Too scared to write, like spooked-scared

I scare myself.
There are certain scenes I just can't write when my husband is out of town.
I can't edit or re-read them either.
My husband finds it ironic that I can talk about such a morbid side of human nature -- about bodies and decomposition, about methods of murder and causes of death -- without flinching, with fascination even when he is home.
I can recount details of lifeless bodies I've seen -- what they looked like, what they smelled like -- with a certain scientific detachment. It doesn't bother me. Sometimes, my husband says, I even sound a little obsessed.
But that changes when he is not home.
On those nights, I rarely write.
I prefer to play Angry Birds.
I can't be the only one.

New agent, new energy

I was excited last year when I dropped the kids off for the first day of school.
I had recently terminated my contract with my agent and couldn't wait to find out what the future would hold. It was a scary thing -- going agent-free after two years, especially since my former agent is such a good guy -- but I knew instantly I'd made the right decision.
We were not a good match.
Sometimes, that happens.
I was careful when I started firing off queries to new agents.
I didn't want to go through that again.
Some rejected me instantly.
Others asked for full manuscripts and have yet to respond.
Others read partials or fulls and decided against representation, or were interested in only one of my two completed novels. The latter were the agents I chose not to pursue. I want an agent who will stick with me throughout my career, regardless of what genre I write. I'd hate to shelve a novel simply because it's not a particular agent's "thing."
Then came the response from Elizabeth Trupin-Pulli of JET Literary.
She'd found flaws in my mystery/suspense novel that no other reader had, and offered to reconsider after revisions. She opened my eyes to those logical errors and immediately inspired confidence. In her emails and on the phone, she struck me as sharp, honest, and experienced.
But it was that confidence that impressed me most.
She knew what both novels needed and she knew how to express that.
She had plans.
She offered strategies, visions and direction.
She knows the industry and knows it well.
She is the kind of agent who can sell my novels and steer my career in the right direction.
I like her but, more important, I trust her.
So here we go.
It's that time of the year again.
All four kids will be in school full-time for the first time ever.
I will have time to write and, as much as I will miss them, I am excited.
But this is a fresh kind of excitement.
This year, I get to write -- just write -- without worrying about the business side of things. 
I feel focused.
I feel encouraged.
I feel, once again, like I made a wise decision.
Two more days and I'm off.

The Lazy River incident

Her eyes.
That’s about all I can remember.
They latched onto mine through a thick layer of clear, chlorinated water, silencing the squeals, the laughter, the shouts, the splashing. Silencing all sounds completely.
They pleaded, but at the same time, they seemed so full of resignation.
So sad.
So apologetic.
I hesitated.
In the end, it made no difference.
But I hesitated.
I stood there beside her in the water, holding my boy’s tubular raft steady with one hand, and for just a moment – a split second – I simply took in those eyes. Completely. I was captivated. I was frozen. I did nothing.
Then, without thinking, I reached.
I grabbed her thin arm and I pulled, still locked on her eyes as they broke the surface and blinked.
I held her like that, dangling her frail, young body just inches over the surface while I scanned the crowd for a lifeguard. Once again, it was the eyes. His caught mine, which must have relayed her plea. He said nothing -- just plowed through the water and wrapped his arms around her small waist, holding her tight.
“Where’s the mother? Do you know?” he asked, finally.
I pointed to a woman standing in the open center in one section of a double raft, her back to the emptiness, laughing with an older child, who was stretched comfortably across a single raft. They were near the exit of the Lazy River.
At the time, I wasn't sure how I knew.
It came back to me hours later. I had seen the girl fall. It just hadn’t registered. The danger. The threat. I was too busy. Too involved with own kids to understand what I had seen until the current brought me to those eyes.
I watched as the lifeguard brought the toddler to the mother, tapped her on the shoulder and gave the child over. He had disrupted her laughter, her moment with her older child. She was clearly annoyed.
She demanded to know why he had her.
“Because she was drowning,” the lifeguard answered.
His voice was flat.
Angry.
Immediately, the mother turned, searching for flaws in the section of tube behind her, certain she would find a hole in the sealed bottom of the safety seat. She was haughty, anxious to blame Legoland, unwilling to accept that her failure to put a life jacket on a child less than two years old had nearly resulted in her death.
Unwilling to admit that she hadn't even noticed her daughter was gone.
The lifeguard shook his head in disgust.
He turned and waded away.
I thought it didn’t bother me.
It was over that fast.
So fast, I almost didn’t think to mention it.
But the eyes came back to me over dinner and then again when I was brushing my teeth and then again in the morning. They do not come in my dreams. They appear in the most mundane moments. In the most excited moments.
Unpredictably.
They come and they go.
The eyes and the mother’s laughter.

Preparing for the inevitable: negative reviews

I've yet to publish a book, so I can't say what a negative book review feels like.
I've had only one review on my published short stories and that got five stars, so I'm in la-la land over that.
But my journalism days ... oh, my journalism days!
You'd think those experiences would have hardened me, but newspaper articles don't really get reviewed.
They get reactions.
In the best cases, I received loads of phone calls, interest from the national media, thank-you notes and teary-eyed visitors offering hugs, cookies and flowers. Those reactions made me feel good about my career choice, like my stories made peoples lives just a little bit better even for only a day.
In the worst cases, I was lunged at by prisoners; yanked into a mob angry relatives (It wasn't even my story! I was just returning the photo.); stalked by a man who was grateful  I had made public his illegal incarceration, but who was also mentally ill and untreated (He later proposed to the female deputy who told him to leave me alone!); stolen from; cursed at; and wished an early death for myself and my future children.
But even such negative reactions to news stories can be, in a sense, a good thing.
Bad people don't like it when their wrongs or their weaknesses are revealed, especially to the general public.
They get mad.
That's okay by me.
So even 11 years of journalism has not prepared me for the inevitable -- for my first negative novel review, the day when someone takes my heart right out of my chest and stomps on it, ripping my work to shreds.
That must be what it feels like, right?
I think about this whenever I read a novel that, for whatever reason, rubs me wrong.
How would I react if my work were publicly bashed?
Could I stand it?
I found comfort recently in a post by author/blogger Beth Revis.
She has a good point.
I don't like beef.
Why?
I just don't like it, so I'll never give a steak or a burger or a pot roast a good review.
Yuck!
That poor chef will just never win over a non-beef lover like me.
That's what I need to remember.
I have to think beef.