This winter is feeling very, very long. I’ve barely taken my boots off in the last six weeks.
Sure they’re ugly, but they’re warm and dry.
You know I’m just waiting for beach season, but this morning it occurred to me we’re nowhere near the end of winter. Blargh. So I thought about what’s been good. Writing and editing have been very good.
Continuing to try and capture a sharp from the terrace moon pic…not as good, but getting there. This was from this morning, somewhere between 5:30 and 6am.
But not bad, getting closer.
Flower Child began art classes, excellent. Man Child has been home, which has been beautiful. He hasn’t been home for a good length of time since last winter, and I’m thoroughly enjoying having him here. He helps out, he cooks and bakes (really, really well), and he makes me laugh. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I like my kids.
Woke to fresh, home baked by Man Child cinnamon rolls the other morning…bliss.
His goal, for his time at home this winter involved driving. New York kids aren’t as driving focused as teens in other areas, so it isn’t unusual that he didn’t get a license as soon as the law allowed. But now it just makes sense, he’s been spending more and more of his time up North, and who knows where he’ll go when he graduates. So he got his learner’s permit within days of being home, and has been practicing. If staying up North is a consideration, this was certainly the winter to learn on, plenty of opportunity for finding out about driving in snow and ice.
Today he went to take his road test. Like any mother, I felt compelled to give last minute words of wisdom. With a song.
You know those getting to know you/riddle questions, if you were alone on a deserted island/in the woods/lost in space what food would you want/book would you bring/who would you want with you? I hate those stupid questions.
But apparently some people love them so much, they decide to go try it. Like this guy, who went on a survival expedition in the Canadian wilderness. He planned to be gone for two months, just a man and his dog. Didn’t work out so well. When he was a month late coming home, his family alerted the authorities who found him after 8 days of searching; alive, starving, dehydrated, and alone. Attacked by a bear, his supplies and equipment were lost/ruined. His dog saved him from the bear. Sadly, he ended up killing and eating his dog to stay alive. I’m not being flippant here, it is sad, and I can only assume if there was a grove of apple trees, a field of carrots, or a stream full of fish this wouldn’t have happened.
I found out about this through a discussion in the writer’s forum. I don’t generally get involved in those discussions, but they can be fun, informative, and a good way to get to know who’s who.
I have to tell you Fringelings, if you’re a staunch PETA supporter you might want to stop reading here. I love my dogs, love my fish and sea critters, I’m a vegetarian and have been since I was a teenager. In fact, I’ve sometimes wondered if I would be able to get myself any meat/fish/flesh if I was literally starving. And yet I was shocked by the sentiment of people who not only said he shouldn’t have done it/they wouldn’t have done it, but equated it with killing and eating a human family member/loved one. Really? You’re shitting me, right? Well played, what a perfect troll session.
Except the conversation began to meander, as these things do, and there were multiple people insisting their pets really are equivalent to their children, and the death of a pet is as devastating as the death of a child. No. Just no. And then proceeded to say it was judgmental for anyone to disagree.
The Intersection of 36th and Troll (Photo credit: sea turtle)
Perhaps for a few people this might be true, but if you are a reasonably well adjusted person, no. And I don’t care if you’re young, middle aged, or Methuselah. No. And if this is being judgmental, well, okay. I’ll just confess to being a judgmental bitch right now. And more than a bit horrified that it’s so easy to find people who don’t see a difference between a beloved pet and a beloved spouse, mother, father, child, cousin, or BFF who you’ve laughed and cried with for forty years.
I’ve been very, very sad at the loss of pets. Cried. Mourned. Dogs, cat, fish, invertebrates. For the record, fish are not disposable pets, they shouldn’t die within days/weeks/months. Clownfish really have personalities similar to puppies, they come to the top of the tank once they get to know you, will eat out of your hand, and play. I’ve been riveted and excited to see coral spawning in my tank, see my clownfish do the mating dance. When the clowns then ate their eggs, I didn’t feel my world had ended. Didn’t even lose a night’s sleep. What a cold, cruel woman I am.
Yup, laid her eggs right on this soft leather coral.
(sorry for the out of focus photo, but that’s the only one I could find of her in “her” leather)
But. But, but, but. You get a dog or cat expecting it to live 10, 15, 20 years. Same for many fish and sea critters. So sad when a creature you’ve loved and cared for over many years passes. Your child? Mmm, the natural order of things is for your child to outlive you. (I do wonder if this makes a difference for people who keep parrots they expect to outlive them, but still, not a child.) And, yanno, it’s your child. If you get a new fish, and that fish dies when you get it home, or can’t adjust to the new tank and refuses to eat so it dies within days, it’s sad and aggravating and you’re glad you got the fish from somewhere that offers an “arrive alive” guarantee. Cause now you’re going to get credit, and they’ll give you/ship you a new fish. Baby? Not exactly. Not even remotely.
Regular Fringelings know I have a few friends who’ve lost children to fatal diseases. I’ve had some terrifying times with Flower Child. I have more friends whose children face horrendous diagnoses. I’ve been zombified at Husband’s bedside in the Cardiac ICU more than once. I’m not special, my family isn’t special. There are thousands of families who face these events throughout the world, every day. Many of them have pets they love and have loved. Not one will tell you the loss or imminent loss of their child/spouse/sibling/other is the same as the loss of Fido.
You love your dog/cat? That’s wonderful, me too. Swear you wouldn’t eat him no matter that you were facing certain death otherwise? OK, I tend to doubt that I would eat mine either. Can’t say for certain, seeing as I’ve never been lost and starving in the wilderness and I’m unlikely to ever be. Besides, Big Senile Dog is old and tough and scrawny. I will admit that Little Incredibly Dumb Dog’s back legs bear more than a passing resemblance to fuzzy chicken legs when she’s wet and in the bath. Plump, too.
Humans are animals too. Yes, we are. And we’re at the top of the food chain. I intend to stay there. Now I’m off to eat my pasta with meatless meatballs.
We love Halloween. Well, I’m not sure if Husband really loves it, but the rest of us here in Fringeland do, so he smiles along. Man Child has been Jack Skellington twice, all three of my kiddos knew all the lyrics to the soundtrack of the Nightmare Before Christmas before they knew their ABCs. This afternoon there’s going to be a party in my building for the kiddos. A nice idea, and so I went out early this morning to hit the grocery store. I saw a meme thingie on Facebook for mummy-hot dogs, what a great idea! Easy, not too pricey, something in addition to candy to eat. OK, I’m using tofu dogs, but still. My sweetie is really looking forward to this. I’m not sure why, but the Halloween oogie boogies, ghosts, vampires, and banshees don’t bother her at all. (no gore though, please)
You don’t get the house to house trooping through dusk here in the city, we do vertical trick or treating, for the most part. This has its advantages, no worries about your little superhero freezing in a costume.
I didn’t leave early enough. The train reeked of young adults on their way home (subway of shame?) with last night’s booze steaming from their pores. Cold outside, hot in the tunnels, lots of vodka sweat.
Then the store was packed. I was on line longer than it took me to finish my shopping–on both floors!
Fine. I get back to my neighborhood and decide to stop in to the temporary Halloween store before going home. Meant I was lugging groceries, but didn’t have Flower Child with me. Sounds mean, doesn’t it? I mean, here I am, going into the store to get make-up for her costume, but preferred to do so without her. Bad, bad mama. Practical mama, too. Flower Child cannot make decisions. I don’t know why or what misfiring synapses cause this, but she can’t decide. Ever. On anything. So something like standing in front of a wall of makeup to decide which tubes of face paint could take two hours–and result in both of us needing to go home and crash–screw the mummies, let those other kids eat candy corn. But I’m being a good mama today, damn it! Supporting creative costumes! Buying ghoulish makeup! Supplying tofu mummies! So I went without her.
Great! Except now I’m looking at a wall of theatrical makeup, trying to decide what looks easiest to apply, wash off, most versatile, trying to fit into the budget. Halloween costumes have come a LONG way since I was a kid. I know, it’s hard to believe, but I was once a kid. Wore my mother’s gold hoop earrings, red lipstick from my grandma, and a black nylon blouse from my mother’s closet–voila! A gypsy! I’m sorry, it was long before the idea of gypsies being politically incorrect for a Halloween costume hit Brooklyn. Anyway, here I was and somehow, I ended up one too-rapid breath from a full blown panic attack in the store. What. The. Fuck.
I’ve had panic attacks before, but not in years. Years and years. Multiple children and lifetimes ago. A tube of gray face paint had caught my eye. The exact shade of gray I’ve seen on Flower Child too many times during seizures. I don’t know what happened, I really don’t. I mean, I know, it’s scary shit watching your kiddo turn colors human beings were never meant to be, hearing a shriek like no other as the air is pushed out of their lungs, watching them stop breathing, feeling completely powerless, wondering if this will end quickly or be one of the ones that goes on and on until you’re in the ER reporting the sequence of events to the 18th doctor. But it’s Halloween! Fun scary, not mama’s flipping her lid for absolutely no reason whatsoever scary.
Flower Child was fine when I left, fine when I got home. She’s happily playing with the makeup I grabbed. I didn’t buy the gray.
English: Pigs and Daffodils Pig farm and Daffodil fields (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
My goodness, October 1st! I didn’t realize how long it’s been since I’ve posted. blahblahblahlifeexcusessadnessmuckfringeblahblahblah.
I’ve come to a very important (though I’m not sure why) realization. Little Incredibly Dumb Dog isn’t all that dumb, she’s just a pig. The other evening I was getting ready to walk the beasts, and the little one was being a nuisance. I dropped my sweatshirt on top of her to keep her busy while I got the leashes.
You know, that’s supposed to be the test of doggie intelligence, how long it takes them to get out from under a towel, or some equivalent. Imagine my surprise when it took her about 1 second. Maybe I didn’t have it completely over her. So I dropped it again, making sure the thing was centered. Same result.
This is the same dog that I still have to keep a pee pad in the apartment for, even though she’s over two years old now. She’ll do great, not use the pad at all for 10 days, and then do nothing when we’re out on a walk, come in and race to her pad to pee/poop. And still, not always remembering that it doesn’t count if only her front half is on the pad. Very special. Even more special is how she’ll take a treat and run to the pad to eat it. Thus, my conclusion–she isn’t dumb, she’s just a pig. Eleven dingy white pounds of gross.
Yes, I’m still writing. Slowly. Painfully. I hit 35,000 words earlier today, which I figure puts me about halfway through the first draft. My protagonist, Christina, is now permanently pickled. Half time, that moment when I close the file and have a wardrobe malfunction through blogging.
The Pin-Up by Charles Dana Gibson. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Do I still think Astonishing is any good? No clue. I’m too deep in it. Slogging through the middle muck, trying to figure out how in the world I’m going to write her way to an ending.
So the other morning I was walking the beasts, thinking once again how much easier life would be right now if I was better at drinking. Sadly, Mrs Fringe pretty much has a one drink a week limit. More might sound appealing in my head, but my body doesn’t want it. But it would be easier to put myself in Christina’s head and ride along with her downward spiral, and easier not to care when Little Incredibly Dumb Dog is rolling in another mystery puddle in the curb. I was contemplating all of this, and then I heard a familiar voice, “Hi Amy!”
It’s a parent I used to see during drop off and pick up when Flower Child was in elementary school. Never got to know him other than 2-5 minute chats waiting for the kids to come out or bring them in. Nice enough guy. Except for one thing. My name isn’t Amy.
I don’t have any clue why he thinks it is, but he does. For all the years I’ve been doing the parent thing, there are more parents of my kiddos’ classmates whose names I don’t know, and who don’t know my name, than who do. I probably didn’t notice the first few times he said it. Hey, it’s a group of parents, I’m waiting for my kid, didn’t pay that much attention. Then I noticed, and corrected him once or twice. Nope. I don’t know if he didn’t hear me or has a mental block, but I decided it didn’t really matter.
I live in a fantasy fringey world of pigs and drunks, I suppose being an Amy is pretty good. Maybe I should use Amy as a pseudonym for Astonishing.
{| style=”width:100%; border:1px solid black; background:#ffe0e0; padding:0; text-align:center;” |- | This photo is of Wikis Take Manhattan goal code R13, Curb cut. |} (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
English: Hide an seek Spotted amongst the hedgerow beside a footpath (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Well here we are. Fall, again. Nerd Child is back to school, Flower Child goes back on Monday, and Man Child is fully immersed in his year up North. Yeah, yeah, technically the season doesn’t begin until the 21st, but I needed a jacket when I walked the beasts last night, and it isn’t much warmer this morning.
Today was my last day to sleep in. Luckily, Big Senile Dog was on the case and woke me up early. Just because. Fine. Got up, made coffee, went to sit on my terrace with my WIP, and he began barking again. This time to let me know Little Incredibly Stupid Dog had peed all over the floor. Out of paper towels. FYI for the fringelings, it takes an entire box of tissues to clean up the pee of an 11 pound dog.
I’d like to say my posts have been sporadic over the past couple of months because I’ve been busy having a fabulous time and upgrading my life. Nope.
I’d like to say posts will be more regular now that it’s back to school season in Fringeland. Probably not.
The WIP I’ve been talking about, Astonishing? To work on it, I have to tap into my inner muck. The stuff I like to stomp down and pretend isn’t there. You know, so I get out of bed in the morning and do things like make coffee and clean up dog pee. Despite the slow progress, I think I’ve got the bones of a good book. Honest. Distorted for maximum impact, wrapped up in fiction, and tied with the bow of story, of course.
Amuse Bouche (Photo credit: ulterior epicure)
Honest in a different way than Mrs Fringe, where I try to serve each platter of honesty spiced with enough humor to make it palatable for the amuse-bouches that equal blog reading.
Switching gears between the two is hard as hell.
When this summer began I was feeling, dare I say it? hopeful. This was not going to be a summer of death, I was going to relax, destress, and take concrete steps to make changes in my life. Let myself feel and plan. What the fuck was I thinking? I want my layer of numb back, please.
Over the past few weeks I’ve been poked by that little thing I like to call reality. I’ve been grateful to have Astonishing. For me, it is a refuge, my pretend world where I can take the shit that is too often life and manipulate it, tweak the character’s actions, reactions, and responses until I get a result I’m ok with. Something satisfying.
Tricky, this. This tapping into enough real to create honest fiction, while trying to get back a nice fat layer of numb.
Maybe tonight while I’m out at Friday Night Madness they’ll have some numb on tap.
Not those, I want the good ones. The ones that make sense, build a story. With feelings and a plot and characters you want to climb inside. Words you can smell, sentences you can hear, paragraphs you can taste.
Workin’ on ’em. Story of my life. Summer is ending, and I’m in a panic. I haven’t written enough words! Too many words of suckage! And who keeps slipping these exclamation points into the blog? Pfft, lazy, lazy writing.
Sometimes the perfect words are few.
Nerd Child: “Mom, I saw an interesting movie the other night.”
Mrs F: “Mm hmm, what?”
Nerd Child: “This is Spinal Tap.”
My work is done.
**One of the Fringelings tells me she was unable to leave a comment on this post. If anyone else experiences the same, please drop me an email to let me know. Thanks!
It’s been an exhausting week for me, lots of ups and downs, how about you? Two highlights. One, Nerd Child is home for the summer, hooray! It was a seventeen hour day yesterday, much of it spent driving in torrential rains that seemed to call for an ark, but he’s home.
What’s the other highlight? SnapinTime, from The Voice from the Backseat very generously donated her limited time to watermarking some of my photos of Flower Child’s artwork, so I could share it here. Thank you, Snapin!
I love looking at art, and so does Flower Child. We’ve spent quite a bit of time in museums together. My sweetie has a real talent. It’s newly discovered, or perhaps it would be better stated to say newly unlocked. I can’t say why, for sure, but it emerged after receiving an iPad to use for schoolwork. Is it the preservation of energy (a precious and finite resource)? Excessive fatigue is one of the most, if not the most, debilitating features of her struggles. I don’t know, but as a mama who watches her struggle with so much–yet she always holds on to the positive–and as a person who is hard pressed to draw a stick figure, this work makes me weep, literally.
angel
truncated tree, with color
dog and bird on a branch
tree
woman sleeping
branch and moon
Nerd Child
woman with dreds
Flower Child is indeed, special. Her thoughts take twists and turns that can be difficult to follow, and clarity is connected to how she’s feeling physically. The drawing of the dog and bird looks like it was done by a different person, no? This was a work she produced last weekend, when she was unwell and “crashing,” as we call it, for lack of a better word. Not completely crashed, because then she’s hard pressed to hold a pencil. After several hours of rest, sleep, and her evening meds, she produced “woman with dreds.”
I’m hoping to figure out a way to get her art lessons this summer. We need someone who will be flexible and ok with these inconsistencies, and sympathetic to the &*$#% budget.
I do quite a bit of whining here, if you hadn’t noticed. I happily tell you I’ve got plenty to whine about. It’s a life, like anyone else’s, and I’ve got a few bright spots too. The beauty of a novel that makes me cry because I’ll never write anything as masterful, getting to know a new friend, writing a story, a scene, a sentence I’m proud of, the mango I cut open this morning that was absolutely perfect.
But most braggage centers around my children. I’m broke, overcrowded, overtired and frustrated, but in so many ways I hit the lottery when it comes to my kids. They’re good people, all three of them.
Man Child isn’t coming home for the summer. I miss him like crazy, but he has a wonderful job opportunity–one that came from his hard work. the good impression he makes on others, and the fact that he has proven himself to be trustworthy and a hard worker.
Nerd Child comes home next week. I’m a lot more excited about this than he is. The fancy shmancy school he attends has turned out to be a perfect fit for him. Yesterday he called and told me he won an award for character and leadership.
Earth (Photo credit: tonynetone)
Flower Child couldn’t be sweeter than she is. She cares about the world and all of the people in it, honestly confused as to why people ever do harmful things to each other and the earth.
I woke up thinking about this stuff, feeling okay. Summer has arrived here in NY, ooh, bliss of a comfy old summer dress and flip flops. I even decided to spend a few hours pretending if I spent long enough Googling, I’d figure out how we’d be able to move to a beach town where we could afford a house, find employment, and have good health care for Flower Child.
Lily Tomlin (Photo credit: Larry He’s So Fine)
Instead of knock knock, my reality announces itself with a ring. First, my pharmacist called. Yes indeed, we have a close enough relationship that he called to say hey Mrs F, it’s Pharmacist, I’ve got a Led Zeppelin CD here for you that you and Husband are going to love. Ring ring, hi Mrs Fringe, it’s pediatrician’s office, the second round of paperwork for Nerd Child’s summer program is here for you to pick up. Yah, great, thank you so much, I’ll be there. First I’m going to try to finish the edits I’ve been trying to get through. Ring ring, Mrs Fringe? This is super special futuristic lab doing the next round of genetic testing the puzzle doctor ordered, we need your credit card information before we start running any of the tests. Fringelings, I can’t tell you how I love hearing other writers smugly announce that if writing is truly important to you, you can and do make time every day. Ring ring, Mrs Fringe, this is Puzzle Doctor’s office to confirm Flower Child’s appointment for next week. That appointment was canceled. No, you’re still on the schedule. It was supposed to be canceled. Well, we’ll have to speak with Puzzle Dr assistant and find out, I’ll call you back, ok, Mrs F? Sure.
Flower Child wasn’t feeling well this afternoon/evening. Not feeling well in a way that makes me nervous, but not a crisis. I was supposed to meet Fatigue, Husband was home, I was only going across the street for an hour…so I did. The day started out so promising, damn it–I wanted that feeling back! If you were wondering, the nectar of the gods is a cold glass of gin and lemonade. Until the stranger sitting next to you begins eating your french fries. Then it’s just time to give up. It’s a life, and tomorrow is another day.
As mentioned often, I haven’t had a day off in years. Some days contain more suckage than others. Today, not starting off so well. I got up and decided to make blueberry muffins for breakfast. Flower Child choked on a piece of kale during dinner last night, freaked out, not much was eaten, therefore I wanted to be sure she would really eat this morning. No one else was up yet, I was able to make the batter and get them in the oven. Another often touched on point here in Fringeland, I have a teeny, tiny kitchen. Rules out cooking or baking anything that involves needing a lot of space, and involves regular accidents, because I’ve got about 8 inches of counter space to work with. Got the muffins in the oven without incident, washed what I used for prep, ignored the pot and dishes still in the sink from last night. Time to get those muffins out of the oven. First tray, balanced on top of the stove. Second tray, on the lilliputian amount of space on the dining room table that isn’t used as Husband’s office (read, overflowing with papers, pens, and crap). I now want to slide the rack back inside the oven, which of course, resulted in the first (full) tray flipping off of the stove and half of the muffins flying out and decorating the kitchen. Sigh.
Historical Oven cooking depicted in a painting by Jean-François Millet (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Flower Child is now up, curled on one end of the couch under a blanket, and waiting anxiously for the muffins not covered in dog hair and drool to cool off. I sit on the couch with my laptop and my coffee. After a little bit, I tell her she can take a muffin. She throws her blanket off, and my coffee spills onto the couch, the floor, my phone, and my book. Fuuuuuck! For the record, she’s been standing in front of the muffins for twenty minutes now, waiting for me to tell her which muffin to take, afraid to move at all despite the fact that I told her six times to just pick one. I don’t want to look at them anymore. Husband woke up, looked in the kitchen, and asked if I made scrambled muffins for breakfast.
So, what to do when you need to escape life and you can’t actually have a day off? Read, and try to pretend your couch doesn’t reek of cafe con leche. I was thinking about books and reading this morning, anyway.
What makes a novel great? And I mean fantastic, enduring, cross genre and cross generational. The type of book that you either can’t put down, or have to put down every so often so the perfect line of prose you just read and reread can be examined, dissected and allowed to swim through the synapses of your brain until it’s coming out of your pores like the morning after a night of drinking cheap vodka.
I think it’s when the story is so clear but so flexible you not only want to be the main character, or in that world, you can apply it to yourself in your world, your life. Open for interpretation, if you will, allowing for projection. Kind of weird, because many of my favorite novels involve stories and lives I wouldn’t really want, they’re tragic. But I can feel them. And you, opening the book with a different viewpoint, different life experiences, different locale, different socio-economic background, can see yourself in that main character, in that story, and feel them too.
I don’t want to say ambiguous, because that has negative connotations, and too often makes readers think of torturous works of literature assigned by pompous and musty professors. You know the ones, they smell like my couch. Personally, I’m ok with ambiguous, especially ambiguous endings, but many aren’t. They want to know there is a happy ever after for Joe Smith, or maybe they want to see Mrs Fringe get her comeuppance. Maybe the story, the character, needs to be pliable. Something that has it’s own form, shape, and limits, but can be stretched through a reader’s brain to mold to individual interpretations.
I’m going to make more coffee and give Flower Child a muffin. Tell me what you think.
English: Constellation of Literature pavilion in the Temple of Literature, Hanoi. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
If you hadn’t noticed by now, I’m not generally a fan of the “Hallmark” holidays. But I have to admit, Mother’s Day can be kind of nice. Today is extra nice on several levels. One, after a spectacularly crappy week, it’s a better day. Friday showed a glimmer of light, yesterday showed promise, and today is a good day. I hope all of you are feeling the same.
Husband read the note I left on the chalkboard, and gave me a couple of much needed and much appreciated gifts. Both boys were in touch with me yesterday, to be sure they didn’t forget to wish me a Happy Mother’s Day.
Flower Child had a rough week, and so did I. There’s the obvious–if she isn’t doing well I’m nervous and holding my breath, my brain hurts with all the coulda-woulda-shouldas and general foot stomping unfairness of life. But she’s smiling and perky now, working on her art and a vision of love.
And then of course, there’s revision hell, which grew to include query writing hell. You know that little voice in your head that whispers, who the fuck are you kidding? You can’t pull off a traditional romance, that’s for woman who are sweetness and light and roses; not women who hope for sleep, a new alarm clock, and money to get their legs waxed. Not for women who were told their last romance was well written, good characters, but just a little too far off the beaten path.
The way I see it, I enjoy writing. Even with an eye towards success and publication, it’s important for me to enjoy it. Not every last aspect, but overall, it should be pleasurable, like Mama-ing. You should be able to weather the difficult or boring parts and stay strong throughout, knowing there will be release, relief, and an ability to hold onto the good days and moments of pure love, so you don’t actually run away or give up when the next hard part comes along. At the moment, no one is paying me for writing any more than I’m being paid for the Mom gig, so the motivation and reward has to come from the act of doing, and hope for eventual external validation. As a Mom, that external validation will (hopefully) include a positive, healthy relationship with adult kiddos. As a writer, the external validation will (hopefully) include a dollar and a contract.
Between internal angst, hammering out query thoughts at the writer’s forum, and pushing through, I’ve come to realize I need to shift the focus of my manuscript, a little. Basically, still the same story, but ultimately not a romance. I’ll keep the strong romantic elements, but focus on my heroine and her challenges and obstacles outside of the relationship. I still want it to be a fun read, this isn’t meant to be a navel gazing allegory on the ills of society (I’ve got my lit fic short stories for that, along with an unfinished manuscript that may or may not ever be completed), but this feels better.
I hope everyone is having a day of peace, or beauty, or whatever it is that lets you feel tomorrow might be okay.
Photos from time in Central Park last weekend with Flower Child.
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And one more, a super bonus surprise sent to me from Nerd Child, delivered yesterday afternoon.
mrsfringe 