Method to my Madness Monday: Fear of Lying

"...not only does Isadora Wing, like Erica Jong, write poetry but she writes Ms. Jong’s poetry, two samples of which are in this book.”

-John Updike, on Erica Jong’s thinly veiled auto-biographical protagonist in Fear of Flying

A while back my ex-husband asked me what the subject of my work in progress was.

I thought for a moment. “Well, I guess it’s about my life.”

“Your life? Isn’t that a little presumptuous?”

“I think it would be presumptuous for someone else to write about my life,” I told him.

“I mean, aren’t you too young for that? Don’t people write about their lives at the end of them?”

But before I could say anything more, my younger son piped in, “How could you write a book at the end of your life? Wouldn’t you be dead?”

Most writers write about their lives. Some admit to it, and that is called nonfiction. Some don’t, and they produce novels.

Now, I don’t mean that my novel is exactly about me. That’s the beauty of a novel. But I draw on myself and my experiences. I can’t help it. I know myself so well, and I’ve had such interesting experiences. It’s like God ordained that I write it all down.

But the problem is what to admit to.

When my novel comes out and you read it, if there’s something shocking, it didn’t really happen.

If you know me and you think you recognize someone in the book, you’re wrong. 

Have I covered myself enough?

The truth fascinates me so much that I can’t ignore it. Every moment of my life is a study in human nature. If I didn’t write about myself, I’d have to follow someone else around, because you can’t make this stuff up. Truth is stranger than fiction, but it’s so strange that we often have to label it f'iction.' I think in fact that the deepest truths are in fiction. Does that make sense?

Erica Jong is so obviously Isadora Wing that I could tell after reading the opening and then scanning her bio on the back cover. They went to the same schools and received the same degrees. They both married Asian men. Give me a break. And the more you delve, the more clues there are - even to the point of the poetry John Updike pointed out.

Another funny thing (if you find any of this funny) is that I always felt my current novel is my generation’s Fear of Flying. I thought this without knowing anything about Fear of Flying and certainly never having read it. I just had this certainty in my heart. Then, when I came across Fear of Flying at Goodwill (they always have an excellent book selection, which I don’t know is a good or bad sign for literature.) I of course picked it up and started reading it right there, leaning against a clothes rack. Yes! It is, as I suspected from the title, a coming of age story about a woman. It is fearless (despite the title) and fresh, as John Updike wrote in his review, and even though it is now dated and we can laugh at some of the terms (there are analysts everywhere, for example), the wit and ideas Ms. Jong put forth are so honest that the book remains relevant all these years later.

I would like to write to Erica Jong and thank her for paving my way – even though I was nearly finished writing my novel when I encountered her book, it rallied me so very much. However, someone told me she’s dead. I will check into that further.

Anyway, the point I wanted to make for today is that good fiction always contains truth, and that truth of course comes from the writer’s heart. So whether or not we realize it (or admit it) we authors have all put something of ourselves into our novels. Unless we’ve written work for hire. Or Twilight.

Method to my Madness Monday: The Things I've Left Behind

My latest novel is in some ways my greatest challenge. Is this because it’s deeply personal?  No. I’ve written novels like that before. One of them was so emotionally close that it nearly killed me.

Okay, this book is not that challenging – thankfully. But it is my biggest test plot-wise, and in its overall breadth, if that makes any sense. My novels thus far have covered a very limited period of time. One of them covered a summer. Another spanned ten months, the other two – maybe a year. This novel covers forty years of a life. Talk about an epic journey!

A lot of scenes are required in a book like this. I’ve been told a novel must be in at least 80% scene. Problem: scenes take up more room than summary/telling. With so much space being occupied by extra scenes in this revision (because of the 80% rule), it sadly followed that some plot points needed to be dropped – or the endeavor would be 1,000 pages long!

Have you read The Things They Carried? (You should.) In the midst of writing this novel, I’m mourning for the things I’ve left behind.

The first thing to go was the most poignant love affair the character experienced. Why? First, because it was too much of a diversion from the main theme of the book. Second, because it required too much of a set-up and explanation – for which there was just no room!

The second thing to go was a set of secondary characters who were quite amusing and animated, but they also took up too much room for the limited amount of time they were part of my character’s life. I couldn't justify building up a personal trainer (pardon the pun) who would only be around for a few years, or a shrink who was present for a few months. In real life we gain insight from many people we encounter. In fiction, it’s richer and more satisfying to meld these people into one strong secondary character, who will act as the main character's “go to” for the bulk of the story.

The third thing to go was a collection of funny and poignant scenes that did not pull their weight in yanking the plot forward. They were well-written and satisfying and I hope to publish them in a collection of short stories, because they hold up on their own – but in this novel they were like boulders strapped around the plot’s waist, weighing it down.

So many pages have been cut – valiant, fallen soldiers who fought the good fight but made the ultimate sacrifice for the cause. Writing a novel is in fact like dodging bullets on a battlefield, but they’re the ultimate friendly-fire because the sharp shooter aiming at you is you. This is impossible to fathom if you’re not a writer.

It’s hard to fathom even if you are one.

My Aunt Olga the violinist once told me an amusing musician’s break-up line: “I love you darling, but the season is over.”

The same may be said to the things I’ve left behind.

Tightrope Tuesday: Another Year of Parenting Without A Net

            Another year of being a mom is underway. And I can’t help thinking: somehow this parenting thing eludes me. I always feel like I should be doing something more for or with my kids, and yet the tug to write is so strong as well...

            The other night they wanted me to carve pomegranates. Tearing myself away from my manuscript to paw at seeds and splatter crimson everywhere was not thrilling, and I let my kids know it. They laughed.

            Some mothers manage to fulfill their kids’ requests with a big smile. I can’t help wonder: is it genuine, or Zanax-induced?

            My son Michael made a little comment about my perpetual menu options the other night. “We know it’s either going to be steak, chicken or fish,” he said.

            “Excuse me, but this isn’t the diner,” I told him. “You’re lucky you get that. Besides, sometimes I make tacos.”

            What does he want? Doesn’t he know how hard it is for me to deal with meals at all when I’m in the middle of a novel? On Saturday night it took me an hour of wandering through the supermarket even though I had a list of only four things to buy, because I literally couldn’t focus. I kept running lines through my head.

            Living in two worlds is like constantly juggling. And when I leave the literary world for awhile, it takes me that much longer to reacquaint myself with the characters – let alone write something quality. Sometimes I forget plot points, or if I’ve tackled something yet. So the bottom line is, I don’t want to cook or shop AT ALL. That doesn’t mean I don’t love my kids. I just wish they could fend for themselves.

            I do what I need to do. I’m just not going to be researching any recipes. It’s only dinner. Eat it and more on.

            I love spending time with my kids. But I like to do fun things with them. You know, like those “Disney Dads?” Yeah, I get that.

            So what I need to do is get famous and wealthy enough so I can hire a chef and housekeeper, so we can just have fun when I’m not writing.

            Until then, I’ll cook and do the laundry and do marginal cleaning, but there’s no service with a smile here. Just can’t do it – I’m not a Stepford wife. I’m not a wife AT ALL!!!  

            But I am a mother, and I must be doing something of a decent job because my kids are interesting and funny and I’m proud to know and be affiliated with them. And when we sit down to dinner – I do smile and enjoy myself. I wish we could just cut to the chase.

New Contest!!!

Enter to win a surprise selection of  novel ARCs, collected from American Library Assocation conferences & Book Expo Americas!

(ARCs = Advance Reader Copies)

They are limited editions & collector's items!

To enter, please comment about a gift you once received that touched you (or if you are shy - e-mail me at Ldymcbeth@aol.com.)

You get another chance to win if you share this post on any social media.

Deadline is midnight Saturday (I believe that is also Christmas!)

Here's some gifts that meant a lot to me:

My son Michael shelled out the big bucks and bought me a bracelet with diamond hearts. When a teenager parts with that kind of dough, it's pretty touching.

My son Casey bought me two bunches of lovely wooden tulips last Mother's Day. I especiallytreasure them because I get so sad when real flowers die. I asked him why he bought two bouquets. He answered, "Because one wasn't enough for you."

My boyfriend bought me a purple Dell computer two Christmases ago.  If you know me, you know why this was so appropriate. I am the purple queen. lol.

Anna Pett - who runs the Facebook group "Peace, Love, Teen Fiction," made me a pair of earrings with the cover of The Girl Next Door on them. She used Scrabble tiles with "S" & "C" - my initials!!!

Your turn!

Guest Blogger Joe Lunievicz Gives Tea Some Equal Time!

Today I welcome my friend and co-WestSide Books author Joe Lunievicz!

Joe's book Open Wounds received a starred review from Publisher's Weekly (read below)!

And here's a funny coincidence:

Joe was married on my aunt's floating concert hall, Bargemusic!

Today you are treated to a wonderful piece about something you'll probably never read about again on this blog: TEA!!!

You would think that a guy named Joe would drink coffee,

but this is no ordinary Joe!

Inspired by my "bean blog" of a few weeks past, here is Joe's take on tea. (I read it as I sipped my morning coffee, lol.)

Whether you are a tea totaler or not, you will enjoy Joe's words! Read on:

Of Tea and Sympathy

Coffee had been associated with writing for a long time. But perhaps longer still there is an association with tea.

Tea is a way of life in India. I am lucky to have a deep association with Darjeeling teas, which are good for one’s health. They elevate your mood and keep you happy. Tea rejuvenates the body and rejuvenates the mind. Tea is creative. Drinking tea gets you thinking. Tea encourages dialog, it encourages company, it encourages discussion, whereas a cola is encouraged to be drunk in solitude. Even the color is black. It is dull. it is dreary.

By and large humans are habit oriented. You need to have a habit, whether it is a smoke or chewing tobacco or paan (betel leaf), or liquor. I think I’ve got a good habit - I drink tea. I don’t smoke. I don’t chew paan and I don’t lose my temper. I drink tea.

- Shiv Saria, Chairman of the Siliguri Auction Committee - The Meaning of Tea by Scott Chamberlin Hoyt.

Now it’s not Starbucks philosophy about the bean, but it does speak to the qualities of the tea leaf and of cola, of which the part about cola may or may not, depending on how you read it sound a bit racist.

But tea, as Shiv says, is creative, or it helps to loosen creativity which could be the same thing. And tea does elevate the mood and rejuvenate the body/mind - which is pretty much what any caffeinated beverage does. And it makes you happy which is what stimulants do. But when you drink tea you do need to drink multiple cups of tea to take in the same amount of caffeine in a single cup of coffee (5 to 1 for black tea, up to 10 to 1 for green and 20 to 1 for white tea) which essentially means the tea makers are simply smart businessmen and women. And drinking that much of anything makes you have to pee. I’m not sure that helps me write but it does help me procrastinate.

As for encouraging dialog, discussion, and company - it indeed helps me with internal dialog and discussion though sometimes too much tea can cause too much internal dialog or crossed discussions about both what happens next and where is the nearest bathroom.

But writers are creatures of habit. I know I am. I don’t smoke or chew tobacco or paan, and keep my beer intake to a minimum (I’ve never found liquor to be helpful in any way to writing though others may argue with me). Don’t get me started on losing my temper - I have a nine-year old and patience wears thing multiple times a day.

So that leaves me with a small caffeine habit that along with the taste and fragrance and ritual of making... tea helps me to align the words wandering around inside my head into sentences that tell a story.

Thanks, Joe!!!

Starred Review of Open Wounds:
Lunievicz s impressive debut is a dark, often brutal story, balancing some of the meanest villains in recent memory with a beautifully portrayed historical New York and a movie-obsessed boy determined to overcome the hand life has dealt him. In late-1930s New York City, Cid has been physically abused by both his grandmother and his father, the latter blaming him for his mother s death in childbirth. His only bright spots are seeing movies with his grandmother and playing with some local kids (while avoiding eighborhood bullies). When his father vanishes and his grandmother kills herself in front of him, Cid is sent to an orphanage and later adopted by his long-lost cousin, crippled veteran Lefty, who helps foster his interests in acting and fencing. As Cid gains confidence, he is drawn back into the tough gang crowd while he econnects with friends and bullies from his younger years. Lunievicz paints a grim picture of Depression-era New York: anti-Semitism, violence, and poverty (an early eviction scene stands out) dominate the storytelling, yet bright spots like Cid s love of cinema are painted with equal brilliance and realism. Ages 14 up. --Publishers Weekly
Joe's bio:Joe Lunievicz has taught stage fencing to actors at HB Studio in NYC and performed improvisational comedy. He drew on his experiences as a fight choreographer, playwright, and competitive fencer in writing Open Wounds, his debut novel. He lives in New York City with his wife and son.

Method to my Madness Monday: Grammar vs. Voice

Welcome to Method to My Madness Monday!

On Saturday I Facebooked a couple of comments my 92 year old aunt Olga Bloom made.

Bargemusic - my aunt's world-famous floating concert hall, which I helped build

This reminded of me of Aunt Olga’s reaction to the beginning of my novel, Saved by the Music – which is autobiographical, and also a tribute to her.

Aunt Olga in the early days of Bargemusic, with her dog, Lovely Bloom

Here’s the beginning of my novel:

The taxi’s spinning wheels spit pebbles and dirt as it left me behind at the marina’s gate. The dusty haze was a perfect fit for my state of mind.

I wobbled across the driveway and into the marina, trying to balance with my heavy suitcase. Sweat beaded under my bangs.

It was unbearably bright, like the sun was aiming right at me. But looking around, I decided that the marina needed all the brightening it could get. Damaged boats lined the gravel-filled boatyard, all of them in dry dock, up on stilts like big crutches—a nautical hospital. Their exposed insides were like my wrecked life. But at least someone cared enough to fix them.

The sounds of saws, drills, and hammers punctured the air as I passed the workers using them. I tried tuning out the men’s jeering whistles.

One yelled out, “Nice ass.”

Another called, “Hey, Slim.”

Some people really got off on taunting strangers.

I crunched though the gravel, kicking up pieces as I moved toward the water. Sailboats, cruisers, and yachts were all tied with rope to the docks.
So where was my Aunt Agatha’s barge? What did a barge even look like?

Aunt Agatha had told me about the barges that kings rode on centuries before, but she’d never actually described their appearance. There didn’t seem to be anything worthy of royalty bobbing about in this marina, at least not anything I saw.

“Over here, Willow!” a scratchy voice called out.

There was Aunt Agatha, waving from the deck of a huge and hideous metal monstrosity. This blows, I thought, doubting there’d be any cable TV on this scow.

My aunt hurried off the vile green vessel, prancing along a wooden plank across the water to reach me.

“What is that ugly thing?” I asked.

“That barge is our future concert hall!”
She couldn’t be serious.


You would think Aunt Olga would react in some personal way when she read this intimate story – which she was a part of!

But the first thing she did when she finished reading this opening was to look at me intently and ask, “Do you know the proper use of a modifier?”

This may sound harsh, but it was done with love. My aunt is old-school about grammar.

I said, “Not really.” I didn't even know what a modifier was, let alone the proper use of one. “But this is in the first-person voice of a fifteen year old, and they don’t tend to use modifiers correctly¸ either.” At least, this fifteen year old didn't - as she was based on the teenaged me.

She considered this for a long moment. Then she said, “Oh! I get it.”

This exchange illustrates today’s focus:

Sometimes, voice and grammar are at odds.

Sometimes, proper grammar kills.

I just ran my opening through an on-line grammar check service. It called my writing “adequate,” saying it could benefit from a revision.

It didn't like my modifier choices, either.

Furthermore, it recommended that I avoid contractions because they make my writing “too informal.” As a matter of fact, it called by use of contractions “a critical issue.” They were the largest reason why a revision would prove beneficial.

Guess what? A teenager’s voice IS informal.

To me, first person is like a running dialogue with the reader. However the person speaks, that’s how the writing should be. Once again I’ll use my favorite book The Catcher in the Rye as an example:

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”

First page of Catcher - the underlining was done by someone else.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say this writing is less than adequate, according to the grammar checker. But as an opening, you can’t get more perfect than this. We know this kid – just from these few sentences.

This is what my oldest worn-out copy of The Catcher in the Rye looks like

Here’s another passage:

“Old Selma Thurmer - she was the headmaster's daughter - showed up at the games quite often, but she wasn't exactly the type that drove you mad with desire. She was a pretty nice girl, though. I sat next to her once in the bus from Agerstown and we sort of struck up a conversation. I liked her. She had a big nose and her nails were all bitten down and bleedy-looking and she had on those damn falsies that point all over the place, but you felt sort of sorry for her. What I liked about her, she didn't give you a lot of horse manure about what a great guy her father was. She probably knew what a phony slob he was.”

Ouch! The on-line grammar corrector would probably malfunction from overload here. But man, this is good stuff!

Everyone loves Catcher - even Chuck Schulz!

It would be fun to paste famous openings in the grammar checker and see what their “faults” are. If I had time, that is. (If you try any, let me know what happens!)

Bottom line: Be real. Unless your character is a grammar stickler like my aunt, don’t worry about modifiers – whatever they are. And embrace contractions. They are your friends.

Readers embrace authenticity.

That’s all I have to say about that.

J.D. Salinger's letter rejecting a film offer, which has nothing to do with this topic, but I found it on Google Images and I love it!

Surrender: Step One in the Revision Process

            How do you write a story?

            Scene by scene.

            It’s kind of like laying bricks,

 until you have a sturdy house no wolf can blow down.

            I know this – I preach this.

            If you examine my novels, you will see I practice this.

            Why, then, have I had such a hard time doing this in my latest novel?

            I think it’s the time frame.

            My preceding novels take place over a short span of time. Months.

            My latest novel covers forty years.

            How can I write forty years scene by scene? What kind of epic will this be?

These are the questions which have immobilized me.

            Even now, when I’ve painstakingly created scenes for most of the first 100 pages (taking it bird by bird, as Anne Lamott advises) I somehow felt obliged to make a blanket statement of thought to introduce main character.

Read this book, if you haven't.

If you have, read it again.

            On Friday, I presented my opening to a panel of three agents at a literary conference at The New School. I really thought they’d like it.

            Here’s the very beginning:

            She loved them all, Luna realized.

            And why not?

            There lay in every man something to love – no matter how cold, brutal, unforgiving he could be. There was always a fragment. A trace. perhaps left from his youth, before the ice settled. Luna had honed in on the positive at once. Every time.

            Agent #1: “There’s no sense of place.” (Agents 2 & 3 nod.)

            Me, in my head: “You ninny! I’m introducing the character.”

            Me, out loud: “She’s in bed with a guy. I bring that in shortly.”

            Agent #1: “You need to bring in now. I want to see that man in her bed.” (Agents 2 & 3 nod.)

            Me, in my head: “Can’t you see that this writing is compelling? What reader wouldn’t want to read more? I’ve poured out my soul here! You can’t wait a page to see the guy laying there? Talk about needing instant gratification!”

            Me, out loud: “So you want me to set the scene first, then delve into the main character?”

            Agent #1: “Yes.” (Agents 2 & 3 nod.)

            I smiled and thanked them, but inside I was seething. Still, I wrote notes about what they’d said.

            And then, as I was going over my words for the umpteenth time, something strange happened.

            I decided to try in their way.

            It was this calming feeling.

            It was surrender.

            Not to the agents – but to the process.

            To the basic tenet of writing that requires scene by scene writing.

            I knew that, dang it all!

            And just like that, the idea came to me: What if Luna is talking to the guy while he’s sleeping?

            And I got excited.

            And I knew I had something.

            Here’s my new opening:

            Kneeling beside her bed, Luna gazed at M’s wrinkly eyelids. They looked like elephant skin, except they weren’t gray. “I love you,” she said.

            “Zzznmpfff...,” M snored.

            It was more of a response than he’d offered last night, when she told him the first time. He’d said nothing then – not even, “Thank you.”

            Wow! What a difference!

             I’m conveying the same information, but in a fun way readers can participate in.

            What was that thing they teach us in writing class?

            Oh yeah.

            Show, don’t tell.

            I knew that, too!

            There’s nothing like learning your lessons over and over. As you live, so shall you write.

            My fellow scribes, I urge you to surrender to revision.

            The sooner you do, the sooner you’ll find your peace with your story.           

Guest Blog Friday

Welcome to the inaugural edition of "Guest Blog Friday!"

I'm pleased to host my friend and co-WestSide Books author, Beth Fehlbaum.

She's the author Yalsa Quick-Pick Hope in Patience.



Writing as Healing: 

How writing The Patience Trilogy

helped me move beyond a history of childhood abuse

I was eight years old the first time I wrote about being sexually abused:  “Sssh!!!!!!   He likes to squish my boobs!  Last night in the green chair…”

            I wrote those words in a small diary—the kind with a little lock and key—but anyone knows the lock can easily be ripped away.  I don’t know why the secret I felt compelled to commit to paper was safe within that cardboard cover. 

 I hid the diary in the back of my desk drawer and carried it with me when we moved from the house in rural Texas—the one with the green chair in the den where I’d nearly fallen asleep in my stepfather’s lap and he’d felt me up for the first time.  I was so shocked, I’d pretended to be asleep, and the next morning, when he called me outside and told me to “slap his hands”, I acted like I didn’t know what he was talking about.  That experience became this scene in my first book, Courage in Patience (this is the revised, 2011 version; the book was first released by a now-defunct Canadian publisher, Kunati Books, in 2008):

 Less than a year after they married, he gestured to me to sit on his lap. I did so, enjoying the idea of having a daddy like my friends did. I got so relaxed and content there, I dozed off. He started rubbing my brand-new breasts. I wasn’t actually all the way asleep, but it freaked me out so much that I pretended I was.

            The next morning, a Saturday, my mother told me to go outside because Charlie wanted to talk to me. I approached him like I would come up on a King cobra, full of dread and feeling like a tightly wound spring. His back was to me as he bent under the hood of our car, changing the oil.

            "Mom told me to come out here. Said you want to talk to me," I spoke to the sky as I watched a black vulture circle over something dead.

            He mumbled something and I said, “Huh?”

He backed out from under the hood and took a deep breath.  “Kiddo, slap my hands.” He paused as if waiting for my response.

            "What? Why?" I played dumb, hoping that none of what happened in that chair had really happened. I was nine years old, and I already knew what he was doing was wrong.

            "Last night … in the green chair …" Now it was his turn to stare somewhere else.

            I tilted my head and my voice was so high it didn’t even sound like me. "What chair? When?"

            He smiled that closed-mouth smile from his "model" picture.  “Never mind, Kiddo. You can go back inside now.”

            My heart pounded in my ears as I walked away from him. The morning sun was blinding and felt hot on my hair.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When I was in high school, I pulled the diary from its hiding place and burned it in the fireplace when my parents weren’t home.  Couldn’t risk anyone learning the truth about what my stepfather had started doing to me when I was in fourth grade.  The abuse escalated from touching to rape by the time I told, and that was the physical part.  In addition, he played mind games with me and controlled me through threats to leave my mom. 

I became angrier and angrier the longer the abuse went on, and when I was fourteen, I told my mother what was going on.  She neglected to do anything about it.  I drew on this experience as well when I wrote Courage in Patience—because even though twenty-odd years had passed since the day I told her, the feeling of numbness and disbelief were just as raw and overwhelming for me at age 40 as they were when I was 14.  Unlike me, the protagonist of The Patience Trilogy, Ashley Nicole Asher, tells a teacher and CPS acts on her outcry.  She is placed with her biological father in a tiny East Texas town, and her life begins anew.

After the day I told my mother what was going on and she did The Big Nothing,  I endured about six months of her seeming angry and my stepfather ignoring my existence before a switch flipped inside of me and I became The Perfect Daughter.  I did the housework, laundry, ironing, cooking, worked for the family business, began calling my stepfather “Dad”, aaaaaaaaannnnd developed an eating disorder that to this day vexes me.  I also kept writing, especially poetry.  I don’t have any of the pieces I wrote.   Like the diary, I destroyed any evidence on the chance that my mom might find it and be upset.  My whole life was about keeping her comfortable.

Fast-forward to 2004, when I was 38 years old, 100 pounds overweight, on an express train to Crazy Town, and taking four other people—my husband and three daughters—along for the ride.  Simply put, I could not cope with the secrets anymore.  Committing them to paper and burning them hadn’t done jack-shit to deal with the past.

I entered therapy and, true to form, tried to process the agony I was experiencing by putting the pain on paper.  About eighteen months into the recovery journey we were on together, my therapist suggested that I try writing a novel.  It took me about four months of stopping and starting and being stuck on the question of “WHY?”  Why did this happen to me?  Why didn’t my mom act on my outcry when I was fourteen?  Why has she turned her back on me now?  Why does she refuse to know the truth? 

One day, I decided to imagine what it would be like to be someone else having the experience of recovering from childhood sexual abuse  from  one parent, and deliberate indifference on the part of the caretaker parent. That’s how Ashley Nicole Asher came into being, and Courage in Patience, my first book, was written.  I never even planned to have it published; once I finished it, though, I realized that I had been helped so much by the experience of writing it that it might give hope to others on the same journey.  Even though I was thrilled to become a published author,  I was so afraid of upsetting my mom and ruining any chance that she might still come around and be willing to know the truth about what happened to me that I asked my publisher to not be completely forthright  in my bio.  He came up with the story that I knew what it’s like to be an abused child because I’m a teacher and have worked with abused kids in the past.  But, honestly:  nobody bought that story, because anybody who reads The Patience Trilogy can tell that the person who wrote it has lived it.

            I thought I was through with putting my pain on paper.  I wasn’t.  I was still in therapy and trying like hell to accept the way things are with my mom: we have no relationship, and I couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that she didn’t love me with the same fierceness I feel for my three daughters.  Through writing Hope in Patience (WestSide, 2010), I came to acceptance.  It was excruciating to write; I wept when I wrote the scene in the hospital room, when Ashley’s mom tries to get her to admit that her stepfather, Charlie, who has just been killed in an accident, was a good man.  AND— I no longer allowed my fear to silence the person I had become.  I publicly identified myself as a SURVIVOR of childhood sexual abuse on the book jacket of Hope in Patience, as well as everywhere else.

            At the end of Hope in Patience, Ashley begins dating a boy she’s had a crush on.  I explored what it’s like to be a person trying to move on with her life and experience normalcy in the third book in the Patience trilogy, Truth in Patience.  I also gave Ashley the gift of a face-to-face confrontation with her mom about Truth and what it means to her in the life she has carved out for herself.  I have not experienced this myself.

Truth in Patience is not yet published; my publisher, WestSide Books, is for sale, and not currently acquiring new works.  I am in Publishing Purgatory, along with Selene and the other WestSide authors.

            I still have off-days once in awhile, but I made it through the recovery process.  It took six years of intensive therapy; a kick-ass support team comprised of my husband, daughters, and therapist; iron-clad determination to make it through the journey to hell and back; and writing the trilogy of a fifteen-year-old girl who finds Courage, Hope, and Truth in a tiny Texas town called Patience . 

            Beth Fehlbaum is the author of The Patience Trilogy.  Visit her website; friend her on Facebook; follow her on Twitter. And, for goodness sake, PLEASE help Beth and the other WestSide authors spread the word that WestSide Books is FOR SALE!  Beth is wrapping up a month-long campaign which has included making a general pest of herself about WestSide being for sale, AND an offer of a free raccoon to the buyer of the company!