Embers

Dental Dilemma

2012-02-14T15:52:00.000-08:00

So. So today was the day when I was going to have my four second molars pulled.

I spent the last two days mentally preparing because I'd booked this procedure without any tranquilizers. (I had to drive myself home, you see, and take care of my 8-yr-old son afterward.) And so.

So I showed up, hung up my coat, and let the assistant adjust the headrest in the chair of torture. The dentist came in. I laid back, and the fun began.

Those shots hurt. Not unbearably, but they hurt a lot more than I remember them hurting. And why the hell were there so many?

As the fourth or fifth straw-sized needle pierced the tender spot in the back of my mouth, a streamer of pain shot down my neck, and up into my jaw, and my eye. Without thinking, and maybe before a thought could form, I grabbed his hand and yanked it out.

"Ow?" he asked.

Mmm hmm.

And then: "Open your mouth."

But when I did, pain began. And grew, until nearly unbearable torment filled my head, and flowed into my sinuses. Ever had dry sockets? It felt like every tooth on that top right was driving a mack truck into a Denali-sized dry socket.

Well, the short version of all this is that my experience is apparently labeled "a reaction to anesthesia." And so now I have to make an appointment with an oral surgeon, and be put out for the procedure. The problem, however, is getting those thirteen miles home afterward, and of course looking after my son is another. (I've got no family here close, and imposing on friends for this kind of thing makes me cringe.)

And so.

But at least now the ibuprofen I took is working, and I'm not writhing on the floor. The other details I'll work out.

Be My Valentine

2012-02-13T23:11:00.000-08:00

What was it he just said? Her gaze lifted from her hands, twisting a knot in her lap, and washed across his face before skittering back to the pale yellow knot circled beneath the salt shaker.

Still, at the furthest edge of her vision, across two tables, she caught his smile. A prick of fluorescent orange wanting bunched beneath her ribs, expanded with her lungs, and she had to press the edges of her lips down, else match his.

As she exhaled, she tried to pretend that she wasn't thinking about how those smiling lips would feel pressed against hers.

Happy Valentine's Day, my loves!

Fils Sur La Lune

2012-02-12T21:01:00.000-08:00

Did you hear? NASA is putting together a plan to send astronauts to the far side of the moon. In fact, they're trying to put together a plan to build a permanent outpost there - on the far side.

Maybe it's because Valentine's Day is so close, but sending folks to see - to live on - the far side of the moon seems like such a . . . romantic idea.

Imagine it. Traveling to see a face that billions have never, and will never, see. Every day, with just a casual glance, your eyes would brush a beautiful, barren landscape few will ever see.

I would go. I would live there.

Of course, I'd have to take my cats, my son, my kindle, and my laptop. No small undertaking. And I'd have to have vacations - - time away when I could drink a coke, eat good Italian food, and visit my loved ones.

What about you? Would you go? Would you live for a half a year on the far side of the moon?

Kitties Are People, Too!

2012-02-09T09:05:00.000-08:00

It's morning, and I always feed my cats canned cat food in the morning. One has to have his medicine, which I dispense by hiding it in a spoonful of juicy canned food, and so of course the others get a treat then, too. To be fair.

Rhiannon -- the oft thief.

This morning, the one who often, and quite shamelessly, steals the others' food did indeed steal one of her "brother"'s treat. I was standing there, watching. Amun Ra, the one whose food got stolen, looked up at me and made the cutest wail of protest. "Help me! Fix this!"

I smiled at his cute little face and spooned him out another bite or two, which he ate with a satisfied mewl.

Amun Ra - the aggrieved.

And at that moment I had a epiphanal flash. How can anyone say - with a straight face - that animals don't feel emotion? That they don't think "like we do"? That they don't talk - communicate ideas - like we do? That they don't feel pain, or understand, or develop relationships?

We humans have a long history of lying - making up stories - to attempt to justify what we feel guilty about.

Like how we treat animals. What we do to them, and allow them to endure. What horrors we say nothing about.

When we're big enough - emotionally and intellectually mature enough - to examine the matter with true objectivity, our shame will be endless. As it should.

Pearlsong Authors Stand Against Size Bigotry

2012-02-06T19:10:00.000-08:00

'Nuff Said.

January Chillin'

2012-01-28T11:21:00.000-08:00

Today - right now - at 10:00 am on this Saturday morning - it is -18 F outside. Just a half hour ago it was -20.

Yes. This is Anchorage. Alaska. Yes. We are used to cold and snow.

But - and contrary to popular belief - we in Anchorage are most definitely not used to seven (or more outside Anchorage) feet of snow in a month and consistent double digit sub-zeroes.

It's tiresome. It makes it hard to go to work, and school, and to the grocery store. My hands stung and then numbed inside my gloves two afternoons ago when I had to walk a block to meet a friend for lunch.

I used to live in the Alaska Bush. It's very cold there, and in December and this time of year, with wind chill, it is often -40 and colder. Every night you have to plug in to an outside outlet at your house the motor heater installed in your car's engine using an extension cord. A drive around town reveals umbilical-like connections between houses and the small, frozen metal-babies huddled close for warmth.

This is the coat I wore when I lived in the Bush.

In that cold, in the Bush, you leave your car running at the grocery store, and when you go out to eat. No one wants to risk shutting it off because it might not start again.

Three years ago I moved from that village and to the big city of Anchorage, where it rarely gets below zero.

And so far, that's been true. Until now. This winter.

It is only January, and we've had over seven feet of snow so far, and it's still - 18, and I am bone tired of it.

(And see "You Asked for Winter, So Head North to Alaska.")

Hunted by Elle Hill: Review

2012-01-17T10:38:00.000-08:00

Check out the review of Lesleigh Owen's - er - Elle Hill's - latest novella - HERE!

To the Handbag Sellers on eBay:

2012-01-14T14:06:00.000-08:00

OMG! I have been trying to find just the right handbag for weeks - and I am fed up to HERE with eBay sellers!

Does listing the SIZE of the handbag never occur to you? Really? REALLY?

Second: what do you MEAN that you don't ship to Alaska? What the hell! Since I'm paying the postage, what the HELL does it matter to you?

Ughhhhhhhhhh. If I didn't need a new handbag . . .

Creating a Character

2012-01-08T11:58:00.000-08:00

Okay. So you've decided to write that book.

Whether you're a plotster or a panster, you still have one fundamental pre-writing task: create your characters.

The first question: Who is this person? A: she is the heroine. Her name is Keira. She looks like . . . and she is X years old. She has this limitation . . . and that one . . .

Next: what will she do? A: save the world. How? And what challenges will she face, and how are those challenges exacerbated by her personal characteristics? A: well, she soon finds this guy doing bad things to this young woman. She's got a history of this - both her and her sister. It's a catalyst - a mini-climax - that pushes her out of the victim role and into the savior role.

Do you see what I'm saying? I'm obviously talking about my own first novel, but writers - take the time and do this with your own projects before you write. When you don't, your characters fall flat. If you want real readers to love them, make them real people living in real worlds. And that takes some time - and effort.

Take One Minute

2012-01-06T11:44:00.000-08:00

Today, put aside one minute.

During that minute, put yourself in someone else's shoes. Pick someone you've had a disagreement with recently, or whom you've scorned or scoffed at.

Now close your eyes and try to imagine what reasons would motivate them to take the position they did that upset you, or that landed them in the place you're scorning.

Don't be defensive about this. Honestly try and imagine what was motivating them. Spend a minute imagining what you would do in that situation.

Okay. And now, when you're finished, tell me: did it make any difference to how you feel or what you think?

The Best Christmas Gift

2011-12-12T21:24:00.000-08:00

If you're looking for something for Christmas that will be truly enjoyed, is a good deal, AND will help make the world a better place, then I suggest buying a copy of one of my books:

(1) They're five-star rated, and one was a finalist in the Reader's Favorite awards.

(2) If you buy either one of the books (in paperback or ebook) between today and December 18 - either one - I'll send you the other for free. Just email me the receipt (Lauri (at) LauriOwen (dot) com) (or you may be able to buy both from me - shoot me an email).

(3) All proceeds - ONE HUNDRED PERCENT - go to no-kill animal rescue.

You can't go wrong!

(p.s.: If you buy kindle ebooks and want the ebook/s inscribed for free, just leave a note here.)

Anzia Yezierska, Part V - Final

2011-11-30T22:15:00.001-08:00

Bread and Roses

In her 1950 autobiography, Red Ribbon on a White Horse, Anzia describes the ambivalence she felt during the time the Bread Givers was first published: “I felt I had justified myself in the book for having hardened my heart to go through life alone” (216). The memories sparked by the book had left her yearning to make peace with her father, though, and she went to see him. He met her enthusiasm with condescension. “Only in America could it happen – an ignorant thing like you – a writer! What do you know of life? . . . It says in the Torah: He who separates himself from people buries himself in death. A woman alone, not a wife and not a mother [?], has no existence. No joy on earth, no hope of heaven” (Red Ribbon 216-217).

Anzia lived and died under the unrelenting scrutiny and criticism of everyone who knew her. Her resignation to the identity of the eternal, lost “other” made the ache of her belly her only lifelong companion. She was never victorious over her struggles, never uncovered the means to satiate her own hunger or reconcile her conflicts. Yet she refused to succumb until her very last days, pen in hand, ever contesting the paradox women faced by being forced to choose between tradition and freedom. Even after her daughter confined her to a nursing home, Anzia continued to write until her death at about eighty-nine years.

Her death was as ironic as her life. Not understanding that, for Anzia, sustenance was achieved through words of protest, the nurses, annoyed by her frequent calls, removed the telephone from her room. Within a year, although continuing to write in a little notepad she kept hidden in her robe, Anzia gradually stopped eating. One of her last notes reads, “I have learned at last that no individual counts when [her] work is over” (Henriksen 299).

Anzia Yezierska’s literary protests reveal an empowered, pioneering feminist despite her exclusion from the feminist literary canon. If she could hear my words, I would assure her that through unflinching endeavors in pursuit of happiness, she epitomized a life fervently torn between the unrelenting hunger for both the Bread and the Freedom of Life. Ironically, her strife typified a tradition from which later feminists, unhappy with their own legacies, could draw strength. Through and beyond her, we envisage the something more about which James Oppenheim and Anzia Yezierska dreamt as they sung his 1912 labor cry, first heard during a Women’s “Bread and Butter” strike:

As we come marching, marching,

We bring the greater days.

The rising of the Women
Means the rising of the race.

No more the drudge and idler --
Ten that toil where one reposes,

But a sharing of life's glories:

Bread and roses! Bread and roses!

Works Cited

Blevins, James [Professor]. “Mendelian Genetics” Lecture. Biology 100 Course. Boise: Boise State University, Fall 1998.

Eisler, Riane. The Chalice and the Blade. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995.

Engels, Friedrich. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. Zurich: Hottingen, 1884.

Foucault, Michel. The Foucault Reader. Ed. & Trans. Paul Rabinow. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984.

Gonick, Cy. “Marxism.” The 1998 Canadian Encyclopedia. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, Inc., 1988.

Harris, Alice Kessler. Introduction. Bread Givers. by Anzia Yezierska. New York: Persea Books, 1975. v-xviii.

Henriksen, Louise Levitas. Anzia Yezierska: A Writer’s Life. New York: Rutgers University Press, 1991.

Kayton, Bruce. “Lower East Side I Highlights.” Radical Walking Tours of New York. 6 June 1998. Available: http://www.he.net/~radtours/tours/lesi_highlights.html.

Lerner, Gerda. “Reconceptualizing Differences Among Women.” Interpretations of American History: Patterns and Perspectives Since 1877. 2 vols. 6th ed. New York: The Free Press, 1992. 105-115.

Marx, Karl & Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. 1848. English ed. London: J. E. Burghard's Printshop, 1888.

Miller, Jean Baker. Toward a New Psychology of Women. 2nd ed. Boston: Beacon Press, 1986.

Neidorf, Robin M. “Two Jews, Three Opinions.” Listen Up: Voices From the Next Feminist Generation. ed. Barbara Findlen. Seattle: Seal Press, 1995. 212-220.

Redmond, Layne. When the Drummers Were Women. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1997.

United States. U.S. Supreme Court. Debs v. U S , 249 U.S. 211 (1919). Washington: Supreme Court, 1919. Online. Available: http://caselaw.findlaw.com/.

Van Etten, Ida M. “Russian Jews as Desirable Immigrants?” Forum 15 (1893): 172-182.

“What is Socialism?” Socialist Labor Party of America. (1998). n. pag. Online. Internet. 2 December 1998. Available: http://www.slp.org/.

Whitman, Walt. “Song of Myself.” Leaves of Grass. The Deathbed ed. New York: Quality Paperback Book Club, 1992. 21-69.

Whitman, Walt. “The Untold Want.” Leaves of Grass. The Deathbed ed. New York: Quality Paperback Book Club, 1992. 370.

Williamson, Marianne. A Woman’s Worth. New York: Random House, 1993.

Yezierska, Anzia. Bread Givers. New York: Persea Books, 1975.

Yezierska, Anzia. “The Fat of the Land.” The Open Cage: An Anzia Yezierska Collection. New York: Persea Books, 1993.

Yezierska, Anzia. Red Ribbon on a White Horse. New York: Persea Books, 1987.

Zandy, Janet. “The Complexities and Contradictions of Working Class Women’s Writings.”

Contemporary Women’s Issues Database 2 (March 1998): 5-8.

Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present. New York: HarperPerennial, 1995.

Anzia Yezierska, Part IV

2011-11-27T14:29:00.001-08:00

Yezierska’s Works and Our Times

The untold want by life and land ne’er granted,
Now voyager sail thou forth to seek and find. (Whitman, “Untold” 370)

German philosopher Friedrich Engels was one of the first to link the emergence of private property systems and hierarchy with the oppression of women in his 1884 work, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. Under a hierarchization in which women were subordinate to males, and private property was created and inequitably held, the need to control the reproduction of women arose in order to assure that a man’s property would be passed to his biological heirs. He asserts that “observed” physiological differences legitimized the arrangement; by citing women’s “obvious” physical and intellectual inferiorities, “ordered” paternal control of women was only “logical” (737).

Anzia, despite her awareness of Engelian philosophy, was enduringly influenced by her longing to be accepted and loved like her peers. She once lamented, “It was Spring in the air. Other girls were enjoying themselves with their young men. The whole world was alive” (Henriksen 24, emphasis added). Despite her apprehension, Anzia’s life is marked by the crests of voluntary acceptance, then renouncement, of several traditionally feminine roles. After college, she taught school for a while, but as her peers and supervisors became aware of her blatant disinterest in the traditional lady’s subjects, she was gradually marginalized to the lowest-paying jobs.

Anzia married twice and had two affairs; in each, love decayed into loathing. Her struggles to retain her hope in romanticism are most eloquently unveiled by examining the pre-marriage letters she wrote to Arnold Levitas, her soon-to-be second husband. In one: “One of the beautiful things about friendship is the free boundless way in which we give and take from one another. I do not hesitate asking you to help me . . .” (32). In another: “If I could only tell you how I love you! How my spirit follows you all over wherever you go . . . how can I become your real friend, your true comrade! . . . the more intimately I know you, the more deeply I love you” (33). Although the complexities of her life wore her down, she continued to hold fast to her hopes: “I came to school, but I broke down. I couldn’t teach. I don’t know what’s the matter with me, but I crave to be alone—just to be alone . . . but step in for a little while on Friday” (44).

Between mid-1911, when she authored the love letters, married Arnold and had her only child, and mid-1912, Anzia’s faith in matrimony evaporated. Between mid-1912 and 1915 she vented her suffering through a personal journal. Its pages increasingly filled with the bitter disillusionment we have all felt. In 1912 she expressed her anger: “How little people can tell from the outside of a man’s life the sort of husband he is at home. Many a man who is considered the blessing of the community . . . a free and generous gentleman in all social circles, may be stingy as a miser at home” (58).

She longed for what she had relinquished: “Women who have known the independence of earning their own living before marriage . . . feel most poignantly the humiliation they have to live through while being ‘supported.’ . . . if there was some way out, they would all rush back . . . but they cannot go back” (58). She resented her husband’s freedom: “A man can always put on his hat and go . . . [but] the massed social pressure of the entire world is against the mother who wants to get away from her place of bondage” (60). And on the subject of motherhood: “By the time [women] realize the full meaning of being ‘supported,’ they have a baby or two to care for. A baby is like the ball and chain of the prisoner that keeps [her or] him bound to [her or] his cell” (58). Her daughter correctly surmises Anzia’s anguish at this point: “she was . . . furious at herself for having deliberately walked into the trap” (59).

Anzia’s fictive prose is marked by the same ambivalence that characterized her life. In her 1919 short story, “The Fat of the Land” (for which she won “Best Short Story of 1919” in 1920) , the principal female is sacrilegious, self-obsessed and emotionally stunted. The plot, revolving around twenty years of dull, starvation-laden characters, is weak at best. Yet this story is enriched with meticulous descriptions and images of the Jewess’ futile attempts to resolve the elemental conflicts between prescribed roles and individual expectations that invariably culminate in disillusionment. Through this story, a style arises which became Anzia’s hallmark: the use of painful detail to describe and decry what she believed was the cancer manifested by the “other” rationality marking American society. Her symbols rely on the ethnic, gendered materialism with which she is intimately familiar: graphic images that describe the physical, emotional and spiritual starvation of Jewish women as compared to the favoritism afforded Jewish men.

In Bread Givers, her 1925 book, Anzia arguably provides her most poignant performance through Sara Smolinsky, her protagonist, and the impoverished family from which she originates. The story follows Sara from the age of ten to her early twenties; through her eyes, we confront intense patriarchal sexism and repression under guise of Jewish tradition. Three dozen paragraphs into the first chapter, Sara reminisces about the family’s immigration to America before which Father made the women leave their cherished possessions to make room for his books. She remembers Mother helplessly begging to bring even one cooking pot and the two feather beds she inherited from her grandmother. This leads Sara to bitterly reflect: “Of course . . . if God had given Mother a son, Father would have permitted a man child to share with him the best room in the house. A boy could say prayers after his father’s death—that kept the father’s soul alive for ever” (9).

During the same scene, Sara reflects on the position of women: “The prayers of his daughters didn’t count because God didn’t listen to women. Heaven and the next world were only for men. Women could get into heaven because they were wives and daughters of men . . . [and then only to] wait on them there” (9-10). True to custom, Sara watches each of her three sisters’ relinquish her “true love,” and her dreams, to obey the irrational and selfish wishes of Father to ensure her place in the hereafter. Exasperated, Sara finds it irreconcilable that doing the “right thing” necessitates such brutal sacrifice.

Mother, representing the traditional Jewess, fares worse. She works nonstop morning till night of each day, almost comedically “fixing” Father’s blunders and smoothing feelings he heedlessly tramples. After years of faithful and productive service, the toll of limitless sacrificing climaxes in her figurative starvation via literal death. One day prior, Father comes to her bedside, affectionately smoothes her hair and speaks tenderly to her. “The touch of his hand was like magic,” Sara observes, “Her whole face softened. A beautiful look came into her eyes as she gazed at Father, undying worship on her face” (248). Mother blossoms under the attention she is literally starving to receive, but he turns from her and beseeches the doctor, “Save me my wife! . . . Since she’s sick my house is in ruin. I have to go for a drop of soup to the neighbor. No one looks after me” (249). In a caustic twist, within one month of Mother’s death Father marries the woman “kind” enough to provide his nourishment while Mother suffered and died.

Sara, our heroine, rebels all the way through the story and fights to free herself from predestined oppression. She refuses to marry, sends herself to school, holds fast to her hopes, graduates from college and secures a satisfactory job as a teacher. Her life, however, is marked with increasing torment and guilt as she realizes the fulfillment of her emancipatory dreams. Her mother’s death, the sight of the starving in the streets, her sisters’ fates, being an outcast among her people, the revocation of her religion, her father’s suffering, her guilt in success— and the helplessness she feels against all of these – all press heavily upon the weakening Sara Smolinsky. She struggles against an ideal she did not intend to internalize, one that bestowed upon her the responsibility for the happiness of every member of the rest of the world at her own expense. She ultimately accepts her sisters’ equivalence of her autonomous endeavors with her personification of Father’s selfishness.

Her loneliness confirms her suspicions of her permanent outcast status until she becomes involved with Hugo Seelig, the principal of the school at which she is employed. In the three months following their first personal conversation, Sara finds her only, albeit brief, happiness. She discovers that Hugo, like herself, is a Jewish immigrant from the “old country.” He seems all Sara might wish in a companion. After their first conversation, she says, “My heart rejoiced! I stood looking at his chair feeling him still in the room for hours after, and my last feeling as I closed my eyes was: I’m no longer alone. I’m no longer alone!” (279).

Alone is certainly not how Sara ends up. In an acidic climax, all for which Sara has dreamed surrenders to her guilt. Sara, in a moment of intense self-reproach, submits to the traditional elements of her ambivalent life; she invites her father to come and live with her. The room “all her own” that she rented, her paradise “rich and fragrant with unutterable beauty” is transformed into a new version of her childhood prison; the cycle begins anew and she exits, arm-in-arm with Hugo, about whom the reader receives an ominous warning in the final scene when he asks Sara’s father to be his teacher (241).

Anzia Yezierska, Part III

2011-11-23T08:58:00.001-08:00

Anzia Yezierska: Ironic Pioneer

I believe in those wing’d purposes,
And acknowledge red, yellow, white, playing with me,
And consider green and violet and the tufted crown intentional,
And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not something
else. (Whitman, “Song of Myself” 29)

At about ten years old, Anzia Yezierska and her impoverished Jewish family immigrated to America from a Russian-Polish village with what must have been grandiose dreams of a better future for them all. She arrived in about 1890 with six siblings, three sisters and three brothers, and her parents, who were all “instantly Americanized” with new American names, according to her daughter and biographer, Louise Levitas Henriksen (13-14). As Jewish Anzia Yezierska changed into American Hattie Mayer, the newly-Americanized family moved into a decrepit tenement, their first American home. All family members except Anzia, who was too young, and her father, a Hebrew scholar (who, due to tradition, did not work), were immediately forced into the labor market for survival (14).

For Jewish immigrants, first impressions of the New York atmosphere seemed rather unwelcoming if we are to believe one journalist, Ida M. Van Etten, who wrote in an 1893 periodical called Forum: “Most men, if asked what class immigrants they considered the least desirable, would answer, the Russian Jews . . . [they] are dirty, cannot speak the English language, and live . . . in unwholesome, ill- smelling tenement quarters, [and] they therefore form an objectionable part of our population” (172). It must have seemed incredibly unjust to Anzia, and to the several hundred thousand other Jewish immigrants, to be labeled, castigated, and face discrimination from “Americans” who were themselves the recent descendants of immigrants who had arrived, often impoverished, and had made lives for themselves here.

The Yezierskas arrived during what historians now call the “Progressive Period,” an era marked by cultural concern with the decreasing relative position of the individual within industrialized society. The perspective of the members of the massive working class increasingly shifted from the traditional aspirations to individualized success to concerns over the increased domination of the public by large corporations. The growing disparity between the “haves” and the “have nots” was openly compared to the class strife of contemporary European nations. Marxism and Socialism were mainstreamed as pluralistic reform advocates sought to remedy the “people’s oppression” through varying means (Grob and Billias 216-217).

Despite the family’s desperate financial situation, Anzia attended American school for a short while, where she was probably first exposed to ideologies that inspired her to reconceptualize her position within her new society and traditional family; ideas opposing long-accepted conventions of home and homeland. According to her daughter, “that dangerous bit of learning . . . probably gave her the critical, rebellious eye she now cast on the lot of women in her family ” as she “fought with her father and brothers, the tradition-keepers” (14). She learned quickly that America held promise for those who renounced traditional heritage and could find the means to attend school; after reading the inspirational poetry of a factory worker, she plotted and endeavored to achieve personal liberation through college (Henriksen 14-17).

Renunciation of persevering traditions is a complicated expedition that comes at a significant emotional cost, however. Robin M. Neidorf, in an essay entitled, “Two Jews, Three Opinions,” writes, “the process of becoming an argumentative Jewish feminist is a sort of deliberate accident, a combination of family choices and individual choices, circumstances both beyond and within one’s control” (213). She notes that Judaism conflicts sharply with one’s attempts to be both Jewish and a woman; the woman who seeks enlightenment risks the same castigation as archetypal Eve of both the Torah and the Bible after committing the same “crime.” Neidorf notes that, for the Jewess, existence is characterized by fruitless attempts to live out a “paradox, a contradiction” (214). Ultimate resolution comes in one of two ways, she says: “one group tries to reconcile and continues to fall short; one group withdraws and thus misses the rituals of Jewish life that give the comfort” (218).

Although her daughter eschews the topic, Anzia chose to shrug off tradition and shared her emancipatory dreams with groups of similarly resistant social reformers: the American Socialist Labor Movement. Although Anzia undoubtedly found herself torn between newfound intellectual “truth” and the emotional commitments she felt toward her family and traditions, her decisions, her choice of friends, her personal letters and her later prose reflect the greater weight she gave materialistic ideology.

Many of the Labor Movement organizations were centered in New York City; groups such as the Industrial Workers of the World and the Socialist Labor Party (who, during this era, worked closely together) held meetings in and sent activists into the impoverished sections of the city, educating and recruiting women and men into their ranks. According to Howard Zinn, Jewish socialists sustained the New York Socialist Labor Party and printed its newspaper, The Forward, in which each issue quoted Karl Marx’s 1884 Communist Manifesto: “workmen of all lands, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains; you have a world to win!” (262).

Insinuations concerning Anzia’s increasingly political tendencies surface in Henriksen’s biography but require considerable research to confirm. Henriksen chooses to downplay her mother’s political convictions, often overlooks Anzia’s emotional disharmony and sometimes takes an offensive, even bitter, posture regarding her interpretations of Anzia’s political philosophies and actions. After Anzia became pregnant at age 30, Henriksen notes that Anzia now had “time to pursue her interest in women’s rights, socialism, and other contemporary social causes” (45). In 1911, Anzia, although herself married, furnished a former classmate a copy of the recently translated Swedish book that challenged traditional mores surrounding marriage and sexual morality, Love and Marriage (45).

When commenting on Anzia’s Communist-sympathetic poem, “The Deported,” published in the popular leftist magazine, the Nation, during the first American “red scare” of the 1920s, Henriksen admits Anzia’s sympathy for the “thousands of suspected [American Socialist/Communist] radicals [who were] jailed . . . without trial and deported.” Yet only one paragraph later, she complains that “although Anzia’s sympathies were with the deported, she was politically always a bystander, agreeing with the arguments, but too absorbed in her own fierce struggle to participate in a movement” (139).

Despite Henriksen’s reductionism, concrete evidence of Anzia’s insurgent beliefs lies in her choice of friends. From childhood, she surrounded herself with Marxist- Socialists including her sister, Annie, who had “organized the women of her neighborhood into a mother’s society, which worked to gain social benefits for all of them” and who was acquainted with the “leading activists and philanthropists of the East Side” (Henriksen 21). Rose Pastor Stokes, Anzia’s closest friend, was a noted social reformer who is described as an “an activist in the birth control movement, the Socialist Party, the union movement and . . . a co-founder of the Communist Party in the U.S.” (Kayton, par. 16).

Rose, and possibly Anzia, became involved in the Labor Movement, including at least one labor strike that made page two of the 2 December 1909 issue of the New York Times in an article entitled, “Suffragists To Aid Girl Waist Strikers.” In the story, Rose (who by this time was married to a millionaire social activist) is identified as one of several speakers for a women’s suffrage group calling themselves the “Political Equality Association.” They were engaged in what the unnamed author of the article calls “biggest mass meeting ever held in New York in the interest of labor” and in which Rose is quoted as saying, “Starve to win, or you’ll starve anyway” (2).

Rose (and again perhaps Anzia) became involved with Eugene Debs, the nationally acclaimed Social Activist who, in 1893, formed the American Railway Union to unite all railway workers. To his credit, Debs had also been indicted by the local and federal courts, had violated their orders, and had spent time in prison for his political views (Zinn 272-275). In 1919, Debs appealed one of his criminal convictions to the U.S. Supreme Court in which he alleged attempted to “incite . . . insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny and refusal of duty in the military and naval forces of the United States” in members of the working class (Debs v. U.S., par. 10). Rose apparently shared Debs’ pacifistic perspective; a section of this federal case reads:

The defendant next mentioned Rose Pastor Stokes, convicted of attempting to cause insubordination and refusal of duty in the military forces of the United States and obstructing the recruiting service. . . . [I]f she was guilty so was he, and . . . he would not be cowardly enough to plead his innocence; but [since] her message that opened the eyes of the people must be suppressed, and so, after a mock trial before a packed jury and a corporation tool on the bench, she was sent to the penitentiary for ten years” (Debs v. U.S., par. 12)

Anzia was undeniably involved with some controversial persons. In August of 1916, she left her second husband in California and returned to New York where she was forced to temporarily relinquish the custody of her daughter to her soon-to-be ex-husband. She had been exposed by a “friend” as an acquaintance of Tom Mooney and Warren K. Billings, prominent leaders of the International Workers of the World (IWW). These known revolutionaries had recently been arrested and charged with the bombing of a “preparedness” parade in San Francisco, apparently demonstrating their objection to U.S. entry into World War I (Henriksen 69). In a September 1916 letter to Rose Pastor Stokes, Anzia laments, “Do you know I envy Billings his life sentence in prison. In one blow he is freed from the dragging down wear & tear of making a living—and in the solitude of prison, he can think out his thoughts . . . if I did not have [my daughter] to care for, I would be in prison writing” (Henriksen 72).

Anzia’s ambivalence is again illustrated through the examination of her rebelliousness towards the traditional telos of wifery and motherhood prescribed for the Jewish women of her era. As a teen, Anzia attended night school to prepare for college following each ten-hour workday in a New York sweatshop. In stolen moments, she devoured Walt Whitman’s poetry and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self Reliant” prose. Thus inspired, Anzia took Virginia Woolf’s yet unspoken advice and moved out of her home, renting a room of her own in an era when “nice” Jewish girls did not live alone. At seventeen or eighteen, after finally saving enough money, she attended New York City Normal College, then Columbia University, for five very disappointing years. Yet neither the schools nor the room brought her any satisfaction; the colleges forbade women from the philosophy and poetry classes for which she longed and thrust her into a “Home Economics” major instead, and the oppressive atmosphere of the “Clara de Hirsch Home for Working Girls” left her yet again drowning in despair (Henriksen 17-18).

Driven by loneliness and a courageous desire to resolve the contradictions between her family’s and her own expectations, Anzia married twice, despite her admission that “I knew . . . the standard viewpoint of matrimony” (Henriksen 37). Her first marriage, in 1911, was brief and ended in an abrupt annulment; of it she said, “I have come to think now that I knew not the difference between friendship and love” (Henriksen 37). Her second marriage was moderately more successful: it lasted five years and yielded one child, but it, too, collapsed under the weight of her disillusionment.

Unable to endure the oppressive confines of her traditional marriage, Anzia fled to New York, and later to San Francisco, where she initiated a brief affair with poet Hugo Seelig. After her divorce was finalized, she returned to New York and spent her time writing and visiting Rose Pastor Stokes. Her romantic luck shifted briefly in 1918; from that January she spent nearly three years involved with Professor John Dewey of Columbia University, the one “true love” of her life (Henriksen 114). This relationship’s conclusion manifested two climaxes in her life: the dissolution of Anzia’s dream of the possibility for a matrimonial “happy ending,” and the complete resignation of her self-identity to that of “the outcast . . . the lost” (Henriksen 116). Ironically, this is the time that Anzia, the writer, finally attained professional success.

Anzia Yezierska, Part II

2011-11-18T18:17:00.001-08:00

I: Man and “Other”

More women cry, loudly or silently, every fraction of every moment, in every town of every country, than anyone—man or woman—realizes. We cry for our children, our lovers, our parents, and ourselves. We cry in shame because we feel no right to cry, and we cry in peace because we feel it’s time we did cry. We cry for the world. Yet we think we cry alone. . . . [F]or most women, however, the resistances they encountered as they reached for the sky were so great that their wings have now drooped, and they try no longer. (Williamson 3-4)

Gerda Lerner, a Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, describes two elements of a process by which females learn to view themselves as less significant than males: the binary gendered opposition of male and female, so fundamental to many cultures, is ultimately associated with an “expertly” legitimized definition of female as “other,” and therefore subordinate. This claim is disseminated by various mass media and evidenced by the mass exclusion of females from historical rhetoric. By doing this, Lerner says, all omitted groups are signified as less important (105, 108).

According to Lerner and other contemporary feminist historians—Riane Eisler, Merlin Stone, Layne Redmond and others—this hierarchy was “invented” by groups of men in the Ancient Near East about 5000 BCE. The consensus is that during the Agricultural Revolution, small groups of peripheral invaders, all militaristic men, termed “Indo-Europeans” or “Kurgans,” began invading and conquering the matrifocal, peaceful cities of the Near East. The one thing common to these groups of invaders was their model of social domination via force. Their god was a male, and angry, symbol who epitomized an axiology in which male dominance, authoritarianism, hierarchy and brute force was the norm; a striking antithesis of the matrifocal Mother-Goddess and Nature-loving cultures whom they conquered (Eisler 42-45; Lerner 106; Redmond 11-13).

This new power structure could not have persisted to become a systemic tool used to repress other groups, however, without the legitimized propagation of certain ideological and institutional manipulators. When status and power inequalities exist interpersonally and interculturally, factors must be identified that justify and legitimize the perpetuating system. Lerner asserts that this was first accomplished by turning “difference into dominance” (106). As the small groups of men continued to control the resources, they demanded compliance with their norms in exchange for survival. To rationalize the domination, and justify women’s exploitation and subsequent commodification to women and other unaffected men, a rationale developed that equated sexual difference, e.g., male versus female, with superiority and inferiority, respectively. When these assertions were forcefully imposed and coercively applied, through time they eventually eroded and undermined the fundamental epistemological beliefs of pre-Patriarchal cultures (106-107); consequently, women learned to internalize these ideologies, legitimized them as “truth” and conducted their lives based on these beliefs.

Hellenic philosophy, from which Occidental philosophy originates, continued this tradition by incorporating systemic “women as ‘other’” conceptualizations into its axiological assertions and legitimized it with biological declarations. The Sophist School demanded that men “prove they are right by their armed might” (Eisler 112-118). Judaism, and later, Christianity, developed and flourished in the Near East during this era. These, too, embraced the systems of androcentrism and characterized females as inferior, partly by abolishing all female deities from their religions. The writings contained in the Torah’s and Biblical book of Leviticus clearly outline the biological, social and spiritual position of women.

As we leap into early twentieth century American society, we are confronted with the effects of five millennia of social “programming” and hierarchization of humanity. Jean Baker Miller, a contemporary psychologist and author, explains that under this hierarchical, primarily didactic, system she terms “permanent inequality,” dominant groups (i.e., white, male business-owners) tend to define “other” groups as inferior, then label certain ascribed characteristics of each groups’ members as “substandard” and “defective” (6).

According to Miller, every subordinated groups’ members are declared biologically “unable” to perform preferred tasks and are encouraged to internalize superordinate groups’ legitimizing ideologies, fundamentally embodying adoption of prescribed roles that include pleasing behaviors and psychological characteristics (i.e., submissiveness, timidity, docility, unselfishness, weakness and helplessness) (7-9). Through generations of socialization practices that, for each individual, begin and birth and continue throughout the life cycle, the members of the subordinated group tend to increasingly internalize the majority of these beliefs and characterize themselves according to the definitions imposed by the dominate group. Further, the “inferiors” generally do not question the superordinates’ authority on matters of “right” and legitimacy and hold each other, and themselves, responsible for upholding the axiology dictating the norms of their roles.

Emotional commitments become attached to these internalized “truths”; behaving in accordance with culturally-accepted norms yields positive social reinforcement, while “deviance,” intentional or not, from commonly-accepted role definitions precedes what French philosopher Michel Foucault describes as the “three modes of objectification” (7). Summarily, this includes three stages, the first of which is “dividing practices” in which the subject is “objectified by a process of division either within [her- or] himself or from others” (8, emphasis added). Second, the subject is “scientifically classified,” a process by which she or he is negatively and narrowly characterized by one or more “experts” whose postulates tend to be widely accepted in the society at large (8-9). She or he is then identified with an increasingly populous group whose existence has been exposed by these “experts.” Finally, the individual undergoes what Foucault terms, “subjectification,” which concerns the “way a human being turns him- or herself into a subject,” ultimately culminating in self-domination through the creation and maintenance of a newly created identity (11, emphasis added).

It is from this perspective that we must conduct our analysis of Anzia Yezierska, Jewish-American, immigrant, working class, socialist, feminist woman of the early twentieth century.

Anzia Yezierska, Part I

2011-11-16T21:29:00.001-08:00

I wrote a paper about an American writer, Anzia Yezierska, for a college class over a decade ago. I came across it today, and since it's actually pretty good, and says some things that need to be said, I'm going to publish pieces of it in pieces.

In Pursuit of Happiness, Part I

Imagine yourself, a college student, sitting one mid-semester morning in your Introductory Biology class. The lecture concerns genetics: You are taking notes, listening intently and trying to reconcile newly-acquired facts with the oblivious acceptance that characterized you for as long as you can remember. You shake your head and laugh softly at yourself; this is not a new, or even unexpected, experience. With the sharpened critical questioning and thinking skills acquired during your term at college, you are increasingly able to challenge the many “common sense” ideas you now call “dogma.” You withdraw from your thoughts as the lecture topic turns to incest; to your surprise, the professor goes into extravagant detail deconstructing the “myth” of the Incest Taboo (Blevins). You look up from your notebook, too captivated to write.

But in the middle of one later night you wake, cold, sweaty and breathless. You tug the covers over your damp flannel gown and stare through foggy glass into the sky, dingy and rumbling from a storm yet unbroken. You slow your breathing, lie still and close your eyes, awaiting the downpour. Splashing through drowsy puddles, you lay bare the footprints of your sleepy apparition. The dam of psyche heaves as images spill into your mind: You were sitting under an umbrella . . . on a blue and white blanket, you think. You were wiping the sand from the edges and . . . laughing. Laughing at a clever joke; (oh god) you and your father, apparently romantically involved, were about to share a lover’s first kiss. You try to ignore the acidic churning of your stomach as you yank the covers to your neck, wrench your body onto its side and draw up your knees to ward off the room’s bitter chill.

The reconciliation of intellectual insight with a lifetime of conditioned affect is an extraordinarily difficult, always ongoing process. Anzia Yezierska, a Jewish immigrant writer, faced this same enigma and struggled throughout her life to resolve this paradox as continuously manifested in her ambivalence toward the intellectual pursuit of happiness and the emotional implications of her choices.

In this essay, I will discuss some of the ways by which a patriarchal society ensures that women internalize particular axiologies and how these systemic values are designed to frustrate women’s emancipatory endeavors. The second section will focus on the life and culture of Anzia Yezierska, an early 20th Century Jewish-American writer who simultaneously struggled against oppression and agonized in her realization of liberation. In the third section, I will examine several of Yezierska’s works, published and not, and attempt to expose the ambivalence she, as many feminists have, felt.

As we undertake this examination, however, we must bear several points in mind. Yezierska was undeniably a pioneering Jewish working class feminist, despite attempts by some to reduce her to a one-dimensional representative of “Jewish immigrant life on New York’s Lower East Side” in the 1920s (Harris v) . As feminists and as literary critics, we must uncover and admit the fact that we often devalue and diminish certain literature because we fail to see to working class, the “others,’’” writings as particularly reflective of other groups’ experiences and thereby exclude it from the canon.

Janet Zandy, in her journal article, “The Complexities and Contradictions of Working Class Women’s Writings,” points out that “the epistemology of working class lived experiences is not part of the institutionalized construction of knowledge” (5). As she asserts, mainstream American literature, whether traditional or feminist, consists almost entirely of middle and upper class contributions. I concur, and further suggest that this practice encourages the popular presumption that mainstream prose is universally valid and reflective, which is certainly not the case; it merely mirrors the mainstream’s life while it serves to negate other groups’ experiences.

When examining working class women’s literature, we must become and remain aware of the assumptions we utilize concerning identity formation, feminism, normalcy, essentialism, universalism, politics, et cetera, and refrain from the temptation to make hasty judgments concerning working class women, including Yezierska, based on our expectations as literary critics, or from whatever posture we read her prose. As we will find, she does share certain similarities with the several groups identified by their respective labels of working class, Jew, immigrant, woman, writer, feminist, socialist, mother, daughter and others. Yet she is also quite individualistic and unique in many ways: she transcends the definitions presented by any, or all, of these categories; it is precisely because she struggled so vehemently against such forms of reductionism during her search for a liberated identity that I believe she would feel quite at ease with our ambiguity.

Part two soon to come . . .

The Best Medicine

2011-11-14T19:25:00.001-08:00

Today someone offered me a sliver of an old tome that I am sure they thought I needed to hear.

"You need to lighten up."

And so, because they did, I feel I must straighten the record a bit.

It is true that I am intense, passionate (to the point of inferno at times), and - er - generally the opposite of shy. I am completely committed to making positive changes in the world, and to leaving this ball of clay a little better tended than how I found it.

However, I am also - for lack of a better word here - "light."

I love laughter.

But my sense of humor, I freely admit, is a bit naughty, and runs to the violent. (I'm no fan of Tom and Jerry though. We'll just say it's a bit complicated and leave it at that.) That's why I don't often share it.

It's all those years in law enforcement. I've told people many times that being a cop ruined me for polite company, and the truth is, well, that that's the truth in many ways.

Anyway, the bottom line here is that you, said worryer, need to stop said worrying. The force of all that passion swirling around is not going to implode me. Promise.

And stop advising me, too, or I'll rip your @*#!@%^ arm off.

Hardy har har.

Whose Tweets Pitter Your Patter?

2011-11-05T20:29:00.000-07:00

If you're anything like me, you have a secret (nonpublic) list of your very favorite tweeps: one composed of the people whose company you really enjoy, or whose words never fail to tickle you, or make you think, or whose cries to battle resound in your heart.

And maybe, just maybe, there's one or two to which you might admit (to your closest friend, and then only after pinkie swearing them to secrecy) that you have a crush on. 'Nuff said.

Well, if your list is on the superslim side (and who besides starving models, the profoundly guilty, and brain-eating zombies love "superslim"?), and if you're a fan of Star Trek, True Blood, Star Wars, NCIS, and Criminal Minds (and who besides starving models, the profoundly guilty, and brain-dead zombies don't love these shows!), here are a few tweeps I offer as suggested thickeners/fatteners/corn starch to your gravy list:

LordPalpatine Emperor Palpatine. Last tweet: Remember remember the fifth of November. Lightsaber, Jedi and plot. I see no reason why lightsaber, treason, should ever be forgot.
PauleyP Pauley Perrette. Earlier tweet: It was Christmas on the #NCIS set today with @BrianDietzen & McGee! twitpic.com/7awwmk
DeathStarPR Death Star PR. Earlier tweet: Remember, Friday's fun day! Set fire to something. Preferably an Ewok.
Vangsness Kirsten Vangsness. Last tweet: the last day for the wonderful cause that is @LALovesAlexs you can donate & get tix at www.alexslemonade.org you totally know you want to
levarburton LeVar Burton. Earlier tweet: Welcome, November! Anyone else feel like getting through October required survival skills?
BauervanStraten Kristin Bauer. Last tweet: Urgent Action Needed Now 4 Bill 2 Save horses! Wisconsonites call (202) 224-5653 & say NO 2 Horse Slaughter. icont.ac/lypP via@AAHS
BrianDietzen Brian Dietzen. Earlier tweet: Here's a fun pic from set today. I apologize for making you all jealous, but alas, I cannot share the sweater vest. twitpic.com/7awwmk
Gibsonthomas Thomas Gibson. Last tweet: Photo: tmblr.co/Z8LpXxBYnpPF
RockyCOfficial Rocky Carroll. Earlier tweet: I will definitely be a part of the NCIS social network takeover on Tues. from 2-4pm (pacific) please check it out.
BorowitzReport Andy Borowitz. Last tweet: If these are the best presidential candidates our current system produces maybe we should try a random lottery.
FearDept US Dept. of Fear. Earlier tweet: Our system of government is one of "checks and balances": we cash taxpayers' checks and use the money to increase corporate balances. #ows
io9 io9. Last tweet: Insane 1977 movie sent Bruce Lee to Hell to meet Popeye (and other crap films that exploited the actor's death) io9.com/5856771/
BrentSpiner Brent Spiner. Last tweet: RIP Andy Rooney. Don't you just hate when people die?
ggreenwald Glenn Greenwald. Earlier tweet: I just don't feel the need to cite a politician as authority every time I make an argument

Oh yes - - there are others. But this should get you started. And don't forget to follow me - laurijowen. I follow back. ;-p

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T11:01:00.000-07:00

Even though it means the year is nearly over, Halloween is perhaps my favorite holiday. And so - to share with you all the joy of Old Hallows Day - I've posted a couple of video links below that fit the season.

Most everyone who knows me knows that I favor hard rock and metal music, but the truth is that I also have a secret soft spot for that catchy stuff that immortalized the 70s. And so, without further ado, I shall wish you a Happy Halloween via Michael Jackson and Helloween:

Little Deuce Remembering

2011-10-23T11:30:00.000-07:00

Something - I don't have any idea what - sparked a memory this morning.

Me. A kid. Sitting in my dad's green Jeep. Us undoubtedly headed for the mountains, with the Beach Boys playing in the background. My dad trying to hide how much he liked the song, and me pretending not to notice, but being secretly shocked to see it.

I miss you today, Dad.

How to request NCIS cast autographs

2011-10-18T11:53:00.000-07:00

Dying for an autographed photo of your favorite NCIS cast member, or want your most-favorite actor to sign that one photo that makes your heart go pitter-patter?

You can do either: send your photo for an autograph, or request an autographed photo from the actor.

Here's how to do it:

Send a large -- 9 x 11 inches -- self-addressed, stamped envelope (upon which you've slapped enough U.S. postage to get the photo back to you wherever you are)* to:

Cast member's name (and not their characters name!)
NCIS
26030 Avenue Hall
Box 4
Valencia, CA 91355

People have said:
Mark's takes from 5-9 weeks. You do not have to send a photo. You will receive back one authentically signed by him (and not stamp-signed). Ask nicely for a reply and you may get one.
David McCallum takes from 5-12 weeks for a reply. You do not have to send a photo. You will receive one authentically signed by him. Ask nicely for a reply.

Some people say it takes months for any reply, so try to be patient.

*Note that some sources say to just send a request letter and include an address label inside it. You can do that, too, but if you do, it seems far less likely to me that you'll get a fast response, and maybe you'll get no response at all. Imagine how much postage each requires, and how many requests they must receive. So -- be thoughtful - and be rewarded.

Sources: see this, this, and this.

NCIS Fanfic - The Final, Complete Version

2011-10-09T18:15:00.000-07:00

All right. Here's the scoop. Instead of posting the final 5,000 words of The Perfect Crime here, I uploaded the story to scribd. It's still free, still rated G, and a lot easier to read, too.

Feel free to leave comments here if you have any.

Link: The Perfect Crime: An NCIS FanFic Episode.

The Perfect Crime: An NCIS FanFic Episode: Part II

2011-10-04T21:49:00.000-07:00

Below lies the next 2100 or so words of my short, NCIS fanfic story, The Perfect Crime. Come back this weekend for the final chapter.

The Perfect Crime, Part II

For some reason Tony couldn’t get a decent cell signal in his Newport News hotel room, so he’d gone to the 7-11 for a soda, and called Ziva when he saw he got four bars. He was certainly above gossip, but the team would never forgive him for not keeping them up on what was going on. Just the facts.

“I purchased her book,” Ziva announced instead of saying “hello.” “And I have nearly finished reading it. I stayed up all last night.”

“Ziva, Gibbs told you to . . .”

“Do you know that it’s all in there, Tony? The ex-lover, the pretend electrocution . . .”

Something hot shot down his spine. “She wrote about electrocution? And a cover up?”

“If you would stop interrupting me I would tell you! Yes, Tony, she did. It’s all in here.”

Her last four words sounded tinny. “Am I on speaker?”

“Hi, Tony!” That was Abby. “Yes. You’re on speaker now. Captain Haas had drugs in his system, by the way, including a slow-acting but very painful poison. Where’s Gibbs? I need to tell him.”

“At the hotel, I assume, where I am headed back to. I don’t get a signal there, and so you need to call the landli. . .”

“As I was saying . . .” Ziva sounded annoyed. More than normal. “It is all in here. A woman returns to the city where she grew up. She pretends it is because she wants to finally come home, but it is so that she can kill her ex-lover. A Navy officer, Tony. She electrocutes him in a bathtub to cover up that she drugged and tortured him. Do I need to remind you the book is called The Perfect Crime?”

Tony’s mouth had gone dry. “Why? Why did she kill him?”

Abby answered him. “She was a spy, Tony. For some Middle East terrorist group. And he had top security clearance, and ties in the Middle East, just like Captain Haas. She, the woman in the book, tried to recruit her ex-lover to her cell, but when he said ‘no,’ she and some ‘friends’ tortured him for what secrets he had and then killed him.”

“And Tony,” Ziva added, not gently, “she got away with it by seducing the investigator assigned to her case.”

Tony snapped closed his phone. “It can’t be that obvious. Can she?”

The knock seemed more strident this time, and it interrupted Al Martino’s “True Love” right at the part she liked best. What were the odds of that? The one song she’d been waiting all afternoon to hear, too. With a harrumph, and not bothering to turn off, or even down, the music, Brooklyn stood from her computer chair and strode in bare feet across the close-cut oatmeal carpet to the front door.

She flung it open to find Gibbs. Just Gibbs. In jeans, this time, below his jacket and pressed shirt. But that wanting she’d thought she’d glimpsed last time they’d met was now buried underneath something grimmer.

“Come in,” she invited, because she knew he’d ask anyway, and she didn’t want the formality her hesitation would invite to steal what little attraction remained between them.

When he was seated, and she’d brought more coffee, she again dropped into the plush mocha chair pushed perpendicular to the couch and stared into his handsome face.

“Why didn’t you tell me about your book,” Gibbs intoned after his first sip of coal black, undoctored Sumatra. He was angry, very angry; she could see it. Was it at her?

Brooklyn’s gaze dropped to her hands, but she forced it back up. “For all the reasons you imagine, Agent Gibbs. An electrocution is quite a coincidence, don’t you think?” Tears threatened, and she looked down again to get hold of raging emotions. “I prayed it was just Elias’ way of being ironic,” she told the floor, “or that maybe he just . . . didn’t know.”

Gibb’s voice seemed even harsher. “And did you know, Ms. Hill, that he didn’t die in the bathtub at all, but that, like in your book, he had been tortured and murdered before his final date with your tub?”

Her ears roared, and Brooklyn found herself standing, and then stumbling. Hard hands caught her before she fell, Gibbs’ hands, and she stared up into his face and tried to catch her breath.

“Elias was . . . he was tortured? Oh, my God. Oh my God.”

The look in Gibbs’ eyes was hard, and she didn’t know what it meant. Tears welled, and fell, and shame and anger turned her face down. She wanted to flee, go to her room, her bed, think this through - was it real? – was someone deliberately trying to . . . and she tried to pull free, but Gibbs’ hands held her there.

“Let me go,” she told him in a voice far flatter than she would have imagined she was capable.

“Look at me, Brooklyn,” Gibbs countered, and without thinking, she looked up. “Are you trying to seduce me?”

Shock. That’s what the electricity wiggling inside her belly must be. All of this was just too much, and now, now he thought . . . “Seduce you?” She couldn’t stop the laugh that bubbled up, spilled from her lips and mixed with Al Martino’s oddly discordant “Spanish Eyes” as it wafted through the room. The CD player was still on repeat. “I wouldn’t know how to start seducing you, Agent Gibbs! I’ve never seduced anyone in my entire life!”

Without warning, Gibbs released her, and she stumbled back. “And what do you do when you travel to Egypt, Ms. Hill? Or is that just a coincidence, too?”

What was he talking about? She ran a hand through her hair and had to concentrate to keep it from stopping to cover her mouth. And that made her mad. “Egypt? I’ve never been east of Bucharest or south of Athens, Agent Gibbs.” She shook her head. “I have never been to Egypt.”

He held her eyes for a moment, then turned and picked up one of the purple coasters. “And where did you get this, Ms. Hill? It looks a lot like the crafts street vendors in Egypt make, and you can’t buy anything like these here. Or are you going to tell me that Captain Haas sent these to you?”

Egypt? No, he was completely . . . “No, Agent Gibbs. Those came from Mexico, not Egypt, and not from Elias. My sister, Savannah, gave me those, and some other trinkets, last week when she returned from an extended Mexican vacation.”

“Show me.”

“Agent McGee.”

“Savannah is her sister’s name. Find her, McGee. Ms. Hill says her sister just returned from Mexico a week ago bearing what looks remarkably like homegrown Egyptian treasures. Ask her.”

“Will do, boss.”

There was no harm in doing what he asked, and she wanted him to see that she had nothing to hide, so she’d gone room to room and gathered the half-dozen things Savannah had brought. He snapped his phone shut as she turned the corner to the dining room – asking someone to check her story, no doubt – but she ignored that and dumped the collection on the oaken table. A cylindrical pottery something sporting a crescent moon and stars punched out. A dark brown wool blanket. Three beaded necklaces. The four purple coasters, made from some straw-like material, though they were probably not designed to be coasters.

With slow hands, Gibbs picked up each piece and examined it. Brooklyn watched him and wondered what he was thinking. His face was so hard to read, especially when he was looking someplace else.

And anyway, wondering was insanity. Yes, he was handsome, and probably a really good man, and no, he wasn’t an ex, but Rule Two was “Think it through first,” and it didn’t even take that much thinking to figure out what a bad idea it would be to get involved with an investigator who seemed to consider her a suspect in her ex-boyfriend’s murder.

Her breath caught again.

Murder. Elias had been murdered.

And then Gibbs looked up. Something had changed in his eyes, but she just didn’t know him well enough to know what it meant.

“These are all from Egypt, Ms. Hill,” he said, and his voice sounded milder than it probably should, since he was practically accusing her of lying.

Brooklyn shook her head. “No, Agent Gibbs. You’re wrong. Savannah practically lives in Mexico. I am sure she would know the difference between local crafts and things imported from Egypt, unless you think . . .” She stopped because she was rambling, and because she had no proof to show him of anything she had claimed. And speculation was worse than useless. He already had a call in. Let his investigator buddies do their job.

Two fingers trembled. Brooklyn licked her lips as she looked into Gibbs’ face, and tried to keep her hands at her sides. For a moment, she wondered if he had this effect on everyone, this ability to unsettle all your thoughts, then let go of the wondering because she knew he did.

For a handful of seconds, he held her eyes, then turned and walked to the door.

As his hand touched the knob, “Red Roses for a Blue Lady” whispered from the speaker closest to Brooklyn’s desk.

“Ask me to stay,” Gibbs said without turning.

What? What did he mean? “I . . . I don’t understand. I . . .”

He turned then, a slight smile transforming his face, and softening his words. “If you’re going to seduce me, Brooklyn, you don’t let me walk out the door.”

For maybe the first time in her whole life, she felt her eyes open wide. “I’m not . . . I mean . . .”

The smile grew as Gibbs walked across the carpet. He took one hand and led her away from the space behind the table that hid her. As she watched his face, he slid his free hand into the small of her back. “You waltz?”

“No, actually. I just like the music.” Gibbs led her into a simple dance, one she had seen but didn’t know the name of. “You don’t, uh, seem like the waltzing type.”

His breath warmed her cheek before he he pressed it to his. “I’ll teach you.” After a moment, he added, quietly, “Rule Five: Never waste good.”

Beep. Gibbs voicem flat from being recorded. “Leave a message.”

Ziva’s voice. “Uh, Gibbs, Savannah White, the sister, says they had a falling out and she has not spoken to Ms. Hill in years. She said that it is Ms. Hill who travels, not her. That Ms. Hill just returned from Mexico seven days ago. She apparently drives down from Texas, then flies to other countries from there, maybe to avoid detection.” A pause. “Maybe she wants to be caught, Gibbs. Call me.”

Gibbs spoke nary a word on the drive back to D.C. Well, except when he ordered his coffee at that drive through. As they drove, Tony kept hearing something, and after the second hour he realized it was Gibbs, and not the car making that sound. A whistle, just under his breath.

He was happy, Tony guessed, though he couldn’t be sure. Had he ever seen Gibbs happy?

It had been 3 a.m. when Gibbs had come back in. Not that he’d been spying, but Ziva had called to check every hour, and not that he, he of all people, begrudged Gibbs the time or the, uh, attention, but what about Gibbs’ Rule Number Ten, “never get involved in a case”?

For the third hour, Tony debated asking him. But not seriously.

Tim lifted his head. Was that a whistle?

The sound just preceded Gibbs as he rounded the corner to the workspace. The question died on his lips as his eyes met Gibbs’ and saw the anger flare.

“She didn’t do it, McGee. I suggest that you find out who did!”

The Perfect Crime: An NCIS FanFic Episode: Part I

2011-10-02T18:39:00.000-07:00

Below lies the first 2300 or so words of my short, NCIS fanfic story, The Perfect Crime. As of tonight, I have 4710 words written, and I expect another couple thousand before the week is out and the story wraps up. Come back in a couple days for the second part, and the final part should be up by next weekend.

The Perfect Crime

An NCIS FanFic Epsiode

Part I

A spear of sunlight tangled in the space between the desktop and the monitor, and Ziva leaned away. It was either that or fish her sunglasses out of her bag.

Fish. She liked that term.

“Read anything good lately?”

Lips pressed tight, Ziva lifted her gaze from the book and flashed a glare at Tony. So what if she was reading beneath her desk? It wasn’t like she needed to be doing something else, and besides, each book helped her learn just that much more English, and that helped her do a better job.

“Pack it up, Ziva, McGee,” Gibbs barked as he came around the corner, coffee in hand, and she nearly lost her place. “We’ve got a body in Newport News.”

“He’s my ex-boyfriend, yes, Agent Gibbs, but I haven’t seen him in at least five years,” the woman intoned from the hallway. Some tremulous something in her voice drew Tim’s view back to the man’s body crammed into the tub in front of him. Elias Haas. A Navy officer, apparently. The poor guy. So far, it looked like he’d just had enough, had it with life, and let himself in here, quite a nice little house, actually, while the house owner was out, then electrocuted himself in the tub using the blow dryer. Not a very dignified way to go, but a lot less messy than a gun. He apparently knew her, the houseowner, and probably didn’t want her to see him like that. And have to clean it up.

Sometimes an NCIS officer found himself thankful for the small things.

Gibbs said something, but Tim couldn’t quite make it out. A question, certainly. “I . . . I wouldn’t have,” the woman answered. “It’s, uh, well, don’t laugh, but it’s against my own personal set of rules. Brooklyn’s Rule Number Seven: ‘Hands and thoughts off the exes.’ Once they’re gone, let them go, and don’t take them back.”

Of its own accord, Tim’s hand stilled on the brush he’d been using to collect detritus from the floor tile. He stood up, then inched closer to the bathroom door, and prayed his soles kept each slinking step silent. He hadn’t gotten a very good look at her when he came in. Forties, he remembered. Sort of auburnish hair, long, but nothing else about her had seemed noteworthy. Did she just say she has a code of rules?

A redhead with a Gibbs’ code?

He peeked out, but couldn’t see anything but Gibbs’ back. Oh, and there was Ziva, leaning into the hallway from the other side of Gibbs and what he thought he remembered as the kitchen. Mossad she might be, and a trained killer, but her eyes were as round and black as the planet mercury.

In fact, Ziva looked a little too shocked, but the thought slid away as Gibbs’ head turned, and the sallow hall light caught the gleam of Gibbs’ teeth as he ducked his head to write something on the pad he held.

Gibbs was smiling. At a crime scene. At the redheaded woman with the Code.

“And does it work?” That was Gibbs. Gibbs asking a banal question. And then he shifted his weight from one leg to the other, moved just enough, and Tim saw her face.

Pretty. She was pretty. Longish hair, like he remembered, and a little browner than red. More on the voluptuous side. Confident, but vulnerable. Sad, shocked, but unafraid.

She was smiling, too, just a small smile, a smile you might expect from someone who’d just had a dead man found in her bathroom, but that wasn’t it. Something was there, something else, filling the space between her and Gibbs.

“It works when you follow the rules,” she answered softly. The look she raised with her eyes wasn’t the one that meant you wish you had followed your own advice; it was the one that said you wish everyone else would.

And then Jimmy Palmer pushed a gurney into the hall and broke the spell.

“What do you mean, ‘he smiled at her’?” came Tony’s harsh whisper.

Abby watched Ziva glance guiltily at the closed door behind her and pretend she hadn’t heard Tony, whom she’d apparently deigned unworthy of a firsthand accounting of the scoop. That reminded her. Something smelled odd in here, which wasn’t odd in itself. Not in her lab. But the smell itself was odd. Not something she’d smelled before.

“You should have seen him, Abby,” Ziva went on, as excited as Abby had ever seen her. “All teeth.” Ziva demonstrated an awkward smile. “Like he liked her. And he hardly said a word!” Ziva shook her head and stared her amazement at some spot over Abby’s right shoulder. “Her name is Brooklyn Hill.”

“Wait, wait,” Abby interrupted, and waved her hands in the air to still Ziva’s torrent. “Brooklyn Hill? The Brooklyn Hill?” Excitement rose in a silky wave, or strummed like the note of a steel guitar string. “The bestselling author of The Perfect Crime?” She was single, Abby was certain. And smart. And pretty.

Ziva’s attention snapped back, as intense as a searchlight. “She wrote a book about committing perfect crimes? How to avoid being caught?”

“No, no.” It was Tony’s turn to interrupt. “It’s fiction, Ziva, like the book in your top left drawer, though Brooklyn’s book is a murder-mystery, and therefore slightly less riveting than your pleasantly amusing tome since it isn’t about falling in love with your cousin’s landlord during a last minute trip to the coast of Maine . . .”

“Shut up, Tony!” chorused Abby and Ziva, then turned to each other and smiled.

“Have you read it? The Perfect Crime?” McGee asked the room –Tony? Abby? – as he slid through the door and pushed it closed it behind him. “You need to open this door, Abby. I’ve never seen it closed before. If you don’t, you’re going to have Gibbs asking . . .”

A hand slid through the small space between jam and door edge. “Yes, Abby. Why is the door shut?”

Gibbs.

The door slid open. If swallows really made noise outside your throat, the room was a cacophony. Well, except that it was silent.

“Abby!”

Her breath caught. “Gibbs! Well, we were, uh, just talking about, um, Brooklyn’s book, and, uh . . .”

He didn’t wait for the lie, but the tone of his voice said it was because his patience had almost dried, and not because he’d scoured up a sliver of sympathy for her – their – unease. “What have you got about the dead officer?”

“Well,” McGee broke in, and spoke quickly to try and hem the awkwardness. “Captain Haas had a reason to kill himself. He was just back from a Middle East deployment. When he got back here, Command awarded him top secret clearance and told him he was shipping back out to Iraq to work as an undercover operative. Drugs. To catch smugglers, I mean. That’s . . .”

“Not a good reason to kill himself, probie,” Tony interrupted. “I am sure that Captain Haas . . .”

Annoyance pinched McGee’s face. “I didn’t say it was a good reason, Tony. I just said he had a reason . . .”

“And?” Gibbs’ attention shifted to Abby.

Abby smiled. “The room was clean, Gibbs.” That would certainly make him happy. That Brooklyn hadn’t seen it. That she’d told the truth. “No evidence anyone was around when he took that last bath. But Ducky has something. He asked me to tell you to come down.”

With a nod, he turned and walked out. “Library hour is over. Get back to work!”

“Ah, Jethro.” As the door shut, Dr. Mallard lifted from a crouch near the wall and used a hand to straighten his back.

Brows up, Gibbs sipped his coffee. “What you got, Duck?”

Dr. Mallard flashed a smile, then leaned over the cold silver table, and the dead officer atop it. “Just testing a theory.” He stared down into the officer’s face. “You weren’t all what they said, hmm, were you?”

Before Gibbs could ask again, Ducky turned to Gibbs. “The poor boy. Just back from Egypt and now about to head back out into the desert. Undercover again. For years to come. Again. A poor fate for any man, most certainly.”

Gibbs bit. “But . . . ?”

“Ah, Jethro, you always know when I am about to reveal that something else lies at the heart of the problem. Persepacity is a quality largely lacking in today’s youth . . .”

“Ducky.”

“Take a look at this, Jethro.” With a finger, Dr. Mallard pointed to a small, square mark nearly hidden beneath the cadaver’s upper arm.

“He was in the bathtub, Duck. Electrocuted. He probably thrashed around when the current hit the water.”

Using his thumb, Dr. Mallard inched the body’s elbow away from his body. “And look at this lividity. Here. Inside his elbow.” Heaving a sigh, Dr. Mallard stood and turned to face Gibbs. “It doesn’t match the levity on his back, and legs.” Dr. Mallard paused. “No, Jethro. This boy’s mark, and the one on his opposite arm, are not from thrashing in the bathtub.” Dr. Mallard paused. “I believe these bruises were received several hours pre-mortem, and I am certain he received them while being restrained. I’ve found what might be clamp-marks on the, uh, more sensitive areas of his anatomy, and I’ve sent his blood to Abby to check for toxins.”

Dr. Mallard put a hand on Gibbs’ arm. “Jethro, this man was tortured, and then murdered hours before he ever made it to the bathtub. I don’t think whoever did this thought anyone would look beneath the surface, but the electrocution was just the means they used to cover it up.”

The door creaked when Brooklyn opened it, and before she could catch it, a smile escaped when she saw Gibbs standing outside. What was it about this guy, anyway? He was cute, sure, but there was something else. Something good, something light, but she knew it was buried miles beneath a mountain of dark. And there was a lot of dark in him. But even so, she was sure he was a good man, an honorable man. One who followed a code of his own. That was something very big. Something that righted a lot of wrongs in a person.

“Ms. Hill. May I come in?”

Brooklyn pulled open the door the rest of the way and motioned for Gibbs to come in.

Oh. Gibbs and some other agent, a man, who followed him inside. So this was business.

But Gibbs’ gaze stayed locked on hers, and a ruddy interest bobbed behind his eyes, a wanting, even though he was trying damned hard to keep it buried. Her face warmed, and she raised her hand to her cover her mouth, and old nervous habit that rose like Lazarus every single time she found herself attracted to a man, and it took some effort to push it back down to her side.

“Ms. Hill, this is Agent DiNozzo. I have some additional questions for you, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t,” Brooklyn told him, and she knew he knew she meant it. “Can I get you two some coffee? A pot of Sumatra just finished.” She smiled at the startle Gibbs stifled. Did he like Sumatra, too? “I drink coffee while I write,” she explained, then motioned for them to sit on the couch while she went to pour them each a cup.

“Captain Haas was murdered,” Gibbs told her when she sat the two cups on her purple, festive coasters pocking the smooth lines of the chestnut coffeetable. Savannah, her sister, had given them to her last time she’d been by. A week ago? Coasters and some other odds and kitsch she’d picked up during her latest trek to Mexico. She met his eyes, then dropped into the chair she’d pulled up to the far end of the coffeetable. Her breath had caught, and she had to force it back out.

“Someone forced him into the bathtub?” she made herself ask.

“They did,” Gibbs confirmed, though she could tell that he was holding something back. “Did Captain Haas have any enemies? Know anyone who might have a reason to want him dead?”

The paneled walls in this living room seemed too dark. From the pictures, she’d thought she’d like them, and she had at first. But pictures can’t convey the feel of a room, and this one was too dark. Like Gibbs, the whole house hid its secrets.

Brooklyn shook her head. “I just don’t know, Agent Gibbs. Like I told you, I hadn’t seen Elias in five years. I got the occasional birthday card, and every year he shipped me a Christmas present, but that’s it. We hadn’t talked since, well, since I told him to pack his things. It was just two weeks ago I moved back to Newport News from Dallas, and I don’t even know how Elias knew where I lived.” A thought rose, but she pushed it aside. “The truth is that he’s never been the kind of guy to make enemies, and I don’t know if he’s made any since we split up. I’m sorry.”

“If he didn’t have any enemies, what did he do to make you kick him out?”

A simple question. Had she imagined that he might have more than one reason for asking?

Even so, she couldn’t tell him. Not all of it. “We’re . . . we were not compatible. He, uh, lives by a different set of rules than I do. It wasn’t a screaming match, Agent Gibbs. We just decided like rational adults that it would be better if we parted.”

A nod was her answer. With it, she knew that Gibbs knew she was holding back. Like he had. Still, she hoped he didn’t think . . .

“We’re staying in town,” he told her as he rose. “For a few days.” He handed her a business card. “Call me if you think of anything you think I should know.”

She opened her mouth, but the weight of Agent DiNozzo’s stare kept her voice inside her throat.

Coming Soon . . .

2011-09-30T18:49:00.000-07:00

It happened this morning - on my way to work.

I was just sort of daydreaming - you know how you do when you're driving. And it's morning.

Anyway, before I could really catch myself, or register what I was doing, I had created and mapped out an entire short story. In my head, I mean.

I am going to write it this weekend -- or at least I hope to finish writing it this weekend.

Oddly, for me at least, it isn't about the Alternate Alaska. No - instead it's an episode of -- drumroll, please -- NCIS. The television show.

So yes. I'm going to be writing a fan fiction piece, something I never imagined myself doing.

Once it's finished, I'll post it either on smashwords or similar, or here. Either way, it will be free.

I promise to keep you posted.

Which Quotation Marks Are Which?

2011-09-28T13:29:00.000-07:00

Okay. You know you’ve seen it, and maybe, just maybe, you’ve even done it.

I’m here to ask you – nay; beg you – to please stop.

Stop what, you ask?

Stop using single quotation marks.

For the love of everything sacred – please!

Unless you live outside the US (which rules I will not address), or work for the Associated Press, it is never appropriate to use single quotation marks. (Well, almost never, and it is very, very unlikely that any of the exceptions apply to your situation.)

So here’s the bottom line: If you’re setting off a word/phrase (Klingon leader signs “peace treaty” with Romulans), referring to the title of a short work (Gibbs’ poem, “A Few Good Probies”), citing a word and not its meaning (she said “naughty,” not “delicious”), or quoting the exact words someone spoke or wrote (“Smell my hair,” he whispered), use double quotation marks.

Questions?

Chapter two: Blowing Embers

2011-09-26T13:59:00.000-07:00

If you haven't read book two - Blowing Embers - you should. I guarantee it's a damn good read. And either way, you should watch the video trailer. It's like 1.5 minutes. And good. ;-p

How Do I Love Los Angeles?

2011-09-14T15:19:00.000-07:00

After leaving home early-early Monday morning, a sleepy jet brought me back from Los Angeles this morning. I’d gone for a disability law conference, and it was worth every penny.

The trip itself, however, was much more a mixed bag.

To get to Los Angeles from Anchorage, an air traveler usually skims the west coast. Following tradition, or Occam’s razor, my first plane, which had thankfully been on time, deposited me in a strangely sunny Seattle. After boarding my second – the final – plane less than an hour later, the flight attendant announced that some object on the airplane’s right wing was perhaps a micron out of spec, and so a team had been dispatched to measure it. If the measurer had made a mistake, she told us in a too-cheerful voice, we would be on our way in “an hour or so.” If, however, the thing actually required fixing, she explained solemnly, we would be stuck in Seattle for a time. Which would mean I’d likely miss my conference since I didn’t have a spare day to sacrifice to the gods of Alaska Air.

This is the first time I’d ever left my young son – he’s 8 – overnight. I had, therefore, asked the state travel office to minimize my time away: I’d leave Monday morning and return Tuesday after the conference – well, I’d arrive early-early-EARLY Wednesday morning (and just deal with the subsequently Volkswagon-sized feet). I requested that they put me in LaLa Land during the middle of Monday so I could avoid Angelonean (aka “abysmal, soul-sucking”) rush hour traffic. I’d planned to stay with my sister, you see, who lives in Monrovia, near Pasadena, a good 40 miles north and east of LAX.

After doing whatever tests needed done, aka about 100 pages of a Terry Pratchett novel later, the measurer apparently decided that the plane could make the trek south, and sent us on our way.

Upon arrival – upon our LATE arrival – I collected my bag and made my way to the shuttle port. The bus to the car rental company was strangely empty, but I remained optimistic that I’d miss the worst of the traffic. That optimism faded, however, just like the force behind my smile when, and after I’d packed the car with my bags and adjusted the mirrors, an attendant knocked on the window to tell me that the car’s license plates were expired and that I needed to go here and see them.

And, after that was sorted, it was 5:00. Straight up.

The trip to Pasadena (home to glorious 99-cent stores and the best Thai food on the west coast) took about 1.5 hours. Too late to meet my sister at the time we’d agreed at President Thai. “I’ll wait. It’s okay,” she assured me after I’d finally been able to plug my dead cell phone into the car’s outlet. “I have papers to grade.”

After a quick trip to the 99-cent store (I spent $27!) and dinner, we stopped by a clothing store we both love and shopped the clearance racks. Among other things, including a new outfit for my sister who’d stayed with my son, I got myself the most beautiful green-stoned ring I’d ever seen.

The next morning, I left my LA-sister’s house at just before 7:00 a.m. to make the conference in Century City, 30 miles and, per google, 40 minutes away. I wanted to be there in time for the continental breakfast. I made a quick stop at the closest coffee chain for a latte, reasoning that my bladder could hold the hill for the hour to hour and half, max, if the roads were bad, it would take to get to my conference.

Oh, yeah – 40 minutes. Ha, ha, ha. And ha, ha, ha, ha, ha to boot.

I am so naïve.

Two hours, 45 minutes, and a nearly exploded bladder later, I pulled into the hotel parking lot. The conference had started at 8:30. It was now 9:45, and all the chairs were full, and I had to be marched thru the room and seated in the front row. The speaker, bless him, made a joke about how since everyone was watching me anyway, I should just continue to the very front and introduce myself. Pulling a smile from someplace, I said, “sure,” and sat down, and let the breath I’d been holding out.

The first break came at 10:45. After relieving a still complaining bladder, I tiptoed thru the throngs (the conference was full) to the middle of the sink shelf. I’d worn my new green ring, but didn’t want to get it wet, so I took it off to wash my hands. The paper towels were located at the two edges of the sink platforms, so I squeezed through and pulled some towels from the dispenser. When my hands were dried, I pushed back thru to the sink I’d washed at. And discovered my ring was missing.

Seriously. Someone had had the gall to steal a too big, adjustable green ring that I got on clearance at a clothing store. Of course I asked, and of course no one saw anything.

The rest of the day went better. The conference had sponsored a lunch, and during it I made some new friends. The drive back to return my car took less time than I expected. Getting through TSA at LAX took less than ten minutes. Both of my flights left on time, and my car was parked exactly where I’d left it in the paid parking lot. My sister and my son were asleep when I pried open the door, and my kitties were overjoyed that I’d brought them a strange-smelling suitcase. Bed felt better than heavenly.

Los Angeles. A mixed bag, but one I think I’ll leave lie for a while.

What is "fat"

2011-09-10T11:25:00.000-07:00

What is "fat" a line drawn by insurance companies and advertisers, and often has no medical corroboration. The topic - what is "healthy" - requires a lot of independent research, and careful analysis of claims. This is a subject that makes people hysterical because of the social stigma, and that's really what admonishment is about - the very very vast majority of the time -- it's about people fearing that they'll be/parents fearing that their kids will be social outcasts. The problem is that humans - healthy humans - come in all shapes and sizes. And when we devalue one part of that - one possibility - or many possibilities - and for women, we devalue most of what they look like anyway - we perpetuate a world where daughters hate their bodies (like their parents do) and eating disordered behavior is the norm.

Gram

2011-08-31T12:07:00.000-07:00

I am missing my Grandma today.

It’s been a handful of years since she’s been gone. I feel lucky to have had so many years with her. But still I miss her.

I remember when I was the same age my son is now, about 8, Gram and I used to walk the ditchbanks in Sand Hollow, Idaho – a very rural farming community – and pick wild asparagus and other delicacies for our supper, and to make juice with. Sometimes we’d walk out, and sometimes we’d ride horses.

That time was always a quiet time. My Gram never talked much. She never once, in all my years, raised her voice, and I never saw her get mad. Oh sure; I saw her take a shotgun and chase my dad off her property once, and I heard that she nearly broke my Grandfather’s skull open with a cast iron frying pan the one time he figured it was okay to slap her. But never – never ever ever – did she raise her voice.

Instead my Gram would watch. Watch and listen. If I asked a question, she’d answer.

Sometimes, on a rare day, she’d tell me a story. Or she'd sing and play the piano, or the guitar.

Right after my horse and I had a terrible accident – we’d been running, and a car scared her and she’d slipped and fallen, and we’d both been hurt – I was too afraid to ride again. I was maybe 9. After about a week of not riding, Gram took me out and saddled my horse – Misti – and told me to get on.

I admit it; I whined.

I remember so clearly the way her mouth hardened - just a subtle loss of softness. She shook her head twice, or maybe three times. “If you don’t get on now, Lauri,” she told me, “You never will.”

I got back on.

Gram did so many wonderful things for me throughout my life. When I was a baby, she handmade me an activity book (which I still have). As I grew, as I made mistakes, she stood strong for me, by me, and behind me.

My Gram was the matriarch of our family for the four decades I knew her. She was the strongest woman I have ever known. Always kind. Always, always good. Always unfailing in her love, and unflinching from her duties.

She worked as one of the Rosie the Riveters during World War II. She learned to weld and worked in a factory for several years while the menfolk were gone fighting Nazis across the ocean. Once they came home, she refused to stop working, and she refused to take being slapped.

My Gram loved me very much. I could always tell. That smile that rose when she’d catch sight of me.

She loved me and she inspired me.

And now that she is gone, I miss her. So very much.

Why is the pain so sharp today? Maybe because this morning I caught the smell of asparagus on the wind.

Bernita June Jinks

A Whole World Moves Outside

2011-08-22T15:34:00.000-07:00

Someone – someone who had just lost a loved one – asked me the other day, “How do you get through each day? How do you live with the fact that someone you love is gone?”**

That question started a thought, and the thought is this: grief is a luxury.

We – we western civ folks – have such luxurious lives. Most of us live without hunger, and even the poorest of us live without fear (of death, of war, of loss).

Most of the planet, however, does not share in our luxury. Too many children grow up hungry and afraid. Too many people all over the world watch loved ones die – siblings, parents, friends.

And even in our own country, we have a full set of our own horrors that we turn a practiced eye from: the brutal slaughter of unwanted pets.

Despite our luxurious lives, we western folks live lives in which we commonly feel so depressed that we take medication. Why is that?

I think I have at least part of the answer.

It’s what we believe in.

Let me explain. Someone – somewhere – be it advertisers, or romantic literarists, or zealous philosphers, or ardent religious peeps, or all of them – taught us – and we believed them – that we are – each one of us is – entitled to be “happy.”

What is “happy”? Well, ask aforesaid spewers of the idea. While advertisers want you to believe you need products to be happy (cars, houses, to not smell human, to be thin, etc., ad infinitum), a romantic might argue that you need love (or family or meaning in life). A religious authority will tell you that you need to live a certain life and have a certain relationship with your deity or you'll be miserable at every moment. Philosophers will never stop arguing about what it all means, much less what you need to have it.

The common denominator here is YOU. You you you you you you. And you know what? All the years you waste searching for the way to sate your own longings will bear no fruit – or at least no lasting fruit. You will never find happiness.

Do you know why?

It doesn’t exist. It’s an idea – a nothing that you make real by believing in it.

Worse, it’s a way to waste an entire life as a narcissist.

It’s a mechanism by which you as an active mover of the world are paralyzed – made impotent – neutralized.

This search for happiness means you don’t give a shit about anything else besides yourself. You never lift your eyes from the lines that squeeze you in.

A whole world moves outside, though. A world where suffering is real. A world where you might be able to make a difference – if you’d just stop staring in the mirror.

** For clarification, I want to append a bit of mixed opine and fact to this post: First: grieving is fine, and normal, and even expected when we lose loved ones. It isn't something to be ashamed of. I grieve all the time - for those I have lost - and I have lost much, and many, at great cost - and for the anguish others I do not know feel now and will feel - including all of the aforementioned non-western folks and all the animals all over the world that humans torture and kill. That - grief - isn't what I am complaining about. It's when we let grief paralyze us that it becomes a problem.

Six Sentence Sunday #17

2011-08-06T21:05:00.000-07:00

Welcome to this week’s Six Sentence Sunday post! (Visit the other wonderful writers here.) I continue to post from Blowing Embers, my second novel in The Embers Series, a paranormal romance/epic fantasy, released July 1^st – and a FINALIST in the Reader’s Favorite awards (and I am SO excited! Woo hoo!).

Today’s snip follows close to where we left off last time:

His face was inscrutable, but he appeared to consider her words. “I believe,” he finally answered, “that you will make your choice no matter my, or anyone’s, thoughts.”

It was hard not to sound tired. “Laszlo, I really do want to know what you think about this.”

The fire sizzled as it chewed the final log in two. Without answering, Laszlo left the couch and tossed one, then another chunk of spruce into the open maw, then squatted in front of the hearth and settled them into place with his hands.

SFFS #6

2011-08-05T20:35:00.000-07:00

Welcome back to the Science Fiction Fantasy Saturday. Visit the other talented authors here.

Last week I posted six sentences from my newly released novel, Blowing Embers, an epic fantasy/ paranormal romance, and a finalist in the Reader’s Choice awards (woo hoo!).

Once again, these sentences follow the prior six:

Still grinning, he offered a hand up, and as he dressed she brushed snow and mud off her backside. As her posterior could attest, even in late spring here in the alternate Alaska she’d been swept to late last year – cycle – the mornings bled cold. And the fog clung like a frightened child to the granite tips of the mountains most every day – turn – until late afternoon. Breakup would come soon, she hoped, this month – moon – like it did in the Alaska she’d come from, thawing the rivers and ponds, tempting flowers out of moons of hiding, and forcing the green back into the birches. Just as back home, the sun stayed longer each turn, and soon it would shine for all her waking marks plus many more. And she yearned for its warmth.

Blowing Embers is a finalist in the Reader's Favorite Awards!

2011-08-04T21:21:00.000-07:00

This last Monday I got the most astounding news.

Out of up to 80 entrants in my category of the Reader's Favorite awards - "fiction - fantasy" - five books were chosen. Blowing Embers, my second novel, the one just released July 1, made it. It's one of the five finalists.

I am thrilled. Humbled. Excited.

But even if it doesn't win a gold, silver, or bronze, that I made it this far with my second book is something I am incredibly proud of.

I poured my heart and soul into BE in a way I didn't yet know how to do in FE, and my writing skill has certainly improved since FE.

Winners will be announced September 1. Whew. Hope I can wait that long. ;-p

Six Sentence Sunday #16

2011-07-23T22:00:00.000-07:00

Today’s snip follows right where we left off last time - and keep in mind that Alex, her nephew, is six years old:

The comfy couch beckoned, and she let him lead her back to it. “Alex asked me if he could become a soldier,” she told him as she pulled her legs up.

His face showed no surprise as he lifted a fuzzy blanket from the couch’s arm and wrapped it around her.

“Did you know?” she asked, suddenly suspicious.

“He did not ask me,” he replied blandly.

“But you knew . . . what . . . that he would?”

SFFS #5

2011-07-22T22:00:00.000-07:00

Once again, these sentences follow the prior six:

A vision of trees, mountains, fog, and sky flashed across her eyes, and her breath, and the elemental air that she held, oomphed out when her back slammed into the snow.

An enormous naked man landed on top of her, a rare grin lighting his face. For a moment, she stared into deep brown eyes set in a god’s rugged mien, skin as dark and warm as umber, as the wind blew a tendril of black hair across his jaw.

“Damn it,” she wheezed.

Instead of answering, he kissed her mouth.

She pressed her own smile away and shoved him back.

Six Sentence Sunday #15

2011-07-16T20:02:00.000-07:00

Welcome to this week’s Six Sentence Sunday post! (Visit the other wonderful writers here.) I continue to post from Blowing Embers, the second chapter in The Embers Series, a paranormal romance/epic fantasy, just released July 1st – woo hoo!

Today’s snip follows pretty closely from where we left off last time, but for those who haven't been following, here's the background:

After the day’s training, Kiera, the heroine, and co-ruler of the city, made her own way back to the manse. Along her way, she stumbled upon a fight, and got smacked upside the head while breaking it up. Chagrined, she tried to sneak inside to clean up, but guests found her. After making excuses, she climbed the stairs and slipped into her apartment, hoping (beyond hope) to avoid Laszlo, her lover, and the leader of the city’s militia. He has found her, however, and took her bruised face as badly as she feared. (The prior sentences are here - and note that I skipped a few sentences between those and these because they would seem confusing without more background.)

“No, no - I’m fine - really. I’d like something to eat.” The wet, reasonably cool cloth had taken some of the swelling from her eye, and she’d washed the spatters of blood from her face and changed her dress. “Do you think I look all right to go down?”

He let a smile rise and linger. “No, a’kala. . .”

You know - I must write a lot about blood, because every other search at dreamstime is for "blood." LOL.

SFFS #4

2011-07-15T20:06:00.000-07:00

Welcome back to the Science Fiction Fantasy Saturday. Visit the other talented authors here.

Last week I posted the third six sentences of my (very!) newly released novel, Blowing Embers, an epic fantasy/paranormal romance.

These six sentences follow the prior six:

Twisting like a cornered wolverine, he clawed furiously, used knife blade teeth to tear the unseen barrier between them, but as her air continued to flow, the space grew larger, wider, and she knew he was losing. All at once he drew back, away from the shield’s edge, and in that split second Kiera wondered if he would accede defeat. A smile began as he threw himself like a supplicant to the ground at her feet, but instead of begging her mercy, open jaws roared his furor. Giant claws blurred, ripped bloody gashes into the black earth dividing them.

Comprehensive List of Book Reviewers

2011-07-13T03:00:00.000-07:00

This page has been moved here. Please adjust your bookmarks.

Character Profile: Meet Laszlo

2011-07-10T14:47:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Alternate Alaska! I'd like to take a minute and introduce you to Laszlo, a main character in The Embers Series:

Name: Laszlo of the Denaa; as a member of the Denaa Tribe in the Alternate Alaska, he can shapeshift into a Great Golden Bear.

Role In Novel: Captain of the Fairbanks’ Mage Governor’s Army – the army Kiera, the woman whom magic transported to the Alternate Alaska, stumbles onto right after she arrives.

Primary Goal: Hidden, but he definitely has something in mind for Kiera.

Most notable personality trait(s): Laszlo is a man of few words. He is very focused on the goals he’s set, and the tasks that needs accomplished, and doesn’t talk about much else.

Achilles heel: He’d never admit it, but he’d do anything to protect the ones he loves, including his army.

Biggest strength: Laszlo is the ultimate leader: strong, decisive, insightful, and frightening at times. He is the perfect choice to general an army.

Physical Description: Laszlo is an enormous man, perhaps a slip over six feet, and well over three hundred pounds. As all shapeshifters are, his strength and speed far exceed human limits, and even among shifters, his ferocity is legendary.

Hair Color/Style: Laszlo’s hair is black, thick, and falls to his shoulders.

Eye Color: His eyes are dark brown, though like all shapeshifting bears, they turn golden when he shifts.

Skin Color: Kiera once described his skin as a “warm shade of umber.”

Notable Facial Features: Laszlo’s face is hard, and square, and reminds Kiera of Hugh Jackman’s in some ways.

Body Type: Laszlo is bigger than big, and brawny, and strong. He is not sensitive to the cold, and even in his human form he can withstand even the coldest Alaska weather without effect.

Gestures/Habits: Laszlo watches, and ponders, though you have to know him to know what’s going through his mind. He keeps his face still, and doesn’t communicate much besides purpose, and sometimes anger, with his body. Many – perhaps most – are frightened by him.

Place of birth: Laszlo was born in one of his tribe’s small villages that lie along the southwest coast of the Alternate Alaska.

Age: 40

Closest confidante: Laszlo keeps several people close, including Mosha and Amba. In book two, we meet Kuruk, one of the otuks (military leaders just below his rank) he favors.

Significant Family Members: He is a slave, and he’d never forgive me for telling all of his secrets.

You’ll have to read the books for more! Enter the contest and you might just win a free copy of the book of your choice!

Six Sentence Sunday #14

2011-07-09T20:09:00.000-07:00

Today’s snip starts right after where we left off last time. (If you’d like to refresh your memory, the prior six is posted here.)

“I’m fine,” she told him, and lifted to tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “Don’t go barging off to wreak vengeance, either. I broke up a fight is all, and if I hadn’t been so tired, honestly, I would have seen this coming.” She paused to grin. “I left them both chastised and cringing in the snow.”

The muscle clamping his jaw relaxed just a little. “Chanda is here,” he told her, jumping ahead to the next order of business.

It's out! Woo hoo!

SFFS #3

2011-07-08T20:14:00.000-07:00

Welcome back to the Science Fiction Fantasy Saturday. Visit the other talented authors here.

Last week I posted the second six sentences of my (very!) newly released novel, Blowing Embers, an epic fantasy/paranormal romance.

These six sentences follow the last six:

What must have been fifty thousand pounds of force slammed into her shield, shoved her back three yards and to her knees.

The shield held, and fire sung in her veins. “Ahh!” she screamed joyously. Defiantly. Her feet pushed her back up as she leaned forward and fed more air into the space between them, forcing him back.

Undaunted, the bear continued his drive.

SFFS #2

2011-06-25T00:12:00.000-07:00

Welcome back to the Science Fiction Fantasy Saturday. Visit the other talented authors here.

Last week I posted the first six sentences of my upcoming book, Blowing Embers, an epic fantasy/paranormal romance, which will be released on July 1 – and is available for preorder now!

These six sentences follow the first six:

“Hold it fast,” Lady Agni yelled from the sideline, spurring a snake of annoyance to wind through Kiera’s chest.

Adrenalin shook her hands, numbed her lips. Further crisped the details of the horror coming for her: ruddy fur, erect on rippling shoulders. The needle white of bared teeth. The grunt of forced breath each time those massive front feet crushed circles into the snow.

And then he was there.

On Politics and Human Nature

2011-06-23T12:52:00.000-07:00

Thoroughly pissed off. That’s how I am feeling today, and most days.

The rich just keep getting richer, the poor keep getting poorer, and the middle class is not just shrinking, but being pushed (shoved? stomped?) into the underclass.

The very banks and financial institutions that drove us into the second worst financial crisis in history (thanks in large part to a lack in government oversight), and created the most unemployment in our, our parents, and likely our grandparents’, memories are now repossessing the homes of the unemployed. They – the banks – never felt a prick. They never had to take any responsibility. No one lost their job, no one went under, and now they’re forcing unemployed families into the streets. People who are unemployed because of the banks' financial malfeasances.

It is beyond ironic. Beyond horrifying. Instead, in my mind, it sits atop a sandy plateau in the middle of a desert on a day when the sun is so brightly burning that everything looks orange, and waves rise from the flattened brown earth. Surreal. Murderous.

Every day the U.S. looks less and less like a first world country, and more like a member of the third world. Where justice is bought and sold, where only the rich get the goods, and where everyone else starves, goes without, and dies both early and often.

Ethics dictate that honorable people don’t let their neighbor’s children starve. Here, not only do we let them starve, we’re taking away their medical care, too. Theirs, the elderly’s, the disabled’s. Medicaid and medicare. The safety net for the helpless.

Is it a burden on society? Sure it is. Absolutely. But shouldering responsibilities is part of what makes us grown-ups.

So, as a society are we regressing to childhood?

I wish I could blame the rich for the gamesmanship, and their greed, and their obscene obsession with acquiring wealth, even as their sister and fellow countryfolk starve, and die.

But we all do it. Here in America.

How many of us think of others when we get a raise? How many of us care an inkling about the suffering of animals in shelters, or the way beef cattle or egg-producing chickens are being treated? How many of us give one tiny shit – even a passing thought – to the people living on the street? How many of us care enough to even feel badly when someone’s child is abducted?

And during any given year, how many of us do one thing – even one – for someone worse off than us?

And that is precisely what the superrich think of you. Or, rather, they don’t.

It’s a disease, and it’s called selfishness. It infects our emotions, our intellect, and our ethics. It manifests as apathy, and greed, and jealousy, and murder, and theft, and adultery, and self-pity, and a hundred other things. It often motivates despair, and urges us to seek happiness. It’s so commonplace most of us don’t even notice it, whether in ourselves or others.

Right here at this juncture is where I’m supposed to reveal some witty truth, some kernel of knowledge that will make you slap your forehead and want to do better.

I don’t have one.

I think the only solution is moral/ethical, emotional, and intellectual maturity, not just of us as individuals, but of societies. I don’t see it on the horizon. In fact, I don't see it anywhere, and that fact leaves me sick at heart.

Six Sentence Sunday #13

2011-06-11T20:01:00.000-07:00

Welcome to this week’s Six Sentence Sunday post! (Visit the other fab writers here.) I continue to post from Blowing Embers, the second chapter in The Embers Series, a paranormal romance/epic fantasy, set to be released in July.

Today’s snip starts right after where we left off last time. (If you’d like to refresh your memory, the prior six is posted here.)

But Laszlo slammed open the door a handful of minutes later. Without preface, he stalked to where she stood next to the window and lifted her chin with a hand. With gentle fingers, he touched her swollen eye. He pressed his lips into a thin line and looked into her face.

A smile lifted her lips at the worry he strove so hard to conceal, but it was there, lurking just below the surface. The jaw he clenched, the eyes that narrowed just a fraction.

SFFS #1

2011-06-10T19:00:00.000-07:00

This is my first week posting for Science Fiction Fantasy Saturday. Woo hoo! Visit the other talented authors here.

In introduction, I am posting the first six sentences of my upcoming book, Blowing Embers, an epic fantasy/paranormal romance, which will be released in July.

Some say Death glides in on angel-black wings while others say that it kisses away one’s last breath like a gentle grandmother. Kiera’s reaper, however, hurtled down the frosted field on four razor-clawed feet.

Narrowed eyes sharpened the terrifying vision of more than two thousand pounds of raging bear, leaping as he ran, and larger with every heartbeat.

So much larger.

Again she set her feet and leaned forward, hands up. Her throat squeezed when she swallowed.

Writing POV - or Please Avoid Writing Like I'm a Movie-Goer

2011-05-30T19:30:00.000-07:00

Most everyone loves movies. A great many of us love books. A smaller, but still significant, number of us love writing books. Not surprisingly, there is considerable overlap in the three categories. Many who read like movies, too, and I’d bet that the majority of those who write like both books and films.

Both books and movies offer different things, and each do certain things better. While I’m not going to list all of the examples, I think it’s important, for this discussion anyway, to note that movies do third person point of view very well, and books do first person point of view very well.

That’s because in movies, vision constitutes your primary source for the intake of sensory data (with hearing a close second). In other words, you’re meant to feel like you’re watching real things happen, like you do in real life. You witness interactions, other people’s lives, all the time, and movies mimic that experience to capture your attention, and your emotions.

Books, on the other hand, most often place readers in actors’ heads. Instead of actually seeing, or hearing, the action, the reader has to imagine it. It takes more work in that way than a movie does, but it also offers, I’d argue, a bigger reward. In any book, the reader gets to live the life, and not just witness it. They get to see inside – learn what the character learns as they learn it – and feel what they feel. And that means that, in a well-written book, the connection to the point-of-view ("POV") characters is more than intimate: it’s deep and lasting, and very similar to the way you feel about your own experiences.

Think about your favorite book. And now your favorite movie. You have profound feelings of attachment for both, but the experience you’ve had with them is very different, and thus so are those feelings. You don’t imagine you’re Captain Picard, right? No – of course not. And you never did. But you did, I’ll wager, imagine yourself as Laura Ingalls, or Jo March when you lay awake with Little Women propped open over your head.

Okay. Great, you say. Thanks so much for sharing your insight. But what, you wonder, does all this have to do with writing?

Well, a lot.

Lately, at least in the books and manuscripts I’ve been reading, a great many writers are getting these two styles mixed up. In their stories, often within the same scene, they switch from what I am going to call "first-person POV" (a point of view in which the reader discerns nothing the POV character doesn't) to what I am going to term "third person" (and which I will further delineate “movie goer” point of view, a POV in which the reader is positioned in a bystanding, outside position and forced to view the character from the outside), and sometimes they even switch back and forth.

(Note: I do understand that these titles are a bit arbitrary, but bear with me here. And if you're a stickler for titles, find the real names for various POVs here.)

Before I give you some examples, let me explain why this matters.

A writer’s primary goal, in my experience, is to connect with readers. You do that differently in each genre. In movies, overall anyway, you simply can’t get inside a character’s head. You can’t live the life of a POV character. And so movies don’t tend to try. Instead, they lure viewers in by leaving an open seat at the table, both metaphorically and literally, and then the producer inserts the camera in there. Ta da! The viewer is now a member of the senior staff, or the character's friend, a member of the in-group, or whatever. The viewer then connects – attaches – as an intimate - as a group member. Loyalty and other emotions flow from that connection, and then a fan is born.

In books, a skilled writer shoves the reader into the POV character’s head from page one and then drags both character and reader through an emotional obstacle course via various means, including action, loss, fear, and so on. Through living through the emotional quagmire, the reader then connects to the character, often quite deeply. (How many nights have you stayed up just to finish a book?)

Okay. Point made, I think. The problem with third person, movie-goer POV is that when the scene leaves the POV character’s head, it leaves the reader’s, too. That means the connection is broken. It’s hard to reestablish, too, because the authenticity of the experience is lost. After being forced out of someone’s head, even when I’m later let back in, a film of distrust coats my fingers. I no longer “buy” it. Any real connection I had is lost. I can look inside a head, but I no longer believe, much less live it.

And that means that when – if – I finish this book, I’m done. I won’t think about it anymore, and when the next one comes out, I’ll skip it.

If you’re a writer who’s done this, and you aren’t in red alert right now, you need to stop right here, go back to the top, and read this entire post again.

And now let me give you some examples:

First, and for clarification, this is third person (“movie goer”) point of view:

The sky rumbled. Wisps of granite slid gauzed fingers over the horizon. Cait lifted her head and glared back, as if warning the recalcitrant storm that she was ready to be reckoned with.

That paints a picture – yes – but you have utterly no emotional connection to Cait, and likely very little desire to read further. (Again: this works in movies, but is less effective in writing.*)

And this is first person point of view:

It hurt. Maybe I breathed in too much air. A hand lifted, her hand, almost of its own accord, and pressed numbed fingers into the hollow between her breasts.

This also paints a picture, but it’s from inside. Did you feel it, or start to? Do you wonder? If so, that’s because first person works for writing.

Now, if we combine the two:

Her fingers stroked the cat, back and forth, as she stared at the document tacked to the table. Fingers in fur so that Buck wouldn’t see her fingers shake. She took a deep breath and lifted her chin, but couldn’t make her eyes leave the paper.

Her shoulders lifted, too, creasing the jacket as it wrapped her back. One lip curled defiantly as she prepared to speak, and the men passed a glance over her head.

Now read that again. If it isn’t obvious, I’ll tell you. The entire first paragraph is in first person, and the second paragraph (although arguably just the last sentence) is in third person. The POV character can’t see what happens over her head – above her eyes. You know that – it’s a dissonance – and a part of you disconnected at the moment your brain understood.

(If you want more examples, please let me know. I created these myself, and will be pleased to create more.)

But here’s the deal: if you’re a writer who's doing this - slipping into movie-goer POV from time to time - and you like the idea of having return readers, you need to stop. Please. For your sake, for their sake, and for mine. Go to the movies or spend a Sunday enjoying your TNG seasons, or read your books, or write. Don’t mix them up though. K?

Okay. Point made. I’m done.

[*Allow me to add that I do know that third person POV is an accepted, authentic tool, and that in the right hands it is sometimes the best one for painting scenes {see, e.g., Kate Elliott}. It requires a great deal of skill to wield effectively, however, and it’s sometimes {often} used by lazy writers who can’t bother to lay what they want seen out through POV characters. If you use it, use it all the way through your scene. Don’t switch POVs in a scene. Don’t do it. Write this 100 times before using this 3rd person, movie-goer POV: I will not change POVs inside a scene. Changing POVs in a scene kills your connection to the reader every single time.]

Six Sentence Sunday #12

2011-05-21T12:00:00.000-07:00

Today’s snip starts a smidge after where we left off last time. (If you’d like to refresh your memory, the prior six is posted here.)

He had to feel helpless. Did she have the heart to deny him the only way he could think of to try to feel safe? And a way that might well help him survive when the attack came?

His eyes watched her face, trying to follow the trickle her thoughts made.

“Let me think about it, Alex,” she finally said, and rose from the couch. “Go and have your dinner, and tell Laszlo that I’ll be down as soon as I change.”

Food Stamps, Newt Gingrich, and Street Chairs

2011-05-19T22:02:00.000-07:00

Food stamps. Recession. Job loss.

In 2008 alone, 2.6 million Americans lost their jobs (see here) – the highest level in more than six decades - because big business made a series of very bad business decisions, fundamentally including lending decisions, then lied about it, tried to hide it, sold those loans to others, who, in turn, tried to push them off onto unsuspecting others as soon as they discovered how bad they were. It’s so unethical, so insane, that it’s almost funny, really, when you think about it.

Well, it’s funny until you remember how many people lost their jobs, which means, of course, that they also lost their health insurance, and many then went on to lose their cars, and some lost their homes.

And um – this isn't small time. Millions lost their jobs.

In fact, this has been the worst financial period in US history since the great Depression of the 1920s. (See this and this.)

Big business has made great strides to recover, and many made record profits over the last year or so.

Oh – wait. “Recover” is probably the wrong word here. “Recover” implies a rising from a lower place. A pulling onself up by the proverbial bootstraps. But that – um – isn’t where big business was. Not ever. No; instead, when it perched atop a precipice, when it had no more toys to throw over the edge, it squalled like a little behbeh. And Mama – er – the US government – came running, picked it up, and held it tight to her teat until the crisis was over. (Translation: paid all its debts.)

But still they cried. They cried because their portfolios shrunk and their credit ratings slipped. They squalled as the words "oversight" and "regulation" were spoken. I don't know if they cried when they laid off hundreds of thousands, then millions, who undoubtedly cried -- cried when they lost their health insurance, their cars, their homes. Oh – and their ability to buy food.

In case I’ve moved too fast here, or jumped ahead too quickly, let me slow down and lay it out a tad more simply:

Food is that stuff you get at the store. That stuff you eat.

It costs money.

Money comes from that plastic card (and if you don’t use it, they won’t put your chips and beer in the bag and let you leave), but you have to recharge that card (think batteries here) or else it stops working. Instead of plugging it in, the way to recharge it is to have your employer deposit your paycheck into your bank account.

Whoops! No job? Well, Houston, we do have a problem.

What one in seven people (see this) -- the ones without jobs -- have had to go ask for government assistance for food. That's the "food stamps" thing. (They call them "food stamps" because they used to be sort of like giant coupons, but I digress.) It’s like – go get food stamps or go without. Get government assistance or starve. Make sense? And food is like – um – not like, I mean – the Wii. You really :do: have to have it, or you get sick and stuff. And die.

Right. Okay.

So I’ve digressed again. Sorry. Let me get back to big business and their record profits. Let me add to that that they have not spent any of that money on the US – not on workers, not on taxes to help those they put out of work – nor have they hired workers back.

They’re pocketing that money.

And millions are still out of work.

Okay. So we’ve got like all these people not working, and needing food, and so the government is helping them, because that’s what civilized countries do. They bail out big companies, and that costs like kazillions, and then it helps the victims – er – unemployed – eat, and that costs like millions. (Which, like, helps explain the big debt right now.)

And so the food is going to to the people big business fired. So - it's like a lot of food stamps because there's like a lot of unemployed people.

And the businesses still don't pay taxes, and no one forces (or evens ASKS!) them to rehire the people they fired, and they don't do jack diddly shit to repair any part of the big mess they've made. Nada. [And if you think raising taxes drives business out, that's propaganda I hope you'll explore the truth of on your own. Or hit me up if you're non-net savvy.]

And so I have to say this. I mean – I HAVE to.

Have you heard what Newt Gingrich said? That President Obama is like the Food Stamp President? Um – yeah, sure. It may well be racist.

But let's put that part aside for now.

HELLO! Is Newt Gingrich really that stupid!?! Is what I have said here really that deep, or difficult to ascertain, or understand? How can anyone cast disparaging remarks about food stamps at a time like this?

I am shaking my head. Sure – half of this is sarcastic, and half is sort of a horrified amusement. But really – really! REALLY?!?

Hey – some of my best friends are Republicans. But you know what? I would be ashamed –appalled – if a spokesperson for my party made comments like this at a time like this.

Someone – please – get that man a chair. And then push it outside.

Chairs. Streets. Screeching brakes.

Or not.

Six Sentence Sunday #11

2011-04-23T20:01:00.000-07:00

Today’s snip starts literally right where we left off last week (er – two weeks ago – and sorry about that; I was sick). Setting: Kiera has managed to make it back to her apartment, only to find Alex, her 6-year-old nephew, and Emmy, his nanny, waiting for her. It’s been a tumultuous (!) day, and she’s sitting in front of the fire, wondering why Alex and Emmy aren’t already down in the great hall awaiting their evening meal. In response to a query, Emmy has told her that Alex has something to ask.

Oh dear; this was something serious. She suppressed a frown and tried to look attentive.
But his words stole her breath. “Keer, I want to be a soldier.” Shoulders lifted as he sat up straighter. His face looked so earnest, and the fear and determination she read in his wide brown eyes, eyes so much like her own, hurt her heart as much as the sounds doubtless issued from the folds of his.

Six Sentence Sunday #10

2011-04-09T20:51:00.000-07:00

Today’s snip is a small jump ahead of where we left off last week. Kiera has managed to make it back to her apartment, only to find Alex, her 6-year-old nephew, and Emmy, his nanny, waiting for her. It’s been a tumultuous (!) day, and she’s sitting in front of the fire, trying to catch her breath before cleaning up for a fancy dinner. All at once, it occurs to Kiera that Alex and Emmy should already be down in the great hall awaiting their evening meal, and so she asks Alex why they’re not.

From somewhere behind her, Emmy answered instead. “Alex has something to ask you, Kiera.” When he hesitated, Emmy stood and walked over. “Come on now, Alex. Ask her so we can go on down.”
“Keer,” he began, and squeezed her hand.

Six Sentence Sunday #9

2011-04-02T22:59:00.000-07:00

Today’s snip is a small jump ahead of where we left off last week. Kiera has managed to make it back to her apartment, where her nephew and his nanny have been waiting for her.

“Oh, Kiera, what happened?” Emmy, Alex’s nanny, gasped. She stood from her seat at the table and rushed over. Took the bottle from Kiera’s hands. “Come sit down . . . let me call a healer!”

Wearing a grimace, Kiera let Emmy lead her across the thick blue carpet to one of the couches crouched in the central area of her very blue home. With a flicker of thought, she lit the fireplace and leaned back into the overstuffed, earth-toned cushions, closed the one eye that hadn’t swollen shut, and waited for the warmth to reach her.

Six Sentence Sunday #8

2011-03-26T20:05:00.000-07:00

Welcome to this week’s Six Sentence Sunday post! (Visit the other fab writers here.) I continue to post from Blowing Embers, the second chapter in The Embers Series, a paranormal romance/epic fantasy, set to be released this summer. In fact, as of today, the cover is finished, and now it's time to start soliciting blurbs. (If you're an author and are willing to write one [I'll do the same for you in exchange!], let me know! My email is lauri AT lauriowen DOT com.)

And now for the setup to this week's snip:

Earlier, Kiera, now governor of Fairbanks, was en route to her apartments with two precious bottles of her favorite wine when she stumbled into the middle of a fight between a shapeshifter and a mid-level mage. A blow she didn't see coming knocked her down. After a tussle with a shifter, she’s righted the wrongs and made her way to the manse, where she’d hoped to sneak back to her apartments and change before a grand dinner. Unfortunately for our heroine, however, Chanda, a naughty ex-beau, found her as she walked in the door, and asked to speak to her about something important. She is about to defer, but now she’s become aware that others have noted her disheveled appearance. Marco is her dear friend, but the others are decidedly not people she would term allies.

Marco’s face held suppressed mirth, true amusement most likely at her disheveled appearance, and she wanted to slap him. Both Allie and Leith avoided her eyes, but Naga openly gaped, and she found herself wanting to slap them all as well. This night was not going well, and it wasn’t going to get any better. Laszlo was going to be really mad when he found Chanda here. And, yeah, he wouldn’t be terribly pleased that she’d fought, either. Kiera heaved a sigh.

The second book's back cover copy

2011-03-26T12:20:00.000-07:00

They have won. With help from Kiera, Fire Mage, the shapeshifting slaves of Fairbanks have broken their chains, and then they lifted her to govern their city. To keep them safe. But unrest slinks through the city as Kiera and her co-rulers struggle to integrate the former slaves and the remaining mages.

Worse, a threat outside Fairbanks waits to fracture the fragile peace. Governor Vrishka, the Skani Water Mage of Barrow, has marched an army from the North, and he sends terms: surrender Fairbanks to his superior forces, restore the Skani mages to rule, or he will raze the city and kill all the shifters. He gifts them ten turns of the sun to make their decision.

But halfway through the armistice, Vrishka strikes a devastating blow – one that steals all hope for Fairbanks’ victory, and that utterly crushes Kiera’s heart. Can Kiera summon the strength to transcend her grief, and to find a way to defeat Vrishka? More: should she? And if so, what price is she willing to pay for that victory? Five days, and a city, await her decision.

Welcome to the Alternate Alaska, where those born with the power to control the elements rule as nobility over those who cannot. For now.

. . . and the cover is finished! I'll post it soon!

For now, click here for the video trailer.

Six Sentence Sunday #7

2011-03-19T20:15:00.000-07:00

Last week Kiera, en route to her apartments with two precious bottles of her favorite wine, stumbled into the middle of a fight between a shapeshifter and a mid-level mage. A blow she didn't see coming knocked her down. After a tussle with a shifter, she’s righted the wrongs and made her way to the manse, where she’d hoped to sneak back to her apartments and change before a grand dinner. Unfortunately for our heroine, however, a naughty ex-beau finds her as she walks in the door . . .

“My lady Kiera,” Chanda smiled, and kissed her hand as regally as if she didn’t have spatters of blood coloring her face, an eye that had nearly swollen shut, and a broken bottle clasped tightly in her other fist.

And still it took every ounce of self control she could summon not to peel his hand off hers. She had expected to feel rage, and maybe fear when she next saw him, but instead simple embarrassment wrapped her tightly inside a shawl of unease. In lieu of reacting, she hoped anyway, she pasted on her most meaningless smile. “Chanda.”

His eyes crinkled as he smiled, and she wondered whether his heart held humor at her appearance, or something more malignant.

Six Sentence Sunday #6

2011-03-12T20:00:00.000-08:00

Last week Kiera, en route to her apartments with two precious bottles of her favorite wine, stumbled into the middle of a fight between a shapeshifter and a mid-level mage. A blow she didn't see coming knocked her down. Now throughly angry, Kiera tried to break up the fight. The participants, however, appear to resent the intrusion.

The shifter tackled her and down they both fell.

With a sharp crack, his first punch smashed her eye closed and ripped a screech from her lungs. “You bastard!” she screamed, and slapped him hard, then again, and tried to shove him off.
She bucked up and slid out her feet, but instead of finding an anchor, her heels slid lines in the slick snow. His next punch was clumsy, she blocked it easily, then locked her fingers and slammed her fist into his nose.

His hand rose as blood spattered across both their faces, then gushed through open fingers and dripped dark circles onto her dress.

Hope you enjoy getting to know Kiera. Hers is a tale that will take many books to finish telling.

Six Sentence Sunday #5

2011-03-05T21:48:00.000-08:00

Welcome to this week’s Six Sentence Sunday post! (Visit the other fab writers here.) I continue to post from Blowing Embers, the second book in The Embers Series, set to be released this summer. Visit BE's page for the exciting video trailer!

Oh – you should know that Kiera is walking back to her apartments, carrying two bottles of her favorite wine, when she stumbles into the middle of a fight between a shapeshifter and a mid-level mage . . .

Faster than she could blink, the someone turned and flat-palmed her cheek, then shoved her backward. Without arms for balance, Kiera stumbled back, once, twice, comically, and sat down hard on the ground. Her right hand tried to brace for the fall and glass shards from the broken bottle bit into her palm. The crash the bottle made as it flew apart came after.

Stunned, she sat for a moment on the ground, watching the blackness of the spilled wine soak into the snow. A shadow blocked the scant light, then passed, and she looked up.

Six Sentence Sunday #4

2011-02-26T11:22:00.000-08:00

This Six Sentence Sunday (and happy birthday, SSS!) post is an excerpt from a little earlier than the one posted last week, though both are taken from chapter one of my second book, Blowing Embers, due out this summer.

Let me provide just a little background. In Fallen Embers, book one, Kiera, our heroine, battled power-mad mages (Alaks), murderous shapeshifting, Alaskan dogs (Shunakah), and won, and lost, and won her man. Laszlo. The slave captain of the ruling mage’s army. Things are precarious. War is imminent. But here, just for a moment, before the hell that she knows is coming, she basks in the love she shares with her shapeshifting, Alaskan bear.

The door opened again and she lifted her eyes to Laszlo’s, who would soon be lessoning the otuks* on some aspect of battle strategies. A smile started on his face when he caught her staring, startling a return grin from her, and as he held her eyes a softness filled her chest, wrapping her with the warmth that her feet still craved. God, she loved that man. And she knew – could see it every time he looked at her – that he loved her as much, and maybe more than she loved him, if such were possible. That his love was a blessing, a miracle, was an understatement. The love with which he gifted her had healed her heart and filled her world.

*otuk = an army squad leader, whose authority lies just below the captain’s.

Six Sentence Sunday #3

2011-02-19T11:51:00.000-08:00

This Six Sentence Sunday post is an excerpt from a little later in chapter one of my second book, Blowing Embers, due out this summer. (And don't forget to check out the other six sentence snips posted by other writers!)

Perhaps as tired as she, the sun had slid behind the mountains by the time Laszlo finished his lecture. Feet still up, Kiera waited in her chair as the men filed out. Too intoxicated by the warmth of the brazier to want to move, she instead waited for him to come sit with her. Soon he did, followed by an Alak* she didn’t recognize. They both remained standing, but she held her seat, hoping they would either sit or politely ignore her breach in etiquette.

“I was flattered by your rapt attention, a’kala*,” Laszlo told her blandly, and she looked up and into his face, and wondered how annoyed he felt.

* Alak = shapeshifters native to Alaska

* a'kala = "my lover"

An Economic Conundrum? Methinks Not.

2011-02-13T16:58:00.000-08:00

Every damned day media inundate me with hubabub about how governments, state and federal, spend every waking moment raking hands through their metaphoric locks as they struggle to make what they’re calling some “hard choices,” meaning without saying, usually, that they “have” to decide which social service programs to cut in order to balance the budget: education; medical payments for the poor, children, and the disabled; WIC assistance; food aid grants. And more. More, more, more, notwithstanding the record number of unemployed.

And all this is despite that the Dow Jones is a very healthy 12,200 and a huge segment of America’s corporations recorded record profits last year. In fact, at $1.7 trillion, profits for third quarter 2010 were the highest ever recorded. See this.

Well, it doesn’t seem logical, or even sane, to wait for these corporations to decide to create more jobs for the masses. They aren’t doing it, and you don’t need a crystal ball to figure out that they don’t have any plans to.

So instead of further cutting social services programs, how about cutting Corporate Welfare, since corporations are not only not helping, they are why we’re in this predicament to start with?

Since it’s largely big banks’ fault that we’re in this mess, I can’t help but wonder why we don’t start by stepping in and forcing them to cut their ludicrous bonusing and make them invest in employing the people they put out of work.

Big banks paid out something like (a horrifying) $143 BILLION in bonuses in 2010. See this. Since American taxpayers bailed them out, how about making them pay those bonuses back into America?

But no. Instead, the GOP (champions of the uber-rich) is pushing for big cuts in the programs that support the people who the banker’s blunders pushed out of work (see this) - cutting the very help for the people that no corporation will spend one penny to put back to work.

And, ludicrously, not one word is being said by either side about slashing Corporate Welfare in this precarious economy, which costs America trillions every year. Instead of helping out-of-work Americans, our governments are paying for overseas advertising for Agribusiness, subsidizing the growing of corn, letting companies (who are making record profits) continue to pay little or no tax, and throwing trillions of wasted dollars into the pockets of foreign purchasers (and defrauders) who promise to buy U.S. products. See this and this. And that is of course just the tip of the iceberg.

In truth, just that $143 billion in bonuses could easily pay to restore the threatened programs, with some left over. That money would help destitute Americans get by until they can find work again.

The L.A. Times published a tool where you can decide which programs California can cut to balance its budget. It's here. Not shockingly, absent in this tool are any other options besides cutting social programs. Propaganda cocktail, anyone?

Imagine, as John Lennon advised, what America would look like if the ruling class, including our fractious, ineffectual, corporate-sycophant government actually gave a shit about Americans. I am a far left, radically-minded woman who votes democrat because I think the Donkeys are often the lesser of the available evils. However, as days go by, as the stink of corruption steaming from our corporate shitpile, and no less so from our own government, wafts past a level of stench that even I can bear, I find myself more and more aligned with the tenets of the purists among the Tea Party. And, frankly, I don’t know how to feel about that.

Six Sentence Sunday #2

2011-02-12T17:57:00.000-08:00

This Six Sentence Sunday post is an excerpt from my second book, Blowing Embers, due out this summer:

Too late Kiera understood, and before she could send a sheet of air deep into the winter’s dead soil between them, the knife’s-blade claws broke through to her side of the shield. Without pausing, he leapt up and back, lifted the shield, and Kiera, off the ground. A vision of trees, mountains, fog, and sky flashed across her eyes, and her breath, and the elemental air that she held, oomphed out when her back slammed into the snow.

“Damn it,” she wheezed.