Quasirandom: Blog

A family funeral -- then Covid and recovery -- another, closer family funeral -- and so on and on. I’ve been writing, some, but entirely on a project for a ’nym that’s not my SOL handle. Not that I don’t have anything slated for here, but I haven’t looked at the novel in revision (about 2/3 through that) or the one being drafted (about 1/2 through that, I’m guessing) since, um, January. I’m hoping once my current day-job deadlines ease, I can return to one or the other, ’cuz I do like those stories and want to finish telling them.

>knocks on desktop<

TLDR: Urf.

My ten prose stories so far have 18 romantically-involved characters, 13 of which are points-of-view. Of these eighteen, 4 identify as gay, 12 are bi/pansexual plus another (the fairy) is ambiguously pan, and a grand total of 1 is straight -- a cis guy, wouldn’cha know it. This is pretty darn queer. More queer than I realized till I totalled them up.

As far as gender, 14 are cis, 1 is trans, and 2 are non-binary, plus 1 identifies with a binary gender that doesn’t match her intersex body. Not as queer, but at least not totally cisgendered.

Slicing another way, those romances involve 4 couples, 2 triples, and 1 quad, with no extended polyamory outside the committed relationships. Of course, one of the triples is featured in an actual series, which gives it a little more visibility. Still, a little more queer than the population average.

Slicing in yet another direction, 3 are latinx, 1 is racially ambiguous but presents as white (the fairy again), and the rest actually white. Even less diverse -- and not at all representative of the racial/ethnic diversity here in the United States. Nor of my multiracial family. Nor of my upbringing -- my two best friends in high school were black and latino, respectively.

As far as religion, 6 are identified as Christian of varying levels of devoutness, though the would-be Unitarian and the Quaker are edge cases of Christianity; 1 is a pantheistic pagan (the fairy yet again); and the rest are given no identification, though one is implied Christian by context. Also not very reflective of either my family’s or this country’s diversity.

Things to hold in mind as I move forward. Not that I should write towards quotas, but it’s something to be mindful of.

Also, watch out for fairies—they’ll wonk up your stats.

Reviewing old stories for possible revising and posting, I see that yet again I made the subtle joke of giving the Spanish teacher a French surname and the French teacher a Spanish surname. I honestly do not remember doing that -- I thought it was just the once, in the Triad series. Nope, it’s up to three times and counting.

Reuse a joke too often, and it gets stale. This is one problem with Dad Jokes. And in this case, I don’t think the solution is to swap French with German. I’ll just have to think of something suitably clever and, yanno, actually funny.

And since I brought the subject up, here:

Q: When does a joke become a Dad Joke?

A: When the answer becomes a parent (apparent).

Writing-wise, a pretty good one, despite everything else. I revised and posted a novel (mff) and a smutty narrative poem (Mf), and wrote and posted 2 novellas (mmff and xx) and 2 short stories (ff and mff). Plus elsewhere, under another handle, four fanfic short stories. Not bad at all.

And then there’s the things in progress. I’m actively working on two novels, being 3/4 through revising a mf fantasy romance (though the last 1/4th is going slowly as I’m replotting the fantasy adventure to punch it up) and somewhat less than halfway through drafting a mff romance with all Teh Teen Dramaz. They are both fun enough, I’m switching off between them, mainly when I have to pause to think something through. Waiting in the wings, I’ve 10k words each on two novellas (sweet mf romance and sex-crazed poly friendship) and a novel (mmf superheros), all interested in my attention.

So, yeah, more to come -- soon, I hope. May you all have a safe and happy new year to come!

The Romans had filthy minds, to put it mildly, and the people of medieval Europe had earthy senses of humor.

As a fan of smut, I’ve always been fond of medieval fabliaux -- short bawdy tales, typically in verse, popular throughout western Europe in the high middle ages. The genre started in France but spread to Germany and Italy, and Chaucer’s pilgrims also tell a few. As did Boccaccio. My medieval Italian is for shite, but his Decameron’s in prose and modern translations do fine for a pony. So for a lark, I once versified its smuttiest story, just to make it look more like a fabliau. And then forgot about it.

(The Decameron is quite topical, BTW: a party of aristocrats quarantine together for ten days (in their case, from the Black Plague) and tell each other stories to keep themselves amused. Sound familiar?)

Speaking of languages, I’m a serial language learner. Twenty or so years ago, I picked Latin as my next, just because. For better or worse, I have a habit, when I get to the point where I’m starting to read independently, of using poetry as practice texts -- to make it interesting. Sometimes, I translate poems that strike my fancy. For Latin, I mostly read Ovid, Catullus, and Martial, but I didn’t translate them much -- I mean, they’re popular for a reason, but that means they’ve been done so many times over the centuries. The smutty epigrams from the Priapea, however, caught my eye. Great stuff, and all but unknown. I translated about two dozen, all told, versifying half -- and forgot about them, too.

I’ve recently been going through my old files, seeing whether anything was worth revising or at least revisiting, and found both of these. As far as the priapic poems, the eight I posted were the best of the lot, or at least were the ones I’m not embarrassed to show in public. Alibech’s Service needed a little polish, mostly for voice, but otherwise was decent journeywork. And since the content of both fit SOL, here they are. I hope you enjoy them.