I know I've been really quiet about it. Well, in fact, completely silent about it... BUT... The official launch date for DANIEL THE CAMP-ER is coming up soon. Like 11ish days soon. I owe you guys a blog post about the process, but I can't even think about it right now. Be patient, my peeps. Once the synapses in my brain recover from last weekend's big editing/formatting push, I'll give you more details.

In the meantime, I could reeeeeeally use your help.  

Many of you probably have seen this already on my Twitter or Facebook, but for those of you who haven't, let me fill you in. I'm trying to gather support for a Thunderclap campaign to promote DANIEL THE CAMP-ER's release. If you're not familiar with Thunderclap, basically you can allow a single post on Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr (or all three) for any campaign that interests you. When a campaign meets the goal of 100 supporters within the set amount of time, that campaign is successful and those posts will go through. If a campaign fails to meet the goal of 100 supporters, nothing happens.

With 100 supporters, the message in the widget below (see the yellow box with the Polaroid picture in it?) will potentially reach 150k people. As an indie author, there aren't many opportunities for that kind of exposure unless you're forking over the dough or you have an amazing platform (and I do not, at the moment). 

At the time of this post, I have 73 supporters and need 27 more before March 2, 2015. Would you consider clicking on a few buttons to show your support? It would mean the world to me.  
You can go to my campaign by clicking the banner below or, if that's not showing up for you, following the link at the bottom of this post. Thank you so, so, so much.  

https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/22479-bring-daniel-to-a-kid-near-you

I am the little sister in the mosaic of my family.  With that title comes a certain reputation: the spoiled one, the brat.  I'm sure my siblings would agree with that stereotype.  I even agree.  It's okay.  I've accepted it because, hey, it's okay to be spoiled.  Being the baby also comes with its own set of negatives, though.  Even though I'm mumble-mumble-mumble years old now, I'm still widely viewed as twelve years old.  

As a perennial tweenager, clearly I do not have a career.  How could I?  I'm a child!  All of my years of working with expectant families hasn't counted as a legitimate job.  Writing certainly doesn't count, either, because I write in my pajamas while my kids (and usually other neighborhood kids) destroy my house.  Plus, I like writing.  People don't like their jobs.  That's against the rules.

But writing is what I want to do with my life.  It is what I want as my career, but I don't want to call it my career because that word just sucks the joy out of all of it.  But this is what I do.  

I didn't go to college and rack up student loans to learn how to write.  I didn't intern anywhere to prove myself.  I merely sat down with a laptop and the words in my head and let them fly off into the atmosphere.  Most days it feels like I don't have a clue what I'm doing, but the words are finding other people and doing something so unimaginably far beyond me.  

This is real.  It doesn't feel real at all, but it's real.

Half of my family and a great deal of my friends don't really understand the person I've become.  They don't appreciate the long nights composing sentences and developing characters.  They don't care.  Well, maybe they care, but in that disjointed way someone pretends to be interested so feelings won't be hurt.  Truth be told, they don't have time for books, they'd rather save themselves the trouble and wait for the movie adaptation.  If I waited for these people to open their eyes and see that this is important, even as their 9-5 office job is important, I'd be waiting a long time.  Forever, maybe.  

Is that discouraging?  Sure.  But I don't let it stop me.  I pick myself up, knock the dust off my sandals, and find people who want to support me--and people I will support in return.  My Cartel.  My Skywriters. My posse.  My kindred spirits.
.  
Conditions will never be 100% perfect for me to write, and people in my own village will never fully respect me because they see me that same old bumbling kid, but I'm doing this anyway.  


What about you?  Do your friends and family support your writing or your career goals?

On July 22, 2011 I met Claire Darling for the very first time.  At the time, Claire was an 18-year-old high school student by morning, horse trainer by every spare hour after that.  She quickly became a friend of mine because she's sarcastic and self-deprecating, a good soul.  Two-and-a-half years and three books later, she and I are pretty tight.  I've fought for her to fall in love and I cried with her (over and over) when her heart was shattered into pieces.  She's struggled and she's endured.  She's no Super Woman, but that's why she's real.  Well, real is a relative term, but you know what I mean.

Over the past couple of years, I've come to adore good guys Liam and Graham.  I've loved to hate all those shady characters--Rayna, Rowan, and Maureen.  Maybe you've found the strings of your emotions tugged by one or more of them, too.  If that's true for you, then I thank you for investing yourself in my humble words.

There's so much I want to say, but so much I can't because I don't want to give anything away.  That, and I'm so overwhelmed by the day that I don't know where to begin and where to end.  

Maybe Liam says it best in the last paragraph I wrote today that brought the third and final novel to a close:  

"With any luck, tomorrow his big heart will eclipse anything he lacks. At least, this is what I pray as I stare out at the stars strung in the deep blue. I want him to find his own place to belong, because I’ve found that place for myself, a home, and I’m homesick."

Like Liam, I've found a home in Hope Creek and I'm already homesick. 

Thanks, guys, for everything you've given me.  You'll never know what you've done for me.

I press my lips together and follow him as he leads the way toward the nuns in the back.  He’s so focused he doesn’t realize a soft doll slips from one of the bags under his arm and falls to the ground.
“Liam!”  I call out.  “You--”

A girl with brown ringlets framing her round cheeks runs toward the doll before I catch Liam’s attention.  She looks both ways to be sure no one sees her, then snatches it up and into her arms.  The doll fits perfectly in the crook of her arm and a smile brightens her face.  

“Hey!  Little girl!”  I say.

She freezes and clutches the doll tightly to her body.  Her fearful blue eyes dart to me and back to the doll as I step toward her.     

“Hey!”  I repeat, coming closer.  From a few yards away I can see the tremble in her shoulders.  The little girl drops the doll and runs from me.  

I stoop down and pick the doll up from where she’s landed in a heap.  There’s a smudge of dirt on its plastic cheek and I wipe it away with my thumb.  Liam’s over talking with the nuns, and he glances my way.

“That girl--who is she?”  I ask when I reach them.  I don’t wait for introductions.  One of the nuns, the younger one with round spectacles and a pointy chin, looks like she really wants to give me a quick lesson in manners.

“I’m sorry, dear?”  The older nun says, wrinkling her forehead beneath her habit.

“There was a girl, maybe four years old.  Curly brown hair, blue eyes--or at least, I think they were blue.”  I scan the yard as I describe the little one.

The older woman smiles, bouncing the child on her hip.  “Ah.  You must mean Daphne.”

Do I mean Daphne?  I have no idea.  

“She ran from me.  Do you know where she might have gone?”

The thin, bookish nun nods towards a strand of trees near the rear of the property.  The trees are short and sparse, obviously very young, and don’t offer much shelter.  A little form huddles at the base of the one in the middle, facing away from us.

I peel back the corner of the foil around the cookies and grab a couple, then hand the tray to the young nun.  When I reach Daphne’s hiding spot, I find her with her knees tucked into her chest.  Tears streak her face, which she presses to her knees.

“Can I join you?”  I ask.  I don’t expect an answer, and she doesn’t disappoint.  I sink to the grass, leaving several feet between us.  “My name is Claire.  They told me your name is Daphne.”

She remains quiet except for a soft shudder.

“Daphne’s such a pretty name,”  I continue.  “A pretty name for a pretty girl.”

The little girl raises her head to glare at me.  Blossoms of crimson burn at her cheeks.  “Go away.”  She hides her face again.

I place the doll next to her gently, so gently I’m not sure she knows I’ve done it.  “That’s a nice doll you have there.”

Daphne brings her head up again and starts to say something angry.  Our eyes connect and I glance down at the doll laying next to her.  She looks down, too, and then back at me.

“It’s okay, pick her up.”  I say.  “I brought her for you.  I knew you would take very good care of her.”

The girl scoops the doll into her arms again and snuggles her little cheek against its plastic face.  Her eyes squeeze shut in joy.  When she opens them again, I smile.  “Would you like a cookie?”

She nods and tentatively takes the cookie from my outstretched hand.  Daphne reminds me a lot of Taran--flighty, suspicious, and upset.  Like Taran, I don’t push her.  I eat my cookie as she eats hers. When it's gone I stand up and slip away.  She doesn’t follow behind me like the horse does, but that’s okay.

I'm guilty of turning on an album and leaving it on repeat for days.  Months, even.  My husband hates this about me because he and I tend to have very opposite tastes in music (him:  Anything Country.  Me:  Florence + the Machine, which is totally a genre, by the way!).  Though it's not working at the moment, we had an iPod jack in our room where we could plug in our iPods or phones and play our music over speakers in the ceiling or on the porch.

At some point while Moe was sick, I turned on Right Away, Great Captain and left it on.  I remember walking away from  his still-warm but lifeless body on the grass and wandering back to the house wondering what could possibly be left without him.  The only thing to do was crawl into bed in the middle of a sunny day and cry.  Right Away, Great Captain crooned me to sleep on that horrible, beautiful day.  I let it play on in the days to follow because it held Moe and I together, this thread of mournful music.

Tonight I'm getting ready to say good-bye to one of my characters and I don't want to because it's like letting my boy slip through my fingers again.  My heart hurts and it feels right to play Right Away, Great Captain! again to pull myself back into the grief.   

It's no more than two lines into the first song before I can see him stumbling and feel his slick neck against my cheek.  The curl of dread tightens in my belly as I watch the vet check his pupils and slowed breathing over and over and over until he is satisfied and I know it's done.  I'm broken, with pieces that will never go back together quite right.

Sixteen months and it surprises me how sharp the pain still is and how little it takes to bring me back to that good-bye.  That is the power and wonder of art. 

Oh.  How will I ever do this? 

Liam

When I finally felt steady enough to rejoin Alfie, he'd moved on to replacing a broken fence board in one of the paddocks.  He didn't say a word about my breakdown, and I’m thankful for it.  I helped him in silence, holding the plank steady as he secured it to the fence post with a hammer and several nails.  Alfie was getting on in years, he shouldn’t be doing this work on his own.  

He took a breather after the next board was up, and stared off towards the few horses still living here.  

“Tell me about the horses, Alf.  It’s nice to see you, but they’re why I’m here.”

Alfie swiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand then gave a short nod.  “I hated to bring you back, y’know, but with Rowan out of the picture, I didn’t know who to ask.  Besides, you always were better with the horses than him.  He’s got a wicked temper, that one.”

“That he does.”  I agreed.   

We walked down the fence row until we stood in front of one of the few occupied enclosures.  “We’ve got six horses still here, but no one with any horse sense at all wants to help with them, especially the one mare in particular.”  I turned my head in the direction he's looking, toward the rear of the paddock to our right.  When she noticed us watching, the dark horse inside snapped her body into alert, her head high, eyes wide, and ears pricked.  Minus her sun-bleached coat from living outdoors, she was a nice-looking horse and would make someone a fine jumper.  The bone structure was all there, I could see it, but so was the fear.  The longer we stared, the more her terror echoed back.  Without taking her eyes or ears from us, she shrank back against the fence.

“That’s Tarantella.”

I scrunched up my face.  “Tarantula?  Like the spider?”  

“No, no.  Tarantella.  It’s a dance--Spanish, you know?”  Alfie hummed a tune and snapped his fingers as he crossed and uncrossed his arms a couple of times and shuffled his feet.  It looked like no dance I’d ever seen or probably would ever see again, thank heavens.  

With a shake of my head, I said, "You'd better stick to horses, Alf."  

He chuckled and stopped dancing, "Anyway, Tarantella... she was going by the name ‘Taran’, but some of the kids started on with calling her ‘Spider’, so you’re not so far off.”

Spider wasn't a friendly kind of nickname. I wasn't sure what to think about that.

I unlatched the gate to her paddock and walked inside.  Taran pinned herself up against the boards of the fence in response, but otherwise regarded me with curiosity.  “She looks all right,”  I said, fastening the gate closed behind me.  “So, then, what’s the problem?”

It happened then, quite literally, with the blink of an eye.  The dark horse studied me for all of three seconds before blinking her eye and charging after me.  There was no time to fumble with the gate--she’d be on me before I could have made it that far, anyway.  My only option was to climb the fence, and with any luck I would be faster than her.  With thundering hooves at my back, I launched myself at the fence and scrambled over.  Taran clamped her teeth around the heel of my boot before I could swing it over.  The old man was doubled over laughing at me dangling in a rather unpleasant position, with one leg in safety, the other in a wild horse’s mouth, and my crotch somewhere in the middle.  

“That,”  He sighed, wiping the tears from his eyes, “is our problem.”