And all through the house, I was the creature stirring because the stupid internet is full of lies and it is impossible to make decent apple butter in an Instant Pot.
And the crock pot was pretty janky, too. (Not that crock pots aren’t great for making apple butter, but that one specifically was uncooperative.)
Xmas is not a big deal around here, as such. We’re not religious, so it’s really just an excuse to hang out and exchange gifts, mostly things we make for each other if we have time. I personally made about twelve dozen tamales of various flavors and fillings because, living in Texas, it’s illegal to have Xmas without tamales.
We also do our big family shindig on Xmas Eve instead of Xmas day because why not? What I usually want for Xmas is just a day off. And I more or less got it: played video games on the Steam Deck for a while (mostly Stardew Valley, don’t judge), took a nap, and then heated up the rosemary roasted turkey tamales, plus whipped up some herbed gravy to smother them, add a dollop of the also-pre-prepared cranberry sauce, and reheated the cilantro lime quinoa as a side. Easy-peasy. I did end up staying up way too late painting my nails and watching several episodes of Secret Levels with Craig. The couples that nerd together, herd together.
(I don’t know, man, I was just going for a rhyme.)
Words about words
As a writer, I feel a little guilty on the regular because I don’t have anywhere near the number of writing credits I feel that I should, both based on age and prolificity. A huge part of this is purely a matter of circumstance: between being a mother and matron, especially with a profoundly disabled child, time is not always on my side. Time to write isn’t the hard part – I can eke out a story or article usually in a day or so, novels in under a month – but submitting to magazines and agents and sites and so forth can itself be a full-time job.
That is ultimately why I decided to go with indie publishing instead of trad publishing. It’s a ton of extra work, though.
Would I like someone else to do all the editing, designing, cover art, marketing, and upkeep? Sure, that’d be super, but I’m also pretty leery of those arrangements of late, especially in light of the very negative experiences that other authors have been reporting from several Big Five publishing imprints. We already know that the publishing industry as a whole has gotten way too big for its own britches, but taking advantage of disabled authors of children’s books? And that’s just for starters.
No, I’m not super-worried about coming up with the words, but I am trying to figure out a good rhythm for getting those words out on a regular schedule. Particularly with indie publishing, consistency is key. I’ve been really good about keeping the weekly posts up on the NTWC site, mostly talking about the indie publishing journey, and now that the Xmas season is winding down, I can focus on the more meaty things.
Words about stories
I have a few exciting things in the pipeline, I think. I’ve been doing a lot of research for a mid-apocalyptic collection called “Paper Cuts”. I’ve always been fascinated by eschatologies and the mythologies that perpetuate the prophecies thereof, but I’ve been reading more into cliodynamics and the functional causative elements that create the cycles of history. What does the middle of the fall of a civilization look like from the street view? We could argue that we’re looking at it right now, but there is so much uncertainty not only in asking what happens next but also in what do we do?
I’m having a glorious time exploring these questions, and the story is unfolding in a kind of tandem way. The first story ends introducing the main character from the second story, within which the first character is wholly absent. Then the second main character passes the baton to another figure for the third story, and so on. It’s playing out in my head very similar to the 1990 classic by Richard Linklater, Slacker, where we follow a string of characters around from one to the next all night long. (Yes, Linklater would go on to make Dazed and Confused just a few years later with a much more star-studded cast, also filmed in Austin, Texas, but Slacker was definitely the “spiritual prequel” to that. And far better in my not-so-humble opinion.)
There is also a pressure to update Thiside of Anywhere to a reasonable second edition (typos corrected, cover improved, maybe a few stories massaged, the bestiary updated) while also strongly considering the format for the second volume. And also, I’d really like to do Thiside as a podcast in a radio show style. I’d thought about just releasing an audiobook, read in the style of Max Brooks’ World War Z, but I also think that WWZ did well as an audiobook because podcasts weren’t really a thing in 2013.
And then, there’s also Lost Ground, the first novella in the hard sci-fi series All the Moons of Petrichor, and all of the excellent Larry, Inc. stories about daily superhero life, and then I started thinking about doing a book-length research project about the juxtaposition of autistic versus allistic neurotypes in the context of the origins of civilization… my brain, she go brrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Words about life
During the Xmas season, I wonder how the older kids are doing, and I wonder how far-flung family is. I mean, it’s not enough to reach out because I have instituted a firm personal rule that “not actively toxic” is not a sufficient tolerance for contact: I make room for engagements that are enriching and productive and healthy only. I feel no pressure to force connections with people who aren’t going to meet me at the same level, but the door is always open for that.
One of my autistic superpowers is that I don’t experience temporal relationship deterioration like it seems allistic people do: I neither assume that someone is exactly the way they were when last I saw them ten years ago, nor have I lost any sort of affection for them during that time. I can pick up a conversation that got interrupted twenty years ago without missing a beat, but I’m also bringing my Now Self to that exchange instead of the Then Self. That freaks people out a bit sometimes, but I think it’s related to the “I’m the same person in person that I am online” feature.
The kids who are home, though, are doing well and everyone had an excellent Xmas. Joseph finally got a baritone ukulele (he received a soprano one last year, erroneously), Ash made Craig a very fancy bag to transport his board games in, and I received multiple pairs of socks with curse words on them. Collin made a new hot sauce, “The Devil’s Tomato* Soup” (*contains no tomatoes) with Fresnos, serranos, and habanero peppers, but he also made some “Oops! Not Hot Sauce” apple butter for the family members that are a little over the spicy stuff. Cy learned how to make origami cranes, and then I helped him UV-resin them all so they’d be durable. Daniel ate a lot of tamales.
As of tomorrow night, we’ll be kidless for a little over a week, and while I do adore the fam, it’s a much needed break.
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