further when all I want is to be free from my former marriage. If that makes me a coward then so be it, but I see it as cutting myself loose from a bad situation, rising above, and being the better person.

A complicating factor in this whole dilemma is the fact that yesterday, my ex posted on his Facebook page that I was trying to “take all his money to pay for a boob job.” I’m no longer on his Facebook page, but my friend Rob is, and he showed it to me at dinner yesterday. I am in fact planning to get a boob job, though I’m not entirely sure how my ex knows about it; I’m sure he found out through a couple of mutual contacts on Facebook. His posts (there were more than one) made me furious, namely because 1. He has no money for me to take, even if I wanted to; 2. I’ve actually paid a bunch of his bills, including his car insurance and some small utilities on the house where he lives, even though I no longer live there; 3. I LEFT HIM THE CAR THAT WAS COMPLETELY PAID OFF when I would have been perfectly within my rights to take it and make him buy another one; 4. I LET HIM STAY IN A HOUSE WHOSE MORTGAGE WAS PAID SEVERAL MONTHS IN ADVANCE; and 5. I’m taking out a loan for the boobs which my BF is going to help me pay back. Sure, by asking him to trade cars I was attempting to lower my expenses, but this was in order to pay down the balance on my first credit card, which was maxed out from PAYING A PARTIAL DOWN PAYMENT ON A CAR SINCE I LEFT MY OTHER ONE WITH MY EX and BUYING A NEW COMPUTER SINCE I LEFT THE OLD ONE AT THE HOUSE FOR MY EX TO USE. So yes, I am a little miffed (she understated) that my ex would, in his wearisome, delusional way, characterize me as a shallow, money-grubbing bitch when he has no idea what is going on with my life or my finances. (This is not the first time he has made judgments and spread rumors about me based on complete misperceptions/fabrications, by the way.) The fact that he is generally civil to my face and then goes behind my back making things up about me and trying to turn my friends against me (he has also started rumors about my BF, not surprisingly) does make me want to punch him vigorously and repeatedly in the nutsack, but as always, I will refrain. Any of my friends who would see his Facebook posts already know my situation, and would realize that he is just being a bitter dicksneeze who hates the fact that I left him, and that I have friends and a job and a new life that he is no longer privy to. So even though my fingers itched to at least send him a nasty little message or post a cheekily passive-aggressive Facebook status in retaliation, my reasoned response is to ignore him and let him look like the asshole. My mother, who went through similar fucknuttery with my infantile father when she divorced him, agreed that it was better to just live my life, not worry about what my ex thought of me, and let him be swallowed by his own self-pity and vindictiveness. Sound advice from my awesome mom, who I am proud to have taken after. Love ya, Mommy.

As I mentioned on this very blog sometime last year, my divorce was finalized in September of 2010. The split was more or less amicable, with what little property we owned divided right down the middle. The ex stayed in the house in Daytona and is continuing to pay the mortgage; I moved to an apartment in Orlando. He kept the two-year-old, paid-off car that we used to share, I financed a relatively cheap, seven-year-old car to take with me when I moved.

There are several issues. The ex was laid off from his job in March. He got a little severance, and collects a small amount in unemployment. He has told me he wishes to stay in the house for now and will continue to pay the mortgage and the bills as long as he can afford to. He is looking for another job, but so far has had no luck.

I took a job in Orlando when I moved here that seemed secure, but there is now the slight chance that the business may go under. I’ve already sent out a few feelers to see if I can find something else in the event that this should happen. In the meantime, I’ve been trying to lessen my expenses. I have one credit card that is maxed out (paid my car down payment, had to buy a new computer), but luckily I just received a second one that I can use in case of emergencies; I do not plan to put any large amounts on it unless I absolutely have to. I make so-so money, but moving and other expenses put me a few thousand in debt, and I would like to get rid of at least one of my bills so I can get back on an even keel. My expenses are relatively low; rent and utilities are manageable. I don’t have cable or a landline. My cell phone plan is ridiculously cheap. High speed internet is my only “indulgence.” The only place I see where I can trim some fat is in my car payment.

I discussed things with my boyfriend. His suggestion, and it was a good one, was to convince my ex-husband to stop paying the mortgage. The payments are made up until October anyway, and the mortgage is underwater. My ex and I still owe about $68K on a house that is now worth $35-$55K, and will likely never recoup our investment on the property since values have declined so severely in that area. From some cursory research, my BF and I discovered that it can take as much as a year to eighteen months for a bank to actually foreclose on a house after you have begun to default on the loan. So my BF suggested that my ex-husband simply stop paying the mortgage (“strategic default”) and live in the house free until they come to kick him out. With the money he saves from the mortgage, he can take over the payments on my car, which I will let him use, and give me the paid-off car, which has both our names on the title. That way my car payment will be eliminated, my ex-husband will save $450-$500 a month which he can use to save for an apartment or to move back to his native UK, and neither one of us will be left without a vehicle. The problem is, my ex does not even want to discuss trading cars, and shuts me down whenever I try to broach the subject. He also does not want to stop paying the mortgage, because he is afraid (groundlessly, I feel) that he will have no place to live.

It is likely that my BF will eventually move in with me; we have discussed it at length and both want to make it happen. If it does, I will be in much better financial shape (as will he), because my bills will be cut in half and I will be able to get rid of my car anyway because my BF has an old paid-off car that he barely uses that he will let me drive. However, my BF will not be able to get out of his current living situation for at least a few months, maybe longer (family issues, as well as lease issues). So he thinks I need help now, and he feels that my ex-husband got the better end of the deal and is basically fucking me over, in his passive-aggressive way. My BF tells me I should stand up for myself, arguing that if my ex will not agree to trade cars with me, then I have every right to march straight back to Daytona and just take the car, since it is half mine. I really, really do not want to do this; I am generally a reasonable, generous person, and I don’t like the thought of fucking my ex-husband over like that. We no longer get along, but I don’t really bear him any ill will, and I know he is in very dire financial straits. On the other hand, I do agree with my BF that I got the raw end of the deal in the divorce, paying for a car and a move and furniture and various other things involved in setting up a new household while my ex paid nothing. Yes, it was my choice to leave, but it does seem as though I had a far greater monetary outlay than my ex did.

So…where am I at now? Am I being reasonable or not? I don’t really know, and I don’t know if any of you do either. Perhaps someone out there can come up with a better solution. In the meantime, wish me luck in my stressful endeavors.

Chin up. Over and out.

I went to see the Psychedelic Furs at the Hard Rock Hotel in Orlando late last week, and although the venue was not ideal (really? The lobby of a huge hotel roped off and a seeming zillion people hemmed in like cattle?), the band were epically awesome, playing pretty much every song I wanted to hear (“President Gas” and “Into You Like a Train”? Yes, please) and seemed to be having a hell of a time. A single crappy image from my cheap-ass cell phone will convey nothing of the wonderment, but I include it nonetheless. Enjoy.

Psychedelic Furs at the Hard Rock Hotel, Orlando FL. June 30, 2011

In other news, tomorrow night I will be attending the Velvet Sessions at the Hard Rock Hotel in Orlando, Florida, with special guests The Psychedelic Furs. I’m very excited. This will be my second time seeing the ‘Furs, the first time in such an intimate setting and with free canapes! More to report later in the week, I’m sure.