So, maybe I should do this...

At the risk of invisibility among a billion other bloggers, I've let this page wither and cough and gasp for breath over the past couple years. I realize it's a great tool for free-writing, even if it does get sucked into the cyber void forever. So, I will revive it, write some stuff, post the link, and keep on movin'.

Lately, I've been thinking about my role as a LesFic author and where I'm supposed to fit in to that world. I haven't really read much LesFic, to be honest. What I did read, some years ago, did not impress me in the least, particularly as a fourth-year Literature student, working on my Bachelor's. Over the past year, however, I have been pleasantly surprised in my re-involvement in the LesFic scene, and I realize there's some pretty worthy competition out there (and maybe there always was, but I wasn't exposed to those authors). I've never been an intellectual in the classic sense, although I do consider myself to be reasonably intelligent. I'm part of the writing field and now have a literature degree, but my verbal communication skills have always been much more 'street'. And I think I write best, coming from that same place. My characters in the past have been drawn very neatly with a certain nobility, if you will. I've kept them clean-cut and doing the 'right' thing. And that might appeal to a wider LesFic reading audience, but it just hasn't been my personal experience in life, and so I'm thinking maybe I should be more authentic in my writing, from here on out.

My experience has been this: I grew up in a multicultural urban neighborhood in PA, just northwest of Philly, then found myself stuck in Alabama throughout high school where I gravitated toward the local kids who drank and smoked weed and had run-ins with the sheriff every other weekend. I was a poor student because in my Alabama high school clique it was 'cooler' to flunk than to do well. I never took the SAT's but did manage to test very highly into our school gifted program--go figure. I did not go to college after high school. Well, I did, but I dropped out after one semester because it cut too much into my free time...which I spent doing a whole lot of nothing. I've lived in five major cities as an adult--Atlanta, Los Angeles, Fresno, Philadelphia, and St. Louis. I've known gang members, homeless alcoholics, and crack addicts (never banged or was addicted to anything myself). I once spent twenty-one much deserved days in the county jail for doing dumb shit as a young person. I spent entirely too much of my twenties in bars and night clubs. I used to be a very talented Hip-Hop MC and also a club DJ in Los Angeles, and so the LA underground Hip-Hop scene was my whole world for most of the 90s. During that era, I ended up becoming technically homeless; I lived in a residential hotel in downtown LA for a year and half, where the hotel manager was shot dead in front of my door by another tenant who thereafter shot himself. I believe in an eye for an eye, but I also believe karma takes care of most of that for you. I think comics like Lewis Black and shows like Veep are hilarious because of the ruthless, brutal humor, and I don't know anyone, to this day, who doesn't use the word "fuck" in everyday conversation. I made it through Army Basic Training at thirty years old and though I don't own a gun at this time, I know how to use one (responsibly) and do plan to buy one in the future, something easy to handle, probably a 9mm something-or-other, strictly for home defense. I'm a smoker. I have been for thirty-five years, though I'm trying to quit--not because it isn't socially acceptable anymore but because thirty-five years is a long fucking time to be sucking on formaldehyde and rat poison and calling it a guilty pleasure.

These are not things I'm here to glorify nor complain about. They just are what they are--the realities of where I've been, a lot which have shaped me as a writer, some of which have probably shaped me as a person, hopefully for the better. I'd like to think I've learned from my mistakes and under-achievement and that even the scariest experiences have made me well-rounded. Hence, there are topics that I'm likely to write about that other LesFic authors cannot or will not attempt. I can give you grit. I can give you dark humor. I can give you streets and bars and jails and profanity, even a little sex and violence. I'm perfectly comfortable with making you uncomfortable.