Goodreads Giveaway and an Amazon First Reads Pick

I have great news! Memories in the Drift has been selected to be a part of the First Reads program for the month of November. If you are an Amazon Prime member in the US, UK and Australia, you can read the book for FREE by downloading the ebook now. If you’re not a member, it’s still available early at a special price of only $1.99.

Or, enter the Goodreads giveaway to win a chance at a free ebook copy of Memories in the Drift. This promotion is open to residents of the United States and ends November 30, 2020.

Winner in mainstream fiction in CAL Writing Awards!

The Secrets of Lost Stones took first place in the mainstream fiction category in the 79th Annual Colorado Authors League Writing Awards. Thank you to CAL for putting on a fun and humorous livestream event that celebrated Colorado’s many authors. It’s a true honor to be among so many talented writers. Thank you!

The Secrets of Lost Stones is a CAL finalist!

The Secrets of Lost Stones is a finalist in fiction for the Colorado Authors League Writer’s Award. I am honored to be among local authors Laurie Marr Wasmund and Chuck Greaves. The virtual awards ceremony will be held June 7 at 8pm, details to follow soon. Join me in celebrating so many accomplished and talented Colorado authors.

Pandemic Truths

I am caught up on the laundry, which is a small miracle.

I make elaborate breakfasts. Seriously, like Belgian waffles with homemade whipped cream and eggs cooked in all manner of poached, boiled and fried

My kitchen is clean. 

I call my parents every morning.

I ask the kids about their day, while they’re still in the middle of it.

I have Zoom chats with college friends spread all over, and others with friends who are only a few miles away. 

My dog has logged more walks in these last few weeks than probably his entire life. I’m sad to admit that. 

The cat has no idea anything has changed. 

My teenagers talk more than they grunt.

My husband holds my hand.

It’s quiet.

There’s something going on. Let me clarify. There’s a lot that’s not going on. The weeks are not flying by full of errands, softball and soccer practices, dance and theater rehearsals, school, hurried dinners, meetings, deadlines, missed phone calls with family and friends.   

Instead the days stretch long, the weeks even longer. There are twenty-four hours in a single day. Did you know that? I must have forgotten because I find myself at one o’clock in the lull of an afternoon shocked that it’s not time for dinner. So I mosey downstairs where the kids are in their bedrooms and also in school. My son has pulled his desk into the middle of his room. For him, the classroom setup is a hard habit to break. Not so for the girls. I have to remind them to get out of bed, that productivity, while tempting, is not necessarily better when prone. 

It’s quiet. And not in volume because we are a loud family with emotions that we find easy to express. It’s quiet in the way I forgot existed. I can hear myself think. I think I can even hear the teenagers think. It’s not Pollyanna, trust me. There have been tears and fights and words we wish we could take back, but there’s also been mediation and compromise, forgiveness and listening. There’s been much more of that perhaps because there’s been more time. More time to think about others, time to worry about loved ones, time to wonder about those who have lost jobs, or don’t have a safe home or those who don’t have a home at all. Time to think about everyone in the medical field, selflessly going to work, or those who deliver our mail, empty our trash, restock the shelves, keep our heat on, make the toilet paper.   

It’s the kind of quiet that comes when nearly everything we fill our days with has been suspended. It is forcing us to learn how to be together without distractions and busyness and schedules to occupy our thoughts and direct our actions. Last week, we lost our Internet for three days and it didn’t even phase us. Instead we watched old family videos and laughed at how young we all were. 

I miss the world as it was. I miss my friends. I miss hugging my mom and dad. I’m sad that school trips have been cancelled for the kids, that they’re losing important formative time with their friends and teachers. But I think that losing some things means we’re gaining something else. For us, it’s time, and a quiet that draws us closer, allows us to see each other in more detail, the good and the bad, and the things we didn’t even know until we asked. 

Don’t get me wrong. I want this to go away. I want our world safe and for scary things to get pushed back under the bed where they belong. But I’d like to take a piece of this quiet with us when life resumes. I question why we have made our lives so busy in the first place, and I mourn all the quiet bits we’ve moved right past without even knowing, in favor of staying busy.

So I want to remember how in the quiet of this time, we reached out to others, answered phone calls we would have allowed to go straight to voicemail, gave money to organizations in need, supported local businesses because we didn’t want to see our community suffer, did something about the homeless, the abused, the addicted, the isolated and alone.  

I want this to be over. But I hope that we remember the quiet and take it with us when our calendars fill yet again with softball and soccer, theater and dance, meetings and work. I want to remember that in the quiet, we were compassionate and thoughtful, that we circled the virtual wagons, appreciated our neighbors and friends, that we were kind to each other and loved without expectation or greed.  

And when everything does go back to normal, there is one other pandemic truth I hope to take with me. One piece of domestic life I’ve never fully conquered until now. 

The laundry. 

I hope I can forever be more caught up on the laundry. 

An Amazon First Reads Pick!

Exciting news! The Secrets of Lost Stones has been selected to be a part of the First Reads program for the month of August. And that means the e-book is available to read now for $1.99 or you can purchase the hardcover for only $9.99. (And the hardcover is beautiful!) But, if you are an Amazon Prime member then the e-book can be downloaded for FREE for all Prime members in the US, the UK and Australia.

Be the first to read The Secrets of Lost Stones before its official publication date of September 1st by downloading your free copy here. Or, click here to enter the Goodreads giveaway to win a chance at a free ebook copy of The Secrets of Lost Stones. This promotion is open to residents of the United States and ends August 31, 2019.

It’s such an honor to have been selected for this program and I’m thrilled that so many people can discover Pine Lake and meet Jess, Star, and Lucy of course.

Getting it right...or not

Funny thing about writing a book. When you're done, you write it again. And then when that's done, you edit it and revise it, until you decide it should be narrated from only one perspective. So you write that version until you have an amazing breakthrough that the book shouldn't be from the perspective of your homeless fifteen year old girl, no! It should be told through the eyes of a dog using only small dog words, like sit, stay and good boy. What a writing feat that will be! Award winning for sure! So you write that version and then you realize, oh no, that idea sucks.

So you write the book again.

Writing requires persistence, stubbornness and a willingness to do it over and over again until it's just right. Or right enough. Or right to the point where you hope someone will read it and like it and recommend it to a friend.

Now parenting on the other hand also requires persistence and stubbornness and a willingness, not to do it over and over again because three children are quite enough for me, thank you, but a willingness to be bad at it, try again, watch your kids fail and try again, and then do it all over again the next day.

So over the past five years I have been co-parenting growing teenagers who are lovely well-adjusted young adults one day and then roller coaster hormonal beings the next, all while trying and failing to get published until, after many years, I finally succeeded. Why do I share this? Do I deserve pity or an award? No, not at all. There are parents all over the globe doing this or something like this or more and nobody gets a medal.

I share this because when you realize how imperfect even our best efforts can be, when you're faced with the magnitude of preparing adults for the world beyond home and you can't see the path ahead because it's actually several paths preparing to diverge, then failure isn't terrifying. It's life changing.

Failure doesn't have to be scary or humiliating. Instead, it can be how we learn and listen and grow and try again until we eventually kick ass. Success is so much sweeter after we've struggled in the mud of not-so-greatness. Hard work is learned when we pull ourselves up, put on a new pair of shoes, and do it all over again.

It's what I have learned and continue to learn from writing and this long road to publishing. It's what I hope my kids are developing as they travel into adulthood. To become strong people with the capacity to fail, learn, fail, learn, and try again until they get it right.

At The Moth

So I did this thing.

A little something called The Moth. If you know what it is, then you get it. If you have never heard of The Moth, then stop reading this, go to The Moth podcast and listen to any episode. It's the ultimate in story telling. Live events are held all over the country and people go, put their name in a hat or bag or whatever is most convenient, and then ten names are drawn for that evening's event. There is a theme, a five minute time limit and a requirement that the story be true, personal and told without notes.

This has been a bucket list item for me since I first started listening to the podcast. But while I told people of my dream, waxed poetic on the idea of getting up on a stage and speaking into the brightly lit void to an audience of strangers, I never, ever, thought it was something I'd actually do.

Until I told a friend of mine in passing about my lofty idea, how I love this podcast for the breadth of stories, the courage of the everyday people who get up to tell them, the depth of emotion some stories bring out in me, the laughter, the tears, the awe.

And she agreed. Wholeheartedly. Before I knew it, I was looking up Moth events in my area and much to my surprise, one was coming up in the next month and the theme was Mama Rules.

How perfect, I thought, and tried to ignore that first twinge of fear and doubt gnawing on my insides. I sent a text to my friend. Hey, there's a Moth Story Slam here. We should do it. And when I didn't hear back from her immediately, I breathed out, relieved. Well, at least I tried.

A few days later over coffee, I mentioned it to a few friends in broad brush strokes of enthusiasm, not expecting any kind of response other than, wow, that sounds interesting and how cool of you to want to do it. Instead I got, let's do it.

Sometimes it sucks to have awesome friends.

Last Friday it happened. My friends and I went to a Story Slam. I'm a writer and I write emotions and reactions for fictional characters for a living. So to feel my heart literally pound against my chest as I waited with excitement and trepidation for my name to be called, felt both professionally validating and surreal. Because our hearts actually do beat and pound and thump and our blood really does pulse in our ears. It was exhilarating and I was nervous as hell.

And then my name was called.

The telling is a blur. I remember the faces in the audience, softened and obscured by the blue stage lights so that I was speaking into a muddied void. An image that was comforting and vexing at the same time because I longed to see the encouraging smiles of my friends just beyond the glare. I remember the laughter and applause, which was especially comforting since I was telling my Christmas Fingers story, a not particularly flattering mom moment. And I remember when I took my seat afterwards and for the first time that evening, my heart beat slow and normal.

But this was the whole point. I wanted to be scared and nervous and unsure of myself. I wanted to push myself out of my everyday comfort zone and feel raw and vulnerable. And I'm glad I did because in a few months my first book, my debut baby, will be released to the world and while I can't predict how well it will do, I can tell you that I'm nervous as hell. Soon, it will be my book, my characters, my story that takes the stage.

But now that I know what it feels like, I'm ready to face the void.

It's about the kids

My son told his principal that he thought the school’s many windows were dangerous because a gunman could shoot through the glass. My daughter tells me that when she feels someone standing behind her, her first thought is that they might have a gun.

My kids go to school where they participate in active shooter drills, lockouts and lockdowns.

At a local high-school a boy gave his life to defend his classmates. A girl from Florida came to Colorado to die and our schools closed. My children were only babies when a man stormed into Platte Canyon and forever changed a community. This year we recognize twenty years since Columbine.

And what has changed?

We ask how and why and where do we go from here or we don’t talk about it at all. Our kids are growing up amid these tragedies, preparing, practicing in case it happens to their school next. And in the meantime, they grow numb because that is the only way they can focus on learning quadratic equations or discussing a classic novel.

Adults take to Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and instead of doing what adults are supposed to do - talk, discuss, mediate, debate, find solutions, work together - all the things we hope our kids are learning behind locked doors at school, instead we get mired in like-minded camps where we toss out opinion grenades about gun rights and mental health and bad parenting and social media and we blame and blame and blame until we get lost in hateful discourse and bitter disagreements.

I don’t have answers. I wish I did. I do talk to my kids about all of it. The fear, the sadness of lost and angry kids, the power of empathy and compassion, and then I change the subject because they need a little bit of numbness in order to still be a kid.

But we adults shouldn’t rest in our numbness. We need to do something, try something, discuss something, agree on something, because all of our children deserve at least that.

PRE-ORDER IS AVAILABLE!

You can pre-order your copy of The Secrets of Lost Stones now.

Click here to order on Amazon.

Click here to add the book to your Goodreads “Want to Read” list.

PARENTING THE STORM

You'd think that after nearly fifteen years of on-the-job parenting experience I'd have this whole thing down. I mean, how hard is it, really? I'm the parent, right? Together with my husband we're the big boss, the 5-0, where the buck stops.

But reality is harsh and messy and human beings are born with different desires and drives and in turn respond in ways we didn't plan.

I was a pretty decent kid. This is not to say that I didn't lie to my parents or do things I shouldn't have. True confession: yeah, I did all that. But when I became the appropriate age (translation: mom and dad couldn't ground me anymore) I confessed, told them how stupid I had been, how sorry I was to have lied, how I should have trusted them with my dirty laundry. And I assured my mom that I would one day be a better parent for it. I would keep my future kids from making the same stupid mistakes and dumb decisions like I had because we would have an open and honest relationship where they would never lie to me.   

In turn my mother hugged me then said with a layered tone in her voice that I wouldn't understand until much, much later, "Well, Missy, I can't wait for you to have children of your own one day." Her words made me feel warm and confident because surely what she meant was that I was right.

But that wasn't the case at all. It's just that my mom had learned the point of parenting a long time ago and knew, even with her adult child, that there were just some things her kids had to learn on their own.

Because what it has taken me a few decades, three kids and a significant loss of sanity to realize, is that parenting is not a one approach fits all kind of job. And that my childhood mistakes do not make me an unqualified expert on raising my own teenagers.

Parenting is a boat, no a dinghy, in a hurricane, winds whipping the water into dark, frothy waves that violently rock the boat while Sean and I straddle it, trying to keep our balance in the rain and the wind and the water that stings our faces. And the point of it all isn't to keep the kids safely in the boat, no, that analogy while tidy and cute, isn't the point of parenting at all.

The point, I am learning, is that teenagers are the ocean and the wind and the rain and the hurricane itself. The point is not to keep them tucked safely away from the elements because they are the elements. The point is to let them figure out who they are, what they stand for, what they are willing to fight for in the middle of the mess that is hormones and school and friendships and bad choices and mistakes, and yes, maybe even a lie or two.

The point is to help our kids become the stronger for it. And the point is to get through the stormy parts so that on those peaceful, glassy water days, we laugh, and love and learn to enjoy the ride together.