Friday 4 October 2013

Are we a different species, dear?

http://www.betsydornbusch.com/2013/04/another-sfwa-sexist-gaffe.html

So I'm like - is the guy under discussion here a human being at all? Or, given the context, a mole from Planet Uppmaiarsch, sent to sow discord?

What the fuck gives him any right to tell anybody what they should or should not be doing?

And - Barbie. Well, slap my thigh and call me Daisy. Words fail me. Yes, they do. I mean, fuck, what, Barbie? How is that a good example of - well, anything?

I find it difficult to understand how somebody can be so unreasonable. Or so scared of people of a different gender. And this is me from a gay transgendered viewpoint but still - I spend a lot of my life even now in the state of mind of - how low can we go?

My daughter had Barbies and she turned them into Borgs. Best thing to do with em.


Tuesday 6 August 2013

Spousal Veto, WTF?

 http://www.c4em.org.uk/drop-the-spousal-veto/


So this is the letter I sent about that piece of shite:

Dear Lady Stowell,

I am writing to ask you to reconsider your position on the spousal veto amendment to the Gender Recognition Act.

To allow such an amendment to go through would be not just a small step backward for transgender people but a massive step backward for the whole UK - into the Victorian age.

For more than a century, people have fought and struggled for equality in marriage, to do away with the idea that one party to the union 'owned' the other. This amendment reintroduces that idea.

It is neither ethically nor morally sound to give one person control over another's physical, mental or emotional well-being, especially when the two parties are probably in the middle of an upheaval in their relationship anyway.

I am sure you know the kind of things people say and do when they're angry and confused. This amendment would just give spouses of transgender people ammunition for their anger.

I have personally seen a relationship go down the pan in part because I am transgender. (And in part because my partner was an arse...) I was told I was 'making a mistake.' I am afraid that this can be the attitude of many non-transgender people who cannot understand the despair and frustration suffered by people who find themselves stuck in the wrong body.

I hope you will consider these points when making your decision and not leave transgender people in the situation of being discriminated against as a group who need taking care of by their spouses! :D

Sunday 9 June 2013

After you....

Not being one to rest on my novels - uh, my laurels - I went online to look for gay publishers or agents in the UK. I could send my novel to a regular agent or publisher when it's done as it's basically a crime novel, but I don't want to. I don't want it to be, uh, straightened out. 

I guess I'd rather be marginalised. :D

So I put in a Google search for gblt author's agents - only to have Google tell me that I should be searching for this - lgbt.

Okay. I guess that's what it's called - but why? Is it some kind of remnant of ladies first culture left over from when so many men opened so many doors; and sank with their ships so many times after the little woman had floated away on the lifeboat?

Dunno. I just found it interesting. It's the little things that define a culture, n'est ce pas?

Excuse me. Not being a poseur. Lol. Just relearning French and it keeps popping out. Oo-er. :D

Tuesday 4 June 2013

Success at last!

I have been very remiss... look how long it is since I posted!

I wasn't feeling myself. Yeah, yeah, very funny. Seriously. I had a fit of self-doubt and a writer's block caused by therewhich - still got it from the look of that invented word - and it got to the point where I couldn't even write my blog.

All better now, though, I think I was a bit up in the air about this:

http://www.thecwa.co.uk/daggers/2013/debut.html


But all is good now as I was shortlisted and am a happy bunny. Realise I need to develop a more professional attitude if I'm going to get this book finished and, hopefully, published. No more sabotaging myself by rushing off and starting writing a bunch of other stuff! I managed to dilute myself to the point where I wasn't doing any of em.

 

 

Wednesday 10 April 2013

Maggie bought the farm

 So I thought to myself, I must post on my blog about this;


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22067155


Then I didn't exactly know what to say. I mean - she wasn't a nice person. Rude, ruthless, not above engineering a war for her own ends; and she made trade unions practically meaningless.

On the other hand - what have we now? David Cameron's drab, overfed sociopathy and Nick Clegg's kicked puppy counterpart to Cameron's Orwellian pig. Making the point that, yeah, some animals are more equal than others.

Thatcher bought her own sheets for Downing Street. Cameron spent over £600K of taxpayers' money doing it up. Makes you wonder.

One might almost wish for a return to the days when politicians were so juicily hateable....

Wednesday 3 April 2013

Haven't got a thing to wear!

Found this little black thing lying around but I think it's too girly:





I made a sweater a while back so I put all the parts together again and this is it, but I'm not happy with it. Although I think it's more the kind of thing he'd wear:




The model itself is pretty crappy and for some reason, while it's been between PCs (HD failure, don't ask) it's lost the morphs I put on it. Morphs are the ability to move bits of the mesh to give effects like lifting the hem in various directions, making the neck sag and so on.

I guess the best thing I could do is make another one. And while I'm at it, I'll make a sweatshirt to replace that nasty travesty I had in the earlier post. I mean - it can't be any worse, can it? :D

Off to download Blender. Free software, what can be wrong with that? I used to use TrueSpace but that's defunct now. And.... shhhh.... I never really liked it all that much. Of course, that was probably user incompetence, but still. I think if I want to make something I'd like to start with a new program to do it. So I don't feel I'll make the same old bunch of mistakes.

Don't stand so close to me...

Haven't updated for ages. Actually, I haven't updated anything for ages. Been ill - bunch of annoying personal stuff going on - family stuff going on - learning Japanese.

The only interesting bit of that is the last one as it's coming along quite well, which is good. I should have learned it a long time ago as it'd be useful for work.  

I joined a site to learn kanji and they said to me, you need hiragana first, which I'd learned a quarter of on Textfugu. So I had to sit down last night and learn the rest of it. 

I can well recommend Textfugu if you want to learn Japanese, it's like magic method. But last night I used a book called Hiragana42 which is designed for people who need to learn hiragana quickly because they registered for a site where they should have learned it already...

Moving rapidly away from the duh factor and on to the picture. The big guy is Eugene Schindler and he is the bad boy amongst my detectives. Um. Well. The baddest bad boy, I guess there are other minor contenders.

I don't want to go into the things he gets up to. They're distasteful to say the least. Tsk.

The other guy's Billy Sinclair, my IT specialist, surely I posted a picture of him already. Honestly I'm so disorganised! Who made that sweatshirt? That neck is dreadful. They've got no proper edge to it. That's like something I'd make and I'm World Number One bad modeller. I dunno why I bought that sweatshirt. I'll find him something better to wear, poor little guy.


Look at the boots, however. Now, those are a nice model. Aziqo - he's Japanese. Those were free actually, although I buy all his stuff that's for sale as well. He does interesting things, a bit fetish and punky and he does them right.

I have no idea why Schindler is semi-dressed in this. Maybe it's in the locker room. See, that's what happens when I'm too lazy to put in a background. A day later I've no idea what the hell I meant by it. Seems like all my short-term memory is taken up with Japanese right now.

Saturday 23 March 2013

Feiyue shoes

Look at these! Are these not the most beautiful shoes on the planet? ;)

Cold here

Snowing here. Which is a lot of fun as my central heating boiler broke and can't be fixed until Monday. 

Moving on to cheerier matters - here's Imri! This is a character of mine that I created about, I dunno, five years ago? Something like that. I've just done him up a bit to make him nicer as he's one of the characters in an illustrated story I'm going to make for my website. Yeah, the one I haven't got yet.

Actually, I do have one but it's kind of - off the shelf. And a funny colour. And I haven't any content on it. I suppose I could put some stuff on it and then replace it with a proper one later. By which I mean a homemade one rather than one that starts from a template.

At the moment I'm still struggling to get anything at all done, due to the tailend of the flu, various household appliances breaking and the backlog of all the stuff I haven't done, due to the flu. Ah well. Roll on spring.

I made this picture to post at Renderosity, but then realised I'd already posted one today and if you want to post more than one a day it costs $5 a month.  Bugger that.

So he can go there tomorrow; in the meantime, we can have his yumminess all to ourselves. And if he looks like he's been rolling in the snow, well, he probably has :D



Saturday 16 March 2013

Why me?

I don't understand why somebody would send me a friend request on Facebook when all they have on their page is invitations to view their (female) body naked, as long as I'm over 18.

Apart from that sounds like a scam that's gonna cost me money in the long run, the person's obviously never checked out my page. It kind of screams, uh, gay man here. Well that was more of a whimper than a bang but you take my point. Not so much of a T&A man. Now and again. Mostly C&A. Oh, yeah. I like the A. 

I realise I haven't posted here for a hundred years or so, blame the influenza virus. We all thought it was a cold until it went on... and on... and on... even my Tai Chi teacher has cancelled classes for the last two weeks, which has severely shaken my belief in her Chi powers of withstanding illness. Ah! My Sifu!

Plus side, I learned a bit of Japanese. About five letters. Hey, it's a start! I've been so stupid. That's the worst thing about flu. Not the streaming nose, aches and pains, fever - no, it's the stupidity. I feel so fucking mundane I want to die!

More plus - got in touch with my old friend I'd lost touch with - hi, Taco! Which was brilliant, because he's my cuddly blond bunny. :D 

Talking of bunnies, I went to the local farmers' market before got really bad with this virus. Was looking at some really nice sourdough bread and turned round to be confronted with a stall full of dead rabbits, pheasants and hares. It was - surprising. I hadn't seen anything like that for - well, for years, really. Here in the UK we're all plasticised by supermarkets and don't see the dead animals in their natural state much.

Having said that, they were uncleaned so I wouldn't have bought em. You should take the guts and stuff out as soon as you shoot it, not leave it to taint the meat. Dear me.

This is part of the stupid - I went to put whimper up there at the top and put whisper instead. Huh? And I never noticed until I'd finished writing it all. Also I was looking at a bottle of bourbon in the kitchen and I said, that bourbon is saying, eat me, eat me. Which is obviously the wrong verb. Maybe I think I have a bf called Bourbon. Hah. Maybe I should have a bf called Bourbon - where is he? Um, shut up. Bourbon talking :D

Monday 4 March 2013

I'm Gay, You're Not Okay

I think it's a bit sad when you're reading some blog from some guy who seems eminently sane and sensible - at which point he gets onto the subject of gay and sane and sensible goes out the window.

I think it's a bit strange that by the mere act of being born as myself I incur the rage, disapproval and disgust of a whole bunch of people who have never even met me.

I think it's evil that people are killed, beaten, raped, ostracised and driven to suicide by ignorant bigots.

 I wish people would find something better to do with their time. Like, maybe, helping somebody instead of harming them.

I don't understand why a lot of these prejudiced holier-than-thou gobshites can call themselves religious people. They believe in a structured and hierarchical religious experience where some kind of god tells them what to do. But when it comes to the undeniable and obvious fact that god/s made a whole lot of us LGBT - oh, s/he must have made a mistake. Yeah. Right. 

Personally I'm a pagan atheist. I don't believe, but I don't mind if the gods believe in me.

Friday 1 March 2013

Out with the old, in with the new

Moi is a happy man. I switched partners. Farewell and good riddance to Word 2007 on my desktop, am now peacefully cohabiting with Apache OpenOffice.

So far, no screams of rage, no wasted time looking for the next hidden thing I need - 2007 must be one of the least intuitive programs I ever used. I put up with the earlier versions of Word but that one is beyond the pale.

Should be switching to Scrivener later in the year anyway. They usually have a half-price offer for people who complete NaNoWriMo. And I'm cheap :D

Writing excerpt 3

“Shower,” Matsumoto said as they came through the precinct house doors. He took off in a hurry and Dante followed more slowly, Matt in tow.
     “I need – Dante paused. “I can’t have a shower, can I? Not with all these bandages on.”
“Shouldn’t think so.” Matt stopped and eyed Dante up and down. “You could probably get in the bathtub, if you had somebody to wash your back and round the dressings and so on.”
“Great idea,” Dante said. “What a shame I fired my personal valet.”
“Don’t you have a friend who’d do it?”
“I have plenty of friends,” Dante said. “They’re all cops, they all work here and most of them are gay. What are they gonna think, I ask them round to my place to spend quality time in the bathroom?”
“I see your problem,” Matt said. “I guess you’re not gay, then?”
“No,” Dante said. “And before you ask, I have no girlfriend either. Not yet.”
“Oooh, someone in mind?” Matt smiled.
“Maybe,” Dante said. “I don’t wanna talk about it. What I want to do is get clean but I guess I’ll have to settle for changing my underwear.”
     Dante led the way into the locker rooms, brooding over his personal hygiene difficulties.
     Despite the fact he couldn’t use the facilities, he was happy to be back in the precinct house. He liked the 69th. He hadn’t been working there too long but he’d already got to feel at home. The precinct tended to attract the eccentric, the unusual and the downright strange but Dante liked that too.
Large gay presence as well, of course. The precinct was known for it. Officers who’d got tired of hiding their sexuality from their co-workers. Guys who’d got tired of finding ladies’ panties appearing in their lockers. Women who’d got tired of finding boxers and jockstraps in theirs. And of course, the perennial haze that everyone was sick of, finding that somebody who disapproved of your lifestyle had pissed in your shoes.
Dante went into the detectives’ locker room to find Matsumoto wearing only a towel and about to leave for the showers. Ryan Giannorino was sitting on one of the benches in a pair of sweatpants. He was changing his work shoes for trainers.
“Matsumoto’s got his ass wrapped in a towel,” he was singing, blues-style. “That’s a state of matters that makes me wanna growell!”
“You should be growling,” Matsumoto commented. “Since you’re singing doggerel.”
“Man thinks he has a sense of humor,” Ryan said.
Matsumoto just shook his head and left for the showers, pulling the towel from around his waist as he went.
Dante heard a sigh from beside him. He caught the direction of Matt’s gaze and smiled.
“He’s so fine!” Ryan burst into song again, eyes fixed on Matt. “Wish he were mine! Ooh, someone has a thing for Matsumoto.”
“Don’t fuck with my driver,” Dante said. “I need him focused. I can’t drive myself.”
“Okay, big Daddy,” Ryan said. “You probably wouldn’t like Matsumoto if you got to know him, Lakowski. He’s into some weird shit. BDSM, stuff like that.”
“Is that me you’re talking about?” Matsumoto returned. “I think you’re sitting on my shower gel, Ryan.”
“I wondered what that unfamiliar feeling was.” Ryan discovered the shower gel in the folds of his towel and handed it over. “We were just scaring the rookie with tales of the Kinkmeister.”
“I’m not scared,” Matt said.
“Oh yeah?” Matsumoto smiled. “Whatever he’s told you, it’s probably true.”
“How I look at it,” Matt said, “vanilla is a flavor. But so are strawberry and chocolate.”
Matsumoto laughed.
“What’s your favorite?” he asked.
“Pistachio,” Matt said.

Sunday 24 February 2013

The Poet

This is The Poet. He originally appeared in a series of very sleazy pictures I did in 2005. It starts off with him being arrested for covering the city in graffiti and it all goes downhill from there on. I'm really not going to go into details but if I say Matsumoto's involved, those who are reading my story Cold Case on Gay Authors will probably have an inkling as to what I mean.

All consensual, folks, nothing to see here, move along!

 Anyway, this is the updated version of him that I just finished, the original one was crap. The pose he's in here is because he's part of a bigger picture when I get it finished.



He's got a knitted hat as well. I don't think I'd have the patience to make one that big.

All behind

No, that's not - does my bum look big in this? Behind in the sense of - where is my chapter 3? Where is my chapter 6? Boss me is getting really pissed off with worker me and here I am updating my blog instead of writing either chapter 3 or chapter 6. Dear me.

I had a picture to post here but I left it on my PC and I'm on my laptop... will go network it over, hang on a minute.

 While we're waiting - I like this guy:

http://brooklyntweed.blogspot.co.uk/

He makes knitting patterns. A lot of them are kind of girly but he does some nice guys' stuff as well. I'm making a hat that's a free pattern. Free because I'm cheap. And making it because it's fucking cold here, like, I have the heat on, I have double glazing, I have the gas fire on, it is STILL cold. 

Not that I'm suggesting I'm going to sit in my room with a hat on. Because that would be weird kind of homeless-person behaviour. I was, for a while, a homeless person. It was years ago and I don't care to be reminded of those halcyon days. 

I realise now that I've named one of the characters in the Gay Authors story after somebody I knew in London around that time. Bill. I liked him. He was kind to me at a time when that was a rarity. Gods know whatever happened to him, he was a Dilly boy or whatever the fuck the PC term is for that. Sex worker? Well, you should work at it, that's what I say. Make some fucking effort there, don't leave it all to the top! :D

My character Billy has actually been around for ages. He was part of a project I was doing with ffabris to make a comic about homeless kids that had been thrown out of their homes for being gay. That never got finished as both fab and I had personal stuff going on at the time. Maybe I should do that myself? I could put it on my website. The one I don't have right now. I have a couple of domain names but neither of them is appropriate.

Lol, I did an absolutely atrocious comic a few years back about a bunch of rednecks who were all called Billy- something. Billy-Jean, Billy-Bob and Billy-Joe, I think. Oh, and the baby was called Billy-Jesus. 

Okay, this is getting way too stream-of-consciousness now. I'm going to go find that picture and post it. Back in a mo.

Thursday 21 February 2013

Matt rebuild

Matt Lakowski, the guy who drives my two detectives around. I changed his whole body base for another one. This is him in his uniform. Actually, it's not his uniform it's - another uniform.  Um. No, he's really not with the NYPD. But it's similar. 

I need to sort him out another uniform that's actually from the (fictional) place where he works. Or maybe just paint the damn thing on, it could be simpler.

I dunno if I mentioned before but book 2 or 3 is from Matt's viewpoint. It's probably going to be first person as well. I don't know if it's 2 or 3 because I forgot where I put my notes about all that.

 

What is it with Matt, no matter what I do with him he gets himself into a sexy pose and looks like a stripper... oh well. There are worse things :P

Wednesday 20 February 2013

More Matsumoto. And a little Pygmalion musing.

Just a scribble. I seem to have got rid of the horrible whiteout he was suffering from before. I'm working up to a finished picture of him now I've got his skin sorted out and stuff.

I think he looks hot now. Well, why not? If I'm gonna make a guy, why not make a guy I'd like to --- shame he's not real. I'd order a dozen.


Monday 18 February 2013

Writing excerpt 2

Just a little bit of what's going on further along in the story :)




Dante turned to Matsumoto.
“What did you say to each other?” he asked.
“I said, your place or mine. He said, bring your handcuffs.”
“You liar.”
“Yeah. Shame. I just said, thanks because I’m busy, he said, you’re welcome. You interested in learning Cantonese?”
“Maybe.” Dante waved away clouds of steam. The room they’d entered was even hotter than out in the corridor. “I mean, we work in Chinatown, right? It seems a good idea to be able to talk to people in at least one of their own languages.”
“It’s an even better idea to know what they’re saying when they think you don’t understand them,” Matsumoto said. “I’m half Hong Kong Chinese anyway. I come prepacked with Cantonese.”
“I didn’t know that,” Dante said. He coughed as he breathed in steam. “I hate to think what this is doing to the crime scene.”
“M E should be here any minute,” Joe said. “There you are.”
Dante looked down at the body on the floor, trying to make out details. The young man was half-wearing a white towelling robe, which had been pulled nearly off him, presumably when he was struggling with his attacker.
“I’ve got your crime scene tape, Sarge.” Another rookie arrived, belting into the room like Pheidippides turning up in Athens.
“Watch that fucking body, O’Reilly!” Joe said.
O’Rielly skidded to a stop, then looked down at the corpse he’d nearly run over. “Urgh!” he said, pointing a trembling finger. “Is that what he does? The killer?”
“What?” Dante said, leaning over to look.
“The body - he’s got no – his dick’s gone! He’s got no dick!”
“You’re right,” Dante said, suppressing a smile.
“Where is it?” O’Rielly looked around as if he expected to see the missing body part hanging on the wall somewhere, along with the towels, robes and shelves holding massage oil.
“He never had one,” Matsumoto said, taking a look for himself. “Those are female genitals.”
“What?” O’Rielly didn’t seem much reassured by this news.
“See that’s the problem with having a lot of gay officers in a precinct,” Joe said. “They see naked woman parts, they’ve no idea what they’re looking at.”

Notional Health Service

Took my daughter to Minor Injuries unit yesterday as she had resprained ankle that first went three weeks ago. Was told if I wanted elastic bandage for her, to buy my own as NHS can't afford to give them out any more.

Admittedly, the nurse says the 'research' proves that she won't get better any faster with a bandage on. When I asked if the extra support would help prevent further incidents of sprain, was answered with vague mutterings.

Went and bought one from the chemist. I'm a great believer in belt, braces - and elastic bandage. 

Fucking Cameron should give the NHS some money instead of keeping it all for himself. But given track record so far, AND IN MY OPINION, he and his cronies shouldn't be in power, they should be in prison.

Monday 11 February 2013

Year of the Snake

Chinese New Year yesterday - lots of lion and dragon dancing, they went around all the Chinese businesses in the city centre here. So I took photos - and used one as the background of this picture.
Happy New Year, everybody! :)


The dragon has just been inside the largest Chinese supermarket we have here - there were firecrackers. That's it you can see whizzing around behind their heads :)

Saturday 9 February 2013

Double, double, here comes trouble...

Yay, I finally sorted out Dante so here are both my detectives - well, both the detectives investigating the case I'm writing about. I have plenty more of them inside those double doors.
 

Thursday 7 February 2013

Fools rush in...

Yeah, I was that fool. Am that fool... I started writing another story - for the Gay Authors site. It's a long time since I posted stories online so I thought it might be fun.

When I say writing, I'm not actually writing two stories at once, I'm writing the novel with Shou and Kenji in it and the other one is pretty much already written. I remembered writing it a few years back, so I dug it out and started to piece all the longhand bits together.

What I didn't remember, what I really could have done with remembering, before I posted the first chapter in public, was how long and complex this damn story is. Oh, look, a bit of gay fiction, thought I. Oh, bugger, I've got a novel of Stephen King proportions, thought I; I thought this latter at some point I will now call too late.

It has three viewpoints as well, which I don't normally do. I have one or two. Sometimes I even first-person it, which keeps it even more firmly in one viewpoint and makes sure you don't even know half of the stuff that's happening behind your back. I like this one for paranoid characters.

Well, I need to post a chapter a week or so of this monster thing. Which should give me chance to sort out what's going on with it - but it's so massive, I'm worried that I'll write myself into a corner in the first part and then find another bit lying around in the primordial paper ooze that tells me something quite different should have happened.

Not that I'm, you know, tied to the outline. In fact, I regard the outline more as a kind of avatar of stern parenthood. You know what it's going to say and then you ignore it. Unless it's pocket money day.

I'm just hoping that by the time I've posted the first three chapters - which introduce everybody and set the scene - I'll have found all the rest of it and it's in good enough shape that I can see where I'm going. But, then again, I'll no doubt want to change what I wrote. That always happens. 

Wish me luck :)

Tuesday 5 February 2013

Just a little nonsense...



I don't remember what font I used for this, but the U doesn't look too good.

Monday 4 February 2013

testing testing


I needed to upload this image so I can link to it for a sig on another site... that's why it's sideways at the top.

Watching the Detective

Mikio outside his precinct house, with the aforementioned rainbow t-shirt on his buff bod. This is when he had long hair.

It's a funny shaped image because I cut off the surrounding. Like when you have a good photo of yourself, but on the other side of it is a bf you now hate. So you cut the photo in two and stuff him through the bars of the gas fire.

Uhhh - just me, then?

Blast from the past

I've got Crosby Stills Nash and Young on YouTube. One of my guys must like listening to that. I feel I should open the window and let some fresh air in, pretend I'm at Woodstock or something. Roll a joint, have unsafe sex with several cute guys I just met. Sigh. Nostalgia...

When I say my guys, I mean the guys I'm writing about. Not my multiple personalities. Although, my guys are pretty much like multiple personalities. I tend to channel them. Lol. Not always that much fun.

You... who are on the road... must have a code.. that you can live by... fuck, this is abysmally catchy music! Who listens to this? I'm gonna make him or her stand in the corner! BAD MIND-CHILD!

Sunday 3 February 2013

Unseen Versity

Those poems are ancient. I have a bunch of newer ones but I dunno where they are at the moment. I have a habit of writing them on scraps of stuff and in pads that are meant for something else
.
I decided to take the day off today and spring clean my desk, it's covered in old papers and other useless shit. It's probably gonna take me the whole day, meanwhile I have the neighbours inviting me to a cut-the-hedge party so I'm hoping it rains.

I might find those new poems while I'm cleaning. I need to find something before the 15th as I'm going to poetry workshop - at least, I think I am. When I sent email for details it bounced :(
I found my guy's body - hm, if only it was so easy - so I'll probably do a new picture of him in a while when I've picked up some of the piles of crap I now have scattered all around me like a fucking typhoon in W H Smiths.

My crow's shouting at me now, I need to go feed him.

Have you seen my little red rooster?

I'm looking for the 3d version of this guy - name of Shing, forgotten his second name or maybe his first one since he's Chinese. I wanted to do a new picture of him since he's Kenji's bodyguard. 
As I said, pictures help me write, yada yada - why does Kenji need a bodyguard, you may ask? You'll have to read the book to find out. And you can't because I haven't written it yet. Never will if I don't get on with it either. Unforgiveable procrastination! I spank myself! Ooh, that was nice, do it again!

Open your books at page 69...

What's that? It's Sunday? You don't get weekends off at Master Alex's Palace of Pain, dear! Now get your spoon and read up your poetry!

I want to call you, talking.
Serious stuff, you know?
Subtext phone sex
I'm saying, read me
I mean, fuck you

I want to wring you
till the last drops shake free,
Drink you, lick you, have you
drench me so I'm
drowning in your sea.
Tasting the salt
Waves slapping, dolphins grounded
Crashing on the rocks
Breaking to pieces,
eaten by mermaids.

I want to scuba
in your deep, you know.
Subtext.
Nice to hear from you.

Copyright Alex Sweeney 2013


That was fun, wasn't it? This, not so much - I wrote this when Cumbria was being wrecked by foot and mouth disease in 2001.


Fly in the body of a black carrion bird
Over this green, this pleasant land
Where there are no
crisp packets, pop bottles,
condoms, baby wipes,
phlegmed tissues, crusts,
crumbs, even of hope.
Nobody picnics, no kids to scream.
Nobody hiking
No gods. No dreams.

Now caved inside
the bones of a sheep's ribs,
prisoner waiting, unforgiven,
for the flame
in a druid's wicker basket.
The still heart does not bang
and beat, like an underwater clock.
Looking out through a maggot's eye
Through a burned and eaten space,
see empty fields through hell's keyhole.

No one man and his dog
No work for them to do.
Across the blood-stained hills,
Warless battlefield
where a thousand corpses
did not fight back, 
the farmer's in his den.
His neck stretched out for sacrifice,
lamb of God.
One useless, work-hardened hand
reaches for the gun.


Copyright Alex Sweeney 2013

Dear gods, that was depressing! Let's have a night out. It's - what is it, nearly six in the morning? I've only been up two hours, I should have the energy to dance!


I want to dance with you
Take your hand from time to time
Touch your bleached hair
say words I may or may not mean.
I like a man, or a woman
who likes to dance.
What Scorpio doesn't?

The clock circles, waits to spring,
time for fierce beating hearts
pump blood, pump iron,
jog around the milkman morning streets,
training to perform.
Waiting for the late. Let's find a club
open as long as life.

We'll ask for Fat Boy Slim
Or Rammstein
Or the Pogues.
Go to that place in my mind
where it always snows.
And dance, as they say,
the everlasting night away. 

Copyright Alex Sweeney 2013


Did I pick the Pogues because it almost rhymes with snows? I'm not sure I can see another reason - apart from Fairytale of New York. Kind of. I'm not sure using faggot as an insult is something I want to endorse.
 

Saturday 2 February 2013

Driving Miss Dante

This is Matty. Not a main character - but he's my main character's driver. My character, Dante, got injured in chapter 1 so he needs a uniformed guy to drive him around. Which is Matty, although this is him sans uniform and about to be sans everything by the look of it.
The second book in the series, which, strangely enough, is already partly written, is from Matty's point of view. Unless I change my mind, but I don't see why I should. He's an interesting character.
I will, at some point, post some writing about Dante. My book has two separate threads that intertwine and two POV characters to go with them. One of the guys is Kenji, whom you've already met and Dante is the main one, but I haven't written that much about him yet that I'd like to post anywhere. I don't want to give away the plot!





This may be totally disappointing, but whatever's going on here, and I'm not going to tell you, it's not gonna happen until maybe book five or six. 

Thursday 31 January 2013

Growling morning and musings

Urrr, I've already realised by chapter 4 that a lot of this absolutely fabulous writing I'm doing here will have to go. Including one of those effing excerpts down there. 

Too much chat and not enough movement. That's what happens you get a bunch of gay police officers in a book, all they want to do is stop investigating the crime to discuss their feelings, compare the price they paid for their off-duty clothes an borrow each other's deodorant in the showers... 

Okay, channelling my grumpy sergeant there. I feel like a grumpy sergeant this morning. It's always a bit bottom-of-the-sine-wave when I've sent something off anywhere. Now I have to get stuck into the hard work of the other 90 or so K.

Less chat, more murders! That will be my watchword from now on! Actually, what I'll do, what I always do, I let em natter on for 120K or so then cut all the blah out and I end up with a book that's about the size I want out. Jeez, that sounds like I wrote hundreds of the things... it's what seems to work so far.

This is my fourth. I think - no, I wrote a couple of novels years ago but they were more fanfiction than anything, I didn't make up the milieu, just the characters and plot and stuff. 

Then I wrote one that was really a collection of (very raunchy) linked short stories with illustrations, no less.

Next I wrote a steampunk novel at the end of 2010 which needs revising as the ending, well, let's just say it has Patented Dyson technology for no loss of suction. One of those what WAS I thinking moments.

Then I had a ghastly 2011. No writing to speak of, at least, none I want to admit to. In 2012 I did NaNoWriMo and that resulted in a fantasy novel that needs the fuck of a lot of work on it. I'll do that later. It's part of a series that I've written part of already, but the one I did for NNWM is pretty far on in the series so there's no rush to sort it out. The first one was suffering from slack lazy won't-write-an-outline writer syndrome so I left it on one side for a bit. Rather than keep on writing stuff I'd just have to delete.

Now this - it is a crime novel and I must say, I've always wanted to write one. Which is what I should be doing, having reached the point where I've realised I'm just putting it off. Well, I had a huge bowl of muesli to get through but there's only a spoonful of milk and a couple of raisins left so - nose to the grindstone. That does sound painful, doesn't it? I mean, suppose you got that little pumice thing you rub off dry foot skin with, and you applied it to your nose instead? Ouch, yes? 

Wednesday 30 January 2013

Right at the back of the closet...

... I found my t-shirt. Needs some morphs. For the non-3d among us, I need to make some variable adjustable modifications to the mesh so that it can fit a variety of body shapes.

Job Satisfaction?


Tuesday 29 January 2013

He's my Japanese boy

I need to get a template that isn't so relentlessly pink. Here's Mikio Matsumoto - one of the detectives in my book. Isn't he cute? :D
I find having pictures of the people helps me think about them. In the sense that I think about them while I'm making the pictures and that seems to move the story along as well. 
Miki had a t-shirt on originally which I made the 3d model of myself. Unfortunately, during some instance of PC collapse, the parts of it became separated - no, not sleeves and body, the part that describes the 3d mesh became divorced from the mesh itself and now I'm having a bit of trouble trying to get it back together.
So just imagine, for now, a black tee with a rainbow flag on it.

Monday 28 January 2013

Why the Blog title - you may ask. Or not.

Yeah, I realised the blog title is somewhat obscure - 911 because my story is set in the USA, a place that for the first time in my life is beginning to seem slightly more appealing than David Cameron's junkyard. 
And 69 because my characters inhabit the 69th precinct. Not all of them are cops. Some of them are just concerned citizens who like to make an honest dollar pimping, hooking, stealing, lying and the like...

Doodle

Shou and Kenji. They're not the main characters in my book, but since I was writing about them yesterday... Kenji's the one with the spikes, Shou's the Man in Partly Black.
This is just a 3d doodle, the equivalent of a sketch...

Sunday 27 January 2013

Writing excerpts 1

I've been writing the start of a book for the Crime Writers' Association Debut Dagger competition. Although I've had stuff published before, I've never had an actual book published so I'm eligible to enter that.
The book's characters are based on ones in some short stories I wrote a few years ago. And one of them is very slightly based on an original character I added to some *cough* fanfiction. 
I'm hoping to write a series of books about these people, but - best to let them speak for themselves. 
I can't post the first chapter as it's what I'm sending to the competition, but here's an excerpt from later on. Please excuse the language. It's Miao Shou. He wasn't brought up right. :D


“Polymath, huh?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Kenji said. “That’d imply I had an exceptionally high IQ.”
“Do you?”
“What makes you think I’d know?” Kenji countered.
“Because you’re avoiding telling me,” Shou said. “This water’s warm. Will you fill it up again, please.”
“Sure.” Kenji got up and took the jug over to the washbasin.
“So why are you ashamed to be clever?” Shou persisted after he’d tasted the fresh water and nodded to say it was acceptable.
“I just –“ Kenji shrugged. “I’ve just found that people generally don’t like to give a job to someone who’s more intelligent than they are.”
“You think you’re more intelligent than me?” Shou banged down his glass, spraying the table with water. “I don’t fuckin think so.”
“You’re very competitive, aren’t you?” Kenji said.  “But even if I had a higher IQ than you, you’ve probably got a lot more life experience and stuff.”
“What, you’re sayin I’m old now?” Shou demanded. “First I’m fuckin stupid, now I’ve got one foot in the fuckin grave? Did you ever think about takin a course in fuckin interview skills?”
“Uh –“
“I notice you don’t say I’ve probably got more common sense than you,” Shou railroaded on. “Most people would say I’ve probably got more common sense. Since I’m so much fuckin older than you. An I run my own business an so on.”
“Well, you’re lying in bed with a gunshot wound and I’m not,” Kenji said. “So I don’t think I’ve yet encountered all this common sense you think you’ve got.”
“Hey, that could happen to anybody!” Shou said. “Drive bys happen all the time.”
“But you run a gay brothel,” Kenji said. “It’s got to be a high risk business as far as getting shot is concerned. Or getting arrested for that matter. Or getting a social disease. I’m not sure it’s the most sensible of career choices.”
“Yeah, right, what fuckin ever,” Shou said. “Anyway, Mr Sense an fuckin Sensibility, what the fuck job are you fuckin doing right now this very minute?”
“Well, at this exact minute –“
“You know what I mean!”
“I’m running your brothel.” Kenji grinned.
“Yeah, an tou fuckin ché to you too,” Shou said. “An please don’t call it a brothel in public. It’s a bathhouse.”



 And here's another bit from later still - Kenji must be having a calming effect on Shou, he only uses the f word once in this ;)


 
“I don’t know why you bother to exercise,” Miao Shou said. “You’ll be fat by the time you’re forty, anyway.”
“No I won’t,” Kenji said. “Why should I?”
“All Japanese men get fat. You just look at any group of middleaged Japanese men, there they are with their bellies hangin over their belts.”
“I don’t intend to be like that.”
“You’ve got no option. It’s genetics. Age forty, lardass time. Blib blob, all over the place.”
“Well, I’ll watch my diet,” Kenji said.
“Why bother?”
“I don’t know,” Kenji said. “I mean – I might have a boyfriend. He might not like it if I’m oozing around like a big puddle of grease.”
“You got a cute face,” Miao Shou said. “That should make up for – hey, wait a minute. Boyfriend? Are you – gay?”
“Huh?” Kenji stared at Shou. “Well, duh.”
“You never told me you were gay!”
“Why do you think I came for a job at your bathhouse?”
“You thought you were gonna get a job doing massage,” Shou said. "All that New Age Reiki Shiatsu shit."
“Yeah, but I knew it was a gay bathhouse,” Kenji said. “I checked it out before I came in.”
“Oh, you did, did you?”
“Yeah, I waited outside for a couple of days to see what kind of people went in and out.”
“You must be fuckin sneaky,” Shou said. “I never noticed you.”
“Yeah, I’m quite unobtrusive when I want to be,” Kenji said. “Despite my incipient lardass.”