Erika Mitchell's Blog, page 3

Self-Improvement via Coercion

I’ve never been a person for whom moderation came naturally. Why stop at one thousand words a day when three thousand words a day will help me finish this novel three times as fast? If I cut out sugar, why not cut out bread, too, and then I’ll lose weight twice as fast. If exercise twice a week is good, then surely five times a week is better, right?

I wrote a few weeks ago about pushing myself really hard prior to surgery, and it both worked and didn’t. I cleared all my to do lists before surgery, which really helped during recovery because I didn’t feel as twitchy from my permanent spot on the couch. It did, however, make me feel like I was riding in a speeding car with no seat belt and someone slammed on the brakes.

Entropy after inertia is not an easy transition.

So now, two weeks after surgery and with four weeks to go until my next, much bigger, surgery, I’m in a strange limbo. Even though I feel like I should be relatively over it already, I’m still exhausted and my limits are set in stone. There’s really no sense pushing it at this point, because invariably my injury just pushes back.

I got really ambitious and walked around Target over the weekend and I was so tired afterward I had to come home, ice and elevate, and then take a nap. When I woke up, I realized it’s actually kind of stupid to walk more than I have to because hello, there’s a huge hole in my cartilage.

I feel pressure (from myself) to be back to normal, so for now life is a constant effort to reign in my Type-A Nutjob tendencies and remind myself that, unlike in mathematics sometimes, the limit does exist. Each day is a marathon, and if I sprint at any point, I might wind up with nothing left to get me over the finish line.

The same principle applies to my writing. In a fit of naivete a few weeks ago, I calculated that if I wrote a certain number of words every day of my recovery, I’d have the first draft finished by the time I went in for the second surgery.

That’s not going to happen.

I refuse to rush what is arguably my favorite part of the writing process, and I’m not going to do that to myself because some days I can hide on my couch and type. Some days, I have to go to appointments, ice and elevate a few times, or take my kids on field trips. Life happens, and I’m not going to short-change myself by trying to force all of it to happen in the narrow window between now and when everything stops again.

Writing will happen, because I’m disciplined enough to make sure it does, but first drafts, for me at least, are not the place for brute force. This is a time of discovery and finesse, and I’ll be damned if I don’t let myself enjoy that process.

So I guess I’ve finally learned some measure of moderation. Better late than never I suppose, and besides, what other choice do I have? Sometimes you have to become a more balanced, well-rounded person against your will. The universe drags you, kicking and screaming, toward progress, and then when you look back, you wonder why you put up such a fuss because really, this isn’t so bad after all.

An Honest View of Recovery

Don’t ask me why.

I feel like I’m two people at the moment. One of these people is tired of sitting on the couch and ready to jump back into the fray. School drop-offs, grocery shopping, errands running, and manuscript writing! Bring it on! Rawr! The other person is tired, stifled, and uninspired after a week of painkillers, painkiller detox, crappy sleep, and routine disruption.

To be honest, I’m never sure what to do at this point in recovery, because I always end up here eventually. There always comes a time when I’m functional enough to do most of my jobs, but so out of it after a weird week off that it all seems overwhelming and impossible. My life has revolved around ice packs and med schedules for the last seven days, now all of a sudden I’m supposed to go back to running things? How?

It doesn’t help that one of my children, who shall remain nameless, woke me up at 5 AM this morning, a scant hour after I went back to sleep after a 3 AM Tylenol dose. I think I got four-ish hours of sleep. Boo.

So this is an honest view of recovery. I can only sleep on one side because of the stitches on the outside of my leg, I’m still waking up to take Tylenol in the middle of the night, I find making toast overwhelming, and driving in the car makes my knee ache. My brain is stuffed full of cotton and all I want to do is watch TV, but then when I do watch TV all I want to do is want to write.

That said, I need to get back into my routine. One cannot survive indefinitely on The Office reruns and midday naps, and I don’t want to completely lose track of the novel I’m working on.

As for the fact that my next surgery is a lot more invasive and will take me down for a lot longer than this one? La la la! I can’t hear you! Denial is a perfectly valid coping mechanism!

Send chocolate and hugs, you guys.

Oh, I! I Did Survive!

Hello from the other side of surgery! As it says in the title, I survived. As surgeries go, this one was easy-peasy. Half the credit goes to my surgeon, who is awesome and in whom I trust without reservation. The other half of the credit goes to my anesthesiologist, who persuaded me to try the surgery awake but heavily sedated to avoid the horrible nausea I usually get when I wake up from general anesthesia.

True to his word, he gave me ALL THE VALIUM, so sorry to the other patients who needed it because it was all for meeeeeeee! I was aware of what they were doing to my knee, but I was so out of it I couldn’t even muster up the wherewithal to care. At one point, I felt the scope going into my knee and it freaked me out until my anesthesiologist gave me a little more something through my IV, after which I was like, “Meh. Scope in knee. Whatevs.”

And finally, half of the credit goes to the nurses who took care of me. They were on top of things and took such good care of me. I could not have asked for better care. The rest of the credit, like half of it, goes to my husband, who kept me calm and took the best care of me while balancing work, our kids, and a wife who couldn’t carry anything for herself.

Yes, I know that all adds up to more than 100%, but I don’t care. That should tell you how smooth this surgery was. Here’s what it looked like afterward:

A post shared by Erika Mitchell (@parsingnonsense) on Sep 13, 2017 at 12:21pm PDT

You can’t see them through the bandages, but there are three laparoscopic scars held closed by black stitches hiding under there. I’ll get the stitches removed on Wednesday, after which I’ll hopefully be cleared to drive again and start physical therapy.

Seeing as this isn’t my first knee surgery rodeo, I’ve already begun working on my quad strength and range of motion. Breaking through scar tissue is never fun, but it gets harder the longer you wait so I’m gritting my teeth and getting on with it.

Now that I’m back on my feet without my crutches, life is just a healing and waiting game until we get word that my shiny new cartilage is ready to be installed. My surgeon says I’d scraped my cartilage down to the bone again, which is probably why I was in so much pain.

Now that I’m walking again, I’m kind of bummed that I’ll be on crutches for at least six weeks after Surgery Round Two. That’s six weeks of crutches completely non-weight bearing, mind you. To give you perspective on what that means, I lost an inch of muscle mass from my left leg in three days from non-use. Now imagine six weeks. My left leg will shrink despite my faithful application of PT strengthening exercises. My right foot will cramp up when I stand on it too long. I won’t see the upstairs of my house for almost two months as I continue to sleep in the dining room downstairs.

But all that’s in the future! For now, I’m recovering nicely from the first surgery and we’ve all agreed it was a good dry run for the big one next month. Until then? I will be gingerly walking as much as I can and doing my best to well and truly appreciate how marvelous it is to be able to use both hands to carry stuff.

Book Trailers!

I finally pep-talked myself out of my camera avoidance and created book trailers for each of my three books! I even posted them to YouTube!

If you want to see what an author looks like using her spoken words to describe her written words (is that meta?), give these a listen. They’re all less than two minutes each.

Click here for my YouTube channel.

Click here for the Blood Money trailer.

Here’s where you’ll find the Bai Tide trailer.

And here’s the one for Take the Bai Road.

Thanks for watching!

Pale and Prolific

I just realized that I only blogged twice in August. Apparently that’s who I am, now. I’m just that lady who posts to her blog a few times a year. You know, back in my heyday I posted four times a week. I had A LOT more spare time back then. Seriously, I had, like, no kids and only one book in progress at a time. Simpler days.

Anyway, lest you think I’ve been sitting back on my laurels sunbathing and day drinking the last weeks of summer away, fret not. I’m pale and prolific over here.

I’m thiiiiiiiis close to being finished enough with Bai Treason to send it to my publisher, which is funny because my original goal at the beginning of July was to have it whipped into shape for beta readers by September. Instead, I started a new project and had Bai Treason in my beta readers’ hands at the beginning of August and now I’m just waiting for one last set of notes, having completed everyone else’s notes already.

Say it with me, kids:

As for that new project, I’m calling it Tranquility Land and it’s going REALLY well. Maybe a little too well. I’m 15,000+ words in already and the story is unfurling nicely. It’s actually two stories, staggered with one another, about a present-day daughter taking care of her paranoid elderly mother who suffers from dementia. The first story is told from the daughter’s perspective, the second story is set before the daughter was born and is told from the mother’s perspective.

That’s right. I have two, I say TWO heroines in this book. It’s Bechdel Test-tastic.

And always, the drum beat counting down the days of summer for me this year, is my looming surgery date on September 12. I’m feeling peaceful about it, because I worked my ass off this summer getting my writing projects in line. If all goes well, I have a real shot of finishing the first draft of Tranquility Land before crutches take over my life after surgery number two in October.

I may be a slacker of a blogger, but it’s because I’m RAZING AND CONQUERING MY TO DO LIST.

Bullet Train Joyride

Can’t stop! Having surgery soon!

You ever feel like you’re on a train that’s going too fast, but then you look at the control room and the engineer who keeps the accelerator on is you, and the brakeman who refuses to slow down is you, and the coal-shoveler is you, and you all realize you should probably slow down but you’re all so busy doing your jobs that slowing down makes no sense?

This is my life right now. My kids are starting school next month, which means shelling out SO MUCH MONEY because they’ve outgrown their pants, shoes, school supplies, and coats. I’m juggling notes from my critique buddies (aka beta readers) for Bai Treason so I can wrap it up and send it to my publisher with a bow on top. I’m also plotting out and researching my next project, which will not be a Bai book so it might just have a non-punny title (right now I’m leaning toward Tranquility Land).

Why am I in such a rush? Why is everything so urgent? Why is the bullet train that is my life careening around corners and blasting through level crossings? Surgeries. Two of them.

All summer, I’ve blissfully denied that I’m having surgery soon because the first one isn’t happening until September and hey, that’s a whole season away. Ages away!

Now, however, September is breathing down my neck. It’s running its back-to-school fingers through my hair and whispering sweet shopping lists in my ear and suddenly I’m very aware of the fact that all of this will come crashing to a halt soon.

I’m not one of those people who has surgery and then moves on like nothing happened. It’s extremely disruptive for me. Pain, pain meds, nausea from pain meds, physical therapy, the unavoidable torture that is crutches, it’s all disruptive. My first surgery, in September, should mess things up for a week or so, and then things will hopefully go back to normal.

The surgery at the end of October, however, is a big one. A doozy, you could say. That one will keep me on crutches for six to eight weeks. I’ll lose all my muscle tone in my left leg again and have to learn how to walk for the second time in as many years. It’s going to be a challenge, and you can trust me on this because I’ve already done it.

So I guess you could say the reason my bullet train life is speeding out of control is because I know my awesome, reckless train has to pull in for some scheduled maintenance soon so I’m getting some joyriding in while I can.

The only thing I can do is hope this scheduled maintenance keeps me on the rails for a long time. Fingers crossed.

Special Offer!

Like all good authors, I ordered a ton of copies of my new book when it came out and guess what? Now I have to store all these books! Maybe you can help me store some of them…On YOUR bookshelf.

I’m offering a deal on an autographed copy of Take the Bai Road. For just $15, I’ll send you an autographed copy of the book. That covers the cost of the book and shipping. I’ll even inscribe it with a message to you or a loved one if you’re hoping to give it to someone as a gift.

This offer will only last while I have books to sell, so get cracking. Just send me an email to erikamitchellbooks@gmail.com with your mailing address and I’ll send you my PayPal info. Easy as that.

You guys, please help me find a place for these books. Trust me, they’ll look GREAT at your house :)

This is What Comes of Leaving the House

This dog has nothing to do with this post, I just like how annoyed he seems by what he has to put up with.

I was invited to a cocktail party Saturday by some of the wonderful people I met at ThrillerFest last week, and it was hands down my most interesting evening of the week. Now, Wes has been gone since early Tuesday morning, so my bar for interesting is set pretty low these days, but even by normal standards it was noteworthy.

To start the evening off, I did my hair and makeup alone but when it was time to get dressed my five year old daughter took over. When I told her I was going to a grown-up party, she considered all my dresses before selecting the black and white tea-length dress I bought on a whim last month. It was a little dressy for the occasion, but I went with it because 1) I’m not arguing fashion with my daughter and 2) she was so enthusiastic about her sartorial victory, only a monster would have taken that away from her.

I drove Wes’s Mustang out to Seattle for the party, which is always a dicey proposition when I’m feeling pretty because I get kind of cocky when I feel pretty and my driving reflects that. I’m telling you, you haven’t truly passed someone until you’ve passed them in a Mustang. I had my sunglasses on, my Girl Power playlist going, and I was feeling good.

I parked in an adjacent neighborhood to where the party was because I knew I could find parking there and then just took an Uber the rest of the way. My first driver was a 23-year old Chinese-American man who regaled me with stories about his mother’s intimidation techniques. When I told him about Bai, my character, and how a reviewer had recently commented that it seemed unlikely to him that Bai’s parents would disapprove of his chosen profession, my Uber driver laughed and said I’d nailed it.

Gotta admit, that felt pretty good.

The party itself was a lot of fun. Great food, killer view, and I was surrounded by stage actors and the people who love them. Actors make for very diverting company, it turns out.

My Uber driver for the ride home was a guy who’d moved here from Palestine six years ago. He holds a Master’s degree in comparative literature and says driving for Uber is the price he pays for picking that field of study. He also expounded on his views of the Israel/Palestine dispute, which I didn’t feel qualified to comment on so I just listened instead.

Do you see what comes of leaving the house, intrepid readers? You meet interesting people and get to do interesting things.

Win a Road Trip with a Spy

Hello, faithful readers! I’m back on the west coast, mostly over my jet lag, and working hard on Bai Treason (book #3 of the Bai Hsu series, and the last one for a while).

I just wanted to make sure you all know about the giveaway that’s going on over at Goodreads right now. You can win a paperback copy of Take the Bai Road, but you only have a few more days to enter!

Good luck!

 

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Goodreads Book Giveaway


Take the Bai Road
by Erika Mitchell

Giveaway ends July 25, 2017.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

This Story Has Everything

You guys, I’m so excited! It’s always been on my bucket list to participate in an anthology, so when I was invited to contribute a story to Close to the Bones by my writer friend A.C. Fuller, I said yes without even considering the answers to either of these very important considerations:

Did I have time to write a new story? No, I did not. I was in the middle of revisions and edits for TAKE THE BAI ROAD and the revisions for BAI TREASON were waiting patiently for me to get to them. I absolutely did not have time.
Did I have an idea for a new story? Oh, um, nope. No, I did not. And because  I had very little practice writing in a shorter medium, most of my ideas turned out to be too long.

I didn’t let a little thing like no time and no idea stop me, though. I forged ahead, determined to play with the the real authors, all of whom have contributed to anthologies throughout the course of their careers.

To be honest, it felt really good to write something new. I’ve been living in Revisions Land so long, I’d forgotten the wild abandon of throwing words onto a blank page. With a lot of help from my critique partners and beta readers, several of whom lovingly pointed out to me that a short story is short so the beginning should just get to the point already thankyouverymuch, I was able to carve a solidly entertaining short story out of the long, rambling stream of consciousness that is my mind.

Where am I going with all this? Ha! Yes. The point. You’d like it, please.

The point is this: I wrote a short story called The Spy Who Came in from the East Coast (name that classic espionage reference!) and it’s available now for purchase in an anthology that finally came out today!

What’s the story about? CIA case officer Bai Hsu, of course, and what happens when he goes home to visit his disapproving parents for the first time since he joined the CIA. It takes place after the events of TAKE THE BAI ROAD, so be aware of the order in which you read them.

In this story, you’ll find out what Bai’s REAL name is (Bai Hsu is his official cover name), meet his parents, and get to know some truly violent members of LA’s gangland underworld.

via GIPHY

In the immortal words of Stefan, this story has everything: humor, sarcasm, a car chase, gunfights, and Chinese home cooking.

So go pick up a copy of CLOSE TO THE BONES (which will only be available on Amazon), available now for a freaking STEAL of a price at just $0.99. It has stories from ten other authors, too, so get thee to a pool STAT, put up your feet, and enjoy.

Happy reading!