First Book Attempt

I have been making up stories to entertain myself for as long as I can remember.  I wrote my first story around age 11.  However, my first attempt at a book had nothing to do with telling a story.  It was more of a hygiene and beauty guide that I hobbled together for myself.

I was an unpopular kid.  I was scorned by my peers for my red hair, freckles, doing well in class (teacher's pet), and my socioeconomic situation.  I never fit in because I never really understood how to fit in.  So around the time I was 12 I decided that if I just did the research on how to be poised and beautiful then everything would change. Of course, this was no My Fair Lady silver screen dream.

I checked out books from the school library about how to "do" the beauty thing (these books were from the 19050's - 60's as our library wasn't well funded).  I started with basic hygiene, grooming, and poise (posture, walking in heels, manners) and compiled the information from all the sources into a few paragraphs and a daily, weekly, monthly schedule that I felt was workable for me or the average person.

From there I moved to the basics of makeup and fragrance.  Unfortunately makeup was not allowed for me at that time.  I wanted to know the basics when the time came that I could.  I had a very sweet perfume (honeysuckle I think?) that my grandmother had given me at Christmas. The books said a lady would dab it on the wrists and on the neck behind the ears.

I wrote this self-help hygiene and beauty guide not only to try to level up to fit in, to try to make my peers forget the things they held against me, but to have something that I had control over.  I had no control of the abusive home I lived in  I had no control over rather my peers at school attacked me.  I could gather and coalesce information and ideas to improve myself.  I could try to improve myself despite all that was against me.



While the general plan to make myself palatable to my peers failed, I learned from the experience. First, I learned that you can learning amazing things through research - libraries are awesome for that.  I also learned that by gathering ideas and bits of information together, I created something new.  Put enough ideas, thoughts, imaginings, daydreams together and fiction is born.  Something new.  Something entertaining and amusing.  It was something that I could absolutely control.  It was exactly what I needed to survive through the darkest times.  Even today while I'm in much better conditions, I still need this - the act of creation - that is wholly in my control.

First Cuss

The first time I cussed out loud was in the eighth grade.  We were in the cafeteria for lunch or some other assembly for our grade.  By that age (13?) my peers already casually cussed whenever the chance arose and an adult was not present.  Paula Walker, Joanna McCord, Tammy Garrett, and someone else I can't quite remember were sitting with me at the table.  Or rather, they had allowed me to sit with them.

I was a quiet mousy girl.  One of the smallest in my class.  In the class photos I was inevitably placed on the front row because of my petite stature.  The others, who were my peers but never felt like my peers because they did not know my situation, saw me as an outsider.  Often I still feel that different-ness.

We sat at the table, the other girls discussing the cuss words they used.  Basically trying to show how "grown up" they were.  Then they turned to me after one of them pointed out that they never heard me cuss or even speak out of line.  They did not know what the consequences of doing so would mean for me at home.  I worked to be quiet and unseen at home so as to avoid trouble with my step-father/uncle who would have given me tremendous slaps to the head and face and/or beaten me with a belt.

At school I was quiet and tried to be unnoticed because I wanted  to avoid the bullies who at this point had noticed not only that I was different but was not maturing emotionally like they were.  Even these girls, who I had once thought of as friends had turned on me that year.  They would take my few personal things and keep them from me.  Throwing these things back and forth to each other over my head or simply taking something (like a precious book) and never returning it.  Yet I sat with them that day because they let me and I simply did not want to be alone.

So they cajoled me that not only did I not cuss, I probably didn't even really KNOW how to cuss.  Of course I knew how.  I had heard cussing at home both towards me and others and towards situations.  But I didn't want to because it felt like I would be giving up some pure part of myself that I'd never be able to get back.  So I told them that I didn't want to.  Which in turn caused the cajoling to turn to open mocking and hostility.  They would make the "baby" leave the table because she couldn't handle cussing.

I wanted to cry.  So often I wanted to cry but I couldn't back then.  Caught between being controlled and abused at home and then being mocked and bullied at school.  I couldn't cry in front of them.  I felt no alternative than to let slip a full sentence of cussing.  It stopped their mocking (momentarily) as they sat, mouths agape, at little miss priss uttering "god damn motherfucking son of a bitch".  These days, that seems like nothing.  In 1982, that wasn't something a good little girl said.

And yet, I admit that there might have been something I lost that day.  Like Pandora's box, once opened, I  could not stop cussing a little here and a little there to this very day.  Still seen as very rude, unladylike, and uncultured in certain company, I open my mouth and the words at times come out unbidden.

Reading List for 2018

2018 was a year of changes.  We moved in late 2017 which left me with establishing a new home and re-establishing all the services for my autistic son.  It took a lot of work but I got them all in place only to have some of them fall apart in the last weeks of 2018.  So here we go again!  But hey, I still have my great escape in reading!  I have an ever expanding personal library.  So much so that I’ve made a vow that if I don’t extremely love the book after reading it, if I don’t plan to read it again, then I have to let it go.  Now if I could just control myself at thrift stores, yard sales, and trips to Barnes and Nobles in the mall (I lie to myself that I’m only going in to look while my son is doing community days with Pokemon Go).  This year was also a big year for audio books with me as I’ve found I’m more productive when using them.  This came in handy while I was canning from the garden we planted this year and finishing the quilt for my great niece.  It will also come in handy as I start the “I’m going to exercise and eat healthier” new year’s resolution.   We’ll see how well an exercise routine fits into my life.

Stories Read in 2018

Leave the Window Open: A Wesley Ayers Story - Victoria Schwab
The Ordinary Woman and the Unquiet Emperor - Catherine M. Valente

Pocosin - Ursla Vernon/ T. Kingfisher - Apex Magazine
Laurie - Stephen King
The Scarlet Slippers - Joanne Harris - Faerie Magazine
The Makara and His Meal - Shveta Thakrar - Faerie Magazine

Books Read in 2018

Shakespeare's Champion - Charlaine Harris (re-read due to the Me Too Movement)

Shakespeare's Christmas - Charlaine Harris (re-read due to the Me Too Movement)

Shakespeare's Trollop - Charlaine Harris (re-read due to the Me Too Movement)

Shakespeare's Counselor - Charlaine Harris (re-read due to the Me Too Movement)

Feral - Holly Schindler

The Fortune Quilt - Lani Diane Rich

Truly Devious - Maureen Johnson

Miss Bunkle's Book - D. E. Stevenson

Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day - Seanan McGuire

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver Presents: A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo - Jill Twiss, E.G. Keller (illustrated)

The Fate of Mercy Alban - Wendy Webb

A Head Full of Ghosts - Paul Tremblay

Black Orchid (graphic novel) - Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean

Best Loved Fairy Tales of Walter Crane (illustrated)

Norse Mythology - Neil Gaiman

Krampus the Yule Lord - Gerald Brom

This Savage Song - V.E. Schwab

Rolling in the Deep (novella) - Mira Grant

A Vintage Affair - Isabel Wolff

Life and Death - Stephanie Meyer

Gwendy's Button Box - Stephen King and Richard Chizmar

Into the Drowning Deep - Mira Grant

Sparrow Hill Road - Seanan McGuire

The Lady of the Rivers - Philippa Gregory

City of Ghosts - Victoria Schwab

The Reformed Vampire Support Group - Catherine Jinks

The War That Saved Me - Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

The War I Finally Won - Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Royals - Rachel Hawkins

Joe Hill's The Cape - Joe Hill, Jason Ciaramella, Zach Howard

World War Z - Max Brooks

The Things About Jellyfish - Ali Benjamin

An Easy Death - Charlaine Harris

Our Dark Duet - VE Schwab

By the Time You Read This I'll Be Dead - Julie Anne Peters

The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman

M is for Magic - Neil Gaiman

Audio Books in 2018

Agent to the Stars - John Scalzi - read by Wil Wheaton

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry - Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Artemis - Andy Weir - read by Rosario Dawson

Locked In - John Scalzi - read by Wil Wheaton

Lock and Key - Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodrigues - read by cast

The Android's Dream - John Scalzi - read by Wil Wheaton

Needful Things - Stephen King

Dead But Not Forgotten: Stories from the World of Sookie Stackhouse - Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner Editors - read by Johanna Parker

Fuzzy Nation - John Scalzi - read by Wil Wheaton

Strong Ending: From Combat to Comedy - narrated by Mary-Louise Parker

Elevation - Stephen King

Lullaby - Jonathan Maberry - read by Scott Brick

Feed the Dragon - Sharon Washington

Girls and Boys - Dennis Kelly - read by Carey Mulligan

Quilt for my great niece, Kaydense.