Of Thanksgiving, Family, and Fiction

I've often joked that my life is more complicated than a soap opera. I don't even have a large family but we have tons of drama. Lives, loves, births, deaths. Sound like your family? Of course it does. Because normal is relative. Okay, add in some more factors: marriages, children born with life-threatening birth defects, deaths of children, divorce, Internet romance, home mortgage foreclosures, unemployment. Still in the ballpark of your own family? How about manic depression, depression, suicide threats and attempts, sibling rivalries that cause family feuds, teen drug dependence, teen drug rehab, teen marriage, grandchildren, major car accident with felony eluding charges. Still sound like it could be your immediate family?

I write fiction and I wouldn't even write a character with these many life-altering elements. But when I talk to people about their lives, the theme that runs through most conversations is how very many folks seem to feel like their lives have been interesting, have had more ups and downs than a Lifetime Movie Network movie.

Through all of the upheaval in my life, I hold onto the thanks that God gets me through. So even though this Thanksgiving, our family is a little scattered with no way for all of us to get together, there are things I am thankful for. I lost my job in October but am starting a new one next week. My family are safe and happy. We are in relative good health. We are not rich and not likely to ever be wealthy. But we always receive our daily bread. The Lord always provides. We have love for one another. If the list of things I'm thankful for seems shorter than the list of all our family woes, it's because love and God are at the heart of everything for me. Our family may be all kinds of messed up, but we love one another and we have God on our side. These may be only two things, but they are the most powerful things on any list in the world.

As my family and I sit down for Thanksgiving, whether we are sharing the same meal or not means far less to us than the fact that we have each other and our hears are anchored by God and the love He has for us and we have for one another. May your holiday hold everything you need to make you happy this holiday season.

Of Romance, Passion, and Erotocism

This is one of the few times I need to say something, and also feel the need to explain that this is completely about me and not intended in any way to offend people who see and write differently than I do.

I enjoy a good suspenseful movie or book. I do not enjoy graphic horror. When my daughter watched the newer version of Texas Chainsaw Massacre (I think that was the movie), there is a scene in there where someone is running away from the killer. They end up in the middle of laundry on a clothesline and victim's legs are chainsawed off, complete with spatter on white sheets. I happened to be in the room for that scene and trust me, I had to reach down to make sure MY legs were still intact. I FELT the bite of that chainsaw. I hope that's graphic enough for you because it's already more than I ever hope to write in this lifetime.


Man's inhumanity to man is no secret and it's been around since Cain knocked off his brother. It's part of our nature, this meanness. We all have it. Think not? Try remembering the last time you felt impatient with that driver next to you on the road who was putting on makeup and kept wandering into your lane. Did you think "That poor girl needs to pull over?" Because my bet would be that your thoughts were closer to "You dumb B*, get up an hour earlier so you don't have to do that in the car." And I can say that with conviction, because I have had these thoughts.



What we choose to do with the meanness in our nature is what matters. We can express it, suppress it, direct it elsewhere.

Man's inhumanity to man is depicted in fiction everywhere as well. It's just one of those social conditions that has so many different subjects, the potential for conflict is ripe to be written about. So we have our fictional terrorist attacks, fictional war stories, fictional police stories, fictional domestic violence stories, fictional human trafficking stories, fictional drug dealer stories, fictional murder stories, fictional kidnapping stories, etc.  And of course, all of what we may write could have been taken directly from the nightly news - I've even been "inspired" in this way from time to time. Sometimes it even seems that the fiction turns into reality, as is the case of Tom Clancy's work of fiction Debt of Honor, written in 1994, in which a Boeing 707 is flown into the White House.


A good story has to have a conflict - man against man, man against nature, man against himself are some of the basics I learned in ninth grade English (thank you, Mr. Chappel).


I have used elements of man's inhumanity to man in my works of fiction, with subject matter to include drug and alcohol addiction, assaults, domestic violence, teen pregnancies, black market babies, gangs and drive-by shootings, even teen suicide.But these are the settings of the stories I tend to craft, and not the stories themselves. My themes always revolve around reality, but the thread that ties the tapestry together is love.

The three Greek words for love are:
Agape, which originates from God and is characteristic of God.
Philos,which is earthly love, found through bonding together with friends, marriages and family.
Eros, from which we derive the term erotica, meaning sexual intimacy.
 
My stories are about romance for one particular reason. I love . . . love. I enjoy watching how love helps people overcome the trials of life. But even more than that, I want other people to recognize that it's love, not meanness, that gets us through these trials. So, yes, I am a hopeless romantic. I believe that love brings hope.

Writing about the romance between two people is tricky for me. As both a reader and a writer, I find I need more than a kiss, a promise, and closing the bedroom door with the knowledge that something is happening there. I need to experience it all with them, not just the suspense of how will they get out of a situation, not just the fights, but the kiss and tell part, also. What I don't need is an instruction manual on what parts go where. As the mother of five, I'm pretty sure I got that part right. I like to experience and share the emotions behind the fitting of the parts. So, while some physical description must be involved, my desire as a writer is to show the emotional connection amid the physical.

This, I have discovered, is not at all easy. There is a balance that must be achieved between the description of the action, the description of the physical feelings caused by the action, and the description of how these things affect the characters on a deep emotional level. This triple connection becomes a sort of umbilical cord between me as the author and my characters as those experiencing what I write, and ultimately the reader living the story through a connection with the characters (if I did it right, that is). The nature of a romance is such that the characters start out anywhere from detesting one another to being mildly attracted, but the deeper connection doesn't happen until later as the story progresses, so the umbilical cord doesn't start out as a braiding of threads with equal thickness.

As the author and the creator of my fictional world, I must decide how graphically to depict every detail. I have discovered in my writing journey that I am a bit conservative. Go figure...

Anyway, I truly hope that my friends and family will always know the truth of how very powerful love is. (And watch out for that inner meanness.)