Dear readers and potential readers,

I do humbly apologize for those who have waited so long for Numen's Trust. With my poor health, it was a mistake to give release dates in anticipation of finishing it. That was almost inviting bad tidings. Most of you know that I am not in the best of shape much of the time, and because of that, my writing has been very sporatic and slow this entire past year. I hate to jinx things by saying that I am now making fairly steady progress in writing and editing again. Let us say that over the past month or so, things have begun to show improvement, and though there are no guarantees how long that will last, I am going to try and make the most of the momentum I have once again managed to build.

I cannot adequately express the appreciation I feel for all of the loyal readers and friends (many of whom are one and the same) who have supported me and encouraged me without being angry at me. When I am ready to give up at times, I think of you, and always find the strength to continue.

A word on the book itself. Most of you have said that Scion's Blood was a substantial improvement on Orphan's Quest, and I concur. I wish that all those who gave OQ such poor reviews would go on and read the second installment, as I think they would be pleasantly suprised. Perhaps with all the skills I have gained over these years, I shall one day go back and come out with an Orphan's Quest: Revised Edition, like Stephen King did with The Stand, but I am still torn over that. The idea was to have each work progress, book by book, from teen-oriented adventure romp to a deep and complex arc with greater and greater depth and complexity. Of course, if people don't read on past book one, then that whole idea will have failed, at least for them. We shall see when the trilogy is all finished what I decide to do. I hope you will all be encouraged by the fact that my early readers and spotters have said that Numen's Trust is unquestionably the best work of the three, and about that, I am truly pleased and gratified.

Meanwhile, I have a favor to ask of you. If you have already read the first, or first two books, please take a few moments to review them on Amazon. I still get many letters from fans telling me how much they love the books, but not many of those people seem to be reviewing them these days, and as a result, my negative reviews are slowly accumulating, and threatening OQ's 4-star rating, and SB has not received a review of any kind in a long time. So if you have a little time, please sign in and share your thoughts. Even if you didn't by the books from Amazon, as long as you are an account holder, you can review them. This is not a request for puff pieces. I want your honest thoughts, even if they are negative. I learn from all who take the time to share their feedback with me. I am still working on the end details of Numen's Trust, so perhaps your views will influence the eventual details of the outcome, as others have done before. If so, you will assuredly receive a place on the acknowledgments page of the book.

I plan to put this message on my website, my blog and anyplace else I can think of. As always, I welcome your well-wishes, or admonishments. Both show me that you care about my beloved Firma, and the characters who dwell there. I hope to have the final installment of this trilogy out to you soon. At the very least, I am trying as hard as I possibly can. Please send your good karma my way, as there are days I still sorely need it in the day and weeks to come.

Peace to you all,

Pat Nelson Childs

http://www.chroniclesoffirma.com

P.S. If you haven't already check out our newly renovated website, please do! It's beautiful! As always, your feedback is more than welcome. -PNC

Hey guys!

I thought I'd make a few remarks about depression, since it's that time of year throughout much of the world when many people, especially teens and young adults, may be feeling especially vulnerable. As someone who has been diagnosed with Seasonal Affective Disorder, as well as Clinical Depression, I always find this time especially challenging.

The main thing I wanted to remind people about depression, particularly those who suffer with it regularly, is how insidious it is. Yes, there are times when shitty things happen, and it comes down on you like a ton of bricks. More often, though, it creeps in like a tide, gradually filling more and more of your life until you suddenly discover that you're in it over your head. By that time, it's much more difficult to deal with, so teaching yourself to recognize some of the early symptoms can be a big help. Even if you're not able to prevent an episode of depression entirely, the fact that you know it's coming can make a huge difference in how bad a bout it is, and how long it lasts.

Here are some of the things that tend to sound the depression alarm for me:

1. I begin to isolate myself more and more from my friends and family. I might back out of a social thing I had planned, or if I don't back out entirely, I find I've lost my desire to go. I put off replying to emails and returning phone calls.

2. I find myself less enthusiastic about hobbies and other activities that I usually enjoy. With me, this directly affects my writing most of all, but as time goes on, I find that all I really want to do is watch TV or idly surf the web. The thought of doing anything else just makes me tired.

3. I either can't sleep, or want to sleep all the time. Sometimes it's a nasty combination of both, throwing my sleep cycle all out of whack. When I'm awake, I'm always tired. When I'm trying to sleep, I can't get my brain to quit working, and more often than not, it's obsessing about something bad from my past, present or future.

4. My eating habits get all messed up. With me, it's not that I stop eating, or eat too much. It's that I just don't care what I eat, and often just grab the thing that requires the least amount of work. This one varies. Some people lose their appetite entirely. Some people overeat to compensate for their growing depression.

These things usually begin to happen gradually, and grow worse over a period of days...sometimes weeks. Even after 30 years of dealing with depression, it still sneaks up on me sometimes, largely because I go into denial about it. Often, however, I'm able to spot the warning signs and take steps to mitigate the attack. I tell my friends that I need a little push. I make myself get out and socialize, even though I don't really want to. I get on here (like now) and try to short-circuit my own sadness by helping others. For my S.A.D., I use a therapy light, which simulates natural sunlight. They're not terribly expensive, and are easy to find online.

Whatever methods you develop to cope with your depression, they will work much better if you train yourself to spot the onset of an attack before you find yourself in the thick of it. If you're experiencing frequent depression, I encourage you to talk to someone about it. For adolescents, medication is not necessarily the answer, but establishing a support network to help you through the bad times is important, and counseling is often a good idea, particularly since depression itself can be a symptom of more serious problems, such as bipolar disorder, for which proper medication is very important.

I know that I talk a lot about depression, and for those of you who don't suffer with it, it might seem like overkill. For those who fight against it every day of their lives, though, it is always helpful to know that there are others out there going through the same thing, and to hear how they cope with it. Of all the things I listed above, by far the most effective remedy for me has been to reach out to friends for support, and to turn around and try my best to help others. Along with my medication (which I personally could not live without), those two things have proven to be the fastest and best way for me to pull myself out of a funk. Others will find different methods, but it's always good to know that one is not alone.

Anyway, I hope this was helpful to some of you. If you have any questions, or need help, feel free to write to me.

Love and hugs,
Pat..

You're usually too young to appreciate it, too busy to make time for it, or too old to do it anymore.

For those of you who haven't seen this moving editorial by MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, I encourage you to watch it, and then post it and pass it on to everyone you know, whether or not they support gay marriage.

A friend of mine wrote this article about Prop 8 that might give some cause for hope. Here's the link:

http://www.oasisjournals.com/2008/11/legal-groups-file-lawsuit-challenging-proposition-8-should-it-pass

Though there is obviously sufficient precedent for striking down amendments like Prop 8, a lot depends on the politics of the judges on the court, and I don't really know anything about the makeup of the California Supreme Court. I guess we'll all know soon enough.

These kinds of cases are the reason we all need to support The Human Rights Campaign (www.hrc.org), The Lambda Legal Defense Fund (http://www.lambdalegal.org/) and other advocacy organizations. For Heaven's sake, give your money to them, not to the politicians. You can't trust any of those bastards on gay rights. The wheels of the campaign busses on both sides are still sticky from all the GLBT people that got thrown under them during this election season.

All Americans should congratulate our new President-elect Barack Obama. While it is no secret that I was not a supporter, I can certainly appreciate the enormous historic nature of electing the first African-American President of the United States. Obama's victory speech was eloquent and soaring, filled with both hubris and magnanimity in just the right doses. He spoke earnestly of reaching across the aisle to work with both Republicans and Democrats, and brought out his now-familiar line about being a President for all Americans, whoever they are – Democrats, Republicans and Independents, men and women, young and old, black and white, straight and gay…

Gay? Really?

At the risk of dampening everyone's mood, I just want to pause briefly at this point to contrast the joy of this moment with a few more sobering events that took place on this very same election night. Namely, Constitutional Amendments banning same-sex marriage in Florida, Arizona and…sadly, even California. That essentially brings the momentum of the Gay Marriage Express to a screeching halt. The most troubling of these three mandates for institutionalized bigotry is, of course, Prop 8 in California which, after unprecedented spending on behalf of both sides of the issue, is on its way to passing with a decisive 52.4% of the vote. The far right really hit hard to get this proposition adopted, true, but when it came down to it, bipartisan intolerance is what swept in this despicable and divisive amendment. When one looks at the presidential vote which, in the Golden State, went 61% to Obama and only 37% to McCain, and then over at Prop 8, which has managed to secure nearly 53% of the "yes" votes, things start to stink a bit. Sure, the religious right did their part to push this turd up the hill, but they don't bear all of the responsibility. I mean, do the math people! It tells you that many of the people who were willing to sweep Obama in with a huge victory in California were also willing to check off the box that would essentially squash the hopes and dreams of thousands and thousands of their fellow Californians (and other committed, same-sex couples from all over the country) by taking away their right to marry for the foreseeable future.

The duplicity of Florida's "change you can believe in" voters was almost as atrocious. Obama beat McCain 51% - 48%, and yet Amendment 2 passed with a whopping 62+% of the vote. Once again, do the math. 48% support McCain. Even if every one of those people supported Amendment 2 (which I highly doubt), that leaves 14% of Obama supporters who were willing to throw gays & lesbians under Obama's Campaign Bus.

Arizona, at least, voted exactly the way you'd expect when it passed Amendment 102. McCain won by 54%. The Amendment passed by just a little over 56%. So in Arizona, it appears that only 2% of Obama supporters were able to plug their ears and tune out that "straight and gay" phrase Obama used so many times in stump speeches all through the campaign.

By far the most despicable, dehumanizing anti-gay legislation took place in Arkansas. It doesn't surprise me. It only disgusts me. This little piece of legalized hate, which either has passed, or will very soon pass, bans gay couples from adopting or fostering any children under the age of 18. Apparently they've caught onto our secret plan to molest all these children and turn them all godless, gunless & gay (and why not? The Catholic Church has been doing it for centuries). If it survives the inevitable legal challenges, this law would set the progress of gay rights in that state back not years, but decades – and by setting a precedent, it paves the way for other backward-thinking states to turn their social reform calendars back as well.

So…nice job, President-elect Obama, but it still kind of sucks to be gay in this country. Still, I'd like to end this on a positive note: Don't worry. Be happy. As I said before, Obama's election to the presidency promises to bring the prospect of hope and change to millions of us throughout this great nation: Democrats, Republicans and Independents, blacks and whites, old and young, rich and poor, disabled and not disabled, straight and……..what's that? Obama went on record again last week saying that he, too, was against gay marriage?

Oh, fuck it. Never mind.

UPDATE (11/5/08): Alright, look - don't bother lecturing me about how much worse it is to be gay in Iran. I know all about it. But I also know that it's we Americans who pride ourselves on our representative government, freedom, equality and respect for individual rights. Iran's government doesn't give a shit about having any of those things, which is why you won't find too many Iranians who wouldn't much rather be here, especially if they're queer. My point is that in this case, American actions aren't living up to American ideals, and that - no matter how you slice it - sucks ass. -PNC

Greetings all!

The critically-acclaimed author of The Phoenix, Ruth Sims, has just posted a glowing review of Orphan's Quest. Check it out HERE. The review is also posted on Amazon.com, along with a five-star rating. Needless to say, I am honored.

One note: It says at the bottom that the third book of the trilogy, Numen's Trust, is slated for release in late 2009. That should say early 2009, so don't anyone have a heart attack. I'm within four or five chapters of the end, and that isn't going to take me a year.

Hope you all have a great Thanksgiving!

Pat

As we progress into a new millenium, I sometimes reflect sadly on how little has been done to "normalize" gayness in our society. Of course, I mean American society, because Europe and even our neighbor to the north are light years ahead of us in this respect. To be fair, our government doesn't execute gays (if you ever saw the video of the two gay Iranian teens being executed, you might think twice about how bad things are for us here), and we've reached a point where even most conservative pundits support legal rights for gays, though generally more in theory than in practice (and no, Ann Coulter doesn't count. The only "value" she represents is the size of her royalty checks). Even President Bush has come out (sorry poor choice of words) in favor of civil unions. I point this out simply to illustrate how far we've actually managed to come in the past 20 years in some respects. A sitting Republican president (and staunch Christian Conservative) publicly expressing support for civil unions? If that isn't progress, I don't know what is.

But these things are more in the nature of political progress. What I've always been more interested in (and think is far more important) is achieving the "normalization" of alternative sexualities, a state in which the sight of two men sharing a kiss on a bus or in a TV commercial doesn't immediately produce waves of indignant outrage and endless punditry about the decline of Western civilization. Does it strike anyone else as odd that gays can adopt children in most states with the blessing of the majority, but that same majority goes absolutely ape shit if two girls hold hands on the bus? Gays can adopt children as long as they don't show any love for one another? Isn't that going to produce a way more fucked-up kid than one who just happens to have two mommies?

This, in my opinion, is where the real work needs to be done. Anyone who has heard me tell my teenaged fans to "be good ambassadors" knows my feelings on this issue. While I don't advocate abandoning our fight to obtain our legal rights through whatever means works, we also need to keep in mind that not everyone in that fight necessarily has all our bests interests at heart. There are those out there who want, or rather, need gays to remain a fringe, counterculture (and unequivocably far-left) minority, and who will do anything to sabotage what common ground we might find with god-fearing, family-loving, middle-American heterosexuals (in other words, just about everyone else with whom we share this country). Many of them, like many of the old guard in the civil rights movement, have made a comfortable (if not obscene) livelihood by selling us the culture of victimization, and are not likely to let their gravy trains pull out of the station without a fight. Others are simply afraid of losing their "specialness" (think men in nun drag). These people do their best to make mainstream America think that they represent some kind of monolithic "gay value system". What they really are in a sub-culture with a hard left agenda in which ALL traditional American values, social norms and moral judgments are evil and wrong. They firmly believe that everyone who dwells in the grim wasteland that lies between New York and San Francisco is a gun-totin' bible-thumper, and they insist that every good, self-respecting gay person believe it too. For this group, the assimilation of gays into the mainstream is unthinkable, and anyone who doesn't share their view, gay or straight, is the enemy.

Before you start the hate mail, this is not meant to depict every gay activist out there. People like Wayne Besen, Executive Director of "Truth Wind Out" (www.truthwinsout.org) is just one example of a GLBT advocate, of whom there are many, who regularly seeks to engage rather than simply vilify those who oppose gay rights. Does this mean that we have no enemies? It absolutely does not. Someone is buying up millions of copies of Ann Coulter's diatribes, after all, and there are plenty more people out there just like her. The nuns in drag, however, would have you believe that she represents the mainstream, just as they pretend, with the blessing of Ms. Coulter's ilk, to represent the "gay community" (an oxymoron if ever I heard one). Essentially, they are two sides of the same coin, and equally savage toward anyone who challenges, or even questions, the legitimacy of the war they're propagating.

Now what, you may ask, has any of this to do with "The Chronicles of Firma"? If you're not asking that, give yourself a gold star. If you haven't read the first two books of The Chronicles of Firma, let me 'splain. COF, as several reviewers have mentioned, is not a "gay" Fantasy series. It is a Fantasy series in which the lead characters are gay - a meaningful difference. Although the heroes deal with prejudice in their world, Firma is a land that has progressed several steps ahead of present-day America on the issue of sexuality, and so prejudice comes mainly from idiots and thugs. Even the villains don't care that Rokey and Flash are "samers". Their reasons for wanting them dead have nothing whatsoever to do with their sexuality. As the vast majority of the denizens of Firma have come to believe, who one chooses to love is largely a non-issue. I chose to create such a world because I wanted my books to reach beyond the gay niche market - to be entertaining and engaging for anyone with an open mind about alternative sexuality (as well as the legitimacy of the Fantasy genre in general, but that's a whole other blog). Though my two lovers battle ratmen, harpies, evil necromancers and numerous other bizarre entities, I wanted their romance to be normal, i.e. one that anyone, gay or straight, could identify with and root for. This is also what I want for the next generation of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people. I want them to be able to hold hands with their significant other, even (god forbid) share a kiss in public, without it being touted as another example of "the gay agenda" at work. I want them to feel free to be liberal or conservative, religious or non-religious, political or apolitical without being made to feel like a traitor to the "gay community".

These may seem like small, insignificant things, but they make a huge impact on people's everyday lives, as well as their sense of self-worth. Equal rights under the law is a laudible and necessary goal, but another, and perhaps ultimately more important one is the right for "gay people" to become "people who happen to be gay" - able to appreciate the many things that all people have in common, while being appreciated themselves for all the other qualities that make them unique and special individuals.