E.A. Haltom's Blog, page 2

Isabel of Gloucester--John's Poor Kept Woman or Independent Countess?

Picture of a Roman woman, but I like to think Isabel may have looked something like this.

For the most part, the historical record of western civilization up until the last fifty years or so has been overwhelmingly written by men, so that we might call it "exclusively" written by men.

This matters for a lot of reasons. And many people have pointed this out already.

It is inevitable that we carry our preconceptions with us when we interpret a long-ago person's motives or priorities based on the scant evidence available to us. Given the battle women still fight today to be taken seriously by our government when we discuss violence against women or discrimination in the workplace, by our colleagues when we speak at a conference or publish a book, it is not unreasonable to wonder whether a female-dismissing perspective on women's lives in history might not be subject to contemporary social norms and assumptions about women more than actual historical evidence.

Let's look at Isabel of Gloucester, the first wife of Prince John. As I have researched this woman, hoping to do her story justice in the sequel, I have been repeatedly struck by the dreary assumptions made by historians and writers who have considered the few established facts of her life. Over and over, I read about how she was a victim of the crown, how tragically empty of love her life was, how she lost everything only to die shortly after finding real love.

Here's what is known about Countess Isabel. As part of a deal between her father and Henry II, Henry disinherited Isabel's two older sisters, and her father agreed that she would be betrothed to John when she was only three years old (around 1176). With significant holdings in both England and the Welsh Marches, Countess Isabel of Gloucester was quite the loaded heiress. John Lackland made good on his father's promise of marriage as soon as Henry II died and Johns older brother Richard had the crown (and no one has accused John Lackland of being a "gold-digger," that I've come across so far).

However, no sooner was the ceremony completed than Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury, declared the marriage void for consanguinity and placed all of Isabel's (now John's) lands under interdict (essentially, the churches and people were cut off from the body and recognition of the larger church whole). Resourceful John took the matter up on appeal (so to speak) with Pope Clement III. The pope found a way to settle all matters by allowing the marriage to continue, provided that Isabel and John never entered into sexual relations.

After this, Isabel's life is full of murk and shadow. We know that John gave her an allowance and set her up in housing in Winchester. John had his marriage with Isabel annulled after ten years, in 1199, when he succeeded Richard to the throne. John then kept Isabel under the crown's "guardianship" so that he got to hold onto her lands, of course, although he ended up giving them to her sister's son, anyway. We also know that Isabel was required to look after John's second and much younger wife during John's disastrous reign. Her lands were restored to her by her nephew's death without issue in 1213. After that she married twice before dying in 1217 at the relatively young age of 44 (cause of death unknown).

That's a lot of gaps and unknowns.

This is where writing historical fiction-fantasy gets fun. I see no reason to assume that Isabel led a lonely and unsatisfactory life. Women's lives are full of secrets, off-the-record negotiations, and connections and friendships that are disregarded by the record-keepers as immaterial to the great flow of history. But what if Isabel's life was full and more influential of events than anyone gives her credit for? What if...Isabel had secretly bribed Pope Clement III to forbid sexual relations between her and her husband because she found the man so utterly detestable? What if...Isabel was a stunning beauty who enjoyed a discreetly managed romantic relationship that the gossips and court recorders politely ignored? What if...Isabel and her sisters (one of whom was married to the extremely well-connected Third Earl of Hertford, Richard de Clare) stayed close throughout their lives and supported one another with affection and strings pulled as needed? What if her third and final husband, the one she got to choose herself, who happened to have also been John's chamberlain, had been her lover all along, during all those years of guardianship?

What do you think? Are there other women from history who you suspect may have been more in control of their destinies than history gives them credit for?

There is no reason to assume that these possibilities could not also be true, and this is just one case of many. Stay tuned for the next installation in Unsung Women of the Middle Ages: Matilda de Braose.

Just Read: Neverhome, By Laird Hunt

Well-researched historical fiction about a woman fighting for the Union army during the American Civil War?

Yes, please.

"I was strong and he was not, so it was me went to war to defend the Republic."

Thus begins this gripping tale, told in the protagonist's unfussy, matter-of-fact, earthy voice. In completing his extensive research to write this novel, Laird Hunt reviewed the first person account of a woman who had disguised herself as a man so that she could join the ranks of soldiers and fight in the Civil War on the Union side. Although the protagonist in Neverhome is entirely fictional (and the story is cleverly structured around the narrative of The Odyssey), Mr. Hunt clearly went to pains to bring as much historical authenticity to his account as possible. Everything from the details of diet, the layout of roads and towns, forgotten turns of phrase, social conventions of the time, to historic battles and the worse details of the war that nearly tore our country apart forever resonate with time-shifting detail.

But this story runs much deeper than that. Behind the battles, the violence, and the gore, another story lies submerged like the outlines of a forgotten city beneath the waves. This story is much more sinister, and its violence ultimately eclipses the war altogether.

Neverhome is a fairly quick read, suggested by my book club partly for that reason (we'd had an unusually long run of unusually long books). Given my predilection for stories about strong women, I was thrilled to discover this book. Like its main character, the prose is unadorned and direct, yet subtle and layered. And I have to give a double thumbs up to Mr. Hunt for choosing to write this story from a woman's perspective. The main character could just as easily have been a man, but by making the protagonist a woman, additional themes and conflicts were available for the author to explore--and he does so deftly. Mr. Hunt also refrained from employing most of the usual cliches about strong women, which I was also happy to see.

One of the members of our book club posed an interesting question to the women readers about whether we thought the fact that the author was male affected how he told the protagonist's story; i.e., would a woman have written it any differently. It was an interesting question. I believe anyone can have a go at telling any person's story, if they try to do so faithfully, regardless of how vast the gulf in space and time, or in anatomy and social norms, between the author's own experiences and those of their character. Having said that, when my reading partner asked this question, I realized that there were details about Ash's work at disguising herself that were left out, most notably having to cope with monthly menstruation while concealing her gender. This did not detract from the story, but given the amount of attention the story gives to the physical strains of her time away from the farm and the efforts she undertook to conceal her gender, monthly cramps and bleeding warranted a mention.

Overall, a highly worthwhile read and a cleverly crafted story in the best of the storytelling tradition.

You Can Do THAT With a Sword?

Sword vs. Belgian FN rifle: sword loses, right?

Not necessarily.

In this brief but extremely informative video, lindybeige, one of my two favorite YouTube sources on the correct use of and defense from a variety of non-firearm weapons, demonstrates how a scimitar sword could be used effectively in close quarters against heavily armed opponents. As he points out, part of the problem for the Belgians was the extreme power of the weapons their soldiers carried, which would have penetrated not only their attackers, but also multiple innocent bystanders. The soldiers were simply not armed correctly for the conditions that they were in.

Watch the video and see what you think. I invite your comments below.

Why Not Invest in Your Own Writing?

That's a snap of one of the inspirational pictures, quotes, drawings and other bits that I have hanging around my desk to keep me going when I want to say, it's too hard, maybe no one wants to read my stories, maybe I'm fooling myself, maybe my stories are just ... not that good. The route of the self-published author is paved with self-doubt. We don't put the self-doubt into our tweets ("5* on Amazon!") or our FB posts ("Check out this great review from BestReviewerEver...") or on our Goodreads bios ("[Author name] loves to write stories that inspire...."). But it's there, nagging us, giving us sticky feet and toes, whispering in our ear that it's all for naught.

But I'm here to tell you, it's real, it's a thing, and it can affect your writing in the most fundamentally negative way: by sucking the joy out of the thing you love the most--telling stories.

I have my first novel out (woohoo!), it has received uniformly positive reviews from readers (WOOHOO!), and now that I'm writing the sequel, I find myself facing deeper self-doubt than when I wrote the first book.

So I hired a professional support network.

That's not what they call themselves, but it's what I call them. They cheer me on, navigate the ever-shifting world of self-publishing, keep me up-to-date with the current sales platforms, make my book gorgeous, and cheer me on some more.

I didn't get into this business to become a whiz at social networking. I'm not now and never will be a master of marketing. I can bang out the formatting and layout requirements to a manuscript with the best, but I can't make it look like the pro's do. I'm a writer. I tell stories. I spend hours and hours on the research, and then it has to soak for a bit while the story starts to take shape, and then I research some more and start to write. After that, I need to hand it over to the professionals.

I felt bad--really bad--about hiring my support network. And then it occurred to me that this is exactly what the pro's do. Publishing houses put a real investment into their books. Some make it big, some barely make a ripple, and that's just the nature of the business. Why had I had it in my head that I should be able to achieve success while literally nickle and dime-ing myself? I read posts on the author networks and blogs bragging about not spending any up-front funds on getting their books published, and I think, why is that a great thing? Are they really achieving the success they want? Is that what they figure their book--their future career as a writer--is worth?

I read an article recently (got to run pick-up the kids but I'll post a link to it in an update) saying that the days of self-pubbed authors being able to just show up without a marketing plan and a professional team of helpers are over. I believe it. I have learned a lot going through this process with my support team, but I'll be honest: part of what I've learned is the power of choosing to respect myself and my work as a professional. Of course the self-doubt is still nagging me, sometimes even more insistently now that I have real "skin" in the game, but didn't I already? And isn't my future worth giving the best shot I can? Good lord, what did I invest in graduate school in my first career before it began to pay off?

So, here goes, stronger than ever, and yes, the sequel is on its way. Success is a twisty twisty road, but I'm hanging on.

Writing is a journey...

That's a snap of one of the inspirational pictures, quotes, drawings and other bits that I have hanging around my desk to keep me going when I want to say, it's too hard, maybe no one wants to read my stories, maybe I'm fooling myself, maybe my stories are just ... not that good. The route of the self-published author is paved with self-doubt. We don't put the self-doubt into our tweets ("5* on Amazon!") or our FB posts ("Check out this great review from BestReviewerEver...") or on our Goodreads bios ("[Author name] loves to write stories that inspire...."). But it's there, nagging us, giving us sticky feet and toes, whispering in our ear that it's all for naught.

But I'm here to tell you, it's real, it's a thing, and it can affect your writing in the most fundamentally negative way: by sucking the joy out of the thing you love the most--telling stories.

I have my first novel out (woohoo!), it has received uniformly positive reviews from readers (WOOHOO!), and now that I'm writing the sequel, I find myself facing deeper self-doubt than when I wrote the first book.

So I hired a professional support network.

That's not what they call themselves, but it's what I call them. They cheer me on, navigate the ever-shifting world of self-publishing, keep me up-to-date with the current sales platforms, make my book gorgeous, and cheer me on some more.

I didn't get into this business to become a whiz at social networking. I'm not now and never will be a master of marketing. I can bang out the formatting and layout requirements to a manuscript with the best, but I can't make it look like the pro's do. I'm a writer. I tell stories. I spend hours and hours on the research, and then it has to soak for a bit while the story starts to take shape, and then I research some more and start to write. After that, I need to hand it over to the professionals.

I felt bad--really bad--about hiring my support network. And then it occurred to me that this is exactly what the pro's do. Publishing houses put a real investment into their books. Some make it big, some barely make a ripple, and that's just the nature of the business. Why had I had it in my head that I should be able to achieve success while literally nickle and dime-ing myself? I read posts on the author networks and blogs bragging about not spending any up-front funds on getting their books published, and I think, why is that a great thing? Are they really achieving the success they want? Is that what they figure their book--their future career as a writer--is worth?

I read an article recently (got to run pick-up the kids but I'll post a link to it in an update) saying that the days of self-pubbed authors being able to just show up without a marketing plan and a professional team of helpers are over. I believe it. I have learned a lot going through this process with my support team, but I'll be honest: part of what I've learned is the power of choosing to respect myself and my work as a professional. Of course the self-doubt is still nagging me, sometimes even more insistently now that I have real "skin" in the game, but didn't I already? And isn't my future worth giving the best shot I can? Good lord, what did I invest in graduate school in my first career before it began to pay off?

So, here goes, stronger than ever, and yes, the sequel is on its way. Success is a twisty twisty road, but I'm hanging on.

A character I've been exploring

This woman and her response to a horrific attack came to me while we drove through the dry, empty vistas of West Texas on our way to Big Bend last spring break. There are not many tales in contemporary western storytelling that show women decisively exacting violent revenge on their attackers--The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo comes to mind as an excellent example. And while I am sensitive to the point of feeling raw to the clichéd, lasciviously detailed and voyeuristic delight contemporary storytelling (both books and movies) takes in recounting gory, horrific attacks on women with grossly perverted sexual undertones and overtones and in-your-face-tones, I see no reason not to take a moment to ask, what if she survived and the story's gaze instead dwelled on the revenge she took, justly, for the atrocities committed against her? This question alone has several novels packed into it, enough to make a career on.

I give you Princess Ibdela.

* * * * *


Avignon, FranceNovember, 1192 
The first thing she noticed when she came to was a soft place near the front of her mouth where there should have been teeth. For a moment her mind flashed to a memory from childhood, golden sunshine and arms reaching for her as she proudly presented the tiny white miracle to her mother. Princess Ibdela tried to remember where she was and how she had gotten there. She laid flat on her back. A faint, chill breeze told her she was outside. Her head throbbed, and her mind offered no helpful thoughts or memories. One by one, she felt her senses return, like children that had scattered from a storm. She found she was able to open one eye, and she panicked for a moment in the darkness until she registered the faint glow of a smoldering fire off to her side. She heard the snores of men and something else: a man groaning nearby.
As the fog in her mind lifted, the pieces of her shattered memory surfaced and began to fit themselves together. But these images that formed in her mind could not be hers. She was a bride travelling with her new husband. After a twelve-day passage by ship and three weeks on land, their caravan was within days of his home in the Poitevin. They had been attacked—ambushed. Her husband was cut and lay dying nearby. The attackers had then beaten her senseless and made use of her. When they tired of that, they had kicked her broken body to the side and helped themselves to her husband’s stores of food and wine. She had finally lost consciousness. The men now lay soundly sleeping around the fire.
Starting with her fingers, she silently began a methodical inventory of what parts of her body were still useful. Left hand: broken. She flexed her right hand and found the grip sound and strong. The corner of her mouth lifted with gratitude for small miracles. She flexed her ankles. Her knees and calves were uninjured; she might be able to stand. She tried to turn her hips to roll onto her side and clenched her jaw to stop herself from crying out when a stab of pain dug in below her navel. She reached her right hand down and found the folds of her ruined gown plastered to the ground in a sticky pile beneath her. She could not remember if they had stabbed her or not. For a moment she was afraid she would slip into blackness again, and she bit the inside of her cheek hard to keep herself alert.
She was prepared the second time she tried to move, knew to expect the pain. Making no sound, she scooted over the ground on her back like one of the machines used to besiege fortresses—digging in her heels, shifting slowly, pulling with her good arm. She ground her teeth and pushed herself onto her side. Her hips were not broken or dislocated. All of the damage was to the softer tissues inside, important for the arts of love and bearing children. Like her left hand, their loss was now inconsequential.
She proceeded on all fours, making no more sound than a cat. She could see the outline of her bridal trunk where all of her silks and linens were stowed, standing open on the ground beside her husband’s cart. The men had seen the fine textiles and not thought to dig deeper, and who could blame them, she thought. Who would suspect that a dagger lay buried in the middle of a bridal chest?
As she made her way to the elaborately carved coffer, she recalled the evening that her husband had presented it to her, how his eyes had sparkled as he spread bolt after bolt of dazzling fabric across the bed before her. She, a princess of Abyssinia, had been rendered speechless by the display. Her husband had been well-compensated by his king for his service in the Christian crusade; he had enjoyed disregarding his usual reserve to stun his new bride with the careless display of wealth. As an afterthought, she had packed her dagger among the folds of textiles when they prepared to leave. The abundant fabrics her husband had chosen would now save her life, if not his.
She paused for a moment, struck by a realization. The man at the inn that morning with the greasy smile, that had encouraged her husband to leave their attendants behind for a day and take this less-traveled lane, had been a party to the attackers’ plan. Take your bride near the lake to see the geese, he had urged him; newlyweds should have a little solitude.
He would die too.
She noiselessly slipped her right hand into the trunk and wrapped her fingers around the hilt of her blade. She breathed a sigh. Ibdela turned her head to study the arrangement of the sleeping forms around the fire. Once she began there would be no time to think or decide. Every movement had to be planned in advance and executed perfectly. None of the men had stayed awake as a night watch; none wore their tunics of mail armor.  Idiots.  Her swollen lips formed a faint, dark smile. She rose slowly on wobbling legs. The first would be the easiest. After that, she would have to move quickly to finish the job. She took one last, deep breath, commanded the muscles of her legs to find their strength, and took a step forward.
She first approached the man who had slit her husband’s belly like a pig’s. This one lay on his back with his chin pointing to the stars, and he snored loudly. She crouched low, leveled her blade, and drew its razor edge firmly across his throat. The deep cut halfway severed his head from his body. She allowed herself a moment to watch calmly as he immediately awoke, unable to scream, and his hands flew to his neck. It was over in seconds.
The man’s movements caused the others to stir, and she turned and thrust the point of her blade into the chest of the man behind her as he began to sit up. She fell against the hilt of her dagger with her full weight and felt the tip punch through the man’s chest and against his spine. She twisted the knife forcefully to the side, pulled the blade out, and stood up.
She could hear the other three rising to their feet behind her. They shouted commands to each other in the graceless tongue that she recognized as English.
They had the reflexes of soldiers, and they had picked up their swords as they rose. Idiots, she thought again. These pale men of the North carried such huge weapons, meant to intimidate, but only useful on a battlefield. She was built small and light. What good were their big swords when she was pressed against them, her dagger between their ribs?
She muttered an Abyssinian slur about men compensating for their anatomical deficiencies, took aim, and threw her dagger. The blade tumbled gracefully though the air and sunk its point deep into the left eye socket of the nearest man. He dropped his sword, screaming, and pulled the blade out as blood poured forth from the wound. Princess Ibdela strode past him, lightly retrieving her dagger from his blindly flailing hand as she approached the next man. Without pausing she reached the man in three strides, easily ducked his blade, and plunged her knife into his chest. The man stumbled and dropped to his knees, and she sidestepped him, her stride unbroken, on her way to the last man. This last had some sense, she realized, because he had turned and run for his horse, his arms pumping as he sped away from her. She watched closely, gauged the distance, and raised her arm to throw her blade. Just as she snapped her arm back to let the dagger fly, the dying man behind her grabbed hold of her ankle. It was enough to send her dagger careening off into the night, far away from her target. She screamed at the injustice and kicked her foot free.
The man on horseback was charging toward her now, and she stooped to the breathless figure lying behind her, the fingers of her right hand making a quick search of his belt and waist for a weapon, even an eating knife—anything with a sharp edge. But as she stood up with a short hunting knife in her raised grip, the pounding hooves swept past her. The horseman paused only long enough to pull the half-blinded man up behind him, and then he spurred his horse away from her into the darkness. She considered for a moment chasing after them on one of their horses, but she needed two good hands for that.
She turned and walked to the tree where the attackers had propped up her husband, fatally wounded, to die with a full view of their repeated insults to his wife. She dropped to her knees beside him, but found herself unable to cry.
She had traveled north to Jerusalem at her father’s bidding, with a diplomatic mission to ensure safe passage for Abyssinia’s Christian pilgrims to their holy sites. She was the third daughter of the king’s fourth wife, a lesser princess of the great King Lalibela, but a presentable gift to the famous Saladin nonetheless. The Muslim chieftain had accepted her graciously, but he had no stomach for the strife that would have ensued if he had added a Christian wife, worse for her striking dark beauty, to his large family. This man leaning against the tree had offered Saladin more silver for her than could have been fetched for her sale at any bazaar. And then he had treated her as a queen and made her his wife.
Her husband’s face was as pale in the firelight as the marble in her father’s palace. His spilled entrails glistened darkly in his lap. He turned toward her, his eyelids drooping, and she leaned forward and kissed him for the last time on his brow, on the hollow of his cheek, and for a long moment on his lips, still warm. He had lived long enough to watch her take her vengeance on their attackers, and she saw his old soldier’s fierce pride in his last gaze. Wordlessly, he turned his head away and made a slight nod. She whispered a blessing to him, an Abyssinian funeral rite, in the warm French tongue that he had taught her, and thrust her blade quickly into his chest. His head dropped to the side. He was gone.
Princess Ibdela rose and walked to the fire and set the hunting knife on the ground by her feet. The sight of her breath frosting in the firelight reminded her that winter was near—a season that she had only recently heard of. She was pleased to find herself numb to the chilling cold. With her right hand she pushed the torn sleeve of her dress up her left arm to the shoulder and then she retrieved the blade. She laid its curved edge against her skin, adjusted its position, and made six even cuts in parallel lines across the top of her arm. Blood began to seep in dark droplets from the cuts as she looked upon her work with satisfaction. She raised the blade again and drew a small diagonal line crossing out the bottom three. This was to be the sum of the remainder of her life: six men; three dead, three more to go.

Learning Social Media for Authors

So much of my ability to do what I'm doing right now--self-publishing a polished and professionally designed novel with characters, plot, and branding all entire under my control--is possible only because of the platform for sales provided by Amazon and the platforms for networking provided by Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads. I have deliberately held back on a major marketing push until I have the sequel ready for release. I don't think it makes sense to invest much in marketing until I have more content to offer, just like it may not make sense to a reader to take a chance with their entertainment dollars on a new author who just has the one book so far.


Nevertheless, I do need to start to learn my way around the various sites now, so that I'm prepared when the time comes to really go for it. I've been on a forced hiatus from writing while the kids were out of school, and I tried to use some of the time to learn about social media and social networking. The rules and advice from the experts is what you would guess as good rules to live by generally: participate; find people who share your interests and values; take time to notice what other people are talking about; contribute to the conversation; don't show up just to promote yourself. I'm sure it's not coincidence that after spending time yesterday on Twitter going through the profiles of people who are following me to find interesting bits of theirs to promote and retweet--that I sold my first book in over two weeks.


I learn so much from the readers out there, and from the crowd generally. Do you remember when we used to call the Internet the "information superhighway"? I saw Douglas Adams give a talk here in Austin at the University of Texas, and he said that the popular name was incorrect; it was more of an "information soup". Of course, being Douglas Adams, he was completely right. I remember his words now, as I feast on all of the thoughts and ideas and inspiration available at my fingertips--more so now that my days are my own again. And I am grateful for every person out there adding their own spice to the soup.

Some Texas BBQ Flash Fiction to Whet Your Appetite

I'm assuming, since I haven't heard from anyone and the deadline's passed, that I didn't win the contest that I submitted this for--so it's fair game to post it here now. Apologies if it makes you hungry at an inopportune moment. Entries were limited to 500 words. I hope you enjoy!


* * * * *
If barbecue was the unofficial Johnson family religion, Eddie Johnson was officially an atheist. Four generations of men and women had lived, cooked, and eaten on the same alligator-infested river bank and been proud to call it home. Four generations of pit masters, all men, tended the fires that cooked the meat to the famous Johnson family perfection. But it was Eddie, the black sheep who gagged every time he got near a grease fire, who was the family prodigy.


Eddie knew brisket like he knew the inside of his girlfriend’s thigh: supple, firm, and dangerous. If he treated it with respect, coaxed it slowly and told it with his hands how utterly perfect it was, miracles happened. But Eddie was a vegetarian. He could spend days exploring the mysteries of his girlfriend’s thighs, but his own brisket had never passed his lips.


Every five years, Texas Living magazine sent its designated, full-time barbecue reporter out from Austin to scour the state and pronounce Texas’s Top 50 Best Barbecue Joints. This reporter, unsurprisingly, was a man. At six feet and three inches tall and two-hundred-forty pounds, Billy Watkins carried his barbecue credentials around his middle. It’s not that Texas lacked for women who could write about food in ways that made nutritionists cry, and who knew that black on barbecue was a good thing. But in Texas, barbecue was Men’s Work.

Billy never let the restaurants know he was coming. Some places fawned over him, bringing him the choicest samples, sending over the prettiest waitress to flirt even though it was known Billy was about as married as one man can be to another in Texas. It’s one of the reasons he looked forward to going to Eddie Johnson’s place. Eddie hardly noticed he was there. Billy was left alone for the transcendent experience of meat that melted, that revealed more complexities of smoke, texture, and flavor than the finest fifty-year Scotch.

Billy gave his order, then scooted down the line with the others to pick up his lunch, presented humbly on butcher paper, raw onions and jalapenos on the side, sauce available but frowned upon. After his meal, Billy leaned back from the table feeling a contentment that made even his insides smile. He would step around back, find Eddie, and congratulate him on a fine meal. He wouldn’t tell Eddie that this was the year he would win, finally, after fifteen years in the top twenty.

Billy rounded the corner and found the man he was looking for, squatting in jeans, baseball cap pulled down, watching the coals.

“Your brisket is superb. Again.”

The figure stood up and a blond ponytail fell into place. Billy stared, slack-jawed, at a petite blonde woman who looked to be the same age as Eddie. She smiled and thrust out her hand, self-consciously wiped it on her apron, and offered it again.

“Hi. I guess you didn’t hear. Eddie opened a bike shop. I’m Eileen, Eddie’s girlfriend.”

Guest Post on The Writing Desk

Tony Riches, author of Warwick, The Shell, and Queen Sacrifice, has a great little blog, The Writing Desk, and he very kindly invited me to write a guest post there. Tony, who lives in Pembrokeshire, Wales (color me green), suggested I discuss what inspires me to write. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and I'm so, so grateful to Tony for all of the encouragement he's given me with links and resources as I start out as a budding author. I look forward to doing the same for others as I grow my audience. Thanks for the boost, Tony, and for showing me by example how easily authors can help one another.


Here's a link to my post in Tony's blog, and each of his book titles above are linked to their Amazon pages. His books are highly reviewed and the descriptions sound like exactly what I enjoy reading--so you might enjoy them too.

Birthright

I wrote this years ago during what I thought at the time was the lowest point of my adult life. I was wrong. That point came a few months later. I don’t know really where it came from, but it gave me strength to write it. I share it here in case it gives you strength, too.
 * * * * *

You are a traveler on a difficult journey through a hostile land. You will be stripped of everything that you knew or thought you knew, and everything you needed or thought you needed will be taken from you. You will be reduced to your core. This is your mission.
 
An end to suffering does not mean an end of feeling; it means an end to your fascination with pain. Death continues; change and transformation is the only constant in our experience. You are not exempt from this law, no matter how special you are, how connected you are to the world around you, how filled with compassion you are, how clean your house is, how many books you have read, how many friends you have, or how well-adjusted your kids are. Your life will end, your identity will cease, and your history will be erased.
 
When you feel loneliness, you are experiencing your innate human longing for connection and love. It is possible to experience this longing in the midst of relationship and in the midst of a full life. The experience of loneliness is not a reflection of the success of your relationships, but the depth of your longing. It is an ache to experience yourself as loving, both receiving and giving back love that is in turn received. As we are all connected, all parts of the same living organism, it is by loving one another that we improve the health of the whole. Just as we thirst when our bodies need water, so do we long for love, for the nourishment of the greater being of which we are the living components.
 
Your emotions are as mutable as the seasons. At times they will seem to wash over you, like a powerful storm. They are like young children, demanding your attention, and you feel more alive when you identify with them, integrate them into your story, define yourself by their tendencies. This is like defining yourself by the weather. You will be lost to your birthright: that your lifetime is a blessed opportunity to be a brief, temporary, finite manifestation of the infinite universe that imagined, conceived, and birthed you.
 
There is no limit or boundary to love. You understand only a whisper of the power of love. Love transforms, love destroys, love is the source of all miracles. When love enters your life, it is like the swollen river after a spring flood, sweeping away the dead undergrowth. Love redeems. Do not turn away from love, or you turn away from the very force that gave you life. Love does not care for your attachments or your insecurities. Love requires you to be more brave, more vulnerable, more patient, more forgiving than you believe you can be.