This is 17 years in the making.

I hit a low point recently with Woven. I’ve written three books in the series, and I felt like I was spinning my wheels. I love the story, love the characters and love what I have planned for it.

But I felt like it was going nowhere.

Then I got two crappy offers on it, from vanity presses disguised as legitimate publishing companies. I won’t share their names here, I’ll just highly caution all of you to check Predators and Editors before taking any offer.

As much as I try not to let things like that bother me, these ‘offers’ hit me real hard for some reason. And I know, it’s part of the process. And I know how many rejection letters J.K got, I wish people would damn well stop telling me!

That’s where I was, hating on myself, hating on my work. But I kept at it, figuring that I wasn’t getting published either way, might as well keep trying.

I sent out some submissions, and got some rejections.

Then, I opened an email from a publisher that I was sure was going to reject me. I was already planning on just checking the name off and finding somewhere else, just another chore on a Monday.

But it wasn’t a rejection letter. I just signed a contract for Broken Patterns!

It’s official, Broken Patterns is finally going to be published! I can’t help but think back to the day that Devon was born, sitting in Diamond Park and praying. I feel like that prayer, more than almost any other prayer, was heard. It was like God said, “You put the work in, and we’ll get this one out there.”

This is the start of a long journey. I won’t be quitting PBW, I love you guys way too much. I won’t be quitting my day job for quite awhile, I’m sure. But the thing that I’ve been fighting for, struggling for, working for is finally starting to happen!

This is 17 years in the making. And it’s only the beginning.

9,087,000 soldiers went to Vietnam.

282,000 didn’t come home.

I wanted to talk to you about the Vietnam War. Before we start, please understand that I do so with a great amount of humility. I’m thirty; I was born an entire eleven years after the war ended. None of my blood family fought in the war. I was never personally scared by this.

I live in Western PA. Worse, I live in an old steel town. Older men in my town were in the war. I live among the ruins of that generation. And I personally know three men who did live through the war, and came home.

The first is my daughter’s paternal grandfather. He was drafted, sent to Vietnam and came back an angry man. He drank too much, did copious amounts of illegal drugs, and neglected the children he had with multiple women.

Mostly, my former father in law was just an upsetting person. He didn’t work, mostly he just drank. He lived in a two bedroom house with his sons, and he slept in the couch in the living room. Every morning he would wake up, sit up on the couch, open a beer, and not move from there for the rest of the day. He often drove drunk, and caused a car accident that I was involved in while I was pregnant.

He once almost stabbed my former brother in law in the throat during a Vietnam flash back.

He would talk about the war, usually late in the evening when his beer was catching up with him. He would tell us that our own government had tested Agent Orange on our soldiers. He told us about picking up prostitutes and of men who died. I didn’t believe half of what he said. He was paranoid, hateful, and horrifically racist. It was clear that the war had left him a very different man, and not for the better.

The next man I want to tell you about is the father of a friend. Actually, this is the father of my friend who I talk about sometimes, Kyle. The one who overdosed and died.

He was older when he had a son, nearly retirement age already. Mostly what he did was watch tv and take an excessive amount of pain killers for his knee. He’d gotten a piece of shrapnel in it during the war. Then he took an excessive amount of pain killers because he was addicted to them.

He was a great guy, though. He was never frazzled by anything, never upset. He never wanted to talk about the war, though. He just quietly got addicted to pain killers.

Finally, I want to tell you about my ROTC instructor. I’ll call him what we always called him, Major. Major was my hero. He reminded me of R. Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket. The first thing I ever heard him say, to a class room full of thirteen and fourteen year olds, was,”You all look like a bunch of damn old women.” We were doing PT at the time. He made us all read Killer Angels, and he would make you do pushups if you said yinz, crick, or yeah. For a very long time, I didn’t say yeah at all, like even at home. I think part of me expected him to show up in my living room and demand that I drop and do pushups right there.

Major rarely talked about the war, but one thing he told my class about war stuck with me. “When you’re under fire you’re not fighting for your country. You’re not fighting for your family, or your girl, or your ideals. You’re not fighting for Mom’s Apple Pie. You’re fighting for the man next to you, your brother.”

Unlike the first two men I told you about, Major was in good shape. If he suffered from his past, he never shared that with us. If you’re keeping track, that’s two broken men, and one that was fine. Not the best odds.

But all of this, all of these things that shaped my life, they’re just echoes. I was born eleven years after the Vietnam War ended. I have still been shaken by the aftershocks.

Now we’re at war again. We have been, in fact, since 2001. My classmen went over there, and they’re coming back now. The ones I know are coming back haunted.

It makes me wonder how long these aftershocks will last. I wonder if they’ll be strong enough to shake my daughters when they’re grown women.

I cannot believe how fast this month has gone! It’s September 30, which means I’m doing a quarterly audit today. It’s the most important audit of the year, in my opinion, because it’s the home stretch. It’s also incredibly frustrating, because I’m trying to squeeze writing time among all the craziness.

But the year’s been good to me so far. So I wanted to just go over where I am, writing wise, and where I hope to be by December 31^st. I’d love to hear where you guys are too. Let us know in the comments what you want to have done by 2017.

Short fiction

At the start of the year, I told all of you that I was going to try an experiment. I said that I was going to go entirely indie author with my short fiction. I’ve done that for nine months now, and here’s where I’m at.

I’ve made no money, but people are reading what I’m writing. Which is certainly a step up from relying on traditional publishing, which made me no money and no one read what I was writing. Now, thanks to the outpouring of support from all of you, I’ve done well. I’ve certainly written more short fiction than I would have. I’ve also certainly loved sharing my work. I still don’t know what I’m going to do about my writing career come 2017, though. That worries me a little. Do I want to keep publishing stories here, or go back to seeking traditional publication? I think I’m going to do a mixture of both, writing some stories for the site and some for others. We’ll just have to see how it goes, I guess.

By the end of the year I’d like to be getting ready to publish my second short story collection.

Station 86

We’re three episodes into Seeming, and I hope you’re loving it. I’m loving sharing it with you, that’s for sure. If you love it, I’m currently writing the rough draft of the second one, which I’m pretty pumped about.

By the end of the year I want to have the rough draft and second draft done. I don’t know if that’s going to happen, but I’m trying.

Woven

I’ve sent Broken Patterns out more times than I’d like to admit at this point. But I’ve got to keep trying, especially since I’m getting ready to finish the second book, Starting Chains, within the next few months.

By the end of the year, I want to be done with Starting Chains (holy shit!) and wrist deep in the second draft of Missing Stitches.

So, what are you doing with the rest of your 2016? Let us know in the comments below!

Artwork courtesy of the American Library Association. Source info for this post comes from the same.

It’s Banned Books Week! Are you excited?

I love Banned Books week because it gets us all talking about censorship. For those of you who don’t live in the US we’re pretty particular about freedom of speech. We argue about it a lot, and the freedom of an artist to express ourselves is constantly up for debate.

While there are some books that I don’t think need to be in elementary school libraries, I don’t think there’s ever a good reason to ban a book. The worst of books still have value, and I wouldn’t ever say that someone can’t read something just because I don’t agree with its message.

Every year I celebrate Banned Book Week by reading a book that was banned. This week I’m reading Bone, by Jeff Smith. Yes, I have read it before, but it’s a favorite of mine.

It’s actually the second year in a row that I’ve read a comic book for my Banned Book. In fairness, last year I read Maus, which is about as uplifting as a gut wound. Bone, on the other hand, is everything you’d want from a story. There’s romance, jokes, characters to love and hate. If you don’t mind being seen reading a children’s book, check out Bone.

If you don’t want to be seen reading a children’s book, I still highly encourage you to read a banned book this week. There are thousands of books that have been banned, for one reason or another. If you’re having trouble finding one, here’s the top ten list of books that were banned in 2015.

Looking For Alaska, by John Green

Banned for offensive language and sexually explicit content.

I think you all know my opinion of swearwords. But let me add this; I think there’s something really messed up about our society, when we consider our own bodies in sexual situations to be more vulgar than violence.

Fifty Shades of Grey, by E.L James

Banned for sexually explicit content, of course.

I’m not a fan of this series, but I also don’t care that people like it. It’s porn, and there’s nothing wrong with porn. I don’t think it needs to be in schools, but that’s about it.

I am Jazz, by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings

Banned for being ‘inaccurate’, discussing homosexuality and sex education.

I’m really getting sick of homosexuality being considered an inappropriate topic for kids. You can’t shield them from everything you don’t agree with and expect them to be an open minded person. And if you don’t want your kids to be open minded people, there’s a pretty good chance that I don’t care for you.

Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out, by Susan Kuklin

Banned for being anti-family, having offensive language, having political viewpoints and religious viewpoints.

What the hell does ‘anti-family’ mean? And if that’s a thing, why is it so offensive? Lots of people don’t have traditional families for one reason or another. They can still be surrounded by people who love them. And lots of people who are transgender have a real good reason for not speaking to blood family. I don’t pretend to understand completely, but as a nontraditional woman, I get a lot of unnecessary crap from some of my family. I get choosing to block out that negativity.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, by Mark Haddon

Banned for offensive language and religious viewpoints, including atheism.

I’m not an atheist, but I’m not so convinced that my children will blow away if someone introduces them to atheism.

The Bible

Banned for religious viewpoint.

Really? Again, people are going to disagree with you. It’s the Bible, you kind of know what you’re getting into when you pick it up. Can I also mention that it’s an historical document that students may need to reference occasionally?

Fun Home, by Allison Bechdel

Banned for violence and graphic images.

The same author who inspired the Bechdel test has also written a banned book. No surprise there, I suppose. Really, if this book is being banned, 1984 needs to go, too. Oh, and Of Mice and Men.

Habibi, by Craig Thompson

Banned for nudity and sexually explicit content.

Nasreen’s Secret School: A true Story From Afghanistan, by Jeanette Winter

Banned for religious viewpoints and violence.

Two Boys Kissing, by David Levithan

Banned for homosexuality and condoning public displays of affection.

Because it will break a child’s brain to know that sometimes boys like to kiss other boys.

Someone thought it was a good idea to shoot up a night club because they didn’t like that sometimes boys love other boys. Lots of people decided to shoot and kill other people this year. Children in America are starving today, right now. But we shouldn’t let the children know that sometimes boys like other boys.

If you’re a writer, jump on twitter and use #banmybook to tell us why your book would be banned. See you there. And let us know what banned book you’re reading today in the comments below.

I’ll be the first to admit that I have a problem with bloggers. I’m kind of obsessed with some of them. My two favorites, Marketing Creativity and Boho Berry are especially fun because they read each other’s blogs, so are often talking about the same topic.

Last year around this time, Marketing Creativity did a post about a goal setting plan for this time of the year. It was 16 before 2016, which is pretty self-explanatory. Make 16 goals you want to achieve before 2016. It’s a great way to clear out some projects before the end of the year, finish up your yearly goals and do some little things that you’ve wanted to do.

Of course they’re doing it again this year, but it’s 17 things instead. I found this out watching a Boho Berry youtube video, where she was showing off her 17 before 2017 spread in her bullet journal. So, I had to make my list, which I wanted to share with you today.

Here is Boho Berry’s list.

Marketing Creativity hasn’t posted hers yet, but here’s a link to her blog anyway.

I tried to keep some balance between personal care goals, family goals and writing goals. I highly advise you to make a similar list. Here’s a link to Marketing Creativity and Boho Berry to check out their lists. If you end up making your own 17 before 2017 list, please link it below so we can all cheer you on.

Here’s what I’m doing with the rest of my year.

Finish a 30 day Plank Challenge– If you don’t know, planking is basically holding the up part of a pushup. (Does it have a nasty sexual meaning too? Probably, but I don’t care to find out.) It’s meant to tighten your core, work on your upper arm strength, and do all sorts of other nice things for you. Mostly, it’s just making my shoulders hurt. But I’m going to stick with it.

Publish Seeming- Yeah, that’s sort of a gimme, because most of the work is already done. But I do still have to build the e-book and do a ton of promotion stuff. So it’s going to take up some time.

Finish all of the short stories I need for a new collection- If you enjoy my short stories, then this is good news for you. I’m getting ready to publish a second collection of all horror stories.

See a play at my local theater- This was one of my goals for the year that I just haven’t done yet. There’s still two shows this year, though.

Finish Starting Chains- Have I sold Broken Patterns? No, of course not. But I still want to finish Starting Chains this year. If I end up finishing the whole trilogy before I find an agent, so be it.

Take care of a personal thing in my past- There’s a lose end in my past I need to tie up.

Finish converting my Woven notes to digital- This is a frustrating chore, and it’s been hanging over my head for years now. I don’t want to carry it into 2017.

Start on Missing Stitches, Draft 2- This would be the third book of the trilogy. I’m going to cry so hard when I’m done with it!

Learn two new dishes that are fast, easy and cheap- I swear, we have the same meals every freaking week and we’re all bloody sick of them.

Finish Daily 15 Challenge- Another person I love online is the Fly Lady. Among her many awesome suggestions is to clean for 15 minutes a day. The thought is that no matter how much you detest cleaning, you can do it for 15 minutes. At very least, it will be cleaner than if you hadn’t done that. So, I’m trying to make that a habit in my house. I’m making the monsters help. They hate it, but hopefully they will carry the habit with them to their homes when they leave me.

Finish Evening Prep Challenge- This one’s a no brainer. I do a few things at night to make my morning better. I make my to do list, pick out clothes and get my coffee ready. It makes a world of difference in the morning, though.

Don’t go over my Christmas Budget- This was on my 16 before 2016 list, too.

Perm my hair- I haven’t made the time, or the space in my budget, to do this for years. I don’t know why, it makes me feel so much better about myself.

Have successful holidays- This means different things to different people. Love my Halloween costumes, have a nice turkey on Thanksgiving. Don’t have a breakdown Christmas morning. Low expectation.

Water Challenge- I don’t drink enough water, and that’s a problem. So I’m making an effort to drink more.

Finish the rough draft of the second Station 86 book- If you’re loving Seeming, and I hope you are, you’ll be thrilled to know that I’m already working on the rough draft of the second one!

Make a yoga/meditation spot in my office- You know what’s in my office right now? Boxes from when we moved that I still haven’t unpacked yet! I am so done living with all of this clutter, and I know I can put that room to better use.

It’s your turn! What do you want to do with the rest of 2016? Let us know in the comments below, or give us a link if you blog about it!

I love meditation! Especially this time of year I need that time to just quiet my brain, or I will lose my cool on someone who doesn’t deserve it. Probably my husband.

But some days meditation can be hard for me. I have Adult ADD and anxiety, which sometimes makes it really hard for me to sit down and quiet my mind. Some days, when I try to practice traditional meditation, I can sit there for as long as I want and my brain isn’t going to reach the quiet. It’s just not happening.

When I find myself in that situation, I often turn to alternative forms of meditation. Some of them you’ve probably heard of before, but I think some of them may surprise you.

Exercising

I despise walking, and will usually bring my tablet so that I can listen to music or read an e-book while I walk. But if I’m feeling overwhelmed or overstimulated, I’ll walk without it, and just pay attention to my surroundings.

Sometimes I get the best story ideas this way. Sometimes I just clear my head. Either way, I’ve never regretted a quiet walk. As I get older, I find that they do me more and more good. I also do yoga, which is wonderfully therapeutic for my back. But it doesn’t have to be walking. Some people like to run, I have no idea why. Some people swim or do Tai Chi. If you’ve never heard of Tai Chi, it’s basically yoga for people who don’t want to admit to doing yoga.

Freewriting

No huge surprise here, being a writer and all. Freewriting can help with all sorts of things, from anxiety to hard decisions to writers block. If you’re a writer, you should be freewriting daily.

Makeup application

Maybe it’s just me, but putting on my makeup is a very quieting time. I focus on what I’m doing and nothing else. It’s relaxing, unless I mess up my eyeliner.

Video games

Not all video games. Some games raise my blood pressure like a gun pressed to my head. But some games are fantastic for meditation. Mah Jong, Tetris, Bejeweled. Anything that takes my hands and just some of my brain will allow me to relax the rest of my brain.

In case you’re wondering, yes this does give you permission to play video games as much as you want.

Gifs

People actually make gifs to calm you the hell down. I have a whole lot of them on my Pintrest page. I do keep them for when I’m losing my mind a little bit. Some of them have fun characters that say calming things to you. Some of them are mesmerizing. Some of them are intended for you to breathe in time with them, which can help in an anxiety attack.

Bonus- The anchor meditation

Finally, I found this meditation on Pintrest a few weeks ago form a site called NotSalmon. It stopped a couple anxiety attacks for me so far, and I love it for that.

Find five things that you can see.

Find four things that you can touch.

Find three things that you can hear.

Find two things that you can smell.

Find one thing that you can taste.

Don’t just shake your head and say that it’s stupid before you try it. It helps.

What’s your favorite alternative way to meditate? Let us know in the comments below.

Everyone’s busy, let’s just get that out of the way right now. Parents, college students, people with full time jobs. It doesn’t matter what you do with your life, you’re busy. Everyone gets it.

And yet, everyone can’t stop telling people how busy they are! We talk about it all the time on social media, that’s for damn sure. I am totally guilty of this myself, and I’m willing to admit it.

Why do we do this? This constant public display of all of our responsibilities? We tell each other how many hours we work, and brag about how we haven’t taken a day off in months.

This has got to stop! Think about it, we are literally bragging about killing ourselves. What if, instead, we talked about all of the healthy things we did for ourselves?

Below is a list of things we all need to commit to. I’ll try if you’ll promise to try too.

Put time into self-care.

Every day, do something for you. I’ve written so many posts about this, I’m not going to bore you. But do something for you, I don’t care what it is. Do something that is not for you, your spouse, your kids or anyone else. Just for you. That’s it.

Brag about it the way you’d brag about killing yourself.

Sorry, I lied, that’s not it. Here’s the second part, and it might be the hardest. The next time you see someone that you like to brag to (we all have those people) brag about taking care of yourself. Here, I’ll go first. I have gotten eight hours of sleep every night this week. I switched to a BB cream that has sunscreen. I scheduled a day off to just play with my kids. I made an eye appointment and I didn’t cancel it!

Don’t brag about killing yourself.

Once you get comfortable bragging about taking care of yourself, you can stop bragging about killing yourself.

Really, this is so bad for all of us. By bragging, and receiving positive feedback for unhealthy behaviors like working too much, we teach ourselves that this is a good place to be. We also teach others around us to be ashamed if they’re not working as hard. We make people judge themselves unfairly against us. We owe it to ourselves, and our friends, to stop that.

Focus on results, not hours worked.

That doesn’t mean that you don’t get to brag about your accomplishments. You do things that are amazing, and you should tell people. Just focus on the thing you did.

Let me give you an example. Instead of telling my friends, “I’ve been getting up at 6:00 every morning to publish a third book this year,” I would say, “Look, I’m publishing a third book this year!” See the difference? One is negative, and sounds like I resent the time my writing took. One is just happy. You see how that can impact your mindset?

Praise your friends.

I’m hoping this positive mindset spreads, but I’ll be the first to admit that it’s kind of scary to brag about self-care. It sounds way better to say, “I worked on a blog post during my lunch,” than, “I read Buzzfeed during my lunch.” It might make you apprehensive.

It might make other people apprehensive, too. So, if one of your friends tells you about some self-care activity they recently indulged in, like a good piece of dark chocolate or painting their toenails after dinner instead of jumping right into housework, praise them! Encourage them to do more, even make a friend date for self-care purposes.

Praise your kids.

And finally, this same principle should be instilled in our children.

I’m not going to lie, this is really freaking hard with kids! When it comes to my monsters, the problem is to get them motivated to get shit done, not getting them to take a freaking break. Especially now that they’re starting seventh grade, I’m spending a lot of time pushing them. That’s part of my job as their mom.

It’s also part of my job to get them to bed on time, and make their doctors’ appointments. It’s my job to make sure that they have healthy meals that make them feel good, and go out to play. It’s my job to see that they get time, every day, to play.

It’s also my job to instill in them the importance of this behavior. One day they’re going to go off and start living their own lives. I won’t be there to make them a cup of tea when they’ve got a pile of work. I won’t be there to send them to bed at a decent hour, or make sure that they’re eating right. I have to teach them now that they must do these things for themselves. The best way to do this is to make sure they see me doing it.

So what are you doing to take care of yourself this week? Let us know in the comments below, or blow up twitter with #selfcare.