Leonard D. Hilley II's Blog, page 15

Fiddling Worms

As a teenager, I spent most of my summers exploring the woods, fields, and bluffs behind our house in Pleasant Hill, Alabama. And most of my time, I searched and collected insects. Nature had always been a keen interest of mine. But I also loved to fish.

One day while turning over large rocks in a small grove of trees next to the pasture, I jumped back in surprise because, for a moment, I thought I was staring at a snake. Only this wasn’t a snake. It was an earthworm over eight inches long. I had never seen an earthworm this size.

When I tried to pick it up, I realized this was only part of the earthworm. I held the worm with one hand and then dug in the dirt where the other part disappeared into the ground. I dug for several minutes and finally exposed enough of the worm that the rest eased free of its hold underground. The earthworm was over fourteen inches long.

I hurried to the house to show my stepfather. He told me an easy way to get a lot of these earthworms. “The best way,” he said, “was to take a rusty saw, cut down a hardwood sapling, and then saw across the top of the stump.”

I thought he was putting me on, but curiosity forced me to investigate to see if it really worked.

It was already late in the evening, but I grabbed a bucket and an old saw and went into the woods. An old wagon road, long abandoned, cut through the woods. Along the edge of one bank, I found a dogwood sapling and cut it down. I used the saw like my stepfather had instructed and sawed for about two minutes. Then I sat on my heels and listened.

Just a few feet from me something rustled in the leaves. I eased over and inspected the ground. A six inch earthworm was crawling across the leaves. I snatched it up and placed it in the bucket. More rustling. More earthworms. There were dozens of them. It was strange to find so many worms that were the size of small snakes, which made me hesitant upon first glance because the really large ones looked like snakes. I grabbed and placed them into the bucket. When I didn’t hear or see any other earthworms, I returned to sawing.

Darkness was settling in. Earthworms kept coming to the surface. I picked up all I could find until I couldn’t see the ground due to the darkness. I’m certain I missed dozens more. But I left with a bucket of 72 earthworms. My stepfather, his brother, and I spent the next day fishing.

Learning about these earthworms was the inspiration for my short story for children, Fiddling Worms (Short Story), available at Amazon. I’ve only tried this in Alabama, so I’m not certain if this works farther north. But, I plan to try this soon.

 

Early Impressions on my Mind

At an early age, I found nature fascinating. I was probably about four years old when I walked with my father and mother in the woods behind our house in Pleasant Hill, Alabama. Being small, everything else seemed so huge.

It was late autumn and the forest floor was covered with layers of leaves. Our dogs ran ahead of us and I found a box turtle tightly enclosed in its shell. I picked it up and brought it to my father. Water poured out of the shell. He insisted it was dead and flung it deeper into the trees. I don’t know if that were true or not, but I was disappointed.

The path in the woods had been carved by our dogs over the year. They always disappeared into the woods every day. One was a beagle and she tracked rabbits early every morning. The woods sloped and the ground beneath our feet became soggy. And soon we stood upon a thick carpet of moss that was more than six inches deep. To this day, I’ve not seen moss like what surrounded the trees and blanketed the ground. A narrow stream flowed through the middle of the moss. Even though I was little, this place astounded me. My mother and father stood in awe, too, and commented about how unusual the place looked.

That place has never faded from my mind. I went back through the woods as a teenager, time and time again, but I never found the place. It was like we had slipped through a veil into a magical world where fairies might hide. I later learned that the area had been bulldozed by the owner to use the land for pasture. The stream had emerged from natural springs, and he cut a long trench across the field and fed it into a small pond, which destroyed a most wonderful piece of scenery forever.

A few years after finding the place with my parents, my older brother, David, and I followed the stream and came to the small pond. At the bottom of the clear water were crayfish. We desperately tried to catch these, but they kicked backwards and drifted toward the center of the pool far out of our reach. We tried gimmicks using sandwich bags and string, hoping one might swim into the bag, but none did.

Gone is the area that fascinated my mind at such a tender age, which is sad. Perhaps this is where my muse found me because the mossy banks that surrounded the clear stream has never faded from my memories. In my mind the place will always exist, and this image is what led me to Aetheaon, where such places still exist with dangers unknown to us in this realm.

 

Last Week for Digital Sale of Shawndirea at $1.99

This is the final week for Shawndirea’s digital sale at $1.99 across all markets. The price will return to the normal $5.99.

The Last Time I Saw My Mother Alive

When a loved one is addicted to drugs, it causes pain for the entire family. Whether the addiction is to illegal drugs or prescription drugs, addiction is addiction. However, the pain is far different for those who pray and hope their loved one is freed from the nasty addictive claws that prevent the addict from ever enjoying life. My mother was one who never escaped and fell victim to opioid painkillers.

The last year of my mother’s life, we seldom visited her. This distance wasn’t because I didn’t love her. I did. But I stopped visiting with my kids because they didn’t need to see their grandmother inebriated by painkillers. She spoke slurred words to the point anyone would think that she was drunk. This wasn’t the type of memories I wanted my kids to remember about their grandmother.

The last few years of her life, she became vile and bitter. She’d lie, manipulate, and steal; never realizing her behavior. If she didn’t lie, she twisted the truth, and played mental games with all of her children, myself included. She seemed to find enjoyment in her attempts to turn us against one another.

My mother was addicted to painkillers for fifteen years. Three times she was taken to a hospital for detoxification. The last time she had a great counselor, who finally had the courage to probe into finding the heart of her real problem. Her real pain wasn’t physical. Her true pain festered deep inside her mind but that wasn’t a mystery to me.

After our little brother, Bubba, died at eight years of age, the day after her birthday, and she found him taking his last breaths, she sought refuge to bury her heartache and turmoil with painkillers. At first, in 1991, she got a prescription from her family doctor in Rainsville, Alabama, fairly easily.

She took more pills than was prescribed and one day, I came by to visit her only to find her seated on the couch. She held a piece of pizza in her hand and had taken a bite. The pizza in her mouth was hanging out. She wasn’t moving. In fact, she didn’t seem to be breathing.

I called her name a half dozen times, getting louder each time. She didn’t respond. I touched her arm and her skin was ice cold. I thought she was dead. I patted her cheek several times, still frantically saying, “Mom!” over and over. Finally she aroused in such slow motion, it seem like the world had almost stopped spinning. Her eyes opened and her tongue pushed the pizza out of her mouth. Several minutes passed before she registered her surroundings and responded to me.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

She blinked several times. Her mouth moved oddly as she tried to speak. And when she finally did speak, she sounded drunk. “I’m okay.”

“Are you sure? I thought you were dead.”

She pushed herself up from the couch and staggered across the living room. “It’s the medicine. My body’s not used to it.”

I breathed with some relief in that she was alive, but I was worried. I offered to take her to the doctor or hospital, but she refused, insisting that she’d be okay.

About two weeks later, my brother-in-law, Rick, found her in the shed in the backyard. She was seated on a bucket, leaned against the wall, and like in the living room, she held a half eaten piece of pizza in her hand with the other part hanging out of her mouth. Thinking she was dead, he freaked out and ran to find my sister. They managed to awaken her and helped her back to the house. We knew she had a problem, but she refused our offer to get her help.

After her second prescription was filled, she used two weeks worth of pills in less than one week. I was there when she called her doctor and asked him directly to have a new prescription filled. He refused and told her that she had addiction problems and she needed to get help. Furious, she slammed the phone down into its cradle and cursed him. I was shocked. Partly, because of her anger, but I was more shocked that the doctor the entire county called a ‘quack’ had stood up to her and refused to give her more drugs. I held some admiration for the man that day.

She sought other doctors, but none would simply give her a prescription like he had done. Instead, she had to actually prove she suffered legitimate pain. A feat that didn’t come easily, but she managed to do so shortly after being hired where I had worked. Once that ended, she discovered a ‘Pill Clinic.’ By this time, I had moved to Berea to finish my college education, so unfortunately, I didn’t know the depths of her problems until moving back a year later.

In 1998, after I graduated from Morehead State University, I stayed at her house for a few weeks while she was in the detox center in Birmingham, Alabama. That was when she met the counselor who did everything he possibly could to administer a way to get off the painkillers. When she talked to him, she seemed to change, and by the time she had gotten home a few weeks later, she acted and sounded like a different person. I truly thought she was going to be okay, and that finally she had gotten through the hellish valley of drug addiction. She glimmered with hope in her voice and her actions but only for a short time.

Talking to the counselor had seemed to make a difference, as he and some of the women she befriended at the center encouraged her to write a self-help book for others who had lost children at an early age. They told her that her story was one to share with the world, and that by doing so, she could give them hope as well.

My mother came home excited and told me she wanted to write the book about Bubba’s death. I told her that I’d be happy to proofread the first chapter when she finished writing it. A few weeks later she handed me her handwritten pages for the opening of the first chapter. My wife and I read this in sheer horror. Instead of a book that could encourage others to find peace with their losses, I discovered just how broken my mother was on the inside. She had not healed. She was still unable to cope, even years later, with the loss. Her words were heartbreaking, as they were a lament that rambled from page to page. I ached inside for her and didn’t know what I could say. I encouraged her to keep writing because she was unleashing her pain onto the pages, and I hoped this would be a means of therapy. If she got out all the pain, she could find the courage to finally overcome the weight of the mental anguish bottled inside her mind. But she never wrote another word.

An addict rarely escapes the demon seeking to claim the soul and mind. Within a month or so, she returned to the pill clinic and paid a $300.00 fee. Like a child takes a wish list to Santa, she handed a list of what she wanted. They wrote out prescriptions and filled them in the same building. No lie. Pay for pills. All in one building.

My sister, Gina, and I were furious that she had gotten the pills so easily. We called her counselor and told him what was going on. Her called and talked to her. She convinced him all was well, and then she turned her fury on us for ‘daring to call him.’

How dare you tell him I’m addicted to these pills?

We didn’t need to tell him that. He had confided in us that he feared she’d go back to the addiction. Some people never break free.

Due to our mother’s bitter anger, months passed before Gina and I visited our mother. Mom received an insurance settlement from Winn Dixie, where she had conveniently ‘injured’ herself as to have a permanent legitimate means for painkillers. She sold the house my siblings and I had grown up in and bought a trailer near Sylvania. For a while, she appeared happier. Perhaps leaving the house where all the memories of our little brother lingered had helped somewhat, but she didn’t stop taking the pills. Eventually, she was back to taking far more than what her prescription listed.

Her behavior worsened to the point my twin sisters threatened to send her back to the clinic. Our mother began acting out and pitching fits like a three-year-old. I was called one day by my sisters because our mother had locked herself in the bathroom and refused to open the door. By the time I got there, an ambulance had arrived. One of my sisters had managed to get the door open and found our mother unconscious. The paramedics came and carried her to the ambulance. She was partly conscious then but slurred her words so badly that she made no sense.

At the hospital, the doctors wanted to keep her because they knew her problems were too severe to trust her to return home. They feared she’d overdose and die. She refused to stay at the hospital, and they were close to sending her to a detox center. One of my sisters said that she’d keep the pills at her house and bring our mother the proper dosage each day. As long as our mother agreed to that, the doctors said that they’d allow her to go home. She agreed, but begrudgingly.

For about a month this worked well. She regained her cognition and talked rationally with us, but her addiction gnawed at her. She berated my sister each day when she brought our mother her daily pills. Her verbal abuse hurt my sister, making her cry a lot. But my sister held her ground, refusing to give our mother extra pills. My other sister had lost her home and moved in with our mother. Mom sent her to demand the pills back and insisted she’d make certain Mom only got the right number. Reluctantly, she handed to pills over.

I’m not exactly sure what happened after this, except that somehow our mother got the pills back and my sister moved out, unable to put up with Mom’s bitter tirades.

Several weeks passed when the phone rang at our house. I glanced at the caller I.D. and read, “Fort Payne Police Department.” I found that confusing since I lived well outside the city limits. Curiosity overcame me, and I answered.

“Are you Leonard Hilley?” the female dispatch asked.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Is your mother Karen Allen?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

(A slight pause) “Well, sir, an officer has pulled your mother over and … he thinks she’s been drinking. He doesn’t want to ticket her but needs you to come pick her up.”

“She doesn’t drink,” I replied, “but she’s probably taken her meds.”

“Oh, I see. The officer said that she nearly hit someone as she went through the intersection, but if you can pick her up, I will let him know.”

“I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

My brother-in-law, Kelly, was at the house with my sister, Christy, so I asked if he’d ride with me to get her. That way he could drive her back in her car. He agreed.

When we reached her, she was standing beside her car, smoking a cigarette. Angrily, she said, “Can you believe he had the nerve to turn his car around and pull me over? I had just passed him, and he turned around with his lights on.”

She sounded drunk. I simply shook my head, trying to look sympathetic, but I understood exactly why any officer would have prevented her from driving away after speaking to her. She was lucky he had not wanted to ticket her. He was more forgiving than other officers might have been.

Kelly got out and walked to her car to drive her home.

I told my mother goodbye, and that was the last time I saw her alive.

Less than two weeks later, Christy called the house. My wife answered and Christy was in tears. Our mother had overdosed on her meds and died in her sleep. The Sheriff’s Department sent deputies to the house. They found our mother’s box of prescription meds and said, “She has a small pharmacy. We cannot leave these here.” They bagged them up and took them.

The coroner and the deputies believed she had accidentally overdosed. Some evidence indicates that might have been the case. Several pills in her daily pill tray were half dissolved, which looked like she had placed them in her mouth and then set them back into the tray. Christy suggested that maybe Mom had taken one dose, fallen asleep, and awakened. Not remembering if she had taken them, she might have taken the next day’s. A deliberate overdose would have been taking a handful of pills.

The next day, as we were going through her stuff, we found a bag filled with empty prescription bottles. One was a bottle about the size of a large vitamin bottle. I had never seen a prescription bottle that size. Methadone: “Take 8-12 per day.” Another empty bottle was for Oxycontin. When I had seen the different types of meds they had her on and the number of pills she had been taking, I was surprised she hadn’t died years earlier.

Mom died in 2007, a couple of days before my first book signing, and even after all these years, I don’t know what more we could have done to help her break the addiction. She had been detoxed three times and each time, she ran back, demanding more. Opioid drugs are killing thousands of Americans. To say there is an epidemic is an understatement. These are drugs that should have never been allowed by the FDA. And while the pill clinics are getting closed down and doctors are being charged for criminal acts, how many people like my mother had to die before action was taken?

It pains me to recall that the last time I saw my mother alive was when the police had called me to take her home for driving under the influence of these drugs. Folks, do everything you can to help those you love if they are snared by opioid addiction before it’s too late.

Shawndirea Spotlighted on The Portalist

Shawndirea (The Chronicles of Aetheaon: Book One) has been spotlighted on The Portalist. I love how the perspective is given from her point of view.

“What if you were trapped in another realm?” is the title. Intriguing?

Often, we writers are asked, “Where do you get your ideas?”

I must confess that an answer to that question doesn’t come right away. Each story blossoms from something different. Sometimes, it is a picture, or a question that has lingered in my mind for quite some time. But, for Shawndirea, it was something far different.

In 2010 I had finished Devils Den, which is also set in the Realms of Aetheaon. Some of the major characters in the Underworld deserved more attention and needed their stories told, particularly Shawndirea and Justin’s uncle Ben (Roble). I thought I would sit down and write a novella as a background story, but instead, these characters took the reins and set off at a blistering speed. I followed and took notes, a lot of notes, and when the journey ended, I was revising a 148,000 epic fantasy novel.

Why and how did this explode to such a massive volume?

A lot of these characters were from a novel I had written when I was eleven years old. I set that aside for many years, at least the premise, but the characters stuck in my mind. In 1994, I began a revival of the story and the characters were stronger, clearer, but the story itself had not yet evolved enough to stand on its own. So, I set that aside. In late 2013, I began writing the novella, and these wonderful characters that had matured in my mind showed me where to go. The opened doors to cities, other characters, strange tales, and adventures I had not pictured beforehand.

You see, I don’t write fiction from an outline. Like Ray Bradbury suggested, “Follow the characters.” I do, and I did. The results were an epic novel, and then another followed, “Lady Squire: Dawn’s Ascension.” I am currently working on the third novel, “The Elves of Woodnog.” But with the Realms of Aetheaon, the possibilities are endless. The volumes of books that can emerge … Who knows?

So, if you want an adventure into realms far different than our own, and if you like surprises, ‘Shawndirea’ might be the journey your mind would like to take. I was surprised where the characters took me, and like many readers, I am curious as to what will take place in the next volume. I have questions I need answered. I have the maps with little clues. But there is room for more to travel to Aetheaon. That is, unless you fear the dragons and other mysterious creatures.

Shawndirea (Chronicles of Aetheaon) $1.99 for a Limited Time

Digital copies of Shawndirea (Epic Fantasy) are currently $1.99 for a limited time across all digital markets (Kobo, Barnes&Noble, Amazon, iBooks, Playster).

New Updated Color Map.

“Often the smallest unexpected surprises garner the most demanding dilemmas, which proves to be the ordeal that entomologist Ben Whytten faces. While netting butterflies to add to his vast collection, he mistakenly sweeps what he thinks is the most spectacular butterfly he has ever seen into his net. Upon examining his catch, Ben is horrified to discover he has captured a faery and shredded her delicate wings into useless ribbons.

Devastated, Ben vows to take Shawndirea back to her realm, Aetheaon; but he discovers that doing so places their lives into immediate danger. To get to Aetheaon, they must pass through a portal rift deep inside the haunted cavern, Devils Den.

Once they cross the rift, Ben enters a world where mysteries, magic, betrayal, and power struggles await. He must adapt quickly or die because Aetheaon is filled with enchanted creatures and numerous races where chaos often dominates order. And since Shawndirea’s destined for the throne of Elvendale, opposing dark forces plot to prevent her from ever reaching her kingdom again. The faery’s magic isn’t enough to fully protect them, so he must trust other adventurers to aid them during their journey.”

Also available in Audio for $21.95

Happy #Fridaythe13th! New Book Launched!

Dee’s Mystery Solvers: Witch Cat

 

Now Available on #Kindle & #KindleUnlimited! Young Adult Mystery

 

Marty Sullivan’s black cat, Edgar, mysteriously appears at the most unusual times and in the least expected places. For the others in Dee’s Mystery Solvers Club, they suspect the cat is somehow magical. What they don’t know is Marty has a secret he needs to reveal about Edgar and where he found the cat. But in doing so, he knows his suspicious sister, Dee, will not rest until they completely solve the mystery. He fears her stubbornness will put their lives into peril, especially after he tells her that Edgar was found in the haunted Tangled Forest. Marty’s greatest fear is that returning to the forest might cause him to lose Edgar forever, as the cat’s true owner is a ghost … The ghost of a witch.

R.I.P. Tom Petty

I discovered Tom Petty’s music during the worst part of my first marriage. Yeah, I was late to the show for a lot of reasons, but his ‘Full Moon Fever’ album had been released and his songs were always being played on the radio.

I bought a ‘Full Moon Fever’ cassette and absolutely loved every song on it. For months, I played the cassette at Mitchell Hosiery in Fort Payne while boarding socks until the tape was completely worn out. This album is a masterpiece and two of these songs gripped me like no other songs had at the time: ‘I Won’t Back Down’ and ‘Runnin Down a Dream.’ Each of these songs were monumental for my outlook on life, particularly with building my self-esteem, finding my self-worth, and getting out of a horrible marriage with a vile dream-crushing tyrant of a woman who was bent on shattering my mentality. Sadly, at that time, she had been overwhelmingly successful.

The lyrics of ‘I Won’t Back Down’ helped me understand that I didn’t have to take the mental and verbal abuse I had been suffering. I had been polite and silent during most of the time my first wife continually assaulted me with her vicious words. My silence had sometimes allowed her to stop her tirades simply because she felt victory at her display of dominance and my submissive behavior. I truly thought if I offered no argument or resistance to her abusive behavior that eventually the abuse would stop. It didn’t.

She had, in many ways, taken the place of my parents in her ridiculing behavior and her way of belittling me. It was strange how I had found a person who held the poorest qualities of my parents, but when I had first met her, she presented herself as a loving, affectionate person whose sole purpose was to make me feel like I was her perfect match. She had somehow managed to keep her evil traits hidden until two days after we had married. Then her true self emerged and the woman who had falsely portrayed herself as the ‘love of my life’ never reappeared. This had been a startling transformation that I had only wished I had seen one time before we exchanged our vows, but her manipulative nature kept these aspects hidden. Without self-esteem, I was at her mercy. Predators readily identify their vulnerable prey and pounce when least expected.

Shortly after my marriage my self-esteem plunged lower than ever, and I never imagined a way out. I never thought life would ever get better. I cannot put into words the misery I was pressed beneath. My world seemed shrouded by forever gray mists of defeat. However, the more I listened to the lyrics of ‘I Won’t Back Down,’ the more I convinced myself that I didn’t have to put up with her brutal behavior. So I began standing my ground. Instead of this making things better, it actually made matters much, much worse. Her words became more vicious and she shouted at me for the least little thing. She had convinced all her friends how horrible a person I was, she had even convinced me (gas-lighting), and every weekend we had to visit her family. Not mine, though. She pitched fits if I ever stopped by my mother’s house to visit my siblings after work. If she got word that I had visited without her, she’d accuse me that I hadn’t gone there and had, instead, been ‘seeing someone else.’ (If ONLY).

But I no longer took the abuse in silence. I spoke my mind and let her know she was the one who needed help, that the problems weren’t me. At first, it stunned her because she had known me to be timid, but within a week or so of pointing out her issues and her lies, her violence escalated. On two different occasions, she tried to stab me. Once with a dull knife, but on the second occasion, she shattered a picture frame and took a long piece of the jagged glass and came at me. That was when I knew I couldn’t stay with her. She was dangerous and unhinged.

Before these stabbing attempts, I had talked to our landlord. She was a retired teacher from DeKalb County public schools. Talking to her prompted my need to return to college. I had dropped out of college in 1986, but the idea of becoming a teacher seemed a promising and rewarding career. But with all the mental abuse I had endured up until that point, I wondered if I could do it. When I told my first wife about it, she became furious, which wasn’t the reaction I had expected. I thought she’d be thrilled, but instead she went into a rage.

“I’m not going to support you while you go to college,” she fumed.

“I don’t expect you to. I’ll still work full-time and take classes,” I replied.

But even that was appalling to her. She refused to accept it. Going to college was an abomination, at least in her mind. The one year of college education that I had already earned was something she constantly insulted me about, and I had been unable to complete my education, which must prove that I wasn’t that smart. She capitalized upon this, but my returning to college to finish my degree became a threat, as she could no longer throw this in my face.

Later, I discovered that she didn’t want me to go to college because she had been a D student in high school, and my earning a degree was an insult to her (not sure how, but that was her reasoning). She and her father had often made fun of me because I had been in college. When I had planted a garden at his house, he kept teasing me about how I had set up my rows in the garden.

“Is that how they teach you to plant a garden in college?” he asked with a mocking grin.

When harvest came, however, my rows outproduced his by over 50%. He was stunned because we ended up giving away produce to neighbors after we had filled our freezers. That was the last he mentioned anything derogatory about my college education.

But she didn’t let the issue go. When I finally mustered the courage to enroll in college, she insisted I move out. It made no sense to me at all. Regardless of my reassurances, she kept insisting I leave. So I did, and this was shortly after my little brother had died in 1991. I had to move back home with my mother.

The timing was the worst, too. It changed my financial aid status, which prevented me from enrolling in the Fall Quarter at Northeast. After redoing my financial aid, I was set to start classes when the Winter Quarter came.

I continued playing ‘Full Moon Fever’ while working in the evenings at Sunrise Hosiery in Fort Payne, and the song ‘Runnin Down a Dream’ captured me. For over two and a half years, I had suffered mental abuse from a woman with a severe mental disorder. Her doctor had insisted she was bi-polar, and prescribed Prozac, which didn’t help. It was many years later before what she had was fully understood. But the abuse had affected me in ways I hadn’t recognized at the time. It wasn’t until I had freed myself from her mental grasp that I learned something about myself and how strong my mind and self-preservation were.

During the two and a half years I had been trapped in that horrible relationship, my mind had shut down to protect me. Basically, I had been on cruise control, so to speak. I functioned only to survive. I ate, worked, and slept. Seriously. Everything else seemed bottled up in my head and tucked away. Only a few weeks before I had enrolled in college, I feared that I had forgotten the essentials I needed to take Pre-calculus and my English composition classes. Then, one day, a strange thing happened at work.

I boarded socks, which was a mindless occupation. Each eight hour shift gave me plenty of time to sort through my issues and concerns. Then suddenly, my mind unlocked. Mathematical formulas surfaced from my memories. I was shocked. Things I had learned over the years unraveled, and it was the oddest sensation. I had not forgotten anything. It was there, but my mind had placed a barrier to prevent me from suffering further abuse, to protect my inner core.

‘Runnin Down a Dream’ became my theme song at that particular time. I knew to get ahead in life, I needed my college education. I thought about Berea College and how living on campus had been a greater necessity than I had realized when I had been a student there nearly six years earlier. I reapplied, got accepted in 1992, and then moved back to Berea. Doing so, changed my life in so many ways. I lived outside her reach and had secured freedom my mind needed. I could breathe again. I was able to restructure myself and set my goals and dreams. Bit by bit, I started building my self-esteem. I made new friends. I decided not to isolate myself or be timid. Instead, I became courageous enough to ask out women that I was interested in. This was something I had never done during my first year. But I had chosen to be bolder and not fear taking chances.

Needless to say, her abuse didn’t stop after our divorce. She still attempted to cause me problems. Midway through my first semester I made the tragic mistake of giving her my campus phone number. She called one evening and immediately started trying to pick a fight with me over the phone. Living on campus three states away had given me a luxury I had not had before. I simply hung up the phone and left my dorm room. Problem solved. When I returned two hours later, my phone was still ringing. One of the students that lived in the room next to mine looked at me with a rather odd expression while I was unlocking my door.

“How long has that been ringing?” I asked him.

He shook his head. “Nearly two hours nonstop.”

Unbelievable.

I picked up the phone, hung it up without saying a word, and then I took it off the hook, setting it on the desk. I’m truly thankful cellphones hadn’t existed back then.

Music and song lyrics inspire and motivate us. Tom Petty’s words in these two songs were powerful messages that helped me during the lowest points in my life. Discovering ‘Full Moon Fever’ was an unexpected gift that came at the perfect time. Tom Petty will always have a special place in my heart. Physically, he’s gone but his words and spirit live on. R.I.P. Tom Petty. Keep rocking, as I’m certain you are.

2 a.m. Muse

For many years I have awakened around 2 a.m. in the morning. Without an alarm clock, I must add. By instinct, my mind jostles me awake, and I find ideas greeting me when the world outside is dark and silent. This is an incredibly productive time for me.

On the days when I’ve overslept past 6 a.m., which is rare, it is like I have missed something major. The rest of my day doesn’t flow easily. Of course, I learned during my Freshman year of college at Berea that I couldn’t sleep late into the day. I recall one Saturday when I chose to sleep until nearly noon. I was miserable for the rest of the day. My mind was fogged, and regardless of what activities I chose to do, the day was an overall loss. I never slept late again.

Two o’clock in the morning is a sheltered time. No interruptions, the quietness, and being surrounded by darkness are motivating factors for me. I’m not certain why, but these vampiric hours prompt me and often allow me to produce my best work. A lot of what I write has a dark twist to it, so writing during the dead of night seems appropriate. But another element triggered my mind to awaken well ahead of the alarm.

Many, many years ago, I begged my parents for one of those wind-up alarm clocks for Christmas. Some of you probably remember those. When the alarm goes off, two bells are struck repeatedly by a metal clapper, making a horrendously loud clanging sound. Surprisingly, that Christmas my parents actually bought one for me. I was thrilled and right before I went to sleep, I excitedly set the alarm.

When morning came, the alarm jarred me awake, making me fully understand why they are called ‘alarm’ clocks. I levitated out of bed. The harsh clangs were so unexpected that I was fully awake in an instant and scrambled out of bed to turn the blasted thing off. My heart raced, and I plopped back onto the bed, still shaken. Good adrenaline rush, I suppose.

Needless to say, the alarm clock never awakened me again. Ever. Oh, I set it, but my mind awakened me about five minutes before it was set to go off every morning. No more being jarred awake.

Believe me, being awakened by a creative muse is far better than any alarm. So while the majority of you sleep, my creativity is fueled by characters trapped in an unfolding story. And caffeine. Yes, caffeine is a necessity.

What’s in a Picture?

With time, things change. Goals, dreams, relationships, and reality all change. What we picture early in life and the success we hope to achieve isn’t quite the way we imagined.

Life is hard and sometimes cruel. But, in the end, it’s still what we make it. Wallowing in self-pity because things didn’t turn out the way we thought they should … Well, such an action doesn’t change the situation. It certainly doesn’t push us ahead. Instead, we get mired down in that miserable place, stuck in the past, and unable to continue our journey.

Writing has been my coping mechanism for over thirty years. The writing process has allowed me to analyze situations in my life and adapt. Writing has taken me into new worlds, introduced me to new characters, and through it all, I’ve been shown parts of me that I was never aware of.

Parents should be our examples in life, but sometimes they’re not the best examples at all. Both of my parents were alcoholics and pathological liars. I chose a different path. How? I’m not entirely sure. The qualities they exemplified were things I didn’t want to be, things I hated, and somehow my mind understood that. I had horrible parents, but I’ve tried to be a better example to my children. I think I’ve achieved that, but I don’t consider myself a perfect parent. Hindsight and all.

The picture above was taken about a year before I left for my Freshman year of college at Berea. The hardest part of leaving home for college was my little brother and sisters. My twin sisters are fifteen years younger than me, and my little brother was sixteen years younger. The age difference made them seem more like my kids than sisters and a brother. I sorely missed them when I went to Berea and that ache was part of why I dropped out at the end of my Freshman year. But looking back, I realize there were more reasons why I hadn’t continued my education at the time.

I had no self-esteem. Others believed in me, but I did not. My high school teachers and my guidance counselor kept telling me how bright my future was and that I would excel. I didn’t see it. I couldn’t see it at the time. Self-doubt overshadowed me, mixed with my anger and resentment toward my father’s absence and lack of communication from the time he and my mother had divorced.

Understand, I never thought I was the reason for the divorce. I understood months before they separated that the divorce was inevitable. The festering problems between them was fueled by alcohol, and while they thought I was asleep, I listened to their arguments each night after my father came home from his job at Northeast State Community College. She was drunk, angry, and jealous that he had finished his college degree while she had not. No sooner than when he got home, her slurred rage staggered from her mouth, trying to belittle him.

After he left, our mother remarried and over the next few years, my sister and I were blessed with twin sisters and a little brother.

However, my mind remained occupied with my father’s absence and why he never took the time to call or write. Perhaps this is why I write. My mind has always tried to figure out why people act the way they do or I try to find understanding for their actions. I run countless scenarios through my mind but never fully come to complete reasoning because there’s no way I could truly know their intent.

During that time, if my sister and I saw our father, it was once or twice during a year. Letters were rare. After a time, the adjustments came to where I didn’t expect to ever see him again. Yet, I tried to laugh and find humorous things to lessen the pain inside, but looking at this picture, I see the emptiness and anger in my eyes and the obvious lack of a smile. My expression reveals the loss and uncertainty my teenage self was undergoing when this picture was taken. The loss is also evident in my sister’s eyes, and our father’s absence affected her differently than it had for me.

Regardless of what we say, our facial expressions often reveal the pain inside. I met a guy named Jerry Riddle while I worked as a temporary manager at a Chevron station in Valley Head, Alabama.

Immediately upon meeting, he said, “What are you so worried about?”

I tried to dodge and downplay the question, but my response didn’t dissuade him. He quickly pointed out how the burdens I was carrying inside were obvious on the surface. But one thing he said has stuck with me after all these years.

He said, “Let me ask you something. If you spent twenty-four hours a day, every day for a week, would the problem change based upon your worrying?”

I said, “No.”

“Then why waste your time and energy worrying? Invest your time in finding a solution. Change the situation or work on it. Give the problem to God. Worrying will only eat you up inside.”

Some months later, I was working at Western Auto in Fort Payne in the garage. A woman came in to have some minor repairs done to her car. She was an interesting person and the other mechanics feared her. I didn’t know why, except that in some ways they seemed to think she was a witch. I didn’t say anything to her, but after the others went to get parts for her car, she and I were alone. She had been studying me for a while and said, “Things are going to get better for you. This is only temporary, but things will get better. You’re in a lot of pain, but you will see brighter days.”

She went on telling me everything about my problems without me saying a word. It was odd because at the time I was having horrible problems in my marriage (a book could be written about this), and the things she told me almost made me believe she knew everything about those issues. However, again, my facial expression and posture were my culprits. She was good at reading people, and her conclusions were true based upon her observations.

But years passed before I came to the conclusion that only I could change my self-esteem, but before that revelation emerged, I suffered through a lot of hardships and a painful divorce. At the moment when I should have collapsed and simply given up, I fought back. I had been backed into a corner for most of my life. Never once had I decided to do what was best for me, but in 1991, I finally did.

I wanted to better my life. To achieve this, I needed to go back to college, so that was the choice that I made. And that decision changed my life. I found inspiration and love for life, slowly realizing my true goals, my reason for living, and the future was indeed as bright as my teachers and guidance counselor had assured me years before.

My road in life has had various bumpy patches–some that seemed endless at the time–but I kept pushing forward, and sometimes I had to dig a tunnel through the mountain that blocked my path.

Life is what you make it.

No one can build your self-esteem for you. No one except for yourself. You can surround yourself with the best friends in the world who compliment and encourage you, but they cannot build your self-esteem. Only you can do that.