Video is up: Singer Clashes with Cougar

Everyone did a brilliant job, and now you can see for yourself. I'm so pleased with everyone's work, the production crew, director, the actors were just brilliant ... they make me look good.
Please feel free to leave any comments here, or at youtube. I'm sure the actors and crew especially would love to hear what you think of their work.
If you have feedback about the script, come back and tell me. I'm always open to feedback, to doing better. Also, to hearing about YOUR work.

Anniversary of an Adventure in Love

28 years ago today I began my longest relationship. We were together almost 19 years, meaning we broke up in June of 2002. We stayed together about 17 years too long for our mental health. But we are still friends, still bound together in deep ways. We were friends for 3 years before we became lovers, and we would have married had marriage been allowed between two women. And now we would be divorced. Divorced friends. We share the same values, same politics, same ideals. We kept house alike, both love animals, enjoy the same movies. And we make each other laugh. We had many good times, unfortunately they were outweighed by the anger.
We never cheated on each other. There was no alcohol, or drugs. No physical abuse. Well, almost, a couple of times, but we got that in check. But there was emotional abuse and plenty of it. So we saw couple counselors for years. We learned all the communication devices. We tried living apart. For years.
And finally I called an end to trying. After a couple of years I tried with someone else for a few months -- and got my heart broken. I don't want to try again. I think I'm too old. Or maybe I tried too long and too hard for too many years. So today, I'm going to celebrate the anniversary of the day I embarked on a great adventure of love. It was a rocky road, and it didn't last as a marriage, but the friendship endured. That in itself is worth celebrating. Cheers!

Blue Roses news and Poetry news. NEWS in other words.

I am busy lining up a director for my New York reading of Blue Roses at the Dramatists Guild Friday Night Lights series on October 28, 2011 at 6pm. Stop by if you are in Manhattan that evening. The play runs between 60-75 minutes. You can still make your 8pm show.
I will have finished a first draft of the sequel to Blue Roses by then, which I can pitch at will to anyone who shows interest, and maybe to strangers who will listen, just for practice. (Pitching your story is critical if you're a writer who wants to get produced.)
On the poetry front: I received a late night email from Binge Press and Productions. They want to publish my mini-chapbook "Invert Sugar" of lesbian poems. I'm quite happy about it. They produce these minis, not to make money, but to promote poets. I'll receive 50, fifty!, of these little charmers, plus 100 broadsides of one of the poems from the book to promote myself, and they will sell as many as they can at places like the AWP, book fairs and readings.
Serendipity much? I'll be giving away books and broadsides at my reading, won't I? And handing out business cards, of course. Speaking of which, my new cards sport ALL my social network info: google+, Twitter, blogspot, Facebook, website, email and cell. What do you include on your card?

INVERT SUGAR

Ever have your mom or gramma or other loving relative say to you: gimme some sugar? Maybe they don't do that in the North, but where I come from, we say it all the time. My grandma and grandpa, my favorite aunts and uncles were always after my sugar. Fond memories.
When migraines took over my life in 1999, yes they did, they took over my life, I eventually had to change every aspect of my daily living. In 2000, I went on the elimination diet and discovered that my main trigger for migraines was CORN and all corn products. Wow, are there a bunch of products that have corn in them, that do not sound like corn. Invert sugar is one of those products.
Invert also means homosexual. Did you know that? It's another old-fashioned word, like using "sugar" to mean love. I first heard it used when I was ten years old and read Radcliffe Hall's "The Well of Loneliness." Yes, I was precocious. I read "The Well of Loneliness" at 10. I read everything I could get my hands on, and that happened to be in our bookcase. And then later on, I turned out to be an invert myself. Whoa. Do you think it was the book? or the sugar? I think it was the DNA.
So. Putting the words together: Invert Sugar, sounds like lesbian love to me. I'm giving that title to a mini-chapbook of my lesbian poems. Take that, CORN industry. :)

First reading of The Godmother

oooh, delicious! I heard the play read aloud last night by a table full of actors, playwrights, the director and other readers. Tomboy, Corker, Black Walnuts, Uppity, Billy, they all jumped to life right there in the director's dining room. Scary, funny, and exciting all at once. I will tweak the script a bit over the next 10 days before the next rehearsal so the cast will have a clean script going into the days before performance of the staged reading. I hope we have a standing room only audience and just pack that mezzanine full of folks ready and waiting for this sassy young butch lesbian taking over her crime family as well as the stages of first Portland and then -- who knows?

It's a New Year, will prohibition end?

Tomboy McCorkle has just taken over the reins of the McCorkle crime family in Kansas City, Missouri. It's 1928. Prohibition is in full swing, but the Pendergast family has a stronghold on the police, District of Attorney's office, and the entire Justice Department, so the speakeasies are lively and jazz rules. The McCorkles operate out of the back room of The Hottentots Club where white lightning is served alongside home brew. The girls are hot, the jazz is hot, and the booze flows like the Missouri River. Trouble brews between the McCorkles and the di Mayos because older brother Bobby "The Slapper" McCorkle wanted to get into rum-running from Canada (di Mayo's turf), and within the family because Tomboy is female, and a lesbian to boot. She's gonna have to show everybody who's boss. You might as well come and see it for yourself. There will be blood. There will be music too. Come on down to Portland Center Stage and see for yourself. January 23rd, 12:30pm. Lunches can be bought by the box and carried up to the mezzanine and munched while you watch. Tix can be purchased online: https://robot.boxofficetickets.com/800-494-TIXS/WebObjects/BOTx2005.woa/wa/inspectProgram?id=88145&passKey=2b42b57e5f