Queer Readers Interview
May. 27th, 2023 08:35 amJust a reminder! Today at 3 pm EST (8 pm UTC) I'll be giving a live interview on the Queer Readers discord, focusing on Tramps and Vagabonds. (The exact channel you want will be Spotlight Talk.)
Queer Readers Interview
May. 7th, 2023 10:20 amFriends! Romans! Countrymen! I am delighted to inform you that the Queer Readers May Spotlight book is Tramps and Vagabonds, and I will be giving a live interview on the Queer Readers discord on May 27 at 3 pm EST (8 pm UTC). (The exact channel you want will be Spotlight Talk.)
Tramps and Vagabonds will presumably be the focus, but last time we ended up ranging over quite a number of my books, so if you have questions about say Honeytrap you could certainly bring those along!
Tramps and Vagabonds will presumably be the focus, but last time we ended up ranging over quite a number of my books, so if you have questions about say Honeytrap you could certainly bring those along!
Tramps and Vagabonds Launch Day
May. 9th, 2022 08:10 amToday is launch day for Tramps and Vagabonds! Go forth, little book, and return with your pockets full of gold!
To celebrate the release (and escape the temptation to refresh my stats constantly and wail “Why has no oneleft me kudos bought a copy in the five minutes since I last checked!”), I am taking a little trip to Clifty Falls, which boasts FOUR waterfalls and a bat cave. My computer is staying home, but I am taking a couple of books and MANY cookies.
To celebrate the release (and escape the temptation to refresh my stats constantly and wail “Why has no one
April Writing and May Goals
Apr. 30th, 2022 07:28 amMost important writing news of the month: Tramps and Vagabonds is now available for preorder! It will release on May 9.
Knocking Tramps and Vagabonds into shape took up a good deal of April, but I have been trundling away on Sleeping Beauty as well. I’m up to 90,000 words! I would love to say I’ll finish a draft in May, but honestly June seems more likely.
Once I have a complete draft I’m going to set it aside to cool, as it were, and work on something else. Perhaps at last those 1910s college girls will get the attention they deserve? I’m toying with the idea of mushing this story together with the Goblin Market retelling, because of COURSE vivacious trickster madcap Judy is exactly the sort of person who WOULD eat the fairy fruit.
The girls are going to make a one-reel film, on the topic of fairies of course. Judy plays the Puck character, who kisses the eyes of a sleeping maiden to give her the fairy sight, and then leads her into the fairy mound. Judy’s acerbic roommate Ruth directs.
Knocking Tramps and Vagabonds into shape took up a good deal of April, but I have been trundling away on Sleeping Beauty as well. I’m up to 90,000 words! I would love to say I’ll finish a draft in May, but honestly June seems more likely.
Once I have a complete draft I’m going to set it aside to cool, as it were, and work on something else. Perhaps at last those 1910s college girls will get the attention they deserve? I’m toying with the idea of mushing this story together with the Goblin Market retelling, because of COURSE vivacious trickster madcap Judy is exactly the sort of person who WOULD eat the fairy fruit.
The girls are going to make a one-reel film, on the topic of fairies of course. Judy plays the Puck character, who kisses the eyes of a sleeping maiden to give her the fairy sight, and then leads her into the fairy mound. Judy’s acerbic roommate Ruth directs.
Writing news
Apr. 28th, 2022 08:03 amTramps and Vagabonds is now available for preorder, to release on May 9! Get it while it’s hot!
I also got a lovely review of Honeytrap on Smut Report! Which resulted in zero sales (as in, there were zero sales total on the day the review came out), so maybe hitting up review sites for reviews is not, as I had hoped, a winning sales strategy.
I also got a lovely review of Honeytrap on Smut Report! Which resulted in zero sales (as in, there were zero sales total on the day the review came out), so maybe hitting up review sites for reviews is not, as I had hoped, a winning sales strategy.
Tramps and Vagabonds cover
Apr. 25th, 2022 09:32 am
Behold! The cover of Tramps and Vagabonds, by the incomparable ZJ Timekeeper!
Riding the rails during the Great Depression, two young tramps team up to take on the world... and fall in love. Carnivals, hurt/comfort, cuddling for warmth: this book has it all.
I was hoping to get it out by the first Monday in May but I think the time pressure will result in a hasty copy-edit, so I'm aiming for May 9 instead. Of course this lowers the likelihood of another thousand dollar month, but once you hit a thousand dollar month once it is not so important to hit it again... What is important is sales over time.
Tramps and Vagabonds Historical Note
Apr. 15th, 2022 01:56 pmAfter MUCH TRAVAIL I finally have a draft of the historical note for Tramps and Vagabonds! I finally realized that I probably didn't need to explain about the differences between "wolf" and "fairy" and "queer" when James already explains that to Timothy in the book itself, which made the amount of information for the historical note slightly more manageable, although it may have been a mistake not to include a refresher course.
***
It’s rare to be able to pinpoint the exact moment that spawned a book, but the present volume can be be traced directly to a footnote in George Chauncey’s Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of a Gay Male World, 1890-1940: “homosexual relationships appear to have been so widespread among seamen and hoboes that historians need to recognize the desire to live in a social milieu in which such relationships were relatively common and accepted… as one of the motives that sent men on the road or to sea.”
Timothy grew from this footnote. If a young gay man hit the road during the Great Depression in search of a more accepting milieu, what would he find there?
Fortunately, there are some wonderful memoirs about life on the road, like Jack London’s The Road and Jim Tully’s Beggars of Life. Both of these books include beautiful, lyrical passages about the joys of life on the road: the thrill of living a life of freedom and adventure, where every day is different than the last. This is the side of tramp life often captured in folksongs, like “Tramps and Hawkers,” of which James sings a snatch in Chapter 16:
And if the weather does permit
I’m happy every day!
These memoirs inspired many of the more picturesque incidents in this book. The fireflies in the hayloft, for instance, come directly from Tully (although the end result is entirely my own).
But although these writers remember their years on the road with great fondness, they are very clear that they are glad those years are over. The road offered them a life of unparalleled adventure and freedom, but also great hardship. Tully mentions multiple deaths that he witnessed on the rails; London dwells on the horrors of the month that he spent in prison for vagrancy.
Sociological studies like Thomas Minehan’s Boy and Girl Tramps of America echo this duality, although their focus tends to fall on the hardship: Minehan documents many instances of tramps maimed or killed by the hazards on the road, as well as the daily struggle for survival, and ends his book with a plea for more extensive government intervention to help vulnerable young people. (William Wellman's wonderful 1933 film Wild Boys of the Road - the title is an ironic reference to scare newspaper headlines demonizing young tramps - similarly presses society to offer more help to young people forced on the road.)
The book is a fascinating read for its own sake (without any of the sociological dryness of Nels Anderson’s useful Of Hobos and Homelessness) and an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the Great Depression. Minehan based this book on extensive fieldwork from 1932 and 1934, when he rode the rails dressed as a tramp, chatting with the young tramps (by boy and girl, he means young people up to the age of 21) and occasionally performing more extensive interviews. I drew extensively on Minehan’s lists of tips that he gathered from the road kids: how to find food, how to beg, how to take care of clothes on the road. Almost all of the advice that James passes on to Timothy comes directly from this book. In homage I borrowed Minehan’s own road name, Shorty, for James.
Aside from Jack London, every single one of these authors comments extensively on the prevalence of homosexuality on the road, a fact corroborated in Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast. As he chats with Gertrude Stein about his youthful experiences with tramps in Kansas City and Michigan, Hemingway recalls, “I knew why it was you carried a knife and would use it when you were in the company of tramps when you were a boy in the days when wolves was not a slang term for men obsessed by the pursuit of women.”
The acceptance of homosexual relationships on the road went hand in hand with a widespread toleration of sexual violence. This is not to say that all relationships on the road were violent: Minehan notes that in certain instances, the relationship between a wolf and his punk “seemed to be one of mutual satisfaction. The man and boy were pals.” But the possibility of sexual violence was omnipresent for girl tramps, and it loomed large for boy tramps, as well. Minehan is blunt: “One of the first lessons that a boy learns on the road is to beware of certain older men.”
Why were same-sex relations so common on the road? Part of it arose simply from an absence of women: even during the Great Depression, when female tramps became common for the first time, they comprised only a small part of the tramps population. But it also arose from the understanding of same-sex activity that remained common in rough working class milieu like the road, which stigmatized only the penetrated partner in the interaction. The active, penetrating partner was still considered a normal, conventionally masculine man, even if, like a wolf traveling with his punk, he was having sex with another man quite regularly. In this context, “normal” was emphatically not a synonym for “heterosexual.”
“Normal” and “heterosexual” were, however, already synonymous among the educated and professional classes, and by the middle of the twentieth century this understanding of human sexuality had more or less pervaded all social classes of American society. However, as Elizabeth Jane Ward chronicles in her fascinating book Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men, even in the twenty-first century straight men frequently find loopholes in this definition that allow for considerable sexual horseplay with other men. As Ward muses, “The long history of straight men’s sex with men, and the varied places where it occurs and the varied forms it takes, requires an expansive view, one that illuminates the all-too-often ignored probability that straight men, as a rule, want to have sex with men.”
***
It’s rare to be able to pinpoint the exact moment that spawned a book, but the present volume can be be traced directly to a footnote in George Chauncey’s Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of a Gay Male World, 1890-1940: “homosexual relationships appear to have been so widespread among seamen and hoboes that historians need to recognize the desire to live in a social milieu in which such relationships were relatively common and accepted… as one of the motives that sent men on the road or to sea.”
Timothy grew from this footnote. If a young gay man hit the road during the Great Depression in search of a more accepting milieu, what would he find there?
Fortunately, there are some wonderful memoirs about life on the road, like Jack London’s The Road and Jim Tully’s Beggars of Life. Both of these books include beautiful, lyrical passages about the joys of life on the road: the thrill of living a life of freedom and adventure, where every day is different than the last. This is the side of tramp life often captured in folksongs, like “Tramps and Hawkers,” of which James sings a snatch in Chapter 16:
And if the weather does permit
I’m happy every day!
These memoirs inspired many of the more picturesque incidents in this book. The fireflies in the hayloft, for instance, come directly from Tully (although the end result is entirely my own).
But although these writers remember their years on the road with great fondness, they are very clear that they are glad those years are over. The road offered them a life of unparalleled adventure and freedom, but also great hardship. Tully mentions multiple deaths that he witnessed on the rails; London dwells on the horrors of the month that he spent in prison for vagrancy.
Sociological studies like Thomas Minehan’s Boy and Girl Tramps of America echo this duality, although their focus tends to fall on the hardship: Minehan documents many instances of tramps maimed or killed by the hazards on the road, as well as the daily struggle for survival, and ends his book with a plea for more extensive government intervention to help vulnerable young people. (William Wellman's wonderful 1933 film Wild Boys of the Road - the title is an ironic reference to scare newspaper headlines demonizing young tramps - similarly presses society to offer more help to young people forced on the road.)
The book is a fascinating read for its own sake (without any of the sociological dryness of Nels Anderson’s useful Of Hobos and Homelessness) and an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the Great Depression. Minehan based this book on extensive fieldwork from 1932 and 1934, when he rode the rails dressed as a tramp, chatting with the young tramps (by boy and girl, he means young people up to the age of 21) and occasionally performing more extensive interviews. I drew extensively on Minehan’s lists of tips that he gathered from the road kids: how to find food, how to beg, how to take care of clothes on the road. Almost all of the advice that James passes on to Timothy comes directly from this book. In homage I borrowed Minehan’s own road name, Shorty, for James.
Aside from Jack London, every single one of these authors comments extensively on the prevalence of homosexuality on the road, a fact corroborated in Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast. As he chats with Gertrude Stein about his youthful experiences with tramps in Kansas City and Michigan, Hemingway recalls, “I knew why it was you carried a knife and would use it when you were in the company of tramps when you were a boy in the days when wolves was not a slang term for men obsessed by the pursuit of women.”
The acceptance of homosexual relationships on the road went hand in hand with a widespread toleration of sexual violence. This is not to say that all relationships on the road were violent: Minehan notes that in certain instances, the relationship between a wolf and his punk “seemed to be one of mutual satisfaction. The man and boy were pals.” But the possibility of sexual violence was omnipresent for girl tramps, and it loomed large for boy tramps, as well. Minehan is blunt: “One of the first lessons that a boy learns on the road is to beware of certain older men.”
Why were same-sex relations so common on the road? Part of it arose simply from an absence of women: even during the Great Depression, when female tramps became common for the first time, they comprised only a small part of the tramps population. But it also arose from the understanding of same-sex activity that remained common in rough working class milieu like the road, which stigmatized only the penetrated partner in the interaction. The active, penetrating partner was still considered a normal, conventionally masculine man, even if, like a wolf traveling with his punk, he was having sex with another man quite regularly. In this context, “normal” was emphatically not a synonym for “heterosexual.”
“Normal” and “heterosexual” were, however, already synonymous among the educated and professional classes, and by the middle of the twentieth century this understanding of human sexuality had more or less pervaded all social classes of American society. However, as Elizabeth Jane Ward chronicles in her fascinating book Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men, even in the twenty-first century straight men frequently find loopholes in this definition that allow for considerable sexual horseplay with other men. As Ward muses, “The long history of straight men’s sex with men, and the varied places where it occurs and the varied forms it takes, requires an expansive view, one that illuminates the all-too-often ignored probability that straight men, as a rule, want to have sex with men.”
Tramps and Vagabonds Blurb
Apr. 7th, 2022 01:11 pmI have a draft of a blurb for Tramps and Vagabonds! It is, perhaps, a little too long/detailed? I may be overcorrecting, because some of my older blurbs are definitely shorter and perhaps vaguer than a blurb should be... I blame my experience writing fanfic summaries.
Please let me know what you think! Is anything unclear? Should anything be cut and/or added?
***
“We’re in this together, share and share alike, you said, and you got to let me share the bad too.”
Bold, streetwise James has been riding the rails and living by his wits in the midst of the Great Depression ever since he ran away from his uncle’s house two years ago. When he pauses to catch his breath with a stint at the Civilian Conservation Corps, he meets Timothy, who has never spent a day on the road but sure would like to give it a try.
James figures sweet angel-faced Timothy will last maybe a few days. They’ll jump a train or two, see some of the country, maybe fool around a little. It’s part of the freedom of the road that no one minds much about two boys canoodling. Then Timothy will get tired of slumming it, and head on home.
But Timothy sticks it out. He’s just as much fun as James hoped and then some, and tougher than he looks, too. Soon James and Timothy rely on each other for everything, sharing whatever food and money they can scrounge, and leaning on each other in their troubles, too.
As weeks turn into months and the weather grows cold, James starts to worry. Winter is the dangerous season, and Timothy could easily die if he doesn’t go home. Only Timothy refuses to leave James - and James doesn’t want to lose him. He never realized till now just how stuck he’s gotten on Timothy.
But James can’t stand that he’s keeping Timothy in danger. Can James and Timothy find a place where they can be safe - and stay together?
Content notes for days. Police brutality, general fisticuffs, rampant petty thievery, transactional sex, sexual menace, period-typical attitudes especially toward homosexuality (by which I mean not only homophobia but “Which parties in this sexual interaction are actually considered queer?”), references to child abuse, references to sexual assault. One of my beta-readers said she read half the book peeking through her fingers because it was so emotionally intense. Make of that what you will.
Please let me know what you think! Is anything unclear? Should anything be cut and/or added?
***
“We’re in this together, share and share alike, you said, and you got to let me share the bad too.”
Bold, streetwise James has been riding the rails and living by his wits in the midst of the Great Depression ever since he ran away from his uncle’s house two years ago. When he pauses to catch his breath with a stint at the Civilian Conservation Corps, he meets Timothy, who has never spent a day on the road but sure would like to give it a try.
James figures sweet angel-faced Timothy will last maybe a few days. They’ll jump a train or two, see some of the country, maybe fool around a little. It’s part of the freedom of the road that no one minds much about two boys canoodling. Then Timothy will get tired of slumming it, and head on home.
But Timothy sticks it out. He’s just as much fun as James hoped and then some, and tougher than he looks, too. Soon James and Timothy rely on each other for everything, sharing whatever food and money they can scrounge, and leaning on each other in their troubles, too.
As weeks turn into months and the weather grows cold, James starts to worry. Winter is the dangerous season, and Timothy could easily die if he doesn’t go home. Only Timothy refuses to leave James - and James doesn’t want to lose him. He never realized till now just how stuck he’s gotten on Timothy.
But James can’t stand that he’s keeping Timothy in danger. Can James and Timothy find a place where they can be safe - and stay together?
Content notes for days. Police brutality, general fisticuffs, rampant petty thievery, transactional sex, sexual menace, period-typical attitudes especially toward homosexuality (by which I mean not only homophobia but “Which parties in this sexual interaction are actually considered queer?”), references to child abuse, references to sexual assault. One of my beta-readers said she read half the book peeking through her fingers because it was so emotionally intense. Make of that what you will.
March Writing and April Goals
Mar. 31st, 2022 07:58 amIt still seems dangerous to say that Sleeping Beauty is going well, but I’ve hit 75,000 words, and at least the book feels like it has a firm foundation and a good, solid structure, so perhaps… it is… going well? Perhaps seventh time is the charm!
At some point I should do a postmortem on What the Fuck Went Wrong with this Drafting Process so it never happens again. But probably I should wait till the book’s done because otherwise the postmortem might crush me with despair.
In April, I intend to continue Sleeping Beauty (I think it’s too early to make “finish a draft” a goal, but we are getting closer) and to prepare Tramps and Vagabonds for publication. Time to bite the bullet and write that blurb and historical note.
At some point I should do a postmortem on What the Fuck Went Wrong with this Drafting Process so it never happens again. But probably I should wait till the book’s done because otherwise the postmortem might crush me with despair.
In April, I intend to continue Sleeping Beauty (I think it’s too early to make “finish a draft” a goal, but we are getting closer) and to prepare Tramps and Vagabonds for publication. Time to bite the bullet and write that blurb and historical note.
Some Books from Before the Trip
Mar. 25th, 2022 06:52 amAfter a trip I always end up with some errant book reviews of books that I read before gallivanting off. My hold on Rosemary Mosco’s A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching: Getting to Know the World’s Most Misunderstood Bird arrived just before I went to New York City. I think we can all agree is the perfect time to get a book about pigeons, and it really gave a new dimension of pleasure to the trip, because every flock becomes an opportunity to admire the many variations of pigeons: piebald pigeons, brown pigeons (rare because recessive), pigeons with feathers on their feet.
I also read Jack London’s The Road, partly as last-minute research for Tramps and Vagabonds (although London rode the rails in the 1890s - a very different time than the 1930s), although I may have accidentally ended up with another book. London mentions chasing across the continent after a tramp he had never met, purely because he was so intrigued by the man’s water-tower signature “Skysail Jack,” and look, doesn’t that sound like the beginning of a romance novel? And isn’t Skysail Jack the perfect name for a romance novel? Couldn’t I build up a line of tramp romances?
Maybe I had better see how Tramps and Vagabonds does before I get any ideas on that line. I don’t think it’s a niche anyone else has claimed, but maybe that’s because no one wants to read it.
Finally, Helen Dawes Brown’s 1886 Two College Girls tells the tale of unlikely roommates Rosamund and Edna, a light-hearted madcap and a cranky bookworm, respectively. (The madcap is a 19th century heroine type I don’t see very often in modern-day books. We should bring her back! She’s so much fun! Here’s a representative quote from Rosamund: “I always did maintain that punctuation hindered a free play of intellect - I think best in dashes.”)
Both girls are initially horrified to find themselves stuck with someone so opposite to themselves, but eventually they become good friends and good influences on each other. Rosamund realizes that she can’t have fun all the time (and in the process discovers an unexpected ambition to be a doctor); Edna realizes that people who don’t share her narrow range of bookish interests can still be worthwhile, and the resulting increase in sympathy and broadmindedness make her both a happier person and a more thoughtful student.
The book mostly focuses on the two girls and sundry classmates, although it ends (of course) with Edna’s engagement to Rosamund’s brother right after graduation. The attitude toward marriage is interesting: I noted down this quote from Rosamund (the most quotable person in the book), who says, “If I ever marry, - and I hope I shall - it may be a shameless confession, but I - hope - I - shall, - it will be the man of all the world that believes most in me; will help me best to be a useful woman; will put new heart and courage in everything I do.”
Girls are supposed to grow up and get married - but it’s immodest to admit they want to.
I also read Jack London’s The Road, partly as last-minute research for Tramps and Vagabonds (although London rode the rails in the 1890s - a very different time than the 1930s), although I may have accidentally ended up with another book. London mentions chasing across the continent after a tramp he had never met, purely because he was so intrigued by the man’s water-tower signature “Skysail Jack,” and look, doesn’t that sound like the beginning of a romance novel? And isn’t Skysail Jack the perfect name for a romance novel? Couldn’t I build up a line of tramp romances?
Maybe I had better see how Tramps and Vagabonds does before I get any ideas on that line. I don’t think it’s a niche anyone else has claimed, but maybe that’s because no one wants to read it.
Finally, Helen Dawes Brown’s 1886 Two College Girls tells the tale of unlikely roommates Rosamund and Edna, a light-hearted madcap and a cranky bookworm, respectively. (The madcap is a 19th century heroine type I don’t see very often in modern-day books. We should bring her back! She’s so much fun! Here’s a representative quote from Rosamund: “I always did maintain that punctuation hindered a free play of intellect - I think best in dashes.”)
Both girls are initially horrified to find themselves stuck with someone so opposite to themselves, but eventually they become good friends and good influences on each other. Rosamund realizes that she can’t have fun all the time (and in the process discovers an unexpected ambition to be a doctor); Edna realizes that people who don’t share her narrow range of bookish interests can still be worthwhile, and the resulting increase in sympathy and broadmindedness make her both a happier person and a more thoughtful student.
The book mostly focuses on the two girls and sundry classmates, although it ends (of course) with Edna’s engagement to Rosamund’s brother right after graduation. The attitude toward marriage is interesting: I noted down this quote from Rosamund (the most quotable person in the book), who says, “If I ever marry, - and I hope I shall - it may be a shameless confession, but I - hope - I - shall, - it will be the man of all the world that believes most in me; will help me best to be a useful woman; will put new heart and courage in everything I do.”
Girls are supposed to grow up and get married - but it’s immodest to admit they want to.
February Writing and March Goals
Feb. 28th, 2022 07:38 amThis has ultimately been a pretty good writing month, although it took me a loooong while to get going. However, I’ve finished a draft of Tramps and Vagabonds (pending the response of my beta, I think we’re looking at a spring release), the Secret Project is off to a strong start, and I think? Maybe??? I don’t want to jinx it?????? But I think I might finally be on the right track with Sleeping Beauty.
You know what finally broke the logjam? I changed the name of one of the main characters. In the very first draft (set in 2018) the modern character was named Caelan, which no longer seemed suitable when I moved the story to 1965, so I changed it to Andrew… but this month I FINALLY realized there is a sixties-suitable sound-alike name, Caleb, and when I changed it things finally started working.
I also finally let go of a couple of beloved scenes - never have I felt so deeply the meaning of the phrase “kill your darlings!” - which might have more to do with it. But rechristening Caleb did also help it feel more like a fresh start, with less baggage attached.
You know what finally broke the logjam? I changed the name of one of the main characters. In the very first draft (set in 2018) the modern character was named Caelan, which no longer seemed suitable when I moved the story to 1965, so I changed it to Andrew… but this month I FINALLY realized there is a sixties-suitable sound-alike name, Caleb, and when I changed it things finally started working.
I also finally let go of a couple of beloved scenes - never have I felt so deeply the meaning of the phrase “kill your darlings!” - which might have more to do with it. But rechristening Caleb did also help it feel more like a fresh start, with less baggage attached.
January Writing and February Goals
Jan. 31st, 2022 08:25 amIn January I finished the first round of edits on Tramps and Vagabonds (and settled upon Tramps and Vagabonds as the new title for the story), except for the last chapter, because I had an new, improved idea for a final chapter!... or at least it will be new and improved if I ever write it.
However, I did not finish it this month, because indeed I got very little writing done at all. Maybe I erred in zooming through Tramps and Vagabonds so fast in December? Maybe I wore myself out. But writing is so much fun when a story flows like that…
Anyway, my plan in February is to get back on the horse. (I’m planning to start with ten minutes a day - there will be a timer and everything! - and work up from there.) I have a Secret Project to work on, and when I’m not working on the Secret Project I will be finishing up that perfidious final chapter of Tramps and Vagabonds and then getting a move on with the 1910s college girls.
However, I did not finish it this month, because indeed I got very little writing done at all. Maybe I erred in zooming through Tramps and Vagabonds so fast in December? Maybe I wore myself out. But writing is so much fun when a story flows like that…
Anyway, my plan in February is to get back on the horse. (I’m planning to start with ten minutes a day - there will be a timer and everything! - and work up from there.) I have a Secret Project to work on, and when I’m not working on the Secret Project I will be finishing up that perfidious final chapter of Tramps and Vagabonds and then getting a move on with the 1910s college girls.
Organizing Things
Dec. 28th, 2021 07:38 amOn Christmas, I finished a draft of the Depression-era tramps novel (working title, which must be changed: Tramps) and decided to take a vacation from writing till the New Year. I also received a new filing cabinet as a Christmas present, so I have allowed myself the delirious luxury of spending hours in perfecting my new filing system. People whose letters have LANGUISHED in my catch-all files (“RL friends” and “online friends”) have at last received folders of their own! Folders of defunct penpals have been tenderly retired to my brand new archive drawer! Postcards that have spent over a decade in my recipe box have at least been reunited with their epistolary brethren!
Since I’ve got organization on the brain, I’ve returned again to the question of how to archive various elementary school writing and art projects, as well as story snippets written in high school/college notebooks. I contemplated files for those, too, but that would require another filing cabinet (look, in my defense, there are only four drawers between these two filing cabinets and one of them is dedicated to various medical/financial/insurance paperwork), so now I’m leaning toward accordion folders… I’ll have to sort it all out and see if I think accordion folders can handle the volume.
I do definitely want to get rid of the three-ring binders in which a certain amount of it is currently stored. The covers always get squashed and look so untidy, even when the three ring binder is pretty full, which you’d really think would impair the possibility of cover-squashing.
***
I’ve also been sorting electronic files and story ideas, and in the name of mental housekeeping I’ve decided it’s time to admit to myself that certain things are never going to be finished. I record them here, after the manner of a grave marker. Let us mourn together.
1. Chris and Josh, the tale of a small-town boy who moves to the big city and discovers that his incredibly hot but deeply cagy boyfriend’s secret is that he’s currently employed as a vampire’s on-tap snack. In Tramps I stole the best bit of this (Chris’s asshole ex-boyfriend, a football player who publicly pretended they barely knew each other) and I never did figure out how to get Josh out of the whole vampire-snack situation. (Maybe the solution is just to leave him in the vampire-snack situation. Sometimes Your Boyfriend Is a Professional Vampire’s Snack and That’s Okay. Only sometimes the vampire sucks so much blood that Josh faints and that does not seem sustainable tbh.)
2. Jess and Innis, a secondary world fantasy novel about two guys from rival empires, one of whom is a POW who has ended up in service (enslaved? This changed from draft to draft) to the other. I don’t think the world is really feeling slavefic this decade, and also I stole the best exchange (“Sure, my empire has just fallen, but YOUR empire will fall someday too, so how do you like them apples?”) for Honeytrap.
3. Fritzi and Magdalena, in which Fritzi is the princess of a small Germanic principality and also a World War I flying ace and Magdalena is her former bff turned communist revolutionary who has taken over the principality and does her level best to have Fritzi executed by firing squad when Fritzi shows up after the war in a desperate attempt to save her brother the deposed king. Every time I try to write this I run aground on my tragic lack of knowledge about the German language, German culture, the German experience of World War I, and generally everything about Germany. Theoretically I am interested in Germany, but in actual fact am I ever going to research this? I first had this idea nearly a decade ago and have not researched a jot, so all signs point to No.
4. Harriet Peabody, the tale of a Civil War widow, post-war, who falls in love with a doctor who lost his leg during the war. I have a complete draft of this and yet it remains inert. Why not? Who knows. The Civil War just gives me PROBLEMS and I don’t know why.
(Speaking of Civil War stories: I am not burying Sleeping Beauty YET, but it is going on a long hiatus. We’ll see if that helps…)
5. The f/f college roommates “Goblin Market” retelling. Have tried this multiple times (in multiple settings! Modern day and 1900s!) and I just can’t seem to make it work. The idea is free to a good home if anyone wants it! So bitter about this because I had the perfect title, “Come and Kiss Me,” which is a quote from “Goblin Market”... If nothing else perhaps I can salvage that title for a different f/f book. It has some gothic vibes.
Since I’ve got organization on the brain, I’ve returned again to the question of how to archive various elementary school writing and art projects, as well as story snippets written in high school/college notebooks. I contemplated files for those, too, but that would require another filing cabinet (look, in my defense, there are only four drawers between these two filing cabinets and one of them is dedicated to various medical/financial/insurance paperwork), so now I’m leaning toward accordion folders… I’ll have to sort it all out and see if I think accordion folders can handle the volume.
I do definitely want to get rid of the three-ring binders in which a certain amount of it is currently stored. The covers always get squashed and look so untidy, even when the three ring binder is pretty full, which you’d really think would impair the possibility of cover-squashing.
***
I’ve also been sorting electronic files and story ideas, and in the name of mental housekeeping I’ve decided it’s time to admit to myself that certain things are never going to be finished. I record them here, after the manner of a grave marker. Let us mourn together.
1. Chris and Josh, the tale of a small-town boy who moves to the big city and discovers that his incredibly hot but deeply cagy boyfriend’s secret is that he’s currently employed as a vampire’s on-tap snack. In Tramps I stole the best bit of this (Chris’s asshole ex-boyfriend, a football player who publicly pretended they barely knew each other) and I never did figure out how to get Josh out of the whole vampire-snack situation. (Maybe the solution is just to leave him in the vampire-snack situation. Sometimes Your Boyfriend Is a Professional Vampire’s Snack and That’s Okay. Only sometimes the vampire sucks so much blood that Josh faints and that does not seem sustainable tbh.)
2. Jess and Innis, a secondary world fantasy novel about two guys from rival empires, one of whom is a POW who has ended up in service (enslaved? This changed from draft to draft) to the other. I don’t think the world is really feeling slavefic this decade, and also I stole the best exchange (“Sure, my empire has just fallen, but YOUR empire will fall someday too, so how do you like them apples?”) for Honeytrap.
3. Fritzi and Magdalena, in which Fritzi is the princess of a small Germanic principality and also a World War I flying ace and Magdalena is her former bff turned communist revolutionary who has taken over the principality and does her level best to have Fritzi executed by firing squad when Fritzi shows up after the war in a desperate attempt to save her brother the deposed king. Every time I try to write this I run aground on my tragic lack of knowledge about the German language, German culture, the German experience of World War I, and generally everything about Germany. Theoretically I am interested in Germany, but in actual fact am I ever going to research this? I first had this idea nearly a decade ago and have not researched a jot, so all signs point to No.
4. Harriet Peabody, the tale of a Civil War widow, post-war, who falls in love with a doctor who lost his leg during the war. I have a complete draft of this and yet it remains inert. Why not? Who knows. The Civil War just gives me PROBLEMS and I don’t know why.
(Speaking of Civil War stories: I am not burying Sleeping Beauty YET, but it is going on a long hiatus. We’ll see if that helps…)
5. The f/f college roommates “Goblin Market” retelling. Have tried this multiple times (in multiple settings! Modern day and 1900s!) and I just can’t seem to make it work. The idea is free to a good home if anyone wants it! So bitter about this because I had the perfect title, “Come and Kiss Me,” which is a quote from “Goblin Market”... If nothing else perhaps I can salvage that title for a different f/f book. It has some gothic vibes.
November Writing and December Plans
Nov. 30th, 2021 08:40 amSleeping Beauty continues to kick my ass, so after much gnashing of teeth I set it aside and have taken out again the m/m Depression-era tramps story that I set aside last December, because at the time it was causing much gnashing of teeth.
Goodness knows what changed in the meantime, because I surely haven’t done much research on that topic since, but now the book and I are getting on like a house on fire. I had about 30,000 words of old draft, and since restarting it on November 23 I'm closing in on 50,000. I expect it will be between sixty and seventy thousand in the end.
I am, rather puzzlingly, writing it more or less backwards, starting at the end and working back toward the beginning. There are enough scenes of old draft (what is missing is the material that links them) so serve as blazes along the way.
I’ve gotten to the part where James gets beaten up by a railroad bull and Timothy tenderly cares for him in the cold dark rain. They end up spending the night at the YMCA hotel, where the gay desk clerk takes one look at them and concludes (erroneously but understandably) that James got beaten up protecting Timothy from homophobic toughs.
Goodness knows what changed in the meantime, because I surely haven’t done much research on that topic since, but now the book and I are getting on like a house on fire. I had about 30,000 words of old draft, and since restarting it on November 23 I'm closing in on 50,000. I expect it will be between sixty and seventy thousand in the end.
I am, rather puzzlingly, writing it more or less backwards, starting at the end and working back toward the beginning. There are enough scenes of old draft (what is missing is the material that links them) so serve as blazes along the way.
I’ve gotten to the part where James gets beaten up by a railroad bull and Timothy tenderly cares for him in the cold dark rain. They end up spending the night at the YMCA hotel, where the gay desk clerk takes one look at them and concludes (erroneously but understandably) that James got beaten up protecting Timothy from homophobic toughs.
Wild Boys of the Road
Dec. 22nd, 2020 09:16 amWhen I started my Depression era tramps reading, ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sovay recommended the 1933 pre-Code film Wild Boys of the Road as must-see viewing.
This is absolutely accurate. Wild Boys of the Road is dynamite, and I wish it were better known. It tells the story of two ordinary high school students, Tommy and Eddie, who drive onto the scene in Eddie’s rattletrap car painted, all over with twenties-style slogans: “Four wheels, no brakes,” “Out hunting: mostly teddies.” (Teddies were a kind of women’s underwear at the time.)
But their carefree days are numbered: Eddie’s widowed mother is already struggling, so that Eddie doesn’t even have the entry fee to the dance (Eddie sneaks in cross-dressed in his girlfriend’s hat and coat, as girls don’t need to pay), and Tommy soon learns that his father has lost his job. Unable to find work in their hometown and eager to ease the burden on their beleaguered parents, the two boys impulsively decide to jump a train out of town - and quickly meet Sally, a girl tramp, who is traveling to Chicago to meet her aunt.
Sally is a bright-eyed, freckle-faced youngster, more or less what would happen if Anne of Green Gables had to ride the rails. When she first meets the boys, they think she’s just stolen their sandwiches, and Sally gives Tommy a bloody nose, which of course makes them fast friends as soon as Tommy realizes she is (a) a girl, so they have to stop fighting, and (b) not a sandwich thief.
Unfortunately, Sally’s aunt gets arrested for prostitution almost as soon as the kids reach her apartment, so they have to hit the road again (Eddie pauses to carry along a chocolate cake).
They quickly fall in with a big group of kid tramps, and the camaraderie among the kids keeps the picture from ever seeming like sheer misery porn, but nonetheless it's clear their lives are grim. A railroad guard rapes one of the girl tramps; the rest of the kids band together to fling the man off the train to his death. Eddie loses a leg when he falls across a train track and the train runs over it. Even when the kids have a bit of luck, like setting up a sort of village in a bunch of unused concrete pipes, the police chase them out with firehoses. The man who owns the pipes gave the kids permission to live there - but the city thinks they’re a nuisance, “wild boys of the road” as a headline puts it, treating them as vicious young hoodlums when really they’re just kids whose families have fallen on hard times.
The main characters are played by actual teenagers, and so, I suspect, are most of the other kid tramps in the movie. The movie is a strong argument in favor of having actual teenagers play teens, instead of having them played by twenty-somethings: their misfortunes hit differently when you can very clearly see these characters are baby-faced round-cheeked wide-eyed kids.
sovay recommended the 1933 pre-Code film Wild Boys of the Road as must-see viewing. This is absolutely accurate. Wild Boys of the Road is dynamite, and I wish it were better known. It tells the story of two ordinary high school students, Tommy and Eddie, who drive onto the scene in Eddie’s rattletrap car painted, all over with twenties-style slogans: “Four wheels, no brakes,” “Out hunting: mostly teddies.” (Teddies were a kind of women’s underwear at the time.)
But their carefree days are numbered: Eddie’s widowed mother is already struggling, so that Eddie doesn’t even have the entry fee to the dance (Eddie sneaks in cross-dressed in his girlfriend’s hat and coat, as girls don’t need to pay), and Tommy soon learns that his father has lost his job. Unable to find work in their hometown and eager to ease the burden on their beleaguered parents, the two boys impulsively decide to jump a train out of town - and quickly meet Sally, a girl tramp, who is traveling to Chicago to meet her aunt.
Sally is a bright-eyed, freckle-faced youngster, more or less what would happen if Anne of Green Gables had to ride the rails. When she first meets the boys, they think she’s just stolen their sandwiches, and Sally gives Tommy a bloody nose, which of course makes them fast friends as soon as Tommy realizes she is (a) a girl, so they have to stop fighting, and (b) not a sandwich thief.
Unfortunately, Sally’s aunt gets arrested for prostitution almost as soon as the kids reach her apartment, so they have to hit the road again (Eddie pauses to carry along a chocolate cake).
They quickly fall in with a big group of kid tramps, and the camaraderie among the kids keeps the picture from ever seeming like sheer misery porn, but nonetheless it's clear their lives are grim. A railroad guard rapes one of the girl tramps; the rest of the kids band together to fling the man off the train to his death. Eddie loses a leg when he falls across a train track and the train runs over it. Even when the kids have a bit of luck, like setting up a sort of village in a bunch of unused concrete pipes, the police chase them out with firehoses. The man who owns the pipes gave the kids permission to live there - but the city thinks they’re a nuisance, “wild boys of the road” as a headline puts it, treating them as vicious young hoodlums when really they’re just kids whose families have fallen on hard times.
The main characters are played by actual teenagers, and so, I suspect, are most of the other kid tramps in the movie. The movie is a strong argument in favor of having actual teenagers play teens, instead of having them played by twenty-somethings: their misfortunes hit differently when you can very clearly see these characters are baby-faced round-cheeked wide-eyed kids.
November Writing and December Goals
Dec. 1st, 2020 08:19 amI limped to 25,000 words on Sleeping Beauty this month, which is only half the NaNo word count and probably only a quarter of what the book’s final word count will be. This book was only supposed to be a novella… And I’m going to need to do so much more research before I’m ready to write it…
In happier news, I’ve actually finished a draft of David & Robert, as opposed to last month when I tacked on a final chapter as a sort of holding action and yelled DONE. (David & Robert is the working title for the English boarding school friends book I’ve been nattering on about for months. Not sure why I did not just refer to it by working title rather than describing the book in slightly different terms every single time I posted about it.)
I still need to learn a lot more about World War I amputees before it’s ready for publication, but I have been merrily rollicking along on my reading for that. Also it needs a better title, which will probably come out of World War I poetry somewhere.
***
Despite my musings about a Christmas book, I was so inspired by Boy and Girl Tramps of America that I seem to have started writing the Depression-era tramps book that I’ve been nattering about since… God, is it really only November of last year? It feels like longer, but then 2020 has been about five years long, so. I have stolen the name Timothy from one of the other stories I mention in that entry.
In that entry I also commented that the story might be overshadowed by the Looming Specter of Sexual Assault, which I figured would be worse in an f/f version, and indeed it would be… but it remains pretty Looming in the m/m version, as all the sources mention that a certain subset of older tramps (“wolves,” in the parlance of the time) simply hounded the boy tramps.
There’s verification for this in, of all places, Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, where he comments “when you were a boy and moved in the company of men, you had to be prepared to kill a man, know how to do it and really know that you would do it in order not to be interfered with.” I’m sure readers will love this. (I am not sure readers will love this, but I also think it’s an inevitable feature of writing about a rough milieu if you do it honestly.)
I am… a little concerned that maybe I haven’t read enough about the tramp life… but on the other hand I feel I have conclusively proven with Gennady my “character dealt a shitty hand in life who just Gets On With It” bona fides, so maybe that will pull me through.
In happier news, I’ve actually finished a draft of David & Robert, as opposed to last month when I tacked on a final chapter as a sort of holding action and yelled DONE. (David & Robert is the working title for the English boarding school friends book I’ve been nattering on about for months. Not sure why I did not just refer to it by working title rather than describing the book in slightly different terms every single time I posted about it.)
I still need to learn a lot more about World War I amputees before it’s ready for publication, but I have been merrily rollicking along on my reading for that. Also it needs a better title, which will probably come out of World War I poetry somewhere.
***
Despite my musings about a Christmas book, I was so inspired by Boy and Girl Tramps of America that I seem to have started writing the Depression-era tramps book that I’ve been nattering about since… God, is it really only November of last year? It feels like longer, but then 2020 has been about five years long, so. I have stolen the name Timothy from one of the other stories I mention in that entry.
In that entry I also commented that the story might be overshadowed by the Looming Specter of Sexual Assault, which I figured would be worse in an f/f version, and indeed it would be… but it remains pretty Looming in the m/m version, as all the sources mention that a certain subset of older tramps (“wolves,” in the parlance of the time) simply hounded the boy tramps.
There’s verification for this in, of all places, Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, where he comments “when you were a boy and moved in the company of men, you had to be prepared to kill a man, know how to do it and really know that you would do it in order not to be interfered with.” I’m sure readers will love this. (I am not sure readers will love this, but I also think it’s an inevitable feature of writing about a rough milieu if you do it honestly.)
I am… a little concerned that maybe I haven’t read enough about the tramp life… but on the other hand I feel I have conclusively proven with Gennady my “character dealt a shitty hand in life who just Gets On With It” bona fides, so maybe that will pull me through.
Thomas Minehan’s Boy and Girl Tramps of America blew my tiny mind. It’s exactly the book I wanted Nels Anderson’s Hobos and Homelessness to be: an in-depth, up-close look at the lives of young tramps during the Great Depression (Minehan did his fieldwork from 1932-1934), rich with anecdotes and details about life on the road.
Minehan learns, for instance, that when begging, it’s best to “to ask for just a little. Hit a guy for a nickel or a couple pennies and he’ll give you a dime. Hit him for a dime and he’ll give youse a stony stare.” In the same vein, another boy advises, “I always ask if there isn’t something I can do for a meal or a piece of bread… The chances are she doesn’t want to be bothered having me work and if anything to eat is handy she will give it to me and say never mind the work.” He ought to know: he once got a whole raisin pie that way.
Begging is also the best way to get clothes - although you can also steal them off the clothesline, if you’ve got to, after dark is the best time for that. Any tramp who has been on the road for six months, Minehan reckons, has probably been forced into a little petty thievery - not least by the fact that relief agencies never give out clothes, only needles and threads and patches.
And the road’s damn hard on clothes, for all that the kids try to take care of them. Minehan notes one clothes-conscious young man’s routine as he prepared to flip a train: “Ole removed his tie and put it in his pocket, turned his coat and cap inside out to protect them from the inevitable soot, pulled the collar of his cleanest shirt down, his outer shirt and coat collar up, and fastened both with a large safety pin.”
But inevitably clothes are worn out by the dirt of the railway cars, the necessity of being out in all weathers, and the fact that tramps wear their clothes day and night with only occasional chance to wash them. And they really do wear all their clothes; you might carry a spare pair of socks and underwear in your pocket, but only greenhorns carry a bindle. (So much for the hobo costumes in Halloween costume books!)
For all that, though, “the condition of road rags worries either boy or girl just as much as high school clothing styles worry more fortunate youngsters. A boy is self-conscious about a dirty face, long hair, a fuzz-covered chin; a girl will be ashamed to appear on the streets in too poor clothing. Proud of a new pair of shoes or a new cap, a boy will strut, a girl will preen and bridle. If he is old enough to shave, a boy likes to carry a razor.”
There are, Minehan notes, a fair number of girls on the road, “dressed in overalls or army breeches and boys’ coats or sweaters - looking, except for their dirt and rags, like a Girl Scout club on an outing.” But it’s a hard life for a girl: the relief agencies where boys can go for food and a bed, whoever scant and hard, send girls directly to jail. Girls on the road are thus almost forced into prostitution - although Minehan does meet one girl who has taken up burglary instead. Occasionally girls leave home with a boy - sometimes it’s sort of a Romeo-and-Juliet thing, their families tried to break up the relationship but instead the kids ran away - but “the majority left home not in company with a boy, but with another girl.”
Naturally I was fascinated by this tidbit, but Minehan doesn’t expand on it. We do, however, get quite a lot of information about male homosexuality: Minehan notes, “One of the first lessons that a boy learns on the road is to beware of certain older men,” who will try to bribe them with tobacco and bananas or lure them to some dark corner of the railway yard and force them.
I could go on. I haven’t mentioned the time that Minehan and company get locked up in jail for the night and sleep on the floor while the actual criminals get beds in cells, or the fantastic hobo jungles he visits, like the river cave converted into a snug winter den. Or Peg-Leg Al, who lost his leg in an accident flipping a train, and made himself a new one out of two-by-fours; or Blink, who lost his eye when a live cinder flew in it. Or the food! God, the Dickensian food in the relief stations: the soup “thin, watery, lukewarm, tasteless, and served without even stale bread, and never with soda crackers. A portion equals a small cupful.”
But at some point there is nothing left to say, except that this book was a fascinating glimpse of a whole new world for me, and if you have any interest in the Depression or tramps then it’s well worth reading.
Minehan learns, for instance, that when begging, it’s best to “to ask for just a little. Hit a guy for a nickel or a couple pennies and he’ll give you a dime. Hit him for a dime and he’ll give youse a stony stare.” In the same vein, another boy advises, “I always ask if there isn’t something I can do for a meal or a piece of bread… The chances are she doesn’t want to be bothered having me work and if anything to eat is handy she will give it to me and say never mind the work.” He ought to know: he once got a whole raisin pie that way.
Begging is also the best way to get clothes - although you can also steal them off the clothesline, if you’ve got to, after dark is the best time for that. Any tramp who has been on the road for six months, Minehan reckons, has probably been forced into a little petty thievery - not least by the fact that relief agencies never give out clothes, only needles and threads and patches.
And the road’s damn hard on clothes, for all that the kids try to take care of them. Minehan notes one clothes-conscious young man’s routine as he prepared to flip a train: “Ole removed his tie and put it in his pocket, turned his coat and cap inside out to protect them from the inevitable soot, pulled the collar of his cleanest shirt down, his outer shirt and coat collar up, and fastened both with a large safety pin.”
But inevitably clothes are worn out by the dirt of the railway cars, the necessity of being out in all weathers, and the fact that tramps wear their clothes day and night with only occasional chance to wash them. And they really do wear all their clothes; you might carry a spare pair of socks and underwear in your pocket, but only greenhorns carry a bindle. (So much for the hobo costumes in Halloween costume books!)
For all that, though, “the condition of road rags worries either boy or girl just as much as high school clothing styles worry more fortunate youngsters. A boy is self-conscious about a dirty face, long hair, a fuzz-covered chin; a girl will be ashamed to appear on the streets in too poor clothing. Proud of a new pair of shoes or a new cap, a boy will strut, a girl will preen and bridle. If he is old enough to shave, a boy likes to carry a razor.”
There are, Minehan notes, a fair number of girls on the road, “dressed in overalls or army breeches and boys’ coats or sweaters - looking, except for their dirt and rags, like a Girl Scout club on an outing.” But it’s a hard life for a girl: the relief agencies where boys can go for food and a bed, whoever scant and hard, send girls directly to jail. Girls on the road are thus almost forced into prostitution - although Minehan does meet one girl who has taken up burglary instead. Occasionally girls leave home with a boy - sometimes it’s sort of a Romeo-and-Juliet thing, their families tried to break up the relationship but instead the kids ran away - but “the majority left home not in company with a boy, but with another girl.”
Naturally I was fascinated by this tidbit, but Minehan doesn’t expand on it. We do, however, get quite a lot of information about male homosexuality: Minehan notes, “One of the first lessons that a boy learns on the road is to beware of certain older men,” who will try to bribe them with tobacco and bananas or lure them to some dark corner of the railway yard and force them.
I could go on. I haven’t mentioned the time that Minehan and company get locked up in jail for the night and sleep on the floor while the actual criminals get beds in cells, or the fantastic hobo jungles he visits, like the river cave converted into a snug winter den. Or Peg-Leg Al, who lost his leg in an accident flipping a train, and made himself a new one out of two-by-fours; or Blink, who lost his eye when a live cinder flew in it. Or the food! God, the Dickensian food in the relief stations: the soup “thin, watery, lukewarm, tasteless, and served without even stale bread, and never with soda crackers. A portion equals a small cupful.”
But at some point there is nothing left to say, except that this book was a fascinating glimpse of a whole new world for me, and if you have any interest in the Depression or tramps then it’s well worth reading.
Wednesday Reading Meme
Nov. 11th, 2020 09:17 amWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
I finished Nancy Farmer’s The House of the Scorpion! Which means I’ve finished all the Newbery Honor books of the 2000s! I must say my main reaction to this book was “I’ve read this Winter Soldier fic”: our hero Matt is a clone in a society that sees clones as less than animals, although because he is the clone of the leader of a very powerful opium empire, he ricochets between being treated like shit and feted as a princeling, which is richer whump fodder than all suffering all the time.
I also read Nels Anderson’s On Hobos and Homelessness, which in fact is not, as I thought, a reprint of Anderson’s 1924 study The Hobo, but selections from a variety of books he wrote over the years that pertain to hobos, including selections from Men on the Move, which was published in1940 and specifically focuses on Depression Era hobos, who were much more likely than tramps in earlier eras to have been forced on the road out of economic desperation. Earlier, boys and young men often hit the road out of a thirst for adventure or wanderlust; often combined with a difficult home environment or dim economic prospects, it’s true, but still it was a choice, not a case of “if we stay here we will starve.”
(The Depression is also when you start to see lone girl tramps on the road for the first time: Anderson estimates 2-3% of Depression-era tramps were girls. I’ve ordered another book on interlibrary loan, Thomas Mineham’s Boy and Girl Tramps of America, which should fill out this picture. It should be noted that in this context boy and girl both seem to extend into the early twenties.)
This book is research for a story I have percolating, which grew from George Chauncey’s observation in Gay New York that homosexuality was common and unremarkable (although not particularly respected) in tramp culture in the early decades of the twentieth century. Chauncey quotes Anderson, which led me to this book, which makes it ever more clear that this was the opposite of a romantic milieu… which doesn’t mean that I can’t write a romance novel set there, but the looming threat of sexual violence (and also just plain violence) would certainly be a thing if I do.
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve been reading Francesca Wade’s Square Haunting: Five Lives in London Between the Wars, which is about five women writers and/or scholars who lived on Mecklenburg Square in the interwar years. It’s interesting but eminently put-down-able, which is unfortunate because six people have it on hold and I really ought to finish it so they can have a crack at it.
Here’s a fun historical fact from the book: “by 1921 the subject was seen as dangerous enough for parliament to debate making lesbianism (associated with over-education, prostitution, alcohol, nightclubs, divorce, and vampires) a criminal offense like male homosexuality, but the question was shelved on the basis that women might not have considered the concept and it was preferable not to put ideas into their heads.”
I’ve also been reading Joan Weigall Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock, which is very much not the book I expected, although God knows what I did expect, because all I knew about the story was that one still from the 1975 film with the girls from the boarding school standing about Hanging Rock in their fluttering white dresses. I think I expected it to be more focused on the boarding school and the mystery of the girls’ disappearance and perhaps more scary? But instead it’s very diffuse and only intermittently about the boarding school, which isn’t bad exactly, but disappointing to me because I love boarding school stories.
What I Plan to Read Next
Gerald Durrell’s Fillets of Plaice seems to be stuck in some kind of hold limbo. C’mon, Fillets of Plaice! Arrive already!
I finished Nancy Farmer’s The House of the Scorpion! Which means I’ve finished all the Newbery Honor books of the 2000s! I must say my main reaction to this book was “I’ve read this Winter Soldier fic”: our hero Matt is a clone in a society that sees clones as less than animals, although because he is the clone of the leader of a very powerful opium empire, he ricochets between being treated like shit and feted as a princeling, which is richer whump fodder than all suffering all the time.
I also read Nels Anderson’s On Hobos and Homelessness, which in fact is not, as I thought, a reprint of Anderson’s 1924 study The Hobo, but selections from a variety of books he wrote over the years that pertain to hobos, including selections from Men on the Move, which was published in1940 and specifically focuses on Depression Era hobos, who were much more likely than tramps in earlier eras to have been forced on the road out of economic desperation. Earlier, boys and young men often hit the road out of a thirst for adventure or wanderlust; often combined with a difficult home environment or dim economic prospects, it’s true, but still it was a choice, not a case of “if we stay here we will starve.”
(The Depression is also when you start to see lone girl tramps on the road for the first time: Anderson estimates 2-3% of Depression-era tramps were girls. I’ve ordered another book on interlibrary loan, Thomas Mineham’s Boy and Girl Tramps of America, which should fill out this picture. It should be noted that in this context boy and girl both seem to extend into the early twenties.)
This book is research for a story I have percolating, which grew from George Chauncey’s observation in Gay New York that homosexuality was common and unremarkable (although not particularly respected) in tramp culture in the early decades of the twentieth century. Chauncey quotes Anderson, which led me to this book, which makes it ever more clear that this was the opposite of a romantic milieu… which doesn’t mean that I can’t write a romance novel set there, but the looming threat of sexual violence (and also just plain violence) would certainly be a thing if I do.
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve been reading Francesca Wade’s Square Haunting: Five Lives in London Between the Wars, which is about five women writers and/or scholars who lived on Mecklenburg Square in the interwar years. It’s interesting but eminently put-down-able, which is unfortunate because six people have it on hold and I really ought to finish it so they can have a crack at it.
Here’s a fun historical fact from the book: “by 1921 the subject was seen as dangerous enough for parliament to debate making lesbianism (associated with over-education, prostitution, alcohol, nightclubs, divorce, and vampires) a criminal offense like male homosexuality, but the question was shelved on the basis that women might not have considered the concept and it was preferable not to put ideas into their heads.”
I’ve also been reading Joan Weigall Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock, which is very much not the book I expected, although God knows what I did expect, because all I knew about the story was that one still from the 1975 film with the girls from the boarding school standing about Hanging Rock in their fluttering white dresses. I think I expected it to be more focused on the boarding school and the mystery of the girls’ disappearance and perhaps more scary? But instead it’s very diffuse and only intermittently about the boarding school, which isn’t bad exactly, but disappointing to me because I love boarding school stories.
What I Plan to Read Next
Gerald Durrell’s Fillets of Plaice seems to be stuck in some kind of hold limbo. C’mon, Fillets of Plaice! Arrive already!
Book Review: Beggars of Life
Sep. 24th, 2020 08:03 amJim Tully’s Beggars of Life: A Hobo Autobiography details Tully’s years as a “road-kid” during the early twentieth century: a teenage drifter, riding the rails across the United States, falling in with traveling companions and drifting away from them just as easily, gazing on glorious sunsets and stealing books from libraries (Tully was an indefatigable reader) and avoiding the railroad bulls (also called dicks) who patrolled the railway yards to throw tramps off of trains.
There’s a powerful nostalgic element to this book: Tully is writing about his youth, after all. But his nostalgic is unsentimental: although he remembers this time in his life fondly, he knows very well it was a rough world that he moved in, with danger not only from the law but from the other tramps, as well, many of whom were accomplished brawlers and habitual criminals (or “yeggs,” as Tully calls them: a yegg is “a robber, a blower of safes, the aristocrat of the road, and the most dangerous man who travels it”).
But it’s neither the police nor the other tramps who kill the most men, but the railroad itself. One man misses his jump on the train and gets dragged alongside and bumped to death; another falls asleep while riding on the railroad coupling and falls to his death. A third is riding on the train top - right up until the train reaches a low tunnel… Tully even hears a tale of a fellow who got struck with lightning while walking along the railway track. The trains are both freedom and death.
This is a much rougher view of the early twentieth century than you’re likely to get from, say, the writing of L. M. Montgomery - this is perhaps a particularly apt comparison, because Tully really was an orphan boy taken in by a farmer who wanted help with the farm work. He was so brutally overworked that he took to the road. (Anne was a lucky lass!)
But there are certain commonalities too, particularly in Tully’s love of the natural world: like Montgomery, he is liable to pause for a paragraph or two to admire a beautiful sunset, or a fleet of fireflies lighting up the hayloft where he sleeps one night. It adds light to heighten the shadows of his story, and it all adds up to a beguiling glimpse of a very different world.
There’s a powerful nostalgic element to this book: Tully is writing about his youth, after all. But his nostalgic is unsentimental: although he remembers this time in his life fondly, he knows very well it was a rough world that he moved in, with danger not only from the law but from the other tramps, as well, many of whom were accomplished brawlers and habitual criminals (or “yeggs,” as Tully calls them: a yegg is “a robber, a blower of safes, the aristocrat of the road, and the most dangerous man who travels it”).
But it’s neither the police nor the other tramps who kill the most men, but the railroad itself. One man misses his jump on the train and gets dragged alongside and bumped to death; another falls asleep while riding on the railroad coupling and falls to his death. A third is riding on the train top - right up until the train reaches a low tunnel… Tully even hears a tale of a fellow who got struck with lightning while walking along the railway track. The trains are both freedom and death.
This is a much rougher view of the early twentieth century than you’re likely to get from, say, the writing of L. M. Montgomery - this is perhaps a particularly apt comparison, because Tully really was an orphan boy taken in by a farmer who wanted help with the farm work. He was so brutally overworked that he took to the road. (Anne was a lucky lass!)
But there are certain commonalities too, particularly in Tully’s love of the natural world: like Montgomery, he is liable to pause for a paragraph or two to admire a beautiful sunset, or a fleet of fireflies lighting up the hayloft where he sleeps one night. It adds light to heighten the shadows of his story, and it all adds up to a beguiling glimpse of a very different world.
October writing & November goals
Nov. 1st, 2019 09:27 amOctober is over! I had a jolly good fun writing ficlets for all those Whumptober prompts. There’s something freeing about writing so many things in such a short time span: the pressure to come up with so many ideas so quickly pushes you to write things you wouldn’t normally write.
Plus I did get one actual full fic out of it: Dreams in Damask, for Code Name Verity.
And - drumroll, please! - I finished the second draft of The Wolf and the Girl, so if all goes well, I’ll publish that in November! Probably late November, because I’ll be traveling to Massachusetts to visitasakiyume (and sundry RL friends) in the first half of November.
Thus, I won’t be doing NaNo this year, but in a way that’s a good thing; NaNo would have kept me busy till the end of the month, whereas this way I can start Honeytrap revisions as soon as I get back (after I finish edits for The Wolf and the Girl, I suppose).
My other goal for November is to brainstorm an m/m novella so I can move smoothly into my next project once I finish Honeytrap revisions. I’ve got a couple of ideas knocking around in my head - World War I amputees! Civil War soldiers! - but both of those feel like they need more time and research to mature, which is not what you want in your very next project.
Possibilities include:
1. Another fairy tale retelling.asakiyume, this might be one for us to chat about while I’m in town?
2. Do you remember Edmund & Timothy from Contrapposto and its sequels? The Victorian artist Timothy and his darkly handsome and dashing friend Edmund, on whom Timothy had a spectacular pash back when they were in boarding school, and by back when they were in boarding school I mean he definitely still the same right now? I could do that again, except this time not erotica and with more, like, feelings.
3. 1930s! The Great Depression! Our heroes are two tramps on the road, destitute of everything except each other! (In terms of wealth, they are basically the opposite of well-to-do Timothy and less well-to-do but not to the point of having to actually work Edmund.) I’ve actually got a more fleshed out f/f idea for this one, but it’s an idea that might be easier to write (and suffer from less of the hovering specter of possible sexual assault) with m/m.
Plus I did get one actual full fic out of it: Dreams in Damask, for Code Name Verity.
And - drumroll, please! - I finished the second draft of The Wolf and the Girl, so if all goes well, I’ll publish that in November! Probably late November, because I’ll be traveling to Massachusetts to visit
asakiyume (and sundry RL friends) in the first half of November. Thus, I won’t be doing NaNo this year, but in a way that’s a good thing; NaNo would have kept me busy till the end of the month, whereas this way I can start Honeytrap revisions as soon as I get back (after I finish edits for The Wolf and the Girl, I suppose).
My other goal for November is to brainstorm an m/m novella so I can move smoothly into my next project once I finish Honeytrap revisions. I’ve got a couple of ideas knocking around in my head - World War I amputees! Civil War soldiers! - but both of those feel like they need more time and research to mature, which is not what you want in your very next project.
Possibilities include:
1. Another fairy tale retelling.
asakiyume, this might be one for us to chat about while I’m in town?2. Do you remember Edmund & Timothy from Contrapposto and its sequels? The Victorian artist Timothy and his darkly handsome and dashing friend Edmund, on whom Timothy had a spectacular pash back when they were in boarding school, and by back when they were in boarding school I mean he definitely still the same right now? I could do that again, except this time not erotica and with more, like, feelings.
3. 1930s! The Great Depression! Our heroes are two tramps on the road, destitute of everything except each other! (In terms of wealth, they are basically the opposite of well-to-do Timothy and less well-to-do but not to the point of having to actually work Edmund.) I’ve actually got a more fleshed out f/f idea for this one, but it’s an idea that might be easier to write (and suffer from less of the hovering specter of possible sexual assault) with m/m.
