They Call Me A Panster

I love this picture. It’s the plains of the Bowland Forest in Bleasdale England. I took it myself the day we visited the area. In fact, I love this picture so much it might actually be the cover of the next book! But don’t hold me to that. As I learned when writing my first book, The Gathering Room - A Tale of Nelly Butler, sometimes what I think is going to happen, isn’t exactly how it turns out in the end.

Let’s talk about this picture for just a minute. What dominates the photo is the hill in the background. This hill is called Fair Snape Fell and you’d do well to remember it along with the notch you can see in the ridge right about in the center!! So far it’s playing a very prominent role in the first 10 chapters of Book 2 (yes I’ve written 10 chapters already! That’s 17,000 words!) Strangely until I traveled to England and stood on this plain and saw this area for myself, I really had no intention of Fair Snape Fell even being in the next book! Oh I had seen it’s name on Google Maps. Thought it was a quirky little name in a British sort of way. Thought it might be cool to include the name somehow but I honestly didn’t plan on writing much about the area that sits in the shadow of Fair Snape Fell, let alone 10 chapters worth!! And yet….here we are!

Recently I was talking with someone about how my day spent writing had unfolded and she said to me “I just find the whole process fascinating.” That really caught me off guard, because “writing” just comes so naturally to me I don’t think of it as a process let alone one that someone would find fascinating! I just sit down and I write. I literally sit in front of my computer and watch the story unfold in my mind and I write what I see. Which I learned makes me a Panster. What is a Panster? A Panster is a writer who has little to no outline for their book. They just have an idea and start writing. They write by the seat of their pants!!

Many writers draft out how their story will unfold. Some do storyboards, fill the walls of their offices with how each scene will play out. Others use index cards or spreadsheets. There are as many different ways of drafting a story as there are writers writing them. Unless of course you are a Panster. Then you just sit down and write. That’s exactly what I do…I just write. For those that know me personally you know I’m an extremely organized person. I take organization to a cosmic level! Everything in my “real” life is orderly, efficient and structured. I am the Queen of Lists!! Everything I do has to be laid out in a List first! I start my day each morning by making a list of what I need to do that day! So how is that I don’t write that way? I have no idea.

Before I started writing Book 2, which will be the prequel to The Gathering Room - A Tale of Nelly Butler, I had a vague idea of what the story would be about. I was aware of the ancient timber circle located in Bleasdale England and knew that I definitely wanted to incorporate that in someway. I knew I wanted to fictionalize the fascinating real lives of the Blaisdell family from their origins in Bleasdale England to their arrival in what would become the State of Maine. And I knew that in doing so it might help explain how Lydia Blaisdell found herself at the center of what would become the first documented ghost sighting in America, or at least in a fictional way. But what that was actually going to look like…I had no idea! I honestly believed and still believe as I’m currently writing, that it will unfold just exactly as it’s supposed to. Is that a little weird and supernatural in it’s own way? Oh probably!

Take Fair Snape Fell for instance and the ancient timber circle that would have sat in the foreground. My original thought for Book 2 was that I would mention the ancient circle in a prologue. I would use a prologue to kind of lay the ground work that the Blaisdell family has this mystical origin that stems from this ancient circle. A couple of pages at most, then the rest of the entire book would be about their journey out of England and across the ocean to the new world. Well here I am 10 chapters and 17,000 words later and I’m still on the plains of the Bowland Forest! That’s a pretty big prologue!! The story has unfolded into a much deeper, more gut wrenching understanding of the family origins and their connection to that circle and Fair Snape Fell. Any thoughts of a prologue are now out the window!

So what’s it like to actually write as a Panster? I’ll give you an example. Tell me this doesn’t give you the chills! It did me! This week I was writing about the main character standing in the ancient circle. I can literally see it in my mind. The plain similar to the picture above only with these giant timbers driven into the ground to create the circle. As the character is standing within the circle, the sun rises over Fair Snape Fell. As it breaks the ridge the beam of sunlight shines through the notch in the center and directly into the ancient circle, similar to what we know about Stonehenge on the Solstice. It’s an awesome sight and my fingers are flying across the keyboard trying desperately to accurately describe what I’m seeing when all of a sudden, in my mind, the beam of light shines on an ancient symbol carved into one of the timbers. Wait! What? Where did that come from? An ancient symbol? I did not plan this. Of course I didn’t I’m a Panster, I just write. I don’t know anything about ancient symbols!! I push back my laptop and stare at the screen. What kind of symbol? What does it mean? How will that play out in the overall story? Who’s idea was this??

Hahahaha I’m not kidding you, that is exactly how it happened. Life as a Panster! I write what I see! So dear Readers, it appears that we now have an ancient symbol that will more then likely weave its way through the whole story! I’ll give you a hint….in some ways it resembles a ring!

Cursed Graves & Weird Feet

If you have ever lived in Maine, or even if you’ve just visited here a time or two, you are probably familiar with the cursed grave stone in Bucksport. It’s a very popular folktale in Maine. So much so that when I finished writing my book, The Gathering Room - A Tale of Nelly Butler, about a dozen people asked me if I were going to write about Captain Buck’s stone next. Although I agree its an intriguing story, I have no plans at this time to fictionalize it. But that doesn’t mean that this piece of Maine’s history, that I grew up hearing about, isn’t far from my mind! And that’s is exactly what happened when we were in England. You won’t believe this one!

So let me bring everyone up to speed on the cursed gravestone of Captain Buck. I’ve added a picture of it to the top of this blog. As you can see there is a foot very visible on the front of the stone. The folktale states that Captain Buck, as the founder of the town of Bucksport, found a woman guilty of witchcraft and had her burned at the stake. As she was being burned alive she cried out that she would curse Captain Buck with a witches curse for all eternity. Or something like that. As is the case with a lot of folktales there are variations. Some say her leg rolled out of the fire and landed in front of Captain Buck. Others say her son cursed the captain and specifically said that his tomb would bear the mark of a witch’s foot! In any event you get the idea. The tale continues on that after Captain Buck died this foot appeared on his gravestone. His family was horrified and had the stone sanded down only to have the foot appear again. Determined to get rid of this evidence of the witch’s curse they replaced the stone, only to have the foot appear on the new stone as well. To this day you can travel to Bucksport, park in the really nice parking area the town has made, and see the stone for yourself. It’s quite remarkable.

As with a lot of folktales the history and facts don’t quite match up with the story. Captain Jonathan Buck died in 1795, ironically the same year that George & Nelly Butler began having trouble with Lydia Blaisdell just a few miles away. It’s often stated that Captain Buck was an honorable man and the founder of the town of Bucksport. That he also built the first boat, but he was only a Justice of the Peace and so therefore would have had no authority to charge or put on trial anyone for any crime. There is also no historical evidence that any one was ever charged with witchcraft in what would become the State of Maine. Certainly there was enough evidence for the townspeople in Franklin & Sullivan to think witchcraft in regards to Lydia Blaisdell, but yet no charges were ever brought against her. So it’s highly unlikely that Captain Buck charged this unnamed woman with witchcraft in his own town either. There is also no records of any witch being burned at the stake in America at all. So as you can see holes are starting to form in this folktale. But the final nail in the coffin (sorry!) on this story is that this monument to Captain Buck was erected 75 years AFTER his death. His real gravestone is in another location in the cemetery and it is unblemished. So as you can see a curse from a burning witch is probably not the answer to why this stone has a foot on it, but it makes a great folktale!!

So what does this cursed tourist attraction in Bucksport Maine have to do with my trip to England? I’ll tell you! We stopped at Skipton Castle on our travels through the beautiful Yorkshire Dales area. It is truly a beautiful and well maintained castle and if you ever get the chance to visit there I highly suggest it. For those that follow me on social media you may remember that Skipton Castle was the location of my ghostly encounter with the disembodied voice that insisted they “needed” the self guiding tour sheet that my son said he did not need. So this castle already held some memorable moments for me!

As we walked around the castle we saw carvings of some kind carved into the stone walls. These were found mostly in the rooms and areas that would have been the work places of staff or servants, the kitchen, storerooms or towers that would have been manned by soldiers. The carvings were of diamond shapes, crosses, one that resembled a tulip and even some that looked like crisscrossed arrows. I snapped photos of each one because I thought they were interesting. Funny the things that people did before they filled their time scrolling the internet!

As we rounded a corner and entered another room I saw something on the wall and it caught my eye because it looked so familiar!! It was a foot!! Other then the fact it was facing in the opposite direction it made me immediately think of Captain Buck’s monument! I even pointed it out to my son. “Hey look! It’s the foot from that stone in Bucksport!”

Like the others it was carved, but this one was outlined in someway and it is most certainly a foot!! Finding it all the way across the ocean, in another country, on the wall of a medieval castle was slightly strange! Could it truly be the symbol of a curse? Could it be something from our history, a universal symbol of some kind, that meant something that we have forgotten? Or could it be some bored soldiers who needed new boots and this was his form of protest? Who knows! I did come home and research Captain Buck’s family history and there is no link to Skipton or the Clifford family that built the castle. So that rules out any connection in that regard.

Whatever it is I did not expect to find it there and honestly I was more unnerved by this foot then I was the ghostly voice from behind me that told me to keep the self guided tour sheets! This foot was just so random. So out of place. Was it a sign just for me? Was it meant to grab my attention because it would be so familiar and if so why? I guess that this goes into the file of creepy unexplained things that keep happening to me! But if you have any thoughts on it, I’d love to hear them!

This summer, if you find yourself out in Sullivan and Franklin exploring the setting of my book (and I’m hearing from people who have trips planned already!), make sure you take some time to drive over to Bucksport and see Captain Buck’s stone for yourself. It’s only 45 minutes away and the town of Bucksport is a great little Maine town! You can also stop in at Fort Knox and the Penobscot Narrows Observatory. I highly recommend that you do!

The Name I Chose Is…..

Well, last’s week blog asking for name suggestions for the main female character in my next book was so much fun! I loved interacting with you all on this! I loved reading all of your name suggestions and I wrote down every single one! Filled two legal size notepad pages! Check out the photos at the end of this post to see all of the wonderful names!

For those that read the blog and knew that I had initially narrowed my own choices down to Susannah, Rachel & Marion - it was a tie between Susannah & Marion. But they only edged out Rachel by one vote!

So that brings us to the most popular names that you all suggested. I say names, plural, because again there were multiple names earning tie votes. The two most popular names suggested were Abigail & Prudence. I must say that as I watched Prudence tally up the votes my heart sank. If there is one name I absolutely cannot tolerate…it’s Prudence! So this one was a bit hard for me to swallow from you all! For awhile there I was cheering Abigail on desperately!

Second place gave me Emma, Charlotte and Patience. Interesting choices but nothing that jumped out to me as THE ONE.

Third place finishers were Victoria, Beatrice, Cecily, Penelope, Olivia, Emily, Catherine & Hannah. Solid, but still not it.

Fourth place was pretty full. Ruth, Elizabeth, Bethany Anne, Rebekah, Charity, Agnes, Edith, Helene, Isabel and Sarah. I must say a lot of you did your homework. If you do an online search for Medieval or Old English names quite a few of the fourth place finishers show up. So nicely done my band of fellow researchers!

Rounding out the list of the most popular were the following names that all got at least two votes: Grace, Nellie, Anne, Eleanor, Constance, Hattie, Clara, Arabella, Eliza, Christina, Mercy, Margery, Violet, Phoebe, Ursula, Pearl and Adeline.

But that still wasn’t all. There were a whopping 111 other names submitted!

There were the names you would expect, what I like to call the Attribute names: Patience, Charity, Comfort, Mercy, Grace & the dreaded Prudence.

There were lots of Biblical names, Deborah, Ruth, Jerusha, Miriam, Judith, Sarah, Esther, Hannah, Joanna, Rebekah and Selah.

There were plant/flower names, Violet, Rose (Rosetta, Rosa & even a Hunter Rose!) Jasmine, Camille, Posey, and Willow.

There were the typical “English” names, Victoria, Elizabeth, Mary, Virgina, Regina, Catherine, Philippa, Beatrice, and Margaret.

There were a slew of names that just made me think of the 1940’s, even though I know originally the names are older, Bertha, Muriel, Mavis, Matilda, Beryl, Priscilla, Harriet, Alice, Lillian, Agnes and Edith.

I found my own grandmothers names on the list, Gertrude, Hattie and Hazel. Even found one of my granddaughters, Genevieve!

There were some I had to dismiss right out of the gate. Nellie and Eleanor as that’s the name of the main character in my first book The Gathering Room - A Tale of Nelly Butler. Couldn’t really use them again. And Clare is already the star of the Outlander series, both in books and on television.

There were a few unusual names that caught my attention though, Tryphosa, Naomah, Blythe, Vandelia, Sabina and Truly. Always wanted another daughter so I could name her Truly!

But the one that really jumped out at me! The one that made me say “Is this it?” came from Ellen in Marshall, Virigina. She suggested Elspeth. Just the right mix of mystical yet traditional. Unusual but still easy for a reader to pronounce in their mind. ELSPETH.

So is that the winner? Ahhh No. Nope. Not happening.

So here’s a peek into the rabbit holes I end up in while researching. A quick online search of Elspeth found that several women with that name have Twitter accounts. She also is very popular in the fantasy world showing up on websites like Card Kingdom and Wizards of the Coast (don’t ask, I have no idea!). Multiple videos on YouTube portray fantasy female slayers with the name Elspeth. I also found out that the name has appeared in no less then 18 works of fiction the least of which is Sir Walter Scott’s The Highway Widow. So apparently I’m not the only one that likes that name. Sorry Ellen!

But Elspeth lead me to Elsabeth, middle name of another one of my granddaughters. A quick call to her mother and I was granted permission to use it if that’s where I settled. Great! So is that it? No. A little more research and I found that Elsabeth is perceived as a modern variation of Elizabeth because of the Disney movie Frozen. Nope sorry! On we go.

Elisabet? No to close to Elizabeth readers would get confused. Liesbeth? No, how do you even pronounce that? Elsbeth? Prominent in a German painting from the mid 1500’s (Elsbeth Tucher) but to close to Elspeth. UGH!!

So I moved on. The true historical male figure this woman will be supporting in the next book is named Ralph which is Old English meaning “wolf”. Searched “female names that mean wolf” Belvine, Daciana, and Averle. Yuck! I searched “female names that mean magical” and “female names that mean elf.” Nothing, except that I visited multiple baby name websites and will probably be bombarded with maternity ads online now for the next several years!

Oh my word! How can this be happening to me? I went back over the two notepad pages full of names that you all suggested. All of these names! All of your hard work! Why can’t I find the right name? At this point even Susannah, Rachel & Marion seemed awful to me! I was literally back at square one.

I’m sitting at the dining room table, spread out in front of me is my laptop, the notepad with all of your names on it and a second notepad full of scribbles, name meanings, and various names written but then crossed out. My husband walks into the room “Alma” he said “My grandmother had a sister named Alma.” No I don’t like that, but I’ll take a look at your family tree and see if anything jumps out. Online, click through multiple generations of my husband’s family. Nothing. Literally at this moment my head is down on the table and I’m at a loss for how I’m going to write the next book without a main character's name!!

Check your own family tree! Came the thought. (I really need to learn to start listening to my own thoughts!)

What a genius idea. So I switch over to my own family tree and there it is! Like it had been waiting for me to find it all along! An amazing name! Given to a woman born in 1608, which would make her 25 years old in 1633. Didn’t I say my female character was in her mid 20’s in 1633? Is this just a coincidence? (You all know what I think about coincidences!!)

The name is not Susannah, Rachel or Marion, so thank you to all of you that suggested other names! All the other suggestions led me down a more creative path. Made me think deeper, opened my mind to keep searching. This name I’ve found was not suggested by anyone, but that’s okay. All of your suggestions led me there! The name is unique, yet traditional. Mystical but not over the top. The name is of the correct time period and the correct geographical area.

For me, what is so amazing about this name is it’s power as a written word. If you speak the name verbally it just doesn’t have the same impact as seeing it with your eyes. Pronouncing it out loud might make you think you even know someone with this name. I can think of two people myself! But seeing it written, it transports you to a different time, a different place. A place so far from our very own understanding, where anything can happen! Seeing it written transcends the ordinary. Written it becomes the character, a woman who is different from those around her. She is no Mary or Catherine, but yet she is just an ordinary woman of her time. She is a simple woman who possesses ancient gifts in the same way that her name, although sounding simple to us, is written anciently. Written it becomes powerful like the character it identifies.

For me, it’s absolutely perfect!

So what is the name?

ALICEN

I love it!

What Name Do You Choose?

When I was writing The Gathering Room – A Tale of Nelly Butler it was very obvious to me who the main characters were; George, Nelly & Lydia. The historical record, on which my fictional portrayal is based, made bringing those characters to life relatively simple. Their names, birthdates, etc are all real. Many of the secondary characters were also real people who had left behind evidence of their involvement with America’s first documented ghost. The handful of fictional secondary characters I needed to create, Rueben Gray, Lucy Giddings, the servant girl Martha, etc. were small and manageable. They were after all secondary characters. Now that I’m working away on the Prequel I’m faced with a dilemma I’m struggling with. So I thought I would enlist your help!

The Prequel, like The Gathering Room, is based on actual events. However we are talking about a much earlier time period. The events that I need to base this story around are there, but not so detailed when it comes to a full cast of characters, especially female characters. Women were notoriously left out of the written record. So, while I know that women had to have been involved in this story it’s not so easily spelled out for me.

Hence why I need your help. I have to create a very important main character all from fiction. She will shoulder most of the storyline in part of the book. While her male character counterpart, who is based on a real person, acts as the supporting player in the story structure. Is she a heroine? Not really. In some ways she reminds me an awful lot of Lydia Blaisdell. She will be the mystical character in this story. At certain times you may love her. Other times you may hate her. Similar to how a lot of you have told me you felt about Lydia while reading The Gathering Room.

So how can you help? I need a name for this woman! I’ve tried for a few weeks now to settle on a name for her and it’s just not coming to me. So I thought I would put a few choices out and let you, my readers, let me know what you think!

Let me introduce you to the character. She’s in her mid-twenties, still unmarried because of rumors of the supernatural that surround her. The time period is 1630-ish and witch trials and fear of witches is a very real thing in her world. She’s English and lives in the Lancashire area of England. She’s a herbalist, having learned the art from her grandmother. She heals the sick using plants and concoctions. Another strike against her during this time period of intense fear and superstition. She’s a very private person. She doesn’t socialize much, preferring instead the quite company of her immediate family or even animals. Some say this is more proof of her evil ways. She’s strong willed but also vulnerable in many ways. Her family call themselves Puritans and adhere to the new faith, although rumors swirl that she and rest of her family may not be as holy as they appear. She comes from a well established family of wool merchants. They are not poor by any means, but they are not of the aristocrat class either. She would be described as plain, unremarkable, in her appearance. As I did when writing The Gathering Room, I did an online image search of of “17th century female England” and then I scroll through the photos until I find one that resembles what I see in my mind. I then use that photo as inspiration throughout the writing process. I have done that with this character and attached the photo to this blog.

So I ask you……What is her name?

I’ve researched popular female names of the 1600-1630’s and I have come up with the names you would expect to find, Elizabeth, Mary, etc. To boring!! So I researched uncommon female names only to find a list equally boring. I have narrowed it down to a few I like. I would appreciate your opinion on this. Could you be swept away to another time with a woman by the name of Susannah, Rachel, or Marion? Or do you have a different option? Who do you see her as? You can let me know by going to the home page here on the website and using the contact form at the bottom to let me know your choice. Or if you’ve found this blog because of a social media post you can always comment on that post with your choice. Thanks so much and lets hear what you have to say! I’ll announce my final decision next week.

There Is Magic Around Us

As most of you know my recent trip to England was planned by my #4 son and his soon to be wife. They did an excellent job of taking me to places that I needed to go for the research of my next book, but also to places that would give me great experiences. One of the things they did was to book some of our lodgings in places that were considered “the most haunted castles in England!”

One of these places was Lumley Castle between Newcastle upon Tyne and Durham in northeastern England. Built in 1389 it’s 630 years old! This was the castle where I stayed in that amazing room with the four poster bed up on a dais and wrapped in plum colored velvet and damask curtains. The bedding was layers of matching plus velvet and there was even a rope hanging near the headboard that turned on the reading lights in the canopy above. Although I imagined it called the servants when I pulled on it. There was a small bathroom just off the room that was completely lined in stone and had the cutest little door. I had to duck to go through it, it’s arch shaped rising to a point at the top but still not tall enough to get through standing up.

It was in this room that I wanted to stay, literally forever. I related to a friend that evening, that depending on your belief system one of two things were happening to me right now. Either I had actually lived in a castle like this at one point in a previous life and my soul had returned and I was finally at complete peace or I have read so much over the course of my life regarding English history and castles that I was actually sitting in something I had imagined a million times, giving me that peace of coming full circle. Either way I had never felt more comfortable in a room. I actually didn’t want to leave the room when my son said we should walk the grounds before dinner. I struggled through the politeness of sitting in the lounge with them afterwards chatting and having a drink. But when discussions of dinner arose I told them that I really didn’t want to stay away from that room any longer and they could go to dinner without me! If I got hungry I would order room service.

So back I went to that peaceful, amazing room where I felt so at home. Most of the evening I just sat sitting up in the bed staring at the room. I tried reading for a while, but I didn’t even want that diversion to take me away from absorbing every single minute of this experience in this room. I wanted to memorize it so that I wouldn’t forget any part of it. Eventually the night wore on and I was getting drowsy and I knew that I need to get ready for bed. As is my habit when traveling I plugged in my sound machine and turned on the white noise. I learned long ago that hotels, motels, resorts, etc can be loud places to try and sleep, so I always travel with my sound machine to ensure that anything that might disturb me is blocked out.

After I turned on the sound machine I walked across the room to the bathroom. As I was doing so a thought popped right into my head. “I don’t like that noise.” Weird thought! Have you ever had a moment like that when a random strange thought just pops into your head? Why would I have that thought? I loved my sound machine! So as I reached to turn on the water in the sink, put the toothpaste on my toothbrush I think to myself, I wonder if ghosts are bothered by different sound frequencies. Logical question since we are staying in “the most haunted castle in England!” and although not an expert on sound frequencies I know enough to know that white noise is different from regular sound right?

I literally had no more poised this question in my mind, “Are ghosts bothered by different sound frequencies?” then the sound machine shut off. Yup I am not kidding you! It shut off!!! I’m standing there in front of the sink the only sound in the room now is of the water running. I’ve got my toothbrush still in my mouth, a little toothpaste dribbling out of the corner, I’m staring at myself in the mirror and I’m thinking holy crap! So I lean a little to my left so that I can peek out of that adorable pointed arch stone doorway into the room. I honestly expected to see someone in the room. I don’t know who or what they would look like but it was very obvious at that moment that I was not alone in that room. However there was no one in the room, that I could see, just the bed as I had left it, strewn with my books and travel pamphlets. The bed side table covered with the wrappers of the complimentary chips and candy bars that I had chosen to have for dinner instead of ordering room service. The bedside light shining softly and my sound machine sitting there absolutely silent!!!

I think I gulped and swallowed a mouth full of toothpaste! I’m not a ghost expert! I don’t study the paranormal. Until this moment I could honestly say I had never had an experience with a ghost. I’m a historian who happened to find a really amazing piece of history that included a ghost story, but I don’t do ghosts personally! However I had heard the term “telepathic” and knew that in some situations this might be how a ghost communicates. Seeing as that random thought “I don’t like that sound” had entered my. mind just before the sound machine shut off I figured whoever this was that was how we were going to communicate, through our thoughts.

So standing there in front of the bathroom mirror, with my toothbrush still frozen in my mouth I looked myself straight in the eyes and I thought “I’m sorry, but I always travel with my sound machine.” And with that simple thought my sound machine came back on and the room was filled with the sound of white noise. Most amazing experience of my life! I followed that up with the thought of “thank you” because apparently whoever I was dealing with was respectful and deserved the same in return. I rinsed out my mouth and toothbrush. Shut off the bathroom light and walked back to the bed. Well this was going to be something I’d remember for a very long time.

I sat there for a long time pondering what had just happened. As I’ve said many times, ghosts are not my thing, so was there another more logical explanation? Were thoughts of ghosts in my mind because I was staying in a supposedly haunted castle? Absoltuely! Was it possible that the sound machine shut off due to an electrical glitch that just happened to have occurred while I was wondering if different sound frequencies bothered ghosts? Possibly, although I don’t remember the lights flickering to indicate an electrical surge. And I can’t explain at all why it came back on when I stated my reason for having it. Again no other evidence of electrical surges were present.

So what was it?

Later when talking with a friend she said “It takes attention to see the magic around us.” Is that the answer? Is magic, just a word for things unseen that we cannot explain, truly all around us and we are just to busy with our day to day life to notice. Are we trying to hard to be logical, to find the answers to everything we experience? Have we lost our faith in things unseen? A belief in a part of our world that we don’t understand at all but has proven itself over and over again to be there. Did I have this experience because I literally had spent hours just slowing down my mind and trying to be in the moment of that room?

I want you all to know that I slept well that night. I slept with all the lights on mind you, but I slept well. I never once felt that the experience was of a dark or sinister nature. No it was almost as if two friends who were sharing the same room for the night were having a discussion on sleeping habits. And I’m glad my companion was accommodating!

Mythical Creatures Of Maine

One of the coolest experiences I’ve had since publishing my book The Gathering Room - A Tale of Nelly Butler, is the opportunity to read books by other authors that I more then likely would not have come in contact with had I not started this journey. I love that I am being introduced to books by local Maine authors. And let me tell you we have an abundance of gifted and talented authors right here in Maine that have produced some quality books! I’m devoting this blog post to one of those really great authors, Christoper Packard.

I first came in contact with Chris early last winter when he was trying to put together a Book Fair in Bangor. One that turned out to be highly successful I might add! He reached out to me to participate but my calendar was already full that weekend so I had to decline. Earlier this year, while I was in discussions about appearing at an event later this summer, Chris’ name was mentioned as also being connected with the planned event. That brought his name back to the forefront of my memory and I reached out to him. He and I have actually now met in person twice. We were both at a recent vendor show and I have to tell you, Chris tops me in marketing and showmanship! His book is titled Mythical Creatures of Maine and Chris dresses in a fine tweed suit, complete with top hat, round rimmed glasses and pocket watch all while sporting his meticulously trimmed beard. He so looks the part of the sideshow barker waiting to tell you the tales of the creatures he has just on the other side of his tent door. It’s fantastic!!

When Chris first told me about his book he explained that he had grown up hearing his grandfather tell stories of fantastical creatures he had seen in the Maine woods. Chris thought they were just stories his grandfather told him, but as an adult he learned that these were in fact true folk stories shared by many people. Some stemmed from Maine’s history with the lumbering industry, but a lot of them were Native American tales told by the Wabanaki tribes in Maine. Chris has a background in biology and science and he set about to research these tales and find the truth about the creatures related in them.

Honestly I didn’t know what to expect from Chris’ book. I knew he dabbled on the edge of things, similarly to how I do with the ghost of Nelly Butler. I knew of the phrase cryptozoology and it’s association with Big Foot, the Loch Ness monster and other mythical creatures. But what I didn’t expect to find was what Chris wrote in the front of the book before he handed it to me. “All of these stories are true”. Oh don’t say that to a historian Chris!

Truth be told I plunged right into the book the night Chris gave it to me. I was eager to learn about what might be out there lurking in the woods. As a child I spent a few summers at the YMCA sponsored day camp located on Chemo Pond in Eddington. I’ve experienced my own fair share of things in the woods that didn’t make sense. Maybe I had run into one of the creatures myself!

Although some of what I began to read seemed like it could possibly be true, my first indication that these were in fact mythical creatures was reading about the Dungavenhooter. With it’s alligator type body I was very skeptical that this could be living in the darkest corners of Maine’s woods. I mean what would it do in the winter? But it was the Dungavenhooter’s ability to knock people down with it’s powerful tail and remain unseen that made me stop and think. How many times have I been hiking through the woods and someone in the group, myself included, suddenly falls down? Could it have been a Dungavenhooter and we didn’t even know it? Blaming it instead on the wayward tree root!

Next came the Hide-Behind, a creature so stealthy that no one has ever seen it to identify what it looks like. You know you have one following you when you get that uncanny sensation that you are being followed only to turn around and there is no one there. Or the Wedge-Ledge Chomper who leaves behind broken rocks on the sides of trails or fresh rock slides on the side of a mountain. I’ve definitely seen evidence of these!

I read each and every chapter in Chris’ book with eagerness to try and figure out the truthfulness of these mythical creatures. The historian in me wanted concrete historical evidence that they existed in real form. And although there were personal accounts from history, like General Merriam’s account of witnessing a sea serpent, the real truth was there to be found if you only pondered it for a moment or two.

I could imagine a group of men in a lumber camp in the winter of 1865. They have worked in the cold and snow all day and are now gathered around the fire eating their meal. There is no TV, no internet, no social media. Their only entertainment is each other. As the men talked of what had transpired that day someone mentions how that dead tree branch fell out of the tree and landed on poor old Joe’s head. A young, inexperienced man who is spending his first winter harvesting the trees in northern Maine asks what would have caused a dead tree branch to fall out of a tree like that all of a sudden. One of the old timers winks and tells the young man it was an Agropelter. A fearsome ape like creature that swings amongst the tops of the tallest white pine in Maine, throwing down dead branches on the lumberjacks below. The flames from the fire would flicker and glow in the young man’s eyes as they got wider and wider as the tale got wilder and wilder. The others seated around the fire doing their best to suppress their snickers.

And just like that a folk tale was born, shared over and over again, first as a joke, then as a re telling of a comical evening when that young city boy thought he was a lumberjack. Until eventually it is remembered by many people. The Agropelter, and the others, are real until the stories stop being told. Then they become folklore, legends, mythical creatures.

A lot of our history is that way too. Stories told over and over until they become accepted. And then once no one talks about them anymore they become forgotten. Look at the tale of Nelly Butler. The description of the ghost itself was not even recorded until nearly 20 years after the fact. How many times had that story been told and re told until it was cemented into the minds of those that had heard it. And now more then 200 years later people every day tell me they have never heard of this story! I’m often asked is the story history or folklore? And I reply could those two things be one in the same rather then separate?

Just as with Nelly’s ghost, all of the creatures in Chris’ book were real to someone at some point in history. Whether that was a lumberjack having a little fun with a greenie or a Wabanaki tribesmen trying to explain the the realities of his natural world based on his belief in the great god Pamola. So they are historical in a sense. Which means that Chris was absolutely correct when he wrote “All of these stories are true!”

If you’d like to purchase Chris’ book, Mythical Creatures of Maine, and I highly recommend that you do, it is available on Amazon.

Walk Confidently Toward The Cake

A lot of people don’t know that I raised five children. I think my bio on my websites says I raised a large family. Yup five kids is a large family! You can imagine there are lots of funny stories that come along with raising that many unique individuals. And unique they are! Each one of them vastly different from the others. So, every once in a while, I plan to throw up a funny or endearing memory on this blog. I asked the kids if there was anything, they could remember that would make a good blog post. No one came up with anything so here we go….they can’t complain as I offered!  

Let’s start with my youngest son. He’s child #4 in the pecking order and he was the fourth boy in a row for us. After having three boys in three years, I decided enough was enough and any thoughts of continuing to add children to our family were stopped. Well that only lasted five years! Then the desire to have a daughter kept plaguing me and we tried one more time. In an age before gender reveals we were neither surprised nor sad when the doctor announced, “It’s a boy!”  I think I just rolled with it! I was a Boy Mom and one more wouldn’t change that!

This son, the baby in a house full of school age boys, was different from the start. I have never met a more determined individual in my life. Born with a basketball in his hand (and that’s a story for another blog) he was determined to keep up with his much older siblings on the court no matter what. But that determination transferred to his life in general or he was just born with a really strong since of determination. Either way it is an otherworldly since of determination if you want to know the truth!

Take the school spring fair as an example. I think he was about six years old at the time. The school that one of his older brothers attended was hosting their annual spring fair to raise money for the PTA. As we always did, we attended all of the events like this as we were very involved in all the school communities.

By this time, I now have five children ages 13, 12, 11, 6 & 5. The minute the sliding door on that minivan opened they were gone. Each one of them shot out of there like rockets, some headed to meet their friends, others just anxious to be the first to scope out the games and food. Soon they would trickle back asking for money to buy tickets and then off again. Occasionally one would appear asking me to hold the prizes won from the fishing game or the ducks in the pond game. I think my daughter came back with a gluey, glitter concoction sliding all over on a piece of cardboard. I was given strict instructions not to tip it until it dried! I set it down on the picnic table in the sun and hoped it dried before I had to transport it home.

In those days we didn’t keep the kids close by, especially at something like a school fair. I sat on picnic tables with the other mothers socializing and our kids were free to enjoy themselves in a safe environment without us hovering over them.

So when it was time to head for home I knew I would have to wrangle up the kids. Corralling five children and convincing them to head for the minivan was a task I was equal too and after some time I had managed to get four of them at least headed toward the parking lot. But I was unable to find my #4 son.

Wondering around the school I stuck my head into each classroom that was being used for games and crafts. I couldn’t find him in any of them and was starting to become slightly worried when I checked the very last classroom at the end of the hall. This room was hosting the Cake Walk and there was my boy standing in line patiently waiting for a turn to walk and hopefully win a cake.

 I motioned to him and told him we had to leave. He shook his head vehemently. So, I walked into the room and up to him in line and told him again it was time to go. He looked me right in the eye and said, “I can’t go yet, I’m going to win that cake.” And he pointed to the table laden with cakes. Standing just slightly higher than all the other cakes around it I saw what had grabbed his attention. It was a cake shaped and decorated to look like a basketball.

“No, no, no. You don’t need that cake.” I said thinking of how much all of that sugar would fuel the chaos that already existed in my house! “And this is a game of chance, you may not even win.”I needed to get him out of line, I had to get home and start dinner!

“Buddy, come on, we have to go.” I pleaded with him. “Mom you don’t understand, I’m going to win that cake.” By now I was very familiar with his sense of determination. When he set his mind on something he could not be swayed. And he was firm in his resolve.  He didn’t say “I need to win that cake.” Or “I want to win that cake.” He said he was “going to win that cake.” Fair enough, I backed off. He was next in line to have a go at the Cake Walk anyway so the wait wouldn’t be long, and I thought this might actually work to my advantage. Losing his dream cake at age six would be a great teaching moment. Might spare him from a lifetime of scratch tickets in the lottery! So, I backed off, stood next to the wall and waited to see him lose.

For those unfamiliar with what a Cake Walk is, there are usually 15 – 20 squares taped out on the floor in a circle or oval. Usually this is done with brightly colored pieces of construction paper. The yellow, orange and red creating a rainbow circle in the center of the classroom.  Each square has a number on it written in black marker and always in those perfectly formed numbers that only teachers can manage to write. When the game starts, the students are asked to step forward and stand on a square. Music is then played, and the children walk around the circle, carefully stepping from one square to the next until the music stops. At this point a teacher will lift a basket full of numbers written on little slips of paper. She pulls one from the basket and reads the number out loud. Whichever child is standing on that number wins their choice of a cake from the table.

They ushered the next round of children onto the squares and my son stood there with a big smile on his face. He waved at me as he waited for the music to start. I waved back thinking how I was going to have to soothe his little heart on the way home. A basketball cake was like a cake made in heaven just for my son. This was going to crush him.

The music started and I watched as his little blond head moved around the room. He took big steps as he reached his foot forward to step onto the next square. Apparently stepping anywhere on the unmarked floor was taboo. Once in a while his arms would flail out as he tried to keep his balance. Eventually the music stopped, and my son looked down at his number. He was on square number 22. He looked up at me and smiled and then turned his attention to the teacher. I held my breath as she reached for the basket. Heard the rustle of paper slips as she mixed them up all good before choosing one. Through the late afternoon sunshine that was streaming through the huge windows in that school I could see the dust particles float between her and I. I held my breath, and it seemed like it was all happening in slow motion. “Number 22!” she announced!

I watched as my six-year-old son walked right toward the table of cakes and pointed to the basketball cake. “That one” he said to the other teacher whose job it was to hand out the cakes. “That’s my cake.” He spoke. She smiled, knowing our family and our love of basketball. As she handed it to him, she said “It’s almost like it was made just for you!”  I watched as the bright orange mound of cake and frosting with its black piping and realistic shape was transferred into his little hands. He looked up at her and said, “It was.”

I’ve remembered this story for many years as I watched that little boy grow into a man, he’s thirty years old now. At the time we all laughed about his sense of determination to win that cake. There was no question in his mind that he was going to take that cake home. It was just a matter of walking the circle and waiting for the number to be called. Didn’t matter which number, it was going to be his number, he knew it even if no one else did.  That was just part of who he was, so sure of himself, even at that age.  But now, as I’ve watched him just as assuredly step into other things in his life and watched those things become realities for him, just as that cake did, I’m beginning to wonder.  

Does he create his own opportunities in life because he is so certain of what he wants? And can any of us do that as well?  Just step confidently toward what you want out of life, fully believing that you will receive it, and because of that belief you do. Could it really be as simple as that?

History Lives In Our memories

Last week I introduced you all to Bangor’s Devil’s Half Acre. I have one more thing I would like to share with everyone and then I will move this blog along to some other topics. Seeing as it’s my blog … I guess I can do that! So if you are a history buff this works out great for you. If not, hang in there, I have other things planned once I get this Devil’s Half Acre all out of my system!

As a researcher I spend a lot of time online or in libraries pouring over little known tidbits of history. I love finding the stories that no one has talked about in hundreds of years. Over the course of my journey to write The Gathering Room - A Tale of Nelly Butler, I would say I was still researching right up until I sent that manuscript off to the Editor! It was very important to me that the book be as historically accurate as I could make it.

Researching, especially historical research, is some times more then reading old musty books. Often times history lives within the memories that we all have. I’m fascinated by oral family histories, the stories that were laughed and talked about around the dinner table or on cold winter evenings. These stories never, or maybe only rarely, make it into printed form. They are the markers of the personal lives of ordinary people and in my opinion are sometimes far more valuable then the histories recorded in what we would call historical books.

When I was gathering research on Bangor’s Devil’s Half Acre I was pretty certain I would not find anyone alive who could tell me first hand what it had been like living or working on Bangor’s waterfront over 150 years ago! What I was hoping for was someone that had heard the stories passed down through families and remembered them.

I found just that person in John. He attended a lecture I gave in 2008 at the Bangor Public Library. He approached me afterward and told me that his family had lived in the Half Acre and that he knew stories that he wanted to share with me. I set a date to meet with him the following week.

John was, at that time, a very elderly man. I wouldn’t dare make a guess at his age but he must have been close to 90 or more. He walked slightly bent over, his hands covered with brown age spots. If he talked to long he got those small globs of white saliva forming at the corners of his mouth. His glasses were bifocal so he moved his head up and down slightly until he could focus on what he wanted to look at. He had lost most of his hair, but what was left he had made a rather nice comb over protecting the top of his head. His hands would shake when he held the pictures and documents that he had brought to show me. Despite all of the physical signs of his aging his mind and his memory were sharp, probably sharper then mine! He was confident in his topic and he had the paper trail to back it up.

John’s grandparents, on both sides of his family, were Irish and had sold liquor in Bangor when it was illegal. They lived right in the heart of the Devil’s Half Acre on Union St. in between Summer & Broad Streets. This is a section of Union St. most of us can’t even imagine being a street with residential houses on it. If you are traveling north on Summer St., the on ramp to access the Joshua Chamberlain bridge now sweeps through what would have been John’s family home, the street itself lying hidden under fill and beneath the bridge. Their surnames were McCann and Gillohgly and I knew from my research that they were well know to the authorities in Bangor. To have found a living descendant of this family was exciting to me!

John and I spent the afternoon together, he speaking and I furiously scribbling on my yellow legal pad. First he laid out the genealogy so that I could understand who was who and how the characters all fit into the story he was about to unfold for me. Once I had that down he moved on and I began to see the lives of these people, immigrants, so desperately poor that illegal liquor sales was their only hope of survival.

He told me the story of his father, who as a young boy, crawled under the tables, where the men drank in the bars, waiting for them to start fighting. Once a fight was in full swing John’s father would grab up all the money that fell from they pockets as they battled with one another. John assures me it was a lucrative endeavor. He laughs as he tells the story of his aunt, who had a young man interested in her and he wanted to walk her home from school. To ashamed to let him know she lived in the Devil’s Half Acre, she had the boy walk her to the Isaac Farrar mansion further up Union St. and then told him she lived there.

John had brought pictures to show me as well, all of which I had never seen before in any published archives. These were personal family photos, not only of people but of the area. There were very few official pictures taken of the Devil’s Half Acre, given it’s infamous reputation, but what John shows me is full of a wealth of information. Of all the pictures he produces it is the last one that impresses me the most. Not so much the picture, but how John reacted to it. This picture is of a man, John’s grandfather, Thomas McCann. It’s an old photograph of an unsmiling man, typical to the time period. The man is dressed in a nice suit of dark clothes and across his chest he wears a sash. John makes a point of drawing my attention to this sash.

“That’s the sash of the Father Matthew’s Temperance Society.” he proudly said to me as he tapped on the picture with his index finger. I stop and look at him, I’m waiting for more, but it doesn’t appear he’s going to say anything else. So I venture forth with a question. “A Temperance Society?” I ask him. He looks admiringly at the picture again and says “Yes.” Again I wait but he’s clearly not going to add anything more. So I push a little harder. “Thomas McCann sold alcohol.” I said as if I needed to state the obvious hypocrisy that a man who sold alcohol for a living would be a member of a social justice group that denounced the sale and consumption of alcohol. “Yes, yes he did.” John replies staring again at the photo. “But he belonged to a Temperance Society?” I finally had to ask, stating the obvious so I could make sure I wasn’t missing anything. To this John just nods.

I know from my research that Thomas McCann was arrested dozens of times for illegally selling and serving alcohol. Yet here he is proudly wearing the sash of the great Irish Catholic Temperance movement. Apparently John did not see the hypocrisy in this. So I ask him outright if he thought that was hypocritical. He paused for a moment and looked at me as if the thought had never occurred to him in all of his long life. He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. After placing them back on his face he looked at me. “I guess a man had to do what a man had to do to take care of his family.”

John taught me a lot that day, not just in the stories of his family but in that I gained a greater insight into the time period. I was already fully aware of the hypocrisy of the prohibition laws in Bangor. How the police would let one person sell alcohol but not another. Or how the wealthy could drink openly but the poor could not. What I had not been aware of was that those who actually sold the liquor were also living double lives. It was a business, they sold it but they were somehow able to separate it from their own inner beliefs.

From the standpoint of a historian John was a gold mine and I was very lucky to have found him. That afternoon as he gathered up his papers and shuffled off I watched him with admiration. He was from another time and because of that he didn’t see things the same way I did. I needed to remember that as I pursued my passion of writing about history. History is full of people that were real and they lived and they made choices and decisions based on the time they lived in. Those decision might seem strange to us now, but they made perfect sense to them. I think that should be remembered.

The Devil’s Half acre

As readers of my book The Gathering Room - A Tale of Nelly Butler know, the opening pages of this story start with Captain George Butler and his wife returning to Franklin from Bangor. The city of Bangor Maine is my hometown and it is a city rich with history that many would find fascinating!! It’s hard to find anything in the city’s past that holds the imagination more than The Devil’s Half Acre. As quoted from a 19th century Bangor newspaper “…..the half acre devoted to his Satanic Majesty.” (Bangor Whig & Courier, October 29, 1870).

The Devil’s Half Acre, at it’s heyday, was the playground for the weary sailors and lumberman flush with cash. Geographically it would be located along the waterfront. It was an area where vice was a true business venture. Cliche’ phrases, from those who somehow thought themselves above such vices, were thrown at the area in the local press. Words like lust, temptation and sin only touched the surface of the evils that lurked there. Any and all primal desires could be satisfied in this section of Bangor. Liquor flowed despite the laws. Women of all ages and all skill levels were there to satisfy. Gaming houses provided opportunities for increase or decrease of the money bulging in the pockets of the freshly paid. Riots and fighting allowed these men the opportunity to expel pent up frustrations from a life that was hard at best. Murders and suicides were common place.

Years ago I did a tremendous amount of research into the Devil’s Half Acre. I so badly wanted to write a book about this piece of Bangor’s history. But as I so aptly pointed out in a journal entry from 2008… “If I were independently wealthy and could devote the amount of time needed I could finish this book next year. But I’m not, I’m a single mom who’s first priority is to put food on the table and keep a roof over our heads.” So the research languished in my files for nearly 10 years.

They say writers write what they know, and as I began to fictionalize the story of the Nelly Butler Hauntings I realized that I could add what I knew about the Devil’s Half Acre into the storyline. The historical record in regards to Nelly’s ghost is clear that people came from as far away as Bangor to see the spirit. So it made sense to me to connect George and Nelly to Bangor. I wanted something dramatic and there is nothing more dramatic then the stories I had learned about the Devil’s Half Acre. And just like that I had a story!! The situation that Edna’s birthmother finds herself in and Nelly’s friend Lucy Giddings are all based on real people that I found in my research.

So how did Bangor’s waterfront earn the name of The Devil’s Half Acre? The late Dr. James Vickery, noted Bangor historian, mentioned that he had found a reference to “Hell’s Half Acre” in a circa 1859 Bangor newspaper called the Jeffersonian. He was surprised by such an early printed reference. Dr. Vickery said he felt the original name was Hell’s Half Acre but in polite Victorian times this could not be printed so the name was changed to Devil’s Half Acre.

There are numerous oral traditions that hold forth that the name was bestowed upon the area by a local religious leader, more then likely in a sermon warning his flock about the dangers of sin. However in all of my research I was unable to locate a name, date or any other recorded written reference to this as the source of the name. Oral history is history just the same and should be added to the fabric that becomes our local history.

What I did find was that Bangor’s Devil’s Half Acre is not unique at all. There are references to the name, and it’s companion name Hell’s Half Acre, all around the world most of them originating in the 19th century. The name is almost evenly distributed in associations with vice, mainly alcohol and prostitution. In 1806 the name was given to an area of liquor dealers in Standfordville, Georgia. In 1807 to a similar area in Miami County, Ohio. An area of rowdy bars and horse racing in Kentsville, Nova Scotia shared the name. Fort Worth, Texas gave the name to it’s red-light district. Manhattan and Chicago also gave the name to their slum neighborhoods. By the time the name became common place in Bangor in the mid 1800’s it was a well known phrase.

Because the tale of Nelly Butler’s ghost happened nearly 50 years before the Devil’s Half Acre earned its name I did not use the phrase specifically in the book. Nonetheless the conditions of Bangor’s waterfront and the people who resided there were no doubt in place long before it was officially named.

I want to end this week’s blog post with another excerpt from my journal entry of 2008. “When I do find time to write, it’s usually just an hour here or there, not enough time to do some serious researching or writing. So unless I meet and marry a man who will let me quit my job, I don’t see this book being finished anytime soon.”

Not going to lie Craig and I both laughed out loud when I came across that!! Funny how life turns out isn’t it? Proof positive that the power to create everything we need and want lies within each of us. All we have to do is put it out there into the Universe and eventually it will happen.

Parenting is not for the faint of heart

I wrote the following story in 2009 for a creative writing class I was taking (I got an A if I remember correctly!). It was later published in the The Townline Newspaper as a guest column. They say writers write what they know and this is true! The following story is exactly how it happened. I did not change the names to protect the innocence.

The click-clack of text messaging was coming in a constant stream from the back seat of my car. Viewing them in the rearview mirror there sat my daughter and her best friend, both of them, heads down, thumbs moving at the speed of light. Every once in a while they would giggled, in unison, which prompted me to ask, “Are you two texting each other?” My daughter looked up at my reflection in the mirror and with a look of exasperation, confirmed my worst fear with a simple blank stare, they were. Which meant that either they were talking about me or talking about something they did not want me to know. Damn technology.

I had put off the cellphone for as long as I could. I remember the first day she came home from school and begged me for a phone, she was seven. Shortly after we attended a school function and I saw little girls, who should have been home playing with dolls, heads down, faces aglow by the blue light of their cellphones.. They could text LOL, BFF, WTF before they could even write. My daughter was the rare child who wrote her papers spelling the word “are” correctly and not just “R”.

When she got to middle school the pressure to comply with the culture was even more intense. She used every opportunity to her advantage. One evening, after a track meet, I was late picking her up, so she went home with someone else and I spent the next three hours trying to find her! When I finally had her safe in the car she said, “If I had a cellphone I could have called you.” I was not going to be swayed, insisting that I had rather enjoyed the past three hours! She needed to remember, she was one of five children, if I lost her, I had spares.

When she turned 14 she began earning her own money through babysitting. Seeing an opportunity to teach her some responsibility I finally relented on the cellphone, provided she pay for the entire thing herself. She has never missed a monthly payment, bought her first phone and then upgraded to the pink model later. She can’t download fancy ringtones or watch movies on her phone. What she does have is unlimited text messaging, and that has created a line of communication that doesn’t involve me.

So the giggling from the back seat continued. I was taking my daughter and her best friend to the movies. The pretense of a conspiracy was grating on my nerves so I began asking the “mother questions.”

“What movie are you going to see?” I asked.

“Nick and Nora’s Infinite Play List” came the reply without a look up from the text messaging.

“Who else is going to be there?”

“Me, Jennifer and Carley.”

“Any boys?” I asked. Silence. I looked in the rearview mirror and I saw two heads come up from their phones and then they stared at each other. “I asked a question. Are there going to be any boys at this movie?”

“Well of course there will be boys at a movie theater mom! Geez, it’s not a girls only theater.” came my daughter’s reply. Oh she was smooth, nice try, but I had been a teenager too.

“I meant, will there be any boys meeting you and your friends at the movies?” I asked again sternly. Silence and then “Yes. Joey Benaossi.”

She said it with defiance, staring at me in the mirror, meeting my eyes straight on. She showed no fear. She had made a decision to meet a boy at the movies and now pressed to reveal that decision she was prepared to defend it. This was a defining moment in our mother/daughter relationship, I had to tread lightly, how I handled this would set the stage for all our future battles. My mind raced through all the boys I knew from the track team, chorus, and even the boys from when she was in kindergarten. But I could not place the name of this new boy. This Benaossi boy, he sounded Italian and visions of a swaggering male meeting my daughter at the movies was driving me up the wall. What if he was in college!! “Who’s Joey Benaossi?” I asked.

It seemed like a reasonable question to me. But the laughter that came from both girls caught me off guard. It wasn’t just a few of those, “we pulled one over on your mom!” kind of giggles, this was deep from the gut laughter. The texting was forgotten momentarily as tears spilled from their eyes as they roared at my expense. “What? Who’s Joey Benaossi?” I shouted, frantically looking in the mirror to try and figure out what was happening. My daughter leaned forward in the seat, touched my shoulder and said, “Not Joey Benaossi, Mom!! Joey, Ben AND Ozzy.”

As they continued to roar with laughter in the back seat, I found myself the butt of their joke. I had met the challenge of this first test of wills with my teenage daughter and proven that I was a moron. I would become the laughing stock of the teenage world. And true enough, every time she leaves the house now and I ask, “Who are you hanging out with?” she replies “Joey Benaossi!” and then laughs. My fate has been sealed.

True story!

Exciting News to announce today!

It’s been a while since I wrote a blog post. Last one was back around Halloween and now here it is almost the middle of March! What a whirlwind experience I’ve been having! Let me tell you!

So the holiday season was a crazy busy book selling time for me! I sold so many books we had to do another printing! It was crazy. I jumped into the craft/vendor fair circuit and met so many wonderful people! Truly it was a great experience. I love to meet people and chat with them about the book. I got to do a couple of events too. I spoke at the Sullivan-Sorrento Historical Society as well as the Clinton Library. I’ve made dear friends from both of those experiences!

In January we snuck away for our annual vacation to Jamaica and I was able to spend some time researching and outling the next book I want to write. It felt so good to be “back in the saddle” so to speak. But that quickly ended as soon as we got home and I had to return to the real world of working a full time job.

In February I teamed up with two other authors, Laurie Chandler and Claire Ackroyd, to work on marketing all of our books. All of a sudden I found myself walking into bookstores and gift shops to see if they would carry my book. Something that I had not had time to do in the fall when everything just took off so fast. Meeting with shop owners and talking to them about our books is very similar to the years I’ve spent selling advertising so I was in my element and loving it!! But again, I was trying to jam it into weekends or the evenings. There just were enough hours in the day!

Then things really picked up again with lots of emails and messages requesting that I appear here or there. Could I speak at this event? Would I meet with this Book Club? Could I do a book signing? Would I be interviewed for a podcast on this date? It became obvious that I could no longer meet the demands of the book and work 40 hours a week.

So I’m announcing today that as of Friday March 10 I will be done working and will focus completely on this wonderful experience that has befallen me! Jobs will always be there, but this truly is a once in a lifetime opportunity and I’m going to seize my moment!!

Stay tuned because I have great ideas for this blog! Let’s see if I can make them happen!

The woman was truly mesmerized

Look at me doing a second blog post this week. I just might be getting the hang of this! Well not really, and honestly I have no idea if anyone is reading them! But I’m putting out content!! Whether it’s being read or not. So what caused me to actually write a second blog this week? I just had one of those moments in life that was just to good not to write it down.

I was doing a book signing this morning at our local bakery here in Waterville. Stephanie, the bakery owner, told me that folks were so excited about my book signing! She asked if I would be doing a reading. Since I’m not a professional author, more like a mom that wrote a book, I had no idea what a reading would look like. So not really sure what to do I got up bright and early this morning, poured through my book and found a couple of examples of things I could read out loud.

At around 9:15 this morning, with several folks milling around waiting to see if I would read anything I finally announced that if anyone was interested I would read a bit of the book. So I set the scene for them and then started reading. I was reading the part where Lydia is standing next to Nelly’s grave and Asa is watching her from the tree line. As with a lot of the book it’s pretty dramatic. I had planned to read two pages, and as I was reading along I just happened to glance up. The woman that was standing closest to me had the most incredible look on her face. I only looked for a moment, as I did not want to break my stride in reading, but she was clearly mesmerized by the story. She truly looked like she had been swept away and was standing before Nelly’s grave herself. Seeing it all for herself. It was that amazing of an experience for her. And for me!

At that moment, and for the rest of my time in the bakery, I truly did not care if I sold another book. It’s one thing to hear people tell me that they loved my book. That they couldn’t put it down. That it was a great escape for them. That’s all well and good. But to look up and see that words that I put on paper have literally transported another human being to a far away place in their mind was just….well… it was pretty darn cool!

Where did my time go?

As I mentioned before, in my earlier blog, the really smart digital marketing folks I’ve hired to help me with promoting the book encouraged me to write a blog “at least once a week. At the least!” Well….here I am more then a month later writing my second blog. I guess I’m not really good at this stuff! Really what it boils down to is time, I’m just struggling to find the time.

Recently I’ve been setting up a table to sell books at local craft fairs and even a paranormal festival! I love this because it gets me out to talk to people I wouldn’t normally meet in my busy, crazy, overworked life! I’m forced to slow down, by having to sit in that chair for 6 hours or more! And by slowing down I get to meet other human beings! Real humans, not the ones on social media.

It’s during this time of interactions with people that I hear the same thing over and over….”Oh I’d love to read your book…if I only had the time!” or “I used to read a lot, but I just don’t have the time now.” When I hear this I realize we are all in the same boat!

During the past 8 weeks I’ve met a few other authors who’s books I’ve purchased. (Not lying, I bought them to see how my book measures up!!) Do you know how many of those I’ve actually been able to read…ONE. Why? I don’t have the time.

I also don’t have the time to turn the two bags of apples in my refrigerator into canned apple pie filling. Pretty sure they have been in there for over two weeks now, but honestly I’ve forgotten when I bought them.

I don’t have the time to actually decorate the house for fall. I did manage to pull the orange colored tote from the storage area, pop open the top and pull out a couple of candles from the top. They are on the mantle above the fireplace, but the rest of the fall decorations sit untouched in the tote. Why? I don’t have the time!

I have closets that need to be organized, the interior of my car that really needs to be cleaned, a stack of papers on my desk that need to be “gone through”, and the list goes on and on. But I don’t have the time!

So where did our time go? As near as I can tell there are still 24 hours in the day just as there always have been. Why do we feel like we don’t have time?

I thought about that this morning, as I snuggled into my recliner at 4:30 AM with my cup of coffee and the dogs on my lap. This is our morning routine. Susan lays on my lap and goes back to sleep, Douglas settles in next to me in the chair with is bone…and I pick up my phone to peruse the morning headlines. It was then that I realized I normally sit there for almost 3 hours doing that! And I usually repeat the same performance when I get home from work. After dinner I will land in that chair, with those dogs, and my phone for a good 3 hours or more!

Well land sakes a live that’s a least 6 hours of every day that I could be doing all of those things I claim I don’t have the time for!!

So if you too don’t have the time for a lot of things. Or you wonder where did all of your time go? Check your phone….it might be there!

They tell me I should blog!

So here we go! I was having a conversation yesterday with my incredibly talented digital marketing consultant and she said “You know Michelle you really need to blog regularly from your website.” My first thought was “When will I have the time to think up really amazing stories to tell everyone?” But then she assured me that I didn’t have to produce publish worthy pieces every day. She said it would be ok if I just wrote a little bit of something at least once a week. She said I could write about my dogs, my gardens, or whatever I wanted.

Well I can do that! So I jumped on to my website this morning and thought, “I can do this!” And now here I am trying to figure out how to add and edit this blog template onto my website! I think I’m failing miserably! But then I noticed this line below that is actually part of the template!!!

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.

Well I guess if that is the advice included in the template then I should probably go with it! So here is my first BLOG!! I can’t figure out how to change the date! So I guess we are going with May 28th even thought it’s September 17th! I’m not sure if the following four templates will also appear when I hit save…but if they do lets just go with that too ok? And if anyone wants to know what the dogs are doing….Susan is trying to hide one of her “babies” (toys) under my desk and Douglas is fighting her for it! It’s not a peaceful environment to try and figure out how to do computer stuff! Oh and it’s 5 AM!