When all else is spinning out of control...I write!

Good morning!

When I was very young, I had a hard time in school. Not because I couldn't handle the homework, my grades, except in Math and Gym, were far above average.  If it didn't involve numbers or physical activity, it came easy to me.  And it wasn't because I didn't have outside interests.  I was in 4-H, Girl Pioneers, church junior choir, I took piano lessons, and, from about the time I was twelve, I had a job.  My parents were married...to each other...and they actually liked each other.  So why was my childhood difficult?

I never felt accepted.  I have always been socially awkward.  People who know me now will find that statement surprising because I can speak and be entertaining in front of large groups.  But I've never felt comfortable in my skin, and even less so among people. As a kid, I kept busy in activities to give the impression of being popular, happy, busy, whatever.  It was at that time I was given the opportunity to write a short article for a 4-H contest.  The winner would have their story printed in the hometown newspaper.  I was the only one who wrote a fictional short story...a story about an awkward girl and her horse battling the upper crust girls and their fancy horses at a summer camp...and I won the contest.  It wasn't the first thing I wrote, but it was the first thing I wrote that really put a light on how I felt about myself and my place in society.

Yes, this is me at 13. 

Moving into my teen years, my parents did something that cracked my insecurities wide open.  They took me out of the high school where 1) my father wasn't actually on the faculty...a first for me 2)  I had friends and a social circle that seemed to like me for just exactly who I was and 3) every student had aspirations to go on to college, so academics were not just for the geeks and weirdos like me.  The basketball players and football players had to hit the books just as hard.  They moved me to another high school where all three of those points were reversed and my world went into a tailspin.  I spent three years dreaming of running away form home, all while throwing myself into activities:  Drama, band, school newspaper, clubs, and a job.  Anything to keep myself out of the house, so that my mother would stop asking me if the girls in my class had included me in some social thing. (Here's a spoiler:  They never did.)  I had a couple good friends, but for the most part I walked up and down the halls of that school, fearful for my physical well being (bullying is real, friends) and wishing I speak out when it came to what I was feeling inside.  

It's no coincidence, for me, that I started writing what eventually

became "Lies in Chance" at this stage of my life.  I created Rock Harbor, a peaceful place where life's orphans and runaways could find a place to live and be happy.  I created Shara Brandt, a prettier, smarter, more talented version of me who had the strength to battle what came at her and I created Bryan Jacobs, a man with baggage of his own, but a love big enough to look outside himself and put Shara first.  (Can we just say that my on again/off again boyfriend wasn't exactly a dream date all the time?)  I also wrote short stories, wads and wads of them. I even showed my parents some of them.  My father, my English teacher, looked at them with a businesslike eye. My mother. hoping to find something in me that would make ease her mind about my social status, praised my scribblings far more than she actually understood them.  It didn't matter. Writing was a solitary action that threw me into a place where I had friends, ease, happiness, comfort, romance, and above all, control.

Isn't that why we write, to control our surroundings?  As authors, we build worlds, we create characters, and we control every minute of what happens.  With experience and discipline, most of us can push through the thrill of control and let the characters speak for themselves.  (I didn't hear a character speak until Ramona Simms

screamed at me during the writing of "Dream in Color."  She didn't like the life I was building for her and she had plenty to say about it.)  But we as writers first and foremost control the world we write.

So it's no real surprise, as I look back over the past thirty years, that there are gaps in my writing.  I didn't write much in college.  I liked college.  I found my social niche, and while I still had plenty of anxiety about my surroundings and being among people I didn't know well, I was better able to cover it with a cheery exterior and an ability to chat.  I wrote some  my first few years of marriage.  Those were rough years, but not out of control years. I had a job I liked, we had a couple we traveled with and even though there were job changes and losses, it was just the two of us.

When we had kids, I started getting a bit more serious about writing, not as a hobby, but as a business.  I joined a writer's group.  It was a motley group, but some of my best writer friends came out of that bunch.  I keep in touch with some of them even now, so many years later.  It was a safe place where I could hear criticism, but still feel like I was making my way toward something.  I had a job where I worked at home, which was great.

Maybe it was when I decided I needed a job outside the home.  I don't know, but for the last ten years I haven't felt like I was in control of anything, which has resulted in a very prolific writing period for me.  Four novels, two novellas, under my own name, two humor books under my pen name, all written, edited, and published pretty much on my own.  Control...from start to finish.

Now my kids are growing up, and after the past two years of heartbreak, white knuckled prayer, and breath-holding, I have two adults living in my house, both of whom are on the verge of leaving me.  After these past two years, I'm in no shape to let them go.  But I can't control time. I can't control what they're going to do. I have to pray that my husband and I have done our job and whether they chose to live at home a while longer or, in the case of my youngest, if they can't wait to be on their own, I have to try and accept what I can't control.

And then I lost my job.  

My response?  I just started a new book series, my Nora Hill mysteries, and I joined a writers' group again..(Had my first meeting last night.  It was like going back in time.  Same instructor, Kathie Giorgio, but now at her new studio, Allwriters.)   

See, when the world is spinning out of control, when all else is crumbling, when I can't control anything around me...I can write.  And in writing I can control what's happening and find a resolution to problems that aren't mine.  It's therapeutic, it's comforting, and, ultimately my hope is that it is entertaining for you all.

Why books make excellent gifts all year 'round.

Good morning!

When I was six I wrote my first book.  It was called "The Civil War."  It was four pages long, I illustrated it, and I wanted to charge five cents for it.  I figured if it was a good price point for Lucy on "Peanuts," it was a good price point for me.  I planned to write a monthly historical magazine called "Historical Times."  

When I was seven I started reading the "Little House" series and when I found out 1) Laura Ingalls Wilder was born in 1867 and I was born in 1967 and that meant something and 2)  Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote her books on lined notepads, just like I wrote my "Civil War" well I figured it was in

the stars.  I was going to be a writer.  Or a poet, since I really liked writing poems, so long as they rhymed.  (Hey, I was seven.)

In grade school I read Margaret Mitchell, Edgar Allan Poe, the Brontes, and Judy Blume and I realized that perfectly lovely people could write perfectly awesome stories about the dark side of humanity.  (Okay, Poe might NOT have been considered "lovely."  That dude was messed up!)

When I was twelve one of my short stories was published in the local...very local...newspaper.  I'd entered a writing contest sponsored by the local 4-H communities.  I was the only one who wrote a fiction story...something about summer camp, snotty girls, and horses.  

In eighth grade I developed a deep love for two newspaper columns:  Erma Bombeck and Ann Landers.  Erma is, even now, my hero because she took every day things and made them funny.  (My blog It Can Only Happen to Sarah! is my way of honoring her memory and the impression she made on my life.)  Ann Landers, with her advice column, showed me that people screw up, break hearts, do stupid things to each other and sometimes common sense and tough love is all that will fix it.

When I was thirteen I started writing my first novel.  This novel, these characters, would live with me
for the next thirty years and would eventually become "Lies in Chance."  But in my high school years, Bryan, Shara, Drew, Molly, they were my very best friends, and Rock Harbor was the place I lived because my real life was...less satisfying.  In my adult years, before I finally published the book, Those same people brought me through pregnancy, birth, debt, job changes, and depression.  Even now I return to Rock Harbor  (ala "A Hero's Spark" most recently) and visit my friends.

When I was twenty-one, inspired by a college course in children's literature, I took a correspondence course in writing children's fiction.  I got an A.  I wrote a murder mystery set in Upper Michigan that I'm still proud of.

What I'm saying is that books and writing have been a part of my life all of my life.  Books can take anyone to places they've never been and may never see.  I've never been to France, and certainly not during the Revolutionary period.  But I've read (yes, I've read the book) "Les Miserables," so a part of my brain has been there.  Iv'e never lived on a plantation in the Deep South in the days before the Civil War.  But I've read "Gone with the Wind" probably a dozen times, and I'm rereading it now.  

Books can be your best friends because books can show you that there are others out there just like you.  Judy Blume's books, escpecially, "Are you there God? It's me, Margaret." got me through one of the biggest life events a girl can go through.  And "Blubber," a book I read many times long after grade school, reminded me that bullying was evil.  (And gave me hope during the years when I was bullied.)

Cheaper than a plane ticket, more readily available than a time machine, books are never a bad thing to have.  My house would probably be six inches taller if it weren't for the shelves and shelves of books.  And now, with the explosion of self publishing and e-books, there are so many more stories, stories that would never have been available when I was growing up because the only books anyone read back then were books the publishing houses wanted us to read.  This is a golden age for reading.  There is, truly, a book for everyone out there.

Right now we are in the frenzy of the gift giving season and I could add my voice to the throng and say, hey, I have six books and a novella out there for your ready pleasure and if you want to check them out...CLICK HERE for Amazon and print...or click HERE for the Nook...or click HERE if you read your book on some other device, like Apple!  And look, there I did.  But books make a great gift any time.  There is never a bad time to give someone a book.

Want to give the gift of romance?  Give them a romantic book like

anything by Jane Austen or Adriana Trigiani's "Valentina" books.  Of course, you can also check out newer authors like Stacey Joy Netzel or Linda Schmalz or Kelly Moran or..me!

Want a thriller?  Stephen King anyone?  J.A. Konrath, who is another personal hero, 


Need to go to another world where magic and mythical characters rule?  J.K. Rowlings, Tolkien, and yes, Stephanie Meyers.

Just want a homey book you can curl up with and never put down?  Billie Letts, and Jon Hassler should fit the bill.

So, after all the holiday parties are over, after all the presents are wrapped and unwrapped, after it's all over and we're in the doldrums of winter...pick up a book or a book reading device and give yourself or someone else the gift of magic, beauty, romance, adventure, travel, history, action, mystery, thrills, and new best friends.  Give the gift of a book.