Michelle Cox's Blog, page 37

The Love of His Life Was Apparently Baseball

Herman Neumacher was born on February 2, 1903 in Chicago.  The names of his parents are unknown, but he is thought to be of Irish and German descent.  He was the youngest of ten children, and his family life seems to have been very chaotic, as his family moved constantly from apartment to apartment.  He spent the majority of his childhood on the streets playing baseball with his brothers.  He attended St. Hedwig’s until 8th grade and then quit to get a job in a radio factory making the cabinets that housed the radios.

When he was about twenty, Herman met a young woman, Pearl Ferguson, at a party that her sister was having.  Pearl was from an even bigger family than Herman and had fifteen siblings.  Her parents were very strict Catholics and were scandalized to the core when Pearl had married a man who wasn’t Catholic without their approval.  Fearing for her soul, they hounded Pearl until she finally bowed to their unrelenting pressure and divorced her first husband.  When she met Herman several years later, she was eager to be married again.  Herman eventually proposed, to the delight of Pearl’s parents, who were thrilled that her new man was Catholic.  Pearl, however, regretted her decision forever.

Herman, it seems, made a very unsatisfactory husband, and Pearl often referred to him over the years as “disturbed” or “unnatural.”  Almost from the first moment of their marriage, Herman showed no interest in her, never had any affection for her, and never seemed to even want to be with her.  But it wasn’t just her; he also did not seem to want to ever be with her family or friends and refused to ever go to any social events, including any sort of party or holiday.  Likewise, he refused to let Pearl have anyone over, so Pearl never once got to host a birthday party, a dinner party or a holiday in her own home.

According to Pearl’s niece, Dee, who helped provide the information for this story, Herman was indeed completely anti-social.  The only people her uncle ever socialized with, she says, were his brothers.  Herman, it seems, spent every free minute away from work attending baseball games with his brothers, drinking beer and eating hot dogs.

More than once, miserable and depressed, Pearl confronted Herman and questioned him about why he had ever married her in the first place, as it was obvious that he had never really loved her, even in the beginning.  She often accused him of marrying her as a way of staying out of the war —an accusation, she has noted, that he never refuted.

The situation grew worse, if possible, when Pearl accidentally discovered that Herman had secretly been having affairs all their married life, even taking some of his paramours to Las Vegas, all the while telling Pearl that he was going to Milwaukee with his brothers to see the Cubs play. Furious, Pearl left him and went to stay with her sister, Dee’s mother.  After about six months, Herman begged Pearl to come back to him, though Pearl couldn’t understand why, as he hadn’t seemed the slightest bit interested in her before. He even offered to give her money this time, which he had never done before.  From the moment of their marriage, he had refused to give her any money from his paycheck besides a few dollars a week, forcing Pearl to earn all the household money herself.

Pearl eventually again caved in, not only to Herman, but to her parents, who were again upset that she seemed on the brink of divorcing another man.  She returned to live with Herman, but it proved a terrible mistake, as he treated her worse than he had before.  Pearl says it was no use leaving him again and instead tried to make the best of it.

Pearl suspects that over the years Herman continued with his extra-marital affairs as well as going to ball games, though she began to wonder if he was really there with his brothers or maybe instead with his lovers.   In his later years, he gave up drinking beer at the games as he heard somewhere that it caused cancer.  Pearl also thought it odd that despite the nature of his job in a radio factory and his predilection for going to ball games, Herman was always well-dressed in a suit and tie and loved being “dapper,” as he liked to call it.  She says that he had no other real hobbies.  When he retired, he took a job as a security guard at the Merchandise Mart and worked there for five years, a job of which he was very proud.

In the last year or so, Pearl says she began noticing a change in Herman.  His health declined, and he became more confused and even dangerous.  He began carrying knives or sharp tools around, saying “I’m going to use this on Whino,” meaning Pearl, of course, which, Pearl states, doesn’t make sense as she has never been a drinker.  Pearl grew increasingly afraid, especially as her own health has been declining rapidly as well.  Her niece, Dee, who has been helping both of them intermittently in recent years, decided to intervene when Herman began to get violent.

At that point, Dee took her aunt and uncle to view various nursing homes, though Herman did not seem to understand his surroundings at all.  Pearl, her own confusion increasing recently, at first assumed they were looking for a place for her to live and seemed happy about it.  Dee had to then explain numerous times that they were actually looking for a place for Herman, but suggested that perhaps Dee should move into a nursing home as well.  Pearl reacted very negatively to the suggestion, however, and claimed to be perfectly capable of living independently.  This, of course, is not true, as Dee has to help her at least weekly with shopping, cleaning, hygiene, and some cooking.  Dee does not wish to force her, however, and says she is willing to continue with the routine of stopping over at the house until Pearl gets more used to the idea of going into a home.

Herman, meanwhile, has adjusted relatively well to his new surroundings, though he doesn’t seem to completely grasp where he is.  It is regrettable that he is not able to tell his own version of his story, though Dee has confirmed that everything Pearl related is true.  Herman does not seem to get any comfort from Pearl’s visits and actually believes another woman on his floor to be his wife, a source of great sorrow to Pearl.  He remains calm and un-agitated and spends most of his days watching baseball on television.  Pearl seems reluctant to join him, but ironically is struggling at home on her own without him.

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From Leather Cutter to Sears Inspector

Eugenia Boyd was born on June 20, 1906 in Austria-Hungary to Anton Herzog and Marie Beran and was one of nine children.  When Anne was very little, the family immigrated to America and made their way to Chicago, where they stayed for about a year before moving to a farm in Michigan.  Thus, Eugenia spent most of her childhood in Michigan and completed the eighth grade there.

When she was about fourteen, one of Eugenia’s brothers told her about a job he knew of at a leather factory in the town nearest their farm.  Eugenia agreed to go with him in his old Ford to apply for it, but was soon disgusted by the stench emanating from the factory as they drove up.  Having come this far, however, she decided to go in anyway.  The story goes that when Eugenia timidly approached the receptionist and asked about the job, the receptionist just looked at her and said, “What job?”

Apparently, Eugenia then looked so forlorn and confused that the receptionist took pity on her and arranged for her to try her luck as a cutter.  This involved cutting the leather trim around a pattern with a very sharp knife.  It turned out to be a job Eugenia was good at and really enjoyed, despite the smell of the factory and the fact that she was often teased by the men that worked there because she was so young.

After three years of working there, however, Eugenia had to quit because the family decided to move back to Chicago.  They were only renting the farm in Michigan and had finally saved enough to buy a small house in Chicago.  Anton got a job in a piano factory.  It took him years and years to save up the money to buy one of the pianos he helped to build, but he was very proud of the fact that he was eventually able to do so.

Six years after the Herzog’s moved to Chicago, the Great Depression hit, and Eugenia was out of a job, though no one remembers where she originally worked when they first got to Chicago.  The family story is that she “paid for” a job in a factory that made razors, though no one is exactly sure what was meant by that.  At the razor factory, Eugenia inspected the razors for quality and also handled customer complaints.  From there she took a job at Western Electric and then went on to Sears, Roebuck, where she worked as a type of inspector, a job she held for many years.

Though Eugenia had her share of “beaux” over the years, she never seemed to fall in love.  One night, however, at a party at a girlfriend’s house, she met a man by the name of Sherman Boyd.  Sherman worked in a lumberyard and also made deliveries for various companies on the side.  The two hit it off right away and began dating.  After only a short amount of time, Sherman proposed, and Eugenia happily accepted.  Sherman already owned his own home, one which Eugenia thought very nice, so when they were married, she moved in rather than them getting a new place.

Sadly, the couple could not have any children, though they very much wanted them.  Instead, they continued working and enjoyed entertaining and having people over for dinner.  Eugenia loved to garden in her free time and was very active at their church, Immaculate Conception.

According to family members, Eugenia and Sherman had a lovely life together until Sherman passed away at age 83.  Shortly afterward, Eugenia went to live with her younger sister, Cecile, in Naperville.  Though Cecile was only three years younger than Eugenia, she began waiting on Eugenia constantly and prepared elaborate meals and “fancy baked goods” for her every day.

This behavior went on for eight years until Cecile’s daughter, Linda, decided to intervene.  According to Linda, Cecile was becoming “obsessed” with caring for Eugenia, which Linda felt was ridiculous, considering her mother was quite elderly as well.  Cecile became more and more worried that something was going to happen to Eugenia, that she would fall or get sick or have some sort of accident.  Cecile became so preoccupied with worry that she began waking up in the middle of the night to check on Eugenia.  It is interesting to note that in all of this time, Eugenia seems to have been completely unaware, or pretended to be unaware, of the stress she was causing her sister.

Not wanting to break the sisters up, but wanting to give Cecile a break, Linda and other family members came up with a plan for Eugenia to spend part of the day at a nearby senior center, which she willing went to and enjoyed.  It wasn’t enough, however, to stop Cecile’s obsession.  Finally, the family decided that something more drastic would have to be done.  Tentatively, they approached Eugenia with the idea of going to live in a nursing home and were shocked when she was very accepting of it.  In fact, Eugenia now claims that it was her idea all along, that she made the decision because of “poor Cecile’s health problems.”

Obviously, then, Eugenia has made an excellent transition to the nursing home, still enjoying having her meals cooked for her and joining in all of the activities offered.  She especially likes bingo, watching gameshows with other residents, “old movie” night, and listening to big band music.

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Proud to Have “Opened the Books”

Ruth Hughes was born on June 4th, 1906 in Chicago to Virginia Ward and Raymond Oveson. She had three brothers: Walter, Raymond, Jr., and Albert, though both Raymond, Jr. and Albert died as infants.  Ruth attended two years at Cathedral High School and then quit to begin working at the telephone company.  She then moved into bookkeeping and was always extremely proud that she “opened the books” for Little Company of Mary Hospital when it was newly built.

When Ruth was around twenty years old, the couple that lived in the apartment above her family introduced her to a young man they knew by the name of Kelly Hughes, who was five years her senior.  Kelly, it seems, was orphaned at age 15 in Ireland.  His father was killed in the Great War, and his mother died of an illness a year later, leaving him alone.  Not wanting to be a burden to his relatives, he made his way to England and then to America, where he found a job as an electrician, a job he kept for over 40 years.

Ruth and Kelly dated for three years, during which time they fell in love and then married.  During their courtship, their favorite date was either “going to the pictures” or walking in Humboldt Park.  After they were married, Ruth continued working as a bookkeeper until their first child, Kenneth, was born.  She stayed home with him and their daughter, Sally, when she “came along” a couple of years later.  Sally says that Ruth loved being a housewife and was devoted to them and their father.  She loved baking and sewing, movies and dancing, but especially enjoyed any kind of family gathering or celebration, such as birthdays, weddings or showers.  She was also very active in her parish of Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Sally says that Ruth and Kelly had a very calm, loving relationship and describes both of them as being very gentle, compassionate people.  They mostly enjoyed being at home, but they did take a few family vacations to Wisconsin and Missouri and New York and even once travelled all the way to Ireland to see Kelly’s birthplace.

As the years progressed, both Ruth and Kelly’s health began to deteriorate, Ruth especially when she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.  Not long after that, Kenneth had them move in with his family and cared for them for six years, at which point Sally took a turn and brought them into her home for another four.  After ten combined years of trying to care for them at home, however, both Kenneth and Sally decided that the best place for their parents would be a nursing home.  Ruth and Kelly were admitted together and shared a room until Kelly passed away after only a year in the home.

Ruth is very disoriented now and rarely speaks.  She does not recognize Kenneth, who visits every weekend, or Sally, who visits daily, and can no longer communicate with them except for holding their hand while they watch TV together.  Kenneth and Sally do not seem to feel any guilt or anxiety about their mother’s placement, but only want Ruth’s last bit of time to be full of the gentle love and comfort she gave to them for so many years.

 

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The Little Girl She Always Wanted

Opal Payne was born on October 18th, 1913 in Chicago to Martin Vogt and Eileen O’Rourke.  Martin had emigrated from Germany and worked as a stenographer in the city, while Eileen, whose parents had come from Ireland, cared for their three children: Opal, Norman and Lee.

Opal went to John Marshall High School for a year and a half before quitting to get a job at the Martin Case Company running a machine that made decorative boxes.  After only about seven months on the job, Opal was involved in an accident at work and lost part of her right index finger as a result.  She continued working there, however, for another fifteen years before the company was bought out by Tailor Trunk Company.  With the new company, Opal was responsible for putting the lining inside of trunks.

In her late teens/early twenties, Opal met a young man, Gilbert Payne, at the Merry Gardens, a dance hall her friends from work liked to frequent.  They were always asking Opal to come along, but Opal usually declined, as she was very shy and also very self-conscious about her missing fingertip.  On this particular night, however, Opal accompanied them and shyly danced with Gilbert when he asked her.  He had spotted her right away and approached the little group as they came in.  Opal was delighted that as they danced, he did not seem to mind her missing finger.

Opal and Gilbert began dating for a short time, but the relationship never progressed, though no one knows why.  Gilbert went on to marry someone else, a woman named Evelyn Uthe, and Opal remained single, never venturing out much after her relationship with Gilbert ended.  Some people say she was pining for him, even after he married.

Gilbert and Evelyn had a little girl, Emily, but Evelyn died when Emily was just two years old.  Several years passed before Opal and Gilbert happened to run into each other again.  Gilbert asked her on a date, and Opal tentatively accepted.  She was twenty-nine by this point.  Something sparked this time between the two of them, and they eventually fell in love and got married.  Emily was about five at the time, and Opal adored her.  Gilbert worked in a factory that made airplane parts, and Opal quit working to stay home with Emily.  Opal got pregnant quickly, but sadly had two miscarriages.  She was eventually able to carry a baby full term and delivered a girl, whom they named Rose Eileen, but she died within a half hour of her birth.

Gilbert and Opal never had any children between them, but Opal was always grateful that she had Emily, whom she raised as if she were her own and to whom she was completely devoted.  Opal often said that Gilbert was meant to marry Evelyn first, as it allowed Opal to have the little girl she always wanted since she could not carry her own.

Opal and Gilbert seem to have had a happy life together until, after twenty-seven years of marriage, Gilbert died of eye cancer in 1969.  Opal was devastated, and relied heavily on Emily to help her through her grief.  She eventually got a job working in the St. Edward’s rectory as a distraction.  After that she became very involved with the Church, often going to bingo, and began a group that said novenas to Our Lady of Sorrows.  Later she joined the Ministry of Prayer and Praise, which asked all members to pray daily in their homes for special intentions.

Opal was always a very nervous, anxious person, Emily says, and dealt with her stress by being organized and by decorating the house, one of her favorite pastimes.  She loved to paint as a child, and continued to do so as a young wife and mother, frequently painting the walls of the house different colors.  She also enjoyed doing crafts and loved to study history and to listen to music.

Opal has been able to live alone until very recently when she began to fall repeatedly.  Emily has been in the habit of stopping in to help her over the years, though she has had her own family – five sons! – to raise and her own declining health to deal with as well.  Emily arranged for a nurse to visit Opal once a day, which helped for a time, but it was eventually not enough, either.  Opal then made the decision on her own to go to a nursing home.  She seems relatively happy with her choice, though at times she becomes teary when spoken to.  Emily, though she seems very guilt-ridden and, at times, critical of the facility, continues to visit her mother, sometimes bringing her two little granddaughters, Opal’s great-granddaughters, which cheers Opal immensely.

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It Was Her Job to Care for the “Waterhead Babies”

Rose Ackermann was born in Chicago on August 22, 1926 to Emil Ackermann and Hanna Raskop, both of whom emigrated from Germany.  Emil found work as a coal and ice man, but he also worked as a handyman on the side sometimes as well.  Hanna cared for their three children—Leo, Judith and Rose—and worked at the Baby Ruth candy bar factory at night.

When Rose was just three years old, she came down with either diphtheria or scarlet fever, which left her with brain damage.  Judith, her older sister, says she was never the same after that.  Rose never learned to read or write, except her name, and never learned to even make change.

More tragedy then followed for the Ackermann’s.  When Rose was nine and Judith just ten, Hanna died, leaving them in the care of Emil, who, according to Judith, was an “abusive drunk.”  As the oldest girl, Judith was expected to fill her mother’s shoes and struggled to learn to cook, clean and do the laundry.  She says she was routinely beaten by her father for not doing things correctly, and she often took Rose’s beatings as well, as Rose could never remember to do her chores.

The authorities somehow got wind of the situation and eventually came in and broke up the family.  Judith was sent to a foster home to live.  Leo was also slated to go to a foster home, but ran way instead and raised himself on the streets from the age of twelve.

Meanwhile, poor Rose got sent to a home for “deformed children” in Dixon, Illinois.  At the home it was Rose’s job to wash and feed the “waterhead babies” every morning before she received her own breakfast.  Rose often tells about the scary room at the institution with rows and rows of shelves upon which sat jars filled with the brains of the waterhead babies who had died.  Needless to say, Rose was frightened there much of the time.  As she grew older, she had to look after more and more children, including children whose only problem was epilepsy.  It was a difficult task considering her limited mental ability, and she found it hard to keep after them.

Rose remained at the home until she turned eighteen and was finally free to go.  Judith came and got her.  It was 1944, and Judith had just gotten married.  She brought Rose to live with her and her new husband, Michael Reading, on Kolmar Avenue in Chicago.

Rose spent the next fifty years living with Judith and Michael.  She never married and has always been a very calm, even-keeled person, says Judith.  She loves dogs, solitaire, doing hook rugs, cleaning the house, listening to ball games on the radio, and watching soap operas.  Judith and Michael never had any children, so when Michael died a few years ago, Judith and Rose were left alone.  They have always been extremely close, as if perpetually trying to make up for the lost years of their childhood, and did everything together.

Recently, though, Rose began experiencing stomach pain and was having difficulty breathing, so Judith took her to the hospital.  Her diagnosis is still not clear, but the doctors recommended that she be released to a nursing home.  Judith agreed, but with much guilt and a heavy heart.  Ironically, Rose seems content with her placement.  It is Judith, who visits often, that seems to be having a harder time adjusting and is very critical of the facility as a result.  Rose is alert and can communicate well, but has difficulty answering questions.  She does not interact with the other residents, as her conversation skills are limited, but seems to enjoy sitting among them nonet

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How to Get Your Book Published in 7000 Easy Steps – A Practical GuideSTEP 7,000: THE END

And so, dear readers, you may not have realized time slipping past us ever so quickly so that we have shockingly reached the end of the Guide already!  Yes, here we are at Step 7,000!  Remember that I did tell you in the beginning that I would skip some of the more tedious steps so that you could finish reading this Guide in your natural lifetime and still have enough minutes, maybe hours, left over to hopefully apply at least a smattering of the wisdom found within.

Lest you are worried that I have inadvertently left out something important, rest assured that I have not.  The passed-over steps are too boring and not worthy of a whole chapter in this Guide.  These are the dull things involved in getting your book published, like:

Enduring the months of going back and forth with the web designers to get just the right images or just the right shade of font for your website.
Endlessly fretting over and finally signing off on the cover mechanicals.
Designing and ordering what are called “collateral” materials, like postcards, bookmarks, business cards and posters.
Setting up an Amazon and Goodreads Author page, or any other “page” you can think of.
Receiving the “Q1 to Design” pages back, which sounds scary but is really just the first set of edits.
Enduring countless rounds of editing, since we’re on the subject, which are appropriately then called first pages, second pages, third pages, etc. (it goes on and on forever until you get to the ARCs).
Finally getting the ARCs in hand only to have to read this bloody thing yet again, making it the what? Twelfth?  Thirteenth? Twentieth time you’ve read your own book.

Plus many, many other tiresome, dreary steps.  Who wants to read a whole chapter on any one of those?  No dear readers, I have spared you yet again.

I will point out that, interestingly enough, as the book actually begins to take on a real physical shape, your focus naturally begins to turn from producing it (birthing it, if you will), to promoting it (raising it), which, as with a child, is infinitely harder than creating it.  Raising the child, you suddenly realize with crystal-clear clarity after only the first forty-eight—okay, two— hours following her birth, involves a long, long, long process and requires a decidedly different skill set than simply say, making love.

No, darlings, it’s not enough for you to publish your book—to physically bring it into existence.  You are now required to spend an inordinate number of hours—say, every second that you can wrench from your real-life children (not to mention your spouse)—trying to get your book the attention it deserves, its moment in the spotlight.

Your life will now become a desperate attempt to get reviews and interviews, publish articles, feature on podcasts, star on “must-read” lists, produce trailers, and the pinnacle—set up a plethora of signings and appearances.  It is this last one, once your mind fully comprehends it, which may cause a slow, sinking feeling of dread to descend upon your heart.

Nowhere was it ever mentioned that writing a book required public speaking.  But of course this makes sense, does it not?  It is a detail, however, that you may have conveniently overlooked and one which I kept hidden from you, darlings, as you might not have the fortitude to continue at all.  Had yours truly known this in the beginning, for example, I perhaps would have passed on writing the book altogether and continued to instead pour all my creative efforts into my flower garden or my kids’ birthday party invitations, at the very least.

Ironically, the doubt and perhaps paralysis you may suddenly be feeling is akin to the feelings of regret one usually fights with when your baby is crying endlessly from teething and you have no recourse but to curl up on the floor beside the crib, hoping it will lull her into sleep, (this theory in and of itself being obviously flawed), and covering yourself with the various stuffed animals lying around the room in an attempt to warm yourself, having of course forgotten to drag a blanket with you off of your bed when you were startled awake by the initial high-pitched scream.  Or when you are standing—literally—for hours in a freezing drizzle in March to watch your child’s five seconds of middle-school glory while she runs the 100-meter dash.  If you were somehow able to feel the despair caused by even just one of either of those two situations ahead of time, things might not have proceeded as they had after that candlelight dinner and dancing with your spouse.  What followed seemed like such a good idea at the time . . .

As it was, I was completely unprepared for the public-speaking aspect of the book.  Perhaps I just vaguely envisioned sitting at a table signing books and smiling at people, not having to stand up in front of them to discuss something apparently relevant, like my writing process, my road to publishing, my inspiration for characters, or – this actually happened – “why did you choose the genre of mystery and why do you feel it is an effective genre in which to express yourself?”!  Don’t people know that writers are shy?  That’s why we’re WRITERS!—because it’s easier for us to write than to speak.  But, darlings, that is not the way of the world.

As I mentioned in an earlier step, you must crush the delusion you may be currently laboring under in which you believe that being a writer equates to having your own little undisturbed life of calmly writing books, sending them to a publisher in a manilla envelope and patiently waiting for the royalty checks while you tend your garden and bake cookies.

No, darlings!  As we have discussed many times, writing has become a very social affair.  Remember, you are building a platform and a brand, the focus of which is you.  Embrace this truth for what it is.  Know that, as with a child, you are in it for the long haul.  No one says it better than Brooke Warner, publisher of She Writes Press, who writes that “building a platform is a marathon, not a sprint.”

My best advice to you, my dear, darling readers is to keep writing.  Because, after all, that is what you like best, correct?  You may be too overwhelmed when the baby is first born to engage in the activity that created it in the first place, but like childbirth, the memory of the pain fades fast and sooner or later that old familiar urge returns.  Engaging in it now, however, is different because your eyes are wide open and you know that you will find yourself knee-deep in diapers or endorsement requests should you proceed, but you do it anyway, because you just can’t seem to help yourself.

Best of luck darlings!  It’s been a privilege and a pleasure.  Never fear—I have my eyes on you, and I’ll be there on the sidelines, cheering you on!

The post How to Get Your Book Published in 7000 Easy Steps – A Practical Guide

STEP 7,000: THE END appeared first on Michelle Cox.

She Wanted a Different Kind of Life

Valentine Conrad was born on February 26, 1910 in Chicago to Wilma Sheppard and Frank Knauz.  Valentine’s early life was rather convoluted, as her mother was married three times.  Wilma’s first marriage apparently only lasted three months before she divorced her husband.  She then married another man by the name of Frank Knauz with whom she had two children: Valentine and, six years later, Edmund.  Eventually, however, Wilma and Frank divorced as well.  Wilma next married a man by the name of Oscar Strumsky.  Oscar legally adopted Valentine and Edmund, but they kept Susan’s maiden name of Sheppard.

Valentine, it seems, was an extremely intelligent child—a prodigy, in fact.  At age four, Wilma made her practice the piano for eight hours a day, and by age twelve, Valentine played Carnegie Hall.  She went to Northwestern University in Evanston at an early age and graduated from the college’s music school.

In her early twenties, Valentine found herself working in a music store and there met a man by the name of Lyndsey Conrad through her friend, Helen, whom Lyndsey had dated once.  Lyndsey Conrad was originally from Duluth, Minnesota where he attended a junior college and, upon graduation, got a job with the railroad.  When he got laid off shortly thereafter, he decided to move to Chicago and start a lumberyard business.  When Helen introduced him to her friend, Valentine, the two hit it off and began dating.  They eventually married when she was 25, and he was thirty.

With the Depression and the then the War, during which the government rationed lumber, Lyndsey’s lumberyard eventually failed.  The young couple decided to move back to Minnesota, where Lyndsey was able to get another job with the railroad.  It was in Duluth that they had their son, Gerald.  The family lived in apartments until Lyndsey and Valentine had saved enough to finally build their own home.  It is interesting to note that Lyndsey remained in this house until he died in 1983.

When Gerald was ten years old, Valentine decided she could no longer take the life she had created with Lyndsey, and returned to Chicago to live with her mother and her brother, Edmund.  She severed all communication with Lyndsey and even Gerald and started her life over.  Gerald says he knows little of that life except that she loved the piano, theater and playing bridge.

Valentine apparently became very close to Edmund’s fiancé, Ida, whom he was engaged to for over 25 years.  Ida and Valentine became almost like sisters.  At some point, it seems that Edmund had a stroke and spent 12 years in a nursing home before he eventually died.  He left all of his assets to Ida, though he had created a trust fund for Valentine as well.  After Edmund’s death, Valentine, Ida, and another friend, Lorraine, became very close and spent all of their time together, including holidays.  Besides piano and bridge, Valentine loved pottery, painting, music, movies, museums, swimming, and gardening.  She did not like to travel and never once left Chicago except for the short time she lived in Duluth with Lyndsey.

In 1983, Valentine got word that Lyndsey had died in Duluth, and three years later, she gathered her courage and decided to seek out Gerald.  Despite the fact that they hadn’t communicated for over thirty years, Gerald welcomed her with open arms and forgave her for being so absent in his life.  Valentine discovered that she had a daughter-in-law, Carol, and four grandchildren as well.  After that, Gerald and his family came to visit Valentine in Chicago from time to time, Valentine delighting in being able to take her grandchildren sight-seeing and to various plays.

Valentine, as she grew older, maintained an independent life style and stuck to a daily routine, which consisted of leaving her apartment by nine am, taking a bus to the Levy Center to play the piano and bridge, and returning to her apartment with a bag of groceries to cook dinner with.  Gerald describes her as a very opinionated, determined woman who hated men and the medical industry both.  She could be extremely generous and kind, however, with those she knew well and trusted.

Recently, Valentine suffered a stroke, which has left her partially paralyzed and unable to speak, hence her admission to a nursing home.  Gerald and Carol visit infrequently, as they live in Minnesota, but they did not think Valentine would want to be moved from Chicago.  Valentine seems depressed and withdrawn and is not able to communicate at this time, which, Gerald says, is probably torture for her.  In the past, he says, Valentine dealt with stress by pacing or by turning to music, neither of which she can do now.  At times she is agitated and even tried to strike Carol when they last visited.  She seems happiest, if that is even possible at this point, when music is played for her on a phonograph in her room or when she sits listening to classical music or jazz on the radio.

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How to Get Your Book Published in 7000 Easy Steps – A Practical GuideSTEP 21: “DARLING, DID YOU REMEMBER TO BRING HOME THE TWITTER TIPS?” (PART 2)

Last week, dear readers, I promised actual Twitter tips, which I am now somewhat regretting, but such is life.  This is not because I begrudge sharing my less-than-vast knowledge with you, darlings; rather, it is because Twitter is a strange, organic animal that is difficult to pin down and even more difficult to predict.  Yet somehow it has come into existence, and so we must learn to wrestle with it.

As a writer, you have to build a platform, a presence in social media, and Twitter offers yet another way to try to connect with other writers and, hopefully, readers.  Another place for your “fans” to find more about you.  Perhaps in fifty years—okay, two—people will probably look back and laugh at our quaint belief that Twitter made the slightest bit of difference, but for now we’ll assume that it does.

Okay, enough rambling.  For the purpose of this Guide, I will assume you know little or nothing about Twitter.  If you already do, skim down to find any relevant tidbits, or skip this entry all together.  The rest of us will catch up with you in the next step!

First, some mechanics:

Each post to Twitter can be its own entity, its own little 140 character message, like “Drinking champagne with Lauren Willig while she signs books!” (62 characters used) or it can be a tease (via a link) back to your blog or website or FB page, or wherever you’re hoping to direct someone.
If you are creating a link, the link itself usually already exceeds 140 characters, so you have to shorten them by using a link-shortening site, such as: https://bitly.com. Simply copy your link there and it will chop it and copy it for you.  Presto!
Don’t waste time with punctuation! Each comma, quotation mark, or period counts!  Even spaces count, so use them sparingly.
Abbreviate words if you can.
Always attach a picture if possible. It is worth the characters used, as it is more likely to get noticed and clicked/retweeted.
Always end your tweet with at least two, maybe three, hashtags. Think of your tweet as an advertisement and hashtags as the billboards you are putting your advertisement on.  Without a hashtag, your cleverly designed tweet has nowhere to be displayed.  No traffic will see it.  Here are some great hashtags (billboards) for writers:

#amreading

#amwriting

#TuesdayBookBlog

#1linewed

#Mondayblogs

#Greatreads

#Bookworm

#writerslife

There are tons more to be found at: http://bit.ly/1RhvLve

If you want your tweet to go straight to a specific person, however, use the @ symbol in front of their twitter name (handle). This is different than sending them a direct message, which is private.  Using the @ symbol posts your tweet on their page (or feed) so their followers also see it.  Usually one does this if you specifically want a certain person to see your tweet or if you’re hoping they will retweet you.

Now for strategy:

If you are just beginning and in need of followers, one idea is to go find your favorite authors and not only follow them, but follow some of their followers.
That being said, don’t go too crazy and follow too many people, otherwise you will be following more people than are following you. This is normal in the beginning, but Twitter will block you if your numbers become too disproportionate.
A good rule of thumb to avoid this problem is to give people a certain amount of time to follow you back before you cut them from the list. This seems cruel, but, believe me, it is necessary.  I try to give people a week, but you can decide what works best for you.
Put effort into liking and retweeting others. Twitter is supposed to be about building a community, which seems at first to be a contradiction in terms, but it can be done.  But like any good community, it’s all about relationships.  Try to scratch someone’s back once in a while.
As for subject matter, your tweets should be broken up into thirds. One-third should be about your book/project, one-third should be personal, and one-third should be other content that you’ve either retweeted from someone else or, better yet, that you’ve created yourself.
Speaking of, Twitter seems to be made up of a lot of people who just retweet other people, so content, as it is everywhere, is king. If you can produce a decent, original tweet, such as a blog post, a book review, an article, a quote, or even a cartoon, chances are people will retweet it.
Experiment with your tweets to find out what your followers like. Just keep throwing the spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.
That being said, there seems to be no rhyme or reason to what makes a tweet get retweeted. Besides the content, it could very well be down to the particular hashtags you’ve sent it to, or even the time of day.  The amount of variables attached to the success of any tweet seems too staggering to try to calculate and use for future predictions, so best not to waste too much of your valuable writing time with this.

The best advice I can give regarding Twitter is to not take it too seriously.  In a single moment of incredulity, my nineteen year old destroyed any notion I had as to Twitter’s relevance by laughing at my sweated labor over each and every tweet and glibly informing me that “tweeting is what people do while they’re waiting in line.”

So, darlings, don’t worry about posting something that could possibly be considered “wrong,” as the fickleness of Twitter means that no one remembers anything for more than a nanosecond, so mistakes are quickly evaporated.  And chances are, this is a fad that may soon pass (we can only hope), so don’t sweat it too much.  Just keep trying – you’ll get it.

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STEP 21: “DARLING, DID YOU REMEMBER TO BRING HOME THE TWITTER TIPS?” (PART 2) appeared first on Michelle Cox.

Three Times Deceived

Irene Bailey was born on October 7, 1906 in Letts, Iowa to Andrew and Gertrude Roth.  Andrew farmed about 150 acres of land, and Gertie cared for their seven children.  Irene was raised Methodist and was able to attend high school.  After she graduated, her dream was to go to college, so Andrew and Gertie allowed her to go seventy miles away to Coe College in Cedar Rapids, where she took “general coursework.”  She lived in the dorms there, but spent most of her weekends at the home of an aunt and uncle who also lived in Cedar Rapids.

While at Coe, Irene met a fellow student, Archie Bailey, and eventually fell in love with him.  No one really knows what happened between them, but after two years of dating, Irene abruptly broke off her relationship with Archie, quit school and returned home.  Dismayed by her sudden change of plans, Irene’s parents tried to question her, of course, but Irene refused to talk about it, simply saying that she had “changed her mind.”  To this day, what happened remains a mystery, though Irene’s sister, Barbara, has several theories.

Irene was not home long before she decided to move to the nearby town of Muscatine with a girlfriend.  They rented an apartment, and Irene got a job at a department store.  While there, she met a traveling salesman, James Splinter, who, after a very short period of time, convinced her to marry him.

Once they were married, the young couple moved to Chicago where James had been raised.  It was an unhappy marriage, however, as James proved to be an alcoholic and physically abusive to Irene.  After only a couple of years, she divorced him and moved back to Iowa, this time to Davenport.

In Davenport, she got a job in a candy shop and met Orville Mentz, a carpenter who owned a few acres on the outskirts of town.  They married, and Irene says that they enjoyed a quiet life together for many years.  Their favorite thing to do together was fish, and Irene also spent a lot of time gardening and reading avidly.  As it happened, Orville turned out to be an alcoholic, too.  He was not physically abusive, though, so Irene stayed with him.

The years passed by, and one day Irene saw an ad in the local paper from none other than Archie Bailey, her old college sweetheart, asking for her whereabouts.  Irene was 68 at the time.  After many weeks of debate, Irene decided she would leave Orville and seek out Archie, perhaps hoping to rekindle the lost days of their youth.  She was sadly disappointed, however, as, after reuniting with him in Des Moines, he, too, proved to be an alcoholic.  Tragically, he was also the most abusive of the three men Irene had chosen to be with throughout her life, and she suffered several serious injuries.

Finally, Irene’s sister, Barbara, whom Irene still kept in contact with over the years, decided to get involved in what seemed to her to be a very dangerous, potentially fatal relationship.  She hired an off-duty policeman to go to Des Moines to get Irene out of the situation.  Irene then divorced Archie and went to live with Barbara in Chicago.

Irene spent the next twenty years with Barbara, still spending most of her time gardening and reading.  She also liked to listen to the radio, especially to Cubs games.  In the time that she lived with Barbara, Irene had several strokes, most of them occurring in recent years, and has had two eye transplants and two hip replacements as well.  While in the hospital recovering from one of her hip operations, however, she suffered another mini-stroke.  At that point it became clear that Barbara was not going to be able to take care of Irene at home, so she reluctantly made the arrangements for Irene to be transferred to a nursing home.

Irene is trying her best to adjust to her new life here in the home.  She is a very mild-mannered, sweet woman who is anxious not the “cause any problems.”  She reports being in a lot of pain, however, which seems to preoccupy her and prevents her from really joining in various activities or making any new relationships.  When asked about her life, Irene says that she tried her best, but that she somehow always picked the wrong man.  She thought Archie was something special, but he turned out to be “the worst of them all.”  “Sometimes,” she says, “life doesn’t turn out how you think it will.”

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How to Get Your Book Published in 7000 Easy Steps – A Practical GuideSTEP 20: NAVIGATING THE VAST SEA OF TWITTER (PART 1)

The next step on your publishing journey, dear readers, is setting up the loathsome Twitter account.  If this seems contradictory in the extreme, it’s because it is.

No one, darlings, could have fought signing up for a Twitter account harder or longer than yours truly, despising the concept of it with every fiber of my mouse.  It was my last line in the sand, one which I was never going to cross.  I mean, I could rarely reduce my thoughts down to a 500-word blog post (okay, never, actually—they always clock in at 900+), much less transmit a thought into a mere 140 characters!  This is the end of civilization as we know it, I was forever arguing!  It is madness!

But, alas, here I am, 2200 followers later.  This would seem to make me the rather unfortunately perfect person to convince all of you of Twitter’s, er…worth.

It all started as follows:

Feeling as though I had the blog, the website and the newsletter momentarily under relative control, I stupidly decided that I may have just a few extra minutes a day to squeeze in one more social media outlet.  Naturally, I turned to the pesky publicist s and asked for their hallowed advice.

“Should I pursue Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr or LinkedIn to find more followers?” I asked, feeling rather confident that I could probably handle any one of these.

“Twitter,” was the response.

“But,” I chuckled, “Twitter wasn’t one of the options, heh, heh.”

“Twitter.  Twitter and Facebook are the most effective way to build a platform,” they said in a robotic sort of voice, which suggested there was no room for counterpoint or discussion.

Deep sigh.

I spent a few weeks cursing the publicists—whom I was paying good money to, by the way, to torture me—and having imaginary discussions with them about the downfall of society and a variety of other things, before I finally caved in to their imaginary peer pressure.

As expected, my first tentative perusal of Twitter left me feeling like I had crash-landed on some alien planet where I was required to not only complete a vague sort of mission (self-promotion?) but to do so without any knowledge of the language or the terrain.  It all seemed hopelessly impossible to make something intelligent out of what seemed a garbled mess.

I nearly gave up several times, convinced that this old dog really couldn’t learn this new trick, but, determined to do whatever it took to help get my “baby” out into the world and sufficiently armed with a large vat of wine, I resorted to watching several YouTube videos on how to navigate Twitter.  I tried doing this in private with my pc’s volume turned low, but I was of course discovered by my thirteen year old who, after he got up from rolling on the ground in a fit of laughter, made me promise never to tell anyone—especially anyone at school!—about the shameful thing I had just watched.  When he had calmed down, I cornered him and forced him to fill in the still-empty blanks, thereby successfully completing my Twitter tutorial.

Armed now with this little bit of information, I decided to set up an account and peruse the territory further.  This did not cheer me.  Twitter seemed to me to be such a vast sea of nothingness that it made Facebook look like the Encyclopedia Britannica.  I felt like a missionary from some bygone century sent to live amongst the natives and to not only make sense of their heathen rituals and practices, but to find some sort of meaning in them.  I felt cheated.  I mean, even St. Patrick at least had a clover to work with.

Eventually, however, in the vast miasma of sports and political rants, celebs, cat pictures, recipes, inspirational memes and a shocking amount of porn (speaking of watching shameful things), I managed to find and nurture a little group devoted to books, of all things, most of them being fellow authors in various stages of their careers.

The publicists’ advice (you should be recognizing a distinct pattern by now) was to go to my favorite authors and tweet what they are tweeting.  I had already gotten around having to reveal to them that all of my favorite authors are dead (see Step 8) by creating a “fake” list of favorite authors.  Or to rephrase: a list of contemporaries that I sort of admire.

This proved to be initially quite depressing, however, as all of my “favorite” authors seemed to be tweeting out fun and exciting things they were preoccupied with, such as going to trendy restaurants and art galleries, drinking champagne, doing research at a remote castle in Scotland, having book signings, launching boats, appearing on talk shows (or at least a podcast or two), and drinking champagne, or did I already say the champagne thing?

I know that what you’re going to say next is that you have nothing to tweet, darlings, and that’s probably true.  I mean, can anything worthwhile be communicated in 140 characters?  I think not.  Except I suppose there’s “I love you” or “I hate you” or “clovers can be a symbol of something else”.  But I’m getting off topic.  The important thing is not so much what you are tweeting, but rather that you have a social presence.

You have to start somewhere, even if what you have or are doing doesn’t seem all that exciting.  A good rule of thumb for Twitter is to operate in thirds:  one third of your tweets should be about your book (finished or not), one third should be about you (not your kids or pets), and one third should be about sharing other useful content that you’ve come across (yes, some can be surprisingly be found out there).  Obviously, I’m not perfect at this or I would have more than 2,200 followers, but it’s a start.

Next week, for what it’s er…worth, I’ll give you some actual Twitter tips!  Promise!

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STEP 20: NAVIGATING THE VAST SEA OF TWITTER (PART 1) appeared first on Michelle Cox.