WHAT'S NEW?

Brigantia (February 2, 2005)

Welcome to the Slough of Despond!

Come on in, water is boiling just fine.

Okay, originally I'd planned to write a new "what's new" page on Halloweeen (of 2004!)--the beginning of the new year for this eclecto-pagan with Celtic hankerings. Start with Dickens' "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times" or, better still, The Simpsons "It was the best of times; it was the blurst of times…"

Then give a heartfelt shudder for the planet in the shadow of what I hoped to be the fading American Imperium.

(Of course, now November 3rd has come and gone. So the shudder's more like a heavy trembling that vibrates outward from the marrow of my bones. And to dear Mother Earth and all her teeming creations, I'm so sorry. Here's a site that says it even better. Some of the images will make you laugh; others cry.)

Then, I'd planned in my original message to move on to thank-yous and hosannahs for all the amazing stuff that's happened to me since October 2003.

So let me do that now for I have much to be grateful for and celebrate here--no matter how much it feels a bit like getting crazy with Shelly Winters at the New Year's Eve party on the SS Poseidon.

First, Suspect Thoughts Press published my second collection of literotica, Satyriasis in October 2003. Whoo-hoo! I'm very proud of it. Here's links to two of my favorite stories in the collection: "What the Market Will Bear" and "Satyriasis."

Second, I'm now part of Suspect Thoughts Press (the mom in its mom&pop operations; okay, Mama Bear, as I like to be called). This is where most of my spare writing and working is happening these days (since I have a 32-hour-a-week day-job). (The two-job thingie is also the main reason I update this site once a geological era.) But it's a total labor of love--and I love what we're printing!

In fact, I love the press so much I married the publisher, Greg Wharton, on February 19, 2004 in San Francisco's City Hall (yes, that infamous Weekend of Love in that infamous Baghdad by the Bay; I've never been prouder of San Francisco, the Hong Kong of the USA). And I can't believe I've already been married a year. (See I'm an editor above.) And yes, I know they were all annulled. With all due respect to the future jurists who will legalize queer marriage, fuck the California Supreme Court. As far as Greg, myself, and the Creator are concerned: we're very married.

Finally, me and my husband co-edited one doozy of a collection of queers opinions on queers marrying queers called I Do/I Don't: Queers on Marriage. It's been nominated for a Lambda Literary Award.

I'll keep you posted. Greg and I are going this June to the U.S. gun&boat show of bookselling, the BEA, to press the flesh in a booth with Suspect Thoughts Press' new distributor SCB (they rock!) and attend the Lammies.

And for all us nerdy reading weirdos, here's a bit of comfort from one of my favorite writers, Philip Pullman, about the small-d democratic importance of the very act that makes us so suspect to so many other homo "sapiens": reading.

And here's an organization worth rallying 'round in these days: the National Coalition Against Censorship.

Until I write again, thank you for stopping by the site. And for all your emails of encouragement (and/or bemused bafflement). They inspire this wee wicked satirist to no end.

See you in the stacks!
ian

 

Mrs. and Mr. Wharton.

 

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