We are holy...

Welcome to spring in the city 🌸

Well, it’s Saturday and the weather is warm. It’s so warm, in fact, that when I stepped outside around 2 p.m. I texted my roommate, “Damn it’s hot as summer out here,” which I think is pretty funny, honestly. It genuinely felt like we’d skipped right past spring — which is warm but crisp — and into summer, hot and humid, the air thick.

The reason I was stepping outside was to go to the library, which has become my new “I need to get out of the house but have no money and want to be productive” destination this week. I mean, what’s not to love: you’ve got free wifi, you’re surrounded by books, and you don’t have to buy an over-priced beverage to sit there for hours. The only thing that would make it better is more comfortable chairs and longer hours.

Anyway, enough rambling. Let’s dive in, shall we?

From the heart 💗

Reflections on being queer and coming from conservative religion

I got quite a bit into my feelings earlier this week. Yes, yes, I know — when am I not in my feelings? Great question, but how rude of you to ask!

The reason I was in my feelings this time is that I was contemplating my existence, specifically my existence as a queer person in a country that is increasingly more and more hateful toward LGBTQ+ people and experiences.

It is overwhelming in a bad way to stop and consider just how many people exist in this country who would relish seeing my life crash and burn — and maybe, literally, watching me burn — just because I’m a woman who’s gay. It blows my mind, because…what the fuck should it matter to them? I am who I am, and that has literally no effect on their lives. Just like trans people using the bathrooms that match their gender has no effect on cis people!

It’s hatred, pure and simple, and honestly? It scares me.

It scares me especially because I don’t trust that the community in which I was raised…understands how scary it is. And honestly? I don’t trust that they wouldn’t shake their heads and blame me if anything were to happen to me as a result of a queerphobic hate crime.

God, I hate so much as thinking that, much less typing it out. It feels like a betrayal of the highest order to ascribe these feelings to people who raised me, who loved me, who still profess to love me.

But the thing is — anyone who voted for Trump, or who regularly votes for the GOP, all of whom have fallen in line and bowed the knee to Trump and his cronies — they’ve already made it crystal freaking clear that their priorities are not with my and the queer community’s safety. They may profess to love me, but when the rubber hit the road, they voted for someone who hates me, for someone who is empowering monsters who would laugh over my dead power, for someone who is signing Executive Orders meant to legislate me out of existence.

And you know what? I’m not just sad about it; I’m fucking enraged.

I have this well of fury that lives in my gut, and most of the time I’m able to quench it, but every few days it roars to life and I’m nearly immobilized with rage. It energizes and wipes me out in equal measure. It is righteous rage, I believe, but it is exhausting to feel. It’s even more exhausting to tamp it down, to plaster a smile on my face and pretend that I’m not vibrating with intense emotions every day someone professes to love me but refuses to accept that I am not an abomination.

I am not an abomination.

That word has haunted me since the first time I stumbled across it in the Bible after realizing I wasn’t — couldn’t be — homophobic anymore. It’s a violent word, it’s a hateful word, it’s a word that promises fire and brimstone, suffering, punishment. It’s a word that leers at me from above, professing to be better than me, more holy than me, more deserving than me.

And I reject it. I reject it with prejudice.

There’s a line in the draft of my adult romance that makes me cry every time I read it. My protagonist, Summer, is lying in bed with her love interest after they’ve had sex (because yes, this book fucks). She’s thinking about an article she read by someone who used to be a friend, who was lambasting her for being queer.

And as she reflects on what has just transpired between her and her love interest, she thinks, “There’s absolutely nothing unholy about it.”

In another instance, she thinks of her love for Ruby as being “divine.”

I stand by it. Love is holy, love is divine, and queer love is both of those things just as cishet love is. If you disagree, I mean, I dunno…why are you even here?

From the camera roll 📸

When a friend comes to visit!

From the page ✍️

I feel like I’ve been all over the place with my writing projects this year. At the start of the year, I was going to focus on revising REVENGE (adult romance) and my young adult novel-in-verse; then I got inspired to work on HEX (YA romance) and spent the past two months drafting 33,000 words of that book, while also completing a revision pass for REVENGE.

And this week? This week I decided to take another break from HEX ☹️ 

Something about this book is a huge struggle for me. This is the fifth draft, the second time I’ve basically redrafted from scratch, and it’s still so incredibly difficult to pull off what I’m trying to do. Or maybe I just…don’t know what I’m trying to do, and that’s the problem?

Regardless, the point stands: I’m taking yet another drafting break from this book. Le sigh.

From the shelf 📚

I’ll Have What He’s Having, Adib Khorram

I read Adib Khorram’s adult debut a few weeks ago and it was sooooo good. It’s set in Kansas City and follows Farzan and David, who meet and hook up in the middle of a case of mistaken identity, which was stressful while it lasted (for me!) but somehow…the book was still sexy during that stressful phase, lol.

The two men wind up back in each other’s lives and decide to help each other — Farzan will help David study to take his master sommelier test, and David will teach Farzan how to run a restaurant. And, of course — they can’t keep their hands off each other, which eventually leads to them falling in love. Which I adored!

I loved this book, and I think you will, too, if you pick it up!

Alla prossima 👋

Hey, so — ICE is ramping up its illegal kidnapping of people, snatching students and academics and probably plenty of other people off the streets because they check notes were pro-Palestine.

This is genuinely terrifying and evil. I’m gonna make myself a nuisance to my reps this week. But like…what the hell.

This country is on fire. If you see that, and you, too, want to douse the flames so we can build a better and more equitable future, I’m so glad. If you don’t see the flames? If you’re putting your head in the sand, devil’s advocating, etc?…open your eyes.

— Karis xoxo