Peggy Jaeger's Blog, page 56
June 18, 2023
#Mugmonday 6.19.2023
I’m really feeling this one today….STORY TELLER!
June 16, 2023
Serenity…
This was the first week where I didn’t cry every single day. I cried, don’t get me wrong. Just not daily.
Progress?
Maybe. But more, I think I am finally starting to emotionally accept what happened. My logical, nursing-educated brain understood my mother’s death the day it occurred.
My heart and my emotional brain? Not so much.
But the absence this week of the daily tears, the heartbreak, and the guilt I was experiencing, and at the oddest, most inopportune moments, has abated.
For now.
I know that doesn’t mean I’m done caring about my mother. The furthest thing from it. I live with the daily wish I could have been there, held her hand, and told her I loved her one last time. And done everything I could to prevent her from dying.
But I wasn’t, and I didn’t.
What this suspension of daily waterworks means, I think, is that I’m coming to terms with my mother’s passing, knowing nothing I could have done would have prevented it. Nothing I could have done would have altered the course God sent her on. Nothing I could have done would have made what happened any less horrible – for her and me.
Accepting her death, how it came about, and what it means for those she left behind has been a tortuous road these past 13 weeks, one which I wasn’t prepared to travel and have been having a great deal of trouble navigating through.
I always assumed being a nurse, having watched so many patients die over my career, would have prepared me better for the end of my mother’s life.
What’s that old saw about assuming something? Yeah, joke’s on me, isn’t it?
Nothing could have prepared me for what happened. Or for losing her. Nothing. I think I am finally starting to understand that.
With a little time, a little self-reflection, and a little emotional distance, I think I’m starting to fully accept it and am learning to move forward.
As I do, I’ve been reciting The Serenity Prayer during those times when I find myself falling into guilt again:
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
It’s the wisdom part that’s taking a while to grow within me…
~ Peg
The story behind the story…
Instead of first line Friday today, I want to do something a little different.
My newest book, INFLUENCE ( A NEW YORK SOCIALITES ROMANCE) is releasing on August 14th and I’d like to tell you the story behind the story. Or in other words, what made me write Mackenzie’s tale.
Back in 2019 when Limitless Publishing released my book DIRTY DAMSELS I had, in my mind, four books for the DotComgirls series. Once Limitless decided they didn’t want any more of the books in the series I was – heartbroken for sure – but I still wanted to publish the remaining books. So that’s when I decided to go independent. IT’S A TRUST THING was the first book to release. I had to change the series name from dotcomgirls to something else and THE NEW YORK SOCIALITES seemed right. The tagline Riches to rags and back again, finding love along the way, came to me in the car one day, and I was set.
WOKE, then BALANCE were published in subsequent years and I thought I was done.
Then the pandemic hit and I noticed something I never had before – the absolute power of Social Media. A new term, Influencer, popped up one day in a news report on Good Morning America, and I got an idea for a character who has burst onto the scene as one of these influencers.
Who was she? What was her story? Why does she crave the attention of likes and follows from strangers? The notion to make her a former socialite jibed with an idea I’d been kicking around for another book in the series. Mackenzie Cray had to have something, something BIG motivate her to put herself in the public eye as an Influencer. Her tragic love story with Lucky Blumenthal was born. While we never meet Lucky in person, on the page he is a powerful force behind everything Mac does.
Now I needed a hero.
One of my favorite secondary characters in my books has always been Dominick Templeton from IT’S A TRUST THING. When we meet him we think he’s sleazy tabloid journalist, but once the story unfolds, we find out just how wonderful he is – especially to his brother. I’ve wanted to give Nick a love story since then, and decided he would make the perfect foil for Mackenzie.
So I did.
In INFLUENCE, Nick has been assigned a series of articles by the magazine he writes for, detailing the past and present lives of former debutants. Mackenzie Craymore is on his list, but she’s stonewalled every call he’s made and refuses to be interviewed. Nick wonders why this former wild child trust fund baby has done a 180 in her life and is now a serious businesswoman and influencer who goes by the name Lizzy Cray. And he’s determined to find out her motivation – even though she’s not revealing it.
So, I guess you can blame the idea for INFLUENCE on the power of social media and the pandemic, LOL!
The book releases on 8.14.2023 and will be available in KU for the first few months. You can preorder your copy here: INFLUENCE.
And if you want to get reacquainted ( or meet them for the very first time!) here’s where you can find the other NYC Socialites and the book that started it all, DIRTY DAMSELS. And P.S. – Dirty Damsels is my most reviewed book on Amazon!!!
June 13, 2023
June 12, 2023
June 9, 2023
3 months…
So today marks exactly 3 months since my mom died.
A lot has happened in those 12 weeks. Some good; some bad.
The good, first.
I was able to sell their home without too much trouble.
I’ve been able to cancel all their accounts with relative ease. Some, truthfully, were harder to cancel than others. I’m NEVER getting a Discover Card for myself, that is for sure. Worst customer service I have ever experienced and there is still an issue 3 months on.
My stepfather, despite the second fall and subsequent re-surgery on the same broken hip that started the entire rigmarole, is doing okay in the nursing home, physically. Mentally and emotionally? Another story entirely.
Now, the bad.
My stepfather did have to have a second surgery since he re-broke his operative hip the day after my mother died.
He is failing mentally. Quickly. He repeats the same thing over and over to me when I visit. He cries often when I visit, lamenting my mother’s death. He has not accepted he will be living in the nursing facility from now on, yet. I don’t know if he ever will. Just the other day he asked if he had enough money saved so that when he “gets out maybe he can buy a little mobile home.”
It broke my heart in two when he asked that. I tried telling him he was a resident of the nursing home for the umptenth time. He cried.
The bills keep piling up. 2 surgeries; 2 multi-state ambulance transports; his care in the nursing home. It’s a lot. All their savings will be gone sooner than I think they ever expected. And they never had any kind of insurance other than Medicare. And we all know how that’s going.
For me, I am still feeling the guilt. I had a dear friend tell me, recently, something from her husband. He feels the sense of extreme guilt I am experiencing about putting them in the nursing home and then mom dying within 2 weeks, is actually my grief manifesting itself as guilt.
I think he may be right.
I carry my grief like I wear my clothing – always on me. It is a little easier, though, to get through a day without crying now. Some days I don’t cry at all. Then I lie down to go to sleep and when I say my prayers, the tears form.
I know this will pass.
Eventually.
For now, it’s just a day to day, sometime hour to hour thing.
June 8, 2023
#preorder INFLUENCE part of the New York Socialites series by @peggyjaeger
Finally!!!
I’ve been waiting to get this book up for preorder for a while now!
Book 4 in the NEW YORK SOCIALITES series, INFLUENCE, will release on 8.14.2023. You can make sure you get your copy the day it releases, by clicking here: INFLUENCE
Brand influencer, Lizzy Cray, is killing it.
She’s got a list of high profile clients who pay her handsomely to help their products explode on social media. Everything from cameras to cashmere, shoes to smoothies. One picture of her with a product and the money practically prints itself.
Why does this trust fund-baby need to work so hard to rake in the cash? That’s a question journalist Dominick Templeton wants an answer to, because Lizzy Cray used to be known in the gossip pages as socialite and wild-child Mackenzie Craymore.
Mackenzie disappeared from the public’s eye twelve years ago, right after her fiancé, hotel-heir, Lucky Blumenthal, died in a fiery car crash rumored to be fueled by drugs and alcohol. But now she’s back, still hauntingly beautiful, rebranded, and from everything Dominick’s researched about her, a much different person. When she ignores all his attempts at an interview, Dominick tries a different tactic and soon becomes embroiled in a world he never imagined…with a woman he’s rapidly falling for.
If you like steamy contemporary romance, your name is all over this one, kids!
June 7, 2023
THANK YOU!!
I am over the moon today because I just found out that two of my books have become FINALISTS in the InD’Tale Magazines 2023 RONE AWARDS
SASHA’S SECRET SANTA is a finalist in the Steamy Contemporary Category
And THE HAUNTING OF WILTON JUNE is a finalist in the Paranormal Short Category
I want to say a sincere, heart-felt thanks to every single reader and book lover who voted for these two books. The final round is now underway so I will, of course, be back with the results once they are tabulated.
Some days it really pays to get out of bed, peeps! LOL ~ Peg
June 6, 2023
It’s WEDDING SEASON courtesy of NN Light’s Bookheaven!
I’m so excited to be a part of N. N. Light’s Book Heaven Celebrate Weddings Bookish Event.
My sweet romance, MIX & MATCH is featured today on their website.
Click on either of these links to read all about it:
https://www.nnlightsbookheaven.com/book-promos
or
https://www.nnlightsbookheaven.com/celebrate-weddings-bookish-event
Check out all books featuring weddings and enter the giveaway to win a $15 Amazon gift card: https://www.nnlightsbookheaven.com/celebrate-weddings-bookish-event
Enter to win a $15 Amazon gift card:
Open Internationally. You must have a valid Amazon US or Amazon Canada account to win.
Runs June 6 – June 12, 2023.
Winner will be drawn on June 13, 2023.
