Character Profiles - Jamil

On this Martin Luther King Day, I want to share the fictional story of Jamil  Ramos. I have always been inspired by the words of MLK, even though he died before I was born. His message was one of hope that the injustices of men would one day be replaced by equality and freedom from fear. Dr. King had a dream of a better life for those who have been oppressed just because of the way they look or where they were born. His dream is the American dream, that anyone, no matter how poor or disadvantaged, can become whatever it is they want to be. And this is the theme of Crawdad. 

Jamil, as well as all the other characters in Crawdad, have challenges in their lives, but they each do the best they can to overcome those challenges. Jamil dreams of being a professional trumpet player despite having no money and very little family support. He doesn't let it stop him.

~Meet Jamil~

I spent most of my math class, staring at my trumpet, thinking about what Mr. T said. I sat next to the window so I always put my trumpet on the window sill. It had a few dents in the horn. Mama said it was probably from too many late nights playing in the juke joints of New Orleans. She bought it in a pawn shop there before I was born. A few of those dents were from me though.

I grew up playing with it all the time, like it was some kind of weapon till I figured out you could make sounds with it. I made all kinds of awful racket with it. Mama said it sounded like dying rooster. Sometimes it got so bad, she’d take it away, but eventually I got the hang of it.

Mama would play her old vinyl records of Duke Ellington and Miles Davis till the record player broke and we had to throw it out. I’d play with those records over and over till I could make my trumpet sound the same. Lots of times I’d play by myself till Mama got home from work. My trumpet kept me company like a friend. When I played, I wasn’t lonely by myself.

By the time I was old enough to start band at school, I was hooked. I was also way past the other kids my age. I wasn’t too good at sheet music, but I could usually play what I heard. I thought everybody learned that way till I joined band.

I wanted to play trumpet for real, professionally. I always had, but now I wanted something even more. I wanted to meet my dad, Leon Ramos in Charleston. I wanted to ask him a million questions, like what he did to make Mama hate him so much. Or why did he never come around? What had he been doing all these years? The more I thought, the more questions popped into my head the way dish soap bubbles grow bigger and bigger until they fill the whole sink and spill over the side. I was filling up with questions I had no answers for and they were pushing my music out of the way.

If I was going to play well at audition, I’d have to clear out all the cobwebs out of my mind, but how? The only way I could think of was to find him.

You can find out more about Jamil and read Crawdad on AMAZON

Happy Martin Luther King Day!

Character Profiles ~ Angel

Of all the characters in Crawdad, there's nobody quite as damaged as Angel, but she's probably one of the toughest too. She's made some bad choices in her short life. Choices that have left her with nothing. She ran away from home on a whim, misled by someone she thought she could trust.  Can she ever go back?

~Meet Angel~

Mikey glared at me like he might hit me again, his eyes so dilated they were like huge black holes in his head. I got up and went to the kitchen before he could do it again. There was nothing inside him. He’d burned it out a long time ago and now he wanted to burn out my soul too.

     I hovered in the kitchen by the sink overflowing with smelly, putrid dishes because no one ever washed them. I stared out the back window at the yard filled with weeds as high as your waist and remembered the smell of fresh cut grass when my dad mowed the lawn back home. The buyer came banging on the front door. When Mikey opened the door, I slipped out the back unnoticed. I sprinted across the overgrown lawn, glad I’d put my flip flops on this morning. They weren’t great for running, but at least the rocks didn’t hurt as much as barefoot. Once I hit the alley, I was out from under the shady trees in the shabby yards.

The sunlight blinded me at first until my eyes adjusted. It had been awhile since I’d been outside much. I could feel the sun burning my pale skin, but it felt good to me, like it was burning away the crust of filth that had grown over me like moss on a sick tree. For the first time in a long time, I felt alive, maybe even happy. Maybe I could go home? I could finish school. I was still young enough to go. They had to let me in, right?

Mikey’s voice nagged my brain. You can’t do that. You’re too stupid. They don’t want you. It had become. a constant in my life. Sometimes I believed it, but I never wanted to think those things about myself. I knew I wasn’t stupid. It’s just I wasn’t sure about the other two.

I shoved Mikey’s voice out of my mind and tried to put some distance between me and his house. All I had in my pockets was a dead cell phone somebody left at the house after a night of partying and a watermelon Jolly Rancher. My tummy grumbled so I unwrapped the candy, stuck it in my mouth, and kept walking.

I got a few blocks before I saw a cop car, its lights flashing, stopped in the middle of the street. It wasn’t a busy neighborhood so it wasn’t blocking a whole bunch of traffic, but there were a few gawkers across the street. Part of me knew I should turn the corner and avoid the mess, but curiosity got the better of me, so I kept walking the way I was going. Pretty soon I could see two officers hassling this big black kid. Some cops think they gotta interrogate every person they talk to, but I couldn’t see how the kid was doing anything wrong. I supposed he could a robbed a gas station, but he didn’t act guilty. Suddenly, one of the cops went for his Taser gun.

You can find out more about Angel and Crawdad on AMAZON

Character Profiles ~ Aisha

In life and in fiction, we see what someone is made of when they're under pressure. In Crawdad, all the characters are stressed by something in their lives, usually events outside of their control.

In Aisha's case, she's got a strange insight into people she's learning to understand, but can barely control. Is it voodoo? Aisha doesn't know, but it scares her and the people around her. Who is she? Is she evil? Is she crazy? Is the power real or just her imagination? And when will it go away?

~Meet Aisha from Crawdad~

“Aisha?” I could hear my grandmother calling me from the porch where she’d been shelling peas in a big, red bowl. A vibration, so faint most folks wouldn’t have noticed, had lured me off the porch and out into the woods, wet and green, steaming like a rain forest. I glanced back over my shoulder where I should have seen grandma’s house through the trees. I saw only shrubs. I could still hear her yelling though.

“Aisha, you get back here or I’m a tan your hide!” she was screaming but it sounded like she was a million miles away. She used to scare the crap out of me, but she’d threatened me too many times in my young life. I didn’t believe her anymore. Besides, I had something in me I needed to understand. No one else around me understood, so I kept walking. I wanted to see Naomi.

My head buzzed with electricity. It was just a feeling I got sometimes when I knew stuff. Once, it started on Friday at school. I knew what the answers were on Mrs. Whitnack’s quiz cause she was thinking them. I knew Paul was gonna ask me out, so I hid in the bathroom until most everyone had got on the bus or left for home. I didn’t like that boy and he couldn’t seem to get it through his thick skull. Missing the bus meant walking a long way home, but it was worth it to avoid Mr. Grabby Hands. I took a short cut through the woods, like I was now, and I was overcome by the same feeling both times. Alive with a vibration like no other. Every leaf was sharper, every sound perfectly clear in my ears, like it was right beside me. Something was coming.

I thought I knew the way, but pretty soon there was a creek I didn’t recognize and the trail turned to little more than a pattern of pine needles and dead leaves.

“What you looking for?” I heard a voice say. I looked around me. I was sure there weren’t nobody there before, but now there was a woman, old and wrinkled as the bark of a gum tree, staring at me with eyes blacker than midnight in a rainstorm. She rattled me, but I tried not to let it show. That was the first time I ever met Naomi.

“Nothing. I’m just walking home,” I said.

“Dat’s not what your heart says,” she said in a little know-it-all voice.

“My heart?”

“’Bout to beat right outta your little chest, it’s so loud. I hear it searching.” I gave her my best “you must be crazy” look, which was easy ‘cause she looked kind of crazy. Her hair was covered by a tightly wrapped purple bandana and her eyes darted around like she kept hearing things in the forest I couldn’t hear. She wore a flowered house coat and slippers, like a patient who just wandered away from the old folks’ home.

“What are you?” I asked her.

“My name is Naomi Wentworth. I got a lotta names, but that’s my favorite.”

The name sounded a little familiar, but too normal to be the person I’d heard all the stories about.

“You ain’t Mama Copperhead, are you?” I blurted out.

I always thought Mama Copperhead was a story meant to keep us out of the woods or away from snakes, but his lady made me wonder if it was true. She laughed a raspy sound.

“Maybe…maybe.”

“Well, nice meeting you, Naomi, but I gotta go,” I said, moving my feet away from her.

“But you ain’t told me what your blessed heart is looking for yet,” she said almost pleading.

I paused. What did she expect me to say?

“I know you been misunderstood a time or two,” she offered as she pulled a loop of string out of her pocket and started lacing her fingers through it to make a cat’s cradle.

“That’s the truth,” I muttered.

“So maybe you’re looking for understanding?” I squinted at her, the momentary glare of the sun through the trees blinding me. A rare breeze cooled my face for a second.

“Ain’t everybody?”

“Maybe, but that ain’t exactly what I mean, honey child.”

I never really heard nobody use that expression before, except for in a joke. Naomi made it sound like the most natural thing in the world.

“I won’t hurt you, sweet pea,” she murmured. I felt the humidity dripping down between my shoulder blades now, itching.

“I know,” I said, a little too smart mouthy. I didn’t mean to be rude, but snapping at people had gotten to be a habit with me.

“Sometimes it’s ok to ask folks to help us, especially when we can’t see the path too clearly,” she said shuffling toward me.

“I heard you was some kinda witch,” I said, backing away a few steps.

“Maybe, maybe not. All in how you look at it, I suppose. They don’t call them witches in voodoo.”

You can find Crawdad on AMAZON

Mothers

~Happy Mother's Day~ 

Mothers are complicated creatures. Some are mothers by choice, some not. Some are biological mothers. Others are mothers out of necessity. And they aren't perfect by any means. These are the messy, complicated mothers I like to write. Mothers who mean well, but have maybe lost their way, by choice or by accident.

One of my favorite moms is Karla, a new widow trying to care for her depressed daughter, Samantha, in The Color of Water.

Somewhere way down deep, I still love Karla. She’s my mom, but there’s no finding my way back to her.  At least, it doesn’t seem like it to me. For now, I follow her around, sometimes her shadow, other times more distant.  She’s not making me finish my junior year of high school.  There’s no way I could have. I guess she knows that cause she never even brought it up.

But this morning, instead of lying in bed until ten like we have been, Karla’s up packing what little we have into the trunk of her Civic.  She’s been worrying for weeks about money and rent and all, but I really wasn’t paying attention before today.  Just before five in the afternoon, we slid into the seats of her car and she started the engine.

“This will be good for us,” said Karla, staring straight ahead at our now former apartment.  She awakened a curiosity in me that hadn’t been there for awhile.

            “Where are we headed, Karla?” I asked. My voice came out soft from lack of use. She didn’t hear me or she didn’t answer anyway.         

“Good bye, Wilmington.  Beaufort, North Carolina, here we come,” Karla said.  She smiled her “I’m pretending I’m happy about this” smile.  She used it a lot where Dad was concerned.

            At least it’s on the water, I thought, slouching down in my seat as I settled back into sleep.  Cars bore me.  I would rather spend my time sailing with Dad.  Karla always accused us of growing gills and fins.

            “This will be good, right?” she said again. I guess she was trying to convince herself it was a good idea.  With a bittersweet smile, she kissed two fingers and touched them to the picture of me and Dad taped to the dash.  Blowing the blonde strands of hair out of her eyes, she backed the Honda out of the driveway and that was it - our lives changed again.

Others mothers are more difficult to love. They do what they think is best, but sometimes they're wrong because they're human. This is Loretta from Crawdad~

Once, she told me he was living under a rock somewhere. To a little kid like me, I figured that meant he must have magical powers to be able to do that. I looked under rocks in the creek behind our house all the time after that, but all I found were crawdads and snails. The crawdads would raise their little claws up to me like they were saying ‘hey’ if they weren’t too busy scuttling away into the muddy water.

Sometimes I’d catch one and keep it in a bucket or the bed of an old wagon. I’d put in rocks and water, make it like a real terrarium, a home for my crawdad daddy, but mama wouldn’t let me bring them in the house. The raccoons usually got them.

I remember when she found me crying over what was left one morning. I gathered up the little bits of shell the coons didn’t eat. Mama came out of the house with a load of laundry in a blue plastic basket propped up on her hip.

“What’s the matter with you?” she asked.

“My daddy’s gone,” I whimpered.

“You mean your crawdad?”

“My daddy,” I bawled. My seven year old heart was broken. I carefully pet the little fan-shaped crawdad tail in my palm with a fingertip.

“Your daddy ain’t no crawdad, Jamil. He’s just a plain ol’ sorry ass man,” said Mama. She plopped the laundry basket on the soggy Bermuda grass and started hanging up clothes on the line in our backyard.

“But you said he was a crawdad?” Mama snorted.

“I did? Well, I was just messing with you then.” She went on her merry way, hanging clothes like it was nothing. I don’t even think she knew how she just dropped a bomb in my heart. I let the little fan-shaped tail fall from my hand. It was worse than finding out Santa Claus wasn’t real. My daddy wasn’t any enchanted creature trapped in a crawdad body. He wasn’t even special.

Worse than that, he had arms and legs, but he never even come to see me. Didn’t want to hug me. I could understand a person not being able to visit you if they’d been turned into a crustacean, but he was flesh and blood human. Why didn’t he ever come to see me?

And some mothers fail us completely and others have to step in. Thank goodness for grandmothers. Corrine is raised by her grandmother in Hush Puppy~

Almost as soon as it closed, the screen door opened again and in walked a skinny woman with an anxious expression.

“Mama!” I shouted and bounded to the door; she was looking around like she didn’t know anyone. I was in her arms before I knew it.

“Oh, baby,” she called me, wrapping herself around me. “Happy Birthday.”

It didn’t matter how many times she had disappeared without saying goodbye; I caved like a kindergartener when she came back. It wasn’t until she had been around a few days that I would remember her faults. Memaw never forgot. She was probably somewhere silently cursing, but I didn’t care. I was just happy Mama remembered my birthday at all. Most years, she didn’t.

Mama swayed a little, her high heels wobbly on the uneven linoleum, but she leaned on me and I held her tight.

“You looking so fine, Corrine. You done grown up, girl.” She hadn’t seen me in probably a year and a half.

“You too, Mama.”

The music stopped and Uncle Terrance shouted over the chit-chat.

“Look what the cat drug in! It’s Shawna!”

Mama’s eyes lit up as she made a beeline into his arms. I thought I heard a woman’s voice whisper something about a two-dollar hooker. No doubt, Mama was flashy in skin-tight yellow leggings, giant hoop earrings with the gold paint flaking off, and her hair sculpted high on her head, but I thought she was beautiful. A beautiful disaster.

 Happy day to all the moms out there :)

  

The more things change, the more they stay the same~

Seems like these days you hear news a of a young black person being shot by the police all too often. A few years ago when we lost Trayvon, it became clear there are a lot of young men living a completely different reality than their white peers in this country.

When I set out to write Crawdad, I was focused on Jamil's dream of becoming a musician against all odds, but as I wrote the story of what might befall a teen hitchhiking across the South, I couldn't ignore the fact that profiling does happen.

At several points in the story, people discriminate against Jamil because of how he looks.

A white guy with a purple feather duster and a bright red vest walked by me and started wiping off some Gulf Coast pelican figurines. He looked like a past president of the high school chess club – uptight and no friends. At least none that I could imagine. Maybe he wasn’t as smart as he thought he was.

“We got security cameras,” he said. “Watching every move you make.”

At first, I wasn’t even sure he was talking to me, so I kind of ignored him. I was looking for maps. I went down the aisles until I finally found them, tucked in a corner on the back wall like nobody would want them. Maybe truckers all have GPS now.

I carefully tucked the water bottle under my arm and squeezed the hot dogs in one hand so I could open one of the atlases with my other hand. It didn’t work too well, but I finally opened to a page with Alabama, Florida and Georgia on it.

Charleston was in South Carolina, I knew that, but which was the best way to get there? Searching the map for Charleston, I started getting this creepy feeling like I was being watched, but not in a scary movie sort of way. Just a “someone’s hanging over your shoulder” sort of way. I looked behind me and sure enough, there was red vest guy, surprised that I’d caught him watching me. He stuck his pointy chin out like that would make him look tougher.

“You gonna buy that?” he snapped.

“I can’t look at stuff?”

“This isn’t a library,” he said like I was an idiot or something.

“I know that. I need to look at something to decide if I’m going to buy it, don’t I?”

“Well, hurry up.”

Truth was, I didn’t want to buy it at all. I just needed a minute to memorize it.

“Is the store closing?” I asked.

“It’s a twenty-four hour store, genius.”

“Then I guess there’s no rush is there?” I pointed out. 

Many people experience the same treatment everyday in real life. It's hard to believe in 2017 it's *still* happening, but it is. It's not difficult to understand why young black men would be angry.

Little kids playing on the curb stared at me like I was some kind of homeless drunk coming to get them. They reminded me just how bad my face looked. I tried to ignore it, but pretty soon a cop car pulled up behind me and turned on the siren. Scared the crap out of me. I jumped left and bumped into an Impala parked on the street.

“You’re supposed to walk on the sidewalk,” the cop barked at me from his open window.

“I was just going around those kids,” I told him, which was the truth. I knew I looked scary so I was avoiding them.

“What happened to your face?”

I shrugged.

“Got beat up,” I said.

“Drugs?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you report it?”

“No.” That made the cop frown.

“How do you expect me to do my job if you don’t report crimes?”

It was a weird question, like I was personally responsible for giving him stuff to do. I shrugged again. Mama warned me about cops. Do everything you possibly can to stay away from them, she’d said. I just thought she meant to stay out of trouble, which I normally did. I knew my daddy had been in jail and she probably didn’t want me to turn out like him.

The cop took off his sunglasses so he could get a better look at me. His eyes were too small for the size of his face somehow, little black specs almost covered by his giant forehead. You could tell he had to squeeze into his flak jacket. He wasn’t good looking like the cops on TV. There were people on the curb stopping to watch me now, just what I didn’t want.

“Where you going?” he quizzed.

“Charleston,” I said, like a dumb ass. I should have made up something else.

“Isn’t that a little far from home? How old are you?”

I paused a little too long before I lied.

“Nineteen.” It was kind of true. OK, not really, but someone once told me I looked older.

“Got I.D.?”

“No, everything I had got stolen.”

“Where are you from?” His eyes narrowed down to tiny slits, like I was really bugging him now. Just then, another cop car pulled up behind the first and an officer got out. I really didn’t want to tell them I was from Alabama. What if they thought I was a runaway or something?

“Am I under arrest?” I asked.

“Not at the moment,” said the first cop. The other guy smiled big and smacked his gum in his mouth. He had his hands on his hips, like he was ready to give me a lecture too.

“Well, I think I’ll be going then. Nice talking to you.” I tried to smile, but it hurt my face, so I settled for a wave. I turned toward the sidewalk. Maybe if I got on it, he would be satisfied, I thought.

“Woah, woah, there. Not so fast,” said the second officer with the square jaw and square hair. He grabbed me by the shoulder to spin me back around but I had enough experience with fights to be ready for it. If he’d been a kid at school hassling me, I’d have punched him hard, but that definitely would have got me trouble so I just pulled away and got to the curb.

“I’m getting on the sidewalk, see? Walking on the sidewalk. Ain’t no law against that.”

I tried to be nice about it, but it was hard not to be angry. Why should I have to ask permission just to walk down a stupid street anyway? The cop got mad too.

“When I tell you to stop, you stop!” he shouted. He had his hand on his gun, like he meant to pull it on me.

“I ain’t done nothing wrong!”

“We decide if you’ve done something wrong, not you.” They were both out of their cars, coming at me now.

“Don’t you have something better to do?” I snapped. I felt my fear turning to determination, hardening in my brain like concrete. Hadn’t I been through enough already?  I got beat up by bad guys. Now I was getting beat up by cops? What else could possibly go wrong?

“Go find some junkie. Go find a car jacker. Not a black man walking down the street!” I was yelling now and waving my arms.

“Just calm down,” said one of the cops.

“I will not calm down. I have had the night from hell and now I want to take a walk. That’s all I want to do. I thought this was a free country.”

“Not for people like you,” said the shorter cop, pulling out a gun that looked like a plastic toy with a cord attached.

Crawdad has a hopeful ending despite all of this because I can't bear the thought that we can't get through this without tragedy. Maybe its naive of me, but I know it's possible to change the world, even if it's only a little bit at a time. I want there to be more Jamils and fewer Trayvons. For everyone's sake.

~Now available on Amazon~

Crawdad Blog Tour

Happy New Year &Welcome to the Crawdad Book Blog Tour!

For the whole month of January, my new contemporary young adult novel Crawdad, will be featured on the blogs of some of my besties - authors and book bloggers who support the readers and writers of  diverseYA - and I couldn't be more pleased. I hope you can visit them all and enter the giveaway.  Here's the schedule:

Magic of the Muses - Eileen Schuh January 1
I Read too much! January 5
Rich in Variety January 8
Beth Fehlbaum Books January 15
CJ Burright January 22
Twinjas Book Reviews January 29

~About the Book~

Seventeen-year-old Jamil Ramos grew up on Alabama’s Gulf Coast believing his mom, Loretta, was his only living relative. She put a trumpet in his hands as a toddler and sparked his love of jazz. But when Loretta drops a bomb on Jamil from her deathbed- she’s not his mama and his daddy is still alive, living in Charleston, S.C. – his world is turned upside down.

Now, with the only mama he’s ever known gone and the Loyola University trumpet audition less than a week away, Jamil has trouble feeling his music. When his band teacher tells him to get it together, Jamil decides to hitchhike to South Carolina over to find his father and get his questions answered. All he has is a name –Leon Ramos.

Jamil relies on the kindness of the strangers he meets-a gay teen kicked out of his home, a runaway prostitute, and a street musician-as he makes his way across Florida and Georgia trying to avoid the cops along the way. But when Jamil is robbed of his most prized possession, his trumpet, his plans go anywhere but where he’d hoped. That trumpet was supposed to be his ticket for a scholarship, the only way to college his mama could give him. Lost and alone without it, Jamil wonders if finding his father is worth risking his future.

You can find Crawdad in print and e-book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Goodreads!

~About the Author~

Lisa T. Cresswell has been writing middle grade and young adult books for what seems like a mighty long time. She can never seem to make up her mind if she likes reality or fantasy, so she writes both. She also likes lemon jasmine green tea, dark chocolate almonds, and lots and lots of coffee. And of course, BOOKS. ALL THE BOOKS!! You can see all of her work at www.lisatcresswell.com 

~Enter the Giveaway~

Enter to win one of three copies of Crawdad to be given away in January!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

My next book cover reveal ~ Crawdad

I know I've been a little quiet this year, but I do have a surprise for you. I'm publishing a new novella titled Crawdad. It's a southern story, much like my first novel Hush Puppy, about a young man who goes on a cross country trek to find his dad after the woman he thought was his mom passes away.

The book is inspired a lot by what I've seen in the news over the last few years. Kids today are living in increasingly violent worlds, but many kids are not violent. They're just trying to do the best they can, you know? Full disclosure, I am a white woman of European descent, but I've always believed we are more alike than we are different and our stories are essentially the same. We are all born the same way, we grow up with hopes and dreams for our futures, and we all fall in love. We all experience pain and rejection at some point in our lives. If we're lucky, we experience great joy. As my character Recks says in my novel Vessel, "The outside doesn't matter. It's what's on the inside that counts." I truly believe that.

Crawdad is now available in print and e-book!

Book bloggers friends, if you'd like to host Crawdad during the book tour in December, sign up with 

Rich in Variety Book Tours as a host!

It's happening soon! Sign up for the cover reveal :)

I'm pretty excited about this new book of mine peeps! If you blog at all, sign up with Rich in Variety to reveal the cover on Nov. 30 or join the blog tour in December.

Crawdad is a multi-cultural, contemporary story set in the South. If  you loved Hush Puppy, I think you'll love this one too.

Here's a look at some the inspiration for Crawdad.

Sign up soon!

Just a little #SampleSunday from Crawdad~

My newest young adult novel is here! It's called Crawdad and it's a little hard to describe. It's a contemporary tale with a bit of magic. It's the story of Jamil, but it's also the story of Aisha, Angel, Desi, and Sebastian. Crawdad was inspired by my love of the diverse people and places across the South, by music, and by current, terrible events I see in the news.  I made an inspiration  Pinterest page for Crawdad if you want to see.

There's some difficult topics in the book that I haven't attempted to solve because it's not meant to be a preachy book and I obviously don't have all the answers. It's meant to be a hopeful book with an uplifting message while acknowledging some of the tough situations today's teens are up against. I hope you enjoy reading it. Here's a short sample from Jamil:




It wasn’t dark yet, but it was getting there and the mosquitoes buzzed around me pretty thick. The cicadas up high in the pines drowned out everything with their constant sawing screeching noise. I went right. I had to tell someone where I was headed. Missy wasn’t the hottest girl in our school, or even the smartest, but she was pretty darn close and she understood me. I had to hurry cause her mama was pretty strict about not letting me come over past seven on a school night.

I was on her doorstep in just a few minutes. The humidity was so high now just walking felt like going for a swim. I was glad when Missy’s mama let me into their air conditioned house.

“Is Missy here?” I asked, already knowing she was.

“She’s in her room. Why’d you bring all that stuff?” asked her mama, eyeballing my backpack.
“Um, I have a homework question I need to ask her,” I mumbled. It could happen, right? Like, would you turn in my homework while I’m gone?

 “Pfft! Homework?” It was plain she didn’t believe me.

 “Yeah.”

“OK, go on back, but keep that door open. And no trumpet! I’m watching my show.”

Some nights I’d play trumpet for Missy in her room, but I didn’t mean to tonight. I walked softly down the hall and peeked into her room. Missy was stretched out on her bed reading a book.

 “Hey,” I whispered from the doorway. She looked up from her book.

“Hey,” she said. “I missed you.”

I sat down on the bed next to her, leaving my stuff on the floor. She let go of her book and sat up to give me a hug. I’d hugged a ton of people at the funeral, but none of them affected me the way she did. I could smell the flowery soap she’s just shampooed her damp hair with. She was a warm, safe place to fall into and I held her tight.

 “You OK?” I heard her say before I let her go.

 “Yeah, I think so.”

 She pulled back and looked at me to make sure I was telling the truth.

 “Audition is next week,” I said.

Missy, more than anyone after my mama, knew what trumpet meant to me.

 “Will you be ready?” she asked.

 “Gonna try. There’s something I gotta do first, but I think I can be back in time.”

“Be back? Where are you going?”

I had to think a minute how to explain it. I hadn’t told anyone about my dad yet.

 “Before my mama died, she told me something,” I started off.

“What?”

 “You know how I always thought my daddy was dead?”

 “Yeah.”

 “Well, he’s not. He’s living in Charleston right now.”

 “You mean South Carolina?”

 “Yeah. And my mama ain’t my mama. She’s my aunt,” I added, shaking my head. I still couldn’t believe it.

 “Wow,” said Missy, thinking it over.

 “All this time my mama didn’t tell me ‘cause she didn’t want me to know.”

 “Maybe she had a good reason?”

 “Maybe, but I can’t think of any good ones. How could you keep that from somebody?”

 Missy didn’t say nothing. She just twisted her lips a little the way she always did when she was thinking about stuff.

 “It’s been driving me crazy ever since she told me. I can’t concentrate on nothing else, Missy. Not even trumpet,” I said.

 Missy stayed quiet. She wasn’t like one of those girls who would talk your ear off about nail polish and stupid stuff. Or one of those people who just loved the sound of their own voice or couldn’t stand it being quiet. I liked that about her. She really listened.

 “I’m gonna go find him,” I said, staring at my trumpet and the red and white strap she made in school colors for it.

 “What? Like on the Internet?” she asked.

 “No, in Charleston.”

 “You're going to Charleston? South Carolina?” She gave me that I-think-you-crazy look.

 “Yeah, I need to at least see him for myself,” I said.

 “But how? You don’ have a car.”

 “I’ll just hitch a ride with a trucker. Should only take a day or so to get there. I can make it back by audition.”

“Jamil, you should be practicing, not hitchhiking, especially not with some drugged up truck driver.” She was frowning now.

"It’ll be fine. I done it before. And I’ll practice on the trip,” I offered.

“Let’s try to find him on the Internet first. Lots of folks find missing family that way.”

“Something tells me he’s not on there, Missy. Besides, I need to see him in person, look him in the eye.”

“Why?” She truly didn’t understand and I didn’t know how to explain it to her.

“I just do.”

“Well then, wait until after audition. You don’t want to take the chance you’ll miss it,” she said.

“If I don’t do this now, I may as well not do to the audition. I’m not gonna be able to play any good until I get this taken care of. I know it. I just know it.”

“Now you’re just being hard headed,” said Missy, frowning.

“I guess I am, but I’m right on this. I know I am.”

Missy twisted her lips again.

“Then why’d you come here?” she asked.

“I wanted you to know where I’m going. I didn’t want you to worry about me.”

“Oh, I’ll worry all right. You got any money?”

“No, but I packed some food. I’ll get by,” I told her.

“You can’t go all the way to Charleston without no money, “she said, getting up off the bed. She crossed the room to her desk an opened a drawer. She pulled out some cash and offered it to me.

“What? I can’t take that,” I said.

“You can pay me back later. It’s only seventy-two dollars.” I shook my head no, but she wasn’t listening. “You’ll starve. Take it,” she insisted, shoving the money into my hands. “Maybe you should take my cell phone too.”

“I won’t have no way to charge it.” She frowned again, knowing I was right.

“OK, but you have to find a way to call me every day and let me know you’re okay.”

“I will,” I said, smiling. She was giving her blessing, which I think was what I might have wanted all along.

“I’m sure I can find somebody to loan me a phone,” I said, standing to stuff the cash into the pocket of my jeans.

Missy grabbed me in another urgent hug.

“Just so you know, I’m not OK with this,” she said into my chest. She might have been crying, but then, I might have been too.

“It’ll be all right,” were the words that came out of my mouth automatically. Does anyone ever believe those words when they say them? Probably not. It’s almost like a gut reaction. You have to say them.

“Get home as fast as you can,” she said.

I nodded before she pulled me into a kiss so sweet and warm I forgot all about leaving for a minute. At a time like this, her mom would usually barge in and ask what was going on, but not this time. Somehow I managed to get my head back on straight and pick up my stuff.

“I’ll be back by the nineteenth,” I said.

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

That was my last night in Theodore, Alabama for a while. I stepped out into the darkness and the heat and headed toward the highway.

Checking in on 2016 Goals

Early this year I set out some goals for 2016, not knowing what this year would bring. Boy, was I surprised. I thought I'd take a minute to check over those goals and ask myself, what the heck happened??  I'm not making excuses, but I can already tell you many of these fell by the wayside in March when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I also lost three aged, beloved pets this spring. It was not a fun time.

So what were my goals for 2016?

1) Read lots of books - The first casualty was reading. It usually is the first thing to go because it's a "nice to do" not a "have to do". I did read the new Harry Potter play, which was mildly entertaining. And Mrs. Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, which I liked. (The movie totally changed the ending though.)

2) Write lots of words - Hoo boy! This I did NOT do. At all. When you're worried about your health and going to doctor appointments every week or more, you just don't feel that creative. No new projects were started this year. JuNoWriMo was skipped because of radiation therapy in June. However, I did complete edits on a middle grade manuscript I'm quite fond of called "Troll Teeth and other Bedtime Stories".

3) Travel - I was a little tied down this spring with radiation treatments every day for six and a half weeks, but after that I went to north Idaho to see family. I've also had some good day trips, some to places I've never been before. Most excitingly, I've got reservations for next spring break in St. Petersburg, Florida. I haven't been there for over twenty years.

4) Exercise and eat healthy - This really shouldn't be a goal; it should be every day life. I do mostly eat healthy, but I can't lie - when I thought I might be taking chemotherapy, I did some stress eating. I thought it might be helpful to bulk up before chemo so I had a little weight to lose anyway. Probably not what a doctor would advise, but it made sense to me at the time. I didn't end up getting chemotherapy, so I started watching my portions again. My exercise routine was interrupted by my surgery and I'm afraid I never really got back on the bandwagon. I still enjoy seeing how far I can go on my Fitbit each day, but I think weight bearing exercise is just as important as steps are. People keep saying "sitting is the new smoking". I got a standing desk at work and it's pretty cool.

5) Publish - I did the query thing, a got few nibbles, but no bites. My self-published titles are doing well on Amazon, so I decided to self-publish "Crawdad". It should be available very soon.  The rights to "Vessel" were reverted to me from the publisher this year, so I'll be self-publishing that as well. "Troll Teeth" is with a publisher for consideration, as is "Star Taker, Sky Dragon", a steampunk adventure story. If those don't work out, they're both candidates for self-publishing too.

6) Grow a garden that survives - This one I achieved!!  A new fence around the garden and a new greenhouse helped a lot, as well as a drop in the vole population spike.  I got tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, squash, beans, onions, lettuce, and beets. I made pickles, salsa, tomato sauce, and spaghetti sauce. I've still got tomatoes, but I think I've canned just about all the stuff we can eat, so I'm not sure what I'll do with those. I also plan to make enchilada sauce when my anchos are dried. I also grew the prettiest flowers! The frost got the zinnias already, but there's still poppies and marigolds.

7) Save some money - yeah, not so much. Maybe next year?

8) Do some home improvements - other than the new greenhouse, not much of this happened either
 
9) Meditate - This helped me tremendously in March and April, which were terribly stressful months. I've meditated before with just a timer, but his year I found an app that had guided mediations for things like stress and worry. It was just what I needed. Check out the Gaiam Mediation Studio if you're interested.



10) Gratitude - If I didn't know how to do this before, I sure do now. Nothing like a life-threating illness to make you appreciate the life you have. I read an inspiring quote the other day that's going to stick with me for awhile....

We don't always know how we'll die, but we can always choose how we will live~

I chose to live life in peace, love, and gratitude.

Giving thanks~

It's been a crazy-busy year for me with lots of good happenings, but with set backs too.

My family and I were able to travel this year and had a lovely time.  My garden suffered terribly due to voles and rabbits. It produced almost nothing.

I worked very hard on publishing and writing this year - Vessel was published by a small press, and I self-published The Color of Water and a print version of Storyteller.  I also finished writing two new books and a rough draft of a third. I've queried far and wide, but no takers so far.

I've seen friends get married, welcome new babies, and say goodbye to loved ones forever this year. I've seen things in the news on television/radio/social media that make me question the sanity of the human race sometimes. It's troubling, but that's life. Change comes to all things and all beings. It's not necessarily good or bad; it just is.

Autumn is a natural time of change and it seems fitting that we take this time to think of the good in our lives and to give thanks for it. I wish you a season of love, the warmth of home and family, and above all, peace in your heart and in the world~

Writing #QuietYA

I happened across a new-ish hashtag today - #QuietYA - and it inspired this post. Inspired because I'm working on a manuscript, two actually, right now that I think qualify as #QuietYA. There's no vampires, no swearing, no love triangles, no flashy-flash. I've shopped them both a bit to agents and editors and each time they're read, they've been rejected. One agent who said it was really good writing, better than most of what comes across her desk, but no, she can't sell it.

Maybe its because my manuscripts aren't the biggest concept or a retelling of something everybody already knows. Those seem really hot these days, but I've never been one for retellings. What I write is #QuietYA. It's character-driven, emotional stuff and I get the feeling its not what big publishers think people want to read. And maybe it isn't what most people read, but there are readers out there who enjoy #QuietYA. I've met them. I'm one of them. And I'm ok with that. I kinda like being quiet sometimes.

I remember years ago when I first wanted to write YA, everything I saw marketed for teens was super gritty, serious stuff about anorexia or rape or suicide. (That was before the Twilight craze that brought fantasy back, which I'm actually really glad for.) I wanted to write for middle graders and teens, but it didn't seem like I wrote the kind of stuff that was being published. I spoke to a published author at an Idaho Writer's League conference about my fears. Was there any room for me in publishing?

I don't recall her exact words anymore, but as they say, I do remember how she made me feel. Her answer was, and it still is, yes, there is room in publishing for #QuietYA. There are readers who want quiet, poignant, thought provoking stories.  With that author's encouragement, I started to write the stories I'd always wanted to.

I still worry about marketability and I still fret that quiet stories are passed over far too often for the flashy titles. But I found my own writer's voice and wrote the stories I wanted to read. I'm happy with that. It's where I want to be. Peace~

#SampleSunday excerpt from my latest Work In Progress

For lots of folks, today marks the end of NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month. For me, it's the end of the November Writing Challenge, which isn't really an ending because the work isn't done yet. It's "well begun" and well begun is half done, as Mary Poppins says.

I've spent November working on a project I call "Crawdad". I started it over the summer and worked on it ever since. I have a rough draft now that I'm piecing together, since I wrote the parts somewhat out of order. I'd like to share an excerpt with you for #Sample Sunday. :) If you're interested, read on down.

I've also been querying another project called The Color of Water. There are at least three pitch events on Twitter this month, so I plan to pitch it as much as I can. Aside from attending conferences, Twitter really is the best place to reach agents and editors you might not ever get to meet otherwise. Twitter is where my first two books found their homes, so it does work. If you follow me on Twitter, I'm apologizing now; my tweets early in December will consist of A LOT of repetitive pitching. Sorry. :)



I'll also be book blogging a lot in December. There's the Small Press and Indie Book Blog Hop coming up Dec. 5-12 and my book Hush Puppy will be hosted by Diverse Book Tours starting Dec. 8 . Diverse Book Tours was started by my favorite Twinjas book reviewers to help promote diversity in literature. If you follow this blog, you're sure to see several posts sponsored by Diverse Book Tours.  I also post Month 9 Books cover releases and book tours. Month 9 Books is publishing my book Vessel in 2015, so watch for that and add it to your Goodreads list. If there's another small press publisher that does more to promote their authors online, I sure haven't seen it. I'm so excited to be in the Month 9 Books family. :)

Whew! With all that going on, I'm sure glad I decided to finish my Christmas shopping in October! I hope you enjoy the upcoming holiday season peeps :)

~Crawdad Excerpt~

Sometimes people do the best they can, but it ain't no good. There's no shame in it. Well, maybe there is, but there's nothing you can do about it anyway. No use getting mad about it. 

The day my mama died I'd been sitting there, wondering what I was gonna do, just like I had for the last three days of mama's coma. The hospice lady said I should tell mama is was all right to let go, but I didn't want to. I wanted her to sit up in bed and tell me what the hell she was thinking when she said I wasn't really her son. Who else's son would I be? Hadn't she been with me every single day of my life? It was only seventeen years, but I remembered her in almost every one of them. She was my mom as sure as August in Alabama is miserable hot, as sure as honey sticks to your fingers, and then she had to go and ruin it all.

"Jamil," she whispered to me, cause the emphysema had stolen most of her raspy voice. "I need to tell you something."

"It's OK, Mama. I know you wished you'd never smoked."

She done told me that about a million times. Made me swear on my immortal soul I'd never do it. I couldn't tell her I already had.

"It's not that."

She raised a bony hand for me to hold, her nails like claws they'd gotten so long. I took her hand and leaned in close so she wouldn't have to talk loud.

"There ain't much time left, so I better tell you this while I still can."

"Aw Mama, you gonna get better."

"No, I ain't Jamil. No time left. I just want to meet my maker with a clear conscience."

I couldn't imagine what she was talking about. My mama always had a "strong moral compass" she called it. She taught me right from wrong with a switch so I'd have one too, whatever it was.

"Then what is it?" I asked.

"I ain't..." she paused, her face bunched up like something hurt her.

"You need a nurse?"

"No. I ain't your mama."

"What?" I was sure my ears heard her wrong.

Here I go again~

It's August. Another month with 31 days,beginning and ending on a weekend. The other thing about August is it's my last month of summer without a lot of the familial obligations that come along with the school year. Why is this important? Because I was so inspired by JuNoWriMo (the 50,000 words in a month challenge) I've decided to do it again in August.

I've spent July outlining several books and settled on one to start writing. The working title is Crawdad. I know, I know! I haven't even typed up the entire book I wrote in June, but that can wait till winter. Editing can be done in short bursts, a bit here, a bit there. I've found I rather like writing a first draft in a focused, short timeframe. I'm not exactly sure if the result is any good, but I know it's far easier to fix a rough draft than a blank page. I figure if I can get another draft knocked out now, I can spend the school year fixing them and have something ready for submission next spring.

So here I go! Deep breath! Diving into my next story starting today. I may not blog much for the next month. I'm so far behind on my Goodreads reading goal I'll never catch up. But never mind all that! I gotta write! ~See you in September~