Leonard D. Hilley II's Blog, page 2

Released Today: Aetheaon Chronicles Boxed Set (Books 1-3) Digital

The Aetheaon Chronicles Boxed Set (Digital Books 1-3) has been released! Epic Fantasy. More than 1744 pages. Estimated reading time: 36 hours. In Kindle Unlimited. Only $0.99 (for one week).

Fully revised with additional scenes. Enter the Realm of Aetheaon. https://a.co/d/6DsPkCX

SHAWNDIREA

What would you do if you were captured, injured, and near death in another realm? How would you get home? Such is the dilemma for the faery Shawndirea. After she crosses a magical rift into a human realm, she’s swept into an entomologist’s butterfly net by mistake. Severely damaging her wings, Ben Whytten vows to take her home without realizing the dark dangers they must endure to survive. Ben enters a magical world where mysteries, betrayal, and power struggles await. He must adapt or die because Aetheaon is filled with enchanted creatures and numerous races where chaos often dominates order. With Shawndirea destined for Elvendale’s throne, opposing dark forces plot to prevent her from ever reaching her kingdom again. Her magic’s not enough to fully protect them, so he must trust others to aid them during their journey.

LADY SQUIRE

To what end would a princess go to regain her rightful throne?

After Lord Waxxon’s coup kills the beloved half-elf queen of Hoffnung, the Queen’s daughter, Lady Dawn—the rightful heir—is forced to disguise as a lowly squire. Chosen by Caen—a faithful Hoffnung Dragon Skull Knight—they search Aetheaon to gather forces to end Waxxon’s hostile takeover. Her identity must remain secret, even to the knight she serves. Lord Waxxon has set a lucrative bounty for her head. His ruthless henchmen, thieves, and bounty hunters scour Aetheaon to find her. But Lady Dawn’s not without hope. Warriors, a wizard, and rulers from several races and kingdoms seek to find her before Waxxon’s bounty can be collected. And find her, they must, if ever she can rightfully reclaim Hoffnung’s throne.

FROSTHAMMER

From treasure hunter to king.

During the Battle of Hoffnung, Boldair discovers his father’s secret betrayal and is declared Nagdor’s new king by the Northern Dwarven Alliance. Boldair and three of his fellow Dwarves begin their journey to Nagdor for his coronation. Due to possible threats on his life in opposition to his taking the throne, he decides to take a longer route home by detouring through the autonomous, majestic city lost to legend and hidden deep beneath the Frosted Peaks. The city is Frosthammer, which is occupied by an unusual Dwarven race that are untrusting to visitors, even new kings. The journey becomes fraught with more dangers than Boldair ever expected or imagined.

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Cover Reveal For Aetheaon Chronicles Boxed Set!

This is the new boxed set cover for The Aetheaon Chronicles Series (Books 1-3). Boxed set’s launch is coming soon!

Cheers!

The post Cover Reveal For Aetheaon Chronicles Boxed Set! first appeared on Leonard D Hilley II.

Driven by Faith

The first year I attended Berea College was 1985-1986. Due to internal stresses and other home issues, I didn’t return the following fall. In the summer of 1986, I bought my first car (1978 Monte Carlo) and was making payments. Since Berea College didn’t allow students to work outside Berea College’s student work program where campus jobs paid so little (~$1.20/hr.), I stayed home to work to pay for the car.

I have regrets both ways by not returning to Berea. Home life was depressing, but I horribly missed my twin sisters and little brother while I was at Berea. They were almost old enough to start elementary school. Because of our age differences (16 years between me and my youngest brother) and how often my younger sister and I watched them while our mother worked, they were like our own children, in a sense. The other regret was how badly I missed my close friends who were attending their sophomore year at Berea College. Deep down, I knew I should be there and was handicapping my future.

After getting the Monte Carlo, a buddy of mine, Mark Walls, who worked with me at Food World in Fort Payne, decided to travel with me to Berea College so I could visit my friends. At the time, I still had a driver’s permit (yes, I was LATE getting a license, but that’s a different story), so I needed someone with a license to ride with me.

When we arrived at Berea College, I found some of my friends and introduced Mark to them. We were waiting for my friend, Jame Ellis, to come to the dorm. Robert Cunningham told us he was coming, so we hid in the dorm room. On the floor was a mat with a lot of blankets. I think someone might’ve used this to sleep on. Mark lie down and flung the blanket over himself. He had long permed hair, but it was not concealed by the blanket.

I got on one bed and hid next to the large wardrobe-like closet while Robert turned off the lights. James opened the door and Robert shushed him and said, “Get inside. Shh. Quick.”

James hesitated at the door and flipped on the light. All he saw was Mark’s long hair and his mouth dropped.

“Shut the door!” Robert said. “It’s a surprise.”

Berea College was not a co-ed dorm, so James immediately thought Mark, due to his long hair, was a woman. He couldn’t hide his confusion.

James said, “What’s going on?”

“Close the door.”

That’s when I moved to where James could see me. Mark uncovered himself and sat up.

James shook his head and laughed. “For a minute there, I thought you were hiding a girl in our room.”

The next day we played some basketball and caught up. We decided to visit Mitch Tolle at his art studio close to Interstate 75. We parked in a spot beside the Convenience store. We got out and headed across the lot toward the studio when I heard a familiar voice call my name.

“Leonard!”

I turned and saw Becky, one of my dear friends. She hugged me and asked if that was my car. I nodded. She pointed at her Mustang. We asked one another how the other was doing. She said, “When you didn’t return to college, I dropped out and started working.”

I grieved. Becky and I had scheduled to take the same courses the previous fall so we could study together. I felt horrible and never realized my decision would affect others. It had and bothered me for years afterwards. We talked for several more minutes, but she had to get back to work at the Convenience store.

The next morning, Mark and I needed to return home. We both had to work the following day. I stopped and talked to another friend for about fifteen minutes. It was starting to snow, so we really couldn’t stay any longer. On the way home, the snow increased for a while. Lightning flashed in the sky while the snow fell. It was the first time I’d ever experienced that. But, as we rode, my heart grew heavier. As great as it was to see and talk to my friends, I missed them all the more. I wondered what might have been, had I not dropped out.

For several years after I dropped out of college, I remained torn. I was stuck in-between with menial jobs.

About a year later, I decided to return to Berea College in April, but I was driving an 1984 Buick Regal. On the other side of Knoxville, a driver with a Florida tag passed me and deliberately cut me off. Being a young driver, I never considered the driver was intentionally trying to cause a wreck. In hindsight, it seems most likely. I hit the brakes hard, avoided a collision, and the driver sped on. Afterwards, the brake light on my dashboard remained on. I tapped the brakes slightly, but the light never went off.

Luckily, when I got to Berea, the off ramp went uphill, and that’s when I realized my brakes were barely working at all. The steep ramp allowed me to gradually slow and stop. I didn’t know what to do. Since the dorm where I stayed at Berea College was on a hill, I parked the car in a spot that overlooked the tennis courts at the bottom of a wooded hill.

My friend, Jody Higgins, who graduated from Plainview High School with me and enrolled at Berea College the same time I did, had put brake fluid in his girlfriend’s car during our freshman year. So, I went to his room, told him what had happened, and asked if he could help. He said I needed to buy some brake fluid since the fluid might’ve leaked, but it wasn’t hard to fix.

James Ellis was with me, and we walked to a store down the street where I bought a bottle of brake fluid. We returned to the car, and I refilled the fluid. When I touched the brakes, the pedal still went to the floor. I returned to Jody’s room. He said that I needed to put the car in gear and tap the pedal several times to get the pressure back.

James and I returned to the car. The next lot over, a lot of college students were seated on their vehicles and talking. One student had a large 4 X 4 pickup truck. James got in the passenger side of the Buick. Since the car faced the steep, woody hillside, I put the car in reverse and backed away from the hill. I pressed the brake pedal and it went to the floor. I tapped it a few times, but nothing. I had the steering wheel cut at an angle and intended to put it into drive. Since the brakes failed completely, I couldn’t put the car in drive or park. Slowly the car turned and backed toward the wooded hillside.

I kept pressing the brake. Everything happened so fast. The back wheels hit the concrete stop, which didn’t slow the car at all. The tire bumped up and over.

James started praying out loud. I still remember his exact words. “Oh, God Jesus! Jesus! God help us!”

Apparently, God heard his prayers. Without explanation, the car stopped about twenty feet down the hill. How we missed the trees was due to my steering. I put the car in park and opened the door. On the right side of the car, a tree was inches away. On the left, the car was oddly suspended in a rough section with another tree a foot or more away. But nothing, absolutely NOTHING, wedged against the tires to stop the car.

James got out and kept saying, “Thank you, Jesus!”

I heartedly agreed.

Those students seated on their cars in the next parking lot gawked and gathered at the top of the hill. One student came down the hill and looked under the car. “How’d it stop?”

I shrugged.

He said, “It never touched a single tree.”

The guy who owned the large 4 X 4 told me that he could pull my car out. Five minutes later, he and everyone else were gone. I stood there embarrassed but thankful no damage was done to the car.

I didn’t know what to do or how I’d get the car out. What money I had was what little I had from cashing my paycheck before I came to Berea. Then, my former Head Resident, Edward Fitzgerald, came to me and looked at the car. He grinned and shook my hand. “I know a guy I can call. His son is a student in my dorm.” Ed explained to him I had been a student the previous year and was visiting.

Within twenty minutes, the mechanic arrived with his wrecker, hitched it to my car and pulled the car back onto the parking lot. Like James and I, he was shocked. He said, “I don’t know how it didn’t crash into those trees or end up down at the tennis courts.”

I asked what I owed him, and he shook his head. “My son goes here. What happened?”

I told him about the brake light and the car that had cut me off.

He said, “You master cylinder probably busted. I’ll call around in the morning and find you one.”

“What will that cost?”

He gave me an estimate, which I could afford, and was probably much cheaper than anyone else would’ve done. He handed me his business card. “Call me tomorrow around noon. I should have a part by then.”

Since I was on vacation, I wasn’t too pressed for time.

The following day, I called him. He had checked all the junkyards and part stores in Berea and hadn’t found a master cylinder for the Buick. He was going to check in Richmond the following day.

That evening, I went to the Convenience store and talked to Becky. I told her about the situation. The store was fairly quiet without many customers, but her coworker continued to interrupt us and picked at her. So I grabbed something to eat and drink and returned to campus. On the way back to campus, I happened to think about how to get home if the car couldn’t be repaired. The first exit going south to Fort Payne was uphill. I could drive up Sylvania Gap without needing to brake hard.

I talked to the mechanic the next morning. Still no luck.

He said, “I can’t understand why this part’s so hard to find. It’s a popular model. I’ll try Lexington and if they don’t have the part, we’ll figure out how to get you home. I’ll tow you back to Alabama if need be.”

The next morning, I awakened and told my friends goodbye. The car’s tank was nearly empty, so I stopped at the Convenience store and hoped to tell Becky goodbye, but she wasn’t at work. When I stopped at the pump, the brakes squealed loudly.

After I filled the tank and got on the Interstate, I was nervous. During this time, I had been teaching a weekly Bible class at Donnie and Penny Drain’s house. The latest topic had been on our faith. My trip home was about to be a test of my faith. I drove carefully. When I came to highly congested areas near Knoxville and Chattanooga, I stayed a safe 15-20 car lengths behind the other drivers. I watched traffic like a hawk. Thankfully, the Florida driver, who had cut me off on my way to Kentucky and caused me to brake hard enough to destroy the master cylinder, didn’t return for round two. No way I could’ve stopped for him a second time.

I made it to the first Fort Payne exit and was able to slow to a stop at the top of the ramp. I drove the Sylvania Gap and went to Cowart’s garage in Rainsville. He said it could have it fixed by the next day, so I called my mother and she came to pick me up.

The next day the car was repaired.

Looking back, I would never have attempted to make the 300 mile drive without having the brakes fixed, but then, I had little money and no one I could’ve called for help. No cellphones then, either. Still, to this day, I know my prayer and faith got me home.

Odd, these memories are bittersweet in so many ways.

Blessings to all of you!

 

The post Driven by Faith first appeared on Leonard D Hilley II.

Stray Cats and Thieves

Stolen

On Memorial Day, while we were at home, someone stole Mustashio and her black sibling off our porch. I had just fed them about an hour earlier. Every time I mow the front lawn, I place them inside a large dog carrier, so they won’t run away. The mower terrifies them. I called them and tapped the metal cat food can. Two kittens ran to me, but Ebony (the mother) and the other two kittens were nowhere to be seen. After placing the two kittens in the carrier, I started mowing. About fifteen minutes later, Ebony returned but no kittens were with her. I figured the kittens must be somewhere nearby, but after I had finished the lawn, they still hadn’t returned.

The last time I had mowed, the carrier was inside the garage with all four kittens. Ebony looked for them and carried a stuffed mouse in her mouth while calling for them. When I was almost finished mowing, she was glaring at me, because she knew I must’ve done something with them. She’s always been a good, protective mother. And Monday, she glared at me wondering what I had done with the other two. I told her I didn’t have them. She was distraught. She searched the backyard and under the deck and returned to the garage, thinking I had put them inside. She worried, but instead of searching for them, she found a place to lie near the other two to protect them.

Mustachio with eyes barely open.

I contacted both neighbors, but neither had seen them. The one got on his four-wheeler and drove around his property, looking for them. At this point, I still thought they might be lost and trying to find their way home. Now, I believe someone nabbed them off the front porch. Ebony’s still upset and the two remaining kittens aren’t as spunky as they were. They act depressed.

I have to wonder about the nerve of people. We live at the end of a dead end road, so if someone drove up in a vehicle and took them, we’d have heard the car. No vehicles had turned around. This means the person(s) came on foot, grabbed them, and left. This also means, it’s someone nearby, on our street. Thieves. I’ve heard of cat burglars, but this is too literal.

Here’s what irks me, too. On Facebook, last year, I introduced Blackie, our male black cat. He was a stray someone had dumped near the house. We took him in, and he followed me everywhere when I was outside. At the time, we also had Gray and her son, Chubs. Butterscotch had been Chubs’ father. While Chubs was a kitten, Butterscotch vanished. He was gone for three days. When he returned, he was haunted. He went into the garage and sat for a few days. He’d eat and drink, but his eyes indicated something had terrified him. He refused to leave the garage.

A couple of weeks later, he got sick. Whatever illness he got killed him quickly. He had yellow phlegm running out his nose. Even if I could get him to a vet, which they weren’t taking new animals at the time, there was nothing they could do for him. I sat on the back deck, and he greeted me with his odd meow and walked to me. He looked so bad. I took a cat brush, and he lie at my feet. I brushed out clumps of loose, winter hair, and he purred the entire time. He was so appreciative. I sat and talked with him for a long time, and his eyes showed happiness. He purred. The next morning I came out to brush him again, but he was lying under the grill. I said, “Butterscotch.” He flipped his long yellow tail in one quick stretch and died. He waited for me before he left.

Oddly, about a year or so later, the same thing happened with Chubs. He disappeared three days and returned a different cat. Illness, like his father’s, occurred, and he died, too. Early last summer, our cat, Gray, disappeared for several days, and when she returned, she experienced the same. It seems like someone was catching and poisoning them. After Gray died, only Blackie remained.

In September, Blackie disappeared. Being a tomcat, he would occasionally be gone for a couple days at a time. I’d see him down the street but he’d come home. But in late September, he didn’t return after three weeks. I feared he’d died. So, here I was without a cat at all. I grieved.

Then, one day, I was driving to the house and noticed a black cat sitting in our driveway. I immediately thought it was Blackie, but it wasn’t. This was a younger female cat, and she was thin as a rail. Practically starved. I approached her but she ran. I talked calmly to her, and she tried to hide in our flowerbed. I sat on a chair and poured some cat food on the porch. She eyed the food but remained too skeptical of me to approach. I put some distance between she and I, and she eased to the food. She was so nervous that she never took her eyes off me while she ate. We repeated this for about four days. Gradually, she’d move closer and closer to me, until she finally let me pet her. The next day, she became bolder, and before I knew it, she was following me around and demanding to be petted.

Oddly, after she’d settled in, Blackie returned and chased her off. He’d been gone for weeks and was noticeably FATTER, and wanted to enact his territorial rights. The next day he was nowhere to be seen, and I feared Ebony wouldn’t return, but she was waiting at the door. Blackie stayed gone for about two months, and the last time I saw him, he was so fat he could barely walk. His head was larger than a softball. Someone has him locked inside the house with constant food, which is cat abuse, if you ask me. No animal should be fed until it’s too fat to get around.

When Ebony gave birth to her kittens, she trusted us enough to have them in a carrier on the porch. She never tried to hide them, and she seems so proud whenever you pay the kittens attention, even before their eyes opened. Now, after a cat thief took two of them, the harmony they had is gone. The kittens are still nursing, too.

Sunday before last, my daughter took her dog out for a walk and noticed two teenagers seated IN OUR YARD, trying to coax the kittens to them. Culprits? Possibly, or they know who took them, since one is our neighbor and the kittens aren’t there. I get it. Kittens are cute, adorable, but they grow up, and guess how many strays we’ve had here because people dump them. Over a dozen. But, if you want a kitten, you should knock and politely ask. You might not get the kitten of your choice, but do what’s right. Instead, someone stole two kittens. Stealing is a crime, whether it’s a cat or any type of property. Add trespassing, too (I have signs).

So, thieves, here’s my hope for you: May you suffer guilt and shame every time you look at those kittens. You don’t deserve them.

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Revisions/Updates/Rebranding

Usually, the more one writes, the better one’s writing becomes. At least, one’s writing should improve.

In practice, if writers strive to hone and improve their vocabulary, grammar, and use of proper syntax, their prose becomes more refined. Reading books—a LOT of books—especially by great authors exposes writers to the necessary techniques to improve writing skills, too. Reading helps improve writing and broadens one’s vocabulary. One learns sentence structure, especially punctuation in dialogue. Study what you read as a writer. Take notes.

Authors develop their own sense of style over time. When I first began writing my first novel (technically my second), I read practically everything Dean R. Koontz had published at the time. I learned about pacing, suspense, and how to get readers to flip the pages. In a sense, I mimicked his style, as his books were the ones I consumed the most. Eventually, my style emerged.

I also read Writer’s Digest and The Writer magazine. I read these magazines’ back issues at the college library. Anything that would help improve my writing, I read it.

Some time back I published a blog, “Why the Rush to Publish?” Advice I’ve given for several years as an English professor is: “The best writing comes from RE-writing. Revision is KEY.” This means revising a draft one or two times isn’t publishable, unless you’re incredibly gifted. Believe me, I’ve reread and revised pages dozens of times and sometimes still find errors.

In truth, authors need editors. At the very least, they need skilled, passionate beta readers who have excellent English skills. Not your friends. Not family. Especially not your dear grandmother who dotes on you about how ‘wonderful’ your prose is. One thing I’ve learned. Family members will lie to you. They don’t want to hurt your feelings, so no matter how badly the writing is, you’re not going to get honest feedback from them. This reminds me of a woman years ago who kept telling everyone she was a ‘special’ singer and kept saying it until they asked her to sing. Oh, she was special all right, just not like she thought. Had she met Simon from American Idol, she’d have saved herself some embarrassment early on. But, you see, friends and family didn’t want to tell her the truth, so they didn’t. They lied to save themselves and her from awkward situations. Is that bad? Yes and no. No, because they wanted to spare her feelings. Yes, because they silently encouraged her to continue. But, this is a story for another day.

As an unspoken rule for myself, I reread most pages over a dozen times. Some pages as much as fifty to a hundred times. No lie. With my second novel, Beyond the Darkness, I read/revised the first chapter over a hundred times. Even after that many times, I still failed to catch a glaring error. I passed the manuscript to someone to read, and on the first page, she caught the error. Instead of ‘reclining’ chair, I wrote ‘recycling’ chair (which hopefully doesn’t exist and not sure why I wrote it this way or never caught it). I’ve no doubt I read the sentence well over 100 times. But here’s the thing. Since I had written it and knew what I’d meant, my brain autocorrected and moved past it without noticing over 100 times. This is why an author benefits from having an editor and/or a great beta reader. Extra eyes reading a manuscript are a lifesaver.

Eleven years have passed since Shawndirea (Aetheaon Chronicles: Book One) was released. To my surprise, Shawndirea placed in the TOP 100 Fantasy Bestsellers for ten weeks and peaked at #29. It sold well enough to qualify for my membership in SWFA, which was one accomplishment I hoped to achieve when I first began writing.

With Book 5 scheduled to launch this September, my PR has scheduled a Boxed Set (Aetheaon Chronicles: Books 1-3) to launch on June 18th. Because I wanted to have the best work out there, I decided last summer to revise/edit the first three books. Although the early books weren’t terrible, they definitely needed an overhaul. He suggested to have the cover typography match on the first four books so it’s more obvious this is a series, so I did that. Afterwards, I continued editing. The boxed set began with 450,450 words and ended with 417,000 words.

Twenty-six pages were cut from Shawndirea. Seventy-three pages were cut from Lady Squire, and thirty-one pages were cut from Frosthammer. These weren’t drastic cuts, but places where sentences could be rearranged or shortened to improve the prose and dialogue without losing the story. Lady Squire was also the longest book in the series and needed revised more than the other two. Although all three books had words cut, words and new scenes were also added. Added scenes came because of the fifth book and because I knew far more about its main character after writing his book than when he first appeared in earlier series books. These revisions mean the books are no longer the same as the original releases. They are better. Padding was removed.

A vast reason for the revisions was because I read these books with new eyes. Yes, my writing has improved since their publications, but the stories and characters were no longer fresh on my mind and I viewed them more objectively. I removed wordiness, which was far more than I expected, but the further into the series I read, the less errors I found.

One of the hardships of writing is being objective about one’s work. The first draft should be written from the heart. Don’t worry so much about the editing, and if you’re fortunate to hit one of those writing river flows, where the words and ideas pour out onto the pages, don’t dam the current by overly editing the work. Let the story and the characters lead the way. Then, after you’ve finished the manuscript, set it aside, for a month or more, and come back with fresh eyes. Now, you’re ready to read/revise with your brain and not the heart. Be objective. Perhaps ruthless, if necessary, and realize you’re working to make your book the best you can. What was written from the heart, while considered sacred to you, needs polished, edited, revised.

So what’s ahead? The Aetheaon Chronicles’ boxed set is scheduled for release on June 18th. Crukas (Aetheaon Chronicles: Book Five) in September. Book four in the Nocturnal Trinity Series is in November (fingers crossed), and a couple of Dee’s Mystery Solvers in December or January. Until then, many blessings to you!

NOTE: Shawndirea, Lady Squire, Frosthammer, and Shadowfae are in Kindle Unlimited. The boxed set will be released in Kindle Unlimited as well.

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FREE Digital Copy of Forrest Wollinsky Vampire Hunter

Yesterday, I discovered the link for newsletter subscribers to get their FREE digital copy of Forrest Wollinsky: Vampire Hunter was disabled during a recent update. My apologies, as I was not aware.

The link is once again functional for those new to my website.

Best!

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The Chapters of Life

Not all chapters in our lives are long. Some are short. Of course, not every chapter ends well or satisfactory. They can be painfully long, dark, and hopeless. Whether it’s sickness, death, or betrayal, the ache and pain of that chapter tarries far longer than one needs. Despair weighs heavily. But sometimes, after such a chapter ends, we unexpectedly begin the next new chapter with a bolder, happier beginning for the next phase in our lives. Light at the end of the tunnel, they say.

As readers and writers, we often skim through chapters that make us uneasy or we find boring. We have that choice and luxury. But in real-life chapters, there’s no skipping ahead. There’s endurance, which can build patience, and unfortunately sometimes, resentment. One must face challenges and even betrayal in life. Fragile pieces of our aura get shattered. We are left to pick up the pieces in an attempt to fix them in the future, or we leave the fragments behind. Either way, who we are or what we were has changed. One might continue to the next chapter having gained experience and the reassurance that if we face a similar event in the future, our previous survival aids us with the knowledge of moving through the next trial a bit easier.

Regardless of who we are, we all face frustrating hardships. People we love and have trusted let us down or hurt us so badly that we can never view them in the same light we once did. Liars burn bridges of trust and those bridges are often never repairable. The divide never reconnects.

The biggest problem with these absent bridges is it makes crossing new bridges to meet new people difficult because we worry how sturdy these untested bridges are for us. Caution sets in. We’re reminded of the pain we experienced when previous trusts dissolved. Emotionally, we risk a lot in venturing across. But, we’ve no way to know the outcome without taking the chance. We must be brave. Who knows? Across a new bridge and into a new chapter, one might find the joy and happiness he or she has sought.

In books, characters come and go. The same is true in real life. People I once viewed as friends, I’ve lost over the years. I’ve no idea where they’ve gone. Nothing bad separated us. We simply lost touch. Life has a way of separating us due to our decisions and careers.

We’ve no guarantee for how many chapters are in our books. Some books end far shorter than others, and we wish those had more chapters to share. Those exceptionally long books are filled with stories we need to listen to. I’ve often viewed the loss of our older relatives with grievous sadness. The memories these folks had are also gone and these are treasures lost, unless they physically wrote them down.

Regardless of our current chapter in life, let’s strive to reach the end of this chapter and flip to a happier beginning in the next chapter. And also, if you have elderly aunts, uncles, and grandparents who are still alive, I’m certain they would love to share the chapters of their lives with you. Seek those stories while you have the opportunity!

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My Surgery and Recovery

A couple of years ago, while bench-pressing on a Smith machine at the gym, I found myself unable to sit upright after finishing a light set. I never lift heavy anyways. Whenever I’m asked how much I can bench, I’m honest and tell them I have no idea. It’s not about ego. I’ve never been one for the amount of max weight or tried to compare my lifts with others around me. The only one I compete with is myself. I’ve always done adequate weight and reps, more for shape than strength, so when I couldn’t sit up, I thought it strange. I finally had to use my left elbow to push up enough to reach the right side of the Smith machine to pull myself into a seated position. I felt no pain, so I unloaded the weights and moved on to the next exercise.

I never felt any pain afterwards, and the next day I returned to the gym. It was leg day. I did all the leg machines, and since they don’t have an efficient way to do squats, I used the leg press. Like other workouts, I don’t lift too heavy, because at my age, who can afford injuries? After leg press, my legs are usually shot, so I go home and work on my novels or work on miniature terrain. But later that day, I noticed severe cramps in my lower abdomen. In the past, this type of pain usually occurred from eating fiber from the day before, which is how it felt. The pain was moderate and gone the next day.

Over the next week, I didn’t have any problems working chest, back, or arms. But, after doing the leg press again, I experienced the same abdominal pain in the afternoon. The following day, I noticed my navel felt different. The tissue moved slightly when I placed my finger inside. I could gently push my finger into my navel and the skin moved farther back and slightly upward. I searched online for possible hernias and sure enough, I discovered I had a small umbilical hernia.

Due to all the issues with hospitals and health services after 2020-2021, I didn’t have much trust in seeking surgery. Instead, since the hernia wasn’t bad, I bought a hernia belt, which worked quite well for a few months, and allowed me to workout. However, the belt stretched and became useless after three months, so I purchased another one.

Since I didn’t lift excessive weight and I was careful to do the exercises properly, the belts prevented the hernia from getting worse. It took two years, though, for me to get the courage to set up an appointment to see a surgeon. I’ve never had surgery, and I’ve never been under anesthesia. The thought of this made me quite nervous, especially the anesthesia. The thought of not waking up concerned me.

At the beginning of this year, I decided it was time to see the surgeon and have the surgery. While the hernia belts were helpful, they were a temporary solution and weren’t going to solve the problem. Prolonging the inevitable seemed a waste of time. Besides, the last belt I ordered was a size smaller than the previous one. It was mislabeled, which made it painful to wear for a long period of time.

I met with Dr. Emmanuel Agaba at Marietta Memorial Hospital, and he briefly discussed the surgery procedure. Dr. Agaba is a super great person with a positive personality. I like and trust him. If I didn’t, I’d have sought a different surgeon. He made me feel at ease about the surgery. I returned a few days later for blood work and an EKG a day after that. I told the RN who set up the EKG that my QRS complex would probably show up negative (inverted) when they did the reading, as one of our class assignments in Animal Physiology (1997) at Morehead State University was to hook ourselves to an EKG and analyze the readings. For some reason, my QRS complex was inverted. None of the other students showed this abnormality. Thinking maybe we connected one of the leads incorrectly, I tested twice more in class and it remained the same. Sure enough, the reading I got this year was the same as then.

For weeks I had been worried and nervous about the surgery but when the day came, my nervousness was gone. The writer’s curse of proposing various ‘What if?’ scenarios gripped my imagination in the beginning. But on surgery day, I set those ‘possibilities’ aside. I suppose I had resolved the situation and understood that in a few hours, the hernia would be fixed and a few weeks later, I’d be able to get back to normal activities without having to wear a bulky hernia belt. One of the hardest parts was fasting for over 17 hours. I didn’t eat anything after 6:30 p.m. the day before surgery.

My normal, daily routine starts with coffee, a small, high protein breakfast between 4-5 a.m., and then about an hour in the gym. So the morning of surgery I had no coffee, food, etc. Much to my chagrin, any commercial or ad on television or the computer taunted me about food. Not only this, my grandkids were talking about all their breakfast options, a list of things, to choose between. That’s the way it goes, I suppose.

I was told the day before that I was expected to be at the hospital at 11:15 a.m. to prep, but then they told me the surgery would be at 12:40 p.m. If the surgery before mine finished ahead of schedule, mine would be earlier. So the waiting game continued and my stomach growled with disdain.

The surgeon and staff were all incredible. Every RN, PN, or any other person who entered my pre-op room asked for my name and birthdate, who my surgeon was, and what surgery I was there for. With a severe lack of carbs, fatigue, and a caffeine-deprived headache, I began to question if I were whom I said I was. My answers came slower and a few times I stammered the words. I developed a sort of mental tunnel vision. All of the people were wonderful, polite, and asked if I had questions or needed anything (aside from food, coffee, or carbs, of course).

The anesthesiologist (according to my paperwork–Dr. John Moore) is a super guy with a great sense of humor. He handed me the anesthesia disclaimer to read, and he said that it still had the errors from the printed copies and no one had bothered to correct it.

“See if you find the errors,” he said.

The first error was ‘bod’ instead of body. I mentioned it and he laughed. “Yep.”

The second error was having bloodstream as TWO words instead of one. When I mentioned that, his brow rose and he looked at me with curiosity. “Are you a writer?” I said that I was and told him how many books I had in print. He was intrigued and offered to lower the cost of surgery a bit if I edited the paper. He was joking, of course, but I said if the hospital needed an editor to contact me. He actually stayed in the room longer than I expected, but if I held any other qualms about being put under for the surgery, he answered my questions quite efficiently.

Soon after talking to him, two nurses came to wheel me to the Operating Room. Despite how I had viewed surgery two weeks prior, I wasn’t nervous. I was curious.

I don’t know how they’ve formulated medications to act on our bodies like they do, but it’s frightening how they can render you unconscious without you remembering anything for an hour or more.

No thoughts.

No dreams.

No pain.

No recollection at all.

In the wrong hands, this is a dangerous weapon.

The two nurses wheeled me into the surgery room where two more nurses waited. I couldn’t see behind me, so I don’t know if others were there. The two nurses explained what they were doing and slid my gurney against the surgery table. Once I transferred over to the table, they hooked up various leads and other monitors. They positioned both of my arms out on two arm boards. That’s the last thing I remember. No one mentioned when they were administering the drugs to put me to sleep. I never saw the surgeon and awoke a little over an hour later. The surgeon talked to my wife before I had awakened. He said that the hernia was small and the scar would be small and that I could go home as soon as I felt able. Originally, he’d said that I’d have to stay overnight, but I was glad to go home the same day. He didn’t see the need to place mesh on the inside, either. He used Lidocaine on the area to help keep the stitched area from being too sore too quickly.

I imagine the Lidocaine helped a lot for the first twenty-four hours. They gave me a prescription for pain medicine and although we picked it up, I’ve not used it. My wife kept telling me the first night that I needed to go ahead and take it. I said that I wasn’t taking it unless I actually needed it. I don’t want to put myself in a risk situation of the slightest chance of addiction or later withdrawals, even though it’s a mild pain pill.

Before the surgery, I actually dreaded the pain of healing afterwards. I thought I’d be curled in a fetal position on the couch or bed, whining like a baby, but remarkably I have had no pain. I’ve not even taken a Tylenol. I don’t know if that’s common or not, but hey, I’ll take it.

Now, it’s back to the grind of writing while I heal and suffer through gym withdrawals.

Have a great weekend, folks!

 

 

The post My Surgery and Recovery first appeared on Leonard D Hilley II.

Good Ol’ Boys Like Me

Don Williams’ hit continuously played on the radio in early 1980, and hit #2 on the Billboard Charts. This song floods my mind with memories from that year, as it was the last trip my sister and I took with our father to visit our grandparents and Uncle Nelson in Middletown, Ohio. The song must’ve played at least a dozen times during the trip and other than the songs on the radio, hardly any conversation occurred between our father and us. He was never good at talking to children unless it was to belittle them by his harsh teasing, so having his silence was actually delightful.

After we returned to our home in Alabama, our father left Alabama altogether since he and our mother had divorced. Months passed, perhaps closer to a year, before we heard anything from him. He’d paid no child support, had stolen (borrowed) and sold the car he promised our mother, and feared DHR was looking for him since our mother had filed for child assistance for his nonpayment of child support. His first contact was by letter. The letter he sent was filled with lies, and the actual truth remained hidden until many years later.

Back in the early 80s, a deadbeat father who refused to pay child support was almost impossible for DHR to find because the computer systems and the Internet didn’t exist. The letter our father sent stated how he enjoyed watching the snow falling in Ohio, but later we learned, as he revealed to me, he had been living in Phoenix, Arizona, with an uncle where, obviously, no snow was falling. Yet, the letter was postmarked from Middletown, Ohio. So his scheme was to mail our intended letter to his mother in Middletown and have her mail the letter from her house to us, so he could get the desired postmark.

Since he had abandoned the three children from his first marriage before he had my sister and I, I suppose it shouldn’t have been any surprise at all. Looking through our family albums when I was a kid, I often wonder what changed for him. For me, I will never understand why he had left us and ceased communication, except for his narcissistic selfishness. Things weren’t necessarily better for him relationship-wise, as he divorced twice more after divorcing our mother.

About two years later, my mother’s brother in Middletown passed away. We drove to the funeral in Ohio, and while there, my sister and I walked a few blocks over to visit our grandfather and grandmother. My Papaw was one of the greatest men I’ve ever been blessed to know in my life. He said, “Let’s go to the store and get some ice cream.”

While riding with him in the car to the grocery store, he said, “I want you to know that I don’t approve of what your father has done to you and your sister.” He said a lot more, but he was angry that our father had left us the way he had. It meant a lot to me for him to express something he normally wouldn’t. Sadly, I wished then and still do, that I had lived closer to him so I would’ve gotten to know him better.

Time passed, and every time I heard the “Good Ol’ Boys Like Me”, I thought of my father and my grandfather. I longed for a family of my own, a wife and kids, and stability. Even though I was so young, I ached inside for what other kids in ‘normal’ households had. Some of my friends’ fathers went out of their way to spend time with them. Our father offered excuses, lots of excuses, and I swore never to be like my father.

And while I still miss my grandfather, whenever I hear this song, I cannot shake the bad memories of an absent father. As a writer, I cannot find the proper words to describe the ache of wondering about the what and why for his actions and endless absences. Perhaps understanding his reasoning isn’t possible at all. Since I was only a young teenager at the time of his departure, I was too innocent to understand or grasp the full picture. When he got a Facebook account years later and started posting pictures, it brought more questions for me and revealed his selfish lifestyle, while he offered his own children no support, financially or emotional, at all.

Some pictures he posted were from the time period with his second wife after our mother, or shall we say, Wife #4. These photos revealed his semi-lavish lifestyle while my sister and I did without. The vacations he took, the suits he wore, and other things we could never dream of owning or experiencing, he was doing. I wore the same shirts and jeans from 7th grade until my senior year. Occasionally, a cousin or friend would give my sister and I some used clothes. But seeing how our father had been living during that time naturally brought a lot of questions and resentment to mind. These questions rubbed the old scars surrounding the bitterness and anger during my youth, too.

He was not only selfish, he wanted to take credit for things he had no hand in doing. When my first novel was published, he emailed a letter to me from my publisher’s website and entitled himself as “The Boss”, as though he was in charge of me and had some role in my writing abilities. I let him know that he wasn’t and didn’t.

A few years before my father died, we messaged one another via Facebook. Nearly thirty-some odd years after he had abandoned us as children, I wanted answers. And rather than explain or offer the slightest apology for how he had cast us aside, not just in the physical sense, but also emotionally, he deflected the questions by saying, “I’m not taking all the blame for that.”

I told him that I didn’t expect him to, but at least 50% of what had led to their divorce was due to his actions and his decisions. His poor choices he needed to own as well. And although he had divorced our mother, he still should’ve kept in touch with us, even if by phone or through letters. He tried to argue that our mother had made it where he couldn’t visit family in Alabama. I refused to accept this answer, and I called him out on it. I explained the true reason for why he feared coming back to Alabama (a story for another day and in the book), which stopped him cold. His response? “The more you stir the pot, the worse it stinks.”

For several years, I had hinted on Facebook that I was writing my memoirs, and his agitation and resentment grew. He went ballistic on Facebook several times with such statements, “If you want the truth, ask me about it. Don’t listen to what others say (meaning me).”

He started attacking me via Facebook messages and posting on my author page wall, which became the last straw. He left me with no choice but to temporarily block him. Sad, really. But his actions were what finally revealed to me that he was a true narcissist. When you believe someone else’s life story is about yourself instead of the author’s … hmm.

While he ranted at others in my family about not believing my “lies”, he was more fearful of the truth, the real reason for why he had to move away from Alabama, and I suppose in retrospect, he understood how what he had done wasn’t as exciting as he had viewed it in the early 80s. What he had done was illegal and immoral, and he didn’t want others to know. His greatest fear was the truth and having the truth revealed. And the truth was also his greatest shame; something he didn’t want others in the family or the world to know, and something that today would’ve landed him in prison.

I’d made a statement on my author page about how the narcissistic father views his own glory in the mirror while not seeing the frightened child hidden in the shadows that the father has tortured. This furthered fueled his rage and made him frantic. It was a ‘poke the bear’ moment, one long overdue and intentional, but he needed to know, whether he accepted it or not, how cruel he’d been to all of his children.

Before I blocked him, he stated in a message, “I don’t want you spreading lies about me to make me look bad.”

I countered, “I don’t need to lie. All I have to do is tell the truth.”

This angered him even more.

So I said, “These memoirs are about my life. How can these be about you since you were never in our lives while we were growing up?”

But still he argued angrily, attempting to defend himself, rather than apologize or admit any fault. He wanted to convince me to not write about those issues. I wrote about them anyway and now they’ll soon be published, revealing what part I lacked in my early life was probably one of the best things to benefit me the most. Since he was a horrible person deep inside and a cynical tyrant who didn’t like the possibility of one of his children finding success, my best shelter to gain back my self-esteem that he and my mother had spent years quashing, was to not be held back by them anymore.

It took years of stress and hardship, a horrible first marriage and divorce, and other obstacles before I came out of the corner fighting and finally stood my ground. I found the courage to protect the cowering child I’d been for so long, and I vowed never to be bullied by anyone ever again.

Through these trials, I’ve been shaped into a better person. I know I could’ve become the opposite, but I chose not to be, because I didn’t want to be like either of my parents. I’ve tried to be the best parent possible to my son and daughter and to my grandchildren. In some ways, I wish I could’ve done so much more financially, but that was limited. However, they know how much I love them and that I’m always here for them whenever they need me. In truth, that’s what a good ol’ boy would and should be.

The post Good Ol’ Boys Like Me first appeared on Leonard D Hilley II.

Blizzard of ’93

At the time of the ‘Storm of the Century’ blizzard in 1993, my wife and I were both students at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky. Being college students, we didn’t watch television and seldom accessed weather updates. Cellphones weren’t a ‘thing’ then, either. No one on campus had mentioned the blizzard warning, and since it was Friday, I planned to drive to Alabama to visit my mother and sisters for the weekend. My wife-to-be decided to travel with me.

No snow was falling when we headed south on I-75, but after driving less than five miles on the Interstate, large snowflakes began falling and immediately sticking to the road. Not knowing about the impending blizzard, I recognized we were going to have to turn around and head back to campus. The snow simply became heavier and heavier. I’d never seen so much snow falling so quickly.

Drivers, myself included, had slowed to about 45 mph. I drove a Volkswagen Rabbit and even with front-wheel drive, the car kept sliding, so we exited at the Renfro Valley exit, which is only a fifteen minute drive from Berea. In such a little amount of time, the roads were too bad to drive back to campus safely. Cars were sliding off the Interstate, and I didn’t want to chance getting hit by another vehicle or becoming stuck in the median. We got a room at the Days Inn and I figured road crews would clear the roads overnight.

The next morning, we awakened and discovered more than twenty inches of snow had fallen overnight. Luckily, where we had parked in the hotel lot, the area was partially sheltered without a heavy accumulation snowing us in, and we were able to drive to I-75. However, no pavement was visible. The only evidence of the Interstate was the grooved paths where semi-drivers had kept driving through the night. No highway department crews had worked the roads overnight, and I later learned the Interstate had been closed. We didn’t know, and I drove along the grooves, which seemed more in the middle of the two lanes on each side of the Interstate.

The usual fifteen minute drive took was forty-five to fifty minutes to reach Berea and another ten minutes to walk from the student parking lot to the Alumni Building. It was also ungodly cold and the heater in the car decided NOT to work for most of the drive back. In hindsight, we were far more fortunate than we even understood at the time.

Almost 4,000 motorists were stranded in the storm in Kentucky, along I-75 and I-64. One man had died from the freezing temperatures trying to walk into Corbin from his home.

A lesson remains forever burned in my mind. I tend to check the weather several times each day. And while the weather is never accurately predicted, I don’t like unexpected surprises. On March 12th, 1993, the blizzard took us by surprise. Remember, no cellphones then, and since we didn’t readily have access to the weather, we found ourselves unprepared. Unprepared, but thankfully, we were blessed and protected and made it safely back to campus.

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