V.R. Christensen's Blog, page 3

Something for you this holiday season…

Originally, I thought I’d share my Christmas ghost story this year, but as I thought about it more it seemed to me that we’ve had enough of loss and sadness. So, instead, I offer this, my favorite of the short stories I wrote in 2012. It’s funny, light-hearted, sweet, and romantic…a perfect escape from the trials of this year!

Download it here!

If this tickles your fancy, there are more in my short story collection, Parade.

Happy holidays, and enjoy!

V.R.

Goodbye 2020

I don’t know what this year has been like for you, but mine has been rough: loss of friendships, loss of family members, loss of a pet, almost a full year of isolation as my yoga business closed (at least temporarily), and lots of changes in the works as my family and I try to sort out what the new normal is supposed to look like. The good news is I’ve gotten a LOT of writing done, and that has been a really wonderful thing. I’m busily editing Odessa Moon so I can get it off to my wonderful editors, and I’m looking forward to the next thing, not just the third installment of the Icarus Project Series, but maybe another project entirely. My heart is so heavy these days that, while I love the world I’ve created in Absinthe Moon and its sequels, I find I’m in the mood for something a little more light-hearted. Maybe I’m finally learning not to take myself so seriously.

I’ve actually spent much of this month, so far, working on some short stories. Parade is finally out and available, and I really enjoyed the time I have spent rereading my old shorts and dreaming up some new ideas. I have a couple of ideas I’ve got in the pot, and I’m excited about what that might look like were I to pursue that. In the mean time, I’m really proud of the new stories I’ve been able to add to the collection that was Sixteen Seasons. I’ve taken out the weaker stories and added a few more.

Miss Happenstance is a historical romance piece that was inspired by a piece of Regency literature I found to be quite a delightful escape. My books are often described as Regency when in fact they are late Victorian, but I figured in this instance, why not give it a shot? I really enjoyed it, and the endeavor has sparked some further inspiration in the way of maybe writing a full-length piece.

The Break is a contemporary story about the end of a marriage and the beginning of a new relationship. I wrote it some time ago, and sort of kept it tucked away in a drawer, but I’m actually fairly proud of this story, so I thought I would at last share it.

Deer in Winter came to me by way of a dream, actually. I’m always marveling about the seeming coincidences in life, how everything (in the words of Dirk Gently) is connected.

I’ve been wanting to tell the full and detailed history of Absinthe Moon‘s hero Robert Mayhew for some time. It’s hinted at in the first book, but in the second volume, where I had hoped to include his story, it only seemed to clutter the plot, which, as it turns out, centers around Emeline’s history. And so I thought I would just offer it as an addendum to the series, but also as a standalone story and an introduction to the books. Hopefully it offers the new reader a taste of what the series is about and they, therefore, do not have to invest too much at the outset before they decide whether or not it’s for them.

While the world has been in lockdown, I’ve also spent a lot of time really thinking about what it is that motivates me and makes me happy. In the past I’ve worked several gigs at once just to make ends meet, and because I thrive on diversity and variety. But I think, of all the things I do, it’s the writing that makes me happiest. I would love to give 100% of my time to this work. This pandemic has given me the opportunity to find out if that’s sustainable. The jury is still out, but Iv’e not yet given up hope.

I’m also learning that, no matter what I choose to pursue, I have to attend to my self-care, which I’ll have a little more to say in an upcoming post.

I’m often nostalgic at year’s end. This has been a hard one. I’ve changed a lot in the years since I first began writing. I have new and different things to say. I’m a different person in a lot of ways. I’ve learned to stand up for myself, not to apologize any longer for who and where I am. I’m becoming quite strong. Trial will do that, to you, I suppose. I suspect I’ll look at this time similarly as how I look at 2015-2016, when my father became ill and my marriage ended, and though Dickens said it first, it was sort of the worse of times and the best of times at once.

I hope that, for you as well, 2020 has had some bright spots. I’m looking forward to a brighter 2021, even if it gets off to a rough start. May you all find much to celebrate this holiday season, and thank you for your readership. It really has meant the world to me.

The Plot

[image error]

The first book I wrote (Cry of the Peacock) came to me by way of a dream. It was just a scene, really, but I was fascinated by the idea of someone who seemingly had every opportunity before her and yet was not certain that was where she really belonged. I had no real faith then in my ability to write a full-length novel, but I decided my first goal would be to outline it. If, having done that, I could come up with a real character and a plot with plenty enough scenes and “things” to write about, then I’d go ahead and do it. After several weeks, I had a significantly lengthy outline and so I began writing, constructing each secne, point by point as if the outline were a laundry list, until I had a beginning, a middle, and an end.

But it was a mess.

I had barely finished that novel when I decided I wanted to write another, a sort of “other side of the coin” story from what Cry of the Peacock had become–another look at wealth and inheritance and marriage law. And so I did the same thing again. I wrote an outline and stuck to it. But it wasn’t working. It was messy and lacked focus. And it was LONG. I needed help.

After engaging a friend to edit for me, and being shocked by her opinion (and my reluctant realization) that I would have to rewrite them both (as well as the third I had, by then, begun), I began to realize that this method of writing to a fixed outline was not going to work for me.

It was such a gut-wrenching process to start from the beginning and try again. I knew what I wanted the books to achieve but not how to get there. The books did, for the first several years, find a significant measure of success. So much so that when my life began to crumble in 2015, I had that early success to lean on to give me the confidence I needed to strike out on my own. That was the plan, at any rate. But plans have a way of revising themselves. What is the saying?

Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans.

World-building and plotting go hand in hand that way, as I’ve found in the course of writing Absinthe Moon and its sequels. I have this sort of abstract idea; I know who the characters are, what their struggles are, what they want and what they represent; I know where the story begins and the great goal I want them to be striving for. But the in-between bits are elusive until I actually start writing. As with the structure of the world they are in (or even the time-setting I choose, in the case of my historicals), I don’t know what they need until I begin the writing process. Imogen’s desperation to avoid becoming an heiress, for instance, (Of Moths & Butterflies) makes no sense without the backdrop of the Married Women’s Property Act and how its passing, and the delay of its enactment, provided a perfect opportunity for a wealthy woman not yet of age to be sold into marriage to the highest bidder. Neither does her plight make sense if one does not take into account the complex psychology of trauma. These are things I didn’t realize I needed to understand until I began delving into her character and really exploring the complexities of her psyche.

In this way, plotting, for me, is almost like trying to recall lost memories. I’m fleshing out a part of myself, not just some fictional character I pulled out of thin air. They live and breathe and have stories that require telling–and which others need to hear. Writing, for me, is not about spinning some fantastic yarn for the sake of mere entertainment. While I hope they will be entertaining (I have no hope of selling them, after all, if they are not) my aim is to convey something real and existential about the human condition. Not everyone is going to relate to Imogen, but she’s real. She is me. And as I read the reviews I can see that there are many who relate to her story on a deep and meaningful level, while others dismiss her as an implausible character with unrelatable trials who approaches the world in a completely irrational manner. Such is the nature of trauma, of which the stories of Dickens and Hardy, Eliot and Collins, are rife.

Even in my own life, I once lived by schedules and routines and fixed expectations. I have found that this system of attempting to force certainty out of an uncertain world no longer works for me. Possibly it never did, but only divorce and loss have forced me to realize it. If such is the case in my real life world, why would I assume that plotting a novel would be any different? My life’s decisions are made by careful study, by feeling out the needs of each moment, spending some time in meditation each day with a blank mind and an open awareness, ready to take in what comes. And by such a method, I find my writing both my life and my writing works much more fluidly and is far more impactful.

I’ve been practicing this in particular of late with my collection of short stories (formerly Sixteen Seasons and yet to be re-released). I wrote them some time ago, more as a challenge to myself than for an audience. I plotted and planned many of these as well, and it shows. Some of them are weak or seem pointless. This last month, since I finished the manuscript for Odessa Moon, I’ve taken some time out to reexamine those stories. Some of them are really quite good, and I’m very proud of them, but I’ve decided to retract several others. In their place, I wanted to offer something new. A couple of these, as well, have come to me by way of dream. As with Cry of the Peacock, the ideas came to me by way of short scenes, by which I then began to imagine a context. I begin a rough outline of the major points, and then I let the scenes unfold in my head, playing them out from the beginning until I hit a snag–something I don’t understand or can’t work out. At night, I’ll lay in bed and play through the different scenarios, sometimes going back a bit where a fork in the road might have taken me in a different direction. Suddenly something snaps into place. It’s no longer a point I have to remember, but a memory, like it actually happened, It becomes fixed. The next day I write, at least as far as I can see the story so far. If there is more to write than I have time for, I’ll jot down a rough bit of outline, but it isn’t set in stone. And then I’ll search out what comes next. By using this meditative sort of method, I feel like I’m channeling more than writing.

There is a concept of the more esoteric theories regarding time and space, and that being that time isn’t linear. In fact a good plot line isn’t linear, either. It’s circular. It makes a point, or introduces it, perhaps merely suggests it, and then comes back to it later, driving the point home. At any rate, it has been suggested, that, if time is not linear, perhaps what you are trying to create has already been created, and so, rather than trying to build it up from the bottom up, you can summon it back from some future form in which it was fully alive and perfect. In this way one might set the intention of tapping into one’s own future greatness. I really believe in intention, and I equally believe that we are much wiser and understand much more than we give ourselves credit for. If someone had told me that I would one day be writing a multi-volume dystopian series set in a post-apocalyptic future, and one that deals with world governments, high-tech fuel sources, and DNA modifications, I’d have told them they were crazy.

And yet, for some inexplicable reason that I have not yet begun to understand, here I am. And while I love Absinthe Moon and what the series is becoming, I can’t wait to get back to writing historicals. That’s where I really feel at home.

In the mean time, I have these short stories to tide me over. Perhaps you will enjoy them, as well, when they are ready. But that is an announcement for next time.

Until then, happy holidays, everyone!

November News

[image error]

A couple exciting things to announce. I’ve at last completed the manuscript for Odessa Moon, part two in the Icarus Project series, and I’m really excited with the direction the story is taking, which of course implies that I don’t have a solid plan in place when I begin these writing journeys. That is definitely the case! (As I’ll be discussing further in a companion post.) It still must go through at least one more round of content editing before the copy editors get it and typesetting begins. But we are huge milestone closer to our deadline, and I’m really looking forward to having this project done.

[image error]

The second item of news I offer today is in regard to Cry of the Peacock. I know there are many who’ve been waiting for an Audible version. It’s the only one of my full-length novels not to have received this treatment. The happy fact is that, after a couple of false starts and five years in production, narration for Cry of the Peacock has at last been finished and the audio files have been submitted for review. Hopefully this time next month, I’ll be able to announce that it is ready for purchase. But, for the time being, suffice it to say, I’m very happy to have one more huge project checked off my list. Many thanks to the wonderful Stacey Patrone for contributing her significant vocal talent to the project!

And lastly…After years of languishing sales for my short stories, I’ve decided to repackage them. Originally Sixteen Seasons was meant to be called Parade (and yes, there’s a short story by that name and hopefully you’ve received your free copy). Sixteen Seasons, however, is too holiday heavy to sell well, even if short stories sold well (though I do think they could do better.) I also had made the decision to sell them individually at the lowest price Amazon allows, but that won me some nasty feedback from readers who felt they were not getting their money’s worth with one story. And so…I’m going to repackage the collection, remove some of the weaker stories, add a few others I’ve written over the last few years (including, you guessed it, one relating to the world of Absinthe Moon). I’ll sell it at a discounted price and periodically give the stories away. I’ve known for some time that this was necessary, but there were always more important things to do. Now that I have two major projects behind me, it seems like a good time to give this some focused attention.

[image error] [image error]

And then it’ll be time to get back to serious work of editing publication prep. Odessa Moon is on its way!

Giveaways!

Hello, everyone!

Today begins the first of a series of giveways I’m hosting. I’ve never done this before, but it sounded like a fun way to get the word out about Absinthe Moon and perhaps get some buzz going about this new series. Absinthe Moon has been out for a year now, and, unlike my historical fiction books, which took off like lightning from the start, I’ve struggled a bit finding a readership for this one, in part because I’ve switched genres just a bit, though you’ll no doubt recognize some commonalities between this and my other work. It’s also owing to the fact that, at the time this book was being published, I was dealing with some pretty heavy stuff, like divorce, and career changes, moving, and the death of a parent, so I was really unable to focus on the promotional side of the writing business. Despite this crazy time in our world right now, and some additional loss and uncertainty, I’m really putting my all into getting this book off the ground. I’m hoping this week’s giveaway, after last week’s successful promotion, will help get the word out.

So, this is what we are doing…I’ve teamed up with 45+ fantastic authors to give away a huge collection of Teen & YA novels to 2 lucky winners!
 
And it’s not just books we are giving away. The Grand Prize winner will receive a BRAND NEW eReader!
 
You can win my novel Absinthe Moon, plus books from authors like Brenda Hiatt and Margo Bond Collins.
 
Enter the giveaway by clicking here

Fear (and Hate) in a time of Covid

Tempers are fraying. Patience is wearing thin. Weeks of the world being on lock-down, while the world changes around us, has produced a phenomenon of collective depression, anxiety, and…you guessed it, fear.

So what exactly is happening?

Besides the fact that our nation’s leaders have failed us miserably, putting their egos and their reelection strategies before the well-being of the public, there is the fact that this world-wide time-out has provided people more time than they are used to with their own company.

[image error]

As humans, we are accustomed to seeking comfort over pain. We actively pursue distractions from the things that hurt. We go to work, consume ourselves with careers and sports and fitness routines. We socialize, we drink, we eat, we watch t.v.. We have sex. We are masters at escapism, at numbing the pain within by consuming our spare time with outside distractions.

But when we are confined indoors with, the distractions are limited. There is still television. Not every stock is falling, after all. Netflix has never had it so good. But the options for distraction, particularly for extroverts–those who energize themselves in the company of others–are significantly reduced. We are confined to limited spaces and a limited number of resources to fill the empty holes within that are now staring us down.

At the same time, the world is changing. The world we knew is gone, and a new one is forming around us. Uncertainty always brings fear. Fear of the unknown is real. And there’s so much we don’t know…however much we like to pretend we have it all figured out.

When things happen that are outside of our control, we naturally feel afraid of what we cannot comprehend. The future, after all, is nebulous idea until it forms and becomes reality. Even with the best of intentions and the most meticulously detailed plans, the future rarely materializes as we would have liked. The real problem here is this need we have to believe we are in control of our lives. We aren’t, and the sooner we can accept that and lean into an attitude of receptive awareness, the more likely things are to turn out well for us. Expectation is a nasty taskmaster. She convinces us that our hopes and desires for ourselves are the only things that can make us happy, that what we need most in life is for things to go according to plan. Our plan. If we can open ourselves up to living beyond attachment to outcomes, what we do is step into the realm of possibility. Instead of staking our happiness on a narrowly defined parameter of acceptable results, we can trust that the universe knows what is best for us. If we are truly open to accepting that life might not be about how much money we earn or what kind of car we drive, and instead embracing each experience as an opportunity to learn and to grow, then we find that life is a series of unexpected joys.

Buddhist teacher Michael Stone has this beautiful video on the yogic principle of non-attachment that I return to often.

Life hurts. It’s a fact. We all have suffered from injury in our lifetimes, often at the hands of others. Statistically speaking 70% of adults have experienced some form of trauma in their lives. 2/3 of women will suffer a sexually related traumatic event before they reach adulthood. Our parents, who are supposed to love us unconditionally, are rarely equipped to do so. At some point in our lives, their disapproval (or that of some other caregiver) registered within our developing minds as rejection and a piece of us got locked away in some inner room. Bullying can have a similar effect. The rest of our lives will be spent trying to operate through life with a piece of ourselves, or perhaps a large portion of ourselves, locked way somewhere in the backs of our psyches. Trying to function fully and competently without our full selves is like trying to run a marathon without legs. It can be done, yes, but we would never resort to prosthetics if we actually have legs to use–and, metaphorically speaking, we still do, we’ve only hidden them so the world cant see them. That locked away piece doesn’t ever actually go away. Where would it go? Instead it screams to be reunited with the rest of the self, to recover the true self. And this is the source of inner pain and anguish. Identifying original pain is the major work of most our lives, whether we realize it or not. Because, until we do, we are not fully functional adults and the pain and the anguish and the anger will sit with in us until we have healed the division.

[image error]

Struggling with an emotion is not the way to deal with it, however. Instead, we must learn to get very quiet, very still, and welcome those emotions home, where we can learn what their messages are and what they are saying to us. Because, like it or not, all emotions have a purpose. They tell us something about what is going on within ourselves. Fear tells us we are in danger, either imminently or psychologically. It may be mistaken. The fear may not be real, but that is the message. Anger informs us that a boundary has been crossed, that our needs have been violated in some way.

What about when fear manifests as anger?

If you are like me, bouts of extreme anger have popped up for me during the shelter-at-home orders. I’ve been so busy over the last year. Having started a community outreach mobile yoga studio, I’ve been busier, and more outgoing (I’m not an extrovert) than I’ve ever been in my life. And it has not come without it’s costs. My energies have been sapped by a neglect of self-care and by friends and acquaintances that continually bulldoze across my boundaries.

I’ve needed rest.

I’ve needed time to reconsider my own needs.

Apart from my own personal experiences, however, I think there is a lot to be angry about.

[image error][image error]Philo T. Farnsworth (American) and John Logie Baird (Scottish) demonstrate their inventions.

I believe we are all susceptible to the collective conscious. It’s why two different people, living in vastly different parts of the world, will come up with a similar idea (consider the invention of the television), why music and art and fashion will display similar trends, why certain foods or colors suddenly become more popular than others. What one person puts out there in the way of thoughts and energies can be read by others who are sensitive and perceptive. But when a multitude of people are putting out a feeling or an energy, such as frustration for the inequalities that this virus has laid bare–it becomes palpable by the masses.

The anger is real.

But the anger, for many of us, is just another manifestation of fear.

Some are afraid of going back to a normal that still allows for the injustices that we have suffered with for far too long. Some are afraid of leaders who do more harm than good in their egoistic rhetoric and self-serving agendas. But, too often, another kind of fear raises it’s head.

The fear of the ego.

Ego is a dangerous thing. Ego is the need to protect oneself from the shame of being wrong or being weak or being less than. Worse than that, it’s the fear of being perceived as such. Because like it or not, we all are, at one point or another in our lives, one or all of those things. That’s called being human. It’s called being alive. It’s called being vulnerable, and one cannot be invulnerable to pain and open to joy. It doesn’t work like that.

When difficult times lay bare the facts that we are not as wise as we thought, we are not as prepared as we thought, we are not as financially stable as we thought, we are not as healthy as we thought, we are not as emotionally stable as we thought, we are not as safe as we thought, we are not as RIGHT as we thought…the ego will inflate itself, unable to sit with fear and accept our frailties and foibles, it will rear its ugly head and shake its fists and breathe anger and hatred…because that feels more powerful than fear. It certainly looks more powerful than fear.

But anger (another complicated emotion) is usually based in fear.

Anger is fear being pushy, throwing its weight around, grasping for power it doesn’t have or that it’s afraid to share because it mistakenly thinks that what it allows for another it looses for itself.

So whatever you are feeling during this time, whether it’s fear or anger, or pain, or actual righteous indignation, just get honest with the idea of what you can and what you cannot control. Get honest with the notion that our country has done bad things in the past and it has perpetuated those wrongs for generations. Trauma begets trauma and hurt people hurt people. Healing is group effort, it’s not something people can be shoved off into a corner to take care of on their own because their pain somehow reflects your culpability. But the fact that hurt has been caused does not necessarily mean that there are guilty parties that need to be hunted down and brought to justice. So many of these injuries happened so long ago that the quest for justice can only be found in changing the status-quo, not in meting out punishment. Power is not a limited resource, it can be shared without being lost.

So, in actuality, there is little risk in owning our story if we are not defined by something outside of ourselves. Which we can’t be. A moment’s pause to self-reflect can only benefit both parties if we have the courage to do it honestly. Think about it…

If you’ve caused hurt in your life, what is it costing you to own it?

If you haven’t caused hurt, at least knowingly or directly, what does it cost you to be empathetic and compassionate with someone who has been injured? Or even to open yourself up to the idea that by perhaps acting in a different way, you could help someone to heal?

The answer is nothing.

The lie is always harder to maintain than the truth. We are all culpable of something. We are all guilty in our way, and often without our knowing. The opposite of pain is not blame but compassion. Power is in taking ownership of our stories, in taking responsibility for the course of our own lives.

This world doesn’t need saviors, it needs healing. It needs love. It needs a voice for the voiceless. It needs compassion for the suffering and downtrodden–for the disempowered.

But it also needs action.

Fear isn’t always unhealthy. Take for instance the fear that comes from being in actual danger. When our autonomic nervous system is activated and we become hyper alert for the sake of survival, we enable courage and unleash the resourcefulness required to find ways to survive that we might not have thought of before.

We are not in that danger now, most of us. That doesn’t mean we don’t feel the threat of it lurking. For those of us who have survived trauma, it’s what we are on the watch for every day of our lives. Consider for a moment what a frightening situation feels like when we are in the midst of it, and how different it feels to anticipate it ahead of time or to look back on it in retrospect. It’s a different kind of fear entirely. In the moment of real and present danger, we are not cowering for our lives, we are not avoiding what we feel, but we are embracing every sensation and every sensory signal in order to absorb all the information we can so that we can assemble the resources required for our survival. In most cases, a frightening situation turns out to resolve itself without serious injury. We take what we learned from the incident and prepare for a better future. That’s what we can do now. That’s what many of us are doing now.

Having said that, I don’t want to disregard real trauma and the harm being caused by others, whether it’s ego-driven law enforcement or incensed protestors–or any number of actual dangers the world truly poses, whoever we may be and whatever circumstances we may find ourselves in. Trauma is real, and it is precisely what I believe is at the heart of our racial issues. Generations of compound, complex, multi-generational, systemic trauma, committed upon a population of people within a society that has utterly failed to provide for its resolution and healing. Trauma in the United States is endemic and largely ignored. And trauma can be inherited. The pain suffered by your ancestors can and does exist in you, and will until it is resolved. Bizarre as it may seem, it’s a true and legitimate phenomenon.

The masses ask for silence, when silence provides nothing but further trauma. It was Freud who found that giving voice to one’s stories releases much of the embodied anxiety (hysteria) that is consequential of trauma. The world has never done well with the responsibility of carrying each other’s burdens. It never needed to rise to that responsibility more so than now.

I would invite you to take a moment and listen to this video, where complex trauma and its socio-economic effects are explained by Dr. Nadine Burke Harris. Compound, complex trauma creates all kinds of problems, mental as well as physical, legal, social, educational, financial, and criminal. It is the number one cause of nearly every ill our nation (and the world) faces today. Unresolved trauma has resulted in a public health crisis in America.

In the United States, we don’t know how to treat trauma. Our mental health care system has failed us in this respect. And so we have communities of unhealed, unwhole people trying to cope the best they can, their minds consumed by the horrors they’ve experienced and trying to forget them. Often, rather than living in fear, they turn to anger and violence, they struggle to live in and with bodies that have betrayed them. They turn to drugs and alcohol, or other addictions that take them out of the painful now.

It’s ok to feel afraid during these bizarre times. It’s ok to feel angry. It’s ok to feel anxious and depressed and uncertain. It’s ok to sit and just be with whatever it is you are feeling. We can take this time to slow down, figure out how to love ourselves more, to give ourselves more of what we need, to figure out how to be more real and honest and authentic, knowing we deserve to have our needs met and to set the boundaries necessary that will ensure we do not give away more than we can afford to expend on others who don’t love us like they should, while at the same time finding opportunities to be vulnerable enough to accept the love we do deserve. All this…so that we have the capacity to hold space for the pain of others. I think isolation has taught us, at the very least, that we need eachother.

This time we live in, as scary as it is, offers us the opportunity to change our lives and the world around us. It is frightening, but let’s embrace the fear of uncertainty, trusting that the universe knows what it is doing, and let’s have the courage to work towards a world we all want to live in together.

Fear can lead to love. And love is the answer.

[image error]

Always!

Why Write?

It’s certainly not everyone’s cup of tea, after all.

As an avid reader I love language. I love that a sentence can be formed in a number of ways, each word adding something to the composition of the message one is trying to convey. The written word is miraculous to me. These little symbols are associated with unique sounds and, when grouped together, the symbols form words, and the sounds…pictures. Every word is loaded with connotation, with images that are unique to every individual. Despite the rules (oh, so many of them!) language is not precise. It’s actually a pretty clumsy way of getting one’s message across. And yet, when one does find the perfect grouping of symbols and words and sounds–and images–to paint an adequate picture of the story one is trying to tell… It’s magic!

[image error]

I used to have trouble sleeping. I would lay awake at night and daydream about the books I was reading (mostly classics at the time) and imagine myself as one of the characters. I’m an unapologetic idealist and a hopeless romantic (textbook INFJ, me), and I would daydream about the dramas and romantic intrigues these characters would find themselves embroiled in. Other plot elements, particularly those that portrayed the disenfranchisement of women, would get my blood boiling! In such cases I would imagine all the little rebellions I would stage, if not to win my freedom, then at least to make my point. Hours later I might finally doze off, only to wake again in the early morning hours. Or perhaps I wouldn’t sleep at all.

[image error]

One night I dreamt of a young woman entering a ballroom, dressed to the nine’s and looking the part but feeling completely out of place and alone, despite a room filled with people. The idea intrigued me, and I wondered what circumstances might induce someone to view their apparent good fortune with suspicion. Books are filled with avaricious schemers and hangers on. Surely not everyone felt quite worthy or deserving of the fortune that befell them–particularly if it arrived to them by surprise.

I began, instead of lying awake thinking about the books that I had already read, but dreaming up this new story. I would daydream of the various plot elements, the backstory, the characters that would add to this narrative in a compelling way. In the morning I would make a bulleted list of the events and plot points I had thought up. At first it was just something to do while I lay awake unable to sleep, but soon I found myself dozing off before I had had my fill of these new and exciting storylines.

But still I did not write. I didn’t think I was quite up to writing a book. I decided I would create an outline first, and only if I could come up with enough of a story line, with the appropriate story arch to carry it successfully from beginning to end, then I would begin to write.

Of course I had no idea what I was doing then, but in time I had an outline filled with plot twists and turns, lovers’ intrigues, stories of injustice and wrongs made right, manipulative men and misunderstandings between would-be heroes and heroines. And so I began to write. My first endeavor was a 300K word manuscript that was far too long and meandering, and displayed a lack of understanding of how to construct a novel that worked (I still struggle with plotting, to be honest). I shopped it around anyway, submitting it to agents, and had several who were interested, but they wanted larger revisions than I knew how to make at the time.

I wrote and rewrote, enlisting the help of friends to beta read and offer edits and suggestions. In time, Kentridge Hall became Cry of the Peacock, a story about an inheritance offered to the daughter of an estate overseer as a means of making up for a past wrong committed by the family of the landlord upon her own family. It was also about an arranged marriage. Having come to the end of that story (it would still require months of editing and revising before it was quite ready for publication) another idea came to mind. A similar theme, but sort of the other side of the coin. Another inheritance, another reluctant heiress, another arranged marriage–but with a far different outcome.

[image error]

Where Cry of the Peacock was a pastiche of plot elements from my favorite books, an attempt to write the book I would most wish to read, Of Moths and Butterflies was a sojourn into my own history–albeit disguised behind a backdrop of late-Victorian culture and early feminist reform. I was writing again, I was exploring myself and my original pain, trying to come to terms with it. Most importantly, I was sleeping. Like…really sleeping.

I had just finished the rough draft about the time that Harper Collins opened up its peer review platform Authonomy.com. I enlisted another editor, a close friend of mine, to help me prepare it for posting on the website. I felt that Moths had a stronger beginning than Peacock, so it became my focus (and was ultimately the first to be published).

Of the many comments I received on the website regarding this MS was one by a user in England who felt that I wasn’t diving deeply enough into my protagonist’s backstory. They felt, in fact, that I was basically skimming over the top of my own experiences without really getting in touch with what that history felt like in my own psyche. It was at that point that Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way came into my life. It had been suggested to me previously, but this time I really felt I was ready to do the work. It was clear, at any rate, that I could not write the type of book I really wanted to without it.

What began was a decade’s journey into my own soul and psyche, a journey which has caused tremendous upheaval and indescribable peace and healing. Yet, it’s a journey far from over.

As an author, it’s our responsibility to share as much of our journey and our wisdom as we can through our websites. It’s taken me a long time to find my voice. Formerly I wrote about my expertise in the topics I write about. The website became an invaluable resource even to myself, but when I lost that website due to a virus, I decided to take some time out and figure out what it was I really wanted to write about. At last, I’ve figured it out, and, as usual, it was right in front of me all along. My books were always meant to offer hope and healing. But I’ve been waiting to be 100% healed in order to feel qualified to do it. I’ve recently come to accept that that will probably not happen in this lifetime.

[image error]

As many have discovered already, the act of creating is in itself an act of healing and of self-discovery as much as it is self-expression. Writing, especially, is a profoundly powerful way to reunite with the self. Finding union with the self is the very heart of the esoteric journey to God, or source, or truth or… whatever you may wish to call it. That is, after all, what the word YOGA means, “to yoke, or to unite”. In Freudian psychology, the act of assigning language to experience and then of allowing the experience to reconnect with its appropriate narrative and associated emotions is precisely the sort of recipe found most conducive to healing trauma (this was in the days when Freud recognized trauma as the source of hysteria–I’ll write about that later). Thus “the talking cure” was born, but it’s equally as powerful in written form, particularly if we learn to truly listen to the wisdom within. My new dedication to this blog is in part due to Janet Conner’s book, Writing Down Your Soul, in which the author makes a convincing case for writing as an act of self-care and even attaining and tuning into the inner wisdom inherent in each of us. We all have everything we need, after all. Healing is just a means of regaining access to our wholeness–of remembering it and reuniting with it.

So answering the question, why I write, an exercise many if not most people would do anything to avoid, the answer is simple. I can’t not write. I’m not happy when I’m not writing. Writing has allowed me to heal. Writing offers me the opportunity to speak my truth, whether its veiled behind the set dressing of late-Victorian corsetry or neo-Victorian gaslampery. Or…when it’s the bald truth spoken in plain language, which I’ve committed to write more of.

My writing is about healing. My healing. But perhaps you’ll find something here that resonates with you as well. I hope so. That’s why, in future posts, I’ll be offering information on the resources and modalities that have been most instrumental to myself, I’ll be talking personality type and esoterica, yoga and meditation, the work and play of writing (if not the semantics), expanding my collection of short stories and essays (working toward the completion of Scatter Creek) and much, much more.

Until then, Namaste, and stay well, my friends.

Scatter Creek: Chapter 2

Early Morning Phone Calls Never Bring Good News

 

Alone again, and this time truly alone, I looked at the body lying in the bed. My father was not there. And now, I had no right to be. When the nurse came in again, I asked him if I needed to leave. He kindly told me I had a few hours yet to make whatever calls I needed to make, whatever arrangements, before his body must be removed to the morgue. He gave me a folder that contained all the information I needed to make final arrangements.

“If there’s someone you should call…” It was a reminder he should not have had to give. I had been on the receiving end of those early morning phone calls too many times. I had always felt pity and sorrow for the person who had been obligated to make them. This time that person was me.

“Yes,” I said. “I suppose I should call my sister and my stepmom.”

I called my sister first. She lived an hour away and it was with her I would be staying. She’d have to come get me. I remember worrying how to convey the message simply and clearly, even while she struggled for lucidity, pretending to be more awake and coherent than she was. But she had known the call was coming. Perhaps she had not expected it to come so shortly after my arrival, so shortly on the heels of her own departure. Four hours. I had only been there four hours. He might have died while I was in the air, or on the train. But he hadn’t. He had hung on, just long enough. He might have hung on for days more, as my sister expected he might. But he didn’t. I had come to offer him some peaceful space in which to depart this life, and he had done it. I knew he was no longer fearful. I knew he was reunited with the family he had been separated from for most of his life, the parents who had left him an orphan at the age of three, those whom he had spent his life resenting for their abandonment of him, however involuntary it had been. And with countless others, most of whom I could not begin to imagine. The parents who had raised him, perhaps. The grandfather who had emigrated from Switzerland at the turn of the century and the grandmother whose name and identity have been lost to us, possibly. My brother—his son, who had died eight years prior—most certainly.

Death is part of life. My mind knows this with certainty. My heart, even now, when my religious beliefs have been replaced with those more spiritual than dogmatic, struggles to understand the letting go process. But it delights in the thought of reunion. I no longer believe those loved ones are as far away as Heaven or Hell. I don’t believe either of those places exist, not really.

Scatter Creek: Chapter 1

A Meeting with Death

 

“I’m not afraid to die,” my father said to me when he was diagnosed with stomach cancer.

But he was. Perhaps he was not afraid when he said it, but as he lay in the hospital bed, the monitors silenced and morphine slowly dripping through the I.V. lines, he was afraid. I could feel it.

Perhaps I ought to have said something. I think of that now. They say that, after the passing of a loved one, we all reflect on what we more we could have done or said so that they knew we loved them. I could have spoken. I could have said it was ok, and that he could go, and that he wasn’t alone and there was no need to be afraid.

But I didn’t. He didn’t want me there. After the realization that he would not be leaving the hospital this time, he called me, he said his goodbyes over the phone, and he asked me not to come, not to trouble myself. My sister was there, and my step mother. “Don’t come,” he’d said. “I don’t want a fuss.” He never did. But here I was.

My father was just a few weeks shy of 82 when he died. Despite all his body had been through, four bouts of cancer, a heart condition that was at last regulated with a pacemaker, a hip replacement and three knee replacements, he did not look his age. But as I slipped into the hospital room that late October evening and saw him, his gray-white hair, his waxy skin, his sunken eyes unshaded by the glasses he usually wore, and a toothless mouth that hung a little open, he looked his age and more. My intention was to enter silently. I didn’t want him to be angry I’d come. He had asked me not to make the trip from Virginia to Washington State. He didn’t want the fuss. He wanted to die in peace.

When my father called me to tell me the news, and to say goodbye, he had not been expected to survive the next twenty-four hours. But here he was, nearly a week later, holding on with everything in him. He hadn’t wanted a fuss. But the dying should never die alone, and the living want as long as time will allow. My stepmother had sat beside the bed. She had always been kind and loving to me, but she and my sister had a tenuous relationship based on jealousy and a strange sort of territorialism for my dad’s affection and attention. My stepmother escapes pain by worrying over the insignificant. My sister escaped it by drinking. They had spent the last several days at each other’s throats, until at last, lacking sleep and proper nutrition, my stepmom had to return home, 90 miles away, and my sister had taken as much time off of work as her employers would allow. On the last day of my father’s life, he was alone. And that was why I came. No one should have to die alone.

Only it was possible he wanted it that way. He liked his time alone, and resented it when it was disturbed. As quietly as I could, I set up what I needed for the night. I knew I would not sleep, but I could make myself as comfortable as possible and prepare for a long night of meditation. There is rest in meditation, and sometimes it is more valuable than sleep. I hoped it would benefit him as well. I intended that it should.

At last, dressed comfortably after my long journey from one coast to another, I put on my most comfortable clothes, brushed my teeth, and settled myself onto the chair that unfolded into something not quite like a bed. And then I began to pray. I did. I asked God to grant my father peace. I asked that he would be aware of those around him who had gathered and were gathering to guide him home. Now, looking back on it, I think I perhaps ought to have offered the prayer aloud, but my religion was never something I was encouraged to discuss within the family circle. It was my own thing. I had strayed, in a way. It had benefitted me, but I was not welcome to share it. And so I prayed silently.

Shortly after I had said my “amen”, the nurse entered, an older gentleman, who was clearly surprised to see me there. I found that an explanation as to what had brought me and why I’d chosen to come, might be offered to the nurse and to my father in tandem. My father was not lucid, he was barely conscious, but I could sense that there was some awareness in him yet. And so I told him. My stepmother, who struggled with diabetes, was unwell and had to go home. My sister has taken all the time off her employers will allow her. I flew in from Virginia to be with him. I looked to my father as I finished. Would he be angry or relieved. “I’m here to take care of everything,” I finished. I’d said more than the nurse needed to hear. No doubt he was aware already of the reasons why he had been left alone. My stepmom and my sister had sat as long as they were able. They said their goodbyes. There was nothing more to be done. But in truth, I had wanted this time with him. Our relationship had not always been comfortable or easy. In the last few years, as he had struggled with this cancer, we had been given the opportunity to mend things. And I felt we had. There really wasn’t anything more to say, but I wanted to be with him. I wanted to be able to offer a peaceful and calm, and perhaps less fearful space for his passing.

When the nurse left again, I began my meditation. I alternated observing my own breath and listening for his. It was light and shallow and sometimes took a great deal of focus to perceive at all. I fell in and out of awareness. I suppose I must have drifted off to sleep. I woke up each time the nurse came in, and then I’d resume meditating, resume listening, when he’d leave again. I hated all the interruptions. I’ve never understood how people get any rest at all in a hospital with all the constant comings and goings of nurses and other staff.

With the room quiet again, I dropped back in. I suppose I must have fallen asleep, but I woke up again with the sensation that the room was no longer empty. In fact it felt quite full. I knew we were alone, but, at the same time, we were not. I didn’t open my eyes to look; I was afraid to. Whatever was happening was happening for my father, not for me and I feared if I looked, it would dispel it. There was a sensation of love that was so all-encompassing, so expansive and penetrating that I felt in that moment, that if this love had been available to him—or perhaps if he had been able to access it—he would never have had cancer, that it was enough even then to heal him. I felt him healed and whole. And then…little by little, the sensation went away. I did not want to know. I heard no breathing. I heard and felt nothing. And when the nurse came in again, I did not sit up to greet him. I just lay there, pretending I was asleep, wishing I was asleep.

“I think he’s gone,” he said.

Slowly I sat up. Was it wrong to be asleep as he passed? I hadn’t been, but something like it. Was it wrong not to be aware and vigilant? To wait for someone unrelated to make the announcement?

A second was called in and at 2:10 am, they called it. But he had gone ten minutes before. I knew it. I had been there to witness it.

Available May 26, 2019!

We are just four days away from publication of my first novel in five years, and the first of a dystopian-steampunk series, and I’m SO excited!

 

[image error]Available on Amazon and from these online retailers!

And be sure to watch the trailer!

Welcome to New Londinium, a city that developed from an enclave of stragglers who survived the culminating blast of the last world war. From beneath the lee of a mountain formed as a result of the devastation, a colony gathered and grew. After several hundred years, this post-apocalyptic city is filled to bursting, and everyone—well, nearly everyone—is struggling for a place amidst the city’s Chosen, the elite ruling faction.

Robert Mayhew, by all appearances, is a man destined to be numbered amongst these Chosen. But Mayhew is both more than and less than he appears. His unauthorized conception, and a hideous deformity that was the result of his failed termination, have left him with a bloodthirsty lust to exact vengeance on the system that conspired to kill him even before he’d drawn his first breath, and who would surely finish the task should his secret be discovered.

In his position as chief curator of the Absinthe Moon—the city’s center of love and leisure—and supported by the Resistance, Mayhew is in just the right position to infiltrate the Icarus Project—the executive body of the city’s shadow government—and bring the whole system toppling down. So long as no one gets in his way.

Enter Emeline Newell. Utterly devoid of any evidence of the city’s taint, she is a valuable asset to the Absinthe Moon, and to Mayhew in his aims to achieve elite status. As his consort, she might give him just the advantage he needs.

Only Emeline has some ideas of her own, and perhaps a few things to teach him about love, loyalty, and the power he wishes to wield.