Better to Live In a Roofless Home (#poetry)

I’m a Reliant K song, waiting for you to walk out and drive away, just like he did.

You can say you love me, but can’t touch me

He could say he loved me, but wouldn’t stop.

Love is action, you dolts, love is action!

Shut your fucking mouth

And put love

Into mine.

Her fingertips

I lost her fingertips for you.

I won’t leave you after paying so many

Fingertips.

But you will.

One day you’ll weary of my drip, drip, drip

The Proverb about the nagging wife

Drip the glowing eyes, my giggle about nothing at all

Drip the naked belly pressed against yours begging for sex

Drip the head leaned on your shoulder, bright eyes begging for Bible time

Drip the flung out form butt-up on the bed, feet and toes kicking, face flat while mind creates creates CREATES a world begging for your presence, for children I don't make alone!

Beggars can’t be choosers

But you keep making me choose all our dates

And nothing happens if I don’t lead

But I didn’t want to lead!

I want to dance the follow with your bony hips leading mine

I want your love in my mouth.

Beggars can’t be choosers, I’m telling you!

If you’re going to make me beg

You’re going to make yourself hate me

Feed a mouse a laxative

And it will lose its cookies.

Goodbye, future cookie.

I hope I’m a false prophet

But until now 

I’ve never been wrong

Except about you

And your love in my mouth.

Did you want the jungle adventure, with its bugs and heat and slime, or did you just like the idea of her?

When gender equality leads to racism? #comics #blackcomicschat

Hey there. Check out these two pictures one of my new artists just made of Natasha, my thunder-powered superhero:

I love what a good artist he is, but because the first thing I noticed about Natasha 1 was boobs, I asked him to shrink the boobs a little. I wanted to emphasize, I said, that she was a teenager (and besides, she's athletic, I said). I was worried that my male artist was sexualizing my female character. This is supposed to be a space where female readers can see themselves without being "other"'d.

But when I saw Natasha 2, I noticed not only the boobs had changed, but the little ripples of fat on her belly, the thickness of her thighs, the angle of her shoulders...

Which is more sexualized, Natasha 2, or Natasha 1? Did I really "save" Natasha from sexualization, or did I just make her lose a bunch of weight? Which character looks "Blacker", if that is even a thing? Does one of them fit more closely to white superhero paradigms?  

My artist for Natasha is a Black guy who told me Natasha One was "the first thing that popped into my head" as he was reading. I remember sitting in the airport when a Black mother dropped off her teenage girl requesting that the child have a chaperone for the flight, for her safety. "She's not a child," the white airport lady said. "I mean, look at her." The lady said this because said teenage girl had size double D breasts. I think she may have actually mentioned the breasts out loud, which is maybe inappropriate. When she saw the child's ID card stating her age she begrudgingly acquiesced, but it's a fact that Black children are often "un-child-ed" due to their height, strong build, or development of secondary sexual characteristics. A twelve year old boy was shot because he looked old enough to be "thuggish" with his toy gun, after all.

So our unconscious stereotypes defining children and teenagers actually have real-life implications for real-life people. 

In my zeal for gender equality, was I racist?

Some of you will jump down my throat for caring about something so small and unintentional. Okay, let's go there. I know that I'm not "intending" anything here but that doesn't matter. Results matter. I'll go so far as to make the controversial statement that the cops who shot the 12-year-old weren't "intending" racism either--they had a stereotype in their heads of what makes a child, and what makes a Black man, and they acted on it in the heat of the moment. I suspect they weren't evilly plotting to rid the world of Black people. I suspect that unconscious unintentional "innocent" racism KILLS! 

See, for a believer, "I'm not racist, I have Black friends" or "you can't be racist without intent" misses the point: it's not about me, and how I feel, but how my actions affect those I care about, unintended or not. If I'm all about the love of Christ, then I should care about how someone else feels, right? I don't need to justify myself because I've already been forgiven for my sins and justified by Christ--it doesn't matter whether or not I'm "guilty" of racism by some magical societal standard, but whether or not my actions harm my Black brothers and sisters. To put it another way, I don't need to defend myself: what I need is to fix my behavior because I love my people and don't want my actions to make them sad. So if my unconscious attitudes cause pain to my precious sisters, why not change them? Why fight that?

Controversial statement! The works-based theology that plagues our society is the primary reason white people keep arguing about racism instead of stopping to listen. If it's all about me working myself to heaven or Nirvana or whatever, and racism is bad, then by golly I need to defend myself because I'm trying, I'm working, "I'm not racist in my heart!" Don't judge me, please! But if we can't become "good people" on our own; if we need someone else to save us; then once someone saves us, we don't need excuses. We don't need to defend ourselves from "white guilt" because all guilt is gone--what is left is only to change our lives to love those that Christ loves. If those that Christ loves are complaining that our perceptions are hurting them, then we'll stop to listen! Society needs that. We need results not guilt--it's not about my white or mixed or Asian journey out of racism, but about what is happening to my Black family! Love drives action, while guilt drives inaction. Guilt is very me-focused, and despite all the SJW twitter rage it's not fixing anything. The grace of the Messiah Yeshua is the only thing that can permanently eliminate institutional racism.

In this case, I'm going to go with skinny Natasha (because she's also underrepresented in the media, because skinny girls are no less "Black," and because most importantly I'm not going to be an asshole to my artist who redrew this entire picture when I only asked for a breast reduction)--but I need to pay attention to my unconscious choices.

What do you think? Was I right or wrong? Judge me. Talk about your experiences. I'll listen.

English Literature Poetry Study Group! Become Great By Studying the Greats.

Hey y'all! (this is how the people around me talk now) You wanna join me in my little poetry writing group? Or maybe you're just someone who enjoys listening to the soft sound of daily poetry--and you wanna know the classics.

That's me, anyway. I just downloaded this awesome app on android, called "English Poems," where they tried to collect all the most famous poets of English language literature. From the 1700s to modern Harlem. We'll be super educated on poetry by the time we finish! We'll analyze EVERYTHING. And, the best comment each time will get a free book.

Without further ado:

Merc with a mouth...has absolutely nothing to say.

Deadpool (One), while crude, had an effective point that hit my heart just when I needed a comforting tale about disreputable suffering endurance.


"Deadpool 2", if it had a point, shoved that point so far up an asshole of unnecessarily grotesque, unreasonably sacrilegious, and unsexily obscene meaningless overwritten drawn out driveling crap that I couldn't have found that point if the point were magnetic and I had Iron-man's weird unnecessary glowy chest emblem installed in reverse to guide the point TO my heart.


Deadpool wants to die throughout the whole movie, and if I were this movie's doctor, I would HONOR that DNR: do not resuscitate and do not recommend.




Am I sick from the popcorn I stole after scaring away the guy sitting next to me, the fibromyalgia I earned by slowly drowning myself in poisonous cortisol over the years, or because I sat so close to the screen I now smell sewage seeping through my skin?


It took "Maximum Effort" to keep watching what can only mean the writers got high off the contents of my fish tank, watched a load of Japanese porn, and then got hit in the head too hard by that humor technique where someone says something that sounds meaningful and then a drawn out pause contradicts it. Guardians of the Galaxy II did that pause well--even the sharpest katana used too long becomes crutch.


Cut off about 40 minutes of almost-child porn, "this character only exists to be a lesbian," "Deadpool insults God for the umpteenth time", and looooooong repeated boring pauses, and MAYBE we had something. Maybe half a thing. Do you even have a thing in those stuffed pants, Deadpool? Like any work of love you make, you know something's wrong when you find yourself hoping it ends soon.


It wasn't good for me, Wade Wilson.


And box office numbers aside, I have a feeling it wasn't actually GOOD for you either.

Falling in Love in Science Fiction: What's Scifi About, Writers?

Do we see more people of color in romance, or in scifi? How about romantic sci-fi? Does it matter?

Let's hear your opinions in the comments below. It's something we need to talk about.

See, within the last few years #representationmatters,#weneeddiversebooks, and other hashtags have surged in popularity on social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram as the world becomes more conscious of the need for racially egalitarian representation in media.

Showcasing people of color in fully-fleshed roles, rather than type-casting for minor roles by race, creates a social and cultural environment that’s conducive to inspiring dreams, better behavior, and kindness in everyone.

Or does it? Let's talk about color in romance and scifi over at the7thmatrix.com:

https://www.the7thmatrix.com/blog/2017/3/19/falling-in-love-in-science-fiction

IT'S HERE! @Crossoverally's superhero anthology with my name in it.

Heyoooo! You know how I've got this whole Becoming Hero superhero franchise thing going on? One of Becoming Hero's superheroes made it into Crossover Alliance's superhero anthology, and that anthology is out TODAY. The anthology spans the gamut from scifi to more fantasy-type heroes, so you'll dig. I'm personally psyched because I've wanted to work with this company for a long time--they're an up-and-coming edgy small press you should definitely check out while you're picking up your copy of the book.


So yeah! My Giveaway for this release ends soon, but there's a new Giveaway you can enter to get free copies! Wooooo superheroes!


UPDATE: You can read an interview with all the authors (me included) here, about why we wrote each of these stories: http://christianfictionreviewguru.blogspot.com.au/2017/03/interview-with-authors-of-crossover.html You can also read a review about all of us here: www.tangentonline.com/print--other-reviewsmenu-263/anthologies-reviewsmenu-107/3445-superoes-the-crossover-alliance-anthology-ed-by-david-n-alderman

We are like a child,

who, upon entering a feast spread with 200 gourmet courses, attended by all the most interesting people in the world along with all his friends, with the greatest musicians of every genre invited to play, and the greatest artists of every art style on display, turns to his Father with a scowl and asks, “is that all?”

#church #GardenofEden #KingdomofHeaven #vss

How do we think about #mentalillness in #sciencefiction? Review of "Caresaway" by @DJ_Cockburn

I appreciate a solid first paragraph, because in this day and age, when books have to compete with so many other distractions, I want to know what kind of character I'm going to hang out with for the next 35,000 words. I mean, now-a-days, I could spend this valuable time crying over an atonal Netflix special about spilt milk, or failing at Starcraft games online while jerks yell at me, or pillaging an English village in the name of my ancestors.

DJ Cockburn is a man who knows how to start a story right. Edward Crofte, a strong, cruel, cutthroat businessman, walks into the CEO office he just took over. Cockburn wisely skips the board room set up, and starts the story right where the world's changing. A new antidepressant, “Caresaway,” has taken the corporate world by storm, and everyone's using it as a performance drug. Has Caresaway made Edward the “uncaring” man he is today?

Read the rest of the review, and find out what's wrong with over-simplifying mental health issues, over at Tangent Online. Writers should use it to learn about proper pacing and first sentences.

My pet peeve: lazy-ass writers. #writetip #writerslife

Yo, you need to get something through your head.

Writing is WORK. Writing is not a hobby, a game, or "the love of your life." It is not a person, or a way for you to hang out with your imaginary best friends without owning up to the fact that you're a grown-ass person with imaginary best friends. (Dude, just play pretend in the open air like all the other kids do. I do it. #noshame)

Writing is a calling, and a calling requires WORK.

That means that when someone says your story could be better, and in your logical brain you know there's a really specific way you can make that better happen, and it requires rewriting an entire chapter or even rewriting the whole book from scratch, you don't settle for good enough. You say YES MA'AM and you drop and give twenty--twenty thousand words! Forty! Eighty! However many it takes! When you revise, don't just read your thing--retype your thing in a new blank document while you read it! Print it out and read it aloud! Break down the plot points into index cards and throw them around your room until you find order! Write your outline, fix it, write it again! Yeah, that's a lot of work, but do you really think you can coast by on "good enough" in a day and age when everyone and their pet cat is writing a book?

Work means that when you know something's wrong with your characterization, and you can't figure it out, you sit down and break out the thirty questions to ask your character. Then write other interviews with your character. With her friends, and family. Then you write a short story about your character, totally separate from the novel. Write and write until you figure out what's wrong, and then bring that fully-fleshed, living person back into your novel. Yeah, I'm saying that sometimes you might have to write several tens of thousands of words that don't even make it into your novel in order to make a person. It took all-powerful God seven days to get around to making one dude, and he started with the dude's settings, the dude's job (animals and plants), and the dude's timeline (stars, molecules, everything that would ever impact nature vs. nurture) before even touching the dude himself. And before that, God sat on eternity conceptualizing the dude! You, not almighty, can take a few extra days to make your imaginary dudes better.

And finally, when your publisher sends you ARCs, I want to see you promoting that shit with all your heart and soul. Yes, that's your job! It's your job to make sure your shit gets read! And no, not spammy auto-tweets forever with your cover, because that's not work any more than spraying your pee is work. Any animal can mark its territory with speed-droppings. Actual work? That's researching reviewers and contacting them individually with cover letters geared towards their individual interests--no, no NO, stop trying to find a way out! You cannot send a mass e-mail to all reviewers ever! Each reviewer gets his or her name at the top of the cover letter, each reviewer gets digital copies according to their format preferences, and each reviewer gets at least one line that about their own preferences. "Because you like science fiction where bunnies murder anthropomorphic cyborg carrots..."

Yes, you have to do your homework!

Why? Because it pisses me off if you don't. 

(Geez Jen, is this all about you?) Ha, slowing down here now, yeah, a little bit. Sorry about that, friend. You know how we hate in other people what we've seen in ourselves? I have to confess, I really missed out in my earlier writing life because of laziness. I really hope you can do better. That would be awesome! And I really don't ever want to work with you if you're lazy like I was (am), because great works don't come into being like that, and because we need to promote together if we want people to read what we write. When it comes down to it, do we really want our epitaphs to say, "Just good enough"?

Or do you want it to say "Burned out in a flame of blood and hope creating the most awesome works ever known to man and elf"?

I know what I'm aiming for.

New feature: Random #WriteTip and Random #freereads of the day!

Hey guys, haven't had a chance to go through all the archives? Well I've got new news for ya: now, on Twitter, every day at 12 PM and 1 PM EST, you can get a random #writetip and a random #flashfiction free read! Go to twitter.com/petr3pan to follow me and sign up for that.