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haveyoureadthisqueerbook · 7 months

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the other me by xan van rooyen (trans mc)

this rebel heart by katherine lock (polyam relationship, two bisexual mcs, one gay side character)

iron widow by xiran jay zhao (polyam relationship, three bisexual mcs, mc is also possibly nb or genderqueer)

call down the hawk by maggie Stiefvater (gay mc, bisexual mc, bisexual side character)

the prey of gods by Nicky drayden (can’t remember the specific kind of rep)

it’s not like it’s a secret (lesbian characters and relationship. please maybe note on the poll that the submitter would really really not recommend this book? i think it’s important to let people know of queer books, but also this book relied on so many stereotypes — about lesbians and Asian-Americans — and had a cheating subplot and was just….)

beating heart baby by lio min (trans mc)

the borrow a boyfriend club by page powars

may the best man win by zr Ellor (trans mc, bisexual mc, nonbinary mc, queer side character)

a promise broken by Lynn o cochroft (trans, aroace guy is one of the two mcs)

not your sidekick by cb Lee (lesbian mc, sapphic relationship, trans side character)

always the almost by Edward underhill

the spirit bares its teeth and hell followed with us both by aj white

a day of fallen night and the priory of the orange tree by Samantha shannon

generation one by pittacus lore (gay mc, not a huge part of the plot though. but confirmed in-text)

last night at the telegraph club by malinda lo

you’re not supposed to die tonight by kalynn bayron

lady midnight and sword catcher both by Cassandra clare

Star Wars: black spire by delilah s Dawson (aroace mc)

Star Wars: the empire strikes back 40th anniversary short story compilation (idk if it counts as a queer book but one short story was a sapphic love story)

one of us is lying by Karen mcmanus

two tuns of fun by

birthday by Meredith russo

invisibly breathing by

i’ll give you the sun by judy Nelson (i think! not sure if i’m remembering her name right)

brooms the graphic novel by jasmine walls

this queer girl is going to be okay by dale walls

two mummies / two daddies (kids picture books)

death’s country by rm romero

redsight by Meredith mooring

the death i gave him by em li xu (tumblr would LOVE this book)

Been outside by shaz zamore

ALSO: a note to op. this blog is such a great idea, but have you considered setting up a google form for submissions instead? they work for people who don’t have Google accounts, and you can export the entries to a spreadsheet automatically instead of manually that way too. if you let submitters view previous responses you can prevent repeats too?

I've queued most of these! Exceptions below:

-Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back 40th Anniversary short story compilation: since only one of the stories is queer, I'm not going to include it. This is absolutely arbitrary, I realize, but for short story collections, I'm looking for them to be mostly queer.

-Two Tuns of Fun: I couldn't find any book by this name.

-Two Mummies / Two Daddies (kids picture books): are these individual books? I couldn't find anything with these exact titles.

-Beating Heart Baby and The Priory of the Orange Tree were already queued (they were both in my initial batch of queued books prior to going live with the blog).

The google form is a good idea and something I'll consider! At the moment, it doesn't save me any work, and actually creates more. I would need to check every submission anyway to make sure it's correct and in the format I want it in. Currently I've got a Google Sheets spreadsheet with all books (both queued and posted) for people to check if their suggestion has already been submitted. Thanks for the idea, though!

#Anonymous #submissions

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cadybear420 · 7 months

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Cadybear's Reviews- It Lives in the Woods

Welcome to the fourth official Cadybear's Reviews post! Today I'll be talking about It Lives in the Woods, which I have ranked on the "Diamond Tier" at 10 stars out of a possible 10.

Honestly, there’s not much to say that hasn’t been said already by everyone and their skeleton dog in the fandom. Just about everything in this one is well done.

Choices that actually matter and have hard potential consequences. A wide cast of memorable characters. A strong and highly compelling story. A proactive and fairly flexible MC, with some pre-set backstory that’s actually established well.

Although I consider OG HSS to be my favorite Choices series, I’d personally consider the It Lives series to be the best made Choices series. As in, the closest to being “perfect”. I’m having a hard time deciding whether ILITW or ILB is better, but I’ll save that for the ILB review and possibly an “ILITW vs ILB” post.

Now I generally don’t care much for the horror genre, as most of it always seemed very cheap. But this story blew me away. I can definitely have respect for horror that is actually nuanced with its storytelling rather than just being cheap jumpscares, yet still being able to be bone-chilling… and ILITW is just that. I love the focus on psychological horror and how Mr. Red (or rather, Jane) plays directly on our characters’ fears, struggles, and insecurities. The CG in chapter 1 was terrifying, and it was enough to give me this lingering feeling of dread through the story. And there is payoff for it in Chapter 15, particularly if you get mostly Haunted nerve scores.

Andy and Lucas are certainly some of my most favorite LIs of all time. It’s really hard to choose who I love more. I’d say I relate to Lucas more, but Andy had the strongest arc. Ava is pretty damn great too with her vibrant and witty personality.

I also love the trans rep with Andy– he’s the only trans character in the cast, but he never felt like he was just a token. We see some of the challenges he faces as a short Asian trans male athlete, yet he also has a lot of personality outside of that too. In spite of what he goes through, it’s just normal in the narrative for Andy to be trans, and not sensationalized or pathologized.

There’s barely anything to criticize here, which is why I consider it the Choices story that’s “closest to perfect”. Most of what I can think of are very minor nitpicky things. I’ll probably save it for the “ILITW vs ILB” post.

#choices stories you play #choices #choices game #choices stories we play #choices stories we play fandom #cadybear's choices reviews #it lives choices #choices it lives #choices it lives in the woods #it lives series #it lives in the woods #choices ilitw #ilitw #ils #ila

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astralbooks · 1 year

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I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me - Jamison Shea

Read: 09/08/2023 - 18/08/2023

Rating: 5/5

Rep: Black bi main character, brown love interest, Black side character, East Asian side character, Black minor characters, Japanese minor character, sapphic minor character

CW (listed in book): depictions of blood, ritualistic self-harm. bones and corpses, body horror, an instance of body shaming relating to ballet, non-graphic torture, murder, classism, racism, referenced parental neglect & abandonment

Review:

Laure is in her final year at the ballet academy in Paris. She consistently ranks as the top performer in her cohort, but is shunned by the majority of her peers and told to her face by board members of the Paris Ballet Company that her Blackness means she wouldn’t be a good fit. As auditions for a spot as an apprentice in the company approach, a chance encounter leads Laure to an underground river of blood and the chance to make a deal. Laure’s new power unlocks a darkness inside of her that she doesn’t dislike, but when other people who’ve made deals start showing up dead, the monster within might be the only thing that can save her.

Have you ever put so much energy and effort into something, only to realise that nobody’s ever going to recognise any of it? Have you ever burnt yourself out trying to meet the ridiculous expectations being placed on you? Have you ever been so angry about this that you wished you could just destroy it all? If yes, this book is probably going to resonate with you.

I found Laure to be a fascinating character and I really enjoyed reading from her perspective, but she has the potential to be divisive. She’s determined, she’s ruthless, and she’s at times blatantly unreliable, telling the reader one thing while certain events point to the situation being at least somewhat different to her perception of it. When she hurts people she doesn’t waste time or energy regretting it. To be clear, I loved her! If you support women’s wrongs then you’ll probably love her too, but people who prefer their stories and protagonists to be clear cut good guys are probably not going to get along with this book as much. Shea has described this book as a villain origin story and that description is absolutely correct.

This is a horror novel, but it isn’t strictly the fantasy elements that make it so. The cutthroat world of ballet, the ways in which it’s institutionally interwoven with classism and white supremacy, and the lengths people will go to uphold all of these things, contribute more to the horror than the existence of the deals themselves. The deals the characters make do result in them getting more than they’d bargained for, and this alone would’ve been enough for an interesting story, but this isn’t the direction in which this story goes. Instead we get a sharp critique of the ways in which established institutions, such as the Paris Ballet, are designed to favour those who look a certain way (white) and who come from a certain background (wealthy), and an examination of just how unreasonable the expectations for those who can’t meet its ridiculously high standards are. It’s discrimination and desperation that drives Laure to make her deal in the first place. It’s white entitlement that leads to every horrific death in the book.

I also really enjoyed the romance subplot! The relationship between Laure and Andor was such a slow burn that I didn’t realise it was happening for a decently long time, but I was loving the growing friendship and closeness between them long before it took a romantic turn. Their dynamic as a couple is definitely a fun one. Get yourself a man who will literally worship you.

I would recommend this to those with an interest in performing arts and how those industries can treat the people within them, to those who like stories with complicated narrators who aren’t necessarily the quote unquote ‘hero’, to those who like stories exploring the fallout of a deal with an entity with unknowable intentions, and to anyone looking for more horror centering a Black protagonist and stemming from how that protagonist proceeds when faced with racist institutions that would rather see them gone.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hot Key Books for providing me with an e-arc in return for an honest review

#review #book review #i feed her to the beast and the best is me #jamison shea #books #booklr

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nought-shall-go-ill · 2 years

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helloooo

13, 15, 16 and 17 for the ask game please

Helloooo! Thanks for the asks, my dear! Ok let’s go:

13. does your country (or family) have any specific superstitions or traditions that might seem strange to outsiders?

Oohh. This is such a good question! I thought being from the U.K., which is a pretty well known country, I wouldn’t be able to think of so many, but some friends have pointed out to me include:

1. Putting vinegar on our chips (fries). I had no idea that was so weird until my friends looked at me in disgust.

2. This one isn’t so well know nowadays, but dancing the maypole. We did it in primary school for a few occasions, including the Queen’s 50th (?) Jubilee. For those not in the know, basically you skip round and round a pole holding a ribbon attached to the top of it, all the while weaving around other dancers.

3. Not so much a tradition but a thing people do: “Save the queen” or “pennying”. Putting a penny in someone’s beer (or any alcoholic drink really) and they have to down it to “save the Queen” (because the money has the Queen’s head on it). In my uni, it was usually followed by a song that goes: “We like to drink with [NAME], coz [NAME] is our mate. And when we drink with [NAME], they down it all in 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. *Much cheering!* It’s almost certainly hazing… but it was a bit thing at the time.

4. Pancake day! Otherwise known as Shrove Tuesday. The day before Ash Wednesday in which we eat pancakes (usually British-style pancakes, which aren’t too dissimilar from crêpes, with lemon and sugar).

And that’s all about I can think of, though I’m sure there’s loads more! The country that I used to live in had so many weird and wonderful traditions too, but that would take an age to say (and I’m always a little afraid of doxing). But here’s one: chucking beans out of the door on a particular day in order to rid your house of evil energy/spirits.

15. a saying, joke, or hermetic meme that only people from your country will get?

Wow, that other one was long… so I’ll keep this one short:

“Nice to see you; to see you nice.”

16. which stereotype about your country you hate the most and which one you somewhat agree with?

I probably hate the most the one that we’re all posh/Londoners/at the very least Southern. There’s such a variety of people across the U.K. and not all them have a stiff upper lip (thankfully). Northerners need more rep beyond Sean Bean and Jon Snow!

Oh, and I dislike the stereotype that the U.K. has bad customer service. Not all of it is great, of course, but on the whole I think it is less fake than North American service (sorry, guys!), while still attending to people’s needs and being flexible (this was a massive problem in the previous country I lived in).

As for one I agree with, I have to admit we do drink a bizarrely high amount of tea for a non-East Asian country. And I’ve said before, I do think Brits can be quite arrogant and ignorant, and I know many of my continental European friends believe that stereotype.

As for 17, I answered it here, my dear! Thanks again for the asks. 🧡

(From this ask game)

#nought shall go answer her asks #turns out I do have a thing I like about the U.K.: customer service #who knew? lol #that is probably the most controversial opinion I’ll ever have

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thenighttrain · 1 year

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try anyway, you have nothing to lose! how did u manage to go to rep tour tokyo omg?? i know japan are so strict about only locals getting their tickets. which is frustrating because like, then she should play in other asian countries too where non locals can actually get tickets! but yes lol manifesting hard for SOMETHING 🔮🔮🔮

if i am recalling this right, i remembered registering out of the country for the tickets with a japan number and address and everything 🥴 but pick up and payment of had to be done in person at the 7/11 within 7 days or so. that wasn't going to be physically possible for me. but i had a hokkaido trip with my fam schedule late september. cue me touching down, heading straight for 7/11 at the airport and trying hard to navigate the machine. some sections were sold out but bless i was just jabbing at the screen for anything available to me. and succeeded 🤯 plane tickets and hotel for tokyo quickly followed the next two days 💭 altho i do acknowledge how lucky i was to have had sufficient savings to afford this at such short notice.

yeah 🥲 and while i understand the business aspects of all of this and hence why the asia options we have now are as such. i do feel that (and i am not sure this is discussed much) with the currency conversion (tix + accomodation + travel) for many asian countries.. it's.. really.. tough.

update: i contacted said friend with your encouragement ✨️ thank you for giving me the courage i wouldn't have otherwise have 🥰

ok wow that's a crazy story, that sounds stressful! how did u even get a japan number and address when you weren't in the country haha. glad you got to go though<3 yeah, like i know the malaysian currency is super weak (even to singapore it's like double) and it's the same with indonesia too. i just think they should've added at least 1 other south east asian country but oh well...... and yay omg all the best with your friend<3

#ask #doinkerss

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ihernglass · 9 months

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Title: House of Flowers

Genres: original Fiction, sapphic romance, sci fi/fantasy Featuring: sapphic enemies-to-lovers, asian rep, slow-burn, female friendships Summary: Here

Chap 17: Compromise

Spring kisses her furiously. She is a wrathful tempest, daring to be quelled. Her fingers wrap around Aden’s neck insistently, clawing an uncontrollable, guttural moan out from deep inside.

But the logical side of her – the impossibly rational voice that rears its head no matter how passionate, how overwhelming any situation is – surfaces overpoweringly like a whale breaching the ocean.

“Spring,” she manages in a rasp. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Do what?” Spring blinks back at her, red lips swollen. Her eyes her dark, hungry. They dart to her lips again.

Aden pushes back against the screaming urge to kiss her again. Instead, she says, “You don’t have to use your body to get what you want.”

“Pardon me?” Spring falls back, easing the pressure on her hips.

The words tumble out, a waterfall of fears. “You don’t have to kiss me so I’ll stop avoiding you. You don’t have to be kind to me so I’ll request your participation and save you from your mandatory engagements. You don’t have to… do this –“ she gestures in between themselves “– to encourage me to end Seeding, the Blooms. Because I promise that I will do so no matter what. You don’t have to pretend to like me or want me to ensure this outcome is achieved.”

Irritation crosses over the Flower’s flushed face. “What are you talking about?“

read the rest on ao3

#writeblr #writing community #writers of tumblr #sapphic lit #queer lit #creative writing #wip: house of flowers #yeah it's here!

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k8rgrl · 10 months

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More kate venting. Israel/palestine shit below the cut. If you're here to argue, go fuck yourself. Show some damn compassion.

I'm legitimately tempted to block tags related to this shit at this point. It is so fucking exhausting hearing about it constantly. Yes. I know it's a fucking genocide. Yes. I know the idf is commiting countless warcrimes. What the fuck is signal boosting going to do??? Everyone who follows me fucking knows already!! We all fucking know!

I don't have money to throw at charities, I don't have the energy or time, or resources to volunteer, I can't do jack shit!

Can't even go to protests!

I live with my dad, my grandmother, and my grandfather.

I was raised jewish, both sides of the family. I'm not anymore, I'm pagan, but my granddad and gma are still.

My grandfather is an incredibly passionate, and caring guy. He saved me from a lot of really bad shit, and goes out of his way to help people who need it.

He even tried to be a good leftist. He doesn't know that, but he's got most of the right ideas.

Except he's a fucking zionist. And not even out of bigotry. It's out of primal fuckin fear and trauma that he would rather die than address.

It's so exhausting. He's got this weird fucked up idea that being critical of israel in any way what so ever is antisemitic. It's this absolutely mind-numbing thought terminating cliché.

Any time the slightest hint of the continent comes up, he becomes the most obnoxiously staunch Israel supporter.

I know he has no hatred in him. He just genuinely cannot understand that supporting palestine isn't the same as wanting every jew dead.

I'm not kidding, that's unironically what he believes. I don't have the heart to tell him I'm pagan when he's yelling with legitimate fear for his and my safety that pro-palestine people want me dead.

He's even admitted that the only difference in our stances is where the line is as to what's supporting palestine and what's supporting hamas.

And he's said if he ever caught me going to a "pro-hamas" protest he'd kick me out without hesitation.

That's already tiring enough, but I don't go to protests, so, fine, whatever. Not taking the risk now, that's for damn sure.

And then there's the fucking internet. Gods I hate how the internet has handled this shit.

Especially in leftist spaces. At least I can comfortably call right-wingers garbage takes for what they are and discard them.

And then, people on here have the gall to say shit like "i don't want to see any white people ever again say how china, the middle east and many others asian countries are censored and that people there have no rights, don't you dare to make fun of north korea when your president wants jail for people who deny the state of isr*el" (they censored it, not me)

How fucking dare you minimize other people's suffering because one group has it horrifically bad right now.

Where were you when yemeni people were being wholesale slaughtered? How about the Uyghurs?

Lemme guess, didn't have the energy? Didn't have any way to meaningfully help? JOIN THE FUCKING CLUB.

And for those of you degrading and mocking people who say vote, or contact your reps, fuck are we SUPPOSED to do?

Grab a plane ticket to an active warzone, and get murdered for a cause it would take a lifetime of traumatic horrors, or a phd to fully comprehend?

Riot in the streets for the sake of awareness, and get labelled a terrorist and ignored?

I'm not some fucking anarchist revolutionary. I'm a transfem barely able to self-motivate, who barely finds spoons for her productive hobbies, much less genocide awareness advocacy, while living in a household with a nearly 70 year old man who is so traumatized he'd rather call his granddaughter antisemitic than accept that being critical of israel isn't wanting him and every other jew in a fucking camp.

So yeah, I sure am just going to live my life like I was. What else am I supposed to do? Uproot my life and become yet another victim of a vicious cycle of colonialism? Become another voice yelling blindly into every void I can, in the vain hopes I convince someone of something I barely understand, after hours of research?

Support and advice appreciated, anything with an aggressive tone or call me something… dude, get some sunlight. Even just through a window. Go play with your pet, if you have one. Call a friend. Do anything except yell at a stranger on the internet.

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mjjune · 2 years

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[all image descriptions are in alt text]

Welcome to my writeblr!

Updated 4/4/23

i'm mj or m, or whatever you wish to call me tbh

any pronouns are fine, most people use she or they.

ask and tag games ON HIATUS!!!

i write: fantasy of all kinds, but always with a touch of queerness. i lean towards dark and mysterious with supernatural and magical elements.

i read: anything, really! mostly dark fantasy, but also sometimes short stories, classics, horror, historical, memoirs, sci-fi, and contemporary.

i mostly follow back if you are a writeblr! don't hesitate to reach out or reblog this post to get my attention <3

all ages are welcome! if i do post anything mature, it will be clearly marked but it should be very rare!

my favs: found family, female friendship, fairytale retellings, anything queer (especially sapphic & aroace), neurodivergent & mental health rep, disability rep, anything that's #ownvoices, anything with angst, reluctant heroes, enemies to [insert anything here]

this blog is dedicated solely to my writing, vibes, and inspiration. i blog about my friends' writing on my side blog here: mj-library!

My Projects:

[banner tba]

DS // high fantasy donkeyskin retelling

The widower king has the last surviving dragon, which sheds its beautiful scales every year and provides the nation with wealth and prosperity. However, he promised to only remarry if he could find a wife who was dragon-touched like his first wife. When all the new queens mysteriously fall ill and die, the last dragon-touched person in all of the islands is Hana, his daughter. She must uncover the truth of the dragons' disappearance, the mysterious illness, and how the last dragon is connected—or else succumb to an incestuous marriage.

Status: Drafting / Camp Nano

Rep: sapphic & nonbinary

Blog Tags: #w: ds, #ds snippets

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TWTR // little red riding hood retelling

After ten years, The Wolf has returned seeking Red, and the Woodsman is tasked with finishing what he started. But as he tracks the beast, he begins to realize The Wolf isn't what it seems, and maybe, he shouldn't have interfered. Maybe, he shouldn't have saved Red at all. (banner made by a friend :3)

Status: Draft 3, beta readers in progress

Rep: aro/ace and trans/nb

Full Page Here

WIP Intro Here

Blog Tags: #w: twtr, #twtr snippets

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AVOF //dark urban fantasy duology

When a vampire sleeps with a werewolf to spite the ancient vampire order and homophobes everywhere, they accidentally reveal supernaturals to the human public. As media tensions, protests, and riots rise, the vampire must choose: risk everything to save his new lover, or hunt down the rarest creature in the world in hopes to prevent war. (banner by neapaulatan)

Status: - Book 1 Complete, 102k words, shelved - Book 2 Draft 0, 118k words, editing (slowly)

Rep: unlabeled genderqueer/queer, lesbian/gay, poly, asian main role with multiple latine, black, and jewish supporting roles

Full Page Here

WIP Intro Here

Character Intros

Character Sheets

Blog Tags: #w: avof #avof snippets

#writeblr #writers on tumblr #writerscommunity #novel writing #writers of tumblr #my intro #intro #mj posts #50 #100

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suiciderape · 1 year

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ok? so do not call someone who is experciencinf suicide racism racist bc we will rep that shit to save our lives and i literally did it just to prove a point! 2011 tumblr anihiliated i never laugh anymore it sucks daddy keeho? call him trademark orea bitch he is dead why? bc hes not u did again! i am a super fucking asian my adoptive family does not hate me they are white sasa so yes! i am racist if that gets u to stop trying to kill me 909 hell rooger? hello rooger? this is general plutar we have gone beyond the kpop idol zone no way! guys i have something 2 tell u i still dont give a fuck i hate racists they tried to kill me its my life and i only love keeho therefore leave the topic about me alone its violent i am going to save ur life get a life? hell nah mhm omg! this is so not cool what the fuck is on the tv bitch? star trek? hell nah its daddy pornstar no! i made sure i promise ok? call keeho who the fuck was that? zeerm heheh hes gone now i hope hes not gonna rape me 989

#meth #is #bad #i #watch #tv #instead #and #write #manga

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bazmichaels · 2 years

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Career - Part Two

The year was 1986. The place was San Bernardino, California. The operating system was VAX/VMS. The temperature was 120 degrees (but it was a dry heat). The air was thick with smog and anticipation. I had become an employee of TRW, the Thompson, Ramo, Woolridge corporation. It was famous for auto parts, apparently, but I was working in its Ballistic Missile Division (Oh yeah, global thermonuclear warfare. Cool.). Even before I started working, I felt infinitely more comfortable in California. It’s a place where you don’t have to be born there to fit in. You don’t even have to fit in – you can just be yourself. My semi-Hispanic appearance didn’t matter at all here. It’s a cultural melting pot. We have Hispanic and Asian people that have been here for generations, or that just arrived and are here to find a better life, and to work hard for it. Black people here, never having had to deal with Jim Crow laws (just systemic judicial discrimination, redlining, and police brutality), are integrated into society, for the most part. Every year, the Rose Parade is broadcast to millions of freezing Americans on New Years’ Day, and they see the warm weather and move out here before the winter is over. Aspiring actors and actresses move out here from the Midwest every day and fulfill the needs of our food service industry. With all these disparate cultures entwined together in a vast tangle of clogged freeways, we don’t expect everyone to look, dress, speak, or act like everyone else. It frees the soul. It also makes traffic a nightmare.

I hired into a group of about 10 programmers. It was on Norton Air Force Base in a huge warehouse-like building, in a large office that had several smaller offices inside it. Most of the programmers were young. There were some other programming groups in our hallway, and we had an informal metagroup called the Young Engineers Club. Too many of the young engineers came from the University of Florida, the alma mater of Howard Grossman, who was our Division manager – our boss’s boss. I liked Howard. He would meet with the new hires every summer and tell them how to save money. Pick n’ Save was his go to suggestion. The Florida alumnae tended to clump together and do things like watch Gator football games together on Saturdays. (Author’s note: I hate the University of Florida more than a reasonable person should. It’s my issue to deal with, but I’ve chosen not to do anything about it, except let it simmer and fester.) The rest of us would rarely, but occasionally go out and do something as a group, and the Gator folks would occasionally grace us with their presence. One such occasion was soon after I arrived.

I was still staying at the Hilton as I searched for an apartment. We went out to a bar that was just across the street from the Hilton. Reminder: I still didn’t drink, but I was hanging out. It looked like there was another work group that was also there hanging out. There were some ladies in that group – one in particular caught my eye. We spotted each other from across the dance floor. I had barely seen a beautiful Latina in person since I moved from Texas. We walked toward each other and met on the dance floor. If you’ve seen the movie Saturday Night Fever, you have some idea of our dance moves on the floor that night. The idea was worthy, but the real dancing was just some rhythmic shuffling, waiting for a slow dance. We hung out and talked as best as we could over the music, and I met some of her colleagues. They all worked for a copy machine company as sales reps. I didn’t need to worry about sticking with my own colleagues much because I was just walking back across the street. When the copier ladies went home, though, the other ladies gave my Latina beauty and me a quiet moment to say a proper goodnight. She gave me her business card and said to call her at work, and we could get together some more. (Still no cell phones, remember?) OK, so, did she tell me to call her at work because she gave me her business card? I mean, women always have a pen in their purse, right? She could have written her home phone on the back. (You see, kids, phone numbers used to be associated with houses and apartments, instead of people. Every house and apartment would have one or more telephones in it, and people would call the house and ask whoever answered if they could speak with someone who lived in that domicile.) Well, I suspect you’re a bit ahead of. the me from back then. I guess I wanted to believe it could happen with the two of us, but we all know that she was living with a dude. But all of that is beside the point. I’m only telling you this to set up the first of three “What are the chances?” scenarios.

Back at work, I was given some time to learn the operating system and programming environment. We did our projects in Fortran, but we used interactive terminals instead of punch cards and green striped printer paper. How modern. I made up some scientific programming scenarios for myself and banged them out with both speed and quality. My boss was impressed and had me help on a couple of existing projects. I was off to a good start and loving the work.

Back to my personal life, I found an apartment complex near the University of California at Riverside (UCR) that would let me sign a lease there. They needed to pull a few strings because my previous salary did not qualify me, even though my current salary was sufficient. You see, my current salary was just my future salary until I got my first paycheck. I got in and it was a nice apartment that was within my new budget. It was a bit of a drive from Riverside to San Bernardino, but I was young and didn’t hate driving yet. Since I didn’t know anybody in the entire state of California, I wanted to start off living near a college campus. I figured it would be just generally more vibrant around there. I looked at the map around Cal State San Bernardino, which was closer to work, but it looked very isolated out on the very edge of the city. I was also starting to get the message that the city of San Bernardino was not at all a safe place to live (other than a very wealthy area up by the country club). Being in a truly multicultural region meant that I was back to having a viable dating life, and my apartment complex had several candidates right there.

Of particular interest was a lovely young lady named Peggy. She was a nursing student at Loma Linda University, she enjoyed sports and played a little tennis, golf, and rode horses, and we did all those things together. We enjoyed similar popular music, and we just generally enjoyed each other’s company. The only thing that concerned me was that she was a Seventh Day Adventist. I had just come from Utah and had to deal with Mormons, and I didn’t know what kind of Adventist things I’d have to deal with. It turned out that Adventists were vegetarians and didn’t drink, and back then I was also a vegetarian, and I’ve never drunk alcohol. But I was wary. Then one day, Peggy knocked on my door, and I saw her beautiful, smiling face, beaming with excitement. Then she showed me two tickets and told me, breathlessly, that she had bought us tickets to go see the musical ‘Cats!’ in Los Angeles. I lost my mind for a moment, but I really hated the music from that show, and I never wanted to see it, so I told her no thank you. Ouch. That was the beginning of the end of our relationship. Andrew Lloyd Webber is what allowed me to ultimately meet my wife and sire my children. Thank you, Sir Andrew! (Sorry Peggy, but it had to be done.)

There were a couple of attractive single women at work, but I never felt like it was appropriate to be hitting on women at work. Having said that, our office had hired a recent graduate of the University of North Carolina named Susan Mills. She was scheduled to arrive a couple of months after I started, and I was looking forward to seeing what she was like. Well, she showed up and she was fairly attractive – I mean, you can never be too skinny, right? She also had a sweet little southern drawl, which got me again. We started dating. Remember when I said I never wanted to date someone who would dump someone else for me? Well, she dumped her North Carolina boyfriend for me, then dumped me for Brian from work, and then dumped Brian for Brendan from work. She did wind up marrying Brendan, though. But all of that is beside the point. I’m only telling you this to set up the second of three “What are the chances?” scenarios.

As far as tennis was concerned, being in southern California was the best. Courts were everywhere, you could play outside year-round, there were lots of players, and lots of good players. I did join an affordable tennis club in Colton when I first moved to Riverside, but I also found a couple of guys I could hit with at UCR. I moved to Redlands after my lease was up in Riverside, and I discovered that the locals played at the University of Redlands through an organization called the Redlands Racquet Club. You could only play on the University courts if you were a student, faculty, or a member of the RRC. There were quite a few good players there, and I spent much of my outdoor time there. With a full-time job and taking some extra programming classes, I wasn’t in the best shape in my life, but I was playing my best tennis. I signed up for local United States Tennis Association (USTA) sanctioned tournaments on the weekends, mostly in San Bernardino or Riverside, and did well. My first full year, I wound up being ranked #6 in the Inland Empire. (A metropolitan area and region inland of and adjacent to coastal Southern California, centering around the cities of San Bernardino and Riverside, and bordering Los Angeles County to the west.) I also won several tournaments at the Redlands Racquet Club, but there were a couple of guys there that had my number. At RRC, I met some younger guys that I became friends with, but I also rubbed elbows with a lot of the movers and shakers in Redlands. I never wanted to be one of them, but it was nice to say I knew Judge Whatshisname or Dr. Thatdude, or Mrs. Bigdeal. One guy I played with at RRC would play on his lunch hour sometimes with Ed Rae, the VP of the whole Ballistic Missile Division of TRW. Ed was incredibly nice and justifiably revered. One time I was a little late getting back to the office, and I told my boss I was sorry, but I was playing tennis with Ed Rea, and we ran a little long, and she reacted like I was playing with President Reagan.

Back in the office, I got my security clearance, so I was able to work on a broader range of projects. Unfortunately, if I told you about them, I’d have to kill you. I can say that I got to learn about discrete event simulation software, and I started processing geographic locations. I also got to learn the Ada programming language, since it was becoming mandatory to write certain types of government software using Ada. It was very interesting work. I was encouraged by my boss to take advantage of the company’s generous training subsidies, and I started taking computer classes through the UCR extension program. I took some important courses that are critical to professional software development – particularly Data Structures and Algorithms.

Work was going well for me. I found myself working on more diverse projects to support both internal and external projects. We got some PCs in the office, and I got to work on some projects using Turbo Pascal, an innovative new development environment that used a new concept called Object Oriented Programming (OOP).

Object-oriented programming is a programming paradigm based on the concept of "objects", which can contain data and code: data in the form of attributes, and code, in the form of methods. Objects sometimes correspond to things found in the real world. For example, a graphics program may have objects such as "circle", "square", "menu". An online shopping system might have objects such as "shopping cart", "customer", and "product". Sometimes objects represent more abstract entities, like an object that represents an open file, or an object that provides the service of translating measurements from U.S. customary to metric. Encapsulation is design principle that encourages programmers to put all the code that is concerned with a certain set of data in the same class, which organizes it for easy comprehension by other programmers. Objects can contain other objects in their instance variables; this is known as object composition. For example, an object in the Employee class might contain an object in the Address class, in addition to its own instance variables like "FirstName" and "Position". Object composition is used to represent "has-a" relationships: every employee has an address, so every Employee object has access to a place to store an Address object. Inheritance allows classes to be arranged in a hierarchy that represents "is-a-type-of" relationships. For example, class Employee might inherit from class Person. All the data and methods available to the parent class also appear in the child class with the same names.

Another pivotal project for me was at an off-site secret-clearance building. I was working on a project on yet another operating system: Sun Microsystems UNIX workstation. This project exposed me to another operating system (UNIX), a new programming language (C), and a new graphics application programming interface (OpenGL). I can’t tell you what I did (or, you know, I’d have to kill you), but I had to draw a map of the world, overlay graphics on top of the map, and in separate windows, draw various types of charts. This was a lot to learn, but I was really digging all of it, and I soaked it up quickly and built some powerful tools. I also worked on a system for the department’s library. I was really enjoying this stuff, and, as a defense contractor, I was only allowed to work 8 hours a day*. So, I had plenty of time and energy to work on projects on my home PC. I used Turbo Pascal because I liked it, but I also built some libraries and sample programs in Turbo C just to learn it. You could build bigger and more memory-intensive programs in C than in Turbo Pascal, because you have more control over memory allocation/deallocation. I built a modeling and simulation library, a charting library, and, years before the Windows Operating System came out, I built a mouse-based graphical user interface (GUI) library. You see, kids, back in olden times, PCs ran an operating system called the Disk Operating System (DOS). When you turned on your computer, you got a prompt to type in a command. For real. That was it. Then you had to know what to type into the command prompt.

*When I worked in the off-site secret location, I had to be in a rotation of people that would stay at the sight overnight, because one of our employees had to be there 24/7. Cha ching, though.

I built a GUI library that allowed you to build an application that would take over the screen and show a menu that you could manipulate with either the keyboard or the mouse. The menus were designed to bring up dialogs, also included in the library, or you could draw graphics in the screen area. Why did I mention these details? Stay tuned.

All the cool development I was able to work on, however, was set against the backdrop of global thermonuclear war. I had one project, in particular, that haunted my dreams. I was commissioned to build a system that would tally up body counts (in millions of lives lost) in various nuclear attack and counter-attack scenarios. I built various graphical representations of the carnage data and several modeling and simulation methods. I remember sitting on the lawn at the Redlands Bowl, looking up at the heavens, (resembling a backlit canopy with holes punched in it) and visualizing in my mind missiles slowly streaking across the sky, heading for Norton AFB. It happened to me more than once. That’s disturbing. I would describe myself as a pragmatic pacifist, meaning I think violence should only be used as a last resort. I don’t watch many war movies or documentaries. I think people should love each other – not kill each other. I wouldn’t mind working somewhere that wasn’t an arm of the military.

One day, Julie’s sister Janis gave me a want ad from the local paper about a programming job at a company in Redlands. You see kids, before the internet, we had to print the latest information about the world every day on pieces of paper and we called it a “newspaper”. People could, among other things, advertise job openings in a section of the paper called “The Want Ads”. This job opening was for a C programmer on a PC that had experience with graphics, mapping, and GUI development. Between the development I was doing on my home PC and the work I was doing in the secret lab, I had just the right experience. Was my time at TRW coming to an end? Would I leave the security of a giant defense contractor for a small local company?

#memoir #career

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