Z is for Zonked: A to Z blogging challenge

April was an awesome month. I celebrated the release of my debut novel. I had a birthday. I got a few days off from the day job.

It was also emotional as heck and, darling friends, I am zonked. So, I'm going to take a little rest now, and leave you with a list of my postings from A-Z. I had a great time writing them, and I hope you enjoyed reading them. Good night.

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AtoZ Theme Reveal
A is for April 23

B is for Biology

C is for Curiosity Quills

D is for Dr. Liu
E is for Emeralds
F is for Family
G is for Goals
H is for Helen
I is for Impossible
J is for Jessica
K is for Knowledge
L is for Linda
M is for Menopause
N is for Nerd
O is for Overwhelmed
P is for Patricia
Q is for Queer
R is for Redhead
S is for Superheroes
T is for Time
U is for Unusual
V is for Violence
W is for Women Warriors
X is for X Chromosomes
Y is for Yippee!
Z is for Zonked

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This posting is part of the A to Z blogging challenge, in which bloggers undertake to post every day in April, excepting Sundays, which amounts to 26 postings, one for each letter of the alphabet--preferably along a theme. My postings will all be about my debut novel and my experiences writing it and seeing it published.

Blogging A to Z is a great opportunity to connect with some excellent bloggers and interesting people. I encourage you to check out other participating blogs, too!

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click the image to preorder on Amazon!

Y is for Yippee!: A to Z blogging challenge

So, I just had my birthday (yesterday).  It was pretty darn awesome. I spent it with my family. There was cake. There were hugs. There was singing and my girls both sing beautifully.

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But what really made this one special is that it was my first one celebrated as a published novelist.

Good golly but that's great to say.

I was visiting with a high school friend this past summer (Hi, +David Holland ) and he reminded me that, in high school, I always said I was going to write a book. I don't actually remember that myself--high school is sort of this ugly smear on my memory that I've tried to obliterate with better experiences ever since.  I try not to remember it in too much detail as I do with other painful things in my past.

But I know he's right all the same. I can't remember a time before I wanted to be a writer. Pretty much as soon as I learned that was a job a person might have, it was on my list of dreams.

And this year, 2015, it feels more realized that ever before. Going Through the Change is out there--on shelves and stuff! People might buy it and read it. Some of them might like it! If I'm really lucky, my other books will get out there in world, too.

Yeah. It was a pretty awesome birthday.

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This posting is part of the A to Z blogging challenge, in which bloggers undertake to post every day in April, excepting Sundays, which amounts to 26 postings, one for each letter of the alphabet--preferably along a theme. My postings will all be about my debut novel and my experiences writing it and seeing it published.

Blogging A to Z is a great opportunity to connect with some excellent bloggers and interesting people. I encourage you to check out other participating blogs, too!

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click the image to preorder on Amazon!

X is for X chromosomes: A to Z blogging challenge

When I started to write Going Through the Change, I hadn't thought my way in too deeply. I'm a discovery writer that way--I just start writing and see where the story takes me. I don't really make a plan, it's more like I find the plan by looking at what's there. Then, I work backwards, making the story lead more clearly to where it ended up meandering.

L. Alvarez, drawn by +Charles C. Dowd 

Part of that meander was a research wander through genetics an gender.  Writing Linda/Leonel Alvarez had me researching and considering estrogen and testosterone, X and Y chromosomes, what kinds of things make a person "male" or "female" both genetically and socially.

Gender as a feature of identity is fascinating. Myself, I'm pretty dull. I'm cisgender. The world sees me as female and so do I. I'm even straight. Boring. But, it's who I am.

Linda's much more fluid than that. She was cisgender for 48 years. Then, a fluke of comic book science turned her into a man. The world sees her as Leonel, a virile man. Inside, though, she still feels like she's Linda, a wife, mother and grandmother.

Gender identity is extra tricky for her because she didn't choose change. As she says in the sequel I'm working on now: "I didn't cross the border; the border crossed me."

In writing, I found I needed both sets of pronouns for Linda/Leonel. When we're in her point of view, she calls herself by female pronouns and uses the name Linda, but the other characters call her Leonel and describe her with male pronouns. It meant I got to write fun things like:

"Her penis stirred a little against her new bathrobe as she remembered the pleasures of the night and the morning. He could still be hers, and she could still be his. They were the same people, even if she was housed differently now."

I'm so glad Linda came into my story. She's teaching me so much!

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This posting is part of the A to Z blogging challenge, in which bloggers undertake to post every day in April, excepting Sundays, which amounts to 26 postings, one for each letter of the alphabet--preferably along a theme. My postings will all be about my debut novel and my experiences writing it and seeing it published.

Blogging A to Z is a great opportunity to connect with some excellent bloggers and interesting people. I encourage you to check out other participating blogs, too!

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click the image to preorder on Amazon!

W is for Women Warriors: A to Z blogging challenge

Women are tough. Even those of us without comic book superpowers have regular superpowers like multitasking, managing crises, organizing families and partner-soothing.

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Maybe this is part of why stories about kick-ass women become so popular. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Black Widow from the Avengers series, Lisbeth Salander from the Girl Who series, Katniss Everdeen, Tris Prior, etc. There's my childhood favorite: Red Sonja.

The frustrating thing to me has been that, even in stories about amazing women, we still worship at the altar of youth. Think about that list I just made. Not a gray hair or stretch mark among them. Several of them still respond to "girl" without feeling insulted or weird. (And I listed the ones who work mostly dressed…unlike our friend Red here)

That's part of what drew me to writing Going Through the Change. I wanted a superhero story about full grown women with lives, jobs, families and responsibilities.

There's not a lot of them out there. Let's see…Helen Mirren in Red, Judi Dench as M, though neither of them are the "star" of those particular movies. Um, yeah. I'm stuck. Can you think of any? Hmmm…best get to work on those sequels. We need more of these.

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This posting is part of the A to Z blogging challenge, in which bloggers undertake to post every day in April, excepting Sundays, which amounts to 26 postings, one for each letter of the alphabet--preferably along a theme. My postings will all be about my debut novel and my experiences writing it and seeing it published.

Blogging A to Z is a great opportunity to connect with some excellent bloggers and interesting people. I encourage you to check out other participating blogs, too!

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click the image to preorder on Amazon!

V is for Violence: A to Z Blogging Challenge

Before I began writing Going Through the Change, I had never really written action scenes. My first novel (unpublished, His Other Mother, women's issues fiction), my short stories, my poetry and my essays had not featured things like people who could wield fire and fly, or even people who threw punches.

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Writing violence well requires a different set of writing chops than I had yet developed. When I first started trying to do this, I really began to pay attention to what other writers did when they did it well (Larry Correia's Hard Magic is a great one). I also attended a writing advice panel at GenCon's Writer's Symposium called Mano a Mano that helped immensely. Lastly, I began studying German longsword. No one in my book fights with a sword, but it still helped me think about and understand body position in combat. (I'd like to think I did it well in the end, but that's for readers to say).

So, for other writers giving it a try, here are a few tips:

• Keep logistics simple: The reader needs to quickly understand where the players are in relationship to each other and what exactly is happening. Don't lose your reader in over-detailed explanations or too-vague descriptions. 
• Pacing is king: The middle of a fight is probably not your moment for a deep thought or flashback--stay in the moment
• Raise the stakes: The scenes are best if kept short, but even in a short scene changing the setting to someplace more dangerous, or putting someone in direct peril can really add interest for the reader
• Don't talk too much: dialogue can really slow down a fight
• Characterization still matters: It's not enough to describe what everyone is doing. Your reader needs to have a pony in this race--they need to care who wins, who gets hurt, who gets away. 

If you can keep these things in mind, you can create a scene that is exciting and engaging for the reader and that forwards your plot and characterization at the same time. You can rule the world! (at least that's how it feels)

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This posting is part of the A to Z blogging challenge, in which bloggers undertake to post every day in April, excepting Sundays, which amounts to 26 postings, one for each letter of the alphabet--preferably along a theme. My postings will all be about my debut novel and my experiences writing it and seeing it published.

Blogging A to Z is a great opportunity to connect with some excellent bloggers and interesting people. I encourage you to check out other participating blogs, too!

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click the image to preorder on Amazon!

U is for Unusual: A to Z Blogging Challenge

The women in Going Through the Change aren't used to thinking of themselves as unusual. In their own circles, each of them is pretty normal.

Patricia fits in well with the suits she spends her day with in the corporate world. Linda is happy among her family and neighborhood friends in her role as mother and grandmother. Jessica enjoyed her role as half of a power couple, at least until she was slowed down by cancer. Even Helen, who isn't exactly happy, doesn't stand out too much from other real estate agents and midlife divorcees.

Menopause can make any woman feel alienated from her own body. One of the major emotions of this time of life seems to be WTF!

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If you've been reading along so far, you already know that the changes that these women went through were more extreme. The emotions though are more universal--we've all made this face at one time or another when we looked in a mirror.

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This posting is part of the A to Z blogging challenge, in which bloggers undertake to post every day in April, excepting Sundays, which amounts to 26 postings, one for each letter of the alphabet--preferably along a theme. My postings will all be about my debut novel and my experiences writing it and seeing it published.

Blogging A to Z is a great opportunity to connect with some excellent bloggers and interesting people. I encourage you to check out other participating blogs, too!

____________________________________________

click the image to preorder on Amazon!

T is for Time: A to Z Blogging Challenge

You hear a lot about how slowly the traditional publishing world moves. It's been described as glacial. It's a source of frustration, especially for eager new writers who are anxious to get their words into the hands of readers.

So I thought I'd share some details of the how much time went into the creation and release of Going Through the Change. For me, from conception of the idea to a book you can now buy (!) was almost exactly three years.

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In Spring 2012, I was struggling to finish the first novel I ever wrote (unpublished, His Other Mother, women's issues fiction). It's a dark story and it was emotionally hard on me to finish it.  So, part of my brain was trying to escape, and I came up with the general concept and some rough character descriptions for a superhero novel, escapism at its best. I filed them away and used them as a bribe to myself to make myself finish that first book.

In July 2012, I finished writing His Other Mother (that one took four years just for the writing of the first draft), and let myself start writing Going Through the Change. I finished the first draft in August 2013 (somewhere in there, I picked up my Magic Spreadsheet habit, which really increased my productivity). By the end of 2013, the book had been through my critique group and I had rewritten it. Keep in mind I also had a full time day job (middle school teaching) and a family during this time--there was only 1-2 hours per day I could get for direct focus on writing, often less.

I started querying it and submitting it in January 2014.  I won't make you suffer through the rejections and no-answer-answers with me.  The story ends happily with a book contract from +Curiosity Quills Press in August 2014. CQ had a really quick process. From my initial submission to my contract offer was only a space of about two weeks.

Since then, we've been working steadily on edits, cover art, marketing plans, etc. All the behind-the-scenes stuff that makes my book as beautiful and polished and perfect as it can be.  So, here we are on BOOK RELEASE DAY! It's been nearly three years to the day since I thought up the idea. In traditional publishing, I'd call that speedy-fast-quick!

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This posting is part of the A to Z blogging challenge, in which bloggers undertake to post every day in April, excepting Sundays, which amounts to 26 postings, one for each letter of the alphabet--preferably along a theme. My postings will all be about my debut novel and my experiences writing it and seeing it published.

Blogging A to Z is a great opportunity to connect with some excellent bloggers and interesting people. I encourage you to check out other participating blogs, too!

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click the image to preorder on Amazon!

S is for Superheroes: A to Z blogging challenge

"A superhero novel? Really?"

That's a pretty common response when I tell people what Going Through the Change is about. Superhero novels is getting to be a pretty nifty little niche market in fiction (check out Eric Searleman's excellent blog on the topic for more information), but it's still pretty small. A lot of people say, "I didn't know that was a thing!"

I've been a comics fan my whole life and I didn't know there were such things as superhero novels until a few years ago when I met James Maxey, author of Nobody Gets the Girl, and was thereby introduced to the sub-genre.

I've since read a lot more great books in this genre. (See my posting on DIY MFA on April 24, 2015 for some of my favorites).

Writing a superhero novel about menopausal women was the most fun I've had so far as a writer. It's still fun, as I finish up the sequel and make plans for a third book. I'm so happy to be playing on this particular playground!

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This posting is part of the A to Z blogging challenge, in which bloggers undertake to post every day in April, excepting Sundays, which amounts to 26 postings, one for each letter of the alphabet--preferably along a theme. My postings will all be about my debut novel and my experiences writing it and seeing it published.

Blogging A to Z is a great opportunity to connect with some excellent bloggers and interesting people. I encourage you to check out other participating blogs, too!

____________________________________________

click the image to preorder on Amazon!

R is for Redhead: A to Z blogging challenge

Redheads run in my family on my mother's side. Many of us have at least some red to our hair, and one of my cousins inherited the beautiful carroty shade I always coveted to go with my freckles. 

My grandmother was a redhead. I can even kind of remember her as a redhead, though she eventually had to stop dying her hair because the natural white beneath made dyed red hair look Bozo the Clown orange. But Grandma Liz was proud of her red hair, and she remained a redhead her whole, by nature if not by appearance. 

I always liked the idea that having red hair was indicative of your temperament somehow.  My grandfather definitely seemed to think that Grandma's stubbornness, quick temperedness, and impulsive nature all had something to do with her red hair. 

So, that's part of why Patricia O'Neill, one of the main characters in Going Through the Change, is a redhead. 

Real redheads are relatively rare compared to other hair colors. It's my understanding that it's a kind of mutation of the genes that makes it possible. I liked the idea that the mutation of the genes that made Patricia a redhead, and may have contributed to her fiery temperament, also made her susceptible to the superheroic sorts of changes she underwent. I think Grandma Liz would have liked that. 

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This posting is part of the A to Z blogging challenge, in which bloggers undertake to post every day in April, excepting Sundays, which amounts to 26 postings, one for each letter of the alphabet--preferably along a theme. My postings will all be about my debut novel and my experiences writing it and seeing it published.

Blogging A to Z is a great opportunity to connect with some excellent bloggers and interesting people. I encourage you to check out other participating blogs, too!

____________________________________________

click the image to preorder on Amazon!

Q is for Queer: A to Z blogging challenge

Gender and societal roles is an integral part of Going Through the Change,  nowhere more obviously than in the marriage of Linda Alvarez. 

Linda and her husband have been married for thirty years. They've raised three daughters together and seen all of them married. They have five grandchildren. Linda and David are a solid, devoted couple when the story begins. They've weathered many storms together. 

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Still, when Linda is unexpectedly transformed into a man, she's sure it means her marriage is over. She dreads having to tell her family, especially since the changes are so hard to explain. She knows that the truth is going to be hard to swallow. She worries that her daughters won't accept her as a man. She is especially worried about Carlitos, the grandson she is closest to. 

But her grandson understands right away. She's his grandmother, regardless of how she looks on the outside. 

“Abuelita?” said Carlitos, looking confused.

Linda knelt, putting her face near his and nodded silently. “Soy yo, Carlitos.” The room grew quiet again, all eyes focused on Carlitos and Linda.

Carlitos tilted his head as he always did when he was thinking deep thoughts. He was an old soul, Linda had always said. The boy laid one hand on each of Linda’s cheeks, looking very seriously into her eyes. “Abuelita, did you make my favorite cookies?”

“Of course, I did. Biscochitos y marranitos, también.”

He nodded. “And are you going to be a boy now?”

“Yes, Carlitos, I think I am.”

“But you are still my abuelita?”

“Soy tuyo, querido. I am yours. Siempre.” 

 As I continue to write Linda and David in the sequel and beyond, I know they'll continuing to show that love can truly be about the people we are inside. The rest is just surface details.

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This posting is part of the A to Z blogging challenge, in which bloggers undertake to post every day in April, excepting Sundays, which amounts to 26 postings, one for each letter of the alphabet--preferably along a theme. My postings will all be about my debut novel and my experiences writing it and seeing it published.

Blogging A to Z is a great opportunity to connect with some excellent bloggers and interesting people. I encourage you to check out other participating blogs, too!
____________________________________________

click the image to preorder on Amazon!

A to Z blogging: Who I'm Reading

Taking a cue from Tasha's Thinkings, who has been doing a fabulous collection of posts about fictional deities, I'd like to highlight what I've been reading during this year's A to Z blogging challenge. There's so much good stuff out there this year that I'd love to quit my day job and stay home reading blogs all day long!

So here are some favorites I encountered:

I "met" J.H. Moncrieff during the A to Z challenge in a previous year. She's a horror writer and a kickboxer and her A to Z posts this year have kicked butt.  Her theme is "Things That Go Bump in the Night"  and her posts have been filled with the creepy, weird, and strange things that may or may not exist in the sunlit world, but are a heck of a lot of fun in fiction, everything from Annabelle the haunted/possessed doll to Mothman and the Loch Ness Monster.

This year I'm participating as a minion, with a few blogs I'm assigned to visit each day. (I'm part of Tremp's Troops). As part of that, I've found some new favorite blogs to subscribe to and read regularly. One of these is Tarmangani by Dennis L. Goshorn. For A to Z, Dennis is writing about history with a focus on leadership qualities. He's telling interesting stories from American history and using them to highlight the qualities that make a person a good leader. I'm woefully undereducated in history, and have enjoyed these small lessons well told.

I've missed some of his postings now (jeez, job and children and life wanting my attention), but I was really enjoying the flash fiction postings of Jay Dee Archer on I Read Encyclopedias for Fun. They've been very evocative little pieces that build well on each other and the story was becoming really intriguing. I'm hoping to get back and read the rest in May and am happy to have found another new blogger to follow.

As a frustrated traveler held back by money and time, I always enjoy a good travel blog and I've been following two this year.  Elizabeth Hein of Scribbling in the Storage Room has been writing about the Galapagos Islands, which are the setting for a new mystery she's writing and jaybird of Bird's Nest has been writing about her home state of New Jersey and making me see it in a whole new light.

So, who have you been reading? What do you like about their posts?

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This posting is part of the A to Z blogging challenge, in which bloggers undertake to post every day in April, excepting Sundays, which amounts to 26 postings, one for each letter of the alphabet--preferably along a theme. My postings will all be about my debut novel and my experiences writing it and seeing it published.

Blogging A to Z is a great opportunity to connect with some excellent bloggers and interesting people. I encourage you to check out other participating blogs, too!

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P is for Patricia: A to Z blogging challenge

Patricia O'Neill was tough as nails long before she became literally bulletproof. She had to be. She was one of the women who put the first cracks in the glass ceiling of corporate leadership. Patricia had been taking care of herself for nearly her entire life, so when the Change brought some more unusual changes to her life, she didn't know how to ask for or accept help.

"Patricia had always taken the attitude that the only person she could rely on was herself, so she was shocked to find how grateful she felt that Suzie was there and cared about where she had been. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she felt tears in her eyes. Patricia never cried."

The Suzie in the above quote is Patricia's intern, a young, pretty, petite, cute blonde. Just exactly the kind of woman Patricia usually detested.  And, it turns out, just exactly the kind of friend she needed most. (You can read a short story version of a chapter in this book that features Patricia and Suzie at freedomfiction.com).

Patricia, as drawn by +Charles C. Dowd 

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This posting is part of the A to Z blogging challenge, in which bloggers undertake to post every day in April, excepting Sundays, which amounts to 26 postings, one for each letter of the alphabet--preferably along a theme. My postings will all be about my debut novel and my experiences writing it and seeing it published.

Blogging A to Z is a great opportunity to connect with some excellent bloggers and interesting people. I encourage you to check out other participating blogs, too!
____________________________________________

click the image to preorder on Amazon!

O is for Overwhelmed: A to Z blogging challenge

The women in Going Through the Change are all overwhelmed in different ways by their lives, perhaps no one more than Jessica. Jessica may be the youngest main character in the book, but she has had more than her fair share of trouble and disappointment in her thirty-two years.

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As a child, she had dreamed of Olympic glory as a gymnast. She'd worked hard all her life, only to see it all disappear in a single afternoon participating in a three-legged race at a track and field day at school. The knee injury was a career-ender. Still, she wasn't one to mope.

She went to college to study physical therapy, a degree she didn't finish because she married Nathan.  She might have been happy with Nathan forever, but everything changed when she got ovarian cancer. She fought it and won, but the experience left her shaken. She wasn't the woman she once was.

Going through early menopause and mourning for the additional children she would never have didn't help. So, when she developed strange changes, she took it hard.

"Leonel was incredibly strong. Patricia was impervious to harm. Even bullets couldn’t get through her armor! What good was she? A former gymnast who floated like a balloon? She felt strangely jealous. None of them had asked for this, but the other women had gotten amazing and useful powers. She didn’t get a super power; she got a disability."

She felt sorry for herself for a while, but she pulled herself up and was amazing. Her arc was the most fun for me as the writer to create because she changed the most. Jessica overcame that feeling of being overwhelmed, which is yet another reason that she's my hero.
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This posting is part of the A to Z blogging challenge, in which bloggers undertake to post every day in April, excepting Sundays, which amounts to 26 postings, one for each letter of the alphabet--preferably along a theme. My postings will all be about my debut novel and my experiences writing it and seeing it published.

Blogging A to Z is a great opportunity to connect with some excellent bloggers and interesting people. I encourage you to check out other participating blogs, too!
____________________________________________

click the image to preorder on Amazon!

N is for Nerd: A to Z blogging challenge

If you know me now, then it's not that surprising to you if I announce that I am a nerd. I'm not apologizing, just acknowledging. I'm comfortable with who I am now. But, like many a middle-aged nerd-girl, I spent my teenage and early adult years trying to hide my nerdy-ness.

Teenage Me, circa 1987ish

I tried to dress like an 80s pop princess (I was bad at it), even though I really wanted to wear Converse sneakers and ironic teeshirts with jeans. I pretended to be engaged by teenage romance novels, when really I wanted to read science fiction and fantasy. I pushed the comic books under the bed when my friends came over so I could pretend I was interested in hair and makeup.

I don't know who I thought I was fooling.

As a college student, an English major even, I was a victim of my own snobbery.  I was convinced that the books I enjoyed weren't capital L Literature, and tried hard to develop a taste for postmodern cautionary tales and experimental theater. The then-husband was a bit of a culture snob, too--though the chip on his shoulder originated in other ways.

I'm not sure when I stopped pretending to like things I didn't really like just because I thought I should like them.

What I really like are superhero stories. Not just for the powers, though those can be pretty awesome. No, it's more about that human element, that huge broad, dramatic canvas to explore issues that might otherwise seem mundane. I want an underdog to cheer for. I want a character who doesn't get it right the first time out, but you know they will eventually.

There are a lot of those stories out there, but, mostly, they're about men. So, I wrote Going Through the Change, a nerdy little superhero book for me and other women like me. Women who are fully grown up, with all the problems of adult life. Women with messy, real sorts of lives. And, of course, superpowers.

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This posting is part of the A to Z blogging challenge, in which bloggers undertake to post every day in April, excepting Sundays, which amounts to 26 postings, one for each letter of the alphabet--preferably along a theme. My postings will all be about my debut novel and my experiences writing it and seeing it published.

Blogging A to Z is a great opportunity to connect with some excellent bloggers and interesting people. I encourage you to check out other participating blogs, too!
____________________________________________

click the image to preorder on Amazon!

M is for Menopause: A to Z blogging challenge

Going Through the Change was born as an idea from a conversation with my husband. Geeky folk that we are, we were having a conversation about superheroes. We were comparing the stories of those born with powers (The X-Men, Superman, Wonder Woman) and those who gain powers through accidents (Spiderman, The Hulk, The Fantastic Four). 

Somewhere during that conversation I was struck by the idea that hormones cause superpowers. After all, a good many of these stories have a teenage angst origin story. Even for people born with powers, puberty seems to be the trigger for manifestation. So, I said, "Well, if hormones cause superpowers then menopausal women should be the most powerful people on the planet." 

The hubby turned to me and said, "Write that down!" And I did. Fast forward a few months (okay more than a few…) and you have: 

cover art by +Polina Sapershteyn

Midlife mutant! With great hormones, comes great responsibility! They took supplements…and ended up super supplemented! They're not your father's superheroes, but they might be your mother's!

This book was my ticket to play with menopause, taking common complaints and turning them into superpowers. Who knew that writing about menopause could be so much fun? :-)

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This posting is part of the A to Z blogging challenge, in which bloggers undertake to post every day in April, excepting Sundays, which amounts to 26 postings, one for each letter of the alphabet--preferably along a theme. My postings will all be about my debut novel and my experiences writing it and seeing it published.

Blogging A to Z is a great opportunity to connect with some excellent bloggers and interesting people. I encourage you to check out other participating blogs, too!

____________________________________________

click the image to preorder on Amazon!

L is for Linda: A to Z blogging challenge

I've got a crush on Linda Alvarez (Luckily for my husband, she's fictional). I'm in good company. More than one of the other characters has noticed her charms, too. Her name means beautiful, and she certainly is beautiful. Becoming a man didn't change that.

Here she is as drawn by +Charles C. Dowd See what I mean?

Besides being a beauty on the outside, Linda also possesses a heart of gold. She's a nurturer.  That's her gift, and her curse. She cares a lot, maybe too much. 

If all my characters are me, then Linda is the part of me that feels guilty anytime I take time for me that I could have given to someone I love. She's trying to balance her life, too.  She loves her children and grandchildren, and, most of all, her husband. When she was transformed into a man, she was sure the life she had loved was about to end. 

She was going to lose him. Her David. Her vida. This wasn’t just aging, a little sag, or another skin problem. It had been hard enough to talk to him about ordinary woman stuff. He was so old-fashioned. He thought of periods and childbirth and hormones as mysterious things just this side of magic. Things men were not meant to comprehend. 

I hope my readers will love and admire Linda the way I do. She's the kind of woman I want to be, even when she's a man.
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This posting is part of the A to Z blogging challenge, in which bloggers undertake to post every day in April, excepting Sundays, which amounts to 26 postings, one for each letter of the alphabet--preferably along a theme. My postings will all be about my debut novel and my experiences writing it and seeing it published.

Blogging A to Z is a great opportunity to connect with some excellent bloggers and interesting people. I encourage you to check out other participating blogs, too!
____________________________________________

click the image to preorder on Amazon!

K is for Knowledge: A to Z blogging challenge

It's a running joke in my writing critique group that the NSA or anyone else spying on us would think us very dangerous people indeed, if they looked at our search histories. Any large writing project involves looking up information about something or another, and this book had me researching some very interesting things! Here's some of the highlights from my search history during the writing of Going Through the Change: 

bioluminescence 

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/
65311000/jpg/_65311446_01349158.jpg

Chinese emeralds

crystals

diving weights

effects of smoke inhalation

explosive chemicals/lab materials

factors in flight

fire proof glass

how to fireproof clothing

lots of Mexican and Mexican-American foods

lucid dreaming

http://rippedmusclex.info/wp-content/uploads
/2014/05/benefits-of-testosterone.jpeg

metabolism

oophorectomy procedure and recovery

ovarian cancer

puberty

relaxation techniques

Spanish slang

testosterone in the female body, and the male body

traditional Chinese medicine

truth serum

why helium balloons float

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This posting is part of the A to Z blogging challenge, in which bloggers undertake to post every day in April, excepting Sundays, which amounts to 26 postings, one for each letter of the alphabet--preferably along a theme. My postings will all be about my debut novel and my experiences writing it and seeing it published.

Blogging A to Z is a great opportunity to connect with some excellent bloggers and interesting people. I encourage you to check out other participating blogs, too!
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