The Raven's Sepulcher is available at Amazon and Smashwords.
I used the fairytale Sleeping Beauty as inspiration for my novel The Raven’s Sepulcher. The fairytale is about a girl who wakes to her own adulthood. There is a special emphasis on sexuality and romance in the fairytale, and those things play a significant part in my story, too, but I expanded on the basic premise. Allison, my protagonist, is not only confronted with her growing desire for love, but she also has to wake to the dangers and disappointments of life. She must give up her childish delusions and deal with reality if she is to survive. There are forces in her grandmother’s house that are urging her to open her eyes. These forces may be supernatural or they may represent Allison’s own innate wisdom bubbling up from her subconscious, but in any event, they are trying to tell her that she is leading a nebulous existence somewhere between life and death. She is in a tomb, and she might slip away forever if she doesn’t wake up.
I like the way Sleeping Beauty suggests that maturation has two tracks. On the one hand, our bodies mature physically, and there’s not much we can do about that. It simply happens to us. Accompanying that physical maturation are usually societal expectations that steadily increase as the process goes along. But there is a second maturation process, a psychological one, and according to the fairytale, this one is driven by our own willingness to accept that our childhood is over.
When Allison is sent out into the world, she is not ready to think for herself or make her own decisions, so for the longest time, she is blind to the danger she is in. There are people in her life, people she should be able to count on and trust, who would prefer Allison remain an obedient and naïve child. They would do anything to keep her asleep in her tomb forever.
I’m a short, fat, middle-aged, half deaf, disabled man with partial facial paralysis, without much energy and with even less money. And being around people makes me incredibly nervous. That’s not a comprehensive description of who I am, of course. I have my good points. But still, I don’t think many would consider me a catch. I’m not saying that to be down on myself. I’m just dealing with reality. I happen to be most strongly attracted to young, lithe, slender, smooth men who are more pretty than handsome. You can call me shallow for being like that. You can tell me that I *should* be attracted to men who are more like myself, or to hairy men, or muscular, manly men. You might say that one day I might fall for a man who is more “right” for me. Maybe, and pigs might fly, too. But in the meantime, I’m attracted to who I’m attracted to. And, again, I’m just dealing with reality.
This situation can be frustrating at times, but what helps is that I really don’t expect those to whom I’m attracted to like me back. I simply don’t. In fact, if a young pretty man expressed an interest in me, I would think he was quite odd. I would be grateful. I would find it flattering. I might even consider a relationship…one that would last a few hours, a day, a week, a month or till death do us part. But I would think he was strange.
I think I deserve respect, and I hope to find compassion in this life. But love and desire? I don’t think anyone owes me those things. And I don’t think anyone can give me those things simply because they want to or think I deserve it. Either you feel it or you don’t. You can’t force it. If love and desire were things human beings could muster at will simply because they thought they should, or they were told that they should, or they thought it would be noble of them, “ex-gay therapy” would work, and it doesn’t.
I think everybody should have the right to be honest about who they are and what they feel. I also think everybody should have the right to not be interested…for whatever reason and even if others think they’re of low moral character or a pain in the backside or a stuck up asshole for not finding supposedly deserving people sexually or romantically appealing.
At this point in life, I’m not sure I want to be coupled even if it was just for a few hours. I’m not sure I would be up to it. I think it would have been nice and I think I really needed it when I was younger. I think it would have been easier for me to find a squeaky-voiced little fairy boy back in the day if I lived in a more open and accepting society. I sometimes wonder what my life would be like now if I had found my cute little man. Would he be with me now? Would we still be happy together? I don’t know, but in any event, I didn’t find him.
So it’s up to me to love myself. And that means loving myself as I am rather than what others think I should be. If I’m that aging, broken down mess who sometimes daydreams about holding Dylan O’Brian, then I’ll just have to be that guy. There are worse things. And I don’t hold it against the Dylans of the world for not wanting to be with me, so it’s not so bad.
Allison, a teenage girl, is sent to live with her grandmother in a secluded colonial farmhouse in New England. After finding a chapel in the attic and a mysterious old cemetery behind the house, she learns that her family is connected to a secret and ancient cult, and she must decide if she will accept the barbaric practices and beliefs of this cult or risk her life by declaring her independence from her family.
Now available at Amazon and Smashwords.
This story began as a recurring daydream I had back in the early 1990s after reading an article in the WVU student newspaper about a mysterious room found in the attic of one of the older dorms. I started working on an outline around 1995, I guess, and then I wrote a first draft in the late ‘90s. That was right after my head surgeries. I was only 31, but I no longer believed I had all the time in the world, and I wrote The Raven’s Sepulcher with a kind of feverish intensity. I tried to say everything I needed and wanted to say in this book before it was too late.
There are elements of this story that are dark, disturbing and macabre, but ultimately, it’s a story about liberation and self-acceptance.
Allison, a teenage girl, is sent to live with her grandmother in a secluded colonial farmhouse in New England. After finding a chapel in the attic and a mysterious old cemetery behind the house, she learns that her family is connected to a secret and ancient cult, and she must decide if she will accept the barbaric practices and beliefs of this cult or risk her life by declaring her independence from her family.
Now available at Amazon and Smashwords.
This story began as a recurring daydream I had back in the early 1990s after reading an article in the WVU student newspaper about a mysterious room found in the attic of one of the older dorms. I started working on an outline around 1995, I guess, and then I wrote a first draft in the late ‘90s. That was right after my head surgeries. I was only 31, but I no longer believed I had all the time in the world, and I wrote The Raven’s Sepulcher with a kind of feverish intensity. I tried to say everything I needed and wanted to say in this book before it was too late.
There are elements of this story that are dark, disturbing and macabre, but ultimately, it’s a story about liberation and self-acceptance.
I was once involved in an online discussion about Pride Parades with a white middle class feminist magazine writer, and she eventually got around to saying something that was rather revealing. She claimed that it was sometimes difficult for liberals such as herself to defend minorities when they did things that “normal” people found “icky.” She didn’t use those exact terms, but that’s what she meant. She spoke of black people who didn’t use what she thought of as correct grammar and how some poor people had children they couldn’t afford. And she didn’t like gay men acting all queeny and flamboyant, and some of them have sex with other men they hardly know. Oh, my. Despite the fact that she could talk a good liberal, LGBT ally game when she wanted to, she was an elitist snob who believed that her way of life was the gold standard.
I know there are people out there like this. Not all bigots are as direct and honest as the WBC, and not all homophobes are likely to call you a faggot or a dyke. But it has been my experience that the majority of straight people who claim to be allies actually are. Does that mean they don’t have a homophobic bone in their body. Well, no, but I can’t say that I don’t have a homophobic bone in my body. Homophobia is part of our culture, just like racism, sexism and hostility toward the poor. It’s something we were taught, and I think most well-intentioned people are willing to reexamine their attitudes once they find out there’s a problem. I have no desire to make those people uncomfortable or feel ashamed by harshly denouncing them as homophobic at the drop of a hat. And I hope that I will be met with the same forbearance if I should stumble.
I’m a poor, fat, disabled gay man with mental health issues, so I have some insight into the problems faced by poor, fat disabled gay men with mental health issues, and I would like to make life just a little easier for people like myself, but that doesn’t make me a saint, and I know it. I know I can be selfish, insensitive and hurtful. And I know that people who are supposedly more “privileged” than I am can and do feel pain and have significant problems. Kings and queens as well as peasants suffer and die. Life can be difficult and way too short no matter how good you have it according to someone else’s calculus.
I may be a member of several minority groups, but isn’t everybody part of one minority group or another? Ultimately, I like to think that I am a human being and a part of the known universe. I like to think that in some sense I belong to everything and everyone.
I read a little piece today about the supposed irony of women relying on men to protect them from other men. The author compared this practice to the security she felt when walking her “doofus” pitbull.
I would like to say that I am not in any way like a pitbull, even the “doofus” lovable variety. I’m a 5’4” 48 year old arthritic human being. Today I’m experiencing tennis elbow even though I don’t play tennis. Even in my younger days, I wasn’t very strong or athletic. If I ever took it into my head to jump on someone, I’d probably trip over my own shoelaces.
If I were to walk a frightened female to her car late one night, I would wonder what exactly she would expect me to do if we were attacked. Scream? Cry? Beg for mercy? Surely she wouldn’t expect me to fight off a dangerous thug who would go after strangers in a parking lot…because that’s not going to happen. Not unless we had a bat with us, and she could probably swing it better and with more force than I could. (Remember the arthritis and the stiff, aching elbows.) And after she got in her car, I would wonder who would walk *me* home because I’m pretty afraid myself.
We’re not all dumb beasts with strong, ripped, superhero bodies and fierce temperaments. That is a stereotype, and many of us do not fit it. For many of us, the world is a dangerous place and has been from earliest childhood, and we don’t expect a lot of sympathy because there’s precious little for the “doofus pitbulls” of the world even when they’re more like timid rabbits. The next time you’re afraid to walk to your car at night, imagine living in a world where everyone simply expected you to take care of yourself, a world where not even one bigger and stronger friend would offer to walk with you in a million years, a world where others would shame you if you accepted such help in the unlikely event it was offered, a world where others not only didn’t care about the dangers you faced but actually mercilessly ridiculed you for even admitting you were afraid.
