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The Last Push

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Disclaimer: This is where I tell you that this story deals with adult themes and language. Do not read it if you don’t want to know that your daughter, aunt, mother, friend, whomever I am to you writes about adult themes.

I wrote this for Chuck Wendig’s Terrible Minds. The assignment was to start with a BANG. I started with a banging.

The Last Push – 880 words

Banging her. Again. He looked out the window as he gyrated his hips. He couldn’t care less about this girl. She was loud in bed too. That drove him nuts. He just wanted to put his fucking hand over her mouth and tell her to shut-up.

Out the window the leaves had turned orange and red overnight. He pushed into her, and she squealed like a goddamn magpie. He didn’t like that. He wanted it over, but unfortunately they’d been screwing so much this weekend his stamina had improved. He pulled out and moved off of her.

“That’s it. You came?”

“Does it look like I did?” he asked, waving his hand toward his still erect dick. “On top.”

She obliged. He closed his eyes so he didn’t have to look at her face as she started moving and moaning on top of him.

On Saturday, he’d woken up and realized he’d spent the night. He kind of liked her smell. Melon—fruity—something like that. At the breakfast table, she poured a bowl of cereal and sat next to him. He ate his Cheerios and looked at the box, reading the words, but her loud chewing distracted him. Then she started talking. He thought they always ruined it with the talking.

“Next weekend my friend is having a birthday party. It’s going to be, like, this big blow-out. And you should come, Daniel.”

He should come. Like right now, come. He looked up at her, a mess of blonde hair in front of her face. He put his hands on her hip and adjusted how she sat. She thrashed about on top of him and made noises like a dying whale.

He’d known her exactly two weeks. They’d met at a party. He’d never invited her to his place. And for those two weeks all they’d done was spend time under the covers. He couldn’t talk to her about anything. She didn’t even know who Tolstoy was. “Is that one of your friends?” she asked when he mentioned the Russian author in conversation.

But she had a nice ass. And was a good lay except today with his mind on overdrive thinking about all the shit that made her so totally wrong for him. She looked nothing like Florrie. Maybe that was the only good thing about her. He couldn’t stand girls who looked like Florrie. He’d seen girls with short hair and that straight nose with the little upturned tip, and he’d run in the opposite direction.

And so he’d ended up with May. For the last two weeks. And he put in minimal effort. I mean, minimal, minuscule, the tiniest of tiny efforts. But she called him, texted, and sent him silly memes. He texted her too at like 10 PM every night to ask if he could come over. And then he’d come. A lot. And he liked that part. Well mostly, except moments like this when it felt like it would never end. When her groans were loud and annoying. When he knew implicitly that she wasn’t and could never be Florrie.

He pushed her over onto her back again. He needed to think of something, but Florrie’s face kept coming back to him. Once, a few years after he and Florrie had ended things, he’d been in the heat of the moment with a girl he actually liked. A girl he thought could maybe be more than just another fucking hookup, and he’d said Florrie’s name. The girl had freaked out. She beat his chest with her fist like some douchey cartoon character and demanded to know who Florrie was.

“Nobody,” he said. But the guilt of that statement stuck with him. Because she was somebody. Somebody he couldn’t forget or let go of no matter how many girls he’d been with since.

That girl had never called him back and since then he’d floated from one mattress to another. He’d seen purple sheets and pink sheets. He’d seen girls with OCD-clean rooms and disastrous clutters. He’d seen almost every size and shape one could think a woman could come in. Pear shaped, hourglass – that was his favorite–curvy. He’d seen girls who took care of themselves meticulously, and unfortunately, girls who didn’t.

And now he was here, in bed with May, wishing for an ending.

With May on her back, he began tracing her face with his fingers. He looked at her. He transformed her face into Florrie’s. He imagined the smile lines. He pretended she had Florrie’s deep set blue eyes. He erased May’s long hair with his eyes and transformed it into the short pixie haircut Florrie always wore. He saw the way she always bit her left lower lip toward the end of sex. He saw her face, and he began to move in a rhythm. May looked suddenly serious, but all Daniel saw was Florrie. He saw her on the summer day when they sat surrounded by dandelions in the middle-of-nowhere field where they stripped down naked and made love surrounded by picnic ants. Like some fucking Nicholas Sparks book. He saw all of the faces of Florrie on this girl in front of him. And he felt so turned on imagining her below him.

He put his head down on May’s shoulder, taking in her scent and pretending she smelled like Florrie. He felt the moment of explosion and his whole body shook with the last push.

One final release. He came. Goodbye to May. Bang over.

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Tidying Up

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If you know me, you know I’ve always been a messy person. In college, my roommates shuddered when they looked in my closet. When I moved into a house with friends, some days you could barely walk through my room without stepping on something. Cleaning and tidying never came naturally to me, and I found it to be an unimportant task. When I did clean, I became obsessive and wanted to clean everything. I didn’t like the way it made me feel, well, sort of crazy.

But last weekend, I looked in my closet, and I couldn’t find anything. I’d pull out one thing, and other items would fall off their hangers. Stacks of clothes sat on the top of the closet. Clothes I hadn’t worn or hadn’t been able to find were jammed into my dresser drawers. And I decided I needed to change. My mom is so surprised. She’s the type of person who always cleans up and declutters, and my lack of organization has always driven her nuts.

I knew when I started to make a change that I needed to focus on decluttering. I simply have too much stuff. Too many clothes, too many books, too many toys are in my house. And so I did what everyone else in the world has done and I bought The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo.

This book. First of all, I think Kondo has OCD. And I’m not touting all her methods. But it is changing my life. Kondo has a method for cleaning up and decluttering in which you focus on categories fully decluttering one category and organizing those items before you move on to the next. So you start on clothes and you go through all your clothes. You focus on what items you will keep. You decide what you keep by what sparks joy when you touch it. I think this is amazing, because so many times when you’re decluttering you’re focusing on what you’re getting rid of. Kondo’s method doesn’t make you think of loss. It makes you think about what you’re gaining: clothes and items that bring you joy in a visually aesthetic and more usefully organized space.

I do think this book is hard to follow if you have tiny terrors children in your house. But I started going through their clothes too and weeding out the items they don’t wear or don’t need anymore. I’ve only finished Hailey’s closet and drawers, but nothing is stuffed in there anymore and every item has its own space. I think this is amazing, because it’s never been so. And of course, as a parent I’m going to have to help her keep it this way, but that’s not a big deal. Once you get rid of the extras it’s not as hard to keep what you have left in order.

Anyway, if you’re like me and a bit organizationally impaired, I highly recommend this book as a way to change. Just don’t think you have to do everything she does, because she wants things done in a certain order, within subcategories, and I really think that’s just because she’s OCD.

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Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow

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I’m a procrastinator and as such, I waited until today to download all of my files for The Devil Within from Booktrope. I have been okay with Booktrope closing. There’s no other way to be. I haven’t let it hold me back, but I haven’t exactly let it drive me forward either.

Today I’m feeling a little sad about the whole thing. I put a lot of time, effort, and pain into writing the book. I spent hours editing and proofreading it (and yes, there were still mistakes–there always are). I spent hours thinking about William, his family, their lives. This book meant a lot to me. It took me in a different direction from my previous book, and I felt like I’d found my niche in dark Southern literature, if there is even such a genre.

The Devil Within Cover

I learned from The Devil Within how to give my characters depth and voice. And I’ve taken that into my other writing, finding the spirit of the characters to make them come alive in my books. The truth is, I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it at this point. I debated self-publishing. I debated putting it on Wattpad. What I really want to do is find a traditional publisher for my other works and then beef up The Devil Within. Maybe take it a step further. I’ve already started writing about Lily (Tommy’s girlfriend), a minor character in The Devil Within, because I felt like I still had a connection to the book. This is strange for me as I’ve consistently said I would not write sequels. It doesn’t seem so much like a sequel, more like a continuation of the timeline that I started in the book, sort of like Faulkner’s characters from Yoknapatawpha County.

At any rate, I’m stewing and trying to figure out what to do.

The Devil Within is still on Amazon for the next few days; however it could be removed before the 31st, or so we’ve been told.

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PS: The Devil Within is only available until May 31, 2016. Don’t forget to get your copy while you still can at Amazon.

The Weird Adventures of Dick and Jane

/ legreene515 / 5 Comments

Here’s another piece of flash fiction from Terrible Minds. There are bad words in this short story. It is 1414 words, and a little bit looney! The prompt came from THEY FIGHT CRIME, which gives hilarious prompts apparently!

My prompt: He’s a Green-fingered advertising executive who believes he’s a wolf. She’s a mentally unstable astronaut with a magical ham sandwich in her pocket.

And the story:

Dick finished his nightly howl after checking in on his calla lilies. Of course they bloomed with the power of a thousand glories. After all, Dick had always had green-fingers as his  grandma liked to say. God rest her soul. He looked up to the sky to see the tiny dot, he thought was a star, traveling closer and closer. He didn’t think that was right. In fact, he’d drawn stars before. He was drawing stars right now for some pathetic ad he had to do for the Wright Agency. God, he hated the Wright Agency. They were always wrong in his opinion. He opened his mouth to howl again.

His neighbor threw open his window, “Shut the fuck up, Dick. You’re not a wolf. You’re just a goddamn asshole for waking everyone up with your incessant howling, every single goddamn night!”

Dick ignored his neighbor’s negative comments and asked, “How about those Braves?”

“Damn, your mother knew what she was doing when she named you Dick,” the neighbor said, closing the window.

Dick didn’t let it bother him. Instead, he focused on the dot. Now it looked entirely too close. And in fact, it wasn’t a dot anymore. It looked like a—s.

Close call, Dick thought, as he brushed himself off from where he’d thrown himself. The spacecraft landed on the other side of his fence sparing his morning-glories and forget-me-nots. The neighbor’s house had been saved too. Too bad. Dick didn’t think anyone could survive that kind of landing, but the spacecraft, the size of a mini-cooper, looked largely intact. His fur of his beard bristled up as he walked out the back gate and stood near the spaceship.

Dick sneaked up to the spacecraft on all fours. Smoke rose from one side. He knocked on it, hearing the hollow sound of metal ring out against the night. Other people looked on from their windows, but no one was as brave as Dick. He protected his territory with a canine ferocity and the machine had landed precariously close to his land.

The door opened and he jumped back, landing on his hands and feet. He barred his teeth and began growling as the astronaut stepped out of the spacecraft. She lifted the orange space helmet from her head, and shook out her long strawberry locks. Her eyes twinkled, illuminated by the moon, and to Dick it seemed as if she’d walked right out of a fairy tale to meet him. Dick barred his teeth and began sniffing as she walked closer to him. He stared at her orange spacesuit which looked a little too tight around her breast area.

“Where am I?”

He stood up and brushed the dirt off his arms and legs.

“Outside Atlanta. Name’s Dick. Top wolf, these parts. Somewhat of a Casanova, really.”

“Wolf?” Her brows knitted into a question mark above her head. “Tried to make it to Mars. Dammit. Failed again.”

Dick hung his head and whined.

“Wolf! The fuck you are!” the woman screamed.

Dick backed away from the woman, unsure why she was so angry. He wanted to go back into his house and work on his ad. He felt safe inside his den. He sat back on his haunches against the roughness of the asphalt as she came toward him. He thought she wanted to attack him, but instead she helped him up on to two legs then wrapped her arms around him in an embrace. She smelled. Not like perfume. Like meat. He stuck out his tongue and salivated, dripping salvia all over her orange spacesuit. He sniffed, leaning down toward her and she let him, amazingly. Most people hit him or attacked him with their purses when he started sniffing around them. He sniffed all the way down to her pocket. He could tell the smell came from there. He wanted to take a bite, but she gently pushed him away.

“Not that. Not here. Not now. Can we go somewhere private?”

He pointed to his backyard, and he opened the gate for her.

“The flowers.”

“Green-fingers,” Dick said, waving them in front of her face like jazz hands.

The garden brimmed with flowers of every imaginable kind. Dick could plant anything. Orchids sprang up from the mere thought of his touch. His backyard felt like paradise, unless you were allergic, then it would have been a nightmare.

Inside the house, the fire cackled.

“Fire in the summer?”

“I sleep on the hearth,” Dick said.

“Do you think you’re actually a wolf?”

Dick’s face took on a blank stare. “Tea?”

“I hate fucking tea,” she said. She picked up the closest thing she saw, a framed picture of Dick’s prized pumpkin from 1997, and threw it against the brick wall closest to her. Dick didn’t flinch. Instead, he went over to the fire and stoked it, ignoring the woman’s hostile glances. She broke into tears again, and Dick knew something was wrong with her. A mental illness. Depression maybe.

“Why do you have a sandwich in your pocket?” he asked.

“This?”

She pulled out a ham sandwich. Dick could smell it from all away across the room. Ham and cheese on ciabatta bread with honey mustard, lettuce, and tomato. It looked like something you’d order from Panera or Subway. Dick loved meat. Any kind would do. Of course he normally ate it completely raw.

“That,” he started salivating again.

“This is a magical sandwich,” she said. Her eyes glowed as she gazed at it.

“Magical?”

“Magical. It can grant my wishes. What’s your one wish?”

“Like a genie in a bottle?” Dick felt his ears perk up the way they did when he was out on a hunt.

“Yes, I suppose like a genie,” she said. She cradled the sandwich as if it were a piece of crystal. The smell wafted toward Dick, and the hunger in the pit of his stomach doubled.

“To find a mate. To expand my brood. What is yours?”

“To make it to Mars.”

“What’s on Mars?”

She shrugged her shoulders as if the answer to that question was not the least bit important.

“What’s your name?”

“Jane.”

He plopped down in front of the fire and stretched out, rolling onto his back and exposing his belly. He then turned to his eyes and stared at her with his wolf eyes, calculating the right time to pounce. Instead, he asked a question, because after all he knew in the human world the way to a woman’s heart was through her mind. And Jane was no ordinary woman.

“If the sandwich is magical, then why hasn’t your wish come true?

“If you’re a wolf, then why don’t you have fur?”

“Touché.”

Dick could feel the crazy emanating from Jane. But, still, he wanted to get closer to her. He did what he knew attracted female wolves. He climbed onto the couch next to her and began rubbing his head against her neck. He flicked out her tongue to groom her, but she pulled away and rose her hand as if she were about to slap him.

“What are you doing?” she screeched.

She pulled at her hair in distress. Dick moved closer then stroked her again trying to calm her down. She put her hands down on the couch and pushed herself further away from him. He growled deeply then pounced.

She screamed as his teeth ripped into the sandwich, shoving the whole thing into his mouth, hardly chewing before he swallowed.

“The magic,” she sobbed.

 

* * *

“She’s stabilized.”

“Jane. You were out a long time. But Dr. Hartsell said the shock treatment might have worked. Isn’t that great news?

“You Dick!” she shouted.

She tried to sit up, straining against the restraints meant to keep her from attacking. Dick backed up and shook his head dejectedly at the doctor.

The man in the white coat paced the room as Jane raged. He made his way over to the medicine cabinet and opened the drawer. He pulled out a needle and a vial. From previous hospitalizations, Dick knew it always took awhile to stabilize her. He scratched behind his ear, making his left leg move up and down slightly, as he watched the doctor inject her. Her screams quieted and an ominous silence filled the room.

“What’s that smell?” Dr. Hartsell asked.

Dick reached into his pocket to find the remnants of a half-eaten ham and cheese sandwich.

“Funny. I thought I’d finished that.”

Follow Lauren Greene:

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PS: The Devil Within is only available until May 31, 2016. Don’t forget to get your copy while you still can at Amazon.

Writing the Feelings

/ legreene515 / 8 Comments

Today is my 37th birthday. Not too young. Not too old. But it’s gone so fast. Actually, the first twenty years or so went super slowly. Then it took off. I don’t even remember the last ten years of my life. They were mostly filled with dirty diapers, grades, too much to do, spousal spats and reconciliations, gaining and losing friends, and kids growing up at the speed of light.

I’ve been down this week. And I think it’s because I’m not doing what I expected to do with my life. Plus, I started cleaning out my closets yesterday and stumbled upon pictures from college and when the kids were little. Nostalgia always makes me feel down. Not regret. But a sense of loss to a certain extent. I attach myself easily to people, and I feel such a sadness when they are no longer in my life.

But depression is a liar as someone told me yesterday. Depression tries to tell me I’m worthless. It tries to tell me I can’t and won’t achieve my goals. Well that’s total bullshit. And I know it. Deep down on the inside, I know I have it within me to write and to lead the life I want. Happiness is not elusive. It’s a decision.

I’ve told you before, but I HAVE to write. I have to write to get all the bad feelings out. I go through life smiling, because mostly I am happy. And I can find the positive in my life every day. But sometimes I feel so down. And this just happens to be one of those weeks.

The one thing about feeling down is it energizes my writing. I can type and hurt my characters. I can twist their souls with angst, guilt, anger, sadness. All of the above. All of the things I can’t seem to express that feel stuck inside. You see, I’m a better writer than a communicator. And it hurts me when it comes to real life relationships. People have always thought I was so cool because I didn’t give a damn what people thought of me. And perhaps this is why I tend to have more close male friends than female friends. Girls seem to get caught up in the small bits without looking at the bigger picture. And I’ve always been a bigger picture type person. I love and care about my male friends. But I need and want female friendships. I’m just not sure how to go about making them and keeping them.

I think I’m open and caring, but I feel like I can’t express my deepest wants and desires to others. In the past, I let the fear of intimacy rule my life. I didn’t tell certain people I loved them when I did. I didn’t tell them my wants and desires. I expected them to read my mind. And I became sullen and angry when they didn’t. Instead of expressing those emotions to them, I let them walk out of my life. Eventually I learned how to express all of that in my writing and it became an outlet for conversations never had, wants and needs never lived. Fear stifled my creativity and became a thief of happiness in my life.

But I’ve reached the point where pretending to make other people happy isn’t worth it anymore. I’m tired of living in a pretend world. I want the important people in my life to know what I think. I want them to know when I feel disappointment, sadness, love, excitement. I’m tired of being stuck in a box of despair, at the whim of my moods and emotions. And so, I’m trying to make a change. Once again. And feeling a little stuck in the muck.

It’s hard to change a behavior and a way of life I’ve been living for years. It’s hard to stop hiding when things get tough. It’s hard to stop shutting people out when all I really want is to let people in. As I work through these heavy emotions and feelings, I’ll be writing more for sure. But I also plan to be listening more, engaging more, and cleaning out my closet of all the emotional clutter that only serves as an impediment to my happiness.

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PS: The Devil Within is only available until May 31, 2016. Don’t forget to get your copy while you still can at Amazon.

Reading Some, Watching Some

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I’m participating in this blog challenge. So, every Friday you can expect to hear from me. You can participate too if you’d like! Fun Times! I missed the first week, so today I’m blogging about my bookshelf.

Blog Challenge

I’ve always been a reader. My whole life. Poetry, books, anything I could lay my hands on. As a child, I read so I could live in an imaginary world. I still do. The thing about reading is it expands your mind. It gives you a whole new perspective. It almost makes you feel as if you’ve lived another life and had amazing adventures without having to leave the comfort of your couch.

Today, I’m sharing with you what I’m currently reading. Lately, between kids, work, friends, and everything else going on in my life I haven’t been reading much. The two books I’m currently reading are:

bull mountain

Bull Mountain by Brian Panowich. Set in the mountains of Georgia, this novel is about the Burroughs clan. The family were moonshine runners, and then got into running meth. I’m not very far into this book, but I like it. Some of the dialogue doesn’t seem realistic to me, but it’s easy to read and has absorbed my attention.

 

The Road to Little DribblingI’m also reading The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson. I borrowed this book from a friend, and at this point she probably thinks she’ll never get it back. I’m just being a particularly slow reader right now. It’s probably because instead of reading I’ve been binge watching Peaky Blinders and New Girl. I go through periods where I binge watch television and then I don’t watch it for months. It’s the only way I really like TV. Now I’ve run off onto a complete tangent. Anyway—The Road to Little Dribbling is hilarious. It’s about Bill Bryson’s journeys around Britain. He’s an American born writer, but married a British woman and now has dual citizenship. Well thought out and funny. I recommend this. And I promise, my friend, I will return the book when I finish it.

HarukiI think the book I liked most that I read this year was What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami. I found this book intriguing, and I related to it. I mean the man is an author and a runner, just like me. Okay, not exactly like me. I me, I think he might be a bit of an overachiever. Runs 6 miles every day! C’mon. You’re just making me look bad now. Ran an ultra marathon! I will never do that! But I really loved this book, because Murakami wrote about two of the things I love/hate the most in this world: writing and running. And he also expressed that he hated running for awhile after doing his ultra marathon. Right now I’m in an “I hate running mood.” Highly recommended, especially to my author and runner friends.

That’s it for now! What are you reading? What books do you recommend?

Follow Lauren Greene:

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PS: The Devil Within is only available until May 31, 2016. Don’t forget to get your copy while you still can at Amazon.

 

Parenting and Expectations

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DSC_0172

Kids. Guilt. Expectations. They go together like three peas in a pod. I probably read every article I come across about parenting. Some serve to judge. Some serve not to judge. Some ask people not to judge while they are then judging other people. Judgment is just human nature. Taking all the information in, processing it, and then finding what works for me as a parent is what I normally attempt to do. It isn’t a fine science.

A few years ago, I found I felt angry a lot. I took it out on my husband and my kids. I yelled and I snapped. I snipped at people. And it only made me feel worse. It took me a while, but I found a way to control that anger, especially when I realized it made my kids act like me. They took on all my anxiety and anger, and they began to express it. They expressed it in their play and in the way they interacted with other people. And that was not something I wanted, because I knew it was one of my major flaws. It prohibited me from appropriately relating to other people. It caused a cease of communication, when all I really wanted was to communicate.

I still have a temper. Sometimes I get so mad I could hit something. Instead, I write. Or do yoga. Or I go for a walk. Or I take a hot bath. I try to push a pause button until I feel better.

I thought taking the anger away was enough. I wanted my children to avoid feeling like they had to please me and their father above themselves. You see, for a long time I felt that way. My parents had HUGE expectations of me, and everything I had striven for in my early adulthood I did for them instead of for myself. I couldn’t figure out why it was so important for me to make them happy. And that feeling made me unhappy. Trying to please others above yourself always makes one feel unhappy, because you never know if you’re succeeding at it and because you’ve placed your happiness in the hands of another person who you have no control over. I felt like I had to be a superhero to avoid my dad’s criticism or to mold myself into their idea of success. And I don’t want that for my children. I love my parents, and I don’t blame them at all. They’re good parents, and they’re there for me, and everyone should be as lucky as I am to have been born of such wonderful, loving people. I know my parents are proud of me. I know it’s my own life to live, and I know that they didn’t mean to heap their expectations on to me. Parents should expect a lot from their children, but children should also expect more from themselves. They should be taught that success is driven by achieving their expectations of themselves, not by reacting to others expectations of them.

I read this great article yesterday (from April 2014) titled What to Say Instead of Praising. Praising brings conditionality into a relationship. In fact, saying “Good job,” implies that you expect them to be good. Instead of “Good job,” say “You did it!” and match your child’s excitement. This is one of the hints from the article. This also allows your child to realize the value of what they did, without feeling like they have to do a good job to please you. Instead, they learn that working hard reaps benefits for themselves. It in fact, leads them to succeed without having the burden of having to please their parents.

I think I say, “Good job,” more than any other phrase to my kids. And this morning, I changed that. I sent Hailey to the car while I went to the bathroom. I said, “Hey, if you try to buckle up while I’m in the bathroom it’ll be a big help to me.” She beamed at me.

When I came back from the bathroom, she was in the car completely buckled with a huge grin on her face, “Look Mom!” And I had to bite my tongue. My first instinct was to say, “Good job!” but I didn’t. Instead I said, “Look. You did it!” and I grinned back at her and gave her a love pat.

Like consciously stopping my anger, this is something I’ll have to work on as well. But I think like the article stated it will increase my children’s self-esteem. It will show them they have the power within to succeed in the ways they want to succeed. Instead of trying to understand and live up to my expectations as adults, they’ll live up to their own expectations and create happiness from within. At least this is what I hope for them.

Follow Lauren Greene:

Facebook: www.facebook.com\laurengreenewrites

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PS: The Devil Within is only available for the next three weeks. Don’t forget to get your copy while you still can at Amazon.

The Boy

/ legreene515 / 4 Comments

I wrote this piece for a Chuck Wendig Terrible Minds flash fiction challenge.

 

The photo I used can be found here: http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=3003524

I’m trying to write more recently, and flash always gets me started so I can focus on longer works. I hope you enjoy.

The Boy

Found: Small boy. Won’t sit still. Speaks no English.

He bit my hand when we found him. Sitting on a school chair in the cave near the river where we fished. A baby really, but wild like an animal. I don’t know how long he’d been there and whether his behavior indicated he’d been raised by wolves or simply abandoned by the people who were supposed to care for him.

I’d read, in the old days, deformed babies or unwanted babies were left out in the elements to die. But he was neither. Blonde hair and blue eyes set in his head like a china doll. He was perfect looking but for the layer of dirt so thick it had turned his skin the color of a darkie. He squealed and clawed at my face when I tried to put him in the tub.  Jeffrey had to take over, and he seethed so much with anger I thought he’d drown the boy. When I pulled the baby out, his skin looked red and raw from being scrubbed so hard with the lye soap. The water in the tin tub looked as black as the soil on the land we farmed.

“Wild animal. Can’t live here,” Jeffrey said, as the boy ran around the room screeching and hollering.

He posted the signs around town. Went out on horseback and listed our address below the words. But no one wanted a castaway and so the boy stayed. For months. And the baby growing inside me began to make its presence known.

I tried to teach the boy English. I pointed to the bump on my stomach and said, “Baby.” I labeled all the objects in the cabin, pointed to the words and said the names.  He moved his mouth but only pathetic animal sounds erupted from his lips. In anger, he projected his small body onto the floor kicking up dust and dirt until I had to walk away.

“We have to get rid of him,” Jeffrey said.

But I shook my head. I did not agree.

Jeffrey and I lay under the quilt in the oak bed as the boy, or the animal as Jeffrey called him, slept on the pallet on the floor kicking and screaming in his sleep. Jeffrey reached over and rubbed my belly. The baby didn’t move for him.

“This is our child. That’s not,” he said pointing to the boy.

Weeks of arguments as the baby inside me grew. And the boy seemed to become more wild.

“Cannot be tamed,” Jeffrey said, sitting at the kitchen table wiping the sweat and the dirt from his brow.

And the whole time something grew inside me. Guilt, fear, and anger. On the inside I began to take on the feelings of the boy. A wild rage Jeffrey couldn’t understand swelled up like a hurricane within me. A wild rage threatened the humanity inside of me. And Jeffrey began to turn his back upon me. At night, the gulf between us grew. He’d touch the small of my back, and I pulled away from the roughness of his fingertips. And even as the chasm widened, I became closer to the boy. I felt he was a part of me. I felt I understood his pain. I felt he had given it to me to share. Something inside, deep down, told me not to give up on him.

The boy began to take my hand. He would roll his hand into a fist and push it against my open palm. His cries ceased, and he became silent. His silence permeated me, and I began to speak less and less. He put his grimy little hand against my belly, and the baby inside me squirmed and moved under the softness of his fingers.

In one breath, I let go of the rage, and Jeffrey inhaled it, filling up his whole body with a palpable anger. He shouted at me and the boy. He spent longer days in the field away from me. Away from the boy. When the shouts didn’t work he filled our house with an unthinkable void of sound. The silence sat at our dinner table like an uninvited guest.  The tension took on a personality filling our souls with hatred.

And then one morning, I awoke to find the boy gone. Jeffrey sat at the table with a pocket knife, sharpening a branch.

“Going fishing. Want to come?”

I shook my head but didn’t utter a word. I felt alone and abandoned stuck within myself, but Jeffrey’s terrible anger had fled with the boy.

Jeffrey had been gone a few hours when the contractions started. I knew from watching my mama give birth that labor wasn’t quick. But there were other plans for me. The boy clawed his way out of me as quickly as he could. The pain felt so intense that all the rage and loneliness of the last few months escaped through the bestial screams coming from my lips.

The baby stared up at me with blue eyes. He opened his mouth to cry, but instead the boy’s animal sounds spilled out of his throat. I held him to my nipples, and I whispered into his ears, “Now you’re mine forever. No one can take you away. I will never abandon you again.”

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PS: The Devil Within is only available for the next three weeks. Don’t forget to get your copy while you still can at Amazon.

 

I’m A Finisher!

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This weekend I did something I never thought I’d do. A few years ago, I never would have been capable of this. I wouldn’t have had the confidence to try. Eff that shit! I’m a half-marathon runner now! How things change!

My sisters and I decided in November to run the 2016 Rock ‘n Roll Half Marathon in Nashville, Tennessee. This race is huge, like 30,000 people. If you haven’t read my updates from before, I suffered a stress fracture at the end of February. It derailed my training until the first week of April. I went into this half feeling nervous, unprepared, and afraid of the hills.

We arrived on Friday night, and my sisters and I hung out and talked, and tried to calm our nerves. We ate a huge carby meal of spaghetti with meatballs then went to bed. When we woke up in the morning, we discovered the rain threat we were worried about the day before was gone. All our weather apps said it was cloudy with 0% chance of rain.

So how come there was rain when we arrived at the race?

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I have a tendency to make my eyes huge and crazy when I smile big for pictures!

I wasn’t so nervous at this point. It also helped that I kept getting texts saying the race was delayed because of “weather conditions.” I never heard the thunder, but apparently it was in the vicinity. So, we all waited.

And then we made our way to our corrals. When we got to the drop off point for my sisters, corral 25, Allison started crying. She was so emotional. There were like 30,000 people, and the first few corrals had already started by the time we arrived to ours. Plus, before you run a half your heart is beating fast and your stomach is in your throat. You have about a million emotions coursing through you. Kelsey, Allison and I hugged. I’m so happy I decided to do this with my sisters. It has brought us so much closer over the last year. What an amazing accomplishment to achieve together. I’ll remember this moment for the rest of my life.

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Then I walked my butt back to the 2:50 time at corral 35. I’d decided to start further back, because I was worried about my foot. And at the corral, I met a lovely girl to run with part of the time. And hung out with 20,000ish people.

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We slowly made our way forward to the start line. My heart beat fast. I was scared, but also psyched, because I knew that after a few hours of running I’d be a half-marathon runner, and it would be over. Plus there were tacos and beer after the finish line, and then an awesome party at Paige’s house. I wanted to run for the beer! (We ate at Mas Tacos afterwards — if you’re in Nashville check it out. Delish!)

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My corral is next!

Then the run started. And let me tell you. It was HARD. Hills for days. And Montgomery doesn’t have many hills or hills so high and long. My parents parked at almost mile 3 and then coming back they were at almost mile 8. And when I saw them the first time the thing that flew out of my mouth was, “This is so hard!” My mom worried about me after that. But I kept going. The hardest part seemed to be finding my stride. There were so many people, I had to weave around a lot, and my breathing was off because of the humidity that set in after the rain started. I did okay for the first 6 miles, keeping my min/miles below 12, but after 6 I had to start walk/running a lot. At mile 7, I stopped and hugged my dad and told him my hip hurt, and that it was hard, and I felt like crying. But his hug gave me energy, and I took off for a few more minutes, until the next hill showed up.

The worst part of the whole race was the hill at mile 12.5. I mean, who does that? But I snapped this great picture of one of the signs The signs were hilarious! There was one that said WTF (Where’s the Finish?). And the Trump signs too: Run Like Trump is President and If Trump Can Run, Then So Can You! (I wish I’d snapped pictures of those!)

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Even the marathon runners hated THAT hill. On the hill, my friend of a lifetime, Andrea sat with her husband, so I pushed up and past her and then yelled back to her, “I had to run past you, but now I’m going to walk!” And we both laughed.

Then coming to mile 13, we had a downhill, and all I could think about was the beer I’d get to drink in just a few minutes and why there had to be a stupid .1 tacked onto a half-marathon. I thought I’d cry going over the finish line, but I didn’t. I felt euphoric. And the runner’s high didn’t wear off all day. I finished in 2:50:34 according to their clocks. (That included a potty break that Runkeeper timed as 1.5 minutes). And Runkeeper stated I ran 13.82 miles in 2:48. This is because I didn’t run the tangents, and the weaving adds mileage to your run, so no 13.1 is actually 13.1 unless you’re a pro at running tangents. In this race it would have been impossible, with all the walkers and the runners. It was so crowded.

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My proudest achievement

Overall, this was a great experience. And the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. To run a half-marathon you have to have perseverance and fortitude. And for me, it helped that I had my sisters and my parents support along the way. I couldn’t wait to have my beer, hug my sisters, and tell them how proud I was of them! What an amazing achievement. If you’re thinking of running a half, go for it! Maybe start with a flatter half, but the Nashville half was super fun and I’d recommend it!

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My sisters and I enjoying a beer after the run

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Goodbye Booktrope

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Today, I had intentions to write about the half-marathon (I’ll write a blog on this tomorrow) I completed over the weekend. But then I thought my time would be better spent sharing some sad news I learned on Friday night. Booktrope is ceasing business on May 31, 2016.

I have to say I’m not overly shocked. When I signed on with Booktrope in February of 2015, I felt intrigued by their model. I liked the team publishing idea, where the author works with a team and they promote the book together so they all get paid. But in reality, it didn’t work so well. I think Booktrope took on more than they could chew, opening up submissions and looking more at quantity than quality. A lot of wonderful editors, cover designers, and book managers didn’t make any money for services rendered. After the royalty breakdown, teams were receiving peanuts, and thus truly talented people began walking out the door. In several articles, revenue shortfall was cited as the reason for closure. Booktrope simply didn’t sell enough books.

I’m not blaming anyone for the demise. I’m actually looking at this as an opportunity to focus on Little Birdhouses, polish it, and begin submitting to traditional publishers. My sales of The Devil Within had been pretty good. Not wonderful, but I did make a little money on the book. And having been through this venture, I learned a whole helluva lot more than I would if I had never been published.

All of this to say, effective May 31, 2016, The Devil Within will be out of print. You have exactly 29 days if you’d like to buy the book. I don’t have any hard copies left on hand for those of you who know me in real life, so take a trip to the link above in order to purchase.

Thanks to my lovely readers! Hopefully my new book will be out soon, and I can get back to achieving my dreams!

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