Where Personal and Professional Life Collide...

 With everything else going on in the world, conversation this weekend seemed mostly centered on the Rattlesnake Hills fires, with a side note of the Mitchell fire in Wenatchee, and the Alamo fire in California (specifically, the ones where vineyards/wineries are at risk as well as homes, because this was industry conversation).

Main suspected causes of the fires? Human. Odds of them being from assholes setting off firecrackers in dry conditions over the 4th? High.

I'd say some people just can't resist making bad situations worse, but the truth is, these people don't put that much thinking into it. Pretty sure they're not putting much thinking into ANYTHING.

When the future writes humanity's obit, cause of death will probably be "terminal dumbassedness."

Twitter screen cap taken this evening, no manipulation.  Two very different reactions to the same book.

There will be an Official First Post at some point later today or first thing tomorrow, but, um. I may have not only committed Patreon, but Committed To Writing CrackFic.

If it please (and amuse) the court...


Several months ago, the opening line of a story came to me, and it made me crack up so hard the people at the Sunday Writing Cafe demanded to know what had gone through my mind.

The first time I met the tom, I knew he was going to be trouble. He walked in like he owned the place, not an orange tuft out of place, sleek and slick and pretending like he didn’t have a problem. I knew he had one; you could see it in their eyes, and anyway, the Human wouldn’t send me one who didn’t.
That’s what I do. I fix problems. They call me the Duchess, and I know every back alley milk-dealer and fishmonger in the city.

“Oh, you have to write that!” was the general reaction.

“There is no way anyone would buy this,” I protested. “It’d be total crackfic!” Unlike my ‘real’ mysteries, written under the name L.A. Kornetsky, where I try to keep things realistic, this would have cats and dogs and humans (and rats, because what’s pseudo-noir without a dirty rat or two?) interacting in an equal and implausible level…

“That’s why it would be so much fun!” my friends went on, because they’re Like That.

“And I don’t have time to write original fiction just to amuse myself, not with bills to pay and a diabetic cat to keep in medication…” And at that point my objections tripped over their own feet.

“Do it as a Patreon,” someone suggested, sensing my weakness. “Write the cat noir crackfic to cover the cost of CatofSize’s insulin!”

Because everyone knows that CatofSize has more fans online that I do.

But then life got busy with other things, and I pushed the story to the side….but the story kept pushing back, and I realized that writing it was going to happen, one way or the other. And CatofSize’s insulin isn’t getting any cheaper.

So here it is, your chance to encourage my more gonzo side, and see what happens in the dark corners of my mind when I haven’t had quite enough sleep and things get weird silly utterly ridiculous….

I need suggestions for characters from televised media (ideally television, movies are good too) who would qualify, either self-described or otherwise, as "functional alcoholics."


Go.

I am - for 99.98% of what counts - a functional adult. I have adulting down to such a skill that nobody thinks of me as anything other than a competent (if occasionally goofy) adult.

And that’s how I like it. Because owning my own shit, the good and the bad, is important. Took me a few years of therapy to get there, but I got there.

But some days? Some days, I really want to hand life - all the adulting shit - over to someone else and say “you take care of this, I can’t deal.”

*looks around*

Yeah. Doesn’t work that way for most of us, no. Dealing’s what’s required.

But for the rest of today? I’m gonna be in the pillow fort. With a book, a teddy bear, and a bottle of wine.

If anyone needs to join me, the password’s SULK.