Month: October 2012

Another award!

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I’ve been nominated for the One Lovely Blog Award again!  This time I was nominated by Rooster Lady Sister, a most interesting character.  As always, I’m flattered to receive such an award, but since I was nominated for the same award by our mutual friend Lindsey just a month ago, I’m going to let that post do double duty.  So if you would like to read my seven random facts, you can find them here, along with the people I nominated when I initially received the award.

And now, back to the grindstone.  I’ve got the day off of work, but I’m working hard on The Lokana Chronicles: Fog of War.  Or at least I would like to be – I keep getting distracted by other things that also need doing.  If anyone has a spare time turner, I’d really appreciate it if you could lend it to me for…um…a period of time that has yet to be determined.  I’ve got a crap-ton of stuff to get done. 🙂

(c) 2012.  All rights reserved.

Melancholy

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Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.  –Graham Greene

(c) 2012.  All rights reserved.

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Excerpt time!

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That’s right, I’ve finished another chapter, so it’s time for another excerpt.  Today’s snippet comes from the newly-finished Chapter 5:

When the servants brought out the food, Michael was relieved to see what looked like roast beef, mashed potatoes, gravy, corn, and fresh bread.  He was even more relieved when his tongue confirmed what his eyes suspected – he hadn’t had a thing to eat since breakfast and he was starving.  Michael couldn’t count the number of times he’d eaten this same meal growing up.  It was one of his favorites; it should have tasted like home.

And yet…it was different somehow.  The meat had a different flavor.  And it was juicier, more tender.  The potatoes were lumpier; the gravy richer, more flavorful.  And the butter – was it hand churned?  He’d had samples of hand churned butter a few times at the local pioneer fair.  Was this what it tasted like?  I can’t remember.

So there you have it!  Michael’s journey through the strange new world of Lokana has only just begun.  I hope you’ll stay tuned for further adventures – rest assured, there will be plenty.

(c) 2012.  All rights reserved.

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Reflection

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Well, the October Memoir and Backstory Blog Challenge is finished.  At least, it’s finished for me, anyway.  I’ve never done a blog challenge before, and this one was a challenge in more ways than I had expected, but I’d like to think I’ve grown as a result.

Some of the posts were a challenge to write in that I had trouble coming up with things to write about (my teen years and my early twenties, most notably), while others were a challenge because I had so many fun stories to choose from and it was hard to pick just one thing to write about (the early childhood years).  Other posts were a challenge to write because they dealt with topics that I’ve spent a lot of time blocking out or just plain not dealing with.  I don’t cope well with change, especially if that change is negative in any way.  It’s not something I ever learned how to do and I wonder if I ever will. But…

Mawwage is what bwings us togevah today…

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I said in my post yesterday that twenty-four was a banner year, but twenty-five ranked right up there with it.  We spent the better part of the year planning the wedding and the honeymoon, getting details worked out and being generally happy and excited and everything else that is good.  At Easter, I was confirmed in Seymour’s church after completing the RCIA program.  That was one of the biggest decisions we had made thus far in our life together; his family is devoutly Catholic and mine is Presbyterian.  My family didn’t seem very happy about my decision to convert, but it’s not like I was changing religions or something.  I simply changed my denomination.  After all, Catholics and Protestants do worship the same God, do believe in the same afterlife, do read more or less the same Bible.  It’s not like I joined a cult or something.

However, the difference did pose an interesting question…

Onward and upward!

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That’s right, things started looking much better for me in my twenty-fourth year.  Much better, as a matter of fact.  The whole year was pretty stellar, really.  See, my birthday is at the end of January.  Shortly before my birthday, I signed up for Yahoo! Personals.  I had gone to a wedding a few months prior for a couple who had met on eHarmony.com.  The groom and I had gone to high school together and I thought, “Hey – if Seth can meet such a nice girl online, maybe I can find a nice guy myself!”

I had a few first dates, but nothing that really went anywhere.  Then one day, I was scrolling through matches in my area and came across a guy who was a few years (okay, six) older than me and hailed from my hometown.  I had no idea who this guy was.  My hometown has a population of 1800 people, so everyone pretty much knows everyone else.  The first thought that ran through my head was, “Who is this guy and why don’t I know him?”

I clicked on his profile and read through it.  That was when I had my second thought: “I need to know this guy!”  He was a former military officer and a single father who was “not looking for a mom” for his daughter.  He was also a self-professed Star Trek freak.  Could this guy be any better?

So I sent him a message.

D-I-V-O-R-C-E

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When I was twenty-three, my marriage sank to the bottom of Lake Despair.  Okay, it hadn’t exactly been smooth sailing for the four years that it lasted, but I had tried to make it work for the sake of the son my husband (now ex-husband) and I shared.  Tomcat was three and a half the day our divorce was finalized.

I spent the weekend I turned twenty-three moving out of the home we had created, leaving the life we had made for ourselves behind.  He refused to sign the papers accepting service at first – he didn’t want a divorce, he said.  But here’s the thing: He’d been looking for a place to move, away from me and our son and closer to the mistress he’d been seeing for four years, closer to the son he shared with her.

The day we were scheduled to appear in court for the hearing on the stipulation, he didn’t even bother to show up.

Twenty-two

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Photo by Kay Kauffman

When I was twenty-two, my marriage was falling apart.  My life was a shambles.  But even as my marriage was ending, my brother-in-law’s was just beginning.  As my twenty-second Christmas approached, he and his fiancée asked that I take their engagement pictures, which I was happy to do.  I love photography and at that point in my life, I hoped to be able to earn a little extra money from doing something that I loved.  It didn’t work out, but maybe that’s all for the best.

Twenty-one…

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Oh, twenty-one, that eagerly-anticipated age of majority.  I’m actually not sure which age young people look forward to more, eighteen or twenty-one.  Both ages are ages of majority – at eighteen you can vote and smoke and get your driver’s license if, for some reason, you don’t have it already (because, believe it or not, I know a few other people who finished high school without one).  But at twenty-one, you can legally drink, and I know many people who anticipate this event with as much, if not more, excitement than the ability to drive.

Another interview

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I’ve been again.  The interrogator extraordinaire was none other than the zombie master himself, everyone’s favorite sock puppet, Splinker.  That’s right, in a new feature called “Someone Else Who Isn’t Me!”, I’ve Been Deader author Adam Sifre interviews other authors and today, that author is yours truly.  So pop on over and have a read!  We talk steaks and books and killer dust bunnies.  There’s even an excerpt from The Lokana Chronicles.  Leave a comment!  After all, even zombies love comments. 😉

(c) 2012.  All rights reserved.

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