I'm on Spotlight Sunday

Fellow EP author Stephanie O'Hanlon did a write-up about Fairest. Check out her article and her website! 

Spotlight Sunday

I'm stoked

about my fabulous new book covers!!

WILD ROSEGARTEN, release date February 1, 2015 by Eternal Press:

BLOOMING ROSEGARTEN, release date April 1, 2015 by Eternal Press:

Waiting (a different time)

During the hours that I sat in the waiting room for Oncology, I studied dream interpretation. I bought several books on the subject, and while the doctors radiated my mother, I read about symbolism. The waiting room was large, so large that I could sit alone and never worry that anyone would need to sit next to me. I always sat in the section away from the TV and close to the refreshment center. I kept to myself and spoke to no one. I just read until the nurse called me to go out and pull the car around for my mother.

One Thursday, a woman sat next to me, which forced me stop reading and acknowledge her. She smiled and pointed to my book.  “Dream interpretation,” she said. “Sounds neat.”

“It can be,” I said.

We introduced ourselves and began a lengthy conversation on the symbolism of colors and numbers. 

After talking for about ten minutes, she told me that she moved her father in with her family so she could take care of him, her husband, and her three kids. Bone cancer. Even now, I still wince at the thought of it. Not as bad as pancreatic, liver, or colon cancers but bad, very hard to treat, usually fatal. He was to the point where he had to wear a neck brace all the time. It was the first time that I was ever thankful for the type of cancer my mother had.

For the next week, she brought her father at the same time I brought my mother, and we talked about dreams and cancer. I feel a bit ashamed that I can’t remember her name, especially since I remember her dreams. They were normal dreams about every day sorts of things with the exception that she was always dragging a heavy black garbage bag. About the time he reached the point where he could no longer care for himself, her father began throwing all his trash down the ravine behind his house. The hillside was strewn with black garbage bags of trash, and this woman and her husband had to clean it all up before they could sell the house. She was angry and burdened, and those feelings made her feel guilty. After talking about it, she felt better and joked that I ought to charge her for my time. 

Near the end of that week, her father’s white count was too low for him to receive more treatments. After that, I never saw her again, but one of the nurses, who overheard our conversations, commented to me that I was a sweet girl for talking to her.  Her father’s prognosis was poor, and I had likely eased her guilt about the situation. 

Of the meeting, my mother said, “God works in mysterious ways.”

I replied, “Of course He does. If He didn’t, we would all understand everything, and there would be no cancer.”

“You know I believe that everything happens for a reason,” she said.

“Yeah, well, why do you think you got cancer?”

She shrugged. “Maybe to bring you and your father closer together.”

“That’s fucked up,” I said, to which she snapped at me for cursing. “I think you got cancer because you grew up in a city before there was any regulation on what toxins industries to pump into the air, and you went to college in a town where the morning air was so filled with chemicals it was yellow.”

“And I didn’t wear sunscreen like I should,” she added. “Maybe, maybe not. Sometimes things just break.”

So I thought, Even God answers his children's questions with, "Because." It's not an answer at all, so why bother asking? 

    

   

Waiting

I sat in Endoscopy, my nose shoved in a book, while I waited for the ass doctor to look in Fluffy's ass. I heard the door open, close, open, close. Couples murmured as the patient filled out forms and the driver commented on how neat it was that the doctor uses those restaurant pagers to let you know he's done shoving a camera in whichever orifice is questionable.

"You sign here."
"I'll fill that out for you."
"Here's a check for the co-pay."
"My friend went back three hours ago. They have to laser cysts out of his stomach. I hope he's okay."
"Is that coffee any good?"
"No."

Stupid idiot, asking a stupid question. I never drank anything out of a Bunn coffee maker that didn't taste like a waterlogged ashtray. Asstray.

"Pardon me."

Large man - in the tall, muscly meaning of the word - sat down next to me. Carhartt head-to-toe. He wore a class ring. I couldn't tell what school. He laughed at a bit on whatever gig Kathie Lee has now. Seth Rogan was naked. Later, something about an anaconda not eating someone and how everyone was bummed out about it.

I shifted and then sprawled my knees apart, crossed my ankles. I can take up space, too. Although, I'd like to take up less space, honestly.

I get back into the book. I was buying a red Fiero with Miriam Black when the smell hit me. I reacted. I tried not to, but I couldn't help the watering eyes, the burning nostrils. I thought the woman across from me was wearing enough perfume to cover the scent of a rotting corpse but apparently not.

She waddled down the aisle, sat down catty-cornered to me. It came in waves - the piss and shit smell of someone who is dying. I don't know how else to describe it. This is the smell of nursing homes. No matter what they do, they can never cover the smell of old people who piss and shit themselves. Her name is Candy. She can't be any less than 60, and her name is Candy, and I can smell what they will find when they stick the camera up her ass. 

And hours later, I can't get it out of my nose.

Work comes in asteroid belts.

The semester is winding down, which means its's time for the last tests, last assignments, last ditch efforts before final exams.

I am also editing like crazy. I received the ARC for the first book of the Camellia series, Wild Rosegarten. I finished going over that while also trying to get through a first round edit on the second book in the series.

Editing books and editing tests. If 24 of Ms. Birdwell's students like reading and 6 do not, what is the ratio of the number of vampires Camellia has killed to the number of men she has slept with? Makes the head spin.

Type of Fool

I

If we had been lovers, I would’ve been a cliché – alone, lonely, the dinner I cooked for us cooling on the table. When you said you would come, I picked flowers from my garden. My heirloom and confederate roses, the tiny purple blooms on the monkey grass, Gerber daisies, and day lilies I arranged in a Mason jar. Aphids on the rose petals. You didn’t show. You didn’t call, but I didn’t worry. You have always been flaky, flighty. I knew better than to trust, than to depend on you, but I let myself hope. That’s what I get for loving you.

II

I wrote to you, many times – offering help when it wasn’t requested or welcomed. Me being me, I couldn’t help but do it, and you, being you, couldn’t help but spew bile at me. I cried for you, wasted tears. You love your sadness too much, your protection from others. I want you to experience joy, and you refuse. My heart breaks, over and over, for you, and you’ll never give a damn.

III

It began as friendly arguing, batting bad philosophy back-and-forth. What is real? What is love? What are we but a man and a woman, matter, anything that has mass and takes up space? Elementary. I had dreams of silver eagles that gutted and devoured nations. You liked that. You liked me until you didn’t. You told me you’d heard enough from me for a while, to run along and play with someone else. A true verbal slap and I hit back until whatever we were was irreparable. Are you still a zombie, little bird? Did you finally find someone to breathe life into you?

IV

I wanted the best for you, and I wanted you. For years, more than anything. You told me that I was the type of woman a man falls in love with, and that was not the type of woman for you. I used that in a story I wrote. I could kiss you for hours and did a few times, always swallowed whole by your eyes. Because of you, I keep my eyes open. After, I used to catch you watching me, your eyes darting away from mine, like two north poles, repellant. There were times I would’ve done anything for you. I would’ve strayed for you, away from what I knew, from a life and a man that were comfortable. You knew that, and that you didn’t take advantage showed me you were a good man. So many times, I wished that you weren’t.

V

I would trade with you if I could, but I wouldn’t do this for you. It’s too hard, too painful. Maybe you would change your mind if you knew, but you don’t talk to me. We’re strangers now. It was just too much, I guess. I should try harder, but I’m just so damned tired. So tired.  

Alive

The summer before I turned 17, my family flew to Vegas.  I glued my face to the window of our rental car all the way from the airport to Bally’s.  I had never seen anything so marvelous and gaudy and utterly sinful.  I fell instantly in love.

I followed my parents from casino to casino, jaw dropped, eyes popped.  I had never been crammed in amongst so many people.  This trip occurred before Vegas tried to make anything family-friendly, so there was nothing much for a sixteen year old to do, legally.  Yet, I was never bored.  I was in awe, stupefied, entranced.  The day was one long adrenaline rush, and I shivered from it.

That night, I stood at the picture window of the room I shared with my brother.  I watched the traffic, both foot and vehicular.  Synchronized floods of people in the scorching heat of July. 

I wrote poetry about the city, about how the air was so dry that all tires squealed, how someone was always at my father’s elbow with a drink, how the lights of the Flamingo flashed in my brother’s dark, stoned eyes.  I hadn’t felt so alone and yet not alone since New Years in New Orleans, but this was different.  It felt good.

We left Vegas the next morning.

Five nights later, I stood outside a cabin at Grand Canyon Village, stared into the sky, and beheld a near-record meteor shower.  The lights in all the cabins and buildings were off, so it was utterly dark.  I stood there, holding my mother’s hand like the child I no longer believed I was, and I made wishes because that’s what you do when you see shooting stars. 

I felt so completely connected with everything around me, even more so than looking over the rim of the canyon and feeling like I could catch a warm updraft in my over-sized T-shirt and hover like the eagles and condors.  I felt like I could fall forever, into the canyon or into the sky.  I felt like I belonged, that even though I was a tiny nothing on a tiny nothing planet, I existed and was loved.  I stood there for over an hour, with my finger pointed at the sky, and cried, and I don’t cry. It wasn't until I met Fluffy that I felt so utterly alive again.