Emma Scott's Blog, page 3
February 10, 2016
How to Save a Book
“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.” ― George OrwellBack in October of last year, I had just published Endless Possibility, the RUSH novella, and I was ready to roll on the next book in my City Lights series, Beside You in the Moonlight. (the Paris book)
I had 20K words written and all systems were go...Except that I had an idea pop into my head for another story. Actually, it wasn't even a story. Just an image. A young man treading water in a pool at dusk. Alone. And he was wearing a white t-shirt, like an undershirt soaked through, and I could see the bruises darkening his skin.
That's it. I didn't know what it meant, if anything. But it wouldn't get out of my head. Much in the sae way I "heard" Noah interviewing Charlotte in my head to kickstart RUSH, this image was a buried artifact, waiting to be unearthed. And it was a helluva lot more demanding than the Paris book. Who was this guy and why was he bruised up?
So I thought I'd explore and wrote this:
His white t-shirt was already threadbare, and the water revealed everything through it: the planes of his chest, the cut of his abs—not yet a full sixer, but well on the way. And his bruises. I could see the greenish tinge of one on his right pec that told me it was old. I tread water around him. He didn’t move, didn’t counter, but let me take in the dark purples and blues of fresher bruises all over his back and arms. I swam closer, my heart thudding dully in an unfamiliar cadence. It had been a long time since I’d been afraid for someone beside myself. “Who does this to you?” I asked, anger lending my faltering voice some strength. “Your foster parents?” “Brothers,” Evan replied. “My foster brothers.” I glided closer; the water carried me to him so effortlessly. “Why?” “To remind me I’m not blood. And that I’m different.” Still behind him, I raised my hand, poised it over a particularly dark splotch on his right shoulder blade. “Is it true? What they say about you?” Still not turning, he said, “What do they say about me?” “You don’t know?” “I want to hear it from you.” “They say you know things no one could possibly know,” I said, and let my hand rest on his back. He flinched, but I don’t know if it was from my words or my touch. I didn’t let up with either one. “They say that you can read minds.” “That’s stupid,” Evan said. “Isn’t it?”
That's not what ended up in the final book but pretty close. The words came easily and I thought, "Hey, there's a story here." And so I got excited. Maybe overly so...
I'm the kind of person who gets super excited about teasers, covers, blurbs...even before I have much written. I love throwing ideas and words out there and seeing how they land. (I'm also seriously addicted to Canva and if you try it once, you will be too.) So in a fit of optimism and armed with a title, I set up a preorder on Amazon for How to Save a Life.
For the uninitiated, setting an Amazon preorder is a solid deadline. To break it means you lose preorder privileges for a year. That's kind of a big deal to me, which is why setting such a crazy deadline without a draft was a dumbass thing to do.
But I was feeling good, super excited about the story, and this was late October. Loads of time between then and Feb!
What could go wrong?
If I had one piece of solid advice I could give to writers who are unfamiliar with the concept of time (like I am) it would be NEVER set a preorder on the other side of December unless you've got AT LEAST a first draft. I lost the latter half of November (totally failed NaNoWriMo) and ALL of December due to holiday shenanigans. I wrote in fits and starts. Not nearly enough words for where a normal sane person would be with an early Feb deadline.
When Christmas was over, RUSH got accepted to a BookBub promotion in early January. So alllll these new reviews and love for RUSH came pouring in from my overly generous readers. And like a rising tide raises all ships, RUSH raised HTSAL. Its Goodreads TBR list started to grow, preorders were coming in, and fabulous bloggers started getting interested in it. So the expectation to write a better story than RUSH, with a more beloved hero than Noah; PLUS the fact HTSAL was a rapidly turning out to be waaaaaaay more emotional a novel than I had anticipated, ANNND adding the extra fun of a crazy deadline looming...well it all piled up. I started to lose it.
Really lose it. I woke up every morning with panic twisting my gut. I was paralyzed by insecurity, the deadline, and the mind-crippling fear that this book was just too weird for anyone to like. I not-too-subtly mentioned this a time or ten on my Facebook page, but tried--TRIED--to keep the drama away from my readers, lest I sound whiny or incompetent, or worse, like I was trying to lower expectations by complaining.
But this book wasn't going to make it without help. It, and me, were sinking fast. So I reached out to someone I am fortunate enough to have in my life, and she threw me a lifeline.
I "met" Suanne Laqueur via her novel The Man I Love. (You really really should read it; here's a link----> http://amzn.to/1Kbbr2g)
The writing in this novel blew my mind and I wrote a review to say so. The review resonated with her, we got to chatting, and bada-ding bada-boom: friendship. Only not JUST friendship. There are certain individuals you meet in your life (you know who I'm talking about, we all have them) where you just click. Or gel. Or feel like you've known them forever. The kind of people who, if you started out as online friends and then met them in person you'd probably just burst into tears and hug them for an hour. I'm not saying that's me, but that's totally me. Point is, you only get a handful of these special people in your life. Maybe only one or two, so take care of them. :)
Anyhoo, I felt a strong connection to Suanne that transcended internet space and time, so that I felt like I could unload my anxiety about HTSAL on her like a dump truck. I was sure--SURE--that I wasn't going to make it. That the book would either have to be delayed (a notion I hated) or I'd have to abandon it altogether if I couldn't pull myself together.
And then Suanne asked me a very simple question: Do you believe in your story?
And like that...boom. Sliced through all the angsty bullshit and got to the heart of it. Did I? Because if the answer was NO then it would be a simple thing to just set the book aside and move on. But the answer was YES. Hell yes, to be exact. So the time to get my act together had come.
I then tiptoed for about six or seven more texts to her; subtle shit like, "Hey, know any good editors?" and "Hey, you know who are cool people to hang with? Editors!" and "Gee, I sure wish I had an editor." She got the hint. Turns out Suanne was available and willing to be my editor for this book and voila! Book=saved.
For Career Day during my seventh grade, a published novelist came to our class to speak. I SO wish I remembered her name, but I'll never forget her lesson. She pulled out a piece of pristine paper, typewritten, with nary a wrinkle. She said, "This is what a page of my book looks like BEFORE it goes to my editor."
She then showed us another typewritten page, this one wrinkled at the edges, dog-eared, and covered--and I do mean, COVERED--in red ink. And then she said words I've never forgotten, "This is what it looks like after my editor is done with it. It's what real editing looks like."
In this digital age, we don't mess with actual paper and ink from real pens. It's all electronical, but the result is the same. REAL editing, by the way, is NOT red ink for the sake of red ink. Nor is it the blood of many wounds because the editor cut you to the bone with harsh criticism. It's the blood of toil and hard work. It belongs there. Any author who gets a paper covered in red ink from an editor they trust, who knows their shit, and whose only intention is to HELP, should be thrilled . They should be Tom Cruise-couch-jumping for joy to have someone who took that much time and effort to go over their work.
Case in point: I sent Suanne a page that looks like this:
It came back looking like this:
That, friends and neighbors, is editing. Every. Single. Page.
Now, this doesn't mean I was typing shit...just upchucking my worst and saying "Fix this." (Though that would have been a time saver, amirite?)
No, it means that there is ALWAYS room to do better. I had been without solid beta/editing input for months as my schedule moved too impossibly fast for my fabulous writer's group to keep up. I'd have monopolized every meeting in order to get the level of feedback I wanted/needed for HTSAL. And time was of the essence.
I stayed up until 2am almost every night for weeks. I drank coffee by the gallon, lost 5lbs, and woke up every single morning with anxiety twisting my guts. I took to speaking into a headset to get the words down even if that meant every single time I spoke the words "Evan said, " it came out as "Heaven sent" or "I've resend."
It was rather torturous. But I have this thing about being punctual. I'm OCD about it or anal retentive or whatever you want to call it. When my kids are running late for school, I literally start to panic. So the idea of blowing my self-imposed deadline was horrible to contemplate. I didn't want to lose my preorders for a year, but moreover, I didn't want to let my readers down. You can't, in my humble opinion, tease the shit out of something and get everyone all excited and then say, "Sorry. I was too busy being a chickenshit to make deadline." Yes, life happens and there are legit unforeseen events that can derail a project. I'm just saying, for me, being paralyzed by anxiety was not sufficient reason to blow my deadline. The only way out is through.
I typed as fast as I could and I gave the emotionally raw pages to Suanne, and she helped me to polish them up. She showed me the way. She pushed and prodded. She mentored me through this thing, and I do not mind saying that. Everyone should be so lucky to have someone of extreme intelligence, artistry, and generosity of spirit to mentor them. To say, "Yes, this shit is hard, but you're going to make it. I'll help."
Suanne, there aren't enough ways to say thank you for what you did for me, but this is one.
Now, this may sound like a helluva lot of angst over a book but it was a gut-wrenching experience to write. That's a fact. So if that translated to the page, then I'm happy because there were a lot of tears and late nights and nausea that went into it. But the end result was worth it. So worth it, and it wouldn't have made it without Suanne. Holy crap, I still can't believe we made it, lady.
This business is so weird. As a writer, you're torn in half (or at least I am) by an almost manic urge to share your work with the world, coupled with a deep, gut-wrenching fear of what people will think when you do. It makes no sense. Why torture ourselves? The only answer I can think of (beside the Orwell quote above) is that the good outweighs the bad and that if you can reach someone and move them, and make them feel something they might not have otherwise, well shit, that's pretty cool.
If there's any takeaway to this post (besides Suanne Laqueur's imminent sainthood in the House of Scott) it's that you should never give up. This is a tough business. If you're a writer reading this then you know that. But keep going. Even when it's hard as fuck. Even when you think it's impossible, if it's your dream, keep the fire lit underneath it. If you're struggling right now, maybe I can help you as I was helped: Do you believe in your story? If the answer is yes, then please share it with us. Love and bravery, as Daisy might say. It takes love and bravery, and always keeping your compass pointing north. Always north.
<3
Emma
I had 20K words written and all systems were go...Except that I had an idea pop into my head for another story. Actually, it wasn't even a story. Just an image. A young man treading water in a pool at dusk. Alone. And he was wearing a white t-shirt, like an undershirt soaked through, and I could see the bruises darkening his skin.
That's it. I didn't know what it meant, if anything. But it wouldn't get out of my head. Much in the sae way I "heard" Noah interviewing Charlotte in my head to kickstart RUSH, this image was a buried artifact, waiting to be unearthed. And it was a helluva lot more demanding than the Paris book. Who was this guy and why was he bruised up?
So I thought I'd explore and wrote this:
His white t-shirt was already threadbare, and the water revealed everything through it: the planes of his chest, the cut of his abs—not yet a full sixer, but well on the way. And his bruises. I could see the greenish tinge of one on his right pec that told me it was old. I tread water around him. He didn’t move, didn’t counter, but let me take in the dark purples and blues of fresher bruises all over his back and arms. I swam closer, my heart thudding dully in an unfamiliar cadence. It had been a long time since I’d been afraid for someone beside myself. “Who does this to you?” I asked, anger lending my faltering voice some strength. “Your foster parents?” “Brothers,” Evan replied. “My foster brothers.” I glided closer; the water carried me to him so effortlessly. “Why?” “To remind me I’m not blood. And that I’m different.” Still behind him, I raised my hand, poised it over a particularly dark splotch on his right shoulder blade. “Is it true? What they say about you?” Still not turning, he said, “What do they say about me?” “You don’t know?” “I want to hear it from you.” “They say you know things no one could possibly know,” I said, and let my hand rest on his back. He flinched, but I don’t know if it was from my words or my touch. I didn’t let up with either one. “They say that you can read minds.” “That’s stupid,” Evan said. “Isn’t it?”
That's not what ended up in the final book but pretty close. The words came easily and I thought, "Hey, there's a story here." And so I got excited. Maybe overly so...
I'm the kind of person who gets super excited about teasers, covers, blurbs...even before I have much written. I love throwing ideas and words out there and seeing how they land. (I'm also seriously addicted to Canva and if you try it once, you will be too.) So in a fit of optimism and armed with a title, I set up a preorder on Amazon for How to Save a Life.
For the uninitiated, setting an Amazon preorder is a solid deadline. To break it means you lose preorder privileges for a year. That's kind of a big deal to me, which is why setting such a crazy deadline without a draft was a dumbass thing to do.
But I was feeling good, super excited about the story, and this was late October. Loads of time between then and Feb!
What could go wrong?
If I had one piece of solid advice I could give to writers who are unfamiliar with the concept of time (like I am) it would be NEVER set a preorder on the other side of December unless you've got AT LEAST a first draft. I lost the latter half of November (totally failed NaNoWriMo) and ALL of December due to holiday shenanigans. I wrote in fits and starts. Not nearly enough words for where a normal sane person would be with an early Feb deadline.
When Christmas was over, RUSH got accepted to a BookBub promotion in early January. So alllll these new reviews and love for RUSH came pouring in from my overly generous readers. And like a rising tide raises all ships, RUSH raised HTSAL. Its Goodreads TBR list started to grow, preorders were coming in, and fabulous bloggers started getting interested in it. So the expectation to write a better story than RUSH, with a more beloved hero than Noah; PLUS the fact HTSAL was a rapidly turning out to be waaaaaaay more emotional a novel than I had anticipated, ANNND adding the extra fun of a crazy deadline looming...well it all piled up. I started to lose it.
Really lose it. I woke up every morning with panic twisting my gut. I was paralyzed by insecurity, the deadline, and the mind-crippling fear that this book was just too weird for anyone to like. I not-too-subtly mentioned this a time or ten on my Facebook page, but tried--TRIED--to keep the drama away from my readers, lest I sound whiny or incompetent, or worse, like I was trying to lower expectations by complaining.
But this book wasn't going to make it without help. It, and me, were sinking fast. So I reached out to someone I am fortunate enough to have in my life, and she threw me a lifeline.
I "met" Suanne Laqueur via her novel The Man I Love. (You really really should read it; here's a link----> http://amzn.to/1Kbbr2g)
The writing in this novel blew my mind and I wrote a review to say so. The review resonated with her, we got to chatting, and bada-ding bada-boom: friendship. Only not JUST friendship. There are certain individuals you meet in your life (you know who I'm talking about, we all have them) where you just click. Or gel. Or feel like you've known them forever. The kind of people who, if you started out as online friends and then met them in person you'd probably just burst into tears and hug them for an hour. I'm not saying that's me, but that's totally me. Point is, you only get a handful of these special people in your life. Maybe only one or two, so take care of them. :)
Anyhoo, I felt a strong connection to Suanne that transcended internet space and time, so that I felt like I could unload my anxiety about HTSAL on her like a dump truck. I was sure--SURE--that I wasn't going to make it. That the book would either have to be delayed (a notion I hated) or I'd have to abandon it altogether if I couldn't pull myself together.
And then Suanne asked me a very simple question: Do you believe in your story?
And like that...boom. Sliced through all the angsty bullshit and got to the heart of it. Did I? Because if the answer was NO then it would be a simple thing to just set the book aside and move on. But the answer was YES. Hell yes, to be exact. So the time to get my act together had come.
I then tiptoed for about six or seven more texts to her; subtle shit like, "Hey, know any good editors?" and "Hey, you know who are cool people to hang with? Editors!" and "Gee, I sure wish I had an editor." She got the hint. Turns out Suanne was available and willing to be my editor for this book and voila! Book=saved.
For Career Day during my seventh grade, a published novelist came to our class to speak. I SO wish I remembered her name, but I'll never forget her lesson. She pulled out a piece of pristine paper, typewritten, with nary a wrinkle. She said, "This is what a page of my book looks like BEFORE it goes to my editor."
She then showed us another typewritten page, this one wrinkled at the edges, dog-eared, and covered--and I do mean, COVERED--in red ink. And then she said words I've never forgotten, "This is what it looks like after my editor is done with it. It's what real editing looks like."
In this digital age, we don't mess with actual paper and ink from real pens. It's all electronical, but the result is the same. REAL editing, by the way, is NOT red ink for the sake of red ink. Nor is it the blood of many wounds because the editor cut you to the bone with harsh criticism. It's the blood of toil and hard work. It belongs there. Any author who gets a paper covered in red ink from an editor they trust, who knows their shit, and whose only intention is to HELP, should be thrilled . They should be Tom Cruise-couch-jumping for joy to have someone who took that much time and effort to go over their work.
Case in point: I sent Suanne a page that looks like this:
It came back looking like this:
That, friends and neighbors, is editing. Every. Single. Page.
Now, this doesn't mean I was typing shit...just upchucking my worst and saying "Fix this." (Though that would have been a time saver, amirite?)
No, it means that there is ALWAYS room to do better. I had been without solid beta/editing input for months as my schedule moved too impossibly fast for my fabulous writer's group to keep up. I'd have monopolized every meeting in order to get the level of feedback I wanted/needed for HTSAL. And time was of the essence.
I stayed up until 2am almost every night for weeks. I drank coffee by the gallon, lost 5lbs, and woke up every single morning with anxiety twisting my guts. I took to speaking into a headset to get the words down even if that meant every single time I spoke the words "Evan said, " it came out as "Heaven sent" or "I've resend."
It was rather torturous. But I have this thing about being punctual. I'm OCD about it or anal retentive or whatever you want to call it. When my kids are running late for school, I literally start to panic. So the idea of blowing my self-imposed deadline was horrible to contemplate. I didn't want to lose my preorders for a year, but moreover, I didn't want to let my readers down. You can't, in my humble opinion, tease the shit out of something and get everyone all excited and then say, "Sorry. I was too busy being a chickenshit to make deadline." Yes, life happens and there are legit unforeseen events that can derail a project. I'm just saying, for me, being paralyzed by anxiety was not sufficient reason to blow my deadline. The only way out is through.
I typed as fast as I could and I gave the emotionally raw pages to Suanne, and she helped me to polish them up. She showed me the way. She pushed and prodded. She mentored me through this thing, and I do not mind saying that. Everyone should be so lucky to have someone of extreme intelligence, artistry, and generosity of spirit to mentor them. To say, "Yes, this shit is hard, but you're going to make it. I'll help."
Suanne, there aren't enough ways to say thank you for what you did for me, but this is one.
Now, this may sound like a helluva lot of angst over a book but it was a gut-wrenching experience to write. That's a fact. So if that translated to the page, then I'm happy because there were a lot of tears and late nights and nausea that went into it. But the end result was worth it. So worth it, and it wouldn't have made it without Suanne. Holy crap, I still can't believe we made it, lady.
This business is so weird. As a writer, you're torn in half (or at least I am) by an almost manic urge to share your work with the world, coupled with a deep, gut-wrenching fear of what people will think when you do. It makes no sense. Why torture ourselves? The only answer I can think of (beside the Orwell quote above) is that the good outweighs the bad and that if you can reach someone and move them, and make them feel something they might not have otherwise, well shit, that's pretty cool.
If there's any takeaway to this post (besides Suanne Laqueur's imminent sainthood in the House of Scott) it's that you should never give up. This is a tough business. If you're a writer reading this then you know that. But keep going. Even when it's hard as fuck. Even when you think it's impossible, if it's your dream, keep the fire lit underneath it. If you're struggling right now, maybe I can help you as I was helped: Do you believe in your story? If the answer is yes, then please share it with us. Love and bravery, as Daisy might say. It takes love and bravery, and always keeping your compass pointing north. Always north.
<3
Emma
February 9, 2016
January 4, 2016
RUSH on sale now for 99 cents!!
Happy New Year!
To celebrate the new year (and the fact that RUSH made it into BookBub as a featured deal) my third book baby is on sale for 99c through January 7th!
If you haven't picked up your copy yet, here's your link: http://amzn.to/1ILRMyy
And if you head on over to my Facebook page I'm giving away a $15 Amazon to some lucky winner for helping me share the news! http://on.fb.me/1O70M7A
To be blind is not miserable; not to be able to bear blindness, that is miserable. --John Milton
The life he knew is over. The life she wants is just out of reach.
Together, they must face their fears and rediscover what it means to really live.
To celebrate the new year (and the fact that RUSH made it into BookBub as a featured deal) my third book baby is on sale for 99c through January 7th!
If you haven't picked up your copy yet, here's your link: http://amzn.to/1ILRMyy
And if you head on over to my Facebook page I'm giving away a $15 Amazon to some lucky winner for helping me share the news! http://on.fb.me/1O70M7A
To be blind is not miserable; not to be able to bear blindness, that is miserable. --John Milton
The life he knew is over. The life she wants is just out of reach.
Together, they must face their fears and rediscover what it means to really live.
December 29, 2015
How to Save a Life Cover reveal
COVER REVEAL and KINDLE FIRE GIVEAWAY FOR
How to Save a Life
Hey all, here is the cover to my newest standalone romance, releasing February 9, 2016!
Josephine Clark is trapped. A harrowing past haunts her every time she looks in the mirror, and she can’t escape the violence of her everyday life. More and more, her thoughts turn to Evan Salinger, the boy she knew in high school. The boy they called a mental case. A loner. A freak. The boy who seemed to know things no one could know. For a few short weeks, Jo had found perfect solace in Evan’s company, sneaking every night to meet him at the local pool. In the cool of the water and the warmth of Evan’s arms around her, Jo had tasted something close to happiness.
Cruel circumstances tore them apart, and four years later, the sweet memory of their time together is dissolving under the punishing reality of Jo’s life now. Evan seems like a fading dream…until he reappears at the moment she needs him most. Guided by Evan’s strange intuition, they flee her small Louisiana town, running from police and criminals alike, and Jo begins to suspect there is something more to his sudden return than he admits.
Over twelve days across America’s heartland, deep secrets come to light, buried pasts are unearthed, and the line between dreams and reality is blurred as Evan and Jo fight to hold on to their soul-deep love, and discover that there is more than one way to save a life.
How to Save a Life is a complete second-chance STANDALONE novel with some shades of the paranormal. It carries the characters from high school through to their early twenties. It is not YA; mature subject matter and sexual situations. For readers 18 years and up.
preorder link: http://amzn.to/1Jsb9OJ
And I am giving away a brand new Kindle Fire as part of the cover reveal!
Enter here: http://bit.ly/1JALOC5
Excerpt: “I didn’t do that so I could get something in exchange. You don’t owe me anything. That’s not how this works.”
“How what works?” I asked in a small voice.
“Us.”
I felt shy and unsure and completely exposed. More than even when he was between my thighs, kissing me to oblivion and back again.
"So this is us?" I asked.
“Yeah,” Evan said, cupping my jaw. He swallowed hard. “This is us.”
I felt something break open in me. I wanted to cry. I laughed instead, and threw my arms around his neck, driving us both under the surface. I kissed him and tasted myself on his lips, and his own sweetness before the chlorine water washed it away.
We came up laughing and sputtering, my hair in my eyes. Evan raised both hands and brushed the long, dark locks from my face…and from my scar. I held still, letting him do this, letting him see me, and he smiled.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, and kissed me long and hard, and I sighed into that kiss, into his body, into him. I wasn’t beautiful, not anymore, but it was still nice to hear.
“I know you don’t believe me,” Evan said, his words echoing my thoughts with uncanny precision. “But it’s true.”
I felt myself turn rigid, ready to pull away, but Evan wouldn’t let me. His arms slipped under mine and around my back, drawing me toward him. He raised one hand to my scar, his fingers soft and gentle, and warm over the lightning crack that marred my cheek.
“The Grand Canyon was carved by a river. It sliced through the rock, revealing layer upon layer of beauty, and a depth that couldn’t be seen until it was cut open. One little sliver of water…”
“Evan…”
“One little sliver.” He traced the ragged seam down to my chin. “The majesty of the Canyon is that depth; that beauty, buried for years, until the river cut it open, revealing everything.”
I felt tears sting my eyes and pressed my cheek into his hand. “Don’t,” I whispered. “I can’t take it.”
"It's okay, Jo." Evan smiled gently and pulled me to him. “It's okay.”
No, it wasn't okay, but he didn’t fight me or try to force it on me. Years of feeling ugly couldn’t be erased with a few poetic similes. But he was here in my arms and I was in his, and the way he looked at me…I could almost believe what he was saying was true, and that was good enough for me.
How to Save a Life
Hey all, here is the cover to my newest standalone romance, releasing February 9, 2016!
Josephine Clark is trapped. A harrowing past haunts her every time she looks in the mirror, and she can’t escape the violence of her everyday life. More and more, her thoughts turn to Evan Salinger, the boy she knew in high school. The boy they called a mental case. A loner. A freak. The boy who seemed to know things no one could know. For a few short weeks, Jo had found perfect solace in Evan’s company, sneaking every night to meet him at the local pool. In the cool of the water and the warmth of Evan’s arms around her, Jo had tasted something close to happiness.
Cruel circumstances tore them apart, and four years later, the sweet memory of their time together is dissolving under the punishing reality of Jo’s life now. Evan seems like a fading dream…until he reappears at the moment she needs him most. Guided by Evan’s strange intuition, they flee her small Louisiana town, running from police and criminals alike, and Jo begins to suspect there is something more to his sudden return than he admits.
Over twelve days across America’s heartland, deep secrets come to light, buried pasts are unearthed, and the line between dreams and reality is blurred as Evan and Jo fight to hold on to their soul-deep love, and discover that there is more than one way to save a life.
How to Save a Life is a complete second-chance STANDALONE novel with some shades of the paranormal. It carries the characters from high school through to their early twenties. It is not YA; mature subject matter and sexual situations. For readers 18 years and up.
preorder link: http://amzn.to/1Jsb9OJ
And I am giving away a brand new Kindle Fire as part of the cover reveal!
Enter here: http://bit.ly/1JALOC5
Excerpt: “I didn’t do that so I could get something in exchange. You don’t owe me anything. That’s not how this works.”
“How what works?” I asked in a small voice.
“Us.”
I felt shy and unsure and completely exposed. More than even when he was between my thighs, kissing me to oblivion and back again.
"So this is us?" I asked.
“Yeah,” Evan said, cupping my jaw. He swallowed hard. “This is us.”
I felt something break open in me. I wanted to cry. I laughed instead, and threw my arms around his neck, driving us both under the surface. I kissed him and tasted myself on his lips, and his own sweetness before the chlorine water washed it away.
We came up laughing and sputtering, my hair in my eyes. Evan raised both hands and brushed the long, dark locks from my face…and from my scar. I held still, letting him do this, letting him see me, and he smiled.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, and kissed me long and hard, and I sighed into that kiss, into his body, into him. I wasn’t beautiful, not anymore, but it was still nice to hear.
“I know you don’t believe me,” Evan said, his words echoing my thoughts with uncanny precision. “But it’s true.”
I felt myself turn rigid, ready to pull away, but Evan wouldn’t let me. His arms slipped under mine and around my back, drawing me toward him. He raised one hand to my scar, his fingers soft and gentle, and warm over the lightning crack that marred my cheek.
“The Grand Canyon was carved by a river. It sliced through the rock, revealing layer upon layer of beauty, and a depth that couldn’t be seen until it was cut open. One little sliver of water…”
“Evan…”
“One little sliver.” He traced the ragged seam down to my chin. “The majesty of the Canyon is that depth; that beauty, buried for years, until the river cut it open, revealing everything.”
I felt tears sting my eyes and pressed my cheek into his hand. “Don’t,” I whispered. “I can’t take it.”
"It's okay, Jo." Evan smiled gently and pulled me to him. “It's okay.”
No, it wasn't okay, but he didn’t fight me or try to force it on me. Years of feeling ugly couldn’t be erased with a few poetic similes. But he was here in my arms and I was in his, and the way he looked at me…I could almost believe what he was saying was true, and that was good enough for me.
December 24, 2015
The Bedtime Story, a RUSH holiday short story
This story is dedicated to Priscilla Perez... Love you, lady!! xox
The Bedtime Story
New York City, Christmas EveNoah
I heard Charlotte step into the bathroom where I stood at one of the sinks, readying to brush my teeth. Her arms slipped around my waist and I felt the warmth of her cheek against my back. “She’s asleep?” I asked. “Finally,” Charlotte replied with a yawn. “And you’re not wearing a shirt.” Her hands trailed along the waistband of my flannel sleep pants, over my stomach, up and around my back, and over my scars. “It’s not fair that you get to look this sexy, and I’m still fat and lumpy.” “You’re not fat,” I said, holding her arms that held me. “You had a baby nine weeks ago. You’re perfect.” “Hmph.” She sighed against my back. “I’m sorry I’ve been so tired. Breast-feeding sucks, literally and figuratively.” I smiled. I knew she didn’t mean that. Not entirely. It had been hard—Lucienne seemed to wake up every two hours and wasn’t showing any signs of stretching that out. Charlotte had told me more than once how close she felt to the baby, and how she loved this time with her. She needed help, but eschewed it out of a sense of duty to the baby. I knew it wasn’t because she was worried I couldn’t handle it; she wouldn’t even let the part-time nanny my mother had insisted on hiring get up with Lucie either. But I also overheard Charlotte tell her own mother over the phone that the only thing she wanted for Christmas was a full night’s sleep. That had been a few weeks ago, and I’d formulated a plan that very day. Tonight was the night to put it into action. “The doc says you can give her a bottle now,” I said. “I know,” she sighed. “It just makes me nervous that it’ll wreck the breastfeeding.” “It won’t wreck it, baby. She’ll still want your boobs.” Charlotte giggled. “Is that the pediatric term for it?” “It’s my term for it. I want your boobs but for totally different reasons.” “Thank you for clarifying that,” she said with a laugh that I felt as a little gust of warm breath against my skin. “That’s why I’m here, actually. Can’t you tell I’m seducing you?” “Are you now?” “Yes. It’s been too long, and I’m always too tired, but not tonight.” She planted a kiss on my back, her hands roaming again. “Tonight I’m all yours. For about two hours anyway.” Her touch raised pleasurable goose bumps of anticipation up my back. I turned around and found her face with both hands to trail my fingers over her soft skin. “Charlotte, you look tired. You aretired. It’s okay. I’m not in any hurry.” “You’re not hearing me, Lake,” Charlotte said, and I could hear the smile in her voice. “I need to get laid. Tonight.” I felt her arms leave my waist, probably so she could plant them on her hips. “Unless you don’t find your lumpy wife attractive anymore—” I silenced her with a kiss; a real, deep, R-rated kiss that left her breathless. “Yes, that,” she breathed against my lips. “More of that. You make me forget I’m a tired new mother. You make me feel sexy.” “You are sexy,” I said, trailing my hands down her sides, feeling the curves of her breasts that were fuller now, her waist that felt softer now. “But I can wait…” “I can’t,” Charlotte said, and she slipped out of my arms, and out of the bathroom. “But hurry up,” she called. “The window closes quickly nowadays.” I shook my head, chuckling. God, I loved that woman. Before Lucie I had thought I couldn’t love Charlotte more; that I had reached some sort of tipping point, as infinite as it seemed. But after Lucie, another facet of Charlotte revealed itself and I fell even deeper in love with her as the mother of my child. I felt around the counter for my toothbrush and toothpaste, and finished the job quickly. My plan was still on—a Christmas present to Charlotte I’d been preparing for weeks—but making love to her first was a nice surprise for me. To say the least. But when I stepped back into the bedroom, I heard the gentle sounds of my wife’s deep breathing. I grinned and climbed carefully into bed with her. She didn’t stir; she was out cold. I felt for the baby monitor I had moved to my side table earlier that day. Charlotte hadn’t noticed. It was on; a faint static-sound the only noise. For now. Softly, so as not to wake her, I kissed her shoulder. “Good night, Charlotte,” I whispered, and lay back to wait. ***
Like clockwork, Lucienne began to stir at what felt like two hours later. I snaked my hand out to shut off the baby monitor like it was an alarm clock and got out bed. I threw on a t-shirt and crept out of the room, remembering to step over the floorboard that creaked at the door. I paused, listening for sounds that Charlotte had woken up. Nothing. I pulled the door almost closed, and felt my way down the hallway to the baby’s room. At the door that was cracked ajar, I took a deep breath. “All right, Luce. Let’s do this.” I pushed open the door and made my way to the crib. Lucie was gurgling and cooing, and making all sorts of adorable-as-hell baby noises, but not crying. Not yet. “Hey, sweet pea,” I murmured over her. “You got me tonight, okay? We’re going to give Mom the night off. Whaddya say?” Lucie made a noise that I took to mean, “A-okay, father dearest,” and I reached in to lift her up. I cradled her head with her silken hair—Charlotte said it was dark like mine—and held her to my chest. Lucie smelled like what softness must smell like; and warmth, and everything pure and good in the world. A flush of intense love swept through me to mingle with my nervousness. As with everything else, my other senses were heightened without my sight, and holding Lucie…I could feel the fragility of her little bones, her little body. God, she was so small. I recalled the training Beatrice, the nanny, had given me, mentally preparing myself. “Can’t be too hard, right?” I murmured against my baby’s ear. “You’re hungry, I heat a bottle, you eat. Bada-bing, bada-boom.” It sounded so easy, especially for a guy who’d traipsed around Europe alone and migraine-ridden, but that journey seemed almost easy in comparison. Then, I’d had only myself to take care of. Being responsible for this tiny human—keeping her safe at any cost—was far more nerve-wracking. “We can do this,” I whispered. “Right, Luce? You hungry? Let’s go eat.” Except that Lucie’s diaper-clad butt under my hand felt much too heavy. Saturated. “That’s one soggy-ass diaper,” I said, and carefully—so carefully—laid Lucie down on the changing table. “That’s a little wrench in my plans, but I can handle it. But don’t tell your mom I said ass, okay? Our little secret.”Keeping one hand on her little belly, I felt around the shelf beneath for a diaper and the wipes. Lucie kicked both little legs and squeaked, and a jolt of panic shot through me. I sucked in a breath. “Whoa, let’s chill, sweet pea,” I said, feeling for the tiny buttons on her onesie, or whatever the hell her jammies were called. “Daddy’s a little bit freaked out as it is.” But Lucienne was the best baby on the entire goddamn planet. She had all of Charlotte’s patience and not a trace of my short fuse. Lucie settled down; I got her sodden diaper off, and replaced it with a dry one. “So far so good, right?” I said, cleaning her up. Thank god it was only pee. Thank god. I was about to close up the new diaper but stopped. “Oh shit, you need that powder stuff, right?” I felt around for the little bottle on the shelf beneath the changer. “No problem. We got this. And don’t tell your mom I said shit.”Charlotte was certain Lucie’s first word was going to be a swear word, and I sort of thought she might be right. I twisted the bottle of baby powder open and then wondered what the hell to do next. I wanted to put some in my palm to get the right amount, but I was afraid to take my hand off Lucie, even for a second. The changing table had rails and the baby was too little even to roll over, but even so. Taking care of her blind was an exercise in paranoia and caution. Since the accident, I’d felt helpless in my blindness too many times to count, but taking care of a newborn baby took it to a whole new level. I laid my elbow against Lucie’s leg so I could still feel her, and quickly shook some baby powder in my palm. It felt like enough so I brushed my hands over the appropriate area, and then started to close up the diaper. “Hey, we did it, girl,” I said, and felt for the buttons on her jammies. “Not bad…” Residual powder flew up my nose and I sneezed into my elbow. I flinched, waiting for Lucie to cry for having been scared, but she laughed instead. “Oh, you think that’s funny, eh?” I said. “You know what else is funny? That this damn outfit has buttons all the way down to your ankle.” I buttoned and rebuttoned as Lucie squirmed and kicked, trying to get them to pair up properly. The baby began to fuss just as I got it right—finally—and I cradled her carefully, and bounced her to keep her quiet. “Let’s not wake up your mom, okay, or else the jig is up.” Lucie seemed to like being held more than she enjoyed my attempts to button her damn jammies, because she quieted. I held her close again, inhaling. Babies are the best. Fact. “You’re being a real peach, Luce,” I said, “but I know if we don’t get that bottle soon, it’s all over. Am I right?” Slowly, I made my way out of her room that Charlotte assured me wasn’t all pink and princesses. It was pale green and yellow, and a lot of cream-colored paint on the wall. The furniture—rocker, dresser, etc—was all out of the way from the door but I moved in slow-motion, cradling Lucienne in one hand and following the wall to the door with the other. I’d walked with her before but it always felt like that relay game you play as a kid with an egg on a spoon, except that the egg is the most precious thing in the world, and dropping it was unthinkable. The stairs down to the second floor were worse. I’d been living in the townhouse for long enough that I could get around with something close to normal speed. I knew the layout in my mind and usually flew down the stairs. But stairs + baby + blindness= someone’s idea of hell. Or a bad joke. I cradled Lucie tightly in my right arm and gripped the railing in my left hand so hard the wood creaked. “Whose bright idea was it to put all the bedrooms on the third floor, Luce? Was it yours?” She made a noncommittal gurgle. We had the room on the first floor that used to be Charlotte’s back in the day and now was the guestroom. It would never be Lucie’s room. Hell would freeze over before Charlotte or I put our baby all the way down there, so far from us and right near the front door. My paranoia about taking Lucie down the stairs was the price I had to pay. But who was I kidding? I’d be paranoid no matter what. I made my way like a goddamn slug down to the second floor, and then across to the kitchen. On the way, I smelled the green of our Christmas tree. Charlotte liked to keep the lights on it at night for when she came down here to feed Lucie. She said she loved nothing more than a lit Christmas tree at night, and had done her best to describe it to me once we had it decorated. I imagined the tree lit and glowing, with light reflected softly on the bulbs and stars. My tension eased slightly…until I was confronted with the stove. Lucie was fidgeting, and making noises that sounded like a warm-up to a full-fledged scream-fest. I knew my lack of speed was already testing her baby patience to the extreme, but the hardest part had yet to come. I crossed to the fridge and felt around for the little bottle of milk Charlotte had pumped earlier that day. I grabbed it, then moved to the stove where I’d already set up a pot with water in it. Lucie began to fuss in earnest, and I put her up to my shoulder, bouncing, as I felt the Braille stickers on the stove to find the temp I wanted. I put the bottle in the pot and then waited. All that took a helluva lot longer than it should, and I was mentally wearing down already. I waited, jouncing Lucie lightly. I had no way of knowing if that water in the pot was getting warm, had become too hot, or was doing nothing at all. Lucie’s little cries started to gain some volume and I knew my time was up if I had a prayer of letting Charlotte sleep. I gingerly felt for the pot, expecting a fiery sting on my fingertips from the burner at any moment. I found the bottle, snatched it out of lukewarm water. That probably meant the milk was still cool, but I’d take my chances. “Dinner is served, sweet pea. I know a bottle isn’t the same as your mom’s boobs, but then what is? Am I right? Ha, bad joke. Don’t tell her I said that.”Teeth clenched, I made my way across the obstacle course of a living room. I had it mapped in my head and could navigate it easily alone, but when I reached the couch beside the Christmas tree with Lucie, I felt like I’d run a 10K. With a sigh of relief, I sank onto the couch and settled the baby in the crook of my arm. I gave her the bottle and to my eternal gratitude, she took it without complaint. “Holy shit, that was exhausting,” I muttered.Lucie made adorable little sighing noises as she ate, and I wondered if she were falling asleep or staring up at me with her bright eyes. Charlotte had been excited to report they were hazel, like mine. “You have my eyes, eh, Luce?” I said quietly. “What do you see right now? Or are you falling asleep? Or do you need a song….or a what’s it? A lullaby? I’m not one for singing. How about a story? Would you like a story?”My daughter made a little noise I took to mean, “A story would hit the spot, O father of mine.” Except that I wasn’t well versed on kids’ stories. I wracked my brain but all I could come up with was Humpty Dumpty, and a story about a dude falling down and cracking his damn head open wasn’t first on my list. But it did get me thinking about Charlotte, and how, after I’d fallen, she’d been there to put me back together again. More than that: she’d drawn me from the dark and into the light.I thought for a minute, organizing my thoughts, then quietly told my baby a story.
Once upon a time there was a mean old ogre who lived in a tall castle made entirely of stone. Every last bit of it was made of rock: hard and cold and uninviting. The ogre lived in the tallest tower and never came down, never talked to anyone, and never, EVER, opened the hundreds of black curtains that covered each and every window in that tower. The ogre lived alone, stewing in anger because, like his castle, he was turning to stone. Bit by bit, piece by piece, his flesh was hardening into rock, and he knew the day would come when he’d wake up and there’d be nothing left of him. Just an ugly old statue in an ugly old castle. One day, while a storm raged in the sky above, the ogre heard a knock down below, at the front gates of the castle. “Who in the world could that be?” the ogre wondered. People from the village came to visit him from time to time, but he always roared at them to Go Away, and they always did. “Go away!” he roared. “Please,” said a young woman’s voice from the other side of the heavy stone door. “I’m lost and it’s raining out. Might I shelter from the storm for a night? I’m so tired.”The ogre narrowed his ugly yellow eyes. Usually it only took one “Go away!” to send the villagers scurrying, but this girl was tenacious. “No!” the ogre yelled. “I said, go aw—”“How rude!” the girl retorted. “It won’t kill you to open the door for a night.” Her voice softened. “Please. Just for a bit. I’ve been journeying a long time and I’d like a little rest.”She had a pretty voice, this girl. The ogre opened the door a crack, and saw the most beautiful young woman he’d ever laid his ugly old eyes on. Her own blue eyes widened at the ogre’s ugliness but she didn’t turn away running and screaming like most villagers did. “One night,” the ogre grunted. “Then you go.” She nodded. “Thank you.” The girl stepped into the castle. “It’s so dark. Why are all the heavy curtains drawn?” “None of your business!” the ogre snapped, leading her along the stony corridors. “You have to earn your keep if you want to stay. What can you do?” “I used to sing,” said the girl, “but I lost my voice.” “Hmmph,” snarled the ogre. The halls of his castle were so quiet, echoing only with his footfalls and muttered curses. “If you want to stay here, you have to sing. Every day between three and five.” The girl frowned. “That’s very…specific. But I told you, I can’t sing. I used to quite prettily, but now when I open my mouth, no sound comes out.” “Try harder,” the ogre said. “You want to stay, you sing.” “You are ever so rude,” the girl said. “Hasn’t anyone ever taught you any manners?” “Sing,” the ogre said. “Or go. You’re choice.” “I’ll try tomorrow,” she said. “Tonight, I will rest.” The next day between three and five p.m. the girl began to sing. The ogre was back up to his room in the high tower, but he listened to her beautiful voice. The storm did not stop. The ogre did not make her go, and the girl did not leave. Not that first day, nor the next. Or the next. The girl sang and as she did, she merrily tore the curtains off the windows on the lower floors of the castle, letting in more and more sunshine every day. Up in his room, the ogre noticed that the stone was cracking and falling off his skin, revealing living flesh behind. And not his greenish ogre skin, but healthier, human skin. “What is happening to me?” the ogre wondered, while the girl sang and tore curtains down one after another, making her way up the many levels of the castle. Finally, one day, she reached the top. She tore a heavy skein of black material off a window in the hall, singing all the while. The ogre threw open the door to his chamber and he stood, facing the girl. He blinked in the light of day that hadn’t shone in his castle in years. She stared at him, and he at her. “Your singing is very beautiful,” the ogre said. “Is it?” she replied. “It’s been so long. I thought it was lost forever.” She cocked her head. “You are not the ugly monster I met the first night I came here.” “Aren’t I?” the ogre asked. “I can’t see myself.” “I see you,” said the singer. “I hear you,” said the ogre. The girl smiled and offered her hand. The ogre took it and followed her through is castle in which sunlight streamed in from every window. She led him outside, into the fresh air for the first time in years. “The storm is over,” the girl said. “Thank you for letting me stay.” “The storm is over,” the ogre said. “I don’t want you to leave.” And she didn’t, and they lived happily ever after. “The end,” I murmured to Lucienne. The bottle fell easily from her mouth and I knew she was sleeping. “What did you think of that one, Luce?” I smiled to myself. “Yeah, I kinda like it too.” Carefully, I lifted Lucie to my shoulder and patted her back. “Don’t barf on me, now,” I muttered. “I forgot a burp cloth. But hey, I think overall, we did pretty good, didn’t we, sweetpea?” My eyes felt heavy and the darkness I lived in became the dark of sleep.
***Charlotte
I bolted up right in bed, gasping and staring around the bedroom. Something was wrong. Totally wrong. Sunlight was streaming into the room from the window. How was that possible? It was ten at night when I’d put the moves on Noah… “And instead I fell asleep,” I muttered, shaking my head. Disappointment bit at me. Noah was so good; he didn’t complain an iota, but I missed the intimacy between us. Moreover, I needed it. But that didn’t change the fact that something was off. I felt good. Better than good. The dull haze of exhaustion that had hovered around me since Lucienne was born was gone. I felt sharp. I felt rested. I glanced at the alarm clock on the end table. Seven o’clock. “Nine hours,” I said, marveling. “I slept for nine hours.” I looked to the empty space on the bed beside me, and a slow smile spread over my face. God, he’s amazing. Beyond amazing. He’s the most incredible man I’ve ever known. I’d already had a similar thought a thousand times since I’d met Noah, but now that we had Lucie, his tenacity and courage only increased, impossible though that seemed. I threw off the covers to go find my family. They weren’t in Lucie’s room, so I headed downstairs. The sight that greeted me made my heart feel warm in my chest and tears came to my eyes. Noah was sitting up on the couch, his head thrown back, lost to sleep. In his arms, he clutched our daughter protectively. Her chubby little cheek was pillowed against his chest, her tiny hands balled into fists. On the coffee table was an almost-empty bottle of breast milk. I pressed my hand to my lips, shaking my head. My husband, my Noah…My heart felt heavy in the best possible way; full of love for him and our baby he held so protectively, even in sleep. I gently touched his shoulder. His eyes opened, unfocused and a little shadowed from weariness. “Charlotte?”“Hey, honey.” I sat beside him on the couch. “Long night?”Noah held Lucie closer, pressing his lips to her little forehead. “Nah,” he whispered. “We had a blast. She sleeping?”“It’s a Christmas miracle,” I said with a smile. “Or just you, working your magic. Let me take her and put her to bed, and then I want to put you to bed.” “Yes, please,” Noah said with a tired grin, then carefully handed the sleeping baby over to me. He touched Lucie’s face to find her cheek and then kissed her there. “Love you, sweet pea.”We went upstairs, Noah to our room, me to Lucie’s. I gave her a kiss and laid her down in her crib and she slept on, sighing softly. I turned to leave but closed my eyes instead. I tried to imagine taking her out of her crib, changing her diaper; just holding her safely as I navigated stairs and stoves, all in this darkness. “Your daddy is incredible,” I whispered to Lucie. “But I think you know that.”Back at our room, I stepped on the creaky floorboard and Noah, lying on the bed, raised his head and opened his eyes. “I thought you might be asleep,” I said. “Nope, but I have a greater appreciation of what you go through every night.”“By choice,” I said, lying down beside him, sharing a pillow. “I’ve got new-mom-itis. I’m tired as hell but I feel like I need to do everything.”“I know, babe,” Noah said. “You’re doing an amazing job.”“And so are you. How long have you been preparing for tonight?”Noah grinned. “Me? Prepare? Nah, I just wing it.” I didn’t smile back. I lay face to face with him and held his handsome face in my hands. “I’m sorry I didn’t let you help me. I trust you with our lives, you know that, right?” “I do, baby.” “Thank you for the sleep,” I said. “Thank you for you.” I kissed him then, deeply, savoring the taste and smell and closeness of him. Since the baby and before, these moments had been rare, and my body hadn’t been my own. Now, I pulled Noah over me, and the weight of him was exquisite. Our kisses turned harder, more needy, and we both worked to get the other naked. Skin to skin, I sighed, as Noah laid kisses down my neck, his hands roaming and exploring, and I did the same, getting reacquainted with his body that was the epitome of what masculine was to me: strong and hard and powerful, but warm too, and containing the heart of a truly good man. “I’ve missed this,” I whispered, my hands dancing up and down the smooth and scarred skin of his back. “Do I feel the same to you?” “No,” he breathed. “You’re more beautiful.” He propped himself on his arms over me, his hands in my hair. “You’re everything to me. God, Charlotte...I’ll never stop wanting you, loving you…” I arched my back slightly as we were joined, and then sighed at the perfect heaviness of him over me and inside me that felt so perfect and right. I held him close for a moment, my lips brushing his ear. “I love you, Noah.” I wanted to say more. I wanted to tell him everything I felt for him but it was impossible. There wasn’t enough music in the world for me to express what he was to me, and he couldn’t read it in my eyes. So I held him and kissed him, and gave myself up to him, calling my love to the surface, to my skin so he felt it in my touch, and I breathed it into the air for him to take, as we moved. The crescendo rose and fell, and our breaths followed after, and still I held him. Eventually, he raised his head from the crook of my neck, a smile gracing his lips. “If this is what happens when you’re rested, I’m going to get up with baby every night.” I laughed lightly. “Then you’ll be the zombie. Let’s share. I think Lucienne would prefer that.” I brushed the hair from his beautiful eyes. “Thank you for my Christmas present.” The baby monitor chirped; Lucie woke and began to coo. “And for this life,” I said. “For all of it.” Noah lowered his lips to mine. “Merry Christmas, baby.” “Merry Christmas, Noah.” On the monitor, Lucie squawked impatiently, and we laughed, and rose to get her, together.
End
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all. I hope 2016 brings you love, happiness, and joy to last the year and beyond. You guys have given me more than I can ever repay, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Love, Emma xoxo
The Bedtime Story
New York City, Christmas EveNoah
I heard Charlotte step into the bathroom where I stood at one of the sinks, readying to brush my teeth. Her arms slipped around my waist and I felt the warmth of her cheek against my back. “She’s asleep?” I asked. “Finally,” Charlotte replied with a yawn. “And you’re not wearing a shirt.” Her hands trailed along the waistband of my flannel sleep pants, over my stomach, up and around my back, and over my scars. “It’s not fair that you get to look this sexy, and I’m still fat and lumpy.” “You’re not fat,” I said, holding her arms that held me. “You had a baby nine weeks ago. You’re perfect.” “Hmph.” She sighed against my back. “I’m sorry I’ve been so tired. Breast-feeding sucks, literally and figuratively.” I smiled. I knew she didn’t mean that. Not entirely. It had been hard—Lucienne seemed to wake up every two hours and wasn’t showing any signs of stretching that out. Charlotte had told me more than once how close she felt to the baby, and how she loved this time with her. She needed help, but eschewed it out of a sense of duty to the baby. I knew it wasn’t because she was worried I couldn’t handle it; she wouldn’t even let the part-time nanny my mother had insisted on hiring get up with Lucie either. But I also overheard Charlotte tell her own mother over the phone that the only thing she wanted for Christmas was a full night’s sleep. That had been a few weeks ago, and I’d formulated a plan that very day. Tonight was the night to put it into action. “The doc says you can give her a bottle now,” I said. “I know,” she sighed. “It just makes me nervous that it’ll wreck the breastfeeding.” “It won’t wreck it, baby. She’ll still want your boobs.” Charlotte giggled. “Is that the pediatric term for it?” “It’s my term for it. I want your boobs but for totally different reasons.” “Thank you for clarifying that,” she said with a laugh that I felt as a little gust of warm breath against my skin. “That’s why I’m here, actually. Can’t you tell I’m seducing you?” “Are you now?” “Yes. It’s been too long, and I’m always too tired, but not tonight.” She planted a kiss on my back, her hands roaming again. “Tonight I’m all yours. For about two hours anyway.” Her touch raised pleasurable goose bumps of anticipation up my back. I turned around and found her face with both hands to trail my fingers over her soft skin. “Charlotte, you look tired. You aretired. It’s okay. I’m not in any hurry.” “You’re not hearing me, Lake,” Charlotte said, and I could hear the smile in her voice. “I need to get laid. Tonight.” I felt her arms leave my waist, probably so she could plant them on her hips. “Unless you don’t find your lumpy wife attractive anymore—” I silenced her with a kiss; a real, deep, R-rated kiss that left her breathless. “Yes, that,” she breathed against my lips. “More of that. You make me forget I’m a tired new mother. You make me feel sexy.” “You are sexy,” I said, trailing my hands down her sides, feeling the curves of her breasts that were fuller now, her waist that felt softer now. “But I can wait…” “I can’t,” Charlotte said, and she slipped out of my arms, and out of the bathroom. “But hurry up,” she called. “The window closes quickly nowadays.” I shook my head, chuckling. God, I loved that woman. Before Lucie I had thought I couldn’t love Charlotte more; that I had reached some sort of tipping point, as infinite as it seemed. But after Lucie, another facet of Charlotte revealed itself and I fell even deeper in love with her as the mother of my child. I felt around the counter for my toothbrush and toothpaste, and finished the job quickly. My plan was still on—a Christmas present to Charlotte I’d been preparing for weeks—but making love to her first was a nice surprise for me. To say the least. But when I stepped back into the bedroom, I heard the gentle sounds of my wife’s deep breathing. I grinned and climbed carefully into bed with her. She didn’t stir; she was out cold. I felt for the baby monitor I had moved to my side table earlier that day. Charlotte hadn’t noticed. It was on; a faint static-sound the only noise. For now. Softly, so as not to wake her, I kissed her shoulder. “Good night, Charlotte,” I whispered, and lay back to wait. ***
Like clockwork, Lucienne began to stir at what felt like two hours later. I snaked my hand out to shut off the baby monitor like it was an alarm clock and got out bed. I threw on a t-shirt and crept out of the room, remembering to step over the floorboard that creaked at the door. I paused, listening for sounds that Charlotte had woken up. Nothing. I pulled the door almost closed, and felt my way down the hallway to the baby’s room. At the door that was cracked ajar, I took a deep breath. “All right, Luce. Let’s do this.” I pushed open the door and made my way to the crib. Lucie was gurgling and cooing, and making all sorts of adorable-as-hell baby noises, but not crying. Not yet. “Hey, sweet pea,” I murmured over her. “You got me tonight, okay? We’re going to give Mom the night off. Whaddya say?” Lucie made a noise that I took to mean, “A-okay, father dearest,” and I reached in to lift her up. I cradled her head with her silken hair—Charlotte said it was dark like mine—and held her to my chest. Lucie smelled like what softness must smell like; and warmth, and everything pure and good in the world. A flush of intense love swept through me to mingle with my nervousness. As with everything else, my other senses were heightened without my sight, and holding Lucie…I could feel the fragility of her little bones, her little body. God, she was so small. I recalled the training Beatrice, the nanny, had given me, mentally preparing myself. “Can’t be too hard, right?” I murmured against my baby’s ear. “You’re hungry, I heat a bottle, you eat. Bada-bing, bada-boom.” It sounded so easy, especially for a guy who’d traipsed around Europe alone and migraine-ridden, but that journey seemed almost easy in comparison. Then, I’d had only myself to take care of. Being responsible for this tiny human—keeping her safe at any cost—was far more nerve-wracking. “We can do this,” I whispered. “Right, Luce? You hungry? Let’s go eat.” Except that Lucie’s diaper-clad butt under my hand felt much too heavy. Saturated. “That’s one soggy-ass diaper,” I said, and carefully—so carefully—laid Lucie down on the changing table. “That’s a little wrench in my plans, but I can handle it. But don’t tell your mom I said ass, okay? Our little secret.”Keeping one hand on her little belly, I felt around the shelf beneath for a diaper and the wipes. Lucie kicked both little legs and squeaked, and a jolt of panic shot through me. I sucked in a breath. “Whoa, let’s chill, sweet pea,” I said, feeling for the tiny buttons on her onesie, or whatever the hell her jammies were called. “Daddy’s a little bit freaked out as it is.” But Lucienne was the best baby on the entire goddamn planet. She had all of Charlotte’s patience and not a trace of my short fuse. Lucie settled down; I got her sodden diaper off, and replaced it with a dry one. “So far so good, right?” I said, cleaning her up. Thank god it was only pee. Thank god. I was about to close up the new diaper but stopped. “Oh shit, you need that powder stuff, right?” I felt around for the little bottle on the shelf beneath the changer. “No problem. We got this. And don’t tell your mom I said shit.”Charlotte was certain Lucie’s first word was going to be a swear word, and I sort of thought she might be right. I twisted the bottle of baby powder open and then wondered what the hell to do next. I wanted to put some in my palm to get the right amount, but I was afraid to take my hand off Lucie, even for a second. The changing table had rails and the baby was too little even to roll over, but even so. Taking care of her blind was an exercise in paranoia and caution. Since the accident, I’d felt helpless in my blindness too many times to count, but taking care of a newborn baby took it to a whole new level. I laid my elbow against Lucie’s leg so I could still feel her, and quickly shook some baby powder in my palm. It felt like enough so I brushed my hands over the appropriate area, and then started to close up the diaper. “Hey, we did it, girl,” I said, and felt for the buttons on her jammies. “Not bad…” Residual powder flew up my nose and I sneezed into my elbow. I flinched, waiting for Lucie to cry for having been scared, but she laughed instead. “Oh, you think that’s funny, eh?” I said. “You know what else is funny? That this damn outfit has buttons all the way down to your ankle.” I buttoned and rebuttoned as Lucie squirmed and kicked, trying to get them to pair up properly. The baby began to fuss just as I got it right—finally—and I cradled her carefully, and bounced her to keep her quiet. “Let’s not wake up your mom, okay, or else the jig is up.” Lucie seemed to like being held more than she enjoyed my attempts to button her damn jammies, because she quieted. I held her close again, inhaling. Babies are the best. Fact. “You’re being a real peach, Luce,” I said, “but I know if we don’t get that bottle soon, it’s all over. Am I right?” Slowly, I made my way out of her room that Charlotte assured me wasn’t all pink and princesses. It was pale green and yellow, and a lot of cream-colored paint on the wall. The furniture—rocker, dresser, etc—was all out of the way from the door but I moved in slow-motion, cradling Lucienne in one hand and following the wall to the door with the other. I’d walked with her before but it always felt like that relay game you play as a kid with an egg on a spoon, except that the egg is the most precious thing in the world, and dropping it was unthinkable. The stairs down to the second floor were worse. I’d been living in the townhouse for long enough that I could get around with something close to normal speed. I knew the layout in my mind and usually flew down the stairs. But stairs + baby + blindness= someone’s idea of hell. Or a bad joke. I cradled Lucie tightly in my right arm and gripped the railing in my left hand so hard the wood creaked. “Whose bright idea was it to put all the bedrooms on the third floor, Luce? Was it yours?” She made a noncommittal gurgle. We had the room on the first floor that used to be Charlotte’s back in the day and now was the guestroom. It would never be Lucie’s room. Hell would freeze over before Charlotte or I put our baby all the way down there, so far from us and right near the front door. My paranoia about taking Lucie down the stairs was the price I had to pay. But who was I kidding? I’d be paranoid no matter what. I made my way like a goddamn slug down to the second floor, and then across to the kitchen. On the way, I smelled the green of our Christmas tree. Charlotte liked to keep the lights on it at night for when she came down here to feed Lucie. She said she loved nothing more than a lit Christmas tree at night, and had done her best to describe it to me once we had it decorated. I imagined the tree lit and glowing, with light reflected softly on the bulbs and stars. My tension eased slightly…until I was confronted with the stove. Lucie was fidgeting, and making noises that sounded like a warm-up to a full-fledged scream-fest. I knew my lack of speed was already testing her baby patience to the extreme, but the hardest part had yet to come. I crossed to the fridge and felt around for the little bottle of milk Charlotte had pumped earlier that day. I grabbed it, then moved to the stove where I’d already set up a pot with water in it. Lucie began to fuss in earnest, and I put her up to my shoulder, bouncing, as I felt the Braille stickers on the stove to find the temp I wanted. I put the bottle in the pot and then waited. All that took a helluva lot longer than it should, and I was mentally wearing down already. I waited, jouncing Lucie lightly. I had no way of knowing if that water in the pot was getting warm, had become too hot, or was doing nothing at all. Lucie’s little cries started to gain some volume and I knew my time was up if I had a prayer of letting Charlotte sleep. I gingerly felt for the pot, expecting a fiery sting on my fingertips from the burner at any moment. I found the bottle, snatched it out of lukewarm water. That probably meant the milk was still cool, but I’d take my chances. “Dinner is served, sweet pea. I know a bottle isn’t the same as your mom’s boobs, but then what is? Am I right? Ha, bad joke. Don’t tell her I said that.”Teeth clenched, I made my way across the obstacle course of a living room. I had it mapped in my head and could navigate it easily alone, but when I reached the couch beside the Christmas tree with Lucie, I felt like I’d run a 10K. With a sigh of relief, I sank onto the couch and settled the baby in the crook of my arm. I gave her the bottle and to my eternal gratitude, she took it without complaint. “Holy shit, that was exhausting,” I muttered.Lucie made adorable little sighing noises as she ate, and I wondered if she were falling asleep or staring up at me with her bright eyes. Charlotte had been excited to report they were hazel, like mine. “You have my eyes, eh, Luce?” I said quietly. “What do you see right now? Or are you falling asleep? Or do you need a song….or a what’s it? A lullaby? I’m not one for singing. How about a story? Would you like a story?”My daughter made a little noise I took to mean, “A story would hit the spot, O father of mine.” Except that I wasn’t well versed on kids’ stories. I wracked my brain but all I could come up with was Humpty Dumpty, and a story about a dude falling down and cracking his damn head open wasn’t first on my list. But it did get me thinking about Charlotte, and how, after I’d fallen, she’d been there to put me back together again. More than that: she’d drawn me from the dark and into the light.I thought for a minute, organizing my thoughts, then quietly told my baby a story.
Once upon a time there was a mean old ogre who lived in a tall castle made entirely of stone. Every last bit of it was made of rock: hard and cold and uninviting. The ogre lived in the tallest tower and never came down, never talked to anyone, and never, EVER, opened the hundreds of black curtains that covered each and every window in that tower. The ogre lived alone, stewing in anger because, like his castle, he was turning to stone. Bit by bit, piece by piece, his flesh was hardening into rock, and he knew the day would come when he’d wake up and there’d be nothing left of him. Just an ugly old statue in an ugly old castle. One day, while a storm raged in the sky above, the ogre heard a knock down below, at the front gates of the castle. “Who in the world could that be?” the ogre wondered. People from the village came to visit him from time to time, but he always roared at them to Go Away, and they always did. “Go away!” he roared. “Please,” said a young woman’s voice from the other side of the heavy stone door. “I’m lost and it’s raining out. Might I shelter from the storm for a night? I’m so tired.”The ogre narrowed his ugly yellow eyes. Usually it only took one “Go away!” to send the villagers scurrying, but this girl was tenacious. “No!” the ogre yelled. “I said, go aw—”“How rude!” the girl retorted. “It won’t kill you to open the door for a night.” Her voice softened. “Please. Just for a bit. I’ve been journeying a long time and I’d like a little rest.”She had a pretty voice, this girl. The ogre opened the door a crack, and saw the most beautiful young woman he’d ever laid his ugly old eyes on. Her own blue eyes widened at the ogre’s ugliness but she didn’t turn away running and screaming like most villagers did. “One night,” the ogre grunted. “Then you go.” She nodded. “Thank you.” The girl stepped into the castle. “It’s so dark. Why are all the heavy curtains drawn?” “None of your business!” the ogre snapped, leading her along the stony corridors. “You have to earn your keep if you want to stay. What can you do?” “I used to sing,” said the girl, “but I lost my voice.” “Hmmph,” snarled the ogre. The halls of his castle were so quiet, echoing only with his footfalls and muttered curses. “If you want to stay here, you have to sing. Every day between three and five.” The girl frowned. “That’s very…specific. But I told you, I can’t sing. I used to quite prettily, but now when I open my mouth, no sound comes out.” “Try harder,” the ogre said. “You want to stay, you sing.” “You are ever so rude,” the girl said. “Hasn’t anyone ever taught you any manners?” “Sing,” the ogre said. “Or go. You’re choice.” “I’ll try tomorrow,” she said. “Tonight, I will rest.” The next day between three and five p.m. the girl began to sing. The ogre was back up to his room in the high tower, but he listened to her beautiful voice. The storm did not stop. The ogre did not make her go, and the girl did not leave. Not that first day, nor the next. Or the next. The girl sang and as she did, she merrily tore the curtains off the windows on the lower floors of the castle, letting in more and more sunshine every day. Up in his room, the ogre noticed that the stone was cracking and falling off his skin, revealing living flesh behind. And not his greenish ogre skin, but healthier, human skin. “What is happening to me?” the ogre wondered, while the girl sang and tore curtains down one after another, making her way up the many levels of the castle. Finally, one day, she reached the top. She tore a heavy skein of black material off a window in the hall, singing all the while. The ogre threw open the door to his chamber and he stood, facing the girl. He blinked in the light of day that hadn’t shone in his castle in years. She stared at him, and he at her. “Your singing is very beautiful,” the ogre said. “Is it?” she replied. “It’s been so long. I thought it was lost forever.” She cocked her head. “You are not the ugly monster I met the first night I came here.” “Aren’t I?” the ogre asked. “I can’t see myself.” “I see you,” said the singer. “I hear you,” said the ogre. The girl smiled and offered her hand. The ogre took it and followed her through is castle in which sunlight streamed in from every window. She led him outside, into the fresh air for the first time in years. “The storm is over,” the girl said. “Thank you for letting me stay.” “The storm is over,” the ogre said. “I don’t want you to leave.” And she didn’t, and they lived happily ever after. “The end,” I murmured to Lucienne. The bottle fell easily from her mouth and I knew she was sleeping. “What did you think of that one, Luce?” I smiled to myself. “Yeah, I kinda like it too.” Carefully, I lifted Lucie to my shoulder and patted her back. “Don’t barf on me, now,” I muttered. “I forgot a burp cloth. But hey, I think overall, we did pretty good, didn’t we, sweetpea?” My eyes felt heavy and the darkness I lived in became the dark of sleep.
***Charlotte
I bolted up right in bed, gasping and staring around the bedroom. Something was wrong. Totally wrong. Sunlight was streaming into the room from the window. How was that possible? It was ten at night when I’d put the moves on Noah… “And instead I fell asleep,” I muttered, shaking my head. Disappointment bit at me. Noah was so good; he didn’t complain an iota, but I missed the intimacy between us. Moreover, I needed it. But that didn’t change the fact that something was off. I felt good. Better than good. The dull haze of exhaustion that had hovered around me since Lucienne was born was gone. I felt sharp. I felt rested. I glanced at the alarm clock on the end table. Seven o’clock. “Nine hours,” I said, marveling. “I slept for nine hours.” I looked to the empty space on the bed beside me, and a slow smile spread over my face. God, he’s amazing. Beyond amazing. He’s the most incredible man I’ve ever known. I’d already had a similar thought a thousand times since I’d met Noah, but now that we had Lucie, his tenacity and courage only increased, impossible though that seemed. I threw off the covers to go find my family. They weren’t in Lucie’s room, so I headed downstairs. The sight that greeted me made my heart feel warm in my chest and tears came to my eyes. Noah was sitting up on the couch, his head thrown back, lost to sleep. In his arms, he clutched our daughter protectively. Her chubby little cheek was pillowed against his chest, her tiny hands balled into fists. On the coffee table was an almost-empty bottle of breast milk. I pressed my hand to my lips, shaking my head. My husband, my Noah…My heart felt heavy in the best possible way; full of love for him and our baby he held so protectively, even in sleep. I gently touched his shoulder. His eyes opened, unfocused and a little shadowed from weariness. “Charlotte?”“Hey, honey.” I sat beside him on the couch. “Long night?”Noah held Lucie closer, pressing his lips to her little forehead. “Nah,” he whispered. “We had a blast. She sleeping?”“It’s a Christmas miracle,” I said with a smile. “Or just you, working your magic. Let me take her and put her to bed, and then I want to put you to bed.” “Yes, please,” Noah said with a tired grin, then carefully handed the sleeping baby over to me. He touched Lucie’s face to find her cheek and then kissed her there. “Love you, sweet pea.”We went upstairs, Noah to our room, me to Lucie’s. I gave her a kiss and laid her down in her crib and she slept on, sighing softly. I turned to leave but closed my eyes instead. I tried to imagine taking her out of her crib, changing her diaper; just holding her safely as I navigated stairs and stoves, all in this darkness. “Your daddy is incredible,” I whispered to Lucie. “But I think you know that.”Back at our room, I stepped on the creaky floorboard and Noah, lying on the bed, raised his head and opened his eyes. “I thought you might be asleep,” I said. “Nope, but I have a greater appreciation of what you go through every night.”“By choice,” I said, lying down beside him, sharing a pillow. “I’ve got new-mom-itis. I’m tired as hell but I feel like I need to do everything.”“I know, babe,” Noah said. “You’re doing an amazing job.”“And so are you. How long have you been preparing for tonight?”Noah grinned. “Me? Prepare? Nah, I just wing it.” I didn’t smile back. I lay face to face with him and held his handsome face in my hands. “I’m sorry I didn’t let you help me. I trust you with our lives, you know that, right?” “I do, baby.” “Thank you for the sleep,” I said. “Thank you for you.” I kissed him then, deeply, savoring the taste and smell and closeness of him. Since the baby and before, these moments had been rare, and my body hadn’t been my own. Now, I pulled Noah over me, and the weight of him was exquisite. Our kisses turned harder, more needy, and we both worked to get the other naked. Skin to skin, I sighed, as Noah laid kisses down my neck, his hands roaming and exploring, and I did the same, getting reacquainted with his body that was the epitome of what masculine was to me: strong and hard and powerful, but warm too, and containing the heart of a truly good man. “I’ve missed this,” I whispered, my hands dancing up and down the smooth and scarred skin of his back. “Do I feel the same to you?” “No,” he breathed. “You’re more beautiful.” He propped himself on his arms over me, his hands in my hair. “You’re everything to me. God, Charlotte...I’ll never stop wanting you, loving you…” I arched my back slightly as we were joined, and then sighed at the perfect heaviness of him over me and inside me that felt so perfect and right. I held him close for a moment, my lips brushing his ear. “I love you, Noah.” I wanted to say more. I wanted to tell him everything I felt for him but it was impossible. There wasn’t enough music in the world for me to express what he was to me, and he couldn’t read it in my eyes. So I held him and kissed him, and gave myself up to him, calling my love to the surface, to my skin so he felt it in my touch, and I breathed it into the air for him to take, as we moved. The crescendo rose and fell, and our breaths followed after, and still I held him. Eventually, he raised his head from the crook of my neck, a smile gracing his lips. “If this is what happens when you’re rested, I’m going to get up with baby every night.” I laughed lightly. “Then you’ll be the zombie. Let’s share. I think Lucienne would prefer that.” I brushed the hair from his beautiful eyes. “Thank you for my Christmas present.” The baby monitor chirped; Lucie woke and began to coo. “And for this life,” I said. “For all of it.” Noah lowered his lips to mine. “Merry Christmas, baby.” “Merry Christmas, Noah.” On the monitor, Lucie squawked impatiently, and we laughed, and rose to get her, together.
End
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all. I hope 2016 brings you love, happiness, and joy to last the year and beyond. You guys have given me more than I can ever repay, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Love, Emma xoxo
This story is dedicated to Priscilla Perez... Love you, l...
This story is dedicated to Priscilla Perez... Love you, lady!! xox
The Bedtime Story
New York City, Christmas EveNoah
I heard Charlotte step into the bathroom where I stood at one of the sinks, readying to brush my teeth. Her arms slipped around my waist and I felt the warmth of her cheek against my back. “She’s asleep?” I asked. “Finally,” Charlotte replied with a yawn. “And you’re not wearing a shirt.” Her hands trailed along the waistband of my flannel sleep pants, over my stomach, up and around my back, and over my scars. “It’s not fair that you get to look this sexy, and I’m still fat and lumpy.” “You’re not fat,” I said, holding her arms that held me. “You had a baby nine weeks ago. You’re perfect.” “Hmph.” She sighed against my back. “I’m sorry I’ve been so tired. Breast-feeding sucks, literally and figuratively.” I smiled. I knew she didn’t mean that. Not entirely. It had been hard—Lucienne seemed to wake up every two hours and wasn’t showing any signs of stretching that out. Charlotte had told me more than once how close she felt to the baby, and how she loved this time with her. She needed help, but eschewed it out of a sense of duty to the baby. I knew it wasn’t because she was worried I couldn’t handle it; she wouldn’t even let the part-time nanny my mother had insisted on hiring get up with Lucie either. But I also overheard Charlotte tell her own mother over the phone that the only thing she wanted for Christmas was a full night’s sleep. That had been a few weeks ago, and I’d formulated a plan that very day. Tonight was the night to put it into action. “The doc says you can give her a bottle now,” I said. “I know,” she sighed. “It just makes me nervous that it’ll wreck the breastfeeding.” “It won’t wreck it, baby. She’ll still want your boobs.” Charlotte giggled. “Is that the pediatric term for it?” “It’s my term for it. I want your boobs but for totally different reasons.” “Thank you for clarifying that,” she said with a laugh that I felt as a little gust of warm breath against my skin. “That’s why I’m here, actually. Can’t you tell I’m seducing you?” “Are you now?” “Yes. It’s been too long, and I’m always too tired, but not tonight.” She planted a kiss on my back, her hands roaming again. “Tonight I’m all yours. For about two hours anyway.” Her touch raised pleasurable goose bumps of anticipation up my back. I turned around and found her face with both hands to trail my fingers over her soft skin. “Charlotte, you look tired. You aretired. It’s okay. I’m not in any hurry.” “You’re not hearing me, Lake,” Charlotte said, and I could hear the smile in her voice. “I need to get laid. Tonight.” I felt her arms leave my waist, probably so she could plant them on her hips. “Unless you don’t find your lumpy wife attractive anymore—” I silenced her with a kiss; a real, deep, R-rated kiss that left her breathless. “Yes, that,” she breathed against my lips. “More of that. You make me forget I’m a tired new mother. You make me feel sexy.” “You are sexy,” I said, trailing my hands down her sides, feeling the curves of her breasts that were fuller now, her waist that felt softer now. “But I can wait…” “I can’t,” Charlotte said, and she slipped out of my arms, and out of the bathroom. “But hurry up,” she called. “The window closes quickly nowadays.” I shook my head, chuckling. God, I loved that woman. Before Lucie I had thought I couldn’t love Charlotte more; that I had reached some sort of tipping point, as infinite as it seemed. But after Lucie, another facet of Charlotte revealed itself and I fell even deeper in love with her as the mother of my child. I felt around the counter for my toothbrush and toothpaste, and finished the job quickly. My plan was still on—a Christmas present to Charlotte I’d been preparing for weeks—but making love to her first was a nice surprise for me. To say the least. But when I stepped back into the bedroom, I heard the gentle sounds of my wife’s deep breathing. I grinned and climbed carefully into bed with her. She didn’t stir; she was out cold. I felt for the baby monitor I had moved to my side table earlier that day. Charlotte hadn’t noticed. It was on; a faint static-sound the only noise. For now. Softly, so as not to wake her, I kissed her shoulder. “Good night, Charlotte,” I whispered, and lay back to wait. ***
Like clockwork, Lucienne began to stir at what felt like two hours later. I snaked my hand out to shut off the baby monitor like it was an alarm clock and got out bed. I threw on a t-shirt and crept out of the room, remembering to step over the floorboard that creaked at the door. I paused, listening for sounds that Charlotte had woken up. Nothing. I pulled the door almost closed, and felt my way down the hallway to the baby’s room. At the door that was cracked ajar, I took a deep breath. “All right, Luce. Let’s do this.” I pushed open the door and made my way to the crib. Lucie was gurgling and cooing, and making all sorts of adorable-as-hell baby noises, but not crying. Not yet. “Hey, sweet pea,” I murmured over her. “You got me tonight, okay? We’re going to give Mom the night off. Whaddya say?” Lucie made a noise that I took to mean, “A-okay, father dearest,” and I reached in to lift her up. I cradled her head with her silken hair—Charlotte said it was dark like mine—and held her to my chest. Lucie smelled like what softness must smell like; and warmth, and everything pure and good in the world. A flush of intense love swept through me to mingle with my nervousness. As with everything else, my other senses were heightened without my sight, and holding Lucie…I could feel the fragility of her little bones, her little body. God, she was so small. I recalled the training Beatrice, the nanny, had given me, mentally preparing myself. “Can’t be too hard, right?” I murmured against my baby’s ear. “You’re hungry, I heat a bottle, you eat. Bada-bing, bada-boom.” It sounded so easy, especially for a guy who’d traipsed around Europe alone and migraine-ridden, but that journey seemed almost easy in comparison. Then, I’d had only myself to take care of. Being responsible for this tiny human—keeping her safe at any cost—was far more nerve-wracking. “We can do this,” I whispered. “Right, Luce? You hungry? Let’s go eat.” Except that Lucie’s diaper-clad butt under my hand felt much too heavy. Saturated. “That’s one soggy-ass diaper,” I said, and carefully—so carefully—laid Lucie down on the changing table. “That’s a little wrench in my plans, but I can handle it. But don’t tell your mom I said ass, okay? Our little secret.”Keeping one hand on her little belly, I felt around the shelf beneath for a diaper and the wipes. Lucie kicked both little legs and squeaked, and a jolt of panic shot through me. I sucked in a breath. “Whoa, let’s chill, sweet pea,” I said, feeling for the tiny buttons on her onesie, or whatever the hell her jammies were called. “Daddy’s a little bit freaked out as it is.” But Lucienne was the best baby on the entire goddamn planet. She had all of Charlotte’s patience and not a trace of my short fuse. Lucie settled down; I got her sodden diaper off, and replaced it with a dry one. “So far so good, right?” I said, cleaning her up. Thank god it was only pee. Thank god. I was about to close up the new diaper but stopped. “Oh shit, you need that powder stuff, right?” I felt around for the little bottle on the shelf beneath the changer. “No problem. We got this. And don’t tell your mom I said shit.”Charlotte was certain Lucie’s first word was going to be a swear word, and I sort of thought she might be right. I twisted the bottle of baby powder open and then wondered what the hell to do next. I wanted to put some in my palm to get the right amount, but I was afraid to take my hand off Lucie, even for a second. The changing table had rails and the baby was too little even to roll over, but even so. Taking care of her blind was an exercise in paranoia and caution. Since the accident, I’d felt helpless in my blindness too many times to count, but taking care of a newborn baby took it to a whole new level. I laid my elbow against Lucie’s leg so I could still feel her, and quickly shook some baby powder in my palm. It felt like enough so I brushed my hands over the appropriate area, and then started to close up the diaper. “Hey, we did it, girl,” I said, and felt for the buttons on her jammies. “Not bad…” Residual powder flew up my nose and I sneezed into my elbow. I flinched, waiting for Lucie to cry for having been scared, but she laughed instead. “Oh, you think that’s funny, eh?” I said. “You know what else is funny? That this damn outfit has buttons all the way down to your ankle.” I buttoned and rebuttoned as Lucie squirmed and kicked, trying to get them to pair up properly. The baby began to fuss just as I got it right—finally—and I cradled her carefully, and bounced her to keep her quiet. “Let’s not wake up your mom, okay, or else the jig is up.” Lucie seemed to like being held more than she enjoyed my attempts to button her damn jammies, because she quieted. I held her close again, inhaling. Babies are the best. Fact. “You’re being a real peach, Luce,” I said, “but I know if we don’t get that bottle soon, it’s all over. Am I right?” Slowly, I made my way out of her room that Charlotte assured me wasn’t all pink and princesses. It was pale green and yellow, and a lot of cream-colored paint on the wall. The furniture—rocker, dresser, etc—was all out of the way from the door but I moved in slow-motion, cradling Lucienne in one hand and following the wall to the door with the other. I’d walked with her before but it always felt like that relay game you play as a kid with an egg on a spoon, except that the egg is the most precious thing in the world, and dropping it was unthinkable. The stairs down to the second floor were worse. I’d been living in the townhouse for long enough that I could get around with something close to normal speed. I knew the layout in my mind and usually flew down the stairs. But stairs + baby + blindness= someone’s idea of hell. Or a bad joke. I cradled Lucie tightly in my right arm and gripped the railing in my left hand so hard the wood creaked. “Whose bright idea was it to put all the bedrooms on the third floor, Luce? Was it yours?” She made a noncommittal gurgle. We had the room on the first floor that used to be Charlotte’s back in the day and now was the guestroom. It would never be Lucie’s room. Hell would freeze over before Charlotte or I put our baby all the way down there, so far from us and right near the front door. My paranoia about taking Lucie down the stairs was the price I had to pay. But who was I kidding? I’d be paranoid no matter what. I made my way like a goddamn slug down to the second floor, and then across to the kitchen. On the way, I smelled the green of our Christmas tree. Charlotte liked to keep the lights on it at night for when she came down here to feed Lucie. She said she loved nothing more than a lit Christmas tree at night, and had done her best to describe it to me once we had it decorated. I imagined the tree lit and glowing, with light reflected softly on the bulbs and stars. My tension eased slightly…until I was confronted with the stove. Lucie was fidgeting, and making noises that sounded like a warm-up to a full-fledged scream-fest. I knew my lack of speed was already testing her baby patience to the extreme, but the hardest part had yet to come. I crossed to the fridge and felt around for the little bottle of milk Charlotte had pumped earlier that day. I grabbed it, then moved to the stove where I’d already set up a pot with water in it. Lucie began to fuss in earnest, and I put her up to my shoulder, bouncing, as I felt the Braille stickers on the stove to find the temp I wanted. I put the bottle in the pot and then waited. All that took a helluva lot longer than it should, and I was mentally wearing down already. I waited, jouncing Lucie lightly. I had no way of knowing if that water in the pot was getting warm, had become too hot, or was doing nothing at all. Lucie’s little cries started to gain some volume and I knew my time was up if I had a prayer of letting Charlotte sleep. I gingerly felt for the pot, expecting a fiery sting on my fingertips from the burner at any moment. I found the bottle, snatched it out of lukewarm water. That probably meant the milk was still cool, but I’d take my chances. “Dinner is served, sweet pea. I know a bottle isn’t the same as your mom’s boobs, but then what is? Am I right? Ha, bad joke. Don’t tell her I said that.”Teeth clenched, I made my way across the obstacle course of a living room. I had it mapped in my head and could navigate it easily alone, but when I reached the couch beside the Christmas tree with Lucie, I felt like I’d run a 10K. With a sigh of relief, I sank onto the couch and settled the baby in the crook of my arm. I gave her the bottle and to my eternal gratitude, she took it without complaint. “Holy shit, that was exhausting,” I muttered.Lucie made adorable little sighing noises as she ate, and I wondered if she were falling asleep or staring up at me with her bright eyes. Charlotte had been excited to report they were hazel, like mine. “You have my eyes, eh, Luce?” I said quietly. “What do you see right now? Or are you falling asleep? Or do you need a song….or a what’s it? A lullaby? I’m not one for singing. How about a story? Would you like a story?”My daughter made a little noise I took to mean, “A story would hit the spot, O father of mine.” Except that I wasn’t well versed on kids’ stories. I wracked my brain but all I could come up with was Humpty Dumpty, and a story about a dude falling down and cracking his damn head open wasn’t first on my list. But it did get me thinking about Charlotte, and how, after I’d fallen, she’d been there to put me back together again. More than that: she’d drawn me from the dark and into the light.I thought for a minute, organizing my thoughts, then quietly told my baby a story.
Once upon a time there was a mean old ogre who lived in a tall castle made entirely of stone. Every last bit of it was made of rock: hard and cold and uninviting. The ogre lived in the tallest tower and never came down, never talked to anyone, and never, EVER, opened the hundreds of black curtains that covered each and every window in that tower. The ogre lived alone, stewing in anger because, like his castle, he was turning to stone. Bit by bit, piece by piece, his flesh was hardening into rock, and he knew the day would come when he’d wake up and there’d be nothing left of him. Just an ugly old statue in an ugly old castle. One day, while a storm raged in the sky above, the ogre heard a knock down below, at the front gates of the castle. “Who in the world could that be?” the ogre wondered. People from the village came to visit him from time to time, but he always roared at them to Go Away, and they always did. “Go away!” he roared. “Please,” said a young woman’s voice from the other side of the heavy stone door. “I’m lost and it’s raining out. Might I shelter from the storm for a night? I’m so tired.”The ogre narrowed his ugly yellow eyes. Usually it only took one “Go away!” to send the villagers scurrying, but this girl was tenacious. “No!” the ogre yelled. “I said, go aw—”“How rude!” the girl retorted. “It won’t kill you to open the door for a night.” Her voice softened. “Please. Just for a bit. I’ve been journeying a long time and I’d like a little rest.”She had a pretty voice, this girl. The ogre opened the door a crack, and saw the most beautiful young woman he’d ever laid his ugly old eyes on. Her own blue eyes widened at the ogre’s ugliness but she didn’t turn away running and screaming like most villagers did. “One night,” the ogre grunted. “Then you go.” She nodded. “Thank you.” The girl stepped into the castle. “It’s so dark. Why are all the heavy curtains drawn?” “None of your business!” the ogre snapped, leading her along the stony corridors. “You have to earn your keep if you want to stay. What can you do?” “I used to sing,” said the girl, “but I lost my voice.” “Hmmph,” snarled the ogre. The halls of his castle were so quiet, echoing only with his footfalls and muttered curses. “If you want to stay here, you have to sing. Every day between three and five.” The girl frowned. “That’s very…specific. But I told you, I can’t sing. I used to quite prettily, but now when I open my mouth, no sound comes out.” “Try harder,” the ogre said. “You want to stay, you sing.” “You are ever so rude,” the girl said. “Hasn’t anyone ever taught you any manners?” “Sing,” the ogre said. “Or go. You’re choice.” “I’ll try tomorrow,” she said. “Tonight, I will rest.” The next day between three and five p.m. the girl began to sing. The ogre was back up to his room in the high tower, but he listened to her beautiful voice. The storm did not stop. The ogre did not make her go, and the girl did not leave. Not that first day, nor the next. Or the next. The girl sang and as she did, she merrily tore the curtains off the windows on the lower floors of the castle, letting in more and more sunshine every day. Up in his room, the ogre noticed that the stone was cracking and falling off his skin, revealing living flesh behind. And not his greenish ogre skin, but healthier, human skin. “What is happening to me?” the ogre wondered, while the girl sang and tore curtains down one after another, making her way up the many levels of the castle. Finally, one day, she reached the top. She tore a heavy skein of black material off a window in the hall, singing all the while. The ogre threw open the door to his chamber and he stood, facing the girl. He blinked in the light of day that hadn’t shone in his castle in years. She stared at him, and he at her. “Your singing is very beautiful,” the ogre said. “Is it?” she replied. “It’s been so long. I thought it was lost forever.” She cocked her head. “You are not the ugly monster I met the first night I came here.” “Aren’t I?” the ogre asked. “I can’t see myself.” “I see you,” said the singer. “I hear you,” said the ogre. The girl smiled and offered her hand. The ogre took it and followed her through is castle in which sunlight streamed in from every window. She led him outside, into the fresh air for the first time in years. “The storm is over,” the girl said. “Thank you for letting me stay.” “The storm is over,” the ogre said. “I don’t want you to leave.” And she didn’t, and they lived happily ever after. “The end,” I murmured to Lucienne. The bottle fell easily from her mouth and I knew she was sleeping. “What did you think of that one, Luce?” I smiled to myself. “Yeah, I kinda like it too.” Carefully, I lifted Lucie to my shoulder and patted her back. “Don’t barf on me, now,” I muttered. “I forgot a burp cloth. But hey, I think overall, we did pretty good, didn’t we, sweetpea?” My eyes felt heavy and the darkness I lived in became the dark of sleep.
***Charlotte
I bolted up right in bed, gasping and staring around the bedroom. Something was wrong. Totally wrong. Sunlight was streaming into the room from the window. How was that possible? It was ten at night when I’d put the moves on Noah… “And instead I fell asleep,” I muttered, shaking my head. Disappointment bit at me. Noah was so good; he didn’t complain an iota, but I missed the intimacy between us. Moreover, I needed it. But that didn’t change the fact that something was off. I felt good. Better than good. The dull haze of exhaustion that had hovered around me since Lucienne was born was gone. I felt sharp. I felt rested. I glanced at the alarm clock on the end table. Seven o’clock. “Nine hours,” I said, marveling. “I slept for nine hours.” I looked to the empty space on the bed beside me, and a slow smile spread over my face. God, he’s amazing. Beyond amazing. He’s the most incredible man I’ve ever known. I’d already had a similar thought a thousand times since I’d met Noah, but now that we had Lucie, his tenacity and courage only increased, impossible though that seemed. I threw off the covers to go find my family. They weren’t in Lucie’s room, so I headed downstairs. The sight that greeted me made my heart feel warm in my chest and tears came to my eyes. Noah was sitting up on the couch, his head thrown back, lost to sleep. In his arms, he clutched our daughter protectively. Her chubby little cheek was pillowed against his chest, her tiny hands balled into fists. On the coffee table was an almost-empty bottle of breast milk. I pressed my hand to my lips, shaking my head. My husband, my Noah…My heart felt heavy in the best possible way; full of love for him and our baby he held so protectively, even in sleep. I gently touched his shoulder. His eyes opened, unfocused and a little shadowed from weariness. “Charlotte?”“Hey, honey.” I sat beside him on the couch. “Long night?”Noah held Lucie closer, pressing his lips to her little forehead. “Nah,” he whispered. “We had a blast. She sleeping?”“It’s a Christmas miracle,” I said with a smile. “Or just you, working your magic. Let me take her and put her to bed, and then I want to put you to bed.” “Yes, please,” Noah said with a tired grin, then carefully handed the sleeping baby over to me. He touched Lucie’s face to find her cheek and then kissed her there. “Love you, sweet pea.”We went upstairs, Noah to our room, me to Lucie’s. I gave her a kiss and laid her down in her crib and she slept on, sighing softly. I turned to leave but closed my eyes instead. I tried to imagine taking her out of her crib, changing her diaper; just holding her safely as I navigated stairs and stoves, all in this darkness. “Your daddy is incredible,” I whispered to Lucie. “But I think you know that.”Back at our room, I stepped on the creaky floorboard and Noah, lying on the bed, raised his head and opened his eyes. “I thought you might be asleep,” I said. “Nope, but I have a greater appreciation of what you go through every night.”“By choice,” I said, lying down beside him, sharing a pillow. “I’ve got new-mom-itis. I’m tired as hell but I feel like I need to do everything.”“I know, babe,” Noah said. “You’re doing an amazing job.”“And so are you. How long have you been preparing for tonight?”Noah grinned. “Me? Prepare? Nah, I just wing it.” I didn’t smile back. I lay face to face with him and held his handsome face in my hands. “I’m sorry I didn’t let you help me. I trust you with our lives, you know that, right?” “I do, baby.” “Thank you for the sleep,” I said. “Thank you for you.” I kissed him then, deeply, savoring the taste and smell and closeness of him. Since the baby and before, these moments had been rare, and my body hadn’t been my own. Now, I pulled Noah over me, and the weight of him was exquisite. Our kisses turned harder, more needy, and we both worked to get the other naked. Skin to skin, I sighed, as Noah laid kisses down my neck, his hands roaming and exploring, and I did the same, getting reacquainted with his body that was the epitome of what masculine was to me: strong and hard and powerful, but warm too, and containing the heart of a truly good man. “I’ve missed this,” I whispered, my hands dancing up and down the smooth and scarred skin of his back. “Do I feel the same to you?” “No,” he breathed. “You’re more beautiful.” He propped himself on his arms over me, his hands in my hair. “You’re everything to me. God, Charlotte...I’ll never stop wanting you, loving you…” I arched my back slightly as we were joined, and then sighed at the perfect heaviness of him over me and inside me that felt so perfect and right. I held him close for a moment, my lips brushing his ear. “I love you, Noah.” I wanted to say more. I wanted to tell him everything I felt for him but it was impossible. There wasn’t enough music in the world for me to express what he was to me, and he couldn’t read it in my eyes. So I held him and kissed him, and gave myself up to him, calling my love to the surface, to my skin so he felt it in my touch, and I breathed it into the air for him to take, as we moved. The crescendo rose and fell, and our breaths followed after, and still I held him. Eventually, he raised his head from the crook of my neck, a smile gracing his lips. “If this is what happens when you’re rested, I’m going to get up with baby every night.” I laughed lightly. “Then you’ll be the zombie. Let’s share. I think Lucienne would prefer that.” I brushed the hair from his beautiful eyes. “Thank you for my Christmas present.” The baby monitor chirped; Lucie woke and began to coo. “And for this life,” I said. “For all of it.” Noah lowered his lips to mine. “Merry Christmas, baby.” “Merry Christmas, Noah.” On the monitor, Lucie squawked impatiently, and we laughed, and rose to get her, together.
End
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all. I hope 2016 brings you love, happiness, and joy to last the year and beyond. You guys have given me more than I can ever repay, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Love, Emma xoxo
The Bedtime Story
New York City, Christmas EveNoah
I heard Charlotte step into the bathroom where I stood at one of the sinks, readying to brush my teeth. Her arms slipped around my waist and I felt the warmth of her cheek against my back. “She’s asleep?” I asked. “Finally,” Charlotte replied with a yawn. “And you’re not wearing a shirt.” Her hands trailed along the waistband of my flannel sleep pants, over my stomach, up and around my back, and over my scars. “It’s not fair that you get to look this sexy, and I’m still fat and lumpy.” “You’re not fat,” I said, holding her arms that held me. “You had a baby nine weeks ago. You’re perfect.” “Hmph.” She sighed against my back. “I’m sorry I’ve been so tired. Breast-feeding sucks, literally and figuratively.” I smiled. I knew she didn’t mean that. Not entirely. It had been hard—Lucienne seemed to wake up every two hours and wasn’t showing any signs of stretching that out. Charlotte had told me more than once how close she felt to the baby, and how she loved this time with her. She needed help, but eschewed it out of a sense of duty to the baby. I knew it wasn’t because she was worried I couldn’t handle it; she wouldn’t even let the part-time nanny my mother had insisted on hiring get up with Lucie either. But I also overheard Charlotte tell her own mother over the phone that the only thing she wanted for Christmas was a full night’s sleep. That had been a few weeks ago, and I’d formulated a plan that very day. Tonight was the night to put it into action. “The doc says you can give her a bottle now,” I said. “I know,” she sighed. “It just makes me nervous that it’ll wreck the breastfeeding.” “It won’t wreck it, baby. She’ll still want your boobs.” Charlotte giggled. “Is that the pediatric term for it?” “It’s my term for it. I want your boobs but for totally different reasons.” “Thank you for clarifying that,” she said with a laugh that I felt as a little gust of warm breath against my skin. “That’s why I’m here, actually. Can’t you tell I’m seducing you?” “Are you now?” “Yes. It’s been too long, and I’m always too tired, but not tonight.” She planted a kiss on my back, her hands roaming again. “Tonight I’m all yours. For about two hours anyway.” Her touch raised pleasurable goose bumps of anticipation up my back. I turned around and found her face with both hands to trail my fingers over her soft skin. “Charlotte, you look tired. You aretired. It’s okay. I’m not in any hurry.” “You’re not hearing me, Lake,” Charlotte said, and I could hear the smile in her voice. “I need to get laid. Tonight.” I felt her arms leave my waist, probably so she could plant them on her hips. “Unless you don’t find your lumpy wife attractive anymore—” I silenced her with a kiss; a real, deep, R-rated kiss that left her breathless. “Yes, that,” she breathed against my lips. “More of that. You make me forget I’m a tired new mother. You make me feel sexy.” “You are sexy,” I said, trailing my hands down her sides, feeling the curves of her breasts that were fuller now, her waist that felt softer now. “But I can wait…” “I can’t,” Charlotte said, and she slipped out of my arms, and out of the bathroom. “But hurry up,” she called. “The window closes quickly nowadays.” I shook my head, chuckling. God, I loved that woman. Before Lucie I had thought I couldn’t love Charlotte more; that I had reached some sort of tipping point, as infinite as it seemed. But after Lucie, another facet of Charlotte revealed itself and I fell even deeper in love with her as the mother of my child. I felt around the counter for my toothbrush and toothpaste, and finished the job quickly. My plan was still on—a Christmas present to Charlotte I’d been preparing for weeks—but making love to her first was a nice surprise for me. To say the least. But when I stepped back into the bedroom, I heard the gentle sounds of my wife’s deep breathing. I grinned and climbed carefully into bed with her. She didn’t stir; she was out cold. I felt for the baby monitor I had moved to my side table earlier that day. Charlotte hadn’t noticed. It was on; a faint static-sound the only noise. For now. Softly, so as not to wake her, I kissed her shoulder. “Good night, Charlotte,” I whispered, and lay back to wait. ***
Like clockwork, Lucienne began to stir at what felt like two hours later. I snaked my hand out to shut off the baby monitor like it was an alarm clock and got out bed. I threw on a t-shirt and crept out of the room, remembering to step over the floorboard that creaked at the door. I paused, listening for sounds that Charlotte had woken up. Nothing. I pulled the door almost closed, and felt my way down the hallway to the baby’s room. At the door that was cracked ajar, I took a deep breath. “All right, Luce. Let’s do this.” I pushed open the door and made my way to the crib. Lucie was gurgling and cooing, and making all sorts of adorable-as-hell baby noises, but not crying. Not yet. “Hey, sweet pea,” I murmured over her. “You got me tonight, okay? We’re going to give Mom the night off. Whaddya say?” Lucie made a noise that I took to mean, “A-okay, father dearest,” and I reached in to lift her up. I cradled her head with her silken hair—Charlotte said it was dark like mine—and held her to my chest. Lucie smelled like what softness must smell like; and warmth, and everything pure and good in the world. A flush of intense love swept through me to mingle with my nervousness. As with everything else, my other senses were heightened without my sight, and holding Lucie…I could feel the fragility of her little bones, her little body. God, she was so small. I recalled the training Beatrice, the nanny, had given me, mentally preparing myself. “Can’t be too hard, right?” I murmured against my baby’s ear. “You’re hungry, I heat a bottle, you eat. Bada-bing, bada-boom.” It sounded so easy, especially for a guy who’d traipsed around Europe alone and migraine-ridden, but that journey seemed almost easy in comparison. Then, I’d had only myself to take care of. Being responsible for this tiny human—keeping her safe at any cost—was far more nerve-wracking. “We can do this,” I whispered. “Right, Luce? You hungry? Let’s go eat.” Except that Lucie’s diaper-clad butt under my hand felt much too heavy. Saturated. “That’s one soggy-ass diaper,” I said, and carefully—so carefully—laid Lucie down on the changing table. “That’s a little wrench in my plans, but I can handle it. But don’t tell your mom I said ass, okay? Our little secret.”Keeping one hand on her little belly, I felt around the shelf beneath for a diaper and the wipes. Lucie kicked both little legs and squeaked, and a jolt of panic shot through me. I sucked in a breath. “Whoa, let’s chill, sweet pea,” I said, feeling for the tiny buttons on her onesie, or whatever the hell her jammies were called. “Daddy’s a little bit freaked out as it is.” But Lucienne was the best baby on the entire goddamn planet. She had all of Charlotte’s patience and not a trace of my short fuse. Lucie settled down; I got her sodden diaper off, and replaced it with a dry one. “So far so good, right?” I said, cleaning her up. Thank god it was only pee. Thank god. I was about to close up the new diaper but stopped. “Oh shit, you need that powder stuff, right?” I felt around for the little bottle on the shelf beneath the changer. “No problem. We got this. And don’t tell your mom I said shit.”Charlotte was certain Lucie’s first word was going to be a swear word, and I sort of thought she might be right. I twisted the bottle of baby powder open and then wondered what the hell to do next. I wanted to put some in my palm to get the right amount, but I was afraid to take my hand off Lucie, even for a second. The changing table had rails and the baby was too little even to roll over, but even so. Taking care of her blind was an exercise in paranoia and caution. Since the accident, I’d felt helpless in my blindness too many times to count, but taking care of a newborn baby took it to a whole new level. I laid my elbow against Lucie’s leg so I could still feel her, and quickly shook some baby powder in my palm. It felt like enough so I brushed my hands over the appropriate area, and then started to close up the diaper. “Hey, we did it, girl,” I said, and felt for the buttons on her jammies. “Not bad…” Residual powder flew up my nose and I sneezed into my elbow. I flinched, waiting for Lucie to cry for having been scared, but she laughed instead. “Oh, you think that’s funny, eh?” I said. “You know what else is funny? That this damn outfit has buttons all the way down to your ankle.” I buttoned and rebuttoned as Lucie squirmed and kicked, trying to get them to pair up properly. The baby began to fuss just as I got it right—finally—and I cradled her carefully, and bounced her to keep her quiet. “Let’s not wake up your mom, okay, or else the jig is up.” Lucie seemed to like being held more than she enjoyed my attempts to button her damn jammies, because she quieted. I held her close again, inhaling. Babies are the best. Fact. “You’re being a real peach, Luce,” I said, “but I know if we don’t get that bottle soon, it’s all over. Am I right?” Slowly, I made my way out of her room that Charlotte assured me wasn’t all pink and princesses. It was pale green and yellow, and a lot of cream-colored paint on the wall. The furniture—rocker, dresser, etc—was all out of the way from the door but I moved in slow-motion, cradling Lucienne in one hand and following the wall to the door with the other. I’d walked with her before but it always felt like that relay game you play as a kid with an egg on a spoon, except that the egg is the most precious thing in the world, and dropping it was unthinkable. The stairs down to the second floor were worse. I’d been living in the townhouse for long enough that I could get around with something close to normal speed. I knew the layout in my mind and usually flew down the stairs. But stairs + baby + blindness= someone’s idea of hell. Or a bad joke. I cradled Lucie tightly in my right arm and gripped the railing in my left hand so hard the wood creaked. “Whose bright idea was it to put all the bedrooms on the third floor, Luce? Was it yours?” She made a noncommittal gurgle. We had the room on the first floor that used to be Charlotte’s back in the day and now was the guestroom. It would never be Lucie’s room. Hell would freeze over before Charlotte or I put our baby all the way down there, so far from us and right near the front door. My paranoia about taking Lucie down the stairs was the price I had to pay. But who was I kidding? I’d be paranoid no matter what. I made my way like a goddamn slug down to the second floor, and then across to the kitchen. On the way, I smelled the green of our Christmas tree. Charlotte liked to keep the lights on it at night for when she came down here to feed Lucie. She said she loved nothing more than a lit Christmas tree at night, and had done her best to describe it to me once we had it decorated. I imagined the tree lit and glowing, with light reflected softly on the bulbs and stars. My tension eased slightly…until I was confronted with the stove. Lucie was fidgeting, and making noises that sounded like a warm-up to a full-fledged scream-fest. I knew my lack of speed was already testing her baby patience to the extreme, but the hardest part had yet to come. I crossed to the fridge and felt around for the little bottle of milk Charlotte had pumped earlier that day. I grabbed it, then moved to the stove where I’d already set up a pot with water in it. Lucie began to fuss in earnest, and I put her up to my shoulder, bouncing, as I felt the Braille stickers on the stove to find the temp I wanted. I put the bottle in the pot and then waited. All that took a helluva lot longer than it should, and I was mentally wearing down already. I waited, jouncing Lucie lightly. I had no way of knowing if that water in the pot was getting warm, had become too hot, or was doing nothing at all. Lucie’s little cries started to gain some volume and I knew my time was up if I had a prayer of letting Charlotte sleep. I gingerly felt for the pot, expecting a fiery sting on my fingertips from the burner at any moment. I found the bottle, snatched it out of lukewarm water. That probably meant the milk was still cool, but I’d take my chances. “Dinner is served, sweet pea. I know a bottle isn’t the same as your mom’s boobs, but then what is? Am I right? Ha, bad joke. Don’t tell her I said that.”Teeth clenched, I made my way across the obstacle course of a living room. I had it mapped in my head and could navigate it easily alone, but when I reached the couch beside the Christmas tree with Lucie, I felt like I’d run a 10K. With a sigh of relief, I sank onto the couch and settled the baby in the crook of my arm. I gave her the bottle and to my eternal gratitude, she took it without complaint. “Holy shit, that was exhausting,” I muttered.Lucie made adorable little sighing noises as she ate, and I wondered if she were falling asleep or staring up at me with her bright eyes. Charlotte had been excited to report they were hazel, like mine. “You have my eyes, eh, Luce?” I said quietly. “What do you see right now? Or are you falling asleep? Or do you need a song….or a what’s it? A lullaby? I’m not one for singing. How about a story? Would you like a story?”My daughter made a little noise I took to mean, “A story would hit the spot, O father of mine.” Except that I wasn’t well versed on kids’ stories. I wracked my brain but all I could come up with was Humpty Dumpty, and a story about a dude falling down and cracking his damn head open wasn’t first on my list. But it did get me thinking about Charlotte, and how, after I’d fallen, she’d been there to put me back together again. More than that: she’d drawn me from the dark and into the light.I thought for a minute, organizing my thoughts, then quietly told my baby a story.
Once upon a time there was a mean old ogre who lived in a tall castle made entirely of stone. Every last bit of it was made of rock: hard and cold and uninviting. The ogre lived in the tallest tower and never came down, never talked to anyone, and never, EVER, opened the hundreds of black curtains that covered each and every window in that tower. The ogre lived alone, stewing in anger because, like his castle, he was turning to stone. Bit by bit, piece by piece, his flesh was hardening into rock, and he knew the day would come when he’d wake up and there’d be nothing left of him. Just an ugly old statue in an ugly old castle. One day, while a storm raged in the sky above, the ogre heard a knock down below, at the front gates of the castle. “Who in the world could that be?” the ogre wondered. People from the village came to visit him from time to time, but he always roared at them to Go Away, and they always did. “Go away!” he roared. “Please,” said a young woman’s voice from the other side of the heavy stone door. “I’m lost and it’s raining out. Might I shelter from the storm for a night? I’m so tired.”The ogre narrowed his ugly yellow eyes. Usually it only took one “Go away!” to send the villagers scurrying, but this girl was tenacious. “No!” the ogre yelled. “I said, go aw—”“How rude!” the girl retorted. “It won’t kill you to open the door for a night.” Her voice softened. “Please. Just for a bit. I’ve been journeying a long time and I’d like a little rest.”She had a pretty voice, this girl. The ogre opened the door a crack, and saw the most beautiful young woman he’d ever laid his ugly old eyes on. Her own blue eyes widened at the ogre’s ugliness but she didn’t turn away running and screaming like most villagers did. “One night,” the ogre grunted. “Then you go.” She nodded. “Thank you.” The girl stepped into the castle. “It’s so dark. Why are all the heavy curtains drawn?” “None of your business!” the ogre snapped, leading her along the stony corridors. “You have to earn your keep if you want to stay. What can you do?” “I used to sing,” said the girl, “but I lost my voice.” “Hmmph,” snarled the ogre. The halls of his castle were so quiet, echoing only with his footfalls and muttered curses. “If you want to stay here, you have to sing. Every day between three and five.” The girl frowned. “That’s very…specific. But I told you, I can’t sing. I used to quite prettily, but now when I open my mouth, no sound comes out.” “Try harder,” the ogre said. “You want to stay, you sing.” “You are ever so rude,” the girl said. “Hasn’t anyone ever taught you any manners?” “Sing,” the ogre said. “Or go. You’re choice.” “I’ll try tomorrow,” she said. “Tonight, I will rest.” The next day between three and five p.m. the girl began to sing. The ogre was back up to his room in the high tower, but he listened to her beautiful voice. The storm did not stop. The ogre did not make her go, and the girl did not leave. Not that first day, nor the next. Or the next. The girl sang and as she did, she merrily tore the curtains off the windows on the lower floors of the castle, letting in more and more sunshine every day. Up in his room, the ogre noticed that the stone was cracking and falling off his skin, revealing living flesh behind. And not his greenish ogre skin, but healthier, human skin. “What is happening to me?” the ogre wondered, while the girl sang and tore curtains down one after another, making her way up the many levels of the castle. Finally, one day, she reached the top. She tore a heavy skein of black material off a window in the hall, singing all the while. The ogre threw open the door to his chamber and he stood, facing the girl. He blinked in the light of day that hadn’t shone in his castle in years. She stared at him, and he at her. “Your singing is very beautiful,” the ogre said. “Is it?” she replied. “It’s been so long. I thought it was lost forever.” She cocked her head. “You are not the ugly monster I met the first night I came here.” “Aren’t I?” the ogre asked. “I can’t see myself.” “I see you,” said the singer. “I hear you,” said the ogre. The girl smiled and offered her hand. The ogre took it and followed her through is castle in which sunlight streamed in from every window. She led him outside, into the fresh air for the first time in years. “The storm is over,” the girl said. “Thank you for letting me stay.” “The storm is over,” the ogre said. “I don’t want you to leave.” And she didn’t, and they lived happily ever after. “The end,” I murmured to Lucienne. The bottle fell easily from her mouth and I knew she was sleeping. “What did you think of that one, Luce?” I smiled to myself. “Yeah, I kinda like it too.” Carefully, I lifted Lucie to my shoulder and patted her back. “Don’t barf on me, now,” I muttered. “I forgot a burp cloth. But hey, I think overall, we did pretty good, didn’t we, sweetpea?” My eyes felt heavy and the darkness I lived in became the dark of sleep.
***Charlotte
I bolted up right in bed, gasping and staring around the bedroom. Something was wrong. Totally wrong. Sunlight was streaming into the room from the window. How was that possible? It was ten at night when I’d put the moves on Noah… “And instead I fell asleep,” I muttered, shaking my head. Disappointment bit at me. Noah was so good; he didn’t complain an iota, but I missed the intimacy between us. Moreover, I needed it. But that didn’t change the fact that something was off. I felt good. Better than good. The dull haze of exhaustion that had hovered around me since Lucienne was born was gone. I felt sharp. I felt rested. I glanced at the alarm clock on the end table. Seven o’clock. “Nine hours,” I said, marveling. “I slept for nine hours.” I looked to the empty space on the bed beside me, and a slow smile spread over my face. God, he’s amazing. Beyond amazing. He’s the most incredible man I’ve ever known. I’d already had a similar thought a thousand times since I’d met Noah, but now that we had Lucie, his tenacity and courage only increased, impossible though that seemed. I threw off the covers to go find my family. They weren’t in Lucie’s room, so I headed downstairs. The sight that greeted me made my heart feel warm in my chest and tears came to my eyes. Noah was sitting up on the couch, his head thrown back, lost to sleep. In his arms, he clutched our daughter protectively. Her chubby little cheek was pillowed against his chest, her tiny hands balled into fists. On the coffee table was an almost-empty bottle of breast milk. I pressed my hand to my lips, shaking my head. My husband, my Noah…My heart felt heavy in the best possible way; full of love for him and our baby he held so protectively, even in sleep. I gently touched his shoulder. His eyes opened, unfocused and a little shadowed from weariness. “Charlotte?”“Hey, honey.” I sat beside him on the couch. “Long night?”Noah held Lucie closer, pressing his lips to her little forehead. “Nah,” he whispered. “We had a blast. She sleeping?”“It’s a Christmas miracle,” I said with a smile. “Or just you, working your magic. Let me take her and put her to bed, and then I want to put you to bed.” “Yes, please,” Noah said with a tired grin, then carefully handed the sleeping baby over to me. He touched Lucie’s face to find her cheek and then kissed her there. “Love you, sweet pea.”We went upstairs, Noah to our room, me to Lucie’s. I gave her a kiss and laid her down in her crib and she slept on, sighing softly. I turned to leave but closed my eyes instead. I tried to imagine taking her out of her crib, changing her diaper; just holding her safely as I navigated stairs and stoves, all in this darkness. “Your daddy is incredible,” I whispered to Lucie. “But I think you know that.”Back at our room, I stepped on the creaky floorboard and Noah, lying on the bed, raised his head and opened his eyes. “I thought you might be asleep,” I said. “Nope, but I have a greater appreciation of what you go through every night.”“By choice,” I said, lying down beside him, sharing a pillow. “I’ve got new-mom-itis. I’m tired as hell but I feel like I need to do everything.”“I know, babe,” Noah said. “You’re doing an amazing job.”“And so are you. How long have you been preparing for tonight?”Noah grinned. “Me? Prepare? Nah, I just wing it.” I didn’t smile back. I lay face to face with him and held his handsome face in my hands. “I’m sorry I didn’t let you help me. I trust you with our lives, you know that, right?” “I do, baby.” “Thank you for the sleep,” I said. “Thank you for you.” I kissed him then, deeply, savoring the taste and smell and closeness of him. Since the baby and before, these moments had been rare, and my body hadn’t been my own. Now, I pulled Noah over me, and the weight of him was exquisite. Our kisses turned harder, more needy, and we both worked to get the other naked. Skin to skin, I sighed, as Noah laid kisses down my neck, his hands roaming and exploring, and I did the same, getting reacquainted with his body that was the epitome of what masculine was to me: strong and hard and powerful, but warm too, and containing the heart of a truly good man. “I’ve missed this,” I whispered, my hands dancing up and down the smooth and scarred skin of his back. “Do I feel the same to you?” “No,” he breathed. “You’re more beautiful.” He propped himself on his arms over me, his hands in my hair. “You’re everything to me. God, Charlotte...I’ll never stop wanting you, loving you…” I arched my back slightly as we were joined, and then sighed at the perfect heaviness of him over me and inside me that felt so perfect and right. I held him close for a moment, my lips brushing his ear. “I love you, Noah.” I wanted to say more. I wanted to tell him everything I felt for him but it was impossible. There wasn’t enough music in the world for me to express what he was to me, and he couldn’t read it in my eyes. So I held him and kissed him, and gave myself up to him, calling my love to the surface, to my skin so he felt it in my touch, and I breathed it into the air for him to take, as we moved. The crescendo rose and fell, and our breaths followed after, and still I held him. Eventually, he raised his head from the crook of my neck, a smile gracing his lips. “If this is what happens when you’re rested, I’m going to get up with baby every night.” I laughed lightly. “Then you’ll be the zombie. Let’s share. I think Lucienne would prefer that.” I brushed the hair from his beautiful eyes. “Thank you for my Christmas present.” The baby monitor chirped; Lucie woke and began to coo. “And for this life,” I said. “For all of it.” Noah lowered his lips to mine. “Merry Christmas, baby.” “Merry Christmas, Noah.” On the monitor, Lucie squawked impatiently, and we laughed, and rose to get her, together.
End
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all. I hope 2016 brings you love, happiness, and joy to last the year and beyond. You guys have given me more than I can ever repay, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Love, Emma xoxo
October 12, 2015
Snippet from Endless Possibility, releasing tonight!
Hey all,
Noah and Charlotte's story comes to a conclusion with Endless Possibility, and I thought I'd actually dust off this blog and post a final snippet for those who care to read without having it in their face on Facebook.
Enjoy!
http://amzn.to/1LlfgMo
Sometime later that morning, we finally put our clothes back on, and Charlotte made a call to Sabina Gessler, the director of the Vienna Touring Orchestra. “I don’t have to be back until later this evening,” Charlotte told me. “I want you to come with me and meet everyone before the concert. Sabina, and Herr Steckler, and—oh! Annalie! My best friend here. She is lovely. I told her all about you. Except that you’re blind. Funny, that never even occurred to me. I just don’t think of you that way first.”“Neither do I,” I said. “Not anymore.”Charlotte gasped. “Really? Oh, Noah...” I heard the bed creak as she stood on it and wrapped her arms around my neck. I breathed in the perfume of her skin. “That’s the best thing I’ve ever heard.”God, this woman. I pressed a kiss between her breasts, over her heart. That sound, her heart quickening its pulse under my touch…the best thing I’d ever heard. “We have one problem,” Charlotte said, slipping her arms down around my waist. “It’s nine a.m. and I’m wearing a fancy black velvet dress. The Walk of Shame imagery I have going on here is pretty epic.”“Hey, I’m in the same boat. How many buttons did you rip off my vest?”“Maybe one or two.”I arched a brow in her general direction.“Or all of them.” She giggled. “So what do we do?”“Let’s go back to my hotel…” I cocked my head. “Unless this is my hotel. Is this my hotel? Where are we?”Charlotte laughed again, a rich sound, and cupped my cheek. “Oh, Noah. You sound so…happy. But tired. You look tired, honey.”I held her hand. “I’m fine, baby. Really. Never better, now that I’m with you.”“You promise you’ll tell me what happened? I mean, all of it. Your whole trip?”I kissed her hands. “I promise. Right now, I need a shower. Or, more specifically, I need to get you in a shower. In my hotel room.”“You’re insatiable,” she laughed. “That doesn’t solve my current clothing predicament. You tore my underwear to shreds, mister.”“In my defense, a thong isn’t really underwear. It’s more of a torture device to drive men insane. And it worked.”“I love how it worked,” she purred, her lips brushing mine. “You have something for me to wear at your hotel?” “Leave it to me. I’ll take care of you, baby."“Mmm.” She rested her head against my chest. “I like the sound of that.”
Noah and Charlotte's story comes to a conclusion with Endless Possibility, and I thought I'd actually dust off this blog and post a final snippet for those who care to read without having it in their face on Facebook.
Enjoy!
http://amzn.to/1LlfgMo
Sometime later that morning, we finally put our clothes back on, and Charlotte made a call to Sabina Gessler, the director of the Vienna Touring Orchestra. “I don’t have to be back until later this evening,” Charlotte told me. “I want you to come with me and meet everyone before the concert. Sabina, and Herr Steckler, and—oh! Annalie! My best friend here. She is lovely. I told her all about you. Except that you’re blind. Funny, that never even occurred to me. I just don’t think of you that way first.”“Neither do I,” I said. “Not anymore.”Charlotte gasped. “Really? Oh, Noah...” I heard the bed creak as she stood on it and wrapped her arms around my neck. I breathed in the perfume of her skin. “That’s the best thing I’ve ever heard.”God, this woman. I pressed a kiss between her breasts, over her heart. That sound, her heart quickening its pulse under my touch…the best thing I’d ever heard. “We have one problem,” Charlotte said, slipping her arms down around my waist. “It’s nine a.m. and I’m wearing a fancy black velvet dress. The Walk of Shame imagery I have going on here is pretty epic.”“Hey, I’m in the same boat. How many buttons did you rip off my vest?”“Maybe one or two.”I arched a brow in her general direction.“Or all of them.” She giggled. “So what do we do?”“Let’s go back to my hotel…” I cocked my head. “Unless this is my hotel. Is this my hotel? Where are we?”Charlotte laughed again, a rich sound, and cupped my cheek. “Oh, Noah. You sound so…happy. But tired. You look tired, honey.”I held her hand. “I’m fine, baby. Really. Never better, now that I’m with you.”“You promise you’ll tell me what happened? I mean, all of it. Your whole trip?”I kissed her hands. “I promise. Right now, I need a shower. Or, more specifically, I need to get you in a shower. In my hotel room.”“You’re insatiable,” she laughed. “That doesn’t solve my current clothing predicament. You tore my underwear to shreds, mister.”“In my defense, a thong isn’t really underwear. It’s more of a torture device to drive men insane. And it worked.”“I love how it worked,” she purred, her lips brushing mine. “You have something for me to wear at your hotel?” “Leave it to me. I’ll take care of you, baby."“Mmm.” She rested her head against my chest. “I like the sound of that.”
August 10, 2015
Haha, funny story...Or, RUSH before Me Before You.
So, back in March of this year, I was working on RUSH, the third book in my series. It's about a blind recluse, who's bitter and angry at the world for his loss of vision, and who makes life a living hell for those around him. The entire idea came to me in a flash while running. (Some of you have heard this before, so just skip on down to FAST FORWARD for your abridged version).
I take a run most days, and I get in some good plot thinking, flashes of inspiration, and sometimes I unravel story lines as I jog along. But on this one particularly good run, I overheard (in my mind) a conversation. It was a young man--and he sounded bitter. He was giving a young woman a litany of job duties (and not being very nice about it.) Sounded like a job interview. So I listened in, eavesdropped. This man began to ask the girl questions. What do you look like? Hair color, eye color, etc, because he was blind--come to find out- and wanted to know what the "ghost who was to haunt his house" looked like. And he still wasn't being very nice about it, but this girl--god blesser--wasn't taking his guff.
And that, in a nutshell, was how RUSH was born. I ran home, typed up the echoes of that conversation, almost verbatim, and went from there.
FAST FORWARD to a month later, and RUSH is giving me the fits. I could NOT get around a certain stupid plot development I had tossed in there, and had not yet discovered that cutting it out completely was going to save my book. I was stuck trying to write around it and generally feeling shitty about the whole thing. To top it off, I stupidly set myself a crazy deadline by putting it on pre-order on Amazon, where the consequences of failure are swift and dire. Basically, I was in a funk and would go for days doing nothing more than ordering and reordering bits of dialogue, trying to get the stupid thing to gel.
I finally gave up and decided I needed to do some reading to refill my brain and get going again. I had heard a lot of good things about a book called Me Before You by a super-talented author named Jojo Moyes. So I decided to give that book a gander...and nearly had a heart attack just reading the blurb.
For the uninitiated, MBY is about a bitter, angry recluse who's been injured in an accident, and who gives his new assistant hell because he's bitter and angry and the assistant is plucky and doesn't take his shit and OMFG WHAT AM I GOING TO DO???
Yeah, panic. Straight up, panic. I'm 40% finished with RUSH and then I find this universally beloved book with a similar premise. Only she thought it up first, and I was sure I was going to look like some sort of ridiculous pretender. Oy. That was not a good day. So I did what I always do when I panic, and that is to send an email to Erin. (She's the one the book's dedicated to, and now you know why) I told her the situation and she told me to keep going because Erin's advice is always fabulous and, in one way or another, always boils down to "Shut up and keep going." So that's what I did. I kept going: I dynamited that stupid plot boulder I'd plunked into the middle of the story, and I finished it.
What I did not do was read Me Before You. Not until after RUSH was finished anyway. I didn't want one iota of that book (which turned out to be everything good I had heard it to be and devastating to boot) to seep into mine, subconsciously or otherwise. I skimmed enough to see that the plot lines were very divergent beyond the basic grumpy guy/assistant premise, and mine has a big ole HEA.
When I did read MBY, I was stunned by its intelligence, its smooth flow, and the fact that despite it being the Ugly Cry of the Century, it wasn't schmaltzy or maudlin in ANY way. Sharp, funny, sad...it's a glorious book.
Some people have compared the feel of my book to MBY and for that, I am profoundly flattered, but I'm not egotistical enough to think the two books are in the same league. And I can say that without qualms or self-pity because I'm also proud enough of RUSH to know it can stand on its own, in whatever capacity it has to move readers. I just kept going, because Noah and Charlotte had a story to tell and neither they, nor I--eventually--could let anything stop them from telling it.
But for a minute there? Yup. Shittin' bricks.
ES
I take a run most days, and I get in some good plot thinking, flashes of inspiration, and sometimes I unravel story lines as I jog along. But on this one particularly good run, I overheard (in my mind) a conversation. It was a young man--and he sounded bitter. He was giving a young woman a litany of job duties (and not being very nice about it.) Sounded like a job interview. So I listened in, eavesdropped. This man began to ask the girl questions. What do you look like? Hair color, eye color, etc, because he was blind--come to find out- and wanted to know what the "ghost who was to haunt his house" looked like. And he still wasn't being very nice about it, but this girl--god blesser--wasn't taking his guff.
And that, in a nutshell, was how RUSH was born. I ran home, typed up the echoes of that conversation, almost verbatim, and went from there.
FAST FORWARD to a month later, and RUSH is giving me the fits. I could NOT get around a certain stupid plot development I had tossed in there, and had not yet discovered that cutting it out completely was going to save my book. I was stuck trying to write around it and generally feeling shitty about the whole thing. To top it off, I stupidly set myself a crazy deadline by putting it on pre-order on Amazon, where the consequences of failure are swift and dire. Basically, I was in a funk and would go for days doing nothing more than ordering and reordering bits of dialogue, trying to get the stupid thing to gel.
I finally gave up and decided I needed to do some reading to refill my brain and get going again. I had heard a lot of good things about a book called Me Before You by a super-talented author named Jojo Moyes. So I decided to give that book a gander...and nearly had a heart attack just reading the blurb.
For the uninitiated, MBY is about a bitter, angry recluse who's been injured in an accident, and who gives his new assistant hell because he's bitter and angry and the assistant is plucky and doesn't take his shit and OMFG WHAT AM I GOING TO DO???
Yeah, panic. Straight up, panic. I'm 40% finished with RUSH and then I find this universally beloved book with a similar premise. Only she thought it up first, and I was sure I was going to look like some sort of ridiculous pretender. Oy. That was not a good day. So I did what I always do when I panic, and that is to send an email to Erin. (She's the one the book's dedicated to, and now you know why) I told her the situation and she told me to keep going because Erin's advice is always fabulous and, in one way or another, always boils down to "Shut up and keep going." So that's what I did. I kept going: I dynamited that stupid plot boulder I'd plunked into the middle of the story, and I finished it.
What I did not do was read Me Before You. Not until after RUSH was finished anyway. I didn't want one iota of that book (which turned out to be everything good I had heard it to be and devastating to boot) to seep into mine, subconsciously or otherwise. I skimmed enough to see that the plot lines were very divergent beyond the basic grumpy guy/assistant premise, and mine has a big ole HEA.
When I did read MBY, I was stunned by its intelligence, its smooth flow, and the fact that despite it being the Ugly Cry of the Century, it wasn't schmaltzy or maudlin in ANY way. Sharp, funny, sad...it's a glorious book.
Some people have compared the feel of my book to MBY and for that, I am profoundly flattered, but I'm not egotistical enough to think the two books are in the same league. And I can say that without qualms or self-pity because I'm also proud enough of RUSH to know it can stand on its own, in whatever capacity it has to move readers. I just kept going, because Noah and Charlotte had a story to tell and neither they, nor I--eventually--could let anything stop them from telling it.
But for a minute there? Yup. Shittin' bricks.
ES
July 23, 2015
Research! What is it good for?
Either my books are becoming more complex or I'm becoming less lazy. I used to hate research. I hated anything that stopped me from actually writing, even if it helped the writing in the long run. Oh, I did it, to be sure, because being inauthentic is worse than being lazy, but I didn't like it. Now, I've seen an evolution as I research my books. I no longer hate research. To the contrary, I actually enjoy it as the most amazing plot developments can arise from it. Its value on that end is astronomical. However, its value is directly proportional to how pertinent it is to said plot.
Basically, I do all this research and then end up using only the smallest fraction of it in my work.
Take RUSH for example. (and no, that's not CAPSLOCK OF FURY, that's just how it's spelled). For RUSH, I researched the hell out of two main areas: blindness and musicality. I called foundations, I listened to concertos, I read testimonials from blind people, I interviewed a concert violinist for the finer points of auditions, and I learned a lot of music lingo. And of all that research, I'd say only a good 20% TOTAL made it into the book.
Instead of acting as a conduit to the plot, my research acted as a big fact roadblock. There's a scene in the book where Noah and Charlotte go to a party. There, Charlotte and other musicians play the themes to popular TV shows. The first draft of the scene where they play was three pages long and full of awesome-sounding terms like intervals, and descants; cadences and dynamics. It was all so authentic and accurate and smart. It was also completely fucking boring. Because who cares? I wrote it to show that Charlotte thought like a musician and that she spoke that language fluently, but the result was a serious dump of boring terms some people would get, others would gloss over.***
I have one hard and fast rule I stick to in my writing, learned from Stephen King in his invaluable memoir/how-to On Writing. The rule is: IT MUST SERVE THE STORY.
I get some flack for starting my books out slow but that's one criticism I don't cuddle close to my heart necessarily. I don't want to bore anyone, but I also like to lay a good foundation, and every single thing I put in my books must obey the law and SERVE THE STORY. (Every single one of my Chekovian pistols I set on mantles in Act I get fired by Act III, without fail.)
So when I reread that music party scene, I realized all those fabulous terms weren't doing a thing to serve the story. What was more important was that Charlotte felt alive in her music for the first time in a long time, and so out went all that glorious research but for a few key terms, and in went a focus on her de-thawing. Also kept, her audition process for the Vienna Touring Orchestra, although severely truncated. I had a full audition written with her playing scales and a piece of their choosing, yadda yadda, but the only part that served the final cut was her NAILING it and winning the seat.
I wish I had been more cutthroat about other aspects of research for RUSH, as I nearly wrecked the book with it--unbeknownst to me--and I would have saved myself a ton of time and headache.
I did a ton of research on blindness, specifically technologies and skills to help those learn to live with their disability. This research manifested in a plot turn where Charlotte goes to a foundation on the sly, to learn tips and tricks for being a better assistant to Noah. Sounds pretty good, but what I actually did was dump a huge boulder in the middle of the book and then spent nearly an entire month trying to write around it to make it fit. I had a potential third-party love interest; I had lessons on how to use a white stick; labels for food and appliances, etc etc. And I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out how to progress the love affair between Noah and Charlotte around her secret visits to this place.
So I took another piece of advice that comes to mind whenever I'm stuck. "Go back to where you were doing well. Just before, or right after that spot, you will find the problem." So I went back to when I was doing well, and it was just before Charlotte's first visit to that foundation. So I cut it all. Probably close to 15K words, and OMG it was like winning the writer's lottery. All of a sudden, everything was flowing again, and all that research went down the toilet where it belonged.
This is not to say I'm now back to knocking research. Hells no. But here's what I learned, and maybe it'll help other writers: Research the hell out of something and let it seep into the novel. Let all that you've learned come out organically, not in a great show of terminology. Don't try to shoehorn in a bunch of new stuff simply because you learned it. Everything I researched about blindness came out in Noah's struggles and Charlotte's kind-hearted attempt to help him, because those things served the story which is, at its essence, not about how to fold money so you can feel its denomination, or how a violinist would approach the eerie whine in Walking Dead. It's a love story and therefore whatever I researched ultimately needs to serve that first.
And never has this been more true than for Beside You in the Moonlight, my latest that is: 1. set in Paris2. in 19713. involving the Vietnam war4. protest culture5. minor-league soccer6. Mountain geography7. a SPOILER ALERT plot twist
In short, there's a shit-ton of research I'm doing/have done but this time around I'll remember to let it flow out with the rest of the story because I could talk with some confidence about Operation Dewey Canyon and the Battle of Hamburger Hill. But wouldn't you rather read about Zoey and Tristan coming together in war time, instead of the particulars about the war? Because that's the story I'm writing.
ES
*** I've seen books heavy on research terminology and not one word detracted from the plot or story. It was woven in beautifully, so on this, as with any piece of advice on the subject of something as subjective, YMMV.
Basically, I do all this research and then end up using only the smallest fraction of it in my work.
Take RUSH for example. (and no, that's not CAPSLOCK OF FURY, that's just how it's spelled). For RUSH, I researched the hell out of two main areas: blindness and musicality. I called foundations, I listened to concertos, I read testimonials from blind people, I interviewed a concert violinist for the finer points of auditions, and I learned a lot of music lingo. And of all that research, I'd say only a good 20% TOTAL made it into the book.
Instead of acting as a conduit to the plot, my research acted as a big fact roadblock. There's a scene in the book where Noah and Charlotte go to a party. There, Charlotte and other musicians play the themes to popular TV shows. The first draft of the scene where they play was three pages long and full of awesome-sounding terms like intervals, and descants; cadences and dynamics. It was all so authentic and accurate and smart. It was also completely fucking boring. Because who cares? I wrote it to show that Charlotte thought like a musician and that she spoke that language fluently, but the result was a serious dump of boring terms some people would get, others would gloss over.***
I have one hard and fast rule I stick to in my writing, learned from Stephen King in his invaluable memoir/how-to On Writing. The rule is: IT MUST SERVE THE STORY.
I get some flack for starting my books out slow but that's one criticism I don't cuddle close to my heart necessarily. I don't want to bore anyone, but I also like to lay a good foundation, and every single thing I put in my books must obey the law and SERVE THE STORY. (Every single one of my Chekovian pistols I set on mantles in Act I get fired by Act III, without fail.)
So when I reread that music party scene, I realized all those fabulous terms weren't doing a thing to serve the story. What was more important was that Charlotte felt alive in her music for the first time in a long time, and so out went all that glorious research but for a few key terms, and in went a focus on her de-thawing. Also kept, her audition process for the Vienna Touring Orchestra, although severely truncated. I had a full audition written with her playing scales and a piece of their choosing, yadda yadda, but the only part that served the final cut was her NAILING it and winning the seat.
I wish I had been more cutthroat about other aspects of research for RUSH, as I nearly wrecked the book with it--unbeknownst to me--and I would have saved myself a ton of time and headache.
I did a ton of research on blindness, specifically technologies and skills to help those learn to live with their disability. This research manifested in a plot turn where Charlotte goes to a foundation on the sly, to learn tips and tricks for being a better assistant to Noah. Sounds pretty good, but what I actually did was dump a huge boulder in the middle of the book and then spent nearly an entire month trying to write around it to make it fit. I had a potential third-party love interest; I had lessons on how to use a white stick; labels for food and appliances, etc etc. And I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out how to progress the love affair between Noah and Charlotte around her secret visits to this place.
So I took another piece of advice that comes to mind whenever I'm stuck. "Go back to where you were doing well. Just before, or right after that spot, you will find the problem." So I went back to when I was doing well, and it was just before Charlotte's first visit to that foundation. So I cut it all. Probably close to 15K words, and OMG it was like winning the writer's lottery. All of a sudden, everything was flowing again, and all that research went down the toilet where it belonged.
This is not to say I'm now back to knocking research. Hells no. But here's what I learned, and maybe it'll help other writers: Research the hell out of something and let it seep into the novel. Let all that you've learned come out organically, not in a great show of terminology. Don't try to shoehorn in a bunch of new stuff simply because you learned it. Everything I researched about blindness came out in Noah's struggles and Charlotte's kind-hearted attempt to help him, because those things served the story which is, at its essence, not about how to fold money so you can feel its denomination, or how a violinist would approach the eerie whine in Walking Dead. It's a love story and therefore whatever I researched ultimately needs to serve that first.
And never has this been more true than for Beside You in the Moonlight, my latest that is: 1. set in Paris2. in 19713. involving the Vietnam war4. protest culture5. minor-league soccer6. Mountain geography7. a SPOILER ALERT plot twist
In short, there's a shit-ton of research I'm doing/have done but this time around I'll remember to let it flow out with the rest of the story because I could talk with some confidence about Operation Dewey Canyon and the Battle of Hamburger Hill. But wouldn't you rather read about Zoey and Tristan coming together in war time, instead of the particulars about the war? Because that's the story I'm writing.
ES
*** I've seen books heavy on research terminology and not one word detracted from the plot or story. It was woven in beautifully, so on this, as with any piece of advice on the subject of something as subjective, YMMV.
July 18, 2015
Career decisions
I have to care less about the marketing and more about the work, or I'm going to go crazy. That's my new strategy in a nutshell: write more. It's become much too easy--and time consuming--to spend all my time perusing FB and doing takeovers and posting in groups in the hopes of selling a couple more books, getting a few more likes. It's too much and while I love the community, I can't do it anymore. I want to be a better writer, not a better marketer, and so the time to redirect my energies toward reading and writing has come.
Oh yeah, that feels good. ;)
Oh yeah, that feels good. ;)
