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!

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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!
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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!
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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!
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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!
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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!