Suzy Vitello's Blog, page 2

roadtrip

Back in the days I was traveling as a solo parent of two kids under three years of age, there was an inverse relationship between planning and crying. And I don’t mean the babies.

The first time I ventured up the coast, San Diego to Portland, I spent a week-and-a-half OCDing the fix for every possible malfunction or affliction. An extra full-size tire for my newish Subaru. Ipecac syrup in case one of the children Hoovered a poisonous plant. Cloth and paper diapers (who did I think I was kidding though. I never used cloth diapers on the road). Strained sweet potatoes and grapes cut up into non-chokable quarters. Labeled Tupperware for everything from apple slices to Zwieback. A highchair and a booster. Flashlights and binoculars. A portable crib. Two different first aid kits. Car toys for the one-year-old, and different car toys for the two-year-old. Earplugs for the mom. Rafi on the cassette player.

This little sweetie was a fireplug at age one.

This was pre-cellphone (and certainly pre-smartphone). Before insta-answers to everything on the internet. If you were planning a trip, you’d go to Triple A and have them map out routes. Possibly you would purchase a Thomas Guide for your destination city for granular information. If you got lost, there was no Siri barking directions out your blue tooth. You had pull over. Sometimes read by the map light. Do they even have map lights in cars anymore?

Everything so nice and neat. At the beginning.

 

Oddly, I had some déjà vu moments preparing for and taking this Spring Break with Whole30 and Rottweiler puppy trip. Even though technology has made getting lost impossible (and finding a restaurant with Kobe beef lettuce wraps easy), 1,050 miles is still 1,050 miles. Several days before we left I spent sleepless hours envisioning the various coolers and bins, ingredients and meal plans I’d be packing. Some pre-made and then frozen meals. A couple bottles of almond milk squeezed fresh just before departure. Then there was the whole Chinese box puzzle of packing it all in yet another Subaru, along with Jaxx, his crate, his food, his toys.

At least there was a husband this time around.

Just like in 1989, I over-packed. But not one tear was shed! Here are some hindsight tips:

Probably don’t make a whole tree’s worth of almonds available. You’ll pop them like M&Ms and your gut will be a tad pissed off.
Rewarding your dog with a bite of your hamburger patty seems like a good idea, but will resort in a day of vomit.
Boiled eggs are the bomb. Especially smeared with compliant baba ganouj.
Slicing up mangos is a delicate operation, and best not tackled while driving.
Shredded chicken wraps sound like a good idea. I envisioned finding a park and having a picnic. The weather was far too crappy, so I made them in the car and offered them to Kirk when it was his turn to drive, and it was mess.
Berries and grapes are terrific road snacks, but Lara bars are even better.
Thank God Jaxx is crate-trained. We could never do this if he wasn’t super comfortable spending hours in a crate. (Though, he’s much less happy about going in the crate after spending hours and hours in it.)

We stopped every 200 miles or so, at the direction of a Google-mapped dog park. Turns out, Jaxx has become a humper. Natch. An eleven month old in-tact male Rottweiler, under certain circumstances, can be a handful. Even one who is mostly trained. Especially when an unspayed female shows up. Luckily, Jaxx will do anything for a hotdog.

I stared those suckers down, but nary a bite.

Another Murphy’s Law sitch: the dreaded Spring Break grunge. With every mile, Kirk’s coughing and sneezing fits increased, so by Redding, he was in full blown hack. That’s when we decided a warm meal was in order. We enjoyed every bite of our thirteen dollar Kobe beef patties, and my darling husband is now officially un reset. I watched him devour half a platter of French fries, and contemplated having one. But one leads to thirty-six when it comes to fries, so I abstained. And it wasn’t terribly hard. But I will say, my “reward” of two-day old grilled shrimp once back on the road was a tad disappointing.

Even fresh cilantro and pom seeds couldn’t make this yummy.

We are now in Southern Cali for a few more days, enjoying our kids and the beach and all the fresh produce. Funny how my 1989 trip continues to linger as we map out all the meals, activities and micro-obsessions. Right now? I’d love … LOVE … a glass of Tempranillo. And some crackers. And a hunk of Irish cheddar.

Whole30 first third

The end of the first third of this Whole30 thing is supposed to be (according to the book) the hardest part. That phase when the novelty has worn off, your body is still adjusting to different fuel, and you begin to resent that you still can’t have a bite of your kid’s Starbucks croissant.

All that is happening, for sure.

Also, the sheer toil. The list-making, shopping, soaking, chopping, preparing, cleaning in order to stay compliant. The mood swings. The energy fluctuations.

It’s work.

But I must say, inflammation is roughly 25% down. Eyes are brighter. When I’m happy and I know it, I stamp my feet. Little bursts of tiger’s blood are happening. So are little bursts of despair. Mood swings, like I said.

Smiles starting to appear during random chores.

Biggest difference: I’m not that hungry unless I go more than five hours without food. There is something to be said for the relationship between Whole30 eating and satiety. The sugar highs and lows are eliminated, and, it’s well-documented that fat sticks with you longer.

Oh, and I’ve had zero tummy discomfort. Zero. Which is a complete 180 from before this thing.

And, something else.

I’m challenging my paradigms. Shaking things up. Here’s an example. Typically, I go to the grocery store in rote mode. Buy pretty much the same things each week. Autopilot. Not so, this past ten days.

Example. Yesterday, in prelude to making Moroccan stew, I went to three different stores for lamb. I wanted chunks of stew meat in little cubes. Nope. So at the big Beaverton Freddies, in the “natural hormone-free meat” section, at last I found a bundled up boneless lamb shank in the right size. Alas, if there’s one thing I’m averse to, it’s cutting up a big hunk of bloody meat.

Nice and tidy. No muss. No fuss.

I know, I know, that’s super modern girl out of touch with hunting and gathering of me, but I have been known to get all bloody accident light-headed about that particular task. But then I thought, Gee, maybe they’ll cube it up for me in the butcher section. And they did! Without extra cost. I had no idea it was as simple as that. Some thirty-odd years as a grocery store consumer, and I didn’t know you were allowed to request such a thing. So that was a win.

Colorful carrots in my stew. Tasty af.

The stew was fairly delicious, and very satisfying (though the thickening agent they allow—arrowroot, leaves a pasty aftertaste, next time going to use almond flour). Today I’m going to make coconut chicken breasts. Doesn’t that sound good?

 

Energy

Greetings, and welcome to my thoughts. You don’t even have to give me a penny.

Have a seat and forgive me in advance for oversharing. Deal? Deal.

So, this past Monday I embarked on one of those Whole30 “cleanses.” Day 6 and I’m just peeking out from the “I hate everyone and everything” rock, and, unlike the current sky in Portland, there is a white hot flash of life blinding me with its potential brilliance. Am I gonna get all Come to Jesus about this diet? I am not. But I do have thoughts.

Meet Jaxx. My favorite beast.

On this morning’s rain-soaked walk with my Serbian beast, it occurred to me that the main reason for climbing aboard the Whole30 bandwagon is, I’m stuck in the muck of thick life. Ennui is too feathery a word for how I feel. Depressed is too clinical. Apathetic definitely doesn’t cover it. Angry? Well, that’s part of it. Leaving descriptors for a moment, let me just say, this past six months has been really hard, and here are a few markers for that statement:

1.  My little sister, my only sibling, is in the midst of treatment for a particularly shitty cancer that was misdiagnosed for months.

2.  Many ideas and philosophies I’ve grown to value over the course of decades now stand vulnerable and are under siege by a government I don’t even recognize.

3.  The winter has been severe and hyperbolic in its record-breaking wetness and unrelenting dark.

4.  Much of what I’d been writing in 2016 felt wrong, and I’m not exactly sure how else to describe it.

Energy. That’s what I seem to be lacking. Energy, zest, verve, being energized—where’d you go? I take solace in that I’m not alone here. I’m representative of a group of people who are fighting the paralysis and lethargy that comes with being continually blindsided by bad news. But I’ve been watching energies of people not so afflicted. The fervor of the left, of the resistance, of the true valiant spirits who are activated in times of crisis.

And, the other folks. The, hmm, guess I’ll call them Cult of 45 people. The “Lock her up” chanters. The folks who stand behind the prez at his rallies waving signs of solidarity and the pro-Trumps unified and vocal on Facebook and Twitter—I’ve been watching them, too.

Then there’s the energy of the GOP ringleaders, Ryan, Conway, Bannon, and 45 himself, who both manufacture and spew the nationalistic Kool-Aid, whipped up in a frenzy of righteousness that, if we’re looking at neuro-biology, can only be explained by the failure of an evolved biofeedback loop. “Repeal and replace!” Huh? Are you kidding me?

All these energies. Sometimes fascinating, often existentially heart-crushing to witness. I’ve been behind a scrim, my emotions abraded by a cavalcade—continual mudslides, actually, here in Portland—of things I cannot control.

I’ve been living in this heightened state of anxiety where I can’t stop rubbernecking and wringing my hands. I’m separate from myself, and from the world, and I miss being actively inside of it all. I do try. Lord knows. Here I am doing a guest instructor stint in Chuck’s class whilst suffering from sugar withdrawal.

Flanked by a hipster student and mighty Chuck Palahniuk, moi. Tired. Day #1 of Whole30.

Even writing out this “thought” post—I’ve put it off because it necessitated going into the backend of my wordpress site and adding another top level navigation item, and I always forget how to do that, and just thinking about passwords and technical steps makes me long for a nap.

To be clear, I want to be energized, not frenzied. I am not seeking a religion or a zealotry-fueled cause. In fact, because of my wiring, I would probably flame out if I attained frenzy. My brain would explode, probably. Unlike my dear sister, who is an espresso machine to my slow-drip, in the face of adversity I’m most comfortable in pause mode.

We quiet percolators are at our best when we are given space to ponder and fuel to kindle a sustainable, yet undramatic, fire. But what this looks like without proper fuel is saturated coffee grounds in a forgotten filter. A bloated, blah. Stimulation trapped in a sluggish body. The doctors call it systemic inflammation. We tend to self-medicate this condition with all the coffee. All the wine. All the chocolate. And we just cycle deeper into the muck.

Ergo, Whole30.

Actually using summer’s harvest with this Whole30 deal. So, yay for me.

Like I said, I’m just crawling out from under the rock. Recalibrating a slug-body—yanking away the sugar, the booze, the “comfort food”—creates temporary chaos. Percolators are not into chaos. Nevertheless, throughout this inaugural week, I persisted. On the other side, headaches are clearing up. Acid reflux has left the building. My sleep schedule is still fucked up though, and finally, after five days, I managed to actually take a shit (told you I’d overshare—and I can hear my darling husband saying, “Are you sure you’re not a dude?”), but, thanks to nearly a week of 100% clean eating, energy is finding its way to me and turning me back into me.

This next week, I imagine I’ll crave the afternoon glass of wine the most. And the casual bag of processed snack. I’ll let you know. Talk to you soon.

Meanwhile, come, come, ye spritely faeries. Feed on me.

Whitelash

Yesterday, a sunny, record-breaking warm day in Portland, I drove to the dollar store for party supplies. Red, white and blue glo-sticks and a big-ass white centerpiece to hoist when the election was called in Hillary’s favor.

I wore a brown blazer over yoga pants, and had thought, for an hour or so, that maybe I should go to Goodwill and purchase a white pantsuit. Weren’t all the “good” people wearing white? The Hillary people? Weren’t we all instructed to wear white to the voting booths in solidarity? But in my case, living in Oregon, I’d voted weeks ago. It seemed pointless to waste time and money looking for a white pantsuit on the racks of the thrift stores. Plus, I thought, they’d all be sold out by now, us being such a blue state and all.

So, I dashed the white pantsuit idea in favor of cheap trinkets, and slapped an armload of them on the dollar store checkout conveyor where a cashier whose name tag read Amber scrutinized each item as she scanned it. She held one aloft and queried, “Is it Memorial Day?”

I thought I misheard, or that she was joking.

But, alas, she continued. “Or, is it, like, Labor Day?”

“Huh?”

“Well, everyone’s buying all these fourth of July things today.”

She was dead serious.

I asked, “Are you over eighteen?”

“Yeah.”

“So, you don’t know it’s election day? Are you not registered to vote?”

She shook her head and then smiled. “I wondered why everyone was buying these things.”

And then, in my elder woman shame voice (that, to be honest, I was holding back as well as I could muster) I said, “Young lady, you must register and you must vote. This is your country.”

She shrugged and handed me my receipt. She told me to have a nice day.

I thought, I knew, I was going to have more than a nice day. Me in my brown blazer and yoga pants. I had helped to elect the first woman president, after all.

Flash forward six hours. I’ve made chicken wings and tater tots and “Mazel Tov” cocktails ha, ha, ha. Along with my son and daughter-in-law (an immigrant born south of the border); my nephew and his wife (born in Jamaica); my best friend and my god daughter (about to turn 16; and wide-eyed at the thought of a Hillary presidency); and my husband and 17-year-old son, we all watch in shock and horror as red begins washing over the large TV screen. Across town my daughter and her brand new wife are watching with their friends as well, horror stricken.

We watched as our country elected a man who had successfully mobilized the hatred we had no idea was so widespread. Or should I say whitespread. Or, as my hero Van Jones says, whitelashed.

White. White. White.

White. Fucking. Pantsuit.

There it is right there. The symbol of our ignorance. Of our complacency. Of our smugness. We think a white pantsuit ensures our inoculation against a pandemic of racism. What in the ever-living-fuck were we thinking?

Today we wake up to a president elect – a buffoon whose impulse control issues rival those of a toddler, a narcissist endorsed by the KKK, a man who treats women like candy to be unwrapped, tasted and discarded – and I think that those of us with a white pantsuit should burn it today. Or any little “white” celebration of our chicken-counting victory. Burn your complacency now and feel your pain. On November 8th, we were no better than the Ambers who thought it was Memorial Day.

Entropy

I have always been fascinated by extreme wealth. Not necessarily the trappings and the “stuff” of rich people, but the thermodynamics of money when compared to poverty.

This is, I must admit, less of a social justice issue for me, and more of a state-of-matter concern. Yes, yes, my heart hurts for the destitute. The fallen, downtrodden poor. My family of origin – most of it – lived on the edge for many generations. I wept when I read Behind the Beautiful Forevers as much as the next gal. I am not heartless.

But when I say I’m fascinated by wealth, it’s a very physical response. And, lately, I’ve found myself on the hunt for data that will help lay the groundwork for my latest novel-in-progress – which is set in the West Hills of Portland and explores the vast consequences of the event we’re all anticipating: the Cascadia earthquake.

When I set out to write a book, I start with a combination of voice and geography. In the case of this latest novel, there is a third item. A central idea, I suppose. At first I thought I was writing about class, and I guess, to a large extent, I am, but “class” feels unwieldy to me without a basis in physical reality. In other words, I needed to find real things in the world to concretize the journey I’m going on with this made up person living a made up life.

The past few weeks has found me logging vertical miles on the SW Trail system up above my home. Sort of like Brady, in my debut novel, The Moment Before, I’ve taken to the streets where affluence, nature and poverty intersect. Object lessons unfolding at every bend. Every flight of stairs.

How precarious are those mansions perched upon fill! How extreme and extracted from good sense is a 7,000 square foot home built on stilts in service to the view of the volcanoes! The conical Hood. The flat-top St. Helens.

When the plates finally collide enough to jolt the earth under these lovely homes, there will be an intensely physical consequence that has nothing to do with money. This is what I want to explore: the fantastical ramifications of a reordering of great magnitude.

In the Pacific Northwest, we’ve seen micro-versions of this with the occasional mudslide. The earth. The powerful, always moving toward entropy, earth. When I walk, I take photographs of stairs that connects roadways and I’m struck by the evidence of homelessness tangled in the ivy and blackberries. At the base of these huge houses, under the signs that warn trespassers that they’re being observed (by whom?), and that they risk towing and/or imprisonment for occupying privately-owned land, I fall into a sort of novelist forensic high.

Who are these people? Whence did they hail? What compelled them to erect these houses and the signs? The sodden mattresses and missing bench lumber. The empty PBR cans. The carefully wrought graffiti. All the stories behind the intersection, rooted in the reality of thermodynamic law.

My protagonist – I don’t know too much about her yet. But with every walk, her role becomes clearer. She lives in both the worlds. The high and the low. And she carries a deep secret. And when the quake comes – my fictional version of Cascadia – the reordering will be such that her secret will be unearthed.

Covers

Good afternoon, folks! In honor of the launch of The Empress Chronicles’ little sister, and because I’ve had such an overwhelmingly positive response to both covers, I thought it only right to highlight the team responsible.

Kit Foster and his assistant Robert Chute were kind enough to take time from their super busy schedules to chat about cover design, and why – especially for indie authors and small publishers – this crucial piece of book development is so important!

You haven’t been in the cover design business all that long – three years, is it? And yet, you’re super busy. How did that happen?

I have no idea, frankly! I think I’m quite lucky in that I am in a job where people are constantly advertising my services, merely by using my designs. I think I also started the business at a time where independent publishing began to explode, and it isn’t showing any signs of stopping! We offer a good service for a reasonable price, and I think people recognize that!

You work with indie authors as well as publishers. Is the process different? Who’s pickier, authors or publishers?

As a general rule, I would say that authors tend to be pickier .This is probably as a result of having a deeper emotional investment in the book. Authors can get very detail-conscious, as they know every single little detail of the book inside out. This can be a great thing (especially in things like non-fiction and historical titles where accuracy is key), but it can also lead to the dangerous territory of trying to shoehorn too much in to the cover; trying to tell the whole story on the cover.

If you were to distill your success, what are three things that set Kit Foster Design apart (or, to use “branding” terminology, your differentiators)?

1. I believe one of the most important skills of book cover designer is the ability to distill a story down to a single, powerful image (that sells). To my mind the greatest cover designers are those who are able to say lots about the book using the most simple designs they can. Kind of the Hemingway school of thought for designers, in terms of ‘complex simplicity’. I think the experience of over 1000 published book covers helps me to achieve this quickly and effectively. Being able to cut directly to the heart of your story / book really streamlines the process for the author, and makes the book more identifiable to the potential reader.

2. A love of book covers! I know it sounds cheesy, but I genuinely do love book covers! I love the idea of having a functioning piece of art, and to my mind, some of the greatest works of art in recent history have been book covers.

3. Robert. Robert really is a differentiator. He’s so easy to work with, and makes all of our clients feel comfortable and at ease. He’s a genuinely nice guy, who is genuinely excited to help you out; and not in that grim, plastered-on-smile-for-customer-service kind of way. He’s actually excited about the process of book creation, and he knows his stuff, so you’re in good hands!

What’s your favorite thing about book cover design?

I have a very short attention span, so, for me, the best thing about book cover design is the variety that it offers. I started out as a writer, but found it to be a lot of work, and because books take a long time to write, I found that I tended to give up on every idea within a couple of months. With cover design, in the morning I could be working on a swashbuckling pirate novel, then after lunch it’s a book about the history of tea-cosies. No two days are the same, and you learn a lot of interesting things!

What’s most challenging?

It is a massive responsibility. I designed a cover for a chap the other week, and he informed me that he had been working on this book for the last twenty years. Twenty years! Twenty years of his life had been given up to creating this book, this magnum opus, and I had been entrusted with designing the cover. When you think about it in those terms, you feel under an immense amount of pressure to get it right. The cover is the face of a book. It is the first thing nearly every potential reader will see, and more often than not, it will play a vital role in their decision to buy the book (or not). I continue to be humbled that people are willing to trust me to carve a face on to their life’s work!

This one is for Robert – the client liaison – how did Kit find you? How did you find Kit?

In 2010, I was looking for graphic designers for my publishing company when I ran across Kit in social media. He designed a cover for me and I was sold forever. He’s done most of my covers, actually. (You’ll find a bunch at my author site, AllThatChazz.com.) His work is excellent and his expertise runs deep. I promoted Kit’s work on my podcasts, we chatted often and became great friends.

Then, late last year, Kit was feeling overwhelmed with the demands of so many clients. He asked me to come in to help manage the business side so he could focus on the art. It’s a great partnership and we laugh a lot. I’ve never met Kit in person, but I count him among my closest friends. He’s truly a very nice and helpful guy.

You guys live in Scotland. Most of your clients are U.S. clients, yeah? How does that work, time zone wise?

Kit’s response: I stay in Scotland, which is about five hours ahead of the east coast of the US, however, Robert is in Canada, so it actually works quite well – because of the 5 hour difference between Robert and I, it means there is more often than not someone manning the fort. Conversations with clients (certainly between myself and the clients) rarely happen in real time, so the time difference is not usually an issue. Robert, who is far more likely to be liaising with the client in real time, is in the same time zone as the east coast of the US – so that work out pretty well for the majority of our clients. With that said, we regularly have customers from all around the globe, and time zones don’t usually present an issue!

Robert’s response: Kit lives in Scotland and I live in Canada. Though we’re five time zones and a spin of the globe apart, with instant messaging, the phone, email and gmail hangouts, the service is pretty seamless. We serve clients all over the world and most are unaware Kit and I don’t work out of the same office. I’m a busy writer so I’m working at a keyboard much of the time. I catch a lot of client requests in real time so clients hear back from us quickly. I try to keep everything on schedule and answer questions and requests ASAP. It’s actually a gargantuan task, but it’s also a lot of fun.

Can you send us a jpeg of your favorite 2015 cover?

Now, now – that’s not fair. A favorite? It’s like being asked if you have a favorite child! I genuinely can’t pick an overall favorite, but I’ve attached one that I like very much. The Incidental Man by Sydney Scott Jean.

Thanks, guys! I hope I get to work with you both soon.

Subverting

Like pretty much everyone on the planet, I recently purchased the Japanese decluttering book by Marie Kondo. And, like most of the people who purchased the nifty purse-sized tidying up bible, it remained in a heap by my bedside. Until today.

After speaking with a friend who had actually employed the concepts (to her satisfaction, I might add) I decided to crack the book and, in my typical fashion, page through it backwards until something caught my fancy. The heading “How to Fold” drew me in with its arrogant assumption that I (and other Westerners) had been doing it wrong lo these countless years.

None of my clients have ever known how to fold clothes properly when they began taking my lessons,

claims Kondo, in the Tiger Mom tone she takes for most of the book.

Really? I snarkily retorted in my head. I think my folding is just fine. When I do it. Which, hm, seems to have lately given way to the ball-up-and-stuff-in-the-drawer method of storage.

Kondo goes on to describe the “rolled and twisted like noodles” state of her uneducated clients’ drawers, and I had to admit, it struck a chord. She asserts that the first step in the process is to visualize the drawer once everything is in it. She says you should be able to see everything at a glance.

Huh?

Then she describes the outcome as similar to a bookcase, with the spines out – instead of pancaking your clothes, you fold them into rectangles and store them on their sides.

I went from, “I am so not doing THAT,” to, “I don’t think that would work too well with my clothes,” to, “Damn, this is awesome!”

I have to admit, I’m still not convinced that balling up your socks prevents them from getting the proper rest – but I do buy the argument that the material shouldn’t always be in a state of stretch.

Of course, I had to get rid of half my clothes to make it work – which was sort of the point. I had over 100 tops! I mean, how many Ducks t-shirts does the fair-weather fan need, anyway?

From the drawers, I next ventured into the wild jungle of my closet – stuffed to the brim with hangers made from all manner and material. 43 dresses/skirts; 17 jackets/coats; 38 scarves; containers full of outdated cosmetics and dried up bundles of sage.

See all of that crap on that shelf? I’ve had it tumble down and hit my head more times than I want to admit.

I allowed myself to keep 10 dresses and 6 skirts – the other 27 went into the Goodwill bin. Half my jackets and coats – off to do good work for those in need. Blouses and jackets I hadn’t worn in the last 6 months. Buh-bye. I admit, I kept more scarves than I should have. Scarves are my jewelry 9 months out of the year.

The guiding principle when deciding what to toss has to do with whether or not a given item brings you joy. About 75% of the items hanging in my closet now (see above) bring me joy. The other 25% are on probation. They’re the “I may need this” type of clothing. You know, in case I apply to work in a bank or something. But, seriously, if they don’t slide over into “joy” by 2016, out they go!

The best takeaway about closets in the Kondo book was the “rise to the right” organizing principle. You group your clothes: coats, jackets, skirts, dresses, blouses: with the lengthiest ones to the left, and shortest to the right. My clothes can breathe now. And I can put something on a hanger and not have it get tangled with its neighbor. The bliss of the purge (and the four bins of clothes now gone from this house) is infectious.

So. This is the point where I try to swerve into some sort of metaphor for writing. Decluttering the mind, allowing new ideas and energy to take root. Yes. Yes! I am totally ready to hit the page. First thing tomorrow. After I unball my socks.

 

endings, beginnings and stuff

Did y'all think I died? Well, of course you didn't. Thanks to Facebook and the like, there's no hiding in the bunkers.

I'm going to get right to it. This is my last post on this blog. Yup. We're done here, and moving on to something new (which I will get to). This is an auspicious day. August 10th, 30 years ago, I became Suzy Vitello and banished forever the last name with ten letters that nobody could pronounce. Just look at me. Innocent, virginal (okay, maybe not), but damn, I had no idea, at age 24, what lay ahead. I mean, who does, right?

Frank and I wouldn't even make it to three years, as a couple, due to the unforeseen circumstance that took his life, but he gave me two wonderful children in those brief years, and a name I love.

I've been thinking a lot about the chapters in my life, and how they all seem to have their own little arcs. Ups, downs, new adventures born of out-of-the-blue circumstance.

So, what's up? Well, life has thrown me a bit of a curve ball again. Certainly nothing as dire as young widowhood, but it looks like my publisher won't be picking up my next Empress book, and I'll be putting it out myself. I have many readers anticipating the second book, and I feel (and my agent agrees) that it would be a shame to lose the readership and momentum I've been trying to build this past year-and-a-half. The second book is called The Keepsake, and it's finished. I am fortunate to have a street team assembled to help with the physical aspects of format/copy edit/cover. (Thank you Laura Stanfill and Max Fulton and Kit Foster!) And I'm pretty sure you all will be hearing from me in terms of helping to get the word out.

Now that I've been flung into the world of the "hybrid" author (and after several days of stunned sadness, I must be honest), I'm doing what I've done on the heels of other of episodes of misfortune: taking a deep breath and leaping into uncharted, scary territory.

First step, is to better organize my backend (ha! both digital and physical - I'm on day one of a cleanse!) and that means scrapping my bug-filled, complicated website for a newer, cleaner, more modern one. I loved all my curli-cues and fancy wallpaper in the old site, but the interface is ridiculous, and it seemed too hard to tear that one down, so I just started from scratch.

I'm very tight on the cashola at the moment, so I'm doing all of it myself, and I have to give a shout out to this guy, Tyler, who I googled up, and who youtube step-by-stepped me through the dev of my work-in-progress.

In about a week or so, I hope to migrate everything over, but if I haven't worn you out yet, come on over to my OPEN HOUSE!

Thanks, you guys, for hanging out with me lo these many years. Hope you'll keep in touch!

Welcome

Good afternoon boys and girls! Thanks for checking out the new digs. I’m thinking I’ll have a house-warming party. What do you think? Good idea? What sort of activities can we plan?

How about “first sentence of the day”? Post it in the comments below, and I’ll select my fave and send you an autographed copy of my Victorian Porn novella (written under my oh-so-spicy nom de plume).

And …. go.

around the bend

I’m edging closer to the full embrace of my next project. Step by baby step. How it goes is, I have a voice. A character. An idea. I wrangle some plot possibilities, and then abandon them. Wrangle, abandon, wrangle, abandon, and like that.
But meanwhile, I walk. Somehow, by walking, I can take the spits from the brain and absorb them. Through the skin, and into the nervous system. The ideas grab hold of muscle memory and the part of my body that knows, and alchemy begins.
Here is the endpoint of today’s walk. Time and circumstance required me to turn around before knowing what happens around that bend.

I’m going back tomorrow to find out.