Real Life

Guess Who’s A Trucker Now?

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Yeah, I am. 🙂

I got into a trucking school back in May where I learned everything I needed to learn to get my CDL-A. After that, I went out on the road with a trainer where I learned how to really handle a truck. I started driving on my own back in August and just came home for the first time. On Saturday, I’ll get another load and shoot out for another month or so before I come home again.

My first month out has shown me just how far I have to go. Don’t get me wrong — I’ve enjoyed it thoroughly. But I am very, very, VERY thankful for all the more experienced truckers out there who have been super patient with me and helped me get backed up to doors or into parking spots when the set-up is not something taught at the academy. Without these absolute angels among men, I’d have done some serious damage. I mean, I can straight-line like anyone else but setting up for a 45° back when I don’t have the space I’m used to? Or backing up off-set up a hill? Or handling a super-tight backing? Not easy.

What I generally do is straight-up tell the shipper or receiver that I’m still new and could use a spotter and that it will go faster if they put me on an easy door. I do the same thing at truck stops if there isn’t a whole lot of open parking. I’ll find a trucker and wave him over and ask for help. I know that as I get more experience under my belt, I’ll need this less and less, but I’m very thankful for all the guys who have taken time out of their day to help me.

This help, this sense of “brotherhood,” is something that you don’t find in a lot of other fields. I know that I was pretty much thrown to the wolves as a teacher. But I’ve found that being honest about what I can do and what my experience is while driving tends to make the others do what they can to help me and to explain things so that I can get better.

The money is good, too. I drive for a great company and they pay well and treat me well. No micro-management. No mandatory daily meetings to get screamed at over things outside my control. No cult-like or abusive-relationship-like BS. I’m told where to go to pick up a load (and what time to be there), told where to deliver it (and when), and then left to determine when and where I’ll take my mandatory breaks. I’m treated like I have good sense and like I’m a person worthy of respect. And I’m paid well. Very well. My education for this industry cost me nothing up front — just an agreement to work for this company for a year in order to pay it back. No money out of my paycheck — just do the work for a year and then I could go somewhere else if I wanted.

So, if any of you out there are struggling in a field where you get treated like garbage, have crap pay, and are looking for a way out, I have some hope for you. Get into trucking. We need more drivers. There are schools where you can learn all you need to know. If you drive for my company, you’ll get additional training after you get your CDL to help you learn the things they don’t have time to teach you at the driving school. You’ll be treated with respect by other drivers and by the public who know that, without us, they don’t get food. Don’t stay in a dead-end job with a boss who gets off on screaming in your face, throwing things at you, and treating you like garbage. No, you won’t go home every day (or even every week) but the money is good, the freedom is awesome, and you’ll wake up each day knowing that the load you’re hauling is going to keep people fed and clothed. Other truckers WILL help you if you need it and are humble enough to ask for it (and having boobs helps because chivalry is still A Thing in trucking).

Anyhow, that’s part of why my updates are sporadic. When I’m on my 10 hour break to sleep, that’s pretty much what I do — get a shower at the truck stop and then sleep. 🙂 Hopefully, as I get more experience driving and backing, I’ll find more time to post little updates and even travel logs (though I’ll have to keep some details out).

Oh, one last thing — don’t be jerks to truckers. If we signal that we want to move over, let us. Don’t pass on the right. And don’t get in front of us and stop unless you want to meet Jesus. It takes us a lot of time and space to stop those rigs. If you don’t like that, go argue it with God and Sir Isaac Newton.

— G.K.

Announcing new stuff!

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Announcing new stuff!

So, last week I went up to visit my First Reader in the near-middle of the United States. We had an absolutely great time together and are looking forward to many more great times together in the future. Additionally, while I was up there, I began working on my latest WIP series: the Blade of Fate. I am planning to release this in two versions: one version as a more straight-line fantasy story with just a touch of romance and another, steamier version (under a different pen name). I also seem to have gotten myself roped into helping a fellow teacher-person with some non-fiction books which may mean yet another name.

Therefore, if you see stuff that is identical to something I’ve written as G.K. Masterson but under a different name, check with me before you take out the torches and pitchforks. Chances are, it’s a re-release into a different market. I want to keep my brands separate instead of getting known as “that chick who writes kinky fantasy novels.”

In other WIP news: I am almost finished with Lanar’ya 3. I am planning to have a long talk with my publisher on that series about getting the rights back and then re-releasing it once I have found an editor to re-edit the series. And, I’m still working in the Cycle of the Eternals universe but I’m not planning to actively put out the first book until I have a few more in the kitty. Had I known that Lanar’ya 3 was going to be so stubborn about being written, I’d have held off a bit on that series, too.

Lastly, if I have time between all the traveling, other writing, and teaching-prep I have to do this summer, I will start trying to update my serials more often. I may give Patreon another go to see if I can make “gas and milk money” off it.

However, all that said, I am not going to promise to blog more often. As explained above, I have about eight hojillion projects on various burners not to mention finishing up my Master’s degree which involves plenty of writing there, too.

Thanks to all of you who have stuck around!

— G.K.

Origins and the Canary in the Coal Mine

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I think what bothers me more than just the whole “weak woman” thing (and, once again, thank you so much for setting us back again, Whitney!) is the chilling effect that dis-inviting folks like Larry Correia, Jon del Arroz, John Ringo, and Tim Bolgeo from conventions has on free speech and free thought. I mean, let’s assume for the moment that every negative thing said about these guys is true. Let’s assume — again, for the sake of argument only — that they are the horrible things that the crybullies say they are.

Does silencing them do anything to prove them wrong? Hell no. All you’ve done is show that you don’t have an effective argument against whatever it is you are strawmann-ing them to have said/thought/believed. You are, in essence, saying that they are right. Do you want to know how we got the Civil Rights Movement to work? It wasn’t by silencing the segregationists — it was by answering their speech with our own and proving them wrong. It was about refuting their arguments. It was about reaching out to them and connecting with them as humans and helping them to see that segregation was a bad thing for whites and blacks. And it took a long time to get where we are and, while we still have a ways to go, we’re all in a much better place than we were in the 1940s and 1950s.

In a way, this bothers me so much because gaming and sci-fi/fantasy have become the new canaries in the coal mine for the free speech movement. Everywhere else, people have caved in to the crybullies — tech, science, literary works, romance, horror, religion, history and historiography — but the geek world fought back. The geek world said “we really don’t care what you have in your pants, who you like to hump, or what the melanin ratio in your skin is — if you like our stuff, we like you” and refused to bow down to the crybullies and the Stalinists who would, quite frankly, like it if everyone to the left of Mao got sent to the gulag. When our world starts getting invaded by people who are NOT part of it — and seriously, a playboy billionaire and his rich bitch probably do not spend their Saturdays playing D&D — and who insist that we have to exclude people for wrongthink instead of engaging them, it’s time to fight back and to tell them to go back to their segregated, gated neighborhoods where the domestics are invisible and leave the rest of us the hell alone.

We are the gutter genre — we’re where everyone mixes together, tells good stories, experiments with exploring cultural problems by substituting elves and dwarves and whatever else for humans, and who honestly don’t care that much if you’re male, female, transsexual, gay, straight, bi, poly, white, black, yellow, red, purple with green stripes. We’re the place where all the outcasts are safe to hang out and talk. We are the United States of the writing world — a place for the oddballs to mix, have more oddball kids, and then dream up awesome stuff that the elites can’t think up because they’re too trapped in their boxed-in, fenced-in, invitation-only worlds. We need to stay what we are and not let the mainstreamers screw us over by imposing their whitebread blinkered view of reality on us and hemming us in with boxes — check boxes, tick boxes, political boxes, socio-economic boxes — and keep mixing it up. We need to bring in people who are interested in telling great stories with great characters — characters and stories that can appeal to many different audiences.

If we let them win, if we give up and let them segregate this last place where we all meet and mix, we’re boned. Big time. So, roll up the sleeves and let’s start building a new place for people of all races, genders, creeds, and socio-economic brackets (not just the chardonnay sippers from the “right” neighborhoods in the “smart” cities) to meet up, talk games, swap stories, and to have all the cultural miscegenation we want.

— G.K.

These Three Things…

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These Three Things...

So, yeah, I am a terrible blogger. I got a job teaching English at the high school level and haven’t had the time or the energy to blog much since it came down to “write” or “blog” and I opted for “write.”

That said, I’m in-between projects at the moment and figured I’d take a crack at trying to keep this place from getting too cobwebby. Granted, I did have to take a flamethrower to it in order to clear up the arachnid infestation…

But I digress.

In recent days, I’ve had love on my mind. No, not like that (not that I’d be against it but the likelihood of it working out is somewhere between zip and zilch). Rather, I’ve been thinking about how several of us who are single are probably not doing much to improve our chances of getting in a relationship because we’re confused about what love is at a fundamental level. It doesn’t help that we’ve been force-fed a steady diet of lies in this arena all of our lives, either, and that, really, it’s only through Orthodoxy that I began to get a glimpse of the truth about love (which means I don’t hold out a lot of hope for my Western brothers and sisters).

Living in our times, we’re confused about a lot of things. For instance, we have no clue what love really is. Speaking English (or any of the Romance languages) compounds the problem because we’re all using one word (“love” or a derivative of “amare”) to describe what is actually three different things. The Greeks had this one right when they used three words: agape (the pure sense of love/affection/connectedness), eros (sexual attraction), and philia (a more distant affection/affiliation than agape). Of these three, the “best” kind — the kind that makes marriage work — is agape (αγαπε). Now, relationships should begin with a touch of either eros or philia (ερω or φιλια) and that should be enough for both parties to decide that there is a basis to build a solid partnership on.

There’s no “falling.” No sudden epiphanies as seen on the Hallmark channel. There’s no Road to Damascus moment where you move from “not loving” to “loving” someone. Actually, as Christians (and yes, I’m Christian), we’re called to love all people. After all, God loved us all enough that He became Incarnate and died to free us from Death. So, I have (and am called to have) a basic level of love for everyone. For me, this is generally philia that, over time, matures into a platonic agape relationship or moves into familial territory (like my Orthodox Ma — the lady who sponsored me when I converted). For most people, this kind of love is easy and natural because it’s not been surrounded by cultural mythology, fancy advertising, and baggage enough to sink a cargo ship.

But romantic love? The love that most of us spend our lives yearning for? The love that our culture holds as the pinnacle of existence? The love that so many chase in the wrong places — bars, clubs, the hook-up scene, singles mixers, church meetings, etc? Yeah, we’re pretty good at chasing the “wrong” things and ignoring the “right” ones because we’ve completely lost sight as to what love and marriage really are.


We’re so blinded by our ideas of love that we can no longer see the Real Thing.

Y’all, it’s not complicated. Love, followed by marriage, is a decision. It’s as simple as that. It’s a decision that is consciously controlled — indeed, it only works well when both parties consciously decide to love each other and to commit to each other. They may base their relationship on a foundation like friendship, common interests, or a shared faith and vision of family. They may have a mild erotic attraction to each other — though I think many would be amazed to learn that simply getting to know someone can spark an attraction where one didn’t exist earlier — but they both understand that the attraction is like the paint, curtains, and furnishings of a house — without a solid foundation and support structure, none of those things matter. Without the “unsexy” part (the walls, the foundation, the siding, the roof), the fun parts (the romance) will be ruined at the first sign of rain.


Not as cool as it looks here, tbh

Now, I know some of you are thinking “but G, you’re divorced.” Yes, I am divorced. Yes, I made a lot of mistakes in my marriage. I feel like I demanded more from my husband than was reasonable — I wanted him to be more emotionally supportive than it was in his nature to be. I was a bit more introverted and more of a homebody than was good for him. I wasn’t willing to learn more about his field to help him and to support him in it while wanting him to listen to me yammer on about mine incessantly. In the end, I’m not surprised he was unwilling to remain married to me after a few really crappy years for us. I’ve spent a good bit of time reflecting on why my marriage failed and, in the end, it really did come down to a decision. We decided to let life part us and we parted amicably. He’s a great guy and I wish him well in finding another wife.

So, if, like me, you’re single and you want to stop being single, quit waiting for lightning to strike. Find a single friend and see if he’s interested in being more. Or, fellas, think about that one female friend you’re always saying would make an awesome girlfriend and go for it. Look around you and make that decision — the decision that you are going to see if that other person is willing to at least consider deciding on you. If they aren’t, then keep the friendship and move on to someone who is willing to decide and to choose to build a life with you.

Right now, that’s what I’m weighing for myself and it’s not easy. But then, nothing worthwhile ever is. And remember that in your writing. Take what you’re feeling — all of it — and use that to build a connection to your readers like I’m doing right this minute. The fear, the hope, the exhilaration, the guttedness, the despair, and then, at long last, the contentment.

I’ll let you jokers know if I ever get to the last one. 😛

— G.K.

Epic Adventures in Aunting

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Epic Adventures in Aunting

So, my niece Mini-me is down here making my life interesting. And, by “interesting,” I mean “why did you do that? What part of you considered it a good idea?”

An example of this that just happened: Mini-me has an old bike. She knows she is supposed to put it away when she’s not riding it. However, today she decided that “away” meant “right behind the Kabota.” Auntie GK needed to take some meat that had spoiled over to the dump so, like a moron, I got in the Kabota without checking all around it thoroughly to ensure that nothing would be destroyed. I put the thing in reverse and noticed that, after a few feet, it was dragging as if the tire was flat or something. So, I get out and lo and behold, there is a little girl’s bike wedged under the Kabota. And I mean wedged. As in “we’re going to need a hydraulic jack to lift the Kabota and get this baby out.”

So, I come inside to tell Mom and Mini-me about the demise of her bike. Mom takes it in stride — she’s raised two kids of her own and is used to Mini-me’s antics. Mini-me, on the other hand, is convinced that her Pawpaw is going to turn into a “complete psychomaniac” and seal her in a bottle and drop it in California. I’m just wondering how long the ribbing is going to go on over me running over her bike. This will probably be my Pizza Box story.

Kids. I love ’em.

— G.K.

Suffocation

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In the wake of Chris Cornell’s apparent suicide, mostly everyone in my various writer-ly (totally a word) has been talking about their experiences with depression. Though there are a lot of commonalities, most of us tend to have experienced it differently. Yes, there’s the whole “lack of energy/motivation” and the whole “my brain won’t stop yelling at me” thing. However, the black dog is something I have fought off and on for years and my experience is only faintly similar to what I’ve read from Kate Paulk among others (whose links I cannot find).

She talks about how she externalizes her depression to make it seem as if the ideas that it shouts come from elsewhere. For me, though, it’s different. I know they come from my own brain. I just happen to realize they’re from the incredibly stupid and selfish part of my brain and I have gotten rather good at ignoring them. So, no worries that I’m going to do anything stupid. I’ve witnessed first-hand what that does to the people who outlive the deceased and there is no way in hell I’d do that to anyone.

No, for me, the worst bits are the physical parts. There are days where it takes all the energy I can muster just to sit up. Moving hurts. Nothing is interesting. Nothing can capture my attention or my imagination. Every step, every thought feels as if I am struggling to swim through syrup. All I want to do on days like that is stay curled up in my bed and daydream or sleep.

But, I generally force myself to get up and get moving. Yes, it’s going to hurt like a wicked bitch. However, eventually I grow somewhat detached from the pain and can mask it or ignore it well enough to do whatever I need to do that day. Days like that generally find me tearing through fanfics, spending hours at Khan Academy, editing my older works, or binge-watching Marvel movies until I feel the pressure fading enough that I can breathe easily. I can honestly say that The Avengers, Dr. Strange, and Loki have helped me keep it together long enough to wrest control of my body back from that damned dog. A few times I’ve considered sending everyone involved in those films a fruit basket or something but I’m sure they all have better things to do than deal with that so I have managed to refrain from it. Being broke also helps a bit, there. 😉

I suppose it also helps that I’ve made peace with my demons and the skeletons in my closet. I’ve also gained considerable control over my emotions to the point where neutrality is my default state. I may experience mild moments of amusement, exasperation, irritation, or joy over the course of any given day but, for the most part, my neutrality protects me. It’s a nice, thick shield that keeps that damned dog from laying down on my chest and suffocating me. Without my control, I don’t think I would have made it this far. I just wish I had learned it sooner. It’s helped me pinpoint when I’m about to enter a flat spin and spiral downwards until I crash and enabled me to stave it off by distracting myself from whatever emotion is about to blindside me. That’s partly why I have gained some little mastery over higher mathematics, why I’m working on understanding dimensional mathematics, why I know so damned much about physics, astronomy, cosmology, criminology, abnormal psychology, anthropology, the behavior of crowds, nuclear physics, history, literature, and why I can speak so many languages. I do these things to distract myself from overwhelming emotions, to give them no chance to knock me off my feet and drag me under their currents.

It’s how I survive and it beats the hell out of my adolescent survival trick of simply dissociating and running on auto-pilot.

Yes, I struggle with depression still. However, I have managed to reach a stage of reasonable contentment and tranquility. I know that the happiness that most others experience will probably never be something I can share. I know the sacrifices I have had to make to stay (relatively) sane and functional. I know that my circadian rhythm is screwed up beyond any real hope of repair. I accept these things. This is simply how life is for me. There’s a certain loveliness in the shades of grey that too frequently surround me and they make those brief splashes of color all the more beautiful and precious.

It is a bit odd that so many of writers are broken and bent like this. I don’t know if it’s something that our brains require of us so we can write or if we can write because our brains are this screwed up. That will be something to ponder, I suppose, the next time I need a good distraction. 🙂

— G.K.

PS — If you are undergoing acute depression or have unmanaged chronic depression or ever feel suicidal, please, call the Suicide Prevention Hotline (1-800-273-8255) or the Samaritans at (212) 673-3000. Whoever you are, where ever you are, you have something left to do and you need to figure out what it is.

Oh Really?

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Oh Really?

Before we start: not all people living along the Coasts are jerks. Quite a few of you are awesome. You may not always agree with people out in Flyover but at least you’ve shown that you can shut up and listen. You don’t spend months lecturing us like we’re children and then turn around and try to act like you’re our patron saints. None of this is directed at those of you who get it. It’s directed at morons who can’t and won’t get it and who, in a few days, will be right back down to calling my lesbian sister a Literal Hitler because she voted for Trump.

Sorry, sometimes people post stuff on Facebook and I know that they mean well but it makes me want to hold AT&T to their old promise with a twist — instead of reaching out to touch someone, GK wants to reach out and smack a bitch.

Recently a few writers have been pointing out that poor whites in Appalachia and other places in Flyover Country have been getting a raw deal and no one cares. This is not news to any of us who have lived here. This is simply the normal state of affairs. Urbanites on the Coasts think we’re terrible, awful, horrible, evil, ignorant people and they feel oh-so-sorry for us because they’re so enlightened and if we’d just let them run our lives for us, they could create a Utopia tomorrow.

We generally roll our eyes, ignore them, and go on with our lives.

We’re pretty used to getting taken advantage of out here and skin color has fuck-all to do with it. Out of town companies come in, start stripping out natural resources, hire a few locals at low wages because the cost of living is low and the choice is “work for crap” or “be unemployed.” Naturally, the more ambitious of us opt to work for crap. We’re also all pretty decent at mathematics so we know that the trope of taking the CEO’s pay and dividing it amongst all the workers would result in, on average, maybe $50 a year more. Take the entire company’s profit and divvy it up and we get maybe an additional $200 a year. Of course, do either of those things and the company goes tits up but we also are smart enough to reason our way to that.

Want to know what keeps us down? Bullshit. That’s the answer. Elitist Bullshit. It’s gotten a lot harder to start your own business and run it out of your home until you make enough money to get an office. Why? Because you have to get a license, a permit, and insurance for everything because the elites on the Coasts have decided that we must be protected from everything and we get to pay for the privilege of that protection. Want to be a hair stylist? You have to go to school and get a license to do that. Want to open a car repair shop? Permit needed! Want to mow lawns or do landscaping? Permit required. Want to start a driving service for elderly folks? Yep, you gotta get a permit for that and hope like hell that you can avoid competing against the taxi services. Hell, if you want to do computer repairs, build websites, or do online marketing it’s getting to where you may need to be licensed to do them.

There’s also the fact that there are virtually no resources for helping people out here start small businesses. And, if you do start one, you lose any benefits you’ve been getting for being unemployed. It doesn’t matter if you aren’t making enough money the first few months to pay your bills — you’re working so no help for you! Oh, sure, you can get a loan but you have to have collateral and you have to be able to pay it back (with interest). If you fail, you’re pretty much screwed for life unless you come from a rich family.

Other things that keep us down are the crap over our flags and our history. Look, for Mississippi, changing the state flag is going to cost tens of millions of dollars. We would much rather that the tax dollars that would be used for that be put towards something like our school systems, helping the poor, and rebuilding parts of the state that got destroyed that year. Yes, we have a corrupt government and that sucks out a lot of money but the only folks who aren’t corrupt are the ones who aren’t interested in running for office. That’s pretty much par for the course where ever you go, though. However, if we’re getting boycotted or having investment opportunities denied to us because we prioritize improving our lives over making a bunch of idiots who want to white-wash history and have us forget what a horrible thing the Civil War was, then yeah, we’re really going to listen to you. *eyeroll*

Lastly, it’s funny how easy it is for so many of you to talk down to us, tell us how to vote, tell us how to think, tell us what we should be doing but it’s really damned difficult for any of you to actually do something other than run your mouths. Right now my home city has suffered through a water mains burst that has close to 30k people without water. The only people I see doing anything about it are those of us who live here. Those of us who live out in the county and are unaffected by the outage are opening our homes to friends, family, and acquaintances who are impacted. The entire area is going out and getting all the bottled water they can and setting up distribution centers to get it out for free. Churches and fire departments and the working water system (Culkin) are organizing themselves to help others. Why? Because that’s what we do, dipshits. When life goes sideways, we actually do more than fart words. We get out and help each other because we know that all we’ll get from the Coasts is a bunch of tut-tutting, “how awful,” and maybe $5. When some of our cities on the Gulf Coast get obliterated, we get reamed for living there — never mind that there is not a single. fucking. place. on. the. continent. that doesn’t have freaky weather events.

We still have a community out here in Flyover Land. We still pitch in and help each other. We stick together. Urbanites don’t do that. Urbanites think that the government is supposed to take care of everything from cradle to grave. Out here, we know that government will only screw things up so we set up something that will work. We volunteer. We don’t sit on our hands and cry “poor, pitiful me!” We roll up our sleeves, hit the store, buy whatever we can, and give it to those who need it. We donate to our churches who go out every day and help the poor. We volunteer to teach adult education classes.

Frankly, it gets annoying to see people on the Coasts who have spent the past several months referring to everyone in Flyover as Literal Hitlers, Neo-Nazis, or whatever because they voted for Trump in droves suddenly start acting like they’re ready to be BFFs. If you want to help us, quit talking down to us and start businesses here. Come in and help us build better school systems instead of shackling us with crap like Common Core. Shut your pie-holes and listen because we live here. We grew up here. We’re part of this place and it’s part of us. You only experience it from 35k feet in the air. We know our people. We know our communities. We know how your utopian bullshit will just set up perverse incentives for the worst among us and will magnify problems instead of fixing them.

We don’t need your patronizing attitudes. We need you to quit looking down on us because we don’t want to be jam-packed into cities that have to import water and are too filled with morons to build desalinization plants — not to mention are built on a fucking FAULT LINE. We prefer to have our space, to live closer to nature, and to distribute our culture a bit more sparsely so that one major disaster won’t shatter all the eggs.

So, the next time one of you wants to show how “compassionate” you are by sharing articles about people, places, and cultures you routinely insult, denigrate, and couldn’t begin to understand just stop. Just fucking stop already. We’re tired of it.

— G.K.

PS — Once again, not all people living along the Coasts are jerks. Quite a few of you are awesome. You may not always agree with people out in Flyover but at least you’ve shown that you can shut up and listen. You don’t spend months lecturing us like we’re children and then turn around and try to act like you’re our patron saints. None of this is directed at those of you who get it. It’s directed at morons who can’t and won’t get it and who, in a few days, will be right back down to calling my lesbian sister a Literal Hitler because she voted for Trump.

Acquired Tastes

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Acquired Tastes

First of all, yes, I realize I’m a crappy blogger. However, in my defense, I’ve been juggling writing, working, school, working, writing, and studying things that almost literally make my brain hurt. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to force a brain and set of senses that evolved in a three-spatial dimension universe where the fourth dimension is a connected tunnel that can be traversed only in one direction (without technology) into thinking the way that a being from a universe with four spatial dimensions and two temporal dimensions which, when gravity is in play, can be traversed either linearly or in a punctiliar manner?

It makes me dizzy. I have actually tipped over and fallen out of my chair a few times doing this. I have a note reminding me to revert back to native mode before standing because, if I don’t, I will fall on my ass.

At any rate, did you miss me?

In my time on this planet, I’ve learned that I, like most of my acquaintances and friends, am something of an acquired taste. Then I started realizing that the handful of people I consider close friends all have things in common with me that causes the world to eye the lot of us in askance. We get hit with a lot of labels — weird, strange, odd, eccentric, sociopath, psychopath — but the truth is none of those things can tell the whole tale.

We are an acquired taste unless you are one of us.

For example, on my Facebook wall, there have been multiple discussions ranging from topics including Sherlock’s likelihood of hooking up with various characters from the show. No arguments, mind, but simple discussions drawing evidence, examples, and data. It’s extremely calm compared to the fandom “discussions” that take place over at Tumblr where, if you so much as point out a single in-universe inconsistency with someone’s OTP, you will get flamed.

That’s why I don’t hang out on Tumblr much.

Other discussions have included which NuWho companion is the most awesome (Donna and then Clara). There’s also been discussion over how to protect flags on the Moon so that they won’t lose their color so quickly, methods for getting off the planet and establishing a lunar base, a general shared disdain for authoritarians of all stripes, general smart-assery, and making fun of idiots. I really only have a core of about ten people who regularly pay much mind to what I post because most of it just isn’t of interest to the vast majority of my Facebook “friend” roll.

All of this got me thinking about why there are so few people like me and these others. I mean, we’re all probably well above average in intelligence (which gives us an evolutionary leg up). Most of us are healthy and can do useful things (shooting, repairs, computer programming). We’re also pretty good at communicating and do know how to make friends. We’re just turned off by the vast majority of humanity because they don’t interest us. However, unless our traits are all recessive (which they very well could be; I’m not up on the biology and hereditary nature of intelligence and cognitive processing), there should be a lot more of us. Maybe there are and we simply haven’t found them because we’re limited by our language (my friends all speak English or French though I can generally muddle my way through German, Italian, and Spanish when it’s written down). Maybe it’s because there are so few of us that the likelihood, in the pre-Internet era, of us stumbling across each other was rather small so we didn’t and generally wound up either never marrying or marrying “normal” people who could tolerate our quirks and whatever it is in our genetics (if anything) didn’t make it to the next generation to the degree that it is present in us.

Yeah, I think about weird stuff. Get over it.

This also leads me to wonder just how large a game-changer the Internet is going to wind up being with regards to human evolution. Now that those of us who are a bit on the quirky but brainy side can find each other, the likelihood of two of our kind meeting and having children together increases. That may increase the chance that our kind’s offspring inherits whatever (if anything genetic) it is that makes us “tick.” Play this out through a few generations and, by the middle of the next century, we may be living in a very different world simply because the skills, traits, and tendencies that under-gird social interactions now may no longer be as relevant in the future. I’m not certain if this is good or bad but I am certain that it’s going to be very fucking interesting.

— G.K.

Ah, my old friend…

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Ah, my old friend...

So, recently I decided I was a bit sick of being overweight and out of shape. So I decided to 1) go on a ketogenic diet (it’s working), 2) start hitting the gym (thank God I can download Sherlock to my Kindle and have something to watch while I’m killing myself on the elliptical), 3) stopped taking OTC sleep aids since they screw up metabolism.

Number Three has resulted in the return of my old friend insomnia.

Now, a lot of people think “oh, I have trouble sleeping from time to time so I have insomnia” or “I didn’t sleep last night (but I normally sleep every night). Must be insomnia.” When I hear that kind of talk, it takes a lot of will power not to start a murder spree.

Insomnia is not having trouble sleeping once in a while. For me, it’s the normal state of affairs wherein, even when completely exhausted, I cannot fall asleep or remain asleep for longer than an hour. Currently, this acute bout has been on-going for almost a week and I’m beginning to reach the stage where punch-drunk becomes a permanent thing. Yes, I have cut out caffeine after noon. Yes, I have filters on my monitors, phone, and Kindle to make them more amber and less serotonin-inducing blue. Yes, I have tried every home remedy, every relaxation technique, and even considered sacrificing a goat to Cthulhu just to be sure I’ve covered the ‘praying’ base adequately.

And yes, cat naps are about the best I can do.

Long-term, I’ve been like this since college at least. This is why, when I do manage to get some “real” sleep, it’s usually around 5 am and I will stay crashed until around 11 am (or later!) Bear in mind, I will have been in bed since 11 pm (though, to be fair, I do get up at 1 or 2 am out of sheer frustration and go smoke and let my dog use my hand as a chew-toy).

Why haven’t I gone to a doctor and gotten back on Restoril or tried Ambien? Oh…you really don’t want to ask me that but since you made that mistake…

I have insurance. I have it through the state exchange since I am, to be precise, skint. However, the insurance offered through the exchange is not accepted by any doctors in my state because said insurance won’t pay out anything. Therefore, I’m paying around $200 a month for a card that will, at best, allow me into a hospital in the event of a catastrophe. It won’t pay for anything — that’ll all come out of my pocket, natch — but it will let a bunch of morons clustering together in easily-targeted regions feel better about themselves.

So, yeah, I can’t exactly go to a doctor and get on something that will let me sleep.

God, you have no clue just how much I want to sleep, either. Probably the only person on this planet who knows what I’m like when this happens is my ex who had to deal with me working long hours on little sleep back in the era when Talent Calculators had to be translated by hand (apparently I once slept-tanked a Naxx 10 raid after pulling back-to-back sixteen hour days for four days straight — I vaguely recall pulling Anub’Rekhan. After that, nothing. The next day I woke up thinking I had missed the raid which amused my husband who told me I’d gone, done well, and we had cleared three wings before he realized I was playing with my eyes closed and told my guild that I was asleep and had been for several bosses).

At any rate, at least I’ve had a lot of extra time for writing.

Yeah, so, toodles!

— G.K.

I Know, I Know… But I Have A Really Good Excuse This Time

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I Know, I Know... But I Have A Really Good Excuse This Time

And no, I haven’t been wasting all my free (non-work, non-school, non-writing) time watching Sherlock, Doctor Who, or playing Diablo III (don’t even mention Mass Effect Andromeda — we split up and it was not amicable. I’m planning to sue to try to get those hours of my life back). Nope, I have been studying calculus and numeric theory. Oh, and string theory physics, standard model, and quantum mechanics.


It took me two solid weeks of studying but I actually get this joke and think it’s hilarious.

By the way, have I mentioned I have been hired to teach high school English next year?


That’s right. I will be teaching English. Not science. Not math. Not any of the things I spend my free time studying. English. I have a degree in history and I’m teaching English.

My Scrivener research section looks like an odd mix of math and physics notes that even I can barely make sense of. When I started trying to parse chemistry and biochemistry I realized that regardless of what my IQ is, I can’t handle atoms and molecules. Leptons, bosons, fermions, strings, vibrations, and my pet theory that gravity isn’t a proper force — it’s the result of another force spanning multiple dimensions: that’s all relatively simple for me to sort out. Start mixing those together in atoms more complex than hydrogen and my head does this really interesting number that makes a migraine feel like a love-tap.

So, why am I doing this? No, not just because I’m a very special kind of insane. Not just because it interests me, either. And not just to make my lovely ex-husband send me a War and Peace length list of corrections. Nope, this is actually for a series. It’s probably the weirdest thing I’ll ever write but it’s one that just won’t leave me alone until I finish the thing (other writers will understand what I mean).


Seriously, it’s like this story — which started out as relatively simple — decided to throw a lot of challenges at me and, for some reason known but to Cthulhu, I am too much of a masochist to stop accepting them.

And that, my dears, is why I haven’t been blogging much lately. I’m good with history, languages, tactics, logistics, encryption, and computers but math and chemistry will wipe the floor with me every day of the week. Lately, I have just been either too busy trying to wrap my head around concepts that ought to make sense but just won’t or recovering from the headache that this effort invariably brings on.

That said, I will try to get better.

— G.K.