#jackie ess

[aubstacle-of-course]

Detransition, Baby isn’t perfect, but I thought it was pretty good. Probably my favorite book I’ve read so far this year, though I don’t like Torrey Peters’ writing style nearly so much as Jeanne Thornton’s (Summer Fun) or Jenny Hval’s (Paradise Rot). But the characters were engaging, and there was some thought-provoking exploration of themes. Darryl by Jackie Ess is a close second so far, but the ending of that one was a bit ridiculous imo lol.

[xenostalgic]

In the dream, Lisa was back in Seattle, attending, with artful deniability of her true purpose, an event where she was all but guaranteed to run into Kevin, and of course she did. The scene was hazy, but it was clear that whatever the party was, something opening or launching or coming to town, she’d cultivated a true, unfeigned interest in it and really done her homework. She sometimes felt her personality was the sedimentation of these maneuvers.

terribly upsetting in a way I can't identify. maybe I just wish I too were back in Seattle

[haveyoureadthistransbook]

Darryl by Jackie Ess

goodreads

Darryl Cook is a man who seems to have everything: a quiet home in Western Oregon, a beautiful wife, and a lot of friends to fuck her while he watches. But as he explores the cuckolding lifestyle, he finds himself tugging at threads that threaten to unravel his marriage, his town, and himself.

Mod opinion: I hadn't heard of this book before, but it does sound quite interesting.

[bi4bihankking]

Our Wives Under The Sea Summary:

Miri misses her wife. Her wife is living at home with her, but her wife spent six months missing in a submarine under the ocean and the woman who came back is not who Miri married.

Darryl Summary:

Our protagonist Darryl is a middle aged guy living off a trust fund who is into sissification and cuckolding kink, with kink providing a way for him to explore his sexuality and gender.

[computerluve]

A lot of the blues has these themes, I think. But that doesn’t feel like my story to tell. What the hell is up with these white guys who get really into old blues records? They’re so encyclopedic about it. Do you see it yourselves? If I know one thing it’s that it’s not my story to tell.

Darryl, Jackie Ess (2021)

[nathanabhaltersmith-shelf]

[seshrat]

i am like. SO HUNGRY for fiction written by trans people that’s just that little bit fucked up and juicy and gripping but i can’t find any fucking recs because all the lists are like “150 books with trans stories!” and 145 of them are the same copy pasted young adult romance/anti-romance shit with 14 year old protagonists and the other 5 is shit i’ve already read

[mortuarybees]

loving depictions of weird, difficult to categorize queer people and experiences my beloved

[shield-o-futuro]

Sempre achei que Jackie tivesse uma queda por Connor.

Jackie: Gostaria que você desenvolvesse melhor esse pensamento, porque eu não faço ideia do que pode ter te dado essa impressão.

[bgezal]

random but anyone got book recommendations

[drdemonprince]

i would pay so much fucking money for a devon price novel and i am not joking. tell me where to preorder that shit. or drop your reccs 👉👈 (yes i have read bluebeard’s castle)

Thank you for the support! I'm about 25k words in of what should be about 100k words by the end (pray for me that i dont get too Loquacious), and that's before several deep rounds of editing and then deciding what the fuck I want to actually do with this thing (serializing on a separate Substack is one idea; self-publishing as an ebook is another, but I also might try to sell it to at least a small press), so you're quite a ways out from getting to read it. I've never properly SAT on a work of fiction before -- I've always worked on longer fiction live, publishing it chapter by chapter online, and I rush to get my short stories out too, but this one feels precious and I really want to get it right.

In the meantime, here are some fiction recommendations for you. Some of them are inspirations for this book, others are just fiction that I have read lately that really connected with me. Some of it might be informing completely separate work, nothing to do with this novel. They're approximately in the order of most to least likely to connect with you, if you enjoyed Bluebeard's Castle by Anna Biller:

Beautiful World, Where Are You? by Sally Rooney

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin

Darryl by Jackie Ess

The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer by Jennifer Lynch

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind

American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis (lots of people think the novel version is far inferior to the movie, but I read it after becoming enchanted by the musical adaptation and now I am a stan of just, gosh everything to do with it)

the novel project is also really strongly informed by the games Life is Strange, LiS Before the Storm, and Who's Lila. a little bit of gone girl and queer as folk is swirled around in there too. astute readers of this blog will by now see why this project is so close to my heart. an entire lifetime of shit i care about is getting packed into here

[cazzyf1]

My favourite/interesting quotes from: Jim Clark Portrait of a Great Driver

"One winter afternoon when I was down there Clark explained that we had to listen for an aircraft around 4.0 p.m. as Colin Chapman, his wife and Jimmy's girl friend Sally Stokes were due to arrive. Chapman had never flown to the farm before and I remember raising an eyebrow when Clark explained how he had told Colin to find the farm. "I told him to fly to Berwick-on- Tweed and then along the line of the River Tweed from the mouth at Berwick. When he saw the first red barns on the north side he was to circle the house until he saw signs of life." At 4.0 p.m. we went outside and scanned the skies but there was no sign of action. At 4.20 p.m. there was the distant sound of an aircraft and we gazed at the slowly darkening skies and finally saw it, a speck in the distance flying in the wrong direction. Immediately Clark scrambled into a Ford Galaxie-Chapman's car, actually and we shot down the narrow farm road, through the esses near the main road junction and turned for Berwick. We had just set off and had reached about 70 m.p.h. when the 'plane suddenly turned and flew towards us. Clark flashed the headlights and Chapman dipped the wings in acknowledgement. A hand brake turn and we were zooming back past the farm and up a side road to the edge of a field filled with sheep. Clark whistled on his dog, jumped the five bar gate and lit out after the sheep with the dog at his heels. Between them they rounded the sheep up and sent them off to the far side of the field whilst Chapman made a couple of passes. On the third he almost touched down then flew off. "He's gone to Winfield", said Clark. So it was back into the Galaxie for another dash across country to the disused airfield, sometime circuit where Clark had run in some sprints in the earliest days of his motor sports career. There we pocked up Chapman and his passengers" - p25-27 Graham Gauld

"In general layout the farm had changed little over the years and it had a family ghost. This was the Grey Lady who Jimmy claimed to have seen when he was very young and taken for his mother. But, on the following morning his mother said she hadn't been near his room. Since then a number of people have been visited by the ghost. Once, when Jimmy and I were preparing some notes for his autobiography, we had a wild session with Jackie Stewart and Paddy Hopkirk. As we talked into the small hours it was decided that Stewart and I would share one room, while Paddy slept in another. Jackie and I thought it was all very funny because we believed that Jimmy had put Paddy into the haunted room but in fact we were told in the morning that we had been sleeping in it..." p27 Graham Gauld

"Clark was the world's worst passenger in any car, in any circumstances with any driver! Indeed, I can only think of one occasion in which I drove him, and then he was kind enough not to comment but just smile wanly every so often" - p46 Graham Gauld

"He once remarked that Indy would be "...fine without the Americans" but in time he made a number of friends over there" - p52 Graham Gauld

"Though to the end he was still a kindly person to those whom he allowed into his confidence, he occasionally displayed a petulance and spite which was generally uncharacteristic. To some people he was cruel, but admist this cruelty one felt that Clark was trying to punish himself for being unable to explain himself. Indeed, if he had an unfulfilled wish, it was to be understood by everyone, but to ask that was to ask for the impossible" - p73 Graham Gauld

"During those times it was a very hard job getting him to believe in himself" - p82 Ian Scott Watson

"The little things you remember are his smile, the way his whole face lit up, and his springy walk and the way he bit his nails. He was an incessant nail biter, which completely baffled me; although he had a slightly nervous disposition this completely dropped when he stepped into a racing car" - p90 Graham Hill

"Whenever I was driving he was either biting his nails or fast asleep. When he was awake there was the occasional sharp intake of breath and the odd remark 'For God's sake, look out'. He was a very nervous passenger. It must have been particularly agonising for him to sit beside me doing 800 miles in thirteen hours or so. When he was driving and made the odd mistake he could never understand why I didn't say anything and he used to say 'For God's sake say something' We were just different that is all" - p91 Graham Hill

"In personal matters, he was not a great one for revealing too much, ans he was a bit clam-like which I think may have been a Scottish trait in him? He was canny, and didn't go around saying too much to people. Very often you found out he had been somewhere or done something, which you would have never known about just talking to him" - p92 Graham Hill

"They were called the Terrible Twins, the Poison Dwarfs and many other ames. But at the height of their friendship they were inseparable" - about Jim and Jackie

"It was also at this time that I started to live in John Whitmore's flat in London with Jimmy. From that day on we called it the Scottish Embassy" - p101 Jackie Stewart

"Though Jim led something of a monastic life, I must say that put there he was a real swinger, living a very busy life" - p101 Jackie Stewart

"In fact we spent so much time with one another that we became known at Batman and Robin - and I kept calling him Robin" - p102 Jackie Stewart

"Jimmy Clark was also very nationalistic, indeed we both had this trait and we were quite sincere about it. It really had to be Scottish. If anything came up wherein he was called English he was at pain to correct it" - p103 Jackie Stewart

"When reflecting on the future that Jimmy had in store I feel that he was not going to go back to full-time farming in Berwickshire. He was living the life of an international figure and no matter what might have happened in later years, I don't think he would have returned to Duns permanently. He had become a very sophisticated person. He played pretty hard and his tastes were very high and these he wasn't going to satisfy in Duns. I am sure he would have kept the house and that from time to time he would have loved to go back up there, but I don't think he would ever have gone back and settled down in the way a lot of people would have liked to imagine that he would. This just wasn't on and this is why, when people told me that Jimmy was thinking of retiring, I know that this was not the case. We talked about this a lot but he really didn't know what he wanted to do in the future. He didn't let anyone know what he was doing." - p105 - Jackie Stewart

"He was much more conscious of his personality than most people realised. It you went into a restaurant with Jimmy he did want to be recognised as Jim Clark. He didn't want it from the point of view of people asking for autographs but, like any human being, he did want the benefit of best table" - p107 Jackie Stewart

"His most difficult task in life, however, was making decisions.It was completely incomprehensible to find that someone who was so accurate and definite in his actions in a racing car was so completely inadequate when a decision had to be made outside a racing car. The number of times we have missed dinner because the restaurants have all been closed because Jimmy hadn't made up his mind which restaurant we should go to are legion, and the same is true of movies. One story is so typical of Jimmy. We were coming back from one of the American races and driving along a road where you cross a railway line with a ten mile straight one side and a ten mile straight on the other side. Jimmy is at the wheel of this Ford Galaxie and he gets to the crossing and stops. He looks one way then the other and there isn't a train in sight ten miles one way and ten miles the other then he turns to me and says 'well... what do you think?" He wouldn't dare make a decision without all sorts of drama. " - p107

"He was very keep to read everything said about him, and to make sure that there were no mistakes (this was a characteristic of Jimmy - he was most insistent that even the smallest of mistakes should not be made). He would spend half the afternoon reading sitting on a chair half in hand out of the little office. Sometimes if there were too many people talking in the office he would even shut himself in it" - p120 Gérard Crombac

"He met most of the French drivers in motorracing and the parties he went to were motor racing parties. He seldom went out on his own" - p122 Gérard Crombac

"He was no gourmet but he was becoming one, and he was very fond of French oysters we usually ended up in a sea food place " - p122 Gérard Crombac

"But although he was very generous, he remained the canny Scot of legend and he was not one to waste any money. I remember that he didn't want a house maid in the flat, so if one turned up in the middle of the morning, one might find James Clark Esq., O.B.E, pushing the vacuum cleaner through our living room" - p125 Gérard Crombac

"I thought his rather strong Scottish accent was fading with the time, until an incident when he was invited to patronise the opening of a French pub, which was to be done in style with the help of a pipe band. When Jimmy turned up and realised these people were fellow Scots he started chatting happily with them and I could hardly understand what he was saying as his accent had come back strongly and so suddenly." - p126 Gérard Crombac

"Jimmy's Scottish upbringing had instilled in him a rather restrained attitude towards girls, and I think he was very very shy with them in the early part of his career. But he was also tremendously attractive to them they would come up to him for autographs, and would leave no doubt as to their true intentions. In part he enjoyed this, but I also think he was put off in a way by this ruthless approach, so that he had absolutely no respect for most of them. So as a result, there were times when he wasn't the perfect gentleman." -p126 Gérard Crombac

"There was also a time he found a packet of cigarettes in a tent, gathered a bunch of boy scouts around him and gave them the cigarettes. He then had a picture taken of all these boy scouts lined up a cricket team smoking cigarettes with Jimmy in the middle holding a half gallon of beer." - p136 Bill Bryce

"I think Jimmy drove like a ballet dancer, he had the lightest feet and hands on earth. He had immensely strong shoulders and arms but this was the only part of him that was strong physically. He was a great dancer in motor cars, gentle with them, kind with them and I feel that the reason he was a great driver was that there was always the feeling of participation with the motor car, so the driving almost became sixth sense with him in many cases." - p145 Walter Hayes

"All this stuff about Jimmy the Shepherd with his little flat cap was nonsense. He wasn't a great Shepherd. He liked to go back to the family every so often to rediscover who he was" - p146 Walter Haynes

"When I first met Jimmy he found it extremely difficult to speak in public and he was exceptionally shy about it" - p148 Walter Haynes

"I remember just before his accident, he was talking about his future and what he was going to do when he stopped racing, and he said he finally made up his mind that he wouldn't in fact go back farming. He still loved it, but I think after the excitement and turmoil of racing, flying and the life he had been leading. I think he wanted to settle down in some branch of the aviation business" - p164 Colin Chapman

[maximumgraves]

what are some of your favorite works/media from the last five years or so?

darryl by jackie ess

it hurts until it doesn't by kahlil kasir

barber westchester dir. jonni phillips

we're all going to the world's fair dir. jane schoenbrun

the annoying person by beatrix urkowitz

the sympathizer (tv show, dir. park chan wook and others)

[transnovelsbracket]

This is the randomly-generated bracket for adult (i.e. non-YA) novels by trans authors! The books are as follows (in order of when I thought of them). Please boost this post! The first round will begin tomorrow, or as soon as I get at least a couple of reblogs on this.

Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars, Kai Cheng Thom

Little Fish, Casey Plett

Small Beauty, jia qing wilson-yang

She Who Became The Sun, Shelley Parker-Chan

An Unkindness of Ghosts, Rivers Solomon

Future Feeling, Joss Lake

Confessions of the Fox, Jordy Rosenberg

Light From Uncommon Stars, Ryka Aoki

In The Watchful City, S. Qiouyi Lu

Detransition, Baby, Torrey Peters

Nevada, Imogen Binnie

Freshwater, Akwaeke Emezi

Summer Fun, Jeanne Thornton

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, Andrea Lawlor

Yemaya's Daughters, Dane Figueroa Edidi

Manhunt, Gretchen Felker-Martin

The Thirty Names of Night, Zeyn Joukhadar

Machineries of Empire series, Yoon Ha Lee

The Tensorate series, Neon Yang

Sea Witch, Never Angeline Nørth

The Subtweet, Vivek Shraya

The Story of Silence, Alex Myers

Wrath Goddess Sing, Maya Deane

Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel, Julian K. Jarboe

Upright Women Wanted, Sarah Gailey

Darryl, Jackie Ess

The Four Profound Weaves RB Lemberg

Little Blue Encyclopedia, Hazel Jane Plante

Otros Valles, Jamie Berrout

the earthquake room, Davey Davis

The City in the Middle of the Night, Charlie Jane Anders

Running Down, Al Hess

[hpowellsmith]

July Books

I can't remember when I last did one of these but as I ended up reading a lot this month, here it is! Bolded are my favourites.

Saturnalia - Stephanie Feldman: a near-future alchemical horror? thriller? in which a former fortune-teller who was ousted from an occultist club gets dragged into her old life. I happened to spot this in the library and enjoyed it quite a bit.

Nothing But Blackened Teeth - Cassandra Khaw: a horror novella about rich young people going to a haunted manor house for a wedding, badness ensues. I liked the messy relationships in this and some of the horror elements, but there were some quippy moments that weren't so much my thing: I felt they undercut the tension in a less-fun way.

Vivi Conway and the Haunted Quest - Lizzie Huxley-Jones: second in an adorable kids' series based on Welsh mythology. I loved the first one and enjoyed this one more: it felt tighter and more driven as Vivi has embraced her magical connection to Nimue and the group of pals is a solid team. Lots of good creepy moments and lovely straightforward moments showing and discussing disability, neurodivergence, and queerness. Perfect for kids (I read it to my child for bedtime); a cute read for adults too.

Nevada - Imogen Binnie: weird that this is known as a classic trans book when it's only 11 years old, but that's a whole other thing. Maria is a trans woman in Brooklyn who's perhaps too online for her own good and struggling with her relationships and workplace. She heads out on an unwise road trip. I liked this a lot: it's very much a book about messy early-20s screwups and it felt very human.

Gender Failure - Ivan E Coyote and Rae Spoon: memoirs from two performers about growing up and transitioning. I enjoyed learning more about the authors (I wasn't familiar with them before) but the choppy style was a bit too choppy for my liking and resulted in some repetitiveness in phrasing/subject that could have been smoothed out a bit.

Boys Weekend - Mattie Lubchansky: a graphic novel about Sammie, a transfem nonbinary artist's assistant who attends a stag weekend with their techbro friends on a libertarian-paradise island on which sinister techbro cults are lurking. I enjoyed this a great deal, it was very funny in places, and pretty heartbreaking in others.

Small Beauty - jia qing wilson-yang: a Canadian trans woman is grieving her cousin, and moves into his old, remote house on the edge of a small town while learning more about their family and loved ones, as well as herself. It's an unassuming sort of book, but it packs a punch and stands up for itself. The magical realist moments were lovely. I keep thinking about it every so often: it was pretty lovely, and moving.

Cuckoo - Gretchen Felker-Martin: queer teenagers in the 90s go through the harrowing experience of a wilderness conversion camp, while also trying to escape an entity that wears their skin, returns to the outside world as "perfect" teens, and infests others. This was a really tough read thanks to the intense, ongoing abuse the characters suffer and the unflinchingly awful horror scenes. I couldn't put it down.

Darryl - Jackie Ess: this dramedy? tragicomedy? was a nice palate cleanser after the intensity of Cuckoo. Darryl's a bit of a sad sack in his forties, despite his easy trust-fund lifestyle his life has become stagnant and he's exploring being cuckolded, his own queerness, and the BDSM scene. I just loved Darryl's voice in this: he's such an anxious doofus and I couldn't help but enjoy how silly he, and a lot of the story, was while also having genuine moments of emotion and compassion.

[junglejim4322]

Have you ever read Darryl by Jackie Ess? I think you’d like it

I have not 🤔 but I will definitely pick it up because I’m not sure I’ve ever been failed by your taste ever I’d probably appoint you no. 1 media consultant in my high court