Like thousands of others, I drove home yesterday afternoon to the news of a mass shooting in San Bernadino, CA. As I pulled into the garage, I began a routine that's become so automatic it's not even conscious activity anymore:

• 48-hour live-TV blackout - nothing except on-demand, Disney Channel, or DVDs on screen
• Keep in touch with the outside world via Google News, but make sure the browser tab is only open when I'm alone
• Think of how to explain in case one of the kids hears something
• Pray for inner peace
• Smile. Keep it together. Pretend everything's ok

This is what one has to do when one has a child with severe anxiety. She can't ever know, at least not until she's much older, that there is this kind of violence and uncertainty in the world. She struggles enough now. Sandy Hook was the hardest - it was so close to home, and the kids were the same age as the victims - but I managed. My kids know something happened, but they don't know the details, and that's ok.

Oh, and I did one more thing, after the children came home: I baked cookies. A new recipe for me, German Spice Cookies, but I used some vintage cutters that came out of my great-grandmother's house when the last of her children died.

I read recently that one's life is a hyphen, or more properly, an en dash, between two numbers: the date you were born, and the date you die. What you make out of that en dash is up to you.

The credit card companies call the en dash time your "grace period," the time between your purchase and when you have to actually pay for it without accruing interest.

(Cookies… punctuation… grace period… where am I going with this? Hang in there. It'll all make sense soon, I promise.)

As I rolled out those cookies to a perfect 1/8" thickness, I reflected on how powerless I actually am. Unlike my characters, I'm not magical, nor am I a brilliant inventor, nor a skilled fighter. If anything, I'm more like Max, who doesn't have any particular magical ability except a really big heart (his true name is "the compassionate one," after all). I don't have a huge fan base. I don't have money. I don't have a public voice to speak of. I'm basically one of millions of ordinary people struggling with ordinary lives in complete obscurity until the date on the other side of that en dash arrives. Until the grace period ends, and you have to settle your accounts.

Oh, but that grace period is filled with tiny little moments and words and actions that are invisible to almost everyone on the planet, except the people closest to us.

Those cookies are miracles.

They saved the day from misery and despair. They transformed a blah rainy Wednesday into a holiday celebration. They saved my children from feeling my grief and frustration, by turning them into spicy, crispy bites of love. Those cookies connected me to women in my family who are long dead, but who came alive when I used their cutters. My kids felt safe and warm and secure, and I had something to do with my hands.

Grace is best understood by looking at the adjectival form of the word, meaning, "to make something difficult look effortless." We call dancers and skaters "graceful" when we watch them perform. Sometimes, it looks so easy we criticize when they fail - "I can't believe she messed up that triple toe loop!" - as if we do anything close. 

Those cookies were grace-filled: seemingly simple, easy, ordinary, but in reality they accomplished what words and logic and science could not. And God's grace is shown in something so basic, so ordinary as the birth of a human child, and in one more violent death in a violent world. Just one. That's all it took, and yet that one life - that one date, en dash, date - was more gloriously impossible, to paraphrase Madelaine L'Engle, than we can ever understand. That's grace.

So here's the point: maybe I can't do anything about the violence and senselessness rampant in our country, let alone the world. Mostly likely you can't either. You're probably much like me, dear reader. But I can do two things gracefully: I can bake cookies really well; and I can use whatever skill I have with words to tell you what you can do to change the world.

I want you to bake cookies.

I want you to bake a dozen cookies for each of the lives whose en dash was ended by gun violence in the USA this year.

No judgment. No words. Just cookies. A dozen. Five dozen. Whatever you like.

When you're done, tell me how many you baked and what kind. I'll post a running tally. Who knows, maybe together we can bake 12,000 dozen? More?

Then, eat them, give them away, share them with friends. No explanations. Just enjoy the grace, period.

When I woke up this past Monday morning, it was 22 degrees Fahrenheit. That's a wee bit  chilly for October, even by New England standards. In typical yo-yo fashion, it was in the low 70s a couple days later, but the drop in temperature prompted my household to finally get around to the fall changeover of clothes.

Those of you who live in warm climates might not be familiar with this semi-annual ritual: as the seasons turn, you have to put away last season's clothes and bring out the new season's. Most of us store our "off season" clothes in bins in the basement or attic, since we don't have enough room in our closets. (More on that later). When I brought up the bins, we found a stash of cold-season clothes that had been saved for my younger child to grow into. Included was a set of fleece feet-y pajamas (the one-piece kind that you step into and zip from ankle to chin) in a cute Santa Claus print that my older child had loved but inevitable grew out of. The initial excitement of "new" clothes turned to disappointment when we discovered that the PJs had been loved so much the soles of the feet were full of holes. 

​Here's where the story turns philosophical.

Let me repeat, if I haven't already made this clear, that the life of a novelist is far from glamorous. 

I'm nowhere closer to being a runaway best-selling author. Connecting with readers is a bitch load of work, and while I have many gifts, effective promotion isn't one of them.

Actual writing is real, hard work, and the time in which to do it is preciously scarce. Because I'm not able to live on my royalties (see above), I have to spend the majority of my working hours in my "regular" life, which actually yields income. And that income is really important.

A recurrent theme on this blog is how I'm dealing with my elder child'a anxiety. I tumble through the proverbial hoops, arranging activities, visits to professionals, and just plain hanging on by my fingernails during the hell known as homework hour. I'll do whatever I can possibly do just to make the child's life a little bit easier, and by extension, the entire family's.

All of it costs money.

Yesterday, I gave up a birthday present for myself in favor of a lovely new gadget, the GeoSpa Aromatherapy Diffuser. Clocking in at $35, this wonder uses ultrasonic vibration to create water vapor and diffuse therapeutic essential oils into the air, for supposed health benefits. The child had asked for one of these. I have no idea how she learned of such things, but I've ceased to be amazed at the breadth of her knowledge. All I knew, when I saw this lovely in a discount department store near home, the only one on the shelf, was that bringing it home would make her happy, if only for a little while, and it might, just might turn a bit of the tide against the battle with the ever-present anxiety monster.

How ridiculous is that?

Of course, it came home. I'm trying to get rid of clutter in my house, not acquire new, but it came home. I'm trying to pay down debts and be responsible, but it came home. I have absolutely no indication that it actually has any value other than making the air smell nice, but it came home. She wanted it. 'Nuff said.

Looking back, I see the foolishness, but I also realize that I could no more have left that silly GeoSpa in the store than I could cut off my own arm. How many times have we done foolish things out of simple blind adoration of our children?

And now, as I write this, I hear in my head the words of scripture: "The foolishness of God is beyond all human wisdom." And I know that someone loved me in that completely foolish, crazy, blind, adoring way, enough to buy me a gift worth more than any aromatherapy diffuser - worth more than anything imaginable.

The things we do for our kids, right?

​Peace, lovelies.

Happy new year, lovelies! I hope the 2015 dance around the sun bring you joy, health, peace, and prosperity. Let's all pray for daily bread and peace in our time.

One of the really great things about being a novelist is having a writing group. I couldn't function without mine. Really. Oh, sure, I need absolute peace and quiet and solitude for the actual writing part, but if I'm not writing for someone to read, I just don't write. I need to have an audience in mind. Someone has to actually read this stuff other than me.

A member of my group recently posted a question to our top-secret page where we share tips, ideas, problems, and insight with each other. (No, I won't tell you where. Don't ask.) The question accompanied a long excerpt from another writer, and was essentially, what does this mean: Writing may start out as self-serving (kind of like an emotional eruption or first-time therapy session), but in order to achieve any level of greatness, a writer will have to detach from her personal interest and begin to look at the bigger picture.

Great question, and it relates to my second paragraph: literature of all kinds is a relationship between a reader and a writer. There has to be both, or else the writing isn't literature.

Do I hear some of you saying, huh? Isn't it possible to "just write for myself?"

You can, but not if you want to write well.

Some people say the difference between a writer and an author is publication (usually traditional). I disagree. I think the writer becomes an author when he opens the dynamic of his writing beyond himself to include the reader, regardless of his publishing status.

I'm wholly supportive of independent and small-press publishing, but I'm also the first to say, there's a lot of utter crap out there. Well-intentioned, earnest, eager crap. Yes, there are "novels" full of typos, historical anachronisms, unresearched "facts," wretched dialogue, and even more wretched plot - but those are all symptoms of the abrogation of the basic tenet: the reader is missing from the equation. The writer was writing for himself.

It's Tuesday of the second week of Advent. Outside, it's 33 degrees Fahrenheit, and a steady cold rain is washing away the inch or so of ice that fell earlier in the day. Indoors, the to-do list is filling up: grants are due, holiday cards need to be mailed, the house needs to be tidied (again??), presents must be bought and wrapped… And of course, there's a steampunk novel for me to finish, and the next installment in the Discovering Ren series is starting to want to be released from imprisonment in my head. So much is waiting for my attention.

Then also, I've been truly grieved by the miscarriages of justice perpetrated in Missouri, New York, Florida, you name the place. I'm angry. I'm sad, the more so because I know I benefit in some little way from the injustice inherent in our society. I'm not stupid; I know racism is real and unfortunately very much alive, and I also know that however much I sympathize, I can't empathize, because I'll never truly feel the hurt in the same way that others do. That realization is appalling, and just abhorrent.

Naturally, I want to bake cookies.

Cookies and Christmas go together. The entire world could be falling apart at this time of year, and I'd go buy the last pound of butter at the store.

Head in the sand? Nah. I'm not in denial. Christmas cookies are a way to answer, "Yes!" to the eternal "Why?" They are little bundles of fat and sugar and love. Yes, love, handed down from generations past, still alive and remembered and felt today.

The Sunday School lesson I recently taught was the story of Esther, a challenging text in some ways (how do you explain the concept of a harem to a sixth-grader? Someone, please, tell me), and in others it's pretty simple, the story of a heroine saving her people. Our memory verse was "How can I bear to witness the calamity about to befall my people?" 

My cookies are Esther's words in edible form. (Come to think of it, hamantaschen are cookies to remember Esther…) They are a way to do something, anything, to stave off the feeling of helplessness that can overcome me when faced with a huge chore list, or a society I can't fix alone. They are a creative product that require no words to produce, nor to appreciate; they are a simple expression of the belief that life is still good, still holy, still meaningful, even at the most stressful times and in the darkest places. 

Advent is about waiting, watching, believing that darkness cannot overcome the power of light. Calamities come and go; hope never disappoints us. Peace and cookies to you all!

Well, another two months has gone by, with the best of intentions, and no blogging. It's not that I haven't been busy - heck, no - but I've lacked inspiration for posting, and thus haven't found the time. It's funny how that works: when we are inspired to do something, somehow we find the time, but when we're reluctant or bored, we never seem to have enough hours in the day.

Yesterday was my birthday, so I've been appropriately self-reflective of late. And I've come to the same inevitable, logical conclusions that I pretty much have my entire life: I'm incredibly blessed in so many ways. My problems are largely first-world variety. I'm safe, relatively healthy, neither rich nor poor, with a lovely family, lots of friends, and a whole host of abilities. I haven't been perfect; far from it, but I haven't messed up too badly, either. I do good things for lots of people, and I recognize I owe everything to my Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier.

This morning I happened to see that a social media acquaintance had posted with justifiable pride about all the things this individual had managed to accomplish in a single day. Good for you! Only, this person took pride a step too far, and commented that people who claim to have "no time" aren't telling the truth, or aren't using their time efficiently, or both.

Oh dear. I'm reminded yet again that the root of all committed sin is the desire to equate ourselves with God. We want divine merit badges. We want others to see our accomplishments and think, wow, she did that all by herself. We want to look at our brothers and sisters and think, hmm, glad I'm not you, or, you could try harder. We want to judge. We want to justify. In short, we want to be God.

Regardless of whether you're a creationist or an evolutionist (truly, that old argument is pointless), we can see in the story of Adam and Eve what I'm trying to convey: human beings sin when they try to be like God.

I'm pretty confident at this point: my writing doesn't suck. I have five-star reviews from total strangers. I have people who have come to care about my characters as much as I do. I've created a world in my own head, put it into words, and invited people I don't know to live in it for the space of 120,000+ words or so. They've surrendered hours or days of their lives to my fictional world. That's pretty amazing when you think about it.

Still, the path to publication is not without its trepidation. Okay, maybe Stephen King doesn't even break a sweat anymore, but for the rest of us, it's still a time of uncertainty, of pre-birth, of anticipation, of waiting and dreaming.

When I'm on my game, I can tell you that Shadow King is an even better book than Discovering Ren. It's tighter, bolder, simultaneously more ambitious and more focused. It's also a radical departure from its predecessor: darker, more dangerous, with a very different protagonist and villain. Where I get nervous is when I think, will those of you who liked DR like SK?

But I've decided I'm not going to worry. I love this book. I'm proud of it. I've matured as a writer, and I think it shows. The proof's in the pudding, of course, but here's hoping you surrender as willingly to this one as the last. Peace!

I was invited by the lovely and talented Beth Lapin to participate in the "My Writing Process" blog tour. I'm a week late, sorry to say, but I figure late is better than never.

I'm supposed to answer these questions:

1. What am I working on?
2. How does my work differ from others' of its genre?
3. Why do I write what I do?
4. How does my writing process work?

Honestly, I can't think of a better approach than to dive right in, so here goes:

I'm working on two major projects right now. The first, praise be, is the sequel to Discovering Ren, entitled, Shadow King. At this very moment, I should be poring over the text, word by word, looking for typos and making sure all the plot details are consistent and make sense. Ah, the joys of final editing. If you're an author, you know how hard this is. If you're not, just know that the authors you read make less per hour than the poorest third-world factory worker, given all the time they put in and the tiny royalties they receive. (I'm assuming you're not reading James Patterson.) But the good news is, if you've been awaiting, eagerly or otherwise, the next chapter in the tale of the Ambrosine family, you'll get it come fall from Cogwheel Press!

The other project is my first venture into novel-length steampunk fiction, under my alter ego's name, Evelyn Grimwood. It's a steamy adventure-romance, blending genuine history and Victorian technology with time travel, theoretical/quantum physics, and sizzling hot sex. Oh my oh my, such fun.

My writing is a blend of everything I've ever read. And I mean everything, from Shakespeare to Donne to Austen to Dickens to my college textbooks, Bruno Bettleheim, Camus, the Bible, and whatever I was reading last week. On some level, I remember all of it, and it stews away in my brain, adjusting and accommodating every time something new is thrown in, and eventually it may come back out in a different form and/or context. I just finished The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield (highly recommend that one; it stuck with me for days), in which one of the principal characters, herself a writer, calls this effect "the compost of fiction." New life is born of the death of many things, blended together. I loved that analogy, for its organic, earthy imagery of the unconscious mind where stories lurk and breed.

I write what I do because it's what I want to read. Simple as that. I think it was Toni Morrison who said that if there's a book you want to read that doesn't exist, you should write it. I don't write to be rich or famous (although I wouldn't necessarily object!), and I don't write to impress people. I certainly don't write to please my family. I write because I want to. I enjoy it. I'm a creative person. I used to paint, but with small children I found the constant interruptions didn't allow for my creative process. I can write in short spurts, stolen time, here and there, early in the mornings, late at night, on my lunch hour, whenever I'm alone and it's quiet and the voices have been clamoring to be released from their prison in my head. Which brings me to…

My writing process can be subconscious or conscious. Sometimes I sit down and force myself to write, extracting the words like teeth, one excruciating bit at a time. At other times, I wake up with scenes, dialog, and full chapters in my head, and it's a matter of transcribing them. (I've got a good bit of the third book in my series stored away in my brain.) I write while I'm driving, in the shower, while I'm weeding, when I'm putting myself to sleep. About the only time I'm not writing is when I'm talking or when it's noisy.

Wow, that was lengthy! Thanks for persevering, dear readers, and peace to all!