Amber Gilchrist's Blog

I wanted to tell you guys about this new book coming out, “The Earth Bleeds Red” by Jackson Paul Baer.  I haven’t have the opportunity to read this book yet, but the cover is awesomely dramatic and the blurb sounds great.

Isn’t that cover atmospheric?  Here’s the blurb.

Scott and Jessie are a couple in love. Ashley, their only daughter, is 17-years old and has vanished; leaving behind nothing but a pool of blood. Her strange disappearance is quickly thought to be a homicide. Her cozy, northwest town is stunned when police find the body of another girl at the bottom of the Willamette River. The eerie signature found on the girl links to a monster dubbed the Hail Mary Killer. While Scott searches for Ashley, the FBI feels convinced that she is the killer’s latest victim.

In spite of three other bodies with the same distinct marking, no one prepared themselves for the discovery in southern Oregon. Local hikers stumble upon a car in the mountain brush and a tattooing needle with an evil history surfaces inside. A cabin appears nearby with another gruesome discovery. Scott finds some solace in his friendship with Father Henry as he and Jessie try to salvage their marriage and move on beyond the loss of Ashley. The FBI finally catches a break when they unearth the dark past of the Hail Mary Killer’s family. What emerged in his basement is more terrifying than anyone could have possibly imagined.

What happens to the Miller family and Father Henry will shake your soul and keep you reading till the last page.

 

Duh, duh, duh…  Seriously, if you’ve read this one, come and let us know how it is.  If you are interested in this book, or in the author, Jackson Paul Baer, you can find it at these links:

 

Website: www.jacksonpaulbaer.com
Facebook Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/JacksonPaulBaer

Twitter: http://twitter.com/JacksonPaulBaer

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/JacksonPaulBaer
Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/Jackson-Baer/e/B0060BDIM0

The Background

 

I haven’t asked my husband if it’s cool with him to write this blog, which I probably should have.  But I guess if he doesn’t like his personal business all up in yo face I can repent in leisure.  In reality, this blog isn’t about him, though some of this is his personal business, it’s about me.  And the way I perceived disabilities, and how I would handle them.  It’s about the friends and family that all of us have who struggle with what I now call “Invisible Disabilities”.  It’s about my struggle to deal with a loved one with an invisible illness.

When my husband was deployed to Iraq the first time, right at the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, I told myself that I needed to be prepared for the possibility of his being injured.  That he might come back with less limbs than he’d left with.  I was cool with that.  I mean, you know, not like one would say, ‘Ice cream?  Okay, I’m cool with that…” but in that I would get past it.

I didn’t marry him for his body, though I could have, because clearly he’s super hot.   I mean, come on.  I gave it serious thought and realized that even if he was sans leg or whatever, we’d be fine.  I was around a lot of wives who couldn’t handle the pressure or the physical changes or something.  And they were out of there.

I knew that wouldn’t be me.

He returned from Iraq deployment number two, one right after another, in mid-2004.  He seemed to be generally okay.  Like a number of war veterans he was twitchy and nervous, expecting every box on the side of the road advertising a yard sale to be a improvised explosive device.  But, comparatively, it could have been much worse.  He survived relatively unscathed.

Or so we thought.

Fast forward ten years, to January of 2013.  My husband was feeling sick.  He missed a couple of days of work.  Being sick isn’t all that rare an occurrence for him.  In fact, it seems to happen more and more often as the years go by.  After perhaps two days of an average cold or something of that nature, he started to complain of an inability to breathe.  He went to the doctor.  They said it was viral and sent him home.  Another day or so passed and he told me he was going BACK to the doctor, something that is a rare occurrence.  That he had gone once was odd.  That he was going again was downright bizarre.  But he felt he wasn’t getting better but, in fact, was getting worse.

At the doctor an oxygen saturation test showed that he had the kind of oxygen saturation that spelled big fat trouble and he needed to hie himself off to the emergency room like yesterday.  What followed was a hospital nightmare where we were given such lovely options as ‘lung cancer’, ‘pulmonary embolism’ and even ‘heart attack’.  In the end, the doctor’s were stumped and they pumped him full of super powered anti-biotics and called it acute bronchitis.  Except that the meds didn’t work.  His breathing improved only marginally.  It was back to the doctor again.  Eventually, in lieu of an useful diagnosis of any kind, he was given the diagnosis of ‘asthma or something like that’, given an inhaler and sent on his way.  The inhaler didn’t work either.  It was on to steroids.

 

The Science and Junk

 

I don’t want to go on and on forever about this eight month journey we’ve been on, especially when his health really could be much worse.  I have friends struggling with terrible illnesses in their families and what is wrong with him, and how we finally got there, isn’t really the issue.  The issue is my perception of his ability to live life.  The long and short of it is, they still aren’t entirely certain what to do with his problems.  Undeniably he isn’t breathing like he should.  Finally, test after test led us to the understanding that his problem is not asthma, but constrictive bronchiolitis (intrinsic lung disease).  His small airways are full of scar tissue.

Constrictive bronchiolitis isn’t something people just get.  Especially healthy 36 year old men.  It comes as a result of something else.  Asbestos, mining, or, in his case Iraqi burn pits.  If you are really interested in what he is experiencing or the cause you can go to http://www.militarytimes.com/article/20100118/NEWS/1180318/DoD-shows-first-signs-acknowledging-burn-pit-woes

and http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/05/burn-pits/

But again, that isn’t really the point of this blog.

The point is this.  My husband did come back from Iraq disabled.  It just took us a few years to notice.  His run times were getting steadily slower and his immune system seemed to be taking a few hard knocks.  But that could have been the process of getting older, and maybe he wasn’t getting enough sleep.  It wasn’t until it became severe that we even noticed.

 

Wherein I Show Myself to be a Bad Wife

Now he has an invisible illness.  A silent one.  He looks okay to me.  He looks okay to his boss.  He looks fine from the outside.  He even looks okay on an X-ray since small airway scarring is only visible with a biopsy.  But he’s not okay.

Over the months since January, actually over the years as this has progressed without my noticing, I’ve experienced the kind of annoyance that comes from being a healthy person faced with looking at a person who seems to be healthy but isn’t.  “I don’t feel good” or “I’m not well” starts to seem like a cop out when you hear it too many times and the person who is saying it looks like they aren’t sick.

His boss and coworkers think he’s making up being sick.  He’ll move his schedule around so that he can take a few more hours to make it in in the morning since he doesn’t feel well and they don’t love that.  After they hear, “I’m not feeling well,” for the fourth time in a month, it seems to lose a lot of validity.  Especially when he seems okay by the time he gets there.

But they don’t love him or live with him, like the rest of his family does.  But it’s just as hard for me to deal with.  I want him to do something, he says he doesn’t feel up to it and spends the afternoon lying on the couch, that pisses me off.  If I am not ever mindful of the reality of his health, I start to think he’s looking pretty lazy over there.

He doesn’t spend every day like that.   Sometimes he’s fine.  A lot of times he’s not.  But if I don’t think hard, every day, about the reality of it all, my inclination is to be annoyed that he won’t just come with me somewhere I want to go, or just do that thing I want him to do.  It’s so easy to slip into.

The same is true of all invisible disabilities.  Arthritis, chronic fatigue syndrome, lupus, fibromyalgia and the like.  It’s a difficult thing to remember that someone who looks just like you and me, isn’t the same on the inside.  That they aren’t just being obstinate when they don’t want to do yard work.  That “I don’t feel well” isn’t just an annoying familiar refrain.  It’s a reality they have to struggle with every day.

Just yesterday, I had to go somewhere and I didn’t want to go myself.  I tried to pry my husband off of the couch and he didn’t want to go.  He just laid there, looking miserable, not sick, just miserable, and said he didn’t feel up to it.

I got in the car, annoyed as all get out, and went to run my errands.  As I was driving, I had a sudden memory of a decade ago when I said to myself that if my husband came back from Iraq disabled that I would be fine with that.  That his physical abilities did not dictate our relationship.  Now, that resolve was being tested, and I had failed because it didn’t look like the disability I expected.  Because it doesn’t look like anything at all.  In a way, it would have been much easier if it was something I could see every day.  I would never forget if it was obvious every time I looked at him.

Instead, I have to think everyday and remind myself that he isn’t doing it on purpose.  It’s hard for both ends of a situation like this.  But I knew a long time ago that I’d be okay if he didn’t come back the same as he left, and now I need to remember that all the time and make it a truth.  I didn’t just mean some disabilities, a wheelchair or a lost limb, but if I meant everything that could happen to him there, I meant this too.

If you are the family member, friend or loved one with an issue like this, an Invisible Illness, it might be hard to remember every day.  Maybe you’re like me and the inclination is to be annoyed.  To think, ‘well, he could just pull it together if he really wanted’.  It’s hard to be a person that everyone looks at like a liar because they can’t see your illness.  And it’s hard to be a person who has to remember every day that illness comes in all kinds of packages.  Even hidden ones.

A

So every once in awhile I get into an old show and I watch a ton of episodes in a row.  I don’t tend to do this with new shows.  Just ones that are twenty or more years old, as though somehow they will cease to exist if I don’t watch all two hundred episodes RIGHT NOW!  So lately, I’ve been into the show, which premiered in 1983.  Some of you may remember “Scarecrow and Mrs. King.”  Some of you weren’t even born in 1983.

The show follows the escapades of a superspy “The Scarecrow” and a divorced housewife, Mrs. King who isn’t a Mrs. at all and it bugs the crap out of me every time they say it.  However, none of that is the point of this blog.  Because, if you ask my family they will tell you, getting to the point is not my forte.

There really is a point though, I promise.  In this case it’s about our standards of beauty and the way we present ourselves in these current times.  As I watching about the tenth episode in a row it occurred to me that Kate Jackson looked strange to me.  I mean, aside from the terrible clothes, feathered hair and continual use of unnecessary and excessive ‘Karate Kid’ style headbands.  Kate Jackson, for those who don’t know, is beautiful.  She was one of the original Charlie’s Angels and was considered quite the looker back in ’83.  But for some reason she looked weird.

Eventually, I realized that it was her mouth.  It wasn’t the kind of mouth I was used to seeing on the Hollywood beauty of our day.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with Kate Jackson’s mouth.  It’s a fine mouth on a regular person.  It’s a fine mouth on anyone, really.  But when I watch a movie or television, what I am now used to seeing is a woman who looks like her glossy lips are about to explode off her face and take independent flight, like a creepy collagen enhanced fleshy butterfly.

I’m not a soapbox type of person normally, so I hope you will bear with me here.  After it occurred to me that were Kate Jackson a current Hollywood babe she would have had some work done years ago so she could have the same ‘I need a collagen intervention and a short trip to plastic surgery rehab’ look that everyone else does, I started watching all the characters in “Scarecrow and Mrs. King.”

So many people in that cast have crooked teeth, thin lips, bad hair (although that one may be just environmental), are too thin or too heavy, or are just all around not particularly attractive by today’s standards.  So I’m really, sincerely wondering where in the 30 years between Scarecrow and 2013 we decided that we have to change everything about ourselves in order to be beautiful.

I’m not saying people shouldn’t.  I guess it’s none of my business.  But I’m just curious.  Where did we change and decide that false beauty is better than real beauty?  Will we change back in twenty years?

Something to think about…

A

My first YA book, “Into Darkness Peering” hit the shelves on May the 15th.  I have been asked one question more than any others.  What was your inspiration when writing this book?

There are many interesting and fabulous answers to questions like these when people talk to authors.  Mine will not be one of them.  I’ve been writing for many years, somewhere along the lines of 25 years, and never once in all that time did I have the urge to write a Young Adult novel.  When I was a young adult myself, those sorts of novels weren’t really a genre.  You had Judy Blume and that was pretty much it.  At any rate, I had no interest.

My best friend of many, many years reads only YA or the old fashioned regencies where dancing the waltz twice is considered risque.  I kept refusing.  I didn’t want to do that.  I didn’t want to think like a teenager again.  I didn’t want to work out of memories.  Didn’t want any of that.

Finally, she bugged me so much, for so many years, that I caved.  Basically, my inspiration for this book was getting my BFF to shut her pie hole.

I figured that it would never see the light of day.  I was writing it for her and no other purpose.  Which might have seemed like a lot of work for the whims of a friend, but actually I’ve been writing books for friends for years.  In high school I would write books for my friends as Christmas presents, staring them and their crushes in modified character form.  So this was just another case of, hey, this one is for you.

I figured I hadn’t seen that many wizards aside from Harry Potter, this was approximately 2006 or 2007, and I would just pull out a wizard and go to town.  It didn’t much matter to me what the story was about, since my motivation for writing the book was lame.  I decided to go for a hero wizard and a girl who was just a normal human landed in a weird situation.

But as I started debating what I was going to write about, an interesting phenomenon began to happen.  These characters were chatty.  Much more so than the others I’d been writing since I’d gotten out of my 20s.  It was just a constant stream of information.  The heroine, Voirey, let it be known that, in fact, SHE was the wizard, not the hero.  That wasn’t something I’d expected and I wasn’t sure what to do with that.  Then Griffin, the hero, gave me a surprise announcement of his own and it was something I very much did not want to hear.  I won’t say what it was because it’s a pivotal surprise in the story, but it wasn’t something I was cool with.  I argued, but he was insistent this fact was true.

Now, this may sound like I have a special brand of the crazy, unless of course, you’re another writer in which case it sounds like every third Tuesday, but it really isn’t that nuts.  Characters talking to me is how I write every story.

Armed with this new information about Voirey and Griffin, I went to work.  And I worked, and worked, and worked, and worked.  This book is approximately 75 thousand words, maybe on the downside to eighty.  It took me 10 days to write this book.  Ten.  Days. It was a nightmare of fevered typing that never stopped unless I simply had no choice.  I rarely ate, I didn’t shower (don’t judge me), I barely paid any attention to my family at all.  The characters never shut up.  It was a constant stream of very clear information.  I would stumble into bed at two or three in the morning and pull myself out at six and start all over again.  It was like being possessed.

It’s not an experience I ever want to have again, but it was definitely unique.  These were some people who had a very clear and very defined story to tell and I just happened to be the person lucky enough to come along and be able to tell it.

It was the beginning of my new career since, as opposed to what I thought, writing YA was a total joy and it invigorated my love for writing, which had faded to the every-day drudgery of a 25 year career writing veteran.

I thought this book would go nowhere and I began the process under duress.  But these characters became my favorite ever and this series is very close to my heart.  I love these people in the Soulguard world.  Every one of them.  I hope all of you enjoy them too.

 

Amber

 

~Sorry guys, I don’t know what the problem is here, but I can’t get wordpress to make spaces between these paragraphs.  So I hope this isn’t too hard for you all to read.

~I was contacted by a fellow LDS writer and asked to do an interview for her site.  A lightbulb came on and I realized I have never done an interview.  So, all for you, here’s my very first interview on this site, one with CK Abbott author of LDS fiction and non-fiction both.

~1. What made you start writing for the LDS audience?
It’s hard for me to separate non-church life from church life because they’re so one-and-the-same in my world. I felt that I could express myself more wholly to an LDS audience.

~2. Do you think there is any subject matter that is off-limits to LDS authors?
If I did at one point, I don’t think so anymore, at least in regards to topics. We all live in “the real world” and deal with the same problems. As far as content, however, I think it’s wise to stick to PG standards. You don’t want your Beehives picking up your book and learning new four-letter words.

~3. How would you write differently if you were writing for a general audience?
I don’t write differently for general audiences than for LDS audiences, except that I avoid using LDS terms that might be confusing: wards, Fast Sunday, linger longer (although this last one has potential for general audience comedy). With the big intro to Mormonism our country has gone through during the last two presidential elections, I think it might be time for LDS lit to become a general audience niche genre, like Jewish historical fiction or Christian science fiction.

~4. Do you write from an outline? Or do you start writing and see where the story takes you? Or some other method?
In the past, I haven’t written fiction from outlines, but I think I’m going to start. I read a book recently called The Writer’s Compass by Nancy Ellen Dodd, and she talks about drawing a story map with the ups and downs of the conflict and then the resolution. I think a story map will help me to keep the tension high and prevent the story from meandering.

~5. Do you think independent publishing will change LDS literature? If yes, how?
Definitely. I remember when Deseret Book rejected a book by Richard Paul Evans because of questionable content. They’ve really been the gatekeepers for LDS fiction. There are a few other small LDS presses, but they’re not well-funded, and they try to stick with tried-and-true authors because their profit margins are so small. With indie publishing, LDS readers will have all kinds of options, and I imagine there will be many more authors willing to put their work out there.




~~I love the idea of having all kinds of options!  And I have to say, I love indie books more every day.  Check C.K. Abbott out and see what you think.
Amber

I was tagged by author Wendy Knight in the One Lovely Blog Award.

For this blog hop, all you do is list seven random facts about yourself.  This works out okay for me because it requires only minimal brain power.  Just the way I like it.

1.  Anything adhesive makes me sick.  When people put stickers on their clothes or put tape on their fingers it’s seriously barftastic to me.  The reason for this?  I don’t know.  I wasn’t molested by tape as a child.  I suspect I’m just insane.

2. My father was in the Air Force.  I don’t have a hometown.  I’m not from anywhere.  I was raised a modern gypsy.  I’m kind of confused by and slightly jealous of people who were born and raised in the same town.  Or even the same house.

3. I don’t understand reality television.  Like, seriously.  At all.  I don’t understand what the point is.  I don’t understand the appeal.  I don’t even understand the reasoning behind them.  Which makes television pretty much pointless for me in this day and age haha.

4.  I’m just obsessed with Russian history.  I’ve read many long texts on Russian revolutions, tsarist history, murders, social climates, anything.  I’m not Russian, at all, in case you think there’s some attempts at ancestral connection in this.   It’s completely random.

5.  I’m absolutely AWFUL in conversation.  I do okay online or in texting etc.  But in face to face conversations I’m awkward and painfully ridiculous.  I’m sure half the people at church think I’m kind of brain damaged.  Church seems to be the worst because I really don’t know them but I’m still required to converse.  It really isn’t pretty.  Really.  At all.  I usually just end up blurting out something that’s apropos to nothing, laughing like a lunatic and running away while they’re still in the middle of their response.

6.  Everyone in my family communicates largely in movie quotes and inside jokes.  Probably further cementing the idea from the outside that we’re completely stupid or completely bizarre.

7.  I love lizards.  I think they’re adorable.  When I was in elementary school I caught one and its tail jerked off.  Talk about traumatic.  I had no idea that’s normal.  I never tried to grab another lizard again after that.  But I still think they’re really cute.

Now that you know more about me than you ever wanted to know, go check out these bloggers!

Ansha Koytk

Lucinda Whitney

and

Rebecca Lamoreaux

 

 

I’ve noticed a lot of talk lately on Facebook about New Mexico being a mystery to the rest of the world.

I’ve noticed this before.

Over and over.

I’ve lived in New Mexico on and off almost my entire life.  So when I moved to Colorado in 1989 it was from Albuquerque.  And the thing I got asked the most was, “Why are your bangs so big?”  But that’s another blog.  The second most common question was, “Do you have a green card?”

I was also told I spoke English remarkably well, which typically wasn’t true of the person telling me that.  Not that they spoke another language better. They just didn’t speak English well.  Maybe I could accept this bizarre confusion about New Mexico being part of the contiguous united states if they lived somewhere like Ohio, where New Mexico is foreign enough to seem as though it were a country by itself.  But this is Colorado.  Your state actually touches ours.   And not coyly, like someone who cops a feel in an elevator.  Colorado is all up in our grill.

I mean, haven’t these people ever heard of Four Corners?  It’s a big metal plate in the ground.  You can take lots of pictures and get Indian Tacos.  You’ve really never heard of this?  Not knowing the state right next to yours is a state requires a special kind of ignorance.  I’m just saying.

What I’ve noticed the most is that people just somehow don’t hear the New part when I say I’m from New Mexico.  Or they do hear it but for some reason disregard it.  Like New is a cute little nickname we give to our part of Mexico.  “Oh, that New Mexico, he’s so crazy.”   Or maybe New is just a moniker we’ve given ourselves in a bizarre marketing attempt to seem more appealing.  And when we just give in and switch back to Old Mexico, people will be so relieved.

I was driving to Missouri to attend a graduation once and I was in the bathroom of a McDonald’s in Shamrock, Texas.  The sinks were shaped like the state of Texas.  And no, I’m not making that up.  Because if there’s anything that Texans like more than firearms and heavily stylized folk artsy stars, it’s things shaped like their state.  There was a very perky blonde woman in there, washing her hands.  In fact, there was an army of perky blondes in there.  Like Stepford Wives were taking a field trip.  But somehow she found out I was from New Mexico and told me she and her friends were going to a camp in Rhema, New Mexico.

Then she told me, enthusiastically, that she’d never been to Mexico before.  In fact, she’d never even been out of the country.  She was so excited I didn’t have the heart to tell her that she still wasn’t going to be doing either.  Also, I was little afraid of her and what would happen if she and her fellow mom-droids lost their composure.

So, I’m wondering where New Mexico disappears to.   I’m wondering how we got lost off the map for everyone who isn’t currently living here or has lived here before.  We’re like the missing state.  Somehow no one realizes we’re here.  Which could be good or bad, I guess.  At least we don’t have any New Mexico shaped sinks in our bathrooms.

Amber

The other day I was trolling the internet for crime stories because, as aforementioned, that’s how I roll (really creepily), when I came across a local New Mexico story about a woman who was being sentenced to jail time for burning down her own house.  The fact that jail is, perhaps, not the best place for a woman with these sorts of issues aside, this story is weird.  She had previously called the police numerous times to report that someone was living in her attic.  The police probably checked it out a time or two.  I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they did.  After that, they probably started blowing her off because it’s pretty clear from her behavior that she’s a few llamas short of a petting zoo.

Anyway, after repeated attempts to get the police in on this person living above stairs, sister turned herself into the attic avenger and burned the house down.  When the police came she told them clearly that she’d done it because she was trying to kill the person who was living in the attic.  Then she made several requests of the police trying to see if she’d accomplished her task.  I closed the article thinking that prison probably isn’t the kind of lock up this lady needs and went about my business.

But I’m a writer.  And I can’t just read an interesting story and leave it alone.  After a few minutes, I thought, “What if she’s telling the truth?”  O.o

Maybe her reaction was a little crazed, but what if there really was someone living in her attic?  A friend of mine from high school sent me an article detailing a true story from Denver about a man who lived in someone else’s attic for a long time, eventually murdering one of the home owners and chasing the other away when the police refused to listen to her complaints that someone was living in her attic.  Eventually, the man living in the attic was caught, because the police accidentally decided to do their jobs, literally, it was an accident, and he died in prison in the early 1960′s.  So there’s precedence.  This has happened before.

What a story, huh?  Hapless heroine trapped in a house where she knows there’s someone with her, though everyone swears she’s wrong, even crazy.  What would cause her to make such an extreme move?

This is the kind of crap that makes me love being a writer.  The ‘what ifs’ make a writer’s world go around.

My current mystery series, Rules of Scam Mysteries, came from a ‘what if’ too.  There’s a woman, a ‘psychic’ who advertises around here.  In the form of a twenty foot picture of her rather frightening expression looming over the highway in three-D coming at you horror.  Usually,  I just cringe.  But one day, driving past, thinking oh good heaven’s it’s coming to eat me, I thought to myself, “Why would anyone think a twenty foot tall head lunging over the highway is a good idea?”

But after that, I thought, “What kind of person pretends to be a psychic?”  I make no assumptions about whether or not this woman is or isn’t psychic in reality.  My ‘what if’ was just based on the idea that a person was not psychic but was pretending to be one anyway.  I had a few ideas, most notably about con artists, and tucked the question away.

A few days later I was watching one of those nutty paranormal ‘documentary’ shows that are all over cable.  I don’t even remember which one, though I’m inclined to say it was some TLC show, and this dude was saying that he believed he was being hunted, not haunted, by a demon.  Then I thought, “What kind of person honestly believes they’re being hunted by a demon?”

I ask ‘what if’ several times on a good day so I didn’t immediately make a connection to my previous question.  But when I did it was an almost immediate story idea.  The daughter of a fake con artist psychic gets sucked into helping a guy who believes he’s being haunted by a demon.  Light bulb moment.

But I love to encourage my children to play the ‘what if’ game too.    And I would totally encourage everyone to trying playing a round at least once this week.  Because it isn’t just about writing.  Everything great starts with a ‘what if’.  What if I could stop polio?  What if I could build a nano computer?  What if I could find the cure to cancer?

And that’s power of ‘what if’.

 

Amber

I have a story to tell.  Bear with me, here.  Because for a moment it may seem like a pointless rant, but indeed, it has a point.

I’m not much of a TV watcher.  I just don’t have the concentration.  As soon as something boring happens or a commercial comes on, I’m gone.  The last time I loved a show deeply was Buffy the Vampire Slayer and that was 1996.  Although I was quite fond of Veronica Mars, it didn’t reach obsession level.  So, via Netflix, for the first time in almost 20 years I developed an obsession level love for a show.  I don’t want to give a name, because if I do the following story will contain a MAJOR spoiler.  So I’ll just say it’s a British Sci-Fi show and leave it at that.

So my love for this show was deep and devoted.  The kind of love reserved by geek boys for Star Wars.  So season three ended on a cliff hanger.  Three characters were trapped somewhere, I can’t say where or the show would likely be obvious to those in the midst of potentially watching this show.  Another two characters were left behind.  One of them ended the show by saying that she had an idea.  End of season three.

I started season four and discovered, to my absolute horror, that the entire cast had changed.  Almost everyone.  There are exactly three characters, of a large ensemble cast, that came back.  Seriously?  WTH?  I’m talking that maybe ten characters changed in the space between one season and another.  It was like a slap in the face.  I had to watch the show twice to wrap my mind around it.

And to add insult to injury, they didn’t even bother to explain what had happened to anyone else.  The girl who said she had an idea is apparently dead though it is never explained how or when she died.  The man who was lost and trapped (in a separate place than the other two lost and trapped people) is just never mentioned again.  Oh, he’s lost.  Well, never mind about him, then.  And, this didn’t bother my husband, though it really bothered me, two of the characters who were flirting, kind of teasing around a relationship…now they’re together.  I mean, like, really together.  I hate it when shows do this to me.  X-Files did the same thing.  Flirt, flirt, flirt, come back a year later and now we’re married.  What?!  What happened to the relationship?  Why am I not privy to this?  You can’t do this to me!

It’s utterly bizarre.  Now, there’s a reason why I tell this story.  Well, a reason beyond my desire to complain extensively about this.  I don’t know about you guys, but to me, characters count.  I don’t care if it’s the same plot.  If you drop in a new cast, it’s a different show.  You just spent three seasons building up a show and now you’ve dropped me into a different show.  One I have to decide if I love now.  That isn’t fair to me as a watcher, and when I read a book, if people don’t really show me a character it isn’t fair to me as a reader.

And when it comes to this man and woman I’ve been rooting for over the course of three seasons, I’ve invested myself in this relationship.  I’ve watched it develop and I’ve hoped for them.  And you’ve cheated me of my expectations by making this relationship change without letting me be privy to it.  And that isn’t fair.  As a writer, this just reminds me one more time that characters are what makes a novel work.  For me as a reader, a book has little worth, no matter how good the plot is, if I can’t bring myself to care about the action because I can’t see it through sympathetic eyes.

The secret a lot of people don’t realize when reading a book or watching a show or movie, is that you’ve unconsciously made a contract with the person who created it.  You have agreed to give your time and your emotional energy investing yourself in their story.  As a result they set forth expectations based on genre and topic.  If they don’t meet those expectations, they’ve broken the contract and you’re dissatisfied, even though you may not realize why.

Have you guys ever experienced this before?  Has a book or show ever done this to you?  Which show or book was it?  Were you able to get past it and continue enjoying or was it just the end of the end?  I’m struggling to learn to enjoy this show with a new cast, but so far it’s not easy.  It just makes me realize how much that people are really the center of the entertainment world.  If not for characters nothing would be worth watching or reading.

And then imagine how bored we’d all be. 

 

Amber

So, I like to troll the internet for crime cases.  That’s how I roll, because I love me some crime.  Don’t take that the wrong way…

Speaking of taking crime the wrong way, I use my husband often as a source of ideas.  I like to bounce things off him at dinner.  So my husband, my mother and my three children were at dinner at a Chinese restaurant and I needed an attempted murder for an adult book, which I write under another name.  There was a rousing discussion about ways to make murder look like an accident.  My husband finally won with his suggestion of purposefully induced anaphylaxis.  I thanked and praised him and said that I would put it to good use the minute I had the chance.

It was at that point we realized the people behind us had been listening and had heard just enough to misunderstand what they were hearing and were literally discussing calling the police.  Oops.  That’s why you shouldn’t eavesdrop, you might hear something about yourself, or mistake a fictional crime for a real one.

At any rate, I read a lot about crime.  And today I picked up this little gem.  Out of respect for the people involved I’m going to leave out most of the information.

Five people were driving around in a car when the murderer, Timothy, got pissed, got out of the car, and started shooting.  These five lived together in a house.  All of them.  Together.  Here’s why this is weird.

Ruth M. was born in 1965.  That makes her 47.  She used to be married to Milton L., killed in this assault, who was born in 1942.  That made him around 70 when he died.  Despite being divorced, Ruth and Milton were still living in the same house.  But make no mistake that Ruth hadn’t moved on.  Because she had a new husband.  Before he was also murdered at the same time, George M. was born in 1993.  That made him approximately 19 at the time of death.

So Ruth moved on from someone 23 years her senior to someone about 18 years her junior.  And they were all living in the same house.  That had to have been awkward, all murder aside.  Also, wow.  Age is clearly just a number to this particular woman.

Also living in the house was Ruth’s daughter, Vallena T., aged 31.  The murderer in this case is Timothy H. who is married to Vallena.  Timothy also lived in the same house.  He’s 43.  So, clearly, Vallena takes after her mother in the whole ‘age is relative’ camp.

Whatever happened in this case to drive a man to kill his fathers-in-law (x2), it no doubt happened while they were all living together in the same house.  Can you imagine?  Yikes.  Families are enough of a pain when they make sense.  When you start piling people up in the same place with years of twisted history, someone is going to end up shot.  The moral of the story is…I don’t know, actually.  Maybe the last sentence.  Don’t live with a bunch of people all interrelated in not the best way.  Also, I’m totally going to find a way to use this kind of situation in a story.

Also, real life is much weirder than fiction is ever allowed to be.  Also, I’m dying to know what made this man so angry that he started shooting.  Also, I want some Chinese.

Amber