Player

I haven't written about the process of my attempt at getting the novel published in a while and though I was procrastinating for a couple of weeks, I have actually been formatting it so it will be "clean" when it transfers over for Kindle viewing.  (Let me interject to say that the new iPad update for the Kindle app is beautiful. Thank you, powers that be.)  The way that I've written all my novels is that I've created a separate word document per chapter and kept the novel in a folder.  In the case of my novel Existence, that's over 90 documents I've had to combine.  I'm not sure if there's an easier way of doing it other than copy/paste, but doing it one chapter at a time has given me another excuse to take yet one more look at it.  As usual, some stuff I love, some stuff makes me stare at the screen for a while before I hit delete and rewrite.  This time around though, that barely happened.

It was interesting to note that even though an ms word document can look clean when you view it, there are a lot of little hidden cues fixing the document in the background, like a Merlin gremlin, without us even being aware of it.  It's a great system but it appears to be a nightmare for html conversion.  I will be taking an html course eventually.  I tried it once about ten years ago but at that time I had no immediate use for it. Now it seems like a pretty good idea to understand what's happening to my words when I send them off to college.

dot dot dot

I reached the end of Existence and am now formally formatting the layout. i.e. title, dedication, page breaks, chapter headings, etc.

Do you know what that means?  I wrote the last chapter.  I wrote the The End (and then deleted it because I thought it looked cheesy). 

Let me share this because I find it, always, really interesting.  I imagine it's hard to look at - I'll gather all writers in together with me - our work objectively, right?  I mean, we love it extremely or hate it intensely.  For me that can happen within the same chapter and sometimes it can happen even within the same paragraph.  Like I said above the dots the other day, some stuff is like, WOW and other stuff is like meh.  Is that normal?  No se.  But, BUT like Beyonce, when I read the last few chapters of my novel yesterday, I broke down in tears.  There are a couple of reasons for this, one is obvious and one sneaks up on me every time I get close to the end.

The first reason is that everything comes to light for my protagonist, Erin Keane, at the end of the book. There are truths revealed that he wasn't capable of confronting until he'd had some clean and sober time and the trip through that process isn't an easy one for him.  The truth can sometimes be a hard pill to swollow unless your chasing it down with a little Stoli.   While this story is not an autobiography, I can obviously relate.  I mean, as much as it isn't about me, these characters are entirely me.  We go through the storms together, and we find the peace together.  I want my readers to experience the same thing, of course.  I want everyone to cry as they reach The End.

The second reason, the one that chokes me up even as I write about it now, is that it's done.  I'm finished and will have to cut the connection.  Do you see what I'm saying?  The relationship is over.  It's not over in like, I hate you, I'm taking the dog.  It's not over in like, it's not you it's me, but we can still be friends.   It's over in like, you can't touch me anymore; I'm with someone else now.

I found myself holding my breath sometimes as I reached the end of certain chapters.  I found myself involved in their lives again, again.  What I did not find was the need to change any of the story lines.  I wrote the last chapter and it was easy.  It felt natural and right and it basically wrote itself.  So, yeah, I'm afraid it's over between me and Existence.

It's okay, Magician is waiting for me with open arms.  I am not a player, not a beyotch.  Erin is over and Jeremy needs me to finish his story now.  Soon, I will be falling all over again.

I am frigging STOKED!! 

Glass Half Full

Perception is a remarkable thing. 

Jack working in his boat.

I am watching an episode of Ancient Aliens.  There is an individual on this show (not Giorgio), an engineer, that I have seen on this series numerous times on previous episodes that I just realized something about.  When I look at this particular person, my mind adjusts who it is that I am seeing so that who I am perceiving I see is Jack Robinson.  Jack was an old man that lived on the sailboat that sat in the slip next to ours at Dinner Key Marina in Coconut Grove.  His hair was grey and usually uncombed or nestled under a Panama hat and he had big bushy, greying red eyebrows over his shiny, squinted eyes.  Jack had really kind eyes, a quick wit and I was very fond of him.  He designed and built the sailboat himself, a fibreglass, sleek beauty that would eventually end up being the death of him. You see, after spending years inhaling that toxic fibreglass dust, he developed lung cancer and he died one morning on that very vessel, his pride and joy.  I can't remember the name of his boat.  I suppose it's good enough that I remember the name of the one I lived on, my big, cumbersome Morgan Out-Island sailing yacht, Elephant Child.  Yes, that I remember well.

Tonight, perhaps because I'm angry and uncomfortable, I looked up at the television screen to see this man describing the near perfect symmetry of the statue of Ramses II, and instead of seeing Jack Robinson, I saw the actual man himself, Christopher Dunn and was struck by the differences.  This worries me.   Until tonight, I had never thought about the way that I was filling in the parts of him that weren't Jack for him to become Jack.  In other words, it wasn't until I saw the truth that I saw the lie.  Did your head just explode?  This is the type of stuff that makes me question my reality, and then my sanity, and then the capacity of my brain to remember things accurately, if at all.

I'm not as crispy clear as I used to be.  Sometimes I'm barely spongy opaque.  My boss has just entered the third decade of his life and his brain is so lightening fast that it actually astounds me sometimes.  One of the best consequences of that quick firing synapse is how immediately funny a person can be.  But me?  I can still be kind of funny but I'm definitely not connecting quite as well as I used to.  The thought of slipping into Alzheimer's (I know that's a ridiculous way to describe the onset, like your putting on a pair of flip-flops) is absolutely terrifying to me.  Most of the time my mental lapses, that is for me the seeming complete deletion of the dictionary in my head, happens when I am speaking.  That's why I prefer the written word so much more over the spoken one.  There are times when I am having a conversation with someone that I'm pretty sure I sound like, well, Fred Armisen on Saturday Night Live plays Nicholas Fhen, a thirty-something year old pseudo political intellectual that spends 2 minutes talking but saying nothing at all - I feel like I sound like that.  The breaks happen when I write too, though not as often and the beauty here is that the more fired up I get while I'm writing, the better and more fluid the connection becomes.  That makes sense even though I'm not a neurologist.

© Saturday Night Live

What else am I seeing that isn't real?  How can reality be subjective, it's reality?  This is an interesting - I was going to say phenomenon but I'm not sure anything that has to do with the brain can be considered a phenomenon, it's a perfect machine, we just don't understand it, so - strangeness.  What other word is there?  For example, it's strange that when I look at my father, both physically while he was alive and now in memory, that I see someone really different than whom my sister sees.  Yeah, I know that different circumstances caused our perceptions of this one man to evolve differently.  My sister, after all, is eleven years older than me so she saw and experienced eleven extra years of stuff that I wasn't around for.  Even so, sometimes it seems like she knew a completely different rendition of our father.  I guess I answered my question in there somewhere, huh?  Our perception is wholly affected by our personal experiences and by how we are wired to deal with those experiences.  And this perhaps too can explain why I am so disappointed in a certain relationship in my life right now.  Because I see things differently for those aforementioned reasons and because I have walked a different path, we will never see things the same way.  

Well, there's a little food for thought, ey? 

I'm probably not slipping into Alzheimer's; I'm just slipping into fifty.  Right now I've gotten the sparks flying in my brain and it's warmed up enough that I think I can get some uninterrupted writing in with out the mental, Um, But, It's just, You know? Even if, I'll be the first...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goZSMXQTcqI

Stuff happens and then?

Stuff Happens.  Right?  Sometimes it's small stuff, like an off tune note on one of those recorders we used to play in school.  It's barely noticeable and it hardly makes any difference at all.  But sometimes stuff happens like cymbals slamming together right next to your ear.  Right on time too, no mistaking it.  Obvious.  Obnoxious.  You even saw it coming from the beginning of the frigging song.  And still you are surprised to find that suddenly the sheet music that you were sure you were so familiar with has been irrevocably altered to the point that it barely seems familiar.  That's life, baby.  You turn around in a full circle experiencing amnesia that your basically forcing on yourself because you just can't believe it.  You just can not believe that this has happened.

This lady here is Olga Eugenia Lopez Naranjo.  Pretty?  Yes.  This picture was taken in Cuba where she was born on November 15th, 1933.  I think she's about 15 in this photograph.  At this point, she had probably already known my father for a couple of years.  They met while they were really young and stayed within each other's periphery until I suppose she reached the conclusion that yeah, he was the one.  Can you blame him for falling so madly in love with her?  And he was.  I didn't get to know her very well, but I know, regardless of how complicated relationships get, that he loved her until early last year.  And maybe he still loves her; maybe love really is infinite.  Maybe they spend their nights in a reincarnated Tropicana listening to Celia Cruz serenading her homeland with Salsa, and dancing the night away.  Especially tonight that it's my father's birthday.  Azucar!  I loved watching them dance.  If they were dancing, everything was right in the world.  I know they would have wanted to be back home too.  The home of back then before you know who.

There's very little known about addiction.  I mean, you can read a gazillion books about it and you can attend seminars and you've seen commercials guaranteeing a cure, etc.  But really, no one knows what's going on there.  Some people think you develop it, like breasts, or a cold sore that goes away eventually if you stop picking at it.  I think it's born with you, like an evil twin growing out of the back of your neck.  Well, addiction isn't any more evil than I am...  So there I am, minding my own business in 1989, I have two kids, so far nothing has turned out anywhere near where I would have wanted it to except that my kids are absolutely and incredibly beautiful and healthy.  Nothing is perfect except for them but I am not addicted to anything.  I'm an addict already but I'm not addicted yet.  And here comes the crescendo.  In this particular symphony though, it comes out of left field.  We knew she wasn't feeling well, but there was never any indication that she was departing that night.  None.  We were in a motel room in Virginia for Pete's sake.  We only had like 400 miles to go to get her back to New York.  Here I was, thinking I had plenty of time to get to know this woman in my adulthood.  That she would watch her grand kids turn into men and women.  That she would continue to be that beacon for me, not necessarily physically available but always shining the light in the right direction. 

All of her grand kids were with her the night that she died in that motel room.   She was almost quite literally surrounded by all five, from my 3 year old daughter to my 13 year old nephew, and they are now well into adulthood.   Her two daughters were there, too, who are now well into middle age.   The only person that was not there was my father.  He was on his way there, driving from New York to Virginia to pick her up because she had called him and told him she wasn't feeling well.  

It took 22 years for him to finally get to her. 

Ahhhh, stuff happens.

I didn't pick up a bottle of Jack Daniels that night to start obliterating my senses.  For me it was slow and accumulative.  Sneaky, if you can imagine, like it was okay at first.  Like alcohol was friendly, helpful even.  But eventually...  Well, here I am anyway.  It was all I could do at the time to get through it.  And maybe it did help me a little.  Maybe it did save me a little.  I didn't know what else to do with what I was feeling.

I know, we all die.   Sad, but true.  All sorts of stuff happens, but thankfully now I'm familiar with my doppelganger, and I've learned a few things to keep it... well, to not keep it at all.   Hey, I can do this life thing without having to take any detours.  It's okay.  And if it ain't okay, well guess what?  It is what it is.  Doesn't sound like much to hold on to, I know, but that's faith for you, and I don't even believe in God.  Not that one anyway.  So, those two humans gave me life.  Poof, just like that, there I am.  A part of him, Jose Manuel Naranjo, and a part of her.  To honor that, and them, and the tree that I am a part of, all I need to do is be grateful for my life. And today, I am really, really grateful.

Anyway, I hope that in between the mambo my parents can look in my direction and know that I'm trying really hard to live the life they gave me as best I can. 

Happy Birthday Daddy.

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Happy Birthday to me

It was my birthday a few days ago.  I've never been one to get too excited about it, not even, that I can remember, when I was a kid.  I'm pretty sure that I enjoyed Christmas way more than birth day.  Also, I would much rather give a present than receive something, not because I'm a nice person but because being handed a gift embarrasses me.  Christmas was perfect because the presents were snuck into place and I therefore didn't have to interact with anybody.  Santa was my ultimate hero.  I've never been too keen on parties or celebrations either.  Hoopla makes me nervous and uncomfortable.  I'm feeling kind of Woody Allenish right now, except not quite as pedantic and hilarious, which would leave me skinny (I wish), short and neurotic.  Ah, well...  I did buy myself a present.  Were I to be hypnotized and regressed to earlier parts of my life (I have a very bad memory otherwise), I would probably find that I get myself the same thing all the time.  My gift to me was a couple of notebooks.  I LOVE notebooks.  And I also purchased a pen but if you gave me the deserted island scenario were I could only take one thing and had to choose between pen or pencil, I would invariably choose pencil.  Basic, #2.  I'm pretty crafty, I'd figure out a way to get it nice and sharp, probably with the edge of a clam.  I'd also use the clam to make paper out of coconuts.  

I've gone through most every version of the personal computer that one can imagine, from the electric typewriter to an old mac word perfect machine that had a screen smaller than the 5 1/4" floppy that stored the work.  Are you old enough to remember those floppies?  That was around the time that you could take a fork and scrape it against a CD and it literally wouldn't scratch the surface (before the light bulb went off and they decided to make them scratch magnets instead).   Scratch proof CD's?  I know that's hard to believe, but its true.  When I lived in Queens after my son was born, probably late 1984, our cop landlord was interested in new gadgety electronics and he calls us up to his apartment one afternoon extremely excited.  All of a sudden he starts throwing these shiny things against the wall like little metallic frisbees.  He was beside himself with glee about these UFOs.  "It's not an LP, it's a CD!  ITS A CD!"  We found out later he was a bit of a cocaine-head, but CD's were pretty exciting back then, even though all they held was music.      

There was a time later in my twenties that I went through a phase of collecting antique typewriters.  Not to write with, just sort of to look at, or to weigh things down with in case of a hurricane.  I have a feeling 'collection' is not a unique stage for writer's to go through.  For some reason the cool little thrift shops on Washington Avenue down on Miami Beach circa 1989 were filled with these things.  This was back in the day when you could actually find parking on the beach.  Parking on the beach?  I know that's hard to believe, but its true.  Hopefully, fifty years from now these 75 pound relics will become as awe inspiring as pterodactyl bones.  Look at this picture.  Am I dreaming to think they will be so venerated?  My grand kids will probably think I was using them to write my novels on without any real idea of how insanely quickly tools have morphed in the last hundred years.  Wait, I'm blowing my mind...

And all I've ever really needed is a notebook and a pencil anyway.  Well, for thirty years a cigarette was also a requirement.  (conjuring French accent in my head) Vehry Frehnsh, noh! OUI!  Sitting at ze cahfe with ze expressoh in the black chinohs and ze black turtle neck, noh! OUI! OUI! I seyh, S'il vous plait!!  Voila. (ok, that's all I got.)  Actually, I have never written in a cafe or a coffee shop, I get too easily distracted.  I've never heard a french person say ze either, I don't know where that characterization came from or why it stuck... Maybe they do say ze.  I haven't met the majority of French people but my husbands x-wife has a great French accent and I've listened carefully and have not once heard her say ze.  Um... what the hell was I talking about?  Ah, oui, notebook and pencil.  That really is my preference.  Look, I love sitting here writing with my self taught QWERTY choreography, seeing the words magically appearing on the screen, but I don't get that same visceral, artistic connection with a keyboard that I get when I feel and hear the sharp tip of a lead pencil scraping against a nice clean sheet of paper.  It almost makes my mouth water.  But, yeah, a PC is like a frigging Lear Jet.  Imagine how much more prolific POE would have been...  Wait, imagine KING with papyrus?  I'm blowing my mind again...  

Technological wonders aside, writing is a cathartic experience.  When I'm fully connecting with the creative wormhole and ideas are flowing from that place in my head that feels like another planet, directly from there through my fingertips; that first introduction to the place, the time, the character, it just seems so much more natural with simple tools.  Sort of like using a midwife and a bathtub when giving birth.  For complete, uninterrupted, smooth purging in an efficient and quick matter, PC, but for the truth?  Pencil on paper.  Under my bed I have a flat box that holds dozens of notebooks with handwritten first drafts.  I even have the notebook that holds my first novel sketched into its pages.  I've said it before, writing is an art form.  For real.  We are artists.  Words are beautiful and the structure and rhythm that emerges from whatever our individual process is, is as important as anything Mozart translated into music notes or that Michelangelo painted onto the ceiling of the Sistine chapel.  It's our expression.  It's our blood beating out into words.  It's us. 

I'm not comparing myself to Mozart and Michelangelo.  Or to Poe and King.  Those are masters.  But if you divide up who we all are, the common denominator will be that inherent, intense drive for creation. We must do it or we blow apart like dandelions.  Think about how unique art is to humans.  With the human trait of self awareness - which can feel like a curse sometimes - comes, for me, the most defining element that makes us human - the trait of symbolism.  Why are we as humans so driven to record our renditions of things? 

Because we want to say, "I was here."  Yeah.  That's what I think.  There's no difference between me and the humans that painted these images in caves over twelve thousand years ago.  That part of me that craves the pencil over the keyboard is the same primal part of me that gets mesmerized by the colors of the sinking sun and that makes me catch my breath when I see a shooting star.  Its the part that makes me human.  Wow, I'm blowing my mind.  Blowing my own mind?  I know its hard to believe, but its true.

P.S. Knowing how to receive a gift is a form of grace that for some reason I am not familiar with, but it is something that I am learning.  If I am inclined to think of someone and desire to give them something to show my love or simple appreciation, then I need to conform to the fact that other people are going to be inclined to do that too.  Who am I to deny anyone of their thoughtfulness?  It's a big deal to me because I know it's part of how I'm wired incorrectly, so its important that I acknowledge the fact that I'm working on it .  :o) 

Fantasia

I read what  I've written so far, because I like reading what I write -   I'm not  afraid to admit that I have a huge ego, even though I also suffer from an inferiority complex, an exhausting combination...  - just kidding (maybe).  I read it because I need to see if my thoughts are consistent.  I've written quite a bit about my (see, right here I'm stuck because the word that I first wrote is recovery, but, I don't like that word.  I never have.  If I say that I'm writing about my recovery from alcoholism, to me it implies that I've recovered and am therefore no longer an addict, which isn't true.  I am an addict, inherently, through my marrow, so, I can't say that I've recovered.  If I were to drink again today, I'd do so alcoholicly.  Even if I sipped half a Tom Collins, that half would haunt me until my next beverage and eventually - and trust me on this one - I would not stop at half.  So then, close parenthesis) addiction.  Why, am I being so honest out here in cyberness.  What will people think, Olga?  

Because I am alcoholic through my marrow, the effort that I need to put into not drinking or indulging in various other addictive behaviours, takes up a rather large amount of time in my life, even if at this point, its majorly subconscious time.  It's still a big part of my identity now.  I don't know if this sub-un-conscious focus I currently have ends up becoming a big part of how my characters evolve in my head.  Does it detract from them?  Or does it add a little flavor, a little spiciness.  Some darkness?  You know what sort of darkness I'm referring to?  GenX darkness?  HA HA HA.  I guess if you get that, then you get it. 

For the most part I'm editing work for which the characters are already established but still, I'm adding and deleting and they will be tinged by who I am now, sober, drug free.  But also, I'm experiencing a maturity level that I obviously never knew before.  I don't think that this means my characters will all reflect that maturity, sometimes I barely reflect it myself.  But I do feel it in the way that I have felt all the other stuff.  Stuff.  Good stuff.  Scarey stuff... You know, yikes, emotions.  The same stuff that makes me who I am right now, sitting here writing this down.  Its important for me to work through the idea that they can remain who they are, because even though who I was back then grew up, she's still lurking.  I can write about what it felt like not to know, and I can also write about knowing.  I can write about doubt and I can write about confidence.  I can write about loss, and I can write about hope.  I wasn't familiar with some of those combinations before.  We are grey matter, right? Black and white between the pages, not once we look up.

I did believe a few moons ago, not that many, that in order to be valuable as an artist I had to have a tortured soul.  Looking back on that thought, and on why I needed to feel that way, it kind of makes me giggle in a bittersweet, shaking my head sort of way.  While its never been clear to me what genre I should categorize myself under, I guess, in the big picture - and I hate to admit this - they are love stories.  For the most part they all include paranormal, fantasy twists, and they aren't like, you know, Fabio on the cover love stories, and neither, hopefully, are they stick-my-finger-down-my -throat-gag, sugary-sweet love stories.  Portions of them are dark, after all my sister fed my child's mind with Brother's Grimm, Mother Goose and Disney followed by Poe, Konrad and Hitchcock Presents.  Evidentally, that's the combination instilled in me.  A dash of 18th century poverty and pestilence, dollop of witches, ogres, cauldrons and ovens, a sprig of pixie dust and incantations, rapping ravens, dark hearts and bingo-bango, in gallops Prince Charming on the white horse.  That said, there's a sense in me, and I won't speak for other writer's or painters or musicians, but in me, that thinks I feel too much.  Or feels that I think too much.  My heart seems to break more often than it should or seems fair it should.  So happy ending?  Yeah, but not without a big shake first.  I don't like avoiding the truth as I see it, that life is rough for some of us and still harder for others but then, you know, earth is so frigging beautiful anyway.  I mean, despite us, earth is so frigging beautiful.  I like to wave wands and wiggle my nose and blink my eyes and poof, prince charming because, well, get out of my way, it's my party and I like the magic.     

Olga, the question was, what will people think?  This is supposed to be a blog about your adventure in epublishing.  Why are you getting naked?

Ok. I don't know.  This is who I am.  This is how I write.  A few decades down the road I won't exist anymore.  That almost already happened so, this is my testament to me.  I have dog eared, faded photographs of my grandparents and parents.  The day my dad died, I grabbed his money clip that still held seven dollars, his wallet and a stack of old work id's, some his, and some with my mother's picture on them - they worked for the same maintenance company in New York - and stuck them in  my drawer where they still sit.  Those are the only tangible things that link me to them; pretty much all I have.  I didn't know my grandfathers, one died when my father was five and the other died when I was a little girl and I hardly remember the mention of his name.  What will I leave behind?  Look, this is what I hope:  All these words will float around in space and a few people will happen upon them, or they'll look on purpose, whichever, and they will see two things;  A writer whose words they would like to read more of, and an addict/alcoholic that hasn't had a drink in a few years.  They will think, "look, she can do this.  If she can do it, so can I," and they will know that they don't have to live the way they are living or feel that they are all alone because they aren't.   I'm right here too. 

Writing has everything to do with me.  Stopping drinking has nothing to do with me.  I don't know what it does have to do with but its not me.  And since I know it has nothing to do with me, then I know I have a chance of staying sober, otherwise I'm not so sure I would be very successful at it.  Believe me, if I had anything to do with it, I would still be drinking and the ensuing misery wouldn't keep me from doing it either.  I don't know how spacey that sounds, but, that's just the way that it is.  But did I stop?  Yeah.  And have I stayed stopped?  Yeah.  And has it affected my writing?  Yeah, it's better.

So maybe this is a blog about my adventures in epublishing and maybe its an addicts blog and maybe its a dancing hippopotumus in yellow tights, it doesn't matter.  I believe that what matters is that I am enjoying the bejesus out of this blogging thing. 

By the way, I don't know what a Tom Collins is, I've just heard the name in old movies and it sounds good doesn't it?  My drink was Tanguery and Tonic, but frankly, I don't even like being this close to it.  And. well, I don't know what a bejesus is either, but I think it resides on the edge of our soul.



*Thank you for the picture (and everything else) Disney.

Bad Bunny

This is Bad Bunny. I received him as a gift in the summer of 2006. I died that winter.

I have a chronic liver illness, and at some point in October of that year I start feeling kind of crappy with some strange pains on my right hand side so I immediately think, 'Holy-Moly, Cirrhosis'. I go see the Dr. and get an ultra or an MRI or one of those obscenely expensive tests, and the doctor tells me that I have gallstones, not cirrhosis, and that I need to get my gallbladder removed. Easy Squeazy, like my boss likes to say, right? No problem. In fact, it's so simple they don't even cut you open anymore, they just inflate you and stick a couple of cameras in with a tube and snip snip - they pull your gallbladder out through your belly button. Delightful. "Ms. Naranjo," (I wasn't married at the time... well, I am married now and I didn't change my name so I guess I'm still Ms. Naranjo, except that when you’re in your forties it isn't really that cute anymore.  So... I'm the one that wants to be the librarian right?) Where was I?

"Ms. Naranjo, you know, since you are due for a liver biopsy, I can just go ahead and do that for you while I'm poking around in your abdomen with my pointy little toys. Yes?"  I'm paraphrasing. Yes?  I don't know if you've ever had the pleasure but, if you want to know what it feels like to get stabbed in the stomach with an ice pick, then I highly recommend getting a liver biopsy.  As much as I wanted to go through that again, I told the doc, "Yeah, maybe you should do it while I’m out."  I trust this guy to take a piece of me out of me, why in the world would I think that anything bad was going to happen?  The last time I had the biopsy I was wide awake and nothing happened so this should be a frigging mimosa.

I get the outpatient procedure and go home.  Everything seems to be ok for a day but I suddenly start to experience a pain in my belly.  It feels like my stomach is tied in a knot and someone is squeezing it in their fist.  I rush to the hospital, get a dose of gamma rays and well, long story short you better not piss me off because you wouldn’t like it when I’m angry.  No, that’s another super hero.  Eventually they were able to figure out what was wrong with me.  The biopsy needle nicked the artery in my liver, and unbeknownst to anyone, I was hemorrhaging.

When you start to bleed out from an artery the blood loss is exponential.  While they kept pumping plasma into me, they couldn't figure out how to cap the cut in the artery in my liver, so I kept bleeding and losing blood pressure. Plasma doesn't have white cells, and my white cells were evacuating my body along with my red.  If you recall what they taught in biology, it’s the white cells that coagulate.  SO, they couldn't cut me open to get to my liver either because, basically, I would have bled out and died faster.  Eventually and twice, my blood pressure zeroed out and I had to be resuscitated with fluid.  By that time my family was holding vigil outside of the OR.  My sister reminds me of The Phone Call telling her "you better come quickly, she's in grave condition".  And she reminds me that my dad kept telling her that I was going to make it.  And I did.  Some maverick doctor came in and threaded the stent through the artery itself.

I don't remember much of it and what I do remember comes back in fragments, like a dream.  The few hours before I fainted I remember I kept asking for morphine, because of the pain, but to be honest, also because I really, really like morphine.  I remember getting up and trying to go to the bathroom and calling the nurse because I was dizzy and then falling into her arms, fainting for the first time in my life. Then, stadium lights over the bed and looking over at the bag of plasma which looked like a big white pillow case with a giant letter A and a giant negative sign on it, like it would look in a cartoon.  I acknowledged that they had gotten my blood type right.  And then, I remember being really, really tired and wanting to stop though I wasn't sure what it was I wanted stopping.  But mostly, mostly I remember the fearlessness.

I have lived with an underlying sense of fear since as far back as I can remember.  Sometimes it is subtle, subconscious, I’m hardly aware of it.  When I was reaching my bottom in my addiction, the fear was a flamboyant, pink haired, LOUD transvestite; impossible to ignore.  Sometimes it was downright petrifying and the only thing that would get rid of it was alcohol, but by the time it became Lola, it was the alcohol that was perpetuating the fear.  So, anyway, I have never known fearlessness.  Not that I can remember, but I'm pretty sure we're fearless when we come out into the world.  That was a long time ago, though.  I clearly remember being in a state of awareness with a part of me that is other than me.  I want to call it unfamiliar but that's not it.  Maybe the words that fit better are disconnected or unused.  That part knows nothing of fear. Nothing.  

That otherness scared me.  Sometimes it doesn't seem right to have experienced that feeling only because I was dying.  It doesn't seem fair.  I guess that's laughable, but only when I'm in the mood to acknowledge irony as it pertains to me.

I don't think about that November all the time anymore. The experience haunted me for a long time afterward.  My dreams were filled with the walking dead and I experienced intense de ja vu a few times daily for months later.  It sounds cool but it started becoming really disorienting.  Eventually all of that strange stuff stopped happening and I got comfortable again.  What does Bad Bunny have to do with anything?  Well, Bad Bunny was with me in the hospital room that night.  I didn't bring him, but he was a favorite toy at the time, because of the Stephen King reference and the writing reference all woven into the maniacal rabbit and I had a friend that knew I would think it was funny.  Even if I had died I'd have loved the idea.  So, there, in the corner of the room, watching the scramble as the blood seeped from all of my nooks and crannies, holding his bloody  little axe, covered in REDRUM and blood, cigarette in mouth ready for battle, was my bunny.  I wonder if the nurses ever glanced up at him in horror or with humor. 

I keep him nearby reminding me to live my life to the fullest.  Or else.  

Hutch

I had started another post which I had to save for later.  This is way too important to ignore or postpone.  I might forget it.  I was at Publix, - hopefully someday people will read this that have no idea what a Publix is, so that I must explain that it is one of the major supermarkets here in South Florida.  I don't know much about supermarket chains, except for Pathmark which is what I grew up with in Queens, Yo.  Crap, I'm friggin lying.  I wasn't at Publix; it was Winn Dixie, which is the other major supermarket, in like the-other-woman sort of way.  Not sure why I feel that I'm cheating on Publix when I shop at Winn Dixie.  She's not prettier, her aisles aren't bigger and her selection isn't better, she's just, oh, man... convenient.  I'm a pig, I know, convenient is such a cheap excuse since the Publix is actually closer to my apartment, it - it - it just, ok, I'll admit it, it has the RedBox outside. Shame.  It's OK, I doubt Publix is losing sleep over my infidelity, you should see her commercials. 

So I drop off the movie, (it was The Sitter, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=japyVYImEcM with Noah Hill - I hate movie reviews, they are so subjective but, ok, it was cute.  That means I barely liked it.  I'm not a fan of Noah Hill, but at the same time I find myself oddly drawn to him.  He brings out the maternal in me and I think that probably creeps me out a little.)  I go into the store because I was craving pasta and meat sauce - I got ground chicken I haven't indulged in red meat in a few months.  I'm wandering the aisles mesmerized by all the colors in the disposable diaper/baby food aisle (not sure why I was in there, maybe that Noah Hill thing) and I start tuning in to the music playing throughout the store. 

"Don't give up on us baby.
Don't make the wrong seem right
The future isn't just for the night
It's written in the moonlight,
And painted on the stars, we can't change us..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfMPUxMx5zY

What?  SHUT UP!  Are you kidding me?  1975.  David Soul, Ken "Hutch" Hutchinson.  I was a Starskey girl myself but by the time I was twelve my hormones didn't care.  It was Starskey, Hutch, or Shaun Cassidy... which would YOU have picked?  I literally stopped for a minute between the Pampers and the Similac just feeling 1975.  It's the closest to time travel we get, isn't it?

Sunday afternoon, (a couple of days ago, today is Tuesday) they were broadcasting this concert on VH1 that was held at some fair in England.  I'm in the kitchen cooking and I hear this mob of people singing "Caribbean Queen" with Billy Ocean.  I was like, ok, whatever, Billy Ocean, who cares?  It sparked a tad of sentimental synapse but I could ignore it.  Then, WHAMO!!

"If it seems a little time is needed
Decisions to be made
The good advice of friends unheeded
The best of plans mislaid..."

It drew me like a magnet into the living room, "oh, is that the The Human League?!!!!!??" trying to be cool in front of my husband who used to be in a punk band. 

And there we were, 198+, crowded into a football (that's English for soccer) field.  Some of us were wearing pink wigs, some of us were sporting the tattoos we got in 1987; some us, well our hair was receding, and maybe some of us had just shaved it all off, screw it.  We gained some weight and some of us gained a lot of weight, but then, many of us looked pretty friggin' good, thank you very much.  Some of us got grey and some of me dye my hair... Hmmm.

Did I mention that MCA died on Friday?  He would have been 48 in August.  I am less than a year younger than he is.  Maybe that's why I'm being so sentimental and time keeps tugging me backwards when really, all it's capable of doing is pushing me forward, leaving nothing but memories in my wake.  It's all we get, I guess. 

Look here, don't be scared!  Memories are A LOT.  Especially now, in the HELLO!! 21st Century!!

Thank you time, for all three Beastie Boys, all at once.  Brooklyn/Queens, baby.

Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBShN8qT4lk&feature=BFa&list=AL94UKMTqg-9Dne_Riy790IlRm0W5QWJy1

This ain't THE END

I'm getting a nervous feeling in my stomach now whenever I edit my book.  I looked up and saw page 500, which is actually irrelevant.  As I understand it the epublishing format doesn't require pages.  I've taken chunks out the book this time so it isn't page 500 anyway. 

OMG.  OMG.  OMG.  I'm almost finished!  Anything I do after I have read and edited the last chapter (which P.S. is not really the last chapter, the last chapter has not been written - it's my whipped cream AND my cherry when I've done everything else) will have to do with grammatical corrections.  Other than that, FINI.   Why get nervous?  I don't know why.  I get giddy too after I've read a chapter that I really like, whether in this book or in one of my others, where I'll have a literally visceral reaction, like when my kids would bring home a particularly good report card.  It's not like I accomplished anything.  I can't believe I've had anything to do with stuff like that, neither good writing or the fact that my kids got good report cards. You know that new stuff they've discovered in space?  Dark Matter?  Well. it's like Dark Ego.  I'm not proud that I've (insert the accomplishment here), but more like astounded that I'm capable.  So, in relation to that, I kind of don't want this process to stop, even though I have another book I am editing for publication sort of at the same time. (*I read in jakonrath.blogspot.com or maybe it was Be the Monkey - Ebooks and Self-Publishing: A Dialog Between Authors Barry Eisler and Joe Konrath, it's a really good idea to load a few things in a relatively close time frame so that should readers become interested in your work that they'll be able to find more work by you quickly.)  That other novel, "Magician" is being edited from its first draft which I wrote about fifteen years ago.  I'm having a lot fun with that story because in the beginning of the book my protagonist, Jeremy Dunnett, is a very precocious child living in South Carolina, so I get to play with accents, humidity and lush landscapes. 

Oh, my goodness I took off on a tangent.  The bottom line is that I am Terrified of finishing.  Why is that?  Maybe...DOH!!

Maybe because it's one of the very, very, very few things that I have control over.  Once it's gone, I will no longer be able to manipulate it.  But I have other planets, don't I?  Yeah, but I don't know them quite as well.  The only other book I new like this one - all the cracks in the sidewalks, all the streams, the fossils, everything down to the quarks - was my first, The Hunt.

Oh whatever.  I love writing.  I love everything about it.  I love the craziness it makes me feel.  I love the schizophrenia.  Even when I can't write a single word without throwing a mental hissy fit, I know, in that same visceral, alligator-in-my-belly way, that it will find a way to manifest.  And when I'm done with one, the other one just takes it's place, sliding in, nice and comfy, because it's been there all along. So, stop the drama, Olga.

Finish it. 

Procrastination Ration

I kick myself sometimes because I am not writing the entire six hours that I'm conscious after I get home from work.  Let me be honest, sometimes I don't write in any of those hours.  And it gets worse than that.  A few days ago I downloaded two books on epublishing (I was still inclined to get hard copies, still more attracted to it when it comes to research but then I thought - this would be kind of weird, no?  If I'm going to commit, let me commit all the way) and I haven't been reading them.  I read the first thirty pages of Zoe Winter's book, "Smart Self-Publishing: Becoming an Indie Author " when I first downloaded it.  This book doesn't focus solely on epublishing and it's a pretty quick, easy read considering the amount of info it has and the different levels of publishing it covers.  She's funny too, which makes it pleasant to stick with but I haven't gone back to it.  The books lurk in the back of my head while I'm concluding my reading of JA Konrath's horror novel "Origin", which, frankly, as witty as Zoe Winters is, Konrath’s demon is just so riotously appalling it keeps kicking the idea of the homework books back - way, way back.

I'm not totally lazy.  I have been editing my novel "Existence" for the umpteenth time since I started writing it back in 2005.  My lead character is Erin Keane, an addict abruptly looking into the face of sobriety.  His character hasn't evolved much since I first began writing his journal portion of the book, in number 2 pencil between the tight lines of a college ruled composition book.  When I stopped drinking I started keeping a diary. (I've kept diaries throughout my life, but as my addiction progressed, the journaling became sporadic, and then the entries sporadic themselves, desperate sentences thrown together, or lonely attempts at poetry when I found myself compelled to write because I couldn't figure out how to express myself out loud anymore.  Out loud expression was one of the gifts of alcohol that lured me in the beginning.  Ironically, it eventually shut me up completely.)  Within that personal diary of mine, in which I was able to write clearly and then honestly for the first time in fifteen years, there was so much information I wanted to express, so many facets to sobriety and the journey through it, I had to start writing in someone else's voice as well, in a separate book.  That’s how Erin was born.

To quit doing something that has obsessed one's life for so long.  To finally be able to stop doing that which up to a point was utterly impossible to even dream stopping, and then suddenly find yourself not doing it anymore, and then eventually not even thinking about it anymore...  It's a crazy, bizarre trip, let me tell you.  It's fascinating.  If you don't know addiction and it has never touched your life, personally- physically or through a loved one, then it's hard to understand.  I know it's hard, I tried to explain it to my father and he was a pretty open minded person, (I think my sister might state otherwise) but I couldn't get him to understand the concept of  not being able to use my will-power to quit.  He couldn’t comprehend that I couldn't, no matter what I tried, stop, even though the more I drank, the more miserable I became.  And then, one day, I turn around and I don't do that anymore.  I can't go into how it stopped, if addiction is hard to explain, consider stopping the addiction impossible to explain.  I call it a miracle because really, there's no other way to describe it.  There are no details I can share.  It’s a very strange, awesome process that is experienced in the living.  I don't know if I was able to capture it in the book I’ve written.  I don’t know if that's what I wanted to do with it anyway.  I think all it started out being was a vehicle to express the runoff feelings that may not have seemed personal to me anymore.  At the same time, this is a very personal book.

So maybe all these times that I’ve gone into the book, diving, wading, fishing, maybe these visits have all been equally important to the book itself and to my process.  Erin is sober through me, and it's important for me to represent it correctly.  Getting clean and getting sober are very human processes; so much more human than addiction.  I know some would disagree, like that sarcastic little voice in my head saying – no it’s the other way around – but I’m not that person anymore, and I can ignore her.  It’s important for me to get the humanness of it right.  We never want to create a perfect character, the blemishes are the most important part, and I want to make sure I’ve filled him proportionately to fill in those nuances, that he’s an addict and that he is becoming sober.  The transformation is complicated but it’s also really subtle so it’s tricky.

The bottom line is that I'll get to it, the publishing.  I want it yesterday and with as little effort on my part as possible, except for the fun part, which is the actual writing, obviously.  I want it to fall from heaven without reading any extra books or writing a blog, or dipping my foot into the massiveness of the internet.  I don’t want you to know who I am for Pete's sake, almost as much as I do.  Almost.

Writer, Banker, Candle Stick Maker

I work on the 12th floor of one of the taller buildings in downtown Miami.  Yes, it is 70 degrees in the middle of January and when I look out the east side of the building I can see the cruise ships ready to leave from the port of Miami.  Don’t be jealous, I work in a bank.  I don’t like calling myself a banker. I really don’t consider myself one, but, I’d rather be a librarian and resemble that image than the image of the banker, unless your image of a banker is sexy, mine is decidedly not.  A banker is the antithesis of what I am.  I am an inventor of stories.  A novelist.  A writer.  But mostly in my heart I consider myself an artist, because an artist creates and that is what I do.  That is what I do when I am not here, at the bank. 

This is hard to admit, especially since some people that know me may read this, but if you really know me it won’t surprise you - I don’t have a traditional bank account.  I would need one of those if I were actually attempting to save money, but I do that through my retirement plan and I spend everything else.  That means - pay attention - that I don’t have any credit cards.  And yeah, that might impress some people, but I know the smarty pants that immediately think, “that also means she has no credit”.  Yes, that too.  But I guarantee you something right here and now, and I will wager my retirement fund on it, we all leave this pretty little existence with the same thing, don’t we? 

Yeah, I get to justify that by saying I am an artist, so I am entitled to not think logistically when it comes to money.  You know what the funny thing is?  Currently, I am the Rockefeller in my relationship which is… you can’t begin to imagine how ironic that is.  So, reason number 75 for trying to publish is to make a reasonable living at what comes naturally.  Oh, man, and it used to come so much more naturally before this responsibility thing started slowing me down.  Age is a nuisance.  I'm starting to realize, and it is becoming blatantly loud in my head, that I have maybe thirty years left, and I want to be able to afford tea and toast when I’m in my seventies, you know?  I don’t want to retire from banking, I mean, if I have to, so be it, but in the same way that we leave this existence with the same thing, it’s nice to approach the end knowing that you did everything you could to realize your dream.  Whatever that is for you depends on who you are.  Sometimes it’s simple, like knowing that the two daughters’ you raised are finally safe.  Sometimes it means letting everyone see who are, inside out, conquering the fear or at least raising the pen to it.  Sometimes it’s the nest egg for your children.  We are lucky, some would say blessed, to come to learn what it is for us individually.  Humans struggle.  Human’s struggle and suffer.  Those of us that have the chance to breathe and contemplate, well, we are so incredibly lucky.  To be a writer.  To look out the window and watch as the morning sun blanches the sidewalk blonde.

To work in a bank. 

I've been reading some of Joe Konrath's novels for a few weeks now.  If you don't know, Konrath writes horror under the pseudonym Jack Kilborn and the books are outrageously violent and insanely gory.  I’m not sure why such a delicate flower as me is attracted to these novels, (if by attracted one means OBSESSED).   Anywhos, I noticed that he has a recurring element in his books, something that I find pretty intriguing.  He seems to favor the strong female protagonist, I mean Whitley from “Aliens” strong.  In Konrath’s novel Endurance there are a few strong females, but one is so bad-ass, she is missing her legs and she still kicks butt.  In Trapped, the female lead kicks butt while her baby is tucked into a shoulder harness.  I LIKE it, Joe, thank you. 

It got me thinking about my characters.  I imagine that Konrath is modeling his beautiful female warriors after someone very special in his life.  Maybe it isn’t just one person, maybe he was raised by Amazons - I don’t know him personally - but it's rooted in something because it keeps manifesting in his writing.  I never thought about how my relationships influence my characters.  Is this something that they teach in writing courses?  I guess it would be, because we develop the nuances of our people through observation and through experience, right?  But, if you are some hermit writer that doesn't get out much then you are sort of stuck deriving this information from your immediate family.  Hopefully your immediate family is really big, like the Walton's.   

Well, for me it's my dad.  He had 'the' influence on me and it is he that I am reflecting when I am writing my male leads, and mine are mostly male.  The females are usually my mom.  I wasn't hidden in the basement, but my upbringing wasn't rich in social flavor either.  I am an artist and I am one of the cool, loner types (he he he) that prefers observation to participation (wallflower extraordinaire).  My family was not as big as the Waltons', but hooooooey, they definitely packed the fixins when it came to Turkey dinner, if you know what I mean.  So, I don't know, mostly it's my dad and mom, and then rest is all of you.

Please pass the mash potatoes if you don't mind. 

Editing madness or is it addiction?

Man, it's sort of overwhelming, isn't it?  Sure it is.  I mean, look, there are a lot, A LOT, of reasons that I am not published.  Maybe one of those reasons is that I am a terrible writer.  Sure, that's totally possible. but let me stick to the verifiable facts, because the truth is I don't think I'm a terrible writer.  (Considering I'm one of the total four human beings that have read my work, that would qualify as the most self aggrandizing thing I have ever stated, and I don't have the balls to say I'm good, just not terrible.)  How does one accumulate the amount of time necessary to attempt traditional publication?  Twenty years ago, (whoa, whoa, whoa, tell the truth) thirty years ago I got married and then I had two children, and then I got divorced and my mother passed away unexpectedly; I got my first grown up job to support my two children whilst simultaneously turning into an alcoholic, etcetera, etcetera.  What I'm getting at is that I had a lot of life happen and I've lived every inch of it.  Throughout it all I continued writing and they, the children I gave birth to and the characters I created, saved my sanity, but I did not have the time to attempt the process of becoming "oh are you published?" 'yes, I am'.  Not that all it takes is sand, that's the least of it.  Because in addition to existing just like everyone else, we can say (the royal we obviously) that we rarely gave ourselves the opportunity to be discovered, or to get involved in writing groups, or to give a flying Kung Fu kick about other aspiring writers.  It was mine mine mine all mine.  Insane, you say? The royal you, obviously.  because you said that you wanted everyone to read you and get to know you.  How can they do that if you are hiding the planet behind a really big moon?  Really big and painfully shy and contradictorily, self possessed and ego maniacal.  Who are you talking about? 

Yeah, now that I think about it, maybe I am crazy.  I found though, in these past few years of my assent into middle aged-ness, that my feelings aren't unique, pretty much about anything, especially about feeling unique.

I'm in the middle of reviewing these chapters.  There are 300 pages so far, double spaced with too many words that I need to cut back on because newbies shouldn't have that much to say (I hated when I read that, but it's the freaking truth.) This is my last time going in.  I've said that before, but I need to let go of her.  I need to set her free.  And with her, me too.

I was just getting ready to write, rubbing my hands together and warming up my fingers, when the alarm went off.  The butternut squash ravioli I'm addicted to is ready.  BRB.

Ok, now it's soaking in caramelized onion and red pepper sauce.  It's the store-bought kind, don't get excited. 

Hmm.  So, did you all start out this way?  Those of you that blog.  You BLOGGERS.  I resisted for as long as I could but, well, here I am, surrendering.  OUCH.

I've been writing for a long, long time. It's the kind of length in time that goes so far back it's hard (impossible) to see it when I turn around.  I want to say - and I did and am editing it now - that I started when I was ten years old, back around 1975-ish.  It was probably before that.  I wish I could remember specifically, and I wish I had hung on to those things, whatever those things were.  I think that at first it was poetry.  Simple little things that would make my older sister smile.  By the time I was twelve I was writing little novella's and I even wrote a Starsky and Hutch episode with my friend Lori.  Oh, and how I wish I had that, written on torn out sheets of notebook paper, scene after scene that included that red Torino and Huggy Bear.  Does Lori ever think about that?  It was my job to transpose that precious, sole yet perfect draft onto clean white sheets of luxurious onion paper, which I found so incredibly sexy and fancy at that age. I was the only 'privelged' one of my group of friends with an actual electric typewriter in the apartment.  I was never pushed academicly in my youth, but my eccentric, bohemian Cuban parents encouraged the artist in both me and my sister.  By the way, they probably wouldn't have labeled themsleves eccentric or bohemian, but for the record, my family is unique.  Maybe we all feel that way about our relatives.

"The Hunt" is my first novel.  I completed it, (if by completed one means finishing the first of 20 drafts) when I was seventeen years old.  It's a love story about the first week in the transformation process of a vampire.  She happens to fall in love with who will eventually become her first feed.  Please don't make me tell you how much better than all the Twilights put together it is.  :) 

Thirty years since and I have started and finished and edited and dreamed about and formulated and EXISTED IN so many stories with so many people and so many places, some that exist and some that don't, that sometimes it feels like I've lived 50 lives. "The Hunt". "Cowboys".  "The Tree".  "Stranger in the Miror".  "Circle of Ghosts". "The Magician." "The Ride". "Something." and "Existence".  Existence is what I am going to e-publish first.  When I write about Existence it chokes me up.  The Hunt used to do that to me.  These stories have a very big piece of me in them.  And they have my peace in them, and that's probably the part that makes me feel the same as I do when I look at my two kids.  The feeling is wonder, I think.   

I used to think that it didn't matter if I got published or not.  But, yes, it does.  I may sincerely not care about becoming a bestselling millionaire, but I do want you and everyone else on the planet to read what I've written.  I want you and everyone else on the planet to come to my world and hang out for a while and get to know these people I have given birth to.  From River Hawk and Camille de Bourney to Erin Keane and Lucy.  They are right here, as sure as I am here, and I am so very proud of them and yes, I will admit it, in love with each and every one.  So I am starting my journey, today, to self publish.  I want to chronicle it.  I have dreampt about making this all available, to you, in the same way that my inspiration, Mr. Stephen King has.  In 1980 I read The Stand, and when I saw those paragraphs in italics, the way he seems to talk to himself on the pages of his novels, oh my, oh my, I was forever hooked.  Writing probably saved my life, and one day I'll share about that.  For now, I get closer to my dream and you get closer to my planet.