Words and Errata
type: channel
date: 2019-04-08T19:08:31Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
generator agent: https://wordpress.org/
items: Life Lessons – The Long-Term Relationship Edition
items: It’s Been A While …
items: The Terrible Extracting Price of Cancer
items: I Married Lou Grant
items: The True Meaning of Queer …

Life Lessons – The Long-Term Relationship Edition
type: item
creator: S A Collins
date: 2019-04-08T19:08:31Z
subject: Giving Back
subject: Health
subject: Journey
subject: Life Inserts Itself
subject: Male Feelings
subject: Words Have Power
subject: writing
subject: Family
subject: growing old
subject: health
subject: hypoxia
subject: I do
subject: life lessons
subject: long-term relationships
subject: may december
subject: plan b
subject: recovery
subject: surgery
subject: tldr
description: File Under: LIFE LESSONS – The long term relationship edition (Totally cool if you want to TL;DR this – I just need to blow some steam.) “I do.” Two words that imply an agreement, a desire, a willingness to do what is required. Said at any sort of binding ceremony (wedding, handfasting, etc – depending […]
encoded: <img data-recalc-dims="1" fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="2348" data-permalink="http://www.sacollins.com/blog-wp/?attachment_id=2348" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/www.sacollins.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/3-Life-Lessons.jpg?fit=900%2C600" data-orig-size="900,600" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="3-Life-Lessons" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/www.sacollins.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/3-Life-Lessons.jpg?fit=400%2C267" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-2348" src="https://i0.wp.com/www.sacollins.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/3-Life-Lessons.jpg?resize=300%2C200" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/www.sacollins.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/3-Life-Lessons.jpg?resize=300%2C200 300w, https://i0.wp.com/www.sacollins.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/3-Life-Lessons.jpg?resize=768%2C512 768w, https://i0.wp.com/www.sacollins.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/3-Life-Lessons.jpg?w=900 900w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /> File Under: LIFE LESSONS – The long term relationship edition (Totally cool if you want to TL;DR this – I just need to blow some steam.) “I do.” Two words that imply an agreement, a desire, a willingness to do what is required. Said at any sort of binding ceremony (wedding, handfasting, etc – depending on your traditions), those two words take on such a deeper meaning. At times, those two words will truly test you – HARD. They will press you until you think you can’t be squeezed any further and yet, if you love them, you find a way to do it. They say, “Life never throws at you more than you can handle.” Easy words to type, not always so easy to put into practice. I recently posted about a major surgery that my husband (of near…

It’s Been A While …
type: item
creator: S A Collins
date: 2019-01-27T02:25:54Z
subject: Authors Voices
subject: Journey
subject: Life Inserts Itself
subject: Pathos
subject: Pets
subject: The Craft
subject: Words Have Power
subject: writing
subject: adulting
subject: Cancer
subject: Cats
subject: Family
subject: health
subject: pressing forward
description: It’s been a while, ya know? I often wonder what other authors go through to do what they do. Why do they do it? It is some incessant need to seek fame and fortune? Validation? ‘Cause I gotta tell ya, there are far easier ways to get that. Start a YouTube channel and blab non-stop […]
encoded: It’s been a while, ya know? I often wonder what other authors go through to do what they do. Why do they do it? It is some incessant need to seek fame and fortune? Validation? ‘Cause I gotta tell ya, there are far easier ways to get that. Start a YouTube channel and blab non-stop of the idiosyncrasies of your life or the oddness you find out there. That always seems to resonate given the countless channels that evoke nothing but the shared common experiences of life and all of its ‘what the fuckery is this’ sort of moments. So, there’s that. But, I tend to think there’s something else going on. Yeah, yeah, we have a “story to tell” that just won’t leave us the fuck alone. And yeah, muses can really mess with writers – all creatives, actually now that I come to think of my previous career trodding the boards in musicals, plays and operas. Muses are real bitches, I’ll definitely give them that. So, writers often blame them. And some may believe that. I mean not just say it as a flippant way of explaining what we do and why we do it, but truly believe that muses guide what we do and we’re merely “the vessels” that pour forth our worlds from our fingertips through the keyboard and onto the digital page – bytes and bits as artistic expression. Some of us may even believe that. I mean, we joke about it enough but maybe in that humor there’s a nugget of truth that we actually believe that. I know I have at times … said it and sort of believed it. I’m a total pantser. I gotta feel it in my gut or it just doesn’t make it to the page. Where does this shit come from? Fuck all if I know. So, 2019 is upon us. I have to say I won’t be sorry to see 2018 in the rearview mirror of my life. It was a shit year for me. It claimed my cat, Katya’s, life to cancer. Yeah, and it very nearly did me in the same day. #FuckCancer! Fuck it all to hell. Now I have another cat – our precious boy, Zorro who has been diagnosed with cancer of the liver. It’s not an easy thing. At least the vet assur…

The Terrible Extracting Price of Cancer
type: item
creator: S A Collins
date: 2018-05-16T17:31:33Z
subject: Authors Voices
subject: Health
subject: Journey
subject: Life Inserts Itself
subject: writing
subject: Author
subject: Cancer
subject: Caregivers
subject: Gollum
subject: Heroes
subject: Husbands
subject: Lord of the Rings
description: The Terrible Extracting Price of Cancer Author Trigger Warning: This is not light reading on the topic of cancer. It is what I have had to live through with the disease as I continue to fight for a cure. If you truly want to understand what it is like for a patient to go through […]
encoded: The Terrible Extracting Price of Cancer Author Trigger Warning: This is not light reading on the topic of cancer. It is what I have had to live through with the disease as I continue to fight for a cure. If you truly want to understand what it is like for a patient to go through this journey from the inside, then read on. If you are not prepared for the sort of darkness this disease brings it may be best you pass on reading this post. <img data-recalc-dims="1" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="2314" data-permalink="http://www.sacollins.com/blog-wp/?attachment_id=2314" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/www.sacollins.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/ff8b0fc473babd2784ab00925e1b3f11.jpg?fit=480%2C480" data-orig-size="480,480" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"1"}" data-image-title="ff8b0fc473babd2784ab00925e1b3f11" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/www.sacollins.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/ff8b0fc473babd2784ab00925e1b3f11.jpg?fit=400%2C400" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-2314" src="https://i0.wp.com/www.sacollins.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/ff8b0fc473babd2784ab00925e1b3f11.jpg?resize=300%2C300" alt="" width="300" height="300" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/www.sacollins.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/ff8b0fc473babd2784ab00925e1b3f11.jpg?resize=300%2C300 300w, https://i0.wp.com/www.sacollins.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/ff8b0fc473babd2784ab00925e1b3f11.jpg?resize=150%2C150 150w, https://i0.wp.com/www.sacollins.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/ff8b0fc473babd2784ab00925e1b3f11.jpg?w=480 480w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /> March 23, 2017. 9:27am That was the exact time my life changed forever. I went to the doctor with something that for over two months had been eating away at my normal life…

I Married Lou Grant
type: item
creator: S A Collins
date: 2018-01-14T14:50:11Z
subject: Authors Voices
subject: Characters Reimagined
subject: geeking out
subject: Giving Back
subject: Journey
subject: Language
subject: Life Inserts Itself
subject: Male Feelings
subject: Men
subject: Novel
subject: Pets
subject: Social Issues
subject: Words Have Power
subject: writing
subject: Angels of Mercy
subject: Bengals
subject: Cats
subject: Diabetes
subject: Dogs
subject: Feline HIV
subject: Heart of Gold
subject: Hubands
subject: Lou Grant
subject: Mercy's Little Angels
subject: Pet Care
subject: The Mary Tyler Moore Show
description: I Married Lou Grant Author Note: I’ll probably catch hell if my husband gets wind of this post. Thank the writing gods that he doesn’t do social media. A writer’s journey is a funny thing. Not that I think that we don’t fold our towels in some magical manner than others. Or that we […]
encoded: I Married Lou Grant Author Note: I’ll probably catch hell if my husband gets wind of this post. Thank the writing gods that he doesn’t do social media. A writer’s journey is a funny thing. Not that I think that we don’t fold our towels in some magical manner than others. Or that we pay our bills using money from Gringott’s (that’d be nice if we did … ’cause elves and dragons … jussayin’). No, I think that it’s more that we often jot down things that happen to us. We document lives – our own and those characters and worlds we create. It’s this documentation that I have rambling in my head as of late. Why? Well, first it started off because I am recasting my Angels of Mercy series cast in a YA format. But that wasn’t the end of it. Angels of Mercy was always meant to be a metaphorical exploration of characters – a character study of three main protags over the course of the same timeline – each boy having a different perspective over the timeline and the answers to the drama I’ve thrown at them. Each boy has an angelic name that is emblematic of their character traits. So, recasting them in a YA setting I wanted to change it up, take the Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Supernatural route and make the story about actual angels and demons. I also took them back to the 1907s so I could omit a lot of the tech that characters interact in current stories and focus purely on character. Eschewing trappings of today entirely. Old school, er, uh, as the kids today spell it: #oldskool. (Ya gotta love them kids). Since I grew up in the 70s I decided that I’d throw in all the stuff that happened back then that I could recall, augmenting with image searches and binge watching TV shows of the 70s to keep in the groove in my righteous way. #RightOnMan! One of the shows that I binged while writing Mercy’s Little Angels was The Mary Tyler Moore Show. <img data-recalc-dims="1" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="2290" data-permalink="http://www.sacollins.com/blog-wp/?attachment…

The True Meaning of Queer …
type: item
creator: S A Collins
date: 2017-12-24T20:21:53Z
subject: Authors Voices
subject: Book Promotion
subject: Characters Reimagined
subject: Cover Artwork
subject: Fanboy Moments
subject: gay community
subject: geeking out
subject: Journey
subject: Language
subject: Life Inserts Itself
subject: Male Feelings
subject: Men
subject: Novel
subject: Novels vs. Media
subject: Queer Youth
subject: Sex Positive
subject: Social Issues
subject: The Craft
subject: Words Have Power
subject: writing
subject: Young Adult Realities
subject: Angels of Mercy
subject: Call Me By Your Name
subject: Daughters of Bilitis
subject: LGBT history
subject: LGBT Spectrum
subject: Mattachine Society
subject: Queer
subject: Queer History
subject: Queer Storytelling
subject: The World of Normal Boys
description: The True Meaning of Queer … Humans love to classify things. We love order amongst the chaos. It’s just how we’re wired to short cut how we see the world. It gives us order and cohesion that is comforting to us. It makes the world easier to navigate. But I write this as […]
encoded: The True Meaning of Queer … <img data-recalc-dims="1" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-attachment-id="2274" data-permalink="http://www.sacollins.com/blog-wp/?attachment_id=2274" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/www.sacollins.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/canstockphoto23187775.jpg?fit=3000%2C1993" data-orig-size="3000,1993" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="canstockphoto23187775" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/www.sacollins.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/canstockphoto23187775.jpg?fit=400%2C266" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-2274" src="https://i0.wp.com/www.sacollins.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/canstockphoto23187775.jpg?resize=400%2C266" alt="" width="400" height="266" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/www.sacollins.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/canstockphoto23187775.jpg?resize=1024%2C680 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/www.sacollins.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/canstockphoto23187775.jpg?resize=300%2C199 300w, https://i0.wp.com/www.sacollins.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/canstockphoto23187775.jpg?resize=768%2C510 768w, https://i0.wp.com/www.sacollins.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/canstockphoto23187775.jpg?w=1200 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px" /> Humans love to classify things. We love order amongst the chaos. It’s just how we’re wired to short cut how we see the world. It gives us order and cohesion that is comforting to us. It makes the world easier to navigate. But I write this as a queer writer. It’s a word that used to be hurled at us to open new wounds, add salt to old, and denegrate us to the point of tears or real physical gut-wrenching pain. As a matter of history, we, as a community, have used that classification to identify who we are and establish our voices in …