Sometimes, It’s Okay to Quit by Donna Small

When I was around seven or eight years old, my parents decided to sign me up for organ lessons. That’s right – organ lessons. Not something cool, like dance or even piano. I was the kid who played the organ for my church. It was a huge contraption with several keyboards, pedals that went across the floor, and large pipes that went up through the ceiling.

Remember the organ from Beauty and the Beast? Yeah…it was just like that.

As you can imagine, I was thrilled. (Note the sarcasm here.)

Anyway, every Wednesday night, one of my parents would take me to my lesson. There was a very nice woman in town who gave lessons out of her home. She, of course, played the organ, but also played other instruments as well, including…

wait for it….the accordion!

If I managed to play a piece particularly well, she would bring out her contraption, swing the strap around her shoulders, and squeeze the thing in and out making sounds to accompany my attempt at music.

It was not pretty.

I took lessons for years. Emphasis on the “years” part. When I started taking the lessons, I still had baby teeth. When I was finally allowed to stop, I had bee through braces, acne, puberty and was driving.

Years….

The interesting thing is, I hated every minute of it. I never practiced my songs, never looked forward to a single lesson, and continuously begged my parents to let me quit.

They never would.

So each week, I’d grudgingly get into my parents’ car and head to my lesson, feeling much like someone forced to go to the dentist for a root canal week after agonizing week.

Finally, I graduated from high school and began attending college. At last, I was allowed to quit my lessons. The small organ we had in our house was moved to my grandmothers’ house and the spot where it sat was filled with another piece of furniture. (It couldn’t be sold or given away because my parents felt certain I would eventually want to resume my lessons and they wanted to make sure I had an organ to play on.)

I never took another lesson.

Flash forward several years and now I’m the parent. I have two beautiful girls who are finding their way in life. A rather large part of that, in my opinion, is trying out different sports and activities to determine where they want to focus their energies. I don’t force them into sports or playing an instrument. I encourage if they show any interest. I pay the fee if they express a desire to join a particular sport. And I’m happy to do so. What I will not do is force them to continue something they hate participating in. Knowing that I put zero energy into my organ playing when I was their age makes me think that forcing them to do a sport or activity they don’t want to do is tantamount to flushing my money down the toilet and a surefire way to create animosity between us.

That being said, once they’ve joined a sport, they are required to complete the season and they know this. We discuss the fact that they are part of a team before they join. We discuss the fact that their team relies on them for a particular skill and it’s not fair to let the other players down. If, after one season, they don’t want to play a particular sport, that is okay with me.

Both of my girls have tried several sports and have found a particular one they flourish in and enjoy. My eldest is a swimmer and my youngest has chosen softball. Both of them have played their respective sports for several years now and I’m happy to pay the fees, purchase the equipment and attend any and all events.

Because they’re happy to participate in them.

I don’t have to drag them to practice, force them to put on their uniforms, or bribe them to get them to events. They look forward to them…because they had a part in choosing.

All this is not to say I”m angry with my parents for making me take all those lessons. I’m not. I learned a skill that while useless, is a neat party trick. I can’t play Beethoven or Mozart – you know, because I NEVER practiced – but I can play a mean “Down a Papa Joes!”

What Story Is Your Life Telling? by Sherrie Hansen Decker

What story is your life telling? A new friend on Twitter asked this question in a tweet this morning. Who says a few word can’t be powerful?

This is a question that seems to be of more importance to me as I get older, as it becomes apparent that my most productive years are probably more than half gone, and that if I want to make a name for myself or accomplish something that I have yet to do, it’s time to get with it and get it done. One of the main characters in my book, Tommy Love, is in his mid/late forties, and in the middle of a stellar mid-life crisis. He’s had a successful career as a musician, gotten the star treatment from millions of adorning fans… most of whom are baby boomers and dying off faster than fruit flies. What Tommy wants – or thinks he wants, is one more big hit – hip hop – to appeal to a new generation of fans. Can you blame him for not wanting to fade into oblivion, for not wanting to be pegged as an oldie-but-goodie? As perhaps all of us would like, Tommy wants to go out in a blaze of glory, to see his legacy live on for at least another 20 to 30 years.

Some of us accomplish this with our children, but in Love Notes, neither Hope or Tommy has children. Neither do I. It’s been suggested before that my books are my way of passing on the secrets of my heart, and I think that’s probably very true. The story my life has been told, continues to be told, and hopefully, will be passed along one day, through my creation of the Blue Belle Inn B&B and tea House (my baby in a very real sense), and in my writing.

I was recently approached about answering some questions for an article because I was an author who was over 50, a writer whose career as an author didn’t begin until I was past 50 years old.  The question’s implication resulted in a lot of things floating through my evidently half-addled, 55 year old brain: What does she think I am, older than dirt? That it’s a miracle I can still write, old as I am? Once I got over my indignation, however, I started to think about what it is really like being 55, and how life is different now than when I was 25, 35 or even 45.

Here are my answers to her questions:

What prompted you to take up writing as a career at this time in your life?

When I was 35 years old, I opened a B&B and Tea House called the Blue Belle Inn. During those early days I worked until 10 p.m. every night, serving or cleaning up after dinner and trying to keep up the laundry and bookkeeping. When I got off work and went home (a basement apartment in the same big Victorian inn) I was keyed up and too wide awake to go to sleep. I needed someone to talk to so I could unwind. Being single, and living in a largely rural area where the rest of the world was early to bed and early to rise, I had no one to talk to and no where to go. So I wrote. I made up characters and conversations and situations and poured my pent up emotions and needs for personal interactions into my books.

For over a decade, I was so busy that I never found time to query or submit. Soon after I turned 50, I was approached by a publisher who had read the first chapter of Night and Day in an online contest I’d entered at Gather.com. He loved my voice and related to my characters and wanted to publish my book.

Do you think your age in any way hindered your writing success?

I suspect it has, for a couple of different reasons. I attended an American Christian Writer’s Conference once, and felt decidedly old, fat, and gray (comparatively speaking), even though I cheated a bit and added some color to my hair just for the occasion. Why, I wondered, would an editor or agent take a chance on me, when there were so many youthful, energetic people waiting in line on either side of me? The editors I spoke to were all in their 20′s or 30′s, looking for books that would engage a new, younger generation of readers. What did I have to offer them, with my stories of 30 and 40 year old characters – still a decade or two younger than me, but so ancient to them, that, as one editor put it, they would work as secondary characters, but not hero and heroine? Another said that they felt their readers would not be able to relate to stories about older characters, with the implication that they would be turned off, that the “ick factor” of a bunch of old fogies finding love would be too great for them to get get past.

Sigh…

The second reason I feel my writing has been impacted by my age is much scarier – and more personal, and that is that everything people say about menopause is true. Your brain turns to mush. It’s harder to focus, multitask and concentrate. My most productive time of the day – formerly from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m., now finds me falling asleep at my computer. Now, I’m awake at 5 a.m. but I’m not productive, I’m crabby. It takes me longer to get the same amount of work done, so there is less time for writing. Worst of all, your interest in romance diminishes. So does your passion for life and people. It’s sad. It’s a reality. Some people tell me it will pass. Others just shake their heads and wish me the best.

Do you believe you could have written the same type of books at a different point in your life?

No. My books are about second chances, people who have learned by their mistakes, men and women who have failed and been forgiven, and thanks to God’s grace and love, have found a sweet love that they would most likely not have appreciated when they were younger. They see beauty in places they would have rushed right by when they were younger.

When I was young, before I fell flat on my face and learned a lot of life’s bittersweet lessons, I never could written the books I have. An author can imagine plots lines and character profiles, but you can’t conjure up the richness and fullness of life you find in your 50′s!

What have been the biggest advantages to pursuing a writing career at your age?

See above! I’m older, wiser, more accepting, more forgiving, more understanding, more savvy. I have more to offer, greater insights into what makes characters tick. I’ve been there, done that. Add my experience to my still active imagination, and you get richer, deeper characters, conflicts that are heart-wrenching, and scenarios that are intensely real.

And, I have the zillions of baby boomers who are tired of reading books about naive, 18 year old Amish girls, as potential readers.

What have been the greatest obstacles?

Finding a publisher who agrees with me. Three years ago, at the moderately “old” age of 52, I opted to sign on with a medium sized, independent publishing firm who are more interested in finding a good story that they are the age of the hero and heroine – or the author.  Second Wind Publishing has been a great place for me to grow as an author and a wonderful venue for getting my books in print. I’ve had to modify my dreams and expectations, a bit, but then, isn’t that what aging gracefully is all about?

Whatever story your life is telling… and whatever age you are, I would urge you to keep sharing yourself – through your children, with your friends and family, in your careers or second careers – or third, or fourth – and if you like to write, through the stories you put on paper.

Here’s to the stories of our lives.

Pssst, Tell Me Your Story, Mister by J J Dare

Yesterday as I sat in the airport waiting for my oldest daughter and youngest granddaughter’s flight, I entertained myself by writing shorty-shorts about some of the people passing by. The rules were simple: try to keep it less than fifty words, don’t look up until I finish and the next story has to be about the first person I see when I raise my head.

* * *

He dropped the suitcase again, but this time it flew open and spewed the story of his life under the feet of a hundred other travelers. No more secrets. Perhaps it was time to tell his parents he liked to wear pink underwear.

* * *

She was a sharp-dressed woman with a sharp-dressed attitude. Please don’t notice the tremble in her hand or the strain in her eyes or how out of breath she was. One more deal and she could rest. One more meeting and she could retire . . . if she didn’t die first.

* * *

The little boy wearing a Disney World cap screamed at the top of his lungs as he tried to keep up with his mother. She was walking too fast and when he stumbled and fell, she stopped and dropped the burden of half-dozen bags and bundles, and cried with him.

* * *

Scanning the crowd of people, the hunched old woman gave way to confusion. No one was here to meet her. Her eyes filled with tears until she heard the cacophony of her family above the roar of a thousand others. Maybe it wasn’t too late to reboard the plane.

* * *

She waited restlessly at the head of the ramp for the flight to arrive. It had been so long, the baby didn’t recognize her. No matter, she thought, as she picked her protesting granddaughter up; plenty of time to reconnect.

* * *

It was a better than the  people buffet at the casinos.  I believe the terminal at the airport is in the top three places to grab writing inspiration.  I may go back from time to time and just sit and write. I scribbled over thirty stories while waiting. The last story was my own.

J J Dare is the author of two published books, several short stories and about thirty works-in-progress.

Current enthusiasm is co-authoring at Rubicon Ranch

Life Inside the Book

I never really thought about the intimacy of the books in my bookcase until recently. Granted, this epiphany should have popped into my brain after my last post, but somehow, in the chaos of life, it slipped by.

Each and every book carries the author inside. No matter what the subject, there will always be varying degrees of the creator mixed in with the story. I have a host of silent companions waiting for me to open their doors and shares their lives. The most intriguing part is finding the writer hiding (sometimes in plain sight) within the tale.

Some authors purposely reach out to the reader. Like a streaker on a football field at halftime, some writers are so embedded in their own fictional tales I can hear them scream, “Look at Me!”

Others try to steer away from themselves. Those tricky little devils are harder to find, but not impossible. Unless you’re a robot, there’s no way to hide the part of your essence that becomes trapped in what you write.

As I pen this blog, I’m looking at my bookcase. Ernest Hemingway is too easy; he’s entwined in all he wrote (he’s a streaker). John Updike was perpetually wide-eyed in surprise and Dean Koontz adores his dogs. William Porter was constantly searching.

Willa Cather loved. Marlys Millhiser is always alone in a crowd. Carolyn Chute is on every page of her books (another streaker).

Writers pull from life. Joy, sadness, fear, loneliness: our emotions translate into words on the page. The seasons in our lives spring forth with the summer of our youth and the winter of our twilight years. We invest something more, though, as we plug away at the keyboard. A part of ourselves, recognized or not, runs through our stories.

I have no plans to write an autobiography, but I have already started. Every writer does. We put ourselves in our books and it’s sometimes hard to separate fact from fiction. What we write becomes another appendage or, in some cases, a conjoined twin (Hemingway, again). Sometimes, it’s an evil twin, as in the case of James Frey or, in current news, of Greg Mortenson.

It is said we are what we eat. It can also be said we are what we write, we are what we read.

How often have you noticed the personality of the author in his or her books, readers? In the same vein, which book hits closest to home for our writers?

J J Dare is the author of two published books, several short stories and about thirty works-in-progress.

Current enthusiasm is co-authoring at Rubicon Ranch

An Elephant Floating in the Sky

I’ve started paying more attention to the trivial things around me lately. My reasoning? I realized there is a potential storyline in all I see. It was an awe-inspiring moment when I began to look at events, even the tiniest ones, as stories.

On the road the other day, I saw this. It led to the first two lines of one more addition to my WIPs (also, listening to Stanley Fish on NPR inspired): “A plastic dollar store bag was hanging high above the ground, caught in the spindly arms of a leafless winter tree and pregnant with rain from a thousand storms. The bulbous yellow sack was a dozen feet above the ground, lethargically twisting in the tepid evening air.” (Facebook)

This was the beginning of my journey into what I’m calling “selfless discovery.” Instead of discovering oneself, I have been discovering “otherwise.”

There’s the leathery old man leaning with fatigue against the check-out counter at the dollar store – a frightened shoe lying in the middle of the muddy dirt road – the cold house with a boarded window and a dozen cats lounging outside. All of these and more have a story screaming to be told.

A year ago, I had a dream of an elephant floating in the sky. Now, I finally get it: like the expression “an elephant in the room,” my elephant meant I was seeing too many stories to ignore. My “sky” refers to the unlimited supply of writing material all around me, updating every day, every hour, and every minute.

I look at a calendar from last year and see the dates I’ve marked. My 2010 is a complete story in itself. Some events are trivial and some are not. My chapters could be entitled, “January, February,” and so on. It is a diary of my life and the lives of loved ones in 2010.

When I talked to a friend about my epiphany, he congratulated me on my “existential moment.” Although I wanted to agree with him in hopes of polishing up my tarnished new-age persona, the “moment” didn’t feel so much existential as it did experiential.

Curiosity fuels these flames. During my many cross-country driving trips over the years, I’ve always been curious about the lives of the people in the houses I pass. What are their fears, dreams, realities? Are they content or simply existing? What are their stories?

Experiences are stories, even those not of our own. That penny you see on the ground is a novel – the tales it could tell of the many hands it passed through. Think of this the next time you look at . . . anything.

J J Dare is the author of two published books, several short stories and about thirty works-in-progress.

Current enthusiasm is co-authoring at Rubicon Ranch

Roll Out Those Hazy, Lazy, Crazy Days of Winter (by Sherrie Hansen)

I’m blogging from sunny Florida this morning. Last night, we left behind blizzards, ice, snow and bitter cold and minutes after we landed at the Orlando Airport, ran smack dab into a tornado warning.

Life is funny that way. You make plans, you hope for the best. You do everything you can to insure that your life and daily schedule will run smoothly, bring you peace, success and joy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But there are twists, turns, detours, road blocks, surprises, catastrophes… there are blimps, bumps and tragedies…

How you deal with life’s little crises all a matter of perspective. When the wind started to howl and  the rain started to blow in sheets around our car last night, I wanted to seek shelter. My husband thought we should keep driving.

We are fine, of course, but once again we were reminded that no matter how carefully you plan things in life, there are going to be  some tense moments in life, some tight squeezes.

In my latest book, Merry Go Round (scheduled for release in April 2011), Tracy’s supposedly perfect life  with her childhood sweetheart and three beautiful children is not just disrupted, it is turned completely upside down. The merry go round of life sweeps round and round and up and down… sometimes  all we can do when things don’t go as planned is to hold on for dear life. Sometimes, we come up with a new idea and adapt.

I hope when all is said and done that I can be flexible and take whatever life tosses my way in stride. And I hope you will enjoy Tracy’s Merry Go Round  – there may be a few tears along the way – a few blustery moments – but the ride is going to be great fun!

Stay warm!

First Books and Familiar Places

I remember reading somewhere that the average fiction author tends to put more of himself into his first novel than he ever will again. Coming up with the “who, what, where, and when” of a believable book-length story is a new, challenging process. That first time, I think most of us feel more confident sticking to the familiar. Or maybe we just take that old advice of “write what you know” very literally. With a little experience, the new writer may discover that it’s more important to “know what you write.” The details of the story must be accurate and believable, but they don’t have to be your details.

In my first novel, Carpet Ride, I can see this tendency most clearly in my choices for where. After reading it, my brother commented that he was surprised that there was no connection in the story to Mahwah, New Jersey. Always quick on my feet, I responded, “What?” He politely explained that there was nothing wrong with that, it was just that Mahwah was the only place I had worked as a software contractor not mentioned in the book. Most of the action in the novel takes place in Boulder, Colorado and Austin, Texas and the back-story for one of the characters involves Kansas City. All places I had worked and lived. The only exception was the very first chapter, which happens in Oregon. That was where I first got the idea for the story while on vacation and driving a rented RV on a steep mountain road. I could probably still point out the exact scary curve where I envisioned the protagonists nearly losing their lives to begin the story. But the actual first dead body discovered in my murder mystery turned out to be a man from Boulder. Was it a coincidence the Colorado city was also the location of one of my stints as a software hired hand? Probably not. I liked the area and this gave me a good excuse to visit there again for research. I was only familiar with that one curvy road up there in Oregon and that state is a long way from home.

This connection to places I know personally can also be seen at a more detail level. The main characters live in a suburb of Austin that is very similar to a neighborhood where I once lived. So similar in fact that a local contest judge reading an early draft of my manuscript said that Sam and Lynn Stanley could be her neighbors. Turns out she lives in my old subdivision. I had not mentioned any street names. I like to think that my descriptions were just that accurate.

Near the end of the book, a cabin has a long wooden rear porch exactly like my current home and Sam and Lynn try to escape killers down a white rocky path in the Texas Hill Country that just happens to closely resemble a primitive trail down the hill behind my house. (No, that’s not the killer in the photo. That’s a squirrel.)

Trail

I could go on and on. The characters in Carpet Ride are not based on any particular people, but the locations were definitely drawn from my own experience. Is that a problem? Not at all. But it is interesting to see how closely I followed the “write what you know” advice with my first book. I don’t think I’m alone in that tendency.

Norm Brown is the author of the suspense novel Carpet Ride, published by Secondwind Publishing, LLC.

Mental Health and Character Development

I have read there are three things necessary in a person’s life to maintain good mental health. They are:

1. Challenges, or facing fears
2. Attitude
3. Support system

    Over my lifetime I have created challenges for myself, usually when I’m feeling at my most insecure or after a tragedy of some sort.  After my husband’s death I realized I had many fears of making it on my own and that was when I began to get into all my Do It Yourself projects.  I learned woodworking and built a hall tree and some tables and even a large server for my kitchen.  I then graduated to tile work and learned to install a sprinkler system and landscaping.  With each new project and the successful completion thereof, I felt more comfortable and confident in my own skin.  As time went on I let most of these projects fall by the wayside and began to concentrate more and more on writing.  Now I challenge myself with writing novels, stories and poetry.  I no longer think of it as a challenge, but rather a very important part of who I am and all this self-expression has given me a strong balance and faith in myself that is priceless.  I find that when I am into these projects my self-centered thoughts disappear and it’s as though I become a conduit for something greater than myself to come through and with it comes a feeling of serenity and even joy.

     Attitude is very important and my own self talk goes along with my attitudes towards life and situations that come up.  Whenever I get to feeling blue or angry I know it’s time to listen to the words I am internally speaking to myself.  It’s no surprise when I realize that I’m being super critical and negative with my own self talk and I make a conscious effort to ‘heal’ that and replace those self-defeating words with positive, life affirming and encouraging statements.

      I find I have a strong support system through my friends and faith and my family.  When I bounce ideas off them and am graced with their knowledge and experience I can then go into my projects with perhaps a new insight or a different viewpoint of where I want to go. 

      These three things have been very important in my life and I have come to see how important they can be in developing characters in a novel or story.  I love the protagonist who seeks out challenges, or feels he/she must always be proving him/herself, or is running from inner demons through engaging in dare devil activities.

     And the struggles within a character with their own self talk that was perhaps generated by an abusive parent, teacher, etc.  And the struggle that can result when a person’s support system is not supportive but is in fact, destructive and the fight one may have in overcoming or leaving all that behind. 

    I know there are more things that can contribute to mental health.  What are some of the things you use in your own life and also in the development of your characters?

Nancy A. Niles is the author of Vendetta: A Deadly Win, soon to be released from Second Wind Publishing.

Have you seen my muse?

Tall, over 6’ of well defined muscles, chiseled features, piercing blue eyes and a thing for custom made cowboy boots, well worn jeans, and 4 button Henley shirts. (His hair color and style changes, but when last seen he was sporting a shaved head.) 

When I first started my contractor position, my muse reappeared with a vengeance and I found myself overrun with ideas, dialogue, characters, and plot twists.  Honestly, I found myself occasionally annoyed at his persistence – especially when he’d kept me up past midnight every night for two weeks straight.  I made significant headway on the second installment of my Time-Walker series and cranked out the first few chapters on several other ideas.  Things were going well, I was in my equivalent of “writer’s heaven” with an interesting job to pay the bills, my muse and I spending quality time every night with my laptop, and a good queue of manuscripts in progress.

Then, as the time for my contract to end or the company to make a decision on hiring me drew closer, I noticed my muse “going walk-about” on a pretty regular basis.  I wasn’t concerned since this is normal for a muse, or at least it is for mine. He’s always been a rather capricious being, coming and going as he pleases.  I just assumed that, when I least expected it, he’d be there leaning against the doorway in some corner of my imagination, arms crossed across his chest, with that playful “so, Maggie – you ready to roll, or what?” look on his face.  It’s been a good two months now since he’s shown up and I’m wondering if I need to file a missing muse report, or post a reward for information on his possible whereabouts.

We’ve all heard about the negative effects of stress on health, relationships, and every other aspect of life, but no one ever said it could put a fairly virile muse out of action.  In the past, my imagination has been a form of stress relief for me.  When the going gets tough, I get creative.  I play my bass or the piano.  I paint or sketch.  I knit or sew or embroider.  I write.  Not this time.  I’m stressed and my muse is missing.

This is something other than writer’s block.  Generally, I can write my way out of a block.  Once the words start flowing, I can usually pick up a thread and begin to weave my storyline again.  This time, it’s different.  When I turn on the computer to write, I get pulled into the world of job search or networking.  Or worse, I start looking at the family budget to see where I can cut back a little more.  I thought perhaps returning to the days of a legal pad and a pen might do the trick, but that quickly turned into a lists of options, catalogues of transferable skill sets, and companies I need to research.

Even my husband has inquired about the whereabouts of my muse.  I know this is serious since he isn’t exactly wild about the concept of a male muse inhabiting the corners of my brain.  “Aren’t muses typically women?” he once asked.  “Mine isn’t,” I responded, trying to listen to my muse describe how the scene should play out and wishing my spouse would return to his tinkering.  “Why not?”  And the conversation quickly went downhill from there.  After that, the existence and gender of my muse became a touchy subject – until now.  The way my husband asks about him, you’d think the two were fishing buddies.

Perhaps with my contract extended, again, he will show up.  Or, maybe when I finally land a permanent position, I’ll hear the familiar deep rumbling laugh followed by a suggestion for the next chapter of one of the storylines he fed me before he decamped.  Until then, I guess I’ll stock up on dark chocolate for the writing binge that I hope will begin when he decides to reappear.

 Mairead Walpole is the pen name for a somewhat introverted project and contract manager who has 20+ years of business and technical writing under her belt. In her spare time, Mairead reviews books for Crystal Reviews (www.crystalreviews.com) and writes paranormal romance. Her first novel, “A Love Out of Time” is available through Second Wind Publishing (www.secondwindpublishing.com) or Amazon.com.

Stormy Weather, Yet Again… by Sherrie Hansen

Once again, Stormy Weather is impacting my life. Last week, a winter storm (ice, sleet, freezing rain, snow, winds) almost kept my husband and I apart on Christmas. This week, another is threatening our long lusted after vacation.

We’ve had this trip planned – a visit to Visalia, Cayucos, and Glendora California to see friends and family – for months. We checked out the extended forecast a week ago and breathed a sigh of relief when the weather sounded passable for the day we were scheduled to fly from Minneapolis to Bakersfield. We asked my parents to drive us to the airport. Everything was a go – we couldn’t wait to escape the frigid, 50 below zero windchills and two feet of snow that has inundated northern Iowa this winter.

My B&B - the place we are trying to escape.

You can imagine our dismay when well-meaning friends informed us that the revised forecast features a winter storm warning – 5 to0 8 inches of fresh snow, winds in excess of 25 mph, near white-out conditions, blowing and drifting snow with blizzard-like periods expected – starting tomorrow afternoon and continuing on until Thursday night. We are supposed to fly out of St. Paul Thursday afternoon, right in the middle of the fray. The airport is two hours from our home – a nice, mellow drive in good weather – a nightmare in near white-out conditions.

So… What possessed me to write a book called Stormy Weather in the first place, I have started to wonder of late… ever since this book came out, my life has been nothing but. A cruel twist of fate? Is Mother Nature mad at me for speaking out about things best left alone? Is God upset with me for making the sex scenes too steamy, something a good girl / pastor’s wife like me really ought not do?

If you have the answer, let me know!

In the meantime… what to do about all this Stormy Weather? Adapt, I guess… we are leaving for the airport a day early, tomorrow morning, in hopes of beating the storm. The plan is to book a room in St. Paul where we can leave our car while we’re gone, and hoping our flight is on schedule the next day so we don’t end up stranded in Minnesota, where the forecast is continued sub-zero temperatures.

We’ve been California Dreaming for months… sandy beaches, warm ocean breezes, barefoot in the sand, Catalina Island romance, tropical paradise type weather… you get the picture. We need this break from the lung-searing cold, frozen tundra, snow and ice everywhere  Midwest.

Assuming we get there, we hope to encounter no Stormy Weather in California. (Did you hear that, God?)

A California sunset I witnessed from a friend's deck while visiting last year.

We really need a rest from all this turbulence… a little smooth sailing would be nice. Red skies at night, sailor’s delight… Please??? I’m taking my Alpha Smart. My husband is dragging the laptop along so I can work on Waterlily. Smooth-petaled, tucked in still waters, sunshine-drenched waterlilies… ah, yes… no ice, no snow. waterlilies… Coming soon (June 2010?) if I get my way… Summer should be here by then…