This came back around on my Facebook. I’m early X. I went to college. I’ve worked since I was 15. I’m 50, my kids are mostly grown and gone. And I’m better off than I was in my 20s and 30s, but not better than my 40s (we had some health setbacks). I work 2 jobs, and 3 side hustles. And I’m tired.
Let me have my damn…

I’m a schoolbus driver. Many of the kids give a little something at the holidays. Gift cards and cash are more welcome than more bath products or mugs or tchotkes.

I use that all the time. And secretary, one who keeps secrets, from Beezus and Ramona.

Try it alone at night in a house with a dripping tub. Brrr.

The Shoe Event Horizon is very like Vimes’ Boot Theory.

From Arthur Dent I learned, when you have nothing to lose, bluff. Lie down in front of the bulldozer. Appreciate Vogon poetry.

Every writing break I’ve gotten has been luck:

One of my personalities is a smoker, but he never has more than one or two and those very seldom. The rest of us hate the taste it leaves on the dentures.

Only to an extent. They get rusty, but they are still there. I picked up Windows Movie Maker after a decade away, and had it back to usual skill levels within a couple evenings. I haven’t ridden a bike in 5 years, but I’m airing up the tires on one this weekend and going around the block. I find it all comes back to…

To quote the 1978 radio script: “Greedo? Nah he was dumb enough to let me get my hands under the table. Hope they throw him a nice funeral.” Greedo never got a shot off.

The mental calculus on all of it is complicated. I’m a genius (literally) with a college degree, and the paperwork for food stamps and medicaid left me completely befuddled. Safety is a vital need. There’s no sense buying food if you’re just going to get shot while carrying it in the house.

Soldiers of the Wasteland by Dragonforce. 10 minutes of speed metal that evokes a near-Pavlovian response from me. I’ve also used Bauhaus’ “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” and Marty Robbins’ “Big Iron.” But for sheer cleaning energy: Irish rebel music

My daughter got a full ride scholarship to the local university. (I homeschooled her for 2 years because she was too far ahead of her class and being abused by classmates (not just taunts, but having her hair cut off) My second daughter got a semester of homeschooling for social and religious reasons (we’re a…

I started in the small press. No agents and no self-pub. The genre I started in is mostly women writing for women (although the men have discovered it and wandered in). I always use my very feminine name, when most authors use initials or neutral names. I decided that if I ever subbed to New York, it was going to be…

How about an anti-hero who is not only a rapist, pimp, drug dealer, politician and killer, he later takes up cannibalism? (in fairness, he considers it a bad habit and only indulges on special occasions)

I did the “Biggest fear/extrapolate trends I see” thing combined with “what I used to believe”. The result was one of the best novels I ever wrote. I keep struggling with the rest of the series.

I started writing because I had thrown a John Norman book across the room one too many times in frustration at the prose and…

My own childhood trauma, thank you very much. And yeah, I know how fast it moves. My youngest is 15 and a half. I’m almost done with a project begun 24 years ago. And I’m ready to be done with this phase and on to the Advisory Stage.
As long as they have basic table manners, what’s the difference?

I don’t believe in family meals. I barely believe in meals. And I do not talk while eating. It’s enough that I drop food on their plates and they return the dishes to they sink promptly.

Passion and pleasure are very different things. I write novels. This means that I bash my fingers on keys until I have an arthritis flare, pace while I work out plotting, yell at the ceiling and generally kill myself during the first draft. This is not fun. But there is nothing I would rather do.

Even in my darkest…

No question. Everything practical one needs when starting out. I had it and Betty Crocker and found I used this one much more. (the peanut butter cookies are sitting on my table right now)

Tortillas. Half the price of the grocery store for the same brand.
Jamaican Beef patties.
Greeting cards
striped shortbread cookies
ziplock bags
Craft yarn (a rare item)
Candles. These days, the first stop before every Sabbat is the Dollar Tree, to make sure we have the right candles.
White Rain shampoo and condition.…