“Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us.”
~ Paul Theroux, 10 April 1941
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Charles Baudelaire (b. Apr 09): “Pleasure consumes us. Work strengthens us.”
9 Apr
“We are weighed down, every moment, by the conception and the sensation of Time. And there are but two means of escaping and forgetting this nightmare: pleasure and work. Pleasure consumes us. Work strengthens us. Let us choose.”
~ Charles Baudelaire, b. 9 April 1821
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Scorpios at night …
7 Apr
I was digging a hole for a body the other night and I got to thinking, why does everyone seem to hate Scorpios? So I leaned on my shovel and asked my partner Sybil who was helping me dig, “Why does everyone hate us?”
“By us, you mean stone-cold killers?” she said.
“No, I mean Scorpios.”
“Oh, that again.”
We’d had this discussion before. By a twist of fate, we’d been thrown together seven years ago, having survived an attack of killer bees on a nature hike in Arizona. We’d both been stung dozens of times, and half our party had died of anaphylactic shock. But apparently we’d had good immune systems. After a couple of days in hospital, we were discharged.
We’d gone out for lunch and over drinks got to comparing life stories. Turns out we were both triple Scorpios – ascendant, sun and moon. Bad to the bone. We decided to buy a bottle of tequila, score some local weed and rent a motel. I could tell you the rest but that would just be pornographic.
“Seriously, why do they hate us?”
“From my point of view,” she said, “it’s because you never tell the truth. You’re sneaky. You’re always doing things behind my back.”
“Baby, I’m hurt. You know that’s not true.”
“Then you play the victim, just so you can manipulate me. You don’t play nice. You’re a sociopath.”
“Play nice? This coming from the Chameleon Queen?” I had to defend myself, because Scorpios never back down. “You blow hot and cold one minute to the next. You ask to be left alone, next thing you’re sexting some guy on the phone. I call you out, and you get all nasty with me.”
“You’re nosy. You’re always snooping around my business.”
“Monkey business isn’t a real occupation, except for you.”
“You’re sarcastic and mean.”
“I just tell the truth. Straight up. On the rocks, baby.”
“You have zero empathy for others. You could watch a person die and not lift a finger, unless it was to check their wallet or cop a feel.”
“I give everybody one chance, but one chance only. If you can’t stand on your own after I’ve helped you up, I’ve got no use for you.”
“Except when you want to jump my bones.”
“I swear, it’s never even my idea. I think you got some little voodoo doll of me in your drawers, you take it out and start jerking it off. Next thing I know I’m lapping tequila shots out of your navel.”
“C’mon, admit it. You’ve got sex on the brain. I look at you, I see a 24/7 woodie.”
“Maybe so, but it’s not just for you.”
“Like I said, sneaky and mean.” She brought her shovel to her shoulder and I took a moment to gauge the radius of the handle and how far I’d have to jump if she took a swing at me. The hole we’d dug was almost big enough for two.
“Now baby, you know I’m just kidding.”
“That’s not kidding, that’s being passive-aggressive.” She turned her eyes on me. “Now look here.”
“No.” I averted my gaze. “I don’t want to be hypnotized or X-rayed. There ought to be a law against your evil eye.”
“Huh. If I could really see through you, I’d get a glimpse of some reptile, all scaly and squinty-eyed from being underground so long he forgot how to be human.”
“I’ve got a right to my privacy.”
“You sleep in my bed, you have no rights and no secrets. You obey me. There are no safe words. You do not fuck with me unless invited.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And do not take a sarcastic tone with me.”
“Baby, I don’t want to fight. We’re just talking. I want to understand why they hate us so much.”
“You really don’t know?”
“Do you?”
Sybil put down her shovel and took off her sweater, revealing only a thin T-shirt beneath. Because it was a warm night and she’d been working the shovel hard, the T-shirt was wet and clung to her breasts like a moist cheesecloth over freshly-kneaded loaves of bread.
She spread her sweater on the ground a few feet from the hole. “Come here and I’ll show you.”
“Is this some kind of black magic thing, what with the full moon and a fresh corpse and all?”
“Shut up and get naked.”
A coyote or a wolf, something hungry, howled from not too far away. A chill went up my tailbone, but I didn’t run. Safety in numbers, even if we were only two. We were both triple Scorpios, after all, so we were practically a six-pack.
She shucked off her jeans, stretched out on her sweater and writhed like a snake in the moonlight. I joined her there among the pine needles and we made love like wild things, scaring off all the animals in the forest.
Maybe that’s why they love to hate us.
~~~~~~~~~
Alan Annand is a writer and astrologer with the moon in Scorpio. Find his New Age Noir series and other mystery novels at Amazon, Apple, Barnes&Noble, Kobo and Smashwords.
Arthur Hailey (b. Apr 05): “A writer has to experience new environments.”
5 Apr
“Don’t put down too many roots in terms of a domicile. I have lived in four countries and I think my life as a writer and our family’s life have been enriched by this. I think a writer has to experience new environments. There is that adage: No man can really succeed if he doesn’t move away from where he was born. I believe it is particularly true for the writer.”
~ ARTHUR HAILEY (b. 5 April 1920)
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Word cloud: SCORPIO RISING
4 Apr
“If you like thrillers and detective stories, this one is a terrific read. It’s fast-paced and has plenty of twists and turns – as well as enough astrology and palmistry – to keep you flipping the pages.” ~ NCGR newsletter
Available at Amazon, Apple, Barnes&Noble, Kobo and Smashwords.
Robert Frost (b. Mar 26): “A diplomat always remembers a woman’s birthday…”
26 Mar
“A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age.”
~ Robert Frost, b. 26 March 1874
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Lauren Kate (b. Mar 21): “See the entire world as your muse.”
21 Mar
Lauren Kate, born 21 March 1981, is an international best-selling author of young adult fiction. Her seven books have been translated into more than 30 languages.
Four quotes on writing:
- Be fearless. Be glib. Be enigmatic. Read everything you can. Always finish your stories. Find a writing friend who can give you comments and help you get perspective.
- I surprised myself by meticulously plotting out Fallen before I wrote it. Character descriptions, paragraph-long synopses for each chapter, “big” endings, the whole deal.
- I majored in creative writing in college, and went on to get a masters degree in fiction — but I don’t think those things are necessary to being a good writer. Practice, curiosity, voracious reading, and diligence are more important than any degree.
- Live your life as a curious person. Try to see the entire world as your muse. Ask questions. Dismiss nothing. Eavesdrop. Always eavesdrop. You’ll have more fun, learn all the time, and when the time comes to sit down and write, you’ll have a whole line-up of stories just waiting to be told.
Richard Condon (b. Mar 18): “Writers are too self-centered to be lonely.”
18 Mar
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Richard Condon (born 18 March 1915, died 9 April 1996) was a prolific and popular American political novelist whose satiric works were generally presented in the form of thrillers or semi-thrillers, including Prizzi’s Honor and The Manchurian Candidate.
Five quotes on writing:
- Writers are too self-centered to be lonely.
- I’m a man of the marketplace as well as an artist. I’m a pawnbroker of myth.
- Amateur psychiatric prognosis can be fascinating when there’s absolutely nothing else to do.
- I think the most important part of storytelling is tension. It’s the constant tension of suspense that in a sense mirrors life, because nobody knows what’s going to happen three hours from now.
- Although the paranoiacs make the great leaders, it’s the resenters who make their best instruments because the resenters, those men with cancer of the psyche, make the great assassins.
Peter Robinson (b. Mar 17): “Writers have to be able to enjoy solitude…”
17 Mar
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Peter Robinson, born 17 March 1950, is a Canadian crime writer born in Britain. He is best known for his crime novels set in Yorkshire featuring Inspector Alan Banks. He has written 25 books.
Writing quotes:
- I think writers have to be able to enjoy solitude rather than just endure it. I’ve always enjoyed being left alone with my imagination, ever since I was a kid.
- Put your bum on the chair and your fingers on the keyboard. Read widely, too. When my students fail it’s usually nothing to do with lack of talent but everything to do with lack of application. So many people want to be writers, but few actually want to write!
- I used to write my own versions of famous tales, such as William Tell or Robin Hood, and illustrate them myself, too. When I entered my teens, I got more into horror and science fiction and wrote a lot of short stories. A literary education complicated things and for many years I wrote nothing but poetry. Then I got back to story-telling.
- I like newspaper stories that are incomplete, that give me room to imagine the rest. It’s no good to me reading about something that’s all neatly solved and wrapped up. That’s why so many of my stories revolve around human psychology, around why someone commits a certain crime, or series of crimes. I don’t profess to know the answers but I like to explore the possibilities.
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