...don't take this the wrong way...

After four previous attempts I have finally passed the point in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo where I had given up because I found the early parts boring.

My friends really want to see the upcoming American film version so I decided the fifth time would be the charm and I would get through this novel.

Finally (!!) I find myself intrigued enough to keep reading, but at the same time I also continue to be kind of baffled by its amazingly huge popularity. The plot is certainly compelling, but the writing feels lackluster and the people rather passionless.

Still, there is one line from The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo that rings so true with me and makes me think of how I wish I'd behaved in situations where I meant well, but most likely drove someone crazy.

One of the characters tells Lisbeth Salander (the girl with the dragon tattoo): "I understand that you don't want anyone interfering in your life and I'll try not to do that. But is it okay if I continue to like you?"

It's the perfect thing to say to someone whom you want to know you admire and care about, but will never ever act in any kind of ill-received way. Or, at least, it seems that way to me :)

...a musical blast from the past that very few probably remember...

I love that you can track down things from your past online and buy them. Years and years ago I really dug this album called X2 by a little-known duo called Times Two.

The album did not do well at all and the two guys behind Times Two faded into musical obscurity, but somehow (back in 1988) they kind of got to me with their one hit wonder, "Strange But Two" and their odd remake of Simon and Garfunkel's "Cecilia."

Recently I bought the cd version from a private seller on Amazon. I wanted it in compact disc form so I could download it onto my iPod. And strangely enough, I found all of the songs as endearing and appealing as I did when I was a kid.

Yeah, songs like "L.O.D. (Love On Delivery)" and "Only My Pillow Knows For Sure" sound kind of silly now, but, really, there's an honest kind of pain on the slow tracks that tugs at your heart unexpectedly. And the upbeat titles ("Romeo" and "Jet") are fun and airy and so upbeat and innocent-sounding you can't help but smile.

...taking a break for a little bit...

be back soon :)

Holiday Daze

For many, the holidays are a trying time. It could be hard for some lonely people to see so much cheer around them no matter how hard they try to be happy for them.


It could be that all the Christmas commercialism is just a little crass when shopping has become such a cold, greedy, downright distasteful thing.

Or it could be the fears that come with all that food constantly on tables in staff lounges, at home and friends' houses.

The other night on a Charlie Brown special Marcie said that Thanksgiving was about more than food, that it was about people. She is right. It is or, at least, should be.

But ask anyone who struggles with weight issues or eating problems what the hardest time of the year for them is and they'll probably say any date from Thanksgiving on to New Year's Day.

The following article isn't going to ease up all the anxiety from the stress food brings during the holidays, but it certainly is less pat than others I've seen and actually has some good advice to follow:


read "The Feast of Gluttony" here

"Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self." - Cyril Connolly


No one ever says to a straight writer, "You write too much about straight people," yet critics often accuse gay and lesbian novelists of writing too much about their own community*. For me, this is a double whammy on top of the one that already demonizes people simply for who they love.

We need a voice in fiction just as much as any other group does.  Maybe in big cities like New York or Los Angeles or even D.C. being gay is no big deal, but where I live people still care, and often in a bad way. Keeping quiet about who you really are is often the only way to go.

I had this terribly unrealistic dream once that I could write the kind of fiction that would shatter stereotypes, maybe even bring the most homophobic homophobe to see the light about how human and moral and loving gays and lesbians are or can be. I was going to write the kind of love stories that would emphasize the love, not the sex. Because when I was in my 20s and grabbing any GLBT fiction I could (because there was and is so little), it kind of angered me how much of it was steeped in sexual stuff and not so much the love.

But the more I wrote, the more I realized I was not going to be that person. My dialogue is horrible and I write about the kind of woman I'm pretty sure would never come across as realistic. Worst of all, no matter how hard I try not to base the narrator on me, my "voice" is always me.

Still, I try. Not because I wish I could write good fiction and won't give up, but because it is an outlet for me, a little happy place I escape to in a world that mostly doesn't believe that gays and lesbians are anything but sordid.

This post comes not from the perspective of a "special interest group member" (as the far right sometimes likes to anyone who dares to speak up), but from a basic human rights need. 

As an old New Order song ("Thieves Like Us") goes: "It's called love and it belongs to every one of us."





* (When Sarah Waters' The Little Stranger first appeared, a lot of book reviews went on and on about how it was her first "non-lesbian" novel...as if she had been writing too much about gay women.)