The Quiet

““You should really write a book. It’s like you’re the king of everything.””

— First Born

This is what my first-born said as he wrote his own Snoopy adventure story a few weeks ago. And in that moment, he summed up artistry in that brilliant, succinct way that only a six-year-old can seem to do.

You see, artists are notorious control freaks. In creating art, there is a space where the creator has complete dominating control over their creation. But that feeling of power while creating, sometimes leads to a feeling of powerlessness when dealing with the real world and its laundry lists of mundane problems.

And that’s where I find myself right now.

There is a stillness that settles over my brain when a book is done. Not that first draft done. That induces a flurry of panicked energy that, quite frankly, I rather enjoy. But when I really know that a book is complete; that all that’s left to do is dot the i’s and cross the t’s and make sure that all those pesky commas are in the correct location, that’s when the Quiet comes.

And for me, the Quiet arrives around the same time as the inevitable let down from the realization that I must start again on a new project. I stand in the Quiet, admiring that giant mountain I’ve just conquered with a sigh of accomplishment and look ahead to see another equally large mountain I must climb. And in this same moment, all the voices in my head – Q’s, Ben’s, Sanger’s, Derek’s – turn on radio silence and I am alone with my own thoughts and feelings without theirs to keep me company.

And it’s lonely.

It’s lonely not to hear Q and the boys sing silly songs so I can hum along with them. It’s lonely not to hear Ben’s big, booming laugh when I see something that would make him smile. It’s lonely not to see Sanger’s shy grin flash at me when I close my eyes. It’s even lonely not hearing what horrible pick-up line Derek will use next.

These voices of mine, they keep me company and it sucks when they’re quiet. And the Quiet hurts. So, I can’t enjoy it.

But it’s a necessary part of the process because sometimes you have to pay the bills. You have to Kosher the kitchen for Passover. You have to make a fucking diorama for a first grader. You have to figure out how to use Instagram and make book trailers for your newly finished book and catch up on your reading. And in between, you have to face that great big scary decision you’ve been pushing aside and do something about it. And you have to take action, otherwise you’ll just sit on the couch paralyzed.

Action is easy when you’re the master of the universe. That’s what my son was getting at. When you write a book, you are the ruler. What you say goes. Not so much in the real world. In the real world, no one has to listen to me or do what I want and that total lack of control sometimes leaves me spinning and scared and alone in the Quiet to which I’m no longer accustomed.

If Derek were speaking to me at the moment, he’d tell me that I’m not really powerless in my real life, no one is. He’d make me say his mantra (which maybe one day he’ll want to share with the rest of you, but not just yet) and then he’d remind me that real change is fucking hard. Real change takes will. Real change takes strength. Real change takes determination. And real change takes resolve.

And that’s the problem I face: Change is coming, both in the world that I create in my books and the one where I actually live my life. The fact that I stand at an astral crossroads where I must do something disagreeable both in the world I control and in the one I do not, is not a coincidence. I think I planned it this way on some level.

In both worlds, it’s for the best. But there’s no way to predict how an action is going to ultimately end up out here in the real world.

And I hate not knowing the ending. As soon as I’m emotionally invested in a book, I read the last chapter before continuing. I’m one of those people.

Don’t look at me like that. I told you 600 words ago I’m a fucking control freak. And if you’ve read just one of my books, you already know I write almost exclusively about people like me: Q’s a control freak, too. So, is Derek. So, is Sanger. Yvie’s worse than all of them combined. But not Ben.

Ben doesn’t need control to feel powerful and it is beyond frustrating. His ability to just let things go. Hell, he even let Q go, once. I’m trying to think what Ben would say, if he was talking to me at the moment. He’s being stubbornly silent, which is why I’ve had to take a break from working on the next Clementine Toledano Mystery. Hard to rewrite a lame-ass first chapter when the character that should be doing most of the talking isn’t talking to you.

But there’s a certain level of powerlessness that even Ben isn’t willing to accept. And maybe that’s who’s been whispering in my ear to take a break from writing and get some real tangible things done in my own life. Q is the dreamer. Ben is the practical one, after all.

Posturing

I am a newly converted health fanatic. And like all new converts, I can be a little overzealous and obsessive. Having felt so unhealthy and miserable for so very long does tend to pour gasoline on the paranoia fire that burns in my skull telling me that if I’m not careful, I will wake up one morning and suddenly be twenty pounds on the wrong side of a healthy BMI and feeling like an old woman again.

In my latest quest to encourage my body to be as healthy as possible, I took advantage of the new 3D body scanner at my gym. It spat out a bunch of numbers that would seem to indicate that I am a very healthy person for a 35-year-old woman. Which means I’m really healthy for a 43-year-old woman. Yay me.

Except for one thing: my posture.

The fact that my right shoulder is higher than my left wasn’t a surprise. I have scoliosis. So, I’m always going to have that oh-so-trendy-for-1987 slacker lean, no matter how hard I try not to (eat your heart out, John Hughes). But then came the bad news. My head is almost 4” out of alignment, which means I’m looking down when I should be looking out. Staring at what’s immediately in front of me, instead of looking up that beautiful, expansive horizon.

And that, my friends, is exactly what I’ve been doing for so long, I’m too embarrassed to say it out loud.

When your back is it to the wall, and things are catching fire all around you, what do people tell you to do?

Keep your head down and just keep moving forward. Because sometimes that horizon isn’t bright and beautiful and full of possibilities. Sometimes there’s a big fucking hurricane filled with sharknados heading your way, and you know it’s coming, and everything on the road in front of you is telling you to stop, reassess, and try another path, but you doggedly, stubbornly stick to your guns, because goddamnit, that’s the path you’ve chosen.

I’ve never been a superstitious person. I don’t believe in signs. I don’t believe in charms. I’ve broken mirrors and think black cats are the cutest of felines. But I do believe in G-d. And I do believe that if you pay attention, sometimes, if you’re really heading into the shit, Adonai will shout at you to stop what you’re doing and maybe reassess for a minute. The problem is that most of us - myself included - don’t listen until it’s too late.

There’s an old joke that goes something like this:

Once a very religious man was in his home, watching the news and the weatherman said, “Everyone in the city needs to evacuate. There’s a storm coming, and it is going to bring a flood.”

The man looked at his dog and said, “Don't worry. G-d will provide for us.”

As the water began to rise around his home, his neighbor pulled up to the man's  front door in a boat.

“Get your dog and get in!” the neighbor shouted. “I’ll take you to safety.”

The man just smiled and said, “Don’t worry. G-d will provide for us.”

The water rose higher until the man had to climb onto his roof to escape it. Soon a helicopter came along, hovering overhead. A soldier shouted into the megaphone, “Climb the ladder. We’ll take you to safety.”

But the man waved him off and yelled back, “Don’t worry about me. G-d will provide.”

The water soon overtopped the roof, and the man’s loyal dog was swept away by the current, but somehow managed to make it safely to higher ground. The dog howled at the man to take the same chance, but the man just laughed to himself as the water rose up to his neck. “Silly old dog. G-d will provide for me.”

And so, the man drowned.

When he got to heaven, he was pissed. And he stormed through the gates and shouted at G-d, “I believed in you. I had faith. And you let me drown!”

G-d replied, “I sent you a weather report, a boat, a helicopter, and a loyal dog to guide you to safety. You just didn’t listen.”

Sometimes keeping your head down and believing that the path you’re on will somehow lead to a good destination, despite all evidence to the contrary, is just fucking stupid.

And so it’s been in my own life. Without getting into too much detail, trust me when I tell you that G-d sent me a lightning strike, a mild civil war, and a blood curse to try and stop me from the path that I insisted was the only one for me.

When lightning struck, I told myself I was being superstitious. It didn’t mean a thing. I was happy, wasn’t I?

The tempest in a teacup of a civil war? I just need to be more convincing. I needed to win. And I did win that fight to lasting damage of everyone involved. Yay me.

The blood curse? I’m not going to lie, that one about did me in. That one brought me to my knees, but I told myself, these things happen and not to read too much into it.

Hindsight’s 20-20, but there you go. That’s what you get for keeping your head down and looking directly in front of you instead of at what’s looming on the horizon.

So, after actively not paying attention to the VERY BIG SIGNS that I can now see were VERY CLEARLY POSTED along my path towards self-destruction, now my head is up, and my eyes are wide fucking open.

Now that I’m cognizant of my poor posture and have been straightening my shoulders and my neck, I have to admit, it makes me uncomfortable. I feel so visible, so tall, so powerful, so very alert.

And while being visible, tall, powerful, and alert are all marvelous things, they mean that I am out there in the world and it makes it difficult to hide from it. And it makes me wonder if somehow my subconscious wasn’t trying to tell me all of this four years ago when I created Ben Bordelon.

Ben. Six-foot-five, gorgeous, striking, big, beautiful Ben Bordelon. Why did I make him so fucking tall?

Between you and me, I used to think I knew exactly why. The thought process went a little something like this: you see, once I knew this man…

[Before any of you rush off to buy plane tickets to New Orleans to try to find out if Ben Bordelon is a real, live, actual man… Stop. He’s not.]

…. but once I knew this man. And while he was very tall, the way he carried himself made him larger than life. He was always the biggest thing in the room on and off the stage. And it was a remarkable thing to behold. I used to call him the Collector of Sighs, because that’s what followed him wherever he went. A collection of sighs from women who wanted to be his girlfriend, men who wanted to be him, and me, who just sighed in appreciative wonderment that such a person actually existed.

It was that presence, that towering, magnetic charisma that I wanted Ben to have.

But now I think it was more than that. Bad things have happened to Ben, but he has a center. A core that is so solid, it holds him upright, vigilant for opportunities and dangers alike.

I think I wrote him to remind myself to stand up. To smile more. To love myself more. To carry the weight of what was happening to me with a little more aplomb and self-worth.

Why? Because of this…

In That Old Devil Sin, Ben says this to Q:

“Baby, everyone’s broken somehow. It’s how you carry it that matters… I smile because I like my business to be private. No one tries to figure you out when they think you’re walking in the sunlight.”

Just between you and me, that last bit is something my friend, the Collector of Sighs, once told me. I wasn’t handling a bad day very well, and that’s what he told me. And now that I’m neck deep in the flood waters of this Sharknado Hurricane I’ve strolled into, that’s what I remind myself to do every day.

Stand up. Head high. Smile. Be kind. And look for that flashing neon sign that’s got to be around here somewhere, pointing me to a better path

The Zeroing Out

It’s springtime, which means one thing in a reasonably practicing Jewish home: cleaning. Like obsessive, Silkwood level cleaning. Every nook. Every cranny. Every closet. Every drawer. No exceptions.

The desperate search for every trace of leavening, or chametz, to prepare for Passover.

The psychological metaphors for this search are so multifaceted that it’s hard to imagine even the least self-aware Jew on the planet not getting something from this exercise in humility.

Removing that which puffs us up. Searching the narrow places in our homes for it. Working like a slave to remove it. Creating a blank slate.

Now that I live a grain-free existence, this cleaning is really more metaphoric than necessary. If it wasn’t for my love of shellfish and pork, I’d keep Kosher for Passover year round. Not by choice, mind you, but since my body decided that corn, wheat, and dairy are the enemy, and rice and beans are really more frenemies than friends, I’m locked into a new way of eating. If I could kick my love of traif, I could keep Kosher without any effort at all. But I do love me some shrimp, y’all.

When I did have actual, real chametz to remove from my home, I have to admit, that I cut a few corners. Three, to be exact: my studio, my vanity, and my sock drawer.

The remnants of my music studio were a dusty disorganized mess and cleaning it meant facing the fact that I no longer make music. That was not a fact I wanted to face, so I simply closed the door on the first day of Passover and didn’t open it until it was over. A perfectly halachically acceptable practice. That it allowed me to avoid the self-reflection cleaning that hot mess would have caused, allowed me to avoid a very narrow place in my life.

But last summer, without warning, and without contemplation, I announced to my family that we were remodeling the studio over the Fourth of July weekend. We took everything out. Ripped out the carpet. Installed a new tile floor. Painted the closet and turned it into a reading room and a library. I wired up all my gear. We pulled the foosball table out of storage and, by the beginning of August, the narrowest place in our home became a functional, usable space for the entire family.

And I faced those years of ignored chametz while grouting that fucking floor.

I’d taken the day off of work to do it. And while I was on my knees, pushing the rapidly drying grout into all those nooks and crannies and feeling lower and less accomplished and more of a failure by the minute, someone knocked on my front door.

My dad. In his work clothes, with a bucket in his hand. My mom had brought me another bag of grout in the middle of my rapidly compounding failure and told him his daughter could use an assist. We finished the floor in about an hour, silently working on the last third and cleaning up all the stains I’d made.

Post-renovation music studio

When you hide from a narrow place full of darkness and so much bad juju for so long, sometimes you need help to finish pushing out the darkness and letting in the light. And when it was done, this marvelous thing happened, I felt better. It was as if making that physical remnant of my old life whole again, made me whole again and I was ready to face the other narrow place in my life: my not-so-narrow waistline.

I stopped drinking alcohol. I cut out dairy. I did the Whole 30 diet and I worked out four times a week. And now, here we are, seven months and forty pounds later and it’s time for the search for the metaphoric chametz to begin. And this year, I started with the corners I used to skip.

I cleaned my vanity this weekend. Organized my necklaces and creams and tossed old lipsticks I don’t wear. Spent an afternoon untangling all the things I use to puff myself up and make myself feel beautiful on days when I can’t stand to look at myself in the mirror. And it was while I was untangling the dozens of necklaces that I rarely wear that I realized how I’d been cheating all these years. How I’ve been honing denial and avoidance into an art form even while cleaning for Passover.

And it stops. Now.

Q had the same problem. Still does, to a large extent. Sometimes I’m working on a Clementine Toledano Mystery and I think nobody could be this obtuse. Then I remember the closed door to my music studio with a sign that read ‘Do Not Open during Pesach’ and I realize that most of us are exactly that obtuse.

In That Old Devil Sin, Q avoids telling Ben that she’d been raped ten years prior until she absolutely can’t avoid it any longer. She describes how it changed her, like this:

“You know, it’s a funny thing, when something bad like that happens, it changes you so fundamentally, it’s hard to recognize the person you were before. I remember that girl. I do… She was fearless, so fucking fearless.”

I wrote that four years ago and it’s taken me until this past weekend to realize that I was writing about myself. The bad thing that happened to me wasn’t as dramatic as an attack, but it hurt me in ways that I refused to admit.

Losing New Orleans to Katrina and losing my band at the same time.

That’s what I used to think pushed me to the brink. But that wasn’t the bad thing: it was the crushing disappointment of failure.

Not the failure itself. The loss of potential. The weight of knowing that future that I envisioned for myself was never going to happen.

In audio, there is a term for starting over: Zeroing Out. When you zero out a piece of gear (usually a mixer), you return all the functions to their default state so that you can start a new mix.

And that’s what the search for chametz does. It resets your home. Resets your mind. Resets your disappointment and your frustration and reminds you that every day is a chance for a new beginning. You can’t avoid the narrow places in your life, they will always find a way to bring you to your knees eventually.

Tonight, I'm tackling my sock drawer.

Jealousy

I recently stumbled across another set of murder mysteries set in Louisiana. Within 15 words of reading the description of the first book, it became overwhelmingly clear that the author was not from Louisiana, nor had they spent any significant amount of time here beyond the odd episode of True Blood or, perhaps, a few chapters of Interview with the Vampire.

Before you cry “foul” and tell me how arrogant I’m being for making that assumption, the word “crayfish” was the 16th word in that book description. People in Louisiana do not raise, consume, say, or write about “crayfish.” We lovingly raise, copiously consume, say with relish, and write volumes of poetic love about “crawfish.” There’s a fucking Elvis Presley song that teaches the proper pronunciation of this delectable creature, for the love of shellfish.

As I stared at this novella’s 284 reviews with growing animosity and an endless cascade of “This motherfucker. This motherfucker, right here” falling from my lips, I realized that I was jealous.

I haven’t felt jealousy towards another artist’s success in over a decade, so it was little off-putting. And I know that success has very little to do with talent, or in this case a fucking five second Google search. But there I was, jealous.

While bemoaning this discovery to a friend, he said this, “Comparing yourself to others is a benchmark for failure… or at the very least, disappointment.”

(I know I’ve said this before, but I am surrounded by brilliant friends and thank Gd for that.)

And then it hit me. That’s what I was doing. I wasn’t jealous of this author’s success at attracting a readership. I was comparing myself to them, and all my fears - all those fears I tell myself aren’t real and all those fears I speak a mantra daily to overcome - were bubbling up to the surface in a single mind-killing scream: I am not good enough.

Isn’t that always the fear? That’s the one. The one that gets everybody.

I’m not smart enough.

I’m not talented enough.

I’m not pretty enough.

I’m not thin enough.

I’m not young enough.

I’m not good enough.

But the question we never ask ourselves, at least I don’t, is good enough for whom?

Who is this mythical person we’re trying so hard to impress? And, more importantly, what makes them so fucking special that we’re trying to impress them?

Jealousy is an irrational emotion. It’s not easily contained, and it’s even harder to explain but at the root of it is just self-doubt. Whatever makes you insecure; whatever portion of yourself you still haven’t learned to accept; whatever deep, dark fear keeps you up at night; I will guarantee you that at some point in your life you have felt jealous because of it.

I’ve spent a good portion of the last five days being jealous. It was like once that book’s blurb and those 284 reviews tore a little hole in my confidence, all those fears came tumbling out like Pandora’s fucking box.

And it was deeply illuminating.

In the last five days, I’ve found myself being jealous of lineless faces, stretchmarkless tummies, job promotions, job offers, happy marriages, childless friends, stay-at-home parents, and authors who don’t know their crawfish from their crayfish, just to name a few of the things that spiraled me down into a pit of depression that I didn’t know if I was going to rise back out of, faster than a knife to the gut and just as startlingly painful.

You don’t get over your insecurities. You learn to live with them and silence them.

In Chasing Those Devil Bones, Q tells Derek:

“You have to shove that darkness back into whatever prison you let it live inside of you and lock that shit back up. Lock it up tight and don’t let it hurt you anymore. Listen to me now. Don’t let it get a foothold. That’s what it wants. But you’re stronger than that, aren’t you? You’re braver than it could ever hope to be because you’re still here. So, let that shit go and don’t let it take anything else from you. Ever.”

And she’s right. And that’s what my friend meant, too. When you are jealous of someone, you are comparing yourself to a single portion of who they are, and you’re not seeing the big picture. You’re also leaving yourself out of the equation. You’re stacking the deck against yourself: Here’s everything they do right and here’s everything I do wrong.

It’s a pointless, futile exercise and somehow you have to learn to let that shit go.  

The Tipping Point

Once I was in a band called Hadji. Looking back on it, we were a great band. We did amazing things that nobody in the New Orleans music scene was doing 18 years ago. Don’t believe me?

Check it.

So, we did what bands did back in 2003. We packed up our gear, said goodbye to our friends and moved to Los Angeles. And we worked, and we struggled, and then it happened: that magical tipping point.

We showed up at the Derby on a Saturday night, and it was packed. The opening band was perfect to hold the crowd. There was a film crew there wanting to do a documentary on us. Us!

As we walked to the stage to set up, the soundman came up and told us we were moved to the last position on the bill. I started to argue. This is our slot. We’re supposed to go on now. This is our moment.

But I lost the fight. The band that was supposed to play last was on “tour” and said they needed to hit the stage right then and there because they had a long drive ahead of them. They were lying, of course. They wanted to play in front of 500 enraptured people. The people of Los Angeles are not well known for their attention spans.

Unfortunately for all of us, the out-of-tune, combination Reggae-Punk musical stylings of said band cleared the bar  exactly 90 seconds into their first song.

And that, my friends, was that.

You don’t get a big moment like that twice. That was ours, and we lost it. Things fell apart pretty quickly after that.

It’s a hard thing to lose a dream like that. To have to let go of something you’ve put so much of your blood into. But we had to. Our drummer was battling some demon we didn’t know about until it was too late. Our bassist needed to make ends meet for his family. And I was tired.

By the end of the year, a hurricane wiped out our home city and stranded us all in Los Angeles. So, I went on, on my own, for about two more years. Making film scores. Doing remixes. Mixing records for other people. But my heart wasn’t in it anymore. I just didn’t want to continue.

But when you’re a creative creature, you can’t let go of that energy easily. I hit the pause button for a while, throwing my energy into learning everything I could about Judaism. Thinking G-d would have some answers I didn’t.

Then I tried gardening. I loved it; until I didn’t. I moved on home improvement, which frankly I only enjoy in small, concentrated bursts. I tried photography for like a nanosecond, but that really isn’t my bag. (Don’t believe me? Check out my Instagram feed.)

And then, one magical morning in November of 2012, I rediscovered writing. I remember how bad traffic was as I made my way to my office that morning and I was really desperate for a good book. The last Harry Dresden book had left me thirsty for more (hint, hint, Jim Butcher. Come on, already, dude) and I couldn’t find anything to scratch that itch.

Then other itches bubbled back up to the surface. The band itch. I missed my band. Missed my bandmates even more. I thought how long it had been since I’d spoken to our original drummer. He’d quit years before the move to L.A. to make his own move to New Zealand. I thought about those sweaty, dusty nights, packing up the U-Haul for out-of-town gigs, carrying that fucking drum coffin of his down the steep steps at our rehearsal warehouse and dropping it into the trailer.

“She was a good ol’ girl, but I just had to go and kill her.” –Kyle Meades, ladies and gentlemen.

And that’s when it happened. That lightning spark of an idea. That flash of creative stimulation: what if a dead body had tumbled out of that case?

And Clementine Toledano was born.

I wrote the first two chapters of what would become That Old Devil Sin in an afternoon. A flurry of words came rushing out. I could see everything so clearly.

I’m not going to lie, the first few characters and places in that book were initially inspired by real people and places I know. Until the characters came alive all on their own and took their own form. But that moment was the beginning of me really starting over and building myself back up.

Before that, I’d lied to myself about being ok after Hadji broke up. I wasn’t ok. I wasn’t anywhere near ok. Everything I was, all the mythology I’d built up around who I thought I was, was centered around being the leader of that band. And when it was gone, so was my center of gravity.

And it’s fucking tough to live without a center of gravity, y’all.

It’s even tougher to build a new one.

Now that I have FOUR books under my belt, (did you catch that? That’s right, The Devil’s Luck is D.U.N. done. Just five more chapters to edit and off to beta!) I’ve built a new core. And it isn’t based on a mythology. It’s based in reality.

I am more than a musician. I am more than a writer. I am more than any one thing that defines me, and I do not lie to myself.

That last part is key. While I daydream of one day quitting my job and writing novels the whole world will read, I know that the likelihood of this ever happening is very small. That doesn’t mean that I don’t try to write the best novel I can. It doesn’t mean that I don’t plan marketing strategies and try to make that dream a reality.

But it does mean that I don’t let the rise and fall of my books’ Amazon rankings define who I am.

Having talent does not guarantee success.

But at some point in time, all the hard work and positive thinking and self-actualizing visualization have to come to a head and raw, dumb luck will tip the scales one way or the other. It’s just the way the universe seems to balance itself.

The trick is not to let it tip you over.

Scandalous

From the outside looking in, I’ve led a marginally scandalous life. I’ve done drugs. I’ve partied with rock stars and gone skinny dipping on a private beach in Miami, also with rock stars. I’ve had sex with strangers and gotten into a bar fight (although I’m still not entirely convinced the latter was my fault… I mean, he was really asking for it).

But I’ve never considered myself a scandalous person. On the contrary, I think I’ve led a pretty normal life. I went to University and got a degree. I’ve worked a full-time job since I was eighteen, sometimes two at the same time. I have a good relationship with my parents. I don’t have any tattoos or addictions. I’ve never been arrested. I got married. I had a kid. I have a mortgage that gets paid every month.

Unfortunately, the closer I get to societal norms of good behavior, the part of me that loved my wild nature best feels trapped in a cage of my own creation. I know what you’re thinking: Mid-Life Crisis Alert.

And maybe you’re not far off, but if I’m being honest, this shit started over a dozen years ago. The war between my socially acceptable self and my wannabe scandalous nature. The former won the  fucking knock-out drag-out fight in my mid-thirties. Won it so handily that it took almost ten years for my inner wild child to regain consciousness.

To combat this crazed maniac that lives beneath my skin, I write books. Books full of people leading scandalous lives and doing scandalous things. But at the center of this hurricane of debauchery is Q. Q, who is a nice Jewish girl at heart. Q, who gets tamed and settles down with a good feminist husband.

I often wonder why I’ve chosen this path for her. I’m not going to lie. Shit’s about to get very real for my heroine, but that urge to push her into a “normal” life is still so alluring. And honestly, it’s making me examine my own gender bias. It makes me wonder if Derek Sharp or Charlie Bourdel were the centers of my stories, would I be pushing them towards marriage and a quiet life of quiet desperation?

Society isn’t a fan of women who behave badly. There are volumes full of names for women like me. Or rather, the woman I used to be.

Being sexually autonomous is equated with promiscuity which gets you labeled whore or slut.

Being ambitious and career-focused is equated with being conniving which gets you labeled bitch or cunt.

Standing strong for your rights is equated with not knowing your place or, worse, bucking societal morays which gets you labeled dyke or femi-nazi.

And I could go on, but you get the idea. What I’ve come to realize, though, is that all these insults and labels get boiled down to one thing: A woman’s instinctive scandalous nature.

There is a popular saying that well-behaved women rarely make history. And  that is true. Well-behaved women rarely make interesting   heroines, too.

So, fear not, dear readers, Q has all kinds of scandalous adventures in store for her. But when she’s ready and tired of all this death and mayhem, I think I may just go ahead and give her the happy ending everyone deserves.

“Well-behaved women seldom make history.”

— Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

The Sleeping Dragon

And here we are, one week out from the big day and anyone who’s marginally aware of the emotional world around them can feel it. That rise in the self-indulgent, seemingly out-of-character behavior of the populace at large. And because Carnival Season was so short this year (it follows the Lunar Calendar, so it changes year to year), it is concentrated like a motherfucker.

I love this week. I hate it, too. I’ve always been a champ at ascetic self-denial. But give me a taste of pure pleasure, and I’m as bad as a smackhead.

And this week, the world around me is screaming for me to go ahead and give in. Everyone else is. Disciplined dieters are devouring their weight in King Cake from Gambino’s. Teetotalers are, at this very moment, consuming their fifth hurricane after smoking their very first joint or eating a random hit of Ecstasy. The prudish are fucking their brains out and flashing body parts they don’t usually admit to having and blush to show to their family physician. And me? I’m hanging on by my fingernails.

I tell myself that Carnival season is a family event. I take my kids to parades, and catch the best throws, and I don’t drink, and I don’t eat King Cake, and I don’t do public exhibitionism. But good lord. It’s difficult not to want to.

Everybody needs a vice. It’s a human need. So, what do you do when every single one of your vices has been systematically taken away from you? What do you do when drinking makes you physically and spiritually ill inside? What do you do when a bite of King Cake would put you into anaphylactic shock? What do you do when you’re a grown ass woman who knows and understands that the Internet is forever and has only every flashed a nipple whilst breastfeeding a child?

I tell you what you do; you make the best of it. You enjoy the spectacle and try not to be jealous, year after year after year. But then, you get a taste. A tempting, tantalizing taste. And that sleeping dragon wakes up and consumes your entire being and it’s all you can do to not claw your fucking face off.

That is the power of collective hedonism. It’s societal permission to break every social moray you’ve been trained from childhood to follow. And you know what? That ok.

It’s ok to drink too much, every once in a while, and remember how bad a hangover feels. It’s ok to eat too much and gain a few pounds and take a break from the gym, so your body remembers how good it feels when it’s being taken care of. It’s ok to let your guard down and kiss a stranger or expose a little too much skin. You’re a grown-up. It’s your body. You do you.

As for me? All of my vices have been removed from my life either with intent or by consequence of my actions. And to be honest, I don’t miss most of them. Just the one. The big one. And, of course, that was the one I got a taste of the other day. A tantalizing glimpse of a beautiful afternoon filled with the one sin that I will never stop desiring.

Escape: my one, true vice.

You see sweets, booze, drugs, and sex in moderation may all be depraved in various ways, some more than others, but those are for chumps and children. You want a bad habit? Pick up the high you get from real escape. Not that temporary buzz from having a drink or seven to forget your troubles. I mean running far away. Starting over as a stranger. Just you and a couple of suitcases and the open road full of possibilities.

That, my friends, is a real high. The rest? It’s for the weak.

But when you build a life, you put down enough roots to bind your feet where they stand with iron chains and multiple padlocks. And, man, that hurts sometimes.

Gnawing off that foot seems like a better idea than standing still and waiting to see what happens next. Or worse? Using your calm intellect to fashion a few extra links in that chain, or even finding a way to unlock the trap yourself so you can walk those few steps away to see a new vista. But, if I’m being honest? I’m nibbling on my ankle right now and have been ever since I was given the glimmer of a glimpse of the key to the chain that’s holding me in place.

And the key knows it and has total control over me right now. And, while I hate giving up control, I crave it, too. That raw terror just adds to whatever thrill I’m seeking. An afternoon of escape? I can resist. An afternoon of escape and giving someone else the wheel? Now, that is making the dragon that sleeps inside me coil around my spine and blow fire into my blood and bring me to my knees, willing to beg for my taste of temptation.

The convergence of decadence, hedonism, debauchery, and wantonness has a hold over this state and me. And it’s fucking awesome.

I wish I could tell you there is a moral lesson in all of this. I know you’re begging for it. That punishing resolution to all this bad behavior. You’ve been trained to want it. That’s the defect that all of us have been given by our Puritan founders. They’re screaming in your ear using your own inner voice right now. Can you hear them? They’re shouting, “You did something sinful. Where’s your scarlet letter?”

But you’re not going to get it. There are no scarlet letters this week. This is no punishment. And, to a large extent, there are very few consequences. Just embarrassing photographs that become funny stories you tell at a boring cocktail party one day. And there are still seven glorious days and nights for the most mundane of us to act wild.

So, what are you waiting for? Go dance.

Demonic Exercises in Emotional Bonding

Reconnecting

I have a confession. A dark and terrifying one that I am going to reveal to the world: I am a terrible friend.

Ok, not really. I’m actually a pretty awesome friend. Unfortunately, I’d also be perfectly happy to never speak to another human being as long as I live. It’s not something I seek out, friendship. And, while I love Twitter and Facebook and MySpace before them, this brave new social media world has made it easier and easier to become, if not a terrible friend, an extremely lazy one. And it suits my personality a little too well.

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. I think they’re stupid. If you want to do something, then do it. Don’t use the planet’s annual cycle around the sun as an excuse. But I made one this year. A simple one. I am going to reconnect with friends that I’ve allowed social media to be the substitution for real contact and [gulp] reconnect with friends with whom I’ve had no contact for years.

It was scary. I’m not going to lie. But, as the saying goes, I will not fear. Fear is the mind killer.

And I can’t take credit for the idea. I “friended” an actual old friend last summer on Facebook and he immediately sent me his phone number so that we could actually talk. I’d lost him after Katrina. I couldn’t find him. I worried about him for years and then there I was on my lunch break, listening to his voice and geeking about gear and hearing about his grandbabies. It was wonderful.

And then, another marvelous, deliciously delightful human being who I get to call my friend did the same thing. He called me. Just to talk. Just to catch up. Two hours later, we were still talking.

And I decided I was going to follow their lead. I was going to make an effort. I was going to be the one to reach out first.

So, Step One: when wonderful, beautiful friend sends her annual text message wishing me a happy birthday, make a real, actionable plan to go to lunch on a specific date and then drive that paltry one hour and change to go see her. And it was so simple. 

We do this all the time, in our modern culture. We say “we never see each other; we should really get together soon,” and we never follow it up with “when is a good time for us to do that?”

And it’s not because the desire isn’t there. It’s because saying “we should” is easier than saying “let’s.” When did that happen?

And since step one and the subsequent lunch with my dear and fabulous friend was amazing and within five minutes we were back to talking as if five years hadn’t passed between us, I did it again.

I had dinner two nights ago with another beautiful, strong woman that I am lucky enough to call my friend...after seven years of not seeing each other. Again, ten minutes in and we’re sharing our struggles with motherhood and relationships, and we’re right back to where we were. A little older, but just the same.

And I get to do this again on Saturday with another dear friend, and I can’t wait. Although, I can’t take the credit for this one since he’s making the effort to drive all the way out to visit me at the convention I’m attending at the moment.

What friends I have, right?

Ok, so that was fun. I’m now back in touch with a handful of people who I adore and who amaze me. Time to strap my courage to the sticking place for Step Two and reach out to those that I’ve truly neglected. Like the ones I haven’t seen or spoken to or about for a decade.

Gulp.

So, I send a very short note to another friend on social media, and he replies back with a very non-committal message with subtle undertones of “why the fuck are you messaging me?” 

Wonderful. 

I did actually have a reason for wanting to contact him. You see, Q’s penchant for wearing t-shirts with [insert metal band logo here] on the front, periodically provides me with the opportunity to give a shout out to bands that I love or bands with members I know. His is one of the latter, and I wanted to tell him because I thought he might get a kick out of it. So, I send a screenshot of the paragraph in Chasing Those Devil Bones in question and tell him about my new status as a published author and done. Right?

Wrong.

Now, it becomes abundantly clear from his response that he has absolutely no clue who I am and thinks some crazy woman is stalking him online. He’s flattered, but confused (and who could blame him).

And here comes the rub of it. That moment when you have the full and very realization that you are not as memorable as you think you are. 

This man was an important part of my life. He inspired me with his drive and ambition and generosity and kindness, and I was fortunate enough to count him as a member of my social circle.

And I what did I do? I walked away from it. I got lazy. I used MySpace updates (that’s how long ago this started) as actual contact. I used mutual acquaintances as go-betweens.

But you know what? “Tell so-and-so, I said ‘hi.’” is not telling so-and-so you said anything.

Pick up a phone and tell them.

I’ve just sent an overly long message to this person to tell him how we knew each other and to apologize for not getting in touch sooner and to let him off the hook if he doesn’t want to resume contact. And I don’t know how he’ll respond.

I know I deserve for him to tell me to fuck right off. But, he’s a musician, and we all live on tour time, so these lapses in contact don’t seem to impact us emotionally as much as it does civilians. But still, I know that option is rightly on the table for him, and I won’t hold it against him if he chooses to take it.

Tour time.

It’s a blessing and a curse. I’ve often wondered if this is something unique to the music industry. We see each other for these brief and intense interactions: recording a record, playing a gig, and then nothing. For months. Because we’re off having intense interactions with other people we know and will not see again for months or years.

I’m at one of those intense interactive experiences right now. The NAMM convention is an annual pilgrimage a good portion of gear nerds and music enthusiasts make to Anaheim, California every January. It’s where music manufacturers show off all their new wares and try to sell said wares to music merchants (the MM in NAMM). I write technical articles and documentation for one such music manufacturer, and we are here, right now, having a demonic bonding experience for the next four days.

And this reconnecting that I’ve been actively working on with those who used to be closest to me is constant. I walked into the hotel from dinner last night and saw a colleague and his wife who I haven’t seen since June at another tradeshow and we’re screaming and hugging and talking like we saw each other last weekend. And it’s like that every year.

Even if you meet someone for the first time at one of these crazy events, it’s like you are instantly bonded for life. At that same tradeshow I attended in June, I met a colleague from another music manufacturer for the very first time. We were booth neighbors. I saw him yesterday and we were asking about each other’s kids and talking about our health like we’ve known each other for years. When, in actuality, we’ve only known each other for three days.

Insane, yes?

I only see some of my friends when they’re on tour in my state and we hardly talk in between. I only see some of my most favorite colleagues once a year. But you’d never know it when if you saw us together.

For my friends who’ve never experienced tour time (and none of the people mentioned so far can be counted within this group), it’s not a part of my personality they enjoy. They don’t like the long silences followed by bursts of intense emotional contact. It makes them uncomfortable. It makes them angry.

But I can’t explain how this works to them. It’s just something that I’ve learned to live with. That I’ve adapted to, because being a musician means being away from people you love. A lot. It also means isolating yourself so that you can create what you love. A lot. 

It’s the bargain. It’s the trade-off. And we all understand that about each other. I think it’s why musicians and music makers travel together in packs. We’re a herding species of humans. Nobody understands us, but our own.

But even in this lifestyle, you can’t lose that one critical element. You can be absent for months or years with minimal contact, but to maintain that bond, that chain of connection, you need those intense bursts of emotional intimacy.

And emotional intimacy has never been something that I’ve been particularly good at. But, thankfully, Ben and Sanger are wonderful at it. And they’ve taught me how. So, during this, my first year of following through with a New Year’s resolution, I’m going to practice what they’ve taught me.

To all my friends waiting for me to reach out; I’m working my way to you, don’t you worry. But if you’re tired of waiting, give a yell because I’m likely dying to hear from you. And if you’ve given up on me entirely and never want to hear from me again, that’s alright, too. 

This is me: flashing one of Sanger’s patented easy smiles at you. We’re all good, you and me. 

And if you're one of the crazy herd living on tour time and swarming on this poor California town, you know where to find me.

Like a Newborn Screaming

Writing is a lonely business. 

I know I’m not the first author to write those words, much less think those words. Before I wrote my novels, I thought that this phrase referred to the process of writing being lonely. You can’t rely on anyone but yourself, your talent, your vocabulary, your research. I mean, the process of composing music is devastatingly lonely, so why would writing words be any different?

But writing, for me, isn’t lonely. Especially not when I’m writing about Q and the boys. They keep me company. Sometimes, they’re more real than the people I encounter every day. And even when I’m drafting manuals or technical articles, it’s not lonely either, because I’m imagining the person reading them. What they’re most interested in learning. What worries they may have. How I can make their day just a little easier.

So, no. Writing, in and of itself, is not a lonely business. But writing is just the beginning. It’s the gestation, not the birth. Release a novel sometime, and you’ll understand why newborns scream bloody murder when they come into the word. Because you see, the business of writing is a cold and lonely hellscape of desolation.

Why? Because that, my friends, is where only your intestinal fortitude holds you upright. That is where you must say you did something good. Something to be proud of. Something worth all that time and energy you spent doing it. And guess what? Most days, you and only you are the person validating your work.

Don’t believe me? Most of my friends have not read my books.

Let that sink in for a minute.

My husband has not read a single one of my books, blogs, or articles. (And it’s an ongoing point of contention in our marriage, but still, not a one.)

I’ve often wondered why that is. And I don’t have to really think that hard about it. I know why. They are all terrified of being the only person in my life to look me in the eye and say, “Your books suck.”

That is how much the people in your life love you, folks. They’d rather hope that maybe you have a ton of talent and are not, in fact, wasting your time on an art form you should abandon, than actually find out for themselves that you don’t have a lick of talent and be forced to tell you that you should quit or, worse still, smile politely and lie to your face. 

The logic goes something like this: I’ll tell this person whom I love that I’m proud of them, but I won’t read the book, just in case it sucks.

Still don’t believe me? I used to live in terror of having to listen to my friends’ albums. I still do. I’m picky. I used to be a professional audio engineer, and it makes me hear things all funny. For example, a friend sent me his new track a few months ago, and it had a terrible phasing issue (if you don’t know what that means, trust me, you’d rather not know, because then you’ll hear it, like all the time); and I debated for ten solid minutes before I erased my text that read, “hey, the string part is out of phase with the bassline and that breakbeat is about 1/32 out of time for half a measure at 1:38," and replaced it with “Love it!!!”

And it gets worse. I literally ranted about how poorly one of my friends’ last albums was mixed to my coworkers for twenty minutes one afternoon. "The guitar solo is always the loudest thing in the mix!! How could they be doing this for so long and so successfully without learning that one little thing? Who the hell mixes a metal record without automating levels? Seriously, what in the good fuck is that??"

And did I say that to their faces? Hell, no. I told them the new record was great. Because it was and it was too late to fix it anyway, I mean it was already out there. And besides, it wasn’t their fault their engineer has his head up his ass. And I can’t tell them that either because they love him and I’m sure he’s a lovely person if they love him so much they don’t care that he can’t mix their guitars properly. And that would make me the bad guy. And I don’t want to be the bad guy. 

You see what I mean? Terror. Absolute terror. 

So, I get it. I truly understand why only the bravest of my friends reads my books and, even braver still, tells me where I fell short (I’m looking at you, Heather and Jim. You’re both god damn warriors). Unfortunately, it also means that, by and large, I am the only person in my life that reads the words I write and knows that I should continue. And that’s ok. Because, in this particular endeavor, it’s my talent that keeps me up at night. My talent that tells me to wake up at five in the morning and write, even though it’s hard.

Because, even if one of my friends told me my books were terrible, it wouldn’t matter. Because I don’t do this for them. I do this for me. It was the same with music. And, looking back on the things I recorded, I can see where I fell short. But I can also see where I succeeded. And that’s a great feeling. 

“I am creating” is so much more powerful to me than “I am succeeding.”

I succeed when I create something I am proud of. Something that I want to share with the world. Something that gives me so much inner joy that the people who love me most are terrified to read it and tell me otherwise.

But the joke’s on them. Because they’re missing out. Don’t believe me? Click on this link and find out for yourself.

Chasing Those Devil Bones is NOW AVAILABLE.

Chasing Those Devil Bones is NOW AVAILABLE!

I wrote another book, y’all! It’s a real thing. I have a copy in my hand right now and it feels yummy. It’s a strange thing to have written to completion, not one, but three novels, edited them, re-edited them, designed covers for them, and published them. But that’s what I have done. And I’m going to go ahead and brag on myself for a moment, if you’ll indulge me.

Now, please click on this link and buy Chasing Those Devil Bones for $2.99, that’s the price of your favorite large coffee drink. (And it stays way hotter and lasts longer, too.)

That was fun. Now back to work.

As Chasing Those Devil Bones makes its way through the digital birth canal and out into everyone’s Kindles and iPads, I am sitting at the 95% completion mark of the next book in the Clementine Toledano Mysteries, working title, The Devil’s Luck. And I am stuck. This happens, sometimes, usually when I’ve plotted out the crux of Q’s current mystery one way, but Q and the gang are running roughshod over the story and have another solution in mind. Unfortunately, they’re all thumbing their collective noses at my shouts of “We only have 10,000 words left! Wrap it up!” And, as much as I love the team’s additions to this plot during the writing process, I refuse to go full boat Umberto Eco and write a 200,000-word mystery.

[Author’s aside: Umberto Eco’s book, Foucault’s Pendulum, referenced above, is one of the greatest books in modern history and I will personally punch anyone in the nose who disagrees. Ok, I won’t really punch you, but it is one of only three books that I’ve read more than four times, so you should give it another chance if you didn’t like it.]

Part of my problem with The Devil’s Luck, is that I know how it ends. I just don’t know how it gets there. You see, I’d written the ending before #NaNoWr2017 even started, well, at least the emotional context of the scene. The scene itself came later and I big-huge-googly-eyes-LOVE it. So, it must stay. And as much as I loved writing more than half this book in three weeks, it’s left little time for the machinations and marinating that come with slogging along for six to ten months, writing 300 words one day and 3000 the next.

But if I’m being honest with myself, the larger part of me is just plain old scared. If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you already know how much I LOVE this new book. It brings me so much joy to read it. It’s so full of life and breath and music and stench and laughter and everything that I love about the city I used to call home. What if I fail it in these last moments?

What if I fail?

Lord, I could write a novel that would put Eco to shame on word count about my fear of failure. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done some things in my life that a lot of people would consider to be brave.  I was scared shitless doing every last one of them. But I did them.

But there are other things I didn’t do because I was too scared. And those are the things that I regret.

A dear friend of mine constantly tells me to not worship at the Temple of Regret. Over the door of my personal temple is written a single word: FEAR.

During the bravest period of my life, I read the entire Dune saga from beginning to end (you know you’re a SciFi nerd when that’s on your Bucket List). If you’ve not read it, first, shame on you, but the omnipresent religion of the Bene Gesserit uses the following litany to overcome fear:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

There are many brilliant things about Frank Herbert’s Dune. For me, this continues to be the most brilliant. A simple, powerful series of words that so perfectly describes that feeling you get when you let go of your fear. A void. A nothingness. And there is tremendous power in that nothingness.

I repeated this litany over and over during that bravest period of my life. I repeated before I went I stage for the first time. I repeated it as I walked into Nothing Studios to interview for a job working for Nine Inch Nails. I repeated the shit out of it before I met Trent Reznor for the first time, followed by a whole lot of “act cool, act cool, just say ‘nice to meet you.’”

I don’t know when I stopped doing that. Maybe I should start again. Right now. Because, here I am, kneeling at the entrance to my Temple of Regret, looking at those big letters in iridescent green script: FEAR. Already convincing myself I’ll fail this novel when I’m so close to finishing it. Focusing on everything I’ve done wrong up to this point instead of all the things that I’ve done to make it so charming and wonderful that it terrifies me to have written something so good.

But I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. And only I will remain.

So, this is me. Standing back up and dusting off my knees to return to the fray and finish this lovely book I'm writing. Because let’s face it, I felt this same fear when I wrote Chasing Those Devil Bones and the wondrous thing still brings me to tears multiple times even though I have actually lost count of how many times I’ve read this final draft of it. And I hope anyone who reads it enjoys it as much as I still do.

Chasing Those Devil Bones is now available on Amazon.

Other Clementine Toledano Mysteries:
That Old Devil Sin
Devil Take Me Down

And, Coming Soon: The Devil’s Luck

New Year: New website, New Book, Refurbished Me.

2017 has ended, and everyone is doing their obligatory year in review. I’m not sure when this trend started, but for some reason, I blame VH1 for it. Maybe it wasn't them, but I’m still going to say it’s their fault we all feel obligated to do this annual summary of our lives.

I’m not going to lie, 2017 was a strange one for me. It started out with the inauguration of a grossly incompetent man as President, instead of the grossly overqualified woman who ran for the same office; confirming everything I’ve felt, witnessed, and suspected about misogyny in America: it’s here, it’s there, it’s fucking everywhere.

January was a rough one. February, too.

What depressed me the most was the realization that I’d let misogyny and outdated notions of womanhood impact my decisions for the last decade or so. Somehow, during my 30s, I’d had enough with bucking the system and decided to go with the flow. I mean, there are only so many times you can show up to mix a session or to wire a rig in a studio and have the person who hired you ask where your boyfriend is, or have the band think you’re the coffee girl even though you’re miking the damn drumkit, before you just want to burn the world to the ground.

I couldn’t change the world, so, I essentially gave up. I left Los Angeles. Moved back home to Louisiana. Met a nice man. Got married. Had a child. Did all those things that were expected of me, as a woman, to do. Problem was: I’d never wanted that life.

And then it happened. On November 9, 2016, a big old jolt of cold, liquid rage filled me so completely that I suddenly just couldn’t keep up the facade anymore. This person I was pretending to be, wasn’t me. It didn’t make me happy. It didn’t bring me any sort of solace, strength, or inner peace. It sure as shit wasn’t doing anything to advance the cause of feminine equality, so why the hell was I keeping it up?

When I cast off that mask I’d put on so long ago, what I found was transformative. A moment of self-discovery. An utter calm. Not tranquility, mind you - there is still plenty that makes me wish I could walk around, carrying a battleax, and decapitating people - but stillness.  The kind of stillness a warrior gets before a fight. The kind of stillness that brings everything into laser-like focus.

And the funny thing is that it happened over the course of months. It happened so fast that I could watch it almost in real time. This decision to stop lying to myself and to just be.

I credit writing with the speed of this transformation. Writing is largely an autobiographical experience. You write what you know. What you’ve encountered. What you’ve felt. What you’ve witnessed. All altered, of course. Exaggerated, manipulated, molded, but still, it’s all you and anyone that tells you any different isn’t very self-aware.

My friends and family who’ve read my novels usually assume that I’m Q. And in some ways, I am. But I’m also Ben. I’m Yvie. I’m Derek. On my best days, I’m even Sanger.

In March, after I released Devil Take Me Down, I quickly began finishing Chasing Those Devil Bones and encountered a huge problem: I had absolutely no idea what made Detective Aaron Edgar Sanger tick, and he was a huge part of the story.

Like many writers, when I’m stuck I do one of two things: do a writing exercise or write the ending first. I did both, even though it meant that I had to write the final two novels of the series before the third book was even halfway done.

It was a catharsis. Writing as group therapy. The characters helped me to work through all the pain and confusion I was feeling in my own life and, at the end of it, I was ready to move forward.

I joined a gym to cast off the weight I’d put on. Some people feel better when they’re a little overweight. I’ve never been one of those people and am happy to report that I now have a healthy BMI for the first time in a decade, thanks largely to starting the Whole30 program and sticking with it for much longer than the requisite 30 days. Self-denial has always been one of my best talents, so it suits my personality well.

Vodka and I have had a very long, passionate relationship and I needed to put us on a little break so that we could reunite in a healthier way. We’re still casually seeing each other a few times a month, but I’m now in a pretty intense committed relationship with mineral water. Those little bubbles just slay me.

I did the National November Writing Challenge. I didn’t get to 50,000 words, but I did get a wonderful start on Book 4, which is cruising along towards a thrilling ending, more on that in another blog post.

I finished Chasing Those Devil Bones, which will be out next Saturday (pre-order is available now)

I decided to stop standing in my own way. Self-promotion has never been my strong point. It was a problem when I had a band. It was a problem when I was trying to make it as an audio engineer. It was a problem when I was writing film scores. It’s not going to be a problem anymore. In Chasing Those Devil Bones, Q’s mentor, Stanley Gerard, tells her that she thinks too much and it’s always been the thing that stood in her way. Just between us, Stanley was talking to me, too.

And finally, I’m going to take opportunities to get help from remarkably talented people when I am presented with them. You’re looking at the result of that right now. This website redesign by Redwood Digital Marketing could not have turned out better. And I’m thrilled at the result. The biggest of thank you’s and shout outs to Katelyn Redwood for her amazing work. I am constantly in utter awe at the number of talented people I am fortunate enough to be able to call my friends and Katelyn is a woman of many talents who has always topped that list.

So, that was my 2017. Like all stories, it had a beginning, a middle, and an end. Some wondrous things happened; some very strange things happened, too.

But now it’s 2018. In Judaism, the number 18 represents life, renewal, rebirth. And, whether it’s fair or not, I have a feeling 2018 is going to be full of all three of those things.

Happy New Year!

W.E. Devore Has a New Website!

In preparation for the release of Chasing Those Devil Bones (January 13th, 2018), I have a brand-new website to celebrate the occasion! My new site features an updated look, information on all three Clementine novels, reviews, a portfolio featuring my freelance writing work, a contact page, and the blog page that you are visiting now.

Take a look around and be sure to check back regularly for updates and new blog posts. If you have any site feedback, you can send it to me through my contact page. Don't forget to mark your calendars for the release of Chasing Those Devil Bones next weekend. At that time, you'll be able to find links to order right here on the site.