Suzy Spencer's blog

Today’s the day after Christmas. It’s a day I should be writing my year-end blog where I tell you what wonderful things happened in 2011 and how joyous and grateful I am. And for those of you who haven’t been keeping up with me through Twitter or Facebook (since I haven’t been very good at blogging this year), wonderful things have happened in 2011.

Magician Kent Cummins sawing me in half for the Bess Whitehead Scholarship Fund.

• In May, I finally finished the sex book.
• In July, my publisher, Berkley Books, informally accepted the sex book.
• In August, I accepted an offer to write a screenplay about a topic that takes me back to my undergraduate studies and dreams.
• In September, I got to spend a night in San Francisco reconnecting with dear friends. I got to start research for the screenplay and had some fabulous experiences doing it. And I got to get sawed in half as a fundraiser for the Bess Whitehead Scholarship Fund.
• In October, Berkley Books gave me a firm publication date for the sex book — October 2012. And Red Line Films/Dick Clark Productions interviewed me about my true crime book Wasted for the new Investigation Discovery Channel TV show Deadly Sins, which will premiere in Spring 2012.
• In December, I got a dog from Cocker Spaniel Rescue of Austin/San Antonio. Jacob and I are very simpatico — he likes to spend his time eating and sleeping in front of the TV. And Berkley Books gave me the official title of the sex book – Secret Sex Lives: A Year on the Fringes of American Sexuality.

On set for interview with Investigation Discovery's "Deadly Sins."

Then there are the stories on the news: A Christmas-celebrating family in Grapevine, Texas, shot to death by a presumed family member dressed in a Santa suit, who then killed himself for a total of seven dead. A Connecticut mother lost her three daughters and mother and father – who was the Saks Fifth Avenue Santa Claus – in a house fire as the mother screamed, “My whole life is in there!” Oh, God, that breaks my heart.

I have my family, my health, a dog who loves me, the knowledge that I’ll have a roof over my head and food in my fridge no matter what (thanks to my family), and a book coming out and a screenplay that’s due. I should be screaming from my roof, THANK YOU, JESUS! And part of me does say thank You over and over again. But as I told my sister, the worst thing about depression is that it won’t go away even when you know you have no reason to be depressed, even though you know you are blessed far beyond what you deserve. She understood. Not everyone does. That makes me grieve, and it makes me angry.

Jacob, my "therapy" dog.

This weekend I asked a man, who lost his job last spring and is still unemployed, how his stepdaughter is. I knew she’d had problems, even though even the broadest of details have been kept secret. I surmised the problems had to do with legal issues due to a mental illness. The man’s reply was an angrily whispered, “She’s a sixteen-year-old Casey Anthony.” Oh, God, his comment makes me cry for his stepdaughter. How does this child have a chance with so little support from her own family? I say that because, as far as I know, she hasn’t had a baby and hasn’t been accused of murdering anyone. And either before or after my conversation with the stepfather – my memory is fuzzy because of the stress and shock of the day and learning what I learned – I overheard (though not from him) that the girl had attempted suicide, had been in a coma, and was apparently still in the hospital recovering.

I want to give this man a break and say his ignorance and insensitivity about mental illness are due to the stress of his unemployment, lack of job prospects, and money troubles, and the child’s suicide attempt is beyond what he can bear. I did say to him that I’ve been concerned that the child suffers from schizophrenia. She is of the age when the symptoms begin to appear. Or maybe she’s bipolar. I don’t know. I’m not a psychiatrist. All I know is that mental illness is not a choice. It’s not a desire. It’s not a call for attention. It’s not being melodramatic. It’s not a matter of bucking up or not praying enough. It is a disorder. A brain disorder. An illness.

Think of it this way, if this child had leukemia, there is no way that she purposely f***ed up her white blood cells to cause leukemia, and there’s nothing she could do to reorder the structure of her white blood cells to make herself healthy. She’d need great doctors and great medicine to have any chance of regaining her health. And everyone knows that and accepts that.

Similarly, a child with a brain disorder did not purposely scramble her brain so that she could be “crazy,” get attention, or cause problems for the family. And she can’t re-order her brain, as if it were a Rubik’s cube that could be twisted and turned until it’s miraculously put back in order. Like a leukemia child, she needs great doctors and great medicine to have any chance of regaining her healthy. Sadly, not everyone knows that or accepts that.

After all, people don’t talk about what a f***up a child with leukemia is or how bad she is or how she’s ruining the lives of everyone in the family. They certainly don’t compare her to Casey Anthony. And they don’t wish her away. Rather, they contact Make-A-Wish Foundation, take her to Disneyland and celebrate her. They pray for her and try to get her the best treatment for possible. Let me repeat: the child with leukemia did not cause or create her disorder of the blood, just as that man’s stepdaughter did not cause or create her disorder of the brain.

So, if there’s one positive thing I can do at the close of 2011, I think that one thing is to attempt to create some understanding about mental illness. Understanding doesn’t just make it easier on the one who is suffering from the brain disease — it increases the chances of recovering mental health. Perhaps equally important, understanding makes it easier on the friends and family members, too. After all, isn’t being empathetic, patient, and caring a heck of a lot easier than being angry and hateful?

Now I’m going to try to practice what I preach – get over my anger at her stepfather and be understanding toward him. After all, a lot of wonderful things happened in 2011, and I have a book coming out in 2012.

Click on the below for additional reading and information regarding brain disorders:

National Alliance on Mental Illness

Breaking Point by Suzy Spencer

Austin American-Statesman columnist Andrea Ball on being bipolar

And posts from my blog:

Update on Tracey Tarlton from The Fortune Hunter

Strong Legs, Fragile Brain: A Guest Post by Diana Kern

A Dark Cloud of Desperation: A Joint Post with D.H. Gregory

One of the many reasons I decided to quit writing true crime is because of convicted killer Tracey Tarlton.  Tracey and I attended the same summer camp, and though Tracey and I didn’t know each other, I knew her name and we shared many friends.

Tracey Tarlton at our summer camp.

In fact, one of those friends, who is mentioned in my book The Fortune Hunter, is the one who suggested I write the book.  What our mutual friend didn’t know is that I already wanted to write the book.  In fact, years earlier I’d pitched it to my then publishing house.

Why did I want to write this book that caused me to quit true crime?  Because of the mental health aspect.

Tracey and Celeste Beard, who was the woman Tracey loved and the woman who convinced Tracey to shoot Celeste’s husband, Steven Beard, met in a mental health facility.  And as someone who has spent too many years in therapy due to an on-going battle with depression, I’m always interested in stories that involve mental health issues, which true crime — or at the least ones I’ve written — always seems to do.

Add to that the fact that Tracey managed BookPeople, the best bookstore in Austin, and had helped me promote my first book Wasted (though I don’t think she remembers that), and that we shared that same summer camp, one that gets in your blood and doesn’t leave you, well, I felt this story was MINE.

Cokie Roberts and Tracey Tarlton at BookPeople

I was wrong about it being MINE.  It wasn’t.  But I sometimes wonder if it was a God-thing that I write the book because, and as I finally get back to my point, it was the one that made me quit true crime.

Let me back track again and explain.  Tracey is probably the only killer I’ve ever interviewed who I respected and that’s because she’s the only killer I’ve interviewed who admitted what she did.  (I didn’t get to interview Andrea Yates.)

So, after a horrible and lengthy trial, I was told that I could speak to Tracey for a few minutes to introduce myself.  Let me repeat, it was a horrible and lengthy trial.  I’d get up, go to court, watch Celeste Beard try to portray herself as a prim and proper innocent lady, have lunch with a Beard family member, go back to court and watch Celeste Beard, again, as witness after witness described Celeste’s cruel, selfish, and manipulative behavior, and then have dinner with Steven Beard’s daughter Becky, during which we’d talk, cry and laugh.  I’d get home around 10 PM, exchange emails with the prosecutor until maybe midnight, and finally crash until I was up early and out the door for court the next day.  And throughout, I was covering the trial for ABC News.

By the time Celeste was convicted of murder, I was punchy with exhaustion, which usually worked out fine because I was Becky Beard’s comic relief … as Becky was my comic relief.  I can’t tell you how many stupid jokes Becky and I cracked.  So when I walked into that room to meet Tracey, I was spent, punchy, and used to cracking less than tasteful jokes with Becky, who had become my friend, and I was singing an old camp song that I knew Tracey knew — “Catfish Floatin’ Down a River.”

I thought it’d make Tracey laugh after a stressful trial, like I knew it’d make Becky laugh.  It didn’t.  Tracey was offended.  She thought I was being disrespectful to Steven Beard.  And since she was horribly guilty of his murder, and knew it and fully admitted to it, and desperately wanted to make it right and knew she couldn’t, she wanted to be respectful of Steve, his memory, and his family.

Steven Beard recuperating from his gunshot wound on his 75th birthday.

And while my singing of “Catfish” turned Tracey off of me, it made me respect Tracey even more.  (No, I didn’t feel like I was betraying the Beard family by respecting Tracey.  I knew that while Becky abhorred what Tracey had done to her father, she was grateful to Tracey because Becky believed that without Tracey’s testimony, Celeste Beard would have gotten away with murder.)

But since Tracey was disgusted by my behavior, she only reluctantly agreed to grant me a couple of prison interviews.  During the first of those interviews, I promised Tracey I would never write another true crime book, because I too was disgusted with my behavior.  No, I’m not talking about innocently but stupidly singing “Catfish Floatin’ Down a River.”  I’m talking about who I’d become as a true crime writer — an insecure, angry, and bitter person.

Certainly there are additional reasons I quit true crime, which you’ll read about when my memoir comes out in October 2012, but my promise to Tracey is one of the primary reasons.  I try my darnedest not to go back on my promises.

By now you may be saying, Suzy, your headline says “Update on Tracey Tarlton” and all you’ve done is talk about yourself.  So here’s the update on Tracey:  She’s out of prison and trying to start over her life in San Antonio, Texas, while never ever forgetting what she did.  And by clicking on this KENS 5 TV link, you can finally hear her speak for herself.  I think you’ll see why I still respect her.

So, Tracey, if it doesn’t offend you, can I offer you one big CLH “Attaway to go!”  Truly, I wish you a great new life.  And with all my heart, I believe Becky does, too.  She was a kind and generous woman.

As you may have noticed, I’ve been more than lax in my blog posts since last spring.  At first I was too busy with the sex book to think about blogging.  Then, after I turned in the manuscript on May 1, I was just plain all “wrote out.”  The book took everything I had to give, emotionally and physically.  More than three months later, I’m still all “wrote out.”  I can barely tap out a word.  But I feel I owe you a few updates.

Fused glass artwork: Kim Brill; Photo: Larry Brill

For those who don’t follow me on Facebook or Twitter, I have some very good news.  On July 15, I learned that my publisher, Berkley Books, has accepted my sex book manuscript and set a tentative publication date of October 2012.  The next 12-plus months will be spent editing, vetting, copy editing, and proofing the manuscript, as well as deciding on a name for the book, designing its cover, and creating marketing, sales and publicity plans.

That sex book acceptance news should have sent me into ecstasy.  Instead, it sent me into panic.  I ate 10 pounds of McDonald’s hot fudge sundaes as I worried and fretted about what neighbors, friends (particularly my Christian friends from high school), co-workers, future employers and, most of all, my family – specifically my mother – would think of me after reading the book.  After an afternoon trip to the emergency room, I begged my mother not to read the book.  She promised she wouldn’t, and I relaxed … some.

Through all of this, indeed, through the past 13 years of writing four true crime books and one sex book, my emotional rock has been my dear Mr. Cool.  In truth, he’s not “my” dear Mr. Cool.  He is my mother’s beautiful, sweet, blond cocker spaniel.  He is the one who calmed me as I wrote about five dead babies and nurtured me as I sank into depression afterwards.  In fact, he has soothed me through many depressions.  And when I panicked over the sex book, all I had to do was think of Mr. Cool because I knew he would be the one who would love me and treat me the same no matter what I revealed in the book.  But on the night of August 9^th, after a brief illness, Mr. Cool moved to puppy heaven.

Earlier in the day, he’d collapsed in my mother’s front yard.  For the next hour and a half, I lay with him in the St. Augustine grass, whispering that I loved him and that it was okay to walk toward the light.  I think he knows how much I hate death because he did not walk toward the light until I told him goodbye, left my mother’s home, and left him with those who are better at death than I – my mother and sister.

But I left with one big regret.  That regret is that I cut Mr. Cool from the sex book.

Please don’t go to any kinky thoughts when you ask why in the world I included my mother’s dog in a book about sex.  It’s a perfectly clean explanation:  Just as Mr. Cool comforted me through the stress and confusion of writing about real life murder, he comforted me through the stress and confusion of writing about real life sex.

More specifically, my boundaries as a journalist constantly blurred as my sex sources turned to me for reassurance and yearned for friendship.  And sometimes I too longed for their friendship, as they often came to my emotional rescue, such as the time they supported me after my mother fell and broke her hip.  Thus, I became confused over my role in their lives and their roles in my life.  And I equally became confused over the role of sex in my life.

So, as a salute to Mr. Cool, I share a (deleted) moment from the sex book.  In it, I’m juggling comforting my sex sources with taking care of my mother.

* * *

I shut down my computer and drove the 40 minutes to my mother’s house.  In the darkness of two and three A.M., as I listened to her obnoxious bird clock tweet the wee hours, I rolled over on her couch and petted her blond cocker spaniel.  Mr. Cool is his name because he’s always calm, cool, and collected and because he’s always known who he is – one cool dog.  Throughout the night, his collar jingle jangling as he walked, Mr. Cool made the rounds from my mother’s bedroom to the couch and back and forth again to check on us both.  And when I lay on my right side, my fingers lightly on Mr. Cool’s head, touching his comfortingly soft hair, I could see into my mother’s bedroom and know for myself that she was safe and hadn’t fallen again.

… This night, as I lay on my mother’s plaid couch, the same couch I’d lain on when that workman had lightly stroked my legs and I hadn’t known how to stop him, part of me wanted desperately to be back in my own house where I was free to think about sex.  And part of me didn’t want to leave my mother.  Unlike Mr. Cool, I didn’t know who I was.

* * *

Today, I know who I am.  I’m an all “wrote out” writer who is blessed to be comforted by the memory of a dog, the friendship of some sex sources, and a mother who loves me enough not to read my book. 

Friday night, around nine or 10 o’clock, my cell phone rang.  I swallowed the bite of peanut butter and jelly sandwich I had in my mouth and answered the phone.

The caller was a friend I hadn’t seen or talked to in months.  We’ve both been too busy.  He asked what I’ve been doing.  “Working,” I said, pacing the kitchen in my gym clothes.

“What else?”

“Nothing.”  I walked over to my briefcase, back to my dinner, over to the sink, back to my briefcase, my dinner, the sink and back.

He asked again what else I’d been doing.

I could tell then that he didn’t understand a writer’s life, particularly a writer under deadline.  I understand that.  One cannot comprehend a writer’s life unless one is a writer, or at least lives with one.  After all, the cliché fantasy is that of a glorious life spent drinking in exotic locales while trading tales of adventure with glamorous people, perhaps making strange and exciting love with those same glamorous people, and then, in the wee hours of the morning, falling into brilliant words that are slammed perfectly onto the page and then fly off the bookstore shelves.

Such wonderful fiction. This is this writer’s life – under deadline:

Yes, I wake whenever I want.  Depending on the stress in my mind, that’s usually somewhere between 5 AM and 8 AM.  I roll over in bed and read my Bible and Al-Anon daily devotional.  If my mind isn’t reeling too much with the worries of work, I lie there and pray for a while.  Yes, I realize that when I’m worried is exactly when I should pray more.

I get up, turn on NPR on an old clock radio, because I’ve purposely disconnected my TV cable and Internet so that I won’t be distracted from work, and jump in the shower.  After I dress, I grab my briefcase, which is really a 30-year-old black leather bag holding my laptop, yesterday’s work for rewrite, today’s work for rewrite, notes on both, notes on characters, basically a ream of paper, a thumb drive or two with the various versions of my book on them, my cell phone, wallet … well, you get the picture.  I throw these pounds over my shoulder and slump out the door.

While slurping down a ridiculously unhealthy breakfast, I check and answer email and start work – editing, cutting, rewriting.  (Yes, I’m writing this while eating breakfast.)  I work until my laptop battery flashes that it’s almost dead.  I pack up, throw my bag over my shoulder, and schlep back home.

There, I fire up both my PC and laptop and get down to the serious work of the day – editing, cutting, rewriting, double-checking facts and timelines, trying to figure out how to make this manuscript riveting and the best book I’ve ever written in my life.  After all, this will be my income for the next three to 10 years.

Around 2 PM, or maybe it’s 4 PM, it all depends on my concentration, I grab a horribly unhealthy lunch.  If I grab it at home, I pace and think about the book while eating.  If I go out, I work while eating.  Usually, somewhere between 4 and 6 PM, my mother phones and asks if I’d like some dinner.  I bark, “I’m working!” even though I know she’s only trying to help.  Around 7 or 7:30 PM, I shut down my computers and pack up my laptop.  My back is burning from being hunched over the keyboards and I’m too tired to think about cooking.  That’s when I often phone my mother and meekly ask, “Are there any leftovers?”

Sometimes I go over to her house, eat fried meat and potatoes, check email and come home and crash.  Other times, I know I need exercise to alleviate the back pain and stress, so I go to the gym, maybe work out 20 minutes, maybe an hour, then crash on one of the gym couches and check email.  That’s what happened Friday night when my friend called.  I’d just gotten home from the gym, had spread a half of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and sliced half of a banana, and I was pacing around the kitchen, thinking about my book, eating, and stressing.

Yes, I could have told my friend that I did take an hour and a half off one evening to see another friend I hadn’t seen in more than a month.  And, yes, I did take two hours off one Saturday to go see my 11-year-old cousin’s football game.  (He threw one touchdown pass, while playing offense.  He intercepted a pass and ran it in for a touchdown, while playing defense.)  But now I’ve even taken my cousin’s football games off my calendar because that one game blew my concentration for the next two days.

After I hung up from my friend, I finished my sandwich, sank into a bath, climbed into bed, read, and fell into another fitful night of sleep – waking with leg and foot cramps from too much sitting, too little exercise, too much fried food, too few vegetables, and thinking about my book.

The reason writers disappear, cocoon, hibernate, hole up, become anti-social, whatever you want to call it, when we’re writing is because we’ve got to live in the world we’re writing about.  Call it method writing, I guess.  Anything that takes us out of that world – like a football game – destroys our ability to work.  At least it does me.*

So that’s why my friend – any of my friends – won’t see me until I meet my May 2 deadline.  But after May 2, I’ll be ready to live that glorious fantasy life of writers drinking in exotic locales while trading tales of adventure with glamorous people, and then, in the wee hours of the morning, falling into brilliant words that are slammed perfectly onto the page and fly off the bookstore shelves.

And I wouldn’t trade any of it for any other career.  I love what I do.

* Admittedly, mothers who write are better at juggling than I.  They have to be.  And I don’t know how they do it.  I admire them.

In 2001, when I first started covering the story of Andrea Yates, the Houston mother who drowned her five children, I read every article on the case I could find.  I thought the most touching writing came from a reporter for the Los Angeles Times.  I contacted her to tell her how beautiful and emotional her work was.  If I recall correctly, I told her she should be the one writing the Yates book, not me.  Her writing was so moving that I knew she was a much more talented writer than I.  She begged off saying she didn’t like covering the story.  If I remember correctly, she said she preferred covering war.

More than nine years later, after watching the last mine rescuer in Chile safely return to the surface (yes, I mean mine rescuer, not rescued miner), I found myself combing through unread emails, including my daily update from Publishers Lunch.  ”We posted another 35 new deals yesterday at Publisher’s Marketplace,” I read, “among them: Journalist Jonathan Franklin’s inside story of the trapped Chilean miners…”

At that, a bit of sadness washed over me.  I was sad because we were already commercializing such a rare, beautiful victory.  Couldn’t we just savor it in our memories for a while before committing it to commercialism?  Of course, I have no right to feel that way; I was part of the commercialization of Andrea Yates and her five murdered children.  And maybe Jonathan Franklin is like me.  Maybe he didn’t pursue the story.  Maybe, like me, he was asked to write it.

I know I had qualms about writing the Andrea Yates book.  I remember discussing it with my family.  They told me, “Someone’s going to write it.  Why not you?  You’ll handle it with more sensitivity.”  I hope I handled it with sensitivity.

I drew myself away from Mr. Franklin and continued reading Publishers Lunch.  ”National Book Award Nominees Avoid the Predictable…”  I barely glanced at the fiction nominees and focused instead on the nonfiction list, briefly wondering if, briefly dreaming that, my sex book could gain such esteem.  I knocked that embarrassing thought out of my head and kept reading: “Patti Smith, Just Kids (Ecco) … Megan K. Stack, Every Man in this Village is a Liar: An Education in War (Doubleday)”.

I stopped.  Megan K. Stack.  That name sounded so familiar.  Then, I thought I knew why.  I Googled Megan to make sure.  Yes, she was that great LA Times reporter who had covered Andrea Yates with such respectful, touching power.  I’d had no idea how young Megan was when she was covering that case — 25 years old.   At that, I was even more in awe of her talent.  I then went to Amazon to read the opening sentences of her National Book Award nominated book.

* * *

This memory from childhood is still there: the voices of the adults bounce fretfully, eternally in rooms that have since been sold or abandoned.  Beirut, they said, never Lebanon.  John was in Beirut.  All meaning fit into those words.  His barracks had been blown up, but he had survived.

John the drinker, the smoker, the apprentice in three-card monte and hanger-out with New York street cons; his face cut by light, arms angled in salt air, his imprint lingers still in corners and amber edges.  John was my father’s cousin, my godfather’s brother, our two Irish Catholic families braided together in city blocks, in the Bronx, by marriage and the crosshatches of godfathering.  He was adrift between the generations of our family, too old to be a cousin and too young to be an uncle, but still unmistakably one of us, with us in churches and cramped living rooms and summers on the beach.  In my earliest memories I waddle in his retreating shadow, arms in the air and begging, “Johnny! Uppy!”  And then this skinny street hustler sweeps me into the air to swing on the rim of centrifugal force until the salty, sunny world swims.

* * *

As I first read Megan’s words, I thought, oh, my, she still has that ability to paint power with a few, simple words.  As I typed Megan’s words, I remembered my days working in New York City.  I was a researcher for Fortune magazine, just a bit younger than Megan when she’d covered Andrea Yates.  Often, I spent my lunch hour touring the Museum of Modern Art.  There I watched struggling artists – the same age as me – sitting on uncomfortable black benches, sketching the Masters, trying to learn from the best. 

More than 30 years later, I too am trying to do that – learn from the best.  I’m reading memoir after memoir, including Megan’s, trying to figure out what they’re doing right and I’m doing wrong.  And the reason I’m doing that is embarrassing.  My sex memoir, the one that I previously bragged was the best book I’ve ever written, has been returned to me for rewrite, again. 

It’s painfully shaming to admit that a book I’ve been working on since December 2004 isn’t of publishable quality.  How good of an author can I be if I – a professional writer since 1976, an author of four books including one that has New York Times best-seller on the cover – can’t get a manuscript accepted after more than six years of trying to perfect it?

Yes, admitting that is embarrassing.  In fact, I started writing this “embarrassing” blog post in September, continued trying to write it in October, pushed it aside and tried to forget it forever in November because a friend had said I shouldn’t publicly admit my rejection.  I understood why – people want to be associated with winners, not losers.

But I decided to write the post and publish it anyway because, well, I’m tired of hearing, “I can’t wait to read your sex book this summer,” with me replying, “It won’t be out then.”  And I’m tired of hearing, “When’s your sex book coming out?” and me mumbling, “God knows when, if ever.”  But most of all, I’m writing this because I need to for me.  I can’t seem to move forward on the rewrite until I confess my sin of … failing. 

I know I have some terrific friends and fans out there who will say, “Suzy, don’t say that.  You haven’t failed.  You’re not a loser.”  I appreciate that kindness and support.  I really do.  And I have a small fantasy that by admitting this publicly that there will be at least one struggling person out there who will be inspired to keep working toward achieving their …well, whatever they’re pursuing, because I know that I will keep writing and rewriting this manuscript until I get it right.

I also know that one of the reasons I’m having such trouble with this memoir is because – like the Yates book – I have qualms about writing it.  But as I tried to handle the Andrea Yates case with sensitivity, I will try to handle myself with sensitivity too.  And God willing, I’ll succeed.

I think about mental health and mental illness a lot.  Serious depression permeates my personal life; serious mental illness permeates my professional life: Andrea Yates, the psychotic mother in my book Breaking Point; Tracey Tarlton, the bipolar book store manager in my book The Fortune Hunter. 

While researching The Fortune Hunter, specifically while sitting in the courtroom every day covering the trial of Celeste Beard, I met a young mother and reporter named Andrea Ball.  I was taken with Ms. Ball because she was hard-working, dedicated, so much more talented than I as both a reporter and writer, funny as hell, and proud of her son.  And being proud of one’s children seemed in short supply in that courtroom.  (Read the book, if you want to understand what I mean.) 

Andrea Ball

I was especially impressed by Ms. Ball when I learned that crime reporting wasn’t her usual beat – philanthropy was.  She has a talent for both.  So on January 15, 2011, when she posted on Facebook her Austin American-Statesman story headlined “Jared Loughner and the stigma and the reality of mental illness,” I was expecting to read more of her great work – heartfelt, accurate, sensitive, insightful, and as my former literary agent would say, “beautifully rendered.”  What I wasn’t expecting was a confession.

“Well, I have bipolar disorder, and I’m not coming to kill you, I promise,” Ms. Ball wrote.

I was thrilled to read her words – not because I’m happy she’s bipolar – but because just a few weeks before a friend had angered me when he’d suggested that I should stop hanging out with another friend because – he’d decided – she’s bipolar.  She’s not, as far as I know.  But I don’t give a flying F whether she is or isn’t, because she’s my friend, and one doesn’t abandon a friend just because she may have a mental disease, just as one doesn’t abandon a friend because she has breast cancer or high cholesterol and heart disease.  Instead, one stands by that friend and loves her through treatment.

The day that that man made his comment, I’d wanted to scream at him, “There are doctors and lawyers and judges who are bipolar and function perfectly well in society.”  But then I decided maybe lawyers weren’t such a good example and I kept quiet.  Then Ms. Ball published her confession, and I had proof that intelligent, hard-working, talented people can be bipolar and functioning members of society who make our world a better place.  (If you don’t believe me, just go to the Austin American-Statesman website and read some of Ms. Ball’s other stories.)

So I posted Ms. Ball’s article on Facebook.  I loved the majority of the responses made by my FB friends.  For the most part, they were kind and showed an understanding of mental disease.  But there was one comment that especially touched my heart.

“Andrea [Ball] hits home with me,” wrote D.H. Gregory.  “I am treated for bipolar and chronic depression.  Out of the closet.  And my stepson is a peaceful, innocent, incurable schizophrenic, who would harm only himself.  The headlines make me flinch, knowing the ignorance of mental illness.”

Yes, the headlines make me flinch, but so do my friends – and family members – who refuse to acknowledge mental illness, particularly that it is real and not simply a matter of “bucking up,” “mind over matter,” or “thinking positive thoughts” … AND who refuse to admit the fact that – like cancer – it can be treated.  But just like cancer, sometimes the proper treatments are difficult to determine and sometimes the results are better than others. 

With that in mind, perhaps it’s ironic that I asked D.H. Gregory to write a guest blog post on his battle with depression.  D.H. is also battling cancer of the brain.  Following are his words on mental illness, words he wrote saddened days after learning that a mutual friend of ours own battle with cancer isn’t going as well as we all prayed.

While still a youngster, depression snuck up on me like a ghost in the night…stealing away whatever blithe boyhood spirit I once had.  And it did usually come at night, upstairs in my top bunk.  A wave of crippling dread would wash over me like a blanket that was too warm.  I couldn’t talk about it, because I didn’t understand what to say.

I did not know about clinical depression back then.  I didn’t know what the hell it was, or the cause of it.  Sure, I had my moments of elation and despair, but not in equal measure.  The unseen flow of sadness was becoming increasingly troublesome. 

My folks would invariably ask me, “What’s wrong?  Why are you so down?”  I didn’t know.  I looked in the mirror through melancholy eyes and didn’t know what I saw.  “Why?”  Stop asking, Dad!

Christ, yeah, I went to church, and even Sunday-damn-School, and sat there drowning in…what? 

Dad, I don’t know!

I sat there in dread of the day, and of the next day.  What young boy sits in Sunday School, not in boredom, but in muted agony?

Funny thing was that my dad was always down too.  He was generally depressed as all hell.  I found out 40 years later that my problem back then, and  now, may be hereditary.

I could have inherited his endorphins or lack of dopamine or serotonin or whatever the hell else.  Re-uptake inhibitors?  Chemical stuff.

By college I was full-fledged down in the dumps.  Unless I was drinking or writing.  Most always both together.  Okay, always together.  When a buzz wore off…thud…back down the dark abyss.  A sort of chronic grief wrapped around my neck like a wool scarf in the heat of summer.  Sure…I could get stoked up over some Bikini Beach Volleyball, but after it was over … then what?  The inevitable descent back into gloom.  Afraid of the next day.

Then when I was about 35 I told my family doctor about it.  He asked my dad the same questions.   “I don’t really know, Doc.”  He said there was a drug called Zoloft that might help.  Sure, I said.  I would have agreed to arsenic.  That drug may have helped.  How could one really know?  I was still depressed, but maybe it was helping and I would have been more depressed if I didn’t take it.  Or maybe it wasn’t helping at all.  Like vitamins, how do you know if a vitamin is working?  I sure don’t.  A V-8 sure tastes good.  But how do I really know what it is doing for me?  Anyone who knows that for sure is a smarter man than I am.  I hear that antidepressants help.  Maybe they do.

But now, years and blues later, I take three medicines for depression … unpredictable permutations piggy-backed together to get me through a day.  That must be working – I am still here.  I have been a dart board of experimentation for many years.  Shrinks talk to me and take notes like they are typing out rapid-fire Morse code.  You know, pinpointing biological and social causes of my ills and afflictions.

Depression can be… well, it can be controlled somewhat.   I often get stuck under a pitiless cloud of desperation.  But help is out there.  So I am told.

After D. H. wrote that piece, he sent it to his best friend.  The friend wrote back and apologized for not recognizing D.H.’s problem, even though they’d hung out constantly, as D.H. said, since the sixth grade. 

So I guess the point I’m trying to make is don’t be afraid and run away if someone you know has a mental illness.  Treat them with the same tender love and compassion you would if they had cancer  … ‘cause maybe like D.H. they’re trying to heal from both. 

D.H. Gregory

D.H. Gregory holds a Master’s degree in English and journalism from Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas.  He was a newspaper columnist and film critic for eight years, followed by 25 years in the college bookstore business.  A native of Rockford, Illinois, he is now retired in Austin, Texas, with his wife Theresa, and he proudly wears the moniker of brain cancer survivor. 

D.H. also wants to write a memoir, and I think we should encourage him to do that.

* * *

For additional information on mental illness, contact the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the Austin Child Guidance Center, and read Andrea Ball’s articles “A thank-you to readers” and “Mental health centers face big cuts in state budget.”

The year 2011 is less than three hours away, at least in the Central time zone, and most people have already reflected on 2010 to say their goodbyes to a year of struggles, losses, and – I hope – at least a few victories.  To a small degree, I’ve done that, too.  Earlier today I glanced back at the year and listed my gratitudes on Facebook.  There were just three of them, in part because of the space limitations of Facebook status updates, but also because I had work to do. 

I’m thankful for that work because when I’m writing my heart beats like it should. When I’m not writing, it pounds with terrifying anxiety.  But now that it is 9:30 at night and my work is finished for the day, I want to reflect on my afternoon and evening as a way of reflecting on 2010.

I missed going to the gym this afternoon.  That too is the way I keep my heart from hurting.  But sometimes I feel work must come first, and last night, over and over, I shouted at myself, “I am NOT a quitter!”  I did that to ensure that I met my work goals.  For me, hitting my work goals improves my confidence as much as pounding the treadmill. 

About 5:30 this evening, hungry but not yet wanting dinner, I drove to McDonald’s for a hot fudge sundae that I could eat while continuing to work.  Calmly and quickly, I did work, getting closer and closer to meeting today’s goal.

When I came to a pausing point, I decided to trek over to the grocery store.  I wanted something to celebrate the New Year.  Already, I’d stopped at the wine store, finding the very last split of the specific champagne I wanted, hiding behind a brand I didn’t want. 

At the grocery store, I hit the shopping jackpot – walking up to the deli counter just as they’d put couscous and shrimp on sale for half price and up to the meat counter just when they had one last package of $12.99/lb. beef tenderloin.  Like the champagne, it was hidden, as if it had been waiting just for me. 

I guess that’s sort of like my year – thinking life is out of what I specifically want and then finding it right there on the shelf, tucked away, just for me.

I came home, unloaded the groceries and started washing a few dishes when I was distracted by a flash of silver light.  I looked up and out my back windows.  Fireworks exploded in the sky.  I cannot tell you how happy fireworks make me.  I grabbed my laptop, plugged it in, turned on the TV, and sat in my easy chair watching fireworks and football and working on my manuscript.  For me, life can’t get much better than that.  Before I knew it, I’d met my day’s goal.

I cooked my steak, along with asparagus, mushrooms, and tomatoes, poured my champagne, and ate and drank.  The steak was glorious, though over cooked on one corner, and perfection on the inside.  Again, isn’t that a bit like life?  The asparagus wasn’t as good as I’d hoped, but it was filling, the mushrooms had me wanting more, and the tomato, which I grew in my backyard, tasted sweet.  Yes, that’s a purposeful analogy of life.  The champagne sits by my side as I type to the rhythm of popping fireworks and wait to take that last sip of the year.

This is the first New Year’s Eve I’ve had at home since I moved into this house, and I am grateful for it.  Until tonight, I never knew that I could sit in my easy chair and watch fireworks and football.  I never knew that I could get so much work done on the last day of the year. 

But before I close out this blog and this year, I’ve got to repeat my Facebook gratitudes.  My number one gratitude is for my trip to China and my friend Candie and her husband Jay.  They made the trip happen and in doing so fulfilled a dream I’ve held for 35 years.  

My number two gratitude is for my fabulous and patient editor at Berkley Books, Denise Silvestro.  She is making my writing better than I deserve.  I owe her more thanks than I can ever say.

My number three gratitude is for the wonderful people who have hired me (and recommended me) for freelance work.  I could not have survived without you.

And since I’m not limited by Facebook’s status update, I also want to think my friend Karl Duvall, who motivates me to get my butt to the gym, my Facebook friends who encourage me, my friends from my hometown who have brightened this year, and you, my blog readers, especially Angela.  She, and you, like fireworks, are light in the darkness.

Together, y’all have made my 2010 a beautiful year.  Thank you.

Yes, even in China, the sex writer is on the job. This is an adult store in Beijing.

Today is the official publication date of the 10th anniversary edition of my true crime book Wages of Sin. 

I’m a bit stunned that typing that sentence, hitting that period at the end of it, rendered my fingers motionless.  It wasn’t the end of the sentence that did it.  Mixed emotions did, emotions I didn’t realize I had until that moment.

With my fingers hovering an eighth of an inch above the keyboard, my mind reflected back.  I signed my first true crime contract in 1997.  And just like my fingers hesitated moments ago, they hesitated back then.  Did I – the girl who had attended the largest Southern Baptist university in the nation, the co-ed who had been a missionary over school breaks, the girl who prayerfully had considered going to seminary – want to write about a drug-abusing dead lesbian and her world?  I wasn’t so sure I did.  In fact, I was pretty sure I didn’t.  

Furthermore, did I want to be known as a paperback true crime writer?  Absolutely not.  I wanted to be known as a writer of commercial fiction. 

But the reality was that my career as a novelist was going nowhere and I needed income. So I asked my then literary agent, “Will this book hurt my career as a novelist?  Should I write it under another name?”  She said no, along with the words that I’ll never forget: “No one will ever know you wrote it anyway.”  That was her not-so subtle way of saying the book would disappear into the oblivion of rotten sales figures. 

I was speechless because, strangely enough, her words elicited mixed emotions.  (Man, I have a lot of those.)  Part of me felt safe and comforted that I could make some money, finally get a book published (even if it was a massmarket paperback), no one would know about it (since it was paperback true crime), and my career would be no worse for it.  Another part of me wanted my first book to succeed.  And since I’d never ever read a true crime book in my life, I went out and bought my first true crime and started to report and write my own.

Eighteen months later, Wasted was published.  It soon hit #32 on the New York Times best-seller list.  My publishing house was ecstatic; my then editor Karen Haas told me that a massmarket paperback original true crime rarely makes the New York Times best-seller list.  I too became ecstatic.  After all, for more than a year, I had gone to bed at night and awakened each morning envisioning my name on the New York Times list.  I’d just failed to envision which list – fiction v. nonfiction, hardback v. paper.

The Austin American-Statesman then reported that Wasted had been banned in Nacogdoches, Texas, because the book had the word “lesbian” on the cover. That banning resulted in coast-to-coast press coverage.  Wasted was also named a finalist for the Austin Writers’ League (now Writers’ League of Texas) Violet Crown Award for nonfiction.  All of that combined to send the book into a second printing.  Ten years later, Wasted was updated and reissued, resulting in its third print run.

Austin American-Statesman headline, January 10, 1999

* * *

When I’d signed the contract for Wasted, I’d planned to write one to four true crime books and return to fiction.  As a result, after Wasted was published and it was time to pitch new true crime ideas to my agent, my pitches were half-hearted and subsequently rejected by my agent. 

But one August day in 1999, I was on the phone with my editor when she asked if/when I was ever going to pitch them – the publishing house – another true crime idea.  I relayed that I’d been talking to my agent about it and we’d never found a case she liked.  My editor asked about the rejected ideas, and I told her about the one I called the case of the Southern Baptist killer stripper – a girl who was reared devout Southern Baptist, became a stripper, then a killer.  She screamed, “That’s it!  That’s the one we want!”  And so Wages of Sin came into being. 

Stephanie Martin, the Southern Baptist killer stripper

By then Michael Corcoran of the Austin American-Statesman had started referring to me in print as “true crime writer Suzy Spencer.”  Despite the fact that a few paragraphs above I said I’d asked myself if I wanted to be known as a paperback true crime writer, the truth of the matter is I didn’t think of myself as a true crime writer.  I thought of myself as a writer.  In fact, Michael’s true crime moniker was rather difficult for me to accept … until I added the words tabloid trash to it. 

“Tabloid trash true crime writer Suzy Spencer” – now that’s a title I could embrace.  God only knows why.  My friends were appalled and repeatedly berated me, telling me I shouldn’t put myself down like that.  I didn’t think of it as a put-down.  Again, God only knows why.  But honestly, I love being called a tabloid trash true crime writer.  It suits me.

So I signed the second contract without hesitation and dragged a couple of guy friends to the Yellow Rose strip club.  That’s where the killer stripper had worked.  Over the course of two research trips, I discovered that the type of man with whom you walk into a strip club affects how the dancers interact with you – well, interact with me.  One type of man gets you – me – offers of table dances; another type gets you left alone.

I also learned that if you take notes under the table at a strip club that it can get you surrounded by security and dragged into the manager’s office.  But if you – I – let the manager show off, he’ll be nice to you and let you stay.

I returned a time or two alone to pick up research documents.  On those trips, I discovered that when I go into a strip club by myself I’m invisible to the men and glared at by the women.  Strangely enough, that made me feel completely safe and utterly threatened.  Mixed emotions?

What I’m trying to say as I ramble on far too long is that as I close out my true crime career with the reissue of Wages of Sin, which sends the book into its third print run (and even without the third print run, or any fancy accolades or awards, it is a book that has far outsold Wasted), I’m … well, … overwhelmed.  My life and career have turned out nothing like I expected.  I’m not sure if it was the path that God chose for me or if it’s one I foisted upon Him.  But either way, it’s been a stunning, life altering, soul-changing 13 years, and I thank Jesus for it.

Wasted irrevocably changed my attitude about homosexuality.  Wages of Sin confused me.  Breaking Point broke my heart, while giving me credibility as a journalist.  The Fortune Hunter broke my spirit, and for that I am most grateful. 

In fact, for my entire true crime career – with well more than 300,000 books in print – I am grateful.  God, I am grateful.  That’s the one thing about which I don’t have mixed emotions. 

Now please go out and buy the reissue of Wages of Sin.  I’d be most grateful for that, too.

Lunching with Celeste

Today, Kingwood, Texas, friend and fan Courtney Little posted the above photo on her Facebook page with the words, “Suzy, today I’m lunching with Celeste.  Haha!  I’m a little scared …”  Celeste is the killer in my true crime book The Fortune Hunter.  So, yes, if Courtney truly were having lunch with Celeste, she should be scared.  Celeste is frightening, but she’s also very entertaining. 

When I interviewed Celeste in prison, I didn’t want to leave because she was so much fun.  I know that sounds weird – interviewing a killer in prison and having fun.  But Celeste is funny.  And only by sitting down with her and spending time with her did I understand how and why she could talk a friend into killing her husband for her … and afterwards convince other friends that she was completely innocent.  In my opinion, Celeste wraps her lies in just enough truth – shocking, humorous confessions of truths that most people would want to keep hidden – that everything else she says, including her lies, feels honest.

Strangely enough, The Fortune Hunter is the only true crime book I ever really wanted to write.  I fell into my first true crime book, Wasted.  To a lesser degree, I fell into my second book, Wages of Sin.  (I may explain that in a later post.)  I only did the third book, Breaking Point, because I was asked to write it.  But The Fortune Hunter was different.  I’d wanted to write it ever since I first heard about the crime in 1999. 

I wanted to write about it because the person who pulled the trigger was Tracey Tarlton, a manager at BookPeople, the largest independent bookstore in Texas.  BookPeople had been very good to me in promoting Wasted.  I don’t think Tracey remembers this, but I once contacted her and asked her to make sure another writer who was appearing at BookPeople got a copy of Wasted.  Tracey promised me she’d get it to her, and I appreciated that. 

But I also wanted to write about the case because Celeste and Tracey had met at a mental health facility and mental health issues have always fascinated me.  (I would have been a psychology major if a rat lab hadn’t been a requirement at Baylor.  I’m deathly afraid of rodents).

I pitched the story to my then agent, who pitched it to my then editor.  My editor made an offer on the book, but my agent encouraged me to turn it down.  So, I did. 

Years later, I was having lunch with an old friend from summer camp.  When I say an old friend, I mean we’d first met when we were about eight years old and approximately 40 years later we were still getting together and laughing and talking.  This day, we were scarfing down Mexican food at Hula Hut on Lake Austin, when my friend announced that she and another camp friend had decided what book I should write next – “Tracey Tarlton,” she said.

“What?” I screamed.  I didn’t know how my friend even knew about the case.  For years, she’d been living overseas.  But then she explained that Tracey was the Tracey Tarlton at our summer camp.  In full disclosure, Tracey and I never really knew each other at camp.  I just knew who she was, and, obviously, we had many of the same friends.  In fact, I eventually learned that my friend had been a mentor to Tracey. 

With that, I had to write the book.  It was my story.  I planned on it being the last true crime book I ever wrote, and I planned on it being the best true crime book I ever wrote. 

Well, half came true – it is the last true crime book I ever plan on writing.  But according to many, it is the worst true crime book I ever wrote, and it’s not my story.  The reasons for that are many, and I don’t feel like confessing them right now.  Let’s just say I take the blame.  But the good news is that the events surrounding that book solidified my decision to never write true crime again.  

* * *

Of course, even when one makes a decision that is right for her, it doesn’t mean it’s a decision without mourning.  Today one of those proverbial waves of sadness washed over me when I learned what I had long suspected – The Fortune Hunter has gone out of print.  I knew this day was coming.  In December of 2009, I emailed my editor and asked if it was out of print – too many people had told me they couldn’t find the book.  My editor had someone else email me that the book was still available.

In early September 2010, there was a bit of renewed interest in the book.  Once again, people emailed me that they couldn’t find it and wanted a copy.  Again, I figured it was out of print.  But some people searched, begged, and found a copy.  Courtney Little’s mother, Connie, was one of them.  Connie – a friend from high school – read the book and passed it on to Courtney, which resulted in Courtney’s Facebook post of today.

Courtney doesn’t know how perfect her note and timing were.  It helped with that wash of sadness.  So did her mother’s Facebook comment:  “You know what I like about Celeste?  She makes me look like a really GOOD mother.” 

I know, I know, I shouldn’t be sad.  I’m on to a new, exciting challenge writing a memoir.  And though I say I’m finished with true crime, Wages of Sin is returning to print next month.  Still, I also know that it’s time to move on.  But before I do, I want to say thank you.  Thank you, Courtney, for making me smile.  Thank you, Connie, for making me laugh.  And thank you to all my true crime friends.  You have changed my life.  You have made it better.  I hope you’ll consider following me into my new world of writing. 

In the meantime, let me introduce you to Stephanie Martin, the killer in Wages of Sin, the woman I refer to as the Southern Baptist killer stripper.  She was reared Southern Baptist, became a stripper, and then a killer.  I wonder what Courtney will say about having lunch with Stephanie.

Stephanie Martin, WAGES OF SIN

I’ve been staring at this page for an hour or two.  I want to fill it with perfect words, but the only words that come to my mind are steak and martini.  If I think harder, I hear the hoarse laughter and cough of a woman who has smoked for too many years, and yet I smile.  And in my mind, I see a short, plump woman in a yellow sweater with hair that almost matches, a cigarette in her dainty, tanned, bejeweled fingers, and I smile again.  Then I remember the tears she shed as we talked, and how – thanks to our mutual, warped senses of humor – those tears would often morph into that husky laugh, before falling into her smoker’s cough.  I am thinking of my friend Becky Beard.  Becky died yesterday of an apparent heart attack. 

The first time I met Becky, she, her younger brother Paul, and Paul’s wife Kim and I shared dinner at Ray’s Steakhouse in Austin.  They were in town for the trial of their father’s killer, which I was covering for ABC News. The gist of the story is that after Becky’s mother died, her father Steven, a lonely millionaire TV executive, married a young waitress from Austin Country Club.  Though Steve gave the waitress every material thing she wanted, she couldn’t wait to get her hands on each and every penny he had.  So she romanced a lonely lesbian named Tracey Tarlton and convinced Tracey to kill Steve for her.  If you recognize the story it’s because it became my book The Fortune Hunter. 

But I don’t want to dwell on The Fortune Hunter right now.  I don’t want anyone to think that I’m using Becky’s death to promote my book.  So please, don’t even consider buying it right now.  I’m only telling you this to explain how and why Becky and I met. 

As the murder trial progressed, Paul and Kim had to return to work in Virginia, leaving Becky, who lived in Dallas, alone to bear the stress and grief of the trial in Austin.  That’s what prompted Becky and me to start sharing our courthouse lunches and dinners at Ray’s.  In fact, we ate at least one meal together almost every day of the two-month long trial. 

The evenings after especially stressful days, we’d rush to Ray’s, where we’d plop down at the bar.  Becky would order a Ketel One vodka martini, and I’d order a Bombay Sapphire gin martini.  I hate to admit that I introduced her to martinis, but I love to admit that ABC producer Bert Rudman introduced her to Ketel vodka.  Anyway, I digress.  Becky and I both would order filets mignons.  She’d emphasize that hers had to be seared on both sides, which is the way her father liked them cooked.  And she’d order a baked potato, while I would stick with the restaurant’s garlic mashed potatoes. 

We’d sit for hours, eating and drinking, often sipping a second martini.  Sometimes we’d joke with the bartender.  Other times we’d eavesdrop on patrons talking about the trial.  Most times we’d huddle in secret conversation.  Sometimes Becky would rage about the day’s events.  Other times she’d cry.  But always we ended up cracking jokes and laughing.  Her laugh was more like a snort.  To think about it makes me smile.

I know a good reporter is supposed to keep her emotional distance from her sources.  But I failed that miserably with that story.  I grew to love Becky and think of her as a dear friend.  Though I was a bit of an emotional support for her during the trial, she definitely was my emotional support.  Strangely enough, reporters need that during murder trials.

Becky and I stayed in touch for years.  Often she’d phoned me late at night, while sitting in a noisy bar and drinking martinis.  Over the shouts and laughter of drunken patrons, we’d once again cry and laugh together.  She’d send me emails suggesting story ideas, including a clever and funny novel based on our favorite prosecutor, Allison Wetzel.  She’d tell me about her trips to Destin, Florida, and her attendance at pro golf tournaments.  Like her mother, Becky was an avid golfer.  And once her father’s estate was settled, I remember Becky’s excitement over buying a gold-toned Ford Thunderbird convertible.   It was an indulgence for a woman who often worked two jobs.  Becky was a math teacher who moonlighted as a bookkeeper.  I always admired her for her work ethic.

I admired her too for her golden heart.  Becky rarely resented the fact that her father adopted his killer’s teenaged daughters and made those teens equal heirs to his riches.  In fact, Becky expressed gratitude that her father had provided her with sisters; for decades she’d been the reliable middle child between two sons.  At one point, she even included the killer’s daughters in her own will.  Becky was a far, far better and more loving person than I could ever be.

Yesterday, her sister-in-law Kim announced Becky’s passing on Facebook.  In actuality, Kim only said her sister-in-law had passed.  Knowing that Kim has at least two sisters-in-law, I privately emailed her and asked if she was referring to Becky.  All the while, I assured myself that she wasn’t.  But I knew Becky drank too much, smoked too much, and was heavy.  And to my devastation, Kim wrote back that, yes, she was referring to Becky.

I feel indulgent in saying to my “devastation.”  I’m not a relative like Kim.  I hadn’t spoken to Becky in a long while.  I had distanced from her as I had gotten more into my sex book research … and as I had kept firm in my promise to myself that The Fortune Hunter would be my last true crime book.  But I’d thought about Becky last month as I’d traveled to Dallas.  And I think about her today.  She died 11 years and 18 days after her father had been shot while he slept.  I wonder if the month of October had been too emotionally tough for that kind and gracious heart of hers. 

Kim told me to go have a steak and martini in honor of Becky.  I don’t know if I can do that tonight.  My eyes are filled with tears.  Becky was just so damned good to me.  Instead, four hours after I started searching for the perfect words to salute my beautifully imperfect friend, I’m going to go to the gym.  Maybe trying to keep my heart healthy is the best way I can honor her.  But I tell you one thing for darned sure, if Ray’s Steakhouse were still open,* which it isn’t, I’d say screw the gym and I’d go have a steak, seared on both sides, and a martini for Becky.  After all, Ray’s has seen us shed tears before. 

Becky, here’s to you. 

* Strangely enough, Ray LeMay, the owner of Ray’s Steakhouse, died just this past summer.

In the days following the June 20, 2001, murder of Andrea Yates’ five children, the City of Houston buzzed with shock, gossip, and confusion.  But on September 11, 2001, it was eerily desolate, a quiet stillness I’ve never experienced in decades of traveling to the Bayou City.

I think I was the only lunch hour customer in the sidewalk cafe not far from the downtown courthouse — the place where the Andrea Yates competency hearing was supposed to be underway.  I sat by a multi-lane street, its silent emptiness a contrast to the screaming panic, chaos and violence in New York, Washington, D.C, and on a field in Pennsylvania.

My waiter and I traded polite smiles and whispered our words as I asked for, and he tried to provide, news updates.  I think I wanted him to stay with me, but he left me alone.  I leaned back in my chair.  I stared down the street.  I watched the fear, in the form of greed, that was overtaking our nation — a convenience store worker walked outside, looked up at his towering gasoline sign, and repeatedly raised his prices.

I paid for my meal and got in my car and drove past the gas station.  I wanted to steer west onto I-10 to Austin, to my home and my family.  I drove east on I-45, towards Friendswood, to park in front of a former home of Rusty and Andrea Yates, to walk up the sidewalk of their former next-door neighbors, and to knock on their door.  In my arms I carried my bag, notepad, recorder, and a nearly foot-high stack of Andrea Yates’ medical records.

With constant replays of the burning and collapsing World Trade Center playing on a large screen TV, Andrea Yates’ … friend, fan, and fellow nurse wanted to study Andrea’s medical records.  She read out loud from the Methodist Hospital records, as Katie Couric described the falling buildings over and over again.

We sat at the family dining table, and as the woman read aloud, her husband munched on tortilla chips like this was any other mundane Tuesday and talked over his wife.  “Nice guy,” he said about Andrea’s husband, Rusty.  The man cocked his head toward the TV.

“I know Rusty didn’t drown those kids,” the wife said.  “She did.”  But the wife – a psych nurse – believed Rusty slowly killed Andrea.

Her husband tried to stand up for Rusty, pointing out that Andrea was severely depressed.  The husband and wife bantered back and forth, she defending Andrea, he defending Rusty.

“Rusty—he’s a pretty good man,” the husband said.

“You can’t say that,” the wife interrupted, then argued that Rusty knew Andrea suffered from postpartum depression, kept having babies, had her living in a bus.  “He’s keeping her confined 24/7 and she’s having no interaction with anybody else but the kids and him…  That’s evidence there …”

And if I recall correctly, a child wandered in and out of the room as this discussion of insanity and murder wore on and 9/11 raged in the background.  I remember worrying about such a young child being exposed to such violence.  I stared at the TV as reporter Ashley Banfield watched a gray cloud speed toward her.  She screamed at woman with a child, “Get out of here!  Get out of here!  Look out for your baby!”**

But the woman in Houston, Texas, staring at Andrea Yates’ psychiatric history, turned to her husband and said, “How can you say this is such a good guy when he’s stupid?”

“He doesn’t have the knowledge that we do.”

“He’s controlling and selfish.”

I spent hours in that home, and all I wanted to do was get to my home.

Finally, well past dark, I was on I-10, tuning my radio to KTRH NewsRadio Houston.  As I drove, I listened to the reports coming out of New York, I watched the waning moon, and I prayed … and I realized that this day of death was my cousin’s birthday, and I’d completely forgotten.  I reached for my phone and dialed her number.  “Happy Birthday.”  How does one say those words cheerily on a day when our nation is burning and thousands are dying? 

She thanked me for calling, and we hung up.  I kept driving.  The last thing I remember that night is seeing the bright lights of a gas station on the outskirts of Austin.  Cars were lined up, their owners fearfully waiting to top-off their tanks.  Just as I’d passed by that gas station in Houston with the jacked-up prices, I passed by this one too.  I didn’t want to feed into the panic.  I just wanted my mother’s voice in my ear, as I phoned her and reported, “I’m home.”  Safe.  Sound.  In the quiet stillness of my own bed.

I wonder if that’s how Andrea Yates’ children felt – safe, sound, in the quiet stillness of their parents’ bed as they went home to Jesus.  I know many will disagree with me, but combing through Andrea’s medical records for hours on end, for months on end, knowing them better than one of her own defense attorneys did, I believe with all my heart and soul that that’s all she was trying to do the morning of June 20, 2001 – send her children home where they’d be safe and sound from the evils of this world.  For her, that evil was herself.  For America, on 9/11, it was Osama bin Ladin.

I will never forget Andrea Yates’ children.

And I will never forget September 11, 2001.

* * *

*  To read The Writing Life I Live, part 1, click here.

** For that one action, I will always respect Ashley Banfield.

When I wrote fiction, the life I lived became my writing.  A hometown visit with my friend Paula Sue inspired my short story My Sweet Sheri Sue, which you’ll find here and was published in a slightly different form in the anthology Red Boots & Attitude: The Spirit of Texas Women Writers (Eakin Press, 2002).  Another short story (that I now find embarrassing) was inspired by an obsession, and a regrettably lost short story was the result of a vacation to Hawaii.

Since I’ve been writing solely nonfiction, my writing has become the life I live.  What I mean by that is that if I’m not researching nonfiction, I’m not having any life adventures or experiences that create stories.  There are no visits home.  There are no obsessions other than work.  And there are no non-nonfiction trips.  As I said, my nonfiction writing has become the life I live.

For example, whenever we remember the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, I recall the night before it hit.  I sat at my computer doing research for my sex book.  As I did so often back then, I was cruising Craigslist’s Casual Encounters.  With Katrina coverage buzzing on the TV, I decided to click on Casual Encounters in New Orleans.  I was a bit shocked, dismayed, and laughing a bit, too, when I saw how many New Orleanians were looking for quick sex rather than evacuating from the storm.  Of course, many of those seekers of sex appeared to be prostitutes.

Today I wonder how many of them washed away in the storm and how many of them lived.  Maybe wondering that, imagining that, will send me back to writing fiction.

I doubt that though, because I remember just before the Andrea Yates trial, I was having dinner with Dateline NBC’s Keith Morrison and his production crew.  I was talking about how I wanted to return to fiction.  He asked me why since there are so many true stories out there that need to be told.  I think Keith Morrison changed my life that night, and I doubt Keith Morrison even remembers who I am.

* * *

Andrea Yates is one of the strongest examples of the writing I do becoming the life I live.  When 9/11 happened I was in a hotel in Clear Lake, Texas, researching my Yates book.  I’d stayed at that hotel before, specifically when I was covering the funeral of her four young sons and infant daughter, all of whom she’d methodically drowned in the family bathtub.

The coastal Texas morning seared hot, humid, and hazy with pollution.  … Already five black hearses were parked close to the sanctuary.  … Fat drops of water wept from trees …

That’s what I wrote about that June 26^th day in 2001 in my book Breaking Point.

I still remember the tiny white coffins and the blankets that Rusty Yates, the children’s father, tucked next to the five cold bodies.

“This is Mary’s little blankie,” he said, holding it up for the mourners to see.  It was a loosely crocheted baby blanket.  “… Her little toes used to slip through it.”

Approximately, 140 pages later in Breaking Point I wrote:

Tuesday, September 11, 2001, dawned with beauty in Houston, Texas.  The air was stunningly clear, the sky autumn bright.  The temperature was almost crisp as Bay Area residents walked out their doors and picked up the Houston Chronicle from their driveways.  They opened the paper and saw a front page headline: “Yates jury selection is today.”

That’s why I was in Houston on September 11, 2001 – to cover the Andrea Yates competency hearing, a hearing that would determine whether the psychotic mother was competent to stand trial for her children’s murders.

* * *

The hotel in which I stayed was just down the street from the extended stay hotel where Andrea’s mother-in-law was registered during the murders, and across the street from NASA, where Andrea’s husband Rusty sat at his desk working until Andrea phoned him after she’d placed the children’s corpses in the bed she shared with him.  “You need to come home,” she told Rusty.

Considering that, it may sound oxymoronic when I say my hotel was a quiet, safe place, so when I slowly woke to the constant sound of sirens on September 11, 2001, I was confused.  Never before had I heard sirens outside of NASA.  I picked up a USA Today and stared at the five and half inch by seven and a half color photograph of Andrea Yates centering the newspaper’s front page.  “’Psychotic,’” it said, “but is Andrea Yates legally insane?”

I had been led to believe that Andrea’s competency hearing didn’t begin until September 12^th.  But as the Houston Chronicle and USA Today said, jury selection was beginning that morning.   Furious and frustrated that I hadn’t known that, I started throwing on clothes while dialing a friend in Austin and griping about my misinformation.

Calmly, firmly she said, “Have you turned on the TV?”

“No, I haven’t had time,” I said, and I kept griping.

Repeatedly, calmly, firmly, she interrupted and told me to turn on the TV.

Finally, I did.  And there I found why sirens were blaring outside of NASA – the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon had been hit by planes and were in flames.  (The news about Pennsylvania had not aired yet.)

I dialed the Harris County courthouse to see if the Yates jury selection was still on.  I was told, yes, it was, 120 potential jurors were already there.

I grabbed my bags, checked out, and blasted up I-45 from Clear Lake to Houston, stunned at the empty freeway heading into downtown, equally stunned at the gridlock caused by workers fleeing the city.  NASA, oil companies, Enron, and major banks were in lockdown and under guard.  Everything was in lockdown, I believed, except the Harris County courthouse.  But in the mere minutes it took me to race from Clear Lake to Houston, the courthouse had been closed too and the potential jurors sent home.

I wanted to go home, too.  But I had an interview to conduct that night with a former neighbor of Rusty and Andrea’s, and she still wanted to keep our appointment.  So on this stunningly crystal blue day of violence, I found a sidewalk café and sat alone in the silent city, the sun warming my face as if I were on vacation in Hawaii.

To Be Continued

The day after I emailed my sex book to my editor in New York, I had so much I wanted to blog about.  Ideas and words kept popping into my head.  But I wouldn’t let myself write them because I felt I needed to take the day off.  The previous four months had been long, hard, and stressful – editing and rewriting my own work under a tight deadline, along with editing and coaching others, teaching, prepping for and going to China, family responsibilities, and perhaps most stressful of all, the fear and anxiety of revealing my soul in a memoir that I dream hundreds of thousands of people will read.

The second day after turning in my sex memoir, the blog ideas and words continued popping into my brain.  I still had a hunger to write them down.  Instead, I returned to my sex book and did a week’s worth of rewrite and re-turned in the book, a “whopping” five pages shorter than the original, but with an ending I hope is stronger and more satisfying to the reader.  (And please pardon that ridiculous pun.  It’s one I wouldn’t have used if a better word had popped into my brain).

Just like the week before when I’d first turned in the sex book, that hunger and desire to blog returned.  Still I wouldn’t let myself write.  I knew I needed rest, and I had freelance assignments that had been waiting for two months.  I had to dive into them.  (Thank you, kind clients, for waiting for me.)

By the time I turned in those assignments, complete and utter physical, mental and emotional exhaustion overwhelmed me.  I think that happens to most writers once we finish a book.  After the exhaustion, or perhaps more accurately, in the midst of the exhaustion, depression sets in as we grieve over our projects and the loss of our characters.  Whether one is writing nonfiction or fiction our characters are real to us.  They are our friends and constant companions.  When they are no longer there for us on a daily basis, we mourn their passing.  Without them, we are a bit lost.

That’s where I am right now.  I’m a bit lost.  That sounds silly when I have another freelance project to do, one that will take months, when I know what I want my next two books to be and I need to get cracking on them, and when I have another secret project that I want to do and must be done now if it is to happen at all.

But instead of working and accomplishing, I sit at my computer and stare at TMZ and Facebook as if someone is going to post something that will forever alter my future for the positive if I don’t read that post within five seconds of it going online.  I then tell myself that I’m not writing because I’ve first got to clean my desk, my office, and my house.  I need to clear out the old and get organized before I can start the new.  Instead, I walk around in circles, fuming at the mess that won’t walk out on its own like cartoon ants exiting a picnic.

So I exit, stand on the edge of my back porch, stare at my Hill Country view, and remind myself how lucky and blessed I am.  I look at my yard, notice how it needs mowing and weeding and how it’s turning brown under the relentless heat.  I think about how desperately we need rain, and I walk back inside, to my bedroom, and collapse into my bed, even though it’s only three or four in the afternoon.  I do that because I’ve got nothing left inside me to give.

As I lie there in the cool quiet, I realize that is exactly what I need – cool, quiet. I thank God for the moment of peace.  It’s been so long since my mind has been able to rest.  I know I’m repeating myself, but I am so frigging tired; I am lost.

I want to be lost on the beach where my mind can wash in and out with the waves.  I want to taste the salt sea water on my lips.  And I want to lie in a king-sized bed with white Egyptian cotton sheets, a friend’s arms wrapped around me as a way to say it’s going to be okay, while I weep for my characters lost.  But I know that’s not going to happen.  I won’t let it because I know that in truth I have no reason to weep.  I’ve just written the best book of my life.  And maybe that’s the real reason I want to weep.  Victory can bring us to tears.

* * *

Addendum:  As some of you may have noticed, I wrote my sex memoir.  Yes, this book isn’t just a look at Americans’ alternative sex practices, as originally planned.  At my editor’s request, it’s been turned into a memoir.  That changed has made this not only the best book I’ve ever written, but the most difficult, honest , and self-revealing.  So the tears I won’t allow myself to weep aren’t just tears of grief and victory.  They’re tears of fear too as I worry about how my family, friends, fans, and freelance employers will react.

But strangely enough, as I typed the words “victory can bring us to tears,” I looked out my window.  And this is what I saw. 

I’m hoping this rainbow is a sign that all is going to be okay with my sex memoir.

For those of you who know I’m writing a book about sex, get your minds out of the gutter.  When I say I’m going to bed with my work, that’s not what I mean.

For those of you who regularly read my blog, you’ll know exactly what I mean.  I’m climbing into bed with my research.  Well, that doesn’t sound right either.

What I mean is that I’m so bogged down in my work that I’m finishing late at night and need to go to sleep thinking about my work so that I wake up the next day and know exactly where to start.  That means I take my notes to bed with me and read them just before going to sleep.  That’s what I did in college – go to sleep with my notes, study in my dreams, and wake up the next day to take the tests.  Then again, I didn’t do so great in undergrad.  Let’s hope it works better now.  I’m behind schedule on the rewrite.

Today, I re-edited for the gazillionith time the pages covering May 13, 2005.  That day, I met with two sex sources who have commented here, did a photo shoot during which the photographer told me about a dildo bar in San Francisco, and went to a seminar on the psychology of bondage.  I was exhausted at the end of the day … just like I am now.

Let’s hope while I dream I can figure out … zzzzzzzzzz.

Puttanesca

Maybe it’s because I’m a writer and words are important to me, powerful to me.  Just a few moments ago, I heard a poem on the radio, Puttanesca by Michael Heffernan.  The words that caught my ears were simple — “a street walker’s sweat.” 

Words like that stun me with their beauty that comes from their vividness.  They encourage me.  They make me want to do better, be better.  Not just a better writer, but a better person … someone who is worthy of such poetry.

When I was a student at Baylor University, I remember learning the meaning of a specific New Testament Bible verse, which unfortunately I can’t find right now, though it’s in something like Galatians or Ephesians.  But that verse, in its original language, said that we are God’s poetry. 

I think about that verse and I think about how hard I work on my words for a book, how I write them, read them, rewrite them, rework them, leave them alone, polish them, and try to perfect them over and over again, each time with love, passion, and desire.  And if I do that for my words, and if we’re God’s poetry, oh, my gosh, how He works, polishes, and loves us. 

What I’m trying to say is that it’s the words that get to me.  Specifically, it’s the name-calling words that get to me.

I hear it a lot in myself.  I hear it a lot on TV.  When I do, I wonder what kind of example we’re setting for our children  — that it’s okay to spew hate-filled words just for the sake venting, for the chance to rage and get on TV, to start and have a career as a pundit or reality TV star.  I hear it even more on radio.  I remember I heard it on the radio the morning after the Fort Hood shooting, as I was driving down I-35, returning to Killeen and the hospital where the injured and dying had been taken. 

Strangely enough, I didn’t hear it from the doctors and nurses who frantically worked to save lives.  I saw exhausted smiles of pride over the lives they had saved.  And I didn’t hear it from the victims who lived to tell their stories of that horrible day.  I heard gratitude.

But on the radio, from people who were miles from the blood and the death, I heard it.  Perhaps it was understandable.  That’s not the way it came across, though.  It came across as trying to stir up people for ratings and advertising dollars. 

What really gets to me, though, is the every day name-calling.   I’m not talking name-calling against people like Major Nidal Malik Hassan, the Fort Hood shooter.  I’m talking about name-calling that’s screamed and shouted under the guise of  freedom of speech in the name of trying to save our nation from … whichever side they think is wrong and they’re right.  I’m talking name-calling and hate in the name of superiority, name-calling and hate in the name of righteousness, name-calling and hate out of fear. 

Do not fear, for I am with you.  I will bless you …

Genesis 26:24

I read it a lot on newspaper websites, where people can anonymously vent their anger, rage, insanity, and hate.  And I read it a lot on Facebook.  I think that’s where it gets to me the most — reading name-calling from my friends. 

All I know is that it makes me lose respect for those I once admired, just like I lose respect for myself when I do it.  I don’t want to lose respect for them … or for me.  I know they are smart people.  I know I’m smart.  I know they are kind, giving, and gracious people in the majority of their lives.  I’d like to think I’m kind, giving and gracious in the majority of my life.  But, when it comes to politics, we become the very essence of what we’re accusing the other side of being. 

I guess for that very reason I can’t give up.  Nor can I spew back.  After all, I’m God’s poetry — written, read, rewritten, reworked, trying to get perfected. 

*  I wrote this last March and revamped it and rewrote it in May.  I don’t think I ever had any intention of ever posting it.  And maybe I shouldn’t be posting it now because it may be too similar to I Don’t Know Where to Start.  Yet that very blog post, I Don’t Know Where to Start – specifically some of the comments posted here — is what motivated me to go ahead and publish this.  Forgive me if you find it redundant.

I don’t know where to start. 

That’s not a very good thing for a writer to say.  Even if we don’t know where to start, we usually write until we know where to begin.

But finding where to begin takes time.  It takes lots of typing and retyping.  Rearranging.  Starting over.  And finding our way again.  I don’t have time to do that.  There’s a book to write.  There’s freelance work that’s due.   And I’m constantly distracted. 

Last night and today I was distracted by Facebook.  Specifically, I was distracted by a “prayer” that many of my Christian friends were posting on Facebook and other Christian friends were clicking that they “liked.” 

“DEAR LORD, THIS YEAR YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTOR, PATRICK SWAYZIE [sic]. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTRESS, FARAH [sic] FAWCETT. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE SINGER, MICHAEL JACKSON. I JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW, MY FAVORITE PRESIDENT IS BARACK OBAMA. AMEN”

For nearly 24 hours I’ve been raging against this “joke” because, as a Christian, I felt I had to.  As a Christian, I’m shamed by such hate.  My Jesus isn’t about hate.  My Jesus – as you’ll read in my sex book – is about love, grace, and mercy. 

I have no issue with people expressing their disagreement with our President.  I don’t even have a problem with people expressing their dislike for him.  What I do have a problem with is Christians praying for a person’s death.  As a Christian, I don’t feel like we have the right to decide when another dies.  That’s up to God.

I’ve heard people compare this “joke” to the cruelties spoken about former President George W. Bush.  They say that those on the left – specifically Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks – wished President Bush dead, so those on the right are justified in doing the same regarding President Barack Obama. 

If I recall correctly, Ms. Maines didn’t wish any sort of thing on our President.  She simply said she was ashamed he was from Texas. 

“Just so you know, we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.” — Natalie Maines, 2003

I have no objection to people saying they’re ashamed President Obama is from Hawaii … or that he’s an embarrassment … or, even as I heard tonight, that he’s an idiot.*  Again, my problem is Christians praying for his death.

In fact, that seems to go against the essence of Christianity, especially since there are many Christians who believe our President is a Muslim.  That very belief – inaccurate as it is – is all the more reason they should be praying for our President, rather than praying for his death.  In other words, they should be praying for his salvation rather than praying that he dies before he’s saved.  Isn’t that what evangelical Christianity is all about?

But there’s another reason I’m upset that Christians are “joking” and praying for our President’s death, and that reason is personal.  He has two little girls.  I cannot imagine what it’d be like for those children to hear that others – specifically Christians – are praying for their father’s death.  How cruel is that?  And, oh, how it would turn them away from Christianity.  At least it would me. 

Still, that doesn’t explain why it’s personal.  My father died when I was five years old leaving my mother to rear two girls by herself.  I look at those children and I see my sister and me.  I think about what it’s like to grow up with a dead daddy, and I don’t want that for them.

This is what I mean about not knowing where to start and not having time to find out where to begin.  This blog is nothing like what I wanted or intended.  It’s not even covering the topics I thought I’d discuss.  But it’s what has come out of my fingertips, so I guess it’s where I’ll end.

By the way, for those who have forgotten, Natalie Maines later apologized to President Bush.  I wonder if there are any Christians out there who will apologize to President Obama.

“As a concerned American citizen, I apologize to President Bush because my remark was disrespectful. I feel that whoever holds that office should be treated with the utmost respect.” — Natalie Maines, 2003

* Okay, truth — I’d prefer he not be called an idiot, but calling him an idiot is an improvement over praying for his death.

New Colors by Jesse Sublett

The other night I dreamed I was in a strip club.  It was a great dream.  I woke rested and happy for the first time in … I can’t remember when.  But the dream, oh, that I remember.  I was working in the club.  I don’t mean stripping.  I was reporting and researching.  From afternoon to well past dark, through shift changes of day strippers to night dancers, I was there … out front, watching and talking with both servers and entertainers … and backstage too, hanging with the dancers in their dressing room, learning about life, being guided and protected by them, seeing the good and illegal of strip clubs. 

I remember the exact positions a man and dancer were in when he penetrated her in the dressing room.  I remember the look on her face … the initial pain of having someone she didn’t want, then the resignation, and finally the numbness.   

For my friends who work in the sex industry, please know I’m not saying this is what a dancer feels when she prostitutes herself.  I’m simply relaying what I read on the face of the woman in my dream, as she watched me watching her.  A writer friend of mine would argue that I have no right — in fact that I can’t — go into the point of view of the stripper’s mind when I’m writing from my POV.  But it was my dream, and I’m telling you what I saw and interpreted.  And if we’re talking interpretations, and Freudian interpretations at that, I guess I should admit that the prostitute stripper was closer to my age than the cliché stripper, and she was brunette like me.

I recall the man’s grin of satisfaction after completion and that same look in his dark eyes as he looked at me.  In my dream, I felt my fear.  And I felt my thankfulness as the women surrounded me and eased me away, not so that I wouldn’t see the reality of their industry, but to protect me from him. 

Again, for those I know who have worked or presently work in the sex industry, I’m not saying there is or isn’t such camaraderie among strippers.  This is just what happened in my dream.   

Dance Party Napkin by Jesse Sublett

As I left the dressing room and returned to the floor, I ran into my friend Casey Dancer, a former student.  She was exhausted from the work, but kept at it.  I also ran into my friend Bonnie, a screenwriter and producer.  She was there working, too.  I suppose researching.  Or maybe she was there watching out for me.  Bonnie’s like that – she’s always got my back. 

When I walked toward the front door to leave, I spotted a friend I’ve known since childhood.  We’d gone to church together.  We’d gone on church mission trips together.  She was at the club having dinner with another family from our church – a woman who’d been our Sunday school teacher, a man who’d been a prominent doctor and church deacon, and their three adult children. 

I specifically wrote that they were “at the club” having dinner, because the white linens and the good silver on the table insinuated that they were dining at our old country club.  The light, happy looks on their faces indicated that too.  But just a few steps behind them was that loud and shadowy strip club. 

Again, there are so many obvious Freudian interpretations there.  I’m going to leave those to you.  Instead, I’m going to answer why this dream, which some people would consider dark and maybe even sinful, awakened me refreshed and happy.   

The answer is because I was back in my element.  I don’t mean hanging out in strip clubs is my element.  I mean working … learning … understanding others who are so different from me.  That’s being in my element.  That’s what I love about what I do.  And that’s what makes me happy.  I am one blessed writer. 

I wrote this in January, but I kept it to myself because I’m old school journalism who believes in keeping my politics out of my writing.  Plus, I’m not knowledgeable enough to write about this subject.  That’s why this piece is rather superficial.  But most of all, I’m too chicken to write about anything that involves political points of view for fear of ticking off and losing people I care about and who believe differently than me.  That includes friends, family, and, yes, fans of my books.

Then something happened … and, well, I want to stay alive.  For those of you who have children, and for my many Christian friends, my reason for wanting to live will sound trite.  I want to live to make sure my sex book gets finished, published, and promoted.  So … there you have it

Once again, I’m wondering if I’m having a heart attack.

I’m driving down Capital of Texas Highway when I feel a pain in my left arm.  Then it seems to go into my left shoulder blade and back down to my hand.  Suddenly I’m wondering if I feel pain in my left jaw too.  I know my left teeth hurt last night and a heart attack crossed my mind.  I start wondering if I should find a Walgreen’s and buy some aspirin.  But I know I need to make a bank deposit before noon and I fear if I stop for aspirin, I won’t make my deadline.

Crazy thinking, huh?

I think crazy like this quite often.  In fact, as I type this, my left arm is feeling weird again.  Of course, I’m typing from a Schlotzsky’s restaurant after I just ate The Original sandwich dripping and oozing with three kinds of cheese, two kinds of salami, and just about anything else that can give you a heart attack or stroke.  And, no, I never stopped to get those aspirin.

Hey, if I’m having a heart attack – if I have heart disease – I’ve just got to die.  I can’t afford not to.  I don’t have health insurance.

Freelance writers don’t have a lot of options when it comes to health insurance.  I used to have very expensive health insurance through the National Writers Union, but then they lost their coverage.  They now have it for New York, but not for Texas.  The same goes for other writers’ organizations that offer health insurance.  The Authors Guild has coverage for New York and Massachusetts, as well as a few other states, but not Texas.  Even the Guild admits that their insurance offerings in those few other states are “unaffordable to most members.”

* * *

A few months ago, a friend of mine, upset over the exorbitant cost of health insurance – his just surpassed his mortgage payment – and distressed by the war in Congress and our nation over this necessary evil, scheduled an appointment with his Republican Congressman to discuss health insurance.  He then asked his friends what questions they wanted answered.  I wanted to know why Texas writers can’t get health insurance, while writers in other states can get coverage.  I wondered if we’re unhealthier than other states.  After all, I’m typing from a Schlotzsky’s where my sandwich alone has 559 calories, 12 grams of saturated fat, which is 60 percent daily recommended values, and 1834 grams of sodium, which is 76 percent of the daily recommended values.

My friend didn’t come back with an answer from his Congressman.  But I guess that’s typical.  We expect answers; we don’t get any.

Now it’s a week later.  The pains in my left arm, shoulder blade, and jaw have subsided.  But I’m still fearful.  Republican Scott Brown has won the Massachusetts senatorial seat held for more than 40 years by health insurance advocate Ted Kennedy, effectively killing any chance of health insurance reform.  According to the media, the pundits, the professional partisans, this is what the people of the United States want – the death of health care reform.

I’m not so sure I believe them.  My friends are far left Democrats; my family members are far right Republicans.  I hear them both calling for reform.  The problem is that they’re yelling so loudly that neither can hear what the other is saying.  Perhaps they don’t want to.  Perhaps they don’t want to admit that such diverse believers can agree on anything.

Today, I phoned Alexandra Owens, executive director of The American Society of Journalists and Authors, to confirm whether or not ASJA offers health insurance to freelance writers in Texas.  After all, the ASJA website touts one of its member benefits as being access to competitive health insurance products in 30 different states.  And when I talked to Ms. Owens, she emphasized just that – that they offer access to individual products, i.e. individual providers just like I, as an individual consumer, could go out and shop for insurance in Texas.  I’ve tried shopping for health insurance in Texas.  I haven’t succeeded.  The last time I applied for health insurance, I was turned down due acne, despite the fact that I hadn’t been treated for it in years.

No organization can provide national group health insurance, Ms. Owens said.  Not ASJA, not the National Writers Union, not the Authors Guild, not even Exxon.  Group policies can’t be written for such national organizations because each state has its own laws regarding insurance, as well as the fact that health insurance cannot be sold across state lines.  Ms. Owens did clarify that there are “pockets” of older policies that do cover multiple states such as New York and Massachusetts.  And when she said Massachusetts, I listened.

Just the night before I’d heard a pundit say that since Brown had voted for Massachusetts’ health insurance reform, simply present him with that — an identical, national version of that bill – and he’d have no grounds for voting against it.  Of course, I don’t have much hope in that.  I believe in these days of partisan rancor, anyone can find any excuse to do their party’s bidding, and it’s my biased opinion that no Republican wants a Democratic President to succeed in any way.

Ms. Owen, however, has hope in the talk of trading health insurance across state lines.  That would help associations provide national, group health plans to its members.  She stressed that that is even more important now due to the very fact that the number of self-employed is growing every single day.  And I know for fact that my Fox-watching, Republican-voting relatives are all for selling health insurance across state lines.

Yeah, I know.  That’s crazy thinking again – that I wonder if maybe the Republicans and Democrats could agree on just one line of health insurance reform, especially since each side, and I’m including the partisan public here, appears to say I’m 100 percent right, you’re 100 percent wrong, it’s 100 percent my way or no way.

I hear Rodney King in my head – “Can we all get along?”

No.  Not when politics is involved.  It’s enough to give me a heart attack.

I don’t need no stinkin’ pity. 

I guess that’s a rather harsh reaction, but the other day someone responded to my New Year’s Eve Confession saying he had no sympathy for me, that instead of seeking sympathy I should look at what all I’d accomplished in my career, and, and – this is the part that got to me — that I should lower my dreams.  That’s the very kind of thinking I don’t want in my life. 

Let me back up a bit.  And forgive me if I’ve already told you this story before, but years ago I mentioned to a yearning-to-be-published author that I’d received literally 200 to 300 rejection letters from literary agents and editors.  She looked at me like I was crazy and responded, “Give it up.”

Okay, maybe that wasn’t her exact quote, and as a journalist I believe in giving exact quotes.  But that was the gist of her brief response — after two or three hundred rejections it’s obvious that you’re not going to make it as a published author, so just give it up.

I looked at her like she was crazy.  I was not going to give up my dream.  If I did, that’d guarantee I wouldn’t fulfill it.  And I’m so glad I didn’t take her advice because it wasn’t long after that that I sold Wasted.  We know what happened to Wasted — New York Times bestseller, Violet Crown Award finalist in the nonfiction category, three printings, and finally, finally, 11 years after publication, Wasted made it into profit territory. 

I began writing this blog post almost two weeks ago.  I have a tendency to do that a lot lately – start writing something, get what I think is halfway through it, then take a break and never finish the piece. 

With this post, I came back to it a week later and thought, hmm, the first 300 words stand on their own as is, though there was one really bad transition, which I’ve deleted.

But despite the fact that the first 300 words stood on their own, I wanted to add more.  I wanted to write about what that no-pity “someone” said to me.  (That’s something I tend to do – write too long.*)  So now, nearly two weeks after I started this, I’m going to diverge from my usual blog post formula and go a bit more into reporter mode.  In doing so, I’m going to talk a very little about my sex book, something I’ve been refraining from doing until it gets closer to actual publication.  I’m going to do that because that “someone” was one of my sex book sources.

I’ve known him for four and a half years.  And from now on I’m going to call him Howlin’ Wolf.  I won’t tell you how Howlin’ Wolf and I met.  That will have to wait for the book.  But in those four and half years, we’ve become friends, though distant friends, meaning we rarely see each other but we keep in touch through email.  And, obviously, he reads my blog posts.  After reading “New Year’s Eve Confession,” he emailed, “Interesting.”

A comment like that says to me that the person didn’t really like what I wrote, but wants me to draw out their not-so-positive feelings.  It’s a bit passive-aggressive, but it’s games playing that I’m used to simply because I’m frequently passive-aggressive. 

“Your (lack of) comment is interesting.  ” I passive-aggressively wrote back.

Howlin’ Wolf replied that he was concerned that I was feeling low.  “I just care about you and want you to be in a better frame of mind.”

I read lines like that and find that it’s no wonder that he’s one of my editor’s, my test readers’, and my favorite “characters” in the book.  Apparently, though, I didn’t answer his sweet email.  At least I can’t find a reply. 

The following day, he emailed me again with some sex news.  Perhaps I didn’t react the way he wanted because the next day he wrote me again about my New Year’s Eve blog.  I don’t know if Howlin’ Wolf realizes this, but often, when I don’t respond the way he wants, he’ll send me another email commanding a response:

 “You know more about me than anybody in this world EXCEPT me, and as a result of that I feel like you should accept and understand me as a TRUE friend when I say I had rather tell you my honest feelings, than tell you what I think will pacify you.  I’m almost sure this will piss you off initially, but if you are still mad at me after a few days of thinking about it, then I guess our friendship wasn’t that solid after all.  I’m not sure I feel as much sympathy for you as I did in the first reading.”

Sympathy?!  I don’t want no stickin’ sympathy.  Sympathy wasn’t what I was striving for.  Oh, yeah, I reacted.  And if I’m truthful, the word in my brain wasn’t sympathy; it was pity.

I forced myself back to his email.

“I think some of your worries and problems were self-inflicted—”

Duh.  Of course, they’re self-inflicted.

“—and maybe your ‘career expectations’ bar was set too high from the get go.”

What?!!!  That’s exactly the kind of thinking I’m trying to get away from. 

“If you want to know why I feel this way, I’ll continue.  Otherwise … oh, well.”

“Sure.  Why not tell me?”  I greeted his passive-aggressive words with more of my own.  “I assure you, I can handle whatever you have to tell me.  Odds are, I’ve heard much, much, much worse.”

As I typed, a comment from an Amazon reader flitted through my mind.  That reader wrote that I, Suzy Spencer, am “THE WORST WRITER IN THE HISTORY OF WRITING.”  Man, that’s saying something – worst writer in the history of writing.  (By the way, the all caps were the reader’s idea, not mine.)

Anyway, back to the subject.  I believe my response to Howlin’ Wolf caused him to soften his comments back to me, rather than say what he really intended.  He wrote that I should focus on the successes I’ve had and not compare myself to the likes of Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling – that that sort of success is rare. 

Duh.

He then talked about his days as a pilot:

“I was a far cry from the Tom Cruise ‘Top Gun’ type of guy.  But you know what, Suzy?  I had fun, lived where I wanted to live, enjoyed what I did and made a decent living doing it.  And that’s all the majority of us can ask for expect.”

Quietly, I went ballistic.  How does one go quietly ballistic?  I fumed like a cartoon character blowing air out of her ears, but I didn’t say a word.  To me, that very thinking – that settling for what that majority expects – is what sabotages a writer.  We have to believe that we’re that special one that’s going to make it big.  If we don’t, we’ll give up when so-called friends hear we’ve had 200 to 300 rejections and tell us to give up.  We’ll give up when we read that we’re “THE WORST WRITER IN THE HISTORY OF WRITING.”

And I don’t know about you, but I don’t intend to give up.  I see that “giving up” a lot in writers these days, especially writers of a certain success and of a certain age, i.e. writers like me.

They’re beaten down by the lack of recent success, by the never-ending financial instability, by the diminishing ability to be paid for our words, by the confusion in the present state of publishing, by the very long-term viability of our industry, and even by the near zero availability of health insurance (at least in Texas).

Just this week, a writer who would be considered a success by Howlin’ Wolf sighed that we’re “dinosaurs,” then whispered the fear that we all have:  “Will I ever be published again?”

That’s the state of writers right now.  That’s the very thinking I cannot be sucked into.  If I allow myself to slide down that depressed hole, the odds bury me barely alive.  And I won’t be published. 

I told Howlin’ Wolf that I don’t want to be content, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have fun along the way.  I do. 

Now this next sentence might sound absolutely awful, and that’s not what I intend.  I wrote Howlin’ Wolf that “I had a blast covering the Andrea Yates trial and stretching and learning, and that’s exactly why I don’t want to be content.  I want to stretch and learn and strive to be Top Gun.  I realize that’s not for everyone.  But it is for me.  And if that wasn’t the way I am, you and I would have never met, because I never would have taken on the challenge of writing a book about sex.  … I would have contented myself with making a comfortable living writing tabloid trash, mass-market paperback, Texas-based true crime books.  But, hey, where’s the fun, the challenge, the daring, the growth in that?

“And don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about – you do that in your sex life.  I just prefer to do it in my career.”

That probably sounds like I’m cutting down my true crime career and true crime writers.  I don’t want to do that.  I am most grateful for what true crime has given me – challenges I never dreamed.  And I admire what true crime writers accomplish on miniscule budgets with often ridiculously tight deadlines and with little respect from others.

But, for me, I also feel like “been there, done that, time to try something new.”

I could go on and on about what Howlin’ Wolf said next, about how he asked me if I equated contentment “with a certain level of success” with having “no incentive to improve.”  And, again, if I’m being honest, I do want to go on and on with that.  But I can tell that at this point, this blog post is getting boring.  So let me just get to the point.  And that point is that I find irony in the fact that the very people who have encouraged me to be content with less have not fulfilled their dreams.

The writer, who told me to give it up after 200 to 300 rejections, as far as I know, has never published a book.  And Howlin’ Wolf, well, since he’s one of my sex sources, I’m going to digress a moment and say that for the past four years he has admitted that he wants to get me in bed.  That ain’t gonna happen.  In fact, when I think about the men who have encouraged me to be less than I dream, they have all been men who have said they wanted me sexually.  And, they are all men who didn’t have a chance with me.

Man, that sounds vain, and it’s an embarrassing and maybe inappropriate thing to confess.  But all I’m saying is, writers … women … or anyone for that matter, when someone is encouraging you to give up your dreams … or lessen your dreams … or wants you to lower your standards … just maybe, just maybe they have a not so hidden motive.  Maybe their motive is for you to give up like they did.  And, more important, maybe their motive is not in your best interests. 

I’m here to say you don’t need their stinkin’ input.  Dream big.  Work hard.  Stretch.  Grow.  Challenge yourself.  Enjoy.  And most of all, don’t give up.  Shout it from the sky, “I don’t need no stinkin’ pity.”  Then get back to writing. 

*  I point out my short-fallings and mistakes so that my coaching clients can see how harshly I critique my own work.  As such, I should note that I’m using sympathy and pity as if they are interchangeable.  Though Webster’s Ninth Collegiate Dictionary defines sympathy as “the act or capacity of entering into or sharing the feelings or interests of another” and pity as “a sympathetic sorrow for one suffering, distressed or unhappy,” and though Word says the two words are synonyms, in my opinion, they’re not interchangeable.  My reason for saying that is connotation.  To me, sympathy has a kind connotation.  Pity has a negative connotation.  As proof, I offer you the phrase “pity party.”

My postman's C-class Mercedes Benz.

I know 2009 has been a rotten year for many.  In fact, I have a tendency to want to join everyone in saying that it was a horrible year.  To be honest, 2009 wasn’t great.  To be even more honest, it was great.  I feel a bit guilty in saying that since I have so many friends and family who are seriously suffering from 2009.  So let me explain, and in explaining I’ll be confessing a few things I don’t want to admit to the general public. 

So why am I confessing?  Because I keep telling the writers I coach that they’ve got to “go deeper” in their writing, that they’re just scratching the surface of their characters and stories.  Sometimes going deeper requires embarrassing honesty.  I just wish I could hide my honesty in saying it’s fiction.  But what I’m about to write is the truth as I know it.

The year that was rotten for me was 2008.  I gave up my beloved townhouse that I’d lived in since 1990.  I’d planned on dying there.  But I put my home on the market because some new neighbors moved next-door and they were so noisy that I couldn’t work or sleep.  At first, I tried to cope.  I moved my office into my living room and started sleeping in the guest room.  But I realized that’s no way to live and began searching for a new home.  Instead, I found a lot with Hill Country views so deep and stunning that I can watch lightning shows that are scores of miles away. 

I grabbed my mother to show her the lot.  She started referring to it as “Suzy’s lot,” even though we both knew it was a bit over my budget.  Still, it called to me.  I grabbed my friend Vanessa and showed her the lot.  “It’s so peaceful up here,” we said.  And we dreamed that it was perfect for writing – on top of a hill so high that the birds soar at shoulder height and the song they whisper is the sound of the wind.  We all knew this was my home, even though – and I know I’m repeating myself – it was a bit over my budget. 

But, hey, I’ve always been lucky and blessed.  I bought the place.  A few months later, the “for sale” sign went up on my beloved townhome.  And here’s the catch.  I bought my future home just as the Texas real estate market was near its peak.  And I put the townhouse on the market just as the economy and stock market were crumbling, then crashing.  It took approximately 16 months for my townhouse to sell.  And for 12 months, I was covering the expenses of two homes.

We all know that everyone loves a “winner.”  Hell, I’ve had people admit that they wanted to be friends with me because I have that New York Times best-seller title in front of my name.  And we all know that success breeds success.  So here comes the embarrassing part, the part that can damage my image and career since New York and Hollywood, which is where I make my career and money, only want to deal with winners – I struggle financially as a writer. 

Yeah, I know some of you are saying “big whoop.”  After all, that’s not a surprise to many, if not most of you, especially my writer friends.  But for me, the MBA who believed she’d be a millionaire novelist by the time she was 30 years old, to admit that at 55 years old she’s still struggling like a career beginner is embarrassing.  In fact, just a few months ago a friend from high school emailed me that she thought I was successful enough that I could easily make a half-million dollar charitable donation.  Obviously, (1) I’m very good at faking things, thanks to my MBA in marketing.  And (2), by this age I planned on being wealthy enough that I could donate half my income to charity.  That was my game plan.

So my long overdue point here is that 2008 was a horrible year because I had to give up my home and that that move – along with the crashing economy and the fact that my career success sucks when compared to my dreams and the image I intentionally have cultivated – wreaked havoc on my finances, my emotions, and my self-esteem.  And perhaps worse of all, I haven’t found the writing peace in my new home’s office that I had in my old townhouse.  I’ve struggled, I mean struggled, to write here.

My old office, the place where I completed one novel and all four of my true crime books.

And perhaps that finally brings me to 2009.  It’s been a rough year because I’ve spent it trying to recover from my rotten 2008, both financially and emotionally.  But it’s been a good year because my house finally sold and I turned in my sex book, though I’m still waiting to get it back for rewrite.  It’s been a good year because I’ve gotten my coaching business off the ground, thanks to Cyndi Hughes, executive director of the Writers’ League of Texas.  And I have some really cool clients whom I adore. 

Thanks to Cyndi, I’ve also gotten to teach, and I love teaching. 

It’s been a good year because I’ve gotten to freelance for ABC News, a job that challenges me because it requires new skills, which is one of the very reasons I love it.  And because of ABC, I had the honor of working one of the biggest stories of the year – Fort Hood.  Thank you, dear friend Teri Whitcraft, National Producer, Law & Justice Unit, ABC News.

It’s been a good year because I’ve sold articles to the Texas Observer.  To be accepted and published by such a nationally respected magazine is a privilege.  Thank you, Texas Observer editor Bob Moser … and thank you Ruth Pennebaker and Jesse Sublett for helping me break into this fabulous publication.

It’s been a good year because of even small things like Diane Dimond quoting me in the Huffington Post.  I cannot tell you how much Diane’s respect means to me. 

Turning from the professional to the more personal – moving outside of Austin in 2008 was shockingly rough because it took me away from easy lunches, dinners, and drinks with my friends.  But in 2009, I’ve been blessed with something that will sound so stupid – Facebook.  Through Facebook, I’ve reconnected with friends from New York to California and back to Texas.  They remind me of what I was, what I’ve become, and what I can become.  I’ve “met” people whose paths I’ve never crossed except through Facebook.  These new acquaintances have brought me smiles.  Specifically, thank you, Tonya Montgomery. 

While I’m thinking of friends, I want to thank my friends Candie and Jay.  On my 55^th birthday, they gave me a vacation during which they reminded me of the joy of dreaming big.  So often rejections, cruel reviews, unresponsive agents, inattentive editors, the confusing and lost state of publishing, the lack of money and respect, beat down writers.  We focus on the negative and forget to imagine success.  Thank you, Candie and Jay, for reminding me to dream positive and to believe in myself like I did when I first began.

From beginning to now ending, I can’t close out 2009 without thinking of the blessing of Karl Duvall.  Karl and his staff, Jim Murillo and Susan Dunton Burton, are my trainers, my friends and my lifesavers.  They are whipping me into shape so that when the sex book comes out I will look like a person who can actually find a sex partner if she wants one, rather than look like Dr. Ruth or Sue Johanson (who may have very active sex lives, for all I know, and, believe me, even this sex interviewer and writer doesn’t want to know that).  But equally important, Karl, Jim, and Susan listen to me, encourage me, make me laugh, and make me laugh at myself.  They also push me past what I perceive are my limits and make me succeed anyway, which is what I hope to do with my coaching clients.

If writers aren’t getting my drift here, my point is that this business is very tough.  It’s tough on you financially, emotionally, mentally, and physically.  Become a writer only if you have to do it.  And I’m about to digress for a moment, or at least appear to digress.  I briefly had a literary agent who yelled at me that there was more to life than writing and my career.  I fired her immediately because she was right, but she was also very, very wrong.  Writing isn’t simply a career; it’s who we are.  So again, if you can do anything else, do any other career, do it.  But if writing is the only thing you can do, no matter the financial cost, the emotional cost, the mental cost, and the physical cost, then you are a writer and you must write.

So how am I now going to weave this back to that postman in the Mercedes Benz?  Well, that postman used to deliver the mail in a beat-up, dark green station wagon.  In 2009, he moved up to a Mercedes Benz.  Whenever I get down and disgruntled, I’m going to think about that postman in the Benz.  If he can move up, so can I.  And believe me, I want a Porsche Cayman so badly that I can see it and see me in it. 

Now I’m going to go jump in my seven-year-old Mercedes Benz and go buy a bottle of champagne.  Then I’m going to come home and dress for the evening.  And when I say dress, I may actually put on a dress to remind myself of the days when I actually wore dresses … when I lived in Los Angeles, had big dreams, believed that I would attain them, and nothing or no one could dissuade me from that belief.  Then I’m going to grab that bottle of champagne, take it over to my friend Carol’s, and spend some time with her, her husband, and our writer friends.  And I’m going to talk about what a great 2010 we writers are going to have.  This writer is going to have a book ready to be published, a fit body, and a Porsche Cayman.  If the postman can do it, ….

BTW, if one of my student’s had written this, I’d tell her she didn’t go deep enough. 

"My" Porsche Cayman

To say it’s blustery here in the ATX on this Christmas Eve is an understatement.  The wind wails outside my office.  The outhouse down the street is blown over on its side.  And inside my house, something clanks in the vents over the stove.  It does that every time the wind is strong.  My builder says it’s normal.  I don’t believe him, but I’ve learned to live with the noise.  In fact, I think of it as the one thing that makes my house unique.  Then again, maybe it’s the fact that a writer lives inside this house that makes it unique.  As far as I know, I’m the only writer residing in this little neighborhood.  I do know that when I first moved in, people referred to me as “Oh, you’re the writer.”  I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

I’ve only dared to give two neighbors copies of my true crime books.  I used to play with the child of one of those neighbors.  Come to think of it, I haven’t gotten to play with that child since then.  And the other neighbor, well, eventually she sent me a wonderful thank you email saying how much she enjoyed the book, that it made her realize how much she loved and missed reading, so she went out and bought a copy of another one of my books.  Emails like that mean so much to a writer.

So, today, this writer stepped into the blustery winds to go buy some last minute Christmas presents.  My sister had told me I should make presents this year to save money and show everyone just how much I loved them.  Her suggestion always was to bake cookies.  I wondered for whom I was supposed to bake those cookies.  My sister is overweight.  My mother is too skinny, but isn’t into cookies.  My aunt is overweight.  One cousin doesn’t eat sugar, another cousin doesn’t like chocolate, and to me chocolate chip cookies are the only kind to bake.  On top of that, cooking isn’t my “thing.”  I’m doing well to plop a piece of tilapia into a pan and toss some greens from a box of salad onto a plate

Still, based on my sister’s constant goading, I had this “genius” of an idea to take my cousin’s photographs and home videos and make CDs of his son growing up.  Alas, I don’t like Windows Movie Maker, which is installed on my PC.  I do like Dazzle Video Creator, which isn’t installed.  So, simple solution, right – install my old Dazzle software?  I quickly discovered that was easier said than done.  My Dazzle is for Windows XP.  My PC has Vista, and apparently there’s no downloadable patch.

So, I decided to go buy an I-link cord so that I could download the video straight from the camera to the PC and I’d suffer through with Movie Maker.  Guess what?  Easier said than done.  The freakin’ cord is over $25.  You can tell by my use of freakin’ that I’m really getting into the Christmas spirit now.  But then I found a closeout cord for 97-cents.  Baby, I’m there. 

Happy, I drove home, unwrapped the cord, went to plug it in, and, yep, right, it was the wrong cord.  It’d cost me more in gasoline to return it, and I didn’t want to spend $25+ on a freakin’ cord that I’d use all of once on a camera that’s not even mine.

But then I had another genius idea – my laptop has XP on it.  I’d install Dazzle on it and edit video there …   Okay, I’m sure by now you’re getting bored with this tale of Christmas woe.  Let’s just say that didn’t work either, so I gave up and found myself walking down blustery streets this morning to buy Christmas presents.  I mean, we’re talking so blustery that leaves are swirling in the air like snow.  Dads are hiding their chilled children in their arms, and poor Santa is sitting outside City Hall posing for pictures with the kids.  And that’s when my heart softened a bit. 

I don’t know what it is about Santa, but I always want to crawl in his lap and tell him what I want for Christmas, even though I know I’m way too old … and though I know I shouldn’t take the place of the kids who really deserve to be talking to him.  Those kids looked so happy, despite the fact that the wind was whipping off Santa’s hat and he was having to trip down the street, chasing it.

That’s when I stretched my legs into the only bookstore in my neighborhood – a Barnes & Noble.  I can’t remember the last time I walked into a bookstore just to look around.  I started out in the calendar section, worked my way over to the stationery, eased over to the bestsellers, read a few pages of Mackenzie Phillips’ High on Arrival, decided that wasn’t appropriate Christmas reading, walked over to the true crime section, gave a copy of Wasted a face-out, meandered over to the fiction section, checked out manga and graphic novels to see what they’re like, and finally maneuvered over to traditional novels to cruise down the aisles.  I was looking for friends’ books, but also looking for any cover that just caught my eye and said, “You’ve got to read me!”  And that’s when it happened.

I remembered how when I was young and living in New York, I’d walk into a bookstore, but I couldn’t stay long because my excitement at seeing and touching all the books, books I’d never see in a Barnes & Noble, caused me to have a colon attack and have to find a restroom – fast. 

Yes, I know that’s too much information.  But it’s pertinent to the story. 

Those bookstore colon attacks continued for decades as they were also due to me imagining my books on the bookstore shelves.     

Now days, I never have colon attacks when I go into bookstores.  And I realized today that I sort of miss them because they represented the excitement, the yearning, the thrill, the dreaming of writing. 

Today, though, two good things happened while I was in that bookstore.  One, I realized how lucky and blessed I am to walk into bookstores and see a copy of one of my books on the shelf.  Yes, it’s a bit disappointing in that in the past I’d walk in and see numerous copies of several of my books.  And now I’m lucky to see one copy of Wasted.  But that’s okay.  I understand why.  I’ve taken too much time between books.  I’m still blessed that I have at least one book in the stores.  I have friends who are much more talented and respected than I, and they have zero copies of their books in the stores.

But the other thing that happened that was even better was that as I stood there in front of all those novels, wondering how in the world one draws attention to their work so that a beginning novelist gets noticed, I didn’t want to leave those stacks of books.  I wanted to sit there and lick them up, eat them like homemade chocolate chip cookies, and I wanted to write.  I wanted to write like I yearned to write when I was in my 20s, standing in those New York City bookstores dying for a restroom. 

So while I went out into the blustery winter winds on Christmas Eve to buy a present for my cousin, I came home with one of the greatest gifts from God – the desire to write again.  That’s a gift I haven’t had in Lord knows how long.  And I am grateful for it.

Merry Christmas to you all.

And now I’m going to go wrap my store-bought gifts.

By the way, the wind has nearly ripped one of my trees out of the ground.  It’s now tilted at a 45-degree angle.  But, hey, I like it.  It makes it unique.

This isn't the Santa who had to chase his hat down the street. This Santa is a whole 'nother story that I'll have to tell another time.