There’s a certain point in exhaustion when the air in your lungs feels musty and tired. Like you’re exhaling the dust collected on a bookshelf from a library no one remembers existing. The possibility of life and knowledge hover there, trapped in the specs and bits floating in the thin sunbeam butting through the building’s boarded up windows but there is no one there to drink them in, so they exist… in that fetid hot still space.

I’ve reached that tired.

A lot of it is from GRL. Not that GRL isn’t the time of the year but mostly because there’s little time to rest and breathe, even when I make promises not to do so much, to take some time. I never do. I lie to myself all the time.

GRL is an odd balance of personality as well. Not just dealing with other people but also myself. I feel uncomfortable at times with crowds but these are my people. Or at least most are. You are never going to be everyone’s friend and in a crowd of gathered like-minded people, that is still the case. All you can do is minimize any internal damage you might do to your psyche and manage all of that.

And be sure to reach out and enjoy the people you do rub well up against. Because no matter how much of on the run you are, those are the people who energize you.

Sadly, one of the Five is leaving us today to go back home. TA Moore’s been on this side of the world for nearly two months now and well, it is time to say goodbye and return her back home to Belfast and all things Christmas. Because well, the adorable delightful girl loves Christmas and also since it’s almost Halloween, she needs to get back home to decorate the walk.

I’ll miss her. BUT I won’t miss her flimsy attempts to kill me. You’d think whomever sent her as an assassin would have trained her up first.

I will be heading over there to that side of the pond in March. Looking forward to seeing everyone in London on March 14th for our every-so-often reader meetup near St. Pancras and then off to Paris to see everyone else there. I can’t wait to get to the Salon du Livre 2019 and of course once there it’s back again to the UK for a visit with the Five.

But first! Napping! And well, writing.

I’ve got a new book I’m working on which came about after staring at the top of Tamm’s head in Florida. It’s about a former covert government operative who was retired out after a HUGE burn of his identity and well, he took a few bullets and the former child star who dumps a hell of a lot of trouble in his lap. It’s set in Koreatown, Los Angeles and really, all Kuro Jackson wants is to run his ramen shop and have a nice, quiet life. Pity Trey Bishop is what Fate delivers him instead.

I’ve got stuff coming out soon… Like Cops and Comix so I’ll be talking a bit about that and my Half Moon Bay Christmas story, Tutus and Tinsel. *grins*

Let’s have a great Halloween and off to those other holidays who really need more bats, moonlight and things that go bump in the night.

Actually nothing funny happened. Mostly I’m dead fucking tired, trying to play catch up and man Halloween is staring me down.

I’ve got full-size candy bars and toys coming for the kids who knock on our door. We live in a rapidly changing neighbourhood. What was once the bastion of old suburbia is now becoming a multi-cultural community. It’s fantastic to see kids of different backgrounds (both social and cultural) coming to the door together, usually dressed as superheroes or princesses or sometimes, some odd combination of something I can’t quite figure out.

But regardless, they do come up the walk and knock on the door, shouting trick or treat.

I’m going to say this very clearly… your kid wants to dress up as Moana, that’s awesome and I applaud them. Because Moana is a fantastic character who happens to be POC. If they want to dress up as Stitch, gonna applaud that too because well, he’s an awesome character who happens to be an Alien of Blue.

The celebration of an individual is a fantastic thing. Celebrating what they represent is great. Celebrating a culture and exploring what it has to offer is beautiful. We need to celebrate cultures not exploit them and that’s where we need to be careful.

Know the difference. We cannot throw everything into the bin of racism if it is not racism. We need to think about what we’re doing and saying. We cannot accept the knee-jerk reaction of… well, I don’t know so I’m saying no to everything and I shall police that among other people. That’s how we got dogmatic religion. Don’t parrot. Don’t accept. Challenge and think. And search. Explore. Make good decisions. And if you have questions, ask.

You should never be told by someone you reach out to that it’s “Not their job to educate you.” It IS our jobs. It’s everyone’s obligation as a person of colour, regardless of the colour, to educate and share what we know. To show what to celebrate and to also share what we find offensive. Go out and teach. Go out and learn.

But most of all, go out and share… and celebrate both our differences and our commonalities.