I have a strange relationship with makeup. I rarely leave my house without it. Foundation, shadow, blush, eyeliner and mascara, in every color of the rainbow. I feel a little naked without it, even though every day I tell myself “We’re going light on the makeup today, no more spending 20 minutes in front of the mirror, it’s just silly.” But I still do it, because it’s important. It’s as important to me as a nice outfit and a pair of comfortable shoes.

My feminist friends would say that I don’t need makeup. It’s fake and degrading. It makes women paint themselves up for the sake of pleasing others, or finding a husband, or something equally off-putting. You don’t have to be pretty for anybody, and that’s true, you don’t. But I don’t make myself up for others, I do it for myself. Every day, I put myself together the way I want to be seen. I change my makeup to match my mood, my outfit, my plans for the day. Makeup is just a tool, in a long list of tools at my disposal, that I use to sell myself every day.

This package is put together for a reason. It’s a composite of plot devices, blog posts, carefully chosen outfits.  I want to stand out to others. I want to present myself as the best possible me, in order to sell my product. That product is my writing, my imagination. As artists we have to sell ourselves. I don’t have the luxury of a physical, tangible offering to give people. I’m not a singer whose voice you can hear, an artist whose creations you can hold, or an actor whose work you can watch. I’m a writer. I force you to take time out of your day to read what I create, to stop what you’re doing to focus on my words. So if I’m going to convince you that I’m worth your time, I’m going to have to work for it.

Maybe I don’t have to be pretty in order to hawk it, but I want to be pretty for me. I want to look that way I feel every day, whether I’m at work or in a line at the grocery store. I don’t make myself up to make people happy, or to shut them up, or to look the way they want me to look. I am this, this mouth, this mind. This outfit, this makeup, this package is just the polish. It’s the war-paint that I wear to do battle in. I want to look as unique and confident as my work, because that’s how I feel. I can do it without makeup too, but right now, right this minute, I don’t feel like it.

I own my makeup, my wardrobe, my exterior. It doesn’t own me.

I’m tired of the city. I’m tired of tall buildings and caterpillar traffic. I hate being fenced in by cookie-cutter houses and apartment complexes, surrounded by the faces of neighbors who all lock their doors and hide behind their drawn curtains.  It’s crowded and slow and I just feel stuck.

Maybe it’s the turn of the weather. The heat makes me crave wide opened spaces and green grass, tall trees and dusty Missouri back-roads. I’m a Lost Boy at heart, and I realize this about myself. I don’t want to grow up and live in a cereal-box apartment in the city or a tiny one-bedroom in the suburbs, with neighbors and mortgages. There are no stars in the city, the sky’s too dusty and peppered with neon lights. It makes me feel boxed in, cut off from the world, even when I’m surrounded by people and noise at all sides. I’m up to my elbows in noise. I’ve had enough.

I want to a plot of land off a dirt road, some tiny house or trailer to hang my hat, and a telescope to see the stars at night. I want some small space alone, for me and the cats and the dogs and the turtle (and maybe the girlfriend, if she wants to come with). I want a mile of trees in any direction and a big ugly fence. I want to fire bottle rockets off in my backyard in my pajamas and have to drive the pick-up to the mailbox. I want to feel like I’m eight-years-old again, running in the woods and splashing in the creek on my family’s land in the foothills.I want to trade asphalt for grass. I just want to get lost, and stay lost, and never come back.

I don’t want to grow up, and I want to do it right.

Some days I have difficulty reconciling my arts background with my writing. I’ve always written, but for a long time I was always painting, drawing, doodling and making things as well. There was a brief period, a year, maybe two, that I was taking steps to pursue the art field. I was filling up the school year with studio hours, pondering my portfolio, considering art programs, and attempting to establish a web presence for myself. I didn’t consider myself an artist, not really. I painted childlike watercolors of soft bulbous animals like plush dolls and lanky, nearly featureless people, stretched out like spaghetti. I made weird little trinkets and jewelry, and none of it was very good at all, at least I didn’t think so.

In spite of this, I had teachers and classmates herding me towards art shows and colleges. I had a few fans of my work, positive reception from professors at other schools, attention from one art magazine editor that I knew of, a handful of tiny sales, and I even had a table in my first “big” art show last spring. It was there that I was approached by the Etsy Texas Crafters about joining up with them.

However, as positive as the reception was at that art show, it was also the killing blow to whatever aspirations I had about going into the arts. The show itself was a little local gig put together by a Fort Worth-based art and crafters magazine. I was approached by the organizers to show my stuff there, and feeling like maybe it could be a step in the right direction, I went for it. I spent a lot of time (and money that I didn’t really have) to produce a large amount of work for the show and create a solid representation of myself. I went into it feeling hopeful that good things would come out of the show.

The show itself, however, was a disaster. The organizers failed to meet the promises made to the artists and vendors. They picked a horrific venue (a huge old warehouse building at the Stockyards with no A/C) on the same day that the flea-market was being held next door, and failed to promote the event accurately. Most of the traffic that came through the show was run-off from the flea-market, so a lot of the people there just wanted to  thumb up artist’s goods and haggle over prices. The vendors were told we couldn’t leave until the show concluded at 6pm, and the organizers ran around squashing all attempts to pack up early.

I only made $20, after spending $300+ in vendor fees, supplies, and stuff for the booth. Half of that $20 was from neighboring artists, wandering over because they were bored at their own tables. Granted I didn’t come there to make money, but I didn’t come there to be harassed. I certainly did not come there to be harassed by cheap, sun-burned housewives crammed into tube-tops and jean shorts, who shrieked about prices and let their kids thumb through my table before dropping my things and walking off. I just wanted to participate in an art show, and maybe be seen by some people who liked the things I made.

After eight hours sitting in a hot-box being prodded by white trash and chased around by event organizers who accused us of being spoil sports, I felt completely humiliated. I packed up, stuck all my things in boxes and bags and went home to hide them under beds and in closets. Alone in my car I cried for about 30 minutes, and felt like an idiot. I was naive and I let myself be conned by people who said they liked my stuff. I thought I should’ve known better.

I realize one terrible art show shouldn’t be enough to ruin my interest in making things, but it taught me a lesson: I’m not cut out for the art field. It’s time-consuming and expensive. Every minute and dime that I spend trying to establish myself through art shows and gigs, that takes away from time I could be spending writing and promoting my work. I can’t have competing portfolios vying for my time. Painting may have been alright as a hobby, but I no longer have a taste for it. I’m embarrassed by it. Maybe some people liked it, and maybe it’s childish of me to put it away because of one failure, but I just can’t be both people right now.

Maybe one day, when looking at old drawings doesn’t make me red-faced and want to hide under the bed, I can go back to it. It may not be any good, and it may not mean anything, but one day I might find joy in making things again. At this point in time, I have too much to say, too much to do, too many stories floating through my head. Oh well.

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My latest story is up to today at Everyday Weirdness. It’s about a girl named Kikyo, and her ex-boyfriend, and the black hole where her heart used to be. Good times were had by all. Stop by and take a peek at it, if you’d like.

Single Singularity

I have a Twitter now. I said I wouldn’t have one, because it didn’t seem useful at the time. I have a writing blog, a personal blog, and a Facebook for whenever I feel like yelling at strangers on the internet, which have served me pretty well so far. Outside of Tweet!stalking Misha Collins and Lady Gaga (and I’m not ashamed to admit it in public) I didn’t think I’d have much use for Twitter.

However, the longer I’m out trolling the internet, the more readily apparent it becomes to me  that I need another outlet. Facebook, while useful for writing updates, is kind of an unflattering medium for most of my random public outbursts. I find the blocky text of larger status updates cluttered and unappealing. It’s really more useful for quick blurbs, whereas most of my blurbs are rarely quick, or even on-topic, and too small to devote a blog entry to. It’s hard to justify an entire entry of The Mighty Boosh clips or Fight Club quotes outside of my personal journal, and even then, I’m usually pushing it.

Yes, I have thought very long and hard about how to deliver my stupidity to the masses. Thank you for asking.

Eonism @ Twitter

Expect obnoxious posts, pop-culture references, writing blurbs, and the occasional high-pitched squeal. That’s really the best I can promise you.

“Congratulations, Deborah,” Dr. Willis said calmly, flipping through the small collection of test results attached my chart, “you’re six weeks pregnant.”

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Downtown Fort Worth, Texas.

I never name names in my cities. I never spend too much time explaining cultural settings, geographic locations, the crisscross of skinny streets and train tracks. I try to keep my cities generalized, a blank slate or canvas for the reader to paint their own scenes. My own little slice of New York-Chicago-L.A.-Berlin-Tokyo-New Delhi, just add Your Face Here.

In reality, all my cities are the bastard children of Fort Worth, the nieces and nephews of Austin and Houston. Some intersections are all Dallas, edged by little corners of San Antonio. Everybody hangs out at Sundance Square, lives on Camp Bowie, shops on West 7th Street. I catch glimpses of characters at book stories, coffee shops, head shops, the Fort Worth Public Library and the Modern.

My characters are all transplants, save Shelby Day and the Gang from Parker County. Noam is London born and bred, Elliot comes from the West Coast, and Hillel is all posh metropolitan charm and resourcefulness. Casey dropped in from a boring stretch of Massachusetts countryside, Joel came here with his Welsh parents when he was eight-years-old, and Mariska was imported from Ukraine. They have no business walking my streets, drinking coffee in my shops, but here they are. It took me a long time to accept that they were all running around my city, and now I can’t stop seeing them.

I’ve spent my entire life in Texas, with the exception of a summer that vanished in the backwoods of Missouri and a year in Florida facing the Atlantic Ocean. Fort Worth has been my home for the last ten years. I’m not always thrilled to be here, having a lingering fondness for the weirdness of my birthplace in Austin, but as it stands now, it’s the only home I have. I tried to keep Fort Worth out of my writing for several years, for better or worst. I’ve done my best to keep my latch-key kids in Elliot and Casey from wandering around downtown when I wasn’t looking, and my aesthetes in Hillel and Noam from being seen at the Amon Carter.

It just didn’t seem proper to have such a decidedly southwestern, decidedly Texan setting serve as the backdrop to the kind of stories I wanted to tell. I didn’t think the audience could connect with my cities and my streets, and couldn’t see themselves walking around my sidewalks and beneath my trees. I’m coming to terms with my influences, I suppose, with my voice, and how my home has helped shape me. It takes time. Things like this always do.

But I think I’m finally okay with seeing my city in my writing, and my writing in my city. At least I’m getting there.

(And yes, Melissa. Noam and Elliot and Casey and Joel are neighbors. They live just off Camp Bowie downtown, and are quite content there.)

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Me in my Nurse Chapel costume, October 2009

I’m fannish by design. I go to conventions. I go to meet-ups. I go to midnight showings. I have costumes and wigs and insignia, and a growing collection of collectible figures (also known as dolls, okay, I’m not going to lie about that). I’ve sat in the official SyFy Cafe in a Flapjack costume, and eaten mahi-mahi surrounded by Hogwarts wizards and Klingons. I’ve participated in Ship Wars and yes, I read fanfiction. I’ve even written it. Shock and awe. Go ahead and call the cops on me, I’m cutting into your cash-cow and playing in your sandbox.

(I’ve yet to receive cease-and-desist letters from the Roddenberry Estate, so, you know. I think I can live with being a copyright-pilfering monster out to sully all your characters with my grubby, grubby fingers. Just saying.)

Fandom has always been my playground. It’s always been my safety-net, a home away from home. It’s a place where I can play freely with like-minded people (and the occasional ruffian, but who’s keeping count) who share my love of a book, movie or television show. I can play dress-up and wear my tin-hats proudly, and never feel out of place. I can confess my love for a character, or a story, or a scene, pull it apart, lay it out, talk about what makes it work so well. I can discuss post-modern deconstructionism in super-hero fiction, emerging female voices mainstream media and film-making, and still talk about how great Karl Urban looks in a pair of Levi’s. You can’t get that kind of interaction anywhere else in the world.

So now, at the age of 10-going-on-24, after 11 years involved in this craziness, I feel strange to say that me and Fandom are at an impasse. It’s not that I don’t love Fandom, and all the things I’ve seen, and all the people I’ve met along the way, because I do. I just feel like maybe I’ve waded out a little too far into the waters. Because the waters can be dangerous.

As with all good things, Fandom has its pros and cons, its good days and bad. On its best day, I’ve seen Fandom raise millions of dollars for Haiti earthquake relief, and bring awareness to the national dialogue of a woman’s rights in a culture that is predisposed to rape, slut-slamming and victim-blame. On its worst, I’ve seen Fandom rear its ugly head in the form of fan-entitlement, where fans feel the right to butt into the personal life of their favorite actor/writer/what-have-you, because they believe they have a right to this information. Family photos, personal affects, legal documentation, their kids, their dogs, their wives, whatever. I’ve seen it all. It’s messy, it’s awful, and people always end up getting hurt.

Fandom isn’t perfect, I know that. It’s made of people, and people are flawed and ugly. But they’re also good and honest and compassionate. I’ve been taking the good with the bad for a long long time, because as much as it can hurt, it can be so rewarding. But now I’ve reached a point where I don’t feel like I have to time or the energy to get so involved. Get so caught up. Get so riled up. I don’t know if I have the patience right now.

Maybe I just want to coast for a while. Just be a spectator, rather than run out, sword drawn, to play along. Maybe I just want to get lost in my own world for a while, and play in my own sandbox, and not worry so much about other people’s toys. Maybe I just want to be inspired by the actions and thoughts of other creators (writers, actors, directors), rather than be swept up by their creations themselves. Enjoy them, tease out their constituent parts, figure out what makes them tick, then let them go again. I feel like I take too much into myself because of Fandom, and for a while at least, I want to put more of myself out there instead.

Does that mean I’m giving up my costumes, my collectibles, my Star Trek: The Original Series box-set? No. Am I going to stop keeping up with Karl Urban and Misha Collins? I’d rather have my arm off, to be honest. But I am just going to sit back for a little bit, and hang out with these guys I’ve been talking to (Noam, Casey, Dan, and all the rest) and try to get to know them a little better. Maybe help other people get to know them a little better, too.