In the beginning, C.L. Beaumont created a writing newsletter. Now the newsletter was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the draft, and the Spirit of Queer Romance was hovering over the waters.
And C.L. Beaumont said, ‘Let there be a growing readership for my upcoming releases - aka light!’ And there was light. C.L. Beaumont saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness of procrastination. C.L. called the light ‘good business sense’ and the darkness he called ‘get off your ass and drum up interest in this book you’ve been working on for 3 years.’
And there was evening, and there was morning, and some months went by without a newsletter, and nevertheless . . . C.L. Beaumont saw that it was (mostly) good.
UPCOMING RELEASE: HOLIDAY SHORT STORY
A while ago I announced that my publisher Carnation Books was looking for submissions for tropey holiday-themed short stories. I spent a very Christmas-in-July summer crafting one such story, and I’m excited to announce it will be published this winter!
“But wait,” you’re thinking. “What happened to the wildland firefighting book? Why do you introduce new books and characters and then we never see them again?”
The answer to that is a delightful combination of writer’s block, anxiety, and the impossibility of writing without a firm deadline / end goal. But this story IS finished and it IS getting published. So if you’d like your own little taste of Christmas in July, allow me to introduce you to:
BIG SKY CHRISTMAS (probably not the actual title)
aka
THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE CHRISTMAS (definitely not the actual title)
To borrow from Queen Avril’s classic ‘Sk8r Boi’, the story goes a little something like this:
He was a 19th century cowboy
He was a 21st century drag queen
Can I make it any more obvious? /
He loves Montana
He hates Montana
What more can I say? /
He falls through time
Gets stuck in the past
Cowboy thinks his ghost boyfriend is back /
And of course there’s a showdown
In the town square
Giddyup it’s Christmas, they’ll fall in love fast . . .
Allow me to introduce you now to half of this duo:
Amos stands in the doorway, empty bags at his feet, and he watches the lonely ball of a golden sun pass through the sky.
It’s spring. The earth reminds him as the trembling wildflowers burst through a thin dusting of late-season snow, Old Jane running gleeful laps with the dappled sun on her chestnut back. He’s due for his post-winter supply restock in town. Has careful plans to load up with everything he needs to last him clear through half the summer, so he won’t have to return. It’ll be the first time he’s set foot off his land since fall. His first time seeing a building other than his own cabin, or the faint outlines of the grand Johnson home through the tree-line. His first time seeing another living person—the eradication of winter loneliness.
And he can’t get himself to leave.
His mouth is dry with sharp fear, his breath cold and stale in his lungs. It’s only town. A tiny town. And everyone there knows him—even if they don’t particularly like him much. And that’s good, because they’ll give him a wide berth like normal. And there won’t be any bugles or cannon-fire—nothing loud or angry ever happens in little ol’ Big Timber.
He hates town. Wishes he could spend the day far out in the fields on horseback like normal, with only the cattle he agreed to watch graze for the season, the swish of his rope across the sky, a canteen full of warm water and a saddle between his thighs. It feels like failure that he can’t solely rely on himself for every necessity, no need for town or general stores or talking to any goddamn people.
But Amos is clear out of coffee and flour. And no amount of self-sufficiency is gonna make cups of black coffee grow out of the soil.
Amos grabs the empty saddlebags and prepares himself. Plasters on the meanest scowl he can muster so the whole earth will leave him alone. He’s a cowboy, goddammit. Was even a soldier, once, too—if you could ever call a terrified fifteen year old kid with a rusty musket and moldy socks a soldier. He won’t die from a trip into town, as much as his body is trying to convince him otherwise.
He wonders what they would all say—Henry and Samuel and Pastor Johnson and his wife, the whole town—if they knew that Mad Amos was really shaking in his boots when he scowls at the sun like the mean old son of a bitch they all think him to be.
He steps out into the sunshine, an act of bravery for no one to see, and he refuses to pause for even a moment while he whistles for Old Jane to come and saddles her up. She nuzzles him, sensing his fear in that way she always can. The tremor in his hand. She never seems to mind his missing fingers. The gnarled scars making up his right hand since he fell in the blood-stained mud of the Potomac.
He swings easily up into the saddle and rides across the meadows, breathing in the mountains, the silent sky. The slice of land he’d decided would be the horizons of his whole world. The sort of life he’d once thought he’d rather die than return to—when word had spread through West Virginia that there was fixing to be a war up and down the coast, frightening letters and whispered words down Sunday church pews—and Amos had left his father’s sickbed and the pig farm in the rolling hills in the dark of night, fifteen and filled with adventure. He’d fixed his eyes to the vast, unknown north and run. Told himself he was a man for going off to fight. That he could finally be somebody.
Stupid and brave and naïve.
Old Jane rides steady, no sudden movements to spook him. Flowers bend in the breeze, dotting the banks of the rushing Yellowstone River, swollen from snowmelt. He keeps his eyes down, hat brim low, as Old Jane carries him up the final twisting path towards the crest of the hill that overlooks Big Timber. In just a moment, he’ll glimpse the little town for the first time in months, flanked down either side of the dusty main road with wooden buildings making up the Post Office, the general store, the saloon and the tiny school. He takes a steadying breath; hardly anyone will be out at this time of the late afternoon, the air heavy with the promise of the setting sun. They’ll be on their way home for hot meals and family prayers. They won’t pay him no mind.
And maybe it’ll be abandoned—everyone killed off by some plague or another over the winter. The church bells he’s been hearing since fall nothing more than a ghostly memory haunting the plains. Maybe a tumbleweed will blow across the road. An abandoned horse whinnying where it’s tied in front of the Post Office, sagging wooden walkways covered in rot and dust. The swing door to the general store hanging crooked on its hinges, blowing with a lonely creak in the hot wind.
Breathe, he thinks. He urges Old Jane along, the final few steps of privacy before he’s visible before all the world and God. Just another few paces. All he can hear is the clomp of Old Jane’s hooves on the little path. The wind in the grasses. He hides his right hand by tucking it into his vest, feeling the push and pull of his own belly breathing.
A creeping sense of unease starts to crawl across his skin, sweat pouring down his back as the crest of the hill grows nearer, the whitewashed spire of the church just peeking over the ridge. It feels like those moments the sun rose, and the bayonets would be drawn, and there would be a hush over the river, every man poised and waiting for the word to charge. The scream of the bugle.
He reaches the peak, town in view, and suddenly, it’s there—a shocking, animalistic cry of battle bursting from the street.
Amos hurls himself down in the saddle, holding tight to Old Jane’s neck. He feels the tumult of earth clods against his back, sticky and red with blood, the acrid tang of cannon-smoke, the shaking earth—
But Old Jane doesn’t tremble like the banks of the river, and when the ringing in his ears stops, Amos sits up, and he blinks, and he sees that Big Timber is flooded with people. He can’t even see the dust of the road—damn near every person within ten miles is filling the street, save him.
And it hadn’t been a roar at all, he realizes, but a great cheer. Another cry goes up from the crowd, whistles of happiness and applause, and Amos’s eyes finally focus on the little wood platform smack in the middle of the town square. Levi Johnson stands there, looking as important as the President. A man in a three-piece suit stands next to him, top hat glinting in the sun.
“Hear now, hear now,” the pastor says, scratching a poorly-shaven jaw. Without meaning to, Amos strokes his own mustache. His hand shakes. Levi grins. “Let’s thank the Lord Almighty—praise be to His Name! That we here in Big Timber are getting such a gift from Mr. Ackerman here.”
The man in the top hat takes it off, holds it to his chest, and bows gracefully, looking terribly important. Old Jane takes a few hesitant steps down the gentle hill into town. Amos is torn between curiosity and damned annoyance—he doesn’t care what in hell this ‘gift’ is from this Mr. Ackerman. Probably nothing more than a new roof for the church, or something else that won’t matter a lick to Amos just as long as Samuel keeps the flour and coffee stocked.
The top hat man says something too quiet for Amos to hear. Old Jane takes another step, and another, until he can make out the sparkle of Pastor Johnson’s dust-stained teeth. A little kid in the back of the crowd turns, spots him, and instantly turns white with fear, burying his face in his momma’s skirts.
That’s right, Amos thinks, without a twinge of guilt. He scowls at the kid’s tiny hands clutching the fabric. Mad Amos is here, so run along now and give me damned room to get by. Just ignore—
“Walker!”
Old Jane freezes at the edge of the road, Amos’s back going ramrod straight in the saddle. The whole crowd turns as a unit, fixing their eyes on him. There are gasps of surprise, and a wide berth forms around him, parting the crowd like a sea.
Damn Levi Johnson. Damn them all. He wishes he had a mouthful of tobacco just so he could spit something nasty in the dirt. He touches his hat brim with his left hand, pulling it low.
“Pastor.”
Levi’s looking at him like the weight of all suspicion is sitting on Amos’s shoulders. Old Jane sways nervously beneath him. Levi dabs a bit of sweat from his forehead with a perfectly embroidered square of silk. “Didn’t think you’d be excited over the news, Walker.”
Wind blows dust across the road, swarming everyone’s legs like little tornadoes. Amos sure as hell isn’t going to admit that he doesn’t know what that news is.
“Don’t got nothing to do with me,” he growls. “News don’t matter.” He urges Old Jane to the side, along the edges of the crowd so he can skirt by. “Out of my way,” he barks at the few people who don’t move.
Maybe they all thought he’d finally died over the winter. That they could auction off the land, and someone else could take over the summer cattle, and all would finally be right again in Big Timber. The way it was before Mad Amos limped into town.
Or maybe this mob is for him, Levi gathering everyone together to vote the Union scum off the land, send him back to West Virginia where he belongs.
People eye Old Jane like she’s the snake from the Garden of Eden. She keeps her sweet head down.
“I’m fixin’ to hold you to that, Walker,” Levi drawls. “When we come around ‘bout your land. Your share of the public duty.”
“Excuse me?”
Levi smirks. He’s enjoying this little standoff in front of the crowd, going face-to-face with the town grump. “I said, don’t go shootin’ Ackerman’s men when they’re on your property, you hear? You keep them guns lowered.”
As if Amos would ever willingly touch a gun again in his life. Would shoot so much as a coyote stalking the chickens, even though he always brings one along. As if he sits hunched over by the window with his rifle pointed at town instead of far away from it all, nothing but his horse and the clouds.
Someone hidden in the crowd says something about Mad Amos getting too big for his britches, showing his face around these parts. There’s a chorus of anxious agreement. Pathetic strength in numbers.
Amos pays the man no mind, but something about Levi’s words sends a chill of unease up his spine. He grips the reins. Squints across the square through one eye. “What in hell’s that cryptic message supposed to mean, Johnson?”
Levi opens his mouth to respond, when the sudden pounding of a stagecoach echoes down the street, and the crowd turns as one to see four horses ripping towards them in a cloud of dust. The little man with the top hat looks pleased. “Ah, gather ‘round! One and all!”
Amos is forgotten, the answer to his question left hanging as everyone crowds around to see whatever is being loaded off the back of the stagecoach—carried, Amos realizes, by four men who certainly aren’t from anywhere around here.
“Chinese,” he hears someone whisper. The men set down something huge and covered in burlap onto the stage. Mr. Ackerman grasps the cloth to pull it away.
And it doesn’t make any sense—this stranger in town, the oohs and ahhs of the crowd, the palpable excitement in the Big Timber air which is usually slow and stale and easy like cooling molasses. Nothing could ever get the town so excited. Nothing except . . .
“Behold, ladies and gentlemen!” Mr. Ackerman cries. Levi leads a round of applause as the burlap is ripped away, and there’s a gasp of renewed excitement. Amos peers from the shadows of the buildings to see.
It happens in a blink. There’s something in the stranger’s hand as he riles up the crowd—the Big Timber Railroad!—and dread sinks through Amos’s stomach, fear and sickness in his veins—no God, please no—the stranger plugs his ears in anticipation, one of the men lights something on fire—
The blast is deafening. Amos watches the fireworks shoot up into the sky in slow motion, and then he can’t see anymore. Not a thing. Old Jane rears in terror, and Amos’s hands stop working to hold onto the reins, and he’s slamming into the dirt, tumbling like a ragdoll to the ground.
He has to get away from the bombs. There are screams behind him—terror or delight—and the dust itself is blood red as he crawls away, pulling himself toward the shelter of the raised walkway, choking on grit. Something is wet on his face—tears or blood—and he crawls and crawls and crawls—
“Hello?”
Stay tuned to meet our lovestruck, fabulous time-traveler next month!
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
As you well know by now, NAMES FOR THE DAWN is coming out this winter—exact date TBA very soon! I’m proud to say that as of today, the final manuscript has been submitted!
This has been such an intense labor of love. I truly can’t wait to share it. We have some exciting plans in the works so that the release of this book can also help support the trans and LGBTQ community.
This newsletter will be the first place to learn about release dates, pre-order sales, ARC reviews, and more - so if you know anyone who might enjoy this queer Ranger love story, tell them to sign up for Just Kiss Already ASAP!
I was lucky to be on the receiving end of so much love and support for the original version of this story (wink wink), so I know there are plenty of y’all out there who will love this new and improved version too :)
Amusing Musings:
This amusing musing managed to write itself this past weekend when my partner and I took a friend to Glacier National Park.
It was a gorgeous, if slightly stressful, weekend. We’ve been to Glacier before, but had never had to deal with such insane crowds, ticketed entry, or trailhead parking lots that were already completely full by 6:30am. Sunday even brought the supreme honor of camping through a thunderstorm and waking up in my own personal puddle of water because it rained so hard it soaked through the tent fly - awesome!
But the only real mishap came when we needed to find dinner on Saturday night. We had hiked about 13 miles that day (not even counting just general walking around) and had been moving nonstop since 5am and were absolutely starving. Now, we had brought along some rations of freeze-dried backpacking food just in case. But eating freeze-dried lasagna at the end of a long day ONLY tastes like a 5-star restaurant if you’re backpacking and have no other options.
We, however, had options in the little town outside the park. So we went to the only place where I’d be able to find something vegetarian that wasn’t just fries, which was this surprisingly highly-rated pizza place. We put our name in — it would be a 45 minute wait, but we could survive. We got this.
We waited outside, stomachs growling, for about 40 of those 45 minutes. Every time the door opened, we got a waft of warm, fresh pizza. We saw the pizzas going in and out on huge sizzling plates. It looked lightyears better than we were expecting. My partner and I almost exclusively vacation in national parks or similar areas, and so we’re used to having substandard food that’s literally just calories after a day of hiking. But this pizza? It looked GOOD. We all deeply inhaled every time another steaming pizza box walked by.
And then, right at the 44 minute mark, the teenage waitress came out to the packed patio of waiting people, and she looked like she was about to cry, and she announced, in a trembling voice, “I’m sorry but we are out of cheese! There is no more cheese! Our truck isn’t coming! We can’t make pizza!”
Immediately, I thought of the aunt in My Big Fat Greek Wedding: “He don’t eat no meat? What do you mean he don’t eat-a no meat? That’s ok. I make lamb.”
But there was no lamb to be had.
Instead we were informed, through tears, that they could only provide salad and chicken wings.
There was an immediate grumble and then mass exodus of people to the only other promising option - the Mexican food place across the street. We hesitated about 5 seconds, which was 5 seconds too long, and by the time we made a decision to also go to the Mexican place the line was down the block. Would they be out of cheese, too? Was their cheese truck the same cheese truck as our cheese truck? What vegetarian option could I find at a Mexican restaurant in small-town Montana that didn’t involve cheese?
These questions plagued me. There were no answers.
My partner and her friend resolved to eat chicken wings, which was honestly not even a compromise. They love chicken wings. I resigned myself to eating a limp salad followed by a dessert of freeze-dried lasagna prepared in the trunk of our car to hide from the rain.
So we stayed, and we sat at our sad little table in the corner while we watched the rest of the restaurant eat the pizzas that they got to order BEFORE they ran out of cheese. Pizza to our left, pizza to our right. All hot and fresh. I genuinely considered just straight up begging to have a slice. Surely someone could spare ONE slice. I had a $10 bill in my pocket and I would have handed it over for one slice, even if I had to scrape the meat off onto my partner’s plate of devoured chicken wing bones.
One by one, more people walked up to the restaurant, starving and filthy from hiking and smacking their lips for pizza. We had a front row view to their excitement, the hunger in their eyes. Then one by one, they would be told that there was no cheese. There would be shock and despair, utter misery, and they would trudge back out the door, look around blankly this town with a population of about 20, and realize that they were screwed unless they ate food from the gas station. It was like watching a car accident over and over and being utterly powerless to stop it.
And then, to our horror, an entire wedding party showed up. Full on suits and wedding dress and bouquets of flowers, fresh from getting married in the park.
“Oh god, they don’t know,” I said.
My partner’s face paled. “They don’t know about the cheese.”
I considered mouthing through the window save yourselves, no cheese! But when they entered, the waitresses all burst into applause, and we realized that the long table in the corner was actually reserved for them. And what do you know? About 5 seconds later, TWO DOZEN PIZZAS COME OUT OF THE BACK, HOT AND FRESH. More pizza than the wedding party could eat in days, let alone one meal. Those sons of bitches had saved every last little shred of mozzarella for this wedding party.
At this point, I felt like I might cry. I resolved to never get married lest I accidentally commit such an injustice against another cheese-less person. My stomach was audibly growling. I flagged down the waitress and let go of all my dignity.
“I’m so sorry to ask this,” I said. “But I am so hungry, I will literally eat plain crust. It doesn’t even need cheese. Could I just order some crust with sauce?”
This 17 year old looked at me like I was the most horrifying thing she’d ever seen. She informed me that they might have a tray of cheesy garlic breadsticks leftover from yesterday which they could heat up.
I informed her that that would be the best thing anyone, in my entire life, had ever done for me — to stick a tray of stale breadsticks in the microwave. Hell, just blow on them with your own breath to heat them up. I didn’t care. I was about to eat the bowl my salad came in.
She disappeared, and I licked some of the buffalo wing sauce off my partner’s plate — easily another 12 calories.
I then smelled a fresh wave of bubbling, greasy, delicious cheese through the restaurant. My heart sank -- those married bastards and their big heaping married plates of cheese, coming back for more. But then the smell got closer and closer, and I looked up, and I saw a tray coming straight towards me. The 17-year-old held it out like I might bite, disgusted at my eagerness, and set a tray of breadsticks the size of a pizza on the table, hot and sizzling and straight from the oven, not a stale piece of bread in sight.
“Here you go,” she said, like she didn’t just commit a miracle more impressive than literal water into wine.
A tear slipped from my eye over a plate of over-priced breadsticks. They were beautiful. I ate them with ravenous, finger-licking excitement, painfully aware that the other few cheese-less tables were looking at me with murder in their eyes. I ate them for a late-night snack, and I ate them for breakfast the next morning, and then finished them off for lunch on the drive home.
And that is the story of how I learned that I am not a good person. Because if another cheese-less person had offered me $10 for just one of those breadsticks . . . Reader, I probably would have said no. I would have raised the price to $20.
(I’m joking. I would have given them one stick. One tiny, corner stick with barely any cheese.)
In cheese’s name we trust,
Amen.