Maybe it’s a Drunken Kangaroo

May 9, 2015May 10, 2015JT Twissel 26 Comments

From Bing Images

My husband just told me we have a “large” animal living in the cellar beneath our house.

Me: “How large?”

Him: “Well, it wasn’t afraid of me. It just kind of waddled away swishing its fluffy tail in my direction.”

Yikes!

“Do you think it was a raccoon?” I ask hopefully.

The only other animal small enough to get into the cellar is, yes, you’ve guessed it – a SKUNK. Double, triple yikes. (Faithful readers will remember the unrelenting Skunk Siege of December 2014.)

He seems to read my mind: “Maybe that’s why our house smelt so bad for so long – a skunk confronted our raccoon.”

Now it’s our raccoon. I must nip this idea in the bud, immediately. Hubby has already adopted several squirrels and chickadees. “It’s not our raccoon!”

He has another idea. A few weeks back he left the door to the cellar ajar and of course Pretty Kitty with his little furry paws managed to pry it open and romp around in the dark, dank and dirt of the storage area. Of course we didn’t realize it until three in the morning when we heard a piteous yowl and practically fell out of bed. “What the hell was that?” We both asked in unison. The resulting search of the house failed to locate Kitty and, after coming to the conclusion that he was hiding in some deep crevice and would come out when he was ready, back to bed we stumbled to try to get some rest. In the morning Kitty still could not be found, until around noon when I looked out the back door and there he was.

Playing peek-a-boo

Snubbing his nose at us as if to say, “Aren’t I a clever cat”?

Hubby’s new idea is that the cat ran into the raccoon. “Maybe that’s how he got outside.”

“Wait a minute. If it’s been under the house for so long then what’s it been living off?”

“Hum. I haven’t caught any rats in a while.”

Great! Apparently while I sleep there’s a party going on beneath me. Cats, rats, raccoons and skunks. Did I mention that we keep our wine in the cellar?

If he can wrestle crocodiles, I reckon he can take on a raccoon!

Never fear. We’ve called in Crocodile Dundee to track the wild beast down. Who knows? Maybe it’s a drunken kangaroo and he’ll know just what to do.

I’ll let you know how that goes.

The Interpreter – Arleen Williams

May 9, 2015JT Twissel 1 Comment

Today I turn the floor over to fellow author Arleen Williams whose ALKI Trilogy has just been released. For those of you who don’t know, Alki Point is just west of Seattle Washington, an area very lush and green. Wikipedia describes it as “reminiscent of a Pacific Northwest beach town, with a mix of mid-century bungalows, medium-rise waterfront apartment houses, waterfront businesses, a thin beach, and a road with a bike/foot trail running several miles along the water.” As you can tell by the titles, Arleen is a very active woman as are her protagonists! In this piece she talks about the inspiration for her novels.

Years ago I was living in Mexico City and thought about studying English/Spanish interpretation. When I took the college entrance examination and failed, I was sad and filled with relief. It really wasn’t for me. I have too many of my own words and thoughts to express to fill the role of an official interpreter. Yet at times, I still feel like an interpreter. In The Alki Trilogy, I “translate” immigrant lives into stories, offering a window into the realities of modern immigration.

As I write these words, I am reminded of Reese Witherspoon’s 2014 movie, A Good Lie, about the lost boys and girls of Sudan. I remember sitting in the darkened theater shaking my head when those responsible for assisting these immigrants upon their arrival to the U.S. were portrayed as totally clueless.

“Nobody can be that dumb, can they?” I whispered to my husband.

“Most people haven’t spent thirty years working with immigrants and refugees,” he shot back.

In a world of instantaneous information, one would think we’d all know of the horrors that continue to bring immigrants – both documented and undocumented – across our borders on a daily basis. But we are inundated with snippets of news and information, with work schedules and family responsibilities, with the challenges of the hectic day-to-day routine so common in this country. We don’t always understand the stories or the worlds behind the headlines we catch as we rush from one responsibility to the next in our busy lives.

In The Alki Trilogy I introduce readers to characters living lives in the shadows of our own back yards, characters making livings, making love, making mistakes and often interacting with native-born Americans in relationships that enrich the lives of all. And like those immigrants who cut our lawns and clean our pools, who grow our fruits and vegetables, who care for our elderly and infirm, they do it carrying the horrors that brought them to this land branded on their souls.

I wasn’t on some sort of zealous mission when I started writing The Alki Trilogy. In fact, when I began the first novel, Running Secrets, I had no idea I’d be writing a trilogy at all. I simply had characters in my head demanding to be heard: a suicidal young woman and an Ethiopian home health nurse, a homeless Salvadoran girl alone after her parents were deported and the college student who offered sanctuary, an Eritrean man haunted by the terrors of his escape and the hatred of some African-Americans while buoyed by the love of another. These stories were rooted in a lifetime of teaching, explaining, interpreting my world to immigrants from around the globe in an attempt to help them build new lives in this strange land. I suppose at some point my audience shifted.

When I started writing Biking Uphill, I wasn’t ready to say good-bye to Gemila Kemmal, and when Walking Home came to me, The Alki Trilogy flowed from pen to paper as though I were nothing more than a conduit for the voices of my students and the characters based on the lives and experiences they have shared with me over the past thirty years.

About the Author:

Arleen Williams is a Seattle novelist, memoirist, and co-author of a dozen short books in easy English for adults. She teaches English as a Second Language at South Seattle College and has worked with immigrants and refugees for three decades. To learn more, please visit http://www.arleenwilliams.com and http://www.notalkingdogspress.com.

Play Me Please

May 3, 2015July 21, 2021JT Twissel 19 Comments

I was once the grandmother of a girl as black as I am white. She was also quite beautiful – a Serena Williams lookalike and about as tall and curvy. Wherever we went – to restaurants, to parks, to the mall – we got stares that made her uncomfortable.

“They’re staring because you’re so beautiful,” I tried to assure her but she didn’t believe me. I didn’t believe me. It didn’t help that she was accustomed to getting food and clothes from soup kitchens, food banks, and other giveaways and thus had no idea how to act in restaurants or clothing stores. For example, she wanted to go to a Chinese restaurant and once there she ordered fried chicken. She’d gotten the idea somewhere that if you went to sit down restaurants you could order whatever you wanted and when she realized that was not the case, her embarrassment turned to shame which turned to agitation. It didn’t help that she was with foster parents who basically ignored the fact that the four teens in their charge were dodging school, smoking pot, staying up all night and quite possibility prostituting themselves. I tried not to make assumptions as I had no proof and they were not abusing the children. They were getting fed, clothed, etc., which hadn’t been their situation when they entered “the system.” When dealing with these kids the first thing you’re taught is not to judge the lifestyles of other people by your standards.

At my first meeting with the “social” he warned: “She’ll play you.” To which I wanted to say: I don’t care. I’d rather be played by a fourteen year old whose father was in jail and whose mother’s whereabouts were unknown than by the traitors in the Congress claiming to be patriots or by the dancing jackals of corporate America cutting their own taxes while freezing out the poor. But instead I kept my mouth shut. I’d been so excited to meet my first “child” that I’d driven thirty miles sans wallet or cell phone sweaty and flushed after a tennis match.

My black grandchild answered the door in an oversized sweatshirt with a half dozen kittens up her sleeve and her hair knotted on the top of her head in a scarf. Instead of fourteen, she looked eleven. I was immediately enchanted. Then we sat at a table in the fosters’ dining room for a half hour as her social lectured her. After he left I was exhausted. She said she was too and so we made plans to get to know each other the next week.

A week later, I could have sworn a hooker from downtown Oakland answered the foster’s door. The darling girl I’d met the week before had on a long curly wig, a low-cut skintight mini-dress, full make-up, and five inch gladiator heels. I thought for sure I had the wrong house but before I could beat a hasty retreat, she recognized me and off we went in search of Cheetos. The stares that time were brutal. We decided if we ran into anyone she knew, she would tell them I was her grandmother.

It takes a long time to get to know a child who’s been in the system for awhile. To them, you are just another stranger in a long line of strangers who make decisions about their lives which sometime put them in tenuous and frightening places, one of them being Dependency Court. I don’t know many times I explained to her that she was not in trouble and that the judge was on her side, the undeniable fact is, it’s a court with bailiffs and lawyers and tons of paperwork. Despite the smiles and toys, it is intimidating.

Photographed by Bishop M. Cromartie

Because of confidentially rules I cannot go into the particulars of my black granddaughter’s case but, suffice it to say, I was a failure. Mine was not the heartwarming, inspirational story told on posters and in the brochures. I wish I could say I was the only one but sadly there are more failures than successes. However, regarding all the debate over whether or not racism is still alive and kicking, if you’re white and you want to know what it’s like to be black in America, became the grandparent of a black child.

The Typo That Got Away

April 26, 2015July 31, 2015JT Twissel 27 Comments

Are you really, really ready to publish this book?

I missed Shakespeare’s birthday celebration because I was in the middle of final, final edits. Those of you who are writers are keenly aware of the abject horror of final, final edits. Basically the publisher says to you: “Here is your last chance to catch embarrassing typos, missing words, misplaced commas, etc. After you sign off, your work will be paraded naked through Amazon and, if you missed anything, you will be the laughing stock of the literary world. But what do we care. You’re not making us any money.”

And you know, don’t you know, don’t you know, that despite the many, many, many times you and your editor and the proofreader go over the manuscript, as night follows day, something will be missed.

It was . . . The Typo That Got Away!

Oh yes. That nasty little bugger – the Typo That Got Away – is hiding somewhere in the text, somewhere weary eyes haven’t a chance of finding him.

However, that first reviewer, oh yes, never fear. Your first reviewer will find it. And they’ll dangle it in front of your face as if to say – “what kind of a writer are you anyway?”

Buy my book! Review my book!

Sigh. The second worst thing about final, final edits is – guess what – it’s Circus Barker time because you know if you don’t start out of the gate with 35 five star reviews well, you might as well have never written the book at all. You’ve just frigging wasted all the years of your life you devoted to writing it.

I’m not a huge fan of Kafka but when it’s Circus Barker time I feel like I’m devolving into a giant praying mantis, sliming all my friends and colleagues.

Write me a review or else!

The Typo That Got Away

I know what. This time I’ll do it a little differently. I’ll offer a reward for the Typo that Got Away. Dead or Alive. Or better yet, I’ll sell my soul to . . . Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice

Cold-Bloodedness

April 3, 2015JT Twissel 13 Comments

By pure coincidence, in the last couple of months I’ve seen two movies based on Truman Capote’s life at the time he wrote the book IN COLD BLOOD: Truman starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Infamous starring Toby Jones. Both excellent movies. Hoffman had the more difficult role because he had five or six inches on Capote and didn’t really look that much like him. However, he did an amazing job of capturing the angst of a writer trapped by his ambition.

The late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman as Capote agonizing over what he knows he must do to get the story.

Writing about an actual crime must always bring angst. Will you get the details accurately? How will the victims be affected by what you write? No doubt there are cold-blooded writers and journalists out there who put their own ambitions above the feelings of those affected by what they publish, but, both these movies suggest Truman Capote was not one of them. However, he was keenly aware that in order to finish his book (which he called a“nonfiction novel”) the killer he’d come to know would have to die. He also knew that his book would have more authenticity if he could pry the details of the Cutter family’s seemingly random slaughter out of a death row convict. Not an easy job. It would take Capote four years to cajole and dance his way into the man’s heart and soul until finally gaining his trust. His passion to create a masterpiece overrode any moral objections to duping someone into believing that you care about them when all you really care about is improving your story. Of course, there’s no way of knowing how Capote actually felt but as the appeals process dragged out the execution day, he was forced to face the ghoulishness of the situation and his own “cold-bloodedness.”

I know writers who believe that this sort of ambition, this willingness to sacrifice all – including one’s self-respect – is necessary to write great fiction. I must admit when I create a character based on a real person, I shudder and stammer and fall all over myself with dread. I don’t have it in me to befriend someone just so I could expose their story to the world, even for that coveted Best Seller status. What do you think? Are there limits beyond which you will refuse to go? Or, in the pursuit of art are there no limits?

Confronting the BOE

March 25, 2015February 22, 2020JT Twissel 15 Comments

I waited six months to hear back from the Board of Equalization. Six month. When it finally arrived in a thick packet, along with their willingness to hear my case (yeah), was a copy of the State Franchise Tax Board’s rebuttal to my appeal (ick). It was eleven pages of dense posturing that made no sense even to my lawyer which I was required to write a rebuttal to. Suffice it to say, a year and a half later I finally had my day in court.

The following scene from Willful Avoidance takes place outside the courtroom before the hearings were set to begin and is written from the perspective of the clerk for the Board of Equalization who, in real life, I got to know rather well during all those rebuttals.

The battle was about to begin: the Invincible Tax Men versus the Appellants. Each side would have their moment in the ring, unless an Appellant cried “uncle” after arm-bending, threats and promises for leniency were made in last-minute deals. Fully versed on all new laws and decisions, the Tax Men had the home court advantage. The Appellants, especially the small-scale divisions with no direct plan (just an overwhelming belief in the humanity of their story) had little chance. But it all rested ultimately in the hands of the judges, the mighty BOE, now sharpening their pencils (metaphorically) as they prepared to play Solomon. On this day they would need to appear kindly but judicial, full of wisdom but not easily conned. All opinions rendered were, of course, of public record and therefore available for scrutiny by the voting public.

The hall outside the boardroom held all the merriment of a morgue. Four or five groups stood in nervous circles negotiating with FTB lawyers. They rattled their sabers quietly, in hushed tones as though at any moment one of the illustrious members of the BOE came through the boardroom door.

The appellants for the two cases Roberta knew were doomed to fail already sat in the back of the boardroom confidently. Their summaries were astonishingly brief, they had no exhibits to speak of, no legal representation, just some sort of rambling notion that they were in the right or that their current economic condition would get them out of an FTB debt. One appellant had even sent his cousin to plead his case because he couldn’t get off work. That would be a costly mistake. At nine thirty she walked over to the two groups still remaining in the hall. One was the Ravel Stone & Gravel gang with the Very Important lawyer. The other, a woman and two men, one of whom Roberta knew quite well. Mark Slattery, an attorney better suited for Vegas than Sacramento.

It was time to go into the boardroom, she explained to both groups. “Even if your case isn’t scheduled until eleven, the board requires all litigants to be in attendance for opening remarks. After the board begins hearing cases, you can move your negotiations out to the hall again. But,” she cautioned, as Ravel Stone & Gravel sulked away, “keep in mind that the BOE rarely needs the allotted thirty-five minutes to decide a case. After they hear one case, they continue right on to the next one without taking a break. If your case is called in court and you do not respond, you will lose your chance to appeal.”

“What would we do without you, Robbie?” Slattery chuckled, putting an unwanted hand of her shoulder.

“Cut the bull.” He flirted with her as young men often do with women they consider mother figures, only Slattery wasn’t that young, and Roberta wasn’t that old.

“You must be Maya Bethany,” she said, reaching over to shake the hand of the woman standing across from Slattery. She was a gentle-looking woman with wavy auburn hair pulled back into a ponytail, soft grey eyes, and the high cheekbones of someone of Slavic descent. Other than a hint of lipstick, she wore no makeup and she’d dressed conservatively in slacks and a crisp, white blouse. Bravo, Roberta thought. It was the perfect look—neither flashy nor too casual. Over the past year she felt she’d gotten to know Maya Bethany, having read her appeals to the board. And now, here she was. Almost exactly as Roberta had imagined.

The Demise of Dickey, Part 2

March 11, 2015March 18, 2026JT Twissel 13 Comments

Hunk — Hollywood Studmuffin Trevor Lamour

Demise of Dickey, Part 2

“I don’t think you understand, Donald. That’s not a piece of art – it’s Dickey!”

“Dickey?”

“Yes, Dinah’s dog Dickey. He’s dead!”

“He can’t be! Not on the Brazilian tile! He’ll stain the grout!” He flew over to the corpse, his cheeks ablaze, and began kicking it. “Up Dickey doggie, up! Trevor, do something!”

Trevor still stood in the foyer, his eyes glazed over. “You know. We once had a dog. His name was Sammy. I remember when he died we buried him in the backyard. Gosh it was nifty. We were all there – Mom, Dad and sis. Buddy, that was my older brother’s name, why he dug the hole all by himself.”

“Gosh it was nifty? Mom, Dad and sis? I thought you were an orphan raised by the Sisters of Infinite Charity who turned out to be child abusing sexual sociopaths?”

“Oh, that was Dinah’s idea. She wants to brand me as a bad boy with a tragic past – sort of like Robert Mitchum. The truth is….”

“Don’t say another word! Some mutt has just died on, and perhaps ruined for-ever, the hand stained mustard seed grout and now you’re telling me that Trevor Lamour is really Jack Sprat from Oshgosh…”

“No, Spokane, actually.”

“Whatever! And we can’t bury the damn dog in the backyard. In case you haven’t noticed, the house is perched on a cliff!”

“Oh.”

DePeux couldn’t contain his disappointment. For months he’d dreamt of having a fling with Trevor Lamour and now to learn the man used words like “nifty.” It was too much disappointment to bear. Damn, that Dinah is a genius at marketing, he thought. No wonder the bitch has managed to claw her way up to the top of the game. And in the shark pit that’s Hollywood no less.

Suddenly they heard a loud crash from the bedroom followed by an eerie silence.

“Was that a gun?” Donald squealed, “Dinah doesn’t own one, does she?”

Trevor’s face was blank. “Oh course she does. It’s L.A.!” They turned and ran down the length of the hall. Dinah sat on her bed scowling at a phone held about a foot from her face, on the marble floor lay remnants of a lamp she’d smashed to smithereens. Trevor knew the look on her face well. She was about to lay waste to everything within five miles, like some sort of alien spaceship sent to destroy all life forms on earth.

“What do you mean?!!! Didn’t you explain to the Disney people I’d lost my darling Dickey and couldn’t be expected to attend their stupid meeting?? What kind of an idiot are you?” She threw the phone across the room, then turned toward the men now cowering near the door. Her eyes were like those of a rattlesnake about to strike. “DePew, what a jolly time you’ve chosen to visit! Well, I suppose for the amount we’ve paid you, you can help Trevor take care of Dickey.”

“But…but…how?” Both men mumbled.

“How the hell should I know. Here’s a suggestion: Google dead dog removal services!”

The End…

Next week, for those of you who’ve expressed interest in the proceedings of the Board of Equalization (part of the Kick Ass Taxwoman story) I’ll be posting an excerpt from the book which will reveal all. See you then!

Images courtesy of Bing.com

The Demise of Dickey

March 5, 2015February 8, 2018JT Twissel 13 Comments

Chained to the desk… dreaming of becoming Danielle Steele!

Many years ago when I was trapped by fear-of-starvation in a nine-to-five job, I read an article about how filthy rich Danielle Steele was and said to myself “Hey! I could write those romance novels! I mean, how hard could it be? Just follow the same script again and again – boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back again – right?”

So on one particularly quiet day (of which there were many) I sat down at my computer, wrote the following in an email and sent it off to my friend J.

The day her dog Dickey died, Dinah was inconsolable. She wept like an ice cube on speed, grabbing Trevor’s sturdy shoulders and flinging her warm, wet face into his perfumed chest. After an hour of steady downpour, she began to calm. Trevor led her gently into the bedroom and set her down on the Austrian goose down comforter that sat atop her Madonna inspired ultra king-size bed. In the distance the sun set over the Pacific as lights began twinkling to life on the Hollywood Strip lying at their manicured tootsies.

“Now Dinah, remember that Dickey was an old dog. . .”

“Oh Dickey, Dickey,” she sobbed. “there will never be another dog like Dickey.” She was still in her satin negligee, scented sleep mask on top her head, fluffy slippers on her size nine feet. When she hadn’t arrived at the studio by three o’clock, her secretary called down to the set. Luckily Trevor had just wrapped up shooting for the day.

By now his shirt was wringing wet thus the cool evening breeze gave him a chill. He got up to close the window, stripping off his shirt as he went.

“Oh Trevor, I can’t believe you’re thinking about sex at a time like this!”

“I’m not thinking about sex; I’m dripping wet!” he protested, although, he thought, it’s not such a bad idea. He could make her forget about Dickey by taking her into his arms and making passionate love to her. That damned dog was never good for their love life, jumping on his mistress just when Trevor was about to perform at his best.

He closed the window and slowly moved towards her. “Let’s make you comfortable, my love.”

“Oh Dickey, Dickey. Trevor, will you take care of Dickey? I just couldn’t do it.”

“What do you mean ‘take care of Dickey’? I thought you said he was dead.”

“He is dead. . . but he’s in the kitchen.”

“The kitchen?”

“His little body is lying on the floor; his little legs sticking straight up in the air…” With that she started sobbing again.

“The floor! Oh no, what will DePew say? Why couldn’t you take Dickey to the vet’s to die? Why let him croak on the Brazilian tiles?”

It was then that the doorbell rang. At least, he thought it was the doorbell, but perhaps it was her cell phone. Trevor never excelled at making snap decisions thus he stood wavering back and forth – door or purse, door or purse – until Dinah snarled “Will you please get the damned door? Can’t you see the condition I’m in?”

He reluctantly started down the hall toward the front door and . . . the kitchen. . . all the while thinking the dog, the dead dog was in the kitchen.

“Who is it?” he yelled through the rustic barn door.

“It’s DePew. Donald DePew.”

Trevor opened the door a crack and peered out. Sure enough, it was Donald DePew, the interior designer they had hired from their remodel. Their famous remodel by the famous DePew.

“Donald, old man!” he said, throwing open the door, “I’m so happy to see you!” He hugged De Pew with a ferocity that shocked the normally implacable Designer DeJeur.

Trevor Lamour, Hollywood honey

“Why Trev, you’re such a brute!” De Pew squealed with delight. “To what do I owe such an unexpectedly delish welcome?” He knew that Trevor Lamour, film stud-muffin extraordinaire would come out eventually and now it seemed, he finally had.

Donald’s manicured nails digging into his bare back brought Trevor quickly back to his senses. “Donald, I have this slight problem in the kitchen which is why Dinah is in hysterics.” Dinah’s sobs could be heard all the way down the hall.

“You can’t have a problem with the kitchen. The kitchen is perfection. Spielberg doesn’t have such a kitchen. Nor does Streisand!” DePeuw peered around the corner. He stood for a moment pursing his lips and flicking his fingers against his jaw as though evaluating a piece of art. “No, no, no. It’s all wrong for the space. Maybe in the living room but definitely not the kitchen, It is rather nice, though. Who’s the artist?”

Okay, troops. Danielle Steele has nothing to worry about from JT Twissel, otherwise known as Jan. My friend J wrote in response:

“Don’t delete this indubitably deliriously, delightful dictation. Will Dickey be delivered paws downward? Will Dickey’s death make sex a delicate decision? Will Trevor decide to delay his declaration of love for Donald DePew? Will Dinah denounce, dismantle and decimate Trevor when finally he declaims? Or will Dinah duplicate Trevor’s behavior and declare her love for Donald?

Tune in. . . and now this . . .

Kind Spirit: Jennifer Hotes

February 25, 2015February 26, 2018JT Twissel 8 Comments

I’ve met many writers in the virtual world where we now increasingly live. They all want you to read their blogs, comment, retweet their tweets and like them on Facebook but not all of them return the favor. So it’s a true honor to post an excerpt from Jennifer Hotes’ debut novel Four Rubbings. She is a champion supporter of other writers, a hospice volunteer, and still very much in touch with the magical, tormented world of teenagers. She’s also a very talented artist. From Four Rubbings:

“As I kneel down next to my mother’s grave, I notice the withered flowers that slump over the sides of the vase. The sunflowers we brought for her birthday have exploded with rotting gray seeds. I dig my nails into my palms to keep from tossing the dead bouquet behind a bush. The leaves crawl with gnats and tiny worms that feast on the fetid offering.

“You guys are glad I forgot fresh flowers, aren’t you?” I say, content to leave the rotten bouquet in place. I stretch across the grave and goosebumps erupt down my naked arms and legs. I suck in the air that hangs thick around my face, a mix of rotting leaves and smoky sweet mulch that tickles my nose and makes me sneeze. After blessing myself, I cross my legs at the ankles. I close my eyes and picture the porcelain white vault below that encases the last of my mother’s earthly remains. I imagine the cedar roots that have wrapped around her coffin by now, blotting out the delicate gold leaf details entirely. I think about my mom the gardener, tucked inside the roots of a tree, and smile. Desperate to feel my mother’s spirit, I paint a vivid mental picture of her, plucked from fuzzy memories and fading photographs. In this particular time capsule, I’m seven and she snuggles next to me in bed. Lush copper hair drapes over her shoulders. It was before the days when she hid her chemo-ravaged head with scarves. Her eyes glint with mischief as she looks down to ask which book I want first. My tiny hands reach for The Runaway Bunny. She wraps her arms around me and opens the worn board book. The thick spine creaks as she turns to the first page and I nestle deeper into her. Resting her chin on the top of my head, she begins to read a book we both know by heart. Her voice vibrates down my back, and her warm breath washes over me like a blessing as she whispers:

“Once there was a little bunny who wanted to run away. So he said to his mother, ‘I am running away.’ ‘If you run away,’ said his mother, ‘I will run after you. For you are my little bunny.’”

Today brought the news of my mother’s cancer and her dire prognosis. So tonight, my favorite baby book brings me a special comfort. She won’t die. Mothers don’t die. She will be here to watch my whole life, because I need her. That’s what mothers do. As she closes the book, I lean into her and breathe in baby powder, sunshine, and coffee. She kisses the top of my head and tucks a curl behind my ear. “Josie, before you were born, our hearts were stitched together in heaven. I’ll always be this close.” She lays her hand across my bony rib cage. Lying on her grave, I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from crying and taste blood. I hold a hand over my ribs and ache to feel a trace of the string that ties our hearts together, but all I feel is cheap fringe and fake beads.

As a part of her blog tour Jennifer is raffling off free copies of her book plus several other other goodies, including a free peek at the next book in her Stone Witch series. Click here to enter the drawing.

Please lock me away; but not with a mini-bar

February 12, 2015September 9, 2022JT Twissel 15 Comments

Frsier — Stricken with writer’s block, an aspiring scribe downs the last alcohol from the mini-bar while his muse yawns.

One of my guilty pleasures is the television sitcom Frasier. When it first aired in the 1990s, I didn’t have time to watch television. I was working full time and taking care of children. I had no spare time. If I did, I watched reruns of silly British comedies, such as Are you Being Served and As Time Goes By. In those days I needed as much silly as I could get and no one does silly better than the Brits!

BeingServed — One of the great silly British shows – Are You Being Saved?

But lately I’ve found a channel that plays re-runs of Frasier in the morning when I’m having breakfast, reading the newspaper and getting caught up on email. It always starts my day off with a giggle or two. The other day they played an episode called “Author, Author” that hit close to home.

Many movies and television shows in which a writer is a main character make one, or all, of the following assumptions:

Nicholson — Writers always get freaked out by dogs…

1) It’s easy to get published and after you hit it big, you will become an asshole. Examples: She Devil, As Good as It Gets.

2) If your first novel is a huge success but the publisher says your second is shit, steal a brilliant plot from an unknown writer and pass it off as yours. Of course, you’ll be obliged to kill the real author before publication but that’s okay because everyone knows, writers make great murderers. Example: Death Trap

3) You hit it big but you’re an out-of-control, drunken misogynist. Life will only get worse and worse for you until the maid finds your naked, bloated body face down in your own vomit in some seedy hotel room. Frankly, there are too many examples of this type of movie to list.

Famous writers only appeal to Hollywood if they’re primarily famous for something other than writing, like Truman Capote or Ernest Hemingway. Even when they’ve tried to make movies about writers like Jane Austen, they’ve had to add scintillating “possibilities.” Perhaps she had a secret romance. Perhaps, perhaps. There are a couple of movies that try to depict a famous writer warts and all. One is Saving Mr. Banks which is about the author of Mary Poppins. Apparently in real life she was no Mary Poppins.

In the episode of Frasier I watched the other day, the brothers Crane decide to test out another myth about writing:

4) A case of writer’s block can be cured by locking yourself away, preferably far from civilization.

Frasier2 — Writer’s blog leads to fratricide!

In their case, a hotel room with a mini-bar. If I were locked in a hotel room for a weekend under the mandate to produce a couple of chapters, that minibar would be emptied the first day and the paddy wagon on its way to get me.