What’s the matter?

By the time I caught my breath, Rio was laughing quietly to himself, still holding my hands as he watched me in his half-shy, half-knowing way. “What’s the matter?” he teased. “Never kissed a boy before?”

I licked my lips, tasting the memory he’d left behind. “A couple times, just to try… but it was never like that.”

His eyes lit up at the compliment, and he leaned forward, whispering against my cheek. “You like me that much?”

“Maybe.” I closed my eyes again, letting myself nuzzle back and slip my hands around his waist.

A Question of Etiquette

A small, elderly Japanese lady showed up on my doorstep Sunday afternoon, wanting to discuss the Bible and the possible coming of the End Times. Normally I don’t mind; I have a running joke that I would probably have become a priest if my parents hadn’t insisted on taking me to church. This is another post, for another day (or another month, at the rate I’ve been neglecting this site), but really all you need to know for this story is that I’m a little better at theological gymnastics than most door-to-door evangelists expect. When I’m in the mood for an argument, it can be a lot of fun.

Unfortunately, this Sunday, I was not in the mood for an argument. Fanime is coming up and I am trying (again) to make progress on First and Last and Always, my long-in-coming Tybalt story. Sunday was the first really good chance I’ve had in almost a month to work on it, and this small, elderly Japanese lady was interrupting my efforts to write, well, gay magical catboy sex. I kept trying (and failing) to put sentences together in the back of my mind, and trying to keep the two thought-streams separate was… difficult, to say the least.

There didn’t seem to be a polite way to explain this to her. Does anyone out there have suggestions?

Amy Vanderbilt is curiously silent on this situation.

Yes, Hannah, I Suck, but I Haven’t Forgotten

For as long as I’ve been writing him, Tybalt has been a creature of the YaoiCon Fiction Anthology. I’m almost finished with his latest, long-delayed story, First and Last and Always, so I emailed Anne to see if she would like to reserve it for next year’s anthology, if it happens. I say if it happens because the Anthology has not been published for two years running.

I suspect, much to my disappointment, that there are no plans for further issues. It’s been about a month since I emailed Anne, and I noticed that her contact information has been locked at the YaoiCon site.

This doesn’t mean much, if anything, for Tybalt’s future. The past two Anthologies have paired me with Tammy Lee, and I don’t think we have very good creative chemistry. Tybalt remains one of my favorite (if most demanding) characters, and I’m sure he’ll continue to slink into my writing life whenever he has a story to share.

For now, I’ve been sidetracked by an interesting little experiment (you can expect it in time for Christmas), and First and Last and Always will go back to the top of my stack once it’s done.

Links Have Changed!

We are all very sorry about this, but the latest version of the 1000Gears software has introduced a new numbering scheme. Unfortunately it makes the site links very ugly, so I took out my hammer and made the website make pretty links again (though they are still different from the old ones).

Unfortunately, the old links do not work anymore. Some of the most popular posts are linked below, but there are quite a lot of them and people link to them in strange ways sometimes. If you have been directed to this post because your link did not work, please excuse the inconvenience and find a working link below. Also, the person who sent you the broken link may not know it is broken. Please be kind and forward the information along, so that the Internet may get by without so many broken links.

Thank you!
~Catboy! =^.^=

Graveyard
Fake It
Sometimes, When You’re Sleeping
YaoiCon 2007: One Server’s Thoughts
If You Think Education Is Expensive…
Putting Money Where My Mouth Is
Lovers Die Together
The Tears of Anael
DreamFever
Intoxication
Wanting More
You Can’t Go Back to Eden
It Begins With A Kiss
Shut Up
Civilized Behavior: You’ve Heard of It, Yes?

If you are looking for a post not listed here, the search bar off to the left should be happy to help you.

Putting Money Where My Mouth Is

I’ve mentioned, before, a young friend and her indecision over college. She’s graduated high school, yesterday or today I think, so the question is substantially less abstract now. I still think that she should do it. For me and for almost everyone I know, university education was an unbelievable chance for us to learn about ourselves, discover who we wanted to become, and grow into those frames.

I think she deserves the same chance. Really, I think that everyone deserves the same chance (that teaching urge is hard to forget), but my friend seems particularly important right now. She’s endearingly quirky and I believe she doesn’t give herself enough credit for how bright she is. Sometimes I wonder how she might change in the experience; I can’t imagine that she wouldn’t make the most of it, but how is anyone’s guess.

I’d like to meet that hypothetical future-self, whoever she might be. I bet she’d have a lot of interesting, compelling things to say.

It’s time for me to put some money where my mouth is.

This is my open gift to her, my promise before all of you. I hope you get to hold me to it.