Sunday, July 9, 2017

What they don't get - From Shuttered Vision Now Available

“You don’t get it. Other populations know white people better than white people know themselves,” she said in a candid hushed way.

His eyes snapped to hers. He was oddly still as she continued. He couldn’t help but catch the humoring pitying head shake from Cody as she continued.

“See America isn’t built where you have to figure out how to constantly avoid people of color, or LGBTQs, atheists, Muslims. Name a none Christian religion or sect, or even women. Your spaces are already set up that way. Just the hint of having to tolerate or stomach another sends average over 30 white folks into a tizzy,” she threw out casually.

She then pinned him with the intensity of her eyes as she finished. “However, every corner and facet of staying alive and living as free as I can manage has literally depended on how well I can navigate straight white Christian male spaces. Looking like this.” She loosely gestured to herself.

Colan stared at her. In that moment, he couldn’t really imagine anything or anyone to be more beautiful. She rendered him speechless. He didn’t know how to relate that. The gumption of the woman was stunning in a number of ways. She stood in his house serving him his booze and then shot out her truth regardless of the consequences.

“You are exhausting,” he finally admitted.

“So, I’ve been told,” she countered. “What I just said is long speak for no rest for the weary. I don’t get to turn it off or tank it down. Look where I’m standing.”

He did just as she asked. He could find no reason whatsoever as to why she shouldn’t exist or be in his house. However, he was honest enough to admit that there were a ton of people who could and would actually think it was valid that she not only shouldn’t be there but that she literally shouldn’t exist. It sickened him. Mostly because he had gotten to be the age that he was and it had never crossed his mind. He had done what was easy. He had rendered himself blind just like the masses of ‘polite’ white folks that pretended not to see color. The thought was actually the most offensive thing when you really thought about it.

“I see you, Fiona,” he said in a low measured tone. “I see you,” he repeated forcefully.

Stunned Fiona just stared at him as she felt her heart expand and her eyes tear. She didn’t know why that sentence was so impactful. Right now, it was almost enough to drop her into a puddle on the floor. She could see it in his eyes. They were a clear grass green. They met hers without flinching and without shame. No true judgement, not looking down on her, not pitying her. He just looked at her as another human being with thoughts dreams goals and more than all of that with inherent value. Cody clinked his martini glass to hers. That finally broke the spell.

“As usual these are delish, love,” he said sweetly which gave away how he felt about what happened.

She looked over at her best friend. He countered with an even sweeter smile. She returned it and he leaned over to kiss her cheek.

Colan turned and grabbed the popcorn. He went to sit gesturing for the two of them to come over. “This is a new one opening in a month and a half starring Dwayne Johnson,” he tempted.

Fiona lit up. “The Rock? Hell yeah.”

Colan smiled. “I did expect the Texas girl to know him as a wrestler,” he said densely.

“I’ve been to shows where he was the main event,” Fiona confirmed.

Cody was staring at the heavens. “Dear God are you also a wrestling fan?” he asked in an exasperated fashion.

Fiona clucked. “Cody is originally from Michigan, he doesn’t get it.”

Colan smirked, “I did think it was just state policy in Texas.” He watched Fiona with barely banked appreciation and asked. “So, you have no problem watching one of his films?”

Fiona plopped next to him in one of the leather recliners with Cody hot on her heels. Cody looked at her in an expectant fashion. She squinted at the challenge in his eyes.
Non-plussed she responded like she often did when they talked about the man known as Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. “I’d watch that man make toast,” she said with relish.

Cody smiled and whispered, “The balls on my girl,” then gingerly sipped his martini.

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Saturday, July 1, 2017

New Paranormal Romance Release Shuttered Vision

I started Shuttered Vision about 8 years ago. Then it was intended to be a love lost letter to a man I knew I'd never have or ever be with.  When I started it I outlined the pervasive issues that were the problem of us ever ending in mutual bliss with each other. Those issues in my eyes were race, class and media bias. I've been a dark girl in white spaces for most of my adult life.  My assumption was that for the man to end up being a man that could overlook or readjust to these differences, love was not going to be enough. What this book started was a journey for me that I didn't realize I needed until of course it landed me right here.

8 years ago I was an administrative assistant for a college in Baltimore. I was pursuing my undergrad in video game design and planning to create a game engine to beat all game engines.  My plans changed mostly because I so needed to answer the question posed to myself due to falling for a man that would never be able to see value in me due to my race, my poor upbringing and the avid brainwashing media intentionally and unintentionally sustains with pervasive anti-blackness. That observation by the way is not up for challenge.  I will allow no one to disavow my lived experiences.

During this investigation of the whys of American racial discourse I learned from those around me. Social Sciences professors teaching History, Political Science, Sociology, Women's Studies and Teacher Education.  What I ended up building was a need to confont the problem on the ground floor. I started to research game based learning and ended up pursuing a Masters by 2011. This halted my writing until roughly around last year.  As my life started to change again I went back to what had sustained me the first time my life fell apart. Writing.


After 8 years and more experiences Shuttered Vision morphed.  It became too important to waste on a man who willfully choose to disavow me as a potentially worthy partner. I learned that it really is his loss.  I also learned that there are some people you reach back for and some you don't.  Something I constantly ignored in previous years for that hero narrative I wanted my life to reflect. I saw an opportunity in this book to truly be as authentic as I can imagine and to add a narrative to the growing ones being built by female authors of color.  Romance as a genre has not always embraced nuance, however this is changing.  I would like to add to that change.

Shuttered Vision then became a love letter to me and to all women who had to get passed that moment of feeling not good enough for reasons that are so beyond your own control.  Its a love letter to those in the trenches, bound in the struggle.  Its a love letter to those who have lost not just love, but freedom and their lives to narratives that refuse to allow basic humanity.

The message is keep creating, keep building, never surrender and be at all times your authentic self.  Because that is what actually defines humanity.

Fiona and Colan have born the weight of realization and discovery for me. They have given me so much of myself back that I adore them. I hope you come to love Fiona and Colan as I do.

Always w/love,

Sue

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Friday, June 23, 2017

The Beginning of the End is Shuttered Vision

Its time, Clair thought to herself as she set up the ingredients for the spell she was about to cast.  She was stronger now.  She didn't need the herbs and symbols but her mother had taught her respect for the old ways.  She loved them and they kept her just enough human these days.  Just enough to remember the people she was looking for were flawed.  Her husband Sergei did the rest when it came to insuring her empathetic bond to humanity.  She smiled over to him softly as she added the rosemary to the shell with the white sage, rose petals and lavender.  It would keep those she bound safe until it was time for them to do what they needed to do.

Sergei lit the white candles around the shell and sat on the opposite side of Clair. The table between them was a wooden pub table.  Their seats pub stools. He had built his Clair a witch's den as soon as they found a forever home in Taos. The shed sat on consecrated ground blessed by her ancestors and his. The walls were built from a blessed oak tree and the adobe that packed those walls from deep in the heart of what was once Apache lands. They had blessed and warded the space themselves with only a little help from Clair's mother Janeene.

Building places like this required a lot of heart and care. The furniture was either stone or wood. The walls were bare but the large wooden chest in the corner held all Clair needed. Candles, herbs, ingredients and totems. Each piece was selected with the utmost care and attention to detail.  Clair had insisted.  He had done as she needed. That was the only way one should deal with a witch powerful enough to drop a city block with a thought. It helped that he was in fact hopelessly in love with her and she him.

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and opened them.  Their vision was shared and she could see as he did. They scanned the world then. Clair gasped and Sergei stopped. They jolted out of the vision.

"That was fast." Sergei said briskly.

Clair looked a little stunned as she stared down at the contents of the abalone shell between them. The shell was the size of a fist and fit easily into Clair's palm. It looked as if it hung in mid air on its wooden tripod stand. When she used it she stared at the flames when she burned her herbs to see what she needed to.

"Not a mistake." She whispered as she used a candle to set fire to the contents of the bowl. She let her aura pulse.  She felt the power that laid in her soul push the boundaries.  The words came to her spontaneously. "For nothing can be seen, made or foretold without art. The artists must be acute of vision, consorts of sound, and scribes of renown.  I call on 3 sets of creators with a view unconventional and will unbendable.

One of handled art with brush to canvas and visions of failed passions. One of traveled time in scenes, lulls, set and dark flashes. Those of sight with vision unbound to see the world that is now found."

Find Clair and Sergei's story in So a Psychic and a Rocket Scientist Walk into a Bar.


Then continue the tale with Fiona and Colan in Shuttered Vision coming June 30th 2017.