Survive and Thrive

I'm taking my annual pilgrimage to the shrine of Karen Marie Moning's Fever world. This may be the last such pilgrimage, as Feversong promises to be the final book in a brilliant series filled with so much wisdom and so many life lessons that I'm not sure how I will live without it. I will hold out hope that Ms. Moning has left a loophole through which she will create new stories in the Fever world, perhaps with new characters. I'm not sure because although the book came out two weeks ago, I'm doing my usual anticipation and savor dance with the latest offering, reading its predecessors and reminding myself of the events and developments that led up to the first page of the new book. This time, I started only two books back with Burned, followed by Feverborn, before I plan to dive into Feversong, which I would prefer to read on vacation, when I can devote hours and hours to swimming in the deep pool of KMM's extraordinary imagination. Today I'm contemplating a major theme in the Fever books—survival. At any cost. Which leads me to wonder whether I agree with Ms. Moning on this point:  is survival at any cost worth it? It's always seemed to me that unless we are thriving, life hardly seems worth living. And when I'm not thriving, it always seems tempting to give up.

According to Jericho Barrons (in Burned), there are two types of people, those who survive no matter the cost, and those who are walking victims. I'm on the fence about Barrons’ theory. I don't fancy myself a walking victim, but neither do I think that survival is worth any cost. In the story, for example, Mac kills an innocent human bystander while defeating one of her Fae enemies. She is distraught over her crime against humanity, while Barrons feels no remorse on her behalf. Mac lived through the incident. She survived. So, by definition, whatever she did was worth the cost in his mind. Mac is more ambivalent and I share her equivocation.

It's hard to put myself in the same situation, of course, but it's certainly a Faustian bargain. My life for someone else's—someone who wasn't necessarily hurting me, but who accidentally got in the way of someone who was. I know what the ethicists would say: it's never okay to trade one life for another. Catholic theology teaches that it is immoral to trade one life even for thousands or millions. Not sure I agree with that.  I'd like to think that I would give up my life to save a city, or a world, as Mac decides she will before the decision is beyond her grasp.

What if the cost of survival means becoming fragmented? Either literally, as Dani does in the story, losing herself to her “alter,” or figuratively, as we sometimes do when we live through something bad and come out in pieces. According to Dani, the key to life is to stop living in the past; "Dude, you survived it. Move on."  Not sure I agree with that viewpoint either.  I think it's how we move on that determines the success of our future endeavors. 

So, where does that leave me?  I think I'm in the camp that believes that survival isn't everything and that there are some things worse than death. But let's think this through. We have the adage that where there is life, there is hope. Plus the idea that self-destruction is wrong according to most religious beliefs as it assumes a power best left to one that sees a bigger picture than we do. If we subscribe to those truths, then there is no cost too high for survival. But does that account for having to do "evil" things to ensure that we wake up breathing tomorrow? I guess the answer is situational. If it's a question of my life or one who threatens me or mine, I'll take my life over theirs.

But what about when we're not clawing and scraping our way to a pacemaker-perfect heartbeat? What about when survival is more about finding the wherewithal to get up day after day when we are in pain—physical or emotional? In the Fever world, there are at least two characters that are helped out of their misery. Their lives of torture were deemed hopeless enough that Barrons was willing to commit the ultimate sin and help them to die. Apparently, even for Barrons, there is a price for survival that is too high.

I'm not sure this rambling walk through the Fever world has illuminated my final thoughts on this issue. I hope that the book I look forward to starting soon will provide some closure. On many levels.

Anchors Aweigh

I just finished a fun-filled romp through the somewhat disturbed imagination of John Hartness. I like John Hartness. I've never met the man, but he is an enthusiastic contributor to Facebook and a prolific writer, so I feel like I know him somewhat. He got fed up with the world of independent publishers and decided to do something beyond bitching; he started his own publishing house. You've got to love that. And he's got a good eye as a publisher: I very much enjoyed Of Lips and Tongue, which I wrote about here, and Changeling's Fall, which inspired another blog. And he writes cool as shit protagonists, including Jimmy Black and Bubba the Monster Hunter. My favorite of Hartness' heroes is Quincy Harker, son of Mina and Jonathan Harker of Dracula fame, and his latest adventure is entitled Heaven Can Wait. Quincy is an enhanced human with tendencies toward supernatural manifestations (he's a sorcerer/mage/wizard type)—meaning he's fast, strong and can conjure great energy balls of fire on par with Harry Dresden. Quincy hunts and fights demons and if it's Tuesday, he must be saving the world from becoming the dominion of the devil. Were that my ‘To Do’ list was as exciting. In this story, Q is trying to prevent the dissolution of the barriers that separate Heaven and Hell, and avoid the destruction of the earth as collateral damage. He's all over that action. In his efforts to save the day, Quincy attempts a little astral projection, leaving his body in the care of his fiancée and using her as an anchor, and their telepathic link as a tether back to his physical existence. He asks her to "tug" on their mental link occasionally, just to make sure they're still connected and that he can find his way home. It's an interesting metaphor: using the ones we love as anchors to our existence in reality and our feelings for them as the connection that binds us to ourselves. 

As I was reading the passage that described this communication and binding system, I was reminded of the many hours I spent in various playgrounds during my children's early childhood. I have twin sons and they were active boys. We needed to do something with their unbridled energy, and playgrounds were the perfect arena for them to expend their exuberance and exhaust themselves. So, every day I would very consciously "run them" and encourage my little men to tire themselves out. And every day they would burst upon the scene in the playground like they owned the place and run around Ike maniacs on crack. And I would watch them like the paranoid New Yorker that I am, never taking my eyes off them lest some perverted kidnapping serial killer snatch them. And yes, my behavior was extreme and likely disturbed. But it was the boys' behavior that was more telling.  While they devoted themselves with complete abandon, their eyes would lift from time to time, meeting mine, making sure I was still there, "tugging" on our link so they would know that they could always find their way home. Periodically, they would rush headlong over to me for a quick hug or kiss or just a touch of my leg or my hand—enough to prove that their eyes were not deceiving them, and I was there in the flesh, which meant that they could race off again to play with absolute security, knowing their anchor hadn't slipped, and that they wouldn't be abandoned or lost.

And it's not just children who act this way. Like Quincy and his love, Rebecca, committed couples do this all the time. I often go about my business over the course of the day, content in my activities, when I pause and shoot off a quick text to my husband, tugging on our tether, waiting for his emoji response or a few short words that let me know he is there and that we are still connected. He does the same, especially when he's away from his home office and we're more physically distant from each other than usual. I've had people comment that we communicate more than seems "normal" (and what the hell does that mean anyway?), or at least more often than couples who are well beyond the honeymoon phase, but I'm delighted that our bond is so strong and so connected. We don't need to exchange tomes of information. Just a small tug. 

I do this with my close friends as well. Back in the Dark Ages before cell phones and texting, my friends used to give me a hard time because I was known for calling and saying something to the effect that I was calling to tell them that I didn't have time to talk, but I wanted to let them know I was thinking of them. These days I just send a text. It's my way of pulling on the tethers that bound me to the reality of my life. 

So, while I cannot project my astral body to other planes of existence by tethering my essence through a extrasensory mental connection, I can and do emulate the great Quincy Harker in a more mundane way. Once again, we find truth in fantasy within the pages of my beloved books, where mythical creatures lead paranormal existences in alternate universes that look a lot like our realm, only more magical. 

I Get By with a Little Help from My Friends

All of you know that I cannot image life without my friends. Knowing my peeps are out there in the world helps me to face each day with courage and confidence; I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am not alone and need never face adversity or joy without someone with whom to share it. The reality of that certainty is literally life changing and I count my blessings each and every morning and evening and never take my good fortune for granted. I've joked that my best friends (and I include my beloved husband on this list) would fly halfway around the world to give me a tissue if I sneezed. Why am I regaling you with stories of my fabulous friends?  Because I just finished reading Rose Montague's last installment of the J'Amigos Trilogy, Jill. At the center of this series is the friendship between the three J'Amigos—Jade, Jane and Jill. One is a vampire, one is a faerie queen and the last is a little bit of everything. They come together against difficulty and danger and become fast friends along the way. What is remarkable about this trio is the level of commitment and support they offer each other. Taken over the course of the three books, their friendship evolves as an inspiration and a blueprint for foundational relationships that all of us should be lucky enough to follow.

The question of how to be a friend stymies many folks. We can take a page from the three J'Amigos and highlight that being a true friend means showing up when we're needed. Even when it's inconvenient. Or even potentially dangerous.  Friends don't let friends go through Hell by themselves. Or even to the Underneath, where Jill has been banished, and from which there is no escape. With friends, all things are possible -- even Houdini-esque exits from places where Camus would be comfortable.

Many of us feel this way about our families—we shut up and show up because they are blood and we're obligated. But it feels different when it's a friend in need. Friends are the family we choose. We choose to be tethered to our friends and to show up for them even when it’s inconvenient. We get bigger kudos for showing up for our friends than we do for our family in some ways, when in reality it should be the opposite, if merit were measured in terms of the perceived weight of the burden. Helping my friends feels like a privilege. Helping my family can sometimes feel heavier.

I was with my mother extensively during her last six months. She made multiple trips to the hospital for falls, heart trouble, pneumonia, etc. She was a mess that I was stuck cleaning up. I didn't even like my mother, but I felt it was my responsibility as her daughter to be there for her. After all, if honoring our mothers and fathers were easy, they wouldn't have made it a commandment. So, I carried out all of my filial duties. And it was no fun at all—not that death and dying are ever much fun, of course.

Contrast this with showing up for my friend when she was going through cancer treatments. Also no fun. Except it was. We made it fun. And a truly horrible situation was a bit less horrible because we were together. She knew she could count on me. And I was grateful for the opportunity to be there for her. Or another time when a different friend was going through a messy divorce and my ability to fly across the continent to see her and let her know she wasn't alone was life-affirming at a very dark time. Again, my primary feeling was overwhelming gratitude that I could be there.  There is nobility in showing up for an amigo that is rarely there in fulfilling familial obligations.

And when my friends have shown up for me? Priceless. My friends made the difference between total despair coupled with overwhelming grief and a feeling that life was still worth living.  Albert Schweitzer said that sometimes our own flames go out and are rekindled by another so that we may burn brightly again. He advises us to be grateful to those who light our fires. It's good advice.

For me, and apparently for Jade, Jane and Jill as well, having good friends means being a good friend. These are, or should be, very mutual relationships, filled with give and take, push and pull and mutual support.  This does not mean keeping score or bailing when things get a bit one-sided. Over the course of a lifetime friendship, the see-saw is going to tilt one way or the other, sometimes for a period of time. Life happens.  And sometimes things get strained. But like the J’Amigos we go one holding each other up regardless because that’s what friends do. Or should. So thank you to Rose Montague for illustrating the art of friendship and showing us all how to be a friend and have a friend.

Transformative Healing

I recently finished the second novel in Faith Hunter's new Soulwood series, Curse on the Land. I loved it. Nell Ingram is a complex character full of strength and vulnerability and I'm thrilled to be riding along with her as she heals from multiple wounds, both physical and emotional. And, as she evolves, Nell comes to learn that healing changes a person, which seems intuitive. Less intuitive, and more interesting, however, is the second part of her observation, that the agent of healing is also transformed through helping another to come back from trauma.  Given that this is paranormal fantasy, Nell is healed by a tree, not a person. And the changes wrought on her body include roots growing in her stomach, and the tree becoming attached to her in a magical way. So perhaps we in the real world don't have much in common with Nell in a literal way, but as in so many of my beloved books, the metaphorical truths are strong and deep. In the real world, we are scarred by life and wounded by the people we encounter—sometimes less, sometimes more. And these scars are the physical and emotional reminders of the lives we’ve led. But instead of focusing on those and that which wounds us, I want to consider those who help us. What happens to the healers? What is the relationship between two people, one of whom is the recipient seeking wholeness and the healer trying to provide it, or at least encourage it?

I've been on both sides of this particular exchange and I vastly prefer to heal than to be healed. Go figure. And as someone who goes out of my way to help others for the purely selfish reason that it makes me feel incredibly good—and contributory and generous and worthwhile—I know that helping others to heal has profoundly transformed my psyche and my soul. 

Now, I'm not claiming to be Dr. Kildare (although I definitely had a major thing for Richard Chamberlain way back in the day). Nor am I a medical professional or lawyer or research scientist. I'm just a human living among others, many, if not most of whom are in pain. Including me. And there is a lot we can do to heal each other—which is certainly apropos, given the current situation in our world.

I understand that doctors are taught to maintain emotional distance from their patients. And I get why that is necessary. But I don't totally buy it (repeat disclaimer here:  I'm not a doctor). I don't see how any human in the healing arts can become so inured to both human suffering and recovery as to be unmoved—one way or the other—from those they heal, or try to heal. I also understand how being a doctor is currently more about paperwork and CYA than making like Hippocrates. But still. It's gotta get to them.

And what about the rest of us?  There is no feeling like a heartfelt "Thank you!" coming from someone whose day got better because we effected positive change. Maybe we held an elevator for someone rushing to make it, or we were serenely patient while the new check out woman at Whole Foods struggled to find the right number to input for our Honey Crisp apples.  Or maybe we helped a friend's son write a better resume, or brought a colleague coffee just because. Or we consciously found something to nice to say to everyone we encountered in our day.  It may not be brain surgery, but it’s good.

What we don't know, perhaps, is how profoundly healing these small acts of kindness can be. For me, receiving positive comments when I was younger was my first inkling that maybe, just maybe, I wasn't the total loser my mother taught me I was. It's possible that someone else who has become so distrustful of humanity because of damaging early experiences can be healed even a millimeter by the small positivity that we can offer up to them.

Because it turns out that it truly is better to give than to receive, to heal than to be healed. It's almost addictive. And if we do enough healing of others, we end up healing ourselves. We become transformed by giving. We create a connection with those we've healed and those who heal us. Just like Nell and her tree.

I challenge you to close your eyes and think of three people whose help healed you in some way. If you're lucky, it was a parent, or a sibling or a mate. Perhaps it is your own children, although it is more about the fact of their existence and our own actions with them that is the most transformative about the kids in our lives. Don't we always feel a true bond with those that helped to heal us? Don't we feel bonded to those whose lives we've touched in a positive way? I do. I think you do too. 

In, Curse on the Land, we learn the extent of the mutual transformation that occurred as a result of Nell’s healing in the first book. It's a metaphor for reality, another in a long list of truths in fantasy that it has been my pleasure and my privilege to identify and promote. In fact, the reading and the writing heals something in my own soul. It is my hope that my insights might, in turn, transform the stories that I write about for others who read them. Then the circle will be closed and the mutual transformation complete. 

Love and Other Imperfections

"Isn't it wonderful not to have to be perfect to be loved?" These words are uttered by one of the characters in the latest addition to the Black Dagger Brotherhood series by JR Ward (technically, the series).  It's no surprise to me that JR Ward always has profound things to say, and, if you read my blog but not her books, you might want to consider the wisdom of Jessica Bird (JR's real name) when expanding your TBR pile. I read that line and was stopped in my tracks. In the story, Mary drops this pearl after her mate, Rhage, has lost control of himself and behaved rather poorly. Instead of berating Rhage, or looking at him askance, Mary lets him know that it's OK to be imperfect, and that she expects no more from him and loves him anyway.  With one small question, Mary makes it OK for Rhage to be human (even though he's a vampire who turns into a dragon, but that's not my point). Wouldn't it be transformative if we all felt that way about those we loved and if those we loved felt that way about us? Of course it would be. And if we're very, very lucky, we get some of that. That unconditional love. That love that doesn't give up, and doesn't crap out, and doesn't abandon us when we fall short of the mark of perfection. But even if we are lucky enough to experience that kind of love, most of us don't believe we're worthy of it. And here's a news flash:  if we don't think we deserve it, we are highly unlikely to be able to give it. Love, like charity, starts at home.

I'm talking about the love we give and the love we get. I don't want to speak for anyone else, so I'll confine my observations to myself. As you know, my childhood was less than ideal. I became convinced pretty early in life that my parents' love was predicated on my being a good girl. My father was unequipped to deal with a demanding child and my mother was unwilling. So love quickly became equated with compliant behavior. Right up until the moment when I figured out that no matter what I did, it wouldn't satisfy my narcissistic mother, and, therefore, there was no room at that particular inn for me. At which point I was behaved nicely around my father, and completely contrary towards my mother. I would say I regretted my truly awful behavior with mommy dearest, except I don't.

But what I do regret is what I learned about love at my damaged mother's knee. I learned that I wasn't worthy of love, that I was so imperfect, so clearly broken, that no one would ever love me. It took a tragically long time to learn new truths. Occasionally, when my defenses are weak and my guard is down, I go right back to being that broken little girl whose mother didn't believe in loving me in all my perfect imperfections. Which is just sad.

What is also sad is that I had a model for imperfectly perfect love, but I wasn't self aware enough to recognize it at the time. Even though I didn't consciously understand it while I was growing up, the effects of unconditional love were working their magic on me. While my mother was busy doing her best to ruin me for life, I was busy being saved. My salvation were my friends—those very same amazing, remarkable, phenomenal women who I've known since I was a small child—who remain the bedrock of my existence. They loved me. Through it all, and I do mean all, through this day and, I know absolutely, till we're dead and probably beyond. Because of them I survived my childhood and adolescence and grew up enough to be able to thrive as an adult.

It really wasn't until I met my husband that I understood that love is always imperfect, and I was able to fully appreciate—in retrospect and from then on— the rare gift of my early friendships. What my husband taught me, consciously and explicitly, is that we love imperfectly, and we are loved imperfectly. Both the subject and the object of love are, by definition, imperfect. And that is perfectly all right and totally perfect.

It is ridiculous to believe that we are only lovable if we are perfect. But so many of us do:  we do our best to make ourselves attractive to potential mates, taking our cues from the media about how we should look and how we should act. We put our best face forward and hide our less attractive aspects, both physical and emotional. We pretend to like things we don't—to this day, my husband feels cheated because he claims I purported to enjoy cooking while we were dating and abandoned the kitchen after we were married (this is not totally accurate, but he has a point). And we tolerate things in others in the beginning of relationships that earn our censure once the honeymoon is over (like ignoring perpetually open cupboards and raised toilet seats until after the wedding when such behaviors inspire epic rages—or maybe that's just me).

And this applies to friends as well as romantic partners. We meet a new person with whom we have some chemistry and common interests and viewpoints. We start to hang out and we become friends. And, as time goes on, we realize that they might not be all they seemed, and maybe they're a little strange, or maybe they have some habits we find off-putting. At which point the question becomes, can we accept others even as we ask them to accept us? I hope the answer is yes, but I'm not sure that's always the case.

Unconditional love is hard. And it's also a bit confusing. Unconditional love dictates that we will love someone no matter what. It doesn't mean accepting unacceptable behavior, or condoning immoral or illegal actions, however. If my husband cheated on me  (I don't believe he ever would, thankfully—but for the sake of argument...), I would still love him. But I am not sure I could still be his wife. If one of my children committed a serious crime, I would definitely still love him, but I would also turn him over to the authorities, in all likelihood. Same for one of my friends. Real love isn't a switch that gets turned on and off. And it's much more than a feeling (Boston was right). Loving imperfect beings requires a decision and a commitment.  Even when we're not feeling it. 

So once again, JR Ward writes truth in fantasy. And sometimes it takes turning into a ten-foot tall Godzilla-like creature and being forgiven any transgressions while we weren't ourselves to feel like we are loved no matter what. Luckily, most of us are only human, and not shape-shifting vampires, and those who love us only have to put up with our human imperfections. 

The Motion of the Ocean

I'm still thinking about Magically Delicious by Robyn Peterman (although I've moved on to Blood Vow by JR Ward, so stay tuned for posts from that deep well). As we talked about in my last post, our protagonist, Zelda, has been charged with restoring the magical balance of her town in West Virginia, which has been disrupted by a pervasive sense of evil that no one can pin down. It turns out that the source of the evil is a magical substance that nullifies paranormal powers. When Zelda discovers the creator of this substance she is understandably miffed, and convinced that the creator, Marge, is as evil as her creation. But Marge takes issue with this condemnation, explaining that no substance or tool is inherently bad, because it's all about the application. As an example, she cites the development of nuclear energy. Now, I'm going to have to digress here a bit, because the snarky fact checker who lives in my brain is compelled to point out that her analogy is incorrect. I think what Ms. Peterman is saying is that nuclear energy was developed for peaceful applications and to provide clean and inexpensive power to a world in need. And that this benevolent concept was corrupted by evil people who made war, not love. As this concept is the central tenet of the book, I've got to take issue with that tenet … and thus I will continue this digression…..

Nuclear weapons were actually developed before nuclear energy. The US initiated the Manhattan Project in response to Nazi Germany's heavy water experiments. At the behest of Albert Einstein (yep, old Albert convinced FDR to build the bomb). Anyhoo, nuclear energy was developed as a peaceful application of weapons of mass destruction, not the other way around. Look it up.

And so ends my digression. Now, back to our regularly scheduled post….. Assuming Ms. Peterman was historically accurate in her analogy (and really, how many paranormal romance readers care one way or the other?), her argument is tantamount to the axiom, "Guns don't kill people, people kill people."  Which is true as far as it goes, of course, but is seriously flawed in all sorts of ways.

In my view, human nature dictates that if something can be used for ill it will be –and only that it might be used for good. The concept of nuclear power gave us Hiroshima and also lots of clean energy (as long as no tsunamis hit the reactor, and then all aspirations to cleanliness and safety go out the window).  Guns can provide food and protection, in the right circumstances and situations. But all too often, guns are the mechanism for death and destruction. So where is the balance?

As you may have guessed from any number of my posts, my political and social leanings take a sharp left after arriving at center. I'm a proponent of gun control and truly do not understand how even common sense restrictions cannot be passed by various state or national legislative bodies. Yes, I understand that guns don't point and shoot by themselves, but more guns equal more opportunity for accidents and impulsive expressions of lethal violence.

So, while I don't like Ms. Peterson's analogy, I don't disagree that she may be onto something. We all know the saying, "It's not the size of the boat, but the motion of the ocean that counts."  And, once again, that is true as far as it goes, but it probably doesn't go far enough. The question of how we use something is complicated. Even more difficult to grapple with is the Aladdin problem: once the genie is out of the bottle, it's almost impossible to put back in. Given that, doesn’t it make sense to avoid rubbing the stupid bottle in the first place?  Is it best to leave that bad boy trapped and cramped for the greater good?  I don't know. Is it even possible that we humans, knowing something is possible, would eschew the potential? Not hardly. We are a curious species, even cognizant of the attendant danger to our feline friends. 

We are also a species that is compelled to ‘keep up with the Kardashians’. If someone else has something, we want it too, which is why there are so many damned nuclear weapons in the world. Not to mention guns. And, again, volume breeds vulnerability. In these kinds of cases, more is definitely not merrier. More weapons mean more death. More lethal weapons mean a lot more death. It’s a pretty straightforward equation.

But I'm also an intellectual and I believe in the free flow of ideas. So quelling knowledge or exploration or problem solving or any other kind of creativity is totally anathema to me. Thus, I guess after all this, and despite any historical inaccuracies she may have promulgated, I am coming down on the side of Marge. That genie has got to be free – just like the rest of us. To make our choices (there they are again) for good or evil, and to live with the consequences. And if that is what we have to do, we also have to believe, as Marge did when she hid herself away to await more like-minded company, that Martin Luther King, Jr. was right, and that, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice."  Bend, baby, bend. 

In the Balance

I love Robyn Peterman’s books and just whipped through her latest, Magically Delicious. The protagonist, Zelda, is like most of Robyn Peterman's leading ladies—paranormal with a side of Prada. In this case, Zelda is a powerful witch who has a gift for healing shifters. And she's married to the king of the shifters, so she's got that going for her. In addition to her other duties, Zelda is the heir apparent to the head witch, the Baba Yaga, a role she doesn't relish. Zelda is also tasked with maintaining the magical balance in her small West Virginia town. This responsibility proves to be the most difficult of all to discharge. Balance is a bitch. Kind of like Anna Wintour in Chanel, or Prada, for that matter. I know it's true because Dr. Seuss tells me so. In Oh, The Places You'll Go! He exhorts us, "So be sure where you step, step with care and great tact.  And remember that life's a great balancing act."  And while Theodor Geisel may believe that our chances of success are pretty high (98 3/4% guaranteed), I'm not so sure. There are so many things to balance. There is work/life balance, family/friends balance, balance between and among our children, between effort and ease (which I've written about before), and even in how much time and space we offer to all the various things about which we think.  So many balls to keep in the air.

Forests have been decimated in the name of figuring out how to achieve the right work/life balance. I have a personal theory about that (I know, you're shocked, shocked that I have a theory about it). The problem appears much worse on the east coast than anywhere else in the US. In places like New York and Washington, DC, it's a badge of honor to work 80 or more hours a week. People define themselves by how much they work—not necessarily how much they accomplish. My first job out of graduate school was for a government contractor where the contract I worked on required four hours of "uncompensated overtime" per week. And each week my boss would publish the memo of shame, listing each employee and how many hours of uncompensated overtime they had worked. Slackers were ostracized and workaholics were superstars. As Robyn Peterman would say, “it was all kinds of wrong.”

The pressure to be the first one into the office and the last to leave was intense. And fucked up. Luckily, I opted out of that plan early in my career. I rarely worked more than 40 hours in a week, and even that was a challenge. In fact, my bosses used to laugh that it was hard for me to rub 40 hours together in a week. But that was all right. I got my work done and then some. I just didn't need to give up every other aspect of my life to do it. 

It's hard to find a work/life balance under such circumstances. My husband decided that such a balance was so important to him (and our family) that he designed his second career around working from home and being around to raise our kids in a more meaningful way than many fathers do. He was there when they got home from school, picked them up from the bus stop, helped them with their homework. More recently, he's been able to attend all of their football, basketball and lacrosse games. It's been wonderful for our boys and a joy for him. But achieving such balance is difficult and pretty rare from my perspective.

And what about those friends who get a boyfriend or a husband and we never see them again? Luckily, I don't have friends like that, but I know others who do, and it always makes me sad. But that's another difficult balance to achieve: sisters versus misters. Personally, I learned that lesson when I was 15, and some asshat named Thor tried to play me off against one of my best friends. We both found out about what he was trying to do and we both told him to fuck off. It's never been an issue again, thankfully. I've been able to maintain my female friendships through marriage and kids and careers and life. In fact, without them, I'm not sure how I would have gotten through any of it. 

But that leads to the question of how to balance all of those aspects at the same time. Not to mention maintaining our health. I ended up sacrificing my health on the altar of balance years ago when my kids were younger and I was working full time and spending almost three hours a day commuting between my two worlds. Crazy days. And they cost me. It's taken years to regain my health after that experience and it was a hard lesson to learn about balance and how to achieve it. And, as I contemplate going back to work in Washington, DC, I'm quite nervous about how I will apply all of these hard-learned lessons to a new situation. Will I do a better job with balance this time around?  I certainly hope so, as I don't think I can put my body through another round of the kind of abuse I generated the first time.

The truth is that I have no magic wand that produces more hours in the day. And time, as we know, is the Great Egalitarian. We get the same amount to do with what we will. Which leads to my favorite topic of all—how to make good choices. Because, on balance, making good choices is how we achieve good balance in our lives. Go to the gym, or go to McDonalds? Watch TV, or work on my novel? Spend time with my kids or go out to dinner with my husband?  While these may seem like no-brainers (except for the husband/kid question, which would easily resolved by eating out as a family), they aren't. Sometimes, the desire to watch TV (or check out Facebook or vegetate on the couch, etc.) is quite compelling. Even when the better choice is obvious.

Often, the best choice is less apparent. And that's where we get into trouble. The issue is with the discretionary hour—where to spend it?  When we are beset by the demands of work, husband, children, friends, exercise, healthy eating, sleep, hobbies, etc., it is difficult to know where to spend that hour and there isn't such a thing as a best choice. Something gets sacrificed. And sometimes those sacrifices lead us toward losing our souls, because we become so imbalanced that we've fallen over and we just can't get up. Been there, done that, got the nervous breakdown, fuck the t-shirt. 

So yes, my favorite philosopher got it right. Life is a great balancing act. And we have to keep balancing everything all the time until we lay down the burden and the privilege of making choices day in and day out, hoping to maintain balance in our lives. And we can be grateful that most of us only need to worry about our own balance, not the magical balance of all of Assjacket, WV, like Zelda and her cohort. It can always be worse, right?

My Kind of Love

"So you may say you're in love with me, but you're not in love with the same way that I am in love with you. We're using the same words, but we are not having the same experience…" Said protagonist Sophie Ross in Moonshadow, Thea Harrison's latest offering from the Elder Races world. I read that passage and every one of my failed romantic relationships flashed before my eyes, not to mention my doomed relationship with my late mother. Sophie summed up much of my life in just a couple of phrases… we may be using the same words but we're not having the same experience. I don't think I've ever heard it stated more accurately or succinctly. Miscommunication and talking past one another are the downfall of many relationships. More damaging is a misaligned worldview or competing philosophies of life, love, work or parenting. These misalignments and competitions arise because we fail to define our terms – to ourselves and each other.

Let's say, just for argument's sake that two people fall in love and decide to marry and start a family.  So far, so good. Presumably, they talked about all of this in some detail, and decided they were on the same page prior to the start of this journey. When the woman involved made her vows, she understood them to be literal and binding.  When the husband made the same vows, using the same words, he understood his promises to be more suggestions rather than rules, to be followed for the most part— until they became inconvenient. Fast forward a couple of years and a couple of kids later, and suddenly the guy is feeling peckish; his wife is exhausted from doing the lion's share of childcare, and maybe she's not looking or behaving as well as when they were courting. Suddenly, the language barrier becomes critical. When she said "forsaking all others... as long as we both shall live," she understood that to mean she wouldn't sleep with other men unless her betrothed was dead and buried. When he said the same words, he understood that the promise was only good until he decided to ignore it. Same words, different experience. Devastating results. I have a close friend whose husband did exactly that, and I’ve seen the destruction up close and personal. Makes me burn every time I think about it.

But marriage vows are only one example. Moondshadow offers others. Like the idea of saying, "I love you," to someone and how it’s heard differently than it’s spoken. In Sophie's case, the words meant that she accepted Nikolas as he was, warts and all, and welcomed her feelings for him, nurturing them and letting them blossom. In her view, Nikolas didn't feel the same way, even though he was using the same words. He did not welcome love into his heart. He fought it all the way, resisting the pull of his tender emotions, steeling himself against love’s siren call; of companionship, affection and commitment. He believed it was not for him, so he refused to make a home within himself for such feelings, rejecting his emotional state and denying his passion. Same words, different experiences. 

I've been in this boat too, rearranging the deck chairs as my relationship was going down. I've had two relationships where the men loved me but didn't want to. So, they punished me for inciting them to feel. Kind of like forcing women to cover themselves lest they arouse lust in the hearts of men who see them. Fuck that shit. No, really. I see red when I hear about people who buy into that nonsense. Gentlemen, you can just keep it in your pants, ladies, don’t buy into that bullshit. But I digress.

Back to using the same words to describe different experiences. We've all been there. Parents and children say "I love you" to each other all the time. But the experience is different depending on one's role. That was certainly true with my mother—and my father too. When I expressed my love, it meant one thing to me and another to them. For some parents, filial love means taking care of them or children sacrificing for parents. And for some children, parental love is supposed to equal infinite support—both emotional and material. It's fine if both sides have the same experience.  But, when world views collide… well…. it's a mess.

The language of love is exceptionally nuanced and difficult to negotiate. Many of us end up speaking our own private dialect. There have actually been books written about "love languages" (I like verbal affirmations, but physical affection, gifts, acts of service and quality time are all important, so it's a bit hard to choose—oops, digression yet again). It's all about finding someone who speaks our particular love language or making sure that one or both of the participants buy a Berlitz course. 

When Sophie and Nikolas get lost in translation for a while, it rings true. This fantasy explores an aspect of truth that is important and relevant for all of us. I'm not surprised these characters were created by Thea Harrison, who writes a language of love that teaches me so much rom while thoroughly enjoying the ride.

The Wisdom of Winston

I was lucky enough to be selected as an advance reader for Thea Harrison's newest Elder Races offering, Moonshadow.  As I've mentioned before, I love getting advance copies from my favorite authors. I also loved being a beta reader the one time I had that opportunity (thank you Lilo J. Abernathy!). But back to Thea Harrison—I love her books and I was delighted to see that she hadn't lost her touch.  Moonshadow introduces a new arena (Great Britain) and a new addition to the Elder Races, the Daoine Sidhe knights of the Dark Court (and doesn't that just sound delicious?). These alpha males are strong and sexy and are locked in an interminable battle with an implacable enemy. Their leader, Nikolas, has watched his cohort decline to a mere handful of men, and his enemy laugh at his losses. He has been fighting so long, he doesn't remember a time when he wasn't locked in mortal combat. The temptation to let go, to give up is strong at times. He feels the pull of despair and the seductive call of surrender. But, he is committed to his cause and dedicated to his mission and those he serves. He refuses to give up, and he perseveres.

I wrote last week about my own dance with despair with respect to my writing. Nikolas' struggle and his triumph over despair inspired me to think about my own willingness to take Winston Churchill's advice to, "Never, never, never give up." Considering that the man led his country successfully through World War II, which included some very dark hours, it's probably advice worth taking.

There is a paradox involved in surrender and giving up. On the one hand, giving up usually connotes quitting, which of course no one wants to do (well, perhaps I shouldn't speak for everyone—I don't want to be a quitter). Quitting usually means ending something before it is completed. The thought is anathema to me. I still think about the dissertation I didn't finish twenty years ago (well, maybe closer to twenty-five, but who's counting?) It took me years to come to terms with the fact that I wasn't going to finish and to make a definitive decision to quit—and while it was probably the right decision at the time, I still regret it on occasion.

Sometimes letting go is the right thing to do. I've written about that before. It's so hard to know when we've held on too long. In Nikolas' case, was it the right thing to do to fight until all the knights of the Dark Court were dead and there was no one left to fight, or to heed the adage that sometimes discretion is the better form of valor? Or is it better to die trying? I haven't personally come across an actual occasion to test this theory, thankfully, so I'm not sure. Does victory vindicate the dead? Nikolas thinks so, and so do those who fought in our popular wars—not so much the ones we prefer to sweep under the rug, but you know, the ones fought by the Greatest Generation, not to mention the Lost Generation.

The jury is still out for me with respect to the price we pay for perseverance. I respect the hell out of dedication and I admire stick-to-it-ness. Grit is great and also necessary. But sometimes the cake isn't worth the bake and the victory, far from being triumphant, is pyrrhic. 

Sometimes, the best strategy for conquest is surrender. Sometimes, resistance is futile and we must give up. This is the paradox. Nikolas achieves victory by surrendering to love (this is a paranormal romance, after all). And I have found peace and joy in surrendering to reality, acceptance and uncertainty, even whenever fiber of my being is screaming for me to fight, fight, fight, in a futile effort to control. Sometimes, it is only when I give up the fight that I get what I want. 

And I know this. But, of course, it's situation specific. And discerning whether a specific situation is one where tying a knot in the rope and holding on for dear life is the right thing to do or letting our hands slip down to initiate the free fall, well that is the question, isn't it?  We don't know, often not even in hindsight if the road not taken would have led to better things. Occasionally, a choice we make about holding and folding is exquisite in its clarity. Hopefully, we are contented with our lot.

Perseverance, discipline and commitment are three character traits I strive to cultivate. And, annoyingly, the cultivation of these traits requires the very characteristics I'm trying to achieve. Please tell me how that is fair?!

But, as I've also written about before, life isn't always fair, so we've got to suck it up, Buttercup (I like that phrase, can you tell by how often I use it?). Nikolas finds his HEA through both persistence and surrender. I suspect that this is true for all of us. So, for today, I will be persistent in reading my beloved books, and surrender to the joy I get from reading them. Win-win

Readers and Writers

I've been away from my blog for a month. For the first time in more than two and a half years. I did this so that I could attempt NaNoWriMo for the first time—National Novel Writing Month. This is an insane proposition where people all over the country (and probably beyond) commit to writing 50,000 words in 30 days during the month of November. And I did it. Meaning I put 50K worth of words on pages, most of which had something to do with their brethren. Not necessarily enough to form a cohesive story, mind you, but there are 50,000 words that relate to each other and are supposed to be a paranormal romance novel.

Except that it turns out that writing a novel is hard. Much harder than I thought it would be. And some of my deepest fears were realized, insofar as I now know with certainty that I have no natural ability in this area whatsoever. Which was pretty upsetting, considering it is my most cherished dream to write the kind of fiction I love to read. I had an OK premise, that with a little bit of work should have been enough to start.

And it was enough to start. One of the most interesting aspects to this experience was that whereas I usually have great difficulty beginning a project, once I get going, almost nothing can stop me from finishing. This time, I jumped in on November 1, and didn't come up for air until the day I crossed the 50,000 word finish line, on November 26. So, I know I can comfortably write 2000 words a day. Considering that I had been writing about 2000 words a week, that was the good news. The bad news was that story arcs, series arcs and character arcs are hard to time, and hard to intertwine. The whole thing deteriorated as I got further and further into the month. Don't try this at home, children. 

On the other hand, do try it. That was the point of the exercise, after all: to do something creative and fun and challenging and to do it. The goal was to commit to a challenge and to meet it, no matter what. And there was a lot of no

matter what that went on during the month of November.

I spent three full weeks of November with a persistent virus that laid me very low. I felt like shit. And I bemoaned my fate. But here's the thing:  feeling poorly meant that I didn't have enough energy to go out much or do much more than lay on my couch, coughing up a lung and decimating whole forests worth of trees to feed my Kleenex habit. But all that couch time doubled as writing time, which worked out well. I was able to follow the NaNoWriMo instructions and write, write, write, suspending judgment and criticism, and not looking back, just putting one foot in front of the other. 

I learned some things along the way. This whole experience was a one day at a time kind of gig. I couldn't project even as far as tomorrow, because the thought of what I was going to write tomorrow filled me with anxiety. So I channeled my inner Scarlett and I didn't think about tomorrow until it came. I learned to block out the nasty naysayers in my mind who constantly berated me for even trying to do this. They told me over and over again how bad my "novel" was and how lame I was for writing it. They told me I was wasting my time. I told them to shut the fuck up. And they did. Mostly. But even when they were threatening to destroy my eardrums with a cacophony of criticism and negativity, I kept going. I didn't realize I could do that as effectively as I did. And I will never be quite as beholden to the voice of my inner critic—which sounds suspiciously like my mother—again.  Worth the price of admission right there. 

 I learned that even though I've always thought of myself as a hard worker, I've learned that I've only been willing to work hard on  things that come easily to me. In other words, when it doesn't feel like work. Something like writing fiction though, which I've wanted to do since I was a little girl captivated by the worlds I visited between the pages of my beloved books, hasn't come easily. I am afraid that I will forever be Salieri to the Mozarts of my craft—good enough to recognize my mediocrity as compared with the masters. 

I am faced with a question that will determine my character:  will I forge ahead, with two steps forward and one (or more) steps back, and test my mettle against a task that truly challenges me? Or will I give up and throw in the towel, determined to continue doing only that which plays to my strengths?  Can I train my brain to tell stories in a compelling way or to create characters that people want to spend time with?  I have no idea. Time will tell.

I do know that the potential to bring the kind of joy to someone else that my favorite authors have given to me saturates my thoughts. Thea Harrison, Karen Marie Moning, Nalini Singh, Faith Hunter, MaryJanice Davidson, JR Ward, Charmaine Harris, Darynda Jones, Jeaniene Frost, Laurell K. Hamilton, Kresley Cole, Katie MacAlister, Molly Harper, Robyn Peterson, Patricia Briggs, Jessica Clare, Kevin Hearne, John G. Hartness and G. A. Aikens are my rock stars. If one of them likes a tweet or comments on one of my Facebook posts, or—swoon city—comments on one of my blogs, I'm delirious with excitement. I would take the work of these authors to a desert island or the zombie apocalypse and count my blessings that life couldn't be too bad if I have my books with me. 

I want to be like all of them. And after spending four weeks trying to emulate them, I have a much better appreciation of just how talented they are, and how truly special their work is. These authors are the best of the best, and there's a reason they dominate the best seller lists. They deserve to be there. 

So we shall see what we shall see. I hope I turn out to be the kind of person who rises to a challenge and takes Winston Churchill's advice to never, never, never give up. It's a new world for me, and it's a scary place. And I hope I make myself proud. As a wise person once told me, and I've written about before in this space, we build self esteem by doing esteemable things. I want to build a mountain from a little pile of clay, as the great Tom Jones said (or sang, as the case may be). I've got high hopes for my mountain.  Now it's time to put some action around my dream.  I want to be a reader and a writer.

Who Are You?

I'm almost finished with Changeling's Fall by Sarah Joy Adams and Emily Lavin Leverett. It's good enough that I'm feeling seriously resentful that I have to take time away from the book to write this blog. I'm anxious to know how it ends and wondering if it will be the beginning of a series. I'm also wondering how two people write a novel together—does one write one chapter and the other write the next one, or do they write scenes from different POVs, or what?  Anyway, the novel has some interesting themes, the foremost of which involves questions of identity and how who we perceive ourselves to be affects who we are versus how others perceive us. These are interesting questions.  In the novel, Deor, a changeling raised in the human world by her human mother, has come to the land of Faerie to find her father and attempt to reverse the illness that is depleting her health. Deor has no idea who sired her, beyond a first name, but there are a number of hints she might be the bastard daughter of the ailing king. Meanwhile, the main male protagonist, Raphael, is being adopted by said king because the monarch claims not to  have any heirs.  Lots of politics and drama ensues, all centered on issues of identity, heritage, relationships and the tangled webs they weave. 

In the world of Changeling's Fall, adoption is a painful process and not knowing one's parentage is equally difficult. I don't think this is all that different from our world. When we are adopted or we adopt a child, by definition we are leaving our biological families who cannot care for us—for many legitimate reasons—to go to a family that—again by definition—wants us desperately. I am not adopted (although I longed to be as a child, away from my mother), nor are my children. But we were planning to go that route to create our family if our efforts to conceive were unsuccessful, and I gave a great deal of thought to the process. In addition, we have many close ties to adopted children that also inform my opinions.

I've always believed that the sting of being given up by birth parents could be offset by the overwhelming love adoptive parents bring to their children. Those who adopt do so with deliberation and consciousness, and the hoops that one must jump through are rigorous, to say the least. You've really got to want to adopt to make it happen. These children are deeply, deeply desired. Receiving that kind of love changes a person. So does giving it. 

But there are still issues of identity that need to be addressed, no matter how much love is involved. In today's world of open adoptions, kids often know their birth parents and can acquire information about health histories or genetic composition. That may not be true with foreign adoptions, but whatever the case, adopted children never know who they would have been if they'd been raised by their DNA donors. Moreover, adoption requires additional efforts to "find" ourselves, and like all of us, discover not only who we are, but also who we want to be.

Not knowing our parents is major obstacle in forging our identities. We can also be affected by not knowing who our parents are, even if we know who they are. For example, I know my father was Jack Uchitel. I know what he looked like and where he was from. I knew his brothers, but not his parents. I adored him with every fiber of my being, but I can't say I really knew him, to my everlasting regret. I knew a small sliver of him as "Daddy," the wonderful guy who turned his attention toward me every once in a while and when he did it was like Christmas and my birthday all rolled into one. But I didn't know him as a man, or an employer, or as a friend. I'm not sure what his philosophy of life was, although I could discern bits and pieces based on clues he provided during our rare and brief interactions.  But a lot of my identity is nevertheless based on my being his daughter. If I found out he wasn't my real dad, I think I'd be devastated. And I want, explicitly, to be like him, or at least to be the man I imagine that he was.

My guess is that kids who are adopted go through a bit of that as well; imagining who they would be if their birth parents turned out to be the Platonic ideal of parenthood. Plus they get to assume the mantle of any positive traits of their adoptive parents, and leave behind the parts they don't like with the justification that the relationship isn't biological, so they are not destined by their DNA.

And while many if not most kids do not twist themselves into the same pretzel shapes that I enjoy in playing out these mental machinations, all of us yearn to create ourselves. Or find ourselves. Or lose ourselves in an identity to which we aspire.  And those of us like Deor and Raphael who are among the lucky ones, soon realize that no matter our parentage, biological or adopted, our identities are our own. There may be signposts along the way, clues from our various mothers, fathers and grandparents, but in the end, who we are is all up to us. We need to choose wisely, no matter the circumstances of our birth or upbringing. After all, we can be anyone we want to be.

Note:  This is my last new post for the next month. I will be suspending my blog as I work toward the 50,000 words needed to participate in NaNoWriMo—National Novel Writing Month, November 1-30, 2016. Please wish me luck and send productive and creative thoughts my way, as I can use all the support I can get. I will be posting my word count every day on Twitter (@truthinfantasy), so please like and retweet to show me the love. I plan to be back in December with new posts. Until then, be well and prosper. —Anne

Why We Gotta Hate?

I'm finishing up Laurell K. Hamilton's latest Anita Blake novel, Crimson Death. I love this series, although I have to adjust my mental pacing when I read her books because Ms. Hamilton is the queen of detail – both interior and exterior. But just as the devil is the details, so too are the angels. And, the Anita Blake books contain a wealth of insight into the human psyche, illuminated through the lens of vampires and were animals, most of which don't like each other. Unfortunately, Anita's world is filled with tragic hatred. And while I'd always assumed that these fantasy novels exaggerated reality to make their point, I think the hatred highlighted in these books doesn't go far enough in reflecting our reality. In the world of Anita Blake, the humans hate the vampires and the lycanthropes (werewolves and other were creatures), the vampires hate the lycanthropes and the lycanthropes hate each other (there is a great deal of enmity among the various species). It is a divided world where humans try to pass laws that legislate inter species antagonism; it works as well in their world as it has in ours—hardly at all. In the same way that attempts to enact laws to govern morality are largely ineffective; because police have very little purview over thoughts and words permeated by hatred. We’re all entitled to our opinions, no matter how misguided, fear-based or destructive they are, and there is no such thing as the thought police, even though sometimes we might wish there were.

And while one person's hateful opinion may not have much impact, the collective opinion of a sizable minority of a population most certainly does. I’m not a political person. I’m fairly jaded insofar as I don't believe that elected officials make much difference in these days of constipated government and spin over substance. Having said that, this election has awakened in me a burning need to follow all the news, read every poll and accompanying analysis, get involved and manage my extreme anxiety over the outcome and its aftermath. I'm a mess. And all of this because of my deep distress over the fissures in our society that this election has exposed.

The deep-seated hatred that has been given a powerful voice during this election scares the shit out of me. I had no idea that so many Americans feel so disenfranchised and hopeless about the future that they are willing to believe in vampires and werewolves. Or the functional equivalent of vampires and werewolves and other fantastical beings, that Donald Trump isn't a dangerously deluded bigot and misogynist who could easily lead the world into nuclear war, or, on a less global scale, civil war or revolution. I'm horrified. And exhausted from lying awake at night contemplating the apocalypse.

Hillary Clinton is far from the perfect candidate and I’m not suggesting that reasonable people couldn't disagree about whether she is the best person to run the country. I have no issue with those who believe she is too tarnished to serve or too divisive to be effective (or those whose views are more fiscally or socially conservative). I don't agree, but I will defend your right to your beliefs and their expression. What is different about this election and the tone and tenor of the debate these days is that fantasy has eclipsed reality as the coin of the realm. It is now acceptable to blatantly disregard irrefutable truth in favor of lies we only wish were true. If this isn’t fantasy in truth, then Donald Trump is a billionaire. 

Trump's entire campaign is built on magical thinking about the cause of all our national woes, causes that are all based on hate—hate of the other; women, African Americans, Muslims, immigrants, people with disabilities, fat people, veterans who have been mentally traumatized and those ‘losers’ who got themselves captured. If it isn't magical thinking to believe that immigrants and uppity women are the root cause of all societal problems, then I'll believe that Donald Trump would make an amazing Commander-in-Chief.

Trump reminds me of Homer Simpson, a stupid, small-minded man with a comb-over and opinions he does not want challenged by facts. Instead of saying, "Doh!" Trump says, "Wrong!"  Instead of being confined to our television screens using stylized animation, Trump is fully animated and not nearly far enough away from the Oval Office and our nuclear codes for my taste. But just like Homer, Trump doesn't have a fucking clue and he doesn't give a shit. He'd be a bad joke—or a caricature on a television cartoon series—except that his message of hatred has resonated so deeply with so many of our fellow Americans.

His supporters don't care that the New York Times has published a list of Donald's tweets that demonstrate his tenuous grip on reality or lack of cognitive consistency. He can say the sky is blue one day and swear the next that he never agreed that the sky was blue. He contradicts himself and lies so often the media literally can't keep up (I wondered why no one followed up on the fact that Donald was 6'2" his whole life until his medical records were released over the summer and he'd grown an inch—until I realized that if he were one inch taller he would be classified as "overweight" instead of "obese."  Who's a piggy now, Donald?  Oink, oink).

Almost 40% of our population has so much hatred in their hearts that Donald Trump, with his history of bankruptcies, tax evasion, sexual assault and harassment, multiple marriages, ignorance of world events and domestic issues, seems like a viable candidate. He is a hate monger and too many Americans are buying his brand of bile. Which is not a call to hate the haters, but an occasion to ask ourselves what we can do to listen to the legitimate complaints and concerns of those who feel they have no response except hate and vitriol. Those doesn't work, of course, except to get our attention. Which it's done. Or, at least, I hope it has. But if we keep going the way we're headed, The Donald will be able to claim that foreign dragons and unicorns are taking over our zoos to the detriment of our homegrown lizards and horses, and a horrifyingly large portion of the population will believe him. And maybe, just maybe, all of this hatred will somehow get us back to unity, or at least talking to each other again. Hey, if the werewolves and the wereleopards can make peace, surely we can too. Right?

Bad Hombres and Nasty Women

Note:  This is a shamelessly partisan post. I am viscerally, deeply opposed to Donald Trump and an enthusiastic supporter of Hillary Clinton. So if that offends you, stop reading now. I'm reading the new Anita Blake book by Laurell K. Hamilton, Crimson Death. I want to be Anita Blake. I also want to be Mac Lane, Jane Yellowrock, Mercy Thompson, and Meredith Gentry. These are nasty, nasty women in the very best ways possible. And they hook up with some pretty bad hombres, which works for me.

This election has provided endless fodder for Saturday Night Live, and I’ve laughed along with everyone else (except for Donald, of course, who has no sense of humor, but I digress). But there are real issues here and it is deeply disturbing that the American populace is becoming inured to each fresh revelation of the revolting actions and attitudes of a presidential candidate who commands almost 40% of the vote.  But beyond all of that anxiety-producing reality, there are some truly ugly truths about attitudes toward women that have emerged. And while these truths need to see the light of day so the shadows can be banished, it is a painful process for those of us who remember and know what men—not all, of course, but many—think of us and do to us with impunity.

For almost 30 years I worked in the male-dominated field of national security studies, analysis and policy. I worked at the Pentagon for almost 20 years. Within the macho world of Warcraft, aka the American military industrial complex, many men are pigs on the order of Donald Trump. Men don't have to be famous to think they can get away with ogling, touching, grabbing, propositioning and speaking offensively to women. They just have to have a modicum of power.

If I had a dollar for every time I was the subject of inappropriate, vulgar discussions and/or questions, I'd be rich. If I had ten dollars for every time a male colleague came to my hotel room, or put his hands on me (if you wouldn't put your hands on the small of a male colleague's back to "guide" him toward the door, why is it okay to touch a woman in that manner?  Or, if you wouldn't put your hands on a man's shoulders for an unsolicited shoulder massage, why do you think you can do it to me?), I'd be Trump rich. And my bad experiences are probably mild compared to many. Sad.

I have been subjected to sexual harassment and sexual assault. No one was ever punished or even reprimanded for these actions against me. And the worst part—the absolutely worst part—is that I never expected the perpetrators to be rebuked. This is the true tragedy. I figured what millions of girls and women just like me figured: 1) there was nothing I could do; it was the price of doing business in a male-dominated world; 2) to complain or make waves would only serve to punish me, because if I didn't lose my job, I would be the bitch who got good old Jimmy in trouble (but not too much trouble, of course—he would still have a job and the respect of his fellows; I would be forever labeled a troublemaker who couldn't be trusted to do the right thing; and 3) nothing would change, so why bother? 

And all of that is only part of the problem. The other part is that young women were and are raised to believe (or taught by the entertainment and advertising industries) that their greatest worth resides in how they look and how sexually appealing they are to men. As a result, we dress to show off our wares and cultivate our feminine "wiles" to trick, trap and torture poor, unsuspecting men. We believe our value resides in our looks and we have to conform to societal (patriarchal) standards of beauty. Even an older, massively accomplished woman like Hillary Clinton is not immune. I'd like to meet her plastic surgeon, her hairdresser, her stylist and her makeup artist. Because as an aging, accomplished woman in the US, I’m going to need them if I want to succeed.

And then there is the tyranny of standards for female presentation, and the extreme disadvantage it creates. Panty hose, makeup, coiffure, complicated outfits, these are all time sucks. Not to mention keeping our hair colored and our wrinkles relatively smooth. Ridiculously time consuming compared to the male need to "shit, shower and shave" (as an ex-boyfriend of mine described his morning routine) before throwing on a suit and comfortable shoes and facing the day. I would have loved to wear comfortable shoes for the average of five miles a day of walking I did to, from and inside the Pentagon on a daily basis. But that wasn’t an option. Even Anita Blake is not immune from this form of male oppression. She speaks eloquently about the calculation that she and all women must make with respect to calibrating our appearances to a level of precision not seen outside of measurements used to make sure bridges don’t fall. Is my outfit too flirty? Am I showing too much skin? Not enough skin? Are the heels the right height? Am I projecting an image of sufficient power to make sure no one fucks with me, but not so much that men will feel emasculated? If that isn’t a rigged system, I don’t know what is.

And what about the culture of rape on our college campuses?  I've heard no fewer than five men tell me—with an understanding that it is horrifying (so many things to be horrified about these days)—that for college boys, "No means yes and yes means anal."  Really?  In 2016? I thought things were better than when I was in college and was raped by a date. At which time I told myself that it was my own fault for putting myself into a bad situation. And I didn't tell anyone else because I felt ashamed for being so stupid. I'm not sure things have improved since the 1980s, except that we are more aware.

This is where my beautiful, inspirational, amazing fictional heroines come in.  These women would most certainly be considered "nasty" by The Donald and all the white, Christian, heterosexual men who fear the end of their reign of world domination (which is long overdue to be overthrown). They are nasty because they are smart, and accomplished, and fierce. They own their sexuality, their power, their bad-assness. They are each she-who-shall-not-be-fucked-with and they are the kinds of women so many of us want to be.  They've got skills and strength and if some asshole tries to touch them without invitation or permission they might lose a hand. I want to be them. I want all of us to be them.

He's a Keeper

I've finished reading the first two (of three so far) Mick Oberon "Jobs" by Ari Marmell. Good stuff. Mick is a very cool guy, for being one of the Fae and all. The second book, Hallow Point, is a complex romp through 1930s Chicago, and the strange imitation of our world that the Fae have created in their own world (and if Ari Marmell wasn't inspired by my favorite Star Trek episode, "A Piece of the Action," then I'll dress up as Oberon the wolfhound for Halloween!). Anyhoo, one of the interesting aspects of this series is that Marmell carries through several plot points through more than one book. So in the first book, Hot Lead, Cold Iron, we learn that Mick often accepts barters from clients as payment for his private investigative work. Sometimes, Mick isn't sure why he asks for certain things, but he follows his Fae instincts and collects various items in an office drawer. One such item from Mick's "drawer of oddities" turns out to be quite useful in book two, and Mick is justified in his hoarding. Or prescience. Depending on your perspective. Which raises interesting questions about keepers and tossers. I'm a tosser. My husband is a keeper. It makes for tense times when we clean out our closet. Or even our refrigerator.  There is a conflicting worldview between the keepers and the tossers, one that cannot be easily resolved. It goes to a fairly deep place of trust in the Universe, feelings of abundance versus scarcity, and moral imperatives to redistribute wealth and prosperity a bit more equitably. It is about the dichotomy between those who pass things along and those who keep stuff for themselves. Our individual proclivities to keep, toss (or give away) also say a lot about who we are as people, with the keepers and the passers seeming morally superior to those who contribute to landfills simply because they cannot be bothered to find a good home for those items they no longer want or need (not that I have an opinion on this topic or anything).

One person's garbage is another's treasure. Whenever I'm tempted to think something is rubbish, in the literal sense of that word, I'm reminded of someone I know who is the queen of free cycling. This woman free cycles everything, from last week's newspapers to egg cartons to plastic ziplock bags. She finds homes for stuff I wouldn't normally think twice about recycling or taking to the dump. But her actions have caused me to stop and think even more than twice and to consider re-purposing before trashing (she gives her old newspapers to a fellow free cycler who has pet rabbits to line the cages). Apparently, there is almost always someone who wants our garbage. Or what we think of as garbage. 

If we're not fans of free cycling, there is Goodwill or the myriad church thrift stores or consignment shops that accept our used clothes, books, furniture, kitchenware, etc. I love these places, and have donated mountains of stuff over the years. Personally, I have two rules that have served me well in terms of keeping my home fairly clutter free and satisfying my desire to share the wealth I've been blessed with. I do not practice perfectly, but I do try my best. The first is the One-Year rule:  if I haven't used it or worn it in a year, it gets given away to someone who will use it more often than I do. The second rule is One-In, One-Out. I'm less good about this one, which states that if I buy a new pair of jeans, I give away an old pair. But it's a good rule. We used to do this with our kids at Christmas and birthdays. It helped (I hope) to encourage them to realize that not everyone has what they do, and no one needs fifteen different colored light sabers (or even five). 

Having said all of this and ensconced myself firmly in the camp of the toss-till-it's-de-cluttered camp, I feel it's only fair to make the case for Mick Oberon and his fellow hoarders—I mean collectors. There is something to be said for finding the exact right item one needs in our "junk" drawer, as Mick does, or in the garage where it's lived for 20 years. This is my husband's philosophy with respect to…everything. "You never know when you might need it!"  Not true; I can state with certainty that I will never, ever need a 30-year-old oxygen tank that has not been used or inspected in 25 years when I go scuba diving.  I enjoy breathing, even underwater, and plan to continue until my dying day, which I prefer to be in the far distant future, far away from water. I'm also pretty confident that I will never use my wedding dress again, and I have no daughters, so that could probably go as well.

But my examples are somewhat extreme and cut-and-dried (although we still have that oxygen tank plus his ancient BC vest that we have never taken with us on a diving vacation and my wedding dress is in the same box it was stored in 21 years ago—but we were moving on…). What about more ambiguous examples? Like my children's "art" from elementary school?  Or framed wall pictures of me as a little girl that used to hang in my mother's house before she died?  I feel bad throwing that shit away, but who would want it? It would be creepy for me to hang baby pix of myself in my house, and neither of my kids will be mistaken for Picasso, so I don't think their childhood drawings will have any value.

And what happens when we down size and de-cluttering is an imperative rather than a satisfying way to avoid writing (oh, did I say that out loud?)? I've never understood the idea of the offsite storage unit. Unless you're a criminal, in which case it makes a more sense. But why would we want our stuff somewhere on the other side of the railroad tracks in some creepy warehouse that I'd never want to visit lest said criminals decided to lure me into their portable pseudo-operating room to perform surgery without anesthesia?  Maybe I've been watching too many episodes of Criminal Minds, but still, you know what I'm saying. 

The way I figure it, I can go through my crap now and make sure I've sorted and stored the things that I truly value and need…or my kids can have that happy task when I kick the bucket sometime down the road. It seems unfair to burden my sons with such a thankless job, so my plan is to do it myself. Preferably while my husband is otherwise occupied.  So I can finally trash that stupid tank. And his monogrammed bowling ball. Mustn't forget that. I doubt even Mick Oberon, which his penchant for odd items, would accept that ball as barter for finding my lost dog. If I had lost my dog, that is. On the other hand, one never knows when a monogrammed bowling ball might come in handy. You know, for bowling. Maybe. Someday. 

It's a Dog's Life

I love Kevin Hearne. The Iron Druid is one of my favorite urban fantasy series. Hearne’s humor always makes me chuckle – I sometimes laugh out loud. I also appreciate his insight and advice; he’s one of my best literary therapists. It’s no wonder, then, that I eagerly awaited the release of his novella, The Purloined Poodle, despite the fact that it's written in the first "person" from the perspective of the Iron Druid's Irish Wolfhound, Oberon. [And no, it hasn’t escaped me that I'm reading a lot of books whose main characters are named Oberon. Truth is definitely stranger than fiction]. I’m not normally the kind of person who reads books written by dogs. Or by humans channeling dogs. But I love Oberon, and the first of his Meaty Mysteries did it for me in a big way. Not just because I was entertained and amused. But also because reading about a dog's life reminded me to think about what's important in my own. One of the most salient lessons that dogs can teach us is to live in the present moment. This is much, much easier said than done, and apparently, it's much easier for dogs than for people. This makes sense for several reasons that I'm almost afraid to talk about lest dog-loving fanatics (including myself) will give me grief. I mean no offense to the lovers of our four-legged friends. First off, there is the issue of brain size; if you have limited headspace, it's probably easier to stay focused on what's in front of you (this could explain the serenity of fools—but I digress). Second is the issue of free will—which, in my humble opinion—is a prerequisite to possessing a soul. And I'm not sure that dogs have free will, so they don't have any issues with making the right choice… like staying in the present moment. If it were easy, everyone would do it. But dogs don't have to worry about their souls ‘cause they are all going to Heaven, and doing the right thing by living in the moment doesn't need to be difficult for them.

We can learn many things from our canine friends: pay attention to what’s in front of us; hear and don’t just listen; see don’t just look. When a dog smells something, he's really taking it into his body—for better and for worse. He's fully present to his sense of smell. And when we touch our dogs or they touch us, if we're paying attention and not absently patting their heads, the communion is a wondrous thing. Because that's what presence does. It allows us to live fully. In reality, we only have the now. Our minds have not yet cottoned to this fact of life, however. Dogs do a much better job.

Another advantage that Oberon highlighted is that dogs enjoy the simple pleasures of life, and therefore seem much happier than we are. They love to run through the grass, and snooze in the sun and cuddle with a loved one. They enjoy their meals, and they take pleasure in pleasing their friends. Humans are capable of the same pleasures, no matter our circumstances. These pleasures cost nothing, and even if they are few and far between, instead of ruining the experience by thinking about its rarity, a dog would revel in the pleasure that was offered. I could learn something from this doggie ability to enjoy happiness where I find it.

Dogs seem to be fully integrated in their minds and bodies, something I didn't even know to desire and work toward for most of my half-century of living. There is no divide for them, which is likely another key to their unique capacity for living in the moment. Dogs live their lives as whole beings. Most of us have forgotten that we came into this world whole and somewhere underneath all the shit, we still are. Most dogs have a lot less shit piled on top of their basic integrity.

Another lesson our dogs can teach us is about values. Doggie values are the best: loyalty, affection, protection, honesty, generosity, the ability to trust, and good, old-fashioned pack values where families love and support each other through thick and thin. It doesn't really get much better than that. Perhaps The Donald could get a dog and learn a thing or two. On second thought, I wouldn't do that to the dog.

Dogs also trust their instincts, something else I'd like to learn to do better.  Dogs seem to have excellent access to their instinctive knowledge and they don't second-guess themselves.  All of us know immediately if a dog thinks we are good people. And we've all seen those who dogs don't like. I don't know about you, but I would be wary of anyone to whom my dogs took an instant dislike. Sketchy, for sure. So not only can we learn something about how to value our own instincts, but dogs are generous in sharing their instincts with us too. Beautiful animals.

So, once again I’m indebted to Kevin Hearne for writing an excellent story. And I offer many thanks to Oberon and his four-legged fellows for making me a better biped.

Breaking the Cycle

I just whipped through the beginning of a new series by MaryJanice Davidson. I love MaryJanice, creator of such memorable characters as Queen Betsy, Fred the Mermaid and the royal family of Alaska.  She makes me laugh out loud, even while she explores meatier topics. In Deja Who, Leah Nazir is an Insighter, a therapist of sorts who helps people explore aspects of their past lives that are leaking into their present reality. In this world, all of us ride the karmic wheel, reincarnating over and over again until we've learned our lessons or paid our debts.  Leah is no exception to this rule. She is living out her karmic destiny to endure a mother from hell only to get murdered by a psychopath who follows her through lifetimes. She seems resigned to her fate, at least at first. Eventually, though she realizes that karma is not inevitable and she breaks the abusive and murderous cycle once and for all. Along the way to her HEA, we get to experience Leah's "Mommie Dearest" moments up close and personal. And I will say this: if there were ever a time that I considered myself and my nightmare of a mother to be terminally unique, the plethora of books—in the paranormal fantasy genre alone—that include mothers from hell, literally and figuratively, disabuse me of that notion. In Leah's case, "It," as she calls her mother, is the worst caricature of a stage mother imaginable. "It" promoted Leah as a child actress, included herself as part of any acting deal in supporting roles, and then stole all the money Leah earned. "It" makes Kris Jenner (Kris Jenner is the ‘mom-a-ger’ of Kardashians] and Britney Spears' parents look like amateurs.

But despite the outrageous abuses, and the vicarious living that "It" did through Leah, there is no such thing as black and white when it comes to our parents. We want to love them. We want to believe them. We want to trust them. And the bad ones use these desires against us to manipulate our feelings. They make us feel wrong. No matter how right we are. Leah rides this emotional rollercoaster over and over throughout her lifetimes.

Being made wrong by our parents is an interesting phenomenon. In my experience, and also that of Leah, and Astrid (in Robyn Peterman's Fashionably Dead series) and Granuaile (in the Iron Druid series), it makes us want to be right more than anything. This tendency can get us into trouble, but that is a topic for another post.  It also ignites in us a deep desire to wrench from our bad parent an admission that they were wrong. They were wrong to dismiss us. Wrong to hurt us. Wrong not to love us as we deserve to be loved. We want an apology, an acknowledgement that it shouldn't have been that way. For most of us, it's like waiting for Godot.

These negative formative experiences also lead to a need for external validation. Because we were made wrong by the person who made us (and presumably any error of execution in the creation should reflect on the creator, in this case the DNA donors and those that raised us, but, strangely, only seem to reflect on the creation itself. Weird.), we need to be told we are all right by others. We seek this validation like Keith Richards looking for his next fix (back in the day, of course, when men were men and veins were afraid).

This is a terrible position to occupy. Needing and seeking validation and extreme self-righteousness lead to what I've termed the "Superiority-Inferiority" complex, which can be described by those afflicted as thinking of ourselves as the "piece of shit around which the universe revolves."  I'm sure all of us know people like this. I am a person like this. No fun. No fun at all. It makes me a highly critical and judgmental perfectionist with impossibly high standards which no one, including myself, can meet. We look for maternal (or paternal) surrogates, and we ache for someone to tell us that we are right and our parents are wrong. Mostly, we want our parents to utter that exact phrase as they lay prostrate at our feet. Hey, we can dream, right?

One of the most healing moments of my life was when a psychologist, who had seen me and my mother together, told me, in a private session, that it wasn't me, it was my mother. I do not have the words to describe the feeling of liberation I experienced upon hearing those words. Changed my life.

But the one thing no one has ever mentioned before was something that MaryJanice Davidson touched on in Deja Who.  Guilt. Guilt—the intense, unrelenting guilt that a child feels for resenting or even hating the person who we’re supposed to love best in the world. And who supposedly loves us best as well. I never thought about that guilt, which makes about as much sense as survivor guilt. It is no one's fault that we survived and others didn't. I feel that way about my brother. I made it out of our childhood home mostly intact. He did not. So while I was able to put myself back together again, my brother, sadly, remains more like Humpty Dumpty. So I got a double whammy of irrational but heartbreakingly real guilt; guilt that I could honestly say that I didn't love my mother, and guilt that I survived our childhood, metaphorically speaking, and my brother did not.

I keep thinking I'm finished writing about my awful mother. But then I keep reading my beloved books and her character—and mine—keep popping up. I hope that I have been as successful in breaking the karmic cycle as Leah was, but I guess I won't know for sure until my next incarnation. Or maybe, just maybe, I will be able to see the last turn of this particular wheel in the lives of my own children and in the nature of my relationship with them as they mature into adults. I’ll keep striving to be the mother I wanted but never had as I ride the wheel of fate, seeking to break this karmic cycle. Only time will tell.

Spin Dragons

We live in a world of spin. She who controls the story controls reality. The truth is no longer relevant, and any fantasy, provided enough of us believe, has been crowned as gospel. It seems that many of us think this is a new phenomenon, or at least greatly magnified in the current political, economic and societal milieu. It's not. Propaganda has been around since the dawn of time, and it's always been a fact that only winners write history. So I was very intrigued by the story arc running through Jessie Donovan's Stonefire British Dragons series. In the world of Jessie Donovan's dragons, humans don't think much of dragon shifters, and the humans control the flow of information. So the dragon shifters are feared, persecuted and tightly controlled in where they can live, who they can mate, and when and how they can interact with humans. But then one of the "approved" human mates decides to write a book shedding light on the mysterious dragon shifter culture and hopefully helping the humans to dispel fear with facts and embrace the dragon shifters as alien, but familiar at the same time, leading to less friction and more cooperation between species.

It's a good strategy, but it's not without its risks. In Revealing the Dragons, Jessie Donovan explores what happens when truth supplants speculation, and how different factions react, depending on what they have to gain or lose. Ms. Donovan imbues her dragon fantasy story with a great deal of truth.

In the book, lots of humans are eager to learn more about the exotic dragon shifters, and the book about them by the human mate, Melanie, is well received. But there are factions that have no interest in "humanizing" the dragon shifters, despite the fact that they spend most of their time in human form, and some of them are, actually, half human, with human mothers. Nor are the fear-mongers out there willing to be confused by the facts. They need monsters in order to lead the villagers in hatred and ignorance, and anything that threatens to negate the fear gets added to the list of that which is hated. So Melanie and her mate's clan become targets of hate and violence. Again, lots of truth here.

We live in a world without dragons (more's the pity), but we don't live in a world where this story line is unrealistic (an even greater pity). And while I try to keep this space apolitical, I can't help but comment that one of our presidential candidates could double for either Gaston (who was rejected by Beauty and led the villagers against the Beast in retaliation) or the village idiot, who's IQ may be impaired, but his ability to dredge up fear and hatred is unfortunately unlimited.

People who somnambulate through life will always be subject to fear and hate mongers.   It's hard to wake up and take responsibility for our own lives. It's so much easier to blame others for our troubles. Hell, it's so much easier to raise ourselves up by standing on the backs of those we oppress than it is to do the hard work to stand tall on our own. Our fear keeps us passive and malleable and ripe for manipulation by those who have figured out that to the victors go the spoils. And those who seek to win, in the dragon shifter world as well as our own, learned a long time ago that creating a bullshit problem and then offering the solution is an excellent way to accrue power, money, influence and prestige.

So, in Ms. Donovan's dragon world, the dragons become the (nonexistent) problem and the dragon hunters become the saviors of the world. In our reality, the "Muslims" or the "Jews" or the "Blacks" or pick your favorite minority become the (equally nonexistent) problem, and only The Donald can save us. Yeah, right. It would be ludicrous if it wasn't so diarrhea inducing frightening. Seeing as I belong to one of the hated minorities and know from personal and cultural experience how damaging this worldview is, my guts are fairly watery right now. 

But the antidote to mindless fear and ignorance is, as Ms. Donovan writes, information and familiarity. The more we know about each other, the more (reasonable people) learn to understand that there are more similarities between us than differences. And that even where there are differences, that's OK, because being different is good; our differences make life exciting and help us to learn and do new things and think about things from differing perspectives and maybe, in doing so, revolutionize the world, cure cancer, make contact with alien beings, end poverty. Or maybe just end racism, and homophobia or antisemitism or Pavlovian responses to terrorism that target peace loving, law abiding Muslims. Yeah, that would be nice. Oh, and, you know, treat dragon shifters fairly and with compassion, cause that's important too.

You Say You Want an Evolution

When three paranormal fantasy superstar authors (Kresley Cole, Larissa Ione and Gena Showalter) get together to put out an anthology, Blood Red Kiss, well, I had to read it, of course. I was a bit disappointed to see that the Kresley Cole offering was a retread of "Warlord Wants Forever," an excellent short story, but one I've read and listened to, although not written about previously. The second offering, by Larissa Ione, called “Forsaken by Night,” was a real page turner and left me wanting more, as only a master writer can do. In the story, Ms. Ione gives us just enough of the world building to give the story weight and coherence, but not so much that I fully understand all that I'd like to know. She skillfully weaves several themes into the short piece, but the one that caught my attention, as it often does, is the theme of change. Apparently, change is the one constant for humans and paranormals alike. The thing about change is that it can be fast and dramatic, as in a revolution, or slow and easy, as in evolutionary change.  In this story, the protagonist is forced to accept that the clan leader who exiled him more than a decade previously had changed enough to warrant a second chance, even as the protagonist himself was given a second chance based on his own evolution. That was the most dramatic element of the story—the lack of drama. Neither the outcast nor the clan leader who exiled him had had any sort of revolutionary shift. Just the steady forward movement toward wisdom and growth that constitutes evolution. Less an earthquake than the gradual erosion of rock under running water. 

Evolution is not nearly as sexy as revolution. The slow and steady march of time that leads us toward progressive and meaningful change isn't glamorous, and often we don't even know it's occurring. It's not until we realize that we are meeting a situation with a new set of eyes and seeing things in a different way than we used to, or we notice that we are more or less reactive than before that we realize that evolution has happened and we are no longer who we were.

Sometimes, these evolutionary changes are for the better, but not always. I've learned to avoid wearing yoga leggings or sweats all the time, or really anything with spandex in it, because I don't notice when I'm slowly gaining weight until the muffin top threatens to breach even my stretchy pants and my regular clothes no longer fit. Similarly, we can skip a trip or two to the gym for a week or two in a row, but we need to be careful because before we know it, we're out of the habit of working out entirely and that pesky muffin top is back. Or we have a couple glasses of wine several times a week, which turns into every night, which turns into a drinking problem down the road. We've all been in one or more of these situations where the slow creep of bad habits turns into a much bigger problem than we realized because the progression was so incremental. 

On the other hand, good habits can slip in under our radar as well, and before we know it, we're doing well without really trying. That's the theory behind adding green foods (i.e. veggies) to our plates; if we slowly increase our consumption of the good stuff, we'll have less and less room for the junk food that is ruining our health. Adding one minute a week to our treadmill or elliptical routine gets us over an hour by the end of a year if we started out at ten minutes. Adding five seconds every few days to our planks gets us to two minutes without our ever noticing it.

And what about other habits that seems so overwhelming when viewed in their entireties? Like people pleasing? Or the opposite of that, being a curmudgeon?  Taking tiny steps out of our comfort zones can make a big difference. Even something as small as saying we didn't enjoy a movie when our friend clearly did can begin an inexorable evolution toward speaking our truth. Every little drop of water over that stone is one more step toward transformation, maybe from rough to smooth or heavy to light or sadness to joy. Each small step counts. Not dramatically, in and of itself, but slowly and steadily over time. 

The thing about evolution is that it's a lot less scary than revolution. And it tends to leave much less of a mess in its wake. In my work as a health coach, I often tell people that while a pill or maybe surgery might seem to work faster, the mess such revolutionary tactics create often hardly seems worth it. It's like going out to dinner because we don't feel like cooking. Most of the time, it's actually faster and easier to throw something together than to get in the car, drive to the restaurant, order our food, wait for it, send it back because something wasn't right, eat it, drive home, etc. It may seem like it would be easier, and in some respects it is.  But until we get a Star Trek-like device that can conjure whatever we want to eat out of thin air, most nights it's easier to just eat stay put.

As a society, we don't like to wait much. We have the collective attention spans of chimps on crack. With evolutionary changes, that can actually work in our favor. Sometimes change happens when we were paying attention to something else. Like we realize that "all of a sudden" we're looking forward to yoga class, or we wake up one day and understand that the ex-boyfriend we exiled to the friend zone is stirring decidedly more-than-friendly feelings. Or we realize that all the work we've done to launch a new business over the past five years has made us an "overnight success."  The payoff in each of these situations was the result of evolution, even though, from the outside, it might appear revolutionary. 

So don't knock evolution till you try it. As in Larissa Ione's story in Blood Red Kiss, we may find that change happens, even when we aren't paying attention. If it's change we like, we'll continue to go with the flow.  If we find we've fallen—slowly—into bad habits, it might take a more revolutionary approach to stem the flow.  But evolution beats revolution for ease and comfort every time, although it makes for a more mature story.