Front Cover SPITE

That’s right, folks! The new novel is ready for release and can be purchased right this minute from LULU, and it will be available through Amazon shortly, if you prefer to wait for that. The sequel to Serve It Cold, SPITE takes Jonny C. Speed and his merry band of mercenaries, misfits, and mini-mart clerks on an exotic trip to mayhem, mystery, murder, and an up close and personal meeting with Jonny’s past.

Don’t miss it! ORDER TODAY!

Well, my last post or two have been pretty maudlin, even for me. I’m going to keep this one light! Work is fine — big grant turned in today, end of year reporting in process, new goals waiting to be set!  Ron is steadily writing. TV sucks–TG for TIVO and Netflix and our local library! (I love the Hattiesburg Public Library!!!!!)  All are well and healthy and happy. Fourth was great — long weekends in the middle of summer — what could be better? Oh, yeah, CA family at the farm and we didn’t cook (but we did drive)! Life gets better and better! I’m not manic, honest! Just happy….

It’s the end of June, the middle of the year, the end of the first half of 2008. The year is moving too fast, but I wanted to take a moment to reflect back on this year. We lost Prentiss (my father in law) a little over a year ago. Ron quit his job a month later, one year ago tomorrow. By that time, he was already writing two or three times a month for the Hattiesburg American and the podcast of his first novel, Serve It Cold, had been released on Memorial Day. Whitney’s graduation, summer visits from loved ones, then school began again. The fall is a blur . . . mailouts, queries, my work and its drama. Then Thanksgiving in Miami while Faye (Ron’s mom) was in CA. Christmas was another blur, followed by a wonderful trip to Philadelphia to meet John & Kat. Ron began writing weekly for the Sun Herald on Jan. 5; My brother’s sudden and tragic death on January 6, followed by another blur of weeks and months. The anniversary of Prentiss’ death. More work drama for me, culminating in the laying off of people that I’ve grown fond of…loss, recovery, life, joy, loss . . .

Jack and Richard Harper, 1949

We just watched an episode of History’s Detectives (yay, MS ETV!) where the detective and his “holder” (of a WWII pilot’s diary) tracked down the daughter to return the diary. The catch was that the pilot/father died before his daughter was born, so they never knew one another. Having read letters my dad wrote home to my mom, the show just plunged me into missing him, thinking what if he hadn’t come home, what if I hadn’t been or hadn’t gotten to know my dad? Which made me miss Prentiss all over again…

loss, recovery, life, joy, loss….it begins again.

A FaceBook Friend posted this and I thought it would be an interesting exercise.  Please practice with me and leave a comment about us.

If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now,even if we don’t speak often, please post a comment with a memory of you and me. It can be anything you want — good or bad, in person or virtual. When you’re finished, post this little paragraph on your own blog and be surprised (or mortified) about what people remember about you.

The writer went birding Saturday morning, and, while I might have enjoyed going, too, it comes to choices: do I want to go birding (which I love to do) with my husband and our friends or do I want some time to myself. It seems this is the choice I’m faced with these days as Ronnie’s work-place has become our home. Now, I know this probably sounds like complaining, but it’s really not. I love having him home. I love knowing the creatures have a human rumbling around among them. I love knowing he will be there when I go home for lunch. I love that he is clearly so much less stressed and so much happier. AND, I miss my time alone. So sometimes I have to choose between going out and doing fun things and having that time. I guess choices are not always supposed to be easy.

I confess I’ve become completely captivated by the social networking sites and have joined both FaceBook (again) and LinkedIn, one presumably all about the “social” in social networking and one presumably more business-focused. So, I’m “on” these sites, have developed profiles for each (remarkably similar), have some common “friends” or “contacts” to both (obviously other networking fanatics!), and now I wonder what it’s really all about.

What do people do all day on these sites? I mean, I could spend all day working on things, tweaking, adding new aps, writing on peoples’ walls, etc., but to what end? Does getting more “contacts/friends” mean I have more friends? No . . . Is it just about keeping score? How is emailing someone in FB different from emailing them through regular email? And, like writing this blog, how much of who and what I am am I willing to share with people who may or may not know me? I confess that I’m spending a lot more time thinking about what I’m writing these days than writing it. But then, maybe that’s good, too . . .

My curiousity got me into this.  I signed up on FB early on in the days of my CA nephew’s college career, and, sure enough, he did, too.  AND, he didn’t disappoint me with his site!  Once that was modified appropriately (thanks to his mother’s intervention, not mine!  After all, he’s just my god-child and I think he’s perfect!), I simply quit visiting, quit checking in.  Now, in the post-graduation glow, I decided to check back in and see what others are up to, how it’s grown, what’s changed….and to see if there’s a place for me on Facebook.

In one of my old jobs (teaching-learning resource development), I might have been led here to explore this as a communication device for class use or as a teaching resource.  But now, although I do think about that as I flip through pages and come across some very cook little aps, I really think its more about the social . . . AFter all, will someone seeing my profile on LinkedIn really call me up and offer me a job?  I’m skeptical.

And I find that there are a lot of people like me — not kids — out there, logging in, setting up profiles, and sharing lots of information about themselves.  What is this about?  Is it a way of connecting with people, sharing ourselves that used to be done in different ways, i.e., church, civic groups, extended families, actually talking to people without cell phones, that we have moved away from?  Or are sharers just sharers and this is one more way to share?  Does the anonymity of something like FB or LI (even though none of us are anonymous if we’ve shared our names, our towns, our workplaces, our life histories, our bra sizes….) appeal to the voyeur in us all or is there some “real” other reason to be doing this?

Tell me if you have a FB or LI account and invite me to join your network.   And tell me why it matters to you.  I’ll come write on your wall and maybe we can talk about this . . . I’m still curious.

since The Writer decided to become a full-time, stay-at-home professional writer rather than a part-time, hit-or-miss non-writer. It’s been an interesting transition for us both, and a not altogether comfortable one.

There was a time that I couldn’t bear to have him be home and me not; that was a time when going to work was real work. It helps tremendously now that I have a job I really like and that is not a constant, never-ending source of stress. It has been a stretch for me not to demand that he do things for me because he is at home; his job, even at home, is to write — not to push the vacuum cleaner or mow the lawn or do all the shopping.  His job is not to lighten my load. His job is to write. It has also been frustrating to me (and somewhat scary) that we are not further down the road toward this being a supporting “business” (as in financial support), but that is coming, and I am not yet in panic-mode.

A year (almost). A year that has had some tremendous downs and a few moderate ups: death of his dad; loss of a job (his) that paid some bills but had many downsides; struggling to get on a schedule with writing; struggling to balance full-time writing with life; both of us working to get a handle on the “business” of writing (it ain’t all just about putting words on paper!), and all of that mushed up with new demands of readers and life stuff.

I cannot say it hasn’t been challenging, but I can say it’s been very fulfilling for me to see Ronnie write: to see pages spooling out of the printer, to see things in print in newspapers, to see progress on novels, to get the Crow-Baby book/art underway, to hear the praise from those who read his work and understand the work he does to produce that.

I can say that we couldn’t have come this far without our friends and family…those people who encourage and support us, through chats in the halls, through emails, through letters, through cards, through posting comments on blogs, over lunches, over cocktails, whatever.

So, here’s my advice, and it doesn’t just apply to major life changes:

• When it’s hard to keep going, find a friend who will encourage you — it may not even be someone you know, but take encouragement from all sources! After all, this is the secret of AA, Weight-Watchers, and every other self-help group that has lasted more than a week.
• When you are feeling low, find someone to appreciate you, maybe not for your work but just for who you are (physically, emotionally, and spiritually), and keep those people close — you will need them again and again! And reciprocate for them as well, cause it feels almost as good to give that “stuff” as it does to get it back!
• Remember to align your goals regularly with your partner. The unknown is too frightening for all of us. Sharing common goals makes the work easier (not to mention more focused) and causes less friction. You know where you’re going and all that’s left is negotiation on the path.

Happy trails!

Okay, so I’m back to The Writer. He wanted to write. He wanted to write non-fiction (well mostly) in newspapers. He wants people to like his writing — duh….Well, they do. They like it so much that they are writing and calling and emailing him with questions and comments and stories of their own. Isn’t that GOOD???? Of course it is. But this is one of those things we all have in life: ask for it, get it, … gripe about it.

“Someone emailed me today about….. ” [often some environmental issue or crisis occurring in our midst]. “I have to email all those people who wrote me about . . . [fill in the blank with whatever his most current column is about]. “I don’t know what to tell this person. They think they saw a …..” [fill in with some outrageous bird that's never been seen in the northern hemisphere before!].

Now, get this: I put on my “guy-hat” — you know, the one where I immediately stop listening and move to solving the problem — “You don’t have to look up all that. Just point them to the website to find the information.” Hurriedly, he responds, “No, they expect me to figure it out and write them back. I have to do this. They’re my readers.”

What’s not said: “I love getting mail and messages from people reading my work. This is affirming. This is what I’ve longed for in my writing — immediate and positive feedback. This is what keeps me engaged and joyous about this work. I love my readers!”

oh. ok. I get it — but I had to take off the hat before I did.

in South Mississippi was yesterday. This is just my prediction, of course––my pessimistic prediction! While the midwest was being hammered by rain, thunderstorms and killer tornadoes, south Mississippi was windy, sunny, and unbelievably cool

A day spent working in the sun out in the yard, cutting and piling branches and pruning azaleas and pulling weeds. A day to savor before the hot, humid days of southern summer return to trap us in the air-conditioned dungeons of houses, workplaces, stores, etc.

“Wish you were here, the weather is beautiful . . .”

Yesterday, driving home from lunch (day one, post-vacation), I encountered a funeral cortege, led by a Hattiesburg Police squad car.  Lights were on, the hearse was stately, the procession of cars slow and ponderous.  I was one of maybe 10 cars I could see who pulled over to the far side of the road, turned on our own lights, and waited for the procession to pass.

It jerked me back to a year ago, when the same thing happened to us as we accompanied Papa’s body from the funeral home to the church, then from there to the graveyard.  I did fine at the wake, but my emotions were really touched by the show of respect and reverence of complete strangers who took the time to pull over, stop, and turn on their lights as we passed, to share our loss just for a minute.  Even now, as I write this, tears are on their way . . . the generosity and kindness of people towards loss stuns me and makes me so proud that I am a southerner, a Mississipian, a person who can take just a minute to acknowledge and honor an unknown neighbor’s sorrow.

And it reminds me that we humans have an untapped capacity for such things.  Witness the 9/11 attacks when people jumped in their trucks piled with tools and went to volunteer for hard duty in digging out victims.  Witness the thousands who came with caravans of supplies and helping hands when Katrina hit the Gulf South.  Accompanying our violent tendencies, our sometimes self-destructive ways, our ability to overlook the forest for the trees, and our incredible self-indulgence, Americans have big hearts that are touched easily, and they spring into action, acting on that passion.  Who can’t be proud of that?