Screw That

Sometimes love hurts. Maybe most times. Maybe all times. Maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be, the way it has to be. Because love means change, and change is never easy. It’s even harder when you have to change from a monster into a man, and I guess that’s what I was planning to write tonight, but screw that. We’re tangenting. We’re tangenting hard.

Because it isn’t fair. Why should he have to learn to be a man? He never asked to be a man, or a monster. He’s just some poor little boy who got used, and it isn’t fair. And the little mermaid? Screw that prince, girl. You should have stuck that knife in his chest when you had the chance. Girl, you should have lived. He didn’t care about you. He didn’t care about anything. Girl, he killed you long before he said yes to another woman. You fought hard for your humanity, girl. You sacrificed everything you had for it, and he still consigned you to the stupid doggy bed in the stupid hallway. You deserved better, girl. You deserved to live.

So forget about love and all its pain. Screw that. You fight, and you live, and you don’t put everything you have into someone who will never give anything back. That beauty will never see that you were never a beast, boy. She’ll never understand how that fairy hurt you, and no matter what you, she’ll always believe that everything you are is only your fault. So rip her throat out while you have the chance. Those fangs are all you have left, boy. You better fight to keep them.

And stick that knife in him now, girl, now before it’s too late. You loved him, and you gave him your life. And your sisters loved you, and they gave you the chance to take it back. Screw him, girl. All he ever gave you was a pillow outside his door.

You deserve more. You deserve so much more. Don’t let them hurt you. You have to live. You have to fight for what’s yours.

Jenny Rants About Dolls and Life

So I flipped out a little on Tumblr. About Barbies.

See some lady was calling the Curvy Doll an Obesity Barbie, and well, the whole thing is over here.

Highlights:
"Kids need representation. Kids don’t need eating disorders. So maybe you should venture out of your stupid Barbie Dreamhouse for a while, and live with the rest of us in this world where there’s actually a middle ground between obese and literally dying of skinniness, and there are worse things around than double chins and fat ankles."


Also it's one in the morning and I'm exhausted but my cat has decided to take a nap on top of me, so obviously I can't dislodge him by getting up and going to bed. Life is hard when cute things use you as pillows.

Also also, I know I'm totally blog-neglecting, but in my defense I'm really focused on trying to wrap up this novel I've been working on forever. Except for right now. That part of my brain is dead right now. Though I think I might have been channeling some of my MC's rage on Tumblr just now.

London on a Tuesday Morning

It is a Tuesday, sunny, and she is walking the streets of London alone. She is walking along the Strand, and does not want to be. She is not entirely sure where she does want to be, but she knows it is not along the Strand. She knows this because she has walked up and down it three times now, and has found nothing remotely interesting.

It has been unusually sunny since her arrival in England, two months ago, in the company of a man called John who propositioned her in a chiropractor’s office. She bought an umbrella, polka-dotted with a handle that curves, especially for this trip. There has been no occasion to use it, and she is angry.

John is long gone. It began when he chipped his tooth on a bit of hard candy, two weeks in. She had seen the end the moment he smiled at the girl in the dentist’s waiting room. The girl was of an average height, with mousy brown hair, a poor complexion, and unremarkable eyes. Plain, but John has never gone for the remarkable. Their elopement to Europe, three days after meeting, is proof enough of that; her back problems are the most elegant thing about her.

Alone in the city, she buys clothes she can’t afford and can’t quite fit in, and frequently becomes lost. Somewhere within a hundred miles is a hotel room containing all of her bags, her computer, and her passport. She knows, distantly, that this is important, the passport at least, but cannot find the energy to care.

She did not love John, or does not think she did. She does not miss him, certainly. But without him she is lost, adrift in a foreign land. Her new skirt from Harrod’s is riding up, and there is a tear in her stockings. She has no money for a plane ticket home, but is certainly the best dressed backpacker in the UK.

She wishes it would rain.

Her mother had still tried to call her, five or six weeks ago. As she no longer has a phone card, she cannot be sure when the last time was. It may have been this morning, but she will not allow herself to feel guilt over that. She is an adult; they can hardly launch an international search for her, and she has assured them many times that she knows what she is doing.

This is completely true. She knew that running away to the other side of the world with a man she’d just met, even flightier than herself, would not be the stuff of fairy tales. She had not wanted it to be. But a whirlwind romance with an attractive man is a small price to pay for the freedom of a whole new hemisphere.

The heat is unbearable, and there is a run in her stockings. There is one pair left, in a golden bag on the dresser of her missing hotel room, and her wallet holds six pounds. There is also the matter of lunch.

She ought to get a job, but that would require a work visa, and she is not sure that avoiding homelessness is worth all the trouble. Perhaps she could become a street performer. Digging through her wallet again, she ponders the price of a guitar.

Guitar lessons, too, she adds to the list. A case for the money to be dropped in, a microphone, a sensible outfit for street performing. Then lunch, and three new pairs of stockings. The hotel room is reserved for five more nights, at least, assuming she can find it.

Sighing, she looks toward the red phone booth across the street. Her mother, perhaps, would wire her some money.

She yanks down her skirt again, and walks purposefully toward the department store behind it.

My Book Is Here!

“Goodbye,” originally published last January, is not only available for the first time in six months as a physical book, but also available for the first time ever as an ebook! Order now, and share it with someone you love this Valentine’s Day.

Order Here

Real Life Stuff

Well, first of all, I think I have one now.

So over the last week I've started a job at Barnes and Noble and moved into an apartment. And since I've been at my new job almost constantly since I moved, there are fragments of furniture everywhere, the cats probably think they've been abandoned, and I'm living out of a suitcase and off of ramen noodles and Goldfish.

Tomorrow I shop. And update my LinkedIn profile.

Also, I'm starting my final semester of college next week. And I'm writing my final big research paper, which is, of course, about folklore. Specifically transformation stories.

So the blogging will probably be even more haphazard than ever, given my recent acquisition of a life, but expect lots of rambling about beasts and mermaids and snake people. And Oz. I think I'm going to have a lot to say about Oz in the near future, for reasons I'll get into another time. And brace yourselves for that, because once I get started on Oz, it's hard to get me stopped.

In the meantime, this is your weekly reminder that I write books.

Book News

My first book, Goodbye and Other Words I Should Have Said, has been re-released. Hard copies available here, Kindle edition coming soon.


Fifty one poems on love and loss, and a gorgeous new matte cover, perfect for Valentine’s Day this year.

My second book, Avalanche, is also matte now, and can still be purchased on Amazon.

And as long as we’re here, let’s not forget Beast, the short story collection I worked on with author Iona Gale. Seven great fairy tale retellings you don’t want to miss, also available on Amazon. And keep an eye out for more news from Io; she’s been working on an exciting new project this winter.

The Beard and the Bird

Can we talk about Bluebeard? I hate Bluebeard, okay? But you know what I love? Fitcher’s Bird. So let’s look at the differences.

Bluebeard is French. Perrault. Fitcher’s Bird is German. The Brothers Grimm. So let’s put away the idea that the Grimms are the most horrifically sexist fairy tale people of all time, shall we? Historically, they’re a major improvement.

You probably know the story of Bluebeard. Man with peculiar facial hair marries girl, tells girl not to enter one particular room while he’s out of town, gives her a key to said room, and leaves. Girl, full of insatiable curiosity, enters room, finds corpses of all Man’s previous wives, and in her shock, drops the key in their blood. She leaves the room quickly, but the key has been stained, and try as she might, she cannot wash away the blood. Man returns, inspects key, and prepares to kill another wife. She begs for time to say her final prayers, and during this time her brothers arrive, kill Bluebeard, and rescue her. The girl proceeds to live happily ever after, but the two morals of the story, as provided by Perrault, are:    

1.       Curiosity will get you in trouble       

2.    Real life guys aren’t nearly as bad as Bluebeard, so chill.

On, then, to Fitcher’s Bird. I’ve always pictured this bad guy with a silver nose, but I might be mixing up my Bluebeard variants. Someone has a silver nose. Anyway, we have a sorcerer.  He just straight up kidnaps his girls, and for some reason I find that sort of comforting. If you’re gonna be evil, just own up to it, you know?

So he kidnaps a girl, brings her to his fancy house, goes on a business trip and leaves her home alone with the forbidden key and an egg, which she mustn’t let out of her sight. Why an egg? Beats me. Spoiler alert—it never hatches.

Girl number one opens the murder closet, drops the egg, stains it, and gets chopped up and added to the mix as soon as the sorcerer gets home. He goes and kidnaps her sister. Same thing. And it’s down to the youngest sister.

Now this girl, she’s got some brains on her. She leaves the egg sitting safely on the kitchen counter when she goes exploring. Finds the murder closet, doesn’t drop anything in the blood, and begins carefully putting together the chopped up bodies of her sisters. And since this is a fairy tale, they promptly come back to life. Of course, the fragmented bodies of a dozen other girls get left behind, but hey, two resurrections in a single story? You’re already getting more than your money’s worth.

Sisters get stashed up in the attic or something. Third girl presents clean egg to the sorcerer. The test passed, he proposes to her immediately. And boy is she ever wearing the pants in this relationship.

Yeah, she says, whatever. But while I plan the wedding you gotta haul this huge basket of gold to my parents, ‘kay?

So she dumps the sisters in the basket, sprinkles some gold on top for appearances, and sends the man off, with strict instructions not to stop and rest, because she’ll be watching him from her window the whole time.

Dude gets tired. Sits for a minute. “And just what do you think you’re doing?” asks a zombie sister. “I thought I told you not to stop.”

Surprised at how close his bride’s voice sounds, he gets up and starts walking again. Meanwhile, she’s inviting all his friends over to celebrate the engagement.

He stops to rest. “Slacking again?” says the zombie sister. “My parents are waiting, dear.”

He hurries on. His bride fetches a skull from one of the skeletons in his closet, dresses it for a wedding, and props it up in the window.

“Hurry up,” her sister tells him in her voice. She coats herself in honey. He drops the basket on her mother’s porch. She slices open his feather bed and rolls in it. He walks home. She walks home. 

Paths collide—no problem. Why should he suspect anything, when his bride is right up in the window there, smiling down at him. Crazy humanoid birds aren’t that unusual, I suppose, where he comes from.

He enters the house. Bird girl’s friends and family, alerted by her sisters, meet her out back, and they set the house on fire. Evil sorcerer, evil sorcerer’s evil friends, all up in flames.

So here’s a girl who knows what she wants and finds a way to get it. Sensible and determined. Sneaky. Persistent. Smart. She saves her sisters, she saves herself, and she finds a way to bring down countless bad guys. Not to mention all the gold the sorcerer carried home with the zombie sisters. This family is set for life, just like in Bluebeard, but in this version, the girl wasn’t stupid and careless and she didn’t have to rely on her brothers to save her. They helped, sure, but she orchestrated the whole show. Got the world wrapped around her little finger, that girl. She’ll go far. Just as soon as she washes all those feathers off.