Permission to Push Pause

I’m often asked at conferences and readings about how I manage to “get it all done.” I’ve published three novels since 2015 (and have written two more). I travel regularly for author events. I’m a college professor teaching four classes a semester (plus meetings, etc.). I homeschool two kids and have two dogs and two cats. (I have a partner who helps with this.) I am also active in the community.

So, when someone comes up to me, thinking about all the balls they’re juggling, I understand the twinge of panic mixed with a tint of doubt or even judgment in their question of how I make it all work. Most of the people asking it are, like me, people who are working full-time jobs AND taking care of others in some capacity AND have additional social or community obligations AND are trying to write and publish novels. 

I’ve written pieces on how to manage your time and strategies for getting the writing done (click the links to check them out), but sometimes the best plans get chewed up by life.

Sometimes the answer to the question of how I make it all work is—I don’t.

People need things. Our bodies and spirits need things. Often these needs run hard up against our wants. Most times, we can navigate both—maybe not with equal balance and probably with a lot of juggling—but there are times when we have to momentarily let go of a want in order to address a need. 

It’s a hard decision to make, but what makes it all the more difficult to bear is the guilt that comes with the choice to push pause on a goal, the sense of failure that shadows the decision to step back for a little while and take care of ourselves and others who might need us. 

Our culture drives us to always be striving for more, to do more, obtain more, write more, publish more. That’s okay–up to a point. Drive is good. Goals are good. Aspiring to stretch ourselves is good. But not if we stretch ourselves too thin. And what’s not okay is the attitude (sometimes shoved in our faces by others’ judgement, sometimes self-inflicted) that we are somehow less than when we stop doing more. 

We shouldn’t feel guilty or like we failed some litmus test of success just because we rest or pause to take care of needs—ours or someone else’s. It’s okay to put down one of the balls you’re juggling. You can pick it back up again when you’re ready. It’ll be right there waiting for you. I promise. 

#MouseMondays

Welcome to our inaugural #MouseMondays!

One of the joys of being a writer is hearing from readers who come to love your characters as much as you do. But I’ve wanted to find a way for us to all share the love together.

My editor, Katie, had the brilliant idea of tapping the hashtag #MouseMondays across social media for me to share special Mouse related tidbits with you—backstory for places Mouse visits or people she meets, photos, perhaps a little news, a blog here, a playlist there, and, of course, answering all your non-spoiler-y questions.

But it would also be a place for you to get to share your favorite quotes, your feelings about characters, maybe some artwork (Anyone tried illuminating your initials like a medieval manuscript?), your questions and theories—basically sharing ANYTHING Mouse related.

I mean, who doesn’t need some Mouse in their Mondays? A little kindness and compassion, some healthy defiance of cultural expectations and a dash of Devil-may-care.

I hope you’ll join me every Monday for #MouseMondays. And maybe invite a friend or two to join.

I thought an appropriate place to start would be with introductions. At almost every event, someone asks me where Mouse came from, where I got the idea for the story, and I get to tell them how I met Mouse. I thought I might share that story here for those I haven’t gotten to meet in person.

I was heading home for the holidays. The kids were content in the backseat with a movie, and I stared out at the empty rice fields of Northeast Arkansas. She came like a flash in my mind. A young woman standing at the edge of a battlefield looking out over the raging violence, gazing at one soldier in particular. I knew we were somewhere in history because the men wielded swords and battleaxes on horseback. But it was the woman’s face I found compelling. It was full of defiance and determination. I had to know what she was so determined to do and who or what she was hell bent to defy.

I think I would have lost her though if it hadn’t been for her name, carried like an echo on the wind: Mouse.

I was hooked. I grabbed a napkin off the floorboard and sketched it all out. I had to know who she was and where and when she was. It took me a long time to get her to reveal her secrets. I know why now—those were some pretty dark secrets to keep.

So how about you? Did you have first impressions of Mouse? What about the other characters?

I hope you’ll come join in the fun of #MouseMondays.

(There might be a bit of news to share coming soon. ;))

Pervasive Assault–Me, too.

I’ve had a sheltered life.

Solid middle class, small town childhood. My folks were pretty conservative, focused on work and raising kids, going to church and contributing to the community. They were more engaged than most parents (I would’ve called them strict back then). Dates to school dances were heavily vetted, including an in-person interview that addressed driving records and attitudes about drugs and drinking. I didn’t date much.

I went from the bubble of that childhood to the safe environs of a regional state university. I commuted from home and hung out with Honors students and band geeks. I met my would-be husband there, and we ventured forth into the ivory towers of graduate school—all the way to the dusty top of a doctorate.

I can’t imagine a life better designed for safety.

And yet, when the #metoo throng of statements began to emerge over social media, I added my name to the list.

During the past couple of days, I have witnessed countless other incredible women tell their stories as a way of speaking out—to men, to the misinformed, to those who make excuses for the perpetrators of harassment and assault, to those who do not believe us when we tell these truths. Some of the stories have been disgustingly too common, and some have been terrifying and brutal.

As I tallied my own scars, I was struck by the pervasiveness of the assault and harassment—not just across all facets of our culture, encompassing all women, but throughout the lifetime of a single woman.

The first time for me was when I was eight and spent a summer hiding from a boy who wanted to show me his penis and would wait to ambush me when I was riding my bike or wandering through the abandoned cotton gin behind our house. I took to hiding in the trees. Or staying in my room. A couple of years later, it was the father of a friend who tried to grope my barely-there budding breasts. A year later, it was middle school boys pinching and then fondling the girls’ bottoms when our backs were turned as we clicked through combinations on our lockers or waited in line for class. We took to holding our books over our backsides like shields. Junior high. High school. Teachers. A grabby relative. College. A manager. A professor. Graduate school. A boss. A coworker and most of our male clientele. Colleagues. A client months ago.

Just a sampling. Just with the boys/men in my own circle, men who were in positions of power.

Women face an onslaught of relentless, pervasive harassment and assault day after day after day.

The first couple of times it happened to me, I told. I knew it was wrong. I knew I felt violated and unsafe. I ran away. I told. But the responses to those early experiences taught me a lesson that the world wanted me to accept: Boys will be boys and girls should be silent.

We will be silent no longer.

And “boys” are better than that. We should hold them accountable for their actions.

Start at home. Start with yourself, your sons, your uncles and grandfathers, your friends. We don’t need men to step in as our protectors. We need men to join us in making a world where we don’t need protection from harassment or assault. Embrace a masculinity that’s not about being aggressive or predatory. Be comfortable with strong, successful women. Encourage them. Respect them. Refuse to be silent in the locker room and at the comics convention and on social media and around the Thanksgiving table when men spew sexist, demeaning language meant to threaten or intimidate. Tell them it’s not cool. Don’t play along. Call it harassment. Call it assault.

No more silence. Not for us women. And not for the men who want to stand beside us.

Haunted Bohemia: Last Czech Vampire

Everyone knows the story of Vlad Drăculea, dread Prince of Romania, father of all things vampire. But along the border between Bohemia and Moravia, they tell another story about another cruel (and equally difficult to kill) tyrant.

Here’s my rendering of the true (maybe? almost?) tale of the last vampire of the Czech Republic:

1817 in a small market-town in the highlands at the edge of Bohemia. It’s February. Ice coats the trees on either side of the Baroque bridge that stretches over the Sázava river.

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The branches clink against each other as the chill wind sweeps along the lane, but the people of Žďár nad Sázavou are celebrating like it’s Spring.

Alois Ulrich, the manager of the local estate, spent his life inflicting cruelty on the townsfolk, especially the poor. But now, after suffering from a sudden and mysterious illness, the tyrant is dead and buried. His funeral is well-attended–by people who come to spit on his grave.

Now, no longer afraid of a brutal rebuke, the children laugh as czjc025 (1)they slide on the thin sheet of ice across the bridge, when a figure suddenly appears between the statues of Saints Cyril and Methodius. It looms large and dark and reeks of new death as it lunges at a nearby child. The others scatter, screaming. 

Days later, dismissing the story as child’s fancy run wild, the old scribe sets off from the plague cemetery toward the bridge. The sun is low
in the sky and trapped behind the gray clouds heavy with more snow. He feels the prickling at his neck before he sees the shadows take form.

“I know you,” the scribe breathes. “You are Alois Ulrich.”

The figure turns sharply at his name.

“But you are dead.” The scribe makes the sign of the cross, stumbling back, too afraid to turn away as the living dead tyrant lurches toward him.

After weeks of terrifying encounters, demands are made and an executioner sent for. A small crowd of brave townsfosantinizdardolnihrbitov4lk gather at Ulrich’s grave as his coffin is opened.

He lay as if sleeping. Months dead and still pink with life.

The priest holds out the crucifix before him like a shield. “I name you Alois Ulrich,” he says.

And Alois Ulrich sits up, his eyes open and still filled with the bitter hatred they held in life.

The priest shrieks and steps back while the executioner frantically swings the blade of a shovel at Alois Ulrich’s head. Fresh blood pours from the gaping wound and Ulrich’s face goes slack as the body falls back into the coffin.

The priest shoves poppy in the creature’s mouth and the executioner bathes it in quicklime–traditional protections against a vampire. They seal the coffin and bury it deep.

Silently the townsfolk slip through the gate at the Lower Cemetery, built in anticipation of a plague that never came. They carry that hope with them–that once again their worst fears will not come to pass. That Alois Ulrich, the tyrant, is finally and fully dead at last.

Haunted Bohemia: Headless Knights

Do you like your Fall with a bit of a scare and a thrill to send shivers down your spine? Me too! In the countdown to All Hallow’s Eve, I thought I’d spotlight a few haunted places and ghost stories to compliment the crispy air and pumpkin-spice everything.

As I discovered in doing research for Bohemian Gospel (out November 15th from Pegasus Books), Bohemia, or what we would call the Czech Republic plays host to some of the creepiest places on Earth and isn’t a place most of us are familiar with. So for the next couple of weeks, I’ll be posting about some eerie castles and haunting tales.

Here’s the first:

During the witching hour along the twisty, narrow Liliova Street in Old Prague,  the sharp rap of a horse’s hooves echoes against the ancient cobblestone and bounces along the lane.

karlova

Slowly, the form of a horse and rider emerge from the shadowy night, and a flicker of errant light illuminates the red cross emblazoned on the rider’s shield–a lone member of the Order of Solomon’s Temple, a Knights Templar.

Templar+KnightHe rides, wearily, night after night, his severed head dangling from his hand. No one knows his sins. But he searches endlessly for a noble soul with courage enough to grasp the wayward rein and still his horse, claim his sword and run the blade through his penitent heart and so release him from his purgatory.

Are you the brave redeemer for whom he waits?

The Magic of Maybe

“‘Maybe,’ Mister Ernest said. ‘The best word in our language, the best of all. That’s what mankind keeps going on: maybe.’”

See? William Faulkner actually could write coherent sentences. This one comes from the end of his short story, “Race at Morning.”

I love Faulkner.
faulkner

I know, you probably had to read The Sound and The Fury in high school and got frustrated and threw it across your room and decided you HATED Faulkner. But really, that wasn’t his fault. It was the institution’s fault for forcing teachers to cram books at students before they’re ready for them and in a way that kills and autopsies the work so that it’s dead, dead, dead. And that’s why you hated it. Not him. Not his beautiful words. Not his ideas.

Like this idea of Maybe being better than a “yes” or a “no”—you have to love that, right?

We’ve become a culture of yesses and nos. This or that. Here or there. One side or the other. We pride ourselves on knowing our own minds.

But where’s the fun in that?

Is there intelligent alien life in the universe?

Maybe. I don’t know. Let’s go look.
MILKYWAY

Will I have a brownie today?

Maybe. I don’t know, but it’s a yummy possibility.
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Is there something real hiding in the dark in the corner that’s making my skin prick at the back of my neck or is it all my imagination?

Maybe. What might it be?
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(It’s the vashta nerada, people! Don’t you watch Doctor Who?)

For writers, Maybe is where the magic lives. No preconceptions. No expectations. No rules. We get to explore and imagine and wonder.

But Maybe isn’t just for writers crafting stories on a page, or readers reading them. It’s in the stories we live out each day. Open doors and hope and possibility.

The joy of the journey isn’t in finding the answers—it’s in admitting we don’t know, actually embracing and reveling in the not knowing, and then exploring all those possibilities.

This week I’m going to bask in “I don’t know.” Maybe you’ll join me.

The Readiness Is All

When I was kid, living in Podunk, Arkansas, my mom ran a for-me-only cotillion (because there wasn’t a “real” one). She wanted to teach me the essential skills of balancing a teacup on my knee, a book on my head, and my chastity somewhere between flirty and virtuous.

Such behavioral training is designed for a singular purpose—catching the “right” man. But despite my Southern cultural conditioning, I decided pretty early on that I did not need a man. Everything I wanted—education, meaningful career, kids—I could get for myself and by myself (minus a donation here or there). And so in college, I decided I was done with men.

Which is when I met my husband.

Years later, we’d been trying unsuccessfully to conceive when we decided to hold off on Baby for another year while we worked frantically to finish our dissertations so we could take the new jobs we had in a city in another state where we were shopping for our first house. Talk about stress! Whew! Any guesses what happened?

Yup. A little girl kid joyfully on the way in the midst of chaos.

So many things seem to work that way, don’t they? When we try REALLY HARD to make things happen NOW in just the RIGHT way, everything seems to slip (or run screaming) away from our determined grasp. When we quit trying SO HARD, things just happen.

Winnie the Pooh had this thing figured out:

“Poetry and Hums aren’t things which you get, they’re things which get you. And all you can do is to go where they can find you.” (The House at Pooh Corner)

Pooh is brilliant, especially for a bear of little brain. He doesn’t strategize about catching Poetry and Hums. He doesn’t work hard and harder to get them. He doesn’t blame himself or them, doesn’t give in to self-doubt or give up just because they aren’t there when he wants them.

He interacts with the world knowing that the Poetry and Hums are there. He keeps himself ready for other Poetry and Hums to find him, too. And they do.

Now certainly folks deal with problems, big ones and little ones, that need something more than Pooh’s method of problem solving, but most of us would benefit from adopting his tactics in lieu of our strategizing and micro-managing and worrying.

When we stay relaxed and positive and open to possibilities, things find us. Sometimes they are things we already knew we wanted and had prepared ourselves to accept. But sometimes a thing we hadn’t anticipated will come our way, and we discover that it was something we needed or wanted all along.

This is an especially necessary attitude for anyone writing a novel. We tend to understand this from the creative side—writing is an organic, fluid process. You prime the creative pumps, fill the creative wells, and establish the discipline so that you’re readying yourself for the words and ideas and characters to come. There’s no mastering or conquering. There’s no demanding.

But we need the same approach when it comes to readying ourselves for publication.

For the better part of two years, I determined to make a traditional publishing journey happen just how I was told it should and just when I thought it ought to. Trained by the publishing version of a cotillion, I endeavored to get the agent and go for one of the big five. I got the agent, which has been an incredible blessing of partnership, but after a few months into the submission process to editors, I realized that, for many reasons, I didn’t want to be courting those big guys. I had bought someone else’s idea of what my journey as a writer should look like.

So I asked my agent to start looking at smaller presses, and, in the meantime, I went into overdrive trying to master all things indie-publishing and wrapped myself up so tightly in learning it ALL and RIGHT THEN and JUST SO that everything, and especially writing, seemed impossible. I was ready to give up.

Which is when my husband reminded me that I just needed to “go where they can find you.”

In my case, this meant sending a submission to Killer Nashville’s Claymore Award and then forgetting about it and turning back to the writing and filling the creative well and readying myself.

I did keep learning what I could about indie publishing, but I did it patiently, without expectation, in a mind of readiness.

And then a call came telling me I was a finalist for the Claymore. I went to the conference with no expectations, and I met some wonderful writers and editors and was inspired. I went to the awards dinner with no anticipation and no worry. I was genuinely and thoroughly shocked when they announced that Bohemian Gospel (my book!) had won the Claymore. I was overjoyed when, two weeks later, several editors were vying for the novel, and I was ecstatic when Pegasus Books, one of the publishers I asked my agent to court, made me an offer.

But I was also ready. My Poetry and Hums had found me at last.

Lessons from Doctor Who–Part One

This time last year, I was saying a conflicted goodbye to 2012.

It had been a year of challenges for me: breast cancer diagnosis in January, double mastectomy in February, a serious fall down a flight of stairs (knocked-unconscious-bleeding-from-the-ears-major concussion-chin-split-to-the-bone-five-teeth-shattered-ambulance-ride-to-the-hospital-in-a-neck-and-back-brace kind of serious) in March, multiple breast reconstruction surgeries May through October, oral surgeries to repair the teeth in the fall, and surgery to remove a totally random just-for-fun kidney stone before year’s end.

I was pretty convinced that the whole Mayan calendar “End of Days” was predicted just for me.

Mayan Calendar
Mayan Calendar

Last year was also the first time our daughter decided to stay up and ring in the New Year.  We’d introduced her to Doctor Who and it timed out beautifully that she was ready for the Tenth Doctor’s farewell, The End of Time, on New Year’s Eve.  

regeneration

Watch David Tennant’s last moments as the Doctor here: 10th’s Regeneration

So we said a tearful goodbye to one Doctor (our favorite), a trepidatious hello to another, and then we watched the ball drop in Times Square.  As tough as 2012 was for me and my family, it was a year of survival.  2013 was an unknown.

But as the Doctor shows us, time and again, change comes.  TARDIS consoles, companions, the faces of the Doctor–they all change whether we want them to or not.

The trick is how we approach change.

The agonizing departure of the Tenth, who was so obsessed with looking back (the Doctor of Regret as The Moment calls him) that he breaks the rules to take a farewell tour and say goodbye to his many companions, nearly destroys the TARDIS.  And the recent regeneration of the Eleventh, the Doctor of Forget, who constantly rushes forward to something new and lives in fear of “the question that must not be answered,” happens so violently it serves as a weapon, wiping out the Daleks at Trenzalore.

One is constantly looking to the past and the other is running headlong into the future; neither of them is very good at just being in the moment–understandable for a Time Lord, I suppose.

But being in the moment is the secret to accepting change.

Someone says, “You have cancer.” And suddenly you are a little kid again, frozen with fear as you anticipate crossing a dark room.  The prickling at the back of your neck and your heartbeat throbbing in your throat battles the rational thoughts assuring you that there’s nothing hiding in the dark.  Will it snake a gnarly hand around your ankle and snatch you away?

For a planner and control freak, like me, focusing on what might be coming seems natural, logical.  But I learned quickly that imagining the possibilities–surgery, what the pathology might indicate, potential chemo or radiation, prognosis–only choked me with fear.  I don’t know what’s lurking in the dark, and I have absolutely no control over it.

Anticipating the future, living in dread of the changes that might happen or living for the thrill of them, wipes out the joys of the moment.  Likewise, looking back to what was, comparing now to then (which we almost always idealize), distorts our attitudes about change.

I walked into a hospital whole and came out transformed.  When days later I stood in my bathroom and took off the bandages and let my eyes slide from the reflection of my familiar face down to the incisions that stretched across my chest where my breasts had been, I understood vividly the choice I had to make.

I could grieve for what had been, see the ghosts of breasts that made me wait so much longer than my friends that I despaired they would ever grow, breasts that finally blossomed the summer before my ninth-grade year, breasts that nursed my children, breasts that, despite my feminism, I innately associated with my womanhood; I could let those past breasts haunt me.  I could compare my new breasts, also grown (or crafted by the plastic surgeon) over a summer, to those other breasts and forever tether myself to the past.

Or I could embrace who I am now, scars and all.

In this moment, I can find the joy of my transformed body–stronger for what we’ve been through, hopefully healthy, ALIVE.  (And these new breasts are round and firm! ; ))

Despite not wanting to go, the Doctor embraces his new self quickly and sets about the work of discovery.  (Fish sticks and custard, anyone?)

Rather than spend this New Year’s waxing nostalgic for what was or obsessing over what will be, how about we settle in to the moment and make good decisions just now and revel in the joy of what is.

 

Mommy Guilt & Unexpected Dividends

A little change of pace here.  I’ve been writing lots about Bohemian Gospel, but I promised to weave together the threads of homeschooling and professoring, too, because I imagine that many of you are also trying to figure out how to manage a writing life with all the other “stuff” that fills your days.

When I started taking my writing seriously, clearing chunks of time from an already packed schedule, I knew lots of things would suffer the consequences.

My house, for example, has not been fully, wholly, scandalously clean in a few years.  We tackle the necessaries so it’s never gross or unhealthy, but it most certainly doesn’t hold up to my mother’s standards.  And the kids have learned the oh-my-goodness-someone-is-coming-over cleaning dance (feels a little like the Mary Poppins scene when everyone takes their stations in anticipation of Admiral Boom’s daily cannon-fire).  I have resigned myself to knowing that our very lived-in home will never take on the magazine-spread look of some of my friends’ houses.

Ditto for the yard.

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See? Weedy garden. Judge at will. : )

But our neighbors love us anyway.  We ply them with excess vegetables in bumper gardening years and with  Wookiee Cookies (BEST chocolate-chip cookies EVER).

Wookie_Cookies-1

Good food can make you blind to OVERGROWN GRASS and WEEDS. (Plus, the neighbors are just wonderful people.)

Weedy yards and a less-than-pristine house are consequences I find easy to live with and well worth the gains of time to write and the joy that comes from having written.  An added bonus is that my daughter and my son will not grow up with unrealistic expectations of “keeping house.”

But my Mommy-guilt has been far more difficult to master.

At first, I stole hours late at night after the kids were in bed.  I worked my way up to claiming a few hours on the weekend, cloistering myself in the back room–one earbud in for tunes and an open ear turned house-ward, listening in case someone needed me.  Surprisingly, I got work done, some of it even good.  But it took being awarded sabbatical to nudge me toward really carving the time I needed to research and write and edit my first novel; writing was my JOB that semester, and my university would be expecting results.

Adjusting to me being home BUT WORKING took time.  My husband and I always managed our teaching schedules so one of us was at the university and the other was at home, schooling the kids.  Only now, I didn’t head off to teach; I closed a door and clocked my hours researching or writing.

And it felt good.  It felt right.

But there was still a twinge of thinking I was being selfish.  In the Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron calls that nasty voice filling us with guilt and self-doubt, the Censor.

theartistsway

I worked on not listening to it, but it was my daughter who finally slayed the beast.

She started writing.  Every day.  For months.  Until she completed her first novel, 80 some odd pages.  She was not yet 10.  And then she finished her second, over 100 pages.

She’s 120 pages into novel three.

My son is dictating a book about a dinosaur named Maple to his sister, who diligently types every word.

And my husband is working through revisions on a forthcoming book about comics. (Here’s a sneak peak from one of the chapters.)

These unexpected dividends happen, not like magic, but when you scuttle other people’s expectations of how you should live and make room for your own.

Sure our house might be a little cluttered; it’s full of stories.