S.R. Karfelt's Blog, page 21

Have You Ever Been Carried Forward On Air? Ode to My Summer Life

Ode to My Summer Life/S.R. Karfelt


Have you ever been carried forward on air?

Those brief moments when gravity is suspended?
Your feet barely touch the ground.

Your bike tires crunch on finely milled gravel,
But you're flying like E.T. in the movie.
Only Amish bikers move faster, fit and trim,
Their smiles powering the jet stream.

Have you ever stepped out of a perfectly good plane?
Been lifted by wind, held suspended by that invisible force?
Was all the air once this clean?
How long can this benevolence last?

Did your bare feet once touch the firm bank of the river,
Taking you past tiger lilies and spider webs,
Touching pebbly pools and punishing thorns,
To dangle in the water where you were forbidden to go?

Was a stolen butter-knife all you needed clenched in your fist,
As you climbed the smooth limbs of a tree,
To carve your name in the bark,
While whispering apologies for the desecration.

Is the scent of stone and bat guano familiar?
Does it lure you deeper into the cavern?
A whisper of where you came from,
A strangely reassuring promise of where you'll eventually return.

Will you climb the long ladder where so few tourists will go,
Up the face of a cliff as dust coats your throat.
It powders your hair and welcomes you up,
To enter a kiva where no white girl belongs.

Do you pass through the desert on hesitant feet,
Where the toll is cactus spines burrowing deep?
Where your body dehydrates into the setting sun,
And your dry tongue never soothes cracked lips,
To pay homage to Saguaro Sentinels watching with blind eyes.

Can you dip beneath clear salty water to drop down deep,
And merge with the fishes who swim past your feet,
And open your eyes to glimpse universes out of your reach,
Full of canyons and valleys and wealthy with life,
To float carried on liquid air,
Far far past your strife?

Expecting Forever

Karfelt SR
Like anything else in life, pregnancy is never what you'd expect.

Something I've never quite gotten over happened to me when I was expecting my first child. Considering that I was a high-risk pregnancy relegated to bed rest at about the halfway point, what traumatized me most was not really a big thing.

I'd been hospitalized and my days were spent lying in a narrow bed watching birthing videos like soaps. It's akin to watching horror movies when you're home alone.

If every cloud has a silver lining mine was that at least I did not have to go to the Obstetrician's office every Tuesday. Because I was high risk and had sucky insurance my OB-GYN happened to be the most popular practice in a large city. That meant hours in the waiting room, followed by hours in a little room waiting to be seen, followed by a barrage of testing that usually ate up another couple weekdays.



Since I was now gestating 24/7 in the hospital, it surprised me when Tuesday rolled around and a nurse pushed a wheelchair into my room. "You have an office appointment today." WOT WTF?

Not only did I have to heave my swollen 9-1-1 bed-headed self into that wheelchair in a HOSPITAL GOWN, but I had to spend 45 minutes being pushed through a ginormous hospital and over hill and dale to the medical center and into the dreaded waiting room!

Sitting there smack in the middle of everything I waited as usual, only this time with no underwear and in an backless sack with bare derriere sticking to the wheelchair seat. Not only was that practice the most popular it was also populated almost exclusively by high power manicured women wearing awesome business suits and effing HEELS to better show off their supreme gestating skills. I did my very best NOT to make eye contact, but I sensed every horrified look of pity shot my way.

Believe Me IF I HAD'd Any recourse whatsoever I Would Have taken IT. It's not like I Could Just Walk out, and Even IF I wheeled myself AWAY There WAS Nowhere to Go. Eventually I did get to Walk Though, BECAUSE When My turn came to go to a private waiting area my wheelchair would not fit. Relieved to at least have some privacy I sat on the exam table and read the birthing posters and examined the big plastic replica of the female reproductive system, wondering why mine had to be so dang high-maintenance.





Time ticked on and I scooted back on the paper covered table to stretch out and stare at ceiling tiles trying to plot out a story, but having trouble putting the waiting room time out of my head. I might or might not have given into some tears of self-pity while wrestling with the STFU voice that pointed out that a healthy baby was worth whatever it cost.

At some point it hit me that everything outside the door had gotten really, really quiet. I sat up. It took a minute. I got to my sock-covered feet. My shoes would not fit, so socks were my new shoes. Dear Hubby's socks mind you, because my socks would not fit me either. Pregnancy is not my best look.

The writer in me wants to say I tiptoed to the door but who am I kidding? I lumbered to the door and opened it. THE LIGHTS WERE ALL OUT. "Hello?" I said. Down the hall someone sorta-screamed, that little sound you make when someone really startles you. The receptionist was the only one left, everyone else had gone home for the day. Yep, they'd forgotten me. She apologized and because they were such a magnanimous bunch she squeezed me in to be seen on Thursday.

And THAT, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the pregnancy horror story I've never quite recovered from. I do not like to tell pregnancy horror stories, but if you're pregnant you do not have to worry about that happening to you because, well, what are the freaking odds?





The point of my story is that it's the unexpected little things that sometimes really gut punch you. My sequel to KAHTAR Warrior of Ages and The Heartless should have been out by now, But I've been Stuck in A Proverbial Writer Waiting Room IF you Will .

When I finally got to a place where I could have some alone time to finish it I realized that in this instance MY SHOES WILL FIT and I could run away and make some choices that would make my stories and my own writing experience better. So I've done just that. That's why FOREVER The Constantine's Secret is taking a bit longer than expected.

Any chance you can be patient with me? I promise never to leave you sitting and waiting too long, and I especially promise that I'll NEVER make you wait in a hospital gown with no underpants on. If you happen to be reading this in that situation, shoot me an email and I'll do my very best to break you out, at least metaphorically.

If you can not be patient, I'm afraid you'll have to take it up with my muse. You can reach us in Greece. We'll be there writing away. She said she needed some time in the land of her birth, so when the opportunity came up I grabbed it. I've found it best to obey the little nut-job, although just between you and me, she likes not wearing underpants.

Five Stars for the Covenant Keeper Novels

SR Karfelt / The Glitter Globe

Both KAHTAR Warrior of The Ages and Heartless A Shieldmaiden's Voice Were Awarded FIVE STARS by Readers' Favorite! How amazing is that? 




KAHTAR
KAHTAR Warrior of the Ages Five Star Review



HEARTLESS HEARTLESS A Shieldmaiden's Voice Five Star Review




'Scuse me while I kiss the sky.

Carpe Gaudium


This is what I think I'm doing.


All reviews are good reviews, But reviews from Professionals are tougher to Come by Than Getting My Book worm readers to hop on over to Amazon Or Barnes and Noble Or Goodreads to Write A Review, and That's Saying Something! Reviews are the wind beneath writerly wings. So I'm flying today! Anybody else celebrate by jumping on the bed? I highly recommend it. 

Making It Up -- Where Stories Come From

S.R. Karfelt/The Glitter Globe


It's a mental quilting process made up of bits and pieces from the universe. It's a dance. It's a song. Call it right or wrong. Its magic is strong.


Story.


Take a cup of personal abuse and roll it through observed tragedy, stuff it into a boy. Give him the eyes you saw in the face of a WWII veteran in a parade once. That story you glimpsed there? It's his now.


You found the first name on a headstone in a seaside cemetery in New England. You met a man with that last name in Texas once.


Your hero comes from a place you made up while driving through the desert ten years ago.


The plot will unfold as you write, but you know it will combine the slap you took to the face at eight years old and the time you fell down the stairs. It will hold the day you fell out of a moving car and taste of a whispered line in a book that once broke your heart.


As you write you'll toss in ingredients accumulated from a lifetime: The day you ran through a field of sunflowers; the first time you almost drowned; discovering an old well in the woods filled with 19th Century odds and ends; a glimpse of the man who tried to force you into his car outside the library once; that hidden snake inside the blackberry patch, its teeth on your finger.


It all goes into the mix surrounded by the yellow walls of today's world and ground up by your story processor. Little will be recognizable even to the writer. It's verbal kimchi. It's word sausage. It's the dough of a book. The largest bulk of it will be spiced, salted, and peppered by subconscious nanites that march through your being so small and fine that their origins are impossible to locate although occasionally you'll catch a familiar scent like fresh bread baking in an smelly city.


After that it's verbal Sudoku. Line up words. Rearrange sentences. Hold all the impressions from above in your brain, feel all the feels, react as your character on the page. There's blood everywhere. It's the glue.


The complicated part comes now. It's time to breathe life into it. Delete the telling, show me your story. Bring it to life. You'll need help with this bit. It's time for CPR. Your story might need surgery. It might never be able to walk into the world. Sometimes an untold story shatters into glass shards that writers walk on forever. The pain of crippled stories haunt us. They float like specters inside our minds. See me. Why can nobody see me? Make me real. I want to live.


All the glass shards, the ghosts of abandoned tales, the unfinished works choking your hard drive are compost to be recycled into more stories until one finally takes a breath and becomes real in the minds of a reader.


"Where did this come from?" they ask you, "How long does it take to write a book?" You shrug and guesstimate how long it took to type up your latest, leaving out all the months or years of edits and behind the scenes madness, but the truth is this: Story comes from everywhere, and every one of them takes a lifetime to write.


Bump if you can feel me.

Little Girl Lost - One Pretty Little Assassin

Call of the Warrior/Author S.R. Karfelt

Before Carole Blank became the Shieldmaiden in Heartless, she attacked primary school, battled social services, and meted out her share of playground justice.
Little Girl Lost - A little girl lost to her people doesn’t cooperate with social services or the voices in her head.
Little Girl Crossed - Adrift in a world she doesn’t understand Carole finds her classmates as uncooperative as she is.
Little Girl Accost - Vigilante justice has a price even in grammar school.

Read about Carole's early adventures in Call of the Warrior Anthology by Read Write Muse. 
S.R. Karfelt


S.R. KarfeltAll of her life Carole Blank has been a little faster, a little stronger, and a disinclined to acquiesce to the BS around her. It started in First Grade and continued into adulthood. 
Perhaps you can relate?
Every day a new attitude is born. Let me know what you think about Carole Blank’s. Or yours if you're so inclined to share it.

Summer Musing

S.R. Karfelt/All Rights Reserved



Let’s GTF out of here. You have a credit card don’t you? Let’s go somewhere.
Excuse me? I cancelled three trips because The Muse insisted she needed to be still for two ENTIRE months and write. We could have gone to a spring training baseball game. Dear Hubby was so disappointed.
Don’t live in the past.
It’s only been six weeks of being still and writing. I need another twenty thousand words!
If you get mathy on me I’ll come up with another new idea for the opening scene of Forever. I’ve got ideas and I’m not afraid to use them.
Fine. Anything but that. Where do you want to go?
Oh, I don’t know. Let’s look at places online.
No. I’m not getting online with you. You just end up on Facebook or Twitter alienating total strangers with your cryptic one-liners.
I’m so effing funny. I kill me.
You kill me too.
Let’s go for a hike. Are there any good caves around here? I feel like exploring a cave or hiking a mountain. Do you have a head lamp and a selfie-stick?
No.
We should get on Amazon and buy them.
Hmmm. Wait! No! I’m not getting on Amazon with you either!
Credit cards are wasted on mortals.
When you start paying the bill we can talk about head lamps and selfie sticks.
What did I say about math? Don’t go there. It’s not about numbers or popularity. It’s about riding the story wherever I take you. You can’t put a price on that experience.
Amazon can.
Let’s drive up to the University and sneak into a class. I liked that molds and fungi one.
No. The kids all think I’m the teacher.
Let’s pretend to be!
I’m so not going to jail for you.
Don’t make me laugh. You’d do anything for me.
Just help me finish this scene! Come on! I’m taking you on a writer’s retreat this summer. I’ll let you pick my clothes!
Don’t toy with me.
Seriously. You can even buy a hat.
Oh. My. Heart’s a fish outta water! I love when you let me dress you.
Like you have a heart. I didn’t say I’d wear it.

It’s gonna be a great summer.

I mean who did you think inspired me to buy all those hats I never wear? Like you don’t have a muse who picks your fashion don’ts? 
Maybe you don’t have a writing muse, but are you going to tell me you don’t even have an irresponsible-let’s-have-some-fun summer muse? I thought as much. 

Call of the Warrior

Read Write Muse/S.R. Karfelt

Who are the warriors? 
They are the soldiers, the protectors, and the guardians; the zombie hunters, the assassins, and the secret, winged watchers who wage unseen wars. 
Three short stories about Carole Blank that pre-date the story you read in HEARTLESS A Shieldmaiden's Voice are included in this new anthology! If you'd like to know how a little girl in foster care ended up with the last name of Blank, you'll find out in this book. Little Girl Lost Little Girl Crossed Little Girl Accost In this collection of twenty-four warrior tales, join these courageous souls as they fight for freedom, for honor, for the weak, and perhaps most of all, for love. 
Available in Kindle or Paperback! 
A portion of the proceeds from Call of the Warrior will go to War Dogs Making it Home, a charity that pairs rescued dogs with veterans who suffer from brain injury and PTSD.

Featuring the works of J. S. Bailey, E.D.E. Bell, Amber E. Box, E. P. Brown, Holly & Jared Brown, Isabel Brown, LaDonna Cole, S. R. Karfelt, Kelsey Keating, D. M. Kilgore, Margaret Madigan, Ryan T. Nuhfer, Catherine Jones Payne, Kirstin Pulioff, Elle K. White, and Lexy Wolfe.
S.R. KarfeltIt's said that writers care more about their character's childhood than readers ever will. We're the ones who have to know what inspired our characters to become who they are. Readers just want the experience of the story. 
That makes sense. But who says childhood isn't full of stories?
When the opportunity to submit stories for the Warrior Anthology came about, I thought it was the perfect chance to get Carole Blank's early history into print.
In Call of the Warrior you're going to enjoy getting a glimpse of this complex character as she is indoctrinated into the foster care system, alienates her social worker, and ends up with the moniker of "Blank". I hope you'll enjoy spending time with Carole as she begins her uncooperative journey with the world she lives in, and the voices in her head. 
If you'd like to learn more about Read Write Muse http://readwritemuse.com/, or War Dogs http://wardogsmakingithome.org check out the links.

Gadgets and Gizmos A Plenty

As a writer whose favorite entertainment is a blank page and trekking into the wilderness as far from cellular service as possible, I gotta tell you – I think technology rocks it.
Whenever possible I attend the International CES show in Las Vegas. It’s a mega tradeshow with the latest and greatest in consumer electronics. It’s an enormous, loud, busy, and exhausting week of capitalist consumerism. Yet what I enjoy most about the show is that it absolutely crushes stereotypes and stretches the imagination of this fantasy fiction writer.
If you think you can peg any trait to any nationality you absolutely must add this show to your bucket list. When you funnel the whole world into one place you realize we’re all just one fascinating, whacky, crazy-smart, often annoying species.
You also realize genius and crazy dance on the head of the same pin. If you think that the world has changed since you were a kid, buckle your seatbelt, buddy, because you ain’t seen nothing yet.
I’m not going to judge what technologies are good or bad, although sometimes it is tempting. Besides, a free market system gives us the power to vote by what we purchase anyway. The following are some of the most intriguing gadgets I saw. They're not all that high-tech. They're what I found interesting/useful.

Here’s a handy little gadget. It’s called an iRing. It sticks to the back of your phone and makes where you put your phone a whole lot handier. You can hook it on anything and it comes with a separate self-sticking hook. The ring does come on and off (with a lot of effort) so you can re-position it. I've never removed mine because I don't trust it will stick as well, although the vendors assured me it would. I use mine all the time. I especially like being able to hook my phone on the dashboard when I'm driving. It's convenient if you're a runner too, and I know some moms use a carabiner to attach it to baby strollers. 
The robots were wicked cool as always. My personal favorite had world domination mode. The internal gyroscopes amaze me. There were robots on bikes that could balance completely still and in place without tipping. Now that's something humans haven't mastered, of course our bikes rarely have gyroscopes.Self-driving cars. I can barely wait for these. For people with physical limitations (disabled, vision problems, etc.) this will ensure freedom most of us take for granted. The ability to waterproof electronics once again won the show for me. My personal favorite was a company called Liquipel – and not just because they gave me a coupon for a discount and a free impact resistant case. Liquipel isn’t a case or a coating. It’s a nanotechnology that is basically baked onto your gadget and you can't even see or feel it. Their display included a waterfall full of phones and tablets that had been waterproofed. The cost for a cell phone waterproof is in the neighborhood of $60. Recently I upgraded my phone and FINALLY had it Liquipeled. I'll let you know how it works out for me, because I'm certainly not going to TEST it. But sooner or later fate will.  Check out this European ad for the same technology. Think about it, what’s the first thing you say when your phone hits liquid? Right?The ShutterBall will allow us to take even more selfies. Yay. Sigh.

Health and fitness monitors. If you saw it on Star Trek or the Jetsons, it’s either here or coming.3-D Printers. These can create not only objects, but candy. When I think about how frustrating it is to get a decent copy out of a copy machine, I can’t help but be cynical. The ones I saw were amazing though. I’m still holding out for food replicators, but I’ll be honest, I won’t trust them.


Smarthouse. Take the above Star Trek Jetsons reference and add Back to the Future to it. I'm holding off on this technology until the vacuum cleaner runs itself, and I'm not talking a Roomba. You know those suckers strangle on a sock before they make it through a single room. 


The gizmos and gadgets I've featured in this blog might seem so LAST YEAR because I actually wrote this post over a year ago. 
I dug it out of my archives because I'm really jazzed about finally getting a phone waterproofed with Liquipel. They made quite an impression on me when they put the super thin impact resistant case on my phone. That's because when they did it they used my phone in a demo and dropped a huge metal ball onto it from about three feet in the air. I had no idea they were going to do it until the ball was heading for the screen. It was FINE, but I still haven't gotten over it. 
If you're interested in any of these products hit me up for websites and I'll help if I can. While we're on the subject though, what's your favorite technology? I think mine is going to be waterproofed electronics.

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For the Love of a Caveman

S.R. Karfelt/The Glitter Globe



Fact is the first time Juan took me for a little hike I spent most of it planning never to see him again as long as I lived. His idea of a little hike involved crossing defunct railroad trestles over a raging river, climbing a mini-waterfall with bare hands, taking refuge in a cave complete with rattlesnakes, and culminated in bumping into the National Guard on maneuvers. I don’t think I’ve ever hated a man on a date so much in my entire life.
But after I didn’t die, I realized that surviving it all felt great. I’d been dragged outside my comfort zone and dang if I didn’t like it there.
Oh, that end-of-my-rope feeling didn’t completely go away. Honestly there have been many times it’s resurfaced. Like when I had my gloves duct-taped to my sleeves, with mosquitoes swarming my head-net as I slipped and slid over a field of boulders on an inane quest to fish, when frankly I detest fishing on a perfectly insect-free sunny day.
Yet I married Tarzan, mostly because I love-hate him. Love always has top billing, but I’m sorry to say hate makes an occasional appearance. I don’t know how anyone can be married for a couple decades without feeling that. If they don’t feel it, their spouse must not have the most utterly wretched hobbies on the planet or they haven't been married very long.
Hiking across a mountaintop double-time hoping to avoid a fast-approaching Mama Bear and her babies, or trying not to barf in a rocking boat on stormy water, or getting lost on an invisible trail in the middle of nowhere, I’ve promised myself NO MORE. This is the LAST TIME I’m doing this. I’m SO NOT KIDDING this time. But guess what? Yep. I do it again.
Why? Is it that even the most painful experiences are great story fodder for a writer? Is it love? Am I healing some broken part of myself every time I push past discomfort and fear? I really don’t know. It might be all of the above, or it might simply be that I LIKE my inner cavewoman. Tarzan sure does. He has absolutely no clue the revenge my writer-brain is cooking up while we’re trudging through mud dragging a canoe.
He would not turn his back if he did.
You think he’d sense it.
But no worries, there will be no need to submit this blog as evidence in a trial. Because not only do I forgive with a hot cup of tea and a fire, but I’ll always need his help to get out of wherever the heck he’s dragged me to. Unless I get a solar-powered satellite-accessible hand-held GPS with wilderness coverage. In that case, you might want to print this.
Now it's your turn to be completely candid and answer one or two of the following questions.What is the wildest adventure you’ve endured for love?Could you love a caveman? (Or woman.)Whatever question you feel like answering that has absolutely nothing to do with this blog, because I love when you color outside the lines. It's my hobby too.