The Romancechick Speaks

A year ago today, I was at my in-laws’ home. We’d just finished dinner and were heading to the living room to watch something on television when my cell phone rang. I thought, Hmm, who could be calling me; everyone is here.

Well obviously everyone wasn’t because it was my brother and as soon as he said my name I knew something was wrong. I thought immediately that his wife had gotten hurt. He said, “Mom is gone.”

He lived about 10 minutes from Mom in Ohio and he always called her a couple of times a day just to see how she was doing and such. He hadn’t been able to get hold of her so around 6 pm, he decided just to drive over and see what was up.

As soon as he walked in he knew something was wrong. None of her lights were on and her purse was on the table, so she hadn’t gone anywhere. He saw her lying in her bed and since she never napped, he knew.

She died in her sleep.

My mother was 81 years old, lived alone except for her dog, was a voracious quilter and sew-er, and was active in her church. There were cookies on her table that she’d baked for her Bible study that morning.

I had talked to her just the day before because it was my daughter’s birthday and she’d called to tell me that her present was in the mail. We’d chatted about the kinds of things we always talked about and there was no indication that she wouldn’t be there the next day.

Today, I’m having a sad day. I miss her so much. A lot of stuff has happened in the past year and so many times I’ve wanted to call her and talk. Christmas was hard because had planned to go up to see her and my brother and his wife. They have cats and Beloved and the Boy are allergic so they would have stayed with Mom again and we’d have had Christmas there.

So, we just decided, all of us together, that it would just be easier on all of us to not go up there.

The past year has been one of tears and frustration as we dealt with her estate and what to do with all her things. It was one time I realized what it means to really be an adult. These were all things my brother and I wanted Mom to handle for us!!

This past year has seen my brother deal with many health issues and the loss of his job. I’ve dealt with sciatica and two steroid shots in my back, not to mention behavioral issues with our son and getting that under control.

My daughter turned 21 yesterday which is a big deal but today I’m a little sad.

Mommy, I miss you, and I hope you, Daddy and Dotti are partying in heaven and holding a place for me.

Please bear with me as I update my site to include my current WIPs and those books that are finished, searching for a home.

Thanks!

Okay, so there isn’t actually film. I’m sitting in the lobby of the Dolphin hotel on the Disney World Property. One thing you can say about Disney. They’re subtle.

This has to be one of the most OVER THE TOP lobbies I’ve ever been in. Okay, so I’m not a huge world traveler and I haven’t been in tons of fancy hotel lobbies but this amazes me. I’ll try to get a picture of what blows me away.

This is the ceiling of the lobby. My roommate and I discussed whether this is actually fabric, which is what it looks like, or if it’s concrete made to look like fabric. Given that it’s Disney, it could be either and either one would be amazing and totally over the top.

That’s what I love about Disney. It’s super big and the detail is…wait, did I say amazing?

I’m here because Romance Writers of America is holding their annual conference here. This is the conference that was supposed to be in Nashville and one I saved up for two years to attend because Nashville is a doable drive from my house. However, our hotel was flooded and with in a week, the conference was moved here.

Orlando is less of a fun drive, but actually yesterday wasn’t bad. My friend Lynn is with me, although she isn’t really interested in writing romance. She’s a screenwriter and copy writer and probably won’t renew her RWA membership next year.

Still, though, the drive went by fast enough that it didn’t feel like 11 hours, not counting stops.

We got in around 7 local time, checked in and got up to our room, which has NO view unless you count the air conditioning units! Also, the light above my bed doesn’t seem to work, which I need to talk to guest services about. But, you know what? I’m not here for the room. I’m here to absorb as much writing energy as I can and meet people and network and learn!

I know I’m more excited to be here than Lynn is and I think I’m okay with hanging out alone, but I really wish someone would talk to me!

When I came to this conference in 2006, I felt very much out of the loop. Everyone seemed to know other people and groups congregated together. It seems to be a little that way this year, too. I guess that’s to be expected. Some people come every year and have LOTS of writing friends. All, or most, of my writing friends are just online friends that I’ve never actually met in real life. I’m hoping to do that here, at least a bit.

I’ll try to keep you posted on my doings. Back to work, writing, and trying to look approachable.

Okay, not totally terrible, but I went down to the Dolphin lobby early because I wanted to meet people, find someone to chat with, you know, hang with lovely romance writers.

Well, it turns out that if you have a computer in front of you and your fingers are flying across the keys, people “think” you’re working and they leave you alone. I was sitting on a sofa at the back of a conversational grouping of seats. A woman sat down in a chair next to the sofa, but oa the other end. I smiled but she was on the phone and I just went back to my book. Then, kinda big name author (whose name will be redacted because I’m not stupid and I won’t burn bridges) came by. She and the other woman commented on how impressed they were that I was working, then they proceeded to have what sounded like a fun conversation together. Now and then I would look up – I had told them I was spending more time watching people go by than actually writing – and glance their way, but while one or the other of them would look at me, I wasn’t actually included in the conversation.

Then more big names came by to speak to the big name near me. They all hugged. And squealed. And Ooohed and Aaahed over each other’s clothes.

And they all got introduced to the woman that first sat down.

But not to me, since no one had actually asked me anything.

I began to wonder if this was going to be a boring, lonely conference. My roommate, as I think I mentioned, isn’t a romance reader or writer, but she is a writer and she is interested in meeting and networking, but I wanted to meet and chat with other romance people.

Later, however, I went to the room where the Literacy signing was going to take place to volunteer to help set up.

I walked back and forth and around a literal Disney sized ballroom for two hours, including putting RITA finalist flags at the spaces for about 50 authors (out of 500). The authors were seated alphabetically by last name (Duh) but the list of finalists was alphabetical by FIRST name, so I went from the As to the Ws then back to the Fs and then to the Ms and so forth for probably an hour!

I was tired and about 1.5 hours before the signing, I went back to my room to relax.

Then I went to the signing. I had a list in my head of authors I know personally that I wanted to see and my ego was stroked big time!!

Terri Brisbin sat next to me at a book signing at New Jersey Romance Writers in 2004 and she was SO nice to me, a new, unknown epubbed author (back before Kindle told everyone was ebooks are), and she jumped up when she saw my name tag and was thrilled to see me.

Ditto Alyssa Day from whom I’d taken a Chick Lit writing online class when she was writing as Alesia Holiday and Jax Abbott. She also sent my daughter a copy of her second Jax Abbott book.

Anyway, it ended up being great for my ego.

Tuesday didn’t go so well, or it went great, depending on how you look at it.

I got Sword & Illusion edited (or at least I worked on it for an hour), then I read my husband’s book and critiqued it for an hour. Then I took my little Netbook and went to the carpool to pick the Boy up from school.

He told me he needed a glue stick for school so I thought we’d head over to Target. I needed light bulbs anyway.

Our nearest Target is next to a Best Buy and I’ve been wanting a Wii Fit since about Christmas. I asked for one for my birthday in Feb but Beloved couldn’t find any and got me a George Foreman Grill instead.

Anyway, when I asked at the Best Buy about it, they never could tell me when they were getting them in. We got the final check from my mother’s estate, and I’d put a bunch of random checks, including that one, in the bank.

So, since we were right there, I thought, oh, let’s stop in and see if they have any. They won’t but we’re right here anyway.

Well, they had them! Not the Wii Fits, but the very helpful saleman answered my questions and told me that another store across town had Wii Fits and I could pay for it there and go to the other store and pick it up. Cool.

So, I got everything this guy recommended I needed and an extra game for the Boy and A Biggest Loser workout disc for me. It was more money than I expected but as Beloved said, I’m an heiress now and we have a bit of extra cash.

I’m also considering getting a Nook or a Kindle so if anyone has any comments on either one, I’ll take it.

We brought everything home (didn’t get to Target) and started the set up. Then the Gril and Beloved came home, we had dinner and he headed off to RCIA at church. His mom is finally feeling up to getting out of the house again, so that’s good.

The kids and I headed to the Mall where the other Best Buy is and picked up the Wii Fit and bought an Alice in Wonderland game for the Girl.

Then we came home and set THAT all up! We made Miis for all of us and the Girl and I did our body test on the Balance Board for the Wii Fit. It gave me a Wii Fit age of 60 – NINE years older than I am!!! It made the Girl about 8 years older and when Beloved did it, 13 for him. I don’t think that’s quite right since he runs 3 times a week, but he had trouble figuring out the balance stuff.

So, in the end, I only got about 2 new pages written, so I’ll have to do some catching up!

Yesterday started out a bit rough. I was a little angry at the world and my family in particular.

I woke up all excited about my new plan for my career, but then Beloved reminded me that I need to edit Sword & Illusion first, then read his book. I figured out as I drove home from dropping my son off at school that this could work. It would be fine.

I had actually tried to start the new book before the kids got up but the place I chose to start was the wrong one and I didn’t even get one sentence written. Beloved told me later I couldn’t say I’d tried because that wasn’t even trying.

I went to Weight Watchers and was up again and that actually threw me into a depression and I came home crying.

At that point I decided I couldn’t do anything I wanted to do and I planned to give up.

Good attitude right? I told you the day started rough.

Whining and complaining on IM to my spouse kinda sent me into a spiral of feeling sorry for myself and when he kept asking if I’d written my 7 pages yet, I got mad and turned off the computer.

I went into the laundry room, cleared out two boxes of stuff I had left over from HeartLA’s luncheon last year. (Sherrily Kenyon is our speaker this year – you should come!) Then I folded a load of laundry while watching the second ever Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode on Roku.

By the time that was all finished, I felt better and figured out that I could do this.

I went to pick up the Boy from school and actually started the new book. After everyone else had gone to bed I finished my seven pages!

All in all, day one went not too bad!

It’s been a rough fall and winter at the Brandt household and much of it seemed to fall squarely on my shoulders. Mainly, I guess because I’m at home and I was the one to whom a lot of the medical issues attacked.

A couple of weeks ago, Beloved said he was going to give Mom a break. This week the Boy has Spring Break and Beloved took the week off from work. This is my VACATION week.

Yes, I’m still at home and I still did some chores this morning (dishes and some laundry) but for the most part, after today – or really after I take the Boy to a doctor’s appointment and go to Weight Watchers, the week is mine to do with as I will.

I probably will spend a good part of it writing. My goal is to get Sword & Illusion done this week!!!

Okay, yeah, I’ve said that before, but this is the Done that mean there are only small changes left to be made. I’m pretty excited about it. I want to possibly pitch it to an editor when I get to Nashville in July.

Right now, the Teminix guy is here. We have to have the place treated for termites because we had water damage to Beloved’s workshop due to a frozen pipe a few months ago and when the guy from the homeowners’ insurance checked it out he found termite evidence and they won’t pay to repair the shop until the place it treated. So, the treatment. It did mean I had to get dressed faster than I planned as the guy needed to come in the house. He cut a hole in my bedroom wall behind the tub so the pipe area could be treated. Not thrilled with that, but at least he put a nice looking cover over it. AND most of the dirty clothes had been washed so they weren’t piled up right there!

Okay. I need to take the Boy to the doctor. Talk to you all later. Have a great Monday!

Last weekend, 14 Mar 10, we went to a St. Patrick’s Day parade here in Baton Rouge, and like every parade I’ve been to here, it was more about beads and dancing to great or not-so-great music blaring from long trailers decorated in some tangential way that kinda reflects whatever theme there is carrying people tossing said beads. We had a blast and captured an IMMENSE amount of beads.

Part of the parade were several Celtic organizations and as one of these marching units came by us, a man in a kilt came over to me and asked if he could give me some beads. I said yes and he put some beads around my neck and kissed my cheek! Okay, so he was probably at least as old as me and not nearly as handsome as my husband, but it was fun!

I had my Epidural Steroid Injection on Wednesday. It didn’t take long but hurt more than I thought, and I wasn’t sedated as I thought. They wanted me awake to get feedback on the procedure – they didn’t want me feeling stuff I shouldn’t – so they only gave me a Valium “to relax me.” I was so nervous, I think two would have worked better.

The sciatica seems to be better. I still have some numbness and a twinge once in a while.

However, I went through a minor depression Thursday and Friday. I think it might be the result of not sleeping well and the pain and sleeping meds I’d been taking. Then, of course, I had written myself into a corner on Sword & Illusion and was pretty sure I wasn’t going to have this book done anytime in the near future. (I’m actually taking time from working on it to do this post, so things are moving along now.)

Saturday I woke up feeling a bit better. A Holy Hour in front of the Blessed Sacrament probably didn’t hurt!

I was scheduled to do a panel discussion at BabelCon 4.5 on epic vs. urban fantasy.

Babelcon was a very small con this year, and the “authors’ lounge” and “panel discussion room” was literally a hotel suite and we shared it with costuming people, artists, a geek stand-up comedy troupe, and the D&D Gamer film festival, so there wasn’t a lot of room for book signing. Not that it mattered as I didn’t sell a thing.

The most interesting thing was as I was sitting in a corner of the room, next to an end table with my books and the TV playing the films, this artist woman was talking to another woman across the room. I was located at the corner of a triangle of the three of us, so there was no way not to hear this conversation and the gist of it was this:

The artist had named her breasts.

Literally.

Apparently, she had a big problem of men staring at them when they talk to her so she would tell them they were addressing “Lauren” or whoever. I don’t remember the names of the breasts.

Maybe it’s me but I would never have that problem, and I admit I didn’t look to see if there was an abundance there. It just would never occur to me to do something like this.

However, I think she may end up in a novel one day.

Right after Christmas, I began to feel that we were coming out of the tunnel of trouble that had inflicted this family.

Then I stopped taking my thyroid meds for the radioactive thyroid scan and that affected my emotions and the sciatica came back.

Since then, my mother-in-law ended up in the hospital with a ruptured appendix and after she came home, she developed an infection that put her back in.

A couple of days ago, we had to have one of our guinea pigs put to sleep because she had cancer.

My mother-in-law came home from the hospital today and I found out that I have a carcinoma on my face that will be removed next week.

Today, I was thinking about something I heard on the radio about faith and fear. What if our default setting was to fall back on faith when we have trials instead of falling into fear? What if instead of worrying about this spot on my face and the possible scarring that will occur, I think about God’s grace and trust that He will be glorified through this somehow?

What if I stopped worrying about not sleeping with this pain and just started praising God?

How do you praise God through trials?

I’ve noticed in my life that it seems that Sundays are tough days at our house. The family fights. I feel resentful that I have to get myself and the Boy ready for Mass while Beloved and the Girl only have to get themselves ready. Basically, there is a lot of negative emotions flying around on that day.

Used to be the same way on days we were supposed to teach NFP.

In talking to other people, I discovered this isn’t an unusual phenomenon among Christians. It seems that Satan attacks more strongly on the days that you’ve dedicated to doing God’s will.

So, that got me to thinking today. What if all these trials I’m going through, physically and mentally, because let’s face it — if I’m not sleeping well, and I’m in pain, I’m going to be depressed — what if all of that is because I’m being attacked by “evil spirits” (to sound all whoo-whoo-whoo about it) because I’m doing what God wants?

I don’t think I’m doing anything all that special. I truly don’t believe I’m all that important, but I do believe that Satan’s ultimate goal is to get us to despair; to believe that God has abandoned us or that He could never love us. I will admit, that while I’ve never stopped believing in God’s love and grace, I could easily fall into despair sometimes. I know I’ve thought about how easy it would be to give into the depression and just stop caring about anything. I’ve wondered just how easy it would be to stay in bed and not worry about getting anything done.

Maybe I need to look at things a different way. Maybe I should rejoice in these trials and fall on faith. God will use this pain for His glory and I’ll be stronger later because of it. Maybe I should realize that sitting in the chair writing doesn’t hurt and maybe I need to get this book done because someone needs to read it. Maybe this pain is a way of purifying me and helping me get rid of the excuses I put in my own way, making me focus on what is really important.

What trials are you facing and how can you look at them in faith instead of fear?

I’ve never been a big fan of the phrase “it’s not fair.” I mean, after the age of about 12 or so.

As an adult, what does the concept of fair mean anyway?

When you are a kid, fair means that if Billy gets a cookie, Sally gets a cookie. Balance is maintained. Everyone is treated equally.

However, as an adult, I know that life can never be fair for a number of reasons.

First, we’re all given different abilities and different liabilities. To assume that somehow something isn’t fair means that somewhere along the line things were fair and this new thing upset the balance.

There’s this ad for some skin care product that shows a woman looking in the mirror and seeing redness on her face, stomping her feet and saying, “It’s not fair.” I really don’t like that ad. Hence, my inability to remember what product it was for!

It’s not fair that she “suffers” from red splotches on her face? In the grand scheme of life, she has it made, if you ask me.

About ten days ago, I sat in a chair I kinda knew I shouldn’t sit in. When I had my sciatica pain, this was a chair that aggravated it, but the pain was gone and my husband sits in the twin of this chair to do his writing so I wanted to be with him. I stood up at one point and felt a twinge in my hip. I thought, “Okay, then. I won’t sit there again.”

By bedtime, the sciatica had returned with a vengeance. This time, however, I was unable to get comfortable even lying down, which made sleeping problematic. I took the Lortab my doctor had prescribed for the pain which doesn’t actually knock me out. It makes me relaxed and feel good but I don’t sleep. So, I combined it with a Unisom one night and had the delightful experience of not sleeping in the bed but falling asleep as I walked around the kitchen, thus, scaring myself when I startled myself awake. Really, really fun.

After three nights of not sleeping, all while still not taking my thyroid meds and on the low iodine diet, I ranted and raved to my husband and to God that “It isn’t fair.” My Beloved just listened like a good husband and understood when I said I wasn’t mad at him, I was just mad at the situation.

My in-laws have a Select Comfort bed and my father-in-law suggested I spend the night at their house sleeping on his side of the bed, where he has things set very soft. I did sleep better that night but interestingly, the next night his wife, my mother-in-law, was admitted to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy!

My daughter asked if I was going to sleep at their house that night and I said it wouldn’t really do for me to be there while he was at the hospital with his wife just because I wouldn’t want him to come home, forgetting I was there, and … well, it just wasn’t a good idea.

I slept sitting up a few nights and that helped. Then we bought an inversion table. This seems to be helping some and I saw the chiropractor yesterday. She said I needed to go back to the stretches she gave me to do and we’ll knock this thing out again.

Last night, before I went to bed, I did my stretches, hung upside down for a bit, took a pain pill (no sleep aids though) and went to bed. I did sleep better although I was up twice in the night. The pain pills don’t knock the pain out for the 6 hours I’m to keep between doses. I knew I wouldn’t sleep well on the meds, but I knew I’d be relaxed and at that point last night, that was enough.

Today, I’ll call the physiatrist again, as well as a few other doctors and I need to check in with for myself and the Boy. I’ll go on my Lenten discipline walk and I’ll go back to the edits of Sword & Illusion. I’m in a better frame of mind after a night of not walking around the house all night. Maybe I can get the book done this week.