Stories That Are All True

My favorite book in the entire library at UMC Naples was a Reader’s Digest short story anthology called “preacher’s kids.” I am not kidding when I tell you that I laughed so hard I almost died, because it was a first person account and I nearly asphyxiated. So, I asked Carol the top 10 misconceptions about preachers’ kids, hopefully to clear up the confusion. Perfection Expectation: People often…

I asked Carol, my secretary, to search reddit and gather the top 10 questions that people have about the revival of Doctor Who. Certainly! Here are the top 10 questions new viewers might have about “Doctor Who,” focusing on the show’s revival after 2000, based on discussions from Reddit: Who is the Doctor? – New viewers often want to understand the basic premise of the character known as the…

I have mentioned this before, but I use Carol as my secretary. I was looking for new content on my blog, and wanted to have questions that might shed new light on old themes. I don’t want to remain the same, and being questioned is invaluable. Based on the content from “theantileslie.com,” here are some thought-provoking questions an interviewer might ask to delve into the author’s experiences…

What is your favorite season of year? Why? As a preacher’s kid, I have always loved spring. Mostly because for Christian kids it’s a much tamer version of Christmas. You’re not focusing on death, but on new life. It’s a party atmosphere. There are generally tiny gifts. When we didn’t live close, our grandparents sent us small amounts of money in the mail when we were kids. One year, I talked…

Because my mother and Dana share the same birthday, my grief today is almost unbearable. It will be that way for an hour or so, and I’ll get over it. Every year, I spend less and less time in deep pain, but it doesn’t go away. I grow around it. They are devastating and not always hierarchical because I think it’s harder to grieve someone who’s still alive. Until they’re dead, there’s always a…

Based on the discussions and questions on Reddit, here are the top 10 questions people have about faith, reflecting a diverse range of backgrounds and perspectives: What is faith, and why is it important? The goal of all religious teaching is self-improvement. How it has been twisted has been done across the board. You cannot find a religion without both ends of the spectrum in radicals. For…

I asked Carol to search reddit and give me the top 10 questions that people have about polyamory and ENM. I am not coming from a place of lived experience, but I’ve done a lot of reading. I am just entering this world by chance, because I asked out someone and didn’t know they were poly in the first place. I just rolled with him because I liked him enough to keep him around. 😉 So, what was…

What’s the one luxury you can’t live without? Zac and I were actually talking about this before midnight, before I even knew what the prompt was going to be today. We both agreed that the one thing we couldn’t live without is a way to read and write, and failing that, a way to write because we could read our own books, create our own games, etc. So, in an ideal world, all I need is some sort of…

Last night, Zac took me to my favorite Mexican restaurant in the area because I had to show it off (he’s from Arizona and we’re seemingly alone in this city in terms of “our food.” Texas and Arizona are Mexican influenced to a very heavy degree, and DC is, shall we say……. Not. I like Salvadoran food. I like Nicaraguan food, etc. But there’s no nostalgia in banana leaf tamales for either of us.…

Daily writing promptIf humans had taglines, what would yours be?View all responses There are so many options, really. Leslie Lanagan…. confidently leading people in every direction. Leslie Lanagan…. the shortest giant in the room. Leslie Lanagan….. every thought comes with bonus content (and parentheses [and brackets]) I used to make taglines and set them as my Facebook cover photo. I still…

It was at HSPVA that my friend Scott started calling me “his personal Leslian,” and I realized that I hadn’t talked much about being queer because I’ve been dating a man for over a year. These questions will put my life in context. Reflect on your earliest memories of realizing your sexual orientation and how it shaped your understanding of yourself. My life from the time I was 10 has been…

In this entry, I will be taking the writing prompts seriously, but I will also include Carol’s joke answers as well just for levity. Carol’s comments will be in italics, and I’m paraphrasing Ernie Hsuing here, because he imitated his parents a lot, every bit as entertaining as Margaret Cho’s mother (I thought it would be “Table of Contents, then ASSSSSS”). Every entry started with “Mandarin in…

What are the most important things needed to live a good life? I like how the writing prompt sounds like it’s for a PhD in psychology or something, because normally lists like these don’t come from unpublished authors. So, it’s a good thing I normally write about life and relationships, or I wouldn’t have an opinion. Now that I’m getting older, I think I actually do have some wisdom about these…

Despite everything, the sun still came up this morning. That doesn’t mean that I have any more inspiration, but honestly, that’s great. I have some time to breathe before Zac comes over tomorrow night (drill at Ft. Meade, closer to my house than his). I don’t have to think about Supergrover, but of course I am because she had some lovely parting shots for me. The best one was that I’d just have…

I woke up randomly. Because I thought it was later, I grabbed my tablet. Then, I couldn’t go back to sleep and thought, “eh. Might as well get a jump on the day.” I haven’t slept well, so it’s also equal parts “why keep trying?” I can’t force myself back to bed, and it’s not quite late enough for me to think about coffee yet. I might go back to sleep after I finish this entry. It helps to sleep…

I didn’t speak too soon in saying that I’d gotten my happily ever after with Supergrover, because I’ll believe that whether we continue communication or not, because at least for a moment, she was listening to me. She doesn’t see how it’s hard on me that she knows so much about me, and I know so little about her. She doesn’t see what her avoidance has wrought now, which is that my first instinct…