I’ve finished chapter eight of Lazarus Rising’s first draft. I’m writing from Fogg’s perspective in the beginning of this book, giving him some space to be seen. Not that he deserves such a grace given who he is. Some of the feedback I’ve gotten on Keeper is how dark it is, how violent Frankie ends up being in some instances. I guess I never really saw it as violence if she’s just using what she learns in defense of herself. Because that’s what it all ends up being, self-defense. I suppose I could probably leave some of the finer details out, but what I’ve enjoyed about my writing growth while working on the whole Maker series is seeing how I can use the darker sides of myself to propel a story. How I can give voice to the parts of me that otherwise wouldn’t be expressed. I’m not a murderous psychopath. But someone in my stories is, so I can take them as far as I want to, knowing I am safe from their evilness.
That then begs the question: how much of it is author-insertion? Do I have thoughts of violence? Do I run through the scenes that appear in my books like I want them to be realities? I don’t want them to be real. That’s the beauty of living in fiction, I can put people who don’t exist through extraordinary ordeals to show just how much they can handle–or not handle–and come out on the other side of it. It’s a wonderful thing, the power of creation. I don’t want the world to burn in reality, but I can sure write it doing that very thing in a book.
I’m going to keep going for tonight, and get as much done in chapter nine as I can. I’m almost done writing Fogg’s bit, and then I’ll have a chapter interlude for the Unbound, and then it’s back to Frankie. The page number formatting for this is going to be a nightmare, but I will get it done.
And that’s all I have for you today. Until next time, friends.
One of the things I plan on using this blog for now is a kind of writing journal, where I drop all the stuff I’ve worked on during the week/day/lifetime/etc. For this inaugural entry, I give you:
Finished chapter three of the third book in the Maker series (first draft)
Wrote a personal essay that may or may not be a future blog post
Doodled little scenes between two of my main characters.
Outlined in my head a few ideas for a romance novel I’m looking to get printed this year. It won’t be offered for sale, but I want a few people to have it, so I’m going to do that one for myself.
Considered once again putting together a compendium for the language I made up
And that’s all the tales I have for you from this week. I did start chapter four of the third book (Lazarus Rising), and I’ve started with the perspective of a different character for this one. Usually it’s Frankie being front-and-center, but this time we’re starting with Fogg, baby. The first section of the book will be his perspective, and we’ll see some of his backstory and some of the current events being unleashed now that certain things have happened.
Thank you for stopping by. I hope you are doing well, and if you are not, I hope it stops being a beshmapasen for you soon.
I’ve been awake since about 5:30a. That’s normal wakin’ hours for some folk, but for me, that’s not the standard. I think I had a dream where I was deep in my thoughts and that kind of made me wake up and now I’m thinking entirely too hard about loss. Of a sort.
When my friend Henry died, I still knew where to focus the love I had and have for him. It belongs to him, and I know he’d be annoyed I’m still missing him, but the fact of it all is, it is his to have.
When you lose someone because they became a part of your life and destroyed you, and letting go was the only way to keep yourself safe, the love has nowhere to go. I could internalize it, make it a learning opportunity for myself, but the reality of it all is, I don’t know how to do that.
I have spent most of my life making sure everyone else is okay. Not that my needs come second, they’re just flat-out unimportant. As a grown woman, I am starting to rewrite that thinking, but do you know how hard that is?
Sure, change is hard, but when my home isn’t being blown to bits and I’m able to afford heat during the winter, why should my self-image matter? I heard a refugee from North Korea say that people who are able to use words like depression and trauma say them from a place of privilege. She didn’t mean that it’s a privilege to experience these things, but when you come from a place those are probably illegal to name, what do you call it? I am free to tell someone “I’m not okay” and I won’t be thrown in jail for not being happy.
Change is hard. It’s even harder without some of the people I had to let go of, because I thought they were people I could turn to in my hard times. Being told someone is there for you only for them to weaponize your demons against you when you do something they don’t like is incredibly confusing. It’s debasing. It makes me feel shame for ever trying to be vulnerable to a person, and it closes me up.
I joke about how I learned a lot about myself this last year (accidentally the spicy kind of learning, haha, sorry, parents if you read this), but I really did. I learned how to say goodbye when it hurt every part of my kindness to do so. There is a piercing affect that has on a heart. I’m not new in this phenomenon. Millions of people have let go of those who hurt them. But I am new to the idea that it’s okay to go.
It’s okay to fall away, and it’s okay to cry months after you’ve done so. The love doesn’t have anywhere to go, so it has to settle in the back of my heart for now. One day, I’ll put it out into the world again, hopefully keeping some for myself this time. But for now, it’s okay to just hold onto it a bit longer.
I didn’t intend to. I kind of forgot this blog existed. I’m sorry. I don’t know how many people are still with me, but if you’re still hanging out with me, I appreciate it.
If you are willing to continue stickin’ it out with me, I’ll be posting a lot more next year. This year I kind of spent more time writing my second book (The Keeper of Time in the Maker Series), and I ignored pretty much everything else. Aside from reading.
I think I’ll be rounding out the year with almost 100 books read this year, and I’ll be honest and say over half of those are probably romance novels. Sometimes you just need to shut the brain off and hope for the best. I plan on doing a “Books of 2024” post in January, and that will only be the beginning of what all I do.
I plan on using this as a writing journal, as that has become the most important thing in my life (outside my niece and my nephews). There will be other things I’ll probably toss in here, too.
I hope you’ve been doing well, and I hope you are entering 2025 with a spark of inspiration and hope. Sometimes the world is gross, but that’s all right as long as we don’t make it worse.
Effulgent is the face of a four-year-old as she steps into the standing water in her side yard. Her father has already told her twice not to do so, but the stick in the center needed saving. As did the leaves. Sodden socks removed and replaced with dry ones, rubber rain boots exchanged for the baby crocs she wore at first.
She is invincible.
With a smile back at those watching her, she sweeps her feet into the water, soaking instantly the dry socks, her tiny jeans, and part of her jacket.
The leaves are safe now, though.
She sits off to the side, near the fence she’s almost as tall as, and she removes her boots one at a time, dumping out the water. Entirely too pleased with her results, she stands back up and begins again. Once more filling her boots so that when she takes a single step out of the muddy water, it squirts from her boot and she looks over at the cackle I’ve made.
It truly is a sight I don’t think I can put in words properly. My niece is my favorite person on this earth and she will never know just how much she’s taught me. The small things that seem so instant, so demanding of my time are absolutely not of any importance when one must dance like the LED ballerinas on her videos. Or become a horse so she can direct me around the living room, but never on the kitchen tile because my knees are no longer as young as I think I am.
Her radiant and pure joy as I get out of my car, her little bounces because she can’t wait to run to me and tell me all about what she has planned for my visit, there are no actual words for the peace it fills me with.
I had not been well. In fact, I’d been too close to the side of me that wants to cut the losses and go. So close I had to take time off of work to find my way back to myself. My true self, not the one broken and hanging on by a mere thread of a root at the precipice of a cliff. The one buried alive under a hill of dirt clods, dry and yet still clumped enough to be in the way. Each attempt to dig out meant effort I couldn’t find. The light I’d found kept becoming reburied and I’d have to rest.
I talked to my brother one night, right at the beginning of understanding I was not, in fact, okay. And at one point, I stood beside him as he sat in his desk chair and he held me the tightest he’s ever held me and let me cry on top of his head because I didn’t have the words to say how scared I was. How uncertain of anything I was.
But he knew. He knew the way he knows what his daughter needs before she knows she needs it.
I am no longer stuck in the mud like a four-year-old’s boot as she tries to maneuver her way out without falling. I am sweeping my feet through the puddle, the joy on my heart is effervescent and I am ahead of where I was when I started sliding into despair.
Mud puddles are not places to get stuck. They are places to save leaves and prod with sticks and see the way the dirt swirls as it saturates.
There will be other sad times. For now, I am turning my face toward the sun, feeling the warmth on my skin as though for the first time, and I am okay.
I published my first book. It’s out there in the world now, and that’s why I’ve been gone for so long. It went live on Amazon back on May 31st, and I kind of forgot this blog existed until a few days ago.
I probably should share a link to it, so I’ll do that at the bottom of this post. It’s available in paperback or on Kindle. There are some minor errors in the printing, but you know what? I care, but not that much. The story doesn’t suffer from those small errors, and there aren’t any glaring spelling issues so I’m leaving it as it is. I’m not intending to make it big, just wanted to tell a story I love.
So, that’s what I’ve been up to. I’m currently working on the second book, The Keeper of Time and that has been smooth sailing (which is difficult for me to accept sometimes because it technically took me about fifteen years to write Fulcrum).
I hope you are well! Thank you for sticking with me. I think I’ll attempt to make more of an effort at updating this blog from now on, but please do forgive me if I go on a hiatus for no reason other than I forget.
The following post discusses weight related issues as well as some disordered eating. If these topics are triggering for you, please do not continue.
My body has not felt like my own for about a year now. More than a year, really, but I don’t feel like being technical. I’ve mentioned before how I lost weight, and while I’m still not at the goal I wanted for myself, the getting there has been more of a challenge than I think I let myself believe it would be.
No one ever talks about the ugly side of weight loss. We see the photos of slimmed down people, and sometimes they briefly mention how hard they’ve worked, but I rarely see anyone go too far down the discussion of exactly how hard they work. I’ve been trying to lose three pounds for about four months. I’ve been in calorie deficits, and picked up my exercise, and I know how to lose those last three pounds, but it is just not happening.
This is discouraging because I still see myself as overweight. But the worst part about it all is I no longer know my body like I used to. When I was about fifty pounds heavier, I knew my limits. Now, I feel soft and squishy in places I didn’t notice before because there’s a tightness in the skin when you have so much heft. Sitting down is painful for me because my ass is disappearing and my bones touch the surface of what I’m sitting on. I jiggle when I walk, and I feel it. I’m sure I did before, but I didn’t feel it, and now that I can, I know it’s more pronounced and people can probably see it.
I can’t eat like I used to. This may be a good thing for some, but as an emotional eater, sometimes I have a painful need to binge and I can’t because I get fuller faster and the emotional satiation doesn’t happen. So I overeat anyway, and then end up wanting to vomit to relieve the pressure on my shrunken stomach.
The stretch marks on my thighs look like turkey neck skin when I scrub my body after a run, and I get grossed out with the wobble they still make when I take a powerful step because I don’t move slowly anymore. I’m not a fast person, but I became one because there’s a need to leave myself behind even more so now.
My lung capacity is greater, but I still ache and creak and I notice it more and more. Each time I have to shift myself in my seat because my knees are aching, or my hips are tighter or whatever the reason, I notice it and it angers me.
I am angry at this body. I am angry that it isn’t what I want and yet I am terrified to lose it. The continued loss of who I was, the destruction of the person I thought I was, it’s not just physical. It’s excruciating to see what I’ve limited myself to because I didn’t think I was worth the time to learn.
How many things have I shuttered closed in my head because I believed I was too fat? Too massive, too bloated, too gross to ever be considered beautiful?
I am angry at this body because it’s making me learn to love it.
This is going to be a personal one, so if you’re not up for feelings, please skip this post. I won’t be offended.
My favorite thing to do in the beginning of spring is drive home with my windows down. Daylight Savings Time swung us back to the sun being up when I leave work and because of that, I get to experience the most beautiful time of the day. The golden hour before sunset. Have you ever driven at a high speed with your hand out the window and the sun beaming itself directly into your eyes? Terrifying. And yet, stunning.
It makes my eyes water.
It burns them.
Tears whip down my face with scalding accuracy that only happens when I cry for myself, which never happens. I am beautiful in that hour. That drive home. I am just as stunning as the sun because nothing matters. I am between the earth and the sky and the brilliance of the light is pulling me together. Holding me on its shoulders so I no longer have to hoist the burdens I place upon myself alone.
It’d be easier to let others see how hard I work to keep myself steady. How fiercely loyal I am to them, dedicated to make sure they live the lives they can with as much ease as possible. No one should ever feel inferior. I will let myself be trampled if it means someone else is able to shine.
Does that make me sound like I view myself as a martyr? I don’t. I don’t want anyone to see me.
And yet, I want to be known. Life really is one great big paradox and I still keep trying to solve it.
The rush of air fills my lungs, much in the way running steals it away. It pushes into me, through my nose and mouth, sometimes choking in its eagerness to give me life. To fill me to the brim with the desire to be more.
To become.
To exist within the world I see.
To be the bold, golden beam of light for others.
The buffeting wind on my skin, the promise of further breath. The sweet grass coming in along the side of the road, baking in the sun all day, letting go its almost saccharine scent as the light fades.
As I slow down to turn onto my street, I understand what it means.
Well, well, well. I kind of disappeared, didn’t I? I got the book finished to a point. It’s being read by betas right now, and I’m doing my second to last round of edits, the final round being when I go through for typos and minor grammatical things. But then it’ll be ready for the “fun” things. I’m going to self-publish, which will be a post for another time, but rest assured the moment it becomes available, I will let y’all know.
Today I wanted to talk about how my January went. Yes, I know it’s March, and yes, I know I could have posted this last month, but I neglected everything last month. Not just this blog. My personal journal suffered, my friendships suffered, I didn’t spend much time with my family. I got the whole book typed up, printed it off, and that was incredible. I got to see my book printed for the first time. Actually took a selfie with it, which should tell you how excited I was about it, because I never take pictures of myself.
Proof
But that’s all February. I’m here to talk about January. I’m an ambitious person, and I decided to start this year out with a bang. Challenging myself to not one, not two, but three different “challenges” just to prove I could. Veganuary, a pantry cleanout, and a no-spend directive.
Veganuary
This one feels like a no brainer for me, because I’m already mostly vegan, I just get a little emotionally attached to cheese on a difficult day. For the month of January, though, I try to avoid even that and see how I can be creative in the kitchen. It’s something I’ve participated in for the last three or four years, and I never really talk about it to people because as I’m sure I’ve said here before, I don’t judge people on what they eat. It’s not my place. Hunger is a prevalent problem everywhere, especially in places with famine or drought, and I’m not about to go after someone for spending .35 on a box of generic macaroni and cheese versus 3.99 a pound for cauliflower. The cost of living is rising, too, so I think it’s okay to give ourselves a little grace nowadays when it comes to eating what we want. And I drifted away from January again. But that’s okay, because I can segue into the next challenge. It added a new dimension of difficulty to my food choices.
Pantry
I have several items in my pantry (shelf stable) I’ve had in there for more years than I’d like to say. Rice, lentils, quinoa, that kind of thing. Since I was working on Veganuary I had to find interesting ways to utilize the stuff I already had. I didn’t do well the first week because most of the items in my pantry are things you have to cook to add to other things, or flavor well, and while I was doing my best to keep my head above itself, I had a bunch of residual holiday depression lingering in the back of my mind. I ate the convenience foods first, and then when I ran out of those, I ate the easiest to cook things like pasta and nutritional yeast. I did lose about five pounds in the month of January because I wasn’t eating much of anything.
No-Spend
I didn’t have an easy way to segue into this, so pardon the abruptness, but for this challenge, it was more to see how I could go without fast food. I have such a dependence on easy solutions, and I struggle to allow myself the satisfaction that comes from accomplishing something requiring effort. That goes so deeply into more than just a no-spend requirement. It delves into the appreciation of self I seem to constantly find myself striving toward. I was about to go on a horrible tangent on the word choice of “strive” but I’ve already diverted from the main topic of this paragraph already. So, for the month of January, I didn’t want to buy anything. No groceries, no fast food, no toilet paper (it’s just me in my house, so don’t worry, I was fine with what I already had), nothing.
Discussion
So what did I learn? I already touched on my dependence on cheese, and my dependence on easy, but to take it further, I learned how quick I am to fall into old habits. I did end up spending a bit more money at Target after the challenges ended, but I was absolutely out of everything. As one would be. And so with a restock of supplements and vitamins, household cleaners, and other various things, it became apparent that my relationship with money has been chaotic at times. I’m not going to go too far into that because that’s a different level of personal I don’t know I want to share on the internet, but it was interesting to me to see what became “oh, I’ll stop at Target on the way home so I can grab this snack, this thing, this something else, and blah, blah, blah.”
What is the point? The point is, I want to go back to the questioning of “do I really want this or is this an impulse?” It’s something that fits just about all facets of each challenge. How quickly do I turn to comfort foods because my emotions are so high and food functions as a punishment instead of a comfort? Why don’t I consider the efficiency of shopping for things all at once over random stops several times a week? How do I utilize what I have already to keep myself fed and content?
Several things to consider. And I leave you with that, for now. I have plans for blog posts more frequently now that the book stuff is kind of slowing down. I hope you are having a good day or week whenever you read this.
I’m not going to upload a video of pen scratching on paper, don’t worry. But what I am going to talk about today is some of the music I tend to listen to when I write. I was going to do a character playlist, but I think instead, I’m going to give a few theme songs and some of the main music I tend to gravitate toward when I work.
I think I should first say I listen to a variety of music, but mostly instrumental because if it’s words I know, I tend to find myself focusing on those instead. I’ll listen to classical, film soundtracks, alt-rock, sometimes Viking metal, and sometimes nothing. Since I do a majority of my writing at work on my lunch break, listening to music helps drown out the sounds of my coworkers so I can zero in my focus. Sometimes it depends on the mood I’m in when I search for something to listen to, and sometimes I’ll just keep listening to what I started the day with.
If I need to have something emotional going? Season 8 of Game of Thrones, the second half of that soundtrack takes me to feelings I can sink into and push into my writing. Specifically these two songs:
Ramin Djawadi has a profound gift for infusing emotion into his work and I try to emulate that in the words I put down on the page. It’s a way to remind myself not to make the words ordinary. That I want to tell the story, yes, but in such a way it sticks in the readers’ minds long after they’ve finished. I love dissonance in music. If it resolves, great, but if it doesn’t? I am tossed into a place of joy. This is a thing Djawadi uses well within his work too. How can I create written dissonance? Something that twinges the brain into wanting the safety of before, not the twisting discomfort of clashing feelings. How do I put it into words?
It’s not just the forlorn which inspires me, but also the music inspiring boldness, the sound that gets under your skin and makes you want to climb mountains and stare at the sky above the clouds. It carries you past the left for broken feeling the previous chapter left with you. There is hope in the ending going where you want it to. Songs like these:
(yes listening to this for this post made me tear up a bit because I lovethis so much)
The last few songs I’m going to give you today are theme songs for some of my characters. All three of them fit those people in particular, but the one I have for Naim, it hit me within the first few notes of the song who this was for. Right around 0:24 is where it starts truly sounding like Naim, and until 0:49 I had this clear image of him slow shuffle dancing along a riverside, cigarette in his mouth, dreadlocks secured loosely, his leather jacket open and his arms wide to the sky as he tilts his head back and grins at the sunset. And the rest of the song fits him too, but that short range hit me with such an intense image of someone I didn’t quite have a handle on before, and now he’s one of the more developed of the series. Here’s Naim’s theme song:
The next theme is Milton Fogg’s. I don’t want to go too far into why it’s his theme because I feel like that spoils more than I want to put on the internet, but again within the first few moments of the song, I saw Milton stepping into a building, his silver tipped walking stick tapping on the marble floor as peons scatter around to be ready for whatever he needs. He passes off his top hat to a quivering underdog, and he makes his way to the golden elevators where he spins on his heel and gives a infinitesimal smirk before the doors close. He’s a smug bastard, and he knows how to get what he wants. This is his theme:
The last song is a piece of music, and it happens to be one of my very favorites. It’s not got lyrics, and it’s more of a philosophical look at a theme song for a character. This is Frankie’s theme song:
This song is the end for Frankie. I don’t want to go too much deeper into it because that’s hella spoilers, but there is a very specific reason this song is the end song. It represents what could have been, what should have been, and what will never be. (I know, I grossed myself out a bit with that, too, but it’s the truth.)
And so, I leave you with the hope that your own writing is going well. That you don’t smudge your pages too much, that your computer battery life lasts long enough for you to finish your thought, and that the songs you use for inspiration give life to the words you choose.
Until next time, friends. (I’ll have finished the first book by next post)
salisbury.fake 