everything hurts

Everything hurts.

Can’t even exist on social media without being reminded of it, either. Our western culture is in a bad place right now, a place of pain. We can hope for change–and we do. Vote for it, speak out for it, all that.

That doesn’t make the hurt go away.

We have our survival mechanisms. Binging entertainment, working harder, sealing off in a bubble, bringing loved ones close, whatever it is.

Sometimes we write without realizing why. On the surface, I mean, I know why: I enjoy it. I love creating. But little things crop up in our work–unintended themes, dialog, tone, descriptions, anything–that speak to what’s happening in our lives.

It is tempting to be bitter, to think dystopia. To go grimdark and make things even more awful in story, a prophet pointing at a future that might be. I appreciate the authors who have chosen this, because we need those stories.

I didn’t realize why I was writing Song for the Weary. Months ago, I would have said “because I really want to write in that world and starting there might help me sort out some of the problems my other stories have.”*

Not wrong, but that’s not all of it.

Song for the Weary turned out so much brighter than I could have envisioned. The protagonist is optimistic. Sure, there’s conflict and dark moments and hopefully some nail-biting suspense. But there’s so much hope and compassion and healing and love. The antagonist, unformed and even nameless at inception, became a villain not for his greed or ambition, but for his cruelty. A foil to her compassion.

I set out to write a book about a father and daughter figuring out how to live with one another. I typed ‘the end’ on a book about a woman who fought cruelty after cruelty and broke the cycle of violence with compassion.

I’d say it ‘just happened,’ except it didn’t. My heart told the story I needed to hear. My subconscious voice put these messages out there. The only thing I did “right” was to use intuition instead of the outline.

The story I’m writing now (a distant prequel to Song) shows the first signs of these unintended themes, and I’m trying to trust myself again. Or keep trusting. This surprise theme is pain, I think, but I can’t see yet if it’s about surviving the hurt, healing, or something entirely new.

Makes perfect sense, considering what’s happening in my outer world. We are collectively telling our stories of pain.

Everything hurts. I wish there was some sort of byline, that we will get through it, we will use our pain for greater good, or some such. I’m not feeling it. Or rather, I am feeling the pain. Maybe right now, that’s all I need to do.

 

*Just a happy little footnote: It did. In writing where those characters ended up, I learned some surprising things that my subconscious already knew. This process worked better than I could have imagined.

Another month, gone

There’s this adage that goes something like this: when you get older, the days go slow but the years fly.

How true it is. I’m watching the minutes tick by until the workday is over and I can get back to some writing. To be so close to finishing (75% today!) is not just exciting but it’s also antsy. It’ll be done this month, probably (universe, please don’t jink me). I know that this whole month will fly by, but today all I see is all the chapters in between now and the ending.

I’m still bewildered and overwhelmed that six months ago, this was two chapters in the trunk. Now it’s the shape of a story. It’s starting to feel like a whole one.

Please, if you have lost your love of making and creating, remind yourself you can find that love again. You can rebuild the habit, you can rekindle the passion. It can be done. Not easily, mind you, but there’s an adage about that, too. Difficult but worth doing.

I guess that’s pretty much all I had to say this afternoon. Novel coming soon-ish? Yeah. Hell yeah. It’s gonna be a lot different than what I wrote before, and hopefully in a good way. People who have seen samples are like “holy crap this is the complete opposite of Angelhide” different. Sweet fantasy YA about a girl making right with her family? Yup.

I hope it turns out like I see it–at least as much as any large project can. Art is funny that way. I’m almost as optimistic as my protagonist, Briga. Almost.

When I have a title and a release date and all that good stuff, so too shall you have it. Stay tuned!

did you try looking?

In the past few months, I’ve found tiny humans and even some not-so-tiny humans asking me to help them find something.

Generally, that something isn’t lost. It is (and was) right where it had been left, often right where it is supposed to go. Ya know, mom stuff.

I bite my tongue because what I want to say is, “Did you even try looking?”

Not generally a great thing to say to a person, but it seems like the recurring theme of 2018. Did you even try looking?

A year and a half ago, I lost something major and with it, a lot of other things. My dad passed away, and it sounds so obvious to say it, but that kind of catastrophic loss changes everything. One loss creates a domino effect of disasters. I lost a season to grief. I lost my reliable childcare, so I quit my job and started a new one. With the loss of my job at the library, I lost my sense of identity. I lost my passion to write. I lost several hundred hours to managing two estates and micromanaging other people’s grief and utter misunderstanding of estate law.

So. I lost my writing. For a long time I would try to get back into it, these half-hearted tries that lasted half an afternoon. After such loss, my stories no longer felt important and I didn’t even enjoy reading.

But time passes. Things change. Scars knit.

I am grateful to have great, great friends. One of them formed a writer’s group and I went, knowing full well I was a fake, that I wasn’t writing, that I didn’t even want to write. Each month, I made the goal of getting into some new project. I lied to myself. I knew I was lying.

After a few months of this, I decided what I should work on next was the story I had been working on before my dad died, back when I carved out minutes of times between newborn naps and pump breaks. There’s good in rediscovering old art. I realized it was worth doing again.

Still, I was feeling pretty cynical. This story, while better and more of it written than I remembered, was still in its beginning stages and I didn’t have the stick-it-to-it-ness to finish a whole novel when getting through each day was most of the struggle.

At each monthly meeting, I deprecated. I’ll write more this month than the last, haha, because I only wrote like a hundred words. At this rate, I’ll have this scene done before Christmas!!

In February, I got a chance to add up all the snippets on my phone, on my tablet, on my drive. Turns out a half sentence there and here, writing in the downtime between picking up the kids from school and while they’re snacking, it adds up. To the tune of 6k, it adds up.

Momentum is easier to maintain than build. Obvious, but true. Seeing how much I had written, how much story I could piece together, it gave me the energy to keep going.

That’s how I found my writing passion.

I’m almost done with my camp nano goal, which was a small but feasible one. I see the work ahead of me, and I want to do it. It’s less a daunting mountain and more a hike I can enjoy a little bit at a time. With each step, I am not just finding my old writer self. I’m finding a new perspective, made sharper by life. Much have I lost, that can never be given back, but there are things that I only lose if I let myself.

My sense of self was right were I left it. All I had to do was look.

how to talk so (future) kids will listen

Recently I reviewed How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk over at the library’s blog. I could say a lot more on about how much I liked this book (and I will).

But first I need to talk about another concept that has been ruling my life lately–in a good way.

My future self.

The idea is fairly simple–thinking about what you want to have accomplished in five years, ten years, or even six months from now, and work towards building that for your future self. It helps put things into perspective. If you don’t know what five years from now looks like, it can be hard to guess what future you will want. Regardless of what job you’ll have or house you’ll live in or strained family relations you’ll be forced to endure, one thing remains constant: you. You will be you. I will be me.

This kind of future-building was hard for me even a few years ago. I was so unorganized, I didn’t know what I wanted out of life, but most importantly, I didn’t know who I was. I probably still don’t know who I am, at least not the extent I will know in about ten years, but I have a better idea of what I’m not and what things will not ever be important to me, and what things have stayed important to me. And sometimes, that’s the battle.

Things have been hard lately. I recently lost a family member and the only reason I even mention it at all is to highlight how awful the month of January can be when depression hits the hardest, the whirlwind distraction of the holidays has passed, and there’s nowhere to hide from the grief.

I don’t feel like giving gifts to my future self. I don’t even care about her, honestly. It’s too hard.

If it were just me, I could probably keep cruising this month, surviving but not much else. It’s not just me, though. My kids are watching.

One of the tenets of How to Talk So Kids Will Listen is that long view thinking–modeling behavior so kids will adopt your own good habits. In the book they’re talking about table manners, conversations, and personal responsibility. I am taking this one step further and teaching Sweet Tea and Honey Bee to plan for their future selves.

How?

One thing we do… On Mondays we spend a couple of hours in the morning cleaning the house–deep cleaning–on top of the daily stuff we do to keep everything running. Let me be honest here, I haven’t felt like doing it. At all. What goads me on is that future self. I hate spring cleaning, and my gift to my future self is doing a bit of deep cleaning every week so that I never have to dedicate a whole weekend to the task.

I let Sweet Tea take full ownership in his jobs. Arguably, a four-year-old can’t remove each speck of dust underneath a piece of heavy furniture with the vacuum hose, but he is very proud of the work he does. As for me, I ignore the bulk of what he missed and offer one or at the most two suggestions. I don’t want to nag, but more importantly I also want to trust him, and give him the space to trust himself.

He’ll get better on his own, with practice. It’s less about doing it today, but about preparing him to do it tomorrow.

That’s kind of what this is–practicing to be the kind of person I want to be. The kind of person who doesn’t let the tub grow hard water deposits before she rolls up her sleeves. The kind of person who enjoys taking care of herself, of her children, and her house. The kind of person who can tackle even the largest of projects by taking them one piece at a time. The kind of person who keeps to a routine for intrinsic motivation and not because of shame or anyone wagging a finger at her.

Sweet Tea won’t always get so excited about our work days, but I have faith that even when it does become actual work, he’ll still help. He is competent. He is responsible. He can work for his own intrinsic motivation. He knows the satisfaction of a job well done. He creates his own good habits.

Maybe I occasionally reward us with some brownies. Today it’s cold and windy outside, so it’s the perfect day to have the oven going and enjoy the smell of super-chocolatey, gluten-free, dairy-free brownies making our nice, mostly-clean house even nicer.

I try to avoid the imperial ‘we’ for discipline. To me, saying ‘we don’t hit’ after a child has clearly just hit someone is the equivalent of pointing at the ottoman and saying ‘that’s a cow.’ But I do love imperial ‘we’ affirmations. We are responsible. We are generous. We take care of each other. We enjoy spending time together. We share this space; we share our lives.

We build today the foundation for relationships we need tomorrow. The work we do today, we reap next season. That’s the gift for my future children, and that’s how I’m talking now so my future children will listen.

author fair!

Local author fair at the library!

Next weekend!

Come see us!

Many great authors!

Prizes and snacks!

I’ve had too much coffee!

Click here! See you then!

cultural shifts and speculative fiction

So I’m aware that I released a book and basically disappeared for four months. Does it help if I had a good reason?

A cute reason, actually.

Cuteness aside, I’ve had a lot of topics swirling about in my mind lately. Some of them are ‘off-brand’ because they aren’t about books, they’re about parenting or sewing, but they’re important things, maybe not for you, dear reader, but for someone. We’ll see what happens.

Today, I’ve been thinking about cultural shifts and how things can change from generation to generation.

For example, breastfeeding and prenatal care in the past 100 years. If you’re wondering how breastfeeding matters to you as a writer creating your own societies, bear with me. I’ll get there.

The history of breastfeeding is pretty fascinating even if you aren’t a woman who might be in the position to create then feed a baby. It’s proof that progress isn’t linear, and that something that seems as trivial as someone’s diet for two years can make a whole lot of difference in the world they grow up in.

Disclaimer: I am one of those crazy breastfeeding fanatics, but when I say that breastfeeding makes a difference, I’m discussing cultural shifts and our understanding of science and medicine and how it affects society (and world-building for writers), not the personal decision of feeding one’s children.

Though, to be fair, the personal decision does generally reflect culture, doesn’t it?

So, a history. For the most part, it’s safe to assume that human babies were given human milk for the greater part of our written and unwritten past. I hate calling it ‘natural’ because breastfeeding does not always come naturally, but it is nature’s design that mammals should feed their young until their young are developed enough to eat and digest their own food. I can personally attest to how instinctual and hormonal the drive to breastfeed my own children has been–and how absolutely fierce those drives are.

The last hundred years have been a little rough on this front. Someone decided they could make money by selling evaporated milk (you know, the stuff in pumpkin pie) as infant food. From there, once others realized that there was even more money to be had in formulating the dairy milk with extra vitamins, and with the help of pediatricians everywhere, infant formula became the norm.

There’s a ton of cultural baggage surrounding formula, and let me assure you that this is the most abbreviated version of the story ever. But what I know is that the pendulum has swung dramatically for new mothers. We’ve gone from breastfeeding (and wet nursing) as the primary and sometimes only way to raise a child, to synthetic is better, and back again, back to the breast. The back to breast movement is so strong that hospitals and health departments in many places offer free services–whatever it takes to get more babies fed with mother’s milk. We now realize that breastfeeding is the best way to avoid illnesses, infections, SIDS, and a host of other problems.  In fact, it took American society taking so fully to formula and experiencing these things en masse to realize the difference.

(And yes, formula has saved lives, because some babies fail to thrive or otherwise have problems eating in those early days.)

It’s easy to look back on that little blip of our history and dismiss a whole generation of people as foolish or chasing trends or gullible to marketing. But at the time, they truly believed they were on the cutting edge of progress.

Much of our lore, habits and wisdom for breastfeeding were lost when an entire generation chose to bottle feed their babies. All those breastfeeding grandmothers couldn’t teach their daughters. And that is the part I find fascinating as well as haunting. Sure, it’s disruptive innovation because so much else is happening like electricity and communications, but this is also culture at work.

Each generation responds to the way it was raised by embracing or eschewing old values. Trends aren’t limited to fashion.

When we talk about world-building for writers, we hardly ever talk about young families. I get it–children and new mothers are a trope to be exploited. There’s like this unspoken rule that the only reason to make a woman pregnant is for tension. Someone is going to die–probably not the daddy (you know, the ‘real hero’ of the story), possibly the baby or the mama, maybe even both.

We can do better.

The #normalizebreastfeeding movement inspires me to think about the way I build my fictional societies. When I feed my baby out in public, I’m not trying to be political, yet every nursing mama has a story of how a stranger treated her while feeding her baby, because in our Western culture breastfeeding has fallen out of favor. This is cultural baggage of a different kind, but it speaks of the culture we live in.

Children and their mothers have been isolated in our modern society. When mothers and their young children are shuttered away, never appearing in, it says a lot about the society, doesn’t it?

You can say ‘well, my story isn’t about breastfeeding’ which is fine. I think writing a story just about breastfeeding would be pretty moralizing and I don’t want to read it.

But let’s talk about imagery. Vivid details. Showing powerfully. Symbolism.

There’s the obvious: casually mention that one mother at a protest is nursing while she chants. Suddenly, she doesn’t just represent herself, does she? A mother with such a young baby, fed of her own body, represents the future. She speaks not for herself; she speaks for her children.

There’s the less obvious: when nursing mothers are welcome everywhere, they go everywhere–which means young children go everywhere, too. Maybe it makes sense to mention that in a crowd of people that many are children and some are babies. Maybe your reader won’t imagine it unless you make a point to.

Maybe this shows us a little about your other characters, even the ones who don’t have children. A world where young children are welcome suggests that the characters have been long welcome. If an attachment-style parenting with breastfeeding and baby-wearing is the norm when your characters are adults, the reader will assume that your heroes were also raised in a similar fashion.

Consider the breastfeeding culture in Mongolia compared to America. Did you have any idea that something as simple as breastfeeding attitudes can have ramifications for generations to come?

An extended family that lives under one roof will breed different characters than small families isolated by distance or estrangement. They’ll have different ideas on what should be shared–food, space, belongings. They’ll have different expectations of behaviors and roles of children, elders, and even genders, and they’ll respond differently, too. A character with seven young siblings may not like babies, but they probably know how to take care of one. That same character might grow up with the expectation that they, too, will build a large family. How do they feel about that?

Maybe it won’t ever come up in your story. But it can–not as a direct question ‘do you know how to take care of a baby,’ but in other ways. Giving yourself a broadly painted visual of your character’s earliest formative years can pave the way to confident answers to all kinds of questions. Pushing yourself to create some form of parenting/child-rearing culture in your fictional world might unstick a stuck plot in a surprising way, or it might give you more story seeds than you can possibly use.

heaven’s most wanted quote

Aggie wiped her sweaty hands on her jeans. No one in the cafeteria was watching her, but it sure felt that way. If community college was high school 2.0, then the divine cafeteria was community college 2.0, full of cliques ready to make war on each other. The only thing missing was cheerleaders.

Heaven’s Most Wanted, available now!

it’s out!

Heaven’s Most Wanted is officially available! Buy it on Amazon! Or for your Nook! Or on Kobo! Or at Smashwords!

Okay, I’ll stop with the exclamation points now. Here’s what you’re in store for in book 3:

It wouldn’t be Heaven if it wasn’t completely broken…

After saving Heaven from certain peril twice, Aggie should be a hero—or at the very least, receive a thank-you card.

Instead, she gets to fix Heaven’s outdated communications network. Her team is as unqualified as she is, and her personal assistant is… Raymond?

Yes, that Raymond, the archangel who stole her memories and tried to murder her two years ago. He’s all smiles now, with the most surprising offer:

If she can put the past behind her, Aggie can have her memories back.

Turns out, memory reabsorption is a painful process. While Aggie’s puking and discovering she was a terrible sister, Raymond tries to have her killed. Oh, and there’s a hacker sending malware all over the network.

It gets worse. The hacker isn’t some demon, she’s a human who just happens to be Aggie’s kid sister. This is a problem she can’t fix with holy fire—if Aggie can’t convince her super-stubborn sister to quit, Grace is gonna make herself Heaven’s Most Wanted.

heaven’s most wanted quote

Kip clapped his hands. “Isn’t it beautiful? I wasn’t sure about the fountain, but now that it’s here, it’s just so adorable!”

At first glance, it was that classic woman pouring water from an urn statue. Except it wasn’t. The face was a cartoon kitten with oversized ears, and it was wearing a chain-mail bikini underneath those chaste robes. For lack of words, Aggie echoed blandly, “Adorable.”

Available now!

heaven’s most wanted quote

“I’ll stop by tomorrow and fill out a report. You can add this to my other fines.” Aggie crossed her arms and kicked a round stamp. It spiraled across the floor, disappearing deep underneath a utility shelf.

Through blatantly clenched teeth, Abraham said, “Your fines have reached maximum capacity. You’re delinquent.”

“And you’re a bad librarian,” Aggie sniffed. There. She said it.

He grimaced, a look that went deep into his eyes and caused him to shudder. “You don’t mean that.”

Heaven’s Most Wanted–Available now!

heaven’s most wanted quote

She went back to the fridge for a refill and felt brave enough to adventure inside for food. She didn’t trust the leftovers in a square foam container, but there was a yogurt still factory sealed and not yet past expiration date. It was a flavor called ‘strength and stamina’ with pictures of bananas and strawberries lifting weights. The container was black with red text, promising Aggie all the help she needed to power through her next testosterone-fueled workout.

She was too hungry to not eat the man-yogurt, and it really was just banana strawberry.

Coming tomorrow (May 1st)!

heaven’s most wanted quote

“I didn’t have time to mark all the places you need to sign.” Raymond picked up one and scanned it. “I’m sorry, I really am. We have to get this all this filled out and signed before the elders’ meeting tomorrow.”

“You said that was next week,” Aggie said, but she wasn’t entirely sure that it wasn’t next week already.

“I was wrong. Tomorrow they’re reviewing financials, next week it’s cat videos.”

Coming May 1st!

heaven’s most wanted quote

If there was anything worse than housework, it was someone else’s housework, especially if that someone had coerced her into doing it, and didn’t even live there anymore. Ms. Fuentes was the perfect worker—always on task, thorough, precise. That unfortunately meant that Beth had to be as well, but no matter. The aura of lemon disinfectant could be washed away with a lot of hot water and maybe some other-scented disinfectant.

Coming May 1st!

heaven’s most wanted quote

Abraham understood. And he knew better than to trust her.

Beth said, “Actually, I just wanted someone to talk to.”

“Bullshit.”

“No, really. I mean, you know how hard it is being what we are. No one trusts you. Everything, even just a simple hello, gets construed as some sort of game. I haven’t had meaningful social contact in three weeks, and it hurts.”

Abraham raised a single eyebrow. His time in Heaven hadn’t dampened his sense of style or grooming. His white polo was emblazoned with the library’s logo of a book in a halo, and he managed to wear it like he chose it, instead of the other way around. “You pulled me from a meeting for ‘meaningful social contact?'”

“You didn’t mention you were in a meeting!” Beth threw her hands up. “I’m sorry, then. I didn’t mean to waste your time.”

“What did you expect? I’m an angel. You’re an almost-demon.”

“Would this be the best time to remind you that less than two weeks ago, you were a demon cavorting with an almost-angel?”

“Cavorting is a strong word.”

“Would you prefer madly in love with?”

His eyes flared. She shrugged and quickly added, “It’s fine. I don’t care. Your secret is safe with me—and whoever else saw you making puppy eyes.”

That was probably not the wisest thing to say. But hey—she’d already lost his help by taking him from that meeting he refused to tell her about. Apparently, becoming an angel mandated passive-aggression.

heaven’s most wanted quote

“You think siccing a hell-beast on me is fun?”

“Of course!” He pouted his lips. “Though I guess if I thought this through a little better, I’d have set this up in front of my court so everyone in Hell could see. You’d quiver in fear that the Infernal Tiger Hell-Beast would rip to shreds.”

“I’m not afraid, because I’m not playing.”

“Yes, you are. You have to. I’m the devil and you have to do what I say.”

Coming May 1st!

heaven’s most wanted excerpt

Here’s an excerpt of Heaven’s Most Wanted, coming May 1st!

Heaven’s Most Wanted
Book 3 in the Angelhide Series

Chapter 1

Aggie uttered the last of the incantation. She only recognized the final two words, since she didn’t remember any of the Latin she had once studied. “Teuri innocens!”

Protect the innocent.

With a white flash of light, the circle of chalk and strange arcane symbols drawn around Schwartz’s door lifted into a haze of dust and disappeared.

“Whoa.” Schwartz squatted on the concrete porch, dragging a finger where a circle of chalk had been caked thick just a second ago.

A wave of exhaustion threatened to drag Aggie to the ground with him. She summoned her last bit of willpower to roll her shoulders to ease the soreness in her back. Her wings fluttered ever so slightly. They’d appeared when she’d cast the spell.

She still didn’t know how to summon her divine mantle on purpose, or how to dismiss it. She’d have to stand here until they went away on their own.

“Angels and demons will no longer be able to enter your home,” she said. “You should be safe.”

“Thanks.” He jiggled the doorknob, though Aggie hadn’t touched that during the warding spell. “Cup of coffee before you go? My dad got me one of those fancy machines and over three hundred flavors. I’m only exaggerating by fifty per cent.”

“I’d love to, but I can’t.” She gestured toward her handiwork, which was now completely invisible. “I’m technically an angel, and all.”

Or rather, she was never not an angel. It was time to stop pretending.

Schwartz snapped his fingers with a grin. “Oh, right! I keep forgetting about that.”

“Must be your stalwart atheism.”

“I’ll have you know that my atheism is strong as ever. Your god is dead, your angel colleagues are assholes, and all the ‘supernatural’ stuff you can do will someday be explained by science.” He clapped his hands together as though that was all the answer he needed. “Who knows? Maybe your wings run on some sort of programming code and you’re actually a cyborg.”

Aggie looked horrified. “A cyborg? I always wanted to be an android.”

He grinned. “Care to debate the finer points of both over at Loaves N Fishes? I at least owe you a mocha-frappe-cciato-tte for your time.”

Coffee or nap? These were the hard choices. Then again, her motel was pretty uncomfortable and this was the last chance to see her friends for a while. Tomorrow, she was scheduled for transport back to Heaven. “Sure, that’d be great.”

“Cool. Just let me grab my wallet and we’ll be off. I’ll text Em, see if she can meet us there.” He ducked into the dim hallway with heavy footfalls.

“Great,” Aggie said, even though he couldn’t hear her. Maybe she could convince them to spend all day with her. She wouldn’t have to be alone. She wouldn’t have to think about Sam, and his suicide a few weeks ago.

You just started thinking about him, Aggie! Stop. You can’t break down right now. Schwartz doesn’t need a guardian angel gross-sobbing in his driveway.

She glanced down the street for a distraction—any thoughts would do. Eventually she’d need to deal with Sam’s passing and her own unexpected pregnancy, but now was not the day. Tomorrow wasn’t, either.

Late spring brought weeds up through the cracks in the sidewalks and dandelion buds to every lawn. This neighborhood was old but quiet. All these houses were full of people. Their lives were riddled with problems, too, and surely some of them needed a guardian angel.

Yeah, that was it. They all needed an Angel of Reconciliation to mend their broken relationships. Estranged fathers and sons. Long lost loves. Unforgiven sisters.

Aggie would help them all. She just had to have Heaven give her the assignment and make it official. I’ll be back for you, she promised. She pressed her senses out, as if by reaching out with her angelhide, she could nudge all the people who needed her. I’m going to find you and bring you together.

And in the meantime, Schwartz could keep her entertained with endless cheerful banter and obscure movie references. He was the perfect antidote to loneliness and grief, and maybe it was time to tell them about her baby—would they be the godparents? Of course they would. His footsteps echoed back through the hall, signaling his return. Awesome.

Just when she thought he’d pop into view, her stomach dropped. A tingling ache gripped her feet, grew upwards like a splash of freezing water.

Her heart jumped to her throat like it was trying to get away. No. Not yet. I’m not supposed to go till tomorrow!

The pain and numbness grew until it was all she could feel, see, and taste. And when she could bear it no longer, it disappeared, leaving her bones hollow.

Aggie was in Heaven.

Receiving looked a lot like the ER of a small, slow hospital. Aggie materialized without her wings in an open exam room, which looked out to the long, glass-walled counter. Two receptionists in pastel scrubs chatted on the other side.

A bald man wearing a shit-brown argyle sweater walked into the doorway. His thick glasses caught the reflection of the overhead lights, making him look dazed or at the very least, hazy. He beamed. “It’s so good to see you, Lamb.”

Raymond Manchester?

Aggie glanced around wildly for an escape. Two years ago this archangel had her murdered as part of an intricate plot to overthrow God. Her part as an unwitting pawn was to be resurrected as an angel so a demon could slaughter her again for her angelhide, which would then be used for the nefarious purpose of keeping God high as a kite for several weeks straight, long enough for the slow-turning cogs of bureaucracy to replace him.

Out of six angels with bright futures ahead of them, she was the only to survive.

Aggie’s entire being clenched with righteous anger and a healthy dose of fear. Raymond represented everything that was wrong with Heaven—angels were scheming, power-grubbing bastards who didn’t care about human life.

“You,” she growled. “What are you doing here?”

She should have led with ‘get out of my way’ and ‘get out of my sight, I never want to see you again.’

A soft golden glow filled the lower corners of her vision, and with it came a reassuring heat. She had unintentionally summoned her holy fire. That was okay—she would use it if she had to.

And if Raymond was here, then she definitely had to.

§

Five computers clicked and hummed, but Grace was plinking at the keyboard of the ancient brick of a laptop instead of her home-built towers. The air was stuffy and thick, and not even the dehumidifier running constantly could fix that. But she didn’t mind—this little unfinished corner of the basement was hers for work and play.

“I knew this thing would be slow, but it must be ready to kick the bucket.” She tapped her fingers against the edge of the cracking card table while the thinking dots danced on the screen. “Time to find a new tradition.”

But first, she needed some assurance she hadn’t gone crazy.

Meer’s quick feet padded down the stairs, her socks visible through the wooden supports. She tossed a towel into the hamper next to the machines and glanced at Grace. “What are you up to?”

“Just about to get a snack.” She needed to eat something, and maybe by the time she got back, this POS would have some answers.

Meer smiled and beckoned upstairs. She wore a pristine white jogging outfit with a matching headband, which she didn’t even need—her hair was stacked into three balls on top of her head, making her a foot taller. She had to duck when she went up or down the stairs. Served her right for ditching that blue weave. Those curls had been amazing.

“Come and celebrate,” Meer said. “I just got back from my last final.”

“That’s awesome.” Grace followed her up the creaking stairs and rounded the hairpin turn into the tiny kitchen.

Meer took two bowls of chili from the counter and put them on the table, which was shoved against the wall to make enough room to walk between it and the counters. “Sit down so I can get into the oven. The rolls should be about ready.”

Indirect sunlight streamed in through the window over the sink. Must have been lunchtime or close to it. Grace’s stomach agreed with a soft rumble.

The chili had huge chunks of peppers and a million beans. In other words, it was SC’s signature five-star vegan recipe. The chili was lukewarm, except for the habañeros that charred Grace’s tongue and made her break out in instant sweats. “Shit. He makes it this hot to fuck with us, doesn’t he?”

Meer pulled a tray of golden, puffy rolls from the oven and let the door screech itself shut. “Doubt it. You see how he packs it in. If it weren’t for us wimps, he’d make it even stronger.”

Grace couldn’t imagine what that was like. “He might accidentally put some chili in those peppers!”

Meer snorted. “Right?”

In the lull that followed, Grace swallowed as fast as she could and followed each bite with a moment of recovery.

Meer poured two tall glasses of milk. “So. When was the last time you slept?”

“I tried when you left. Woke up an hour later and couldn’t fall back asleep.”

“Did you take your meds?”

“I should have. Can’t now—not enough time before dinner tonight.”

SC’s mam was bringing out the grill for the first time that summer, with barbecue and roast veggies.

Meer looked like she might disagree, but she didn’t press the issue. Her voice was soft. “What woke you up? Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Grace blurted. Because she wasn’t. Stupid brain wouldn’t let her sleep.

Meer batted her excessive eyelashes at Grace and waited expectantly.

She could never resist those eyelashes. “I just… I started thinking about my sister again. No idea why, she just popped into my head and then I couldn’t fucking sleep.”

More specifically, she’d woken up to the sound of her sister’s voice echoing inside her skull, promising, I’ll be back for you. I’m going to find you…

Because that wasn’t crazy at all.

Meer sipped her milk. “You haven’t mentioned her in a while.”

“Yeah. I thought I was doing good.”

“You are.” Meer let her words hang as an encouragement not to argue.

“But… it’s been two years.” Two awesome years that would have been perfect without the recurring anxiety attacks and night sweats.

“Two years isn’t a long time. She was your sister. She was killed.”

Grace’s throat tightened against the thought that wanted to come out. “I hated her.”

It was an awful thing to say. She hated herself for it.

Meer nodded in complete acceptance. “She hurt you, Grace. There’s no shame in hating her for doing that to you, dead or not.”

“She can’t hurt me anymore,” Grace said to herself.

“But that doesn’t stop you from being afraid once in a while, and that’s okay.” Meer reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “Is that what you were doing downstairs?”

Busted. “Yeah. Sometimes I hack her old friends and see what they’re up to. Em had a hell of a time getting over her. It was nice to know I wasn’t the only one suffering… even if we were suffering for different reasons.”

“Why don’t we go see what you found, then?”

“It’s probably nothing.”

“I know.” Meer smiled and put their dishes in the sink. “Then we’ll take it easy and you can quit playing the stalker, alright?”

“Deal.” Grace wrapped up the rolls so they could bring them to the barbecue.

They went downstairs and Grace woke up the screen saver. Profiler’s message box was loaded with Em Hendricks’s most recent history. Brute force hacking had done its job once again. That and Em had chosen passwords with her boyfriend’s name in them for the past two years.

Schwartz, said boyfriend, had said: Hey babe, you wanna get coffee with our angel friend one last time?

Five minutes later: NVM. Aggie must have already gone to Heaven. She vanished from our driveway.

Em responded, Bummer. I could have used a pick-me-up today. Hopefully she’ll give us a call when she gets back. She said it wouldn’t be long.

“I guess this means you’re the sane one,” Meer murmured from over Grace’s shoulder.

“This shit pisses me off,” Grace retorted, surprising herself with her anger. “Angels and heaven? That was Cheryl’s schtick.”

She clicked through to a message stream between Em and Aggie. This is my new email address, Aggie had written. a.halcomb777@heaven-sent.org. If you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask.

Another message immediately followed that one. Oh and my number is 555-5977. Again, don’t hesitate. If you need me, I’ll come running, I promise.

Meer pressed her fingers into the sore muscles of Grace’s back. She always knew right where to find her weak spots. “So, are you satisfied that Cheryl isn’t back from the dead to torment you?”

“Yeah, but now I want to know who the fuck this person who think she’s an angel is.”

“I’m not going to stop you, but I am going to find a book to read.”

“But you’re done with school.”

“Which means I don’t have to dissect the pompous works of stuffy white dudes anymore.” Meer headed up the stairs. “I’ll be back with something fun.”

Grace jotted down the email address and number so she could shut down the old laptop for good. It always seemed appropriate to use her sister’s laptop for hacking and spying on family—Grace pictured Cheryl rolling in her grave over her stuff being used for—gasp, hiss—sin. But maybe it was time to move on.

Grace dumped the laptop into the garbage can. It didn’t fit, but it made a satisfying clunk or three.

They settled into companionable silence. Grace ran preliminary searches on her computer devoted to play, but she came up void. No such DNS, no such carrier.

That only made Grace want to try harder.

“Meer, would you proof read this?” Grace grabbed one of her anonymous, prepaid phones and typed a message to the mysterious angel Aggie. Hey, it’s Em. I put my phone through the wash again so here’s my new number. I can’t get Profiler to work, but I really need to talk to you. Could you download ScreenTime and help me? link.STdownload.me

Meer took the phone. “Looks okay to me. What’s the link?”

“Spy ware. If she’s stupid enough to click, I’ll be able to see all the messages she’s sending.”

“That’s pretty stupid.”

“Here’s hoping she doesn’t think twice, because it’s from her friend and she did offer to help, like twice. If not, no big—this phone can’t be traced back here.”

“Want me to hit send?”

“Go for it.” Grace fired up the spy ware dashboard while they waited for a response.

The phone vibrated and Meer frowned at the screen. “Wrong number, dumb-ass,” she read. “Dumb-ass is misspelled, by the way.”

“Great.”

It was worth a try.

Meer gave her an encouraging look. “Hey,” she said softly. “At least you can put your sister out of your mind.”

“Yeah,” Grace echoed. Now that she had another puzzle to fixate on—these people who called themselves angels—she could forget about Cheryl for another few months.

§

Raymond looked down at Aggie’s clenched, glowing fists. He chuckled and learned against the door. “You should probably hear what I have to say before you get violent.”

“No, actually, I’m not listening to a single word that comes out of your mouth. You’re full of lies and you’ve done nothing but hurt me. Get out of my way.” Aggie wasn’t normally this rude, but it felt right—given their history.

Raymond spread his hands in an open gesture. “Please?”

Aggie wasn’t expecting and she didn’t want ‘please.’ She just stared at him, because he wasn’t getting out of the doorway and she wasn’t getting close enough to touch him.

“I’ll take that as an ‘okay.'” He smiled like this wasn’t awkward at all. “So, I understand why you’re angry. I do. But here’s the thing: you and I are working together.”

She knew what all those words meant, but not coming from his voice or that smug, lying smile. How could he do this to her? “You were the one who summoned me here half a day early, weren’t you?”

He hung his head in mock sheepishness. “You got me. I was just so excited to see you, I couldn’t wait to embark on this exciting new chapter of our lives.”

The light encompassing Aggie’s hands flared. Excited to see her? Exciting new chapter of their lives? “Get out of my way.”

“Aww, Lamb…”

“Stop calling me that! Don’t ever call me that again.”

“I can see you’re upset—”

“Try furious and ready to hurt you.”

“That, too. And after everything I did to you, it’s a perfectly natural reaction.”

Aggie clenched her teeth and tamped the Essence burning at her fingertips to a steady, low glow. “Then why are you here, trapping me in this room?”

A room that was too small, too sterile, and smelled like antiseptic cleaner. What a great way to reintroduce someone to Heaven—by inducing claustrophobia.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.” Raymond beamed again and deserved to be punched on principle. “You’ll need to work through your emotions awfully quick. I’m asking a lot of you, but that’s because we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.”

“What are you talking about?” Aggie’s shoulders sagged as she gave up fighting the conversation. It was going to happen, apparently.

“Our giant project! Hazel has appointed you to my team. We’re going to overhaul the Heaven-Sent network… together!”

Aggie blinked. “What? No. I’m not doing that.”

Granted, Heaven-Sent needed an overhaul. But there was one little problem with Aggie doing the work—she had no training in IT. Or business management. Or anything, really.

“‘Fraid you are, L—Aggie.” He held out a clipboard with some paperwork but no pen. “The Right Hand of God herself wants you on the job. I got her authorization on Form 389-C: Interdepartmental Transfer.”

Aggie snatched the form so she could glare at it. Raymond’s handwriting was annoyingly perfect, with every line in the form filled out, even if it was an N/A or a TBD.

Agnes Halcomb was listed as the new acting supervisor for the special action committee Heaven-Sent project. At no point on this paper was there a spot for her to consent to this transfer. Hazel’s signature was on the bottom, dated same day, with a notary seal time-stamped about an hour ago.

She riffled through the other pages, which were supporting documents and project notes. “I never applied for this position.”

“Well,” Raymond said, “The beauty of special committees like these is that they’re appointed by the archangels. It’s less about sifting through applications and more about choosing the right person for this very critical job.”

He was so full of shit. She wanted to spit at him. And to think she put up with six months of that condescending tone and PR-bullshittery when she spent six months at Angel Academy, all the while thinking she was getting a favor.

“I don’t want it.”

He laughed. “What do you mean, you don’t want it?”

Aggie crossed her arms and stared at him. “I don’t want it. I reject this offer.”

“That’s now how it works, and besides, this is a great committee to be on. Good things are happening, and you can be a part of it.”

“I’m not working with you. Will you please get out of the doorway now?”

He didn’t. His too-happy expression never faltered. “But Aggie, this is the opportunity of a lifetime!”

“Is that before or after you killed me?”

“Would you just listen to me?”

“I did, actually. I heard what you had to say and then I said no.”

“I can’t believe you don’t want to this position!”

“And I can’t believe you’re still here after I’ve asked you like a million times to leave. Go away.” Aggie stood on her tiptoes and called out to the nearest receptionist. “Hey! I need help.”

The receptionist took great pains to pull a pore strip from a box, peel off the paper, drizzle it with drops from a water battle, and apply it to his nose before he answered. “This is Receiving. If you wish to leave again, you’ll need to utilize Departures.”

She said, “I need security to deal with this guy.”

The receptionist didn’t respond. Apparently, keeping time on his wristwatch was more important.

“I said I need help!” Aggie shouted. “Call security!”

Raymond said, “You might try toning it down.”

“You might try getting the fuck out of my way. If you think standing here is going to make me give in and accept your shitty job, you’re wrong. I won’t.”

“This is the part of the conversation you aren’t going to like.” He winced, an expression that lingered on his already sour face.

“I haven’t liked one word of it. As far as I’m concerned, it’s over.”

That’s it. All I have to do is stop responding, stop letting him get to me… then he’ll get bored and leave me alone.

Raymond drew out his response, and for a moment she thought she might gain an upper hand. Then he said, “You don’t understand, Aggie. You’re on the committee. Once Hazel signed this form, it became official. You can’t undo that, you can’t just throw your hands in the air and say you’re not doing it. You are.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Aggie sputtered. “It’s just a form. Give me that.”

Raymond offered her the clipboard. “If you have any questions, I’m happy to answer them.”

She pulled the form loose and let the board clatter on the tile. With a flair, she grabbed the paper at the top and ripped.

Well, she tried, anyway. This paper was tough. Resilient, even. No matter how hard she yanked, her fingers would rather give up than let that godforsaken form tear. Aggie grunted without meaning to and sounded rather like a wimp.

Seriously. She couldn’t even tear a piece of paper.

Raymond laughed at her. “Like I said, this isn’t something you can quit. That form is about as close as you can to a command direct from God.”

Aggie crumpled the paper and tossed it aside. The moment it left her hands, the paper smoothed itself and fluttered away. “God is dead.”

“His contracts still stand, as you can see.”

Damn.

There was no use convincing Raymond. The person who could undo Form 389-C was Hazel, and it would be Aggie’s first action as Committee Supervisor was getting out of the contract.

She let her shoulders sag. She wasn’t good at lying, but she could at least act hopeless, because that’s how she felt. “Alright. Fine. Will you let me out of this room now?”

“Sure.” Raymond sidestepped and held out a badge with her picture and name on it. “First meeting is this afternoon. The tech house is hard to find, so I’ll swing by your apartment and pick you up in an hour.”

“Yeah. Okay. Sure.” Aggie walked to the receptionist, who was still wearing the nose pore strip. “Excuse me. I need to get to the Elders’ Area, please?”

He looked up from his wristwatch. “Sure,” he said slowly. “Go through that door over there. It’s like the second door on the right.”

“Really?” That was easy.

Raymond and the two receptionists snickered.

The guy with the pore strip flicked a map in her general direction. “Good luck with that.”

Aggie didn’t catch the map in time. It fell and she had to pick it up, because she needed it to find her way around Heaven. She’d only been in the Academy wings, which were probably a small part of Heaven.

The map was a photocopy—small, grainy, and impossible to read the labels. Great.

But if not the Elders’ Area, Aggie had no idea where to go. She hadn’t been here in eighteen months, and before that she was escorted around.

Oh, and she didn’t have a place to live.

“If you think you’re going to get Hazel to change her mind, you’re wrong.” Raymond stopped laughing long enough to speak. “But I’ll take you there so you can see for yourself.”

Aggie looked at the map again but her eyes started to cross. This was a joke. Useless. And she had no other option but to accept Raymond’s help—for now.

Pore strip pointed his white flag of a nose towards the double doors marked PERSONNEL ONLY. “I’ll beep you in to the Main Ward. Thank you for choosing Heaven-Sent.”

Chapter Two

The problem with being the Demon of Manipulation was that no one ever believed the Demon of Manipulation. Especially not the clerk at Requisitions, a boy who was way too polite—not to mention calm—for a chubby eight-year-old. The moment he read her card, he leaned back as though he might get cooties by breathing in the same air. “Just a moment,” he said stiffly.

Beth toyed with the gold nameplate next to the clerk’s computer screen, which was emblazoned with the name Thaddeus in rubies the size of sand grains. Staring at them hurt, but really, everything in this part of Hell was posh to the point of trying-too-hard. Black sandstone floor was polished to obsidian shine, yet was soft to absorb sounds. Intricate silk tapestries rippled softly against the nudge of overhead palm fans. She heard a rumor that the counters were diamond panes, but that was from a student at Academy who probably resented Beth’s promotion from tortured soul to demon initiate.

Not that she actually was the Demon of Manipulation. Not yet. Lucifer refused to grant her a demonspine and title until she earned it on this special mission of soul-searching and discovery. She was, as he put it, to venture forth into the world and find her place in it.

And apparently, when her wisdom was gained and lessons learned and all that, she would simply ‘know,’ return to Hell, and accept Lucifer’s gracious promotion to Level Five demon.

Then came proving she was the only logical choice to become his next Left Hand, which Lucifer wouldn’t discuss until this task was complete.

Beth suspected it was all lies, anyways. What kind of self-respecting devil sent his servants on pilgrimages of soul-searching, truth-seeking and discovery?

But. The only way to win was to play, and Beth was determined to learn the long game.

Thaddeus returned with a short stack of books, stepping onto a little stool on his side of the counter so that he could see the screen without craning his head up. “There,” he said. “Sign here, here and here.”

“What am I signing for?” Beth squinted at the forms.

“That I filled your request.”

“Just let me double-check first, then.”

His face remained cold but his eyes seemed to harden. “Everything is here. I don’t make mistakes.”

This could be a test. What if Lucifer sent instructions to mess with her as part of her ‘request?’ But what was the right way to respond—distrust the bald kid or put him in his place?

She picked up the keys. The largest one—for the car, presumably—was plain and brandless, not the kind with security features built into the key or even a remote. “I want an import.”

“That is not in this request.” Thaddeus said as he typed softly on the keyboard. “If that will be all, please sign so that I may help the next client in line. As you can see, we’re quite busy.”

Beth was the only ‘client’ in the entire room. She sighed and glanced through her stuff—a journal with a cross on the cover and an orange ‘final clearance’ sticker over Jesus’s face. An abridged version of the Accord, with bonus appendix ‘Welcome to Demonhood 101.’ And perhaps most insulting, the phone on top had a cracked screen.

“Can I get another phone? One that isn’t already broken?”

The clerk tippy-toed to peer at it over his nose. “That is our only model Dash214 currently available for checkout.”

“Then find me another model.”

“Model Dash214 is specified here. I cannot deviate from the request. Standard Hell-Spawned policy,” he said. “Please sign so I can finalize your request.”

There was no winning this one. Maybe this was Lucifer’s idea—send her down to Earth with a crappy car and half-broken phone, make her start with nothing. She held out her hand. “Pen.”

As she handed back the signed forms, a slip of paper slid from an otherwise invisible slit in the diamond counter. With a bland, practiced smile straight from the bowels of retail, Thaddeus said, “This is a summary of your checkouts, complete with due dates and special instructions regarding this request. Thank you for choosing Hell-Spawned. Next?”

Beth crumpled the receipt, since that was the only thing she could take her frustration out on. Not near satisfying enough. She stomped out alone, only bothering to smooth out the receipt as an afterthought, to make sure she didn’t check in the materials late.

Due date: two years from now. Wow. Maybe that was Lucifer’s doing, too, inferring that she’d be stuck wandering on Earth for two years.

Below that date, a bold message was printed: “BTW, my two best assassins are following you down to Earth. Better move fast! Hugs, The Lord of Hell.”

Heaven’s Most Wanted

Here’s some exciting release news!

Heaven’s Most Wanted
Book 3 in the Angelhide Series
coming May 1st, 2016

It wouldn’t be Heaven if it wasn’t completely broken…

After saving Heaven from certain peril twice, Aggie should be a hero—or at the very least, receive a thank-you card.

Instead, she gets to fix Heaven’s outdated communications network. Her team is as unqualified as she is, and her personal assistant is… Raymond?

Yes, that Raymond, the archangel who stole her memories and tried to murder her two years ago. He’s all smiles now, with the most surprising offer:

If she can put the past behind her, Aggie can have her memories back.

Turns out, memory reabsorption is a painful process. While Aggie’s puking and discovering she was a terrible sister, Raymond tries to have her killed. Oh, and there’s a hacker sending malware all over the network.

It gets worse. The hacker isn’t some demon, she’s a human who just happens to be Aggie’s kid sister. This is a problem she can’t fix with holy fire—if Aggie can’t convince her super-stubborn sister to quit, Grace is gonna make herself Heaven’s Most Wanted.

demonspine quote

Abraham smiled and shouted, “The sky is blue in Hell!”

The taskmasters stared at him blankly.

He rushed them, hands out and yelling as fast as he could. “That dress looks great on you! I’m an honest worker! Lucifer kicks puppies! Seriously, that dress really does look great on you!”

from Demonspine–available now

demonspine quote

“This is a really bad idea.”

“Of course it is,” Abraham said with characteristic cheerfulness. “We’re walking straight into the lion’s den. But remember when you did that two years ago to save Nicholas Bayer? At least this time, you have the benefit of saving yourself.”

“I got Nicky killed.”

“Details, schmetails. You used to be so optimistic, Aggie.”

“Heaven makes a cynic of everyone.”

from Demonspine–available now

How to Use Project Management Skills as an Author

My lovely friend Natalie Fee has some great thoughts on project management as an author over at the PeoWriMos blog today. Check it out!

PeoWriMos -- Peoria Writers' Group

Project management is a valued resource in the business world, but can it help you with creative endeavors like writing a novel? Of course! Employing project management skills will help you beat writer’s block to get to the end of that elusive novel, short story, or set of poems you’ve been meaning to finish. If you plan to self-publish, project planning will be an invaluable skill set, especially with your marketing efforts. Take your next writing project from the realm of abstract into concrete actions and steps.

What is a Project?

According to the Project Management Institute, a project is “a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result.” It has a defined beginning and ending with dates. It usually has about five stages:

1. Initiating
   1. Define the Scope
2. Planning
   1. Calculate time & costs
3. Execution
4. Monitoring / Controlling
   1. Milestones
5. Closing
   1. Lessons Learned
   2. Celebrate Success

Nanowrimo is, at heart…

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