Chick Books & Dimestore Romance

So little....

2008-09-14T17:48:00.000-07:00

Still plugging away, making revisions on a novel since last November. Stay tuned.

copyright 2008, Joanna S Kelley (pseudonym)

And Live in the Light Again

2008-04-12T07:18:00.000-07:00

This one is posted on all of my blogs...

And Live in the Light Again

It's bringing the dark down again
shutting me off, pulling me under
I don't mean to take things so hard
but the world spins and I begin to falter...

In the worst of it, I'm drowning
the surface lost and the blue surrounds
too weak to argue, I close my eyes
and I let it keep pullin' me down.

Then you notice me and close the distance
and I forget I'm lost
you make it all seem easy
and now, at last, the void is crossed.

the sun does shine, the wind does blow
see the mountains I can climb
we look down at the busy below
you and me in a world without time

You take my hand, you won't let go
you hold on for the fight
until finally I emerge,
mighty banged up but alright

You wipe my soul with solemn grace
you hold me close and then
you whisper softly, "Give me your hand...
come live in the light again."

c. 2008 Joanna S Kelley

Not a lot

2008-03-28T18:56:00.000-07:00

Nothing going on these days. Been lurking at Helium.com and trying to earn side money w/ the writing thing, but it is nearly impossible for me to tolerate the repetition when you are "rating" other folks' work. The writing part is fine, but the rating is so tedious I've all but given up.

copyright 2008, Joanna S Kelley (pseudonym)

Enter the Zone

2008-02-26T17:41:00.001-08:00

Do you ever just enter a place where the words pour out of you seemingly beyond your control? Of course you do...if you are a writer.

Though you won't see evidence of it in this blog today, per se, I've got that going on in my offline works. I am in the flow, in the know, buzzing, humming, rolling. Whatever you choose to call it, the words are coming easily today. Hallelujah!

copyright 2008, Joanna S Kelley (pseudonym)

Living in dreams

2008-02-23T06:26:00.001-08:00

Every now and then, when life gets hard
I turn to dreams, to where you are
I want to stay there, safe in you
but morning comes...erases you.

So I rise and try to shine
slog through work
head for home
I end the day still alone.

Where is my heart?
Where has it gone?
It left with you
when you moved on.

I do not cry
I've no tears left.
I meet the days
with a brave face.

But when night comes
I long to wail
curl up and die
drop in despair.

But hope returns
as hope does.
It fills my lungs
and gives me hugs.

The day is new
the future bright
so might as well
enter the light.

copyright 2008, Joanna S Kelley (pseudonym)

10 Signs a Book is Written by Me

2008-02-12T04:17:00.000-08:00

1) It is set in a place that does not exist. I typically find that since I have not yet enjoyed a lot of travel, I don't know any other cities well enough to bring them to life. So rather than sound like a travel brochure, I make up whole cities. I even used to draw maps when I was a teenager.

2) There's almost always a dog. I think I subconsciously adopted this from either Fern Michaels or Dean Koontz. Not sure which.

3) I mention SOMETHING from pop culture...a movie or a song, a book or a campy product in almost all of my work. (Except, oddly, the items on this website. Hmmm.)

4) My characters eat a lot of yummy food and not a lot of veggies and fruits. Sadly, this is just the author's experience shining through. I have a very limited palate when it comes to these foods. I have tried so hard to incorporate more of them in my diet, but I just hate most of them! I feel like a picky four year old and I suffer a lot of abuse socially for it. *sniff*

5) I am given to melodrama. I try pretty hard not to give in to these urges. But if it isn't over the top, I find myself thinking it isn't quite good enough.

6) Bad childhoods, abuse, and other traumas are common themes for my characters. Another cliche I am fighting against. But I love my moody, wounded heroes. Think Dean Winchester on the TV show Supernatural. Don't you just want to soothe that man?! Gather him up and fix all the wounded parts?! OOOOOH. I get weak just imagining it.

7) The names of my characters are not average names. I used to be a trend-setter, but nowadays it is all the rage to find a goofy name or goofy spelling of a regular name. Like Mayre (Mary) or Tobias. But let me just go on record as saying that I did it before it was the "in" thing to do.

8) I was fascinated (for reasons I cannot explain) with sign language as a child. I have used deaf characters in many of my works. This is not easy in writing because if you aren't careful, you spend too much time trying to explain the way signs look visually or you try to get creative with how many ways you can remind the reader that the character didn't SAY it...they SIGNED it.

9) If there is mention of Phoenix, AZ in the book, you know it is mine. Either someone used to live there, a relative moved "down there", or there is some obscure mention of it in the background of the story. Guess I don't want to forget the old hometown, even if I don't really want to set a story there. Again, my shorter work doesn't do this. I am talking novels here.

10) There will be a happily-ever-after sort of ending. Usually a little bit too saccharine for most people (including me). I just can't end on a bad note. There's too much of that in real life.

copyright 2008, Joanna S Kelley (pseudonym)

Practical applications

2008-02-11T17:44:00.000-08:00

Sometimes everyday writing has its rewards. My boss complimented me today on my letter writing skills. She said she doesn't have to worry about checking my letters for grammar or spelling before they go out, but it wouldn't be fair to have me off on my own. (My "day job" is in the insurance industry, and these are denial letters I am talking about...kinda stupid that our supervisors have to check them...makes us all feel like little high school kids. But it is what it is.)

Nice to have those little affirmations from time to time.

copyright 2008, Joanna S Kelley (pseudonym)

Let the Bodies Hit the Floor.

2008-02-05T17:56:00.000-08:00

((INSPIRED BY THE WRITER'S DIGEST "FREE PROMPTS"))

I was halfway to work, drifting in that zombie-like place so familiar to bus riders everywhere, when my phone chirped three times. A text message. Who the heck would text me this early? Everyone I know was bombed last night...much like me. And unlike me, they don't have to drag ass into work with a head that feels seven times too big for their body.

"I have the money and hid the body."

I blinked. Then I grinned. It could only be him. He refused to text in abbreviations like normal people, and he wouldn't answer if I texted back that way. I'm probably the second fastest texter in the nation, thanks to him.

"That was quick. I wasn't expecting you for another six hours."

I waited. He always was a slow, deliberate sort. Unless it came to sending texts, of course.

"Your expectations were always too low. Pessimist."

I was beginning to feel better already.

"What now? Who's next?"

I didn't have the list with me. But I knew we were on step five out of eleven. Four bodies down, seven to go.

"Father Chris. This one will be messy. Mr. Black wants it messy."

I made a face as my stomach objected to the images in my head.

"How much for this one? I forget."

I glanced up as we passed 64th Street. Only two more stops to go.

"Eighty thousand big ones."

I sighed.

"You'd think the Diocese would pay more to vanquish evil."

A series of HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA filled my screen. And then:

"You'd think."

I yawned and stood up, preparing to push the sensor bar.

"I gotta go. My stop."

Just as I was stumbling down the steps, my phone rattled in my hand.

"Hey. Veer off into Starbucks, will you? I could use a Venti Hot Chocolate."

I grinned again. The sweet tooth on that man was something else.

"Fine. But you're buying the pizza after Father Chris."

"That's cool. And hey, B..."

"What?"

"If you show up late again, you're fired."

I glanced across the street at my office and the big, cheery, bouncy letters. Huzzah Games. The 'Zs' haven't worked in about a year.

"B?"

I stuck my tongue out at the building.

"What?"

I ordered the Venti and a tall for myself and waited for him to answer.

"I saw that. Pick me up a Raspberry scone, will you?"

I added it hastily to my order. I could feel the hyper guy behind me roll his eyes.

"YOU make me late, you know."

I grabbed the drink carrier, balancing it on my forearm as I pushed open the door with my opposite shoulder.

"I know. I was kidding about the fired. Hurry up, though. We're stuck."

I wondered what could possibly have them stuck. As he tends to do, he read my mind.

"Mr. Black just gave us the dagger, but the entire chapel is frozen. We can't stab Father Chris."

I rolled my eyes.

"Good grief. How did we fix it last time, when it was Angela Lansbury at the English cottage?"

"Oh. Yeah. Right. Hurry up with that Starbucks."

I laughed as the elevator doors slid open. Beta testing video games was such a blast. And imagine getting paid to goof off all day. Though that Lansbury glitch was a real mother to fix.

"Or you're fired."

I punched 'end call' and threw my phone in my purse.

I love my job.

copyright 2008, Joanna S Kelley (pseudonym)

Being Funny

2008-02-01T04:36:00.000-08:00

I never really thought about it before, but yesterday I had a chance to see how exhausting humor can be!

I had to give a presentation, and I spent MANY hours trying to find ways to make the subject matter more exciting than it was. Some subjects are necessary to discuss but not so much fun to sit through! I made a lot of jokes and plays on words and clever turns of phrase, and I will tell you...being funny is not as easy as it looks! I have new respect for comedians and sitcom writers everywhere!

copyright 2008 Joanna S Kelley (pseudonym)

What I Wouldn't Give

2008-01-22T15:58:00.000-08:00

What I wouldn't give
to live life as my characters do
with pretty, magical happy endings
and love...to be loved in that special way.

This poem has no flow.
It is stagnant, much like my life.
A smelly pool of woe is me
with a side order of whine.

I am jaded by too many rescues
knights on white horses
pretend men
the women I want to be
instead of boring old me.

I hate the sounds of my own complaints.
Dreadful pity parties
and ticker tape misery.
I tire of watching the world
writing it down
but living it empty.

I wonder if this is how Heath Ledger felt?
Bottoms up.
Heartside down.
Tails, you lose.
Game over.
Try again?
Only a million quarters.
Step on up.
Hope again.

Yeah. No. Thanks.
I'll pass.
Ask me again tomorrow.
Perhaps I will have a new reserve of faith
a fresh, sunny smile painted on.
Glassy-eyed and wagging
Like a dog about to die.

copyright 2008, Joanna S Kelley (pseudonym)

Uninspired

2008-01-16T19:22:00.000-08:00

I feel completely uninspired these first three weeks of January. Perhaps by the end of this 3rd week, some sort of revelation will occur and I will be off and flowing again.

I really could use the shake up.
And how!

copyright 2008, Joanna S Kelley (pseudonym)

Long absence

2008-01-06T07:22:00.000-08:00

I apologize for the long absence, and I wish I could guarantee more regular posts. I know better than to promise what I can't deliver! I have learned my lesson regarding that sort of thing.

Some good news is that I sent a novel I'd written off to a critiquing service and got back a fairly positive letter. Certainly, there were weaknesses that needed to be addressed. That's the whole point of a critique, after all. But there was a lot of encouragement.

One of my favorite positives was that the reviewer stated that my work read like that of a seasoned author. That one alone is enough to keep me going in those frequent periods of doubt.

Stay tuned. I am hoping this is the year I become a published author.

copyright 2008, Joanna S Kelley

Just Words (part 6)

2007-05-13T16:52:00.000-07:00

By the next morning, Ben was no longer sure of what he'd experienced. Perhaps the journal had been there all along. Perhaps he fell from the roof at a lucky angle, thus allowing him to avoid the dangerous rubble. He desperately wanted it to be real, which was why it probably wasn't.

He'd read the whole journal--the rest of it--in one sitting. And then he read one part again.

I know Ben will always wonder why. Why I disappeared. Why I didn't love him enough to tell him goodbye. Only God and Phin know how I agonized over it, how many times I almost went to him, even when my hair was falling out and I had sores in my mouth that hurt so bad I couldn't even talk.

It's just that he's had so much pain in his life, so many losses. I think I was the first good thing Ben allowed himself in a very, very long time, which makes this disease of mine so much more awful. I've put a lot of energy into getting him to trust in me, in my love, in a gentler life than he ever wanted to let himself hope for. And the only thing I could think to myself that first day in the doctor's office, the day that awful 'C' word was used, was "Oh, crap. Ben was right. He's destined to lose everything that he loves."

That's why I left. Better he think he lost me to a whim of a fickle heart than to the more permanent, icy grip he's so familiar with. If your love walks out on you, there's still a chance they'll walk back in. But with death, there's no room for hope. Not in this life, anyway. And my gift to Ben, because I love him in every cell of my traitorous body, is to give him hope. If not forever, then at least until he's strong enough to believe he can love again.

Ben stared at the ceiling, almost unable to breathe through the pain, the tightness of his chest and throat compounded by the fact that Rorschach lay on his ribs, purring. He allowed himself a few tears, a little flash of anger, and a gaping, gushing self-pity wound. She was right. He'd lost so much. So, so much. The desire to wallow was fierce. The self-destructive bent, even stronger. He wanted enough beer to find oblivion (and pickle his liver), but he couldn't even raise himself from the sofa for a bottle.

Yet somehow, he finished the roof without event. Now that he was desperate for more proof, there was none. Nothing inanimate moved, no strange drafts, no odd behavior from the cat. The only thing there was, was emptiness. Yawning stretches of deep, black alone.

Before he knew he would, Ben was showered, dressed, and standing outside Phin's door. A little ripple of deja vu coursed through him as Phin opened the door, took him in, then wordlessly stepped back to grant him passage.

They shared a couple of beers in total silence, and then Ben told Phin about the fall from the roof, the journal, the cold spots in his home, and the way the cat would stare at empty corners of the room and purr wildly. And then they shared another silence, another couple bottles.

"I've had dreams about her," Phin said with a shrug. "We were in this old house we used to live in, and she was tearing the place apart looking for a stuffed duck I gave her when she moved away to go to college. A duck so she wouldn't forget about me. I told her it was at your place."

"My place?" Ben tried to recall if he'd ever seen a stuffed duck anywhere.

"Yeah. The duck was my way of telling her not to forget about me. I was stupid enough to think she would, that it worked that way. Shit, I was only nine." He shrugged. "In the dream I was telling her I was okay and to go visit someone who loved her who wasn't okay."

"Me," Ben said softly, taking another long pull on his beer.

Phin said nothing, just lifted his chin a bit, just like Sarah used to.

"It was a challenge," Ben said after another long silence. "She used that journal to challenge me to move on."

"Yep."

Ben pretended not to see the glimmer of hope in Phin's eyes. He could almost feel the guy holding his breath. Ben knew what he wanted. The strangest thing was that he didn't have to lie in order to tell him what he wanted to hear.

"Okay, then," Ben replied, looking Phin right in the eye and lifting his chin. "Okay."

###END###

Just Words (part 5)

2006-10-01T07:33:00.000-07:00

The first thing he did when he made it home was throw up. Violently.

And then he had to clean it up, because he hadn't made it to the bathroom.

Now he just felt dead inside. Cold. So much so that he shivered. It was late August, but he shivered.

Ben fell on the couch, closed his eyes. Rorschach, still on the back of the sofa, purred. Ben wondered if he'd been there the whole time. A second wave of nausea hit, and he shivered again. He pulled the afghan from under his head and threw it over himself, shuddering so hard the cat leapt off the couch in disgust.

Don't think, he ordered. Just turn it off.

Except he couldn't turn it off. He couldn't turn her off. Couldn't get her out of his head. Couldn't get the questions to stop. Why? How? When? Why did you walk out without a backward glance? How could you just leave me like that? When did it happen...this cancer? When did you know you were sick, and why didn't you tell me?

Whatever remained of his breakfast sat in his stomach like a ball of ice. He couldn't get warm. He tried to sit up, to find the journal, but he got so dizzy he fell off the couch. And then he didn't have the strength to pick himself up. His muscles had gone south for the winter. Except it wasn't winter. But it felt like winter. It felt exactly like the winter when they'd gone without heat for a week because every technician in town was booked solid. Except that week he'd had more than an afghan to keep him warm. He'd had Sarah.

The tears that finally came felt outrageously hot. Boiling, even, against his cheeks. And then he couldn't breathe. And he didn't care, didn't fight it. He just let the darkness take him, draw him down with merciful hands.

He woke in the fuzzy half dark of twilight. He blinked, wondering for a moment what he was doing on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. Then he rolled over and Rorschach was there, on the bottom pedestal of the coffee table, tail twitching, blinking back at him.

He stretched a hand out from under the blanket, curled it in a fist. Rorschach closed his eyes and thrust his face against it. Ben sat up warily, remembering how dizzy he'd been. But it was gone now. And he was hot under the blanket.

He rose. He folded the afghan. And then he looked around for the journal. He didn't want to read it, but he had to. He knew that. It would keep making him itch until he did.

It wasn't on the floor. He thought he remembered just dropping it there, right before he dressed and went to Quack's place. It was fuzzy, of course, because he'd been half out of his mind. He knew that now, though he couldn't see it before. But he was pretty sure he'd just dropped it and had let it fall where it would. He didn't remember picking it up, so he figured it should be on the floor between the couch and the coffee table. In fact, he should have been sleeping on it just now.

It wasn't there. Not on the floor, not on the coffee table. Not even lost in the couch as it had been the first time. Ben took it apart twice, cushions and all. No journal. He lifted the couch up on one end and looked underneath in case the journal had been forced there somehow. No journal. He even did the same thing with the coffee table. No journal. He looked at Rorschach, who was now on the armchair across the room.

"Where is it?" he asked. The cat just blinked lazily and stretched. Ben scanned the floor, wondering if it had somehow tumbled farther than he'd expected. No journal. His eyes roved the room, over the little entertainment center, the bookshelves, the few dusty knick-knacks she'd left behind. No journal.

He felt lost. Disappointed. A little angry, too, like the time they'd gone to the movies to see The Saint. Sarah had had a thing for Val Kilmer. He hadn't wanted to go, but she'd begged him. He couldn't say no to her, either, come to think of it. There was something about her that made a person want to give her everything he had. And then just as he was getting interested in the film, the theater went pitch black. No film. No lights. Nothing. Not even the emergency ones.
An old woman had passed out in her car, and the car had smashed into a transformer. The electricity was out for a square mile.

They'd been given tickets to come back and see the film again, of course, but he'd left feeling itchy and annoyed. He'd been restless and edgy for the rest of the day. He felt like that now. Only this was more important than a stupid movie. This was the journal. And he couldn't find it anywhere.

Although he knew he'd never taken it out of the living room, Ben spent the night tearing the house apart looking for it. The kitchen. Every cabinet, until he had clean cabinets and a garbage can full of mostly empty boxes and stale food. Sarah usually did it. But she wasn't here. Hadn't been. He even looked in the refrigerator. It too, ended up clean and emptier. In fact, every room ended up cleaner and emptier, until finally, he flopped on the couch again, unable to face the bedroom. There was something different about it now. Something different about those cold sheets. They'd already been cold and lonely...but now they were final. Final.

Since he hadn't drawn the drapes closed over the sheers, the sun woke him up. He stood and stretched, he went to the bathroom. He fed Rorschach. And then, exhausted, Ben sat back down on the sofa. He was tired. So damn tired. But he knew he couldn't sit still any longer. No. He needed to do something. Something he could just do and not think.

He'd spent two summers helping his uncle, who owned a construction business. He knew roofing. He'd been putting it off, but he knew roofing. So that decided it. Ben spent two hours in Home Depot thinking about felt and shingles. He spent an hour on hold for the water and sewer department to rent a garbage bin, which they wouldn't deliver until the next day. But he couldn't wait. So he just started ripping shingles off, letting them fall in a pile on his lawn that he'd have to pick up and shovel into the bin tomorrow. But he didn't care.

He stayed on that roof until he couldn't see anymore. Sweat that had raced down his body, dried, and then raced again now made him feel chilled in the soft breeze. Dusk surrounded him like a blanket. He flopped on his back on the half naked roof, staring up at the sky and hoping it wouldn't rain because he couldn't see to nail down the plastic sheeting he'd bought. Idiot. Why would he do this now, in the middle of hurricane season?

But he knew why.

When the sky had faded from silvery blue to midnight blue, Ben rose and crawled toward the ladder. And then, in a moment of spectacular klutziness, he missed it and tumbled off the roof.

It should have killed him. He'd known that in the split second when the world froze up, when he realized he'd missed the ladder, was still too far left. He'd known it then, just as he'd known there was a pile of shingles, nails and all, just below him, waiting to impale him.

But he remembered nothing else after that, and he woke, impossibly, in the middle of the lawn. He just lay there, breathing, wondering why nothing hurt. Oh, his arms ached. His shoulders protested as he rose up on one elbow. His back hurt from hunching over shingles all day. But nothing screamed in pain. There were no warm rivulets of blood trickling down. No puncture wounds. No broken bones.

Ben eased up onto the porch, waiting for something to flash in pain. But other than the good pain of a long day's work, he felt nothing. He felt his way past the screen door, found the light switch. Rorschach padded to the kitchen, meowing expectantly.

He fed the cat, fed himself. Just a sandwich and a beer. He contemplated a shower, knew he needed one. So he did. He stood under the spray until the warm water ran to cold. Then, as if awakened from a long dream, he soaped and rinsed quickly, thinking about aspirin. He threw on some boxers and a t-shirt.

Don't think. Just take the aspirin and go to bed.

He took the aspirin, but he knew it wouldn't be a good idea to go to bed with his hair wet. He wasn't afraid of getting sick. He just didn't like a damp pillow.

Ben eased down on the couch and found the remote on the coffee table. He flipped the TV on, found a baseball game. It went to commercial immediately after he eased back against the cushions. He glanced up toward the clock that sat on top of the entertainment center.

The journal. Right there. Right where he'd looked a dozen times. Standing up, the way you'd stand a greeting card.

Ben stared at it for a long time. It sat there. He half expected it to move. He stared at it for so long he fell asleep.

(to be con't.)

copyright 2006, Joanna S Kelley

Just Words (part 4)

2006-08-12T09:25:00.000-07:00

He didn't realize he'd fallen asleep until Rorschach leapt up on his chest, turned twice, and lay down right on his breast bone. The journal had, at some point, slid from his chest and was nestled between his body and the sofa cushions.

This mystery girl was still on his mind, though he didn't want to think about her. Why waste time on a dead girl? It wasn't as though they could ever meet. That bothered him more than he wanted to admit. The book intrigued him even as it let him down. He wasn't in the mood for sad reading, but he felt that itch again. Just a little bit more. Not the whole thing, if you don't want. But a little bit more.

It reminded him of Sarah, the way she got him to do things he didn't want to do. Like when he'd had pneumonia but didn't want to go to the doctor. If you won't go for you, she said, go for me. I want you to. It's all I want for Columbus Day.

That was her, always making silly jokes. Every day was a holiday. Every day there was something new to learn or discover. She was always bringing home books from the library, and they were such odd selections. He was left shaking his head at the stack on the bedside table. Wine for Dummies. What Color is Your Parachute? Beginner's Japanese. Finding Your Own North Star. There wasn't a topic left he hadn't seen perched on that wobbly old table. She never read a whole book in her life. Just enough to know a little something about absolutely everything and everything about nothing.

Ben grinned in the semi-darkness of the living room. Rorschach drowsed and purred. He debated whether to get up and open the curtains so he could flip through the journal a bit more, or stay where he was to avoid disturbing the cat. Over time, they'd become good friends, whereas before they'd been merely tolerating one another's presence. Perhaps missing Sarah had forged a bond between them.

Still, he carefully scooped up the cat and deposited him on the back of the sofa. He drew back the heavy inner curtains but left the sheers drawn. The neighbors didn't need to see him in his swimming trunks.

************************************************************************************

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that Phinaeus and I are lovers. You are mistaken. Whoever decided that a soulmate had to be a lover is an idiot. But I didn't lie. I met Phin when I was five years old, after watching my momma's belly grow bigger and bigger and feeling it come alive with movement. It still seems so strange to me that we really carry this living thing inside us...that we host the formation of a whole other human being.

It is something I really wish I could have done.

I suppose I could have, by myself. I never married. I thought there was time for that stuff...the settling down, the family. No one thinks they'll die at twenty-eight. But I always pictured myself as the older momma type. The busy type who gives birth in her late 30's. The sort that is seasoned a bit, less given to panic and uncertainty. What a joke. As if you're ever like that as a parent. I've never met one first time mother who wasn't a complete paranoid nut. God bless 'em!

Anyway, I was horrified and fascinated at the way momma's belly grew and grew. I didn't understand quite how what was inside was going to get outside, but I looked forward to my baby sister. We could play house together and dolls and Barbies! I was overflowing with the fun stuff we could do. Momma had to keep telling me I might get a brother. All I ever talked about was my sister and how we were going to be playing this game or that. All the grown ups were worried about how disappointed I would be if it went the other way.

Turns out they needn't have wasted so much anxiety. When I saw him in momma's arms, I fell instantly and irrevocably in love. I promptly told momma he was "Phinaeus", a name I could barely say...a name borrowed from a silly poem I loved called "Phinaeus Moon and his flying Baboon". Momma, apparently still worried that I was heartbroken at the loss of the sister I'd so wished for, happily named him Phinaeus Harper Moon. The Harper part was for Daddy, because that was his family's traditional name. She never really intended to use the Phinaeus part...he was supposed to be Harper, like Daddy. But once the aunts got wind of it, he became Phin or Phinny forever.

And he was mine. Momma might have stored him for a while, but he was mine.

*********************************************************************************

Oh, God.

Ben dropped the volume as the world spun crazily out of control. It couldn't be. It just couldn't.

He tried to breathe, but there was no air.

Sarah. Sarah's dad's name is Harper. Harper Coyne.

He picked up the phone, but he couldn't dial. He slammed it down, then snatched it up again. And then he slammed it down again.

He stormed down the hall to his room. When he got there, he couldn't remember why he'd gone there with such purpose just moments before. Oh, right. Jeans.

He pulled on a pair of them and a faded t-shirt that didn't smell. And then he forgot again, for a moment. Everything filled with her, made it impossible to think straight. And then he shivered. Jesus Christ, no. Not Sarah.

He arrived at the dingy little building in record time, considering he'd only been there once and didn't even know the address so much as he remembered it was behind the old Barrett grocery building that now lay silent and empty, the victim of another WalMart Supercenter. She hated WalMart. It killed small business. She'd nearly peed her pants laughing when he made her a slogan board for her birthday. WalMart. We kill small business. The i's were dotted with the famous WalMart smiley face.

"Quack!" he called before he even reached the door. And then he pounded on it so hard he could imagine the neighbors cowering in fear. There's a crazy man out there, they'd say to one another. Don't open the door!

"Dammit, Quack, open the fucking door! I know you're there!"

And then he landed on his face on Quack's carpet. Phinaeus Harper Moon's carpet.

Phinaeus Harper Moon chose to lean against the frame of the kitchen doorway, a fair distance from where Ben landed. His face was blank. No hint whatsoever for Ben, no answers to any of his questions. And so they stood facing each other, wordless, for a long, long time. Or maybe just seconds that felt like forever.

"How the Hell can you stand there like that?" he cried, waiting for Phinaeus to crack. A tear, a sob...a crumpled face. Anything. Anything at all. "Did you put that fucking book on my lawn?"

He just watched Ben carefully, with folded arms.

"She just vanishes, and you don't tell me what's she's done? Where she's gone? That she's sick? That she fucking died?!" He raged, and Sarah's soulmate ignored him.

"How far did you read?" Quack finally asked. This was the guy Ben knew. Quack. The kid that followed Sarah around like a little duck, adoring her. Quack. The musician. The soon-to-be famous Quack. The kid who hated being called Quack but couldn't lose the stupid childhood nickname. The kid who was too adoring of his big sister to tell her so.

He shrugged. "Long enough to figure out it was Sarah," he replied.

Quack smirked. "I knew it wouldn't take you long. But you need to read it all. Then come back and see me."

And he vanished into the kitchen.

Ben waited for him to reappear. He willed himself to barge in there and shove that stupid, emotionless fool against the refrigerator until his eyes rolled back in his head. Put a hand against his throat and watch him squirm until he broke. But it was too surreal, this place and this guy. This whole thing was wrong. Ben couldn't move. Maybe it was the same for Phin.

Phin.

Ben tried out the name. He'd been trying out the name since he'd come to understand that Quack was Phin and Phin was Quack. Phin. It didn't fit, and yet it did. It wasn't hard for him to change Quack to Phin. It should have been. The fact that it wasn't meant he believed it...that Sarah was dead.

And that, above all else, he did not want to believe, much less accept.

"...read it all. Then come back and see me."

Ben considered the empty kitchen doorway for a long moment. And then he simply turned and left the dingy little building. Just walked out.

He didn't look back.

****to be con't***********

copyright 2006, Joanna S Kelley

Pay Dirt!

2006-07-21T07:19:00.000-07:00

I am soooo happy to announce that I was chosen one of (10) ten 2nd place winners in the "Be the Next Downtown Press Girl" author search! YAY! Although it does not mean publication of my piece, it does mean 10 free books from Downtown Press! WHEEEEEE!

I finally feel like a real writer!

copyright 2006, Joanna S Kelley

Just Words, (part 3...I know...FINALLY)

2006-07-11T21:07:00.000-07:00

Ben closed the book after just those few pages. He felt let down. Just a weepy swan song from some dying woman. Not that it wasn't sad. Or, really, not that she didn't make a few good points. He never really thought about his own death. He tended to agree with the old Woody Allen quote: It's not that I'm afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens.

But was it for real? Or was it only supposed to seem real...like that Blair Witch movie that was hyped as a true story but was in fact, fiction posing as nonfiction? After all...who had a name like Phinaeus Harper Moon?

Ben sighed. So much for intrigue. So much for a peek inside an exciting life. He'd been hoping for something scandalous. Something that would make a person go, "OH! Jeez! Now I don't feel so bad about my life!"

Instead, the roof still needed fixing, a job still needed finding, and Rorschach still needed breakfast. So much for a few minutes of mindless escape. It was a downer, and he didn't need a downer.

Ben nearly tripped over the cat on his way to the can opener. It felt good to slam the can down on the counter, even though it made Rorschach dart under the table. Maybe he should set up the punching bag in the garage again. Maybe if he'd done it sooner, he wouldn't have lost it in the middle of a meeting over a slogan that was, as the client had said, shit. His work was shit. He couldn't write good copy to save his life. Slogans surrounded him every day. They stuck in his head, they invaded his mind at inopportune moments. They kept him awake at night the way a dripping faucet would.

Ben slammed the can facedown in the old melamine bowl he used for the sole purpose of feeding a cat that his last girlfriend left behind. She left the cat and she left him. No note, no breakup. Just one day here, the next day half the closet's empty and the medicine cabinet's completely bare. And the cat's sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor, still as a statue, his tail curled around his dainty paws. Silent, but not for long. When the cat noticed it was Ben and not Sarah that had just entered the kitchen, he began yowling piteously, sounding outraged and heartbroken all at once. And not unlike Ben himself, actually.

Ben grabbed the sad journal and flopped down on the couch. And then he just held it there, unopened, on his chest. It was cooler in the living room. The curtains were still drawn, which would have to change if he actually decided to read any more of the book. But now he was all maudlin again, even though he reminded himself that it was a pointless exercise to wonder why she left. He couldn't ask her. He'd never know.

Most people who are suddenly abandoned often wonder why. As often as not, there were no telltale signs of restlessness or dissatisfaction to forewarn the soon to be deserted. No fighting. No "what if we...". No evidence that the other party was experiencing some sort of shift. And it was true of him and Sarah. They never fought. She was unbelievably calm. Nothing ruffled her. It took a major, category 5 level problem to make her even the slightest bit irritated. And she was happy. He'd never met someone so content. It was like looking at pure sunshine. Well, maybe not like that. Looking at the sun, or trying to, really hurt your eyes. The sheer brightness was enough to blind a person.

Then again, maybe it was like looking at pure sunshine.

He dreamt of her a lot at first. He yelled and he raged. But she just stood there with that bemused smile of hers until he emptied out, and then she just shrugged and walked away. He tried to follow, to stop her, to bring her back, but it always ended the same way. She was always vanishing, as if she'd never been there in the first place.

(to be con't)
copyright 2006, Joanna S Kelley

my apologies, the sequel

2006-06-25T16:23:00.000-07:00

Gosh, I feel awful for letting you all down. You've been waiting so patiently for Just Words to resolve itself! I've been having issues logging on to blogger, and when blogger might actually be working, I am having issues in my offline life. All excuses aside, I've got a block of vacation within the next three weeks (no, not three weeks long, but coming up within the next three weeks!). That would be my ultimate deadline for the next installment of Just Words, though I hope to have the next bit up by next Saturday at the latest.

Please stay with me! I appreciate all of my readers and hate to lose a single one!

my apologies!

2006-06-16T17:41:00.000-07:00

Readers, I am sooo sorry to keep you waiting for the next installment of Just Words. I have been searching for a new job. This weekend (tomorrow, ideally!) I will upload the latest. Bless you for stopping by!

Just Words (con't)

2006-05-31T09:14:00.000-07:00

Ben continued to itch as he fried himself an egg and made a piece of toast. The soggy little book called to him. Mostly, he thought, it was the wondering. The mystery of what the book could contain was surely better than what it did contain.

In the end, he was weak. Just pulling it toward him as he pushed away his empty breakfast plate was enough to make him smile wickedly. He'd always loved pushing the envelope, even when it got him in trouble. Or, as in the case now, fired from a good job. But he wasn't going to think about that just now. He'd promised himself this one day of not scouring the internet resume sites, not going on any interviews, not putting on a dress shirt and tie. One day. And now that day seemed filled with promise. A stranger's secrets.

He closed his eyes and opened the cover, sort of like slowly opening a gift. Prolonging both the agony and the excitement. He grinned again, eyes closed, Rorschach winding around his ankles.
But finally, finally it was time to open his eyes and dive in.
***********************************************************************************

If you're reading this, I'm dead.

It was the last thing I asked Phin to do, and he's never let me down. Not once. Phinaeus Harper Moon is just the nicest man that ever lived. But he can't say no. At least not to me. Not everybody meets their soulmate when they are five years old. I was lucky.

Love is like a fairy tale...or it can be. And life knows lots of villains. Mine in particular was cancer, but you probably already guessed it was something like that. There's not much that kills a young girl and gives a warning. Phin once asked me if I would rather have gone quickly...if I minded this long, drawn out sickness and having to be constantly aware that I might be slowly dying. I told him since you really never know how things will end until they do, I guessed it didn't so much matter. Except I could do without the being so sick part. If I could just, you know, go on vacation or work on one of my projects, I'd be happier about the whole thing.

Anyway, I made Phin promise not to let the world forget me. I was, above everything else, horrified at the thought that I might just vanish into nothingness. Phin kept promising and promising that death is not the end. For most of my life, I firmly believed that, too. But when your death and the possibility of non-existence are suddenly brought closer, much closer, and you can no longer think of it as a "someday" event, terror and uncertainty set in. Maybe we don't go on. Maybe that's just it...forever.

So Phinaeus has been spending these last few days (weeks? I am not sure...all I know is that I have a sneaking suspicion that things are not working the way they should. I am not getting better as we'd all hoped...) Whoops. I got off on such a tangent I didn't know how you could possibly remember the first part of that sentence which was: So Phinaeus has been spending these last few weeks loving me fiercely and reading me story after story of "proof" that the soul survives. And when I decided I felt strong and confident about it again, I began this journal for those I leave behind. After you all read it, I told Phin, you are ordered to abandon it somewhere for all the voyeurs to enjoy.

Remember me. Please, remember me. In return, if I am out there somewhere, in some form (and since you're reading this journal, I think I will be...) I will try to make myself known to you. Not just in the book, either. For real.

It is a cold, cold world that forgets its dead. And I hate to be so cold.

(to be con't)

copyright 2006, Joanna S Kelley (pseudonym)

I have not forgotten...

2006-05-22T09:06:00.000-07:00

I know I have another installment due on the last post. I have just been rather busy and will continue to be busy this week. I expect the soonest I might post would be Memorial Day. Please stay tuned! I appreciate your patience!

Just words

2006-05-17T07:05:00.000-07:00

One moment he was lying in bed cringing with each louder crack of thunder, unable to count even a second between the brilliant flash and the boom. He remembered the way he'd race into his mother's room as a boy and leap onto her big old bed, diving straight for the crook of her arm.

She pretended it didn't scare her, but he always secretly thought she was glad for his company.

Now it was morning, bright and clear. The smell of rain clung to the air like a guest unwilling to leave. He wondered how many shingles had blown off his old roof the night before. He wasn't keen on going outside. He didn't really want to confront the truth of it scattered all over his lawn: he needed a new roof. Badly.

Still, he found himself putting the coffee on and shuffling out the door in swim trunks and a raggedy t-shirt, squinting in the harshness of the dawn. Five whole shingles and a whole lot of silty, pebbly stuff off of the shingles that remained on his house.

Yawning, he dropped his head to avoid the glare from the east and promptly noticed the soggy blue book nestled in the glistening green grass. Shit. My Journal, the front proclaimed in fake gold leaf on the warped linen-over-cardboard cover.

He gingerly lifted it from the lawn, half expecting it to disintegrate in his hands. How the hell would someone lose a thing like that?

He considered all the shocking news, quiet dreams, and naughty secrets such a book might hold. He weighed his options. Do the right thing and peek in the front cover only for a name, address, or phone number? Do the wrong thing but the most fun thing and sit down at the breakfast table with it? Or, maybe, he thought with a sneaky grin, do both?

Rorschach was pacing on the porch when he finally lumbered back toward the house. He meowed a loud complaint. Ben could feel the disdain coming off him in waves. Inside, the cat streaked past him to the kitchen, clearly hoping to hurry his master along. Or servant, anyway. Ben dropped the wet book on the kitchen table and mechanically reached for the Meow Mix.

It was an itch that he desperately wanted to scratch. Just one sentence. That's all, he promised.
Just one sentence...

(to be continued...)
copyright 2006, Joanna S Kelley (pseudonym)

To Clarify

2006-05-11T08:29:00.000-07:00

Some have commented against my last post that I need to write for myself and not be concerned with comments.

Do not mistake my motives, folks. I do write for myself 100%. However, if I had no interest in growing as a writer, that would be the end of it. I'd keep the stuff scrawled in my sprial notebooks to myself. The purpose of posting here (and lamenting when no one comments) is that I want feedback. Yes, I have a regular writer's group offline. Yes, they give me feedback.

But they know me. The purpose of leaving my work up here is for total strangers to see it. I want to see if there's a difference in the honesty level...are the members of my group treating me with kid gloves, or am I getting the honest review? So I decided to post a few things here.

Just wanted to clarify that since some of the comments I got seemed to imply I'm writing for the wrong reasons. I can see how one would draw that conclusion, but it is incorrect.

So, stop in and stay awhile. I'd like to hear your feedback, whatever that may be. Whether you think I suck or you don't, whether you've got a few suggestions on how to make my work "work", or whether you just want to laugh at what you think must be the lamest writer on the planet, I'm glad you're here.

Decidedly Unloved

2006-05-09T10:30:00.000-07:00

Is anyone even reading this stuff? Am I alone in the universe?
*sigh*

copyright 2006, Joanna S Kelley

The Walking Catastrophe, Part 6

2006-05-08T08:49:00.000-07:00

It was snowing the day Joey and Brad left Colorado forever. Andee Shane was going to watch their place until it sold, and then she was going to join them in Tucson. Joey said that was the happy ending, that Brad got the girl. The state police were still looking for Annie, but it seemed she'd met up with Deputy Aaron someplace, for he'd disappeared, too, his car parked just a bit down the road from the Hamblin house.

Once the coroner had thawed Raymond, it was determined that hypothermia was the cause of death (rather than a cover up for poisoning or some other such incident). Not even he could figure out how Raymond froze standing up. And no one could figure out how it was that he was encased in a rough block of ice, like special fruit in a cocktail glass.

Brad drove for hours, the heater hissing forcefully most of the way. It seemed the marrow of his bones would not be warmed with simple physical heat. The chilly nightmare that was his life, Joey's life, would only fade with the years. And there would always be scars. Always.

For the thousandth time, he glanced over at his sleeping brother. He'd come down with a vicious cold shortly after the murder, and whenever he was sick he slept a lot.

On the last leg of their driver, at the scenic Sunset Point rest stop, Brad stared out at the blackness. Just beyond the shadows was a mountain canyon. He could just see a bit of the drop from his place at the rail. At just after midnight, there was no crowd. There was no one to see him unwrap the glass figure from his bandana and toss it into the void. He tried to listen, wondering when it would hit the ground and if it would shatter. In his mind's eye he saw the glass explode into a million different shards, freeing the little figure trapped inside.

The slam of the pickup's driver side door woke Joey. He looked up at Brad just in time to see his brother hang the blue spotted dog from the rearview mirror by its fishing wire loop.

###
copyright 2006, Joanna S Kelley (pseudonym)

The Walking Catastrophe, Part 5

2006-05-07T20:23:00.000-07:00

Brad stared down at Joey, feeling an eerie sense of deja vu. There were new cuts and bruises on his chalky face. But he still seemed so innocent and at peace in the darkness. The house was quiet, its rooms deserted. Annie was out, no doubt spending whatever money the deputy left on his own bedside table for her. Raymond was gone, too, probably to one of his many favorite bars. Soon. I mean it, Joey. Really soon.

He'd given notice at work, and he'd sent a check off in the mail to hold an apartment in Tucscon. We're leaving next week, right on payday. I don't care if I have to work three jobs...we're going.

He was at his day job when he heard. Deputy Grey, looking strange, entered his cubicle at the title agency and asked to speak to him in private. He followed reluctantly, his heart pounding. Nausea crept up into his throat. He was sure Grey was going to tell him that Raymond finally went one punch too far. He was too afraid to meet the deputy's eyes. He didn't want to find the truth there. Instead, he looked at his feet and cleared his throat.

"We found your father's body this morning, out at the restaurant."

Brad's head snapped up. He couldn't quite bite back the sob of relief.

"It's okay," Lee Grey nodded, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. "I understand your reaction. Joey's been roughed up pretty good. We got a look at him this morning when we drove out to tell Annie. Guess you can take some comfort in the fact that it's the last beating he'll ever have to endure."

Brad just nodded, unable to speak for fear what he might say.

"The thing is, Brad, Annie wasn't at home. Joe opened the door himself and told us. It's a shame. We need to bring her in for questioning. I've already confirmed you were at work last night until midnight. Coroner puts Raymond's death at about ten o'clock."

Brad nodded. Of course. He'd been a suspect, too. And why not? Folks knew his own bruises weren't from sports like he'd always claimed. But they didn't butt in. In some ways, that was good. Joey'd have been in a foster home a long time ago if anyone had bothered to press the issue. Brad wasn't sure he could keep moving without his brother. Joey was his reason to breathe most days.

When he tuned back in to Deputy Grey's voice, Brad was startled by his next words.

"It looks like murder, all right. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I sort of figured all along that if the drinking didn't kill him soon, somebody would have to go ahead and do it. But it's the damnedest thing. We found him totally encased in ice. Like that Stallone movie where all the criminals are frozen, except he wasn't naked, and he was standing up."

copyright 2006, Joanna S Kelley (pseudonym)

The Walking Catastrophe, Part 4

2006-05-06T08:18:00.000-07:00

Things went well with the masterpiece for the next two weeks. Joey worked on finishing the model and finding homes for his completed pieces. They couldn't stay in the workshop forever, and he couldn't let Raymond see , so he couldn't take them home.

Raymond was working for once, which was good for two reasons. First, it took Raymond out of the house for long periods, allowing Joey's wounds to heal. It was easier to stay out of his way for a few hours each night than to steer clear for whole days. It also gave him precious hours to devote to his masterpiece. He couldn't even carry all of the materials himself. But since he'd never told anyone about his work with the glass, he couldn't ask for help.

Like many problems, it solved itself. He was bringing the groceries inside for Raymond, carefully watching his face and listening hard to the tones of his voice, always on the alert for a foul or tricky mood. Joey tried not to put the bags down too hard, but he was distracted and stumbled on the doorstep with the final bag. It was a lucky coincidence that it held Raymond's beloved Jack, which broke open and sent precious liquid racing across the tile floor. Raymond moaned as though it were blood needlessly shed instead of liquor wasted, and his precarious mood tipped to the wrong side.

"I can drive home in a blinding goddamn snowstorm with a couple beers in me even, and you can't get a bottle of JD in the door without breaking it! What's your problem, boy? If I didn't know better, I'd say you done it 'a purpose."

Like the doomed victim in a horror movie, Joey fought tears, backing shakily away from the hulking bear of a man in front of him. It was exactly the wrong thing to do, which in this case made it exactly the right thing. There was no help for him. Brad was at work. His mother was, too. Three miles away a bedroom door was closed and Deputy Aaron's squad car was parked in the driveway. It was an ordinary Tuesday.

Joey managed to slip past Raymond and ducked through the open doorway of the kitchen. It didn't surprise him that Raymond lumbered after him, hollering about a whuppin'. After a quick backward glance to make sure he was following, Joey grinned gleefully into the blizzard and ran on.

copyright 2006, Joanna S Kelley (pseudonym)

The Walking Catastrophe, Part 3

2006-05-02T21:47:00.000-07:00

That face. So innocent asleep. So pure. He looked like any other ten year-old boy when he was tucked under the fuzzy, dark blue blanket, breathing softly. Brad couldn't remember being little enough to sleep on the rickety lower bunk, but it had once been his. Mom and Dad had wanted another child, a brother for him. They talked about it all the time, and then it happened and he watched her belly grow huge with new life. He remembered this room and the way it looked with the bunks and a crib squeezed in together. Just as quickly as it had appeared, however, the little white bed vanished. His next memory was of the bright, hot orange everywhere he looked, and he remembered wondering at the time why the fire didn't melt the ice.

And then there was Joey. Annie Brigham's kid. The town whore's kid. Brad thought of the night ten years ago when he was not unlike Joey...small and helpless and scared half to death by his father's ranting and quick hands that smacked, slapped, and punched without warning. It was a knock on the door that stopped one such crazed beating. From behind the sofa, it sounded like his father had a new target, too. He made it to his bedroom and locked the door, but the awful yelling still reached him. There were two voices, one high and the other low and slurred.

Two days later, without a word, Brad woke up to see the white crib had miraculously reappeared. Inside there was a soft, round little body in a well worn yellow sleeper. A ragged, slim Annie Brigham stood at the stove frying eggs. For a good long while, his father was nice again, and it was this gift that forever bound him to the warm little body with the sleepy eyes and slow grin. Standing there beside the crib, Brad laughed as the five tiny fingers curled around just one of his, and he made a vow to watch over that helpless, cooing little thing. It was the same vow that kept him from loading up the old Ford pickup and hitting the highway without a backward glance. He couldn't go without Joey, and he wouldn't go before he'd saved enough to make a safe life for them.

Brad stared at his brother's face, washed in pale moonlight that had just broken through the last of the storm clouds, and promised again. I almost have enough, Joe. It'll be over soon. He won't hurt you again. I'll be a better dad that he ever was. Just hang in there a little bit longer.

He waited until he was absolutely certain that Joey wouldn't wake up before rising from the bed. After tucking the ratty old blanket closer to the bruised body beneath it, he left the chilly room. He had to know what Joey was up to in that old building. There was nothing there of any interest to anyone. It was nothing but a damp, blackened wasteland.

Brad trudged out in the snow, shining the beam of his industrial flashlight past the truck to the deserted highway. It was stingingly cold, but Brad was careful these days not to drive the old truck unnecessarily. It was, after all, their getaway truck. It had to last long enough to get them out of Colorado. After that, he'd take a bus to work if he had to. But first, they had to get far, far away. Lately he'd gotten the feeling that every mile was a precious gift with that old truck. It was dying, and he couldn't afford to speed up the process.

No one was around on this eerie blue-white night. Everything was startlingly beautiful, crystalline in the light of the full white moon. His breath was white, too, as he began to huff his way up the blacktop toward the ruins. It was a long walk, but he was neither lonely nor scared. Besides Joe, there wasn't really anyone whose company he would consider worthwhile. Maybe Andee Shane's. She might be worth a lifetime or two's attention. Brad smiled in the dark. Fear, on the other hand, was too familiar already. He didn't bother wasting it on harmless things like the dark or bugs or horror movies, much less a midnight walk down a silent, snowy road.

The looming shadow of the old restaurant made him shiver, though. He could understand why no one wanted to buy the land and redevelop. The fire ten years ago had turned it into a spooky legend, the sort of place school kids would dare one another to sleep in overnight if it weren't too far away from their homes. The townsfolk loved a good story, and their father and the town whore made a delicious bit of gossip. Everybody loved telling the story of Crazy Mary on Halloween night, even though the fire happened in February. It was the sort of thing that made a cold snake of fear slither down one's spine, and that was just what people wanted on old Hallow's Eve.

It was too easy to remember Mary Hamblin, who was very pregnant and quite distraught at having stumbled across her husband in the pantry with the town's biggest slut. Those present would never forget the look on her face as she trudged out of the little family restaurant in tears, Raymond running after, sheet white and sobbing desperately. She tried to run from him but slipped on a patch of ice, falling right on her swollen abdomen. She disappeared from the hospital in the middle of the night, right past her guilt-stricken husband as he slept fitfully in the bedside chair. Brad remembered being shaken awake and tugged out to the car beside her, his eyes burning with the need to sleep, a fat white moon much like this one chasing them as she raced over the snow.

And the next thing he knew, there was orange. Lots of roaring orange, reflecting in the car windows, the driver's seat empty, his mother, gone.

Brad, like the townsfolk, still wondered what went wrong. Word had it she only planned to burn it to the ground, escape with him, and start again someplace else. He wondered what it had been like for her, trapped inside, burning alive. Though she gave her life, she got what she wanted. Raymond was a broken man. Except for a brief relapse into hope nine months later, he remained broken ten years and ten months later.

Brad shrugged off the memories and ignored the voice in his head that wanted to compare the bizarre likeness of this night with that other: the cold, fat white moon painting the charred, gray-black cinder blocks a silvery blue. The building stood silent, a ghostly monument to revenge and despair. It was a place marker of rage and sorrow, and Brad felt the fingers of utter desolation curl around his heart and seep into the marrow of his bones.

What he encountered there surprised him. He had prepared himself for chalky black remnants, but things inside were more solid than the shapeless black powder he'd imagined all these years. There were blackened forms he could distinguish...a table here, a chair there....even the scorched, warped visage of the old jukebox. He was shocked, for the place seemed less destroyed than gutted, as though termites had eaten the wood and left a black residue over anything that could not be digested. He could see where the kitchen had been, and the bathrooms around the corner. Debris on the floor faintly resembled twisted, half-rendered tableware, and there were bits of untouched glass and wood. He realized with growing indignation that it might have been possible to salvage the place. Not now, of course. The years had done what the fire hadn't. The yawning structure was now unsalvageable, but it was painfully obvious to Brad that it hadn't always been the case.

The beam of his flashlight glanced off of something, distracting him from the rubble. On a table close to the old pass through (both strangely intact) lay a virtual carpet of broken glass. Shards of all shapes, sizes, and colors winked at him in the dim room. Some were large enough to hint at what they might have been. There was a jagged green pitcher and a green-tinted pasta jar. Brad realized it must have been broken recently, for Annie left him a plate of spaghetti in the refrigerator on Wednesday night without explanation.

With a sense of wonder he hadn't felt since he was Joey's age, Brad sat down on the rickety but still functional bar stool and examined the funny little figures that had been fashioned by genius hands. There was a celestial mosaic cemented to a white plywood backing, as professional as anything he'd ever seen in a store. The table was littered with fantastic surprises: a pair of glass dice, a mouse, a rose, a butterfly, and a jagged broken heart. His favorite, however, was a quirky white dog with cobalt blue spots and a tiny black collar strung with a fishing wire loop for hanging. It touched him like nothing else on the table. Everything else was sort of obvious: red rose, green stem, red heart, yellow and blue celestial. Normal. Wondrous because of how they were made, but still normal. But there was not a single white dog with blue spots in existence.

Brad lingered for a few more minutes, staring at an odd piece of glass. This was even more unique than the dog, but it bothered him. He couldn't claim to know everything that went on in Joey's head, but the kid had a good heart. People like them typically faced one of two futures. One could either become a strong but gentle man, or a rotten, twisted bastard like their father. Brad had long ago made his choice, and Joey would have to choose for himself one day, too. The odd sculpture seemed a good sign, a vent for the darker emotions that sprung from Joey's deepest pains and fears.

Soon he was on the road home again, still pondering what he'd seen. He'd been worried when he'd seen Joey emerge from the building, but he'd been on an errand for his boss and couldn't stop to check on him. He couldn't imagine what his brother was doing in there. He didn't even know Joey knew about the old restaurant. Brad wondered how much, if anything, his brother knew about the circumstances surrounding his birth. He pondered these things all the way back to the sagging little house that stood as the last reminder of what once had been. He considered it as he stood under the steaming hot spray of the shower, as he wolfed down a tuna sandwich in the dark kitchen, and as he climbed into bed an hour later. Sleep came over Brad before he could decide whether or not to tell Joey he'd discovered the workshop and the way he'd resurrected the broken glass.

(to be continued)

copyright 2006, Kelley J Sasser aka Joanna S Kelley

The Walking Catastrophe, Part 2

2006-04-30T16:50:00.000-07:00

In his workshop, Joey turned over the Tupperware container and watched the glass tumble out onto the old banquet table. It was certainly the largest of the tables, and the least damaged. Only a small section was burnt at all, and Joey just ignored it in favor of the other three-quarters of useable space.

He surveyed his gallery solemnly. The china cup Dalmatian with blue spots instead of black was his favorite. Then there was a rose made out of two pieces of shattered Cape Cod dinnerware...red and green. They had been a salad plate and a goblet once. The cracked cup portion of the goblet made a great flower. Beside the rose stood a craggy pasta jar cactus that closely resembled something he'd seen for sale in a Hallmark store. The only difference was that his cactus had sharper angles since all the pieces of glass weren't machine cut into uniform rectangles.

Joey pushed the clock glass to one side, unable to think of a use for it just yet. Instead, he focused on his masterpiece. For most artists, the masterpiece was a final work, the grandiose last gasp before they either died or lost the magic. Joey's was neither his first nor his last. Other, more beautiful pieces would come after...but this would definitely be his most disturbing. That's why he called it the masterpiece.

The model he was making was more of a blueprint. You couldn't build anything of such large scale without a miniature replica to use as a guide. The model itself wasn't any bigger than the rest of his works. In fact, it was smaller than the cactus. Also, a cactus wasn't dark. Cactus didn't charge the air with shock or confusion. A glass cactus--or a glass Dalmatian, for that matter--was kitsch. The masterpiece was not kitsch.

After working on the model for over an hour, Joey was tired. He slogged home through the swirling snow and biting wind. It was well past dark. But he wasn't afraid of the dark. He was less afraid of the dark than of home...of wondering if Raymond would be awake. If Raymond would know he was gone. But he didn't want Brad to worry. The last thing Joey wanted was for Brad to feel anything bad. Brad was everything...more than a brother, more than even a friend. Brad was Dad and Mom, too.

Joey was relieved when he got close enough to the house to see that there was no light on for him. There rarely was. Joey peeked around the side of the house, trying to distinguish which noises were inside as the wind howled past his ears. Brad's truck wasn't parked beside the old water heater. Joey thought about slipping through the garage window, the one with the broken latch, and waiting there until Brad came home, but it was bitterly cold and the snow was turning into a blizzard. Instead, he tried to open the door fast enough so that it didn't squeak. Sometimes that worked. It worked tonight.

Raymond was flopped on the recliner, snoring the loud, sloppy snore of the drunk. Joey crept past him as he would creep past a sleeping lion that wasn't in a cage. Soon the snoring was behind him. His body was hurting now, feeling the collision with the wall. It always happened that way. Things hurt terribly when they happened, but then the glass took him away from anything real. But it always came full circle in an hour or two, when the glass began to swim before his eyes, forcing him to stop and take notice of himself again. Once free to think of things, his mind always crept back toward fear and pain.

He kicked off his shoes and his jacket and damp clothes. It was odd. Around people, especially around Raymond, his fingers and his hands and arms and legs never did what he wanted or asked. But here in the dark, alone, he slid noiselessly from his clothes to fresh pajamas and slipped under the covers on his little twin bed without so much as a rustle.

"Joe..." He was almost asleep when a soft gasp from the doorway roused him. Brad was there, looking strange. Not surprised, Joey knew. It happened too often for either of them to be shocked by it. But he didn't look angry, either. It didn't pay to waste anger on Raymond. He would always get drunk and mean. Joey tried to figure out what was different about Brad's face. He didn't know. He closed his eyes as he felt the edge of the bed dip with his brother's weight. Joey tried to muster up the energy to ask Brad about it, but instead he fell asleep to the calming rhythm of his brother's gentle hand stroking his hair.

FLASHBACK...The Walking Catastrophe, Part 1

2006-04-26T21:33:00.000-07:00

Note: I find it fun to go back into my old writing from time to time...to see how I've grown. This is a piece I wrote back in the late 90s. I've left it in the "final draft" version that I was satisfied with back then. Not sure I can say the same today. It is neither a Chick book nor a romance. And it is long, so it will be posted in several installments.

The Walking Catastrophe

CRASH!!

Joey froze, his heart pounding. Maybe he's too drunk to notice. Maybe he won't even care. He knew it was wishful thinking. he knew becaue even as he was wishing it, he heard heavy footsteps on the stairs. Dad's gonna be mad about the clock. Joey stared down at it, a former antique mantel clock turned to junk. A few of its innards lay exposed on the cool tile floor. Bet if we had carpet in here it wouldn't have broken, he thought even as his father's rough hands seized him, drawing him backward and up off his feet.

"Boy, that better not be my clock..."

Raymond Hamblin had always been one for stating the obvious, especially when he had a quart of Jack in him. Swaying, his father nearly dropped him. But instead of a chance at escape, Joey remained fast in his father's iron grip. His hands were so huge. They were a laborer's hands. The shaking began, followed by the words. The words were always the worst part.

"You little sonofabitch," Raymond shook him forcefully with each word, "My goddamn new clock, five hunnerd fucking dollars, 1804, you useless little idiot!"

Joey crashed into the wall head and shoulder first. He didn't even feel it when he hit the floor. But he did see stars and he did hear the words...the same ones Raymond flung at him whenever he broke something.

"You're a walking catastrophe, you little bastard! What's the goddamn matter with you? Don't you have the sense God gave a horse? You touch anything else in this house, I'll beat the ever-loving shit outta you! You--"

Joey tuned out the next stream of curses and abuse. He wiped his wet cheeks with a shaky hand, and then he glanced over at the jolly red stocking on the floor. If Raymond was the type that would listen to explanations, he'd tell him that he only wanted to help put up the Christmas decorations. Just the stockings. That's all he wanted to do. Just something to remind them it was coming up. How was he to know the mantle was just a board laid across two brackets? How did he know that the board would tip when he tried to push a tack down into the top of the board to hold the stocking?

Joey carefully gathered the shards of glass that had once been the watery green face of the clock. It reminded him of the ocean. The ocean reminded him of the last time they'd pretended to be a family. San Diego. They won the trip from a supermarket drawing. Joey himself had been the one to write Raymond's name and address on the little white card and drop it in the gift-wrapped cardboard box with the slit on top. Nobody thought anything would come of it, but Raymond had grinned and ruffled his hair. He wasn't drinking then. It was his latest promise, not to drink anymore. It was AA on Thursday nights and bowling with the guys on Fridays to let off steam.

Joey stared at the chunks of glass in his hand. It was a man in San Diego that gave him the idea. It was such a waste, all that broken glass. And the man had intrigued him, crouching on the rocky shore at an outdoor shopping center, balancing rocks on other rocks. Raymond said if he hadn't been watching the guy do it, he'd have sworn it was the work of aliens. The stacks were eerie, impossible balancing acts with huge rocks on tiny rocks and rocks with really bizarre shapes. Yet the man made little pebbles hold up boulders and round rocks support flat rocks without collapsing. He'd used up all of his allowance to buy a large picture of one of the "sculptures". It was hanging in his hideout over the workbench.

He squeezed past the fallen boards and crumbled stone into his hideout. It used to be a restaurant, before the fire. Joey was too little to ever have eaten there. He was only ten, and the fire ahd been about that many years ago. It had been the most popular place in town. He'd read that in an old newspaper once. Maybe that was why no one tore down the ghostly remains. Or maybe no one thought it posed a danger there in the outskirts of town, more than two miles from any residence. No one would dare enter that old place. Not with the dark history. Not with the stories about ghosts.

But they underestimated him.

Love is Funny

2006-04-23T19:54:00.000-07:00

"Ok, he's coming. Are you ready?"
She nodded. "Can you see me?"
"We're good." Pause. "He'll be hitting the button in 5...4...3...2...1."
The elevator creaked to a rickety start. Skye hurried behind the desk, where she slipped the headset on. Just as the doors opened, she spoke into the microphone,
"Yessir, can you hold for just one moment?"
A man in a suit stood dumbstruck in front of the open doors. She didn't have to wonder what he thought about an elevator receptionist. It was plain on his face that he thought she'd been raised on a daily dose of crack.
"What the hell is this?" he barked, his sharp eyes slicing through her like a dagger.
She merely blinked, steadfast in her role of airheaded secretary. "What floor, sir?"
"Eighteen. What are you doing?"
"Answering the phones," she replied cheerfully, just as she was asked to do.
To her great relief, the doors opened again to reveal Don Lauer of Lauer, Larkin, and Cates. Apparently, Mr. Lauer was not just an investment capitalist but a practical joker, as well. The sharp-eyed stranger flashed a grin that looked more like a wince as Don Lauer laughed his pudgy butt off.
"Hardesty, lighten up. It's funny," Mr. Lauer said as he stepped off on floor fifteen moments later. As the door closed, some other executives met up with Lauer and his last words echoed in the cab. "Did you see his face? Priceless!"
Unfortunately, Hardesty clearly did not share his colleagues sense of humor. "If you're not cleared out of here in fifteen minutes, I'll have security assist you out of the building."
"Lighten up, Mr. Hardesty," she grinned. "Your boss is a funny guy. It's a shame you don't share his sense of humor."
"Just get out of the building, lady. And mind your own business."
She had no fear of him. He wasn't the one who'd hired her. She'd already been paid for the joke, and the skit had been captured on camera for the firm's anniversary party. Mr. Powertrip could just bluster all he wanted.
Still, she thought as she drove back to her home and the office above her garage, could he have been a bigger jerk? And why did his sour demeanor bother her? She didn't know him from Adam. She stomped up the stairs, still thinking of things she could have said to him. When she opened the door to see her two part timers already at work, she fumed,
"I really hate this job. I should just give up and be a teacher like my mother says."
Ron smirked at her and handed her a doughnut. "No, you shouldn't. You'd want to kill someone after a week. Besides, how many people can say they make a living making people laugh?"
He had a point. Out of the Skye was a unique opportunity for her natural optimism and cheer to shine through. Whether she was filling someone's front yard with garden gnomes or their work cubicle with styrofoam peanuts, one thing was constant: laughter. It was rare to have someone explode in anger. And, after all, most of the employees of Lauer, Larkin, and Cates had been amused by the stunt. Many played along and asked for their messages or mail. One man asked for a cup of coffee, two sugars. Some were puzzled by the offbeat stunt, and a few didn't understand why it was particularly funny, but none except Hardesty had taken it poorly.
"Hey, boss!"
Skye snapped to attention in time to see Ron Engle grinning at her in amusement, his skinny arms folded across his skinnier chest. The man looked like one of Tim Burton's animated heroes, but he was always up for a laugh.
"What's the big deal, boss? Gag's over. You'll never have to see him again."
Leave it to Ron to know exactly why she was angry. He'd been the camera man for this particular project, so he'd seen everything. Jill, the other part-timer, also teased her.
"Shame, huh? He was cute..."
Now it was Skye's turn to smirk. "He was handsome. But you can ruin handsome when you open your mouth."
Ron and Jill just watched her for a few moments, and then they broke into song. "Skye and Matt sittin' in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G...First--"
"Hush!" she laughed, flopping down in her desk chair. She was just about to check her e-mail when they started up again.
"First comes love, then comes--"
"--Then comes the unemployment line if y'all don't shut up and get to work!" She teased. But they stopped. They could tell when their boss meant business. "But he really was handsome. I wouldn't mind a nice, healthy tumble with him."
Not five seconds later, Matt Hardesty walked into her tiny office. But instead of the slice-and-dice look, this time he just looked sheepish.
"Ms. Norton," he said, shuffling awkwardly, "I wanted to apologize. I'm--" He sighed, rubbing the little furrow of skin between the most gorgeous brown eyes she'd ever seen. "Well, would 'just kill me now' sum up the sort of day I've been having?"
When she remained silent, he tried again. "It's just that Don's always had this...this frat boy sense of humor, and--"
"And you've always been without one?" Skye finished coolly, not quite ready to forgive him. He was too cute when he grovelled.
He blew out a breath. She'd deflated him, which had been precisely the goal.
"Do you have any in stock?" He asked. "I had one, but it broke."
She tried to keep her mouth from twitching as she registered the words spoken in his flat, all-business voice. His lips slowly tugged upward into a delicious smile that she felt in her toes.
"What size?" she asked, folding her arms across her chest.
"What sizes are there?" he countered.
"Well, we have the 'self-deprecating,' the 'eating crow,' and the 'can't you ever be serious?' package on sale today. You can also buy them separately, but you'd overpay."
"How much for the package deal?" he asked. "Would dinner and a movie cover it?"
"Well," she considered, biting her lip, "the movie would have to be a chick-flick. Your sense of humor needs a good stretch in order to operate properly."
"If that's what has to be done," he shrugged, a twinkle lighting up those previously stormy eyes.
They both stood there, grinning like fools, oblivious to her co-workers, until Ron offered Matt some coffee.
"When should I pick you up, Ms. Norton?"
"Skye. Say, seven-ish?"
He nodded gravely, all business again. "Any special tools to install it?"
Or not. She laughed. "No. But a good glass of wine will lubricate any rusty joints."
"Good. See you later, then."
She turned to Ron and Jill with a giddy smile. Jill, the most devoted to marrying her off, was smiling ear to ear.
"What was it your were saying? Something about a tumble with him?"
She just smiled. Stranger things had happened. Sometimes love began just like that. Out of the sky.

copyright 2006, Joanna S Kelley (pseudonym)

Bathrooms

2006-04-23T09:30:00.000-07:00

Why is a bathroom so important? I mean, aside from the obvious reason. Since when did it become a mirror of my financial life?

I've been devouring Home & Garden magazine since I was young. The rooms that speak volumes from this angle or that. When you look at someone's rooms, you're unwittingly looking at someone's soul.

So why bathrooms? Does my soul cry out for water? Does it focus on the luxurious baths out of longing for a pond or the ocean? Is it because I'm a Cancer, a water sign, that I am so drawn to the romance of something wet, blue, and elemental? Is it something primitive, or is it just media driven like everything else?

Why do I picture old clawfoot tubs beside crumbling plaster walls...a vague "bathing in Italy" flavor that includes candelight and steam and white rose petals?

I earmarked a page in the Lillian Vernon catalog thta showcased a plastic coated wire rack that you put across the tub. It can hold oils and salts, a razor and shave cream, or even a book and some chocolate.

Or how about a green and black 40's bath with marching lines of tile, a pedestal sink, and a double hung window? Vintage and rich with the mood of days gone by: the tension of war, the bonds of family and love, stirrings of hope for a bright future. It was where you sat on the closed toilet seat and cried in shame, soon to be the family disgrace, already swelling beneath that perfectly pressed wool skirt and soft, cashmere twinset.

What is it, besides a romantic imagination, that calls me into a world of bubbles and heat and a long, wet leg rising into the fog, followed by the drag of a lazy razor?

I started out dreaming of sunken tubs, miniature indoor pools lined in Mexican tile, painted with bright flowers. Cold against my buttocks as I sat inside, waiting for the empty space to fill around me, envelop me in heat and steam.

Next, it became Roman tubs, the giant above-ground whirlpool tubs surrounded by tile or granite, wainscoting, bead board, or even brick. Sometimes country style, sometimes Zen...and sometimes a sort of Neo-classic Victorian.

Or perhaps all the bathroom focus is about my other bathroom dreams...disturbing dreams with institutional black stalls, dim lights, and dirty surfaces. This toilet unflushed, that toilet overflowing...each with a problem so that I can't find anywhere to relieve myself when I really have to go. I literally cannot find a clean, private pot to piss in. Sometimes the bowl is clean but the door is missing or doesn't lock or the stall is out of paper. I am so anxious and frustrated in these dreams, having to choose the lesser of the evils, because there is no walking away from it...I have to go. Perhaps it is about being forced to settle for things we do not want, things we don't feel are adequate.

So, for now, I guess I'll go on dreaming of bathrooms...the sort large enough for window seats or chaise lounges. The sort that use old dressers to hold the sink and wouldn't dream of putting just a plate of mirror on the wall. Oh, no. It has to have one of those elaborate frames around it, and little flower vases attatched to the walls on either side that will be regularly filled with fresh flowers. Luxury, I suppose, is what I'm longing for. Just luxury.

copyright 2006, Joanna S Kelley (pseudonym)

You are as you Dress

2006-04-23T00:01:00.000-07:00

I'm standing in the crowded yellow brightness of my closet, daunted by the task of deciding what should go and what should stay, unable to remove anything for fear of being left with nothing.

Taking out a pair of slacks here and a hideous mistake of a blouse there is like cutting dead leaves off a plant. The plant is better off afterward, but it is hard to see when the dried up brown seems to outnumber the healthy green.

There goes the gorgeous, never-worn dress, mostly black with large red roses and no sleeves...the one I bought for motivation, for when I'm finally slender enough and can lose myself in a romantic night with an antique black lace shawl draped across my shoulders. It is an outfit chosen to look fabulous and sexy in a heap on the floor.

I actually cry as I remove that one, finally realizing that I've been spending my life buying clothes for someday and some version of me that I hope will one day exist rather than buying for who I am right now. And even though I realize this, pulling that dress out feels like giving up on a dream.

It hurts so much that in the end, I cannot do it. I hang that dress back up, still four sizes too small. I leave it in the middle of my regular clothes, the ones that fit, so that I will see it daily and remember daily what all of my dieting and working out is for. I put it in my line of sight, right where it can whisper to me and taunt me with all its useless Spanish heat.

Some things we can let go, and some we can't. I don't mind keeping the dress a bit longer. Maybe I'll get my act together and someday fit into it. Maybe not. But for now, it fuels my fantasies, tells me that I want to be more outgoing and more mysterious both at once. And it keeps me from completely losing hope in a future I've been dreaming of since I can't remember when. And that is worth an entire closet worth of space to me.

copyright 2006, Joanna S Kelley (pseudonym)

2006-04-18T18:31:00.000-07:00

Her earliest memory of wanting more was on a hot afternoon when the impatience of walking home from school--the drudgery of getting from here to there--filled her with negatives. She was poor. She was unpopular. She didn't know what she wanted to be when she grew up.

She decided to work on poor. She repeated to herself the much overused ideology that said you could have anything you wanted as long as you believed in it enough.

Believing, she closed her eyes, staying on the sidealk by way of intuition or perhaps by way of routine...walking the same path for all 9 months of the school year. She imagined that the sad little slump block house with the ugly curtains and the dirt yard would, when she opened her eyes, be a 3-story castle complete with turrets and a moat. Her bedroom would be all pink and purple with a flowing canopy over the bed, the closet filled with frilly dresses fit for a princess. The courtyard would be filled with adoring subjects. She'd have a different color fancy gown for every day of the week, and a different horse to gallop to school on.

Even as she desperately imagined it all, wanted it all with every fiber of her being, there was a tiny seed of doubt she pretended wasn't there. She wondered what she'd do if she opened her eyes and found it had come true.

Sure enough, the forlorn house came into view around the bend in the road. As she slipped her hand into the mailbox she wondered if the reason it hadn't come true was because she truly didn't believe it would. If that was it...if that was really it, she'd never have money or beauty or power. She wouldn't have them because, secretly, she didn't believe she could.

That's when the tears came...fat, dejected, heartbroken tears. She admitted to herself then that she felt broken, defective, unable, unworthy, even unloved. Some elemental basic thing that other people had was missing . Some basic ingredient of the human spirit had been forgotten in the womb, left on a shelf somewhere in the ether. And now she had to go through life with nothing but a head full of big dreams and no way to make them come true. She was forced to go through life hoping to find someone or something that could insert the missing piece and get her working again.

copyright 2006, Joanna S Kelley (pseudonym)

Sorry, Wrong Number

2006-04-17T20:28:00.000-07:00

It was the worst day. The mother of all worst days. Worse than the day she split her chin playing double dutch in P.E. Worse than the day she went to a job interview with a big cat pee splotch on her butt and didn't notice until the interviewer, walking behind her, whispered conspiratorially,

"I think you sat in something, hon..."

Worse than the day when she was accused of shoplifting Tampax at the Piggly Wiggly because she accidentally threw them on top of her open tote-bag-turned-purse and had to spend 90 minutes and a box of Kleenex explaining that no, she just had bad aim.

She wasted no time, just kicked off her shoes, threw off her jacket, and dialed the phone. One ring. She flipped through the mail she'd been carrying in her mouth. Bill. Bill. Bill. Ooh, the new Cosmo. Bill. Three rings. She aimed the mail toward the couch, but it bounced off and hit the floor. Figured. Five ri-

"Hello?"

Not Jana. Definitely not Jana.

Her face began to burn. "Oh, I'm sorry," she stammered, glancing at the keypad as if it would tell her what she'd just dialed. Her face reddened, though the stranger on the other end of the line would never see it. "I've...I think I've got the wrong number."

"It happens," he replied breezily. She could almost see him shrug. "No problem." The voice was almost wistful. "Don't sweat the small stuff, you know?"

"I guess," she laughed a little, awkwardly, wondering why she was having a conversation with a wrong number. Never mind that his voice sounded...good. Sexy. Calm. "You'd think I could dial my own best friend without messing it up, though, wouldn't you?"

"Ah. Well, you never know. You're probably just a digit off or something. I'm 555-349-7542. I'll bet you either transposed numbers or missed one for the next."

"You're right, I did. I wanted 349-7572."

"See? No biggie."

"Nope," she agreed. "But when you've had a day as rotten as mine, the smallest things seem so much bigger than they are."

"Mmm. I hear you. I had one of those, myself. In fact, I bet my day was worse than your day."

"Oh, I wouldn't be so quick to bet on it. But listen to me, arguing with some poor guy I dialed by mistake. I'm sorry. I'm going to hang up now."

"Don't. You're not disturbing me. I have nothing better to do. Shoot. Let's see whose day was really worse."

"Oh, come on!" she laughed, blinking at the absurdity of it. "I don't even know you!"

"Even better. Total strangers never judge. They just listen. They don't know you well enough to harp on you or say they told you so."

"No, really, I feel like...like..." she paused. "I feel like an idiot, blabbering on when I don't even know you." Yet she was writing his phone number down. 555-349-7542. Doodling daisies and other happy stuff around it. Fake it 'til you make it and all that.

"I bet you dinner that my day was worse than yours."

"What? No!" she laughed again. Then she realized she was actually laughing. After all the shit shoveled on her, she was laughing.

"How about at Noni's? Who doesn't like a plateful of pasta and a good bottle of wine?" he coaxed.

"Okay. Fine. You know what? Fine. You could be an axe murderer, but could it really make my day any worse?"

Now he laughed. "I'm not an axe murderer. Do you go there a lot? Noni's, I mean?"

"Actually," she said, pulling the silk shirt out of her skirt now. "I do. I love Noni. She's just like my grandma Ada."

"I'm glad you like her. I'm her grandson. So now you know I'm not an axe murderer."

"No. No, you're not. Grandson? You mean Jack? You're Jack? Bubble face Jack?" she chuckled. Yeah, and also jeezus amighty Jack. Hot babe that Noni can't stop bragging about Jack.

"I'm going to kill that old bat," he joked. "God. She showed you the mud pie picture, didn't she?"

She exploded, unable to surpress a new wave of giggles. "My leetle fango eater!"

"Ok, so tell me about this bad day of yours," he challenged, quickly changing the subject.

"Where should I start?" she wondered. "Well, I don't know if you were affected by that lovely blackout this morning, but my alarm didn't go off, and even when I got out of my apartment, traffic was jammed up because none of the street lights were working, so I was late for a court appearance only to go bankrupt, after which my car was towed for a total electrical system failure. It's been a bad year for me, a lot of crap going on, and long story short, I've taken too many sick days and been late a lot so I got fired, too. Walking home from the subway, where, incidentally, some pervert in a raincoat was trying to rub up against me, I lost my favorite ring in a sewer grate. While I was trying to see if I could rescue it, a pigeon pooped on my head and some idiot stole my purse, which contained my last twelve dollars until payday."

"Wow. I think the contest is over. I'm not even going to try to top that."

"No," she chuckled playfully, suddenly able to laugh about it, somehow. "I told you mine. Now you have to tell me yours. I'm serious."

"Honestly," he backpedaled, "compared to-"

"Just shut up and tell me, Jack," she ordered.

"Really, I don't-"

"Shut up and tell me," she repeated firmly.

He went on to tell her that, actually, his day didn't start off all that bad. Although he did get caught in traffic, he stopped for gas and found ten dollars he'd forgotten about in the ashtray. When he paid for the gas, he bought a couple of scratch tickets and played them as the tank was filling and won two hundred dollars instantly. At work, he was nominated for a prestigious award and received several attractive job offers as a result, so-

"Whoa. You're obviously living in an alternate universe. I say I've had the day from hell, and you butt in with this flowery, too good to be true dream day!"

"You didn't let me finish," he replied pointedly.

She sighed. "Fine. Go."

"After work, I got all green lights and then there wasn't a single bill in the mail and my answering machine was so full it was all but smoking, so-"

"So spit it out. If anything bad happened to you today, you'd better fast forward to it before I hang up on you."

He was quiet for a moment. Just long enough for her to worry that she'd offended him and he'd hung up on her. "My father died today."

She closed her eyes. "You win," she said softly.

"The worst part isn't even that he died. He was really sick. Cancer. We knew it was coming," he said, his voice a little thick. "The worst part is that I didn't know him. Not any better than I know you."

"I'm sorry," she said after another longer silence. But it wasn't awkward. It wasn't strange. It was just...shock. She found herself wanting to comfort him and felt helpless, instead.

He sighed, too. And then he swore softly. "How did I take a wrong number and tell it my life story? I'm sorry. Jesus, I don't even know your name!"

"Mia," she told him. "My name is Mia."

"Nice to meet you, Mia," he said solemnly. "Or, not meet you."

She waited, unsure of what to say.

"You owe me dinner," he cracked, chuckling.

She covered her mouth with her hand, her face reddening again. Not from embarrassment, exactly. But from shame. His father was dead and her heart was doing cartwheels in her chest at the thought of buying him dinner. Of meeting him in person.

"Mia? Are you there?"

"Yes, Jack. I'm here. When can I buy you dinner?"

He sighed again. "Would tonight be too soon?"

"No. Not for me," she found herself saying eagerly. She bit her tongue just hard enough to warn it not to be so upbeat. The man's father had just died, for heaven's sake!

"So...Noni's in what? An hour?"

"That would be fine."

That would be more than fine. She looked out the window, at the waning of the day, and she smiled. This. This was a good day.

copyright 2006, Joanna S Kelley (pseudonym)

Jennifer Crusie!!!!!

2006-04-14T22:12:00.000-07:00

I am sooo excited! Jennifer Crusie has a new book out, co-authored by Bob Mayer!!!
Don't Look Down!!! I adore her books, and my only complaint is that she writes very slowly. Good things come to those who wait, I guess!

Mr. Never Again

2006-04-13T12:51:00.000-07:00

When we met, Mr. Never Again told me that he'd been married in the past. He said he wanted me to understand that he liked me, he really liked me, really enjoyed my company, thought I was just a wonderful, stand-up sort of gal. But, he said, looking directly into my eyes, he would never marry again. He'd been there. He'd done it, and it was difficult. He didn't want to go through the wringer again. Not financially, not emotionally, not at all.

So we dated. I loved that he was direct. I never held any idea that I might change him, I just enjoyed today. He was silly just when I wanted silly and solemn when I needed solemn. I couldn't have asked for anyone more perfect in my life.

My girlfriends...none of them believed me when I said I didn't care about the "never again" stuff. Surely, they said, someday, you'll want to wear the white dress and have the roses and the beautiful day. I, too blissful to allow them to ruin my vibe, told them weddings were just a self-centered "me! me! me!" day for the bride, anyhow, and that only the bride and perhaps her mother really cared about all the pomp and circumstance. Most of them (happily married) didn't talk to me again for a few weeks.

Honestly, though, I couldn't have asked for a better man. He loved me. He loved my cooking, which is rare, considering that most of my culinary efforts involve reheating frozen foods or combining pasta with a jar of sauce. We socialized as a couple. He liked my friends, even though he picked up on their dismay over his stance on marriage. I suppose it was the comments like, "You should just let her go if you aren't going to commit to her." or, "So, Ben, what are your plans for the future?" Yeah. They weren't subtle. He didn't care. He'd just grin and say, "But I am committed to Rae. She's the only woman in my life."

I was steadfast in my okayness with the whole "never again" thing. We did everything married couples did...we bought an apartment in the village, he bought me jewelry for our important anniversaries: the day we met, the day we got the apartment, and the day my dog died (to cheer me up). We curled up in bed together and listened to the rain and told each other what we wanted from life, where we wanted to be. Typically these conversations ended with...other things. And he always told me, every single day, that he loved me.

One of my friends, whose ideas on relationships are somewhat crazy, told me out of the blue one day that I should get pregnant. Then I would know for sure if Ben would ever marry me. She just didn't understand that I didn't wonder if he would. I didn't ask myself this question. I didn't dream of changing him. I simply accepted what was.

Nobody believed it, though. All of my friends and family thought I was biding my time, showing off my best self and hoping he'd marry me in the end. Somewhere, they said, deep inside, you're waiting for it. The question.

But I wasn't. I truly wasn't. No one will believe me, but I wasn't. Not then.

And that's when my dad died.

It's hard to explain to anyone just how important my father was to me. Explaining that he was the sane parent doesn't help, because no one remembered my crazy mother and her mood swings and her tantrums and her manipulations. She's an empty shell now, her mind vacant as she sits in a rest home waiting for Alzheimer's to finish the job that all of her pharmaceutical attempts could not. But she was...varied. A new person every day. Sometimes more than once a day. But he loved her. He still loves her, even though she screams and scratches and bites at him every chance she gets.

He was both parents, really. He sewed my costumes for plays and talent shows and Halloween parties. He baked cookies for the class on Valentine's day. He shopped for my prom dress with me, and he picked me up early when my date ditched me in favor of the girl most likely to blow him under the table. He taught me how to change a tire, to sew a button, to do Algebra, and he listened patiently for hours about boys, makeup, clothes, Spring Break, and just about everything else that dads usually leave up to the moms. He bought me my first bra and my first box of Tampax. And he never once complained or made a face or even joked about it.

Dad's passing was monumental for me. It was the first time I ever did anything that resembled something my mother would do. But I felt so terribly alone, and not even Ben, who was closer than my skin, could really understand it.

I didn't get out of bed for a week after the funeral. Ben crept in and out of the room, first worried, then highly concerned, and then near frantic as I wept silently and slept and left every bowl, dish, and plate full.

What I did lying there was think. I thought and thought and thought. Mostly I wondered if there was a life after death and if my father was still out there somewhere, watching me. It was the thing that finally got me on my feet, in fact. I couldn't stand the thought of disappointing him...a man who stood by a crazy wife and then a sick wife and loved her every bit as much as he had on the day they married.

And that was when it hit me. What a coward I was. I mean, I loved Ben with all my heart. No doubt. But I had settled for him...for as much as he could give and nothing more. I'd turned away all thoughts of marriage and children because they were not part of my lover's plan. But did I want them? Did I really want them?

Oh, shit. Yes. Yes, damnit! I did. Damnit, but I did. I wanted them so much so suddenly that it shocked me. And I could think of nothing else but to tell Ben the truth immediately. No sense drawing things out.

So the next time he came to our room, he was no doubt surprised when I wasn't in the bed and the water was running in the shower. When I came out, my hair in a towel and a robe wrapped around me, the sheets were freshly changed and there was a mug of soup and some crackers on the bedside table. I was just finishing when he entered and silently came to sit beside me.

"Ben, I've ruined everything," I said tearfully, setting aside the mug and the plate.

He waited, clearly puzzled.

"My Dad..." I started, trailing off when I realized I didn't know how to begin. "I-something about him makes me realize I want to get married and have kids. And I know that isn't what you want, but I love you. So, I've ruined everything because now you know I want something that you don't and now we'll never be the same because even if I stay you're going to know I've got this unfulfilled dream, and if you stay I'll know you're doing something you don't want to do...you never wanted to do. So, it's ruined," I repeated, wiping my eyes for about the billionth time.

He didn't say anything for a long time, and then he just put an arm around me and we sat there silently as before. At first I was tense, waiting for him to say his goodbyes. Waiting for him to start divvying up the furniture and the DVDs. When I didn't think I could stand it any longer, he tipped my face toward his and gave me a long, sweet, lingering kiss. My heart sank a little as I wondered if that was a goodbye kiss. One for the road.

"Rae, when we started dating I was only a year out of what had to be the nastiest divorce in the history of divorce. The only good thing about it was that Lisa and I didn't have any kids." He sighed. "When I met you, I meant what I said. I didn't want marriage and I didn't want kids. The trouble is, I didn't really know Rae McCallister back then. I knew a pretty girl, and I knew I liked a pretty girl, and I knew I wanted to sleep with a pretty girl."

I laughed and poked him in the ribs with my elbow. He chuckled in response but got very serious again very quickly.

"But as I got to know Rae, I realized Rae was different. She liked pretty things but she didn't think I owed them to her, so it made me like buying pretty things for a pretty girl again. She insisted on paying for about half of our dates, she was almost never late, she treated everyone she met to the most gorgeous smile I've ever seen, and she always tried not to take her bad moods out on other people. I'd never had anything like that in my life before, but I wanted more. And I've been taking it and taking it for the last four years. I never offered more because Rae didn't ask for more. But now you have. And I never knew how I'd react to that if it ever happened, so I never brought it up. A chicken shit, I guess you'd say."

Ben pulled away from me then, removing his arm from around my shoulders, and he crawled to a spot on the bed directly across from me. My heart skipped a little as he took my hands in both of his. "Rae McCallister, forget everything I said about my position on marriage and children. I don't think I could ever be any happier than I've been these last four years. I want to keep that. I want you and anyone else that might come along with you. So even though we know I've said I'd never ask you, would you be my wife?"

Mr. Never Again married me on April 21, 2005, in a very small ceremony on the beach at his parents' summer home. We were barefoot. He wore dress slacks and a nice shirt and I wore a sundress. He gave me a frighteningly large diamond because he wanted to, and then he had it made into a pendant when I hesitatingly told him I'd prefer more of a pebble on my finger than a boulder. I spent a week unnecessarily pounding it into his head that I loved how lavish he wanted to be with me, and that I loved the original stone. I wasn't rejecting him, I said. I didn't want him to be hurt that I wanted a smaller stone. He just smiled and kissed me deeply and said again that I was only being the Rae he fell in love with.

I did, however, allow him to exert some extravegance on our home. We spend most of our time there, I reasoned, so it only made sense that it would have all the bells and whistles that our ordinary lifestyles did not. We moved out of the city, both of us agreeing that Manhattan was no place to raise a child. That and Ben got a better job elsewhere.

Currently, Mr. Never Again is trying to convince Mrs. Cold Feet to go ahead and try to make a baby. He says he loves the creation part, plus it seems that it was a package deal. Marriage and children, he says. You told me you wanted both. And I did. I do. It's just that after he proposed, not only did I have to plan a wedding, but I had to eat humble pie to all my friends for my holier-than-thou behavior. To this day none of them believe I didn't carefully plan the whole thing.
My crazy girlfriend, the one who'd told me I should get pregnant, is now telling me that I should open a secret bank account and start making as many small deposits to it as possible, just in case he should ever leave me for someone else. I can only imagine the uproar I'll face if I have to tell everyone I'm expecting.

Truth be known, I may not have to worry about it much longer. I'm two weeks late, dizzy as hell, and I feel like vomiting most of the time. I'm just not sure quite how to tell Mr. Never Again.

copyright 2006, Joanna S Kelley (pseudonym)

Longing

2006-04-11T22:37:00.000-07:00

The days had been dragging, one lonely hour after another. The endless minutes felt like the nagging of a leaky faucet, yet when he let himself out of the house, he discovered that night had fallen. Night. Darkness. Relief.

She loved the night, loved its mystery. Where he found only sticky heat and annoying bugs, she relished the sound of cicadas in the stilted air. She'd ease up, sliding against him in something soft and shiny. Maybe rub her lips against his damp neck.

"Come to bed now," she'd invite, her words like a finger tracing the small of his back.

He missed her.

Sure, she was still in the house. Her apron flung over a barstool, her glasses perched just at the edge of the coffee table. The smell of freesia lotion on the sheets. But she wasn't there. Not for an eternity.

His throat grew tight. He blinked at the sting of his eyes. Just as it became overwhelming, he fled back into the house, away from the moonlit water that she so loved to swim naked in.

"Hello?" he breathed into the phone, desperate for distraction.

"Hi, baby. Miss me?"

He closed his eyes at the sound of her throaty laugh. "God, yes. When will that damned conference be over?"

copyright 2006, Joanna S Kelley (pseudonym)

Seeking inspiration....

2006-04-10T07:30:00.000-07:00

Today, I am without ideas. So, whenever I am stuck, I always visit Blogthings in hopes it will jumpstart my imagination.

Today's offering?

The Movie Of Your Life Is An Indie Flick

You do things your own way - and it's made for colorful times.
Your life hasn't turned out how anyone expected, thank goodness!

Your best movie matches: Clerks, Garden State, Napoleon Dynamite

If Your Life Was a Movie, What Genre Would It Be?

Hmm. Not much different than I would've guessed...especially with the way I can't seem to stick to any one genre lately. I don't know why that bothers me. I usually hate being pigeonholed.

Maybe my muse will wake up later.

Ella Jane

2006-04-09T19:14:00.000-07:00

I never really planned to attend my 10 year high school reunion. It just sort of happened. I had torn open the invitation and was instantly transported back to the most miserable, angry time of my life, a place that made me want to damage and destroy.

If you want to know the truth, it is really Lynn's fault. She agreed to cater the reunion, but at the last minute went into premature labor and had to quickly scribble directions on a few index cards for me. The food, she said, was mostly prepped. All I had to do was cook the hams, cut them with her professional deli slicer, roll the slices, and put them in storage containers for the next day. Her partner would then take over preparing the actual trays and finishing the catering job. Just an hour and a half each in a 400 degree oven, and ta-da!

I was rather proud of myself for helping, actually, given my history with cooking. Lumpy eggshell pancakes for Mother's day, too rare steaks and lumpy mashed potatoes for Father's day...I was a nightmare with food. So to have cooked the ham with no issues was nothing short of a miracle for me.

The day of the reunion, I strolled into the still awful high school gym. Some genius on the planning committee decided to spend all the event money on the food, music, decorations, and these admittedly cool, swanky gift bags with iPods and gift cards in them instead of booking a hotel ballroom somewhere. I had a bit more bounce in my step, still praising myself for saving the day. Little did these people know that without me, there would have been no ham. I was still basking in the glow of my good deed when Butch Brannek stumbled up to me, laughing, breathing thick fumes of something rippled.

"Hey, it's Fatty LeFever!"

I wanted to show him my newest karate move, but then he turned away and I saw the bald spot that covered the back of his head like a Yarmulke and bit back a laugh, instead. So much for the handsome former captain of the football team.

If it wasn't for Bob Richards, I wouldn't even be at the reunion. Lynn's catering issue did not actually require me to attend, and I hadn't planned on going until Tuesday's meeting when Bob burst in and blurted,

"I've got the perfect idea for the June issue. Why don't we send someone, one of the journalists, to their high school reunion?"

Mary Kennedy, our Editor-in-Chief, jumped on it, and by the time the whole room realized I was the only one that graduated in '96, it was too late for me to take back my answer. And just like that, the wheels were set in motion.

Ricardo and Elyse (our makeover team) nearly cried like babies when I schlepped in at 5 a.m. looking more like a judge in the big black smock than a candidate for any sort of improvement project.

"Ella, where did you get these huge pores?" Ricardo lamented, tossing Elyse a jar of what looked like spackle.

"From the same diety that forgot to give you a sense of tact," I retorted.

"Yeah, Ric," Elyse elbowed him. "I mean, Christ, she can't help it she's not a supermodel!"

"Have you seen her eat?" he fired back, apparently forgetting I was in the room.

I don't know what it is, but 90% of the American public is lacking that part of the brain that controls thinking before they speak. I can't imagine walking up to someone and saying the types of things that people have said to me over the years...but who am I? If I weren't a size sixteen, I'd be invisible!

That is how I ended up in Janitor McGee's supply closet/office, muttering darkly into my tape recorder about the continued lack of maturity from my fellow classmates. The cheerleaders had their usual fine film of bubbly kindness and cheer stretched over their still-flawless faces. They didn't know I could see past the disguise down to the smug superiority. Still a chub, they were thinking as I walked away to mingle after exchanging the usual pleasantries with them: No, I'm still single. No, no kids. No, I've got an apartment downtown close to work. Oh. Married, huh? Wow. Six years. That's great. Oh, yeah, they're so cute. Five and three, you say? Adorable. You're in an apartment, too? Oh. Only till the house on Martha's Vineyard is finished. Well, that's great. Sounds like your life is exactly the dream you wanted it to be.

Yargh.

In thirty minutes my former classmates managed to undo all the healing I'd done since high school. Gone was my sense of pride over having graduated summa cum laude from Bryn Mawr. My job, for which I am startlingly well compensated, suddenly makes me want to ask, "Paper, or plastic?" And never mind about my dingy little apartment. Suddenly, I am self-conscious in what I thought was a sexy black dress. Sexy? How can I be sexy with that rounded tummy and those fleshy thighs?

I was just settling into old McGee's closet for a nice cry before sneaking out and catching the train back to the city when Aaron Engle, prince of the class of '96, walked in. My mouth was instantly agape.

"I thought I saw you come in here," he said, studying me with that same intensity he had in high school. You didn't want him looking at you like that when you were seventeen. You were terrified what he might find. What he might conclude. What he might say to his friends about you.

I didn't bother to pretend I wasn't crying, and he didn't pretend not to notice. I was still Fatty LeFever, at least as far as the class of '96 was concerned. Cow of Camden High. So much for hoping people had grown up by now.

"What's this all about?" he finally asked, still watching me as he tested the strength of the carton beside mine. Deciding it would hold his large frame, he slid up beside me. Then he did the damnedest thing. He reached up and knuckled my tears away like some romantic film hero. I could almost hear sweet music in the background.

"It's nothing. I'm fine," I replied automatically, stopping my recorder, hoping he wouldn't hear the faint click.

"The big expose not going well?"

So, he knew.

I laughed. "Expose? Hardly. Just a three column article about returning to my roots and proving that not only can't you go home again, but you didn't really want to, anyway."

Aaron laughed, but when I didn't laugh with him, he grew quickly sober. "Turn it back on. I want to go on record."

He waited until he saw that the tiny reels started their slow spin, and then he looked straight into my eyes again. "Well, Ella, I bet you're wondering what old Aaron the Asshole is doing in here with you, right?"

"Sort of..." I admitted, tucking one knee to my chest before remembering the not-so-long dress I wore. But by then it would draw more attention to put my leg down than to leave it where it was, so I simply wrapped my arms around it and tucked my heel closer to hide anything he might see.

"I was hoping you'd come tonight, actually," he began. "I wasn't sure you would. I mean, people were pretty mean back then. I was pretty mean." He stopped to laugh again. "Ok, really mean. I was a rotten bastard. I wanted to apologize to you tonight. In fact, you're the only reason I came to this stupid thing. If I could've known then what I know now..."

When he said nothing for a few seconds, I looked down at my knee and asked, "Like?"

"Well, remember Gina Hart?"

"Five foot eight, size four, cheerleader...yeah. I remember." I did remember. Skinny little bitch that mooed at me every chance she got. Not original, but still painful.

"I was engaged to her for two years. And then one day I came home and she was fucking my brother on our new couch."

"Ouch," I said simply. What would that be like? I mean, did he really love her? Was he devastated? It never really seemed like true love when two beautiful people got together. It seemed more like the fulfillment of an unspoken expectation. I mean, everyone wonders and whispers when a person hooks up with someone that doesn't seem to match the right demographic, don't they? You can feel it. It's like a palpable doubt and amazement that just floats around in the air.

He smiled wistfully in the dark beside me. "Yeah. After that, I wanted to just get away from anyone who reminded me of Gina. I met a girl named Lucy Green. Actually, when I met her, I thought she was you. She was walking ahead of me on campus at NYU, wearing the same lime green dress that you wore for the interview when Rodney Grant was killed."

"You saw that?" By that I mean my brief stint in television news. It was decided after only three months that I was too fat and that I wasn't going to lose the weight they wanted. So, poof. No more TV news.

"Yeah. Rodney was a good guy. He worked for me for six months." Aaron sighed a little. "Anyway, I thought Lucy was you, and you'd been on my mind. I'd been going through this weird self-hatred phase. All of a sudden I just started questioning who I was and what I was and what I believed. Pretty soon I was babbling it all to this Lucy Green still thinking it was you, and I only found out later that she was just humoring me, desperately trying not to offend a guy that she thought she might really have known and just forgotten about. And just as I was about to ask her out on a date, this guy came up behind her and started kissing her neck. 'Hey, I'm Rob,' he says. 'Luce, are you trading me in for a new model?'"

I laughed with him, enjoying his wistful smile for the few seconds before it faded again.

"And then she said no and broke my heart," he joked. But then he smiled wistfully again and I saw he'd really felt something for her, this girl who looked like me. This girl he thought he'd found again. "It wasn't really Lucy I wanted, though. It was you."

I didn't want there to be, but there was a huge, awkward pause. I mean, what do you say to that? We haven't seen even a glimpse of each other since high school, but he was half in love with a girl he thought might be me? How is that possible?

I sometimes speak out loud when I think I am only thinking. This was one of those times. Aaron sighed in response.

"I knew it all along, Ella. Don't you get it? I've been in love with you since high school. I think it started when you did that news story freshman year about the hazing that went on in the locker rooms after football games. You just walked right in on us, naked as nothing, and you didn't even blink. Not even when Principal Ryan threatened to expell you. I knew you had guts. And when you organized that pet adoption day, I knew you had heart. And I still have Ella Jane. She's getting old, but I don't know what I'd do without her."

I didn't know whether to be wildly flattered or utterly insulted. I remembered what jerks like Brannek had to say about Ella Jane. I'd cried myself to sleep for a week over it.

"Yeah. I really admired you back then. Still do. I've got everything you've ever written. " He chuckled. "Jesus. Now you're gonna think I'm some kind of stalker."

Somehow, I couldn't see him that way, even though it was certainly odd that he'd been (apparently) pining away for me for so long.

"I was an idiot, though," he continued. "I cared too much what people would think. When my buddies found out about Ella Jane, they were pretty much merciless with the razzing. Instead of telling them to fuck off, I got embarassed and I told them the reason I named her Ella Jane was because you were such a dog. But I didn't really mean that. I sweated it all through high school. I was sure someone was gonna tell you about my dog, Ella, and why I named her after you. So I never tried. I could never just say the hell with it, I like her, and ask you out. I was a jackass."

"I knew. About Ella Jane." I said softly, talking into my knee. I was suddenly afraid to look at Aaron, because I knew he was still intent on me. This was too weird. Did someone put him up to it? I wondered suddenly. Make the fat girl think he'd been irrevocably in love with the memory of a frumpy writer all this time? If I left the comfort of McGee's closet, would a flash bulb go off, capturing the stars in my eyes for all eternity?

"What really did me in was the story you wrote about the guy and his brother in Desert Storm. James was in that war. I was crazy worried about him all the time."

"And then he came home and ruined everything," I finished. "How are things between you now?"

He didn't speak for a long time. "Tough," he finally said. "I'm okay about Gina, I think. She was just young and stupid. We both were. She told me later that she was scared to get married. Deep down she thought she'd done it so I'd call things off. He's not seeing her anymore. He told me it was just that one time, you know, but how do you believe that? I mean, that's what Gina said, too, but how do you really know once someone messes with your head like that?" We fell into silence again, but it was easier this time. Friendlier. Less startled. Less suspicious. I fought the overwhelming deisre to take his hand. To console him.

"The thing is, we don't really talk anymore."

"That's hard," I agreed. "You guys were always so close."

"Yeah. Once."

After another long, easy silence, I stood up abruptly. "Well, Aaron, I don't expect you to stay in the closet with me all night. And I don't expect to stay much longer at this hideous reunion. I think I'm going to take my goody bag and see if I can catch the train uptown. But thank you for the apology. I accept."

"I wasn't planning to stick around either," he said, his eyes meeting mine. They didn't seem so harsh anymore...so judgmental. Now I just saw...warmth. Humor. Desire.

Whoa.

That's the precise moment that his lips met mine. Aaron Engle! Kissing me. Ella, Cow of Camden High! Ella, whose knees have given way. Ella, whose size sixteen body is filling up Aaron's curious, approving hands. Ella, whose voice is going all throaty. Ella, who is hearing Aaron's voice in her ear...

"Hey, Ella Jane, you wanna get out of here? Go on a date with me? Maybe dinner and then a walk with the other Ella Jane? I'm just across from Central Park..."

Copyright 2006, Joanna S Kelley (pseudonym)

The Day I Disappeared....

2006-04-07T12:25:00.000-07:00

The day I disappeared, I was wondering if I could convince my mother to let me join the Ice Warriors, a local junior hockey league. It's funny the things you think are important. The only thing in my head was convincing her that I wasn't too little, I wouldn't get hurt, and I wouldn't lose any teeth. As if I had control over those things. Or anything else.

The sky was graying fast. It would rain before I even made it to school. I wonder, though, if I would have made it there before the downpour. I don't know because just as I was considering it, playing with the idea of breaking into a run, someone grabbed me from behind.

I thought it was one of my friends. But none of them was strong enough to lift me off my feet. And I smelled peanut butter and some sort of alcohol. It smelled a little like rubbing alcohol but sweeter and not as clean.

I won't tell you what happened next. It choked me. Repulsed me. Scared me. You can guess. You'll probably be right. There's no point in going over it again because it can't be undone, and those sort of things don't serve any purpose. That's what Dad tells me. But I think he just doesn't want to hear it. His eyes are wet whenever he says that to me. But he never cries.

I don't really remember the afterwards part, to be honest. I remember being really cold and sleeping a lot. I remember bright and cheerful things and my mother's put-on happy voice quavering in my ear. And then one day I just woke up in a room that looked like any kid's room, except it wasn't mine. And that's when I looked over at my mother and asked, "When can I go home?"

Home was odd. It was exactly the same. My bed was made but wrinkled, because I am not very good at making my bed. Dad tries to show me, again and again, how to make a bed military style. So tight you could bounce a quarter off of it, he beams, showing off his pristine work. One day after he left my room, I dropped a quarter on the bed. It didn't bounce. Not exactly. But it made a pleasant thud, whereas when I make the bed, I don't really hear anything.

Nothing had changed and everything had changed. People spoke gently to me for a long time. I had to talk to this man downtown for a while. He told me a story about himself. It had happened to him, too, once. And he decided he'd spend his life helping other people like himself (and me). I thought about that for a while. In the end I decided to wait until I was older to decide stuff like that. Because right now it is hard to get excited about anything.

I still play hockey. Mom let me join the team without even the smallest argument, which I would've thought was cool. But when people lose themselves to these sorts of things, when they can't be who they are anymore...that just sucks. More than anything, I just want my people back the way they were. But I can't be the way I was. Still, every night as I drift off to sleep, I wish that we could all just give up one day of our lives. One day. But I guess that wouldn't work because there would still be the other days that followed that one day, and then those days wouldn't make any sense without the first one. Without the day I disappeared.

Copyright 2006, Joanna S Kelley (pseudonym)

Thursday 13

2006-04-06T08:07:00.000-07:00

13 Best Books I've Ever Read (in no particular order)

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton (ok, this one really is in order!)
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz
Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts
Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
Tales of a Drama Queen by Lee Nichols
Ramona Quimby, Age 8 by Judy Blume (I didn't start reading at 32!)
The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach
Boy's Life by Robert McCammon
Sea Swept by Nora Roberts
Rising Tides by Nora Roberts
Inner Harbor by Nora Roberts

Off topic?

2006-04-05T08:02:00.000-07:00

Guess my posts lately haven't really fit the "Chick Books & Dimestore Romance" theme. But what writer can ever really be pigeon-holed?

Followers

2006-04-05T07:51:00.000-07:00

It started with Dean Koontz, Odd Thomas, and the bodachs . The bodachs creeped him out. Few books affected him the way Odd Thomas did. The darkness. The prickly sense of something hideous just around the corner.

The bodachs.
The bodachs are coming.

It was not unlike the hags, really. Woebegone, dreadfully old hags that would wail outside in the inky night, foretelling of death.

The Grim Reaper. The Angel of Death. The Deathwatch Beetle. Every culture claimed a pre-cognitive entity.

And suddenly, frighteningly, there was the raven. "Quoth the raven, 'Nevermore'," he thought grimly. Creepy bastard, that Poe.

Poe.

He started calling it Poe. He tried not to think about the way they seemed to have an ever-present awareness of each other. Secretly, in a place he did not even admit to himself, he hoped naming the ubiquitous raven would neutralize the slick, sick thing that waited. After all...there never was a thing of darkness that did not herald yet more sinister darkness.

Poe was in the sleeping winter tree when he left in the morning. And no matter which route he took, Poe found him and would swoop down from the heavens to light on a billboard or a streetlamp...always catching his eye.

Poe was everywhere. And there was nothing to do but wait.

Copyright 2006, Joanna S Kelley (pseudonym)

Black Horseshoes

2006-04-04T07:34:00.000-07:00

I have this dream. Over and over again. I'm in a bathroom...a public bathroom. It is black and white. The stalls are all black and they have those hard seats that look like horseshoes. Black horseshoes. I'm afraid of those seats. It's stupid, but I think it goes back to when I was a kid. My mother always made me go to bathrooms by myself...even when I was very little. And I was afraid.
I don't know why.
My brother, Jack, he says I'm afraid of bathrooms because my real family didn't want me and they left me in one when I was just a baby. I never told him the part about the bathroom being black and white.
My mother says he's just being mean, and she punishes him every time he says it, which is every time I say I've had the bathroom dream again. But what I've never told her is that the first time I told Jack about the dream he asked if the bathroom stalls were black with a black and white checkerboard floor and those old-fashioned white sinks that stick straight out from the wall with nothing but pipes underneath.
I said "no", but the answer is actually "yes".
I don't think I'm going to tell them my dreams anymore.

From Blogthings:

Your dreams seem to show that you're a bit disturbed...but nothing serious.
You may have a problem you're trying to work out in your sleep. Overall, you are very content in your life. Your dreams tend to reflect your insecurities. You have a very vivid imagination and a rich creative mind.
What Do Your Dreams Mean?

Today's exercise....

2006-04-03T07:54:00.000-07:00

From the blog titled Bubbles in My Head :

Creativity exercise (writing prompt 1)

Write a sentence or two using the following words. This exercise is to test your creativity and writing skills.

1. Lunge
2. Umbrella
3. Heave
4. Elephant
5. Stormy

As the stormy sky breaks open, I lunge for the safety of the umbrella-topped elephant table at my local Cafe' Afrika, pausing only to heave my own tattered umbrella into the trash.

Years ago....

2006-04-02T17:10:00.000-07:00

...I wrote this poem for a liberal arts class. I never really write poems, but I wrote this one back in the day when the "internet" (for most of us) was all "muses" and "muds" and all of that...remember those days, anyone??? And it was pretty much all text based. More like a giant chat room....

TIME

Walk, if you must
to search for youth and beauty lost
but find nothing
save the wrinkles of wisdom
and time in her capsule
fading away.

I had several online IDs at the time...but it was either Whimsy or Babble that I used for this.

It's funny when you unearth old stuff, eh?

Copyright 2006, Joanna S Kelley (pseudonym)

YAY! Validation! At Last!

2006-03-31T22:52:00.000-08:00

I was goofing around at Blogthings
and took the "What kind of Writer Should you Be?" quiz.

Apparently, I am on the right track!

You Should Be a Romance Novelist

You see the world as it should be, and this goes double for all matters of the heart.
You can find the romance in any situation, and you would make a talented romance story writer...
And while you may be a traditional romantic, you're just as likely to be drawn to quirky or dark love stories.
As long as it deals with infatuation, heartbreak, and soulmates - you could write it.

What Type of Writer Should You Be?

She

2006-03-30T09:50:00.000-08:00

She pulled her hair out. Or she tried to, anyway. But there's this thing that exists in people that makes it impossible to do certain things for too long. Like you can't hold your own breath until you pass out. And you can't keep your eyes open and sneeze. You could blow your eyeballs out if you did manage it. She read that somewhere.

Because of this, she found frustration and fury to be the most excruciating emotions. When they filled her, it was as though she were full of something vile and the release valve was too narrow to bring relief. Like holding urine for too long so that when you finally tried to go you couldn't start, despite the awful tingle and stabbing pains in your bladder. Or like having a bad case of gas and being unable to burp. Things remain stuck and they eat at you until finally you're gone.

She alternately cried and screamed and then laughed at herself. God. How do people stand being alive? she wondered. How do you withstand a billion pounds of unrelenting pressure? How do you withstand everything the media tells you is wrong with you? How do you withstand the center of your universe crumbling away, leaving you behind, alone and cold for eternity?

Copyright 2006, Joanna S Kelley (pseudonym)

This is how it starts...

2006-03-23T19:37:00.000-08:00

One night after work I dashed into my bathroom, twisted on the taps, and thrust my hands under the water. I'm not sure what exactly made me glance into the mirror, but at that moment I saw a ginormous, hairy spider sitting just under that little opening for the overflow.

Every night since I've glanced in the sink just to make sure that when my hands connect with the spray, they will be alone.

Do you suppose this is how obsessive compulsive disorder begins? Will I soon be checking not once but three times? Will I follow that with checking the toilet seat before I sit down and the bedclothes before I settle in?

I am not even particularly afraid of spiders. It's just the thought of such a sneaky attack that gets me. Like he waited in the dark, hunkering down on his eight legs, waiting to spring. The somewhat amusing ending to the story is that when I stepped back with a short scream, he seemed to jump, too, and he lost that footing and skidded straight down the slope of the sink and down the drain, never to be seen again.

His brothers and sisters, however, may be planning another similar ambush. I must be ready.

"Elizabethtown"

2006-03-21T20:10:00.000-08:00

I want to take a road trip. Think Elizabethtown. No, I don't exactly wish my father was dead. It just sometimes seems like he already is or might as well be. We are worlds apart; our relationship is best summed up as the comparison to shards of pottery glued back together: it looks solid to the naked eye but under even the lightest pressure, it collapses all over again.

It would be a wonderful thing to know that love had sent me on the journey, bittersweet though the love might be. She wasn't kidding when she told him the map was extraordinary. The thought that someone might care enough about me to send me on such a quirky errand...

To be fair, however, my enchantment with the thought of a road trip (whether solo or with a friend) is likely wrapped up in slick magazine photo spreads or in the movies with their poignant soundtracks. I know of no one who would bother to learn me well enough to send me on a road trip...let alone a journey as cool as the ones they memorialize in the travel sections of hip women's magazines.

Aside from that, there's also the matter of time, the lack of funds, and the fact that I am not a gorgeous supermodel. A true road trip, in my humble opinion, is no shorter than one week in duration...and is preferably two weeks long. The only trouble with the Elizabethtown road trip was that the poor guy had to dump ashes and run. Moreover, who has the money for such a thing? Especially now, when gas prices are so high! A room to sleep in, meals, and of course, the requisite road trip kitsch (for the photo spreads, remember?) are all quite costly in the end. And I don't look so very adorable. It would ruin the cool random photos of me at each stop along the way. Perhaps I could substitute some leggy brunette with a silly yet sexy grin. She could alternately goof off and look solemn, and people would look at her and feel wistful and wonder why they've never taken a road trip before.

*Sigh* Guess it is a good thing that experiences seldom turn out to be as magical and meaningful in real life as they are in our heads.

Copyright 2006, Joanna S Kelley (pseudonym)

Am I wrong?

2006-03-15T11:32:00.000-08:00

Am I the only person who sees fault in asking students to answer questions when they haven't been given enough information to answer them in the first place?

Am I the only person who gets completely annoyed when people try to tell me how to feel when all I want to do is let off a little steam???

Am I the only person who gets irritated when she can't figure out whether to use "that" or "who" (as in ...am I the only person who/that...?)

:)

Oy.

2006-03-13T12:03:00.000-08:00

Firstly, I don't know why I say "Oy" all the time. People ask me why I say it all the time except that's not really what they ask. What they ask is if I am Jewish. I know it is a Yiddish word....but does one have to be Jewish or Yiddish in order to utter it?

Anyway, OY is the only way I can accurately describe my day today. PMS? I hate that. I hate that it is true. I hate that it gives less educated, less saavy men a trump card to explain away all the myriad of things that make a woman angry. I hate that people wield it as a sword against all frustration, sadness, anger, and outrage. Oh. Must be PMS. Just because I feel that that is accurate TODAY does not mean I feel it accurately fits EVERY situation or every mood I get into.

Most of all, I hate feeling so "two seconds from bursting into tears" while also feeling so "God, if you don't shut up and back away from me RIGHT NOW, I'm gonna scrape your face off with my non-existent fingernails!"

I took a "B" vitamin. They really help. I'm just waiting on it to kick in.

Now I've heard it all!

2006-03-11T09:38:00.000-08:00

I can die now. Everyone has this secret list of criteria that must be met before their demise, which fate may or may not honor. But still we make them.

Well, I've officially seen it all now. Or, to be more concise, READ it all.

It appears there is a guy who is avoiding jail time (at least for now) because... he has an erection .

Yeah. You heard it right.

Little Willy won't lie down.

Apparently, doctors on staff stuck needles in would-be inmate Maurice Baumann's, uh, manhood for 90 minutes. Sort of acupuncture for the penis, I guess. But it didn't work. Five minutes later, the guy was back to full salute mode.

Oy.

So you see why I say I can die now. How comical is that? What a goofy reason for not putting someone in jail, huh? But apparently officials are worried his fellow inmates might get the wrong idea about Baumann's apparent excitement. They claim that a person with acute medical problems can stay out of jail...but would this really be acute? Perhaps...given that he'd be easy meat for fellow prisoners!

Wow. I really think I've heard it all now.

Flavor of the Day

2006-02-19T15:44:00.000-08:00

There is something odd in the mind of men when it comes to abundance of flesh. Somehow it is okay to force one's ideas and opinions on any fat person, whether friend, acquaintance, or stranger.

It has happened to me many times, these sneak attacks by the fitter denizens. Once, at my desk in geometry class, a boy I thought was cute strode up to me, exaggerating his belly, and moaned,
"I had too many blueberry pancakes for breakfast. They were so good, but now I've popped a button on my shirt!"
Having been reading a book up until that moment, I looked up at him with a puzzled frown. "And you're telling me this why?"
He shrugged. "I just thought it would make you feel better since you're bigger than I am."
Feel better about what, exactly? That you don't know when to stop eating? What has that to do with me?
keep reading.........

This latest display of uncommonly huge ignorance happened this afternoon at the grocery store. My sister and I (two admittedly large ladies) just popped in to grab a few things we'd forgotten. I was bagging bagels when the sushi clerk strolled up beside us and told us he knew a secret and that we were going about this all wrong. So we thought maybe he was going to give us the inside track on when bagels would be fresh and hot or when they'd be on sale. But no. Oh, no. He wanted to convert us to his lifestyle of low carbs and zero sugar. He actually opened his thin little mouth and started in on a physiology lesson about the human metabolism and the way the body processes refined vs. unrefined carbohydrates. As if we were asleep for the 90s and hadn't read Atkins or South Beach or Sugar Busters or any of the other "Sugar is death" tomes.

I stopped him midstream on a puff of utter disbelief and outrage. "I don't need nutritional advice from you!"
He responded by hi-tailing it out of there fast. He knew he'd stuck his foot in it. Jerk!

What, exactly, is it that drives skinny people to preach to the fat masses? What little voice inside them tells them it is okay, that we'll love it and appreciate it and maybe even be inspired to drop 50 pounds and give them all the credit? Is it a form of Martyrdom? Imagined heroism? Sheer lunacy?

I then proceeded to place the bagels into my cart, viciously annoyed that suddenly, they didn't sound so good and I didn't want them...those round little bits of contraband! Guilt slithered in as I popped a box of Twinkies in after them (and I haven't had a Twinkie in about three years!). Look what he'd done! Doesn't he understand the devastation wrought by his act of utter dumbshitness?
I heard a thousand soundbytes rush through my head. Wisdom imparted from many a Weight Watchers leader raced by...."Don't eat at people to get back at them for making you hurt or angry. Eating hurts you, not them." "If you allow everyone to walk all over you, the only person YOU will be able to walk on is yourself. So stick up for yourself, even if you are afraid of what it means to be firm with someone else." "Why are you buying more junk? Trying to give the guy more justification for his actions, even if it is all in his head?"

Yeah. I heard it all. I knew I should not buy the Twinkies. I knew the better action would be to buy the bagels and a bunch of green food to show that more of what I eat is something HE would find healthy. Something that would win his approval. Something---

Wait.

Wait just a damn second. His approval? Since when do I care? Why should I care? In the last breath I was announcing his social ineptness to the world (because, really, who would go up to someone in the supermarket and start that sort of shit if they weren't just utterly clueless about people and how they feel and what they think?) and now I am saying I want to put stuff in my cart that I don't like and won't eat? What is wrong with this picture?!

So it looks like the Flavor of the Day is bitterness about what I didn't say back to him, the words I can express here but not to him, the understanding I wish I could bring to persons like him who feel it is acceptable to give unsolicited advice to strangers in the supermarket. Boy, is it sour.

Copyright 2006, Joanna S Kelley (pseudonym)

Turn the Day

2006-01-25T21:09:00.000-08:00

Today's exercise is to "Turn the Day into Art". Hmmm. Sometimes my day feels about as much like art as the stuff "on" my circular, watery canvas. If you get my drift... Still, here goes.

It is barely one hour into my shift and I am already contemplating jamming my pen in my eye for an excuse to go home early when a call pops through my headset.
"Plutonium Card Loss Prevention, this is Jenny. How may I help you?"
It goes downhill from there. It is, apparently, Mrs. Devon Llewellyn Cartwright IV calling from the Hamptons. Clearly old money. Clearly still impressed enough with her own stature that she talks down to me. Her voice is cultured. She doesn't swear, but I would rather she did. The edgy types who use profanity are easier to laugh at and brush off as ignorant, inbred morons. Her, not so much.
After a lengthy diatribe about how terribly embarrassed she is that her card won't work at Saks, she barely lets me breathe let alone speak.
"Mrs. Cartwright," I begin, biting back a sigh, "I apologize for your--"
"Well, I'm afraid that's just not good enough this time, Jenny," she cuts in, her voice tinged with self-righteous solemnity. "That was a $5,000 charge you turned down. I pay my bill in full each month, and I don't deserve to be cut off every time I try to use my card."
I listen with half an ear and the appropriate apologetic murmurs, but really I am just fed up by her incessant whining. I flip back to my spiral notebook, where I continue my grocery list and the lengthy to do list of things planned for my next day off. Her voice tinkles along, cultured and prim in that way of stuffy rich people. The words drip like so much gaudy jewelry, tumbling through my headset. Sugar-coated poison, nothing more. The words are pleasant enough. It's the sense of entitlement that jabs.
"...so what I'd like you to do to make this up to me is credit my account for the airline miles I missed out on for that $5,000 purchase you denied."
Is that all?
I want so badly to laugh. Of course, I also wish to flip her the bird. I wish to get even with the snotty condescension she disguises with her neatly ordered, calmly spoken orders. But I settle for knowing I've got the upper hand here.
"I understand how you feel, Mrs. Cartwright," I lace my voice with synthetic sympathy. No one will ever know it's fake, dear. Our little secret. "We are unable to credit your account, however, for denials that occur during the regular course of business. Our theft detection systems are working as they should, and unfortunately that does mean there will be some false positives. Your charge was one of them. In the future, if you are denied at the store, don't hesitate to call us from the store so that we can clear up any issues like these and push your charge though so that you get the mileage you are hoping for."
She is silent for a moment, but her silence doesn't bring me any relief. I know people like her. That sense of entitlement is so overdeveloped that her next words are inevitable.
"Well, Jenny, I think I'd like to talk to your supervisor."
HA! You think talking to them will make a bit of difference? Good luck.
As always I feel a surge of unadulterated glee. Stupid, self-righteous Bring-me-the-world-on-a-platter-right-now-Why-are-you-still-standing-there bitch! HA! I wish that I could be a fly on her wall when she hears the same words from my supervisor. It sure has a way of taking the sting out of the good old peon treatment.
After just a moment's pause I nod at the computer screen. "Certainly," I reply graciously, automatically matching her calm, charming tone.
After a quick introduction, I unleash the self-centered Mrs. Cartwright on one of the many floor supervisors and reflect again on how call center life is beginning to grate on my nerves. Call after call after call of sometimes rude, often obnoxious, frequently quick to panic customers is about enough to drive anyone to early retirement. If the bosses ever heard the mocking, evil soundtrack in my head, I'd be escorted out at once. It is a wonder, in fact, that I haven't slipped up and confused the soundtrack with the "other me" who is kind and courteous and professional out loud. I leave each night marveling at the miracle that I am employed for another day.
All of this I am thinking to myself as I breeze through the activation of Mr. Yamamoto's brand new Plutonium Card. He politely answers my questions about his mother's maiden name and his address and is none the wiser. Meanwhile, I'm on autopilot. "Thank you for calling Plutonium Card..."

Copyright 2006, Joanna S Kelley (pseudonym)

Dean Koontz

2005-11-13T14:44:00.000-08:00

Man, I love this guy. He makes me want to write horror/suspense/thriller novels. Does anybody else notice the gratifying turn his books have taken from heavy gore to "gore for a cause"? :)

I love the more life affirming messages of his books. I love the wit and humor his characters exchange. I love when he draws keenly intelligent characters. Like Barty Lampion, one of the main characters of From the Corner of His Eye . Like Odd Thomas. Like the dog in Watchers. HA!

Those are my favorites. OOh, and Thomas Vanadium. There's got to be some deep reason why he named the guy after an element from the periodic table...but would it be the resistance to corrosion? (Corruption? HA) Because it improves steel? Or is it because it is everywhere? Air, food, etc? HA.

I adore the way Koontz can take a character and make him or her so real. So very human. Vulnerable geniuses. Geniuses who are not mad but who are, instead, way ahead of the rest of us in the wisdom game. His geniuses (or at least my favorite of his geniuses) love others even if they are not and never will be as intelligent. They don't belittle or show off...they just live.

One Door Away from Heaven was one of my recent favorites. By the Light of the Moon (Shep is so lovingly drawn!) is another. Just finished Life Expectancy and adored Lorrie's witty exchanges w/ Punchinello. Almost peed my pants in delight when I heard about Forever Odd though I haven't read it yet.

I adore Dean Koontz. Sometimes you read an author and you like their books and that is just so awesome. And then sometimes you read their books and you just know they'd be as fascinating and endearing in "real life". He strikes me as a great man who is changing the lives of everyone who reads his work. You carry fiction with you. It doesn't matter that it isn't "real". I've carried The Outsider's with me since I was eleven years old. It's no wonder we slow down and we die...what with all these people, all these lives, all these stories to carry! *GRIN*

Back in the Saddle

2005-11-02T08:06:00.000-08:00

Still wondering who won that contest. Still wishing it had been me. But---and this is the big but---I am wondering this while I work on new stuff.

Feels good to write again...to have the pain of rejection fade into a ghost-like memory. It is a fading that I imagine to be similar to what happens to new mothers. Otherwise, if one could not somewhat forget the pain of childbirth, how on earth would any woman ever allow herself to get pregnant again?

SIGH

2005-10-04T22:25:00.000-07:00

I entered a writing contest recently. I entered two different pieces of short fiction. I thought they were damn good, my best work. Clearly, the judges disagree.

The notification deadline has passed. My phone never rang. My mailbox has held only the usual sad array of bills and ads.

How long is too long? How many times do I climb back on the typewriter (or keyboard, anyway) and try again before I burn all the rejections and resign myself to keeping my day job?

Well, enough pity party. Every writer has a tale like mine. Tears shed. Enough frustration that if frustration could create electricity, we'd power the entire world for the entire foreseeable future. So now I must climb down from my wailing wall and decide...try, try again? Or try, try tomorrow?

Think I'm gonna sleep on that one.

More on Katrina

2005-09-24T23:39:00.000-07:00

Just when I thought I had it all decided, more stories flooded through about Katrina. So many of them are filled with love and generosity and hope, yet some are black with hate and greed.

I don't understand those out to rob the victims. Haven't they suffered enough? Must you promise to restore their demolished home to its previous glory only to make off with their up-front deposits? Must you use their names to apply for aid and then vanish, only to have them make it to the front of the aid line and get turned away because, according to records, they've already received their benefits?

Fake charities. ID fraud. Donation scams. Criminals posing as displaced Katrina victims, only to rob their hosts blind.

What else can we, as a society, endure? How much more pain and hopelessness will we suffer? Why can't someone protect these ruined, frightened, desperate people in their time of need?

Yes, it gives me fodder. I will be in writer heaven for the next several months as I try out plot lines and sketch characters and create villains. But in the end, I will be safe and dry in my home in the southwest with a roof over my head, clothes on my back, and food in my belly. But where will each of Katrina's lost be?

Katrina's Stories

2005-09-07T22:55:00.000-07:00

I am so moved by the things I have read and seen regarding the wake of Katrina. I want to write about a thousand different stories, all fiction, based on this tragic event. But which do I choose? Can I ever properly set the images in place, make them as vivid as they have been made for me by the media?

There are a million stories of loss and pain and anger, frustration and hate and hopelessness. All the sad stuff we writers draw upon to create powerful, lasting tales. But do I chose to fictionalize the views of someone who refuses to budge? Do I create an elderly man or woman with a tough-as-leather hide but a soft-as-butter heart, someone who has reached as deep inside themselves for one last shred of dignity in the face of a leveling event, only to find they will be forcibly removed from the home they fought so hard for?

Do I take a frantic mother searching for her child and chronicle the events in both their lives as they circle and bounce and push at life as they try to reconnect? Do I create a future where somehow the days and weeks turn into years until the parent child reunion is one of two strangers who have rebuilt lives without one another?

Do I take a hateful, not-such-a-very-nice-guy type of man whose empire began to crumble even before Katrina...a corporate heavy who'd been living the high life, vain and selfish, only to be financially and emotionally obliterated by Katrina. He becomes a man who has an Epiphany in the very same instant that he realizes there is nothing left to lose. Show him humbled and changed by his journey out of Hell?

I'll have to outline and plan and play with people and places and events for a long while before I can come up with something that can do the aftermath justice...the people of Louisiana, Mississippi, and coastal Alabama deserve a well-crafted, solid and above all, respectful tale. Some would argue this is wrong...to write fiction drawn from the facts, particularly if I capitalize on it with publication. But I've got to make a living like everyone else...and as slow as I write, New Orleans may be back up and running and nodding at the 10th, 20th or 25th anniversary of the devastation before I'm ever satisfied with it. About a million other "Katrina based" novels will have come out by then...

Lobotomy

2005-08-24T22:02:00.000-07:00

It didn't occur to her to question why she was so afraid of everything that was new and different, why she reacted with fear rather than wonder whenever a new experience presented itself. Survival of the fittest? Not exactly. Mostly because she wasn't fit. She was fat.

So she didn't question her fears, just lived with them like an unhappy marriage until the night she hopped up on the back of a courtesy cart at the Antelope Point Marina. Her stepmother sat next to her, facing backward for the ride to their slip.

Maybe it was the devil-may-care driving of the young kid, but she was suddenly struck with helpless terror as she watched the pavement whiz by. Shooting straight downhill, she closed her eyes and tried to calm herself with reassuring words. "This kid drives these carts day in and day out. He could probably do it blindfolded...."

She secretly feared he'd lose control and they'd go careening off the dock into the inky blackness. Meanwhile, as she opened her eyes she noticed her stepmother, Sandy, watching her with amusement and was forced to admit aloud that she hated not being able to see where they were going. It felt helpless and out of control. If she was the one driving, she'd be just fine.

"We just lost the siderails," her stepmother teased.

She winced. "Don't tell me that!"

She tried to laugh it off but her stomach clenched in terror. But even as she felt afraid, she was angry at her fear and a bit ashamed. She knew her stepmother and her father were so much braver than herself, and she wished not for the first time that she could have been raised by them. If she had been, maybe she wouldn't be this anxiety-ridden, fearful little mouse. She could be more the heroic sort---the daredevil---that she dreamed of being.

And then the racecart driver stopped abruptly in front of their slip and it was time to worry all over again...about whether she'd get seasick in spite of the Dramamine or that they'd sneer at her because she was a picky eater, or maybe she'd somehow miss the mark and fall in the water between the houseboat and the slip as her stepmother admitted to having done. She wished, not for the first time, that there was some kind of surgery they could do, some sort of brain adjustment that would remove some of the fear. Not all of it, mind you...fear obviously served a purpose. But perhaps just a little lobotomy to make her threshold for fear improve to a more acceptable range. Something that wouldn't exasperate her father or Sandy.

She sighed, closed her eyes, and stood at the edge of the dock trying to will herself to just step across the void and onto the ship, easily and effortlessly as Sandy had done until Sandy noticed and stretched out a hand to help her aboard.

An exercise in writing your environment....

2005-08-08T17:24:00.000-07:00

Clouds. That's what I see when I look up from the office window. Fat, foreboding grey clouds sulking in the distance. Seeing them there is like seeing a bully sneer. Ha ha, the clouds say. We're going to give you hope. You're going to think, as you thought yesterday (and the day before that, and the day before that) that it will finally finally be the monsoon storm you've been waiting for.

HA! Just like any other bully you'll sit there sneering and making idle threats. And then there will be nothing. No wind, no thunder, no buckets of rain. Sure, you've made good on your wimpy threats this season, but never with the violence I hope for. So, fine then. Sit up there and sneer. I'll be at the computer if you decide to bully some more. But don't expect me to panic and log off like I did the last time you taunted me. I'm on to your empty threats, clouds! Got that?!

Random flipping

2005-08-07T21:59:00.000-07:00

I randomly flipped to a page in one of many writer's exercise books today. It told me to write the opening to a western involving several ODD animals. So, after much deliberation (especially given that I am more fond of comedic westerns!) here she is:

When Drake Hackett finally drew close enough that he could make out the odd figures he'd seen from the saddle, he didn't know whether to laugh or to panic. Surely there wasn't actually a three-legged burro next to the buckshot, splintered sign that read, "Nowhere, Arizona". And even if there was, that couldn't be a silver and grey tabby cat riding on it's back! His last thought before he passed out under the withering August sun was that he might as well go ahead and die. He'd officially seen everything.

Copyright 2006, Joanna S Kelley (pseudonym)

Tongue-in-Cheek

2005-08-07T21:55:00.000-07:00

Today's exercise demands that I write a one-paragraph opener to a romance novel with the heroine meeting her hero-to-be in that very first paragraph. Also required is the use of humor...a funny meeting or incident.

Kenzie Crane considered herself either hopelessly trod upon or else a team player, depending on her mood of the moment. Today was not a good day, so by definition, she was a doormat sent by her hungry co-workers to the ever-busy Pace Brothers Deli. Standing at the counter, she watched the three Pace brothers dash from station to station filling the large order of the patron before her, who stood impatiently off to the side tapping her Prada pump on the faded linoleum floor. Twenty minutes later, Kenzie re-learned the meaning of utter mortification when, juggling her laptop and the cardboard tray which held the lunch orders of her five co-workers, a bag containing an uncut pepperoni stick fell over. The hefty hunk of spicy meat (which was to be part of her Atkins-friendly lunch) tipped off the edge of the tray. The mortifying part was that she rescued it from the fall only to find that she could not open the door, so she freed her hand by jamming the pepperoni into her mouth. And this was the precise moment that her new (and very handsome) boss arrived to help her carry the lunches next door.

Copyright 2006, Joanna S Kelley (pseudonym)

Openers...

2005-08-07T21:54:00.000-07:00

Today's exercise: Write 5 different first lines for stories.

1. If it weren't for Skippy peanut butter and Marva Blake, I might still be alive.

2. The only thing worse than watching a man dance clumsily is if the man is Pete Wellington and he promised the first dance to you.

3. Sometimes I would wake up with a tingle, expecting something extraordinary to happen to me during the day only to come home at night unchanged...my utterly boring, utterly bored self.

4. Would you ever willingly live in an apartment whose bathroom shower was next door to the kitchen pantry, within an arm's length of the stove?

5. After the smoke alarm battery died at three in the morning--which, incidentally, is the only time the batteries EVER die--and I treated the neighbors to not just the pensive little spaced out beep.....beep.....beeping but a full on screeching wail, it was no wonder that none of them believed I was really having a fire five nights later when it screeched again.

POV

2005-08-07T21:49:00.000-07:00

Today's assignment is to write about the same object or place from 3 different points of view...

It had been there since before he was born, and it would be there after he was gone. Some days this felt good. Circle of life and all that. There were seasons to everything. Gardeners knew it. Anyone who read the Bible knew it. Some days, like today, it felt lonely. Days when he was thinking of Martha. Days when he didn't understand why he was here and she was gone. Days when he knew it was better that he be here to long for her instead of knowing she was weeping for him at night amidst the silent phones and the wandering dust and the dishes she would have been doing instead of sitting there in the glider on the back porch watching the river ooze by sluggishly.
There was just something about good news that painted the whole world in some sort of magical color. The sky seemed bluer, the air more pure. The river less murky and brooding as it flowed by. Today it seemed lively, not lazy. Birds chattered happily in the trees, and the humming of the hundreds of bees at the edge of her property seemed jovial, too. Busy. Happy busy. Putting together all the odds and ends of ceremony...the ribbons and flowers and layers of satiny cloth. She remembered it well. One magical day in a woman's life...a day of white and silver and lovely pastels. A day of tulle and white ribbon, sweet confections, roses and promises for a bright future. And oh, to be Cinderella again, waltzing with her Prince Charming. That one day that you adore...over so quickly, but so wonderful for that brief flicker of time! What a blessing to get to relive it in her memory now as she waited for her young man, her good, handsome man to walk a fresh faced, lovely young girl down the aisle.
God. He hated this. All the pomp and circumstance. The overpriced everything. The explosion of pink and of wispy fabrics and violins. But it was her. God bless her. He couldn't say no, wouldn't want to. It was just something a man had to suffer for the love of his life. This is what his father had told him last evening as they waded in the chilly water, watching the sun go down. He cast his line into the brown depths and reckoned,
"Son, you do it because you love her and because you want her to have whatever it is that makes her happy." Not that he needed to be told. It was instinctual. Just a wounded look could have him on his knees. Tears...well, God help him. That was all there was to it. Women needed that sort of thing sometimes. Not on the grand scale like today, with all its lace and flowery-ness. No. Going forward he could just be himself. Flowers once in a while. Sweet words he liked to say when they were cuddled on the couch. Dancing in the kitchen to whatever slow song happened to be on the radio she kept by the sink. Dinner out on a hot day. Just himself. And just herself. What was left under the black and the white and the lace and the ribbon. He couldn't wait.

Spooked

2005-08-07T21:40:00.000-07:00

Today's exercise was to write down my spookiest memory. I was contemplating this when I came across a writing exercise online that said to take the name of one the characters you've already written and look up the name in a naming dictionary and find out what it means. After looking the name and other similar names up, the writer is then supposed to detail why the name does or does not actually fit the character after all.

These two topics merged when I remembered that I had been trying to write a spooky, supernatural romance story. This was way back when I was fifteen or so. My thoughts were pretty generic. I had started writing the story based on a dream I had had about a ghost that roamed around the shorelines of San Francisco. You know...white, ethereal clothing, flowing silvery hair, etc. Well, there was supposed to be this detailed story about how she died but I don't remember it all, just that she haunted the sea because she drowned or was drowned in some big drama involving her lover (husband? I can't recall...) who was in the Navy. I wanted some sort of catchy title for her plight...and the book. So I thought and thought and came up with "The Legend of Caja Marina" (Her name was not actually Caja Marina...it was the "ghost name" the locals gave her.) I did not consciously choose the name. I had taken two years of high school Spanish, however, and realized the name sounded Hispanic. So I dug up an old textbook and looked up the words "caja" and "marina". Caja means box, bin, or case and marina means navy. This gave me a chill because I hadn't consciously remembered what either word meant in Spanish, but her name, at least to me, seemed to mean "Navy Coffin".

Strange, isn't it, the things our subconscious mind can do?