June 2025 – The Literary Underworld

By Angelia Sparrow

So many places I could start this. It’s June, and hence Pride.

Maybe we should make it Veterans’ Month.

When’s Straight Pride, hurhurhur?

It’s Men’s Mental Health Month and you all need mental help.

Maybe we should drop the TQ+, they are scaring off allies.

And Donald Trump Jr. announced on June 16 that the transgender movement is the most violent domestic terror threat in the world.

These are a few of the recurring things I’ve seen this month. There is a saying that the comments on any post about feminism prove the need for it. Ditto Pride. After all, homophobia is just misogyny’s rainbow-clad twin.

In 2024, the ACLU tracked 533 anti-LGBTQ laws through the state legislatures. This year it’s 597. And 937 anti-trans bills have been proposed. Over 100 have passed. 26 states have passed bans on gender-affirming care.

Across the country, feeling the shift in the zeitgeist, corporate sponsors are pulling out of Pride parades and festivals. San Francisco, New York and St. Louis are some of the bigger ones.(Memphis Pride got rained out HARD, lightning strikes and flash flooding. The parade was postponed.)

And this is why Pride is more necessary than ever. Twenty percent of GenZ (1997-2006) are LGBTQ+. For reference, that’s my two youngest kids, age 27 and 25. Their grandfather’s generation, before 1946, has about 2%. But they were one of the hardest hit by AIDS.

Overall, about 9 percent of the population is some shade of queer. In demographic comparison, that’s all the Asian, Pacific Islanders and Native Americans, put together. It’s two-thirds of the Black population. It’s the same number as all the non-Christian religious folks in the country: Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, pagan, etc.

Yet, right now, that 9 percent is under attack by state and federal government. According to Project 2025’s aim to “Promote Life and Strengthening the Family,” all “trangenderism and woke gender ideology” must be removed. To this end, they want:

The Department of Justice to treat anti-gay discrimination as a free speech issue (We reserve the right to refuse service);
The Department of Defense to remove trans soldiers from the military;
The Department of Health and Human Services to remove a focus on LGBTQ+ equity;
The Supreme Court to quit applying Bostock (Title VII gender equity ruling) to matters of orientation and gender identity.

And that’s only part of it.

My wife is trans. And the laws make her public existence a minefield. She is very cautious about going to the restroom in public. She ignores the dirty looks we get in restaurants (I tend to glare down the offenders). While all her ID has her real name on it, her driver’s license still says M. Because Arkansas decided emergency action was needed against all 200 people who had an X, and all the trans people.

I am scared for her all the time.

While you personally may not be part of the QUILTBAG, you may not be out of the woods. In February, Oklahoma introduced an extremely broad obscenity bill (SB 593),which could be applied to anything someone believes is obscene. If you write so much as a kiss before closing the door, and someone takes offense, it can be prison time, massive fines for the author, the publisher, and any book seller or librarian. And if you write LGBTQ+ characters, that will be the first target if this passes.

Oklahoma already passed HB 1217, which criminalizes “obscene performances,” especially drag, around minors. This is a slippery slope bill. First, they make drag illegal/obscene. Then they arrest trans women for wearing dresses to the grocery store and charge them with exposing minors to obscenity. Immediate prison and registry on the sex offender list. And if Project 2025 gets its way, executing them. Over going out for a box of Cheerios.

Some of us who know how this picture (Cabaret) ends are fighting it every step of the way. Others don’t think it will get that bad. And a small minority think their wallets will protect them.

“No one ever talks about [extermination]. They just do it. And you go on with your lives, ignoring the signs all around you. And then, one day, when the air is still and the night has fallen, they come for you.” The 2000s X-Men movies are a gay metaphor and Magneto’s assertion has only become more salient since.

And this is why we need Pride. To come together in public, in joy and color and happiness. To wave at all those who cheer. To cheer for those who march. And most of all, to dance our defiance of a tinpot fascist who thinks we can be eradicated and no one will care.

In the darkest days of the AIDS crisis, the saying “Bury your friends in the morning. Protest in the afternoon and dance all night,” came into being. We dance. Well, others dance. I no longer can. So I make things and I write.

This year, all my amigurumi was in Pride colors, rainbow, lesbian, nonbinary and other.

And yes, I am writing. One of the tenets of Primali Paganism is Divine Defiance. So, I write. It’s slow going through the COVID brain fog, but I continue. Whether an Orc lord marrying for political gain, or Santa and Krampus having some (ahem) VERY private time between holidays, I’m still making words happen.

“There was a cabaret and a master of ceremonies, in a city called Berlin in a country called Germany. And it was the end of the world.” — Joe Masteroff, Cabaret

From Cemetery Dancers, the fourth of the Withycombe and Doyle books, in progress.

[His father] looked sharply at Charlie. “You never seemed to have much interested in dating or courting. Has that changed?” When Charlie glanced down, he nodded. “I see. It hasn’t.” Mr. Doyle lowered his voice. “Is it Edward? You try to keep your letters casual, but you adore him, and it comes through in every line.”

There it was, the big secret, the one that could get him arrested or deported. And his father had seen it without him even telling it.

“Yes. And it’s so illegal.”

“I can’t say I approve. We would like to see you married, although, your Ma would prefer you live nearby so she can spoil the grandbabies rotten. Having them across a whole ocean would be a trial to her.”

“I wasn’t asking for approval of Edward. I was asking about how to get married when it looks as if the marriage is going to be arranged for me.”

His father shook his head. “That’s a hard one, son. The best you can do is be kind and sweet to her. But that’s your nature so it shouldn’t be hard. Remember she is in the same position and no easier with it. You don’t have to love her right away. But do try to be her friend. That may grow into love. There is more to love than the swoopy, giddy feeling.

“When Ma smiles at you, is it still like the sun coming out?” Charlie asked.

His dad smiled. “Every time.”

My writing work can be found on Amazon or the Literary Underworld as Angelia Sparrow or Nick Rowan (NOT the one who writes the Silk Road travel books). My links can be found at these pages: Angelia Sparrow or Nick Rowan. My crochet work is available at The Traveling Tinkers.

By Rachel Brune

Run Faster…

Rick Keller, werewolf secret agent and grumpy retired soldier, came to me over the course of three or four writing exercises. I wasn’t expecting him to set up shop in my creative brain until those exercises turned into Cold Run, the first book in the Rick Keller Project. Nor did I expect there to be more books, short stories, and half-formed ideas that would grow along the way, each waiting to be set down with greater or less patience.

But after Cold Run, which had its own long, strange trip to its current publication with Falstaff Books, I wasn’t sure what direction I wanted to go in. We’d already visited the trope of the retired spy being dragged back in from the cold, with the shady government agency that treats him like just another resource to be used up at their discretion. Did Cold Run work as a standalone book? Did it have series potential? And what would that series potential look like?

I’m a history nerd with a long reading list in 20^th century shenanigans, and one of the elements that stood out to me when learning about the arms race was the absolute amorality of the sprint to developing nuclear weapons. Project Paperclip showed that the mission to develop and keep the edge in the nuclear arms race against the U.S.S.R.

Without giving away spoilers for Cold Run (and if you haven’t read it, it’s available right here on the Literary Underworld), at the end, Rick Keller tries once again to disappear into the wilderness—but there are some loose ends that are going to eventually bring him back.

And those loose ends are directly tied to the fact that governments and extra-national organizations will, in the vast game of might-against-might, will do anything they need to or can do to pursue that edge in race for the bigger and better weapon.

Even if it ends up destroying them.

Keep running!

Vegas Run, the sequel to Cold Run, is now out and available for purchase here at the Underworld, as well as from Falstaff Books. (And I guess you could buy it from other places, too, but if you’re here, you probably enjoy supporting indie authors and publishers.)

There’s a bunch of themes and topics I’ve been thinking about while planning out the rest of the series. Vegas Run is where I went hard on the theme of found/chosen family. It’s the book where I worked through my feelings about the decision to leave the military and what that would look like. (Spoiler alert – I immediately joined the Reserve because, like my main character, I am a masochist.)

Vegas Run also has a few hints as to where the next books in the series will go. And, I have to say, the final climactic sequence was immensely satisfying to write.

But of all the different plot twists and characters introduced and various themes touched on, I kept coming back to the idea of how far people will go to pursue power and a technological edge, even if the final weapon has the capability to wipe us off the face of the earth, along with whatever group of them we’re demonizing and othering at the moment.

But pace yourself…

When I pitch my series to readers, I tell them it was written by someone who grew up in the Cold War and served in the global war on terror, and enjoy reading spy and thriller novels—but always wished they had a werewolf.

When my publisher pitches the book, he pitches it: “If Joe Ledger were a werewolf, he’d be Rick Keller.”

The arms race never went away. The desire for power and strength and pursuing the technological edge to keep that power and strength never went away.

As Vegas Run launches, and I work on finishing up the third book in the series, Trial Run, it reminds me that when faced with the banal malevolence of large entities embarked on the quest for absolute power, the only thing that can throw dirt in the gears of the machine is finding the people who will be your family and stand with you—and hand you another handful of dirt.

I hope that the folks who have given the series a chance will enjoy the ride, and that if you—like me—get nostalgic for a little Spy vs. Spy—with werewolves!—you’ll check out the series. And take care of yourselves and your chosen and found families.

RACHEL A. BRUNE graduated from the NYU Tisch School of the Arts in 2000, and was immediately plunged into the low-stakes world of entry-level executive assistantship. Her unexpected journey out of that world and into the military is chronicled in her self-published book Echoes and Premonitions. Rachel served five years as a combat journalist, including two tours in Iraq, and a brief stint as a columnist for her hometown newspaper. After her second tour, she attended graduate school at the University at Albany in NY, where she earned her M.A. in political communication, and her commission as a second lieutenant in the military police corps.

Although her day job has taken in her in many strange, often twisted directions, Rachel continues to write and publish short fiction. She released her first novel, Soft Target, in early 2013, and other books have followed. In addition to writing, she is the founder and chief editor at Crone Girls Press and edits the Falstaff Dread line of horror fiction at Falstaff Books.

Some debts you can’t outrun.

An unprovoked attack destroys Rick Keller’s refuge and sends him back to civilization. Adrift, alone, his past reaches out to him as the agency he escaped–and the old Soviet spook he almost didn’t–call in their debts. His choice: work with MONIKER one more time, or face the rest of his life on the run.

From the snows of the north to the sand of the Las Vegas strip, Rick finds himself enmeshed in a web of old alliances and new, as his team heads out on the trail of the latest development in the supernatural arms race. While Rick has been hiding in the north country, MONIKER has been building a supernatural army. No matter how fast or far he runs, it won’t be enough. This time when they call him in, they don’t need an agent–they’re eliminating the competition.

This time, he’s going to burn them to the ground.