45 Boxes of Books

Barney: Going to kiss my wife without examining why I want to (or even why I married her)

This project started a while ago. The fiber is from Good Fibrations and was gifted to me. I wasn't sure what to do with it, until thought of sunsets and looked up some pictures.

To spin the gradient I separated out all the colours and blended them on my hand as I spun, trying to make smooth changes.

It took me 2.5 hours to ply today - it was spun very fine and chain plied. I don't have the length yet, but I gave it a rinse and it's drying. I'm really happy with it.

Dress

c. 1890

Part XV from the mural series of the Quest for the Holy Grail

by Edwin Austin Abbey

This is so fun, I love the brightness and joyfulness of the art, and Elliot so clearly being a little menace and their very different angry expressions. And the scar on Luke’s head from the trigon ball!

I absolutely love the progression here, not just Elliot from lil snot to much bigger snot in jock denial, but the progression of the weird table’s dynamic. Luke and Serene, who were platonic love at first sight, Elliot’s undeniable bisexuality and the celebratory way it’s shown.

And since it is the last day of Pride, I do have some other things to say. Things are rough right now. I hope in an extinction burst way, where people are being awful because they know the tide is turning against them. I hope things will get better and better. In some ways they are! LGBT representation has come a long way since I was first published in 2009. There was behind the scenes pushback then I don’t get now. I watched Queer as Folk back in the day, but all my friends weren’t watching it the way they all watched Heated Rivalry.

At the same time, the way is rocky and full of stumbling back. Tasha Suri (genius author of the lady knight/witch Arthuriana tale ISLE IN THE SILVER SEA) showed me this link about how Heated Rivalry spawned… straight hockey shows? (Well said by the lead and writer of Fire Island, a very excellent gay modern take on Pride & Prejudice.)

And my head spun round and round. And yet… before Heated Rivalry, last year publishers in various markets were saying no thanks to LGBT fiction, and now they’re saying yes again. Baby steps through the rocks.

There is a reason I wrote IN OTHER LANDS on my blog, and that it was published by a small press. For the record, if any book with a straight romance at its centre had made the sales numbers IN OTHER LANDS did, it would have been SNAPPED up by a big publisher. And several editors over the years have tried. (Whenever I talk critically about publishing, I mean the institution, most people in publishing are beautiful story-loving souls.) All of this is incredibly frustrating for those of us who want to celebrate love and share stories.

Still I do think there’s a rising tide of love and change. There are more writers sharing more diverse stories than ever before.

For obvious reasons, LONG LIVE EVIL is the story that means the most to me, and that I think of as my best. (I’d hope my writing has improved in 10 years, or what is it all about). And Time of Iron is making a lot of points about queerness as a way of breaking free from the narrative that I couldn’t quite articulate, back then.

But I know for many of my readers IN OTHER LANDS will be the book that means most to them, the big magical joyful bi coming of age tale that came to them at an important time. I have read and cried over emails and letters telling me that they read it and came out, to their families or themselves, that Elliot was their first bi MC. I’ve heard from other writers that it inspired them, as books like Swordspoint inspired me. And this book survived, and in a large part my career survived, when books I published with big publishers went out of print, because of readers loving this book which for so long I didn’t even know was a book. I wrote it long enough ago now that I experience the book through my readers most: I love it again through their eyes. You bring the tale and the joy back to life for me.

I wrote some of this book sitting in the London beer garden of a gay pub with my friends, drinks in jamjars, drenched in sunlight, lying to them that I had a deadline. Playing with my awful and awfully good Elliot, Serene-Heart-in-the-Chaos-of-Battle, and golden Luke. Telling the story mattered, and so does love and celebration.

$2,195,000/3 br/3 a

2,312 sq ft

Topanga, CA

For reference: Hedi Slimane, the man, the person, is a fucking beanpole. He is the textbook definition of naturally skinny.

Growing up, he was always made to feel insecure about his body. By creating clothes with an ultra-skinny silhouette, it was his way of empowering himself and feeling secure in his body, his version of body positivity, and that is something I absolutely cannot fault him for.

But looking back at some of his runways, I can't help but think HOLY SHIT, how did anyone think this was okay?!

THAT IS NOT HEALTHY. THAT IS KIND OF HORRIFYING. THOSE ARE THE KIND OF IMAGES YOU SEE ON PRO-ANOREXIA ACCOUNTS.

The problem isn't that Slimane was creating it, the problem was that THIS WAS THE BIGGEST, MOST POPULAR BRAND OF THE 2010S, THE SILHOUETTE EVERYONE WAS TRYING TO FIT INTO. It's the fact that it was copied into mainstream fashion and seen as the standard.