Author: Jonathon

I write from emotion. I write from pain, happiness, joy, sorrow, revulsion, horror, fear – pick an emotion that’s strong enough and it has driven me to the computer so that words could pour out of my finger tips. Sometimes it’s like a purge, getting rid of what I’m feeling, but most of the time it’s just letting off steam. The emotion is too deep, too much, to get out all at once. It would be like trying to pour the ocean out in one drowning deep mess. It would literally be too much. I would drown. The emotion would sink the writing, and it’s about the story, not just the emotion, or event, that inspired it. Both of them have to work together to form a whole.

Most of my writing career it’s taken me years to understand why a particular story, or character, or world came to me, or what compulsion drove me and the story, but lately that’s begun to change. In the last ten years I would hate the moment when I realized what trauma had induced a story. “Nightseer”, my very first novel was a couple of years finished when I realized it was all about my mother’s death. It even begins with the death of my main character’s own mother, and she gets to take revenge on the villain that killed her mother. Oh, if only there had been a villain to hate for my own mother’s death. The realization of the issues behind that fantasy novel made me feel like I was doing therapy in public, and in a way I was, but I hated even more when I realized the trauma of inspiration before I finished the story. It made it very hard to finish the book when I was suddenly painfully aware of what tragedy I was working on paper. It was like being caught having sex in public, when you thought you were safely in the privacy of your own bedroom. I would muscle through and finish but it was hard. The Anita Blake novel, “Bloody Bones,” was a book where I was only part way through when I realized I was again taking the same ghost out for a walk. “Bloody Bones,” is about Anita facing the pain of her mother’s death in the figure of a master vampire that can give you the illusion of your heart’s desire, and what Anita wants most is for her mother to be alive and with her again, to have not died. That was my greatest wish at that time for myself, and here I was doing a very thinly veiled exploration of that pain in public. It made me incredibly uncomfortable, but I muscled through, and finished the book, and I think it helped me deal with my own mother’s death. I’m not sure it helped Anita, sometimes I think it traumatized her more; I hope not.

Some losses are so huge, so life changing, that you can spend books and books exploring the pain and not come to the end of it. The loss of both my parents before the age of six was one of those things that one book, two books, five, was not enough to exorcise that tragedy. My father is alive to my knowledge, but he abandoned my mother and myself before I was a year old. I have seen him twice in my entire life, so no father, no mother, just a grandmother that had her own issues.

One of the interesting things about writing like this is that when you finally exorcise the demon, your done. I didn’t understand that, that you could be done with a world, a character, imaginary friends, but you can. Anita and I no longer have the same issues, in fact, I’ve healed parts of myself that are still wounded on her. How do I bring her up to speed? How to help my fictional alter ego heal, as I have healed? She has other pain different from mine, new traumas that she’s discovered on paper, and that in a weird way she’s shared with me. I’ve had more than one police officer tell me that I react like someone who’s seen this kind of violence, not just written about it. My research is sometimes overly real, because I am so connected to Anita. Studies on how the human brain interprets reality hint that what you imagine is not differentiated by your mind. That, in effect, when I write violent, bloody, crime scenes, my mind sees no difference between that and me actually seeing it. Now, I know there’s a difference, because I’ve touched real blood, seen real violence, and that has marked me harder than the “pretend” violence that I’ve written, but how close to real is it inside my head? How much difference does most of my mind see between fiction and fact? Have I actually written myself new traumatic scars to carry around inside me? An interesting thought, but more interesting to me is that as I get healthier and Anita does not, it becomes a fight to work her issues when they’re no longer mine. And harder yet, not to rain my new issues on her, when she does not share them with me. Her life is enough of a mess, I don’t really want to make it harder with my own issues, she has enough of her own, and enough of my old issues that it just wouldn’t be fair.

So, I’m left searching for a fictional place to put new issues, new growth, new pain, new pleasures, but not Anita. So why not the Meredith Gentry series then? Because Merry was created out of the pain and isolation of my first marriage, and honestly, the first seven books laid that ghost for me. Book eight, “Divine Misdemeanors” is my attempt to see if I could write in Merry’s world without that pain to spur. I could, but it’s not as satisfying to me as a writer. There are still stories for Merry and the men, but I have to let her come to me with her own issues, her own desires, and the two of us have to find things that interest us both so we can move forward. Again, I had no idea when I created Merry and her world why she came to me, or what her emotional purpose was for me as a writer. By the time I got through about five books, I was aware, but I knew the story arc enough to muscle through to the end. I love her world and all her men, but she and I need to find common ground.

But I have new issues and I don’t want to fuck up Anita’s life to work them, she has enough things that don’t work, thank you, I’m not adding my shit to it. So what is a writer to do? I’ve been working at a new character for awhile, a note here, a sentence there, and a new world. I realize now that maybe this has all been waiting for me to find new pain, new joy, new issues to work on paper. Until this moment the characters were fascinating, the world was so cool, but every time I sat down to write on it, it was lifeless. It was character studies, it was world building, it was plot, but there was no life to it. I needed that extra spark of creation, and I think, maybe, I’ve found it. That extra spark for me is a mix of pleasure and pain. The overwhelming joy of love, and the unutterable loss of it. I think that’s it. I think, it’s a, by George, I think I have it moment. I think we have life, at last, in a new world.

I hope this gives me a place and a format to take some new demons for a walk – younger, more eager, so there are more of them in a tangle of leashes pulling me on. My older, bigger demons are still here, but they’re more tame, maybe just by the familiarity of them, as the body can grow accustomed to physical pain until the mind reroutes, ignores most days, so old traumas. Your mind just begins to either work around them, or accept them. As I embrace my shadow self, and accept all of myself, and know true peace, there are new challenges, new things to learn, new ways to grow and I need a new character, a new world to do that in. I think I have it, and if I do, then I’ll know what drives me from the very first page, I’ll know what demons are nipping and playing at my feet. I’ll still play with Anita and company, because those are some major demons and if I don’t take them out for a run periodically my head grows dark and my life with it. But they’re big dogs, and they run on a lose leash at my side, not ahead of me, but beside me, my companions, part of me always and forever, I think, at least this lifetime. I’ve made peace with some pretty ugly things inside myself and in my life, and it’s okay, in fact, it’s good. Time to scare up some younger pups, a different breed, one I’m not familiar with, and have no idea how to tame. Time to learn all over again how to run the obstacle course with a new pack of demons nipping at my heels. Time to exercise them and me, until in a few months, or years, they’ll run at my side, too.

 

Happy Holidays everyone! The Laurell K Hamilton online store has new items in stock in time for Holiday gift orders.

 

 

Available for pre-orders, we have a red Anita Blake Marshal Hoodie with the design that was introduced at Comic Con and Dragon Con. And for our Merry fans, we have an addition to our Merry Gentry Celtic Knot series T-shirts. Fans voted at Comic Con this year on who they wanted to see in the knotwork designs and the winner is – Sholto! (THESE TWO ITEMS SHIP IN JANUARY)

 

 

 

 

We also have in stock, ready to ship an adorable 6” white tiger with a chain collar. Your very own Crispin to cuddle with. Don’t forget our Anita Blake Marshal shirts and our Anita Blake Marshal Bags make wonderful gifts.

 

 

We have also put most of our original design T-shirts and all of our Comic Book T-shirts into Clearance. That makes about 10 shirts that you can get for $10 each…or even less if you are a member of the fan club.

 

 

Speaking of the fan club…..If you haven’t yet signed up for membership or renewed your membership yet this year, there are only 3 weeks left to get the 2010 Membership Kit. These items will never be available again. Starting Jan. 1st, 2011, we will be sending out all new items in the membership kits including our redesigned Fan Club Only T-shirt, a LKH Fan Club patch, cloisenne Anita Marshal pin, and more…

 

A lot of people want me to write late at night, by moonlight, preferably in a dungeon. They picture my house a mix between a haunted house and a castle. In reality I prefer to write in the morning with sunlight streaming in through the many windows that take up three sides of my office. I have four skylights. I am a light junkie. I don’t get seasonal effective disorder, winter sunlight is as good to me as summer. It’s not how long the light lasts, because if you get up early enough you can catch the sun. My office is painted my favorite color – blue. I discovered just after college that I write better in rooms painted earthier pale green, or pale blue. I’ve experimented with this, and I can write in any color of room. I rented for many years and stared at my share of neutral wall colors, but my productivity and ideas multiply faster in rooms painted those two colors. When you find something that really helps you create, you don’t question it, you just make a note and paint your office.

The clock in my office is an Audubon bird clock. The one that plays different cards with different bird songs on it. I also have one with frogs and toads calling on it, but that one, though cool, isn’t conducive to writing. Besides, some of the amphibian noises are really weird, almost mechanical, and it will throw me out of my muse driven haze, and drop me abruptly back to reality. The birds I have in right now are field and meadow, that’s the title of the card. The idea is that the birds on it are likely to be found in that habitat. Two of the birds on the card are Meadowlarks. The Eastern and the Western, to be exact. I grew up where the Eastern Meadowlark existed, but it was rare. I loved seeing that flash of yellow, and thought it’s song was pretty, but it wasn’t until this year that I truly fell in love with the song of the Western Meadowlark. You have to be out west in the spring when they’re nesting and the males are singing to mark territory, find mates, or just to celebrate that it’s warm again. One of my fondest memories of the year is waking up in the house of our very good friends, and hearing the bird song through the open window of the bedroom. It’s cool enough there in the summer, most of the time, that windows open at night and during the day make the house comfortable. It works most of the time, and if they had had central air conditioning then we wouldn’t have woken to the feel of the breeze dancing through the window, and that bright, rising, falling, trill, of the Western Meadowlark. It makes me smile every time my clock rolls around to that song. The sound seems to buoy my spirits and I can take a deeper breath of that sweet air.

I could leave it all poetic, but honestly we, my husband Jon and I, could breath better out west. Two of our major allergies do not exist at high enough altitude and dry enough climate. No mold, no dust mites, and we just didn’t realize how much that impacts our ability to simply breath. To keep the elevation sickness at bay we drank tonnes of water, so after a couple of days of acclimating we were able to do white water rafting and other strenuous activities. The only time I had some trouble was when I was surrounded by a certain type of pine tree, hundreds of them, that I had allergy issues with, but other than that it was so much better.

Jon and I also fell in love with the land out there. I, especially, am enamored of mountains. I thought it was these particular mountains, until we went on the cabin trip to the Blue Ridge, and though very different from the rocky peaks of the west, I was still delighted with them. Jon declared, “You’re a dwarf.” I knew it meant dwarf as in gaming, not genetics, but still I asked, “What?”

“You like shiny objects, rocks, and mountains. You’re a dwarf.”

I actually said, “I always thought I was hobbit, but I don’t like food that much, I’m not that into the pastoral existence, and I’m not that social.” Hmm.

I’d have liked to argue, but in the end, I really couldn’t. We’ve decided that my dwarf ancestors were a rogue clan and interbred with the local elves, I guess the elves would have had to be pretty roguish themselves, either that or it was a very pretty bunch of dwarfs. So we got rid of the beards, added a little height, a love of sunlight and the great open spaces, but have never lost our love of mountains, jewelery, rocks and minerals, and a certain stubborn determination.

The sunlight has moved again and I have rainbows back on my wall. I have several crystals hanging around my office so they can catch the light and paint my work area with color. It’s sort of a mix of my two fantasy heritages stones and light. I’m also entirely too earthy to be a Tolkienesque elf. The dwarfs may have been played for humor some of the time, but they, and the hobbits seemed like they might actually have sex. The elves always seemed above that, and that would never do for me.

I also love the ocean, but I love mountains more, so how did I end up living in St. Louis where there hasn’t been ocean for a few hundred thousand years, and the closest mountains is hours drive away? My first husband found work here, and as a writer I can work anywhere, so we followed his work. If I’d chased mountains, or oceans, I would never have met now husband, Jon. Or, meeting would have been very unlikely, and if we had met, it would have been too late to be a couple as we are now, because we have impacted each other in so many ways. But as Trinity, our daughter, gets closer to being out of school I begin to think of mountains. I begin to wonder, could I? Could we? Have our mountains at last? Jon and I actually looked at houses out West, but when you have a whole family to move you have to consider things, plus I have people here that depend on their jobs being here. We came very close, and the near brush with moving brought me a deeper appreciation of the house we have, the land here, and the wildlife, because the birds here are not the same ones as out west. It’s not even the same squirrels. I’ll enjoy here for a while longer, but Jon and I keep thinking about mountains and breathing deep, and I leave the clock set so that at least twice a day, if I’m working long enough and lately I have been, I hear the song of the Western Meadowlark. It makes me smile, and remember the land. If it’s meant to be we’ll find the right house and the right timing to move, or maybe just a second home. People have cabins in the mountains; right?

I think we will look at houses again where the mountains rise taller than any I ever saw growing up, and the air is sweet and clean and there just seems to be more of it. And there was this one drive with our friends and a herd of mustangs beside the road, and a merlin that kept pace with the car. Now, if we could just get all that within driving distance of certain larger city amenities . . . but sometimes life is about compromise. The question is always what are you willing to compromise on, and what truly means the most to you? That’s always the question to answer; what means the most to you? What makes your heart lift? What makes you happy? Figure that out, be true to what really fills your heart up, no compromising on that part, and then go for it. I want mountains and meadowlarks.

 

I get a lot of beginning writers asking me what font size I use, double space vs. single space, the mechanics. Other than using a font size that is very readable and clear, and always use double space, plus get a copy of “The Writer’s Guide”, or Writer’s Digest, or The Writer. They will help you find format for professional presentation of your work. But in the end, other than a very few things mechanics don’t matter. It will not help you to know how many words per page I have, because that is wildly dependent on whether it’s a heavy dialog scene, or heavy description. Dialog uses fewer words for more pages, than description. Mechanics are about the only thing that is similar between one selling writer to another, beyond that is where it all gets tricky.

Some writers outline. Some writers never outline. Most fall in between the two extremes, but even in those writers that use outlines what constitutes an outline differs. Some writers do a basic bone outline, I know of a very few that write so much in the outline it can be nearly half the length of the finished book. Some writers never allow their characters to deviate from the original outline. Some use the outline is a jumping off point and quickly leave it behind as the book comes alive. Others deviate from the outline, and then will eventually go back to it in a different part of the book. It all depends on the writer, and sometimes on the book.

Some writers are very anal about their work methods. Every book is done the same way as far as outline, schedule, pages per day, whatever. Other writers find that what works for one kind of book, doesn’t work for another. Sometimes the frame of mind of the writer is what changes everything. You can be too sad to write. You can be too happy. Some writers can turn anger and hurt into fuel for the muse. Other writers find it stops them in their tracks, and they can only write when they’re happy again. You can work through these kinds of issues, and working writers do it all the time, but you do need to at least realize which flavor of emotion works best for you, so that when you are not in the optimal emotional state you know you need to work harder at the writing. Please, do not make yourself miserable just to be able to write more, trust me you’ll adjust to being happy and there will more real emotional angst coming down the pipeline. Patience; no emotional state is permanent. You think I’m joking about people making themselves miserable because they believe their muse likes it better? Nope. I’ve known people that would break up with someone they loved because that person made them too happy, it’s sort of a flavor of those individuals that once happy, they grow uncomfortable with it, and will eventually poke at it until they destroy it, but with a literary flare. Either way, it sucks, and you’re being a bastard to the love of your life, cut that shit out.

Another thing that differs wildly is how much of the writers actual life or personality goes on the page. For some, you’d never know that they write what they write, it’s like camouflage. You’d be surprised how many women at the PTA are closet writers. Some pretty racy stuff can go on the page behind those suburban fatigues. Then you have writers that reflect their writing more either in outward appearance, or just in how they live. Most writers are pretty quiet and retiring sorts, there’s a reason we sit in rooms by ourselves and play with imaginary friends, we’re mostly introverts. But there are exceptions, and some, like myself, are just fine in front of a crowd. Others would find speaking to a group a lower corner of hell. Though, I am an introvert with high social skills, not truly an extrovert. I tend to swing from a need for company and conversation to need for solitude. My writing, and me as a person, needs both to thrive.

Some writers write better at night, others in the morning. Some books and characters like night time and others don’t. Writers will either need absolute quiet or noise. Most writers prefer music of some kind, or silence. On the music, some cannot work to anything but instrumentals, anything with actual singing throws them out of the writing. For others, myself included, I need singing in my music, and don’t like instrumentals at all. I will occasionally listen to some classical for a bit, but it’s the exception rather than the rule. Some writers listen to music they like to write, others listen to music that sets a mood, or reminds them of the character they’re currently writing. I pick an album or a genre of music and will listen to it until the music itself will sink me into the book I’m writing, so with my trusty headphones I can work on airplanes, restaurants, etc . . . Because the music has become the soundtrack to this book for me. Sometimes the music makes sense for the book, and sometimes it’s so opposite of what I’m actually writing it’s like a counter balance to it. I will listen to everything from metal core, to musicals, and even Christmas music. Though musicals and Christmas carols are for when the muse and I are having a hard time of it. Most of the time I do a lot of nu-metal. Current book is Stone Sour, Staind, New Medicine, Rev Theory, and The Sammus Theory; right now. I’ve changed music more on this book than any other I’ve written. Which goes back to me saying that each book can be very different.

I cannot tell the beginning writers the kind of things they want to know, because it all depends. It depends on the writer, the current book being written, and what’s happening in the writer themselves. The same things that effect other people effect us, too. A death, divorce, a break up, a new baby, vacation, overdue for a vacation: the usual stuff that can derail, or energize any of us works on artists, too. Is it easier to muscle through your work if you sit in an office and order widgets when emotions are in turmoil? I don’t know, I’ve never done that kind of job. My brief stint in corporate I found that if I was depressed, it was harder to do anything, not just the job. But emotions can effect the writing, a lot, or not at all.

I use to think that all writers used their emotions as fuel to write, or as idea jumping off points, but I’ve found that’s not always true. For some, their emotions are not reflected, or a reflection of what they write. For others, their emotions bleed all over the book. And then you have still others that find the emotions in the writing bleed back into their real life, sometimes with odd consequences. You can be having a great “real” day, but find yourself depressed because the “fictional” day has had a tragedy. I’m that kind of writer, and I have to be careful to remember that I just write this stuff and it’s not really-real. I have my own emotional issues, I don’t need all the ones I write about on top of them.

The above is just some of the reasons I find it hard to answer some of the writing questions. How to answer you truthfully, helpfully, when it all depends?

 

I learned a lot of new things in knife fighting class this week. For one thing, I discovered that even a very dulled practice blade has bite to it. It was completely my fault. In fact, it was my blade, in my own hand, that cut me. My reaction when the wound happened? I laughed. Laughed my ass off, it happened completely because I was so intent on getting away from my “attacker” and keeping my knife, that I was trying to muscle through, and when I got my hand free it sprang back and hit me. If I’m not careful I push too hard and try to muscle when finesse is what’s called for, I know this, and I relearn that pushing, or pulling, too hard isn’t always the best idea. Me with the bandage.

This is once I got home and unbandaged myself. Me with an ice pack to the wound, as my instructor requested.Yep, that’s my blood. It bled for awhile, but all in all, not much.

This is me yesterday. That’s not eye makeup. It’s a bruise, and as the bruise has blossomed I realize why my instructor had been so worried. I am very, very lucky that I didn’t hit my eye. You can see that the initial impact was right at the corner then it hit so hard that it sort of bounced up and bled me higher up. Today, it’s official I have a black eye. The first one in years. Right now, it looks like eye makeup, and I could easily cover it with makeup, but I’m wearing it proudly. Other trainers at the gym called it, when they said, “Now you’re one of us.” Another said, “You’re in the club now.” I totally get the mentality, and I’ll take it. I’ve shed blood in the dojo, I laughed at myself, was totally unphased by the blood, and I wasn’t a baby about the ouch part, so I’m one of the “guys”. Cool.

 

Jon and I had a weekend in the Blue Ridge Mountains recently. We rented a cabin nestled on its own wooded acreage, very private. In years past I’d tried to pick weekends for autumn color. This weekend, we just picked a time we could all be there, and it turned out to be some of the most spectacular autumn leaves that I’d seen in years. The mountains and hills were covered in every shade of red from a shocking scarlet, to rich crimson, and a red so dark it was burgundy. Pale yellow like the gown of some virginal prom date, golds so thick it was like someone had melted old coins down and spread it across the trees, and just enough evergreens to give the eyes a rest from all that color.

We went with another couple C & K. We met in the mountains, and I confess that Jon and I rented a Dodge Charger as our rental car. We cheated on my Chip Foose Mustang. The Baby must never know. May I say that I was unimpressed with the Charger, so we cheated on the Baby and it wasn’t even fun. It was like cheating and the sex isn’t even any good. All the guilt, none of the fun. *laughs* Some cars ruin you for everyone else, The Baby is one of them. I should have known better. The Charger and I made peace eventually but it doesn’t have nearly the Mustang’s handling. Not even close.

The cabin was wonderful set in all that color, surrounded by trees, and giving that feeling that there wasn’t anyone around for miles, but us. The cabin had a large hot tub on the front porch, porch swings, rocking chairs, and a view from all of them. The only disturbing thing about the cabin decor was the amount of dead animals. There was a gray fox head nailed to the side of the small cabinet that held the guest book. I managed to not see the skunk pelt on the one bathroom door. I walked right past it. I saw the vase of pheasant feathers on the shelf by the door, but missed the skunk. C and K saw it immediately, so I said that must be their bedroom and bath. Jon and I took the red,white, and blue, patriotic bedroom, and bath combo. The rooms were pretty much identical except for decor. The living room, kitchen area was large and comfy.

We ate three meals out, but the rest of the time we cooked. We took turns doing all the chores. Nobody complained, there was no hesitating, we just divided everything up and did what needed doing. Jon, K, and I did a little bit more of the cooking than C did, but he did way more of the clean up in the kitchen, so it was still even. If you wanted to keep a knife or cup you had to be quicker than C was, or it was cleaned. *grin* C & Jon built the fire in the grill for the steak. It was very fun to watch our two boy scouts build the fire. I’m not joking about the boy scout part for C and Jon. Can you say Eagle scout? I rediscovered that I actually make fluffy and yummy scrambled eggs. Jon and K invented an egg and vegetable breakfast dish one morning that was much nom-nom-nom. We tried to eat healthy, but I admit that there was a certain fudge shop that had the best pumpkin fudge. It tasted like the best pumpkin pie ever, except creamier, and melted in the mouth. We also got kettle corn at the local animal rescue event. Have I mentioned that kettle corn is one of my weaknesses? It’s one of K’s, too. Yummy, but dangerous in large quantities. *shakes head at self* Totally worth it, both the fudge and the popcorn. Diet? Was I dieting? Apparently nutrition rules were partially reascended for the four day weekend. I also had strawberry waffles which I’d had for the first time earlier this year. Very nommy.

C and I went hiking one day. Jon and K found a coffee house in town with Wi-Fi because K needed the Internet for work. For once it wasn’t me having to take time away from the fun to work. I was sorry she had to, but amazed I wasn’t the one doing it for a change. Jon didn’t want to risk the hike with his knee still in a brace from the patella dislocation/relocation incident. None of us blamed him for the caution. C and I hadn’t been hiking in a long time, both for time considerations and for me; injuries. My ankle and knee held up well. I was very pleased with that. C and I stopped to stock up on trail mix, and the healthiest protein bars we could find, plus lots of water. Then we got to be out in all that riotous color, underneath that shining tree canopy. I’d forgotten how much I enjoy being outdoors. During part of the hike we got to see the river spreading wide, but surprisingly shallow dancing in the sunlight. Have I mentioned I love running water? But mostly the hike was up hill and down. I saw a Greater Sulfur and a Buckeye butterfly. There were a surprising number of dead falls around and across the well blazed trail. Okay, well-blazed until the last part of the path and then it was as if part of the map had been forgotten a few years ago and maintenance had ceased. C and I wended our way through underbrush, small trees, vines, ferns, and more vegetation than I could give a name to, I’ve always been more interested in fauna than flora. We both agreed at about the same point where our Significant Others would have said, no mas, and wanted to go for the road and the car, but with just the two of us we were able to keep going as long as the trail was passable. My hair seemed to attract more tree bits and C helped me keep free of twigs. His hair which maybe as thick as mine, and falls to his shoulders, but is very straight, didn’t attract nearly the amount of vegetation, no idea why. C got stung by something at one point. I looked at the sight, and it looked painful, but not dangerous. He wanted to go on, and I was game, so we persevered until even we couldn’t find a way through the tangles, not without a machete anyway. Since we hadn’t come jungle equipped we called it and slithered down to the road to finish the walk with glimpses of the river through the trees as we began. I am well enough to hike again, very yay!

We got C’s first aid kit out to treat his sting, but found that alcohol wipes dry out if not used. Luckily my eye-glass cleaning cloths were just alcohol wipes in a different package, so I used that to swap off the sting sight. Lucky for us he wasn’t allergic, and the ache at the sight was fading. I realized later that I’d managed to wound my thumb on a thorn, which I thought I’d managed not to grab that tight, but C wins on the ouch award for the hike. The road back was so narrow that if I’d met another car in places, I’d have had to hug the ditch. We also saw a lake that was completely dry from the year’s drought. It was a large-ish lake and it was just empty with the boats and the piers surrounded by dirt, as if a giant had removed the plug from the lake’s stopper. It was a pretty drive though, and an interesting end to our hike.

We joined our Significant Others at the coffee house. I got some pretty good coffee while we waited for K to close up shop, and I also found some souvenirs for people back home. Then we divided back into our couples, got both cars, and headed back to the cabin. Though we’d showered that morning both C and I had worked up a sweat in the woods and another shower was required. We also did the can-you-find-the-tick-game with Jon and K helping us. Luckily no one won the game. If we’d realized we’d be plowing through quite that much wilderness we’d have used bug spray. We just didn’t expect to be on a trail that reminded me that being small was handy when worming through undergrowth.

 

Samhain, or Halloween, marks the end of the year if you’re Wiccan. Our household is, so this is our New Year’s Eve. It is a time of remembering. Remembering the year that has come and is going, and the lessons that year has taught us. It is also the time of year for remembering the dead, those loved ones that have gone before us. This year I am finally able to say goodbye and hello to my mother. She died when I was six and if you hear me tell the tale, it is told quickly, unemotionally, almost matter of factly. I grew up with this story, this fact, so in a way it is matter of fact. It’s just one of the truths of my childhood. Nothing more, nothing less.

As I sat in sacred space tonight I realized that I have always concentrated on my mother’s death, not her life. I knew she was the pretty one. I knew she’d been a basketball player in high school, so a jock. I knew she’d wanted to be a country and western singer. I knew she’d wanted to act and be in the movies. I knew she had talked about opening her own beauty shop. I knew she and I were talking about a vacation to Disney Land. I found out many years after she had died that her trip to take me to Disney had also been planned to try and get me in the movies. After she died, a photographer called our house and told my grandmother that the pictures were ready. My Grandmother didn’t know about any new pictures of me. When my grandmother showed them to me as an adult I knew immediately what the black and white photos were, because on the back of them was hair color: brown, eye color: brown, height, my stats, my resume as if I were an actress. I took dance lessons every week and I was about to start piano lessons when my mother died. After her death there wasn’t money for either so the lessons stopped, but those professionally done resume photos spoke volumes to me. It let me know that my mother hadn’t given up her dream of being in the movies, she was just going to live the dream through me. I was terribly shy at the age of six, and my first dance recital was a terrifying expeirence of stage fright and freezing up at the beginning of the dance number. My mother never got stage fright, and had presence that I would not acquire for many years. I certainly didn’t have it at age six. But she had a plan, and she did the research, and she never shared the plan with anyone in the family. Just those pictures of me with the stats on the back, and a plan to take me to California to Disney Land. That little bit of story said that there was more to my mother than I knew, or than most of the family knew.

I’ve been reading people’s posting on Tweeter and especially FaceBook, because it has longer posts. People have been talking about their mother being their best friend. That even after her death they find themselves picking up the phone to share news, milestone moments, with her. I never had that. I believe I told my grandmother that I sold my first short story, and my first book, but after that not so much. She seemed more puzzled than proud. I am told she showed my books to everyone that came in the door, but to me she played it down. She seemed always worried that I’d get a big head about something, so praise was very sparse. I never saw her as my friend, she was the only parent I had, but she never made sharing my triumphs with her very satisfying so I learned not to try. I was my own cheerleader. I was my own goal setter. My own strategist for getting where I needed to go. I became very good at researching everything from how to format a short story in a professional manner to what classes I needed for college. If my mother had lived would she have done all this with me? I don’t know.

Today for the first time I let myself think that my mother would have loved my daughter, Trinity. My mother was a social butterfly and so is my daughter. I guess some things really do skip a generation. Trinity wanted dance lessons and had them for more years than I did. She wanted to be in musical theater and I realize that my mother would have come down, out of state, to see Trinity in her first production. It was “Children of Eden”. I didn’t miss her that night, because it never occurred to me to think of her that night. It really didn’t. Trinity is taking voice lessons, and tonight I realized how happy that would have made my mother with her own dreams of stardom, and her plan to put me on that track. Trinity has done this all on her own. I was a drama and speech team geek in high school and very early college, but writing was always my greater passion. Trinity has both bugs. She asked to start piano lessons this year, and she’s doing well. Again, my mother would have been thrilled. Probably, I honestly don’t know for sure. But I think she would have liked that her granddaughter seems to want to chase that dream that once was hers. Trinity decided on the stage as a dream without knowing that her dead grandmother had once had her heart set on it. But, like I said, I guess somethings skip a generation.

For the first time I let myself realize that I might have had a friend that I could call and share my life with if my mother had lived. That she might have been thrilled with each success of mine, and of my daughter. That here might have been someone that I could have shared my life with in a positive normal way. My grandmother, her mother, raised me to concentrate on the death, the tragedy. Not her life, not the promise that might have been, but the grief, and loss. That was what my grandmother was about, always, the negative. It is only this Samhain that I’ve been able to open my mind and heart to the possibilities that might have been if my mother hadn’t died in a car accident so suddenly that summer. I think if it had occurred to me earlier, to understand all that I had lost, it would have been crushing, but apparently it was time. Time for me to look at the joy I missed, and not just the sorrow I had. It isn’t enough to remember the good times I had for those few short years with my mother. I needed to look at all the positives that I could have had in my life that I lost with her. I am not sad about it, though. I never had anyone in my life to fulfill that role that she might have had, so I didn’t miss it. Just as I didn’t miss having a father. You can’t miss what you never had, or at least I couldn’t. But this night, I can think about it, feel it, puzzle over it. Tonight I can let myself think that my mother would have really loved having a granddaughter like Trinity, and that I might have had a best friend and cheerleader my whole life long. Or maybe we would have clashed, fought, and I would have struggled to escape her frustrated dreams of stardom when they were not my own. Who can say? But regardless, I know she would have loved her granddaughter, and it would have been interesting to see how much alike they were, or even how much like my mother that I was. I look very much like her, so much so that people who knew her when she died, and me only as a child, will recognize me, or even call me by her name. We look alike, but how much alike we might have been, or might be, in personality I can’t say. I’ve never had any member of the family tell me I’m like my mother, except in the way I look. I don’t think our personalities are that similar, but I watch my daughter and I wonder how much of my mother is walking around my house? Trinity is very much her own person, but would there be mannerisms, expressions that would remind me of my mother if I remembered enough of them? No way to know, really, but tonight, for the first time, I can let myself think that there might be, and I’m able to be glad about it, not sad. Because even without my mother having ever known about Trinity, she is still her granddaughter, there is still a little piece of her walking around, growing up, dreaming her own dreams. The fact that some of those dreams are the same dreams that my mother had is just one of the many things that make me wonder if I would look at my daughter and see my mother in her, if I knew enough of my mother to know where to look.

Happy Samhain everyone. I hope it was as enlightening, as comforting, to you as it was to me. I shed some tears, but they were mostly happy tears. I can look at my loss, and remember that once I had a mother who loved me very much and who would have really loved to meet her granddaughter and her son-in-law, and to be a part of our life.

 

Halloween is only two days away. It’s usually one of my favorite holidays, and has been since I was small, but this year I just can’t get in the spirit of things. I’m not sure why, but I feel almost melancholy. I haven’t wanted to decorate. We’re carving pumpkins tonight and I hope that gets me in a more ghoulish mood, but I’m not holding my breath.

Halloween is Samhain for my religion, Wicca. It is a festival to celebrate the dead. To say goodbye to them. Because our daughter, Trinity, still trick or treats we do a traditional American Halloween and do the Samhain ritual separately. It is supposed to be a joyous farewell, or in some cases, a happy reunion with the spirits of those we loved who have passed away. Samhain is seen as a time when the veil between this world and the next thins and allows us more clear communication both ways. Most Americans don’t realize that Halloween and all it’s traditions were not always fun and frolic. We happily carve pumpkins into scary faces, but most people don’t remember that we carve jack o lanterns with frightening faces and dress in scary costumes to scare away real scary things. The idea being that we can sort of bluff the real ghosts and monsters away by looking even scarier ourselves. But at it’s heart, it’s about saying goodbye to those we love and have lost, or making peace with an old loss.

For the first time in years I am working on my mother’s death. I am finally ready, healthy enough, whatever, to have her death as part of the Samhain ritual. She died when I was six, and her death that hot, August day, changed my life forever. Whoever I was supposed to be, whatever life I was supposed to live, was gone. Not only was I profoundly affected but I was then raised by her mother, my grandmother, just the two of us and that was a very different upbringing than I think my mother had in mind. The last movie I remember her taking me to was “Bambi”. Back before video or movies on demand Disney would re-release moves periodically. This was one such for “Bambi”. I’m going to assume that everyone reading this knows the movie’s plot, if you’ve somehow missed it, then please stop reading, because I’m about to spoil one of the big moments of the film. (Waits for those who have been living under a rock for the last three decades to live the room.) Okay, Bambi’s mother dies in the film. Curse you, Disney, and your penchant for killing off perfectly good parents. Admittedly, Bambi the book has the same plot, and if you haven’t read it I recommend it. It’s a good read. I sat in the theater and wept while my mother held me, comforting me because the cartoon deer’s mother gets shot by hunters. Later that year, I’d been weeping for real, mourning her.

I bought a mug in Disney World the last time we went. It’s a Christmas mug from 2007 one of Disney’s Christmas Through the Years series. It’s a Bambi mug with all the animals from the movie decorating a tree in the snowy forest. Bambi is standing beside the Great Stag (his father) and gazing up at his mother who is helping the birds string red ribbon. I found this mug both charming and painful when I bought it, but I thought I was ready for it. I was not. I have never used it. It has sat in my cabinet of mugs since 2007. I shoved it into the back of the cupboard where I didn’t even have to look at it. Just in the last couple of weeks I found it again, and this time I got it out. I am drinking my morning tea from it as I type this, and it does remind me of my mother. It does remind me of the irony of her comforting me over the fictional death of a cartoon mother, when only months later she’d be dead for real, and she wouldn’t be there to comfort me when I needed her most. Yes, yes, the irony of that last statement does not escape me. I wanted her back with me to help me deal with her death. I wanted her back so badly that it was like a physical ache from the top of my head to the tips of toes. The idea that she’d never come through the door again, never hug me again, never do her exercises while I tried to follow along, was almost more than I could bear. I was six and didn’t have a lot of coping skills for a disaster that large. My grandmother’s grief at losing her baby girl, my mother, was so overwhelming that it was more important than mine. She would mourn my mother’s loss for the rest of her life, and all of my childhood. I would be in my twenties before I began therapy to work through that first profound grief. I have worked the issues that stem from all of it, but I haven’t let myself say goodbye with love and not just not pain. It has been too painful, too much to bear, and I am decades from that little girl, but still I miss my mother. It sounds almost silly. My own daughter is a teenager. I am married and very grownup. I am a successful novelist, a New York Times Bestseller, but still I miss my mother.

I believe that this Samhain I will finally be able to welcome her memory with love and acceptance of the loss. I think, maybe, I’m ready to say goodbye. I guess this does explain why I just can’t seem to get into the mood of the more commercial American Halloween. I’m not in the mood to dress up as a hooker Pirate this year, or much of anything else. This year for Halloween being myself will be quite enough. I don’t feel the need to scare the ghosts away this year, its time to welcome them in, and say goodbye.