L is for Love

            L is for love. As in, I love blogging. That is cheating, but it still counts. I think. I’ve been invited to do a blog-hop by @MrsLeapOfFaith and since I’m also in the middle of the A to Z blogging challenge, they’ll just have to mesh.

            I want to thank Inger for including me in stuff like this. First, there was the Liebster award and now this blog-hop. It is networking at its finest! And while I appreciate the glowing recommendation, being southern, I don’t wear a cowboy hat. The closest I come is this: 

            We were at the Outer Banks, which is one of few times I actually wore this hat. No other time seems more appropriate than when you’re trekking through sand dunes. Anyway!

            The rules are simple: Answer the four questions below, link back to the person who invited you, and name the people who will be posting the following Monday.

Why do I write what I write?

            Hmm. Well…because I love love stories and I love supernatural things and women that kick ass. I cut my teeth on Charmed, which is female dominated and all about magic and family. I think those are themes that make their way into what I write today. They’re certainly themes I look for in books I read.

What am I working on?

            In-between keeping up with the A to Z challenge, I’m still wrestling with the first novel of the bloodborn, the series that will follow Shadows Rising. I have no idea when I will finish but I can say this: I’m ready to be done with it and for the series to move forward.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

            It’s mine. It’s my take on common creatures and themes that we’re all familiar with but that can be manipulated a thousand different ways. If you want to know more than that, read Shadows Rising to find out for yourself. Witches, shapeshifters, dragons, and some other things that you may not be familiar with. I’ve taken common supernatural beings and mixed them all together in a world of my own making.

How does your writing process work?

            Usually, I get an idea that just latches on my mind and won’t let go until I write it down. New ideas that I’m unsure whether or not they’ll become anything substantial, I sketch out scenes as they come to me. Once there’s enough sketches, I then try to make something bigger. A lot of current storyline and characters came into being that way.

            Once I’ve got reassurances that the story is here to stay, I then turn to the process of actually typing it out. Whether or not it gets finished, that is the fun question.

            Maybe that’s why I love blogging so much. I can write and finish something and post the product quickly for other people to see. And I don’t have to answer to anyone else as I do it. It’s fun. 

 I will put my choices for the blog hop on the Kelswitch tomorrow. I'm a little frazzled today with some other things. Oh, and it's my birthday! :) :) :)

Ring of Love

            “A wedding ring is a circle, a sacred space encircling the finger which many ancient people believed contained a vein running directly to the heart. Therefore, it is not a brand of ownership, as some would have you believe, but a magick circle which guards a sacred place and which creates upon the giver a geise, or honor vow, to uphold the Handfasting oaths they have just taken.”

            That passage comes from Celtic Myth & Magick by Edain McCoy. I include it here because I wanted this blog to be about something very special. Yesterday, December 22^nd, marked four years since I got engaged. I said we wouldn’t get this far without a ceremony, but things haven’t quite worked out how I thought they would. But I still wear my ring most every day, and I feel naked if I leave the house without it. My wedding band still sits safely tucked away, free of the weathering of everyday wear. Sometimes, I just like to take it out and slide it on next to my engagement ring and remind myself for just a moment of the promise Bear and I started out with. Even if we’re having a hard time, I just look at my ring and I can’t help but smile.

            What makes the ring special is that it suits me and Bear picked it and the matching wedding band out by himself. He fretted over it before we ever officially got engaged, and I phrase it that way because we knew a long, long time ago that we wanted to marry each other. He sent me a link for a Kay’s survey that was supposed to give clueless boyfriends a helping hint at what kind of ring their ladies would like. I think Bear already had it figured out, but he just wanted to be sure.

            I am horribly frustrated that we’re not married yet and I’m still just wearing my engagement ring. But the ring is a promise that we will make it to that point, no matter how long it takes. It’s funny because there have been many marriages to rise in the time since we got engaged and half as many have failed. And we’re still here, still together. Just like the eternal symbol of a circle, a continuous cycle of the promise of life. It gives me hope and fills me with happiness, even if I would much rather be wearing the wedding band.

            The next update I have planned for the Kelswitch is a blog about my choice for best book of 2013. I have no idea what that will be, but I hope to get a clue over the holiday. From Carolina Kel of the Kelswitch, I wish any and all readers Merry Christmas and happy holidays. Enjoy your families and count your blessings. That’s what I’ll be doing.

            Over and out.

Fairy Tales Never Surrender

I last messed with this on March 16, 2011. It was written when emotions were running high because of some stuff going on in my life, and it still seems relevant today, worth the repost. I originally shared it on Facebook and now I’m sharing it here on my blog. Enjoy, and I hope it makes you think.

P.S. I dropped the f-bomb, the real one, a few times here. You’ve been warned.

            Life is not a fairy tale. Or so we’ve always been told. I’ve seen for myself that the saying is true, but the why of it is what boggles my mind. There have been circumstances where the central theme of fairy tales, true love, has been in perfect play. The couple was a fairy tale sprung to life, even if their circumstances in the world weren’t the best. They  had each other and that was enough to keep them going. Brace yourself for this one, even though it won’t come as that much of a shock. These couples, whose love and devotion is so beautiful that it draws admiration from those around them, from their children and their children’s spouses, have royally fucked up in one way or another. The fuck up in question is of the variety that breaks a marriage up, destroys a home and a family. This is always tragic and marriage counselors get paid thousands of dollars every year to figure out this next question: Why? Why did their fairy tale love go spiraling out of its natural orbit?

            It all comes down to the choices we make. Life could be a fairy tale with the perfect love, if only we’d let it. Things get in the way. Shit happens and couples buckle under the strain, I’m not disputing it. But in the end, it’s always because they decided they couldn’t take it anymore. It’s because they decided to do the thing that they knew, somewhere in the back of their mind, had the potential to destroy everything they held dear and precious. Relationships are hard. They are work, don’t kid yourself. If they were a walk in the park, the divorce rate wouldn’t be the talk of the town that it has become. They’ve always been difficult. The difference between the past and now is that people have an out when they want it, when things get rough. In the past, it was until death do ye part, and they meant that quite literally. These days, people bolt if things get too hard. They jumped in without much thought in the first place anyway.

            But this is not a commentary about my generation and how nearly none of the people I know were married when they had a baby and the parents rarely ever stay together. It’s a commentary on the choices we make, how we decide to deal with things and go on with life, even though there is shit all over our windshield. The choices we make. It’s not just a pretty saying you can throw out on Facebook to make yourself feel better when you spill coffee on your blouse at work. I mean when it is truly a case of the shit hit the fan and everything is spiraling down towards hell in a hand basket with a nice pretty bow on it. That is the true test of a person.

            Recently, I read a novel called Shadowfever, by Karen Marie Moning. It was the fifth and final installment of the Fever series featuring Mackayla Lane. One of the central characters, a man which Mac is heavily involved with throughout the series, says quite often something about it’s how we go on that defines us. Fictional character or not, those are words of wisdom that I plan to live my life around. It’s the paths we choose, the choices we make. Throughout the entire series, Mac is put through so much shit that a lesser person would have curled up and died on the spot. Not Mac. She kept getting up, she kept on going, even though her world literally fell apart around her. When the love of her life was supposedly dead, she set out on the warpath to seek revenge and take the Dark Book unto herself and completely remake the world, for him, to bring him back. It is a romantic notion, but that doesn’t take away the severity of it. Many authors I’ve read have broached the idea of remaking or just destroying the entire world for a loved one. It makes me think. A love so great, you would be willing to destroy the world, remake it just to bring that person back from the dead? That is a love that you are literally willing to do anything for,  just so long as you keep that person by your side. One series it was a mother and her only son, with the Fever series it was Mac and her true love.

            This is why literature is so important to our society. These ideals are ones that cannot but are being lost every single day. People choose not to care, for one reason or another. They choose to not give a damn what happens to anyone but themselves. It’s all choice.

            We were creatures given free will from whatever creator there may be out there and some of us do not take full advantage of that gift. We fall in line like sheep and accept what there is and do not try to change it, even for someone we really love.

            Choice. It’s choice. Those before us made mistakes and made them intentionally. We do not have to repeat them, if we can learn from them. And that is what I intend to do. I never want to hurt my love the way I’ve seen other people hurt each other. I never want to let my emotions cloud my judgment so far that I cannot see past my own hurt into the lives of those around me.

            Learn from mistakes. Make the choices to go on and make this small existence what I want. Know that it won’t always be perfect, but as long as I am willing to walk through hell and high water for my love, it will be a fairy tale for me. What about you?