What Happened to the Dining Room?

What Happened to the Dining Room? by Debra H. Goldstein

When I was a kid, our dining room table always looked pristine.  It had a beautifully ironed tablecloth on it and a lovely centerpiece that sat exactly below the chandelier. The chairs were meticulously pushed in, but never touched the table.  Of course, we never used the dining room except for special family events or company who weren’t considered extended family.

True family meal gatherings were in the kitchen dinette area.  The surface of that table was scuffed from the book bags dropped on it; its finish marred by original crayon drawings that hadn’t stayed on the page and later homework assignments that had gone awry. Before I reached a certain height, its legs were nicked when riding toys weren’t stopped fast enough. Later, the table sides bore the wounds where chairs were pulled or pushed against it.

When I married and raised children, I followed the same practices with my dining room and dinette, but then I became a writer.  Suddenly, my books and swag needed more space. Space that could be conveniently reached, while being somewhat out of the way.  My solution? Cover the wooden dining room table with the pads originally made to protect it and go for it. 

For the year after my first book, Maze in Blue, came out, I told my husband we couldn’t have company. I refused to clean off the table.  Slowly, my stock was sold, my swag given out, the bookmarks exhausted, and the table reappeared (of course, I did stick the banners and posters in a corner of the dining room in case I needed them again).  We reclaimed the table.  We entertained. When visitors went into the dining room, their eyes wandered from the breakfront to the fireplace and over the top of my clean table. 

That all changed in May 2016.  Should Have Played Poker was published as a hardback and six months of touring and speaking began. A printer, extra papers, swag galore, and boxes of books covered the table. When some space opened, a new shipment of books or swag arrived. Only this time, it wasn’t only the new book on the table, but copies of the old book, too, as it saw a resurgence in its sales. 

Five and one-half months have passed.  There actually is room for me to pack a small suitcase on the end of the table (I leave it there because I need it so often that it became tiresome going in and out of the garage to get it). The original swag is gone, the re-ordered swag is dwindling. There still are books, but by my calculation, because most of the bookstores order their own stock, there only are enough to see me through the last big consignment.  By the end of the month, only one box of books and swag be relegated to the writing corner and I’ll take back the dining room table.

I’m excited, but I hope the sight of a clean dining room table doesn’t last long. For a writer, what can be better than having it covered with clutter because people want to read your books and stories?  Secretly, I hope there comes a time that I never find my dining room table.

Creepies, Crawlies & Other Scary Things Like Politics

by Bethany Maines

Welcome to the Halloween / Election Season where we're all hiding under our covers and hoping that come sunrise it will all be over and the tangerine menace will have gone back under his rock.  I don't know about you, but I long for the days when October child safety meant checking the candy for tampering, not checking the news for use of the word "pussy".  When the boomers talk about bringing back the "good old-days" I nod along, but I'm pretty sure we're talking about different old days.  My definition of good old days was when I didn't have to listen to a year-long build up to an election.  So, basically, 1984. Can Back to the Future happen now?  

Sadly, Doc Brown has not turned up to rescue me. So I'm forced to devise my own escape plan.  It's called books. I'm going to bury my nose in a book or computer and read and write my way through October. In case you wish to enact your own escape plan, I'm offering this giveaway opportunity from my publishing company Blue Zephyr Press.  Enter for a chance to win a $75 Amazon Gift Card, one of three print novels (Exile by Karen Harris Tully, An Unseen Current by Bethany Maines, and Perfect Likeness by J.M. Phillippe), and one lucky winner will win five e-books (Exile and Inheritance by Karen Harris Tully, An Unseen Current and Wild Waters by Bethany Maines, and Perfect Likeness by J.M. Phillippe).  Contest runs through 10/30/16.  Tweet for extra entries!

>>ENTER CONTEST AT RAFFLECOPTER<<

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Bethany Maines is the author of the Carrie Mae Mysteries, Wild Waters, Tales from the City of Destiny and An Unseen Current.  You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube video or catch up with her on Twitter and Facebook.

Hearing Voices

By AB Plum

I hear voices in my head.

Most of the time.

Not every minute of the day or night. But . . . in countless places, at lots of moments—some inappropriate, such as:

·         While conferring with my tax-guru husband about my business expenses

·         While reviewing my latest marketing plan

·         While creating a FB ad

·         While struggling to grasp using video in FB ads

·         While listening for half a second to political callers (usually at dinnertime)

·         While zoning out in front of TV

·         While falling asleep

And . . . mostly, while writing at my computer. 

E.L. Doctorow said, “Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.”

When the voices stop—especially when I’m at my computer—I’m in trouble. Major trouble.

Which means I’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere in my story. (My characters absolutely refuse to be forced into a situation or action or thought that contradicts who they are). Ignoring me is the quickest way to get my attention.

Two years ago, though, I got hit by the flu. Not the coughing, sniffling, aching kind of flu. The kind that hospitalized me for ten days. I spent seven days in ICU, totally unaware of my surroundings or my brush with death, I heard neither the voices of the medical staff, my husband, nor my characters.

On Day 8, my doctor sent me to quarantine in the Continuing Care Unit. Coughing occupied most of my day and night, and I had the energy of wilted lettuce. I wondered if I’d ever feel ‘myself’ again. Excellent nursing, support from my husband, and my insistence on getting out of bed several times daily helped.

On Day 9, one of my characters popped into my head in the middle of a wobbly circuit around my room. A couple of more showed up before the doctor came by. They hung around after he left. Did I plan to loll around for another nine days? When did I plan to resume telling their stories? Didn’t they deserve a little empathy for their patience?

By the time the doctor returned that afternoon, I made the argument to go home.

And I did. The next day. Late on Day 10. With a cast of characters filling my head with their music.

What about you? Had your flu shot yet? Do you hear that little voice shouting, “Do it!”

Me? I’m scheduled for October 20 because the voices in my head believe in prevention.

AB Plum was born reading—according to her mother.  She started writing shortly thereafter. After publishing two romantic comedies and two romantic suspense novels, she has turned to psychological suspense. Look for release in late October of The Early Years, Book 1 in The MisFit Series.

Clowning Around

There are writers who love to blog.

I envy them. Deeply. Theirs must be a bottomless well of creativity.

Me? I struggle to come up with something even mildly entertaining once a month. This month I have failed. Badly.

I got nothing.

Still reading? Bless you, because all I can think about is clowns.

I wrote a book. It begins with murderous clowns--ergo Send in the Clowns. It releases in two weeks. Whenever I finished the manuscript--April? May?--the thought of ACTUAL creepy clowns was far from my mind.

Fast forward to autumn and there are creepy clowns luring children into the woods. There are clowns with baseball bats closing down college campuses (shouldn't that be campi?) There are clowns everywhere.

What makes them so scary?

I remember when clown Ronald McDonald had much scarier friends. Hamburglar, anyone? I remember Bozo. I remember going to the circus and watching an impossible number of clowns squeezing into a tiny car. Clowns were funny. Clowns were benign.

Not anymore.

Psychologists suggest we are disturbed by a smile that hides true emotion.

Maybe.

I have a different theory.

When the world is so scary, it's nice to be scared by something that isn't quite so terrifying. Global warming, Isis, crippling national debt, or clowns. What would you rather worry about?

You know, when I go back and look, Bozo might actually be a bit scary...

Julie Mulhern is the USA Today bestselling author of The Country Club Murders. 

She is a Kansas City native who grew up on a steady diet of Agatha Christie. She spends her spare time whipping up gourmet meals for her family, working out at the gym and finding new ways to keep her house spotlessly clean--and she's got an active imagination. Truth is--she's an expert at calling for take-out, she grumbles about walking the dog and the dust bunnies under the bed have grown into dust lions.  Her latest book, Send in the Clowns, releases on October 25.

Getting It Together

by Linda Rodriguez

This is not really my house (thank heavens).

My husband, the world's original disorganized, absent-minded professor, is fond of saying, “I'm going to get it together,” as if he's putting the final touches on a perfectly organized life. Now, regular readers of this blog may remember that my youngest son, who adores him, calls him “the chaos demon.” Sometimes people who work with my husband at the university take someone new into his office just for the shock effect. Over the years—after many efforts to set up systems he can’t destroy and after giving him books designed to help him understand the simplest organizational principles (like ”throw the trash in the trashcan—don’t just walk past it and deposit it on the kitchen counter”) I’ve stopped trying. I try to keep a couple of areas clear and comfortable for me, and I don’t look when I pass the rest. I haven’t had guests to my house in years, although I had many before he fully embedded himself in my home. (It takes a year or two to completely undo good systems, I’ve found, even for a chaos demon.) He's a wonderful man, and it’s his only real fault, so I long ago decided to live with it.

Lately, I've been chafing at these circumstances, however. Probably because, unlike my husband, I work at home and thus spend most of twenty-four hours a day in these chaotic surroundings. I've grown tired of living with boxes of books and postal bins of manuscripts stacked in the living room—he runs a micro press from our home in his spare time when he's not running a university press and teaching. This morning finally sealed the deal for me, however. My weak and shaky hands (from lupus) managed to knock off the table between our chairs the big Columbia University cup in which I keep things I use regularly—fountain pens, mechanical pencils, scissors, a nail file, and knitting needles. This meant I had to scrabble around on the floor around and under his chair for the spilled contents of my cup.

He keeps a quilt made by my sister in his chair to cover up with if he's cold or just sit on if it's hot. This quilt often puddles on the floor around his chair, and I've given up chiding him about it. So this morning, I was looking for my fallen necessities, only to find that his quilt was hiding three times as many items as I had spilled. Apparently, I'm not the only one with shaky hands in this house.

My cup is back and filled with the pens, pencils, and knitting needles that I consider necessary to daily life, but my hard-won peace with the house mess is gone. I'm googling home organization websites and making lists of decluttering tasks to do over the next weeks. I'm laying in supplies of trash bags and cardboard boxes. The chaos demon's days are numbered.

He tells me he is going to get it all together. I tell him that's a meaningless phrase, that no one ever gets it all together. He reassures me that. He. Will. Get. It. All. Together. I tell him that, like too many men, he sees the house situation as a war where he can win a battle and go home forever. I tell him that life's not like that. “It's a case of constant maintenance, baby,” I say. The chaos demon is stubborn, however, and insists that he will get it together. Tomorrow. Or maybe the day after that. After all, things are crazy right now. But he will get it together. Later.

Does Work Life Balance Exist?

by Sparkle Abbey

If you follow us on Facebook, you know we just returned from our first NINC (Novelists, Inc.) conference in St. Petersburg, FL. We had an amazing time exploring beaches, enjoying local hangouts, and learning from our fellow authors. We returned to Iowa with dozens of seashells and major brain overload.

We attended workshops on business, marketing, and creativity. We learned that we need to do a better job of cultivating our mailing list (sign up here), how to create engaging Facebook ads, new strategies for a launching book #9 (we’re still kicking around titles so if you have one, please share it!), and discovering new readers. We also attended a workshop on balancing two careers by speakers Dr. Debra Holland, Heidi Joy Trethaway, and Dr. Jennifer Barnes.

Since we both still have full-time day jobs, we’re always seeking ways to stay sane while writing the best books we can, and still giving one hundred percent at work. It’s hard enough managing work-life balance with one career, but add a thriving writing career in the mix and all bets are off. Thankfully, all three authors offered practical advice on following your intuition, self-care, and weighing the cost of taking on new projects.

Heidi Joy offered a super easy tip that resonated with us. She suggested that if you’re going to add a new project or task, try and subtract one that you’re already doing. What a great idea! We took it a step further and added that if we can’t subtract anything, then maybe we needed to say no. Now, that’s easy in theory and much more difficult in practice. We’ve been fortunate enough to be asked to participate in special writing projects, speaking engagements, and book fairs. We hate to say no because we love it all, but the whole idea of subtracting before adding is a great starting point.

They also talked about being kind to ourselves, which is something many of us, not just writers, overlook. We get so caught up in being there for others, meeting deadlines, and multi-tasking to stay productive that we forget to set aside time for ourselves. Or we obsess about what we did wrong that we fail to acknowledge what we did right. If you don’t even know where to start here are 17 ways to be kind to yourself. Let us know what you think.

 

What’s the best advice you’ve been given or have given on finding work-life balance? 

Sparkle Abbey is the pseudonym of two mystery authors (Mary Lee Woods and Anita Carter). They are friends and neighbors as well as co-writers of the Pampered Pets Mystery Series. The pen name was created by combining the names of their rescue pets--Sparkle (Mary Lee's cat) and Abbey (Anita's dog). If you want to make sure you're up on all the Sparkle Abbey news, stop by their website and sign up for updates at sparkleabbey.com.

Juliana Aragon Fatula Stands with Standing Rock

Save the Water Save the People




Here is my news: I've been selected as a finalist in the High Plains Book Award for Poetry in Billings, Montana. I'm so excited for the road trip. I've never been to Montana.

I want to win, of course, claro que si! However, I'm a finalist! I'm thrilled to be one of a handful of regional poets who will battle for the prize.

We should have a dance off and whoever dances the longest and the best, wins. I'd win that contest for sure. I love to dance. I love to sing. I love to stand on stage and quote Shakespeare.

Why can't I ever play Hamlet. Why do I get to play the maid, the cook, the Indian, the Mexican, the wino, the drug dealer, the homeless woman, the homeless man. Why do directors cast me as the drug addicted, pregnant single parent teenager?

I accepted those roles because I was so thrilled to be doing what I love and getting paid to perform. However, in 1995 that all changed. I toured the world with my friends and we performed for the Department of Defense in los azores, Sicily, diego Garcia, and the United Arab Emirates.

Three Denver, Colorado Chicanos: the Latin Locomotions arrived in Kuwait and shuffled to the exit. We though someone in uniform would be at the airport to collect us, our luggage, and Manuel's guitars.

The base sent a woman in civilian clothing to retrieve us. She searched the crowd for three Chicagoans. Typo, easy mistake, who knows but we missed our ride.

We suddenly felt panicky. The airport security were dressed in the traditional white from top to bottom.  They were packing M-16s. They looked like Chicanos. We smiled. They remained stoic.

We didn't speak Arab, we had no Arab money, no telephone number for the base.

We searched for an airport employee who spoke English. We ran into a man who smiled when he saw us. He smiled from ear to ear. He said, "Hello."

We said, "Help! Please?"

He took us to his office, he gave us water and fruit, and asked us where we were from. He recognized that we were Chicano, not Chicagoans, or Arabs. When we told him we were from Colorado. He slapped his knee and said, "I graduated from Ft. Collins Colorado State University!" He asked what our plans were in Kuwait.

When we told him we were entertainers. We told him we were visiting for Hispanic Awareness month in October and we were performing on base the next day. He became animated and waving his hands in the air. I saw Chicano Theatre in Ft. Collins, Denver, and Pueblo. I loved it. Can you sing some songs for us.

By then the entire office surrounded us and we had our first audience. We called our agent in Denver. She called the base and sent a ride to pick us up.

We said good bye to our new friends and were never so happy to arrive on base and settle in for the night. We slept in the barracks with the soldiers; the showers and toilets were down the walk, five barracks down the walk.

I've had some interesting experiences and traveled from the mountains of Colorado to the volcanos in Sicily, to the Mediterranean, to the Persian Gulf and to the Indian Ocean. I learned about other cultures, languages, food, and I experienced the joy of giving back to the men and women who protect us back in the states.

Everywhere we travelled and performed the locals would attend even if they didn't speak English they enjoyed the music and dancing.

The soldiers both men and women were welcoming, appreciative, and very friendly. We were taken on short site seeing trips during the day and performed every night we weren't travelling. We had no crew, no techies, nada. The soldiers were our crew. The men and women offered to carry speakers, guitar cases, and stayed to strike after the show.

I learned about the Arabs and the Persians, and Sicilians, and the Portuguese, and the natives of Madagascar. And what I learned is that music is the language that communicates, peace, love, understanding, soul, and fun. The soldiers and the locals danced at our performances. And when we had a night off, they took us dancing in their clubs. I met merchant sailors and Brits in Diego Garcia and fought off their drunken fumbles to get me to dance with them. But never did anyone do anything inappropriate. 

We met people from all over the U.S. but we also met Chicanos from Denver, Pueblo, Colorado Springs, Alamosa, and they were our biggest fans and wanted to thank us for singing corridos and telling cuentos about their people. Hispanic Awareness Month in the military in 1995 during peace time.

Today, we have someone who wants to deport people of color, ban Muslims, and wants to use Nuclear Weapons, water boarding torture and stop and frisk. He wants to divide our country. I say, we unite and show him we are the United States, not the Divided and segregated United States.

Please, hug your neighbor, kiss your children, help your coworkers and begin to see people, human beings, souls.  The differences between cultures makes us interesting, unique, educational. Why fear the unknown? Embrace our otherness.

Don't build walls and plow through the reservations of the Standing Rock Sioux, stop hating, stop fearing, stop. Just stop and listen to Muslims, Catholics, Atheists, Brown people, Asians, African Americans and learn from one another. And when they tell you what offends them, tell them you didn't know and apologize.

Too Perfect

By Kimberly Jayne

I love journals. I request them for birthdays and other gift-giving opportunities where I can actually tell people what they can buy me. They're going to buy me something, so it may as well be what I want, right? Journals are beautiful inside and out, and I must have them. Plus, I have never found a reason to re-gift a journal. Ever. Because that would be wrong. 

But here's the problem. You knew there would be one, right? Yes, there's a problem. It's the girdle of perfection that squeezes the daring out of me. See, my beloved journals are perfect. I adore them. I fondle their smooth edges and bindings and dream of the worthy thoughts and ideas that only I can pour inside. I covet them like Scrooge covets his bags of gold, all for myself. The one thing I don't do is write in them. They are simply too perfect. 

I currently have a collection of a dozen beautiful journals that now serve only to taunt me because they’re gathering dust and slowly disintegrating, as all things do with the passage of time, without the glory of someone's pen (mine) scrawling and jotting and doodling and masterpiecing across their pages. I know. This could be the very definition of sad. *Sheds pitiful writer’s tears.*

So, obviously, this is a bit of a conundrum because the reason I ask for journals in the first place is precisely because they're beautiful, and I really do want to write in them. One would be perfect for recounting my life so my children would actually learn who I am after I'm dead. One would be perfect for writing my innermost thoughts about men and relationships and sex—but, er, what if someone finds it after I'm dead? And still another without lines would be perfect for drawing and sketching and arting, except that I'm no Michelangelo. I’m not even a Southpark Trey Parker. And there I'd be, embarrassing my children from the grave. *Pauses. Considers the merits of this one.*

I have intended to change this situation for a long time, coaxing and finagling, and bribing myself into writing something in each journal. So far, I have inscribed my name. I do have nice handwriting. Meanwhile, I keep adding more journals. Every time I walk into a book store, I walk out with a perfect, hoardworthy journal that remains as I received it: empty and deprived.

So I mentioned this little “problem” to some writer friends at a retreat last weekend. One of them is not only a writer and a longtime friend but a life and creativity coach. A wise and delightful woman, she immediately identified a solution. Wabi-sabi. 

Wabi-sabi represents Japanese aesthetics and a world view centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. A concept derived from Buddhism, the aesthetic is described as beauty that is imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. Like my journals. Characteristics of the wabi-sabi aesthetic include asymmetry, roughness, and the ingenuous integrity of natural objects and processes. In other words, Wabi-sabi says the beauty of an object is in its flaws. In a pretty but cracked vase, wabi-sabi is the flaw where the gift of light pours in. And whose broken heart isn't the personification of wabi-sabi?

In short, wabi-sabi struck me right between the brain lobes, creating a fissure in my thinking—and how very wabi-sabi that there the light shined in. It was so simple. So illuminating. So right in front of me all along. By writing in my journals, I'm not sullying their pages with my existential drivel. I'm not destroying the beauty and perfection of their craftsmanship. I'm not wasting the trees that gave their lives to be tattooed by my brain matter. In fact, I'm making my journals more beautiful, more valuable, more worthwhile—if to no one else but me. And any family that survives me. 

To make sure I won't slide back into [absurd] old habits, I invited two of my nanababies to color on the first few pages. And guess what? The journals have become even more precious to me and, far from perfect, I'm free to fill them up with abandon—and writer stuff.

What about you? What can wabi-sabi do for you? How can it break the girdle of perfection that binds you? Can it free you, as it has freed me?

 

_____________________
Kimberly Jayne is the author of the dark fantasy series Demonesse: Avarus and the hilarious romantic comedy Take My Husband, Please. She has been making up stories since she was five, when she scribbled on her grandfather's notepads her first tall tale about pigs flying. Yes, she started that shtick. Since then, she's written just about everything and for various websites and clients, including humor features for Playgirl Magazine. She also performed her work in the 2011 Listen to Your Mother Show in Austin, Texas. Visit her at ReadKimberly.com.