Today is a someday I thought would never come

Posted on by May 5, 2012
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Twenty-five years ago I first learned origami; the box, the balloon, the jumping frog.

I like paper-folding.
I like the feel of the creases coming into place as I gently break the paper fibers under my nail.
I like the interplay of mountain and valley folds working as I move the paper to tuck into neat shapes.
I like the satisfaction of a tiny delicate beauty when my folding is complete.

I would make little things all the time; boxen, cranes, the frog – mostly the balloon, because I delight in the final step of cradling it in my fingertips, blowing into the hold, and have it puff into three-dimensional being. Then I was in college, and I tried to make a paper rose.

I tried. And I tried. No matter what instruction I found, no matter how the folds and movement were explained, I simply could not grasp the doing of it. Page after page was a crumpled ruin beside my desk.

Rarely have I failed so utterly, so completely, so undeniably. It’s always been that, when I set my mind to it, I COULD learn anything I wanted. To come up against something so many people could do so easily that simply baffled all my attempts at understanding was one of the most frustrating experiences that I’ve ever endured.

I stopped folding paper.

Oh, I made paper balloons a couple times for my children to bat around the living room, but I stopped trying to learn new designs, and most of the old ones have fallen out of my head. I couldn’t make a crane without an instruction sheet now if my life depended upon it.

This morning I sat down with several square sheets, and went internetting.

There are many designs of origami rose; I tried one that has no specific name, and got more than 2/3s of the way through the step by step diagram instructions before they baffled me. I went on YouTube and attempted the Kawasaki rose; I managed to get a little more than halfway through before I fumbled.

Then I found a video for instruction on making an “easy rose.” I followed along, folding and occasionally pausing and rewatching as I went. Many of the steps were similar to the familiar folds and tucks of the balloon design I so adore, and this pleased me. There is a comfort to be found, having familiar things in the midst of something strange and intimidating and new. Step by careful step, I bent and folded and unfolded and tucked and creased and folded and twisted, and when I got to the end of the video, I had a tiny white paper rose.

Something impossible just became possible. I’m going to be able to make something for SecretAgentLoverMan the significance of which he may never truly understand. My stomach actually hurts with the joy of it.

Never give up.
Never surrender.

Ooh, a Mystery Text!

Posted on by May 2, 2012
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I’ve been waiting for the day to come that I’d start getting texts from strangers. Someone clearly typoed my number into their phone, and now I’m getting messages meant for someone else. ETA: To make this easier to follow, I shall preface their texts with “FWD:” because that came at the fore of their first text, and mine with “Bliss:” because… well, duh.

FWD: We both know you crazy

Bliss: Everybody’s crazy.

FWD: U r 4 thinkin u were gonna b with jay

Bliss: I’m more crazy than that.
Bliss: I alphabetize my condiments.
Bliss: I shave captions into the fur of street cats.
Bliss: I eat food that has been on the floor LONGER THAN ALLOWED FOR BY THE TEN SECOND RULE!

FWD: Thats nt crazy thats dirty

Bliss: I regularly make tiny Lego houses to stand upon, reciting passages from T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland” and then throw myself to the doom of carpet-rendered rug burns.

FWD: Shave ur pussy to say desperate.

Bliss: The walls talk to me.

FWD: Took u a while to write bk. Readin all this from lets text 4 dummys?

Bliss: Mannequins don’t like this seasons fashions, but they endure for the sake of Fall.

FWD: Thats because u live in a box

Bliss: It’s a very pretty box. I used ALL THE GLITTER.

FWD: Is that because ur fake?

Bliss: I’m made of real meat.
Bliss: Bacon is god.

FWD: Its hard comin from a family that was once slaves. Right?
FWD: Ya he said u were fat

Bliss: The bee colonies aren’t collapsing. They are plotting the End Of Days.

FWD: 4 u.? And ur family to burn

Bliss: Adipose is alien spawn, sent home by the Doctor.

FWD: Is that ur mas name

Bliss: Uno mas, por favor. Mis pantelones es el fuego.

FWD: To bad u smell like pollo tu my mal.

Bliss: Chickens build me tiny shrines.

FWD: Ur the color of a platano.

Bliss: 2 + 3 = potato.

FWD: Ur minus.

Bliss: G+!

FWD: ?tj

Bliss: Ampersand. Interrobang.

FWD: Ur middle name?

Bliss: Ur: an ancient Sumerian city, formerly on the Euphrates River, in southern Iraq.

Now available: Bits of Bliss – Volume 1

Posted on by April 26, 2012
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Hey guys, guess what is now available on Smashwords? Oh, only Bits of Bliss – Volume 1!

What is it, you say? Bits of Bliss is 9 pieces of erotic fiction for under a dollar, ranging from modern times in familiar settings, to long ago and far away, with several stopoffs at strange and unfamiliar lands along the way – and every one exploring hot sex and its connection to our essential humanity and understanding of the world, each other, and ourselves.

That’s right. Hot sex.

“Heartscaping” – F/F fic involving, of all things, plants. No, not garden vegetables!
“Homecoming” – M/? fic; home is where the heart is. Especially when you have a sentient house.
“Hunting Hound” – F/M fic; because this princess needs something more than the usual prince. Mild trigger warnings for (consensual) sexual violence.
“The Spy Who…” – F/M fic; a message comes in that needs to be revealed through a chemical reaction by the queen and her head spy, by unconventional means.
“Everything But” – F/M; Marriage can be truly transformative. Sometimes literally.
“Fruit of Knowledge, Seed of Truth” – F/M/?; a Snow White tale like you’ve never read it before.
“Her Master’s Voice” – M/F; what’s the dynamic when he’s in charge, and she’s a werewolf that could rip him apart?
“Summer Nights” – M/F; the man lurking through the summer parties at the lakehouses is not what he seems, and she’s not the usual type either. Of course they gravitate to one another behind the boathouse. Mild trigger warnings for (consensual) sexual violence.
“Spaced” – ?/F; Lost in space, losing heat. how else to feel alive?

Go, read, enjoy 9 sexy stories for $.99!

 

(And if you want a little scary along with your sexy, check out Nightmare Fuel.)

I’m an author.

Posted on by April 22, 2012
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I can say that because I’ve published a book. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/153938

This began several years ago, when I started having nightmares. Not that I’d never had nightmares before, mind you… but I’d never had them one on top of another, ceaselessly, all night and every night for days and sometimes weeks on end. It recurred the next year, and the year after that.

It happened regularly enough that I began to refer to the fall as Nightmare Season.

Then at the beginning of last summer, Google opened the invite-only beta of Google+. I was invited, joined, and managed to meet some really great people, and witness them doing some interesting things. In September, with Nightmare Season looming, I decided to (and posted that I would) write a piece of short horror fiction every day in October, in the hopes that getting the demons out of my head and onto a page or screen where I could see them would help alleviate Nightmare Season somewhat.

People thought this was a fantastic idea.

People wanted to join in.

I welcomed anybody who wanted to participate in any capacity, and set it up that I would post to a filtered group an inspirational image each morning, and anybody so inclined had all day to write something and post it. I was the only one that I felt had to post something every day. I set it up that it would start October 1, and end October 31. I had folks who wanted to write, some who just wanted to read and comment, and several who wanted to provide photography or other images.

I didn’t manage to write every single day, but nearly, which was pretty great (and also served as good practice in writing daily for NaNoWriMo, which I used to work on a still IP work) – I ended up with over twenty short fictions. I pared that down to twenty, edited them, and had people proof them. I formatted it, followed the Style guide on Smashwords, and submitted it with some really amazing artwork on the cover, done specifically for this collection by the even more amazing Moan Lisa.

I wrote a book. I published a book. I have a book for sale.

Check it out: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/153938

Moving Day! and a new publication

Posted on by March 23, 2012
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That’s right, I moved! No, not in meatspace… but here! A lot of it probably looks pretty much the same, which means the move was successful, but when you look up at the URL you’ll see that I’m at callmebliss.wordpress.com no longer. Thanks to the fantastic Thenuinn, I’ve got my own digs here at callmebliss.com! There will be a lot going on of the next few dys and weeks as I feel out and set up my space – unpacking my gags and boxen, if you will.

As I’m doing so, don’t think I’ll be leaving you without anything to do. Oh no! In fact, I have a fantastic thing to show you.

You may recall back in October of 2011, when I started a project to try and stave off the Nightmare Season that plagues me every fall by writing horror fiction every day, and a ton of people jumped on board. Well, one of those people was a gentleman by the name of Matt Champine tightened up several of the stories that he wrote during the course of the month and has put it out as an eBook – for which I have written the foreward! I highly recommend you get a copy, not only for my foreward (In which I am Chatty McChattypants about the Nightmare Fuel Project and about how great a tool is social media for making things like this happen) but also for the more than a dozen pieces of short horror fiction, all for under three dollars.

Click here for Matt Champine’s Cold Shivers on Amazon.

Congratulations, Matt, and thank you!

Book Review: Memoirs of a Mouthy Dame

Posted on by March 20, 2012
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So, you guys may have seen me talk about +C. Corey Fisk before. You’ve seen me wax all glowing and girlcrushy about her because, frankly, she is crushable on pretty much all conceivable levels of crushability.

Beyond that, though… this woman is tough as shit and frakking brilliant.

If you follow her stream at all, you know that; she’s one of the people at the forefront of the +Virtual Photo Walks™ project, she agitates in favor of the disable, and she’s also a fantabulous geek. And, of course, Corey is a writer.

She wrote much of this book several years ago, and it is finally coming to print. I have had the multifaceted honor of not only being able to read this book, but also to actively partake in working on making its sequel come into being. Memoirs of a Mouthy Dame — Beyond Repair: Living with MS is, as I have told its author, an important book.

That’s not quite right. It’s an Important Book.

I don’t know about you guys, but I used to have only the barest of familiarity with multiple sclerosis. I knew it was a thing, a disease, and it was the sort that if someone got it we’d talk about it with hushed whispers and sad demeanour. MS is, honestly, not something I’d talk about while jumping up and down and playing accordion. But thanks to Corey’s book, I actually have a working knowledge of it without having felt like a moron while it was explained to me.

Even better, she was able to explain it to me in such a way that I giggled while I learned, and then this bold woman went on to ask questions I never would have asked – some of them because I wasn’t consciously aware that I had such questions to ask.

Below is the link to Corey’s book. It’s currently 25% off until March 24, and I strongly encourage you to take advantage of this launch sale – if possible, by two or three copies, so that you can keep one for yourself and give the others away to friend show might otherwise try to steal it from you!

And if for some reason you don’t have the money to snag this jewel of a book for yourself… please share this post. Hopefully one of your friends will buy it.

Then you can yoink their copy. 😉

http://www.lulu.com/shop/c-corey-fisk/memoirs-of-a-mouthy-dame%E2%80%93-beyond-repair:-living-with-ms/paperback/product-18935175.html

Book Review: Redbacks, by Aaron Crocco

Posted on by March 11, 2012
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It becomes increasingly tricky to innovate a fairly well-explored fiction genre, and the idea of a zombie apocalypse is no exception – zombies are fast or slow, voodoo or viral, after your brains or simply any iron-rich tissue of the body, a tool for a gorefest or an allegory for society. Sometimes it seems like, in the overal body of work involving zombies, it’s all been done.

Then +Aaron Crocco comes along and gives us something new.

_Redbacks_ is book 2 of his _As Darkness Ends_ series, but can be read standalone (although, having read it, I want to go back and read book 1). It begins with the world ending – or so it seems to some of the characters. An earthquake shakes not just most of Manhattan, where protagonist James Cole works, but the actual entirety of the earth. James manages to avoid upheaving streets and crumbling skyscrapers, and post-quake bands together with a survivor who saved his life in order to try to get through the city to make his way back to his estranged wife.

Then they discover that buckled streets and precarious architecture and infrastructure are far from their biggest worry – the eponymous, violent antagonists of the tale appear, wreaking havoc and killing survivors, moving in animal-like packs, though they clearly used to be human.

And all of this under a sky unnaturally darkening under a black cloud moving to cover the earth.

It’s a quick-paced adventure with roots in zombie literature and religious apocalyptica alike, and one I quite enjoyed – it grabbed me from the quaking get-go and dragged me along through the ruins of one of the great cities of the world, to a conclusion that I honestly never saw coming.

 

Amazon Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/Redbacks-As-Darkness-Ends-ebook/dp/B007ETKF2S
Amazon Paperback: http://www.amazon.com/Redbacks-Darkness-Ends-Book-Volume/dp/1470034441
Amazon Paperback of Book 1: http://www.amazon.com/As-Darkness-Ends-Book-One/dp/1466251654
Smashwords Book 1: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/82830
Smashwords Book 2: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/137369

See the author’s site at http://www.aaroncrocco.com/ for more links, info, and a way to purchase an autographed eBook!

Kalli’s Story – Week 3 (Chasing Revery BlogHop)

Posted on by February 23, 2012
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I’m taking part in a story Blog Hop, where four writers are each contributing a piece of a story over the course of four weeks!

Mine is Week 3/Part 3, so if you haven’t yet read the story up to this point, please do so before continuing.

Read Part 1 by Carrie K. Sorensen at Chasing Revery
Read Part 2 by Nicole Pyles at World of My Imagination

Then continue on below, to Part 3 of Kalli’s Story.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

All things considered, it was a pretty quick walk. Actually, it was a bit too quick for Kalli’s liking – she hadn’t gone back to the house since that day, and the closer she got, the more she realized how very, very much she didn’t want to. Her stomach twisted and clenched, her heart pounded like the now-silenced beat that had been thrumming through her earbuds when Jenae had ripped them from her ears. Her heavy boots slowed on the sidewalk, until Jenae stopped too, just at the corner of the block.

“What’s the hold up, Kalli?”

What could she tell her? I’m sorry, I’ve changed my mind, I’m not really in the mood to show you how Claire died, maybe we can go for a soda instead?

“Just… give me a second.”

She pulled her arm free and dropped to a knee, carefully unlacing and retying one boot and then the other, making sure they were firm. Solid. Protecting. She’d be fine – and there’d be no more questions, after.

Standing, Kalli grabbed Jenae’s arm, and all but pulled her into motion again, thudding quickly past the several first houses on the block, toward the victorian that squatted in between a pair of ranches that looked like twins on either side of it. There didn’t seem to have been anybody living in the house since the night Claire was there, and Kalli found herself dryly unsurprised. Although the grass looked mowed, and the bushes still looked trimmed. Even the paint, which had been old when she was here before, had an unexpected sense of freshness to it although spots of flaking here and there told her it definitely hadn’t been painted.

“So we were here, with Claire,” she said without preamble, her boots thudding hollowly upon the steps as she mounted the porch. “Jordan figured out that if we reached between the boards, we could pull the door open just enough for someone to get in. And they- we dared her to go in and stay inside by herself. Not all night, even, just for a little while.”

The new boards were there, just like Jenae said, and yet… there should have been another one, and it was missing. It made it so that Kalli was able to reach between to find the old, carved metal doorknob. It should have been cold to the touch, but it was warm, even here out of the sunlight, and Kalli swallowed hard as she turned it and pulled.

The door opened without resistance, thudding against the inside of the boards nailed across the thick old doorframe, and there was a spot where, if one were so inclined, one could worm in between the boards and slip in through that open door, into the dark foyer beyond.

“So she went in, and we were out here on the porch. And for a while we were just talking, and sometimes knocking on the boards over the windows – you know, to just scare her. I swear to god, Jenae, all we wanted to do was scare her!” Her voice went high and tight with that confession, and she couldn’t drag her eyes away from the dark foyer space.

“That doesn’t sound like that bad a dare,” Jenae pointed out from her shoulder, leaning in past Kalli to squint in at the darkness inside the open door. “Even though that was kind of mean… trying to scare her. But it sounds funny. What HAPPENED, Kalli?”

“She started knocking back. Except… on all the windows at once.”

Jenae’s head whipped around, staring wide-eyed at Kalli for a minute, and then she let out an exasperated laugh and shoved playfully at Kalli’s shoulder.

“You butthead! I really want to know what happened, and you drag me over here for this campfire story?”

Kalli started to protest, but grinning wryly Jenae was already grabbing onto the boards so she could hoist herself and swing her feet through, wriggling past the boards and door to become a shadow in the foyer, her feet thudding gently upon the boards.

“You want to tell me what REALLY happened in here?” she challenged. Kalli’s hand tightened on the doorknob.

Days of Grey: Day 5

Posted on by February 19, 2012
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“But it’s just a bunch of toys on cardboard.”

“It is and it isn’t. We’re up here looking down on it, see. Lincoln Logs, a piece of fabric draped over Rock ’em Sock ’em robots, a little old silver stereo missing a knob, sitting on top of a doll’s cabinet, some erector set pieces… it just looks like a mess. But it isn’t, I’m telling you.”

“I don’t see how it can be anything other than what it looks like. Didn’t you say your kid built this?”

“Yeah, yesterday when I thought she was napping. But you have to look at it differently, to really see what it is she did.”

“Differently how?”

“Come on, don’t be stupid. She’s a kid. She’s little. Belly down and take a look again, and tell me what you see.”

“This is ridiculous.”

“Just do it.”

“…holy- dude. Is this- did she build the docks?”

“Completely. The tent, the pilons, the cranes. It’s all there, right down to this lego big over here being that one last tie-up that nobody ever used.”

“That’s amazing! And also really messed up, man – what the hell were you doing, taking her THERE of all places?”

“That’s the thing. I’ve never taken her there. She’s never seen it. I’ve never taken her to Pike’s Acres, either, but she’s been carrying a lot of twigs and branches into her sandbox this morning.”

“You think… she’s building the circle?”

“I think she might be. And look, while you’re down there, you see the boat? Give it a nudge.”

“Holy fuck! How did it do that, – it’s on the carpet! It shouldn’t be bobbing like it’s in the water!”

“I KNOW, dammit! But she made it like this, and it does that… and if she manages to make Pike’s Acres?”

“Do you think?”

“Yeah. I think maybe she’s going to bring back the fairies.”

~~~

This was written as part of Days of Grey, a daily writing project in which anyone can participate. Just go follow the page. A prompt image will be posted to it each day throughout the month of February, meant to inspire bright, warm, happy fictions – or poetry, haikus, memoir essays, visual poetry – anything to get the mind focused on warmth and light and joy.

The Day Five image prompt is from Alexander Symonette, from GooglePlus.

 

Days of Grey: Day 4

Posted on by February 19, 2012
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When she was born, she slept much. Her cries when first she emerged were soft and quickly quieted when place in my arms, and when the midwife was left, I spent hours (tired though I was) contemplating her as I cleansed her skin, gently wiping the effluvia of her gestation from her soft translucent skin. There was barely any hair upon her scalp, and her hands balled up beneath her tiny chin.

They were waiting for me to declare her name, but one had not come to me yet. There was always a sign, among our people, that led a mother to the name of her child. Some names had great auspicion. Some bore ill-luck. Usually the name came whilst laboring, but nothing had happened to encourage me to bestow a name upon her. One would come to us, just as when I had born, the cry of a bird had earned me the name of Avis.

Despite the waiting outside, the village was quiet; I could faintly hear the sound of voices and the crackling of fire as I rested, and along with my own weariness decided night must have come. Indeed, no light spilled into my tent through the cleft between the flaps, left ajar by the midwife to let in air to sooth and cool me.

“Who are you, my sweet?” I murmured softly, running the cloth gingerly under the corner of her wee jaw.

My answer came in the form of another small creature entirely.

Through the open flaps, a moth flitted in. I half-noticed it, darting and sopping, fluttering along the interior of the walls, but moths frequently found their way indoors. I watched it rise toward the oil lamp that hung from the pole above us. But it did not rise to the lamp and circle the glass. It circled but once, and fluttered down like a cherry petal, to alight upon my sleeping daughter’s forehead.

There it rested, a pale, luminous blue-white, with great dark eyes at the base of its feathery antennae. Perhaps it was looking at me, but then it turned, minuscule feet ever so light upon my daughter’s skin as to not even begin to wake her. With its back to me, its wings swept open so sharply as to coat my daughter’s skin with a dusting of the pale powder from the underside of the wings, and its antennae swept in a wide arch before twitching in wee, arcane movements.

I was captivated by the pattern upon its wings. It was one of which I had heard, but never had seen; the interior of its swept-open wings were the same soft, luminescent blue as the outside, but decorated with a pattern of charcoal grey that resembled a single eye, gazing upon me. Somnium Tinea, the Dream Moth. These moths were so rare as to be creatures of legend, and it was said that those chosen by the moth could, in the light of the moon, see things that could not otherwise be seen: glimpses of the future, the truth behind lies and secrets. Paths to the Otherworld.

This one had come to us in the night, and chosen to land upon my unnamed daughter.

The cloth fluttered to the floor beside my cot, forgotten, as I lifted my hand to lay my fingertips gently against my daughter’s temple. “Tinea,” I whispered, naming her. At the word, the moth’s wing’s snapped sharply shut, and then it launched itself into the air, making for the doorway and disappearing into the night. It left behind, though, the thin dusting from its wings, and etched into it by its wee feet and feathered antennae was the same shape that had been hidden inside its wings. A new eye, upon my daughter’s forehead.

“Tinea,” I murmured again, and without stirring her eyes slid open, calm and dark, and she knew me.

~~~

This was written as part of Days of Grey, a daily writing project in which anyone can participate. Just go follow the page. A prompt image will be posted to it each day throughout the month of February, meant to inspire bright, warm, happy fictions – or poetry, haikus, memoir essays, visual poetry – anything to get the mind focused on warmth and light and joy.

The Day Four image prompt is from dendroica on Flickr, shared through a Creative Commons Attribution license. http://www.flickr.com/photos/dendroica/4824223505/ If you share or repost this image, please keep the attribution info intact.