The day wore on, and Linda was feeling worse and worse. We kept calling people to see what they thought, but what we should have asked ourselves is “What the hell are you waiting for?” By now she has a fever of 102 and a sharp stabbing pain below her right shoulder blade. We called more people, the idea of the crowded emergency room apparently crowding out any remaining lick of sense in our brains. And I didn’t even have a fever to use as an excuse for my muddy thinking.

It reminded me, later, of an alcoholic wondering if he’s an alcoholic. It’s a pretty safe bet that if the question keeps coming to mind, well, then you’re an alcoholic. We needed to be in the hands of medical professionals, and we were in deep denial.

Late in the evening Linda got up to go to the bathroom and I saw her start to wobble. I couldn’t get to her in time and she collapsed, crashing into the bedroom wall. It scared the hell out of me, and it also made the decision for me. I called 911 and the ambulance was on its way. This set up the next challenge, which was to get the paramedics to our door. We live on the river, in a townhouse complex, and though we have a street address, there is no street in front of our house. No one can find it, including the paramedics, so while Linda lay immobile in our bedroom, I was running around trying to direct the traffic. The two firetrucks and an ambulance seemed a little much, but we were finally ready for help. Bring it on.

One of the firefighters asked me what the story was. I told him Linda had fainted and that she had flu-like symptoms. He wouldn’t let more than himself and one other guy up to check things out, no doubt anticipating a virulent case of swine flu with Linda foaming at the mouth. Her blood pressure was taken, and then taken again, and suddenly the activity stepped up. They might have told me what her blood pressure was, but it didn’t sink in. They got a line started on her and whisked her away to Swedish Covenant Hospital, but I still managed to beat them to the ER.

The next few hours were when it started to sink in that Linda was seriously ill. Her blood pressure was hovering in the 50/something range (I never remember the bottom number), and when someone explained that normally you’d see that top number around 110-120 I realized she was in trouble. Plus, she was crying out in pain, but they couldn’t give her anything because of the low blood pressure. It would kill her.

As I started to get more worried I asked the resident whether this could lead to a sepsis. “Oh, she’s septic,” the resident said. My idea of sepsis was a roaring, unstoppable infections pervading the body, but she assured me it’s not always unstoppable. But it does shut down the organs, and the low blood pressure was a by-product of this. Also, her kidneys weren’t working. Great.

Around two in the morning her blood pressure had risen into the 70s and they gave her something for pain. They were able to stabilize her enough to move her to the IMCU at about 4 in the morning. We later found out that if we had been much later – an hour or two – in getting her to the hospital, she probably wouldn’t have made it. Her physicians, a whole team of them, gave the diagnosis of Severe Progressing Necrotizing Pneumonia, also referred to by them as a “devastating” pneumonia. In other words, we’re lucky she’s alive.

How can these things happen? And how could we have been so in denial about what was going on in her body that day? I simply don’t know. I do know that we’ll probably be driving each other to the emergency room everytime we have a sharp pain, a bad headache, or a bad head cold. The better safe than sorry adage is now gospel in our house.

In March I had the pleasure of traveling to Palm Springs to meet up with my new publisher, Bold Strokes Books (in the form of Len Barot, aka, Radclyffe), her editorial staff, and quite a few of the BSB authors. We gathered for a day or two of workshops and meetings and it was fantastic fun to meet everyone, learn a lot at the exceptional workshops, and hang-out pool side talking shop and enjoying the sublime weather. There were many spirited conversations on the weighty issues of the day, one of which involved the varying definitions of what constitutes having sex. My opinion is that you know it when you feel it, but others had much more specific qualifications. Bill Clinton would have approved.

The gathering was then opened up to readers for a book festival, and it was wonderful to meet so many women who love reading as much as I do. A few recognized me from my previous novel, Sometimes Quickly, and that was a thrill.

The BSB authors were friendly, the company organized and professional, the woman at the helm a real leader. It feels very good indeed to be associated with a steady publisher in this rocky time in the industry. I have great hope that Veritas, now schedule for publication in November, 2009, will be a success.

On March 21st I read from Veritas at Women and Children First Bookstore, along with four other BSB authors – Nell Stark, Cathy Rowlands, Jennifer Harris, and Rachel Spangler. The evening was a blast, perhaps especially due to the enthusiasm of some dedicated BSB readers in the audience. Carleen Spry filmed the entire reading and Watty Boss took many good photographs. Thanks to you both for recording the night for posterity.

I learned a week or so ago that I have been accepted by the Ragdale Foundation for a writing residency at their art colony in Lake Forest, IL. I’ll be attending in November of this year, spending a month working on my next book for BSB, tentatively titled Shadow in the Dark. The plan is that I’ll have so much of the book written by November 1st that I’ll be able to finish it while I’m at Ragdale and do my first edits. Lately I’ve found many of my writing plans frustratingly delayed by the demands of my real estate practice – a line of work that is so erratic and unstructured that it is hard to get into good writing habits. That sounds like a bit of an excuse, doesn’t it? Well, I’ll just have to find a way. After all, T.S. Elliot worked in a boring bank all day and managed to write every night. My excuse is a weak one.

Upcoming for me is the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival, where I’ll once again meet up with my BSB compatriots as well as many other writers I’ve met at these events around the country. I’ll be reading from Veritas and taking some really great Master classes and workshops. This will be my second time at S&S, and since it’s in New Orleans every year, it won’t be my last.

I recently learned that the prominent LGBT publisher, Bold Strokes Books, was offering me a contract for my new mystery, Veritas.  I’ve had some highs in my relatively new writing career, but this was giddy high.  I signed the contract last week but was unable to tell anyone until the contracts had exchanged hands via the mails, and the delay was undeniably hard.  I wanted to shout it out.  My goal as a writer has been to keep moving the ball forward with everything I do, test the limits, but in a steady way that extends my reach rather than exceeds it.  And I’m discovering that my reach is farther ahead than I thought.

Bold Strokes Books publishes lesbian-oriented genre books – mysteries, romances, sci-fi, fantasy and erotica.  And it has grown very quickly by publishing a reliable read for its base of readers – good stories with exciting lesbian characters.  My admiration for BSB would be great if that was all that they do, but BSB is clearly extending its reach also, signing gay authors, some literary authors, moving into e-book publishing, reprinting some LBGT classics.  It’s exciting stuff, and I’m very happy to be a part of their shop.

Veritas will be available from BSB in November 2009.  You’ll hear more from me on events surrounding the publication, plus other appearances I’ll be making with BSB.

In other news, the Obama inauguration is one week from today and I’m predicting that there will be some trees knocked down from the exhalation of collective breaths being held around the country and the world.  There’s a lot of fear out there waiting to be soothed when the man takes office.  Can you imagine having his job?  I sometimes despair at my to do list, but all I have to do is think of his and I relax.  In my real estate practice I have definitely seen people holding out, waiting to see where the new administration is going to take us.  It’s a good time to buy, but is it a good time to buy if things get worse?  It’s a bad time to sell, but will it be even worse down the road?  Or better?  What to do?  It’s a paralytic time, in a country usually agitated by motion, not inertia.

I’m not holding my breath.  But I’m taking very deep ones.

One thing about having your own web site is that you can put whatever you want on it.  Right now I’m pretty darn excited about my sister’s newly found talent as an artist. The reason I feel this story can be of interest to those beyond my family is that Liz started painting when she was 46 years old. She’s turning 48 next week, and I think you’ll agree that she’s pretty far along the scale for someone who’s painted for less than two years.

This must be something that runs in my family – at least among the females. My mother was a painter who didn’t find real success in selling her paintings until her early 60s.  She was a trained artist, having gone to the Ringling School of Art when she was a young woman, and then painting when she could while raising four children.  It wasn’t until she was 60 that she started to work in a focused, dedicated fashion and her work took on a whole new look.  More concentrated, meaningful, artful. And her paintings sold like crazy.

I started writing when I turned 50. I’m 53 now and still a beginner when it comes to how much I know and how much I have to learn, but still I’ve thrown myself into it, much as my mother did.  And I’ve had some success so far, enough to keep me going on this path. My mother died before I started writing, but I’d like to think she’d be proud. She admired hard work, even if she wasn’t a fan of lesbian mysteries and romances.

I think there’s no question Mom would be proud of Liz. She too has discovered her passion in middle-age and has made huge progress in such a short time. It’s inspirational, really, and the message I really want to impart is that it is never too late to find that which makes you feel passionate, that which makes the time go by as if it didn’t even exist, that which makes you feel intensely proud and humbled at the same time. And if you do find it, the other part of the message is that it – the craft, the art, the hobby, whatever – doesn’t develop itself.  Like everything else, you get out what you put in, and when you work hard at developing skill, the rewards can be enormous.  The reward, in fact, is the work itself.

I figure I’ll get to be a good novelist about the time I’ll be thinking of retiring from real estate.  And that’s just about perfect.  What better to do with my time? I sometimes wonder what things would be like if I’d discovered writing when I was in my twenties and not so much later. I can’t imagine, but I do know that had I not discovered this love at 50, I’d still be 53 but without a published novel and six or seven stories published in anthologies.  It’s never too late to start.

It's hard to not feel a little gloomy these days.

After returning to civilization following my month long writing retreat, I’ve found myself strangely unconcerned by the rather horrible state of our economy.  Mind you, I am a real estate agent and my phone has virtually stopped ringing.  By all rights, I should be worried.  The money I put away while real estate was crazy hot has now lost a good deal of its value, but soon I’ll have to sell stock to have cash to live on while the market remains quiet.  My partner is in banking, and though her bank is one of the safest in terms of its overall stability, it’s still banking – a pretty vulnerable place to be.  As a couple, we are a ground zero of the new economy.

Why am I not worried?   I really have no idea.  I still am doing some transactions and there will be some closings along the way.  I’m staying on top of what’s going on in the business, staying in touch with my clients, and ready to be there for them when things pick up again.  And in the meantime, I’m writing.  Maybe that’s why I’m not worried.  I have something else I care passionately about and I can devote myself to that with the time I now have.  When real estate picks up, I’ll flip flop the ratio of time I spend on each.  I guess I feel that somehow I’m being taken care of – not necessarily monetarily, but in a broader sense.  Things are happening as they are supposed to, and I’m going to make the most of the situation as it exists.  This coming year will be a challenge to my bank account, but if I can get another book written, how much richer am I?  Richer in spirit, I mean.  I don’t see myself writing a best seller with the next one.

But you never know.

I was recently interviewed at an on-line lesbian fiction site called Kissed by Venus (kissedbyvenus.ca).  The editor of the site is Alexandra Wolfe, who lives in Quebec City but is a woman of the world.  It’s a great web site and I encourage you to visit it.  My interview can be read here.  Alexandra also published a story of mine on the site, Thirty Days Has September, which can be read here.  The story is about a woman who is bottoming out on alcohol, and the reaction to it has been so interesting.  Recovering alcoholics who read it can instantly relate to the cluelessness of the narrator.  Non-alcoholics who read it are amazed at the cluelessness of the narrator, but it’s my hope they have a little more understanding of the power of denial, and the power of addiction, after they read the story.  I recently heard from someone who took the story into a woman’s prison where she does service work.  Her group of recovering women read the story and had quite a lively discussion about it.  That’s the best feedback I’ve ever gotten.

Have a wonderful holiday season.

This is me reading from Sometimes Quickly, my first book. I

I have been back from my month long residency for over two weeks now, and still haven’t found the time or energy to write about my experience there.  My last blog entry was written the day after I arrived, and the feeling of deep satisfaction that I felt then only increased as the month of October rolled on. Let’s see if I can describe it briefly, without too much reverence.

A month can seem like an incredibly short or long time, depending on a host of variables. My month at the Mary Anderson Center for the Arts felt very much what I imagine a month is in real time – I was aware of nearly every moment, I was able to plan my day and then live it without distraction, I was never pulled away from what I intended to do, unless I simply changed my mind about doing it.  The four weeks was a substantial amount of time, but only in the most comforting of ways.  The time was not racing by me, throwing me into a state of fear that it was all going to be gone in a flash.  Nor did it drag on ad infinitum, throwing me into another type of fear – fear of boredom, fear of being too much with myself, fear of not accomplishing as much as I should.

My intention was to finish writing the first draft of my novel in the first two weeks of my stay and to edit during the final two week, and strangely, that’s exactly what I did.  The wonderful brick house that I lived in was occupied by only one other writer and the resident manager, it was quiet, my window had a gorgeous view, and the weather was sublime.  Everyday I woke up, drank coffee while I looked over the pages from the day before, ate breakfast, wrote, walked to the friary for lunch, wrote, hiked the trails in the woods.  Then I’d start editing what I’d already written that day.  Dinner at the friary, and then more editing followed by a TV show I’d downloaded onto my iPod during the day.  The internet connection was so slow that it took all day to download an hour long show.

On Monday nights I walked a few steps out the front door to one of the Friary buildings where yoga was held each week at 6:30.  On Sunday afternoons I’d drive twenty minutes into Louisville and go to the big Barnes and Noble they have there, and that was my outing for the week.  It was the simplest life I’d led since I was too young to complicate my life – let’s call that five years old.  I worked like crazy and felt completely energized by it.  I left the retreat with the book completed, amazed that I’d accomplished what I set out to do.  But even if I hadn’t finished the book I accomplished something in that month I think I needed to accomplish.  I proved to myself that at long last I am comfortable enough in my own skin to absolutely enjoy my own company, to know what I did and didn’t want to do, and to just accept every part of me as being the way it needs to be, at least for now.  I wish everyone had the luxury to do what I did.

The only problem, really, is that while a month away seems like a reasonable amount of time when you’re the person away, the people left behind have a different perspective.  It happened that it was a particularly bad month for my partner, with the financial crisis exploding early in the month and her father falling ill toward the middle of the month.  I guess it’s too much to expect that everything will go exactly the way I want it to.  It certainly wasn’t for my partner that month.

The other thing that was a little shocking is that a week after returning from MACA, I got an e-mail from them saying they’d shut down the whole program!  I got in and out in the nick of time.  I’m not sure why they closed, but it’s probably the same reason most arts programs don’t make it – lack of funds.  It’s really too bad, because I don’t think I really adequately described how conducive that was to my writing.

Now I’ve edited the book as much as I can see to do and sent it off to my first choice in publishers.  The waiting now begins, and it can be agonizing for a double Aries like me.  The only answer is to start the next project.

The acreage the retreat house is on is gorgeous, with miles of hiking trails.

I arrived yesterday at the Mary Anderson Center for the Arts, where I’ll be spending the ENTIRE month of October.  This is such a luxury.  I can only marvel at the fact that I’ve managed to craft the kind of life that allows me to do this, though I think no small portion of that is due to the fact that I’m a real estate agent and I’m just not overly busy right now.

This is the writing half of my room. The other half has a bed and a small sofa.

In any event, I’ll be here for the month, trying to finish my second novel.  Here is in the very southern tip of Indiana, about 15 minutes from Louisville.  The MAC is on land owned by a Franciscan Friary and Retreat Center, but it is completely separate from it.  I have a room looking out over acres of beautiful wooded land.  There are miles of hiking trails all around and a picturesque lake as well.  It’s unbelievably quiet, and the night is pitch, pitch black.  Kind of creepy to a city girl.  I’m the only artist or writer here, so the quiet is fairly complete.  No communing with others at the end of the writing day, which I had been looking forward to.  Another writer is coming next week, so I’ll try to remember how to interact with others once he shows up.

The house

The Friars who own the land have a sense of humor, I was delighted to discover.

My room has a comfy bed, nice big windows, a small couch, and a generous, L-shaped desk.  I got everything set up by last night and even edited a little bit.  Today I went for an hour long hike and wrote 1,500 words.  I’m going to shoot for at least 2,000 a day, but that all depends on what I’m writing.  Some scenes are easy, and some are dreadful, painful, slow and agonizing.  If I come out of here after a month with a good first draft and stronger legs, I’ll have achieved a lot.  I know I’ll be more relaxed.  I can feel that already.

Fiction Workshop with Claire McNab

Some of the emerging queer writers

My buddy Susan hanging out on the patio where we all spent a lot of time writing and shooting the breeze. The view was spectacular.

It’s been nearly a week since I returned from the Lambda Literary Foundation Emerging Writers Retreat. The experience was the best of my writing life, and I include the publication of my book in that assessment. For one glorious week I was immersed in all aspects of writing, housed in a comfortable campus located in Bel Air, California, and exposed to new friends, new writing, new ideas. It was really amazing. And I am so grateful to have been one of the 20 writers picked to take part in what the Foundation plans to be an ongoing nurturing of the next generation of GLBTQ writers. The fact that I’m considered the next generation of anything is thrilling for me, but truthfully, I did not have any trouble at all connecting with the others at the retreat, many of whom were much younger than me.

Part of the week’s schedule was devoted to workshops taught by accomplished authors.  It’s worthwhile noting that these authors were not only successful as such, but had lots of experience as teachers, an important distinction.  My fiction section was taught by Claire McNab, author of some 60 books of various genres, most notably in our community the Carol Ashton and Kylie Kendall mysteries.  Claire also teaches at UCLA and I can easily say it was the best experience in a classroom I’ve ever had.  She was blunt, but she was also brilliant, and it was easy to see that she cared whether we learned how to be published writers or not.  She also has one of the driest senses of humor I’ve ever run across, so I basically liked being around her to hear what she had to say and how she said it.

At the end of the week the students read from their own work.  It was clear to see that the quality of writing was really high, and the teachers said as much themselves.  It really was a privilege to be part of that group.

Katherine Forrest posing for a photo with Lynn Ames and Ruth Perkinson

KE Lane and I signing books

I’ve just returned from my second literary convention of the year, the Golden Crown Literary Society 4th Annual Convention.  The GCLS is an organization founded solely for the purpose of championing lesbian literature.  The convention is unique in that it welcomes and celebrates the reader as much as the author, and the weekend of panels, workshops and events has as much in the way of entertaining fans of lesbian books and their authors as it does workshops on craft for the writers.  A particular thrill for everyone this year was the presence of Katherine V. Forrest, a true icon in the world of lesbian literature, a trailblazer in many ways and a very fine writer and editor to boot.  Her Kate Delafield mystery series saw me through a particularly bleak post-break-up period many years ago.  I would lose myself in those stories and forget about my own for awhile.  And many, many lesbians remember Forrest’s Curious Wine as the first honest to god lesbian romance they ever read.  By the time the two women in that book finally got together the reader – especially the reader of the early 80s – was practically panting.  Plus, there was no fall out in the way of older lesbian books.  No suicide, no ostracism, no arrest, no murder.

I enjoyed myself throughout the weekend, learned a lot, met some really nice readers and writers, signed some books, and enjoyed some of the Arizona sun.  Or as much as you can enjoy 110 degrees.  I hung out a bit with KE Lane, whose first book – And Playing the Role of Herself – won all three categories it was nominated in at the awards on Saturday night.  Kathy is a modest and delightful person and I was thrilled that she won.

Reading a sex scene from Sometimes Quickly, with Catherine Lundorff looking on.

My erotica reading went well, but I admit being upstaged by Nell Stark’s reading of a very hot and well-written story of her own.  Her delivery was sensational and taught me a little about how important that is, no matter what you’re reading for an audience.  I spent some time with Nell during the conference and thought she was delightful.

Now I’m home for a week and then off to L.A. for the Emerging Writers Retreat.  Lucky for me, I’ll get to spend more time with Katherine Forrest while in L.A.  She gave a terrific all-day workshop at GCLS and I’ll happily sit through it again while at the Retreat.

One of the comforting rituals of home-Buddy bowing to Lucy

Right now I’m in Florida on a trip with my partner to spend time with her family. When I return I’ll spend a few days at home before heading to Phoenix for 4 days at the Golden Crown Literary Society convention.  I’ll be on a couple of panels there as well as attending workshops and hopefully meeting other writers and readers of lesbian fiction.  It should be great fun, and I may even get some writing done there.  Then it’s home again for close to a week before leaving for L.A. and the Lambda Literary Foundation Emerging Writer’s Retreat.  I’ll be in classes with Katherine Forrest, Claire McNab, and others, and it should really be inspiring.  I’m sure it will be intense as well.

In September I will be going up to Minneapolis for a reading at Amazon Bookstore, accompanied by some Chicago friends and meeting up with some Minnesota friends.  Amazon was recently purchased by Ruta Skujins, just in the nick of time.  It’s previous owners were retiring from bookstore life after years of providing a fantastic bookstore and community service.  I’m so happy that Ruta is having me up to read from Sometimes Quickly.

Finally, and most exciting as far as I’m concerned, is my month long residency at the Mary Anderson Center for the Arts in Southern Indiana.  MAC is located adjacent to a friary and is home to 8 visual artists and writers at a time.  There I’ll have nothing I have to do but write, a luxury almost too rich to even contemplate until I get there.  I hope I don’t freak out.

But wait, aren’t I a Realtor also?  How can I just keep going out of town as if I didn’t have any job at all?  That’s what distinguishes today’s Realtor from those of the very recent past.  Business is so bad, we are free to do almost anything we want!  I may be one of the few realtors who is viewing this as a good thing.  But then again, I’ve done well enough during the first part of the year that I can continue to support myself through the second part.  And what business I do bring in the second half of the year I will be splitting with my good friend and fellow agent, Alley Ballard.  I’m almost glad business is slow.  I’m just starting to get back into writing my Weston College book and I really want to finish that this year.

Traveling for me means moving away, physically and mentally, from being a realtor whose life is interrupted countless times a day and into being a writer, focused on the project at hand.  I don’t make my living by writing, so I have to respect and work hard at my real estate career.  By my real heart goes into the writing, something I’m learning and feeling passionate about.  I’m so lucky to have both things.