Do and hope?

One of my matriarchal family lines (Caldwell-Tatum) has a centuries-old family motto:

Do and hope. Fac Et Spera. 

A lot can be read into these three simple words, even without the fancy armored arm waving a sword through a crown crest that goes along with them. As a kid and then a young woman I was drawn to the words hope and do individually, and in that order. I pictured noble ancestors hoping for a better life for themselves, their family, their country and doing the work, adventuring, rebelling, immigrating, bootlegging, and learning to make those hopes happen. I took heart in my naive hopes of saving the world and dared to tilt at windmills and bang my head into brick walls of bureaucracy and apathy. I even rallied others at times vicariously with my off-gassing of hope and determination. Hoping and doing was initially a very satisfying mantra or motto, and then I discovered I had it backward.

I'm now arguably middle-aged and have suffered through obtaining three degrees and a host of traumatic experiences in extreme environments where I could literally do nothing and the worst outcome was hopelessly inevitable. As a consequence of my jobs, I necessarily do a lot of observing only (e.g. job analysis, teamwork assessment, organizational research, executive coaching). There was nothing I could do to prevent a detective from being shot to death during my ride-along or put life back into the many broken and defeated bodies I followed first responders to, or bring back an astronaut or faculty member I had worked with after a tragic incident, or to help a healthcare professional or veteran actually get past the repeating memory of a gruesome trauma. There was nothing I could do that had any hope of saving two of my best friends from a boat fire or my dog from drowning or my in-laws from a long, slow, scary cognitive decline, or young family members from being exploited and disparaged into self-destructive behaviors. There is certainly nothing I can do that has any obvious or immediate hope of stopping deadly wars, natural disasters, famines, greed, or ignorance. Living has made it abundantly clear that waiting on hope to inspire me to do is completely hopeless.

Hope feeds on the fumes of doing, not the other way around. Sitting in the bulletproof back of that police cruiser while one detective struggled to drag his partner out of the line of fire, I thought of things I could do to better select and train officers to survive and to support their families and colleagues when they did not. When the horror was over, I set about doing those things as much as possible and convincing others to pay attention to doing them too; and I found the hope to do more from there. I've learned that the doing must come first or my hope will certainly die. I must do in order to feed my future hope.

I still read a lot into those three words. I cling to them in their exact order now, do and hope. They save me from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. They remind me that if I wait to hope, I may never do what is really necessary or actually helpful again. I do the best I can to change what I can for the better while I can with what I have and hope that makes my own or someone else's adventure living a little easier or better from that point on. I do, and I make mistakes or sometimes I just end up doing the wrong thing, but then I do something else or something differently next time, knowing that I will probably learn something that has an even better hope of influencing lives. I write and hope it will speak to what someone else needs at some point in time when they most need it, but I do not wait until I feel hopeful someone would like to read it before I write it. I certainly do not wait to write until I have hopes of achieving success (whatever that is). I write and hope I can revise it to be even better later as I learn. I do, then I hope, and that is how my next day always dawns beautiful and clean and full of purpose now.

Do and hope.

Lacey's 10 Author Fashion Essentials

It isn't always sippin' lattes and cashing royalty checks...sometimes authors have to fashion themselves for hard work. I offer you my time-tested fashion essentials, in hopes, it will save you some time to get down to authoring (so you can #BeMightyWrite!).

1. A comfortable attitude is easier in the right pants, Chico's So Slimming Girlfriend Jeans. These go everywhere from weekends holed up in the dusty reserves of the local library to under your punky best tuxedo jacket for an international awards ceremony...and they are comfortable enough to sleep in on a long flight...and did I mention the four real pockets? https://www.chicos.com/store/product/so+slimming+girlfriend+jeans/570268076?color=001&catId=cat8319290
2. A snuggly shirt for writing makes all the difference in getting through those tough-to-write, too-real scenes. I know you're thinking flannel, but broaden your mind a tiny bit to chamois. Specifically, LL Bean's Women's Heritage Chamois Shirt. It's even great for pulling over your favorite t-shirt inside over-air-conditioned libraries and cafes in the Texas Summers. https://www.llbean.com/llb/shop/119946?page=womens-heritage-chamois-shirt-misses-regular
3. Speaking of favorite t-shirts, Duluth's Women's Longtail T Lightweights also go from curled up on the sofa with a cat or five to under that tuxedo jacket or chamois shirt as needed and without shrinking. https://www.duluthtrading.com/womens-longtail-t-lightweight-v-neck-t-shirt-69236.html?cgid=womens-tops-t-shirts&dwvar_69236_color=OKS#start=18&cgid=womens-tops-t-shirts
4. A writer must follow her feet, sometimes into nature and sometimes through the big, dirty cities and airports to a book signing. I don't like packing heavy, so I want a shoe that does it all and looks good with almost everything...even occasionally a punky little dress. Blundstone's 500 Chelsea Boot for Women in Stout Brown takes care of everything that doesn't require a tennis shoe and can be waterproofed with an $8 bottle of Camp Dry. Bombas socks (buy a pair and they donate a pair to a homeless shelter) go great with these boots. https://www.blundstone.com/shop/stout-brown-premium-leather-v-cut-boots-womens-style-500
5. When you must wear dress shoes, but still want to be able to walk ten miles or stand around for hours, then it is all about the Rothy's shoes of your choice. They last forever too and wash in the washing machine. https://rothys.com/
6. What about the jacket? The Womens Canvas Kuhl Trinity Moto Jacket keeps the rain off, looks cool dressed up or down, and makes your Vegan fans happy too. Carbon is my favorite color because it goes with just about everything, including my silk tank top and those Girlfriend Jeans and way-out Rothy's at the award balls. https://www.titlenine.com/product/womens-canvas-moto-jacket-trinity-kuhl-512007.do?from=Search&cx=0&query=trinity%20moto%20jacket
7. I've been around the world for work and worry with only one bag and nothing beats Timbuk2s Laptop Messenger Bags with the quick-zip that lets you cruise through security checkpoints without taking out your laptop. The main compartment also holds three to four days' worth of clothes if you need it to. Mine is custom colors, but the Jetblack Static version is pretty lesfic suave too and they're made in San Francisco! https://www.timbuk2.com/collections/all-messenger-bags/products/1810-closer-laptop-briefcase?variant=12733961404458
8. It's too easy to get distracted by a Smart Watch, especially when I have a hint of writer's block visiting. I like to have a watch with a movable dive ring too for timing my writing sessions (and to wear as a back up to my dive computer on occasion). Casio's LRW200H is so affordable I can have different colors, including the one with rose gold numbers and the one with rainbow numbers! https://www.casio.com/products/watches/sports/lrw200h-7e2v
9. Normally, I write on a PC (I'm a big fan of my Surface Pro now), but I don't always have a laptop handy and sometimes I don't want to drag down my phone battery by using my Dragon Speak too much. Sometimes I also just want to jot down some notes or ideas for later. In all of these instances, Moleskine's Pocket-sized Cahier Journals are great. I like the Kraft Brown version so I can sticker it up or doodle on the cover to make it a fun fashion accessory. Each journal also has a small pocket inside that is great for travel receipts that I need to have reimbursed later. https://us.moleskine.com/en/cahier-journals-kraft-brown/p1274
10. For a writer, the pen is the ultimate in luxury jewels. It's my royal scepter in the vast queendom of my imagination, and yet I can sometimes lose it easily. Only one pen on the market writes like it cost hundreds of dollars, looks like a thousand bucks, but costs less than ten dollars: Zebra's Steel F-701 All Metal Retractable Ball Point Pen. https://www.zebrapen.com/product/f-701-ball-point-retractable/?source=brand

    

    It isn't always sippin' lattes and cashing royalty checks...

Words are worth a million feelings?

As a novelist and a human, I am plagued by the voice of my inner critic at times. Given the lagging sales of novels and author earnings right now, my inner critic has been clamoring a lot lately about how "a picture is worth a thousand words" so maybe I should just shut up with the novel writing and use my photography skills to tell stories. There are so many good ways to tell a story with pictures, or do visual storytelling, now and "who reads a whole book now anyway, we don't even read Facebook posts that require us to click See More " (a friend who chooses to remain anonymous).

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then why do we write novels? Do we still need novels?

Since my inner critic won't shut up otherwise, I have to have an answer so I thought about some of the most compelling photographs I've seen lately. Most of them are from the assorted Scuba Diving magazines I get now that I'm a (relatively) newly certified Scuba Diver. I've been a photographer for twenty plus years (i.e. earn money for selling photos kind), but I'm too new to Scuba Diving to master the challenges of taking good photos underwater. Even if I was better at capturing the light underwater just right, I still think it wouldn't be enough. Even the exquisite composites of expert underwater photographers (e.g. Cathy Church) don't sufficiently, satisfactorily, tell the heart of the story.
The pictures are beautiful, otherworldly, maybe even evocative (they make me want to tell stories sometimes), but somehow they still lack some dramatic punch. They say nothing about the millions of feelings or thoughts wrapped up in them unseen like the Electromagnetic spectrum. That picture says nothing about the chaff of the oversized dive computer against my wrist bone, the clinging suck of the wetsuit collar on my neck, the overwhelming dryness of the air I have to think about pulling in through the zinc taste of my regulator, the salt in my eyes because the mask isn't really that watertight, the hollow rumble of my stomach because I've traveled so far and it doesn't pay to eat much before going down, the pressure and extra degree of chill of each depth of water pressing in on my ribs, or my nagging wonder about where my dive buddy just wandered off. No matter how pretty, the picture doesn't explain why I learned to tolerate all of this discomfort to see this stuff first-hand.
I am weightless here thanks to the magic of neutral buoyancy, free to move in ways that are typically impossible under the influence of sobering gravity. My pictures don't show the school of Seargeant Major fish following me like curious puppies, bumping at my elbows as I try to frame the shot. I can feel the ghostly, delicate, caress of the hundreds of tiny Common Jellyfish against my bare skin as they ballet by. Just out of frame is a mysterious grotto where the light slivers and wanes around a dozen sharks at rest and the Amber Jackfish ahead does her best to keep an eye on them and an eye on me. Below me are even deeper gradations of blue, seeming unending and even wider than the sky above that is reduced to a simple translucent lid of sunshine overhead. I want to put the camera down. I want to tell the deeper story.
This moment is pure exploratory joy, like walking the moon. There is a good probability that no other living human has been here and seen this. There are still things here without any given names. The life and light on the reef, even the reef itself, change by the hour. Every snapshot falls flat. You can't tell from any of my pictures that this is the first time in two years of incredible stress and common grief that I feel like I can really breathe deep, despite the pressing weight of the entire Caribbean ocean around me. The pictures lack emotional context. I think novels exist because words are worth a million feelings.
Novels can go below the surface into the oceans of our souls. In such brave, new worlds I think words still have greater currency.

Our Alpha and Omega Love Song

The stars are just dust,
light reflected,
from some distant past,
that didn't last.
The used-to-be.
I want more
for you and me.

Alpha and Omega.
Let's break-in
to break up
the beginning
of no end.

Light a match,
set a glow,
warm in hand,
draw our lines,
in the sand,
keep this stand.

Alpha and Omega.
Hope won't
blow us away
because we're
built-in sway.

The stars are just dust,
dead shiny daggers,
of what once.
I want more us,
wild swaggers.

Fuck legendary.
Long live the Queen,
right in this scene.
Forget fate's permission.
We're all forgiveness,
alpha, omega, alpha-bravo!

If this life is
endless labor,
we are the
perpetual birth,
Before Common Error,
anno domini,
us ad hominem,
alive.

Because the stars are just
someone else's
Alpha and Omega
love song.

Fate Loves a Riddle

Survival favors the fittest,
and yet,
Nature abhors a vacuum.

There is only one thing,
I know of,
that will tell of the same thing,
over and over,
over again.
Only a timepiece,
repeats information
without wit.
Only this device,
invented by humanity,
will tell us the measure
of our own construct
continuously.

The world doesn't love anything or one equally,
and yet,
Love is blind,
like Faith and Justice.

There is no Answer,
and yet,
the Question is not Everything either.

Maybe Fate isn't fickle,
maybe,
It just loves a riddle?

Survival favors the fittest,
and yet,
maybe,
survival isn't the boon...

Maybe the desperate and disabled
have the most room
to see the real treasure,
a moment to breathe,
a lifetime to grasp.
While the fit,
fight to last.

Wouldn't that be
the worst fate?
A good joke.

I hear
Fate loves a riddle.

For Mary Oliver, who so loved nature she embraced the riddles like the bloody eye of the moon.

The 4th Novel is now happening

After an unfortunate series of disconcerting and time-consuming events, I am writing fiction again. Here is a teaser from my 4th novel (currently in creation). Please ask me how my novel is going, as there is no accountability so motivating as your friends and family kindly nagging you about your progress! 

The Synopsis of A Badge Washed Up:

A grieving middle-aged, African-American cook finds the badge of a forensic scientist, who is presumed dead, washed up on the shore at a beach-side retirement community. No one in authority will take Janey’s clue seriously so she searches for Brooke Stone, the missing scientist, on her own. Janey finds a lot more than she expected.

Chapter 1: The Hook

My son, Saul, didn’t always die in my dreams, but that didn’t make any of the nights after his death less of a nightmare. Even in my sleep, on some level, I suppose I still knew that he was really and truly dead. I found every dream of him so close to real though, because I wanted it to be so badly, that I could smell his hair still. My heart was a wound that never healed. Walking long distances on the beach numbed it some. Plodding fatigue brought me to an edge that hinted at living. Moving proved I was breathing. That I should continue breathing.

I often walked the shores after work, at sunset, until my heels were cracked and bleeding. One day last August, I got more than I bargained for though.

My hands were shaking even though the heat beating down on the sand was so hot that my eyes felt scorched.  I felt sorry for all the little elders of the Shore Acres Seaside Retirement Resort where I worked. Their thin old skin loved the heat, but so much sun was hard on their pale eyes.  In truth, I felt sorry for the entire world. All the time, I just felt sorry.

 I felt sorry for my beautiful dead baby. The injustice of his promising life cut short in his prime burned so rough in my chest that my hands still shook, two years later, whenever I thought about it.

I paused my walk, stuttered stepped into the surf, and let the green Gulf of Mexico wash in and out over my toes. The smell of salt filled my nostrils and pricked at the edges of my eyes reminding me of the taste of the tears I was too dry to cry any more. I kept playing back the last time I saw my son, Saul, alive. 

“Come on, Momma, I'm walking one mile up the road.  Julie's house is right on the edge of Orange Grove.  The first house on the left as you turn into the neighborhood.” He bugged his eyes out at me and shook his head.

“I know you can walk the mile, Saul.”

“Julie is a good kid.  We're really going to work on our project for the science fair.  I promise.” Saul spread his large hands open in front of his body and stuck out his lower lip.

“I know Julie is a good kid. And you know I trust you.”

He rubbed the palm of his hand over his tight brown curly hair. “So, what's the hold up?”

I watched him shift from foot to foot, one ratty Converse over the other, as he waited for me to answer him.  He was sixteen years of earnest adolescent energy.

I wasn't sure what my problem was, but for some reason, I didn't want him to go out that evening.  My stomach grumbled. I should have listened to my mother's intuition that early February night. “It's winter, Saul.”

“It's Gainesville, Florida, Momma.  Low of sixty-two degrees today.”

“It gets dark before six 'o-clock, Saul.”

“There is a sidewalk the whole way.  I have to cross one street and there is a stop light there.”  He gave me a sideways smile and draped his arm around my shoulders.

I said nothing. Why didn’t I hold him tight right then?

“I'll take my hoodie in case it gets cold, and I'll be home by seven for dinner.”

I shook my head and smiled back at him. Why didn’t I tell him I knew the hoodie wasn’t necessary?

“I'll also leave Julie's phone number on fridge for you.”

He was a good kid, an Honors student.  He never sassed me. He never complained that we couldn't buy him a car or a phone, or that his clothes came from the third-hand bargain boxes at second-hand shops.  He smiled every day and he did his best to make others smile too.  He tried to take care of me. 

“Okay,” I consented, trying not to frown. Why didn’t I insist he hug me right then?

He promised to be home by seven for dinner that night because we both knew his dad would probably wander in very late, drunk and smelling like some other woman. 

I don't know when I heard the first siren for sure. It was fifteen minutes after seven, I was sitting at the kitchen table with our food plated, when the bottom just dropped out of my stomach as if I was on a plummeting airplane. I got really worried.  Saul was never more than a few minutes late to anything in his life.  He was two days early for his own birth.  He rolled out of bed every morning before his alarm clock went off.  I stared at our plates. Instant mashed potatoes, canned green beans, and thin fried pork cutlets cooled on the microwave-safe malanite. I listened to the sirens outside. The one siren warbling siren exploded into a symphony of sirens.

I thought I should call Julie to see what time Saul left her house, but when I got up from the table my feet took me past the phone and through the front door. 

I ran accross black-top parking lot in my socks, toward the front gate of our apartment complex, and the sound of sirens.  I remembered tasting my heart in my mouth as I called out for Saul. I remembered seeing one of Saul's Converse on its side on the pavement, covered in so much blood that it looked red rather than washed-out gray all over.

 I remembered many things. All of them hard. I couldn’t remember what it felt like to be whole, to be real, to be happy. I couldn’t remember being innocent enough to believe that justice would eventually prevail. I couldn’t remember what it was like to assume that the world would play fair if I played fair too. My heart ached the most though, because I couldn’t figure out what good love was in a world that killed my kid with impunity.

Eventually the sound of the ocean, tide rolling over shells, brought me back to the hot beach again. I hadn’t realized how far I’d walked out into the Gulf of Mexico. I tottered on the unsteady slope of sand. The hem of my basketball shorts was wet.

Salty waves tugged against the back of my knees and shell grit slapped at my shins.   That’s when it hit me, literally. A sharp wet slap on the side of one knee pulled past me on a wave and then caught between my legs, limp and leathery, as the wave receded. The water was gritty, so I couldn’t see what it was. I reached down and plucked it from the water. Black leather, well-worn before it was worn more well by the ocean. It looked to be a wallet at first. A broken clip on one side. I thought it was odd to have a money clip on the outside of a wallet at first. I flipped it open to find a wad of kelp wrapped around a gold colored shield.

Even through the kelp, I could tell the shape of a badge. The bare edge of metal glinted in the sun. I pulled the kelp away and peered at the badge’s dull enameling proclaiming, “Florida State Department of Public Safety.” I rubbed away more kelp and the engravings became clear, “Forensic Scientist, 424242.” The plastic ID sleeve was empty, gaping like a dead jelly fish. A shiver shot down my spine. The leather, dead skin, was waterlogged and gross. I wanted to drop it, but the enamel of the badge was warm, and I couldn’t let it go for some reason. I traced the “424242” with the tip of my index finger. The grooves were soothing. I folded the wallet up and clutched it, dripping beside me as I walked home. The numbers and the title sang in my head with each foot step. I didn’t know much about law enforcement then, at least not much positive, but I knew a, “Forensic Scientist” probably wasn’t a typical police officer. A Forensic scientist might not even carry a gun. Worry tugged at my gut. A Forensic Scientist sounded like someone who could easily get hooked into troubling things and end up dead. Or mired in a world of hurt. Like me.

†

I put a paper towel down on my dresser and left the leather wallet laying in the sunlight to dry. The badge unclipped with a soft thwap and I rinsed it carefully under the bathroom tap. Multi-colored sand grains trickled down the porcelain and rimmed the rusting metal edges of my sink’s drain. I knew I would leave the sand there to sparkle in the water, a testimony to my new complete-lack-of-housekeeping habit.

An old mock-up of an idea for the cover.

Owning The Adventure

You will never believe

The things that I have seen,

Though, I could tell you a hundred stories

of

Days when everything Is sacred And pregnant With hope. Grass stands Thick, cool, and green Beside a burbling stream On a Siberian slope. Trees older than Jesus Reach to the sky Gnarled high, Mid-Nevada miracles, Stark clear and dry. A mother, A astronaut, Reaches the stars And shares the trip So that more children Dare the slip From the surly bonds Of gravity. Free to see Earth’s blue marble beaming. Underpaid firefighters Stop traffic To rescue Blossoming Squirrel puppies. All God’s creatures Are small, Are great-- Small on judging, Big in faith. And I believe In everything.

Days when nothing Is sacred Nor born With good will. Rival owners Firebomb strip clubs Killing sex-traffic victims And booming their business. A trusted official Commits the felony And not only goes free, But doesn’t have to flee, And still gets re-elected, While the Under-Represented Minority Remains unduly suspected. Fundamental attribution error Breeds increasing cognitive bias Like plastic pollutes the sea And millions in apathy Toss on billions of straws. Camels aren’t just beaten Bloody and raw In fables of Shahs. A Grandmother, A hater, Brutalizes a baby Breaking bones zero to 206 Per angry shake, But she gets to demand The doctors finish Killing the kid slowly On life support. And I believe In nothing.

What does it mean to believe?

There once was a fork in the road…

I choose my own adventure.

There is never enough time to choose, and yet we must choose again and again each day.

The Low Down, Dirty, Shameful Truth

I'm not always zen.
I believe in the magic
of cheap rhymes,
thick novels,
lonely times,
and not worrying
about when,
as much as
why.

I love like sin.
I believe in my wife,
one of the biggest,
baddest,
baby-saving,
every-day-slaving,
bad-ass heroes
in life.

I'm a total goof.
I believe in singing
operas,
in full Texan drawl,
to too many pets
and stone deaf
to the wall,
to keep laughter
warm
and misery aloof.

I know I'm a fool.
The doctorate
is only more proof.
I'm stubborn
and dumb,
plumb crazy
numb
to basic
necessities
like common sense
and public cool.

You can plainly see,
millions more patient
than me,
more focused and kind,
and ready to find
fault fixed
in our world.

But...
the low down,
dirty,
shameful,
truth
is...
I'm already
on
your side.

Spaceship
Earth
already set sail
a gritty
long time
ago,
and we're on it
together.

So,
I'm not always zen,
and I don't care about when,
but here's my hand;
and I hope you'll take it.

I think we can make it,
if we
love like sin,
keeping laughter warm,
too stubborn
and too dumb
to find fault
to fix
in each other.

Stuff grows on the dirty down-side!

The Poet Knows It

A poem on a napkin
is more like a tissue.
A poem on a blog,
ephemeral as fog.
A spoken rhyme
mere litter
among airwaves
in time.
All,
words to the sea,
a token memory
of a world
that existed
with me.

A moment of sunlight creates poetry of light.

Every Time I Hear Loony Tunes

Every time
I listen
to The Cure
I think about
the boy
that got away,
like Wile E. Coyote,
over the edge
of a car crash
in the dark of night.

Every time
I listen
to Tricky
I'm sure about
the love
I've given up,
like Bugs Bunny,
knowing I should
have taken
a left turn
in Albuquerque.

Every time
I listen
to Morrissey
I'm crazy about
the day
fading out,
like Yosemite Sam,
hollering when
I say, Whoa!
I mean, Whoa!

Every time
I listen
to Lucinda Williams
I'm sick about
the way
grace slips by,
like Sylvester
lisp suffering
succotash
while Tweety Bird
twitters.

Every time
I listen
to Wagner
I'm mad about
the gray
given sway,
like Marvin the Martain
sneaking in unnamed
for two decades
until Warner Brothers
needed to market him.

Every time
I listen
to One Republic
I feel about
to hope,
like Pepe Le Pew
fondling faith
despite rebuff
from
the millionth face.

Every time
I listen
to Everything But the Girl
I remember
what it's about,
obnoxious but true,
like Foghorn Leghorn
bellowing
that's a joke
to the bewildered
book Chick.

Ever time
I listen
to the music,
I hear
a Loony Tune,
a siren song,
about life,
and keep
living
like that's what
it's for.

Another nostalgic siren song source.

.

A Lone Star

An excerpt from my new Romantic SyFy story, now available in The Lone Star Collection (12 Texas Stories). All proceeds from the book support the Lonestar Lesfic Festival in Austin. If you buy the print book and bring it to the festival, I know a whole lot of authors who will sign it up good for you (including me).

A Lone Star

Bad ass. That was the first thought that came to Venn Jules’ mind as she looked over the Lone Starport’s new sheriff, Arnika Verne.  The sheriff stood on the deck of the hovercraft, eyeing the vast sea below, with one hand on her trim neoskene-armor clad hip and the other wrapped around a laser-arc spear like she knew exactly how to use it in a hurry. Which was very comforting, given that Venn herself was too stymied by the Great Orange Kraken’s tentacles, and now also too fatigued from wrestling with it, to keep the kraken from chewing on either her or the Starport’s tidal stream generator.

Operating a new near-equatorial launch facility on the shores of Austin came with more risks to manage than the Governor and his cronies cared to admit; but at least that ass-hat and his merry troupe of brown-nosers had finally seen fit to grant Venn’s appeal to hire some protective muscle. Sexy muscle too.

“Looks like you’re an ass-crack away from becoming Kraken snack,” the sheriff said with a sultry grin. Her accent dripped of Nor-easterner, someone used to the cold horror of the Arclantic ocean, and thus she probably knew fuck-diddle about the warm terrors of Venn’s Gulf of Mexico operations. Venn’s hopes of salvation diminished.  “No shit. Now shoot the bastard in his damn plate-sized eye.”

Black hair whipping in the wind, the sheriff sent an off-hand laser bolt into the Kraken’s beak just a foot shy of Venn’s head and then, in such quick succession that Venn never saw the sheriff move, fired two more bolts into the Kraken’s eyes.  Venn dropped from the Kraken’s failing grasp into the ocean like a stone.

Luckily, she hit the muddy red waves feet first, but the velocity of her fall still sunk her a dozen meters. She knew her immediate-personnel-locator-tags likely tripped on two seconds after being submerged, but they wouldn’t do the sheriff any good toward dragging her out of the water is she didn’t break surface in a hurry--before any of the Kraken’s sisters sensed her presence and dragged her to the blackest deep.  And it would be the Kraken’s sisters, Venn knew, because their males were mostly lame, much like the men of today’s United States of Oceania.

Venn kept kicking hard, but nearly laughed underwater as the words of her cynical birth mother sprung to mind. Men were only good for three things: sperm, hysterics, and a whole lot of indignant insinuating that some ancient artifacts indicated they were really the dominant gender a thousand years ago. “Yeah, and I bet the water and sky were clear back then too,” Venn thought and added broad desperate breast-strokes to her efforts. She spotted what could only be the snout of a monstrous Great White shark speeding through the murky redness in front of her. Another murderous sister hard on her heels. Just great...

Read the rest in the book, available now in print and eBook formats on AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/Lone-Star-Collection-Carsen-Taite-ebook/dp/B079HWJCQS

Benefiting the Lonestar Lesfic Festival

Muses Never Die

Last August, the day after the Harvey flood hit my house in fact, I also lost a very dear friend and fellow warrior-of-the-written-word, Mr. Trey Garcia. Trey and I started trading poetry (and challenging each other to keep writing) in 6th grade. We avoided some arrests together in high school and wrote letters swapping poetry while I went to college and he served in the Navy. We challenged each other into writing a novel in a month for the last seven years or so too. He was my muse, and I miss him.

But I still hear him. I still have his poetry, and I still have the poems he challenged me to write. In celebration of this light that lives, I share one of his poems (one of my favorite) and one of mine (written in response to his challenge on the same theme).

The Paris Line by Trey Garcia

Trust no one but the pavement and the wind,
And never quite clear of the grey statues
As we lay in the river by the bend
A nightingale on a fig tree eats cashews
Taken from the pilgrim land just this Spring.

Can he not see that which will not be?

You and me and love. This is just a fling
Nothing more than a squirrel in a tree
Hiding acorns in a burrow made by
Ancient squirrels in hope for generations
Present and future. Now we start to fly
Above nature, above waves from stations
Playing our favorite songs as we dance
And kiss and feel and know
There is no chance.

What is the purpose of a pickup line exactly? by Lacey Schmidt

Some Egyptian-rule, obsidian cruel, 

icy social milieu 

where your eyes meet mine 

and suddenly complete some small space 

in time?

Something must be said...

to simultaneously let you know 

I think I just might love 

dipping my hands into your russet curls 

to pull your lips expectantly near mine 

while still enmeshed 

in the thoughts you’d share 

for thoughtful wear.

Something must be said...

to convince you our met stare

is more than a chance glance 

in a crowded room 

of social graces,
but I can only gulp 

and fret 

until you’re on the verge of turning 

toward some other day.

Anything should be said...

but will “your shoes are nice” really suffice?

Trey toasting our long-time limericks, with Laura, the night before my wedding.

Christmas Romance Teaser

Happy Holidays! Here is a teaser from my story, Peaches for Honey, about one special Christmas in the Marktplatz of Fredericksburg, Texas as featured in Affinity Rainbow Publications' Christmas Medley (Out now in all eBook formats).

Elysia Cisneros was still somewhat shocked, even after nearly twenty years, when her staunchly Catholic father encouraged her lesbian dating life. 

“Elysia Honey, I hardly ever hear of you talk of any romantic potential with much enthusiasm.” He stood with his ranch boots firmly planted in the restaurant’s kitchen, arms crossed, cowboy hat on the counter behind him.

Ely produced a smile for him and gave a small shrug. “I just haven’t found anyone worth that kind of enthusiasm, Dad.” She turned her back to him to finish wrapping up the holiday cakes that Jack and Vanessa had prepped for her to use in welcoming the B&B’s guests next week.

Her dad cleared his throat and harrumphed softly, a nervous habit, and Ely knew she wouldn’t like what he said next. “Are you sure?”

“What do you mean, am I sure?” Her fingers tightened on the plastic wrap.

“I just mean, are you sure that you haven’t dated anyone worth that sort of enthusiasm, or are you just protecting your heart because you can’t forgive Georgia Delaney?”

Ely spun to glare at him, if for no other reason than for speaking the name that should not be mentioned, but he was staring earnestly at the floor with his hat now in hand. 

“I don’t mean to upset you, Honey. I just worry about my only little girl. I want you to be happy.”

“I am happy.” Ely gesticulated at everything around her. “I have all of this. A thriving business that I created with my best friend in my hometown where I’m surrounded by my loving family.” 

He met her eyes, nodded, and smiled. “That’s true, but I wish you the same deep and abiding love your mother and I have as well.”

Ely sighed. “I know you do, Dad, but I don’t think everyone gets that sort of love in a lifetime.” She shrugged. Twenty years ago, with Georgia Delaney, she had believed she would be one of the lucky ones, but now she wasn’t so sure. 

Her father suddenly grinned so widely that his tanned leather face blossomed into a thousand happy lines. “Well, your Abuela feels that you are, and you know how it is when she gets a feeling.”

Ely couldn’t help but laugh, “She is always, always, eerily right somehow.”

“Exactly.” He leaned over and kissed the top of her head. “All I ask is that you keep an open mind, my Honey.” He headed for the back door. “I’ll see you later.”

“I promise I’ll try, Dad. I love you,” she called after him.

He turned toward her before stepping out the door. “I love you, too.”

The door swung shut behind him, leaving the kitchen empty and silent.

Ely took a deep breath and, to get into the holiday spirit, started humming Christmas carols to herself as she worked to finish wrapping and storing the cakes. She wasn’t thinking of anything, just enjoying the certainty of her task and the peace of an empty kitchen after all the administrative hustle and bustle of the week. Then her memories of a love she had once believed was deep and abiding smacked her subconscious silly.

She stopped humming “Deck the Halls” in the middle of the second verse. The smell of baked bread, cinnamon, and candied peaches rising above the holiday cakes in front of her turned cloying. She always avoided that Christmas carol. There was no reason to hum it now. She usually turned off the radio, or walked away from choirs singing it, unwilling to hear it and remember the golden hair and warm kiss of peppermint hot chocolate that had once gone with it. Taking a ragged breath, she tried to sidestep the bittersweet memories, but got lost in them once again anyway. . .

“I’ve always loved this one,” Georgia Delany had said as the radio beside her played a gentle instrumental version of “Deck the Halls.” Her blonde hair was a deep gold in the fading sunlight. They were snuggled up on a fleece blanket, their backs against the wide, bracing trunk of their tree. The old live oak’s limbs were bare and black above them. Stars started to show between the branches in the deeper, velvety blue fingers of twilight spreading overhead.

Elysia was eighteen and her whole world revolved around the beautiful girl beside her. First her best-friend and then, as they discovered together, so much more. They were inseparable.

“I’ve always loved you,” Georgia admitted.

Georgia kissed her, tasting of the peppermint hot chocolate they shared. A feeling of pure joy pierced Ely’s heart. Georgia’s elegant but always lightly calloused hands caressed her face. She leaned into the touch and just the feel of that love seared her vision with a thousand sparkling lights. The falling night brought a chill air that neither of them noticed as they made love beneath their favorite oak on the hill near the old balanced rock site. They had missed Fredericksburg’s tree lighting, but still managed to make it into town to wander the Marktplatz and watch the children harry Santa Claus. 

Ely hadn’t known then, but the sweetness of that day would become even more heavy and golden because it was the last Christmas she would spend loved by Georgia Delaney. Ely’s whole world would turn dark the following Christmas. Cold grief and fear would cleave her heart, as she hid alone, curled up as far under her parent’s Christmas tree as she could get, while everyone else went to town. After the Thanksgiving break of her freshman year at Southern Methodist University, Georgia would never return home to Fredericksburg again.

Ely gave a ragged sigh and shook her head, hoping to clear it of the girl who got away. Or was she herself the girl who got away? It probably didn’t matter, it hurt the same either way, and still so sharply. She rubbed her chest and turned on her heel. Her clogs squeaked against the restaurant’s kitchen floor. She had to pull her step short so she wouldn’t collide with Jack’s sous chef, Vanessa O’Bannon.

Vanessa’s eyebrows drew in to form a vague frown. “What are you still doing here, Ely?”

“Yeah, what are you doing in my kitchen?” Ely’s best-friend, business partner, and executive chef, Jack Waller, boomed from behind Vanessa. He crossed his skinny arms and gave her a mock glare.

Ely wiped her hands on her jeans and gave another long sigh.

“That kind of sigh can only mean one thing,” Jack proclaimed with a smug look born of knowing her too well. “Oh yeah, what’s that?” Ely crossed her arms.

“Either you’re mourning Van’s move again or the untimely death of your dating life.” Despite his baseball hat, a shock of blonde bangs played loose over his forehead, and he gave her a dazzling grin with one blue eye sparking beneath the blonde fringe.

She shook her head and felt a smile overtake her own face. “I will miss Van.”

Jack nodded. “No doubt, but Katy is ready to be a sous chef and we will be fine.”

“I know.” Ely directed her smile at Van. “But I will still miss her.”

Van squeezed her shoulder. “As I will both of you, but Jack is right, tonight is not the time to mourn anything.”

“Exactly. You need to get your ass in gear and go represent our interests with all those lovely, lucrative tourists.” Jack poked one finger in the air and struck a pose she knew was intended to elicit her mirth.

“I know.” And Ely did know that it was important for someone from the Camphouse B&B and the Lavender Restaurant to be seen at these events. She even served on the Chamber of Commerce’s event committees and made sure their businesses were obviously touted as sponsors. Her usual urge to socialize and bask in the communal glow was just uncharacteristically flagging this holiday season.

For one microsecond, a look of concern filled Jack’s features, and then his teasing grin flashed back. “Good.  Now get your fine Latina rear out of that ratty flannel and into something better looking, and get down to the parade.”

“What?  I can’t go like this?”  Ely looked down at the frayed jeans she’d coopted from her older brother and cut to size a decade ago, and the nearly sage instead of olive plaid of her favorite flannel shirt.

Van mimed a look of horror and visibly cringed. “Funny. Ha. No.  I know the odds are small, but there is at least a one-percent chance you might run into some spectacularly beautiful lesbian you would like to seduce.”

“At Fredericksburg’s light parade? Really?” Ely’s skepticism coated her voice in disbelief.

“Hey, you never know,” Van replied.

“And if this miracle does occur, then she’ll be here for all of thirty-six or so hours—which means I can basically ask her if she’d be interested in a five-minute fling,” Ely reasoned.

“Of flaming hot lesbian love,” Jack interjected.

“I don’t see a problem with that approach,” Van added.

Jack pointed one finger in the air. “It has definite possibilities.” Ely shook her head. “Or not, you nut-balls.” “You love us.” Jack chucked her chin.

“I do.”

“And we’re right,” Van sang.

“Go flirt already. You have to make the magic happen,” Jack pushed her toward the door.

†

Determined to give a joyful evening its best shot, Ely slid on her tightest, black, skinny jeans and a fitted, red, cashmere sweater. She plucked the black cowboy boots with the red and green Christmas cactus embroidered on the sides from her closet. Jack had gifted them to her last

Christmas, claiming, “Kitsch is the next great fashion fad.” They still made her smile. There was a definite upside to being the old fag hag to a sweet shopping Mary.  She slipped them on, the leather still shiny, but supple enough to glide smoothly over her bamboo, reindeer socks.

A pair of dangling, silver-star earrings, and a little frizz-control mousse to soften her dark curls into more enticing ringlets, completed her primping. She surveyed the total effect in the mirror and gave herself a half-shrug and a grin. 

“Not too bad, Ely. Maybe Jack is right and forty is the new thirty.”

She walked up the long pink-granite gravel drive from her cabin, past the rental cottages, and back up to the old limestone millhouse housing the Camphouse Bed and Breakfast’s single rooms, lobby, and office. The smell of cedar was sharp in the crisp cool air, and the winter sun angled low and lit Triebs Creek in flashes of silver and gold. The creek burbled over rocks and wandered on behind the millhouse and the large cedar and limestone barn that Jack had converted into their restaurant, The Lavender. As she walked, Ely felt a surge of pride at all they had accomplished over the last twelve years. When she had first bought the old Triebs Creek mill, eleven miles north of Fredericksburg, it was a gamble whether she could convert it into any place guests would call a haven, and seek it out beyond the township’s borders. The Vista Ranch, next door sold off five-hundred acres that became a professional golf course, and Ely had become more certain guests would appear. Once the course opened, Jack added the five-star dinning, a shuttle service to the lavender farms and vineyards, and on-call masseuses. Suddenly, the Camphouse B&B and Jack’s Lavender Restaurant were in high demand among golfers and the less athletically inclined spouses of avid golfers. Now they were almost always fully booked. 

Ely went around to the backside of the restaurant, pleased to find her Ford F-150 loaded up and ready to go. Jack or Van had already packed the back full of boxes. She was supposed to take the salted-caramel pecan sandies to the booth they shared with the Historical Society in the Christmas Marktplatz. Ely pulled the cover over the boxes and tied it down. She opened the door and found her keys on the seat along with a post-it note. Jack’s handwriting scrawled in purple ink, his favorite color: Bring me fruit cake. He was a massive fan of the Eberle Bakery’s cupcake-sized fruit cakes, probably because they were soaked in Bourbon for six weeks before serving at the Marktplatz.

†

By the time she made her way to the center of town, the sun was definitely eyeing the horizon. She quickly found an empty vendor-parking spot in the guarded lot behind Fredericksburg’s old, octagonal, Vereins Kirche, or Society Church building. She spared a loving glance to the old white building with its sage-colored shutters and roof. It was a replica, built for the 1936 Texas Centennial celebrations. The original 1847 building had once served the residents of town as an all-in-one church, school, fortress, meeting hall, and polling place.  Now it housed the Vereins Kirche Museum and preserved their town’s history, and it still served as a focal point to many social gatherings. A abundance of bright red and peppermint poinsettias, dappled in Christmas lights, corseted the building. Boughs of juniper and pine, tied together with red velvet bows, graced the top of each window, and plump globs of mistletoe hung suggestively above the doors, giving the building a festive dress for the evening. Ely smiled at it and then hustled out of the truck. She decided to check in with the folks at the booth before hauling more than one armload of boxed cookies into their midst, so she made her way around the growing crowd toward the Marktplatz.

 Children darted in front of her, laughing. A harried mom trailed behind them, offering her

an apologetic smile. Ely smiled back. Smells of cinnamon and roasted nuts wafted towards her.

She found herself humming again, but the song was “We Three Kings” this time.

She found she was finally enjoying herself and then a blonde head, in a French braid, bobbed within the crowd ahead. The languid pattern of the walk was so like the step of Georgia

Delaney that Ely froze in place. Her heart thumped erratically, and she shook her head. It couldn’t be. ..

Check out the book for the rest of the story, and 11 other fabulous tales of merry magic and romance. Cheers!

For more Merry Magic, check out the stories in Affinity Rainbow Publications' Christmas Medley

The Scene that Playing with Matches lost to Hurricane Harvey

The good often comes with the bad and vice versa. My newest novel was published on November 14th and we were flooded out of our house on August 28th. Writing and editing the novel mostly occurred before Hurricane Harvey impacted Houston...but not all of it.

I was traveling for work and fun in the weeks prior to Harvey and trading rewrites with #AffinityRainbowPublications' editors (and my amazing mentor Erin O'Reilly) so I e-mailed myself a scene intending to slip it in before the final edits. Harvey had other plans. I spent my first full night home after those travels putting pets, furniture, important paperwork, and survival rations upstairs instead. Things get lost in such circumstances.

So now we're back in our house, putting our lives back to normal, and I finally found the lost scene. I think it would have added something special to the book, but maybe not. Maybe fate stepped in for a reason. What do you think?

Gus flopped over in bed and picked up the phone on its fifth ring. "Hello."
Her sister's voice rang a little too joyously, "Happy, Happy Birthday, Sissy."
"Thanks, June. What time is is anyway?"
"I'm surprised you even have to ask."
Gus groaned. Of course her sister called to tell her happy birthday at
the same time every year, the exact minute she was born six forty
five in the morning, Eastern Standard Time.
June laughed. "So how goes the dating?"
Gus grumbled and shifted in bed, trying to clear her head enough to
speak with some articulation, but June rushed into the silence, "Oh, I,
uh, oh, I didn't wake you up when you had a guest. Did I?"
That set Gus laughing. "No. No. Fat chance."
"Well, given your tone of defeat young lady, I'd almost rather I had.
So the dating is going that well, huh?"
Gus grumbled, her tongue still thick with sleep and fatigue.
"Well, I know the right woman is out there for you," June said with a
pregnant pause at the end of her sentence.
"But?" Gus prompted.
"But nothing. I didn't say but," June protested, her voice hitting
false echoes of merriness.
"It was implied in your tone."
"So what being a psychologist makes you a mind reader or something."
"Sometimes I can predict behavior before it occurs, yes, but in this
case I think it is being your sister that does it. I can hear you
thinking it almost."
"But," June started and then they both laughed before she could continue,"but maybe you're being too
picky."
"I don't want someone who has never had baggage. Just someone mature
enough to have dealt with it already. Someone without any deep, dark
secrets or unsettled regrets or haunting ambitions."
"Hmm." The sceptism was clear in June's murmaration. "Honey, we all
have baggage still even if we dealt with some of it before. Even you
have baggage still."
Gus felt it too, she had to admit, but she couldn't name her own.
Maybe it was something too small to see for herself, so she challenged
June,"Like what?"
"You're scrappy."
"I'm scrappy? How on earth is that baggage?"
June sighed. "It's in everything you do. You were stuck in the middle
in our family and you had to fight for time and attention. You're
small and pert and pretty and you still have to fight to get people to
take you seriously even though you're a doctor. I don't think you can
help it. It's just a chip on your shoulder. You think you have to
fight for almost everything still."
"I don't think I have to fight for my family's love and attention."
"Granted, but you had a few decades to deal with that particular
aspect of your baggage already. What about romantic love? If someone
showed interest in you my dear sister, can you honestly say that you
would take that interest seriously if you didn't have to fight for it
first? Or would you just assume they gave it because they wanted some
thing from you?"
"What do I have that anyone would want?" Gus looked around the tiny
bedroom of her rented apartment. The hundred year old walls flaked
flat paint that probably had lead in it.
"What you have always had in spades, baby girl, lots of truly
compassionate, beautiful empathy. I'm no psychologist, but I'm sure
you feel like it is a limited and tested commodity. I know I do for
you."
Gus shrugged even though June couldn't see her. "Maybe."
"Maybe." June echoed before adding, "I understand why you might guard
your heart, why you'd want someone already beyond their baggage. I
just think that might be a little too much to hold out for and one of
these days I'd really like my call to interrupt some sexy morning
gymnastics."
They broke into laughter again, and as June bid her a happy birthday
one more time before hanging up, Gus made a wish closely mirroring her
sister's corny sentiment. Sexy morning gymnastics would be a great birthday present.

I'm a little sad the scene didn't make it in, but the two 5-star reviews the book has since garnered on Amazon make me think all is well that ends well. I feel extremely lucky just to be at home again and blessed that my entire family is safe, even our pet fish. Our neighborhood is rebuilding, and the reason I wrote Playing With Matches in the first place seems more true than ever: continuously challenging our own preconceptions helps us build many resilient and worthwhile relationships, including a lasting love.

Harvey arrives on our doorstep, enters the house an hour after this photo, and we spend 24 hours sheltering upstairs in the dark with the Coast Guard circling.

Life and Other Full Contact Sports

As an I-O psychologist specializing in teamwork and leadership in extreme environments (e.g. outer space, healthcare), I've spent an insanely large portion of my time reading about, debating, and defining grit, determination, perseverance, and resilience. My wife would say I've expounded ad nauseam on the minute variations in these near-synonyms with a less-than-entertaining obssesive scientific curiosity. (Note: I can also use words like they're going out of style soon.)

My professional preoccupations and my amateur athletic forays into team sports like Rugby have taught me that it is easiest to maintain confidence and sportsmanship when you're winning. It's even still pretty easy when your losing epic battles but believe you'll win the war. The real grit comes in when there is no doubt you're going to lose, when you have to politely keep trying despite the 11th straw that broke the camel's back being heaped on your head, when you have to sing and dance in the freezing cold to keep your soul alive in a Nazi concentration camp of unfairness (ala Viktor Frankl or Primo Levi or Dietrich Bonhoeffer). And even if you manage that kind of grit, then the brutal need for resilience to survive the survivor-guilt and emotional fall-out post-events might still kill you or your kindness (e.g. see the perils of returning from a year on the International Space Station).

This all isn't to say that my challenges and extenuating circumstances have been especially awful or particularly unusual. They are the stuff that all of our lives are made up of: living out of our home while our house is repaired after flooding during Harvey, the death of a good friend, the death of my sweet mother-in-law, unexpected work contracts, hiring new employees, having a novel published, a car recall, an infection, a sprained ankle, a lost wallet phone...you know what I mean. We all have excuses, even good ones; but it's like my grandfather used to say, "Excuses are like assholes. We all have them and they all stink." 

I failed Nanowrimo 2017 because I chose to let my challenges and extenuating circumstances take priority. The point here is why. Why did I do that? Why does it matter?

Grit and resilience, those animals of perseverance are extremely complex and unbelievably messy. Taming them requires a lot of quality self-care be done and be done first. First, I must be kind to myself, so that I can be kind to others or there is no point in perseverance. Rude perseverance is dishonorable in that it does too much harm for too little return. 

As a respectable statesman and third-rate poet, once wrote, “Life is mostly froth and bubble, Two things stand like stone. Kindness in another's trouble, Courage in your own.” (― Adam Lindsay Gordon)

I will lose Nanowrimo 2017, but I make great stone per Gordon's advice. There is nothing wrong with writing in December. I chose to let other things take priority so that I, and my support network, can live to try again. 

As Cherry-Gerrard concluded at the end of The Worst Journey in the World, "And I tell you, if you have the desire for knowledge and the power to give it physical expression, go out and explore.... If you march your Winter Journeys you will have your reward, so long as all you want is a penguin's egg. " 

Mostly what matters, is that I just don't quit exploring. I keep writing. All I want are those penguin eggs, the knowledge of how to write these stories well. I will do whatever I have to do to make another, the next, one more author-expedition into writing fiction possible.

My Nanowrimo 2017 failure is ultimately just a weather delay.

The Penguins are Out There, just like the Truth.