Jacqueline Jillinghoff: Blog

Bruno Traven, a talented graphic artist who appears to enjoy my work, has sent me an illustration for My Summer Gown, the last poem in the collection Pure Filth. His drawing has has been added to the verse.

Many thanks to Bruno. It's very cold here today, and the picture holds the promise of warmer times to come.

I don't think blog posts with external links show up in the home page feed, but maybe a few of my regular readers will see this nonetheless.

Not long ago, a new story of mine, Blessed Sacrament, was posted at littlesally666.com. Afterward, the guy (I assume it's a guy) who runs the site asked to interview me. Our exchange may be found HERE.

Hope you find it informative.

It was one year ago today (July 18) that the woman known as Naked Athena faced down the police in Portland, Ore. I commemorated the incident in a poem called, appropriately enough, Naked Athena, which is sort of a combination of Barbara Frietchie and Paul Revere's Ride, but, you know, with a naked woman in it.

The word 'naked' means to be without clothes. It needs no modifier to get its point across. A woman may be half naked or partially naked, but once all the clothes come off, she is, simply, naked. Yet often, almost unconsciously, I feel the need to add some kind of emphasis to focus more attention on the situation, and so I'll describe a woman as completely naked, or totally naked, or stark naked -- all of which is to say that she is, well, naked.

In most circumstances I'm an ogre about usage, and I abhor redundancy (unless it reveals something about character), and yet, in this one case, I am happy to make an exception. I write as much for myself as for my readers, and in this context, an intensive like utterly and totally, while strictly unnecessary, gives me a wee bit of a charge.

It's a hot summer day here in the US. Let's all get completely naked.

My latest, The Shoemaker's Daughters, has just gone up. It's a companion piece to my much earlier story The Nervous Princess, and it's written in the same formal, storybook style. I've been in touch with a reader who's into stories involving exhibitionism and nudism, and while I've been thinking about this particular scenario for some time, he inspired me to tackle it in earnest at long last.

I expect scores to be low, but I don't care anymore. I wrote what I wanted to write.