Last night, I drank a little too much red wine. (Gosh, go figure!) That feels like my life these days -- too much red wine. That, and constantly reading the tarot cards. I got a new Universal Waite deck recently that I just love and it is always giving me the very best readings that you can possibly imagine so it seems like I always either have a glass of red wine in my hand, or the tarot deck. It's at the point where it's getting embarrassing. One minute, I might be down in the family room talking to Jay about something, then I go upstairs to allegedly take a shower and a moment later he'll follow me upstairs and there I am in the bedroom, half-undressed, spreading out a quick tarot reading on the bed.

ME (very flustered when he comes into the room and sees me): "I know this looks weird, but I just wanted something to sort of meditate on in the shower!" Then I very hurriedly gather all the cards together and stuff them back in the box and then go get into the shower and try not to feel insane. The other night we were getting ready to go somewhere, we were both dressed up nice and we're getting ready to walk out the door, then I disappear. He comes down to my office looking for me and finds me standing there, with my great big book of tarot meanings in front of me and he said, "Aren't you coming? What's going on?"

ME: "I'm sorry, I'm sorry! Yes, I'm coming, I just wanted to get a better sense of what the 9 of pentacles meant!" Etc., etc.

I've always got the cards in my hands. Sometimes I even try to hide that I've got the cards in my hands. Is this the sign of an addict?

Anyway, last night I drank a little too much red wine b/c a full moon is coming and I am always out of my mind when the moon is full. It comes from being born under the sign of Cancer -- the moon child. But Jay and I were sitting on the couch last evening, talking about the publicity stuff for Freak Parade b/c he is a genius marketer (that's his actual title: GENIUS MARKETER -- it's what he does for a living) and I was being my usual paranoid self, b/c that's what I am when it comes to publicity & marketing.

ME (on the couch drinking too much red wine, replying to everything he's saying with): "I don't have the time to do that! I am not going to do that!" (This is b/c it exhausts me to think about being out among people, to do readings, to give interviews. There is always somebody somewhere who comes right up to me and tells me that I "don't look anything like a pornographer", and who refers to my art, my work, my heart, as "smut"...)

JAY (very patiently but very directly): "Fine, Marilyn, but be prepared to sell a lot less books. If you feel okay about that, then, fine."

Ack. More wine. (Yes, I positively live to sell a lot less books. Thank you very much.)

I went to bed drunk (big surprise) and I had a dream that I was living in a really large apartment in New York City. All these strangers were mingling around in my apartment. It was night; candles were lit everywhere. I went into my bedroom and found Johnny Depp standing in there reading all this stuff that I had written all over my walls. And it was all about him. Stuff I'd written about him. (I don't know what it said, but in my dream, I knew what I'd written there.)

Right away, I was thinking, Wow, this is really uncomfortable; this is really unfortunate. Who would have ever thought that Johnny Depp would come into my home and read this stuff? But there's nothing I can do about it now, he's read it.  He turned to me and he said, "I actually agree with a lot of what you said here." So I was relieved, but I was still sick to my stomach; those feelings of being exposed and vulnerable and not able to do anything about it. That's what it's like for me when I give a reading. Most of my readers are incredibly nice, as well as educated, people. But there is still the very real fact that a lot of people consider what I write to be pornographic as opposed to "art"  -- especially in a town like this, where people tend to be very conservative. Not everyone, certainly, but I do feel like I walk out into a minefield when I go out in public with my work somehow attached to me.

But still I'm proud of my work b/c I look on it as something God has inspired me to do. And Freak Parade does mean an awful lot to me. I think there is so much more going on in the novel than to call it simply "porn."  It means so much to me, in fact, that I am going to go broke just in order to publish it. But it's okay. You're either here on Earth doing stuff, or you're half alive, right? And we all end up dead regardless. I just don't want to end up dead with Freak Parade unpublished. So I am willing to go broke. But I've been broke before, gang, and I always, always, always bounce back.

Okay! Back to the tarot cards!! OOPS! I meant, back to the editing. See ya, gang. Fight the good fight. Te quiero mucho!