An author's collection of thoughts and stories
The best marriage advice I’ve ever been given wasn’t intended as such at all.
Actually, I overheard Some Old Guy warning my husband that being married to a woman was like having a live grenade in your pocket.
And I decided that I didn’t want to be the sort of wife who was remembered as the psychotic ex, turning her husband into a 60-year-old MGTOW and alienating her children.
Turns out, the simple resolve to not randomly explode has made me extremely atypical.
I’m really glad that I wrote Alice and the Warden.
Since I’m expecting #6, I’ve been ravenously hungry for stories about pregnancy and babies. Heck, I even watched Bridget Jones’s Baby, even though I don’t remotely care for the subgenre.
Unfortunately, the majority of stories love to revolve around the “pregnancy is shameful and/or dangerous!” trope. Either female characters are moaning about how their life is over, or it literally comes close to ending because of some pregnancy related complication.
Aaaand it doesn’t stop there. After the baby is born, there’s the constant complaining about how a helpless human needs someone to care for it — as if being depended on is the worst thing that can happen. “Woe is me! I can’t be selfish all the time anymore!”
It’s so sickening.
Especially because I know women who are like that in real life.
Me? I’m the sort of person that wears jewelry that depicts pregnancy. I firmly believe in honoring the Divine Feminine, and rant about how our Christian-normative society demonizes the most powerful magic women possess: the ability to create new life. Not everyone thinks that the very existence of humanity is something shameful.
While the homebirthing community has plenty of women similar to me, none of them are writing novels. Too many of them have gone off-grid, I guess.
I’ve spent the last several months trying to find decent stories about pregnancy and babies, but now I’ve given up. I’m reading my own novel.
Alice is so sweet and loves her family so much, it’s like a breath of fresh air. Finally, a character who is full of hope and doesn’t hate everything about life.
In a very literal sense, I wrote that novel for myself.
Happy St Patricks Day!
I’m skipping the Irish coffee this year, but we’re still making a hearty cabbage stew.
And pinches for anyone not wearing green!
It’s kind of funny, but I was introduced to Pi Day through my calculus class. It was a very nerdy little celebration the teacher put on for us students, but it tickled my fancy to no end. Ever since, I’ve always had pie on Pi Day.
At some point, it became popular. Suddenly everyone was going on about “Pie Day,” including several whom I’m pretty certain had no clue what pi was.
And all I could think was, “You’re ruining it.”
My big complaint about CR1515 is that I feel like I’m only writing half the story.
So far, Talon exists as a prop. He’s there for the first few paragraphs, then vanishes forever — something that’s driving me batty. I want him to exist as a character, and to establish a solid foundation that helps the reader understand Aurora’s emotional conflict over the situation she finds herself in.
When I talked with my husband about the troubles I’m having with this story, he suggested that I change the first chapter to focus on Talon’s perspective, and end it with the sinking realization that his girlfriend has vanished. It’s a brilliant idea, and I love it.
But it also puts me in the same position I am in with The Scion Suit; I currently can’t maintain a masculine frame of mind for the life of me.
I adore masculine characters, so I don’t want to phone it in or force it. They need to flow naturally and keep consistent personalities.
Writing hasn’t been going all that smoothly with this pregnancy anyway; at this point I feel like waiting it out isn’t going to make much of a difference. Everything I’ve written is very likely going to need to be rewritten anyway.
At the end of my third pregnancy, I commented to another mom my age that all I ever wanted to eat was brownies made with real butter. She reacted like I had said something weird — along the lines of, “What else would you make brownies with?”
I didn’t bother to explain that shortening is frequently used as a substitute, or that box brownies usually call for vegetable oil. I’ve always had a lazy streak when it comes to conversations, and I thought that she was the one who was being weird.
Anyway, after months of craving a variety of foods, the last few weeks of pregnancy always boil down to carbs and fat. Like brownies. Baby needs to come out chubby, you see.
Today, I decided to make cast iron brownies.
I use a normal brownie recipe, then bake it in a preheated cast iron pan soaked in butter for extra deliciousness.
As I was getting the batter mixed together, one of my kids asked, “Can we put marshmallows in it?”
And I thought to myself, “Why not?”
So, I put mini marshmallows on top of the brownies for the last five minutes of baking.
They’re so delicious, I’m certain that I have invented a new type of sin. ^.^
I was searching for inkle loom designs when this popped up (yeah, I don’t know how the two are supposed to be related either).
It made me laugh, because as a Millennial, I’ve spent my entire adult life joking about how everything costs an arm, a leg, and your firstborn child.
Gosh I wish I could have been so privileged.
The religion I grew up in didn’t permit drinking coffee. We were often told about how it caused all sorts of ills, ranging from cancer to stained teeth, and everyone who loved Jesus should faithfully refrain from even thinking about the devil’s drink.
After I officially left that religion, coffee was one of the first things I tried. I’m not going to lie though — that first cup was a major disappointment.
Thankfully I ended up married to a man who knew a thing or two about coffee snobbery, and he taught me to think better than chain coffee stores. I’ll just say that we started roasting our own beans over a year ago, and there’s no going back. 🙂
Sometimes I like to sit with my hands cupped around my favorite mug, and wonder what’s supposed to be so evil about starting every morning with coffee. Of all the horrible wrongs in the world, why make a big deal out of something so harmless?
I like the ritual of brewing a cup for my husband and myself every morning, and topping them off with a dollop of heavy cream. I like taking the time to meditate as I transition into starting the day, to get myself into the mindset of being up and about. I like how it gently motivates me, without the jitters and sugar crash that comes from sodas.
So far, my teeth haven’t developed any staining.
And let’s be honest: there was no hope for me before I ever tasted my first drop of coffee.
Once upon a time, I had a best friend.
We called each other ‘soul sisters’. After she moved out of town, we spent most nights chatting on the phone for three hours and saw each other every weekend we could. We got along like a grassfire in July.
Then I chose marriage, and she chose career.
We tried to keep in touch, but after a few years it began to feel heavily one-sided. I was the one to call and text, while she increasingly spent her days off going out and getting plastered. Everything she said about her job sounded horrifying and stressful, and she began developing a number of health problems in her mid-20s. I tried to convince her to move out of the Big City and start over in a friendlier area, but she felt too invested to follow my advice. More and more time passed between conversations, more and more texts went unanswered, and I gave up trying.
I realized the other day that I haven’t heard anything from her in two years. For all I know, she could be dead.
The dark part is, I don’t want to pick up my phone to find out what’s happened with her.
Because I’d rather not know.
I’m making this one for my baby who loves purple.
I dyed the warp cotton yarn myself, which is much softer and less of a strain on my hands than the popular crochet thread that’s in all the crafting stores (I also like it much better for lace crochet for the same reasons).
It’s kind of like magic to watch all of the individual threads come together into a woven pattern.
Maybe in the future, I’ll have to get myself a heddle loom.
By Autumn Rain 