Squeezing the Most Out of Summer

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Summer is a quiet, calm song wafting on a gentle breeze, promising love and happiness.

Summer is a sparkling jewel on the horizon that helps me pull myself from the quicksand and keep going when it might be easier to give up.

Summer is the softly lit respite I long for when I suffer under fluorescent lighting.

I love summer.

I teach for a living. So, for me, maybe more than for other adults, summer is important. Summer is this shining light at the end of a, sometimes, very dark tunnel. It's the carrot I drag myself behind when the school year gets tough and I'm tired and burning out. I promise myself the sacrifice will all be worth it and I'll be rewarded with summer.

Summer vacation is short this year. I lost a week to snow days, so today is actually my first day off. I've been home for a few days already though, having used leave days to take off optional teacher workdays. It's not that I lacked things to do at school. It's that I lacked energy and enthusiasm for the tasks.

This week isn't really off either. I took an extra contract for some work on a new district initiative, so I'll work two days this week, too. I'll work four or five others days over summer, here and there. But, mostly, I've got long hours of time to use as I see fit.

So, what to do, what to do?

First and foremost: write. I've got two books to finish, for goodness sake, and another one or two waiting for me to start them.

Secondly: do lots of fun summer things with the kids that don't cost very much. Squirt each other with the hose. Blow bubbles. Take long walks in the shady woods. Eat ice cream. Read.

Thirdly: make myself relax. This is harder than you might think. I'm used to working very hard. On an average school day, I prepare twelve meals (four people, three times a day), teach six classes, facilitate a meeting, prepare six more lessons, run at least one life errand, do a load of laundry and a set of dishes, care for the dog, and write my daily minimum 650 words. I try to exercise, too. Though I fail at that most of the time.

It's both lovely and difficult to go from so much to do to a smaller list. I have to stop myself from taking on every organizational and repair project that has come up since last summer. I have to tell myself that it's okay to spend some hours on the couch reading or watching television.

Time resting is not time wasted. That's my summer mantra. So, on that note, I think I'll take a book outside. It's nice this morning.

Summer Reading: Week Three

Having looked forward to more time to read for the entire school year, I am now having a little trouble focusing my energy and reading time, and balancing it with everything else I want to do, so I've begun several things.  I'm often guilty of beginning too many books rather than finishing any of them. I think it's because I want to read it all!

I began Flying Over Home by Jeanette Stokes because she had a reading this past week and I bought my copy. I'm excited about this one because I was there when she was writing it. Jeanette facilitates weeks of writing and quiet for writers through her organization, The Resource Center for Women and Ministry in the South. I was attending one of those weeks to work on His Other Mother, and this is the book she was working on, a memoir of her journey to find her peace with her father.

I also picked up The Rabbi's Cat by Joann Sfar, a graphic novel that been on my to-read list for quite some time, and Women and the American Experience by Nancy Woloch, a fascinating, but dense history that I've been working through bit by bit for a year or so. It's given me a lot of food for thought for my historical fiction WIP.

I'm still reading Greatshadow by James Maxey. I met James through some writing workshops he taught at our public library and have enjoyed several of his books now. It's because of James that I also began William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!  He's holding monthly book talks at my library on classic literature.

The only thing I finished was one of the beta-reads for a friend this week. If you're not familiar with the term, it's when someone reads an unpublished novel for a writer, offering feedback about flow, plot, characters, and even line edits. I really enjoyed the book. I hope to be able to tell you where to get a published copy soon.

NJ (7) has been reading lots of fun and funny books like the Fancy Nancy series by Jane O'Connor (a great series for future word nerds) and Bad Kitty: Drawn to Trouble by Nick Bruel (She admired the picture book, and likes this direct talk from the author).  She loves to read me parts out loud then laugh at the top of her lungs. I love it, too.

She's also hit a stage of being interested in fact books about animals. We have lots of these around from when big sister was younger and had a similar obsession, and NJ recently discovered them. The one she left on the sofa just now is called Reptiles and Amphibians Dictionary: An A to Z of Cold-Blooded Creatures by Clint Twist. It's really fun to listen to her being amazed by some of the truly wild and weird things created in nature.

NJ has an impressive memory and, given an opening, will quote to you for hours from these books. Today, she's focused on the Hellbender, a salamander from Up East. I suspect she's interested in him because she gets away with saying H-E-L-L when she says his name. Since she is asked to stick to a level of profanity appropriate for one of her tender years (as in none), it's quite the little thrill to say that word.

M, the elder daughter, is traveling in Alaska with the bio-Dad this week, so I don't know if she's reading much.  She is, however, having good bonding time with her other dad, and getting to see some of the places he and I used to live in when we were married. I'm jealous as hell that he can manage the trip and wish I were the one taking her.

In the meantime, time to read!

#SaturdayScenes: No. 8

#SaturdayScenes has been a lot of fun. As an unpublished writer, I long to have people read my work, so appreciate this opportunity to share my words with an audience. I've really enjoyed this venture, begun by +John Ward , which asks writers to share bits of something they have written for public enjoyment. Following the hashtag is a great way to get a little taste of a wide variety of writing.

I received some beta-reader feedback this week, and used it to do some mild rewrites on His Other Mother.  I've posted a couple of other scenes from this novel previously (chapter 3: the kidnapping; and a thoughtful chapter with Kirk at the beach). So, if you like it, you can check out some more.

This chapter comes in the second section of the book. It was one of the first scenes I wrote for the book. Sherry, the main character, is on a baking binge as a coping mechanism for dealing with her latest disappointment in her fertility struggles.

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Sherry had spent her sick day baking, trying to knead out her frustrations over the failed final round of Clomid. If Clomid wasn’t going to work for them, they were running out of options. In vitro was almost as expensive as adoption, with no guarantee of a baby at the end. Sherry wasn’t sure she could take it if they tried it and it failed.

Slamming down the last loaf, now ready to rest and rise, Sherry thrust her hand into the middle of the first one, punching down the dough and her worried thoughts—the usual litany of self-blame for past mistakes or for waiting too long--if, if, if, if only—the usual whining self-pity that even her subconscious recognized and scorned as weak.

The dough sank satisfyingly, releasing a burst of yeast-scented air into the room. The oil on the outside felt good between her fingers as she worked out the blisters. She began to form a round loaf out of this one, a “rumpy” as she called them. No-manners bread, Gram called it. She had been partial to it, too. Her bread was the kind you could tear hunks from when it was fresh from the oven, warming your fingers in the steam. Eating the bread like this was as much a part of the ritual as kneading and baking.

As Sherry cut the traditional criss-cross pattern into the loaf, she eyed the knife and thought about putting similar markings into her forearms, thought how that might let something out, relieve a pressure valve. She put the knife down with a clattering force, shoving the thoughts away roughly and turned up the volume knob on the little red CD player perched in the windowsill. She hadn’t done it, but her imagination had supplied a stunningly clear vision of what the cuts would have been like. Obviously, she hadn’t yet succeeded in shutting down her over-active brain. “Stop torturing me,” she said aloud, wondering if she was talking to herself, the doctors, or the gods.

Sherry was wrist deep in dough when she heard the front door open. Kirk didn't call out or come straight to her with his backpack still on and his keys still in his hand like he would have six months earlier. A year and a half made for eighteen disappointments; eighteen nights spent soothing his bereft wife—who could blame him if he was in no hurry to face another one? He knew the calendar as well as she did. He had hoped, too. She could hear him close the door gently, hang his keys on the hook, place his backpack in the closet and head quietly to the bedroom for a tee shirt and jeans.

By the time he appeared in the doorway, watching her with that careful, questioning look she had come to dread, the loaf was coming out of the oven. That was good because they didn't have to talk. She wondered if he had stayed out of view on purpose, listening for the sound of the oven door opening before coming in. She set the loaf on the stovetop, and, without giving it time to cool, ripped into it with her hands, glad to feel the mild burn on her skin, and offered a hunk to him.

He took it, stepping nearer, but still staying at arms-length, watching her while he chewed. They stood like that and ate the whole loaf while she finished making the others. It was the only supper they ate that night before taking their respective sides of the king-size bed and turning back to back to stare at opposite dark walls. That was probably when Kirk gave up. Sherry was sure he didn't even hope with her anymore. If there was to be any more hope, it was up to her. Sherry didn’t think their odds were good.

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My other #SaturdayScenes contributions:

Week One: Elopement Day from WIP, Cold Spring

Week Two: Linda Makes a First Impression from WIP, Her Father's Daughter, sequel to Going Through the Change

Week Three: Claiming Alex, from unpublished novel His Other Mother

Week Four: Things Get Hairy for Linda, from unpublished novel Going Through the Change

Week Five: a poem: A Clear Day in Kodiak, Alaska

Week Six: a snippet from an idea barely begun, Lacrosse Zombies

Week Seven: Mathilde's Visit, from WIP, Cold Spring

The pleasures of silly surveys

 PlayBuzz, Survely, and other such companies are pumping out silly little surveys lately. I see them most often on Facebook. Normally, I don't play Facebook.

I keep a Facebook account basically so I can see the highlights of the lives of people I no longer see regularly (former students, friends in places I used to live, etc.). I don't play any of the games or engage with the site that way.

But I've been kind of addicted to these little quizzes that promise to tell me which character in this or that I'm like, or what category of monster I am.

From these surveys, I've learned recently that:

• I am Athena
• The kind of woman I am is: Loyal
• The song "You're Beautiful" by James Blount was written about me
• I am 68% scientifically literate
• I'm 10% stereotypically white
• I've read 62 of the 100 books the BBC says we should all read
• I should star in Sweeney Todd

As I clicked on another one today, I asked myself why I enjoy these silly little surveys so much. It's not that I put stock in their assessments of me. After all, how does what kind of kitten picture I pick tell you about my beauty or intelligence?

But I am curious. I want to know what they'll say. I love to agree with or dispute the results just like you might with your Chinese fortune cookie ribbon or your newspaper horoscope. I love it when my Facebook friends take the same quizzes and we compare our results. 

Really, I've always liked surveys. Even though I'm not a beauty magazine girl, I always take the relationship quiz when I'm waiting to have my hair done. I like the simple organization. The idea that complex things like people can be analyzed by simple check-boxes and conclusions drawn. It's soothing and entertaining.

Plus, they just told me I'm Athena. That's a compliment I'll take :-)

Summer Reading: Week Two

It was a rough week for me in terms of reading. I'm truly exhausted at the end of the school day from riding herd on a surging tsunami of middle-schoolers fit to burst with excitement about summer. But, still I am reading, just not as much or as quickly as I want to.

This week I finished The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker. I read it in paperback as a choice for a neighborhood reading club. 

I really enjoyed it. The premise was a joy, though it sounds like a joke: a golem and a jinni walk into a foreign city. The author did a beautiful job pulling it all together into what felt like exactly the right ending to me. I did get a little bored during the second third of the book, when the characters were established, and we weren't yet in the crisis moment. That second third is tricksy . . .I'm struggling with it in the rewrite of one of my own novels. There are a lot of good quiet moments in Wecker's book during the part, but the quietness might be the problem. So again, not a perfect book, but a good book. One I would recommend to each of you.

I've also continued reading Greatshadow by James Maxey this week. It's my bedside book, and I've not lasted long for bedtime reading in my current state of exhaustion, so I didn't make a lot of progress. But I continue to really like Infidel (the main character: a woman with indestructible flesh and a mysterious past), and am engaged by the unusual choice of narrator. Where I am in the plot, the adventure is really about to begin. We've gathered our motley crew of heroes/mercenaries and are off to find the dragon. It should make good reading this coming week as I appreciate my first student-free days.

I just started Lilith Dark and the Beastie Tree by +Charles C. Dowd . I've been following him on G+ for a

while and knew I'd eventually get this book to share with my seven-year-old. There was a sale recently that suited me, so I bought it. It's perfect for my daughter, featuring a fierce little girl with a powerful imagination as the main character.  I'll probably finish it this weekend and pass it on to the Small Fry. It reminds me of other graphic novels I've enjoyed with my daughters like Ernest and Rebecca by Guillame Bianco and Antonello Dalena or Courtney Crumrin by Ted Naifeh.

Other than that, I've been working on a beta read for a friend. Her novel is quite good! I hope to be able to tell you where to buy it a few months down the road.

NJ (7) has really jumped into summer reading with both feet. She's very motivated by the little chart where we record our reading numbers. She's recorded somewhere between 75 and 150 minutes each day . . . and I suspect we're under-recording her a little bit. If you leave that child sit anywhere near a book, she's reading. :-)

She brought home a darling picture book from school: Slugs in Love by Susan Pearson and Kevin O'Malley. It's a sweet story about a girl slug with a crush who writes poems to win his heart. NJ is such a romantic soul. When she finished reading it, she said, "Mommy! That was the best book ever! And you have to read it right now!" So, of course, I did.

She's been devouring Tiny Titans since our last trip to the library as well.  I think she's read each volume that we checked out at least six times. She loves Beast Boy. He's just her kind of silly.

In the car, we're listening to Horrible Harry. He's new to us, and I appreciate the change of pace after nearly a yearlong obsession with Frannie K. Stein and Junie B. Jones. Harry's got an obsession with gross things that suits NJ's sense of humor right now, so I think it's going to be a hit.

The older daughter (14) is almost finished with Fangirl, which I read last week and passed on to her.  She doesn't like it as much as another book by the same author (Eleanor & Park), but she says it's pretty good. She just finished Cress by Marissa Meyer, the third in a fairy-tale derived cyborg series. I read the first two with her and really enjoyed them. She said the third one is more complicated because there are so many more characters now, but that it's still well worth the read.

Next on her list is The Evolution of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin. It's another one that I read with my school YA reading club and passed to her. I liked it, though some parts of it disappointed me. I suspect M will like it better. She is, after all, the target audience and is much more interested in angsty teen love than I am :-)

So, there you go: another week of reading by the Bryant girls. I love summer.

#Saturday Scenes: No. 7

This week for #Saturday Scenes (the brain child of +John Ward ), I bring you a scene from Cold Spring, my current WIP. It's a historical piece set in rural Kentucky in the early 1900s following the lives of two sisters, Lena and Freda. At this point, it's looking like it might be a three or four books series, following these sisters through the decades.


This scene is near the beginning of the novel and introduces the older sister, Mathilde, a minor character who now lives in Lexington. It's 1915. Mathilde is 23 and married, but without children. Lena is 16, and has been running her father's household for two years, since the death of her mother. Mathilde has just arrived for a visit.

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Mathilde stood when their father came in. She held her hands primly at her waist and watched as Gustav

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hung up his hat, removed his boots, and washed his hands and face in the basin Lena had placed for that purpose. She smiled in greeting when he raised his eyes, but their father walked past her without acknowledgement and headed for his usual chair near the fireplace.

“Why is my tea not waiting, Lena?”

Heat rushed to Lena’s face. After her sister had just praised her household skills, it was embarrassing to immediately be called on the carpet by Papa. “It’s here, Papa, at the table. I thought you would want to sit and talk with Mathilde.”

The man looked at his older daughter briefly, then turned back to Lena. “I will have my tea as usual, daughter.”

Lena scurried to bring his cup and biscuit to him at his accustomed seat by the fire, not sure what to make of Father’s treatment of Mathilde. Mathilde’s face was frozen, set in an expression of shock. After a moment, she recovered. “Quite right, Father. It is nicer here by the fire.” She picked up her own cup and plate and seated herself opposite Gustav in Mother’s chair.

No one ever sat in Mother’s chair. In fact, Gustav had once given little Freda a hiding for sitting in the chair. Lena was shocked by her sister’s audacity and, at the same time, admired her for it.

“How is the farm, Papa? What did you plant this year?”

“Why would you care?”

“I only meant to inquire--”

“Be nosy, you mean. It’s no business of yours. Not anymore.”

“What?”

“I’ve heard about what you’re doing in Lexington.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re one of them--one of those ridiculous ladies marching and meeting to get the vote.”

“Papa!”

“Maybe if you stopped going to useless meetings and stayed home like a woman should, you’d have children by now!”

Lena knew that her sister had struggled through a difficulty pregnancy at the beginning of her marriage only to bring forth a stillborn son. She couldn’t believe her father’s cruelty in attacking Mathilde with her tragedy as if it were a personal failure. Mathilde’s face showed the sting in the verbal slap. “I nearly died, Papa. The doctor says--”

Father brushed off her words with a gesture of his hand. “If you can’t give your husband children and me grandchildren, what use are you?” He paused, long enough to put down his cup and leaned menacingly towards his daughter. “Your mother was more delicate than you, yet she birthed me six sons.” Lena noticed that the three daughters were not listed among her mother’s accomplishments.

“And it eventually killed her!”

Gustav stood then. It seemed as though his body had grown with his anger, the hulk of him filling all the space in the room. “Get out of my house.” He grunted between gritted teeth. When she didn’t immediately move, he took a step towards her, and shouted. “Get out of my house!”

Evil Children

What is it about evil children in movies and television? Done right, they can be so chilling.

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The first episode of The Walking Dead begins with a flash forward. The first live zombie we see is a little girl. From the back you can see that she was a beautiful girl, long and lean with long blonde hair. You can see the softness on the main character's face, as he calls to her, "Little girl?" He wants her to be okay, but, even before she turns around he (and we in the audience) know that she won't be.  Sure enough, when she turns, she is revealed as a zombie and Rick has to shoot her. Heartbreaking. There are others in the series, too. Carol's daughter, Sophia, and the Governor's daughter, Penny.

Hmmmm. . .just noticed they are all girls, too, all somewhere between eight and twelve years old. That probably means something, too.

It's not just zombie children that are creepy though. Think about The Bad Seed's Rhoda Penmark played by Patty McCormack in the 1956 movie. She's so cold, dispassionately admitting to the violence she has wreaked on others. McCauley Culkin played the boy version in The Good Son.

Or possessed kids like Regan in The Exorcist or Carole Ann in Poltergeist.

Or ghost children like the Grady twins in The Shining or Samara from The Ring.

Or vampire children like Claudia in Interview with The Vampire or Eli in Let the Right One In.

I think what makes them all so effective is that they so not-child-like. Children are full of life and movement. Sure, they can be mean, but they are not cold or calculating. They are not still. Not unless something is very very wrong. There's something visceral and soul-chilling about the evil child that no number of evil adults can match.

Maybe it speaks to the fears in us all about children--about failing them, all the bad things that can come about if adults don't protect the young the way they should.

I can't define it well, but it gets me every time. (Shiver).