December, Then and Now

 

 

The new and improved bionic me with a pixie hairdo.

 

15 years ago, on December 1st, it was a cold and blustery early morning when we were woken by the scream of smoke detectors. All of us - my spouse, me, our 2 children, the international teacher staying with us from China, and our dog all escaped the burning house. The dog without her leash, the rest of us barefoot and in pajamas. 

We were lucky. We were all unhurt. We were together. What we lost were things that could be replaced, or let go as unimportant. We were supported by friends, family, and community and were able to rebuild and return to our home ten months later. 

The beginning of  December has become a time of reflection for me ever since. A time to take stock of what is and isn't important. To embrace life, to appreciate blessings, to be grateful for the love that surrounds me. 

This year, the beginning of December brought another challenge. This time, on December 2nd. That morning - exactly 21 days ago -  I underwent extensive surgery to take the pressure off my spinal cord at two levels in my neck. Over the past year or so, I'd been slowly losing strength and sensation in my hands and arms as well as noticing balance problems in walking. Over the last few months before the operation, I'd been awakened nearly every night with severe cramps in the muscles of my lower legs, feet, and toes.

Because of my background as a physical therapist, I knew these were serious signs. And it still took me longer than it should have to get the work up and surgical consult I needed.  

While I consider myself a fairly active healthy person, I have had more surgeries than the average bear and I had pretty much decided I'd been cut open enough thank you very much. While I no longer had all my factory installed parts, I figured I'd be able to keep the rest. 

But when your surgeon sighs after looking at your imaging studies, gets inadvertently kicked when testing your reflexes, apologizes for needing to do a complex operation, and cautions you that 1/3 of patients get better and 2/3 just don't get worse, well, you realize you don't really have a choice. 

The Good 

I am in the very lucky 1/3. Pretty much immediately post surgery, I had improvement in strength and sensation and balance. Critically, I'm getting back the subtle proprioception - that sensation that tells you where your joints are in space without needing to look at them. This means that things like touch typing, knitting, crochet, and ceramics are all going to be easier and better. I can stand on one foot with my eyes closed and not lose my balance. And I haven't been woken up with leg/foot/toe cramps since the surgery. All of this tells me my spinal cord is a lot happier.

I am also extremely grateful for the support I've gotten from friends, family, and community. We've had a fridge full of meals and gifts of cookies, teas, and other goodies. And my BFF spent a week visiting from NYC keeping me distracted and ensuring I took care of myself. 

The Bad  

My impatience. I struggle with letting others help me. I get frustrated when I can't just bounce back and do everything I want to do. It's not like the surgeon didn't council me that this was going to be a healing process measured in months, not days. My inner cranky-pus says it's been almost 3 weeks. Why aren't I all better yet?? 

The Ugly 

Honestly? Other than the lumpy scar down the back of my neck, there really isn't any. And that will likely heal in time. I've even embraced my new pixie haircut - a necessity since they had to clip all the hair halfway up the back of my head for the surgery. 

Two Decembers, 15 years apart 

Two very different experiences, tied together by having to face my fears. I vividly remember how aggressively I coped in the aftermath of the fire. How I kept the terror hidden from everyone in my life because I was afraid if I let it out, I wouldn't be able to support my spouse and my kids. I never cried in front of them. But when I was alone in the car, parked somewhere, I would fall apart. People's kindness nearly undid me. And I buried myself in the work of cataloging what we'd lost and acted as the liaison to the general contractor for the firm rebuilding our home. It took a lot of therapy to come to terms with how vulnerable the fire and its aftermath made me. 

I wish I could say that 15 years later, I have learned to be open with my fear, but I'm not sure I've made all that much progress. I know my spouse saw how freaked out I was ahead of the surgery, but he let me keep the fiction that everything was going to be all right, damn it. A day before, I wrote him a letter on my computer. Cleaned up most of the cluttered icons on its desktop, and left it in the middle of the screen for him with his name on it. It was a worst case scenario letter. And the first thing I did when I could sit up comfortably enough post surgery to work on the laptop was to file it in my journal. Maybe some day, I will share it with him. But honestly, I don't think I ever even want to read it again. Writing it was hard enough.

Even if the only person I completely expressed my vulnerability with was me, that is growth and change, right? 

Now I've confessed it here. To everyone. And if I'm being fully transparent, it's in everything I've ever written. All my poems, all my blogposts, all my fiction. 

So who am I fooling, really, other than myself? 

Certainly not you, dear reader. As ever, I appreciate that you let me ramble, both here and in my stories. And I promise to continue to work on being open, vulnerable, earnest, and truthful. Even if it's hard. Even if my impulse is to wave it all away and tell you I'm fine. 

What I am is healing. 

What I am is a work in progress. 

What I am is grateful. 

And all of that is enough.  

 

 

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Another One and a Headscratcher

Since I wrote my last post on the absolute deluge of spammy, scammy AI generated book marketing emails, I continue to get them. Every single day. Multiple emails a day. But this one takes the cake. 

First of all, there's no salutation. Just a "Hi". 

Second, it's about a book I've never heard of. I didn't write Champagne at Seven! Nor did I have anything to do with its publication. 

Third, I don't write "binge-worthy women's fiction." 

And finally, I have no idea who Olivia Wyatt is. 

Why on earth did this get sent to me?

Whatever these spammers paid for this AI email generator, they definitely overpaid. 

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It's hard enough being a creative person in a mostly indifferent world.  This kind of predatory crap is infuriating. 

I'd hate to see any writer get conned into spending precious money chasing empty promises.

Be careful out there, people.  

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Anatomy of a Scam

One of two similar emails I received from the same scammer 1 day apart.

 

Several times a week, I get solicitations from email marketers, book bloggers, and other writing service industry people wanting my money in return for some promised promotional outcome.

Most of the time, I delete them out of hand. They are nearly always generic, clearly mail merge letters. Sometimes they will have something that tries to be personal, but that's rare. 

This one was the rarest of the rare: it references the title and themes of my most recent novel. My curiosity led me to first search the internet for the company and the person. A combination of "Book Niche Alliance" and "Rachel Key" found nothing. Which got me even more curious. 

So I fired up a private browser and copied/pasted the website link. That's where things got interesting. This is from their testimonials page. 

If this company is good enough for John Grisham and David Baldacci, it's good enough for me...right?

Why on earth would a spammer use such well known author names/photos for such generic praise? But that wasn't my first clue. No, the first clue was a wix address. And the wix banner still over the home page. 

The URL - with a ".wixsite.com" address and the banner says amateur.

Then I looked at the so-called staff looking for Rachel. And here she is...

She looks like a lovely person. Too bad she's a model in a corporate headshot gallery

 

 Perhaps Rachel is one of a set of triplets who dress identically, because I found her in a reverse image search in a lot of other places.

 

How much do you want to bet none of the team members are real?

 

But here's the thing: the pitch was personalized and relevant to my book. The why is easy to understand - who doesn't want to be flattered by someone who seemingly read and loved your novel?

The how is a little harder. My 2 theories are:

1.  Someone posted a review with this information in it or
2. (and worse/more creepy) the book was fed into a LLM and this was its summation. 

 The first email had this subject heading and content:  

A multiverse story with emotional depth — let’s help it travel further

"We recently discovered Entangled Realities and were struck by its beautifully layered exploration of the multiverse. But what truly stayed with us was its emotional heartbeat   the way it speaks to grief, displacement, and healing with such care and resonance."

From the second email, screenshotted at the top of the post:

"I recently came across your novel Litany for a Broken World while browsing visionary and metaphysical sci-fi in the Kindle Store, and I was immediately drawn to your layered, emotionally intelligent premise. A young girl lost in the multiverse, a grief-stricken doctor, a lonely seer and the convergence of their brokenness across dimensions this is the kind of story that not only entertains, but resonates on a deeply human level."

So, would I have liked this to be a real human being so deeply moved by my book? Yes. Absolutely. And indeed, I have had readers tell me how meaningful and powerful they found it. Perhaps as it wends its way into the world, others will be profoundly moved by the story. But it will have to manage without the help of the equally fictional Book Niche Alliance.

 

Have you received a similarly weirdly personalized pitch? Let me know! 

 

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Blue Musings is a low volume e-newsletter containing notifications about book releases, sales, recommendations, and free original short fiction in multiple drm-free formats. Your privacy will always be respected.

Five Years Ago Today

Struggling green, March 2020

Five years ago this week, when a handful of cases of a new virus was making the news, my husband insisted that I pack up what I needed and take the dogs out to our farm in Central Massachusetts for an indefinite stay. I had to head out there from Boston anyway for a meeting, but I had fully intended to return home after one overnight. 

That was the start of lockdown for Covid-19. 

My husband - a physician - spent much of 2020 and beyond as part of a specialized team putting central lines in ICU patients hospitalized with covid. He was adamant that I not come home. 

Remember, this was long before we knew that PPE would be effective in limiting transmission of Covid. Long before we understood that Covid was airborne. Certainly long before any vaccine or any kind of treatment. We lived apart for the longest stretch of time since we had been married in 1988 because he did not want to risk me being exposed to the virus. 

I spent many weeks in this liminal space where the days were all the same, worried about my husband. Worried about my adult children and extended family. Isolated. 

In some very profound ways that I am still not able to fully articulate, I am not the same person I was five years plus 1 day ago. 

My sense of how fragile life is has sharpened. Perhaps I worry more, but I also revel in the small marvels of my world: A green shoot pushing through thawing ground, the cacophony of birds clustering at the feeders, the full moon shining through the cupola in our house, the peepers chorus in the woods, even a surprise spring snowfall. 

I take more time, both for myself and others. Ironic, as I know I have fewer years left in my life than I have already lived, but not feeling pressured by ambition suddenly stretches out the minutes and the hours. 

I am more patient that I once was. Is that a natural consequence of aging? I am now 61, not 'old' (whatever that means), though certainly not young. And contrary to popular wisdom, I have gotten more liberal as I've aged. More certain than ever that what will make society thrive is ensuring everyone has the basics as a matter of course: housing, medical care, education, healthy food, clean water, leisure time. 

In my naivete, I had believed that the world's brush with Covid would force us to see that we survive together or not at all. That my neighbor's health and well-being directly effect mine. That hoarding - wealth, knowledge, power - makes us less secure, less well-off. That we would learn to both offer and accept help with grace. 

The world we inhabit five years on is not that world. 

It would be natural, easy even, to despair.

But there is no future in despair and I am at my core, too stubborn to give into it. This quote, by a Jewish sage (Rabbi Tarfon) has always been a source of hope and comfort. I've even used it as one of two epigraphs in my latest novel. 

"Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it"

("Pirkei Avot" 2:16).

 

I will hold onto what living through 2020 taught me. I can't heal the world's grief, but I can continue to walk this path with gratitude, with compassion, with hope. 

I will continue to write my strange, earnest novels, believing that the right readers will find them.

I will continue to make knitted and crocheted things for my loved ones, imbuing every garment with caring and love.

I will continue to make pottery and find joy in playing with clay.

I will continue to tend our fruit trees and plant for next autumn's harvest, sharing the bounty with our community. 

None of these acts will change the world, but they will nourish and enrich me and those around me.  

And if you are reading these words, I wish for you to find what strengthens and feeds you for the work to come. 

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Blue Musings is a low volume e-newsletter containing notifications about book releases, sales, recommendations, and free original short fiction in multiple drm-free formats. Your privacy will always be respected.