Small Worlds

I’m lying in bed debating on whether to take over the counter pain relievers, my prescription pain relievers (always a last choice) or to ride out my rapidly elevating discomfort.  I have a congenital muscular condition that, on bad days like today, basically feels like every tendon and every muscle is being pulled as tightly as possible.  No amount of stretching, yoga or hot baths will help on days like today.  It’s just, well, a bad day.  Fortunately, since I’ve lost a significant amount of weight and I have committed to moving everyday these days are less prevalent.  But when they happen it’s hard to not feel as if I’ve taken a major step backwards.  It’s hard to not feel as if some behavior or action in the prior days has led up to this. 

What I really fight against is the overwhelming feeling that I am just crazy to think I can live the life that I do…that what my body is really saying is, “give up” “stop now” or “who do you think you are?”.  It’s only been a few years that I’ve been active and striving to be more so.  That I got up off the couch and moved again.  It’s only been a few years since I’ve done things like gone dancing or out for long walks or traveled again.  Some days I still do it but with a cane.  It’s been even less time that I have done all of these things without fear.  There was a time long ago, when I looked out my office window (I used to work from home) and saw women in my neighborhood out for their daily walk.  I remember thinking, “They make that look so easy.”  As my body grew weaker, my world grew smaller.  And while now I live differently, on days like today my mind returns to that small world.  It’s a struggle to keep my world bigger and to remember I am here now.  I am stronger now.  It’s a struggle to allow myself to be weak today, knowing it will allow to be strong again tomorrow.

Survival Skills

It’s been eight years since my mother died.  While her loss weighs on my heart every day, like millions of people who have suffered a loss, I move forward.  In the looking backwards, I have come to see that first year as something akin to being submerged underwater.  I spent many days suspended, neither sinking nor swimming.  Occasionally, I’d break the surface of the water that was my grief, survey the landscape of the shore that was my life, and slip silently back under.  As the months passed I spent fewer days submerged and more time surveying the shore until, one day, I found myself on solid land once more.  That suspended time kept me from losing my mind, of that, I have no doubt.  In the moments when the grief was too much to hold or carry, that proverbial water could take the weight of it all for me.

These last few weeks I have had a feeling of Déjà vu and couldn’t put my finger on it until recently.  That feeling of slipping silently under the surface had returned, making me wonder what was too heavy for me to carry?  Yes, I have had huge transitions, and I’ve said goodbye to my home of fifteen years.  But it wasn’t that.  I don’t feel as if I have more than I can handle right now.  All of the changes have been known, planned for and expected.  I’ve been letting go of my island life for almost a year. It’s a lot and there are days I say to myself, “Really? What next?” but I’ve had more stress or change without this feeling.  So what is it? 

And then it came to me.  Slipping under the surface, getting into a quiet space deep inside isn’t always about letting go of something.  Sometimes it is about finding something.  When I emailed a dear friend about another issue, she said these words: "The starting line for the road to you is right in front of you. GO!"  When I read those words I knew that my mind and heart had, once again, created respite when my life circumstances could not.  And now I know slipping under the surface, as well as walking back to solid ground isn’t just a grief response.  It’s a survival skill.

Brazen Marketing: Caught and Kept

I am an indie author.  That sounds so renegade and free spirited but in reality it means one.  Not one thing.  Just one.  Me.  All me.  Just me.  I don’t have staff.  On second thought, I do beg Syd Parker to clean up my book covers with her mad graphic skills and I plead with friends who have more grammar skills than me to cull through my manuscripts.  So I might have, at least, volunteers.  However, the task of marketing a book is down to me.  I should be fired. 

It’s funny because in my day job I can discuss with clients how to get themselves out into the world all day long.  When it comes to me, I post an announcement on Facebook and then quietly step away hoping I haven’t disturbed anyone.  When I wrote my first book, Infinity’s Song, in 2012 it took me almost seven months to publish it.  A friend finally sent me a song with the lyric, “you’ve got a voice as loud as lions so why let your voice be tamed?” and then said she was waiting to hold my book in her hands.  With tactics like that, what was a girl to do but publish her book?  But the marketing is still where I fall down.  It’s the place where being an indie is a disadvantage. 

In an effort to rectify that, at least a little, I’m going to blog about my latest book, Caught and Kept available now on Amazon and through your independent bookstores.  (I secretly hope you order through a bookstore.  What would the world be without them? But, alas, our e-readers are so convenient.)

Caught and Kept is the second in the Siren’s Song Series. The book was written at a time when I was experiencing much turmoil and loss.  My twenty two year marriage had ended, but I also had a couple of friendships that were in flux and one in particular for which I was grieving.  I didn’t really know where solid ground was in my life.  As I pondered the reality that friendships have the ability to break your heart just as much as lovers, Caught and Kept was born.

My setting is personally important in this book.  The majority of the book takes place on Whidbey Island, Washington.  I recently left the island after fifteen years.  As I wrote I felt my time there was coming to an end.  I wanted this book to reflect my love of Whidbey and the magic it holds.  I’ve often called it my own Avalon…an island set apart by the mists of Puget Sound.  However, the book is part of The Siren Song Series and the Siren is both a place and a character for me.  The Siren’s Song is an imaginary private club located in Seattle just for lesbians.  I physically based the Siren on the downtown YMCA building (the irony wasn’t lost on me, trust me).  A quiet, unassuming and yet, pretty brick building you could walk by and never realize was there, but for the sign.  The concept was simple.  I designed a space I wish existed for us.  A beautiful, safe, supportive and nurturing place for women to find community and be themselves.  After the book came out that was the number one Facebook message, “Please tell me it’s real!”  My reply remains the same: I’ll build it if I sell enough books.    

I got asked recently, “Are Kai and Dani real?”  Yes.  All my characters are real.  I draw from my life and those around me.  It’s important that when I write, the characters are people with their own lives and stories.  My closest friends will recognize pieces of themselves in all of my characters.  Recently, I was given a little plaque that said, “Be careful or you’ll end up in my novel.”  My friends all know that’s true.

Reviews and feedback tell me readers find this book a quiet, sweet romance with humor.  I was pleased to hear that.  Sometimes love comes quietly, either in romance or in friendships or in the case of Kai and Dani, both.  I hope for those of you who have already read Caught and Kept, you enjoyed it.  If you haven’t yet read it, I’d be honored if you’d put in on your list. Please, do let me know what you think.   

In the true marketing spirit, I’m offering a giveaway.  Find me on Facebook and private message me your funniest or sweetest memory of a best friend.  The first three that make me laugh out loud or tear up will receive a signed copy of Caught and Kept or Infinity’s Song. If you prefer email send them to penelope_grey@yahoo.com.