#oh also men here are so much more pierced than toronto men it’s crazy. like so many men here have nose rings or eyebrow piercings or

[dreamertrilogys]

i need to move here i could literally move here so bad. like you don’t understand i could do it i could become a surfer boy. i’m so serious i could have long curly hair and be jacked so easily. trust me. i could be a skater boy. i could do it.

[madscientistjournal]

Old Mother Shudders

An essay by Old Mother Shudders, as provided by Tom McGee Art by Leigh Legler

There was a time when everyone knew to come to me for advice … but then my hair began to grey, my back began to stoop, my hands, once so strong, so capable, became frail and wrinkled. I began to shake, to tremble as my joints seized up one-by-one. Needed my ancient cane to prop myself up.

In a word, I got old.

“Old Mother Shudders” they began to call me. The kids at first, then the adults … then even I accepted it. If you live as long as I have, you carry many names: daughter, mother, wife … you come to realize that perhaps names don’t mean as much as we think.

What does matter is what we do.

I tell you all this, because I want you to understand what happened the night the women and children stayed home.

The night the lycanthropes returned.

~

The evening was bitterly cold, the kind of cold that gets deep into your bones no matter how much you bundle up, no matter how close you sit to the fire. There was an air of panic and agitation in our village. For years the mayor and the “elders” (a pack of ninnies several years my junior and very self-important) were convinced that the lycanthropes were gone for good. The last werewolf we’d seen had been in my youth, long enough ago that the hunters and village councilmen could pretend we were safe.

You live long enough, you come to realize we’re never really safe.

You learn to be ready.

When the first little girl went missing, the village councilmen were happy to concoct all manner of excuses and justifications, anything to avoid facing the truth: the monsters had returned.

Little girls don’t just go missing without reason on the night of the full moon around these parts.

Of course, when I told them that, they all ignored me.

“Crazy Old Mother Shudders,” they laughed, “Wants to live in the superstitious past. We’re modern people. All that unpleasantness is behind us.”

It took four more deaths before the word “lycanthrope” was even mentioned by anyone other than me.

We could hear them, stalking the woods. Howling. Waiting for the coming of the Long Night when the full moon would hang in the sky for hours and hours. It only happens once every seventy years … how could there be any doubt that the lycanthropes were just biding their time?

But now, of course, it was too late: they had claimed too many of our number, turned them. The remaining able-bodied men decided they had to take the fight to the monsters, before the Long Night began.

I offered advice on hunting the beasts as given to me by my grandmother, passed down from generation to generation, but of course they didn’t have time for me.

“Not now, Old Mother Shudders! The time for fables and fairy tales is over. Now is a time for steel and fire!” They declared, arming themselves and setting out to end the threat “once and for all.”

“The women and children stay home,” the lead huntsman declared and then they were gone, off into the woods.

The Long Night began early that year.

But where the men of the village had not the time nor care for the stories of an old woman, the women and the children listened. And listened well.

And so when the lycanthropes came for us, we were ready.

~

“Like this, Mother Shudders?” The little girl with flaxen hair handled the herb carefully, wearing gloves and placing it into the small stone basin. I nodded to her mother, who began grinding the herb with the pestle, into a fine powder–fine enough to be inhaled. We should have enough wolfsbane powder to defeat the creatures, but a little more can’t hurt.

“Just be ready to throw when you can smell the rot of their breath,” I told them. “It’s vital you wait until they are that close before you throw.”

The little girl nodded very solemnly. She would do well tonight.

We could hear them, in the woods, getting closer. The wolves had seen the hated fire leave held aloft in the hands of our clueless husbands, brothers, sons, and fathers. Fire is effective, to be sure, but it’s too obvious: every creature, living and undead knows inherently to avoid flame, why rely on something we fundamentally know to fear?

Better to hit them with the things do not yet know they should fear.

Amongst the sewing, weaving, and leatherwork the women of the village do, I’ve been having them make these pouches out of scraps. They’ve been doing it since the first little girl went missing, and now we have plenty. The powder bombs will buy us vital time to close the distance.

Then comes the silver.

~

The night is long, The wolves are fierce, Hands be strong, Their hearts to pierce.

When the children came to me and asked to hear the old tales, the ones that about monsters and genies and witches and faeries … the tales that actually teach you the important things in life, I made sure to always stress the importance of silver. Their parents would covet silver for status and vanity–mirrors and utensils, mostly. Nary a dagger or sword left amongst them–nothing so practical left unsold since the olden days.

And so, I told the children: when the day comes, when the monsters step out of myth and onto our doorstep, you must run and bring all the silver you can, no matter how unlikely its shape, for it is the silver that will save us all.

The children listened.

When the Long Night arrived, they brought it: spoons, forks, mirrors, combs, and best of all, knifes. We made a grand pile, and each person in the village took one. The one they’d use, when the time came.

I had already showed them how to use it, how to press it to the heart of the wolf and say the rhyme the whole way through. The one I’d taught them as it had been taught to me. As I had taught it to their parents, not that they’d remember it now.

The night is long, The wolves are fierce, Hands be strong, Their hearts to pierce.

It was the exact length of time it took silver to burn through a lycanthrope’s chest and into its heart. Decapitation works too, but takes more work than is strictly necessary.

And so, armed with powder bombs, silver, and tales of monsters defeated and vanquished through valour and bravery by clever little people just like them, the children stood side-by-side with their mothers, grandmothers, and a little old lady, who shook gently and leaned on her ancient cane. My ancient cane.

Made entirely of silver.

In our lives, we carry many names–I am told that the monsters still have many for me. To the lycanthropes, I am Wolfsbane. They made a mistake, coming back here; I have killed hundreds of their kind.

It would seem that the lycanthropes have forgotten that their monsters, too, are real.

Together, we spend the Long Night reminding them.

~

The men returned in the morning, having gotten lost in the woods, to find their women and children enjoying breakfast, telling tales of our heroic exploits, and drying dozens of wolf pelts by the fire.

To say our heroic huntsman and the village council were humbled would be an understatement, but true nevertheless.

They were eying our food hungrily and our wolf pelts sheepishly. We’d made enough for them, of course.

We’re good at planning ahead.

As we ate, I agreed to tell them the stories they had forgotten if they vowed never again to disregard the lessons of age and the wisdom of stories.

Gathering at my feet as they did when they were young, we defenders of the village shared our stories and laughed and cried.

Together.

~

So that, little ones, is why you must carry garlic in your pockets tonight and help your parents sharpen the stakes. You know the story of the night the women and children saved home, but now it will be up to you. When the Long Night comes, the undead will follow. Wrap yourself tight in your wolf cloaks, they will keep you warm and make you brave.

Oh, do be a dear and bring the silver.

It works on vampyrs, too.

Once a feared and fearsome monster hunter, Old Mother Shudders now spends her times teaching the children of her village the important stories (which is, of course, to say the ones about monsters, genies, ghosts, and faeries), ensuring that whenever evil rears its head, her people will be ready. If you were to ask any of the monsters of the realm their thoughts, you’d hear all manner of fables about Old Mother Shudders as well … after all, even monsters have a boogeyman.

Tom McGee is a Toronto-based writer, playwright, producer, dramaturge, and puppeteer. If you enjoyed this story, check out Tom’s first novel, The Bloody Lullaby, on Wattpad! He is the co-founder of Theatre Brouhaha and Shakey-Shake and Friends Puppet Shakespeare Company in Toronto. He is also the show runner and Game Master for Dumb-Dumbs and Dragons and Star Trek: Redundancy, two narrative podcasts where comedians play RPGs for the first time with hilarious, disastrous, and occasionally heartbreaking results. Both podcasts are available at GarbageProductions.net and on iTunes. For more of Tom’s writing, go to WhaHappen.ca.

Leigh’s professional title is “illustrator,” but that’s just a nice word for “monster-maker,” in this case. More information about them can be found at http://leighlegler.carbonmade.com/.

“Old Mother Shudders” is © 2018 Tom McGee Art accompanying story is © 2018 Leigh Legler

Old Mother Shudders was originally published on Mad Scientist Journal

[andimarquette]

Happy Sunday! Today we’re joined by the multi-talented Lyralen Kaye who has, among other things, a novella called Priest Kid that she’s here to share with us. Literally. Starting today, she’s making it available for FREE on Amazon.com. Click on the link and get your copy today!

Getting feedback on my writing has…well, it’s always been a thing for me. I mean, a thing. So a week ago, staring into my laptop screen, trying not to get obsessed with my new haircut when I should be looking at the very lipsticked femme in the bigger frame, the thing started vibrating in the air like a laser cloud.  And I’m like uh-oh. My stomach knotted with tension. My eyes narrowed. I secretly started saying ohhmm in my mind. “Just listen”—that’s what they train you to do in creative writing programs, and I have two degrees in writing.

Ohhmm. I’m listening. I’m fucking listening.

The woman speaking is talking about the screenplay version of my novella, Priest Kid (which I love…I know I’m not supposed to say that about my own work, but I do love it…so much that it’s a play, screenplay and novella at last count) is an incredibly credentialed, truly brilliant straight writer of tv shows. She’s talking about The Kids Are Alright as a template of comparison for my work. And because I’m trying to just listen, I grip the edge of the couch instead of saying that I deeply hate that movie, especially because a long-term lesbian sleeps with a man for no good reason (unless she just can’t live without the you-know-what, and who the hell can’t live without that?). The brilliant and VERY straight tv writer says that event raised the stakes of the movie and made it work. And you know, she’s right. Within the existing screenplay structure in Hollywood, in which you must put the family in danger of dissolution to get to a big enough climax, that is. No movie would be interesting if the family changed in more subtle and complex ways that might actually say something about the nature of family.  (I hate The Kids Are Alright so much! I hate everything it says about lesbian life, I hate its humor, I hate its homophobia and I hate that the actresses playing lesbians have no chemistry. Shoot me. I hate it!) (And for Christsakes, start casting lesbians as lesbians.)

I should add that this woman was right about the technical aspects of my screenplay. She told me that it was a great story, that she had no suggestions about character, dialogue, or the writing…but that I either needed to raise the stakes in the screenplay or I should keep the story as it is and turn it into television rather than film.

I believe she is correct about all that. I’m saying this to be fair, and because it’s true. And I still hate The Kids Are Alright and never want to write anything like it.

Plus, if I make the changes she suggests and write it as television it will be a much less queer show, with a much less queer vision. So I’M NOT DOING THAT!

I’m a person who starts businesses whenever she gets pissed off. Seriously. It’s often not a good idea, but it is what I do.

So here I am, in Toronto, away from Trump (don’t get me started), and I’ve somehow ended up teaching queer writing workshops to queer writers. I’m teaching one tonight, as a matter of fact. What I’m doing in this particular workshop is queering the hero’s journey so that LGBTQ writers can consider how to best represent their experiences in the world.  Because here’s the problem with The Kids Are Alright…and with The Danish Girl: the stories use the monomyth of the hero’s journey, which is taken from the heteronormative experience of white men. In every story, the hero goes on a quest, descends into darkness and battles, has a decisive victory, and brings a boon back to the world. (Usually they don’t die in the process, but they can.)

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

When I think about last month’s writing workshop, going around the circle saying names, preferred pronouns, and writing interests, I see the faces of the writers—the older gay men with their craggy faces, the gender queer pink-haired, blue-haired, pierced people, the femme women with long hair and earrings, the butch women in their men’s t-shirts—and I know there were at least 20 genders in that room…one for every person. Being queer is the ability to step out of heteronormative and question the assumptive meaning inherent in the straight world view. We don’t have a single quest in our lives. We come out. And then, maybe, we redefine our gender. And we face prejudice—sometimes daily. Our hero’s journey has a completely different arc.

Think of it this way: a queer kiss doesn’t mean the same thing as a straight kiss. We lean in, and we’re either coming out, seeking ourselves for the first time, or we’re taking another step in a journey to love and self-acceptance…maybe we’re easing into a deeper expression of gender that’s changing this kiss. Maybe the kiss is a reclaiming of our sexuality from violence. And we’re either in private or in  public—and being public means potential danger.

Queer people don’t live the traditional hero’s journey. For trans people in particular, the struggle to realize who they really are is often ongoing, as is the battle with prejudice and danger. For lesbians, there is often a need to separate from the feminine in order to redefine what gender means, and then an ongoing integration of masculine and feminine as we play with gender expression. Maybe we’re fluid. Maybe we’re non-conforming. We quest, and then we quest again.

I’m a femme tomboy who brings a radical queer vision to life. I’m married to a gender non-conforming non-binary partner who I love (and who drives me crazy). And so my stories reflect this, not just in content, but in form. Priest Kid is about a newly out bi-sexual daughter of an Episcopal Priest, who is struggling to reconcile falling in love with a polyamorous lover when what she wants more than anything is to come first. I’m very interested in questioning the nature of her desire. I’m interested in looking at love as plural—so the Episcopal priest is, in her own way, just as plural in the way she loves as is the gender queer polyamorous lover. There is a struggle that the bi-sexual daughter enters, but that struggle follows the path to epiphany rather than only a crescendo climax and a resolution that wraps the story up tight. (Besides, I’d like to come first. All the time. Why doesn’t the world catch on to this?) (Did I mention that I’m an actress?)

Feedback. Tonight I’m helping queer writers to think about structure, about delving into story. I’ll inevitably give them a response to their work. Mind you, we’re not working with the rigid structure of the screenplay, but I think the question of form is still valid. After all, we all look at the world through the lens of the stories we know, the stories our culture presents to us as meaning. So as I talk about story tonight, I will talk as much about breaking with existing structures as about learning what they are. Think hero’s journey. Whatever darkness queer people have to battle, whatever gift that battle returns, it’s got to be, in part, a vision of a freer world than the binary mainstream. That is the ultimate gift, really. I’m queer. I’m not like you, so I give you a new way of thinking. I give you the possibility of reinventing your life, because I am constantly reinventing mine.

In other words, I’m pissed off. So my business tonight is encouraging other queer people to rebel in the way they tell their stories.

It’s a living.

It’s also a life.

Lyralen’s first screenplay, Saint John the Divine in Iowa, won the Streep Lab in 2015, after being a finalist for the Roy W. Dean Award and semi-finalist for the Pride Plays and Films Award.

Her novella, Priest Kid, based on the screenplay, is available on Amazon.

Her second screenplay, Run from Fire, was a finalist for the Half the World Literati Award.

You can read the Black List review of Run from Fire here:

https://lyralenk.wordpress.com/2016/05/18/run-from-fire-reviewed/ www.lyralenkayewriting.com

The Queer Story by Lyralen Kaye (plus a FREE book!)

Happy Sunday! Today we’re joined by the multi-talented Lyralen Kaye who has, among other things, a novella called…

The Queer Story by Lyralen Kaye (plus a FREE book!) Happy Sunday! Today we're joined by the multi-talented Lyralen Kaye who has, among other things, a novella called…

[jovebelle]

Happy Sunday! Today we’re joined by the multi-talented Lyralen Kaye who has, among other things, a novella called Priest Kid that she’s here to share with us. Literally. Starting today, she’s making it available for FREE on Amazon.com. Click on the link and get your copy today!

Getting feedback on my writing has…well, it’s always been a thing for me. I mean, a thing. So a week ago, staring into my laptop screen, trying not to get obsessed with my new haircut when I should be looking at the very lipsticked femme in the bigger frame, the thing started vibrating in the air like a laser cloud.  And I’m like uh-oh. My stomach knotted with tension. My eyes narrowed. I secretly started saying ohhmm in my mind. “Just listen”—that’s what they train you to do in creative writing programs, and I have two degrees in writing.

Ohhmm. I’m listening. I’m fucking listening.

The woman speaking is talking about the screenplay version of my novella, Priest Kid (which I love…I know I’m not supposed to say that about my own work, but I do love it…so much that it’s a play, screenplay and novella at last count) is an incredibly credentialed, truly brilliant straight writer of tv shows. She’s talking about The Kids Are Alright as a template of comparison for my work. And because I’m trying to just listen, I grip the edge of the couch instead of saying that I deeply hate that movie, especially because a long-term lesbian sleeps with a man for no good reason (unless she just can’t live without the you-know-what, and who the hell can’t live without that?). The brilliant and VERY straight tv writer says that event raised the stakes of the movie and made it work. And you know, she’s right. Within the existing screenplay structure in Hollywood, in which you must put the family in danger of dissolution to get to a big enough climax, that is. No movie would be interesting if the family changed in more subtle and complex ways that might actually say something about the nature of family.  (I hate The Kids Are Alright so much! I hate everything it says about lesbian life, I hate its humor, I hate its homophobia and I hate that the actresses playing lesbians have no chemistry. Shoot me. I hate it!) (And for Christsakes, start casting lesbians as lesbians.)

I should add that this woman was right about the technical aspects of my screenplay. She told me that it was a great story, that she had no suggestions about character, dialogue, or the writing…but that I either needed to raise the stakes in the screenplay or I should keep the story as it is and turn it into television rather than film.

I believe she is correct about all that. I’m saying this to be fair, and because it’s true. And I still hate The Kids Are Alright and never want to write anything like it.

Plus, if I make the changes she suggests and write it as television it will be a much less queer show, with a much less queer vision. So I’M NOT DOING THAT!

I’m a person who starts businesses whenever she gets pissed off. Seriously. It’s often not a good idea, but it is what I do.

So here I am, in Toronto, away from Trump (don’t get me started), and I’ve somehow ended up teaching queer writing workshops to queer writers. I’m teaching one tonight, as a matter of fact. What I’m doing in this particular workshop is queering the hero’s journey so that LGBTQ writers can consider how to best represent their experiences in the world.  Because here’s the problem with The Kids Are Alright…and with The Danish Girl: the stories use the monomyth of the hero’s journey, which is taken from the heteronormative experience of white men. In every story, the hero goes on a quest, descends into darkness and battles, has a decisive victory, and brings a boon back to the world. (Usually they don’t die in the process, but they can.)

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

When I think about last month’s writing workshop, going around the circle saying names, preferred pronouns, and writing interests, I see the faces of the writers—the older gay men with their craggy faces, the gender queer pink-haired, blue-haired, pierced people, the femme women with long hair and earrings, the butch women in their men’s t-shirts—and I know there were at least 20 genders in that room…one for every person. Being queer is the ability to step out of heteronormative and question the assumptive meaning inherent in the straight world view. We don’t have a single quest in our lives. We come out. And then, maybe, we redefine our gender. And we face prejudice—sometimes daily. Our hero’s journey has a completely different arc.

Think of it this way: a queer kiss doesn’t mean the same thing as a straight kiss. We lean in, and we’re either coming out, seeking ourselves for the first time, or we’re taking another step in a journey to love and self-acceptance…maybe we’re easing into a deeper expression of gender that’s changing this kiss. Maybe the kiss is a reclaiming of our sexuality from violence. And we’re either in private or in  public—and being public means potential danger.

Queer people don’t live the traditional hero’s journey. For trans people in particular, the struggle to realize who they really are is often ongoing, as is the battle with prejudice and danger. For lesbians, there is often a need to separate from the feminine in order to redefine what gender means, and then an ongoing integration of masculine and feminine as we play with gender expression. Maybe we’re fluid. Maybe we’re non-conforming. We quest, and then we quest again.

I’m a femme tomboy who brings a radical queer vision to life. I’m married to a gender non-conforming non-binary partner who I love (and who drives me crazy). And so my stories reflect this, not just in content, but in form. Priest Kid is about a newly out bi-sexual daughter of an Episcopal Priest, who is struggling to reconcile falling in love with a polyamorous lover when what she wants more than anything is to come first. I’m very interested in questioning the nature of her desire. I’m interested in looking at love as plural—so the Episcopal priest is, in her own way, just as plural in the way she loves as is the gender queer polyamorous lover. There is a struggle that the bi-sexual daughter enters, but that struggle follows the path to epiphany rather than only a crescendo climax and a resolution that wraps the story up tight. (Besides, I’d like to come first. All the time. Why doesn’t the world catch on to this?) (Did I mention that I’m an actress?)

Feedback. Tonight I’m helping queer writers to think about structure, about delving into story. I’ll inevitably give them a response to their work. Mind you, we’re not working with the rigid structure of the screenplay, but I think the question of form is still valid. After all, we all look at the world through the lens of the stories we know, the stories our culture presents to us as meaning. So as I talk about story tonight, I will talk as much about breaking with existing structures as about learning what they are. Think hero’s journey. Whatever darkness queer people have to battle, whatever gift that battle returns, it’s got to be, in part, a vision of a freer world than the binary mainstream. That is the ultimate gift, really. I’m queer. I’m not like you, so I give you a new way of thinking. I give you the possibility of reinventing your life, because I am constantly reinventing mine.

In other words, I’m pissed off. So my business tonight is encouraging other queer people to rebel in the way they tell their stories.

It’s a living.

It’s also a life.

Lyralen’s first screenplay, Saint John the Divine in Iowa, won the Streep Lab in 2015, after being a finalist for the Roy W. Dean Award and semi-finalist for the Pride Plays and Films Award.

Her novella, Priest Kid, based on the screenplay, is available on Amazon.

Her second screenplay, Run from Fire, was a finalist for the Half the World Literati Award.

You can read the Black List review of Run from Fire here:

https://lyralenk.wordpress.com/2016/05/18/run-from-fire-reviewed/ www.lyralenkayewriting.com

The Queer Story by Lyralen Kaye (plus a FREE book!) Happy Sunday! Today we're joined by the multi-talented Lyralen Kaye who has, among other things, a novella called…