All right, gang.

These last few days of working with Valerie on the book cover-coffee mugs has just been stupefying. (See the blog post “At It Again“)

It’s not like I don’t remember my writing career prior to Q, but it’s this notion of how many years I’ve been working at it, you know? I lost track. And now it’s back on my plate. My primary focus. And suddenly, I just can’t process any of it.

Nowadays, when I think of my writing career, I think that I’ve written about 5 novels and a few novellas, a bunch of short stories and some scripts… And then when I was faced with choosing the book covers for the coffee mugs, I see I have to choose from 25 books. Of my own. Not the dozens that include my work but are edited by someone else.

What the heck?

Almost all of my books are out of print now, so I kind of forget. But I have bookshelves in my storage closet filled with books I either wrote or edited or contributed to over the decades, so it’s all in there. But I really don’t see it anymore. If it isn’t on LULU or Smashwords or Amazon, I simply forget.

Here’s one small portion of the writing madness in my storage closet. Some of my published books over the years, and all of my journals.

The closet is filled with books, journals, original manuscripts, correspondence — all of it “overseen” by Valerie in Brooklyn, since she is one of the heirs to my humble Estate…

And the idea of having a blog for 25 years just blows my mind. I cannot get my mind around that, still. Where did the time go?

Marilyn’s Room was an offshoot of my first erotic fiction site, Other-Rooms.com. That idea was born in the fall of 1997, when I was riding the subway in NYC, thinking about the terrific erotica writers who were emerging in the US and the UK and I wanted the world to know about them. So I decided to start Other-Rooms. It was named after one of my favorite writers, Truman Capote, and his classic provocative book Other Voices, Other Rooms.

On Other-Rooms, other erotica writers had their own “rooms” where they could publish their erotic short stories or erotic poetry. This was back when the Internet was brand new. There was not the ton of content there is today. Other-Rooms was an incredible success, internationally. Almost immediately, it was getting 5000 visitors a day. And every writer who had a room on Other-Rooms got a publishing deal of some kind (sold a story or poem, or got a book deal). It was incredible. We even made it into Playboy‘s Online Hall of Fame. And I did it all by myself, from my room.

Marilyn’s Room was actually incorporated, in 1998. I had business partners, investors. I had my own server and programmer up in Boston, and a 24-track recording studio in Midtown Manhattan (upstairs from the old Studio 54) was also a partner — it was the multi-media arm of Other-Rooms. We featured filmmakers, spoken word recitals, recorded interviews, erotic photography. Multi-media was very expensive back then and was bulky and very hard to upload. But we did it. And on the Marilyn’s Room site, I had an online journal — which eventually came to be called “blogs.”

But anyway. I remember it all. I just don’t understand how time suddenly just flew.

So I sit at my desk and look at all the works I have in -progress since 2020 and I don’t even know how to begin. Where to jump in. How to get it all done. Plus I still have the play rewrites in full swing all summer.

So it is safe to say that I am overwhelmed.

But before I forget– Valerie created this on Tuesday night and I just love it!!! It was probably my most controversial book ever (the first time I ever actually got hate emails), from 2005 — Zowie! It’s Yaoi! Western Girls Write Hot Stories of “Boys’ Love” — published by Thunder’s Mouth Press in NY, and now you can own it as a lunchbox!! With the Marilyn’s Room blog logo on the back. (My blog logo is also the logo for my self-publishing company: Marilyn’s Room Books.)

So. I’m tired, gang. And confused about this fleeing of time. And of course, I spend a lot of time thinking about my dad, my childhood, since I will be making the trek back down there to see him this weekend for Father’s Day.

For some reason, when I was a little girl, I always bought my dad this for Father’s Day. I really loved the smell of this stuff, and the packaging, plus I could afford it on my teeny allowance! I don’t think my dad ever wore after shave, let alone English Leather…but I, personally, really loved the stuff.

In other news…

This was awesome, gang. Just great historical stuff here.

Gnostic Informant & Ross K. Nichols — Oldest Mention of DAVID & ISRAEL ever Discovered (1 hr 44 mins):

And in other other news–

I’ll just say that I think it’s interesting that Phil is off on his honeymoon for the month of June, not totally silent but basically not posting any intel. And at the same time, SGAnon is “recovering from surgery” and also got a “promotion at work” so he has no time to really post anything right now, either….

Even Charlie Ward is “still recovering”.

And Real Raw News has slowed way, way down…

Lots of silence out there, folks.

So we’ll see.

Meanwhile, I have to get to work on a bio for Sandra for the play. So I guess I need more coffee to get the brain back on track.

Enjoy your Thursday, wherever you are in the world!

Thanks for visiting.

I love you guys. See ya!

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Linda Ronstadt & the Stone Poneys, her first hit, which I find myself singing all the time — “Different Drum”, from 1967 (and written by Michael Nesmith, of The Monkees). Enjoy!