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.  

Untethered

“You must be so excited.” 

Those words were said to me more than once yesterday as I ran around on my first day back from England.  I live on an island so, of course, people know almost as much about me as I do.  They certainly all know I’ve been gone for six weeks; that my house sale is pending inspections and escrow; that I have a new place in Portland.  A few know I am dating someone new.  Such a simple conjecture—”you must be so excited”—but really what I feel is untethered.  It’s a word that whispers itself in the back of my head.  Sometimes it feels ominously threatening and at other times it feels joyous.

As I came home from the airport the other night, it was one of those island nights that defies description.  The air was warm, the sky was beyond gorgeous, the Sound glistened, and the stars twinkled just on the edge of the dusk—the island, the Sound, the sky, and my soul all woven together.  Those are the nights that make me want to get on my hands and knees and kiss the earth.  For I live in a place that makes you earn them, let me tell you.  As the ferry sailed closer and closer to the Clinton dock, I was filled with a deep love and reverence for this place.  Coming up the hill from the boat, I immediately wanted to stop everything I had set into motion four months ago.  I wanted to text my real estate agent and say, “Just kidding.  I’m not selling.”  I wanted to call all my clients and say, “I’ll be back on Monday if you’ll take me.”  But then I heard the word untethered in the back of my head…as if carried by the wind.  The last few days have been full of those moments. Hang on or let go.  And each time that word lingers.

I came to the island seeking roots and grounding.  In the last fifteen years I’ve gotten that aplenty.  I have a community of people who have held me up and carried me through so much.  And they’ve allowed me the honor of returning that favor. I literally learned to feel the earth—in my hands as I learned to garden and grow food—and in my soul as learned I am merely a small creature on this planet. 

Now, it feels as if those around me know it’s time for me to leave this place.  For now…perhaps...but, I hope, not forever.  So I am greeted with: “you must be so excited” often these days.  It’s as if everyone can see it’s time for me to fly and they are gently letting go of the tie that binds me here by offering me anticipation.  As much as there is possibility in that, there is deep fear.  What if, like a balloon released from a grasping hand, I float so high and far there is nothing to hold me anymore?  In the quietest of moments this morning, another thought came to me.  Unless I am untethered, I will never know if there is somewhere else in the world I am meant to land and grow new roots.