Hi! How are ya? Hindsight is 20/20, and here we are in 2021, so…I don’t know if that says much. Anyway, I’ll probably end up saying a lot since, like most people, I don’t know what to say about myself until I start, and then I don’t shut up for an hour. Grab some salad, a pizza, ice cream, whatever floats your boat, and settle in.
Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start… Oh yes, I’m a nerd. 😀
I was born on a…I’m not sure what day of the week, but it was probably sunny since it was in California…. And let’s fast-forward to later on. Sick kid not expected to survive…that’s actually relevant to why I’m here. I was very sick, lost control of my body, and was on prednisone, 80mg a day for three years. It was rough, and I developed a deep loathing for the body that betrayed me. I ended up surviving against the odds, though live with permanent medical issues. Joy of joys.
I was the nerd, the math prodigy, the girl bullied for being into mechanics and science and math, things I was told to my face were “boy things,” while also bullied for being into makeup and dresses, things deemed “too girly.” When I was 12, I was bullied for being “fat” at a whopping 122 pounds at 5’7″. Kids suck sometimes. And then I got to be sick on top of it, losing organs, kids scared I was going to infect them with something not contagious. What fun life was…and it’s all relevant to now.
When I was 16, I read a Sweet Valley High book where Elizabeth’s ex-boyfriend moves back into town, and she has to choose between him and the new guy she was dating, two boys who really loved her and she loved them both, and I didn’t understand why she should have to choose. Only dating one wouldn’t mean that her love for the other would just vanish. Right? That book set the path for later in my life, though I didn’t know it.
Let’s just forward, oh, a long time. I end up dating a good friend, Cody, we have a kid through IVF, Charlotte, (Apple made their insurance carrier cover over $100k in IVF stuff since united wanted to be a pain in the ass and claim that only abortions count as family-planning services, something Apple’s HR did NOT take kindly to, and Apple going to bat for us is part of why I’m so loyal to them), got married, and I just felt broken. I didn’t understand why I could love someone so much, but still have feelings of such strong love for others. I thought it was best to suppress and conceal. And isolate myself. Keep people from getting close, and I won’t risk loving anyone else as well.
After two years of being married, and four of being together, I heard a new word. Polyamory. And it described me so fucking well that I realized I wasn’t broken. But shit, how would a spouse who entered a monogamous relationship take it? I found out three years later, when I finally told him, and the answer was he didn’t take it well at first. But over the following few years, he opened up to it, and ceased to be threatened. The silver poly bracelet I always wear I received from him in support of me being me. Our daughter already knew that polyamorous relationships exist, and she knows girls can love girls and boys can love boys and some boys are born with vaginas and some girls are born with penises and some people are neither and some are both and some people are ace and how can we raise her to accept all consensual relationship types if we’re going to set the example that some love is bad? For the record, she and her two besties, one a girl who likes girls and one a boy who thinks dating is icky are planning to run away to Paris together and get an apartment and a bunch of cats instead of dating people or having kids because relationships and kids are work.
Indeedily-doodily.
In about 2012, I started writing books because I got fed up with abusive relationships being portrayed as ideal and romantic. My first two books, which are no longer available, didn’t do so well as at that time, readers really wanted more Christian Grey and Edward Cullen, which I wasn’t willing to write. I was called a “hater” who “didn’t understand” because I was so vocal about how we shouldn’t be telling impressionable teens and young adults that those relationships are hashtag-goals. Well, we’re now in a time where the problems in those books are things we can openly talk about since we now acknowledge them as a society, a time when a lot of women have opened up online about how they thought that bad relationships were good because that’s what they were told was good.
In 2017, I started writing a trilogy of duologies, and will complete them all before deciding if I’ll query them or independently publish. Too often authors put out books as they write them, then end up with the issue of finding that they’ve backed themselves into a corner, and the only ways out result in final books that disappoint fans. This hexaology isn’t quite romance, though there’s some of that involved. There’s a lot more suspense, including attempted (or is it just “attempted”?) murder and a couple deaths, in the first two, and the next two have their own issues. My characters don’t get their happy endings handed to them. They have to earn them.
A couple of the characters I created resulted in this idea popping into my head in 2019. Since I have so many body image issues, why not throw myself far outside my comfort zone and take burlesque? As soon as I saw registration open up, I registered, though didn’t tell anyone since I was so embarrassed. What if everyone I knew laughed? I knew Cody would be fine with it. So that wasn’t the concern. I just never felt sexy. That’s ironic, actually, since I had no problem donning a skin-tight Hervé Léger and going into a club in Seattle and knew I could have my pick, despite my “advanced” age. And I did just that quite often, making solo weekend trips to go clubbing and then a football game (the XFL is better than the NFL, though I’m into both…Dragons and Hawks). The shenanigans of Seattle stay in Seattle.
And burlesque certainly can be sexy. But before my first show, which already was potentially not happening since the instructor ended up being a major asshole who humiliated me in front of several others for no good reason, who it later came out did some absolutely terrible things to some other performers (that asshole should be in jail, actually), Covid hit, and I think that says enough. The hardest thing for me at that time was that I was a twice-a-day gym-rat, at the gym upwards of 2.5-3 hours every single day, and that was suddenly cut.
So I did the logical thing and started an OnlyFans page. Yes, this is logical to me. It forced me to at least try to maintain my physical conditioning. I’m not where I was there, but I didn’t let myself go as much as I could have. I’m not sure there’s too much to say about 2020 other than I ended up not giving up entirely on burlesque thanks to the incredible Paige of Little Lioness Productions, who I happened to meet the night that my former-instructor showed their ass, I spent a lot of time perfecting selfies, and I started getting into leather work.
Now that you know probably more than you cared to know, a bit more surface-level stuff: I’m a couturiére and corsetiére who, prior to the world shutting down, had clients literally around the world, and I was spending a couple months a year in Paris sourcing silks and laces and a bit of time in London studying historical gowns and sourcing laces. Needless to say, the things I make are very high-end. But when the world closes, no one bothers buying expensive gowns and corsets. When the 2008 recession hit, the same thing happened. But I’m privileged enough to be in a situation where my small business can weather hibernation.
I am also a nerd who is into Lord of the Rings and Titanic and Star Wars and Wonder Woman and Disney and I still love the hell out of math and science, and though much of the world now claims to be nerdy because it’s trendy, I was that way back when kids who were into that stuff were, unfortunately, bullied and beaten for it. I am an original nerd from before it was cool, which makes me doubly cool since that means I’m now a trend-setter. 😀 I was also into Broadway and other theatrical productions before the phrase “theater kid” was a thing.
Done with your pizza? Your salad? Ice cream all melted? Okay, then. Go click my little “find me” tab up top and start following my social media, and check the burlesque tab to see if I’ve got shows coming up, and you can subscribe to updates at the bottom of any page. 🙂 I’m about done talking for now. But only for now. 😉