A Lone Star

An excerpt from my new Romantic SyFy story, now available in The Lone Star Collection (12 Texas Stories). All proceeds from the book support the Lonestar Lesfic Festival in Austin. If you buy the print book and bring it to the festival, I know a whole lot of authors who will sign it up good for you (including me).

A Lone Star

Bad ass. That was the first thought that came to Venn Jules’ mind as she looked over the Lone Starport’s new sheriff, Arnika Verne.  The sheriff stood on the deck of the hovercraft, eyeing the vast sea below, with one hand on her trim neoskene-armor clad hip and the other wrapped around a laser-arc spear like she knew exactly how to use it in a hurry. Which was very comforting, given that Venn herself was too stymied by the Great Orange Kraken’s tentacles, and now also too fatigued from wrestling with it, to keep the kraken from chewing on either her or the Starport’s tidal stream generator.

Operating a new near-equatorial launch facility on the shores of Austin came with more risks to manage than the Governor and his cronies cared to admit; but at least that ass-hat and his merry troupe of brown-nosers had finally seen fit to grant Venn’s appeal to hire some protective muscle. Sexy muscle too.

“Looks like you’re an ass-crack away from becoming Kraken snack,” the sheriff said with a sultry grin. Her accent dripped of Nor-easterner, someone used to the cold horror of the Arclantic ocean, and thus she probably knew fuck-diddle about the warm terrors of Venn’s Gulf of Mexico operations. Venn’s hopes of salvation diminished.  “No shit. Now shoot the bastard in his damn plate-sized eye.”

Black hair whipping in the wind, the sheriff sent an off-hand laser bolt into the Kraken’s beak just a foot shy of Venn’s head and then, in such quick succession that Venn never saw the sheriff move, fired two more bolts into the Kraken’s eyes.  Venn dropped from the Kraken’s failing grasp into the ocean like a stone.

Luckily, she hit the muddy red waves feet first, but the velocity of her fall still sunk her a dozen meters. She knew her immediate-personnel-locator-tags likely tripped on two seconds after being submerged, but they wouldn’t do the sheriff any good toward dragging her out of the water is she didn’t break surface in a hurry--before any of the Kraken’s sisters sensed her presence and dragged her to the blackest deep.  And it would be the Kraken’s sisters, Venn knew, because their males were mostly lame, much like the men of today’s United States of Oceania.

Venn kept kicking hard, but nearly laughed underwater as the words of her cynical birth mother sprung to mind. Men were only good for three things: sperm, hysterics, and a whole lot of indignant insinuating that some ancient artifacts indicated they were really the dominant gender a thousand years ago. “Yeah, and I bet the water and sky were clear back then too,” Venn thought and added broad desperate breast-strokes to her efforts. She spotted what could only be the snout of a monstrous Great White shark speeding through the murky redness in front of her. Another murderous sister hard on her heels. Just great...

Read the rest in the book, available now in print and eBook formats on AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/Lone-Star-Collection-Carsen-Taite-ebook/dp/B079HWJCQS

Benefiting the Lonestar Lesfic Festival

Muses Never Die

Last August, the day after the Harvey flood hit my house in fact, I also lost a very dear friend and fellow warrior-of-the-written-word, Mr. Trey Garcia. Trey and I started trading poetry (and challenging each other to keep writing) in 6th grade. We avoided some arrests together in high school and wrote letters swapping poetry while I went to college and he served in the Navy. We challenged each other into writing a novel in a month for the last seven years or so too. He was my muse, and I miss him.

But I still hear him. I still have his poetry, and I still have the poems he challenged me to write. In celebration of this light that lives, I share one of his poems (one of my favorite) and one of mine (written in response to his challenge on the same theme).

The Paris Line by Trey Garcia

Trust no one but the pavement and the wind,
And never quite clear of the grey statues
As we lay in the river by the bend
A nightingale on a fig tree eats cashews
Taken from the pilgrim land just this Spring.

Can he not see that which will not be?

You and me and love. This is just a fling
Nothing more than a squirrel in a tree
Hiding acorns in a burrow made by
Ancient squirrels in hope for generations
Present and future. Now we start to fly
Above nature, above waves from stations
Playing our favorite songs as we dance
And kiss and feel and know
There is no chance.

What is the purpose of a pickup line exactly? by Lacey Schmidt

Some Egyptian-rule, obsidian cruel, 

icy social milieu 

where your eyes meet mine 

and suddenly complete some small space 

in time?

Something must be said...

to simultaneously let you know 

I think I just might love 

dipping my hands into your russet curls 

to pull your lips expectantly near mine 

while still enmeshed 

in the thoughts you’d share 

for thoughtful wear.

Something must be said...

to convince you our met stare

is more than a chance glance 

in a crowded room 

of social graces,
but I can only gulp 

and fret 

until you’re on the verge of turning 

toward some other day.

Anything should be said...

but will “your shoes are nice” really suffice?

Trey toasting our long-time limericks, with Laura, the night before my wedding.

Save Some Kids Today

I am a teamwork and leadership coach, but once I was also an operational manager. Many of my colleagues, many other managers and executives complained to me about how they spent the last decade (or five) telling someone (an employee, a mentee, a spouse) that the door was always open.  They extorted folks to interrupt them, walk-in, and complain about anything. The important thing was to let them know that there was a problem or frustration before it became a disaster… BUT NO ONE EVER DID. Their planes crashed. Their space shuttles blew up. Their supervisor went crazy and shot up the factory. Their CFO told some million-dollar lies and many executives went to prison. Even though a leader’s door was always open. Even though they talked every day, liked, and were liked by the culprits. Problems still festered, unannounced, and unheard. This happens with our children too. Sometimes they suffer in silence and expect us to know the truth behind their evasions, to do more than wait with an open door for them to confess their confusion or guilt.

What more can we do?

I like questions because they inspire research. I am a scientist-practitioner. My job is to verify and translate psychological knowledge into practical behaviors that working adults can implement to positive effect (without having to do the reading and the research on their own first). So, the question haunting me became, “What more could we all do?”

Obviously, just having open doors doesn't work. They are necessary, but not sufficient. Even if someone does walk in to tell you about a problem, there is still one massive obstacle to understanding well enough to help. Psychology has cataloged over a hundred cognitive biases that keep us from hearing well (check Wikipedia for cognitive biases if you don’t believe me). Among them is a molehill that is really a mountain for families and teams…the Bystander Effect. Individuals are significantly less likely to offer help to a victim when other people are present. Everyone believes someone else has more time or authority to deal with it, or is doing something about it already, or hears and understands the victim better. For the bystander, denial and rationalization kick in quickly and paying attention to the real situation becomes hard. This is what families and teams were fighting against really.

I tried many things that science said should engage listeners and facilitate shared understanding. I coached leaders to declare who they wanted help from by name and to assign specific actions. I coached teams to use shared communication protocols so that it would be easier to build and share a common understanding of what was going on. These things helped, but they didn’t answer the root issue. They didn’t get people to walk into the leader’s office and proactively assert their concerns.

Then one day, fifteen years ago, I read a book on managing in hospitals. Hardwiring Excellence by Quint Studer. One chapter stuck out like a beacon, the one on something he called, “Rounding.” He was applying something that clinical and counseling psychologists frequently do: ask specific and consistent questions in brief one-on-one moments with individuals every week. He was doing this to build a culture of responsibility. I tried it as a manager first, then as a mentor, and occasionally as a professor. It worked so incredibly well that I extrapolated it to my personal life.

What works.

If you take away only one thing from this article, please let it be this: I know of only one sure-fire way to get information from others about a problem before it becomes a disaster. Ask your team and family members 3 specific questions, deliberately and consistently:

1) What went well today/ this week?

2) What didn’t go well today/ this week?

3) What surprised you today/ this week?

And then, JUST LISTEN.

Show you are sincerely interested and that is all.

I know some of you are thinking that you already ask your kids how their day was. Every day. And you do listen. But the magic is in asking these specific questions that are formulated to draw out actionable information. And in asking them habitually, so that your family and team members start telling you the answers before you ask...so they start barging in your open door to tell you their answers and you are conditioned to listen well.

Asking these three structured questions and listening well saves kids (and suicidal adults and teams on the brink of unseen troubles), because they help you understand the larger pattern of behavior, make more astute predictions about consequences, offer more support in advance, and take preventative action to prevent crises.

Listening to understand is leadership.

If you ask follow-up questions, then make sure they are open-ended and non-judgmental questions like, “What did you think was most surprising about that?” Above all else, finish the conversation with something like, “Thank you for telling me. I really value your thoughts.” If someone (especially a child) pushes to know how you feel or think about something they’ve said, then resist passing judgment by answering with something like, “I’m not sure yet. Will you give me a day/ X hours to think about it?” When they agree (and they will 99% of the time, that is another psychological phenomenon), then state exactly when you’ll get back to them and do get back to them on it.

Our first job as leaders and parents is not to advise, or impart wisdom, or fix anything, or hope they’ll learn better if we work hard enough to give them the opportunity. A leader is a canary in the coal mine. A leader is the first one in, literally. A leader is supposed to see and hear and start developing an awareness that can be shared and used to plan actions. The leader is not supposed to have the answer (…that is usually the last one in, the guy in the back of the mine, furthest from the danger, who has the most time to process the information).

True leaders ask good questions. True leaders help team and family members hear their own thoughts out loud. True leaders help team and family members think about what they really want and need to do so they can make wise decisions on their own. True leaders influence by Judo, so to speak. We listen and thereby use the momentum of the individual already in a complex situation to discover the healthiest and happiest way for opposing forces to fall.

A specific, actionable, and practical plea for your help.

Please try these three questions and listening with the children in your life. Notice you don’t have to be a parent. It works for uncles, aunts, grandparents, cousins, teachers, and anyone with a meaningful social connection to the child. It works gradually though, so you have to try it repeatedly. You have to be consistent and specific with the three questions until the problems start coming through your open door.

Research on Rounding is newish. We’re still learning things about how it works and how to make it work better, but I promise you from my own personal experiences that applying it makes a world of difference. I learned to ask great questions, and I’m still learning to ask better ones. I focus more now on seeing and hearing before it’s too late to be of any help. I know some kids better now. Enough to spot some big scares and save some kids before it was too late. Sometimes my kids, sometimes someone else’s kids, too. It feels amazing saving a life by asking the right questions and listening. It feels a whole lot less confusing and sad than wondering why a tragedy happened.

Help save some kids today.

In memoriam of the victims of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018; and the 15,381 additional victims of the 417 mass shootings events in America in 2019.

Save some lives before more blood hits the ground.

Bigly, Badly Big

The Bigly, the Badly Big, the Few.

We didn't:
                Mix up our facts
to counter attacks,
               Claim sorted details
sordid allusions,
               Stoop to gaslight
even when right,
              Or call out mansplain
to flex our might.

We didn't:             
                Strawman evidence
to get our two cents,
               Gild our grit
to prove we were fit,
               Pimp pride
to improve our own ride,
              Or give in
when first heard
                          was first served.

We kept:
              What tested true
like being kind,
              Trusting time would find,
Karma soon behind,
              Cleaning the mess
we could confess,
             Knowing joyful persistence
a better resistance.

We kept:
              Keeping on
being bigger,
              Working around
to gain common ground,
              Saving all agreed
and disagreed.

We stayed:
                  Freed.
                  Sleeping well
through the night,
                  Without losing
our light.

We were:
               Too big,
too bad,
               Too beautifully ugly
to washout,
               In the absurd
fallout.

Were we,
               too few?

Alone on some big, bad steps in DC.

             

             
                

Christmas Romance Teaser

Happy Holidays! Here is a teaser from my story, Peaches for Honey, about one special Christmas in the Marktplatz of Fredericksburg, Texas as featured in Affinity Rainbow Publications' Christmas Medley (Out now in all eBook formats).

Elysia Cisneros was still somewhat shocked, even after nearly twenty years, when her staunchly Catholic father encouraged her lesbian dating life. 

“Elysia Honey, I hardly ever hear of you talk of any romantic potential with much enthusiasm.” He stood with his ranch boots firmly planted in the restaurant’s kitchen, arms crossed, cowboy hat on the counter behind him.

Ely produced a smile for him and gave a small shrug. “I just haven’t found anyone worth that kind of enthusiasm, Dad.” She turned her back to him to finish wrapping up the holiday cakes that Jack and Vanessa had prepped for her to use in welcoming the B&B’s guests next week.

Her dad cleared his throat and harrumphed softly, a nervous habit, and Ely knew she wouldn’t like what he said next. “Are you sure?”

“What do you mean, am I sure?” Her fingers tightened on the plastic wrap.

“I just mean, are you sure that you haven’t dated anyone worth that sort of enthusiasm, or are you just protecting your heart because you can’t forgive Georgia Delaney?”

Ely spun to glare at him, if for no other reason than for speaking the name that should not be mentioned, but he was staring earnestly at the floor with his hat now in hand. 

“I don’t mean to upset you, Honey. I just worry about my only little girl. I want you to be happy.”

“I am happy.” Ely gesticulated at everything around her. “I have all of this. A thriving business that I created with my best friend in my hometown where I’m surrounded by my loving family.” 

He met her eyes, nodded, and smiled. “That’s true, but I wish you the same deep and abiding love your mother and I have as well.”

Ely sighed. “I know you do, Dad, but I don’t think everyone gets that sort of love in a lifetime.” She shrugged. Twenty years ago, with Georgia Delaney, she had believed she would be one of the lucky ones, but now she wasn’t so sure. 

Her father suddenly grinned so widely that his tanned leather face blossomed into a thousand happy lines. “Well, your Abuela feels that you are, and you know how it is when she gets a feeling.”

Ely couldn’t help but laugh, “She is always, always, eerily right somehow.”

“Exactly.” He leaned over and kissed the top of her head. “All I ask is that you keep an open mind, my Honey.” He headed for the back door. “I’ll see you later.”

“I promise I’ll try, Dad. I love you,” she called after him.

He turned toward her before stepping out the door. “I love you, too.”

The door swung shut behind him, leaving the kitchen empty and silent.

Ely took a deep breath and, to get into the holiday spirit, started humming Christmas carols to herself as she worked to finish wrapping and storing the cakes. She wasn’t thinking of anything, just enjoying the certainty of her task and the peace of an empty kitchen after all the administrative hustle and bustle of the week. Then her memories of a love she had once believed was deep and abiding smacked her subconscious silly.

She stopped humming “Deck the Halls” in the middle of the second verse. The smell of baked bread, cinnamon, and candied peaches rising above the holiday cakes in front of her turned cloying. She always avoided that Christmas carol. There was no reason to hum it now. She usually turned off the radio, or walked away from choirs singing it, unwilling to hear it and remember the golden hair and warm kiss of peppermint hot chocolate that had once gone with it. Taking a ragged breath, she tried to sidestep the bittersweet memories, but got lost in them once again anyway. . .

“I’ve always loved this one,” Georgia Delany had said as the radio beside her played a gentle instrumental version of “Deck the Halls.” Her blonde hair was a deep gold in the fading sunlight. They were snuggled up on a fleece blanket, their backs against the wide, bracing trunk of their tree. The old live oak’s limbs were bare and black above them. Stars started to show between the branches in the deeper, velvety blue fingers of twilight spreading overhead.

Elysia was eighteen and her whole world revolved around the beautiful girl beside her. First her best-friend and then, as they discovered together, so much more. They were inseparable.

“I’ve always loved you,” Georgia admitted.

Georgia kissed her, tasting of the peppermint hot chocolate they shared. A feeling of pure joy pierced Ely’s heart. Georgia’s elegant but always lightly calloused hands caressed her face. She leaned into the touch and just the feel of that love seared her vision with a thousand sparkling lights. The falling night brought a chill air that neither of them noticed as they made love beneath their favorite oak on the hill near the old balanced rock site. They had missed Fredericksburg’s tree lighting, but still managed to make it into town to wander the Marktplatz and watch the children harry Santa Claus. 

Ely hadn’t known then, but the sweetness of that day would become even more heavy and golden because it was the last Christmas she would spend loved by Georgia Delaney. Ely’s whole world would turn dark the following Christmas. Cold grief and fear would cleave her heart, as she hid alone, curled up as far under her parent’s Christmas tree as she could get, while everyone else went to town. After the Thanksgiving break of her freshman year at Southern Methodist University, Georgia would never return home to Fredericksburg again.

Ely gave a ragged sigh and shook her head, hoping to clear it of the girl who got away. Or was she herself the girl who got away? It probably didn’t matter, it hurt the same either way, and still so sharply. She rubbed her chest and turned on her heel. Her clogs squeaked against the restaurant’s kitchen floor. She had to pull her step short so she wouldn’t collide with Jack’s sous chef, Vanessa O’Bannon.

Vanessa’s eyebrows drew in to form a vague frown. “What are you still doing here, Ely?”

“Yeah, what are you doing in my kitchen?” Ely’s best-friend, business partner, and executive chef, Jack Waller, boomed from behind Vanessa. He crossed his skinny arms and gave her a mock glare.

Ely wiped her hands on her jeans and gave another long sigh.

“That kind of sigh can only mean one thing,” Jack proclaimed with a smug look born of knowing her too well. “Oh yeah, what’s that?” Ely crossed her arms.

“Either you’re mourning Van’s move again or the untimely death of your dating life.” Despite his baseball hat, a shock of blonde bangs played loose over his forehead, and he gave her a dazzling grin with one blue eye sparking beneath the blonde fringe.

She shook her head and felt a smile overtake her own face. “I will miss Van.”

Jack nodded. “No doubt, but Katy is ready to be a sous chef and we will be fine.”

“I know.” Ely directed her smile at Van. “But I will still miss her.”

Van squeezed her shoulder. “As I will both of you, but Jack is right, tonight is not the time to mourn anything.”

“Exactly. You need to get your ass in gear and go represent our interests with all those lovely, lucrative tourists.” Jack poked one finger in the air and struck a pose she knew was intended to elicit her mirth.

“I know.” And Ely did know that it was important for someone from the Camphouse B&B and the Lavender Restaurant to be seen at these events. She even served on the Chamber of Commerce’s event committees and made sure their businesses were obviously touted as sponsors. Her usual urge to socialize and bask in the communal glow was just uncharacteristically flagging this holiday season.

For one microsecond, a look of concern filled Jack’s features, and then his teasing grin flashed back. “Good.  Now get your fine Latina rear out of that ratty flannel and into something better looking, and get down to the parade.”

“What?  I can’t go like this?”  Ely looked down at the frayed jeans she’d coopted from her older brother and cut to size a decade ago, and the nearly sage instead of olive plaid of her favorite flannel shirt.

Van mimed a look of horror and visibly cringed. “Funny. Ha. No.  I know the odds are small, but there is at least a one-percent chance you might run into some spectacularly beautiful lesbian you would like to seduce.”

“At Fredericksburg’s light parade? Really?” Ely’s skepticism coated her voice in disbelief.

“Hey, you never know,” Van replied.

“And if this miracle does occur, then she’ll be here for all of thirty-six or so hours—which means I can basically ask her if she’d be interested in a five-minute fling,” Ely reasoned.

“Of flaming hot lesbian love,” Jack interjected.

“I don’t see a problem with that approach,” Van added.

Jack pointed one finger in the air. “It has definite possibilities.” Ely shook her head. “Or not, you nut-balls.” “You love us.” Jack chucked her chin.

“I do.”

“And we’re right,” Van sang.

“Go flirt already. You have to make the magic happen,” Jack pushed her toward the door.

†

Determined to give a joyful evening its best shot, Ely slid on her tightest, black, skinny jeans and a fitted, red, cashmere sweater. She plucked the black cowboy boots with the red and green Christmas cactus embroidered on the sides from her closet. Jack had gifted them to her last

Christmas, claiming, “Kitsch is the next great fashion fad.” They still made her smile. There was a definite upside to being the old fag hag to a sweet shopping Mary.  She slipped them on, the leather still shiny, but supple enough to glide smoothly over her bamboo, reindeer socks.

A pair of dangling, silver-star earrings, and a little frizz-control mousse to soften her dark curls into more enticing ringlets, completed her primping. She surveyed the total effect in the mirror and gave herself a half-shrug and a grin. 

“Not too bad, Ely. Maybe Jack is right and forty is the new thirty.”

She walked up the long pink-granite gravel drive from her cabin, past the rental cottages, and back up to the old limestone millhouse housing the Camphouse Bed and Breakfast’s single rooms, lobby, and office. The smell of cedar was sharp in the crisp cool air, and the winter sun angled low and lit Triebs Creek in flashes of silver and gold. The creek burbled over rocks and wandered on behind the millhouse and the large cedar and limestone barn that Jack had converted into their restaurant, The Lavender. As she walked, Ely felt a surge of pride at all they had accomplished over the last twelve years. When she had first bought the old Triebs Creek mill, eleven miles north of Fredericksburg, it was a gamble whether she could convert it into any place guests would call a haven, and seek it out beyond the township’s borders. The Vista Ranch, next door sold off five-hundred acres that became a professional golf course, and Ely had become more certain guests would appear. Once the course opened, Jack added the five-star dinning, a shuttle service to the lavender farms and vineyards, and on-call masseuses. Suddenly, the Camphouse B&B and Jack’s Lavender Restaurant were in high demand among golfers and the less athletically inclined spouses of avid golfers. Now they were almost always fully booked. 

Ely went around to the backside of the restaurant, pleased to find her Ford F-150 loaded up and ready to go. Jack or Van had already packed the back full of boxes. She was supposed to take the salted-caramel pecan sandies to the booth they shared with the Historical Society in the Christmas Marktplatz. Ely pulled the cover over the boxes and tied it down. She opened the door and found her keys on the seat along with a post-it note. Jack’s handwriting scrawled in purple ink, his favorite color: Bring me fruit cake. He was a massive fan of the Eberle Bakery’s cupcake-sized fruit cakes, probably because they were soaked in Bourbon for six weeks before serving at the Marktplatz.

†

By the time she made her way to the center of town, the sun was definitely eyeing the horizon. She quickly found an empty vendor-parking spot in the guarded lot behind Fredericksburg’s old, octagonal, Vereins Kirche, or Society Church building. She spared a loving glance to the old white building with its sage-colored shutters and roof. It was a replica, built for the 1936 Texas Centennial celebrations. The original 1847 building had once served the residents of town as an all-in-one church, school, fortress, meeting hall, and polling place.  Now it housed the Vereins Kirche Museum and preserved their town’s history, and it still served as a focal point to many social gatherings. A abundance of bright red and peppermint poinsettias, dappled in Christmas lights, corseted the building. Boughs of juniper and pine, tied together with red velvet bows, graced the top of each window, and plump globs of mistletoe hung suggestively above the doors, giving the building a festive dress for the evening. Ely smiled at it and then hustled out of the truck. She decided to check in with the folks at the booth before hauling more than one armload of boxed cookies into their midst, so she made her way around the growing crowd toward the Marktplatz.

 Children darted in front of her, laughing. A harried mom trailed behind them, offering her

an apologetic smile. Ely smiled back. Smells of cinnamon and roasted nuts wafted towards her.

She found herself humming again, but the song was “We Three Kings” this time.

She found she was finally enjoying herself and then a blonde head, in a French braid, bobbed within the crowd ahead. The languid pattern of the walk was so like the step of Georgia

Delaney that Ely froze in place. Her heart thumped erratically, and she shook her head. It couldn’t be. ..

Check out the book for the rest of the story, and 11 other fabulous tales of merry magic and romance. Cheers!

For more Merry Magic, check out the stories in Affinity Rainbow Publications' Christmas Medley