Cynthia Harrison's Blog, page 41

Blue Heaven 99 cent Sale

You read that right ~ Blue Heaven is ON SALE!
For 99 cents! Such a deal!
 Blue Heaven, the first book in my Blue Lake series, climbed the Kindle charts all the way to the top last year in several categories, including mainstream, women’s fiction, and romance. Now the second book in the series, Luke’s #1 Rule, is set to debut December 8, and I’m thinking it’s the perfect time for a sale. Read below for blurb, excerpt and reviews.
 

With a tight budget and two months, Eva Delacroix has to turn six dilapidated cottages on Lake Huron into a shabby chic tourist destination. Fulfilling her father’s renovation dreams and her own needs for family, Blue Heaven is Eva’s last resort.

Daniel Bryman will do anything in his power to stop city girl Eva from destroying the integrity of the historic structures his ancestor built. But as they work together to rebuild the main cabin, Eva’s determination makes him question his own life choices.

Despite their opposing views, they do agree on what to do with the attraction between them. When everything they’ve built threatens to crash down around them, will love be enough to save Blue Heaven?

Available on:

 Amazon  |  B&N  |  Kobo  |  iTunes  |  Wild Rose Press

Read an Excerpt

Read a Review

Tagged: blue heaven, blue lake series, books on sale, romance, romance novels

Sexual Assault

Maybe because of the Bill Cosby news lately, maybe because the fiction I’m writing deals, in part, with a rape and its aftermath, maybe because I’ve been sexually assaulted five times–whatever the reason, this is the post I never wanted to write. And yet, I have to tell this story. You wouldn’t know by the statistics, which are lower than I expected, but I think it’s almost every woman’s story.

Five times. Is that a lot? I can’t bring myself to dig that deep into the raw data, and anyway, most victims are probably like me and don’t report these crimes. Being assaulted sexually, short of rape, seems tame. Seems like whining to complain. Seems like I got off easy. Should be grateful. Should shut up about it and get on with my good life. Which, until today, I mostly have.

Nobody knows my number. Five. I didn’t know my number until last night when it hit me while watching the news and I wrote down names and then remembered another, and another. My list got bigger as I wrote. That surprised me. So I looked up some government stats and was dismayed by the low number. I mean, I’d be happy if I believed them, but I don’t.

I decided to write about the sexual assaults that happened to me because if one person who has just been violated this way reads it and finds some kind of weird solace, then it’s worth it. Because nothing makes you feel more alone than the only girl at the party who gets pranked in a sexual way. Yeah, that happened to me and it wasn’t pretty. I was 16, on a date I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything that happened that night. I only know about it because an old friend recently told me he was there, he witnessed what happened, and he wanted to apologize for not stepping in and stopping it.

He told me the name of the guy who did it to me, but I almost immediately forgot. It was someone I knew, but not well. I didn’t ask, but I’m pretty sure I knew a lot of people at that party. Maybe some of them are my Facebook friends. Maybe one or two of them are reading this. Maybe like me, they forgot all about it until someone reminded them. In my case, I’d say it was more like I’d repressed the memory for my own sanity. Teenage girls are fragile enough without carrying around that kind of knowledge.

What happened was I fell asleep. On the floor, passed out. I’m guessing everyone was high. Some asshole got it into his head that it would be funny to take my breast out of my shirt and put it into an empty wine goblet. Glass full of tit. Hahaha. Great party trick. Apparently many attempts were made, but the breast kept slipping out of the glass. I woke up and pushed the guy away, buttoned my shirt, and walked home. Alone. I don’t remember any of this, but knowing who I was then and who I am now I was probably pissed off and humiliated in equal measure.

But I forgot all about it and got on with my life until it happened again. I can’t talk about the next time. It was the worst and I never forgot it and that’s all I can say. The other three times happened in professional circumstances, with a teacher, an employer, and a dentist.

Yes, a dentist. The same dentist I’d been seeing since I got my big girl teeth. Guess when I got my big girl breasts it was just a little too exciting for him because as I lay helpless in his chair, he grazed my nipples, again and again, over the paper bib dentists use on patients. No dentist since has ever wiped his hands on my bib so often or EVER in such a location. And I’ve been to a lot of dentists. I love my dentist, but I still have to take a pill just to go to the office and not only because of the sound of the drill.

At first, I thought, no, I’m imagining it. But this guy, he was blatant. He kept doing it. And I finally got my nerve up to get out of that chair, rip that damn bib off my neck, and tell him to fuck off. I was angry. And humiliated. And somehow, now that this had happened to me three times between the ages of 16 and 17, I was beginning to wonder: was it somehow my fault? I talked things over with my mom, and she assured me that no, it was not. Men were pigs. And boys were just little men. Mom doesn’t hate men, she was lashing out on my behalf. I have a husband, a father, brothers, cousins, sons, students, friends, a grandson; I know all men are not pigs.

For a long time, I never told anyone except my mom. Of course people knew. Those people at the party. But I’d forgotten that, Pushed it firmly down after the second horrible incident. The one that never went away and haunts me still. I wonder how many girls that dentist did his little trick with. I remember raging in the outer office that he was a pervert. Maybe somebody heard, maybe he decided he’d better not try that again. Maybe he figured out some girls have bigger mouths than he thought. I sure hope so.

When I was 18, I got a job tending bar at a place I still remember the name of…it’s not called that anymore. I remember details, people I met there, the older woman I worked with, and my boss. I won’t say any of that because he has kids and he’s probably dead by now anyway. One day he asked me to help him bring up stock from the basement, so I followed him down the stairs and as I bent over a box of whiskey, he grabbed my breasts. He laughed and roughly fondled me until I could push him off and step away without falling over stock. He was still laughing when I said I quit and walked up those stairs and out the door.

Was kind of the same thing with the teacher. He laughed it off, but it wasn’t funny to me. By this time I was 25, with two little babies and taking some college writing courses. I was so insecure about my intelligence I wasn’t sure the community college would even let me in. But they did and he was waiting. A predator. I knew he had a rep, but not until I told a friend from class what he’d done to me. “Oh yeah, he tries it on with everyone. He brags about bagging a virgin every term.” This was in the early 80s. College has changed since then. Professors do not sexually assault their students; they don’t even have consensual affairs. It’s totally unacceptable.

But rape on college campuses happens all the time to girls at parties. Like I was drugged and taken advantage of, so are they, but in ways much worse. I’ve always thought of my assaults that way: I was lucky I’d never been raped. So many of my friends have been. Gang bangs where they were bound and gagged. Incest when they were too little to protest. Just a someone they thought was their friend but wasn’t after all.

So, sexually assaulted five times and I count myself lucky. Now if that isn’t a hell of a logic. Because I didn’t deserve any of that shit. And if it ever happens to you, if it already did happen to you, you don’t deserve it either. Complain to someone in authority. Sexual assault, even without rape, is a crime. And even worse, it ruins you in some ways. It robbed me of self-esteem, crippled my ability to have a healthy relationship, made me afraid. And that’s the real crime: the one against the psyche.

Tagged: rape, sexual assault, violence against women

Make Love Happen: Post-Romantic Stress Disorder

My writing critique partners looked skeptical when I talked about falling in love as being a kind of hijacking of common sense by our own bodies and the hormones they produce. I wouldn’t have believed it either if I hadn’t read Post-Romantic Stress Disorder and other books and articles with information, fact-based, provable stuff. fMRI brain scans have revealed to science the hormones that produce the feeling of being in love.  Scientists, psychologists and researchers have been tracking those effects for a while now. But I wrote all about it here.

And then I promised to write about what to do when those hormones calm down and the “in love” feeling goes away and you think you don’t love your partner anymore. Not true! And the same brain that produced those hormones is capable of helping couples stay together to create stable, mature love. We just have to make new pathways, cultivate new habits, and retrain ourselves from certain prevailing myths about what love is and what it is not.

First, recognize the signs of trouble when they start. Next, do something to subvert the process. Here’s the breakdown. The first sign is criticism. Do you criticize your mate or does your mate criticize you or do you both pick on each other? Stop it! Learn how to disagree constructively instead of destructively. Let go of nastiness and instead try for empathy and compromise. Don’t discuss when angry or tired. Wait until you are well-rested and ready to play nice. Then calmly say your piece with “I” statements so feelings don’t devolve into contempt and your partner doesn’t feel defensive and withdraw from communication.

Those bolded words are the steps in the process of walking away from intimacy. There’s a final warning sign, but by the time dissmell happens, it’s too late. Your relationship is doomed. Dissmell is a severe reaction, a disgust of your partners’ body odor. It could be a mouth like an ashtray, sweat that stinks, feet that make you faint when socks are removed, whatever the odor, if it offends you to the point of criticism, it needs to be addressed. Or you need to hire a lawyer. Because disgust can’t easily be turned around.

Hell, none of this is easy. But dissmell and disgust really are the death knell to a relationship. I should know, because it happened to me. I thought my partner (not my husband, but a former partner) was right and there was just something wrong with me that only he could see. I blamed myself. That’s a shame response and it happens when a relationship is out of sync because of childhood trauma. It’s all so buried and unconscious and insidious.

I’m well out of that relationship and have since done loads of work on my self-esteeem, which really for a relationship with anyone else to work, you have to be right with your own self first. You have to love yourself and out that shame that may be holding you back from true intimacy. Because intimacy is more than sex and cuddles. It has to do with trusting your partner with anything, including the things that have shamed and wounded you. Sharing these things builds intimacy, which puts the marriage back on the right track.

Here are a couple of other intimacy builders: make time for each other. My husband recently started taking off one day a week to spend just with me. Try new things. Be adventurous in ways that appeal to both of you. Listen, we are both 59 and there are still so many things we want to do. But we came up with something really wild, something so out of my comfort zone, but something I really want to do. We’re going to take lessons together. I can’t say what kind because my friends who don’t like guns will shoot me (hint).

Be spontaneous. Friday night a note popped up in my mail about a concert for one of my favorite bands. Problem was it happened to be the next night. And my husband had to work the morning after. And we were sure tickets would be sold out. And we already had a perfectly good plan to go out to dinner. But I thought about that spontaneous thing: getting excited about new and different things actually releases some of those same “in love” chemicals our souls crave. So we went for it. And we had a great time.

I’m not going to tell you the obvious things like to be kind and considerate because you know that already. It’s really easy to hurt the one you love because they are always there, right? But what if you develop some interests apart from each other? Everybody needs alone time and everybody needs something just for them. So build that into the relationship and suddenly your partner seems much more intriguing. Like someone you could really fall for all over again.

Tagged: #MondayBlogs, divorce, love, marriage

Luke’s #1 Rule by Cynthia Harrison

Cynthia Harrison:

My first review for Luke’s #1 Rule:)

Originally posted on A Woman's Wisdom:

Book Blurb

When Chloe’s employer amps up the verbal abuse and her ex-husband succumbs (again) to his addictions, she accepts a job offer across the country. Before starting their new lives, Chloe and the boys visit the family cottage at Blue Lake for their annual summer vacation.

When Luke meets Chloe, he’s blown away. She’s a strong, smart, gorgeous woman, and he wants to know her better. This sweet dream dies when Luke learns Chloe is a single mom. His #1 dating rule is “no single mothers.” He shuts down fast because he’s been there, done that, and has the broken heart to prove it.

Blending families and addressing addictions co-mingle with summer sunshine in a small lakeside town where the roots of love grow deeper than life’s challenges.

My Review

Chloe is bringing her two boys up on her own after leaving their drug addicted father Spence. Spence meets…

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Post-Romantic Stress Disorder

Been reading this awesome book by the father of the “inner child” movement that helped so many of us recover from childhood wounds. Bradshaw looked to experts in the fields of love, relationships, and science to infuse this book with smart advice for writers of love stories– unintended I’m sure–probably wrote it for actual real people in love or falling out of love fast and wondering what the hell happened.

fMRI imaging makes it possible for scientists to actually view the different areas of the brain and pinpoint the exact chemicals our bodies produce when we fall in love. I wrote them down somewhere but basically there are two or three hormones that kick into overdrive, one being testosterone (easy one:) and two others which act on the body like amphetamines. Thus the reason why we sleep and eat less when falling in love. Great for a diet, not so great for optimum clear-headedness.

Crazy in love is more than just a cliché, as it turns out.  These chemicals bath our brains, saturate specific areas, suppress serotonin. That drop in serotonin is what creates obsessive thought patterns where you just can’t get that beloved other off your mind. Every waking moment is devoted to thoughts of them. Or, if you’re together, you can’t keep your hands off each other.

This chemical reaction called being in love is natural and was meant to keep the species procreating and populating the planet. But that was back when we didn’t live so long. When people say “forever” these days, they might be in for a shock. About 17 months in, that “in love” feeling wears off. This confounds most people. Some think their marriage or partnership is at fault and divorce or split. “We just fell out of love” they say. Some stay together, but aren’t happy. Most marriages fail, something like 70%.

The lucky 30% make the necessary adjustments into mature love and live (mostly) happily ever after. But the rest of the population live basically miserable lives. Because we are programmed by genetics to form pair bonds. That’s just the way we’re built. Some people turn into love junkies, swinging from one 17 month high to the next. They might stay with their partner but have affairs or engage in other risky behaviors.

Bradshaw sets out to show everyone in a loving, committed relationship how to stay that way. As someone who has been married three times and in love more than I can reveal without embarrassing the hell out of myself, I recognized many of the dysfunctional patterns Bradshaw illustrates. And as someone who wants to stay married, and faithful, and while I’m at it, blissfully happy, I’m interested in his methods for attaining this Nirvana on earth. (I didn’t get to that part yet, will report on methods when I do!)

I needed this book way before now, but somehow have managed to keep my third marriage alive, if not always finely tuned, for 29 years. We’ve had our ups and downs and always have been able to repair damage done. Still, I’m one of those types who wants to know why shit happens. I write a lot about love but before this believed it to be an unfathomable mystery. I wondered what was wrong with me. What happened to the young woman who would do anything for her man? Why was I different?

Not so different after all. 70% of other people wonder these things, too (or at least the ones given to introspection). The answer is easy: it’s all in your head. The chemicals inside specific areas of the brain, to get technical. And thanks to science, we now can learn how to undo those obessessive patterns and blast new and healthier pathways through the brain. Which seems to me would be helpful after the in-love phase ends and that hungry for fattening foods and other bad-for-you- things feeling returns. Stay tuned for those fixes for our love-starved brains when I finish the book:)

Tagged: addiction, John Bradshaw, love, PRSD

West Girls

I met with a group of women who call themselves The Kennedy Girls for lunch today. Kennedy was the name of our high school. I have not seen them in awhile. I mean, I “see” them on Facebook every day. Especially Patti, who never fails to post. We met in journalism class at West Jr. High so that makes sense. Like me, she’s still writing:)

And Janet looks exactly the same, plus, we were super tight in junior high. We got into a lot of trouble together. Joyce was so funny today. I think she was like that in junior high, too. She talked about her recent marriage and I asked her if it felt the same falling in love now as it did when we were young.

“Nope,” she said “Way easier. Back then you want to impress someone, you want to be liked, now I don’t give a fuck. I am who I am.” I admire Joyce for being herself. I also think it’s pretty awesome that I’m not the only one in that group who on occasion uses the F word.

Janet and I told stories on ourselves, like the time we threw raw eggs at a guys’ house because she loved him. Of course this is what you do in junior high when you love someone. That or toilet paper their maple trees. We might have done both as I’m sure I loved someone too. In fact, Janet claims to have notes I passed her in class about a certain guy, still folded up tiny in that junior high origami. Guess they text now. No way to origami that.

So the reason I think of these girls as the West Girls is I did not hang out with any of them at Kennedy. Maybe they did with each other, but I was not like them then. I was, well someone nicely said today, a hippie. That’s a sweet word for who I was.

I was a drop out, a first hour ditcher, a girl who would thumb to Colorado with no shoes on a whim. Janet was a cheerleader, on Homecoming court, and also crowned Miss World or something like that. She wears an actual crown in the picture. Also she always did her homework, I’m pretty sure. At Kennedy, we could not have been more different.

Time has a way of mellowing even the most hardcore badasses, which I totally thought I was, even though Donna somebody-or-other was constantly threatening to “kick my ass.” I have no idea why. Every time I’d see her in the hall, she’d sidle up to me and whisper “I’m gonna kick your ass, Hines.” (That was my name then.)

Not sure why Donna had it in for me. Maybe because I didn’t wear a bra. I didn’t wear make up either. Or style my hair. I smoked Kools. I hit any joint offered. I dropped acid at 8 a.m. and drank Annie Greensprings apple wine to chase it down. I did all of this in school and after school and all summer long for three years. I didn’t worry much about getting my ass kicked ’cause I was doing a pretty good job my own self.

Senior year, I lived alone in a little shack of a house my dad owned because I was pseudo-cynical and a bit of a high-on. Even my own family wanted to kick my ass. And they did, to the other side of town. One day the principal called to see why I wasn’t in school. “Put your mother on the phone,” he said, pissed when I’d answered. “She doesn’t live here but I can give you her number,” I said helpfully. Bastard hung up on me.

I have no idea why the Kennedy girls decided to invite me into their group. I think it’s pretty sweet. Really long lost pals are a trip. Speaking of…I used to say everyone on the planet should drop LSD at least once, because having your mind blown is so far fucking out. The minute my own children were born I reversed my decision regarding this preposterous proposition.

I’m thinking now maybe I hallucinated that girl who wanted to kick my ass. And I’m thinking I owe the school that actually allowed me to graduate with my West Girls in ’73 a debt of gratitude. Or maybe they just wanted to be rid of me. Kind of ironic, I’m a teacher now, and I know I’d be glad to see the backside of somebody like that me-I-used-to-be. But those Kennedy girls. They dig me despite all that. Word: they are way too cool for school.

Tagged: getting high, getting old, high school

Burning Regrets

Been feeling some regret lately and wanted to let it go. October was a tough month for me and really, September was only a little better. In those weeks, I had more bad days than good. Wrote 500 pages trying to understand myself and the emotional journey I found myself on, at age 59, when I’m supposed to be wise and know stuff and not have regrets because I know better than to do the things that I will regret.

So not true. And regret was one thing that hid itself, sly fox. I was depressed, I was sad, I was confused, I was stressed. But regrets? Hadn’t thought about those. Until a chance remark made by another person made me think: wow, I have so many regrets. I’m hanging on to them and they are dragging me down. Once I finally copped to the situation, it was time to get to work on burning those regrets. Literally.

Last night I wrote out about ten pages of regrets I had about hurting people, making bad choices, getting lost, you name it, I wrote it down. Something funny happened while I was writing. I started to realize that some of the things I regretted, in fact most of them, I would not change. Given the chance, I wouldn’t change much at all about my life and the way I’ve lived it. I learned so much by the mistakes I’ve made, I’m almost grateful for the suffering it brought.

I do regret hurting others. I can take it; I’m tough. I just wish I didn’t mow innocent others down sometimes in my single-minded determination to do something, big or small, I will later come to regret. But the person hurt most by my actions, I discovered in writing, was myself. There was nobody else to blame, and really, I didn’t want to blame myself anymore, either.

I had to change pens three times writing my little manifesto. Finally I wrote the last page in barely discernible ink. I didn’t want to get another pen. I was tired and my regret was fading just like the ink. Fitting and proper, I thought. So I went to bed, had a nightmare, woke up, and started a fire. I was careful, because I’ve done this particular cleansing ritual before, so I knew that a pot on the stove is not a good idea. Neither is a match on the sidewalk.

But I wanted those pages good and burned and gone forever. And with them my regrets. So I balanced my pizza stone on the kitchen sink, water at the ready, and flicked my bic. I cannot tell you how satisfying it was to watch all that baggage go up in smoke. I won’t be looking back, I finally am unstuck, and I’m moving forward in a healthy way. Still, sorry to anyone singed along the way. Sincerely.

Need to let something go? This works for more than regrets. It works for relationships. Burn a picture or a poem or special card. It works for humiliating situations, maybe fired from a job, maybe held up to ridicule or judgement for one thing or another. The incident doesn’t matter, what matters is that it is over except in your head. Get it out and on paper and then burn that sucker down.

The charred remains will satisfy you in an inexplicable way. Just make sure to douse the fire and maybe even soak the ashes and bits of stray paper before tossing them in the trash where they belong. Be safe, be happy, be renewed. Balance your books and forgive yourself. Of course I’m saying all of this to myself as well. Namaste.

Tagged: regrets, renewal, ritual

Breaking The NaNo Rules

My first draft of the third Blue Lake book is finished. Took a minute to bask in the glory of getting it done today–I didn’t think it would happen but that extra hour this morning helped–and now I need to get busy with polishing up this messy first draft for my patient and kind editor.

I’ve already had help from my critique group, so the first half should be simple to clean up.

There’s still the problem of what to do about Lily. Should she get top billing over my reunited lovers? The writers think so. And this past week or two of writing, when I finally admitted that I wouldn’t even get the first draft done in October (so close!) let alone something I could send my editor, I have written far more Lily pages than Reunited Lovers pages. One thing I can do when I read it over is see which one dominates page-wise. Lily’s story has more drama. Way more. The other one is pure, if a tiny bit unconventional, romance.

Speaking of unconventional romance, Luke’s #1 Rule should be available for pre-order any day now. I thought it was a romance when I started it. And there is a love story, one very close to my heart. But my publisher has decided it is “Contemporary Mainstream Fiction” because really, I don’t write romance. I write love stories, always, but also mixed in there is more messy life. In Blue Lake Book 3, there IS a love story, but Lily’s theme is darker.

My idea for Blue Lake Book 4 takes off from where Book 3 ends and right now I want to make it sunny and bright. That’s my goal. Somehow, during the writing process, goals change. If you are writing during National Novel Writing Month, and have taken the official challenge, then you’ll have to go with that goal changing thing. A minor character might become bigger than you first thought. A romance might become a mystery. By the rules of NaNo you really just have to push on and keep writing new pages.

Some people hate first drafts, but I love them. To me, it feels like flying. I would really like to take off and fly with another first draft for NaNo. But I am not going to because I am a disciplined writer who will get down to business and finish one book before she starts another.

Once again, I’m going bend those NaNo rules to my own deviant purposes. Yes, I will write every day. I will write 50K. But they won’t all be NEW words. And it won’t be a new story. It will be the revision of a story already written. I simply like the energy around the month of November for writing. Honestly, October was tough and I could use the extra support, which is out there in November like no other month of the year. Everyone on Twitter is doing it, the blogs are full of NaNo this and NaNo that, and it truly is a truly inspiring time to be a writer.

So I’m thinking maybe if you’re reading this you might want to break a NaNo rule or two yourself. Go ahead. I’ll never tell.

Tagged: Fiction Genres, First Drafts, NaNoWriMo

Writing Saves Me

I have never missed a deadline in my life. Until this month.

When I used to hear published authors talk about being behind on a book, I judged them. How lucky were they? Didn’t they realize? What was their problem? Why risk losing a career most writers would do anything to get?

So, as happens when I judge just about anyone or anything, it happened to me so the universe could show me exactly how someone might miss a deadline. For the first time in my life, I took on too many work projects, including the third Blue Lake book. It happened because I have always been able to juggle everything. I taught emotionally impaired high school kids days, went to grad school at night, read every novel on the syllabus, including Ulysses (the James Joyce one!), labored over A+ essays on the weekends, wrote my Master’s Thesis, raised my sons, and had dinner on the table every night.

My time was squeezed so tight sometimes I couldn’t take a phone call or have a cup of coffee with family. But I still made homemade cookies every Christmas and gave away dozens of tins as gifts. That was then. This is now. And I can’t do it all anymore. Much to my surprise, I have slowed down. Must have been over the winter of ’13 when I wasn’t looking.

I knew the last thing I added to my schedule in September was too much, but I thought, you know, lie low in October and get it done. Power through. Except I couldn’t. I needed recuperation time between teaching and learning and writing and keeping house. And then I got it into my head that I needed my house to feel more like a home, and made a list of what that would take. If I just felt easy in my own space, all would be well, I thought.

It worked, sort of. I do feel more at home in my new place now that I’ve added some more Cindy to it. But this summer I got in a car accident, got an air bag concussion, and have had ongoing headaches, sleepless nights, and panic. So I had to add in therapy once a week to nip that. And therapy helped. Is helping. In fact, therapy, and talking to a spiritual counselor, helped me figure out why I couldn’t get it all done and what my priorities should be. So I dropped the least important items from my list and only kept my happy home, teaching and writing front and center.

I still will not make my October deadline and finally wrote and told my editor. She was really nice about it — I mean it’s better for her if I turn in the best book I can write, and it’s not there yet. But it will be and I have her blessing to take all the time I need. My publisher is a small boutique house and in that I am lucky. They do most of their sales in e-books and have flexibility that another, bigger publisher wouldn’t. And they treat their authors so well.

Yes, I missed my deadline, but it won’t be by much, and I hope to get this series rolling very soon. I have one “work” thing on my agenda in 2015: write. Because, in the end, writing is what saves me. It allows me to play.

Tagged: creative process, day job, writing

“The Black Cats of Blue Lake”

They met under the old oak in Town Square at the stroke of twelve on Devil’s Night. Each of the all female feline squad gave their crime reports.

“Foiled a firecracker in my butt attempt.”

“Walked under a ladder on purpose.”

“Crossed the path of the grumpy guy living under the boardwalk.”

The Grumpy Guy was new. He wasn’t a tourist, because that season had passed. He wasn’t townsfolk either; he was a stranger, an outsider. And the cats didn’t trust him.

“Saw lights in Kiwi cottage,” Thomasina, the eldest cat, said. “Upped to window. It was him. Grumpy Guy.”

“No!” Kiwi Cottage was one of the six quaint lakeside vacation homes known collectively as Blue Heaven. Thomasina’s people owned the cottages. And now someone, a Stranger, had busted into one of the town’s beloved old treasures.

“Yes. And he had guns. Three of them. A pistol, a shotgun, and a rifle. Also a butter knife with a strange sharp tip.”

“Strange how?” Athena, next in seniority asked.

One of the youngsters licked her paw nervously. The others sat in anticipation. There would have to be a plan. It would not be easy. Humans weren’t great communicators and, despite their many feline skills, they’d need at least one, probably two, humans for this mission.

“We’ll rouse Daniel,” Thomasina said.

“We’ll have to crowd him down to Blue Heaven.” Crowding was a technique the cat clan had recently perfected. You circled the human and slowly moved them in the correct direction.

“But time is crucial,” Athena pointed out. “He’ll need his car. And his phone.”

“He always has his phone. I think he keeps it in his pajama pocket while he naps.”

Twelve eyes, six gold, six green, glowed with glee. An adventure, perhaps even a dangerous mission. They lifted their tails and in a straight line headed to Thomasina’s house. Thomasina let herself in her private door while the others waited on the front porch. Like a streak, she was up the stairs, on the bed, biting Daniel’s leg.

“Oww.” He swatted her. She deflected and bit him again, pulling the meat of his skin. Urgent!

“Okay, okay.” Daniel got up, left his sleeping wife, and followed Thomasina downstairs. He started for the kitchen but she stopped him with a walk across his path and a loud meow. He followed her to the front door and stared out at the other five cats.

“Oh boy. What now?”

Thomasina jumped onto the table in the foyer that held a bowl where Daniel kept his keys. She nudged them with her nose.

And so, a few moments later, a man drove slowly behind six cats trotting at a good clip toward Blue Heaven and Kiwi Cottage. Thomasina hoped when he saw the light he’d phone the police. Athena prayed they weren’t too late for whatever damage this Stranger wished to inflict on some person or persons in their town.

“Not on our watch,” Thomasina said.

Nobody had reported roaming teenagers, so they felt confident they could stop the Stranger before he pulled his bloody prank. Where had he come by guns? What did he intend to do with them? And, most important, when?

All would have been well if Daniel had called the police instead of getting out of his car and walking toward Kiwi himself. His motor and the flashlight alerted the Stranger who came to the door of the cottage with the pistol in his hand, pointed straight at Daniel. Pistols, the cats knew, were much more accurate and deadly than the other kinds of guns. Not good.

Daniel immediately raised his hands. “Hey, slow down, I own this place.”

“I know who you are. Daniel Bryman, town benefactor and all-around big shot.”

“And you are? If you need a place to stay, I’m happy to lend you the use of the cottage.”

“Oh I bet you are. But I’ll be wanting more than a cottage.” The Stranger had his eyes trained on Daniel and didn’t notice the cats as they moved into position. “I’ll be wanting those keys to your house. After I kill you, I intend to pay your wife a visit. She’s already in bed? Just where I want her.” The Stranger leered and Thomasina read his filthy thoughts. If only she had this power for more than one night a year she would have known months ago the Stranger had developed an obsession with Eva, Thomasina’s other person. He wanted her, and the gold coins, jewels, and paper money in the Bryman safe, too. He didn’t care that he had to kill Daniel for his prize.

Clearly, there was no time for police. Clearly, action had to be taken immediately. Thomasina howled, her teeth gleaming in the moonlight, sharp as razors. She lunged upward toward the gun arm of the Stranger. Startled and hurt as she bit down hard, he dropped the gun.

“Shit.” The Stranger clutched his arm, looking for his attacker, but Thomasina had already dissolved into the night.

Daniel was phoning 911 instead of trying to get the gun so as the Stranger, still clutching his injured arm, went for it, Athena pounced on him with the weight of six tons. She held him pinned as the four youngsters used their many skills, eyes burned holes like cigarette scars into the Stranger’s trigger finger. Tails whipped like barbed wire across his face and eyes. Poisonous claws clamped onto his neck.

By the time the police cruiser arrived, the Stranger had been well and truly subdued. And the cats were rewarded with cream, fresh tuna, and a splendid, well-deserved nap.

Happy Halloween!

*Thanks to Kris & Jim for photo of Ariel

Tagged: cat stories, halloween, microfiction