Hello Fall!

Hello Fall! Gorgeous sky and cooler temps, hoodies, bonfires and all-things-pumpkin, welcome!

Interestingly enough, the Fall equinox has coincided, this year, with my immersion in some much-needed research on witchcraft. Midway through my second novel, “Maypops in September”, my character Benny Jones has begun to more actively pursue the more magical aspects of her personality. She is being badgered by a particularly persistent – and extremely unhappy! – spirit, who she is, consequently, seeking to send . . .well, onward. Wherever it is that he needs to be, but no longer in her bedroom! And so Benny, who has generally tried to bury her talents, will now be forced to haul them out and polish them instead. And perhaps even muscle her sister on board, as well. 

And I, the ever-beleaguered author, am forced to bone up on witchcraft.

Oh, but it’s fun! What a perfect time of year for this project!

Here’s a little of what I’ve picked up so far, probably just enough to start any Wiccan readers out there chuckling at my ineptitude. The autumn equinox, Mabon Sabbot, just passed yesterday, with its perfect measure of hours, light and dark being exactly equal. This entire week is considered a bridge, a time when the dead can travel between their shore and ours – not for sinister purposes, but in order to be remembered. So, this is a time to not only look back fondly on those who have passed, but also to recall any lessons that we may have learned from them, and to put into practice any good deeds that they may have failed to achieve.

Positive thoughts for a witch! But I’m rapidly learning that modern-day witches have very little negativity.

Maban, apparently, is not only about balance – and interestingly enough, the sun now enters the sign of Libra, which is represented symbolically by the scales – but also about gratitude. Traditionally, thanks is given for a bountiful harvest, but I’m pretty sure that any thanks for any bounty is good! We are urged to make gratitude lists, to tell timeless stories, and to honor the darkness so that we may better enjoy the light.

And so, only a little knowledge thus far, but enough to sway me in the direction of autumn as the perfect time for Benny to rid herself of the unwanted spirit, and allow her to celebrate the perfect Halloween.

In other news . . . the big day is almost here! “Sugar Man’s Daughter” will be released on Friday, and I am beyond excited!

"Sniffing the Flowers" : Writer’s Guide to Stress Management

Writing a book, I’ve discovered, is only the proverbial tip of the ice burg. Creating the story, the setting, the characters who live in your heart as surely as your own children do – all fluff compared to what follows. The search for a publisher (and yay, I found the most wonderful man in the world, Lyle Perez, and the awesome Rainstorm Press) the creation of a blog, a facebook page, a presence on Linkd, Twitter and oh dear, who else . . . all become a prominent fixation on your day-to-day horizon.

            Which brings me to the meat of this post, and what is likely to be a most unpopular approach to ultimately keeping your sanity. Here it is: take a breath. As when you’re doing yoga and you realize your chest is about to burst. Breathe. Understand that you are enmeshed in what is perhaps the loneliest and most self-serving profession known to man, and so, you are in danger of becoming isolated from, well, life. The very thing you are writing about.

            Steinbeck took Charley travelling for a reason.

            I have two very different jobs, and yet I’ve discovered parallels in the way that each encroaches on my existence, nearly to the obliteration of all else. A neighbor’s house fire, or an infant’s imminent birth can yank me from my home life at any time. Sounds horrible, but the truth is, I love this. I live for it. And my characters (who are lately crying for promotion) have the same demanding shrill as the pager; sometimes I can’t sleep for the noise in my head. I have to respond, and if you are a writer reading this, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

            In my EMT world, we say, “Breathe. Smell the flowers and blow out the candles.” Another lovely parallel because it applies to both of my professions. Candles and flowers are all about the passage of time, and taking notice of them means just that. Don’t let life run away from you – children grown, tasks abandoned, leaves turned to gold – without noticing its passage. Take time to recharge, and while you’re doing so, look around you and realize how beautiful everything is.

            Fuel for the next book.

Keeping Pieces (Short Story)

HIPPA demands that we don’t talk about our calls, except in a very generalized fashion, and I adhere to this rule strongly enough to have tweaked the call that this story is based upon very nearly into the arena of unreality. So, here’s what is real and true – the spirit of the child, the sorrow and shock, and finally, the redemption.

For me, this is a springtime story, and no matter how many springs go by, my mind still worries the memory; and I still see this boy when the air begins to gentle into long warm days. Every EMT carries a few pieces around with them – these are mine.

 

Keeping Pieces

I took a boy on the ambulance once, and he left a piece of himself there with me. I’ve been carrying it around ever since, and sometimes in the black early morning when I am on my way to work, he morphs out of that piece and sits beside me whole. On those days, the scent of spring in the air is only a trick of the mind, lilacs and pussy willows as far away as tomorrow.
            He shimmers in death, fresh from another world that my soul knew in infancy. A place that the cold and practical adult, the professional, has forgotten, and wants no part of now.
            But anyway.
 When I knew him, he was just one of us; on the last day that I saw him, the blood seeping through his wrist bandages was tangible and real - the only color in an otherwise gray day.  I knew him, I guess, in the way that most adults know their children’s friends. He was a familiar face, a bright redhead in my yard on beautiful blue football mornings, an easy grin and a maturity that set him a little apart from the other boys.
The kid on my cot that day bore no relation whatsoever to that other bright child. My boys – the boys who decorated my furniture with their lanky forms, ate my food, made me laugh - were at that age where they were as immortal as Huckleberry Finn, and they hadn’t cried in years. If the Jabberwocky lived under their beds, he did so unacknowledged.
            But I can tell you now that two weeks later, the monsters won, and this boy was dead. His mother found him curled in the tub like half formed reality, bled out, already gone.  And in my profession, helplessness is something that seeps beneath your skin; it lays there like lividity, a large black bruise that won’t go away. And so. The pieces.
            You carry them around with you, and you work at them a little, rubbing them the way that a worried thumb will smooth a lucky stone. Sometimes you take them out and look at them, turn them in your palm, and they still look the same. Your failure mocks you.
 I should have been able to save that one.

                                                                  * * *

            Spring.
If not this spring, then the next.
It will come when you are able to let it, and everything will smell so sweet that you have to stop crying. You can’t throw those pieces away, but they seem to weigh less now. Go outside, and look at the branches of the trees against a smooth dove colored sky. Take your little girl on a bike ride, and watch the magical play of sunlight in her hair. Listen and remember. Where you came from, to whom you belong.
            Understand that it’s all right to carry those pieces around; you couldn’t get rid of them now if you tried. They soaked into your skin and they course through your veins, and they live. In you.

            We carry each other until we get to the other side.

"June Already?" -An Update-

June already? The magnolia has lost its tentative lacy green, branches already laden with large, waxy leaves and the lawn beneath plush as cat fur.

            Spring went by in a blur of rain and work. Fire trainings, Mother’s Day gifts, prom tuxes and our last high school graduation. All the stuff of life, bundled and tossed at us – sorted out, soaked in, and hurried past.

            Slow down, life!

            May and June are big fire training months. Possibly because we finally feel like moving again, lol! We will come to your house fire in the winter, but, given our preference, we would rather not turn into animated ice cubes while operating the hose lines. This spring, we’ve covered auto extrication and l.p. burns – yours truly got to be nozzle man, raising her blood pressure to an amazing level (I’ve been eating garlic and drinking apple cider vinegar ever since.) Also, we have not one, but two, abandoned houses to use for practice burns. Youngest son has joined the department, and brought buddies with him, so we are thrilled to death.

        Mother’s Day saw me with not only my mother, but all three of my kids, and I am so blessed to realize that this is always the case. Sunshine and lilacs and the slow awareness of utter peace. Mother’s Day, to me, feels like the easy Sundays of my childhood – simple, unfettered happiness.

This is a picture of all of us together – Rachel is the oldest and a university student, which still sounds so important that I secretly marvel every time I say it, lol. She’ll be home for much of the summer, yay!. Philip is the boy in the cap, already brown as can be, although I would swear the sun has hardly been out this summer. He lives just down the road from us, and is currently wearing himself out building pools and attending bonfires. This boy works and plays harder than anyone else I know. Johnny is the youngest and the tallest – just graduated high school and tells me that nobody calls him Johnny anymore. He makes movies – you can find him on youtube if you go to Jones Shorts and then Jones Productions, he’s got the pic of the horse - but he doesn’t know what he wants to do with the rest of his life. Lately, it’s become a prevalent question. He’s only eighteen, people!

I sometimes think of these guys as the rudder, the sails and the anchor in my life ship.


Prom was especially awesome this year because Johnny was king! He insisted on a white tux, and even though dinner was spaghetti, the garment seems to have survived. We had a lot of fun with the crown, and even made Kitty-Boy pose for a picture in it. Lol!

And graduation, whew! Our high school – which we never think of as “ours” since it is not in our town – is especially snobby and stuffy, and insists on silence during the ceremony. Lol! Philip brought an airhorn, and we made a resounding racket as Johnny walked up for his
diploma. This is long-standing tradition in my family, but truly, we outdid ourselves. Probably a good thing that this is our last-ever high school graduation.     

Our party was at the fire station, and my daughter, party planner extraordinaire, had it well in hand. She makes cakes! Beautiful, awesome cakes with butter cream frosting as thick as two finger widths – yay! And she decorated – streamers, balloons, photos strung from silver wire and live flowers for centerpieces. The flowers were of a variety I had never seen before, long cones tipped in pink, yellow and orange. So appropriate, they looked like little candles, and if ever there is a time to light a candle for the future, now is it.         

Today is my first anniversary! I love, love my husband.

            Happy summer, all!

No Big Hero: A Lighthearted EMS Parody

Happy EMS Week!

Like every EMT/firefighter you’ve ever met, I am pretty much obsessed with my profession; I have the requisite bumper stickers and tee shirts, even a collectible “Roy and Johnny” toy fire helmet. Birthdays involve extrication gloves, stethoscopes, EMS pants, and my yahoo page is littered with updates from every department within a seventy mile radius.

            In fact, HERE is the article that hit my inbox the other day and became the inspiration for this blog. 

You don’t have to read the whole thing, lol! Not that it isn't well written – truly, it is. And God knows, I can actually relate to most of it, as can almost any emergency worker. But it is, perhaps, a tad melodramatic, no? Maybe somewhat officious? All of which lead my partner and I, regrettably, to play with it. I share with you now the unfortunate results:

• Until you have spent eight hours on scene with your pants falling down inside your bunker gear because you forgot to put a belt on when you left the house – Don’t judge us.

• Until you have hit the patient’s house at a dead run only to slip in vomit and slide across the room like Babe Ruth stealing home (halting at the feet of your “non breathing” patient, who remarks. “Oh my.”)  – Don’t judge us.

• Until you forget to set the brake on the tanker and don’t realize it until said vehicle is sliding down the boat ramp into the lake – Don’t judge us. 

• Until you've answered a call with shampoo still in your hair – Don’t judge us

• Until you have answered a call for a non responsive medical alarm, torn down the front door and tromped mud across a stranger’s living room, only to hear the “patient” screaming in terror from their shower “Who iiiiiissss it??” – Don’t judge us. 

• Until you've gotten thoroughly lost, after dark, in your ambulance en route to a “trouble breathing” and been subjected to dispatch instructions that involve turning “right at the big Christmas tree and left again after the duck blind” – Don’t judge us.

Too often, our job actually is dramatic – at least when it isn't mind-numbingly boring. We have learned to go from zero to one hundred on the adrenaline scale in five seconds flat. Thankfully, we've also learned to laugh at ourselves, and we really don’t subscribe to the “hero” nonsense at all. Very simply, we love what we do – more than that, it’s kind of hard to get that hero-swagger right when your pants are falling down beneath your bunker gear.          

Frog Song

            Tonight is the night.

I step outside, barefoot on a lawn soft as grave dirt, to inhale the faintly piquant lemon of magnolias and hear the frog song. A thousand chirring, peeping, cheering voices that hold me enthrall, errands forgotten, while all the summers of my life shuttle past, swift and rolling as the downhill rush of a spring-fed creek.

Copyright Steve Polatnick

            “They’re here,” my mother, daughter, grandmother would say – day gentling into evening, a sky the color of tea roses and violets, and through it all, the song. “Summer’s coming.”

            Oh, summer. The languid air in the valley has a presence that is very nearly tangible, and is at least half made-up of memory. My mother played in this yard as a little girl in the years just following the Great Depression. Hair in a smooth Scout Finch bob, neat patches on her cotton dress, fingers blackberry-stained. The frog song brings the little girl back, and I can see her almost as plainly as I see my own children –

            Here in the same yard, beneath the magnolia, and trailing up the hill after lightning bugs, their shouts jubilant enough to puncture the soul, to suck the heart out.

            I think that the happiest moments in our lives are overlaid with the deepest sorrow, as though we need to experience the depth of one in order to feel the other. Time wounds us, always, simply by its forward motion.

            But anyway.

            Who on earth first applied the word “croak” to that sound? And could it be further from the truth?  

"Words Like Dandelions" : Breaking the Author’s Rulebook

           This week is devoted to new beginnings. Not only because it’s spring – blooming time, reaching time - but also because I have worn myself out with novel revisions and am ready to chuck aside the old in favor of tabula rasa, the clean slate. “Maypops in September” is my second novel, sequel to “Sugar Man’s Daughter” and ever-present thorn in my pride. Today, I am launching my third run at a cohesive manuscript, and am feeling thoroughly pig-headed about seeing it through. It will flow!

Copyright Karen Ahuja

To that end, I am reading James Lee Burke in my spare time.

And when I finish with him, I think I’ll go back to Steinbeck, and perhaps Harper Lee.

Here is why: when you study writing, you will very early on be bombarded with rules. “Never open a book with weather.” “Limit use of adverbs and adjectives.” “Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.” “Remain in one point of view.”  Etc, etc, etc. Paralyzing, you think? Ah yes, how on earth to write within these limitations?

            The answer, of course, is that you can’t. (Incidentally, another no-no is the word “that”!)  
Relax, kick back for a bit and read the masters.

            “Grapes of Wrath” opens, I’m afraid, with a very lengthy and detailed description of corn crops dying. Oh dear, the very first sentence – “To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma , the last rains came gently.” Sounds rather  . . . well, a-hem, weather-related. And exactly whose point of view are we in? Did he just use a pesky “ly” word?

            Who could forget Harper Lee’s lovely opening, “Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired town when I knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop . . .”? Uh-oh, rain again. Sigh. And truly, such over-use of descriptive words! “Old, tired, rainy, red”! Could she not have found a more subtle approach?

            I hold James Lee Burke in the same high esteem as the aforementioned, and I don’t think I’m alone in doing so. But in diving into his “Glass Rainbow” (a sensation, incidentally, akin to leaping into a cool, deep pond mid August - which is to say, an utter release of tension) the reader is immediately confronted with several sentences which are roughly the size of any normal paragraph. Run-ons, you say? Likely, but aren’t they beautiful? Do they not enhance the reading experience?

            And isn’t that what this is all about? I say, write the way you long to write. Pick your words with the abandon of a toddler in a dandelion field, and inhale their sweetness. Wring all that you can from them. We are writers, after all. Words are our currency; we should use them as such.

            Okay, enough said, lol! Here is the new revised opening to “Maypops in September.” I have begun with yet another taboo - a prologue, gasp! - and peppered it, I hope, with enough descriptive words to stupefy even the most seasoned critic.

  Prologue 

Benny Jones woke to the sound of rain, and the slow awareness of blood pooling in her mouth - a raw, salty taste, and there was far too much of it. She fought the strangle of airbag over her face, whimpering when her fingers encountered the slick gushing beneath her nose, and at last finding the seatbelt release. The thud of her body against the jeep roof made a sound like a sandbag slapping mud, and for a time she lay still, absorbing the blow and allowing the blood passage through slack lips.

Gasoline fumes, at first subtle, finally drove intrusive fingers down the back of her throat; she belly-crawled through the driver’s side window and onto the bridge, not noticing the bite of broken glass in her elbows. The night vibrated with the discharge of wind and water, lightning quick as strobes bursting blue over the swollen creek.

Rafe Giancoli was shrimped in the mud on the far side of the bridge with his chin tucked to his chest; Benny approached him, toes en pointe and breath trapped in her chest. His eyes were asymmetrical, the left lid drooping at half mast, and a lacy pink froth trembled on his lips before the rain washed it sideways; his breathing was ragged and moist.

            A turquoise bead bobbed in the puddle next to his head, and Benny hunkered down to reach for it, rolling it absently in her palm. Rafe had been beating her when he lost control in the back-road potholes. Big hand at the back of her neck, up beneath her cornrows, driving her face into the dash so that her nose popped.

            Benny stood slowly, pocketing the bead and sucking her bloody lip while her eyes rested on the dark swell of wet road going into town. At last she crouched again, fixed her hands in Rafe’s armpits, and tugged experimentally.

            His heels dragged, carving furrows in the mud, but overall the disposal was so much easier than it should have been; the black water swallowed him with barely a resulting ripple.