R.I.P. Lucien, October 2007 – February 10, 2018, My Light of Love

Let me tip a line of silence to my buddy . . .

 .  .  .

As a writer, and as a person, I study life, which means I also study death.  Even in the deepest fits of grief, I strive to understand the emotions that tear us apart, leaving us gut-punched and bruised, heads throbbing, eyes slick with fiery tears and sand, battered by unseen fists.  Our memories race and the beating intensifies.  It’s our own personal hell.  It’s inside us.  It’s grief.  Sadness.  Love.  Our emotions. 

Emotions are intangible, but they leave a path.

I discovered this when David died in 2007.  I discovered it again in the years that followed.  I full-body slammed into it in January 2016 when Robin passed.  And while I’m still grieving for her, and the first anniversary of her death, I am reminded yet again, now.

First, I want to get this out of the way.  I am a deeply empathetic person and I am a cat person.  I love animals.  Stick me in Snow White or Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty’s shoes, and I’ll sing and dance with mice and birds.  In MY shoes, I talk to cats and play with bugs.  Anyway, I’ve heard, “It’s just a cat,” far, far too many times.  It’s insensitive.  And I don’t mean that in a pc way.  It’s mean.  If someone is hurting, and that person is supposedly your friend, shouldn’t you care?  So . . . Animal people will get this.  Empathizers will get this.  Not everyone will.  To some people, the animals who live with us are only that.  Little things that scurry under foot or live outside.  But for the sake of this post, imagine someone close to you, someone you love, someone you see and talk to everyday.  Someone you say, “I love you,” to everyday.  Someone who is so much a part of your life that you wouldn’t recognize life without that person.  Now lose that person.  Or imagine your best friend has just lost that person.

I have felt that great loss both from person and animal.  The first time was with David.  It was soul shattering.  He was my first true grief study.  I was writing CONFESSIONS at the time and was working in a chapter that needed a true depth of sadness that I could only imagine.  Well, thought I could imagine.  I rewrote that whole chapter in grief.  I learned how to make grief tangible the hard way.  But it’s damn good chapter.  And that’s when I learned that I rely on my emotions to write (which is another post, for another time).

Okay, so this post should obviously be about Lucien.  I’m still not in a great place when it comes to him.  He just came home the other day.  We have our cats cremated, so he’s hanging out in a box.  You know, he’s a cat.  If it fits . . .

Yeah, I’m not there, either.  Okay, (nervous ear scratch), how about this – let me tie David and Lucien together because this whole thing is a puzzle that has ripped open old wounds and really showcases the maze that is grief and the weird patterns that form life.  When I met my husband, I had two cats, Twitch and Shadow.  Technically, Shadow was Twitch’s cat, but whatever, he didn’t have the thumbs to sign the papers.  (Laughs)  Yeah, I’m totally the crazy cat lady.  Okay, anyway, I was at one of the lowest points in my life and was homeless.  Twitch moved in with my then boyfriend soon-to-be husband and Shadow moved in with my parents.  Long story short, which I’m sure is too late since you know I write books and super long blog posts, Shadow disappeared, after accidentally slipping out, along with the neighbor’s dog.  Queue six plus months of searching and posters and calling the Humane Society to no avail.  Shadow was gone. 

The search brought Tim and I to David, however.  David literally reached out and grabbed me.  And he looked like Shadow.  I was at a better place in life by then, but not ready to give up on Shadow.  He’d been such a sweet cat.  He loved car rides and would curl up in my lap and just stare up at me while I sang (horribly) with the radio.  Eventually, the day did come, though.  Tim and I went in to apply for David.  He was gone.  We were bummed.

A month went by.  Tim and I had our apartment and Twitch was our only cat.  I can’t believe I had only one cat.  Or rather that my cat didn’t have another cat.  (awkward pause to think that through)  And then one day, Tim came home with a surprise.  David.

I still get happy with tears when I think about it.  David had been sickly and, apparently, when we’d gone to apply for him, he’d been put into isolation with a respiratory infection, and was there for almost a month.  He had a bed sore on his leg and a goopy eye, but was otherwise okay.  He was prone to sickness, as we found out, but we did our best to keep him healthy.  David was not Twitch’s cat, for the record.  At the time, Twitch had a pet gerbil named Ralph.  (laughs again) I swear, I’m never going to finish this – seriously – Twitch and Ralph were something else.  We had a hamster ball so Ralph could run around the apartment, but we’d let him run around the bedroom without it.  Twitch would chase him, but if he ran under the bed . . . under the bed was “base” so Twitch would wait and do that cat shoulder-shimmy-shake thing while he waited.  Ralph would dart out from under the bed right at him and they’d zoom around the room.  It was all play.  Twitch never tried to hurt Ralph.  It was totally adorable.

And then we got David.

I was cleaning Ralph’s cage, with Ralph in it, turned for 5 seconds, turned back . . . bloody cage, bloody Ralph.  (sigh)  David tried to grab him behind my back and only hit with one canine into Ralph’s ear.  We treated the wound for weeks or months, I don’t recall, but Ralph kept scratching it and reopening it and making it worse, and we finally had to euthanize him.  That was Twitch’s last pet.  His pets didn’t have the best luck.

You can imagine David’s entrance into our lives was a bit rocky.  It’s hard to believe that now, knowing how much we both loved him and how much he still affects us.  For example, he died in 2007 right after Christmas, and we had a red string tied to a doorknob that he loved to play with.  We’ve moved four times since we got him, while he was alive, and since he died, and that string is still tied to a doorknob.  None of my current cats touch it.  It’s David’s string.

David was special.  Truly.  He was smart.  He knew that doorknobs opened doors and he would try to open them.  If we’d had lever-style handles, every door would’ve been open.  He also knew how to open the cabinets and how to do a host of other things.  He used his paws like hands and would spread out his “fingers” to grab things.  I’ve never had a cat like him.  We had to Davey-proof our house, to include socket covers.  I swear – anything you’d do for a toddler, we had to do it for him.  He also seemingly understood cameras.  It was hard to catch him in a candid shot because by the time the camera was ready, he’d be posed.  I have so many perfect pictures of David.  He was a handsome guy.  He was a lap ninja, too.  You’d sit down and never even know when he’d gotten there, but there he was.  And it was David, so you couldn’t move, even though he was a lap ninja and would come back.  He loved warmth, so he slept with me in the winter and with Tim in the Summer.  He rarely purred.  When he did, it was really low and really quiet, and the most special thing in the entire universe.

One night, in our first apartment, I was nauseous, so Tim and I were lying on the couch watching tv together.  Tim kept fidgeting with David, who was digging under the couch, and the movement made me feel worse, so I moved down to the floor.  A few minutes later, Tim and David appeared with a velvet box from under the couch.  Tim said something like, “This isn’t how I wanted to do this . . .” but David apparently wanted to help.  He opened the box and asked me to marry him (and David).  Oh my God, how did I get such a guy?  It was the anniversary of our first date.  Of course, I said yes.  And luckily, I didn’t throw up on anyone.

David was there for so much happiness in my life, so many good times.  He would walk us to the door to say goodbye and greet us when we got home.  He’d sit on the kitchen stool when we cooked, get dusted with flour when I baked, and sit on the basin when I bathed.  He was always with me.  On me when he could be.  I wrote the first draft of THE ARRIVAL  in three months and he was there for every single page.  He was there for most of the first draft of Confessions.  Writing has never been the same since I lost him.

David, as it turns out, was a good pretender.  I discovered, one night, that he was putting his face into his dish and moving food around, picking it up, and spitting it out, but not eating.  I wish I had noticed sooner.  In hindsight, there were warning signs that I missed.  I learned a lot from David’s life and death.  The next morning, Tim took him to the vet to have him checked out – we had an arrangement to drop him off in the morning before work so they could fit him in.  I wasn’t aware of how long he’d been doing this, but I did know that cats can’t go 24-hours without food or water without serious consequences, so I thought we were being proactive at the time.  Neither of us expected to hear that he was going downhill fast and that it would be “cruel” to prolong his condition.  That sounds mean, but it was compassionate.  Tim and I are both pragmatic people and would rather hear it straight and true.

David was so cold when we got there.  And he was in so much pain, he growled at me when he was put on my lap for the last time.  He was shivering so badly.  And he was purring.  Purring because it hurt so much.  I beat myself up for years for missing the signs that let him get that bad.  Maybe that guilt is coming back now.  We had no idea what actually happened aside from the fact that he had stopped eating and had lost weight.  I don’t know how we missed the weight loss, given how much he’d lost, but he'd always been trim (had to look good for the camera).  When the time came, they tried to find a vein for the needle and he fought them.  It was awful.  Thankfully, they sedated him, and then were able to euthanize him in peace.  No matter how painful it is for me, I insist on being there with them and for them.  They are dying.  It cannot be more painful for me to watch than it is for them.  The least I can do is be there for them. 

The house felt so different without him.  His absence was huge.  He was quiet guy, not a talker like so many others, but it seemed quieter.  My lap was colder.  My friend was gone.  My best friend was dead.  And, as it turns out, I lost my other cats, for awhile, too.  We had five by the time David died.  Twitch was the at the top and David was the prince, which suited them both.  Twitch liked David and hated the others, and David loved everyone.  Everyone loved David.  David was my kitty glue.  Where he went, the others followed.  So when I wrote and had David on my lap, I had 3 other cats surrounding me.  Well, suddenly, I had none.  Without the glue, they wandered listlessly.  Twitch was still the alpha, but they'd lost their common element.  David was special to human and cat alike.

I cried so hard for so long.  I cried for him, for failing him, for the loss, for emptiness.  Sometimes I still cry for David.  David represents so much for me.  He was with me during the happiest times in my life and he died just before I entered some of the hardest parts.  And now I'm crying equally hard again, for a loss that is so eerily similar, yet different on so many levels.  But,  we’ll call this part one and close for now.  Part two coming soon.

Processing . . .

Every writer has a process, whether it's winging it, brain storming, or outlining.  I've never been good with outlines.  I hated doing them in school.  Most of the time, I cheated and did them afterward. 

Oddly, doing the outline afterward actually works for me to track continuity.  I also keep a timeline, a family tree, and a character list with details.  Oh, and journal upon journal upon napkins and notebooks and scratch paper of notes.  And every single manuscript I've ever printed and every copy I've ever worked on saved and dated on my laptop and two external drives.  (Think I'm paranoid?  I did work in I.T.  Things fail.  Files disappear.)

The gist?  Never throw away anything you've written and write notes on whatever is nearby.  But pencil on toilet paper needs to be copied onto something else if you ever want to read it again.

For the most part, I wing it.  I've had the story in my head for a long time, after all.  However, I was talking with a friend yesterday and rediscovered a problem I'd had when I hit a certain point in the plot.  And, of course, I can't say what it was without spoilers, but it stopped the story dead. 

I've said before that this all started with a nightmare I had.  That nightmare was the driving force for the original tale when it was about witches and witchcraft.  Around this time, I had read THE MAGIC COTTAGE by James Herbert and it influenced how I shaped a story around my dream.  It made sense and I wrote off and on for many years.

As an adult, I shifted away from the witchcraft theme and decided to go with vampires.  I don't have a clue why.  I don't know where Eric came from initially.  I do remember sitting at the diner where I waited tables thinking about this handsome vampire named Eric L'Blanc who fought in the French Revolution under Napoleon Dynamite.  Wait . . . Tater Tots.  No, just Napoleon (he's a Ziggy Piggy).


When I realized that - A.  I knew nothing about France or the French Revolution, and - B. I'd have to research France and the French Revolution, I chucked that idea.  There are iterations around here somewhere in which Eric L'Blanc exists.  But he was short lived.

Maybe if I hadn't winged it, the story would have been written sooner.  But I don't think so.

So instead, he became Eric Ravenscroft, the last name being inspired by H.P. Lovecraft, Lara Croft, and THE RAVEN (also, Jonathan was originally able to shape shift into a Raven, which I took out but wanted "Raven" in there somewhere, and I also don't know where Jonathan came from - neither were in the original story).  I still wanted a war veteran, so I had to pick between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.  Have I ever mentioned that history was my worst subject?  Because history was my worst subject.  Thankfully, as I dug into Civil War research, I found that I actually enjoyed it.  And one on of these days, I'll do a blog post about my brief stint as a Civil War Reenactor, which is touched upon in the acknowledgements in the book.  

I've derailed from my originating subject.  Which just illustrates that I write as I go and don't plan it out.

SO - my process.  I wing it.  When I get stuck, I yank on my hair, bang my head on my desk, and stare at my screen and usually mutter curse words.  Not so much the first two any more, but the last two happen a lot now that my brain goes on strike.  Because I got stuck so badly in THE ARRIVAL, I tried something different for Confessions.  I created flash cards.

The initial batch contained major plot points and the second batch was for secondary plot points, and for character and world building.  I spread them out so I could see them all and started grouping them together and stacking until I had an order and a direction.  It worked really well.  I had too many points to get them all into Confessions, so I divided them and started over with a pile for Confessions and the leftovers for COMS. 

The flash cards worked for the overarching story that developed in THE ARRIVAL, but they wouldn't have worked for THE ARRIVAL itself.  The problem I ran into needed to be thought through and dissected.  The whole story initially revolved around that nightmare, and I reached a point where I realized the nightmare was missing.  And I couldn't figure out how to tie it into the new world I'd created with vampires instead of witches around my central character.  Essentially, I had half the book written without even knowing where I was taking it and I had no map.

Thus, several candlelit nights and many hours of hair pulling and head banging and cursing at my laptop ensued.  I'd write in the story itself or I'd open a new window and just type out ideas.  I'd space out in the car driving and hurriedly jot down notes at traffic lights.  Eventually, I got there.  It wasn't smooth sailing and I got stuck a few other times to answer the whys and hows of the situation (every writer should be able to answer Who, What, Where, When, Why, How, AND get the character through the door - a metaphor I read about as a way to see the plot:  character starts on one side of the door and winds up on the other side at the end via the plot), but I did it.  Frankly, I'm surprised it worked at all, let alone as well as it did.

I don't have structure.  I don't make myself write X number of words per day.  I don't necessarily do research ahead of time (I'll just write what I want, highlight it for research, and go back to it later).  I let the creative process work at its own pace.  Sometimes I pause to sketch out a character or a weapon or add to the family tree or timeline.  But my mantra is to write when I want to write.  If I force it, I'll end up deleting what I wrote.  It's a waste of time.  I learned that several times.  

For a lot of it, I just got lucky.  Or maybe I'm not giving my brain its due credit and somehow I knew what I was doing thanks to research and creativity.  Either way, I put together a well-written, addictive, and cohesive story that many of you are enjoying or have enjoyed

Editing. It's important.

Even the best authors miss something here or there.  I read, early on, that you should have an editor check your manuscript at least once prior to querying agents or self-publishing.  If you're a writer, you'll see it everywhere - get an editor who is not your mom  and not your teacher.  They may be great at grammar, yes, but there is so much more to editing than just grammar and typos.

For the record, my mom did help me edit.  And she's read my book more than anyone else, not counting myself.  I've read it hundreds upon hundreds of times.  It's been ten years.  It's a commitment.  If you love it, make it so others will love it, too.  And I had other grammar nerds read it.  But, I did hire a professional editor.  He was a literary agent who edited on the side.  And it was the best investment I could ever make.

You could be the best writer on Earth, but you're not going to publish a polished jewel without some work.  That can be hard to accept for some people.  Even I thought my manuscript was a masterpiece before I realized it was a masterpieceofcrap.  I cringe so much when I see the copies I sent out to those first few agents.  I'm sorry for their eyes.

My professional editor did what you might expect - checked grammar, caught typos and misued words, and so forth.  He also brought a wealth of knowledge of what readers want, type of voice, and how to tighten the narrative.  I gave him a 118,000 word manuscript and he gave it back with 10,000 fewer words.  He turned whole paragraphs into sentences.  He cut out unnecessary components that muddied the scene or dragged the story.  He cut out exposition and pointed out areas or characters that needed action or depth.  In short - he was amazing.

He wasn't cheap.  But he was worth every penny.

He told me I was a beautiful writer, not as in physically beautiful, but that I had a flowery type of prose that was beautiful to read. The bad?  People generally don't like to read that in long stretches.  You need to lay out the story so it's easy to read and pepper in beautiful writing and metaphors and comparisons.  It wasn't easy and I was nervous about what I'd get back from him.

When I got my edited manuscript back, I was surprised in several ways.  One - it wasn't polished.  This was round one editing and it was a choppy, grammatical mess.  But it was a mess easily fixed, and polishing was my job.  What surprised me most was reading my story for the first time with new, fresh eyes.  I had no idea what he'd cut or added or changed, so it was the closest to reading my book for the first time that I've ever gotten.  It was awesome.

Sure, things were cut that I added back in and some things were cut that I missed, but when I read it, it made sense, so I left them out.  In the end, the author is the creator and the author chooses what stays and goes.  I learned a lot from him.  In fact, while he was whittling away at The Arrival, I applied what I'd learned to Confessions of the Second Born.

Confessions was 176,000 words when I finished the first draft.  After two rounds of editing utilizing what I'd learned, I cut out 68,000 words.  The manuscript currently sits at 109,000 words and reads so much better than it ever did.  Until a few months ago, I hadn't touched it since early 2015 and hadn't done any serious work on it much further back.

The author has the final say and only the author can decide how much editing to do, but if you love your project and want to put the best out there for the reader, I strongly advise putting in the extra effort and investment.  The Arrival would not be the tightly written book that it is today without my pro-editor.  But I can't discount the assistance from mom and beta-readers.  Everyone who helped, HELPED. 

Grammar nerds and detail-oriented people are excellent for catching those early, obvious errors that your eyes gloss over because it's the 167th time you've read that page.  And beta-readers are supremely important in getting that early reader information - what works, what's confusing, what characters need something, how this or that is actually perceived versus how you wanted it to be perceived, and how the plot evolves.  Professional editors have that inside edge and know what the industry wants and what readers on the whole generally want.  Everyone plays a role and everyone is important.

But the most important thing is doing it.  Asking for insight.  And listening to it, even if you don't like it.  My editor had largely positive things to say, but I didn't like everything.  For example, I had to change the title, the name of the forest, and the name of the town due to a large, commercially successful book series that I hadn't read.  Since I was 13 years old, the town had always had another name.  And I had to change the opening line.  The opening line is the one thing that had never changed since I first wrote it.  But, once I changed that line, I realized that the book would flow better if I added a new chapter one and cut other scenes out of latter parts of the book. 

Hence, the first chapter as it is - which, I understand now is confusing and I didn't see it before - cut down on exposition later on in the book and allowed me to insert an active scene.  Show, don't tell.  After I got my manuscript back, I cut another 4,500 words from it, even after doing my assigned work to flesh out this part or beef up this scene, etc. 

There are a few things I'd change now that I've gotten reader feedback, but they're small things and, admittedly, they are things I added after working with my editor.  He might have seen what the readers are seeing and prompted me to make some changes.  Overall?  It was a great experience.  From writing it to editing to criticism to editing to publishing.  That was a decade of my life for a story that's been in my head for nearly 3 decades.  I'm so happy it's out of my head into the hands of people across the country!  And that I'm hearing their theories and their opinions.

The whole experience to this point now is helping me see Confessions in a new light.  Hopefully it'll be a better book for it.  Once it's published, that is.  ^_-