Why?

Detective Banks leaned forward to switch on the recording device and then sat back in his chair. Ainslee watched him, her hands gripped three facial tissues like a lifeline. She swiped at another tear and tried to calm the trembling of her body.

            “I just want you to take us through the events of this morning,” Banks said. He used a handkerchief to wipe the sweat off his bald head. Ainslee wondered why the little room didn’t better air conditioning, but then chided herself for thinking of something so trivial at a time like this.

           

            She hunched forward, closer to the microphone. “Mom had just left to take Ashlyn to soccer. It’s just at the park up the street from our house, so they walked.” Her throat caught on a sob and she swallowed before continuing. “I was supposed to go with them but I’d been up all night studying for my geometry final and Mom let me sleep in.”

           

            Banks nodded like he was encouraging her. “And then what did you do?”

           

            Ainslee looked down at the partially shredded tissues in her hands. She’d been tearing at them ever since they sat down. “I got in the shower. I always hook up my iPod to the waterproof speakers and I guess I had my music on pretty loud.”

           

            He moved as though to put a hand on her arm but reconsidered and leaned back. “What happened next?”

           

            You already know, she wanted to scream. Why are you making me tell you?

            “I heard a couple of bangs and a thud,” she said. “I figured Dad and Jayce were roughhousing. They always get a little wild so Mom doesn’t let them do it when she’s home.” She thought of her little brother, how he had taken the last bowl of her favorite cereal this morning and how she’d yelled at him for it.

            She wished she could take everything back.

            “What next?”

            Ainslee took a deep breath to keep the tears in check, but there was no way to keep her voice from wavering. “I felt something shake the walls. I thought maybe it was an earthquake, so I turned down the music and listened. Maybe my dad would call me to get into a doorway or something. But I couldn’t hear over the water so I turned that off too.”

            “Did you hear anything?”

            She shook her head, but then realized the microphone couldn’t pick that up. “No. It was so quiet. I got out and put on my robe and called for my dad. He . . . he didn’t answer. I yelled for him again, even though I could tell there wasn’t an earthquake.”

            Banks nodded again. “And then what?”

            “I heard footsteps,” she said, her voice hoarse. She didn’t bother to wipe the tears streaming down her cheeks. “Then the bathroom doorknob rattled. I thought that was weird since Dad would have said something so I thought it was Jayce being a dork—“

            “Do you always lock your door when you shower?”

            Ainslee shot him a look. With a prankster brother and his perv friends what do you think? “Yes.”

            “Did the person say anything?”

            “No.” Ainslee choked back a sob. “I thought it was Jayce, so I yelled at him to leave me alone. Then the rattling stopped.”

            “Did you exit the bathroom at that time?”

            “No,” she said. “First I put on my moisturizer and then got dressed. See, I thought everything was normal.”

            “When did you discover the bodies?”

            The question sent a shiver right through her soul. Ainslee’s tears poured down her face. “I went to the living room to watch TV,” she sputtered between sobs. “And there they were. Jayce was behind the couch but Dad was right in the middle of the floor!”

            “We have the recording of your 9-1-1 call, so I won’t need you to repeat that,” Banks told her. “Do you remember anything? Did you see anything? Hear anything?”

            “I only heard screaming,” she whispered. It had been her screaming and she knew it, but couldn’t remember opening her mouth. “I just don’t understand. Who would do this? Why?”

            “We don’t have any answers yet, but I promise you we will.”

            Then the question spilled out. “Why didn’t he kill me? He knew I was there. Why didn’t he kill me too?”

            Detective Banks reached over and shut off the recorder. “Miss Dawson, I just don’t know.”

Reactive

This is a response to the dad who wrote that he and his wife were angry that they are expecting twins. You can read his ARTICLE and then come back if you want. No big.

I don’t know you. And I imagine right now you’re questioning whether writing the article was the best idea, even though you elected to remain anonymous. But, like it or not, writing that article and publishing it gave me and everyone else who wrote it a glimpse into your life. I liken this glimpse to peeking in your living room window on a random evening—it doesn’t give a full picture of who and what you are. I’m sure you and your wife are lovely people who are, right now, struggling with something huge. I respect you greatly for having the courage to say something “out loud” that is essentially unpopular. That’s never easy, and I appreciate your struggle.

And, fair’s fair, so I’m going to give you a look into my living room window at a certain point in time. It’s Christmas 1998 and my husband and I just found out that we were expecting not one, but TWO sons. Our oldest boy would be three months shy of his 2^nd birthday when the blessed moment would occur. We were in the process of adjusting my husband’s visitation and support for his daughter (the process began sometime that fall and ended in March 1999, just so you know) to better enable us to accommodate our growing family. Incidentally, my stepdaughter was present at our “discovery” ultrasound and went home and cried that she would not be getting a baby sister after all. What’s more opposite than a baby sister than two baby brothers? I can tell you that she felt pretty dang screwed by the whole system at that point.

No, we never struggled with fertility. The twins happened naturally.

About 30 weeks into my pregnancy, my body decided that it really wanted to be done and started practicing pre-term labor processes. I was closely monitored, including several weekly 30-mile-both-way hospital visits for non-stress tests. My bed rest was increased to 50%. By 32 weeks’ gestation I was at a full 100% bed rest, had been given steroid shots to increase fetal lung development, and was popping pills to prevent me from going into labor. At this same time my husband’s court date, which had been postponed by his ex’s lawyer a month, loomed on our calendar. Though he’d already purchased the plane fare to AZ and back and taken the time off work, my husband didn’t feel he could leave my side and so trusted his lawyer to handle things for him. I’d already been in the hospital twice that week (I was admitted both Mon and Tues and he was to fly out Wed kind of deal) but I still wanted him to go. I felt it was imperative that he be present at the hearing, and apparently the judge felt the same. Though my husband participated via phone, it was only to hear the judge call him all sorts of worthless names and barely let his lawyer say a word. Nothing was decided in our favor and we ended up probably in worse shape legally and financially than we would have been had we never filed. To demonstrate this, when our twins were born the court ordered child support decreased by $20/month. His overtime, though never steady and not reliable, was considered regular income and we were left paying more than we could reasonably afford. But once bitten, we never refilled with the AZ courts to adjust or change anything after that.

Meanwhile I spent my days on a mattress on my living room floor. Friends took my firstborn for a few hours every morning until his nap time and my sister in law moved into our garage apartment so she could be there if I needed help in the afternoons and evenings.

My twins were born at 36 ½ weeks, April 21, 1999. It was a Wednesday, and I went home Sunday. For their privacy, I’ll simply call them J and D. I elected to breast feed my sons since that had gone so well with my first child, but J would projectile vomit green sludge in the middle of every other feeding. D was gassy and had a hard time. The medical professionals in our service all said it was because they were preemies and that most digestive issues sort themselves out. Still, we had J back to the ER with his pea soup colored vomit within a day of being home. During those first weeks doctors told me many things. I was even told to stop breast feeding because that was the problem.

I never went back to that doctor.

D had some issues with colic and gas and spitting up. J never seemed to complain much but then he would projectile vomit several times a day. Knowing his stomach was empty I would wait for it to settle and then feed him again. I was literally nursing a baby every hour on the hour. It got wearing, I’ll admit, and by their six week check up I had to admit defeat and switched them to formula. In some ways that was easier because anyone could feed them—my sister in law, myself, my husband when he was home. But I still struggled with J’s vomiting. Soon, though, I detected a pattern with his vomit and it got to the point where I could schedule doctor visits and grocery shopping without worrying that he would throw up in the car or in public. Because he was still growing and “thriving” and only a little smaller than his brother, his doctor seemed to think whatever he was experiencing would pass as he got older.

When the twins were about 3 months old my husband took a job with the Special Services section of the company he worked for. This meant he would be away (for us it was Wyoming) from home for 3 weeks of every month, and home for 6 days including travel time. So he wasn’t really home for 6 days. It was more like 5. Even with my network of support and help, I was really the primary person responsible for all 3 boys 24/7. I can’t give you a whole lot of details about that time because it’s really a blur for me. I was in survival mode, eeking by day to day without thought or plan of tomorrow or even the next week. I was doing the best I could, dealing with vomiting, waking at night, teething, and a toddler all on my own.

Finally, when the twins were at their 9 month check up I got the doctor to admit that J should not be vomiting like he did. And finally he was beginning to lose ground on their stupid age/height chart so he couldn’t be considered “thriving” anymore. She scheduled an Upper GI where they have him drink a barium solution and then track that solution through his body via a type of X-ray technology.

The barium was the only thing he never threw up. I have no idea why.

The procedure revealed a blockage in J’s duodenal area, just beyond his stomach. Because it couldn’t give us any specifics, we were referred up to the OKC Children’s Hospital for further testing. Their department couldn’t get us in for 4 weeks.

The Monday before J’s appointment in OKC, he and D woke up with the stomach flu. By 6pm that evening J’s diaper was still dry—he hadn’t wet a diaper in almost 24 hours. I took him to the hospital for dehydration for the second time in his life (he was ten and a half months old) and had them look over D too, since he was fevered and fussy. They confirmed the stomach flu diagnosis and released D, but wanted to get J on an IV and rehydrate him.

Except they couldn’t. He was so tiny and his little veins so dehydrated that they finally had to go into the marrow of his shinbone to get fluid into him. My poor baby screamed for almost an hour while they used him as a pincushion trying to hydrate him.

At first, they didn’t know if they would admit him to the hospital or just treat him as an ER patient and release him. Then they wanted to admit him but weren’t sure if they should do it there or just transfer him up to the Children’s Hospital. I lobbied for the Children’s Hospital. His doctor did the same. And with friends watching my other two boys, J and I rode on stretcher in the back of an ambulance the hour and a half up to the Children’s Hospital in OKC sometime around midnight.

We spent ten of the longest days of my life in that hospital. My husband had to be called back from Wyoming and met us up there. That week was supposed to be my big vacation away from the kids week so he’d planned to have the week of but not quite that soon. Meanwhile, D was still very sick at home and had to be treated and helped by friends because I couldn’t be in two places at once. I still haven’t mastered that.

At the hospital they ran more tests on J and then scheduled an exploratory surgery to go in and see what was wrong and (hopefully, if they could) fix it. The morning before his surgery he pulled out his IV. We were at a children’s hospital, mind you. Their patients are all little and all sick in some way. No one could get an IV in my child. They even asked the nurse who puts IV’s in kids while in a helicopter in mid-air and she couldn’t even do it in a hospital bed inside the building.

If you ever want to know fear, then I dare you to hand your child over to the doctor at the doors of the operating room. I didn’t know if they could fix him. I didn’t know if he’d survive. But I did know that if we did nothing he would definitely die. He was dying already, starving to death no matter how many times I fed him. There was no other option.

His procedure lasted forever. Really it didn’t, but it felt like forever. When the surgeon finally came out to tell us he was in recovery I felt like I couldn’t even stand up. Basically, when my two little boys were tiny little embryos some of the cells that were supposed to go to another part of J’s development ended up in his intestine causing the walls at that part to be much thicker than any other part, and much thicker than they should be. The surgeon was amazed he’d lived that long without being diagnosed and fixed. His food was trying to slide through an opening the size of a pinhole. When it backed up, he’d vomit. They bypassed the damaged section so food would process normally.

They also took out J’s appendix. Because of the location of the blockage they had to cut at the tethers holding down his appendix, which left if “free floating.” The surgeon didn’t want to risk J having appendicitis at any point in his life but the pain being nowhere near where his appendix should be and thus being misdiagnosed.

We remained in the hospital another several days. His feeding tube down his throat rubbed at the end causing blood to come up. He did vomit once after his surgery. But they did finally let us take him home.

About a month after his surgery, I was feeding J some applesauce and he threw up. I panicked. After everything we’d gone through I was afraid it hadn’t fixed the problem and we still might lose him. It turned out to be an isolated incident. At his post-op check up the surgeon told me he should grow up to live a whole and normal life.

I’m sure about now you’re asking yourself why I would share my horror story. How is this supposed to make you feel better about what you’re facing?

I’m glad you asked. Life’s hard, and sometimes we all get thrown curve balls (or even get beaned in the head by a fastball) when we least expect it. And it’s hard. And it can really, really stink. I can’t tell you how many times I cleaned up sick green vomit. I can’t tell you how many nights I didn’t sleep. I can’t even tell you how many diapers I changed.

But I can tell you this: if you expect it to be a living hell it will be. If you expect to be burdened and miserable by your twins then you will be. You can’t expect them to come and somehow magically bring about a change in your heart. And I can promise you that children know when someone doesn’t want or love them as much as they should. They sense it. And there’s nothing more horrible than a child growing up feeling unloved or unwanted.

But what about you? What about your plans, your wants, your dreams? This is going to screw it all up. If you let it, sure. But if you make your boys part of your new dreams, your new plans, then your life will be fuller than you can even imagine.

My twins are 14 now. And I wouldn’t trade them for anything. I don’t regret one second. My experiences made me who I am, and I kind of like me. My boys know their worth. They know they are loved. They don’t even have to question it. They are amazing and I wouldn’t trade them for a rewrite of my life on any terms.

Now I wish to plead with you. If you and your wife truly don’t feel you can give your children the love and nurturing that ALL children need then don’t short change them. Give them to someone who will. I’d happily take them. Or, as an alternative, I have some friends who have struggled with infertility who would love to bring them into their home.

But, really, for your sake, I hope you choose to keep them. I also hope for your sake that you choose to want them. Because they can be the greatest thing that’s ever happened to you.

Giving Myself Permission

This is the kind of post I dread, because it's not the kind of news I want to share. I want to be able to tell you all everything's awesome and moving along at lightning speed and I'm right on track and books will be appearing online soon.

But I can't. I've been thinking about this for a while now, so please don't think this is a spur of the moment decision. And please don't try to talk me out of it.

I'm giving myself permission to fail. To be a failure.

I've mentioned it before, but I got my publishing contract for The Peasant Queen the same week we got the final notice from our mortgage company that we had to leave our home. That was late 2009/early 2010. TPQ did not subsequently do as well as I or my publisher had hoped, and I know that in large part it was because my ambitious marketing plan that I sent them fell by the wayside. Yes, it was difficult that they kept replacing their marketing team that whole year or so that I was trying to market my book, and ever email to them was a reminder of who I am and what I published and basically starting from scratch. I got discouraged and gave up on them. But I didn't do all the things I said I'd do either. I was trying to patch my family back together, trying to make living in that stupid duplex apartment okay--and it was never going to be okay.

And ever since then my life has been a crazy roller coaster of never having enough money, of trying to balance writing and working and my family and every time something dear to me fails to get the attention it needs. I know God wants me to write and share my words with the world, but I also know with equal certainty that He doesn't want me to sacrifice my relationships to do it.

I mention that because recently I had my daughter in for a psych evaluation to determine what was the best course of action to help get her back on track. She traced her misery and woe to the time we had to leave our home. I realized then that, as much as we had tried to make things okay for the kids, what happened left deep scars on them as well as on us. Granted, most of the kids have fared really well, but not all of them. And those shortages need attention.

On me. All of this led to some self reflection, and I realized I've been trying to fill buckets from an empty well. I'm empty. I have moments where I feel very confident and full of God's encouragement and make lofty writing and publishing goals--and then berate myself for every day I don't do anything and fall more and more behind. Because, for me at least, it's not an "every day is a new day to start fresh" kind of thing. Every day I don't write or edit that book or that project, I fall more behind on my ultimate goals for this year. And every day I feel worse and worse about myself as a writer, and that negativity spills over into other aspects of my  life.

I'm failing as a writer. I'm failing as a mom. I'm failing as a wife. You get the picture. I've got two church callings right now and can barely pull myself together enough sometimes to function in them.

When I heeded the Spirit's call to "quit my job and write" I may have read to much into it. He didn't say "quit your job and publish." He didn't even say "quit your job and stress about money to the point that you paralyze yourself and can't even get out of bed until noon."

People, I'm broken. More broken than I think I realized. And I'm giving myself permission to be broken. You have to acknowledge a problem before you can fix it, right? So, I'm taking EVERY LAST ONE OF MY PUBLISHING GOALS for 2013 and putting them on hold. Or chucking them entirely. Right now 3 published novels are going to have to be enough. I'm going to follow the Spirit to the letter and WRITE. I'm taking all the pressure off, at least what I can. It's a shortage of faith to always stress about the money, but I'm working on that every day I draw air.

I'm just going to write. For me and God. And for now let that be enough. And hope that my readers, and my friends, can understand.

Awake

I dreamed about my dad last night. This may not seem unusual to you, but it's epic for me.

My dad died 30 years ago this coming May, and in all that time I've never dreamed about him. He's never even been a peripheral character in my dreams. And last night's dream wasn't anything particularly poignant, he didn't have anything earth-shattering to tell me. What I remember is we were in a group of people and he was sitting on the arm of a chair smiling at me. Just smiling. I don't remember him ever looking so happy, so radiant. I don't even think he said anything directly to me in the entire dream.

The significance is that he was there. A few years ago, during a priesthood blessing, I was told that my dad was proud of me. It was the first glimpse of contact from him that I can remember since he died. I was also told that he wanted to be here with me, to help me, but that the Lord was holding him back. At first, I admit it, I was confused and a little hurt by that. Why would God keep my dad from me like that? I knew He did it for a greater purpose, something I didn't understand at the time, but it still hurt.

I took "holding him back" to mean "preventing his presence." Now I think "holding him back" meant "reserving him for the right time."

Lately I've been struggling more than I feel I should to fulfill my purpose. It shouldn't be this hard, especially since all the pieces are in place now, or at least appear to be. I'm not working, so I have time to write. I'm not sick, so I have energy to write. Sure, the computer isn't fixed yet but that's me being a chicken. All I really have to do is put in the new motherboard and plug everything in. (maybe part of my worry is that it won't work even after all that) And I can still continue to use the laptop even though it's power isn't reliable and it hurts my back to sit and type at it. Because of its power issues, the laptop has to be used at a desk or a table. I can't sit it on my lap and recline somewhere comfortable, which kind of stinks.

But every day that I don't get some writing work done, I go to bed feeling down on myself. What am I not doing right? What key puzzle piece am I missing? The desire is there, especially when I go to bed. The time exists.  What's holding me back? I've been puzzling over this for weeks now.

Last night I had something of an epiphany about my attitude, and went to bed all excited to get up and begin the day fresh today. Last night I also got to see my dad. And this morning, while checking my email, I got a great confidence booster from a sweet friend.

All these things aligned so perfectly to set my attitude for the day. Although I didn't get up as early as I wanted to (silly cat), I still felt like I could accomplish something today--and any movement in the right direction is progress.

Amendment

I hate writing these posts, as I'm sure you're sick of reading them. But I don't like dragging out the delivery of bad or disappointing news, so here it is.

I did not finish The Lost Princess in Feb as I planned, nor did I get it to my editor. Piffle.

If you've been keeping up, you know my Jan and Feb were hardly calm and relaxed. It was as though the cosmos has unleashed fierce darts and aimed them all right at my family for a while there. I didn't get the writing done in Jan that I wanted, which put me behind in Feb. I felt though that I could still catch up, and still finish the book by my deadline.

And then the unthinkable happened. I lost the story.

Not literally, but in my head. Everything that I'd mapped out and planned turned to mush in my brain. There was no conflict worth mentioning. It wasn't writer's block--it was something far worse. Like a writer's harrowing. Or writer's torment. I could write words, but none of them led anywhere useful. Ugh.

So, basically, I could have finished a book for you but it wouldn't have been worth reading. It would have been, rather than the climactic ending to a fun series, boring and disappointing--to say the least.

Rather than dwell on this disastrous failure, I've chosen to move forward with my plan. I know this means at some point one of my projects for this year won't happen, that in order to finish TLP I will have to shelve something else that I had planned to finish this year. It's interesting, and I thought I'd share, that I was really bothered by all of this until I spent some time at the temple on Friday. It's amazing what a reset in one's perspective can accomplish.

I've already scheduled another edit for later in the year. Hopefully, I can finish TLP in April and turn it in for my May edit deadline (which was supposed to be for City of Light). This means, of course, that my scheduled release for TLP of May 27th won't happen barring a miracle (which I don't discount, but also don't expect). I'm sorry about that, but at the very least I want to have it out a year after the release of The Tyrant King. I can do that.

But, as I said, I'm moving forward. I'm completing my project for March, which happens to be a ghost writing project I've been looking forward to for some time. If I finish ahead of schedule, I may take apart The Lost Princess brick by brick, or word by word, and see what can be salvaged.

And in the mean time I need to think of horrible, awful things to do to my characters.

Kilenya and Author Andrea Pearson

My friend, Andrea Pearson, has just had the fourth book in her young adult fantasy series published. In celebration, the first book, The Key of Kilenya, is available for free as an eBook, and the second book, The Ember Gods, is available as a $0.99 Kindle eBook until March 3rd.  

The Key of Kilenya has been in the top 100 for teen fantasies on Amazon since last May and has been very popular with young (and adult) readers. They compare it to Harry Potter along with Brandon Mull's Fablehaven and Beyonders books, with a hint of Narnia and Lord of the Rings.

To download a copy of The Key of Kilenya for Kindle, click here. Check out Andrea's blog post for other formats of the eBook.

I Gotta Be Me

"Be yourself. Everyone else is taken."

That quote makes its rounds on Facebook every other week or so. I know because I'm there. On Facebook. Much more than I need to be. (In the process of weaning myself, so it's all good)

I want to tell you something, and forgive me for going all fangirl on you for a minute, but I have this awesome online friend. I say "online" friend because we may or may not have met in person and I may or may not have held her sweet baby (when she was still tiny) while this friend taught her class.

See, my friend is also a writer. She speaks to kids. She does book signings. She's also just finished her 3rd book in 2013.

It's still February, remember?!

She's beautiful, dynamic, vibrant, energetic, and wonderfully amazing--and she's the mother of 7. I've spent the last few months telling myself I need to be her. She's a prolific writer while juggling so many other hats. And her writing is awesome. So far she has 9 "book babies" on shelves and online and one on the way.

She is author Jenni James. (I didn't post pics, but you're also going to want to check out her fairy tale series. For real.)

Jenni's like a force of nature. There's no stopping her. And that's really great and inspiring and wonderful. And I'm not her. I'm me. She's got a background in theater. I want to be invisible when I grow up. She's got it all together. Sometimes I'm good to get up in the morning. I don't want to make it seem like she's got it all together--everyone has things they have to deal with, everyone has problems. But her online persona is so bubbly and bright you wouldn't know she's suffered if you don't dig a little. I know because I've read her books. You can have so much raw emotion without feeling it sometime in your life. So, yes, along with all her stunning qualities, Jenni is also human. 

It's taken me a little bit of time, but I know now I can't be Jenni. Following her online inspired me to create this plan for publishing in 2013, to write a book a month, and really push my writing career. I've got so many books in my head if I don't get some of them finished I really may go crazy. And I so wanted to be like Jenni and be awesome.

But I'm me. And I'm going to keep plugging away at my plan and work through my demons and keep moving forward (and about half a dozen other cliches that I don't want to bore you with right now). Thing is, I have to do it my way. That's the glory of being individuals. Just like Jenni has a unique light she shares with the world, I have my own unique light to share. Sure, mine is on a dimmer switch right now but I'm getting there. 

I don't want Jenni to think she has to tone down her spunk or risk making some poor shlub like me feel bad about themselves, because that's not her problem. My feels are my issue. And I'm okay with that. Just like everything else, I'm working on it.

I'm not going to be Jenni, but I am going to be me. And that's okay.