S.P. Wayne's Blog: STUFF IS HAPPENING

“I’ve been waiting for years,” Leander said. “I’ve been learning Armenian.”

“Awesome!” New York said, “great thinking!”

“Thanks, yeah,” Leander said, “I mean, it’s not great, but I should be able to understand the basics in the field.”

“Great, great,” New York said, “I haven’t been able to find a translator I think is solid yet, so, good.”

“Well, between the two of us, we could probably…” Leander trailed off slowly.

“Yeah?” New York asked.

“How’s your Armenian?” Leander asked.

“What?” New York asked. “I don’t speak Armenian.”

“But you’re a polyglot,” Leander said, “you speak like, what, five languages? Six?”

“Yeah, so?” New York asked.

“You’re good at languages, you’ve known for years that we were going life or death with Armenian gangsters, and you didn’t bother learning any Armenian?”

“I’m good at Romance languages,” New York said.

“You speak Japanese, asshole!”

“Yeah, but that’s special,” New York said.

“You piece of shit otaku!” Leander said. “We could die! We could be killed by Armenian gangsters and you spent the last five years learning Japanese!”

“Look, I learned Japanese to train martial arts more effectively,” New York said, “it’s relevant.”

“It is not!” Leander shouted. “Oh my fuck, I’m going to die because my partner was too much of an idiot to learn the language of our enemies!”

“Relax,” New York said, “did you forget they all speak English?”

“Not to each other!” Leander said, “not when they’re saying shit like shoot the tall one first, if you fucking remember!”

“Yeah,” New York said, smiling fondly, “that was cool.”

“You were wearing lifts! It doesn’t count,” Leander said.

“Hah,” New York said, “sidetracked by that, really? It’s okay, man. You don’t have to be so defensive about it. I’m not that much taller than you. I mean, just a couple of critical inches.”

“Oh my fuck,” Leander groaned, pacing around the room, “oh my fuck. We’re going to die.”

“You don’t need language to understand that kind of thing anyway,” New York said.

“What?”

“‘Oh shit, I’m gonna get shot’ sounds the same in every language you hear it in,” New York explained. “You can just tell.”

“Dios mio,” Leander said, “dear lord above, sweet baby jesus, how did I get saddled with such an idiot best friend?”

“It’s not my fault you’re tied to language above understanding,” New York said. “You need to let the borders of your perception expand.”

“I’m going to die young,” Leander said, hands to the sky, “I’m going to die young and as a casualty of gang warfare. My mom is going to be so pissed at me. This is so fucking tragic.”

For those of you who occasionally do me the favor of checking in here, I’m going to give you, you lovely lonely frontiersperson, some secret in story knowledge. Okay, ready?

New York is convinced that the branch of the Armenian Mafia he is going to war with eventually is really composed of Armenian vampires.

Notice that I say, “New York is convinced” and not “New York and Leander are convinced.”

Do you ever wonder what it must be like to go from living outside and not getting medical care and getting shot up with shotgun pellets to lounging around on your own couch, inside, with your own blankets, while someone comes over and feeds you by dropping scrambled eggs directly into your mouth so that you don’t even have to move?

“Eh. It’s alright, I guess.”

Ernie: elevating the art of the lazy Sunday.

now, I can tumblr wildly without blowing up my goodreads blog feed. success. I think.

WHYYYYY

So why does my comic book boyfriend look like a World War 2 propaganda poster all of a sudden? I don’t know, but xojane let me write an article about it.

This is what Amadeus usually looks like:

note floppy hair, lack of glasses, and expressive eyes that are not weird slant slit things

Why, man? Why is it so hard to be an Asian dude in Western media? Why doesn’t anyone care? Whyyy?

The forums are up and running! Nothing is actually on them yet, but hey. YOU CAN PUT STUFF ON THEM! That is a thing you can do. I should figure out how to mark spoilers.

Events page is up. It boils down to, “let’s hang out at these two cons.” But seriously dudes, let’s hang out. I’m ordering pins. There will be swag.

I mean, I think at this point, we’re basically a website, right? I think I’ve checked all the author website boxes probably maybe. I need to put some actual fanart up on that page, hmm. But basically, the framework is here.

Also, I have an article going up on xojane tomorrow! I think tomorrow. Maybe Monday, but I’m pretty solidly sure Sunday is the day. It’s about comic books, because that’s, you know, my beat. As a journalist, my beat is comics. (journalist? blogger? cough. no! i once wrote about comics for an actual newsy news site! that counts!) As a novelist, my beat is emoootions and passionate but healthy relationships. Also werewolves.

The podcast is still going to happen. Hunter, my amazing and super talented cover artist, is designing a logo because this shit is so serious, you guys. Call in at (305) 985-2508!

This is my new coffee mug. As you can see, this thing is huge. Draw your conclusions about my caffeine consumption.

We were at 100%, and it was beautiful.

Sssh, shh, I kid. People not liking what you do is part of the process, because we all have room to grow as artists. But still, it was cool to have that for a while.

I’m trying to encourage myself to put some stuff up so I can start blogging things of wordy substance on here and therefore justify switching my goodreads auto-update RSS feed thing to here from tumblr, so I can reblog pictures of sunsets to my heart’s content on there without blowing up my official author feeds. I’ve been terribly lazy about that, so I thought it would be good to pick some nice topics to kind of ease myself into it. So like, what’s an easy topic? What’s something I can talk about, like, all the time?

MY DOG.

I can talk about my dog all day long. This is because he is the best dog.

So, hey. Here’s a question: how can you tell if somebody’s dog is a rescue? Answer: THEY TELL YOU.

so expressive!

It’s true, though. So here’s the deal: this is Ernie, and he came from the local Humane Society no-kill shelter here. He was a long term stay, which means he arrived at the shelter and didn’t get adopted out for a long time. He used to be a rural dog and live outside, and at some point he was apparently shot up with shotgun pellets, because people are basically the worst. He has one pellet still in him, a hard little ball over his ribs–that’s too big to be from a bb gun. He does not like playing with other dogs, he is kind of scared of my cat, and he is the BEST DOG IN THE WORLD.

Here’s how Ernie and I happened. I was volunteering at the shelter as a dog walker and sometimes trainer, so I could feel like my undergraduate psychology degree (with an animal behavior focus) might possibly be useful somehow. I met Ernie basically as soon as he came in. He was one year old, a fun, blonde, and leggy dog fresh into his young adulthood. He played catch and fetch and tug and frisbee and smiled all the damn time.

I paid him absolutely no mind. I figured he was going to be adopted immediately, so why get attached?

NO ONE EVEN TRIED TO ADOPT HIM FOR SIX MONTHS. SIX! MONTHS!

During those six months, I saw this dog multiple times per week. He was always so happy! So playful! So seemingly grateful to get even just 15 minutes to romp around!

He grew attached. When I would had him over to another volunteer, or even shelter staff, he would turn around and look for me the whole time as he was walked off, checking and checking to see if I would follow, seeming confused and sad when I didn’t. He would greet me joyously whenever I walked past his cage, even if I was walking another dog. He would lean against my legs whenever we paused on our walks.

I wasn’t in the market for a dog, not exactly, though I had a vague idea of what I wanted in a dog if the right one came along. Sleek, blacker than black fur, a cool and laid back personality, and the stocky, low to the ground build of a haphazardly bred pitbull type dog. Basically the opposite of this blonde and leggy bastard. Black shelter dogs get killed at higher rates; even at no-kill shelters, they take longer to adopt. Also, a solid 90% of my clothing is black or grey, so adopting a black dog would be ethically good but also practically stylish.

In the six months Ernie was there, the shelter adopted out at least two dozen pit mixes with black coats and obvious bully breed bodies.

It was so strange, I thought, so unexpectedly unjust. This was a great dog! Obviously a great dog! He could jump two feet up in the air, all four paws off the ground, and do a 360 to catch a frisbee! Why wasn’t he getting adopted?

He started to whine whenever I put him back in his enclosure, to go walk another dog, or leave for the day.

Late one night, my boyfriend and I were driving back home from whatever, some kind of event I wore a dress and heels to. We drove past the shelter.

I promptly burst into tears.

“OH MY GOD THAT DOG IS ALL ALONE IN THERE POOR SWEET BABY HE HAS TO SLEEP ON A CONCRETE FLOOR OH MY GOD HE IS SO ALONE,” I sobbed, or something like that. “I NEED TO RESCUE THIS DOG.”

My boyfriend pointed out that, one, that dog was not alone; he was in fact in with over fifty other dogs in his building alone. Karate Boyfriend pointed out further that even IF we adopted this dog, or, in fact, any dog, the dog would still be sleeping on a concrete floor, because that’s what our apartment has for flooring. Painted concrete.

I think I just cried harder.

Anyway, then we set up a play date to see if Karate Boyfriend and Potential Dog got along. They did.

And so, Ernie became MY DOG. Our theme song is Rihanna’s “We Found Love,” by the way. I have to use a lint brush all the time because his yellow-white, yellow-red fur shows up on all my clothes.

And about the concrete floors? Are you worried about the sad cold concrete floors?

SUCKERS.

Ernie sleeps on a couch every single night of his blessed life.

THE BEST

In conclusion: best dog.

So, hey! Exciting news. WE’RE GONNA BE A PODCAST. HEAR THAT, EVERYBODY? WE’RE GONNA BE A PODCAST. YEAH, WE, US, WE ARE GOING TO BE A PODCAST BECAUSE YOU ARE GOING TO CALL IN. WE’RE IN THIS TOGETHER, BABY.

Through the magic of google voice, you can call this number:

(305) 985-2508

and it will ring through to voicemail. Leave a message, and then I will air it maybe unless you tell me not to. Ask questions! Call just to tell me you love me! Whatever you want.

This is gonna be a show about, uh, werewolves, obviously, and fairytales, and dark fantasy, and old horror lit and mythology/folklore and what that has to do with YOU, you beautiful and wonderful consumer of genre fiction, you. Also I’ll be essentially supplying annotations for my own books and whatever so we can talk about werewolf trials in the 1500s if we want. Eventually each of my major characters will get an episode, like

AXTON: a history of nice boy werewolves

LEANDER: the poet jock action hero multi-class build

DANA: werewolf hamlet + truckers doing meth, and

NEW YORK: LOVES NEW YORK

etc etc etc

FIRST EPISODE on March 3rd, a week from now, so call in ASAP.

There’s gonna be a hell of a learning curve. Please be gentle.

SECRET, SO SECRET.

So totally super secret, this doesn’t give it away at all, aren’t you just totally mystified, etc.

Really, I should just post about this tomorrow, but I’m excited.