A Council of Husbands Convenes over ‘The Bread Incident’ (+ a quick promo)

Since getting married last year, I like to think I’ve grown into the role of ‘husband’ rather well. It was a long road getting to matrimony, and my now-wife continues to be patient with me as I learn the in’s and out’s of my new job. Seeing as half of that job is knowing what to say and what not to say, suffice it to know that it’s been a learning process.

Some months ago we had a disagreement (what I like to call episodes where I earn her ire), and we’ve since laughed about it, so I feel somewhat free to discuss it here. As with any good disagreement of this kind, I have almost no idea what started it. But what I can say is that I didn’t help matters. The short version:

I said words about something, then she said words about that thing, after which I uttered sounds, whereupon one of us was grumpy with the other. We had plans to be at a friend’s that evening, and I was making flatbread to take with us. It’s a super simple recipe, dough gets squished, says hello to a skillet, boom – done. I think there was some lingering tension in the air, which led to some anxiety over us being punctual, and so with regards to my food prep and time management she asked, “Well, does it need to rise?”

I couldn’t help myself.

“I mean,” I half-snorted, “it is called flatbread.”

#comedylegend #foreverfunny #got’em

She gave me a look. And long story short, she was mad at me for about the next thirty-six hours. I went in to work a couple days later perplexed, and so asked my married friends. In short order, I was surrounded in a half-circle of other husbands, trying to decode where I went wrong. My friend Kopa mostly laughed, either at my misfortune or in sympathy, I could never really tell. Brad, the longest-married and most experienced of us broke it down for me like a coach reviewing a play, capping it off with a ‘better luck next time, champ’ kind of attitude. My friend Jason, though? He gave it to me straight.

“I thought it was pretty funny,” I argued.

“Oh, it was, but you called her stupid.”

“I categorically did not!”

“I get it, but yes you did. ‘It’s called flatbread, you idiot, no it doesn’t rise. How could you be such a dumb person to think that?’ That’s what she heard.”

“It was a play on words. Nothing more!”

“And it was cute, clever. But you shouldn’t have said it. In that moment, all it sounded like was, ‘Duh. It’s called flat, so no, it doesn’t rise, you dumb dummy.’

I took his wisdom to heart, went home, and apologized. We’ve been best friends ever since.

The creature Woman yet remains a mystery to me. At one moment, she stands clear as glass, transparent with her feelings and intentions. The next, she conflagrates, and stands aflame in righteous fury that is somehow your fault. Beautiful, deadly, she stands as an enigma to me, but one in whose aura I know only awe…

Anyhoo, if love stories like the above are your jam, go check out Twenty-Two Twenty-Eight Magazine and my story “Just Like Old Times” with them. It’s a cute little ditty about a love like we should all hope for. I should have more news soon too, been a busy year.

Bye now ❤

What Cake Taught Me (+ Story Promo)

A few years ago, I baked a cake for the first time, and I legitimately think it changed who I am as a person. I think I’ve shared this before, but I’ve been ruminating on it again recently. It was maybe January of 2022, my wife and I were lazing the day away watching Try Guys baking challenges on Youtube, and I couldn’t help myself.

“Is it…I don’t know. Is it bad that I kind of think I could do that?” I asked. I had never made a baked good outside of boxed brownie mix to that point in my life.

“You think so, huh?” she asked back, indignation clear in her tone. “I know what I want for my birthday then. I want you to bake me a cake from scratch.”

“You’re sure? Easy-peezy. Consider it done,” I said with a shrug, palms already sweating.

I’d never followed a recipe before in my life, much less attempted the delicate art that was creating a baked good from raw ingredients. And, I’ll be damned, I did it. But not only that, my wife and others also swore under oath that it was actually pretty dang good. Now yes, beginner’s luck played its part of course, but I’ve managed the hat trick of two more birthday cakes in the years since.

But that isn’t the important part. The important take-aways of the experience are two-fold.

The first came when I was making the frosting. I put heavy whipping cream into the stand mixer and watched the attachment whirl away. Cream lapped and splashed while I waited for it to “turn light and fluffy,” but I just wasn’t seeing it. I shot a confused glance over at my wife where she sat, resolutely content to observe and not offer hints. Then the miraculous happened: the stuff in the bowl went from milky liquid to fluffy clouds.

I felt like a god. I felt like I’d harnessed the powers of alchemy and transfiguration itself, granting new form where it hadn’t existed before. The power of creation was at my fingertips, and it felt good.

And that led into the second take-away: I made a thing…by following instructions. Cake was no longer something that existed just in pictures and in stores. I’d taken a bunch of stuff and turned it into a birthday cake by following written shared knowledge. And that meant that could be true of other things. Things you see around you that have been made or built, there’s a strong chance that with the tools and the know-how, you could do the same. (In fact, that reminds me of another recent triumph that I’ll share in greater detail next time.)

Just, I know it can often not feel like it, but just remember that you’re plenty capable, with whatever it is. Baking a cake, fixing up an old car, landing a job, running a marathon – people worse off than you have done bigger, so the math checks out that you can do it too. Different things might take more effort, more investment, more time or willpower than others, but it’s frighteningly simple how many things are within our reach reach as capable people that escape us just because we convince ourselves they’re beyond us.

So get out there and do it, whatever it is.

Oh! And something awesome. Had another story get picked up recently, this time to podcast! So if you’re looking for something to do, or just to go on a journey for a little while, go check out my story “Re-Runs” with Tell Tale TV. It was a funny little story I brainstormed with a friend, and Chris over at TTTV did, I think, an excellent reading of it.

News and Blog To-Do’s

Well’p, it’s about that time once in a while where I crawl out from under my rock and fulfill the promise to myself to write on here again. That means it also comes with my usual disclaimer that it isn’t that I don’t love this little slice of internet that I get to call mine – I think I’m just lazy. Also I’m a bit of a firm believer that one should most be heard when they have something to say, and I…just kinda haven’t, lately.

But, I am alive, and that’s kind of cool.

In the meantime, I also swear to myself every time that I’ll get more punctual about announcing this sort of thing when something cool happens, but since I haven’t learned my lesson yet: News dump!

It’s been a busy month of fiction publications, writers’ meetings, and fun newspaper shenanigans, and about a week and a half ago I got to check an item off my Bucket List that I didn’t wholly realize was a Bucket List item until I did it – I did a book signing!

The short version is that a little bit ago we made a regular visit to a local game store Goblin Bros, and I noticed that they stocked an anthology series I was about to have work appear in. My fiancee had more wherewithal than I can ever lay claim to and actually mentioned it to the fine folks working there, wherein they were gracious enough to invite me to do a signing for a few copies.

I felt like royalty for an afternoon. (Who am I kidding? Almost two weeks later and I’m still riding that high.) And special thanks need to go out to Amanda and my good friend Dylan for being my emotional support people and keeping me in line while I made my squiggles.

The folks at Flame Tree Publishing were super cool to work and cooperate with, and same goes for the editing team at Crow & Quill for my other work that they helped join the literary world (I might just keep trying to do this stuff thanks to Tiffany’s kind and uplifting words). My story with FTP is a (dang fancy) reprint of my first-ever story “The Sixth-Gun Conspiracy Letters”, and C&Q’s anthology ‘Rituals and Grimoires’ now has my story “Speaking to Shades”, which is one that I’m really proud of, so I’m glad it’s found such a worthy home. (Ye can find it here https://thecrowshoppe.com/…/rituals-grimoires-gothic… if ye was interested.)

I know I started this post with the ritual “It’s been, like, six weeks (again), but here I am”, but I’ve also been considering doing a bit of a remodel on this whole thing. When I started it, I think it’s pretty well evident that not a whole lot of design philosophy went into the aesthetic. I just kind of slapped it together and was like, “I’ll make it yellow. Yellow’s a happy color.”

And I’m right about that.

But it only takes maybe a gram of honesty with myself to see that it’s lacking – earnest, simple, and modest, but lacking nonetheless. So in the next couple wee- okay, no. There will be an eventual remodel of sorts so this can be a halfway respectable slice of internet. A proper About Page, Contact Me, a list of Published Works, a Gallery or some junk – I don’t know, but more of what good, respectable, upstanding websites of internet society have.

I’m also going to take it back to its roots juuuust a little bit. The whole mission statement of this blog was in its namesake: The Light of Day, ie “that thing most of my work will never see.” I definitely have fun just ranting on here and thinking out into the void over just sharing scrap notes, but I think I’m going to piece out an old half-a-novel I had in the works from some years ago. Like the beloved work of the great Patrick Rothfuss and the monumental George R.R. Martin before him, the aforementioned project is hella unfinished. And it’s definitely without any plans to carry it forward into full literary life, but this is as peaceful a resting place / chance at second life I can think of to offer it with how blessedly busy I find myself these days.

Anyhoozle, Christ Almighty, that’s WAY more than enough of me talking about myself, so please continue your lives in just as awesome a manner as before I interrupted it.

You da bes’.

Ciao.