Leaf Me Alone

 

  I listen to them. They say I'm beautiful when it gets cold. They love my red color, but they complain when all the red falls off and they have to rake it up. No one says it's beautiful when one of them loses the stuff on top. 'Hair' they call it. The two-trunks are disgusting creatures.
  After I'm bald, they go around and drive tubes into my bark and catch my sap in buckets. Oh, the pain! The oak told me they boil down the sap and eat it on pancakes (whatever that is). Revolting.
  None of them will allow another two-trunk to drive tubes into their bark and collect their red sap in buckets. 'Blood' they call it. Although the dogwood told me he heard some of them talking about a movie (whatever that is) where the two-trunks did that to each other and laughed about it. Disgusting creatures! I wish I had been planted somewhere far away from these lunatics.
  The oak told me when I die, I won't go to two-trunk heaven (whatever that is) but to the lumber mill. 'Hardwood floors' they call it. What an insult to my beauty. I feel safe in saying the trees will still be around long after the disgusting two-trunks. No creature so revolting can possibly survive its own stupidity.
  The next time you see a bald two-trunk eating pancakes, think of me.

Lighthouse Keeper

  It's 387 steps to the top. I know this because I'd counted them every evening at twilight for fourteen years. I could get to the top in my sleep. In 2006, they installed a switch at the bottom of the stairs. Then I only had to climb once a week to clean the windows or change the bulbs.
  Natalie left in '07 and took Gemma with her. She said it was too isolated and no place to raise a child, that Gemma needed other children to play with. I stayed.
  In '08 the hurricane took out most of the beach. I rode out the storm in the lighthouse tower. The generator needed tending, of course. It was my duty. The light stayed on for forty-eight hours straight. The governor thanked me in person for my diligence. The state even gave me a raise.
  Gemma graduated high school last year. She asked if she could come live with me. She said she missed the solitude and the beach and me. Mostly me. She met a surfer I don't approve of, but he's opening a T-shirt shop on the boardwalk. I guess I could learn to like him if it means Gemma stays on the island.
  Last week my left knee gave out on the seventy-eighth step. I had to descend the rest of the way on my bottom, like a toddler. "Knee replacement," the doctor said. "No more stairs."
  I'm too young to retire.

(I thought this fit well on a hurricane weekend with Joaquin passing by the coast of NC.)
 

The Influence of Music on My Writing

  I was in third grade when my older brother Adam brought home the first record album he had purchased with his own money. It was Kiss Destroyer. I remember being stunned and fascinated by the four men on the cover dressed in black leather costumes with chains, platform spiked boots, and makeup masks. Scary stuff for an eight year-old whose musical experience prior to this had consisted of listening to my mother's old Beatles albums on our derelict hi-fi, but I cannot understate its influence on my life.
  I grew to appreciate the loud music coming from Adam's room. While my peers were still singing "It's a Small World," I was soaking up Deep Purple, Peter Frampton, Grand Funk Railroad, Boston, and Bachman Turner Overdrive. My brother was also an avid reader, and I don't think it was a coincidence that his favorite genre was science fiction. His music and reading seemed to go in lock-step, and my own reading preferences soon followed.
  I was eleven years-old when Star Wars came out in theaters. The movie seemed to resonate with me as much as my brother's Rush A Farewell to Kings eight-track tape. After reading every Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, and Three Investigators book in fourth and fifth grades, I was ready for something more edgy to stir my imagination. Star Wars was the first SF book I read, and I had to consult a dictionary several times to get through it. Science fiction became my genre of choice.
  In high school I discovered Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat series. AC/DC's Back in Black was my favorite album, but I also played air guitar to Scorpions, Quiet Riot, and Def Leppard. My music and reading preferences were in lock-step, and my writing followed suit. I have a filing cabinet drawer full of short stories and half-finished novellas from high school and college, and most of them are SF.
  Does what we listen to influence what we like to read, and vice-versa? Compare my love of heavy metal and science fiction to my best friend in high school who preferred pop music. The first time she played Madonna in the car, I needed a barf bag. It was no surprise to me that she liked to read chick-lit. Nicholas Sparks is still her favorite author. (I need a barf bag just thinking about it.)
  In college I dated a guy who introduced me to more metal and took me to concerts. Judas Priest was our favorite band. He preferred Tom Clancy novels to SF, but I married him anyway.
  When my youngest child was four, I threw away the Sesame Street cassette tapes (it would be another five years before we had a vehicle with a CD player) and told my captive minivan audience, "Now we're going to listen to some real music!" I think the first song I cranked up for them was Collective Soul's "Heavy." And when my oldest son was experimenting with groups like Fallout Boy and Yellow Card in middle school, I bought him the Best of Led Zeppelin. I'm proud to say that he now knows the lyrics to every song by Metallica.
  Now here's my disclaimer: I'm sure there are some country-music lovers out there who like to read horror. There are probably a few Taylor Swift fans who don't read chick-lit. There's no proven correlation between music and literary tastes, but it's definitely been true for me. Listening to metal sparked my interest in science fiction, and, like most authors, I write what I like to read.
  Music stirs my imagination. Reading makes me a better writer, but it's the music that makes me want to write. While I'm sitting in carpool, I blast Rush Clockwork Angels to help me imagine the next scene in my book. What do I listen to while I'm writing? Nothing. Silence. But I need the music to get me in the right frame of mind to write. It's funny how that works.

SAHMA--Stay at Home Mom/Author

  What do I do all day? The first thing I do each day is clean. Not because I like to clean (yeah, I hate it), but because in cleaning I find things that need my urgent attention. Unfinished tasks, projects, and moldy things the kids hide in the couch cushions. While I clean, I find new things to occupy my time--time that I should spend writing.
  When I tire of projects, I write. (Yeah, I know I should rearrange my priorities: write first, projects second.) While I write, my house gets dirty and disorganized again. The place perpetuates new projects all by itself. (The kids help some in that department.)
  Then there's those all-too-frequent moments--and by moments, I mean hours--when I check my email, Facebook, and Amazon. It's a bad habit, one that sucks up my time like the Dyson vacuum cleaner I can't afford. I could probably write a novel every six months if the internet was down. (There's an idea!)
  And when I'm really bored, I call my mother and listen to her whine while I paint my toenails or look at Amazon again.
  I used to have a condition called chronic volunteerism, but I was cured when I published my first book. I've yet to find volunteer work I enjoy that doesn't use up too much of my time--time that I should spend writing.
  Oh, and sometimes I take care of my four kids who still live at home. Three of them are adults so I consider my job done if I keep food in the kitchen, TP in the bathrooms, and laundry detergent next to the Maytag. The youngest still needs to be fed and chauffeured around, but sometimes the older ones will do that for me if I tell them--and by tell them, I mean beg, plead, and bribe--in the middle of writing a scene.
  I've trained them well, but I will always be mom first, author second.
  Time to get off my blog. I hear my laptop calling.

August Relief

 

  Most Southern kids hate the oppressive heat of late summer, but I'm always grateful for August. It's the only month of the year when Daddy will run the air conditioning. No matter if July is sweltering and September is miserable, we only get relief in August. I can sleep past 8:00 a.m. without waking up in a puddle. Thanks goodness we don't live in Florida. It's hot enough here in North Carolina.
  I love falling to sleep to the gentle strains of the AC's mechanical buzz. Our home is cool for 31 blissful days, even though the summer heat lingers from late April to early October here.
  I always have nightmares when it's hot at night, but Daddy hasn't quite made the connection. I wake up to the continuous chirping of the crickets, but to me it sounds like monsters outside my window, ready to feast on my flesh like zombies.
  Once I woke up screaming for Daddy. There was a thunderstorm and the rain was coming in my window. I though a burglar had shoved me into a bag and tossed me in the river. I know it was just a bad dream, one of many, but my home doesn't feel safe in the summer. Something about the open windows, the stifling air, and an imagination that can't get a good night's sleep while I'm tossing and turning on sweat-soaked sheets.
  I only sleep soundly in August when the windows are closed. In August I'm safe from the storms and the monsters. My nightmares take their annual vacation, at least until Daddy gets the electric bill and opens the windows again.
  I'm grateful Daddy runs the heat December through February, at least.

Prayers for Nathaniel

  My life was a blur when I had small boys. The oldest was six years old when number four was born. 'Crazy' was an apt description of my life. I was so busy meeting their basic needs for food, clean clothes and diapers, and transportation to preschool and soccer practice, that sometimes I neglected my own needs. Thank goodness for a camcorder or I would have forgotten all the sweet moments, the laugh-out-loud funny things they did and said.

  My third son made me laugh the most, but he also gave me heart attacks. Nathaniel was absolutely fearless, very unlike his cautious, easy-going older brothers. I had to relearn how to parent when Nathaniel came along. At 18 months, he walked to the edge of a two-story balcony with no railing. I couldn't reach him because the space was only wide enough for a toddler to squeeze through.

  I've never prayed so hard in my life. But God heard my prayers, and Nathaniel turned away from the ledge and came back to my waiting arms.

 Two weeks later, Nathaniel vanished from the yard when I turned my back for a moment. We lived on a cul-de-sac so there was no fear of him getting hit by a car, but I frantically searched for half an hour, recruiting the help of any neighbor I could find. I don't think I stopped praying the entire thirty minutes, until he reappeared from a backyard. He explained that he had gone to see a doggie, and was mystified why I was sobbing and hugging him so tightly.
 
At twelve, Nathaniel was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. He spent his thirteen birthday in the hospital. Eighth grade was a blur as he recovered from surgery and struggled to adjust to a synthetic thyroid replacement while going through puberty. It was a long road to recovery, complicated by years of 'self-medicating' and addiction. I've never spent so much time on my knees, praying for one individual. I consider Nathaniel my greatest challenge in life, and one of my greatest blessings.

 I've never stopped asking God to watch over Nathaniel, my heart attack child. On Sunday he moves out to attend college. He'll be living by himself in an apartment in an unfamiliar city. I think I'll be doing a lot more praying, but I'll trust in God to watch over him. My job as a mother is (mostly) done.

Wedgewood

  Julie tried to ignore her stinging eyes as she started on the dining room. She told herself it was just the dust as she blinked hard and began to take the beautiful china out of the hutch. Julie took time to wrap each plate in newspaper before placing it in the box, but she had no illusions that her brothers were taking the same care in the kitchen.
  A crash and tinkling of glass met her ears, but she refused to go investigate. Let the selfish jerks clean up their own messes.
  "Aw, man, that might have been worth something!" Ed bellowed from the living room
  Mike bellowed back, "Shut it!" and "Where's the broom?"
  Julie assembled another box and started opening the drawers of the hutch. A long, tarnished, silver cake knife drew her attention. She took it out and squinted at the engraving on the handle: Michael and Anna, June 23, 1956.
  Julie wiped at her uncooperative eyes as she placed the knife in the box for the auction. She turned back to the hutch and opened another drawer. She discovered a blue velvet box filled with tarnished gold spoons. They looked very old, as if they had never been used.
  Mike walked in to check on Julie's progress. He snatched the box of spoons from her hands and tossed it onto the dining room table. "Don't get sentimental, Jules. We sell it all. Everything."