Brooke London - Blogging for the Not-Faint-of-Heart

Men and Women and Where We Are Now

2012-01-13T08:15:00.000-05:00

FYI, this is not a male-bashing post...

I know to many young women that the word "Feminism" is a four-letter word. They deny that they are feminists even though they've reaped the benefits from earlier feminists in terms of choice. I am a feminist but I am not a radical feminist. I believe that men are an indispensable part of feminism and that changes taking place now will extend an olive branch to men. Here is the background on the different waves of feminism starting in the 20th century:

The first wave fought for and gained the right for women to vote in the early 20th century. These rights were mostly aimed at white upper class women.
The second wave struggled to obtain the right for women to have access and equal opportunity to the workforce, as well as ending of legal sex discrimination. The time frame for this was the 1960s through to the 1980s and was primarily aimed at white women.
The third wave of feminism (1990s and on) lacked a cohesive goal, and it is often seen as an extension of the second wave. Third-wave feminism does not have a set definition that can distinguish itself from second-wave feminism. The only differentiating factor is that the third wave of feminism included women of all racial backgrounds.

I believe we are starting to experience the fourth wave of feminism in the 21st century. I believe women’s issues in re-entering the workforce after a career break (for maternity, elder care, disability etc), are the fourth wave of feminism. The difference between this wave and prior waves is that this wave will hold out an olive branch to men, a radical departure from the earlier days of feminism. This wave will improve working conditions not only for women but for men as well.

The kinds of programs promoting women’s interests in the workplace will eventually need to be inclusive of all facets of social and cultural equality for both men and women. The provisions that reduce barriers to workplace re-entry for women will improve the work and professional lives for both genders. The issue is that women are unlikely to make significant inroads in this area without buy-in from the most senior levels of management and the C-suite (CEO, CFO, CIO, COO etc), who are mostly male. Book after book after paper emphasize the fact that if the CEO is not actively, audibly and visibly engaged, committed and devoted to women’s issues for re-entry and retainment, any initiatives to get women to re-enter the workplace will most likely not succeed.

A company can write all the forward-thinking Human Resources (HR) policies they like but if the corporate culture either overtly or covertly discourages these practices, then HR will have wasted a lot of time and effort on something that won’t happen. In order for this to work, men must be included, be onboard and recognize that what’s good for women, is good for men and therefore is good for the corporate culture, profitability and sustainability in terms of an educated workforce (vis-à-vis demographic shifts, both in age, immigrant availability and the underutilization of women in the workforce) going into the future. If men take advantage of the policy changes meant originally for women, the culture of the organization will change to be more accepting of women re-entering the corporate culture because it won’t be seen as special treatment for women or unfair treatment of men.

In one information technology firm in Britain, where 80% of employees are male, the company was looking for ways to engage in retainment/re-engagement practices and to help women re-enter employment with the company. The company decided to offer flextime, parental leaves and company daycare for all employees. As a result of being able to choose the full-time hours they work, sick days fell from an average of 11 days per year per employee to an average of 3 days per year per employee. The fact that a high percentage of men were taking advantage of the flexibility, as well as the women, made it easy for the corporate culture to change (less stigma attached to flexible work arrangements and support systems) so that both men and women viewed re-entry policies favorably.

The main factors driving this fourth wave are twofold:

1. profits - studies show that having women in upper management and C-suite positions have a direct positive impact on profits, increasing by as much as 35% as compared to traditionally male upper management models

2. demographics - within this area there are two main issues that will occur in the next 5-10 years as baby boomers start to retire. This will leave large skill gaps that will be difficult to fill with fewer people in Gen X and Gen Y.

the cohorts following the baby boomers (Gen X & Y or the Millenials) have a different set of values than the previous generations. They are more interested in a work-life balance than their predecessors and will not be willing to give up their lives to work. They know how to set boundaries around what they want and will fight for them.
immigration will no longer be a reliable source of talent. The reasoning behind this are the emerging economic giants of China and India. As the middle class grows in Asia, fewer people will feel the need to immigrate to find economic success. Why leave your country, your family and your traditions if you can have a satisfying life where you are? This is more of an issue in America because immigration quotas after 9/11 were slashed but Canada and other traditional destinations for immigrants will be affected.

So despite the economic climate now, especially in the Eurozone and America (and to a much lesser extent Canada, where good governance and strict banking regulations have produced one of the most economically stable countries in the world and the most stable banking system in the world), there will be a skills shortage in 5-10 years. How are we going to bridge this skills gap?

The answer is women. Women who have for any number of reason who have taken a career break (off-ramped) and want to return to the workforce (on-ramp). Out of the women who off-ramp, 93% want to return to work. Of those 93% only 30% actually find employment in line with their previous positions. Of those 93%, 95% would not seek re-employment with their former employer, implying a lack of support for women within that culture. Women with MBAs and degrees work part time in Walmart because much of the business world somehow thinks that taking a break means losing your mind. And if women do manage to re-enter their previous field, their earnings drop by 30% or more. This is a collosal waste of talent. Progressive companies like Deloitte, KPMG, TD Bank Group, Telus, Verizon etc have made re-engaging (and retaining) women after a break a priority. They have offered flexible solutions so that women can return to paid work. These flexible options are shared by everyone, including men, in the company.

Men and women both will benefit from initiatives to re-engage and retain women in the workplace. Men who are encouraged to take part in all the programs available to women become the biggest proponents of the initiatives.

I believe this is the fourth wave of feminism. The wave where we finally, FINALLY, acknowledge that men are a vital part of better work environments, a better world, for everyone. This is the wave where we can bring it all together. Feminism until this point has done somewhat of a disservice to women: they said that women could have it all and the "superwoman" myth came into being. Women are burnt out trying to be all things to all people. We need men to participate and benefit from all initiatives. The result will be a better, more egalitarian, world.

Women make up 51% of the population but we are nowhere near these numbers in various industries such as publishing and media, which play a large and growing part in how women are perceived and how they feel about themselves, nor are we represented in elected government positions in the numbers that would approach demographic realities. Men make up the agenda with little, if any, input from women. Our voices and our interests must be heard and heeded - it will make for a better world for everyone.

Just my two cents after doing a project for seven weeks on this subject matter.

Sunrise Today

2011-12-19T08:22:00.002-05:00

Come and take a look at the pictures for Sunrise today :)

Just Give Me Time...

2011-12-13T09:57:00.001-05:00

This past week was good. I finished a course I was taking, I received some good news on the health front and I received some much needed news yesterday. I just hope I ended the call before I started my happy dance, complete with a small shriek. I even rewarded myself with a hamburger and fries yesterday for the first time in four years. Although, I'm pretty sure grease leached out of my skin and my blood coagulated temporarily. :) It's been a while since things have gone my way and I think I've paid my dues and earned the little triumphs of the past week.

I'm not going to go into details but it's been a difficult few years (okay, so maybe it has been a decade or so). I have put so much work into looking for answers in what seemed to be all the wrong places. But each wrong answer filled in a piece of the puzzle that has lead me to be in a few right places for answers. The point of all this is that answers, most answers, do not come easily but they eventually may come if you keep chipping away at them.

Three years ago, I blogged about the meaning of "no" (http://brookelondonromance.blogspot.com/2008/11/what-does-no-mean.html). Looking back, it's still true. My premise was and is that "no" isn't always a concrete barrier stretching up ten miles high when searching for answers. Sometimes 'no" is just the universe's way of telling you to try another way, go another route or you're asking the wrong questions. As the saying goes, a well-defined question is half of the answer. The last words in the post were, "Take responsibility for yourself. Trust yourself. Trust your instincts and intuitions...'No', in most cases, is an opinion, not a decree." It has taken time and energy and now I seem to be reaping at least some of the rewards of my persistence - I'm not where I want to be yet but I will get "there" in one form or another. But we're never completely where we want to be, no matter what our situation. There are no instant answers; instant answers are so often the wrong answers. But there are answers, sometimes in the most unexpected of places.

In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was compelled to roll an immense boulder up a hill as a punishment, only to watch it roll back down, and to repeat this throughout eternity. I think we mere mortals can do a better job. Yes, the rock may roll back down the hill every damn day but every once in a while, it crests the top of the hill and stays there. Maybe my middle name should have been Sisyphus because it seems I have always been rolling one rock or another up some or another hill only to have it roll back and flatten me. But apparently not this week - those boulders are staying put. For now, anyway.

So yay! A couple big questions answered plus an accomplishment. Just another day in the life. So now, I'll have other boulders to roll up hills until I find more answers. The answers will not be instant, they may even be 'no' but they're just rocks, really, and rocks aren't known for being immensely smart anyway. They will give up their secrets sooner or later. I will move my mountains. :)

Just give me time...

Every day I count wasted in which there has been no dancing ~ Nietzsche

2011-11-08T18:49:00.000-05:00

I've been coming to a single conclusion for the past while. Life is too short.

Life is too short to hold grudges.

Life is too short to let your last words be harsh ones.

Life is too short to waste your breath on dead causes.

Life is too short not to go for what you want.

Life is too short for bitterness.

Life is too short for hate.

Life is too short for unending anger.

Life is too damn short to hang onto past hurts.

Life is too short for regrets.

Life is too short not to grasp love when it's near.

Life is too short for drama.

Life is too short not to laugh every day.

Life is too short not to dance every day of your life.

I hope you dance.

It Goes Both Ways

2011-06-16T17:49:00.005-04:00

For the writers amongst you, I have a question. Do you ever pick up bad language or attitudes from your characters? As nuts as it sounds, I do. When I get toward the end of a book, heading towards and through the black moment and climax, my characters swear. A lot. And it's not "fudge-buckets" or "sugar."

Some writers will tell you that they are completely separate entities from their characters, having no bearing on the writer him or herself. I think that's garbage. Characters are a part of the writers who create them. Somewhere inside the writer, a part of this character that we have identified with is running amuck. No, the writer is not the character but the character is a facet of the writer. You wouldn't be able to write convincing characters if you didn't identify with the little terrors to some extent.

So I hit the 'do or die' part of my current WIP last week and since then, well, it's a good thing that I live alone. I am swearing a blue streak and not only at home but in the car, at other drivers. In the grocery store, at missing produce and products and other shoppers (under my breath). It seems that I'm grumbling at everything for the past week. I'm ready to fight. I'm not sure if this is good for my health or not - on one hand I'm venting frustrations but, on the other hand, studies show that profusely negative venting is not good for you - you just become angrier and angrier.

It's a little disconcerting that characters can influence your behavior. But I'm thinking I'm not alone in this. In between the angry music I'm listening to in order to get the mood right, I am listening to calming, peaceful music to haul me out of my self-induced insanity. And it's tiring.

I know that many people think that writers perform a core dump and vomit words onto the page, and presto, a novel appears. Writing is the most difficult thing I've done and I've done a lot of insanely difficult (and stupid, let's not forget stupid) things. The saying that writing is easy, you just open up a vein, is entirely true. You pull things out of yourself that weren't necessarily supposed to set foot out of the primordial sludge. Things that aren't nice, aren't pleasant, aren't fun and sure as hell aren't civilized and happy pink thoughts.

It's tough - especially when you set out to make your characters' lives a living hell. Which I do. I've been known to cry, to have to take walks to calm down, swear, shout and on occasion to throw things around (I limit myself to pillows so I don't damage anything). Easy? No. Necessary for writing? For me, yes.

I fully admit that I create screwed up, flawed characters. Who wants to read about a character who has ALL of his or her shit together? I don't and I'm betting you don't either. Is this a tortured part of my psyche screaming to get out? Maybe. Is this a twisted, dark side of myself erupting from my sub-conscious? Maybe. Am I a masochist? At times, I think all writers are masochists. I don't think people generally look at the darkest parts of themselves without a ton of motivation.

So when a character you're reading really gets to you? Makes you angry and squirm uncomfortably? The writer probably wasn't the happiest camper either. Who needs therapy when you can write messed up characters who explore all the dark areas? Just remember, it goes both ways - the character is influenced by the writer and the writer is influenced by the character.

Scary.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

2011-02-13T19:16:00.000-05:00

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… it’s been quoted so many times that I don’t think anyone really pays any attention to the words anymore. But listen again… it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It’s still true after one hundred and fifty years or so.

People have wonky memories when it comes to good times and bad times. In truth, the good times were probably fairly good but the veneer of time and distance puts a special happy filter on the good times. And the bad times are probably worse than you remember. Yes, some things are truly awful—losing loved ones, illnesses, divorces, wars, destruction and just feeling that life will never improve. Feeling isolated and alone. You’re in the black hole and you’re never going to see the light again.

People complain about getting older, especially in North America. Here, we are obsessed with youth, dismissing anyone older than thirty as ‘old.’ “I’m old,” someone says in their thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, seventies and then in their eighties. So, I’m just going to say it. YOU ARE NOT OLD. There. Got that off my chest. It felt so good to say that I’m going to say it again. YOU. ARE. NOT. OLD. With one exception—if you give up and insist you are old. Then, yeah, you are. And you may as well die right now. Give up. Go back to the dust from whence you came.

We are all aging. We are on the road to death the instant we are conceived. No, I’m not being morbid. Just very honest. But if you use your chronological age to justify acting like an old fuddy-duddy, then you are doing yourself a great injustice. You cheat those you love of your life. You’re cheating yourself out of your life. What kind of existence is that?

Life is not easy. It never is. It never was. It never will be. There will always be tragedy, heartbreak, illness and disability. Bad things will always happen. That is the nature of life. But beside those bad things are good things. The good things that are made that much better because of the bad things. I think we all forget this when we are frustrated or unhappy or having a shit day at work.

Nothing is going your way, it seems, for years. And it may very well be years. You or someone you love may be sick for years. Not just a case of the sniffles, but something that is chronic. Painful. Debilitating. Financially devastating. You may be unemployed and wondering what the hell you’re going to do when the money runs out. Will you ever work again? And after a while, doubt seeps in and you think no one in their right mind would hire you: you know nothing. To what could you possibly contribute? You’re an idiot.

And you hit rock bottom.

You have a choice.

You can stay at rock bottom, wallowing in misery and the illusion of agedness. It’s your choice. Or you can kick off from the bottom of that ocean of self-doubt and swim to the surface. Not to be trite, or Pollyanna about that whole thing, but things really do work themselves out, one way or another. Something that you thought was the worst thing to ever happen opens a door to a new way of being. That journey is a tough one. No one said it was easy. “Good” is not a destination. “Life” is not a destination. “Bad” is not a destination. Life is a journey encompassing the good, the bad and the not-so-bad. Because when you arrive at where you’ve been heading for your entire life, you’re dead as a doornail.

So all this talk about “arriving” at your life is crap. What you’re experiencing now? Right now? This is your life. The only one you’re going to get on this earth. You can walk around bemoaning your age, railing against your "fate" (another piece of garbage people use to support their misery) or you can live your life to the max.

I have/had a great-Uncle, whom I never met and I believe is no longer in the land of the living, who went trekking down the Amazon when he was in his eighties. His eighties. That is one man who was never old. My parents are not old even though most of the people I meet their age are old. My parents are busy people, despite being retired for a couple of decades. They go places, do things (don’t ask me what but they’re always busy) and it keeps them young. People regularly think mum is anywhere from 15-20 years younger than she is. She looks great. I won’t tell you her age but, while a majority of people my age are mostly grey, she isn’t.

It annoys the hell out of me, this “I’m old and ancient” crap. One would swear by what some of these people say that they should get walkers and support hose by the time they’re forty. Start lawn-bowling any day. Feed the pigeons in the park. People younger than me are claiming that they’re old. I’m not old, so if they’re old it’s because they’ve chosen to be so.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” is always going to be true for someone somewhere every single day. I’ve lived that saying for my whole life. Nothing is ever perfect. There will always be a fly in your chardonnay. But it’s up to you whether you let that fly swim the backstroke or fish it out and enjoy your wine.

Salut!

Some New Year Thoughts :)

2011-01-01T22:42:00.000-05:00

A new year has come around again. New challenges, new people, new experiences, new stuff all around. But is it really? People hope that the new year will be better than the last year but they still carry around something that is not new: themselves. Their hopes. Their joys. And their sorrows.

This seems like a "well, yeah...duh" moment but really it's not. Things don't tend to happen unless you do something to change your behaviour, your outlook on life... you. Sure, a few people will win the lottery but most of us have to change ourselves to improve our lot, our happiness, in life.

If I look at my life as objectively as I can, I can see all the things that have gone wrong, things that have failed, and I am the common denominator. Yeah, some things were plain bad luck but other things? Other things were sheer idiocy, a measure of naivete, a lack of understanding of my own self-worth and an unhealthy dose of stubbornness. I can out-stubborn most people, if I put my mind to it. :S

I find that so many people wander around totally oblivious to the destruction they wreak upon themselves and the lives around them. If things are habitually going wrong for you, you need to take a look in the mirror and decide what responsibility you have in the whole mess. I highly recommend counseling. I sought counseling a few years ago after a very emotionally destructive period of my life. It's not easy to have to look yourself in the eye and be honest with yourself. Most people won't do it: it's hard, it's painful and it takes a LONG time to see the patterns in one's behavior that led to one's own demise, so to speak.

At this point, I think most people could use some counseling. We're all kind of screwed up in some way or another - some of us more than others. And there's really no excuse not to take a look at one's behavior and say, like a certain tv psychologist does, "How's that workin' for ya?" Someone said the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. So by this particular definition, I think there are a LOT of troubled people out there.

So for this New Year, 2011, I want to wish everyone good mental health. And I want to share my yearly list of what I have learned in the past year - oh joy, you're thinking :) but here goes (and yes, a lot of these are cliches but they're known for a reason):

Just because something is difficult is no reason not to try
Never say never
Stop whining and just do it
Live with intention
Walk to the edge and look into the abyss
Listen well
Never stop learning
Play with abandon
Laugh until your sides hurt and tears run down your face
Cry your heart out if you feel like it
Do what you love
Black Rat snakes have very cool and smooth skin and if I didn't object to feeding a snake a poor, terrified mouse once a week, I would get one
Don't let the bastards get you down - there's no reason not to have fun - annoys the bastards :)
I can be my own worst enemy, my own worst critic, and I have to stop that kind of thinking in its tracks
I am my own best champion
Trusting my gut instincts is the ONLY way to go - whenever I have doubted my gut and gone with my head, everything goes sideways
Being obstinate is different than being determined - obstinate gets me into trouble, determination gets me ahead
And the last one is a quote by Mary Ann Radmacher: "Courage doesn't always roar, Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, "I will try again tomorrow.”

Much Love to You,
Brooke

Alone Again - A poem

2010-11-07T18:05:00.000-05:00

Alone again, I’d grown used to your absence,
To the sounds of silence and the hum of my hitched breath
Something whispered to me,
Urged me to slay the deafening emptiness that felt like death

You were not gone, you were not with me,
But you stole moments here and there,
As if to say, “She’s still with me” to stave off your despair
Alone again, I did not want to see the deep game you played,
I did not want to see what over the tracks of my approaching train was laid

Alone again, I struggled, I weakened, I finally tapped a line into the mist

Along you came to resume your game, hoping I wouldn’t see what you resist
I can’t live this way, I can’t be yours
While with my questions you stay silent and you declaim

Alone again, my questions gutter silently into the ashes of an unfed flame

© Brooke London 2010

Fabulous, Darling!

2010-10-06T11:23:00.000-04:00

Recently, I started patronizing a Second Cup (like Starbucks) near my home because I like the coffee drinks more there. Most of the time, I get the same barista. I always ask her how she’s doing and her answer is always, “Fab-u-lous!” in this British Caribbean accent. She draws out the “fab” part and shakes her short curly hair out of her eyes, almost poses like a supermodel and flashes an impish smile. This is her standard answer to everyone, I’ve noticed, and everyone walks away from her with a smile on his or her face, along with their coffee. She is one of those wonderful people who welcome the world.

It’s amazing to see how people relate to her. One simple word, one flip of the hair and one smile and she has you. Yes, it is part of her schtick, part of how she deals with the world, but it’s very effective. I don’t think anyone walks away without tipping. I don’t think anyone walks away without smiling at the woman. And isn’t it nice to have someone smile at you whenever you walk in? And isn’t it nice to have someone walk away from you with a smile on their face?

Such a simple thing makes a big difference.

Growing up, it was understood in my family that I would be some kind of professional something. I would get a meaningful university education and go on to do challenging, thought-provoking work. No doubt being paid more than a barista, at any rate. But who is better off? Someone who greets people and makes them smile and feel good about themselves, or someone involved in "serious work" who can’t smile because they’re too miserably aware of all their pressures and deadlines. Working 70 hours or more a week. No time, no energy to actually live a life. As opposed to someone working a less stressful job, not expected to continually hit efficiency benchmarks and baselines for performance —just show up at work, do your job, go home and live an actual life. Make people happy. Make yourself happy. Don’t drive yourself crazy.

Maybe it’s better to be a regular person. My barista has learned or instinctively knew that stressing yourself out only leads to an early death even before you hit the grave. I have a streak of curiosity a mile wide. This curiosity seems to necessitate me having to try everything, examine everything, analyze everything to freaking death. I’ll tell you, it’s a pain in the ass.

I often ask myself why isn’t anything just straightforward and simple. The most obvious answer is because I’m not straightforward and simple – my world reflects who I am, just as your world reflects who you are. In this barista’s world, she is fab-u-lous. And she is. That is what the world reflects back to her. What the world reflects back to me is different—a torturous rat’s nest of ups and downs is what I’m getting from this mirror of life. The next logical question is, how can I change this? To which I have no answer. Everyone talks about simplifying their lives, minimizing the junk they’ve accumulated over a lifetime. I have donated probably in the range of 600 books now that were formerly cluttering up my bookshelves. I’ve weeded out my kitchen and my closets, trying to get rid of the stuff cluttering up my life. I don’t need more stuff in my life, I need more life in my life.

Those of you who have been following my blog posts for a while know that I divorced last year. It’s taken me some time to figure out what and who the hell I am since leaving. I’ve had to do a lot of work to heal from that disastrous, hell-bound mistake. A lot of work to trust my judgment again. And it’s coming, slowly. I’m listening to my emotions, instead of only my logic. Pure logic has not served me well. And perhaps I went a little overboard on the emotional side of things at first. But I think I had my emotions buttoned-down and suppressed for so long, that when I finally gave myself permission to feel what I was feeling, I was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of emotions. I thought I’d drown in my emotions but instead washed up on the shore of my new life, like so much flotsam and jetsam. My life—the undiscovered country. I was Christopher-freaking-Columbus and had just escaped the savage sea.

So, I have this opportunity to re-create my life better than it was before. Like the Six Million Dollar Man but without the super abilities. Things have changed to the more positive for me. Maybe a little older. Hopefully a lot wiser. And maybe, just maybe, I can be "fab-u-lous, darling", too. I think I’d like that. :)

Flirtless

2010-09-17T16:10:00.001-04:00

I’ve heard it said many times that women are natural flirts. That they are born able to flirt and are able to wrap people around their little, delicate fingers because of this. In Forbes magazine, apparently, women are now being told to work their way to success through flirting, which seems a little backwards to me. Well, I am here to say, that I am a flirt-free zone. Yes, it’s true. I do not know how to flirt.

So how on earth has this anomaly happened? Is this not an anathema to womanhood? The inability to flirt. If I were to go out with friends to a bar and if one of my friends said that a man kept looking at me, and that I should go over and flirt with him, I would not have the first clue as to what to do or say or anything. I mean, yes, I have read the steps of intimacy and there are 12 of them:

Eye to body
Eye to eye
Voice to voice
Hand to hand
Arm to shoulder
Arm to waist
Mouth to mouth
Hand to head
Hand to body
Mouth to breast
Hand to genitals
Genitals to genitals

Although with flirting, I think I’d probably stop at voice to voice. It is, after all, just flirting not an all out seduction. I know the signs of flirting, even if (okay, when) I don’t recognize them at the time:

Raised eyebrows—unconscious sign of interest on flirter’s part
Eye contact—make and hold eye contact for significant amount of time; men will not hold the gaze of a woman he isn’t attracted to
Hair flick—women often do this, sometimes unconsciously
Playing with accessories—women play with earrings, twirl hair, fiddle with necklaces; men play with ties, jingle change in pants pocket
Leaning in—nonverbal message the he/she wants to be closer
Active listening—turn body towards other person, make eye contact, nod, show other signs of actively listening to what is said
Open body language—invitation
Sideways glance—demure glances, strong sign of flirting
Looking at lips or body parts—sometimes an unconscious sign of flirting
Laughter—laughing at jokes, silly or unfunny
Light touches—touching someone’s arm, knee, or shoulder shows interest
Ignoring cell phone—purposely ignoring or turning off the cell phone sends signal that he/she is more interested in the other person than whoever might be calling

But as for putting these things into action, I just don’t get it. When I look at the signs of flirting in this list, I think I do most of these all the time except for the touching part because I don’t touch people that I don’t know very well. No, I don’t have some kind of phobia about germs or anything. It’s just that touching somebody is invading their personal space and unless I have a very clear flashing neon sign saying it’s okay to do so, I am not comfortable with it. I hardly ever use my cell phone so that doesn’t count. I do not stare at body parts, i.e. I don’t stare at a man’s crotch. I think that’s just as rude as a man who stares at a woman’s boobs. And I don't laugh at things that aren't funny.

I always look people in the eye when speaking to them. I try to be friendly. I do play with my hair and jewelry routinely but especially when I am nervous but that doesn’t speak towards flirting. So it is quite possible that someone thinks I am flirting with him, when in fact I am just being me. It seems that flirting is about sociability and being open to possibilities.

I think the other part of flirting comes with confidence in yourself and, in a woman’s case, your femininity. It never actually occurs to me that someone is interested in me unless it is in blinking neon lights—even then sometimes I will miss it entirely and someone has to point out. I don’t think of myself as being ultra feminine. I don’t wear pretty pink except on my fingernails every once in a while. My voice is not what could be described as melodious. I don’t faint – okay, I’ve fainted a few times but that has been very rarely when I’ve been ill. I’m not particularly afraid of insects. I don’t freak out when I see an ant or spider or even a cockroach. Although cockroaches gross me out because they’re filthy creatures but I’m not afraid of them per se. This past summer I had a black rat snake wrapped around my neck, which I found quite interesting instead of horror-inducing. I travel on my own. I do what I want when I want. I’m highly logical and analytical, which seems to be at odds with the image of a romance writer but… there it is. So I’m not, and have never been, a girly girl. But does that mean that I’m not feminine? I don’t think so. I think my brand of femininity is more subtle, for lack of a better term. Growing up in my household, sciences and math were emphasized over softer subjects such as English and social studies.

My poor father ended up with three daughters all going through puberty at the same time, but he and my mother were determined that we would be independent women. That we would be able to do anything, within reason, that a man would be able to do. Obviously, the same physical strength is not possible— I need help opening jars. But having functional brains in logical subjects was emphasized. There wasn’t much emphasis placed on more feminine stuff. I call it feminine stuff because I don’t know what else to call it—getting Cosmo magazines, getting makeovers, having pedicures and manicures, etc. Talking on the phone forever every single night. Giggling with girlfriends over Playgirl magazines.

In fact, growing up in our house we did not have any kind of magazine delivered until I was probably ten. My mother worked so that my father could start his business, while he worked a full-time job, and I always was very proud of this. My mother was a “working woman” and she didn’t have time for inconsequential things like frivolous magazines. I was so floored when they finally started getting Maclean’s magazine delivered—LOL! For those of you who don’t know, Maclean’s magazine is a news magazine like Newsweek or Time. But it was a magazine nonetheless and I have to say that I was kind of disappointed that my mother would stoop to ordering a magazine. So you can see that perhaps my upbringing wasn’t as traditional as it might have been. Not that I’m complaining.

But what is femininity? This is something that came up in the past couple weeks over one of my posts on Facebook. And when someone brought up this topic of women being feminine and that femininity is a good thing, I really didn’t know in which way I was feminine. I wear makeup every day, or at least when I leave the house. I wear skirts sometimes. My hair is long. I do not wear high heels because those things screw up your natural body alignment; they wreck your back, neck, shoulders, knees, ankles and feet. The maximum heel that I will wear is about one inch. In other words, I try to make the most of what I’ve got without killing myself. But I’m not one of these giggly people who spends hours in front of a mirror and has to have her makeup flawless at all times.

I would rather put work into more than just external appearances. I want to be able to understand and like the person that I am. I want to be able to develop myself as a human being, and a good human being at that. No, I don’t neglect the outside. But yes, I believe in the importance to develop one’s intellect, understanding of the world and understanding of oneself. Is that unfeminine? Nietzsche said that stupidity in a woman is unfeminine—something that I agree wholeheartedly with. But stupidity is not just in the things that you can’t see at first glance; stupidity is also in the outward manifestations of a human being, which includes their appearance and behavior.

So in my quest to find out what exactly femininity was, I decided I would Google it. Femininity, on a lot of these websites, seems to be for women who desire to be laid out like a doormat for her man. Obviously I don’t agree with this version of femininity. I think Audrey Hepburn had a very nice viewpoint, even in these times for modern women. I don’t think she was talking about femininity in particular, but I do think she was talking about being an attractive human being, which is different than being outwardly attractive. She said, "For Attractive lips, speak words of kindness, For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people, For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry, For Beautiful hair, let a child run their fingers through it once a day, For poise, walk with the knowledge that you never walk alone. People, more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed. Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you will find one at the end of each of your arms. As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself and the other for helping others." I think we can all agree that Audrey Hepburn was a very feminine woman. She had an ephemeral grace about her and a regal but welcoming demeanor. And even though her heyday was 50 or so years ago now, let’s say, I don’t think she’s any less relevant now than she was in her own time.

So I think I will take this quote as my version of femininity. I may not always live up to that standard of being feminine but I think it is something that I can strive for. And in the end, isn’t being true to oneself but the most important thing? I’m not going to pretend that I am a pink-loving, giggling lady who loves tea and crumpets. But I’ll tell you some of those pink-loving, giggling women who love tea and crumpets are vicious people. My version of femininity isn’t as obvious as some but it is something I am comfortable with, something that I am pleased to strive for.

So regardless of my flirtless state, which may not be as hopeless as I think, I believe I qualify as being feminine. I think every woman has to define what is feminine for her, what feels right for her, and not be guided by what some insipid website says is feminine. Being feminine is just as much about the inside as it is about the outside, if not more. One can look as feminine as all get-out, and still not be feminine. Feminine does not mean stupid or witless. I think each gender has unique gifts in their repertoire. If we were all the same it would be pretty boring. And I like men to be men. I don’t appreciate it when women try to be men—I realize that this is a part of feminism whereby women try to be taken seriously but I don’t think men take women more seriously when women act and dress like men. I think people respect others who are brave enough to be what they are, as they are, regardless of gender.

All You Have to Fear is Fear Itself

2010-09-10T15:03:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, I was corresponding with a friend looking for information on how to do a public reading in front of a live audience. I’ve never done a reading in front of an audience but on November 2^nd, I will be doing just that. The Prana Café and Teahouse in Toronto is going to host my very first public reading. I’ve been doing readings on the radio but those were a little different. Doing a reading in front of a group of people I don’t know is somewhat intimidating.

My friend congratulated me on doing this, saying that most people wouldn’t do something that scared them. When I first became published, I made a decision to say yes to any promotional opportunities that came along and, with one exception, I’ve done exactly that. Even though every time I’ve done one of these promo opportunities it has scared me to death.

The problem is these days that writers are expected to have a number of personalities. One is the writing personality who is an introvert. Writing is not something that I can do with somebody else. All of it comes from somewhere within and I dump it out into the computer. The other personality is the one that’s supposed to know how to deal with people, how to do readings and how to look confident and comfortable doing everything. It’s a dichotomy, and it’s one that every published writer these days has to deal with.

It’s not just in writing where this expectation has happened. I’ve been in information technology for many years. I started off as a computer programmer and I’ve done just about every job in information technology. It used to be, as a programmer, that you could hide in your cubicle and nobody bothered you as long as you were doing your job. Now, technical people are expected to have excellent soft skills as well. Companies want their technical people to not only be technically proficient but be able to relate to other people. There are places for pure technical people but, more and more, technical people are expected to be more than just technical. They are expected to be socially well adjusted and not scratch or adjust their privates in public. Most women don’t do this but some men still haven’t caught this part of social etiquette. But aside from the very obvious like this, social skills are vital.

I have never considered myself an outgoing person. But since being published and doing signings, doing interviews and doing all the external things related to writing, I’ve learned how to be more comfortable in social settings. I’ve learned how to reach out to people to a certain extent. I’ve learned how to be more outgoing and confident in myself. I attribute that to directly to the peripheral writing activities.

The thing is with fear, unless there is a very real possibility of being physically hurt, it’s all in your head. People will say they can’t do something whether that’s public speaking or traveling by themselves or meeting new people or any number of things. But what they are actually saying is that they don’t have the guts to try, that they won’t do certain things because they’re afraid.

I think with fear you have to break it down. Some of the questions I ask myself when something scares me are:

1) Am I going to be physically hurt?

2) How realistic are my fears? I mean, are people going to throw rotten fruit at me at this reading? Are people going to start laughing at me? Are they going to be unkind, are they going to hate me? Am I going to lose my voice suddenly? (At the first public speaking event I did a number of years ago, I actually did lose my voice because I was so nervous. Perhaps some people at this point would have thought, oh my God, that is the worst thing ever to happen and I’m never doing that again; my thinking was, okay, the worst happened, it will only get better from here. And it did).

When I look at things this way, I realize that very few things are actually going to harm me. In fact, doing these things will help me. I have what I call the “bubble theory of life”. My bubble theory of life is that life is like a big elastic balloon. If you’re not pushing on the balloon from the inside, breathing life into it, pretty soon your balloon turns into a straitjacket and you can’t do anything—you have allowed your fears to immobilize you. So, breathing air/activities into your balloon expands your boundaries.

I’m not talking about throwing yourself off a building or mountain climbing. I’m not talking about things that could possibly hurt me because quite honestly I have a fear of heights and I’m quite comfortable with that fear. J Now some people could turn around and say well your bubble theory of life says that you should be throwing yourself out of an airplane and they could be right, but I really don’t see any point in doing that. It doesn’t help me. So it’s not a priority for me.

What is a priority for me is anything that will help me in my day-to-day life. I try to be pragmatic about the things I do. Everything is for a purpose. If I need to do something to get to where I want to go, then I’ll do it. I’m also not talking about the things that I have to do as opposed to the things I want to do. Having fun is just as pragmatic as being responsible. Everyone needs a balance for good mental health and an enjoyable life.

So instead of turning down opportunities and adventures because they scare you, give it a shot and just say yes. Yes, I will do that. Yes, I will go there. Yes, I will do that public reading. Because after all, you only get one shot at life and you might as well make the most of it.

I hope that I will see some of you at my first public reading of Pitch Dark. The Prana Café & Teahouse is located at 2130A Queen Street East, on the corner of Queen and Hammersmith in The Beaches in Toronto. The date is Tuesday, November 2, 2010, the time is 6:30pm - find a seat, schmooze and order one of their fabulous coffees. The readings begin at 7:00pm.

Cheers!

Truth - A Poem

2010-07-30T19:11:00.002-04:00

Many roads lead to a city named Truth,
but few find the path and are lost forever,
never knowing why or what to say

To those who blindly followed and prayed for a better day,
surrounded by the blooming lilies of hope and joy so wild

Many roads lead to a city named Truth,
how I wish I could turn back the feet that led to sorrow and a forever-lost child

For on the road to Truth,
though I faithfully followed the signs and arrived on time,
Truth betrayed me and left me behind

© Brooke London 2010

A Story Begins…

2010-07-23T16:00:00.000-04:00

... late. At night. Just as I’m tired and ready to crawl into bed. Listening to a piece of music. And my muse takes flight.

I close my eyes and pictures take form in my mind, painted by the strains of music, a scene laid out before me, waiting to be captured in words. The scene raises so many questions, questions that will not be answered until the end of the tale. Now, I don’t know what the ending will be. I only have a starting point. And all those questions.

So I confine the words into a chapter; the sights, the smells, the sounds, the tactile sensations of what I see. And I put it away to simmer on the back burner of my mind.

Over the next weeks, maybe months, I’ll find out who my characters are: what they want, what they would live for, what they would die for. I delve into their minds. I find out what nightmares disturb their sleep. Events that challenge my characters are thrown into the pot. The plot grows organically out of my characters: what is their story, what will force them to reach for everything they’ve ever dreams of, ever cried over and never wanted.

And one day, I sit down with my simmering characters and events and write their stories. I have basic events and crisis’ lined up for my characters but I don’t know when exactly these things will happen. They will happen when they are meant to happen. I can’t tell anyone the story because it is still unfolding for me.

It unfolds until I type the words “The End”.

I like creating stories this way, it keeps me entertained while I am writing – I’m like a reader with the advantage of being able to write the story as it comes to me. I think every writer has his or her own method of writing.

This is mine.

Brooke London's interview on "Book Discussion with Fran Lewis"

2010-07-21T16:58:00.000-04:00

Fran Lewis graciously hosted me on her show today. It's a two hour show and I appear half way through. Enjoy! :)
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/rrradio/2010/07/21/book-discussion-with-fran-lewis/

You Can’t Go Back

2010-06-30T10:12:00.000-04:00

Back in May I visited my family near Edmonton. And I decided I wanted to see the places where I grew up and lived during my childhood and young adulthood. It was strangely depressing.

There were two houses and three schools that I visited. The first house was the one I lived in until I was fifteen. It was an older suburban area, middle class. The house looked small. Years ago, Dad had put in a small brick retaining wall across the lawn near the sidewalk with a little built up spot next to the driveway. My older sister’s boyfriend had backed up into it and knocked it off. My dad had put it back on all those years ago but not cemented it in. It still wasn’t cemented into place – I won’t tell you how many years that was, but it was a loooong time ago. The street looked Alice-in-Wonderland tiny, maybe because I had been so short for most of the time I lived there.

The elementary school I went to looked old and broken, the asphalt playground area strewn with asphalt debris and forgotten toys. It also looked much smaller than my memories. The portables were gone and the church next to it had converted to another denomination. It had been a Roman Catholic church attached to the school when I attended. I can still remember Sister Ryan telling me to stop fidgeting in my seat when we went to visit the church – had I never been in a church before?? I was seven years old. Sister Ryan scared the hell out of me but, looking back, she was a good woman who took me aside and taught me to read when I needed the help.

We then drove to the house where I lived from ages fifteen to twenty-two, when I finished university. It had been a rather posh area when we moved in. Now, the front yards were cluttered with dandelions, rioting amongst the new and dead grass. The street also looked smaller – probably because now people parked their cars in the street instead of their driveways. The yards were unkempt and messy – it was obvious that neither the yards, nor the houses had seen any upkeep or improvements since I left all those years ago. Now, it looked like people didn’t care about the high grass and the once beautiful houses. It looked destroyed and it slumped at its heels. I was disappointed, surprised and a little let down.

The places where I grew up did not match the vibrant memories I had. The places where I grew up were not what I expected. The places where I grew up no longer existed anywhere but in my mind.

Maybe I shouldn’t have gone back to see. Maybe I should have left well enough alone. Maybe it’s best to leave past homes alone. Let sleeping dogs lie. I was a little depressed after my visit to the past. It’s amazing how things tend to look good in retrospective inner mind context but so much different in reality. I guess I had romanticized the places where I grew up in some way. In my mind, the houses and areas were pristine and now…now they were run-down wrecks that had seen much better days.

A couple years ago, during a day in the summer after I left my ex, I went back to my former marital home. Just to see. My ex was probably at work. What I saw was expected but still depressing. This is where I had spent nine years of my life, not happy years, but years nonetheless. The yard was a mess with the grass and weeds growing to my knees, the foundation of the house was cracked even more. It looked like the ‘Trailer Park Boys’ had moved in. And that hurt too.

The places of my past are not happy places. They actually weren’t happy places when I lived in them but memory had given them a gloss of happy unreality.

I won’t visit those places again.

Brooke London Internet Radio Interview podcast

2010-04-21T18:11:00.000-04:00

This is a clip of The Asylum for your Soul Show Whistle Radio 102.7 - A Soul Asylum Poetry, and Double K Records Production from March 30, 2010 with Brooke London. The clip is just over 30 minutes long and includes the interview and music for the show.

Enjoy!

All the Angry People, Where Do They All Come From?

2010-03-25T18:57:00.004-04:00

It seems like the world is one big blob of pissed-off-ness. Walking down the streets, driving on the roads, malls, airports, churches. Everywhere I see people who are ANGRY for some reason. And do you know where all this anger is taking us? Nowhere. It’s a dead-end road.

I grew up in an angry, chaotic childhood. I traveled around an angry, chaotic world. I’ve been employed in angry, chaotic workplaces. I’ve lived in an angry, chaotic marriage. The one common element? Me. And the world at large.

Have you ever known a truly calm, peaceful, unflappable person? A person who doesn’t let anger creep into their lives, who lives life in harmony with themselves and others. I haven’t. Everyone seems to be living in his or her own personal hell.

There always seems to be a reason to be angry. Oh, he cut me off, the bastard. Oh, my boss is a jerk, the bastard. Oh, my workload is so unfair, those bastards. Oh, my life is hell and I am going to blame the whole world, you bastards. Oh, life is so hard for me while it’s so easy for everyone else, those bastards.

People walk around thinking everyone else is the enemy. The politicians, the economists, the terrorists, the intelligence agencies, the countries that populate the world. Anger is fear. Fear that someone else is going to hurt us or take something away from us. Fear that our circumstances will never change. Fear that we are alone in the world, without support and without love. They say that love makes the world go ‘round but that seems unrealistic. It seems that anger makes the world go ‘round. And that’s not a good thing.

Angry people make stupid choices. Angry people are so busy being self-righteous that they don’t see anything good in the world. They are crippled by unreasonableness. Everything and everyone is a target for their anger – why should anyone else be happy when I’m not? they ask themselves. Bitter, vindictive people go out of their way to spread their fear and paranoia.

Anger is like a contagious virus. I see it on the 401 Highway in Toronto, the busiest highway in North America. One person, apparently having a bad day, cuts off another motorist and flips him the bird. The second motorist responds by becoming angry and starts driving more aggressively, cutting other people off. Pretty soon, the 401 becomes an arena for gladiator road warriors. The 401 is crazy and so are most of the people who drive it. Because of this, I drive very defensively in Toronto – too many people having too many bad days, doing too many reckless things. I try to be aware of what is happening 100 meters behind, ahead and to the side of me (the 401 is 16 lanes wide – there’s a lot of space for aggression).

I turn on the news and everyone is angry. I go onto news websites and all the comments on all the stories are angry. I speak to people who seem ready to explode with anger – those ones scare me.

Anger is a natural emotion. Angry responses are each person’s choice. None of this but you did this wrong so I’m pissed off with you and I’m going to demonstrate how angry I am – I have no control over my emotions – you made me do it. No personal responsibility, no integrity whatsoever. Well, you may not have control over your emotions, but you do have control over what you do with your emotions. We all do, but rarely do we see people exercising control over themselves. They just erupt like Mount Vesuvius and rain their rage down on everyone within spitting range.

After I left my ex, I was angry. I was angry about how I let him treat me. I was angry with him. I was angry with me. I was angry that he took my piano out of spite (he didn’t play but he didn’t want me to have it because he was angry that I was leaving him). But anger doesn’t help me. Anger eats you up. Unfortunately, it doesn’t spit you out; it devours you until your whole existence is one of chaos and turmoil.

I have been learning how to let go of anger. It hasn’t been an easy process. I’ve had to cut some things out of my life such as news reports and negative, angry people. Driving in Toronto used to be a real problem anger-wise for me – so instead of reacting to the stupid things people do, I sing at the top of my lungs in the car and let it go. I don’t have to take on someone else’s anger. I’ve talked to people who are in my life, who will always be in my life, and explained how their anger affects me.

I am an emotional sponge, something I am working on not being. I suck up negative emotions around me very easily. So now, I work on controlling whom I come in contact with. Yes, I have de-friended a couple of people on Facebook, who only seemed to spew and stew with anger. I don’t need this garbage in my life.

I meditate. I try to concentrate on the positive instead of the negative. I don’t always succeed but at least I am aware of my shortcomings and I work on my issues to understand why I’m feeling what I’m feeling. Walking around angry without knowing why you feel like crap is no way to live a life. And your body knows this – anger causes stress hormones to flood your system and you become prone to all sorts of health problems.

I think many of us are angry because of the pace of life these days. Between jobs, family and friends, we’re loaded down with more than we can handle. I think at least a partial solution to this problem is to simplify one’s life as much as possible. No, your kids do not have to be in some sort of organized activity seven days a week, requiring you to be licensed as a taxi driver. No, you don’t have to do everything yourself – you can ask for and require help. No, you don’t have to be perfect. No, you don’t have to have everything your way. No, you don’t have to walk around angry.

Even simple things, like your physical environment, are important. If your physical environment is messy, then it affects you emotionally. Try to pare down what you have. What do you really need? What are the things that are just getting in your way and bogging you down? Make a distinction between wants and needs. Yes, I would like to buy that cute pair of shoes and a few hundred dollars worth of books, but do I NEED to? No. I don’t need another pair of shoes, I don’t need more books and I don’t need more STUFF that I forget about as soon as I buy it.

And I definitely don’t want to go to the mall where there is temptation to buy stuff everywhere. Have you ever noticed that people in malls have this glazed look in their eyes? You know. The “I must buy something or die” look. They gaze longingly through shop windows at some item they’ll wear or use twice and then never look at again. Mall people are especially bad at Christmas because they get aggressive. They wait until the last possible moment and then desperately run around angry and upset. This is why I don’t go into malls between November 15^th and January 15^th – those people are crazy.

At any rate, anger is yours to deal with. You can let it eat you up or you learn how to deal with it constructively. Your choice. I’ve made mine.

Milk, please?

2010-03-10T20:10:00.001-05:00

I just watched a commercial on television that extolled the virtues of a nice cold glass of milk. The milk looks wonderfully white and clean in a clear glass on a wonderfully white and clean background. One can almost forget that the milk came from a somewhat smelly animal in a barnyard. And milk comes out out the cow very warm.

When I was traveling in Asia, I landed in Bangkok coming from the beach area of Phuket. Beautiful beaches – I highly recommend them to anyone adventurous enough to go to Asia. But I digress…

Anyway, I landed in Bangkok – and why would I land in any city in Asia during the day??? Just never seemed to happen – at night. I was a bit leery being on my own, so I grabbed a taxi and asked the driver to take me to a hotel than wasn’t too far down on the price scale (that would come later). I got to the hotel at around 11pm and, after the staff chased a four-inch cockroach out of the room, I realized I was hungry.

I perused the English room service menu and didn’t recognize a thing except toast and milk. So I ordered toast and milk. I couldn’t figure out why it took 45 minutes for it to arrive. Until it did.

The toast was bread that it appeared they’d waved over an open flame for a minute. And then there was the milk. I took a sip of it and found it was very warm, body temperature warm. And something got stuck to my lower lip. Hmmmm. I pulled the offended piece of whatever it was off my lip and gagged.

It was a hair. From a cow. The hotel obviously had a cow somewhere in the vicinity of the kitchens and they had milked this cow for me. They absolutely gave me what I asked for. I poured the rest of it down the drain, nauseous and definitely not hungry any more.

Now I realize that any dairy farmers reading this are going to scoff and say, “So, what’s the problem?” But for me, that was about on par of being chased around the room by a four-inch cockroach.

I refused to drink milk for a long time after that. I took calcium supplements. For the past several years, I’ve seen commercials encourage people to drink milk – ice, cold milk. So I started drinking milk again but every time I see one of those commercials, I think ‘cow hair’.

Ugh.

Men??

2010-02-21T18:11:00.003-05:00

I want a man to be a man. I know they exist, these men, this man I look for. I just have to see past whatever they’ve gathered around themselves, hiding who and what they are. For all know, my perfect man could be five feet tall and ninety-eight pounds. I’m sort of hoping he’ll at least be somewhere around my height (5'5") if not taller, but who knows what lies in a human heart, under mystifying package? So I talk to them all, the short and tall, the big and small, the wide and thin, the wiry and slim. Wondering. Is this him? Is this you? And why does it matter so much that I find you? To say I want to dive into your ocean seems trite. And dangerous if I dive in only to find you’re two inches deep. Break my damn neck.

So I am left with this inexplicable urge to be skin close in a relationship with a man and yet run like the Hounds of the Baskervilles are on my heels, like a squirrel darting up a tree to escape from danger. But the danger is not really from someone else, it’s from me. What if I can’t handle more than what I’ve already handled and fear locks me in, locks me down, won’t let anyone in. The question becomes, “will I choose what is best for me?” The question becomes, “will I be alone for eternity?” I’m not settling this time. Settling set me miles backward last time. I was careless with my life, I was careless in my choices, like one more cigarette to be burned and thrown away.

Just some things running through my head lately. Just wish they weren’t sprinting.

Start 2010 with Places to Find Pitch Dark :D

2010-01-01T01:32:00.004-05:00

Pitch Dark, my debut novel of Romantic Suspense, is available in both e-book and paperback formats in many places for your convenience. The updated book trailer is on YouTube for your viewing pleasure :)

Paperback is available at
Cerridwen Press

Barnes & Noble

Amazon USA

Book Depository USA

Alibris USA

Amazon Canada

Amazon UK

Eruditor Low Cost Book Store in the UK for £13.95

Amazon Germany/Austria

Amazon France

Booktopia Australia

Fishpond Australia Australasia's Biggest Online Bookstore for $34.97 AUD

Eden Terrace in New Zealand for $NZD34.12

Libreria Universitaria Italy

Ebook is available at:
Cerridwen Press

Amazon Kindle for $9.99

Pitch Dark has been receiving great reviews:

RT Book Reviews Magazine, November 2009 issue, gave Pitch Dark an impressive 4 out of 5 stars, saying "This story has the perfect mix of romance and suspense, with plenty of twists to hold your interest. London has created two strong-willed and passionate characters. Connor and Alyssa strike sparks off each other whether they're fighting or making up."

Night Owl Romance, Reviewer Melinda, gave Pitch Dark its Reviewer Top Pick designation, saying, "Pitch Dark was an awesome read from beginning to ending. I loved the whole suspense, betrayal and lies twisting in the book.

The attraction between Connor and Alyssa was great. You can tell they both are afraid to love because of their pasts but man the heat between them is explosive. Even the grandfather in the book was great to read. His attempts of matchmaking will really make you smile. This is the first I have read of Brooke London and it won’t be the last. Brooke London knows her men, action and how to create chemistry between her characters. All of that just makes her books worth reading.

Joyfully Reviewed said, "I thought that Alyssa and Connor were the perfect foil for the other, being so different. I just loved learning new things about both of them that enhanced their personalities. While the sparking passion and corky humor would have kept my attention, it was the thrilling suspense that kept me turning the pages to discover just what would come next. If having espionage, betrayal, spies and danger along with your romance has you grabbing for a story as it does me, then Pitch Dark is a must read for you."

Madame Butterfly gave Pitch Dark an 'A' grading, saying "Pitch Dark is one of the best romantic suspense novels I’ve read in a while. There’s a nice easy flow to Brooke London’s writing style and from this book, she has an ability to write well rounded, complex characters while keeping them from coming across as stereotypical and stale. Her ability to slowly build up on the plot and keep the tension going at just the right pace is just as fine. I’ll definitely be looking out for more of her books.
Sex rating: Crotchless panty- the sexual situations are written with a lot of intensity and passion, but with soft, non graphic, sensual language. This is not an erotic romance on that level. Still, very spicy though."

Literary Nymphs gave Pitch Dark a 4 out of a possible 5 Nymphs: "An impressive read. Quality literature, recommended for anyone who enjoys the genre." The reviewer noted, "Pitch Dark is a good suspense story...I did not want to put it down."

New Year, New Directions

2009-12-31T16:34:00.002-05:00

Yes, it is that time of year yet again—December 31st, New Years Eve. The night when one and all are supposed to party like it’s 1999. But like Christmas, New Year’s Eve has lost a lot of the sparkle as I have become older. Quite honestly, I’m probably going to be in bed and hopefully asleep by 10:30pm. And when I wake up, it’ll be 2010.

Crap, 2010??? How the hell did that happen? Through all the good and the bad, time marches on. What happened to being 21? What happened to traveling around the world just because? I’m hardly in my dotage but responsibilities tend to take precedence over being footloose and fancy-free. That said, I still take risks and try new things.

2009 was an eventful year for me, I got published, for the first time/hopefully not the last time, and divorced, hopefully the only time, on the same day. How many people can say that? Between these two events, I’ve managed to keep busy and stay relatively sane. Not completely sane because, honestly, that would be boring. ☺ I received a Rising Star award from my publisher, which I am now looking at on my bookshelf. Not a bad start for a first time published author. I learned how to use Photoshop fairly well (the light version, the full version is out of my price range). I updated my blog today with new graphics and a new color scheme/look, which I’m quite pleased with. Always room for improvement though.

Just over a year ago, I was invited to be a member of a great critique group of ten people who keep me on my toes and offer loads of encouragement / support / advice / information, both personal and professional. And this year, I discovered how truly valuable my group is. Ladies, I love you lots! If you’re a writer, a critique partner/group you trust is invaluable. The women in my group are great – not a wilting flower amongst them. We all have strong opinions and strengths and a great synergy has been created. We’ve connected both as writers and as women (hear us roar – LOL!!).

Not everything has been great but such is life. I’ve learned from my mistakes and my difficulties. I know they, whoever they are, say that difficulties build character but I think I have enough character now, Universe, so please lay off just a bit ☺. I am in a much better mental space now than I was in a year ago at this time. My emotions have settled, I’ve settled into my home, I’ve settled into a routine, I’ve settled somewhat into my life. All of which makes me feel, well, more settled overall.

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions on principle but this year, I am going to make a few.
1. Become a terrific photographer
2. Get my second book finished (I’ve got 11 days to go) and published.
3. Restart and finish my third book (a paranormal romantic suspense) which I’ve been itching to get back to for a while.
4. Find a great agent.
5. Put together a course on the different aspects of writing novels. I have a different way of setting things up that I’m pretty sure no one else uses.
6. Meditate daily.
7. Exercise daily to get the creative juices running.
8. Complete my morning pages every day (see Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way).
9. Live consciously and be happy.

So the past year has been one of leaving my past behind and starting to look to the future. 2010 will be the year when I consolidate the gains I’ve made in 2009. I’m looking forward to this year. The shackles have been shaken off and I’m ready to fly. I’ll see you in the sky. ☺

The Undomestic Goddess

2009-12-10T20:38:00.004-05:00

I have never in my life claimed to be a “domestic goddess”, unlike the many people who write cookbooks or give tips and tricks to the hopeful on how to fold fitted bed sheets properly. Growing up, domesticity wasn’t really a big thing for me (okay, I can hear my mother laughing hysterically at that gross understatement). Don’t get me wrong, my mother tried and, I think, for the most part she succeeded admirably with my sisters, both of whom cook and pull off domesticity very well. Me, well, not so much.

When I first moved to Toronto, my younger sister and I lived here for a while in the city. I remember she came over to my place once and for some reason she was looking through my cupboards, probably to help me cook something. She turned to me in amazement and said, “You have no canned goods, no staples! How can you cook with no canned goods?” I think my answer was, “Um, cook???”

She used to go through cabbage roll phases – I’d go over to her place, which would be permeated with the smell of cabbage, and she’d have multiple pans filled with cabbage rolls, cooked and ready to go into the freezer or for lunches or dinner. An organized domestic goddess even in her early 20s.

My older sister married young and had three kids out on an acreage. She would plant these huge vegetable gardens, bake bread every day it seemed. Make loads of pies and freeze them. Those kids ate well. She’d put on these huge holiday feasts for a zillion relatives and friends. Another organized domestic goddess early on.

And me, well … I watched Oprah many years ago when Martha Stewart appeared on her show. Martha showed Oprah how to fold a fitted bed sheet. And, I swear, I tried to fold a fitted bed sheet into a nice, even, neat square. On the tenth try, I balled up the sheet into a messy roll and shoved it into the linen closet.

Baking is fairly straightforward but I seldom get the urge to bake. Cooking seems to be a lost art for me. I don’t think I got the domestic gene that apparently my sisters got. But I can’t blame genetics. My interest in the domestic side of life is sadly lacking – I just don’t care enough to be domestic. I wish I had more domestic interests. I’m one of the few women I know who hates decorating. Every woman I know seems to be a decorating maniac, changing the decor with the seasons. I moved into an apartment once and someone asked me if I was going to paint the walls to something other than white. I said, “No, I like white.” I don’t notice these things, never have.

I’d rather be doing almost anything other than domestic stuff – writing, reading, watching tv, going out, anything but. In a perfect world, I’d have a maid and a chef, but as I haven’t won the lottery, it is up to me to at least try to be somewhat competent domestically.

And the really strange thing? I love cookbooks. I love cooking stores. I love cooking implements. I just don’t love cooking. Or baking. Or decorating. I manage to keep my place clean for the most part. It’s not that I’m incapable. I can follow recipes in cookbooks and get the correct result. Mostly. I’m just not interested. Which is why I’m eternally grateful to have a double side grill press – I can grill everything year around. And it takes me five minutes to make dinner – perfect for someone who can’t be bothered.

If I have people over for dinner, I can actually cook fairly well. At least no one has died yet and I’ve had no complaints. I think it’s easier to get motivated to be domestic if other people count on one being domestic. Like a parent. Or a spouse – but the cooking should be shared – or have one person cook and the other person clean, just to equitably distribute the tedium.

Maybe the issue is that my head has always been elsewhere than at home. I work at home but I’m not AT home. I’m thinking of plots, sub-plots, characters, politics, world events, science, psychology and human behavior, quantum mechanics (although not so much anymore), the state of the world and society, and information technology. And romance fiction. It’s a real hodge-podge of interests and none of them include anything in the domestic sphere. You’d think that I’d at least appreciate baking more because that is based on chemistry.

I think I tried for so long during my disastrous marriage to be a domestic person that now I feel like running screaming from the kitchen if I’m required to make anything that takes more than six minutes. Ten minutes at the outside. Square-peg-in-a-round-hole syndrome.

I still don’t keep canned goods. I still can’t fold a fitted bed sheet. I still don’t like cooking. I’ll never be Julia Child or Nigella Lawson or Martha Stewart (but that last one is probably a good thing – no pun intended - as she is a veritable menace to women everywhere by insisting that one should only use kosher salt, fresh eggs from your own chicken coop and being a perfectionist without mentioning that she has a huge staff to do all this stuff for her 24 hours a day). Women have enough to feel inadequate about without someone telling us we need to keep an immaculate home, cook and bake everything from scratch and do everything to perfection. Why doesn’t anyone tell men to do this? But I digress. Sorry. ☺

I guess the point is, I get on well enough by keeping my kitchen and domestic adventures to a minimum. It works for me. I start cooking and the smoke alarm goes off. The universe is telling me, unequivocally, to be an undomestic, unconventional goddess.

And I can live with that.

A Banner Day for Pitch Dark!

2009-11-04T13:35:00.008-05:00

I am having a banner day today! Pitch Dark is now available on Amazon USA, Canada, UK, Germany / Austria and France AND the Barnes & Noble websites! Excited bouncing happening here!! Select the links below to take you to the website of your choice :) Discounts from the list price are available at some sites.

Barnes & Noble

Amazon USA

Amazon Canada

Amazon UK

Amazon Germany/Austria

Amazon France

WOW!!

Wonderful review of Pitch Dark in RT Book Reviews magazine, November 2009 issue!

2009-10-03T14:31:00.006-04:00

RT Rating:
Category: ROMANTIC SUSPENSE
Publisher: CERRIDWEN
Type: Romantic Suspense

This story has the perfect mix of romance and suspense, with plenty of twists to hold your interest. London has created two strong-willed and passionate characters. Connor and Alyssa strike sparks off each other whether they're fighting or making up.

Summary: Former intelligence operative Connor Donnelly, now the CEO and president of Energy Unlimited, has been negotiating a co-venture between his company and a company owned by Douglas Tiernan. Douglas' granddaughter, Alyssa, wants to protect her grandfather's interests and offers to meet with Connor at his headquarters in Colorado.

Alyssa and Connor are wary of each other but also very attracted. When their lives are threatened, they are thrown into a world of espionage and terrorism, and Connor and Alyssa will have to combine their skills to stay alive. (CERRIDWEN, Jun., 349 pp., $18.99) HOT

—Barb Anderson

The HOT rating means: Most romantic fiction falls into this category. Ranges from conventional love making to explicit sex.

The Four Star Rating: Compelling. A Page Turner.

Yay!! Got it right the first time and it'll only get better from here!

No Man’s Land

2009-09-17T15:06:00.004-04:00

I think most men today are feeling under siege due to the upheavals in society in the last fifty years or so. And in a way, I think it’s time for everyone to change how he or she reacts to and perceives the opposite sex.

It used to be that, generally, women stayed home with the kids, protecting and nurturing hearth and home, while their men went out to slay the dragon (or protect his family against threats, physical and economic) everyday to bring home the spoils for his family. Everyone had a role and life was simpler because everyone generally knew what their role was.

Of course, nothing stays the same and abuse of authority, whether by governments or individuals, leads to revolutions and rebellions to erase the perceived and/or real inequities.

From the beginning of time, women were viewed a chattels, like a cow or a goat, from which children and service were extracted. Sometimes the chattels were loved and respected and sometimes they weren’t. And then there was always the argument as to gender superiority. Since bigger is ostensibly better (witness all those teenage boys with a penchant for measuring things), women lost out and, it was presumed, declared inferior to men.

The problem is men and women are now so busy pointing fingers at each other to assign blame for everything that we’ve lost sight of what we’re trying to accomplish. I can hardly blame a living man for all the wrong men have done in the history of the world. Just as women cannot be held accountable for all the wrong women have done.

What I don’t understand, and don’t know how to fix, is why do we have to point fingers at all? Why can’t we just work with what we have and do our best? In the past fifties years, the cultural and social pendulum has swung from “Father Knows Best” to “Everyone Loves Raymond”—from benevolent, wise man to idiotic man, while women have gone from brainless doormats to mistresses of their own domain. Just look at the sit-coms. The woman is the smart, insightful character while the man bumbles around and learns something by the end of the show. Have any of these depictions been accurate? No.

I don’t know one man who hasn’t had their head handed to them on a platter because they opened a door for a woman. The woman invariably feels indignant that a man thinks she’s not capable of opening a door. Unless one is disabled, most people are capable of opening doors. So it’s not a reflection on the capability of the woman, but the manners of the man. Hell, if someone opens a door for me I say, “thank you”— I also open doors for other people. Big deal. Why would I get upset over someone opening a door for me? I know I can open the door. He knows I can open the door. But someone taught this man that opening a door for a woman is simple courtesy. So THANK YOU. Any woman who reacts badly to having a door open really needs to take a look at her priorities and possibly go for therapy.

Some women, and I see this all the time, will walk through a door that a man has opened and not even said “thank you” to the guy, not even smile at the guy. These women have really, really poor manners— obviously no one taught them about common courtesy.

But I digress. Sorry, pet peeve.

So, we’re on a pendulum that was stuck on the guys’ end forever and now that swinging bob has swung more onto the gals’ end. And some people think that somehow reverse discrimination should be SOP for righting all the wrongs done to women by men. We have affirmative action programs, not only for women but also for anyone who isn’t a white male.

Well, excuse me, but I am perfectly capable of getting a degree/diploma and a job in a male dominated field all by myself. But really, am I?

Affirmative action programs and the like are part of a massive social engineering experiment. I don’t know about your country, but in Canada in 1965, approximately 65% of men and around 38% of women smoked. The Canadian government knew that smoking cigarettes caused major health problems and death. So they embarked on a massive social engineering experiment to get people to stop smoking or to not start smoking. Forty-four years later, something like 20% of all people in Canada smoke—that’s a huge drop of around one percent per year since 1965. It took nearly half a century to get attitudes towards smoking to change. But change it did.

If I hadn’t been a beneficiary of feminism, I probably would not have ended up with a business degree, and I would probably not have received a diploma in computer science. Nor would I be competing with men, based on merit alone, for jobs in a male-dominated field like information technology. Feminism has allowed me to do things that were not generally approved of for women forty or fifty years ago. Any woman today that says she is not a feminist is a hypocrite, because feminism that has given women choices.

Unfortunately, the way feminism has been proposed and practiced has sort of screwed everyone over and left many of us, okay…me, wondering what my role is. There is this ‘thing’ in feminism that resulted in the Superwoman syndrome. Hey, we’re women, we can have it ALL: we can have an education, careers, kids, a man (but really that’s optional), do all the housework, do all the cooking, nurture and teach your children and still be a sex kitten at night. Are you kidding me?? We’re freaking exhausted trying to have it all, do it all. And men? They don’t know what to do. Feminism has sloppily re-defined what it is to be female but has not held out an olive branch to men at all. Men are the ENEMY.

According to http://www.chivalrynow.net/,

“In America, we shy away from defining manhood as if the very subject were taboo. After a long history of unwarranted violence and discrimination, men are being taught from birth that they automatically carry an inheritance of guilt for past sins. We make sure that no male child slips by without taking his share. Each of us is expected to bear the guilt of our forefathers along with a personal stigma for simply being male. We are told in a thousand different ways, either in silence or in the commercial media, that there is something inherently wrong with being a man.

The intent is clear. We do not want today's men repeating the crimes of the past. The hope seems to be that by tearing us from any sense of cultural identity the world can move toward greater harmony. More guilt and less pride make for a calmer species. Women and minorities will be treated better. The demise of Western male dominance might even bring an end to war.

Such conclusions are dangerously simplistic. We cannot excise the cultural identity of half the population like a cancer and replace it with nothing. Doing so sends our entire cultural evolution into a tailspin, leaving a psychic void that can only lead to disaster.

The results are all around us — a population of boys and men searching for who they are and how they fit in. No road map, no gender specific guidelines, no rite-of-passage — not even an articulated goal. Finding no guidance at all, many turn to whatever distraction is available, be it entertainment, business, sports or narcotics. Or they just give up.”

This is no way to run a society, no way to run a world, where half the population is mad about the past and the other half is mad about the present. We need to turn a page in male/female relations. We’re at war with each other. And there are no winners, only losers in this conflict.

And I don’t know how to fix it. The only fix would be to celebrate both the masculine and feminine without referring to the “other” as evil or depraved or stupid or weak or inferior. But people are not perfect, understanding is never perfect, we don’t even understand our motivations and ourselves for the most part. It all stews beneath the surface, waiting for the next inciting incident to tip off the next round of skirmishes.

It plays out on the world stage and on a personal stage every single day. We’ve created an enormous no-man’s land between men and women. Somehow we have to figure out how to bridge this gulf. And we all need to contribute, need to be open to different viewpoints and come up with a happy medium, where everyone compromises.

Yeah, dream on. Sighhhh.

Older Men and Flirting

2009-08-31T00:00:00.001-04:00

The other day, I was sitting in a large mall waiting to meet someone. As is normal for me, I was early. I'm always early - it's like a disease :). Anyway, I sat down with a coffee to wait for this person, my laptop open on the table (also like a disease - needing my laptop near) and kept one eye out for the other person to arrive.

A man approached me - he must have been somewhere in his late 70s, maybe early 80s - and he complimented me on my outfit and jewelry and said something flattering about my appearance. I managed to say "thank you", smiled at him and he went on his way. I guess I must have looked suitably surprised because the couple at the table next to me laughed and the woman said, "That would make any woman's day." I laughed, agreed with her and the couple left.

And I had to wonder if that man had been nearer to my age, would I have wondered what he was after? Probably. Suspicion factor would be built in for a younger man in the same situation. But older men can do this sort of thing without seeming sleazy. My own father does this type of thing - I've seen him do it numerous times. Nothing lascivious or inappropriate, just friendly.

I think much older men know that approaching a younger woman with a compliment won't result in an insult or a put-down. I knew he wasn't being disingenuous - he was just being nice.

But a man nearer to my age doing the same thing? All my radar would have sprouted up, looking for any signs, however minute, that he was less than sincere. I'm a suspicious person, always have been. Very few men my own age approach me - I think I broadcast "don't come near me" signals, which is close enough to the truth. And I've been known to be oblivious to men - I don't notice them unless they approach me, as this older gentleman did. I do know a physically attractive man when I see one - I register the information and then I forget about it. What is attractive to me is a man who is friendly, intelligent, trust-worthy and nice. Appearance doesn't count for much unless the person would need to have their front window removed and a crane to lift them to an ambulance - that, I would have a problem with.

So, I guess the question becomes, at what age does a man need to be in order to approach an unknown woman, give a compliment and not be perceived negatively? Or is it an age thing at all? Maybe it's more of an attitude thing. I would like to think that I could differentiate between a genuine compliment and a disingenuous one.

Or maybe, it's just as well that I'm not looking for that "special someone" at this point. I'm saving the entire half of the single population for the time being :). Yes, I think that's the way I'll look at it.

Costco - Parental Fight Round 16897

2009-08-29T12:57:00.008-04:00

I visited my neighborhood Costco this morning. Doing what I would normally do on a weekday but didn’t get around to doing. I expected Costco to be jammed with people, which it was, but I didn’t expect to keep running into one battling family – a mother, a father and two little blond boys that I estimated to be around three and five.

I don’t know what started it. But the father and mother decided to have a major spat in the middle of Costco – yelling and shouting and pointing at each other accusingly, while their little boys looked on with numb expressions and dead eyes. It was obvious that these children had seen this kind of behavior so much that they had shut down, waiting for the storm to pass. I passed them about three times in the aisles and somehow ended up behind them in the check-out line where, forty-five minutes later, they were still arguing and the boys looked even more shell-shocked. The parents were so involved in their argument they didn't even notice their younger boy drop his toy (he was in the kid's seat in the shopping cart) - I picked it up and gave it back to him. I wanted to give the poor little guy a hug he looked so miserable. I didn't because I don't touch other people's kids unless I know them and the parents know me well enough to know that I am not a threat.

I know that I can’t tell people to “SHUT UP ALREADY – YOU’RE HURTING YOUR KIDS WITH YOUR STUPIDITY” without being told to mind my own business and/or possibly being assaulted because what else can I expect of people so ignorant as to argue in front of their children. These people should not even have kids – they’re not mature enough. But seeing those two little boys so traumatized just broke my heart. And it made me angry as hell.

These parents are obviously adrenaline junkies who will probably have make-up sex later and go back to their normal fighting activities. The problem with this is that the kids only see an argument, they don’t see a resolution. They are left in a state of perpetual uncertainty and fear, wondering if they did something to make Mommy and Daddy mad at each other. Kids will always blame themselves for things that go wrong with mum and dad.

I wanted to slap both parents, not that I would have, but I really wanted to. I actually haven’t slapped or hit anyone since I was a kid and then it was my younger sister. Plus one moronic guy in India who came up behind me and grabbed me, but that was self-defense.

Don’t these parents know what precious gifts they have in their children? Don’t they care that their behavior hurts their children? No. They only care about winning whatever stupid argument they’re having – a power struggle played out for the viewing displeasure of every other person in Costco and their poor boys. The reason I get extremely upset with abusive behavior to any child is that I tried to have children but due to problems that were not mine, plus five failed IVF attempts and one failed adoption attempt, I don’t have children. I wanted children but in light of what happened in my now-defunct marriage, I can see it is just as well that I didn’t have kids.

I think people should be licensed before they can have children. We make people take driver’s tests to get drivers licenses so they don’t kill themselves or other people on the road. I don’t see why people should be allowed to have children if they are going to mentally / emotionally / physically / spiritually damage their children for life through idiotic and destructive behavior. Take a parenting course, for God’s sake. Do something other than what you are doing but don’t damage your children. It’s very simple. And very hard to do when you have an immature relationship.

I know life is not perfect and couples argue. But really, people, don’t argue in front of your kids and don’t argue so that they can hear you—act like two reasonable adults and stop acting younger than your children. Practice some self-control because honestly, you’re embarrassing yourselves. The parents I witnessed would have been good for those Ultimate Fighter contests I’ve heard of. No holds barred.

Seriously, grow up, get some help or get away from each other. Your kids are better off with a single parent in a less stressful environment than a chaotic environment created by clashing parents.

Okay, that's it for my rant. I just had to get that off my chest.

Independence

2009-08-25T17:12:00.004-04:00

Hmmmm. I’m starting to wonder, actually have been wondering for quite some time, if I was meant to be a settled down person. You know—married, 2.3 children, white picket fence, steady employment and PTA meetings. More and more, I’ve been thinking ‘no’.

I took one of those Facebook quizzes about what kind of animal represents me—as a rule, I don’t take them seriously but sometimes the results make me think. Apparently, I am an Eagle type person, the description of which is:

You have an Eagle personality. These Birds of Prey are some of the wildest of nature's beings. Though they can be tamed they always retain some of their wild spirit. Most see the Eagle as a wandering spirit but it only seems that way to the untrained eye. In actuality you as an Eagle personality have issues being tied down in relationships and in places sometimes not because you want to be elsewhere just that you want the freedom to be elsewhere if you choose. You aren't the most trusting individual but you are the most well known. Eagle personalities are few and far between but they tend to stand out in a crowd as if they don't belong with them, mainly because they are fairly solitary: they might be the artist who sits in the corner and doesn't communicate, they might be the popular person who has lots of acquaintances but very few actual friends. Being an Eagle means you have an inner core of strength, which you unfortunately have to use quite frequently since you are uncomfortable leaning on others, and have difficulties sharing your personal and innermost thoughts.

I don’t know anymore. I like to think that I chart my life according to my own wishes, but more and more, I look at my past and realize that I’ve never been settled. Not at any time, not in any place, not with any person, not in any job. My earliest memories are of wanting to get away, to escape from wherever I happened to be in my life or where I was living.

For a period of time during my now-defunct marriage, I was at the same job for almost four years and during that time, in combination with an impossible marriage, I felt trapped. I was in a rut. Get up every day, go to work, come home, make dinner, watch TV and argue with my ex. Every. Single. Day. I felt as if I had died in a hell of monotony. And then one day, I was laid off along with half my department because the company I worked for was on the brink of bankruptcy.

Suddenly, everything was immediate. I started living in the here and now and anything could happen. I was scared as hell because I had become accustomed to an every day mundane existence and was abruptly dumped into a whirlpool of uncertainty. At the time, I thought it the worst thing ever. After a number of months (and after much nagging by my ex even though my severance package paid my full salary for the duration), I found a contract position as a Business Analyst. The position turned into Project Manager, Build Manager, Trainer, Team Lead, Systems Analyst, Quality Assurance Analyst, Support Analyst, Professional Handholder and Chief Cook and Bottle Washer for a department in the government. And in a strange way, my need for instability and chaos was satisfied - until I hit my physical limit and was forced onto disability.

But it was exciting. Being dumped into the deep end and forced to sink or swim. I swam but at a huge cost to my health. I think it's part of a perfectionist, masochistic streak that seems to run through my head. If I could do ten jobs at the same time, I must be pretty good, right? Wrong. It illustrated how the thought of letting other people down adversely affected my health. It illustrated a lack of personal boundaries. It illustrated how people will take advantage of those who do not protect their own boundaries. I hate learning these lessons the hard way, but that’s the only way I seem to learn them.

I seem to do better on my own. Always have. Like a lot of people, early on I learned not to trust people. People will turn on you. People will let you down. If you do it yourself, you won’t have to depend upon anyone else. But you know what? No one is an island. And you will be hurt. At some point, in some way. It is a part of life. But the question isn’t if I will be hurt, the question is how will I react when I am hurt. I won’t disappear. I won’t dissolve. I will keep going because that is what I’ve always done.

No matter how independent you are, at some point, you will need help. And with any luck, someone will be there. As someone was there for me when I needed it the most.

I admit it, I'm addicted to...

2009-07-20T16:44:00.009-04:00

Kitchen gadgets! Ha! Not what you were thinking, was it. LOL! :))

Yea, though I dislike cooking and baking, I love kitchen gadgets and cookbooks. I'm not even sure if I can explain why I have this fetish for kitchen things. Most women (I think) have a shoe fetish or a purse fetish. Those things would make sense - you wear shoes and use purses. But I don't normally even use the kitchen, unless I'm nuking milk for a latte - yes, I have a cooktop espresso maker. And yes, I have an electric grill which is my main mode of cooking - otherwise, everything would be raw and, quite honestly, raw steak/chicken isn't my thing.

I have two and a half shelves of cookbooks - okay, they are very narrow bookshelves (about 18 inches / 45 cm wide). I leaf through the pages, lovingly gazing at the pictures of what I could do, should I be so inclined. Which doesn't happen often but it does happen on occasion. I may even go out and get the ingredients. And then they rot or go stale. Sighhhh. My parents did not a domestic goddess raise.

Today, I wanted to find a cherry pitter. Cherries are in season and I want to have pitted cherries. I find a kitchen supply store and to my great dismay, they are sold out of cherry pitters. So instead of leaving the store like a normal person, what do I do? I get myself a shopping cart and I peruse the aisles. Up and down until, lo and behold, my cart is full. How the heck did that happen??

Hey, I needed those silicone brushes, place mats, six BBQ lighters in a single pack (although I don't own a BBQ), the over-cabinet door hangers, the bright red dish scrubber (red's my favorite color), water-stop flocked latex gloves in hot pink, the trash bin, the blue polka dot beach/shopping bag and the baking paper. Oh, and the food dehydrator was an absolute must. :)) Really, I think this should be categorized as a compulsion. I'm not compulsive about anything else, just kitchen stuff that I don't use.

This is why I don't go into kitchen stores. I haven't been into one for a few years now. So I guess I was catching up and now it'll be another few years before I allow myself near that kind of store again.

Life is hard. :))

Trust Yourself

2009-07-16T10:30:00.003-04:00

There is a Blue Rodeo song that has been playing in my head for the past five years. It has become my anthem of sorts. The lyrics that I identify with the most are:

Now you’ll be alone when the sun comes up

Tattered little dreams and a broken cup

Then you’ll have to trust yourself

And don’t believe in any more lies

I believed in lies for years, about myself and about the people around me. And it wasn’t just a bad marriage. Other things and people contributed to my problems, problems that were and are up to me to fix. It’s all well and good to discover from whence your problems sprang, but if you get caught up in the “It’s all your fault” thing, you can’t move forward and you can’t fix those things that are every person’s responsibility to fix. You become a victim because you define yourself as a victim. You may have been victimized, but it doesn’t follow that you have to view yourself as a powerless victim. And you perpetuate your victim-hood by not taking steps to view yourself and your world in a different, clearer light.

And whether it’s an abusive childhood, abusive marriage, racism or bullying at home, school or work, in the past or present, it’s up to you to fix you. You teach people how to treat you. I absolutely believe this. You may have tried to have the perfect life, the perfect relationship, the perfect whatever but it blew up in your face and “now you’ll be alone when the sun comes up”.

Being alone in and of itself is not a bad thing. In fact it can be a very good thing, a very centering thing and a very humbling thing. Being alone has allowed me the time to figure out what has gone wrong and right in my life. Yes, I hang onto my “tattered dream and broken cup” but that is until I replace it with something better, which I am working on.

My eyes are open and I won’t believe the lies anymore because I am not that person anymore. I have to be able to trust my judgment and instincts. And that comes with maintaining my personal boundaries and listening to myself. That comes with carefully picking apart my past and my present. Some of it is painful but some of it is good. I have done some things right, even though it may have taken me some time to realize it.

The reason I am writing this post is that I believe that everyone gets dealt a raw hand in some way, at some time. No one’s life is a fairy tale and unfortunately, some get dealt a worse hand than others. No, it’s not fair. But it is life.

Romance and The Sexual Mind

2009-07-01T08:00:00.003-04:00

I spend quite a bit of time looking at psychology and physiology to build my characters. The other day I read a special issue (July 7, 2009) of the “Scientific American Mind” magazine dealing with sex and sexual differences between men and women, aside from the most obvious dissimilarities. The article about kissing was named “Affairs of the Lips” by Chip Walter. Did you know that a kiss “triggers a cascade of neural messages and chemicals that transmit tactile sensations, sexual excitement, feelings of closeness, motivation and even euphoria”? Also “Kisses can convey important information about the status and future of a relationship. At the extreme, a bad first kiss can abruptly curtail a couple’s future.” Wow, talk about pressure and all dependant on the first touching of lips.

Oxytocin is a chemical that can govern the formation of social bonds. They did an experiment and the results were fascinating. With kissing, researchers had predicted that oxytocin levels would rise in both men and women. What they found was they while oxytocin levels rose in men, they did not rise in women. Researchers concluded that women “needed more than a kiss to feel emotionally connected or sexually excited during contact.” The reason I thought this was interesting is that I believe that men fall in love faster than women. And if oxytocin, which facilitates bonding, rises faster in men than in women, it could mean that men become involved in a relationship faster than women.

Another article, “The Orgasmic Mind”, was written by Martin Portner. Men and women were placed in PET scan machines to see what happened in their brains during an orgasm induced by their partners. Not something I would want to do personally, but hey, it takes all types. I like privacy. When a man orgasms, “the amygdala, the brain’s center of vigilance and fear, showed a decline in activity”… ”a probable sign of decreased vigilance during sexual performance.” When a woman orgasms, something unexpected happens, namely that, “much of her brain went silent”, which might correspond “to a release of tension and inhibition.”

As a result of other measures, the researchers concluded that, “(f)ear and anxiety need to be avoided at all costs if a women wishes to have an orgasm, we knew that, but now we can see it happening in the depths of the brain.” So maybe this has to do with our caveman brains: a man, being broadly responsible for the safety of his family, must always maintain some vigilance even during sex thus allowing his female partner to relax enough to orgasm and facilitate bonding with her partner. I may be wrong, I may have misinterpreted what I read but still it’s an interesting subject.

So those of us writing romance and erotica now have more scientific ways to closely simulate realistic characters in courtship and sexual situations. The images of women as mindless during orgasm don’t appear to be all that far off. But this is only during climax, the article indicates that women’s brains bounce back to normal activity immediately after orgasm.

Romance and erotica are such interesting genres because they explore relationships between men and women. And despite derision of these genres by “serious” writers and readers, relationships literally keep the human race in existence. I think that every adult should read at least one well-written romance novel, where the characters are realistic even if the situations are not.

I believe the percentage of men writing romance under female pseudonyms is somewhere around 10%, so some of your favorite romance authors may be male. It is really too bad that we don’t necessarily know who is male and who is female in these cases because we might get a more balanced view of men and women. After all, writers are either men or women who have to simulate the opposite sex' responses and feelings.

I would like to think that romance writers could present a realistic view of both men and women. I personally do my best to avoid stereotypes in characters because no one is entirely a stereotype. Everyone is an individual with feelings and motivations and agendas. And when we stereotype anyone, whether in real life or in fiction, we do a disservice to everyone.

This is why I love mixing science and art. When the two are combined, great things can happen. Science is art and art is science.

An Eventful Week - Birthday Prezzies from the Publishing World and Beyond

2009-06-30T13:35:00.007-04:00

I have to say that this past week has been one of the more eventful weeks than I've had in a while. This is a very good thing, btw. :) I celebrated my birthday on June 26 (Friday) and spent the day indulging my interest in photography, starting at dawn. I found out on the week-end that my novel, Pitch Dark, is now available in paperback from my publisher, Cerridwen Press.

In addition, last week I found two more reviews of Pitch Dark, which are fantastic. I even got the Night Owl Romance Reviewer Top Pick designation for Pitch Dark. Yay! The reviewer from Joyfully Reviewed enthusiastically enjoyed Pitch Dark. Pitch Dark, to date, is doing really well with the reviewers - something that has affirmed my choice of writing. If you select the links below, you'll be taken directly to the reviews of Pitch Dark.

Night Owl Romance wrote, "Pitch Dark was an awesome read from beginning to ending. I loved the whole suspense, betrayal and lies twisting in the book. The attraction between Connor and Alyssa was great. You can tell they both are afraid to love because of their pasts but man the heat between them is explosive. Even the grandfather in the book was great to read. His attempts of matchmaking will really make you smile. This is the first I have read of Brooke London and it won’t be the last. Brooke London knows her men, action and how to create chemistry between her characters. All of that just makes her books worth reading."

Joyfully Reviewed wrote, "In Pitch Dark Alyssa and Connor are going find the answer. Alyssa had to leave the job that gave her joy when she could not let her gifts be used for harm. Connor was only hoping for a big dollar partnership when he found an unexpected love. I thought that Alyssa and Connor were the perfect foil for the other, being so different. I just loved learning new things about both of them that enhanced their personalities. While the sparking passion and corky humor would have kept my attention, it was the thrilling suspense that kept me turning the pages to discover just what would come next. If having espionage, betrayal, spies and danger along with your romance has you grabbing for a story as it does me, then Pitch Dark is a must read for you."

Madame Butterfly wrote, "Pitch Dark is one of the best romantic suspense novels I’ve read in a while. There’s a nice easy flow to Brooke London’s writing style and from this book, she has an ability to write well rounded, complex characters while keeping them from coming across as stereotypical and stale. Her ability to slowly build up on the plot and keep the tension going at just the right pace is just as fine. I’ll definitely be looking out for more of her books."

I am just so completely thrilled: Pitch Dark, even though it is a first book, is getting wonderful reviews and has just been published in paperback. I am so happy. Hopefully, I will be finished the sequel to Pitch Dark in the next few weeks with the working title "Blinding Light".

I have a new life, a new career, new friends and a new me. What more could a girl ask for??

A Great Review for Pitch Dark by Madame Butterfly!

2009-05-25T16:45:00.008-04:00

Madame Butterfly posted a wonderful review of Pitch Dark on her site at http://madamebutterfly90.blogspot.com/2009/04/review-pitch-dark-by-brooke-london.html.

Leah (Madame Butterfly) gave Pitch Dark an 'A' grade saying, "...it’s really impressive for a first book. Pitch Dark is fast-paced thriller, which I couldn’t put down...Pitch Dark is one of the best romantic suspense novels I’ve read in a while. There’s a nice easy flow to Brooke London’s writing style and from this book, she has an ability to write well rounded, complex characters while keeping them from coming across as stereotypical and stale. Her ability to slowly build up on the plot and keep the tension going at just the right pace is just as fine. I’ll definitely be looking out for more of her books."

Pitch Dark is available for purchase online at http://www.jasminejade.com/p-6985-pitch-dark.aspx. Drop by for the blurb and excerpt. :)

Who is more romantic, men or women?

2009-05-25T11:48:00.004-04:00

This age-old question is as relevant, or as irrelevant, as ever. Women claim they are more romantic than men, citing such reasons as being more verbally emotive, buying romantic cards for their partners, suggesting candle-lit dinners, etc. And while women may be more outwardly expressive of feelings of love, I think men are more romantic but many are shy about expressing themselves for fear of ridicule or rejection.

There are studies that show that men fall in love faster than women. Men are more idealistic about love, not bothering to look at some of the down sides. Women initiate the break-up of a romantic partnership more often than men. Men also, according to these studies, suffer more from a break-up. Men felt lonelier, more depressed, unloved and the least free after a split.

I think there are reasons for the above findings going back to Darwinian theories of evolution. It’s a numbers game really. A woman produces, generally, one egg per month. A single man, in theory, could populate the entire world in a few months because of the millions and millions of sperm he produces (using IVF – not even the most lusty man could impregnate millions of women a day, assuming that all the women become pregnant).

Love is a riskier proposition for women than men. Women seem to have more to lose, so I think this accounts for some of the differences. Women carry babies, they invest more of themselves in the process of procreation. They have to. A couple has sex and, biologically speaking, the man’s part is done. Of course, the man needs to be there emotionally and physically for his pregnant partner, but the woman incubates and nourishes the fetus until birth. A baby is one tangible piece of a sexual partnership.

I believe that women may recover faster from a break-up as women generally have a larger support system of friends. Men are supposed to be the strong silent types—I’m not sure how many men feel comfortable enough with their friends to cry on their shoulders. And I’m assuming that the break-up has not been precipitated by some form of abuse. If a break-up occurs because of abuse, then both men and women will take a long time to recover their sense of self.

I think men feel love just as deeply as women. Women just don’t give them credit for it. Men just show their love in different ways.

He takes out the garbage = he loves you.

He mows the lawn = he loves you.

He comes home every night = he loves you.

He fixes things around the house = he loves you.

He thinks of ways to make your life easier = he loves you.

He supports your decisions and respects you = he loves you.

You know, flowers and candy and grand romantic gestures can be nice, but quite honestly, I’d rather a man shows me his love in different ways. Ways that go past the superficial and speak more deeply of attachment and love.

Or maybe that’s just me.

Cyber Friends: The Good, the Bad and the Puzzles

2009-05-20T12:37:00.005-04:00

It is no secret that I am a member of Facebook. Through FB, I have “met” some really wonderful people, people that I am glad to know and some I met in real life at RT in April 2009. Like many authors, I have been trying to reach out to people—some have turned into good friends who I love to chat/interact with because they’re great people and we have common interests. I have had people reach out to me when I needed help and I hope I have done the same.

Others, unfortunately, have turned out to be creeps who I promptly block because, really, I don’t want to receive pornographic images and have someone believe it is a turn-on. It’s NOT. Yes, I write romantic fiction and some may see explicit sexuality in print as pornography but I do not. Wikipedia describes pornography as "the depiction of explicit sexual subject matter for the purpose of sexually exciting the viewer. Pornography makes no claim to artistic merit, unlike erotica which does." I believe my writing has artistic merit even though, like most romance writers, I write sex scenes for the viewer's reading pleasure. It is fantasy, fiction, and not indicative of who I am. I mean, yes, you can tell some things from my style of writing, but I’m not interested in enduring crude attempts at what amount to pick-up lines.

And yet, some others have turned out to be puzzles because I simply did not know what to do. I think the drawbacks of being on social networking sites are outweighed by the good parts of the medium. But some people get the idea that they know me personally and start to make unusual statements, leaving me to scratch my head and wonder where I went wrong in evaluating the person.

I think the issue is there are a lot of lonely, isolated people in the world who are looking for some kind of connection. They take a look at the slice of me, or anyone else for that matter, that I show to the world and think that’s all there is to know. That the small slice means that I am looking for companionship. I mean, I’m single, I write romance: I MUST be looking for more than friendship. The puzzles read more into my profile than actually exists.

I feel badly for these people and I truly do try to be kind while not encouraging them. Sometimes I succeed and sometimes I don’t. I am not perfect. And meeting someone who seems to have an unrealistic image of me would be unnerving to say the least, which is why I haven't done so, except with people where I can at least verify their identities. I am sure that this is not their intent but unless I meet someone at a convention or through personal friends or have more interaction with a person, I don’t know what anyone is really like. Even then, I am very cautious. And someone who sends me twenty-five requests every day, only serves to make me more wary. Life is not risk-free but that doesn’t mean I will take idiotic chances, such as meeting someone I have never met without taking many, MANY precautions. So far, the only people I have personally met have been other writers.

All the lonely people, where do they all come from?

RT Booklovers Convention 2009 - Orlando, Florida

2009-05-04T17:04:00.049-04:00

Well, it's taken me a while to get myself together after RT. First I couldn't find the patch cord to transfer my pics from my camera to my computer and THEN I couldn't find my camera. Sighhhh. But I've got it together now :)

This convention was the first major convention I've attended. I met a bunch of great people, both readers and writers alike. During the Saturday Booksellers Fair, I went around and took photos of authors and others I met around the resort, in seminars, at lunch, at dinner, dancing ... well, you get the idea. These are the pics of some of them.

Michelle Rowan aka Michelle Maddox from the RWA Chapter, Toronto Romance Writers:

Christine D'Abo also from the RWA Chapter, Toronto Romance Writers:

Melissa Lopez, Ellora's Cave author:

Cai Smith and Stephanie Lynch comprise the writing team of Marilu Mann for Ellora's Cave:

Robin Kaye, author:

Annaliese Evans, author:

Cheryl Dragon, Ellora's Cave author:

Sandra Cox, author for Cerridwen Press:

Solange Ayre, author for Ellora's Cave:

Jeania Uplinger, Ellora's Cave Publishing Inc.'s organizer extraordinaire, and hunky Ellora's Cave cover model, Rodney Chapman (God, I hope I got his name right!):

Lynn Cash, Ellora's Cave author, with her cover model, Rodney Chapman (sighhh, some writers have all the luck!):

Dakota Cassidy, author:

Eileen Ann Brennan and Dee Brice, Ellora's Cave authors - lovely, lovely ladies :)

Mechele Armstrong, author, with her book 'The Rivals':

Marissa Alwin, Ellora's Cave author:

These two wonderful ladies, the writing team of C.T. Adams and Cathy Clamp AKA Cat Adams, were the first people I met at the convention. Fresh off the plane and confused by the warmth, sunshine and humidity, these lovely ladies invited me to have lunch with them, even though I had never met them before. I guess I must have looked like a lost writer - LOL :) These multi-published authors won the RT Award for Career Achievement in Paranormal Romance, you can see it in the pic below - YAY!!

Dalton Diaz, Ellora's Cave Author:

Frances Stockton, Cerridwen Press author:

Ciana Stone, Ellora's Cave author, with her cowboy cover model (I really wish I could remember his name - if anyone knows, please contact me and I'll update this post).

Elayne S. Venton, Ellora's Cave Author:

Joanna Waugh, Cerridwen Press Author:

There were many, many more readers and authors I met that are not pictured in this post unfortunately. I am so happy to have met friends, both new and existing, in Orlando.

Until next year's RT Booklovers Convention, everyone, happy writing, reading, editing...

P.S. There were so many people that I MAY have gotten a name wrong - I sincerely hope not! But if so, please let me know - you have my apologies and an update of this post to correct the errors.

Eureka!

2009-05-04T15:17:00.002-04:00

I finally have the missing piece. Writers are sort of like golfers—always missing something in the quest for the perfect swing, the perfect method, the perfect word, the perfect tool.

I should have realized this before but being a relatively new writer, I didn’t. I know what my problem is now, halfway through writing my second book. To be perfectly honest, the second book has been more of a trial than the first book. I think I just did things in the first book that happened to work, without knowing why these things were working. First time lucky. Second time has required me to think about what I am doing and how I am doing it. I didn’t pay enough attention the first time.

The first time writer, I think, is sort of like a lone wolf in the woods. Solitary. Without guidance except for instinct. And all too often, I think I, and probably other writers, ignore their instincts because they just want to finish their project. Deadlines, whether imposed by the writer herself/himself or by the publisher/agent/editor, mess with the creative urge. The first book I worked out a method but I wasn’t really paying attention to my surroundings, those things that made it easier for me to write, where the words flowed from my fingertips onto the keyboard, from my voice recognition software into my manuscript.

The missing piece for me is music. I had one of those “slap my forehead”, “D’oh!” moments as I have struggled through my second manuscript. The first book I had written entirely listening to music, being inspired by the music, matching the moods of my scenes to the music to which I listened. And an occasional glass of port. Mustn’t forget the port. I escaped into my fiction, into my story to avoid the other realities of my life at the time.

I don’t know if this is true for most writers, but for me music is an amazing creative tool. It sets the mood, it creates a bubble which the writer inhabits, away from the world. I have music for all moods—from heavy metal (not much) to classical—you name it, I have some variety of it. And my music collection keeps growing as I look for new sources of inspiration for moods. Right now for instance, I am listening to classical music “Any Other Name”, and it’s piano music, so I am in my happy place. Music has always been my happy place, my sad place, my inspired place, the one thing that has never failed me.

To write, I need to block out the world and just “be” in my head. And music seems to reach directly into my emotional centers. I think most people are this way. Music speaks, even if there are no words. But then, music is the universal language. Allowing me, as a writer, to tap into imagery and ideas I may not have had before, not considered before. I close my eyes listening to music and I “see” a scene unfolding on the backs of my eyelids, like a movie screen or television. I see people, activities, colors. I see more with my ears and my imagination than with my eyes sometimes, a lot of the time.

The words are flowing again, like a spigot that’s been turned on after winter. The flow of music is clearing the rusted debris and cobwebs from the pipes. So I will ride on the crest of my music from now on.

It’s funny in a way. Last night as I signed off from one of my social networking sites, I posted a picture of a palm-from backlit by the moonlight and music to accompany it – Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1, Movement 2. The two just seemed to belong together. I listened to that music, staring at the picture, for a long time. Felt it sink into my mind to remind me of what has always been there.

Me and my music.

The Spring of My Life

2009-05-01T17:04:00.004-04:00

Every once in a while, I hear someone refer to their early adulthood as the Spring of their lives, their middle age as the Fall of their lives and aged as the Winter of their Discontent (swiped that one from Shakespeare). But the Spring of someone's life always seems to refer to when they were anywhere from eighteen to twenty-nine years old.

I am past my twenties, I won't say how far past, but those days are gone. Thank God. And I am in the Spring of my life, maybe for the first time. I'm sitting in my home, looking out over the horizon of the city, seeing green life poke its nose into Toronto. It's still cool and windy, but Spring is shyly poking it's head out of the trees and ground. Taking a look around to see if it's safe to bloom into riotous life, to see if Winter is over. The Winter of my discontent is finally over, but it took a long time for it to happen.

I think I am aging backwards, if that makes any sense. Youth brings with it so many unknowns and firsts and excitements, middle age can bring dissatisfaction to many, old age can bring despair to others. I think I started off middle aged, Fall, moved into old age, Winter, and have now moved into Spring with the possibilities of my future hanging just barely within my reach from the trees ready to bloom.

All things are possible now, freed from the restraints of the past. I have a brand-spanking new writing career, I have a new home, I have new friends, I am meeting new people, experiencing new things and, for the most part, have left the crippling shyness of my childhood and early adulthood behind. I wouldn't want to be in my twenties again. Too much confusion. Too little confidence in my own abilities.

But now, in the first Spring of my life, I know where I stand. I know myself better, understand myself better, than ever before. And although I am no Spring chicken in years, I am in my life. For the most part, I am enjoying myself and exploring the possibilities revealing themselves almost daily to me. I know what I want, what I don't want, what is possible and what is not possible for me. But the impossibilities dwindle as the days pass. And I am made new again because of the choices I've made. Hellish choices which turned out so much better than I could ever have imagined a year and a half ago. Things that didn't happen in the past which I regretted at the time, devastated me at the time, have worked out for the best.

Would I change some of my past? Maybe. Probably. But at the same time, my past experiences have made me who I am today. And I like me, just as I am. Perfection would be boring and leave me with nothing to accomplish. I have many things I want to accomplish and in the next few years, I will achieve want I want to achieve, even if I end up taking a circuitous path to my destination. And it will still be Spring when I get to where I go.

Whenever or where-ever that may be.

First Review of Pitch Dark is In!

2009-04-15T13:22:00.002-04:00

The first review of Pitch Dark is in by Literary Nymphs! It is rated as a 4 out of a possible 5 Nymphs: "An impressive read. Quality literature, recommended for anyone who enjoys the genre."

The reviewer noted, "Pitch Dark is a good suspense story...I did not want to put it down."

I'll take it! :))

To see the full review go to: http://literarynymphsreviewsonly.blogspot.com/2009/04/pitch-dark.html

Heroes

2009-04-11T12:55:00.002-04:00

I hear so many people say that someone is their hero. Actors and famous people qualify as heroes to many people. I can’t say that I fall into this category. I require my heroes to be something important, something special, someone who strives to be more, better, someone worth my admiration. My hero, and I only have one, is my younger sister.

She has all the qualities I admire. She has truly been to hell and back, something most people will never, could never, understand. And no matter the odds, she keeps fighting to improve her life, herself, contribute to the people around her. She is kind, caring, understanding, resilient and wise beyond her years. She started university five or so years ago with the odds stacked against her. She has persevered, worked incredibly hard and never lost sight of her goals when most people would have given up and said it was too difficult, too much.

Anyone who knows her will tell you the same thing. With determination, sheer grit and single-minded purpose, she has taken control of and responsibility for her life. She has a wonderful man who loves her completely and who she loves completely in return. Her life is busy, difficult but filled with people who love and care for her. Because of who she is.

She wages a war every single day. And every single day, she wins against doubts and setbacks by not throwing in the towel. She doesn’t give up. I have never seen or known anyone who works as hard, tries as hard, as she does.

I am proud to call her my sister, my friend, my confidant.

My hero.

Please Welcome Author Paul Levine!

2009-04-06T00:00:00.009-04:00

Please help me to welcome author, Paul Levine. This former lawyer’s many books have been acclaimed as “Genuinely Chilling” by the Washington Post and as “Mystery Writing at its very, very best” by Larry King on USA Today.

His newest novel, Illegal, has won rave reviews:
“ILLEGAL is a riveting read, filled with action, pathos, and even humor. The portrait of the dangers and predations that Latinos face crossing the border is chilling and rings with authenticity. But the book’s best quality is the way Levine invests his characters with believable humanity. A compulsively readable yet character-driven thriller.” - Booklist

"Entertaining. Payne has a broad enough backstory and personal charm to head up a series on his own." - Publishers Weekly

"This pedal-to-the-medal thriller wraps a gripping story around a current topic. Levine knows how to turn a phrase, especially with the colorful characters he's created." - Romantic Times

Paul Levine worked as a newspaper reporter, a law professor and a trial lawyer before becoming a full-time novelist.

“Obviously, I cannot hold a job,” he says.

Paul claims that writing fiction comes naturally: “I told whoppers for many years in my legal briefs.”

He is the author of the “Jake Lassiter series” for which he won the John D. MacDonald award and the “Solomon vs. Lord” books which were nominated for an Edgar, a Macavity, a Thriller Writers award and the James Thurber Prize. His books have been translated into 23 languages, none of which he can read. In Germany, for reasons he does not understand, he is published under the name “Polly Levine.”

His novel, “Illegal” (Bantam Hardcover), introduces Jimmy (Royal) Payne. The down-and-out L.A. lawyer pans to skip town, but he crosses paths with 12-year-old Tino Perez, newly arrived from Mexico with no money, no papers, and no fear. The gutsy kid wants Payne’s help. Marisol, Tino’s mother, disappeared when a border crossing went to hell. The dilemma for Payne: should he help these total strangers or look out for himself? Against his better judgment, Payne tracks Marisol from Mexicali to California’s Hellhole Canyon where he’s swept into the dark current of human trafficking and sexual slavery.

Brooke: Your earlier books were very humorous. Does “Illegal” take you in a new direction?

Paul: The “Solomon vs. Lord” novels relied heavily on banter between Steve Solomon and Victoria Lord. The series was my homage to Katherine Hepburn and Spency Tracy movies. “Illegal” has more meat on its bones. It deals with serious issues of broken borders, illegal immigration, and human trafficking. But the number one goal of popular fiction is to entertain. In the opening scene, Payne is stark naked being searched for a wire by a suspicious judge. Payne is, after all, trying to bribe the judge. There’s more than a sprinkling of humor in the book.

BL: What’s the main difference between caper novels like your earlier ones and true thrillers like “Illegal?”

Paul: As a thriller, suspense and jeopardy are the bywords. There are many harrowing moments in “Illegal.” The midnight border crossing; the meth-addled stash house guard who shoots apples off the heads of the migrants, the bloody kill floor of the meatpacking plant, and the threats of the land baron who can bury people in a levee where they’ll never be found. The tension ratchets up as the stakes become higher: will it be life or death for Jimmy Payne, Tino and Marisol Perez?

BL: How much of Paul Levine is in the character of Jimmy Payne?

Paul: Payne is a damaged character. I'm 61, an age where everyone is damaged in one way or another. A bad marriage, a career setback, a dark spot that turns up on the x-ray. All life is about loss. Payne, in some ways, is a more real character than Jake Lassiter or Steve Solomon. He’s had a tragedy – I don’t want to give away here – that unbalances him. He begins the book looking for revenge and ends it risking his life for strangers.

BL: ILLEGAL is much darker in tone than the Solomon vs. Lord novels. Can you share how it felt to switch from writing the more comedic Solomon vs. Lord books to ILLEGAL? Was it difficult to make the transition from writing about Steve and Victoria to writing about Jimmy and Sharon?

Paul: Sly humor is my natural tone of voice, so Solomon vs. Lord was a hanging curve ball right right over the middle of the plate. Two people are attracted to each other but drive each other crazy...well, that's just plain fun to write and read. But it's different with Payne. Once you create a character who has suffered a life-altering tragedy, there's no room for pie-in-the-face yucks. That doesn't mean Payne is without humor. He's filled with anger, and his wit is biting. Payne uses zingers as a sword, not a shield. So, now not more difficult to write Payne, just more payne-ful. Once I knew who he was, he flowed naturally onto the page.

BL: What would you do to resolve the illegal immigration problem?

Paul: The book is clearly sympathetic to hard-working people who risk their lives to come here and are preyed upon by predators on both sides of the border. The cruelty inflicted on the immigrants --- particularly south of the border --- is really horrible. I set up debates between the open borders advocates and those who would place machine gun turrets in El Paso. This sounds like a cop out, but I don't have the answers. Obviously, we can't deport millions of people. Security is being upgraded along the border, but there's a new problem. Mexican drug cartels are taking over human trafficking operations. More violence is sure to follow. This problem is going to explode soon, and I'm not sure we're ready for it.

BL: What inspired you to take on a story with such social significance?

Paul: Several things came together to influence and inspire me. Residents of San Diego County and Imperial County are familiar with the yellow "Caution" signs with the man, woman, and child running across the road. It's a warning to be on the lookout for illegals who might dash in front of your car like a deer leaping from the woods. I saw one sign pockmarked by bullets. Well, that's a pretty good image to get the mind working. "Welcome to the U.S." About the same time was the news story about the undocumented aliens locked in the back of a metal refrigeration truck (with no refrigeration on). Several baked to death in a run across the desert.

BL: Your dedication in ILLEGAL is as follows: “To the woman carrying a rucksack, clutching her child’s hand, and kicking up dust as she scrambled along a desert trail near Calexico, California.” Did this encounter provide the inspiration for Marisol and Tino?

Paul: It sure did. I had a chance encounter with a mother and son who had just gotten out of the toxic New River, a poisonous dump of a stream that flows north from Mexico. Well, that did it. They were Marisol and Tino Perez, but in my imagination, they become separated at the border. She goes missing, and Tino must get Jimmy Payne --- a guy who these days doesn't help anyone --- to help him. By the way, I wrote a short piece about my border encounter. http://live.psu.edu/story/38537

BL: What’s next for you?

Paul: Another Jimmy Payne. Working on it now, but I can’t tell you anything about it except that 12-year-old Tino will be back, too.

Thanks so much for joining us here today, Paul! I can't wait to read Illegal.

Read more about “Illegal” at http://www.paul-levine.com

Blurb:
Jimmy (Royal) Payne, a down-on-his-luck lawyer, battles cops, coyotes, and a corrupt and powerful rancher, as he tracks a beautiful Mexican woman who disappeared on a midnight border crossing, and is swept into the world of human trafficking.  

Haunted by a tragedy in his past and wanted by the cops for his latest malfeasance, Jimmy Payne needs to skip town. That’s when he crosses paths with twelve-year-old Tino Perez, newly arrived from Mexico with no money and no papers. The gutsy kid first robs Payne, then pleads for his help. Marisol, the boy’s mother, is missing, after crossing the border with a vicious coyote.  

Following a chain of greed, corruption, and betrayal, Payne traces Marisol’s steps from Mexicali to California’s Hellhole Canyon. Before long, the cynical lawyer and the savvy kid are bonding…and battling predators on both sides of the border. It’s the two of them against an army of cops, coyotes, vigilantes, and sex slavers.

Most dangerous of all is Simeon Rutledge, a wealthy rancher and the biggest employer of farm workers in California. Just why is Rutledge willing to bribe Payne—or kill him—to keep Marisol under wraps? Will Payne’s quest redeem his mistakes and resurrect his dead marriage—or get him buried in a shallow grave? Either way, he’ll find out there’s no escaping his past.  

From the shadows of migrant stash houses to the fertile fields of the San Joaquin Valley, Illegal delivers a searing mix of live-wire prose, shattering violence, and rich characterization, all set against a backdrop of larger social issues.

Excerpt
ONE  
Judge Rollins drew a handgun from beneath his black robes, pointed the snub-nosed barrel at Jimmy Payne’s chest and said, “Who you pimping for, you low-life shyster?”  

Payne gaped at the revolver.   This cannot be happening.   

The judge gestured toward the stacks of hundred dollar bills on his desk. “C’mon, Payne. You’re not smart enough to dream this up on your own.”  

They faced each other in the judge’s chambers, a tranquil place of leather-bound books and walnut wainscoting. Payne felt his knees wobble. “I swear, Judge. I just represent the defendant. Ramon Carollo.”  

“Not like you to defend human traffickers. I remember the hell you raised when those wetbacks got barbecued in a trailer truck.”  

“I like to call them ‘undocumented aliens.’”  

“Why? They from Mars?”   The judge vaulted out of his high-backed chair. Quick for a big man. Silver hair swept straight back, like feathers on a snow goose. Shoulders as wide as a bookcase.   “Take off your clothes.”   

“What?”  

“You heard me.”  

“I swear I’m not wearing a wire. You can pat me down.”  

“Strip!”  
Payne wasn’t sure he could. His joints seemed rusted shut.   

“Now!”  

With jerky motions, Payne kicked off his shoes, unhooked his belt, and dropped his trousers.   

“You bring me nine stacks of hundred dollar bills, fifty to a stack.” Judge Rollins motioned toward the open briefcase on his desk and did the math in his head. “Forty-five thousand dollars.”  

“That’s the offer,” Payne agreed.  

“Odd amount. Like it was supposed to be fifty thousand, but some half-assed bagman skimmed five off the top.”  

“No, Sir.” Payne lowered his tie slipped out of his shirt. “Forty-five is all I’ve got to spend.”  

“No sale, shitbird.”  

“I thought it was worth a shot, Your Honor. But let’s just forget the whole thing. I’ll put my pants on and--”  

“Drop those undershorts, too.” The judge waved the gun like a king with a scepter.   

Payne pulled down his red and white boxers with the Los Angeles Clippers’ logo. He preferred them to the Lakers’ purple and gold shorts, not for the colors, but because he favored underdogs.   

“Now, turn around and spread your cheeks.”  

“No way, Judge.”  

“Do it!”  

At 37, Payne was in good shape. Flat stomach, decent chest, a sinewy runner’s body. He spun around and bent over.

“Like I said, Your Honor, no wire.”  

Judge Rollins gazed off. “I don’t know whether to shoot you or arrest you.”

Jimmy straightened up and turned around. “Just let me go, Judge. There’s a lot of good I can do out there.”  

“Out where? You’re Jimmy Payne. Royal Payne. You cut corners. You represent undesirables. You piss people off.”  

“Honestly, Judge. I’m gonna change my life.”  

“People don’t change, Payne. They just get old and die. Sometimes, they don’t even get old.”  

Jimmy stepped sideways toward a set of shelves decorated with framed vanity photos. Judge Rollins with Mayor Villaraigosa, Senator Boxer, some local bigwigs, and a pretty young woman in a pink sash, the Rose Bowl queen, maybe. Alongside the photos, the scales of justice. Bronze. Heavy. Tilted heavily to one side. One more step and Payne could grab the scales by the blindfolded lady and take swing at the judge.  

“Freeze, sleazebag.” Rollins pulled back the hammer of the .38.

With the click echoing in his brain, Payne thought of his son, Adam. Ten years old. Loved baseball. Cheeseburgers. Surfing. A boy needs his father.  

Just how the hell did I get into this?

TWO  

One hour before he stood, naked and terrified, in the chambers of the Honorable Walter Rollins, Jimmy Payne stood, clothed and angry, glaring at a wooden pin some sixty feet away.  

The five-pin.  

Payne hated the five-pin nearly as much as he hated Cullen Quinn, his ex-wife’s fiancé. And there the damn thing stood – the pin, not Quinn – smack in the middle of the lane, taunting him. For most bowlers, the five was the easiest spare, but for Payne, the ten-pin – that loner at the right edge of the lane – was the gimmee. The trick, he knew, was not being afraid of dropping into the gutter.   
Payne’s second ball whooshed past the five and thwomped harmlessly into the pit, leaving the pin standing. Giving him the finger.  

Damn. Even Barack Obama could have made that spare.   

So could Payne’s son. He thought about taking Adam bowling this weekend. His eleventh birthday was coming up, and the boy already threw a decent little hook.  

Payne checked the counter behind the ball rack. The stranger was still there, watching him. He had shown up around the third frame, sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup. Blue shirt, striped tie thickly knotted, cheap tan suit that needed pressing. Hair that might have been blond once, now turned the yellowish brown of a nicotine stain. A gum chewer with jaw muscles dancing, a face of angles and planes, a cold stare. A cop? Homicide, maybe.  

Not a problem. Payne hadn’t killed anyone. He hadn’t even represented a murderer in a couple years. Bar brawlers, check bouncers, hookers from the Sepulveda Corridor. He could use a good murder trial right now. Or a personal injury case with fractures to weight-bearing bones. Even a nasty divorce would do. Lacking any decent cases, bowling alone on a weekday morning provided a break from bill collectors and anger management classes.   

Payne hoisted his Hammer Road Hawg from the ball return and settled into his stance. Sensing movement, he glanced over his shoulder. Wrinkled Suit was headed his way. Payne considered challenging the guy to three games at 10 bucks a pin.   

“Morning, J. Atticus Payne.”   

Keeping the ball at hip level, Payne turned to face the man. “Jimmy. Jimmy Payne.”   

“Your Bar card says ‘J. Atticus.’”  

“My parents were hoping I’d grow up to be Gregory Peck.”  

“Nah. They named you ‘James Andrew.’ You changed it. Not legally, of course. Just made it up and put it on your driver’s license, which also says you’re six feet tall when you’re really five-eleven. You make up a lot of shit.”  

Grinning now, gotcha. Like he was Sherlock Fucking Holmes.   

“Some people think Atticus fits,” Payne said, thinking of his ex-wife Sharon.   

“What slimeball you gonna walk today, Atticus?”  

That was before she started calling him “the respondent.” When Sharon divorced him, her bill of particulars included his reputation for sleazy behavior.  

“Respondent has engaged in a pattern of professional activity that is a source of embarrassment to Petitioner, a police officer.”  

If he’d been different, Payne wondered, if he’d made more money and been more respectable, if he’d lunched at the California Club instead of Hooters, would Sharon still be his wife?   

Nah, that wasn’t the issue.   

“You weren’t here for me when I needed you, Jimmy.”   

“Why do you lie so much?” Wrinkled Suit asked.   

Payne shrugged. “I’m a lawyer.”  

“You rolled a baby split in the third frame. The three-ten. Very make-able. But you hit the reset, erased the score, and bowled again.”  

“That a crime?”  

“What kind of guy cheats when he’s bowling alone?”  

“Maybe a guy who wants a second chance.”  

“To do what? Tell a client to flee the jurisdiction?”   

“Who the hell are you?”  

The man reached into his jacket pocket and flipped open a vinyl wallet with an L.A.P.D. badge and photo I.D.   

Payne read aloud. “‘Detective Eugene Rigney. Public Integrity Unit.’ Kinda wussy, isn’t it? I mean, compared to Robbery Homicide. Or SWAT.”   

He turned toward the pins and took his four-step approach. A high back swing, a wrist-snapping release, a fluid follow through. The ball skidded on the oil, dug in, and hooked hard left into the pocket. A big mix, the clatter of rolling logs. The skinny neck of the six-pin kissed the ten, pushing it over like a wobbly drunk.  

Strike! Take that, Mr. Public Integrity.  

Rigney didn’t look impressed. “You gotta do something for me, Payne.”  

“What?” 

 “Bribe a judge.” The cop looked at his watch. “And you’ve got one hour to do it.”

Pitch Dark Released Today!!

2009-03-19T00:01:00.017-04:00

Talk about un-freaking-real! I am in shock. My first novel has been released today online in e-book format by Cerridwen Press at http://www.jasminejade.com/pm-6985-543-pitch-dark.aspx. You can also click on the Pitch Dark cover to the right to navigate to the book on the publisher's site, with the blurb and excerpt. The book can also be located at http://www.CerridwenPress.com - just search for Brooke London and you will find the book. Obviously, I encourage everyone who has a computer and a minute of time to buy my novel ☺.

The blurb for Pitch Dark is:

Alyssa Tiernan must protect her grandfather’s cutting-edge, environmentally friendly oil sands extraction technology—and his life. Forced into dealing with her grandfather’s chosen partner, Connor Donnelly, a wildcard business mogul and ex-CIA spy, she knows she can’t trust him.

Connor resents that she has the final say on his multi-million dollar partnership. When someone tries to kill them both, they are thrust together and their mutual attraction sparks hot enough to heat the sheets to searing intensity, despite their mutual distrust.

Together they race between his headquarters in Colorado and the oil sands of Alberta to stay one step ahead of the terrorists who are determined to stop them at any cost.

It will take their combined cunning and courage to survive the explosive and treacherous covert world of espionage, betrayal, terrorists and spies. But even if they do, can they survive the secrets they are keeping from each other?

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You might be asking, what the heck is an e-book??? An e-book is a book that is in electronic format, meaning that a reader can download the book from the Internet, in a variety of formats (pdf, rtf etc) and read it on their computer, on their e-book reader (of which there are many, even iPods can be used for e-books), PDAs or print out the e-book onto paper if they so choose.

What are the advantages of e-books over traditional paper books? Well, for one, trees aren’t cut down in order to produce the paper used in traditional books. For another, the reader doesn’t need to drive or take the bus to a bookstore to get a book. There are no huge gas-guzzling trucks delivering the books to stores. The book is delivered directly to your computer. No wasted gas or additional pollution. E-books are also priced less expensively than paper books.

What are the ‘traditional’ views of e-books? Traditionally, the prevailing view was that e-books were of poorer quality than their paper cousins. This is no longer the case, especially with the e-publishing giant Ellora’s Cave Publishing Inc, or ECPI, which produces the imprints of Ellora’s Cave, Cerridwen Press (Yay - that's me!), Lotus Circle and Cerridwen Cotillion. ECPI is the largest e-publisher in the world and growing.

Traditional publishers turn down many very well-written books because publishers want a sure thing, especially in these difficult financial times. Traditional publishing costs and risks are so much greater than e-publishing just by the nature of the beast. The risks are so large that publishers lean towards big name authors and to authors who write in the most popular genres. E-publishers don’t have that issue as much. Yes, they hire editors and cover artists and they promote the books, but since they’re not printing actual books, they can afford to take risks on lesser known but equally talented authors who write excellent stories.

E-publishing is the democratization of publishing. Less expensive books. Equal quality writing. Deliverable to any computer on the planet in seconds. Fewer costs. Less pollution. Decreased use of natural resources.

Traditional publishers are also realizing the benefits of e-books and many are now offering e-books themselves. Traditional publishers are interested in a less costly production and distribution model and e-publishing is it. No need to worry about book returns of up to 70%. Book returns are those books originally purchased from the publisher by a bookstore or book chain which did not sell. The publishers then must refund the money the book buyers paid for the books. So authors of books may only be paid once a year, once book returns are known. With e-books, there are no book returns. The reader has bought the book. End of story. The authors are paid regularly based on their actual sales, not on projected sales.

There are many e-book readers available - I have one of them, the new Sony PRS700. The screen actually looks like a piece of paper. And you can store many books in one e-book reader: you can carry an entire personal library of books with you in a package the size, and just a touch heavier, of a paperback novel.

The publishing industry is going through a shakeout, one that is being accelerated by the global economic slowdown. Traditional publishers are looking for ways to decrease their costs without decreasing market share or quality. E-publishing seems to be the answer, the wave of the present and future.

So that’s an introduction to e-books. But what is the background story of my debut novel Pitch Dark? The question upon which the book is based: What would happen if terrorists took out the Saudi Arabia oil production machine? Where would the terrorists go next to ensure the world oil supply was minimal? The answer, surprisingly enough, is Canada.

I’ll give a backgrounder into the politics and economics of the world oil market. At this time, Saudi Arabia is the big dog on the block. Their daily oil surplus of approximately two million barrels of oil make it possible for them to step into the world oil market and stabilize it at any time. They have the world’s largest proven oil reserves. This doesn’t necessary mean that they actually have the largest oil reserves, just that they are verifiable as such.

The area of the world with the second largest proven oil reserves is in the province of Alberta, Canada. In reality, there is probably more oil in Alberta than in the entire Middle East.

The current issue with oil in Canada is that it is tied up in what are called the oil sands or tar sands, also known as pitch or bitumen. Oil is mixed together with sand or earth making separating the oil from the surrounding matter an intensive process. The process is also environmentally damaging. Hot water or steam is used to wash or extract the oil from the sand and the chemical-laden water left over from the process is placed in huge tailings ponds.

While it costs the Saudis under $2US per barrel to extract oil from their traditional oil reserves, it costs anywhere from $36US to $40US to get one barrel of oil from the oil sands. The costs are dropping as more research is being done. In recent months, we’ve all heard that Canadian oil is “dirty” because of the environmental damage caused by oil sands extraction techniques. In the lab, they have found a way to essentially eliminate the environmental problem. The new process will not use water to extract the oil, so fresh water won’t be utilized. They are field-testing this process now and oil extraction in the oil sands will no longer be an environmental problem in the near future.

The problem with getting oil from Saudi Arabia, in particular, is terrorism. The Saudi government pays terrorists not to attack Saudi oil production facilities. In effect, they fund terrorism throughout the world, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan etc so that their oil supply remains safe. So when anyone in the world buys gas (a by-product of oil processing) or oil from Saudi sources, they are in actuality paying for terrorism. Oh, what a tangled web we weave!

In the USA, dependence on Saudi oil has dropped in the past twenty to thirty years. I think, and my actual figures may be wrong, that originally Saudi oil products accounted for 25% of US domestic consumption. Now I believe that figure is around 8% of US domestic consumption. The US wants to insulate itself, rightly so, as much as possible from Middle Eastern oil, since the region is politically unstable at best.

This is where Canadian oil comes in. America has access to oil from an economically and politically stable neighbor. According to Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athabasca_oil_sands, “the Athabasca Oil Sands are now featured prominently in international trade talks, with energy rivals China and the United States negotiating with Canada for a bigger share of the oil sands' rapidly increasing output.”

So that’s the primer for my novel, Pitch Dark, and of the premise behind it. Yes, it is definitely a romance novel but I figure that reading should be entertaining and interesting. I’ve learned many things from romance novels and my aim was to have fun, be entertaining and be informative. Pitch Dark can be easily purchased in e-book format from Cerridwen Press. At your convenience, on your computer, today.

Good Reading!

Jack Kerouac and Me

2009-03-17T17:28:00.004-04:00

I am a member of Facebook and as it would so happen, I took one of the quizzes that abound on that social networking site named something like, “What kind of writer are you?” According to this quiz, I am a writer like Jack Kerouac. Now, these quizzes need to be taken with an entire salt lick meant for a herd of cattle but still, I thought I should at least know something about the man.

Jack Kerouac’s parents were French-Canadians who immigrated down to the States where he was born in 1922. He didn’t speak English until age 6. He was known as the Father of the Beat Generation. He was also an alcoholic, according to reports, and died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1969.

According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Kerouac), “he set down”… “his Spontaneous Prose method“ of which ”the most concise would be Belief and Technique for Modern Prose, a list of thirty ‘essentials.'" With my comments in brackets, they are:

1. “Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy” (Joyful writing is Good Stuff – don’t want to worry about secret notebooks and wild typewritten pages though)
2. “Submissive to everything, open, listening” (maybe a little too laid back for me but I think he meant be an informational and emotional sponge – Good Stuff)
3. “Try never get drunk outside your own house” (So it’s better to drink at home? Alone?)
4. “Be in love with your life” (Good stuff)
5. “Something that you feel will find its own form” (Good stuff)
6. “Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind” (It helps to be crazy to write – Good Stuff)
7. “Blow as deep as you want to blow” (Not a clue, but could have another meaning for a romance writer ☺)
8. “Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind” (Good stuff)
9. “The unspeakable visions of the individual” (Not a clue)
10. “No time for poetry but exactly what is” (Not a clue)
11. “Visionary tics shivering in the chest” (Not a clue)
12. “In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you” (Sounds like it’s drug-induced but he was into Buddhism for a while so maybe he referred to meditation)
13. “Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition” (Plain confusing for us ordinary folk)
14. “Like Proust be an old teahead of time” (marijuana can be made into marijuana tea but I’m not sure how this rule should be read)
15. “Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog” (Deep Point of View – Good Stuff)
16. “The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye” (Look beneath the surface – Good Stuff)
17. “Write in recollection and amazement for yourself” (He wrote largely autobiographical stuff so this would make sense)
18. “Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea” (Makes sense – start from a singular compact premise and swim out into your story with words - Good Stuff)
19. “Accept loss forever” (I’m not sure about this, it sounds like to suffer loss forever and I’d rather move on)
20. “Believe in the holy contour of life” (Good Stuff – I think there is a purpose to everything)
21. “Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind” (Good Stuff – get out of your own way when writing, for that matter, get out of your own way when living)
22. “Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better” (Good Stuff)
23. “Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in your morning” (Good Stuff - I think he meant to be aware of your surroundings and perceptions)
24. “No fear or shame in the dignity of your experience, language & knowledge” (LOL - To boldly go where no one has gone before – problem is you might be dead by the time anyone appreciates your work, or you may never be published, but still, points for originality)
25. “Write for the world to read and see your exact pictures of it” (Good Stuff)
26. “Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form” (Many writers have a more dense ‘cinematic’ style of writing – Good Stuff)
27. “In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness” (Sounds depressing)
28. “Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better” (Okay, but not so crazy as to be incomprehensible)
29. “You're a Genius all the time” (Good Stuff – believe in yourself)
30. “Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven” (a little out there but still Good Stuff)

Some of these things make sense to me, others seem like flower power rejects from the 1960s, which would make sense as his work largely became know after 1959. But I think he had some good points as evidenced by the ‘Good Stuff’ comments. I don’t pretend to know anything about Kerouac’s work aside from knowing his name. I can only go by his rules to see, at this point anyway, if I am like him in my writing style.

To a certain extent, I think modern writers use many of his rules naturally, just because it makes sense to use them. Obviously I was not a part of this generation of writers but I think many of Kerouac’s ideals have been distilled down over the years to the point where mortal writers can use and understand them. Instead of an omniscient viewpoint, which would have been more the style of writing during his time, modern writers generally use first person, second person or third person points of view. These different POVs, if used correctly, can tell a story more effectively and with more impact than a god-like perspective on the story.

Out of his thirty rules, I counted seventeen that I listed as ‘Good Stuff’, which comes out to about 57% of the rules. The others I didn’t understand or were not applicable to me or were dependent upon the type of experience a writer describes. My understanding is far from complete. Perhaps if I had an English Lit background, I would appreciate his rules more but I don’t – I can only go from my own experience and my own understanding of my time on this planet. But looking at the 57% that I do agree with, I can see how modern writers have used his rules to improve how they write and how they perceive the world of their story.

So, am I a writer like Jack Kerouac? I suspect all modern writers use at least some of Kerouac’s rules. Aside from being alcoholic, maybe a drug user, a spokesperson of the 60s beat generation (I was going to say a victim of flower-power but…), I think that the 57% is a decent enough match. Obviously, I am no Kerouac. But I am a Brooke London. And maybe that’s all I need to be.

Pitch Dark Book Trailer

2009-03-01T17:33:00.013-05:00

For a high quality video experience, please hit play then select the up arrow in the lower right corner and select 'HQ'.

Brooke's Travels - Asia

2009-02-27T14:28:00.005-05:00

I've put together a slideshow of my travels through Asia using my photographs - Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and India. Enjoy!!

Stupid Character Syndrome

2009-02-26T10:47:00.011-05:00

Those of us who read romance novels have all seen it. You know what I'm talking about - the woman in danger thing where the heroine has rocks in her head and can't resist following the bad guy into obvious danger even though you KNOW it's the dumbest idea since...well, EVER. Personally, I see a "heroine" do this and I feel like slapping the character and then banging my head against the wall in frustration.

I watched a movie on television today, based on a romance novel, and this type of thing happened. Of course, the woman character got caught when she should have been fleeing the scene as fast as a gazelle on the Serengeti. She couldn't even bother to flee through the woods. No, she had to run down the middle of the road in high heels where her evil ex-husband could not only see her (he'd be blind to miss her) but could aim a weapon at her and shout at her to stop from a distance of 100 yards. Hell, even I know that if you zigzag while running, he's unlikely to hit you, even from a much closer range. And it would draw attention and other people who could help would be alerted. But noooo, the character does the most stupid, asinine thing possible and stops. This, my friends, this is Stupid Character Syndrome.

Of course, it doesn't only happen in romance novels/movies - it happens in horror movies too. A group of teenagers decide to split up to explore a haunted house. Let me slap my hand against my forehead now. All I can think is, "Can't you hear the scary music? You're all going to get whacked!" And sure enough, within ten minutes those kids are swiss cheese.

So why do writers continue to write this kind of thing? Is it to make the reader feel so much more superior and intelligent than the character? Is it to ratchet up the suspense? Is this the way writers see women in general? Or is it just to annoy the hell out of their readers/viewers?

Fortunately, in romance novels, this kind of thing is dying a well-deserved death. Readers want to be able to respect and identify with an intelligent, gutsy heroine. Who wants to identify with a total airhead? I know I don't and I'm guessing that no one else does either. But every once in a while, I come across this type of character behavior and I literally throw the book to the floor and sometimes I stomp on it for good measure (only paperbacks though, hard cover books leave dents - I have hardwood floors). Of course, then I have to pick up the thing and dump it into recycling. And I know I have wasted $8 on a book with an idiotic heroine. I HATE that.

I realize that a tragedy is more about a character's flaws and that's what makes the tragedy. If only the character had made different choices, there would have been a chance at a decent ending. And I know that romance novels guarantee a happy ending. But quite honestly, if a character is that dumb, do they deserve a happy ending? Let her gutsy friend have the happy ending, instead of the victim.

With so many women reading romance novels (and I know this because sales of romance novels account for 60% of book sales, so you're out there, don't bother to deny it), I think women characters should be portrayed as intelligent, strong, gutsy and vulnerable. Just like real women. The hero and heroine characters should be role-models - showing how one can go from despair and fear to triumph against the odds, overcoming obstacles and achieving self-awareness and courage. Courage isn't a lack of fear, courage is doing something despite the fear, sometimes because of the fear. Those are the people we admire in real life, so why should fiction be any different?

So many people say that they would never have the guts to do one or another thing. Go back to school, love after disappointment, travel, change careers, change jobs, move. You name it, people have said they don't have the guts. People allow their fears to define them negatively. I can't do this, I can't do that. Yadda, yadda, yawn, snore, zzzzzz. And so, some people read romance novels where the character grow and learn, because they wish they could be the same but they're too intimidated to do what they really want to do in their own lives.

I think writers have a responsibility to their readers. To show what's possible. To show what's achievable. Air new ideas and perspectives. And to show that even though circumstances are not ideal, that there are always decisions to be made, even if you don't like the choices.

Whether the outcome is happiness or sadness, triumph or defeat, the characters should grow and hopefully not make too many ill-advised decisions. Like running down the middle of the road in stilettos where someone can shoot them.

Interview with Erotica Author Keta Diablo

2009-02-23T00:00:00.010-05:00

Brooke London: Hi Keta, welcome to the blog. According to your website, it seems that you’ve been interested in writing and books from an early age. Can you tell me what kinds of stories you first wrote? What was the first book you really enjoyed and why?

Keta: Hi Brooke, thank you for having me here today. It’s a pleasure. I can remember as a child writing down stories and placing them into notebook form. Then at about ten, a teacher must have noticed my fondness for writing. She introduced me to Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird. I’ve been hooked every since.

B.L.: You were once a reporter for a newspaper. How did this help you develop your writing style? How would you define your writing style?

Keta: Reporters must listen carefully and be accurate on their details of the story. If nothing else, this helps when it comes to researching a book, particularly historicals. I’m not sure how I would define my writing style. I think it changes a little depending on the genre. When I write fantasy, I’ve been told my writing is more descriptive. Perhaps this is because of the alternate world a writer must create. When I write erotica historical, I lean more toward dialogue than narrative. I try not to break the big rules pounded into our heads, POV, dangling modifier abuse, repetitious words, congruent sentence structure and all that, but heck, sometimes rules have to be broken. And I’m sure on occasion I break them.

B.L.: How are you feeling about the release of your book Land of Falling Stars?

Keta: I’m very happy over the success of Land of Falling Stars. The book has been on the top ten best sellers’ list at Ravenous Romance several times and it’s number five on Fictionwise for Ravenous Romance. I’ve had many wonderful reader reviews/comments on the book, so this really pleases me.

B.L.: What inspired you to pick the pen up one day and create the particular characters and story that appear in Land of Falling Stars? Did your interest in genealogy contribute to the book? How so?

Keta: Genealogy always seems to filter in somehow. Actually, I was reading a true story about cousins who fought in the Civil War on opposite sides and how that affected their families. My brain took flight; I started with the “what ifs”. What if two men who loved the same woman fought on opposite sides? What if one shot the other accidentally on a smoke-filled battlefield, and one was left to break the news to the heroine? So you can see where this led me. Sophia, was a pampered, coddled child and promised to Jesse in marriage since they day she was born. But it’s really Gavin, her childhood friend that owns her heart. Now, if she can only admit it. Many have asked where the title came from so I’m about to tell you . . . As children, Sophia, Gavin and Jesse would lay under the star-bangled canopy of heaven and pretend they lived in the Land of Falling Stars.

B.L.: What do you feel is the most important thing that a pre-published author should know?

Keta: The market; what’s selling, what do readers crave, what are publisher’s looking for. And they should learn as much about the craft as they can. So many people say, “Hey, I’m going to write a book.” It’s much harder than it looks, and there are many rules writers should follow in order to be recognized in the publishing arena. That’s not to say you must follow all of them, but know when it’s okay to break one. A pre-published author should know it is very tough competition and you have to be very thick-skinned to survive. There are always those who won’t like one of your books, readers, review sites, etc. You have to take it with a grain of salt and attribute to different tastes in people. Nothing should be taken personally.

B.L.: What goals do you hope to attain in your writing career during the next few years?

Keta: Oh, this is a tough one. I don’t generally set long-term goals but just see where the writing leads me. I’m much further ahead than I was two years ago, and in two more years, I hope to have more books published, more reader interest, etc.

B.L.: Sometimes people envision an author’s life as being really exotic and exciting. Authors are real people like everyone else, so tell us what’s the most unexciting, un-exotic thing you’ve done in the past week?

Keta: If they only knew! Most days will find me at the computer, perhaps in jeans and a very unglamorous T-shirt. The cat is perched by my mouse. For some reason, she’s fascinated with it, so we’re always competing. And there is a big old dog curled up by me feet. The nice thing about animals – they don’t care if you forgot your deodorant that morning. They still love you. A writer’s life is lonely, not glamorous. At least mine isn’t. The most unglamorous thing I did this week – three times – empty Emma’s litter box!

B.L.: Land of Falling Stars is on Ravenous Romance. How long have you been with them and why do you like them?

Keta: Ravenous Romance is actually quite new, but they’ve have made tremendous strides in the publishing world since opening. I’m one of their first authors, along with a host of others who joined before they opened. I was thrilled when they accepted Land of Falling Stars and think we’ll hear big things from Ravenous in the future. I’m told there are quite a few New York authors on their roster, so to have Land of Falling Stars make the top ten is a real honor. Soon I’ll be editing an anthology for them on Gods and Goddesses. Again, I was honored to be assigned this project. Watch for it on their web site in the coming month.

B.L.: What books have you bought but haven’t read yet?

Keta: I received a gift certificate for Barnes and Noble for Christmas and just completed some shopping online. Here’s what I purchased, Red Fire by Deidre Knight, The Lady Flees Her Lord, Michele Young, Forbidden, Helen Kirkman and about six others. My TBR pile is enormous and my time so precious, but I’ll get to all of them before spring. Promise.

B.L.: How many books are currently in your library and who is your all-time favorite author? Why is she/he your favorite author?

Keta: Hundreds of books make up my library. I recently had to add a new shelf to the wall to hold thirty more. My all-time favorite author is a husband and wife team that wrote in the 1980’s under the pen name Laura London. Their book Windflower is my all time favorite of any book I’ve ever read. For some reason that book resonated with me. I’ve read it so many times the pages are worn and tattered. Hmmm, I’ll have to get a new copy. I related to the characters, Merry, Devon and Cat. So many times reading it in bed at night I’d laugh out loud. I received some strange looks from my Sheltie, but that didn’t stop me. I was so drawn in by their descriptive writing and felt as if I was right there, scooping sea water out of a sinking skiff with a moccasin. Kudos to them, and how I wish they were still writing.

B.L.: If you could live in any time period, what period would that be and who would you like to be?

Keta: I think in old time Scotland or Ireland where the men who ruled were larger than life, heart-stopping gorgeous and sexy beyond words. I know the living conditions at the time were very crude but I think the Highland warrior would compensate for that.

B.L.: You’re the heroine of your book, why do you fall in love with the hero?

Keta: Because he can stare death in the face and laugh, can slay the most vicious of enemies and yet be loving and caring to his woman. He would have to be funny and have the ability to laugh at himself. And I don’t want him to be perfect, mind-blowing handsome, yes, but he has to have some flaws, cuz Lord knows, I do.

B.L.: Keta, thank you so much for being here, and before we sign off, could you let us know what’s next for you?

Thank you for having me, Brooke, and thank you for asking about my upcoming releases. My first Male/Male novellas and shorts are being released soon. Look for Valentine’s Vindication at Noble Romance on the 14th of February, and Crossroads and Crossroads Revisited coming from Phaze in March and May. And I just signed a new contract with The Dark Roast Press for Carnal Cravings. There is a huge demand for GLBT and Male/Male romance. If it’s not your cup of tea, there’s nothing wrong with that. I’ll still be writing more erotica historicals for Ravenous, Noble and Siren Publishing in the future.

Short Author Bio: Keta lives in the Midwest portion of the US and in her spare time (spare time?) loves to read and garden. She writes for five publishers under Keta Diablo and for two publishers under a pen name. She loves to hear from readers, so please find here on the internet: http://www.ketadiablo.com and here at Keta’s Keep, her author blog: http://www.ketaskeep.blogspot.com.

About Land of Falling Stars:
Better men than Gavin had been knocked low by Sophia’s beauty. Hell, every man who looked at her left a piece of his soul behind. Beyond her loveliness resided an indomitable spirit, but Sophia had always been a bundle of contradictions—fire and ice, a scorching temptress one minute, an icy bitch the next. And everything about her drew him like a hapless fly on the fringe of a giant spider web.
Years and distance, not even the war had cooled his infuriating desire for her. The woman slithered around him like a sleek, dark cat, her young, supple body sheathing him in a fiery web of unleashed passion. Oh yes, deep passion smoldered in the woman, an untapped reserve of simmering lust. Jesse, with his staunch moral upbringing and dandified ways had never dared compromise precious Sophia. Jesse had never tossed her in the hay or ravished her in the tall swamp grass of the Mill Pond to sate his hunger. Jesse had his chance, and all those years Gavin stood idly by and watched from the sidelines. He wanted her and now she wanted him. He felt it with every beat of his tormented heart.
She stood in front of him with a checkered napkin in her small hands. He fought an elemental need to crush her against him, devour her mouth, if only to prove the paltry tingling she’d felt when Jesse kissed her paled next to how she would feel when he had finished with her.

It's Better to Have Loved and Lost than to Live with the Psycho for the Rest of Your Life

2009-02-13T14:05:00.003-05:00

Well, it finally, FINALLY happened - yesterday, I dragged my flu-ridden body down to my mail box and, lo-and-behold, my divorce order was sitting in my cubby-hole. I've been waiting for it for what seemed forever - the para-legal said I'd have the order in three to four weeks which turned into five and a half weeks. Yes, I was counting days.

The title of this blog came from a fridge magnet that a friend of mine gave to me a few years ago before I decided to divorce my husband. Hmmmm. Apparently she knew before I did. LOL. My friend knows me pretty well, I'd say.

It was not an easy marriage, not even in the beginning, but like so many other people, I thought I could make it work. I made a vow to this man, which I had every intention of keeping. During the ten years we were married, the marriage deteriorated to the point where we could barely tolerate each other. It's amazing that something that started out with such hope and promise swirled down the toilet with such stunning speed. Counseling didn't save the marriage - it just clarified what I needed to do for me, in the end.

I can honestly say now that I should have left the marriage three weeks after we were married. Something happened before the marriage that I did not find out about until after the marriage. I thought I could forgive and forget, but I couldn't. I know now that I never really trusted him again. But at three weeks into marriage, the thought of divorce seemed outrageous. All that money, all that fuss, all those people who saw us take marriage vows. And I didn't want to fail in such a spectacular way - I mean, who gets divorced after three weeks unless you're a screwed up Hollywood-type?

If I had been more pragmatic and more realistic, I would have left three weeks into the marriage. I should have known myself better. I should have known that I couldn't forgive this type of betrayal. I should have tossed him out the door and let his butt bounce off the curb. Shoulda, woulda, coulda. I can do nothing about it now. I have done the only thing I could - I divorced him. I have closed, finally, the door to that miserable period of my life.

My reaction yesterday, holding the divorce order, ran the gambit from a very few tears for what had been lost to an overwhelmingly immense sense of relief. I was OUT. It was finally OVER. And now, I have my whole life ahead of me to do with as I please.

I am myself again.

Hi, my name is Brooke. I'm pleased to meet you.

Sun, Sand and Sangria

2009-02-01T13:55:00.002-05:00

Sun, sand and sangria. Sounds good right about now, doesn't it? Well, it does if you live in the Northern Hemisphere and are in the midst of winter's snow and cold. Unless you're one of those polar bear club people who have decided to embrace winter against all reason and common sense. Hey, if it makes you happy, go for it. Just don't complain to me if your heart stops from utter shock. Embracing winter makes a lot of sense when you live in a northern climate - skiing, sledding, snowball fights, skating - and why DO winter activities seem to start with an S anyway? To match the S in snow?? Another question for the ages. After all, who wants to be stuck indoors for six months of the year?

Personally, I don't appreciate the cold. I'd rather move south for winter and come back for summer. I can be one of those snow birds (no, not Canadian Geese). I want to be a beach bunny, one who hangs out on the sand with cabana boys handing me sangria or margaritas. Keep 'em coming.

The problem is that I cannot afford that lifestyle. For short periods of time, yes, but extended, no. It is such a shame that cash is needed. Sighhhhh. Warm sun and sandy beaches with blue-green crystal clear ocean should be free of charge. I sometimes think that there should be some way of taking the land mass of Canada out of North American and plunking it down somewhere in the South Pacific. There's room, we could fit! (I think). But that would cause problems for the rest of the world and so I will need to stop fantasizing about this happening.

I receive emails from various travel websites and every time I see one I can't resist selecting the links that would take me to the sun destinations. And then I look at the price. Not so bad until I realize that the taxes for the vacation cost more than the vacation itself! I don't understand how taxes can be more that the actual price. Of anything. There is something seriously wrong with the math here. 150% tax?? I don't THINK so.

So I am stranded in the ice and snow until Spring peeks into the Northern Hemisphere and decides it's time to stay. It could be worse: I could live at the North Pole - the snow and ice never leave there.

It's February now; Spring is only three months or so away. I guess I could turn up the temperature in my home to tropical levels, but I don't want to waste energy. Maybe if I got a small wading pool, a sun lamp and some sand, it would be a close enough facsimile. Paint the ceiling blue with white fluffy clouds. Pretend there's a cabana boy with sangria.

Nah. I'm just going to have to wait. I want the real thing.

YouTube Craziness

2009-01-31T11:02:00.002-05:00

I couldn't resist putting up this news clip from the UK - it's hilarious! Enjoy!

Sex, Religion, Philosophy and Romance Novels

2009-01-30T13:01:00.001-05:00

C'mon! I'm a romance writer. You knew it had to happen sooner or later!

Aside from populating the planet, why are people obsessed with sex? The birth control pill in the 1960s gave women the freedom to do as they wished sexually speaking without fear of unwanted pregnancies. I've been reading a book named "The Philosophy of Sex and Love". It addresses the logic of sex and love from various philosophical viewpoints.

Many issues swirl around the problem of objectification. Objectification of another human being is undesirable according to philosophers and I can't say that I disagree with them.

According to Wikipedia,
"Objectification also commonly refers to the regarding of a person as 'a thing'. For example, sexual objectification refers to the regarding of a person as merely a non-human object, or tool, for sex.

Philosopher Martha Nussbaum has argued that the objectification of something can be determined by the presence of the following factors:
Instrumentality - treating as a tool for one's own purposes;
Denial of autonomy - treating as if lacking in agency or self-determination;
Inertness - treating as if lacking in agency;
Ownership - treating as if owned by another;
Fungibility - treating as if interchangeable;
Violability - treating as if permissible to smash;
and the denial of subjectivity - treating as if there is no need to show concern for the 'object's' feelings and experiences.

Feminist scholars say that the objectification of women involves disregarding personal and intellectual abilities and capabilities, and women's reduction to instruments of sexual pleasure for men. Examples of phenomena seen by some feminists as objectifying women include depictions of women in advertising and media, images of women in pornography, as well as images in more mainstream media such as advertising and art, stripping and prostitution, men evaluating women sexually in public spaces, and cosmetic surgery, particularly breast enlargement.

Feminist authors Christina Hoff Sommers and Naomi Wolf write that women's sexual liberation has led many women to view men as sex objects. Research has suggested that the psychological effects of objectification on men are similar to those of women, leading to negative body image among men, as well as fears of inadequate sexual performance, leading to increased use of drugs like Viagra."

Catholic doctrine says that sex can only occur in marriage and where there is no encumbrance to conception. But why are they so hung up on encumbrances to conception? It was something I hadn't really thought out before. If the Catholic Church removes the 'no encumbrance' part, it opens the door to gay and lesbian marriage. What? Well, if there are encumbrances to conception and a heterosexual couple is having sex for fun rather than for procreative purposes, what is there to prevent the definition of marriage from changing? Nothing. A gay or lesbian love making session cannot result in a child. And the encumbrance to conception is the fact that only a heterosexual union can create a child. So if the Catholic Church says, okay, you can use birth control, then they are saying the sex without the intention of creating life is acceptable. Which would trickle down to the acceptance of gay/lesbian marriage without the chance of conception.

So the Catholic Church is unlikely to ever change its stance on birth control since that leads directly to gay/lesbian marriages, which they don't want. So millions of people around the world die of AIDS because the Catholic Church says contraception (including condoms) is a sin. But what is the greater sin? Millions of people dying or people enjoying sex? Sounds self-serving to me. Power, as they say, is an aphrodisiac especially for a 2000 year old Church accustomed to getting what it wants.

Isn't that objectification? Aren't the Catholic Church and other Churches reducing people down to sexual beings and then denying their sexuality? The Catholic Church objectifies people by their own doctrines - the presence of the factors of objectification are in full use by the Church: Instrumentality (treating as a tool for one's own purposes),Denial of autonomy (treating as if lacking in agency or self-determination), Inertness (treating as if lacking in agency), Ownership (treating as if owned by another) and the denial of subjectivity (treating as if there is no need to show concern for the 'object's' feelings and experiences).

I'm not trying to bash the Catholic Church or any other Church. I was brought up Catholic but I cannot agree with many of their doctrines. Many religions do everything they can to suppress basic human nature. We are animals. The urge to mate is natural. Why is something natural made to be disgusting in the eyes of religion? Because it is a social control. Yes, we need to have basic rules by which to live in order to avoid anarchy and chaos in our societies (we're fairly close to that anyway) but some things need to be left out of the public/religious domains and left up to the individuals.

I am NOT proscribing orgies or having sex with a different partner every night or breaking vows. If you make a vow, it is meant to be kept. If you can't keep your vow, then leave the relationship, free and clear and honest.

Kantian philosophy agrees that sex can only take place within a marriage. Kant believed that in order to avoid objectification of the other person that sex had to be marital. The logic behind his philosophy is that when a heterosexual couple marries that the woman owns the man and his sexual organs and that the man owns the woman and her sexual organs. It's sort of an equal power exchange philosophy, so that objectification is avoided. Tit for tat, no pun intended.

Some philosophers believe that human flesh is so repugnant that any/all sexual activity should be prohibited so that the human race can die out. Extreme much?

It seems like a lot of sexual philosophy has a problem with sex for sex sake. It seems like procreation in marriage is the only thing that prevents objectification from happening. But that seems like a very short-sighted philosophy. If you believe in God, I don't see why God would allow sex to be enjoyable but apparently so abhorrent. Just like I can't see how God would create gays and lesbians to only punish them. Sounds like a very capricious, vindictive God. And this makes no sense whatsoever.

I think that between consenting adults, where no one is being hurt including third parties, sex is a way to connect to another human being in the most primal, basic way. It brings pleasure, emotional, mental closeness and floods the body with endorphins. And it's fun to read about. LOL. It's also fun to write about!

Romance novels are fantasy. Romance novels guarantee a happy, committed, monogamous ending. They guarantee sexual tension and obstacles to love but in the end, the reader knows the hero and heroine will live happily ever after and have lots and lots of sex. And many children. So, are romance novels evil? Some would say yes. Others, including me, would say that it is fantasy and even if the sex and marriage are in reversed order, the love and marriage parts still happen. So, are romance novels trashy, even with religious mores thrown into the mix?

Absolutely not.

I think we have more problems with violence on TV than sex everywhere else.

Just my two cents.

Fractal Time

2009-01-28T14:48:00.002-05:00

I haven't thought about fractals in a long time. Here is a picture of one. Real purdy, ain't it? Amazing that something so pretty could be a mathematical wonder. And I have to ponder this: What makes a fractal so appealing? According to Wikipedia, a fractal is "a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is a reduced-size copy of the whole, a property called self-similarity. A mathematical fractal is based on an equation that undergoes iteration, a form of feedback, based on recursion. Because they appear similar at all levels of magnification, fractals are often considered to be infinitely complex in informal terms." Huh?

A fractal, at its core, is a repetition of a pattern over and over again, in the exact same sequence. And one fractal gives birth to a smaller but identical fractal, theoretically to infinity. Do you see the left end of the fractal above? If you were to magnify that a million times, it would look just like the swirl from which it grew. Slowly drifting off into eternity on a teensy, tiny scale.

If I were to have a fanciful theory of fractals, it would be fractal time theory. No, I am not a mathematician or a physicist, so I have no intimate knowledge of fractals. But the concept is fascinating as a rich source of pseudo-science, real science and fantasy.

What if we are all one on never ending procreative series of fractals? What if everything that has happened, has happened many times before and will happen countless times again? And what would happen if an anomaly founds it's way into the equation, throwing the pattern off-kilter?

Sometimes, I like to think that everything has happened before (ie. deja vu) and sometimes I like to think that a glitch in the programming can lead to another set of beautiful diagrammatic, mathematical equations.

Either way, I am surprised time and time again, life and life again. I think each person has their own fractal, each community, country, world. And to really mix my science, math and science fiction, every once in a while a free radical comes along to bump against your fractal causing it to change in unimaginable ways.

Fractalicious!

Resonate to Your Own Frequency

2009-01-18T18:06:00.017-05:00

I think most people have experienced THAT feeling. You know the one. The one where you're sure you've seen or done the exact same thing before. You're walking in an unknown place and suddenly the world does a little tilt and you're SURE that you've been there before. At that time. At that step. At that place. And it throws you. You stop and stare, desperate to remember the fading memory, like quicksilver disappearing into the ether.

Answer.com says that deja vu is: The illusion of having already experienced something actually being experienced for the first time.

MSN Encarta says: Déjà vu once referred exclusively to the illusion of having been somewhere before or having done something before. Recently, however, it has come to encompass as well the reality of repetitiveness in events or actions. This sense of the word has been extended still further, until the turnaround from the original meaning is almost complete and déjà vu is sometimes also used to describe tedium.

According to DiscoverMagazine.com: Brown and Marsh’s work suggests that déjà vu is more than just a hallucination—a misfiring of neurons—as many psychologists have long believed. One explanation for their results is the “double perception” theory, which has been around since the late 19th century. According to the theory, people sometimes see things twice in quick succession: the first time superficially or peripherally; the second time with full awareness. You might glance at a building while talking on a cell phone, for instance, and not really register it, then give it a second look a little while later after you get off the phone. You might not remember the first glance, but your brain has registered it subliminally, so the second glance may seem oddly familiar.

Further according to this article, researchers have information that suggests that déjà vu may be the result of a small seizure in the part of the temporal lobe that governs our sense of familiarity, a temporal lobe defect.

But is that all there is to it? Just another myth shot down in scientific flames? This phenomenon is more common in twentysomethings and tends to dissipate in middle age. But why? Why couldn't it be that we are all connected to a universal constant with a constant cycle of rebirth? We are all connected - we are all made out of the stuff of stars. And if one molecule can resonate to the frequency of another molecule, can we not all be resonating at our own frequency? Reliving moments?

I believe in science and logic. But science and logic can only take you so far. Logic can take you in any direction you want. You supply yourself with supporting data and, voila, fact-based logic. Science can be, and has been in the past, manipulated to get the results the researchers desire - everyone has their own agenda. Funding, adulation, whatever.

But what if these so-called temporal lobe seizures are something straight out of science fiction - something like a space-time crack in your mind? Allowing one to recognize the signposts of a life already lived?

Yes, I like science fiction. And as far as I can see, science fiction can lead the way in hard science. Is it just that scientists love science fiction and so go out of their way to prove it? We've all seen the original Star Trek episodes with the communicator thing they use to speak to each other wirelessly, looking a lot like present-day cell phones.

The brain is such a complex piece of tissue. Controls everything. Thoughts, words and actions change brain chemistry. So if these things can change brain chemistry and the structure of the brain, who is to say that déjà vu is not another one of our senses. Something that we learn to ignore as we age, as we move further away from the children we once were. Children are beacons of light, they see things in totally new ways, before they are taught/forced into a mold dictated by society. Losing their unique vision, their unique voice, their unique senses.

I prefer to think that déjà vu is telling me that I am on the right course. That somehow I am doing what I am supposed to do, where I am supposed to be. Yeah, this is a lot of metaphysical stuff but pure logic has not served me well. I am a logical person but when dealing with feelings, you must look deeper. Your feelings are instantiations of your core beliefs about yourself, about the world.

One of my core beliefs is that I think there is something out there. I don't understand it. I'm not sure if I call it God or the Universe, but I think there is something happening. Does this mean I believe in fate and destiny? Sort of but who is to say there is only one fate or one destiny per person? Maybe you can have multiple realities and in each one of those realities there is a fate/destiny. Wow, I sound like a new ager. I like to think that reality splinters into a million pieces with every individual passing second. You control your fate, your destiny, with your decisions. You can change the entire course of your life in a single second. And if I believe that, it would seem that I believe in multiple realities. But the realities are of our own making.

So déjà vu may be traced to the temporal lobes but I don' t think that it is not "real". Maybe déjà vu is just an echo of another reality. Or maybe an echo of this reality.

Hard to say. I don't have the answers, only the questions.

Last Tango in Toronto

2009-01-16T05:11:00.004-05:00

It's not as sexy as Sleepless in Seattle. Or maybe I should have more accurately named this post '"Last Dancer in Toronto". Yes, I admit it, I am one of those people who stands on the subway platform, plugged into my iPod, dancing. You know the ones - the ones everyone thinks are crazy.

But what is so crazy about enjoying yourself? People, in general, don't enjoy themselves enough. Not enough fun, too much work and responsibility. "Grow up" we say to those who act silly.

I am not a native Torontonian - I came originally from elsewhere where if you're waiting for a light at a street corner to change, you can actually make small talk with the person waiting with you. I tried this when I first moved to Toronto - the woman looked at me like I was an axe murderer and gave me a horrified look before scurrying away. Geez, calm down already. I am hardly a threatening person.

Part of the problem in Toronto, it seems, is that the only people who actually speak to you on the street are either panhandlers, insane, trying to pick you up, want to rob you or want to convert you to their religious sect. But when I say something innocuous about the weather and wait for a response, I don't expect a freaked out reaction.

So I people watch in the subways and streets instead. I can't talk to anyone because people think you're a threat of some sort. I'm not tall enough to be a threat. Honest. And I have my iPod. MP3 players are a great invention. I love mine. And the best thing about listening to my iPod on the subway platform, is the look of total bewilderment from other people when I start dancing. I don't do the crazy iPod dancing from the iPod commercials, but I do shimmy and shake in time to the music.

I dance to just about anything. Like Nietzsche, I consider a day lost if I have not danced at least once. Lately, I've been listening to tango music on the subway. And I keep having the same scenario running through my head - dancing the stereotypical tango that we all sort of know - the one where you throw your head back, stride to one side with one arm flung out in the direction you are moving in. I do this in my home sometimes. And I'm trying to work up the nerve to tango on the subway platform. I can just imagine how people would outright gawk at me, point and whisper to their neighbor. Well, at least they'd be speaking to each other. After all, everyone seems to love a spectacle.

I keep thinking that this would be the funniest thing or at least it would be until the men in the white suits put me in a straight-jacket and ship me off to a padded room.

So maybe I have danced my last tango in Toronto. On the subway plat form anyway.

Sighhhh.

10 Things To Do When You're Crazy in Canada

2009-01-12T20:42:00.002-05:00

When people think of Canada, they generally think of three things: Mounties (they always get their man, wink, wink, nudge, nudge), snow and terminally polite people. I think Voltaire said that Canada was a "few yards of snow", actually it's a few gazillion yards of snow, give or take a gazillion here or there, in the winter anyway. And all that snow can drive one crazy. So to lighten the load of insanity while in Canada in the winter, you can try the following things:

Go up to a Mountie, grab his stetson hat and try to run away with it (this could get you arrested but remember, you are crazy now)
Go the the Governor General's official residence in Ottawa (and having a Governor General who represents a foreign Head of State, the British Queen, is crazy in and of itself). The residence is guarded by guys in red outfits (I'm pretty sure they're mounties) who are like the Queen's guards - they don't move a fraction, don't react to anything. Go up to one and try to tickle one. See if there's any reaction. (still you might be arrested, but your mantra is "I am crazy in Canada now").
Refuse to speak anything other than French in the province of Alberta (of course, you might not survive the experience)
Give your inner dork full rein to say "eh" after every sentence. Go to the Ottawa Valley to get the "authentic" Canadian accent used by Bob and Doug Mackenzie from the Great White North. Funny, this is the only place in Canada with a Canadian accent. Most of the rest of us speak normally.
Elect a government only to have it overthrown in a bloodless, constitutionally-backed coup because the political system is whacked.
Be a true polar bear. When the snow is five feet deep and you happen to have an open body of water nearby, take a refreshing dip in the water. Ensure you have those electric paddle things to bring you back to life on hand.
Drive on the 401 Highway (busiest highway in North America) through Toronto in a snowstorm. Watch the bug-eyed people leaning forward in their seats so far their teeth marks decorate the steering wheel. Canadians afraid of the snow - who knew??
Throw yourself down a triple black diamond ski run in the Rocky Mountains, preferably with no experience in skiing. See how fast you can go before you hit a huge mogul and go flying off into the wild blue yonder. That or be a member of the Canadian National Super G ski team aka The Crazy Canucks.
Even though the temperature is 40 degrees below zero on the Fahrenheit scale (about the same as -40 degrees Celsius), go about your daily routine wearing jeans, a jean jacket, t-shirt and sneakers. Cold? There is no cold!! Bah, crazy Canucks spit in the face of cold! P-too! Sorry, I didn't hit you, did I??
If you happen to be a mayor of a large Canadian city (cough, c...Toronto, cough. Did you hear anything?? Not me.) and your city gets under four feet of snow (119 cm), then call the Army to clear the streets of snow. Really, the sheer nerve of Mother Nature.

So now you have some idea of what you can do in Canada in varying situations.

Fun, eh? Okay, okay, stop rolling your eyes.

Orgasmic Music by Jake Shimabukuro

2009-01-11T19:27:00.011-05:00

I have always been physically. emotionally and mentally affected by music. It is just something I have always taken for granted, thinking that this was something most people do - a perk, for want of a better word, for being human. But the more people I speak to, the less common I find this "perk" to be.

I was recently introduced to the music of Jake Shimabukuro, a ukulele player, of all the music in the world. I seem to remember some guy in a yellow suit in the 1970s tiptoeing through the tulips playing the ukelele. And I sort of remember thinking that the ukulele was the worst sounding instrument on the face of the planet and, to make matters worse, his voice was screechy and high.

Ugh!

But Jake plays a piece by George Harrison named "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" on a ukulele. It is almost a religious experience for me. So closely wired into my brain, it's like every one one of my nerves resonates to this man playing what I had previously thought to be a totally ridiculous instrument, a mini-guitar for children.

I listen to this piece and goosebumps fly across my skin. It's almost like having an orgasm. Almost. There isn't a better word to describe the effect this music has on me. I close my eyes and let the music drift through my body, enjoying every last drop of sensation, both aural and physical. The music is strong and passionate, tender and wild by turns. It makes me want to run through the rain naked as the day I was born. Unfortunately or fortunately, it's winter and there's snow outside so I manage to restrain myself. You can thank me later. But talk about inspiring! It is simply amazing. I don't know if Jake ever tours but if by some chance Jake is reading this, then PLEASE come to Toronto to give a concert. I will be first in the ticket line.

This man has talent. In spades. I watched a YouTube video of him playing this piece and watching his fingers move blindingly fast over the strings is something to behold. I never in my wildest imaginings would have thought a ukulele could possibly sound so wonderful. My instrument of choice is a piano but ukulele is definitely on my radar now. I even downloaded his album "Gently Weeps" from iTunes the other day, I was and am so enthralled. If someone told me that one day I would be downloading/buying ukulele music I would have laughed myself to death.

You have to listen to this guy to believe me. Go on, I'll wait while you watch and listen.

Now wasn't that amazing? So now you are thinking one of a number of things: that I am totally insane, because it's not Nickelback (who I like) and it's not classical (which I LOVE) or Wow, that was unique and wonderful.

I'm hoping you go with unique and wonderful, but everyone has their own musical tastes. I don't know how much of a following Jake has but I'd wager it is more of an underground movement. I had never heard of him or his music. Which is a real shame. We get music that has been pre-packaged, pre-marketed and pre-digested with a pretty face at which to look. Musical factories who manufacture the next pop icon. American idol stuff. Whatever.

This is authentic music to my thinking. It is individualistic and real, and more appealing for being so. Evocative and thoroughly entertaining. It is what music should be - appealing on many levels and wonderfully nuanced.

Confessions of a Technology Junkie

2009-01-09T16:03:00.008-05:00

Since starting my profile on various social and writing networking websites, something has clubbed me betwixt the eyes. The longer I am a part of these sites, the more I see in the tech microcosm, I understand how alone technology has made us.

Don't get me wrong, technology is a wonderful thing - I can't imagine my life without my computer, the internet, e-mail, voice mail, online shopping and all the things that can make one's life more productive and easier, less stressful. But in the midst of all this technology, we've cut ourselves off from the world and other people. We interact with the world through a monitor and keyboard, sometimes using Skype to actually see any person you want to speak to around the world. I am addicted to technology, not surprising for someone who worked in Information Technology for many years, but still not a good thing.

We are reaching out in record numbers to people we've never met before. eHarmony, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Red Room - all used in an attempt to connect with other like-minded people. We have love affairs with our computers. Over the holidays, I didn't have daily access to the Internet. And it just about drove me nuts - I wanted the contact with others that I have come to appreciate as a member of various social networking sites. My family thought this was kind of amusing, no doubt.

I just wanted to have a computer around me, sort of like a wiry, cold security blanket. OMG, I was out of touch! I just wanted to touch a computer, caress the damn thing. I just wanted to hang out in a computer store. And that's when I realized it - I am a technology junkie.

My fix is plugged into the wall and I plug into my laptop. I need to check my e-mails, my site traffic stats for the previous day, network with other people and write. Now I really do need to write and my handwriting is atrociously bad. But I need to limit my time on the social networking sites.

I am an avid Facebooker. I have "met" so many wonderful people that I look forward to "chatting" with them on a regular basis. It's also a support system - like today when I couldn't get a word out to save my life. Someone from Facebook helped me with my problem and off to the races I went. Perfect. Fulfills a need.

But when you're sitting there and checking for email every three minutes, there's a problem. And if you're sitting there all day, without moving your backside out of your chair for some much needed exercise, technology has created another species of couch potato, instead of camping out in front of your TV, you're camping out in front of your computer.

Writing, in general, has cut down my day-to-day access to flesh and blood people that I can see, feel and speak to. Not that I feel up the people I see :). It's so easy to do - you don't even need to go out to get groceries, just shop over the Internet and have it delivered. You don't even have to speak to the delivery guy, just have him drop it off at the door or with the concierge.

And the kids growing up with all this technology are addicted to it too. When was the last time you saw kids playing in a playground? I honestly can't remember. It might have been three or four years ago. Not including organized sports, etc. What happened to swinging on the swing sets? What happened to tag? What happened to blind man's bluff or red rover? Or hide and seek? Kids are plugged into technology to the point that six year olds are coming down with carpel tunnel syndrome. SIX!

And the thing I really, REALLY don't understand? Parents give their kids a computer as a gift and then don't monitor their computer usage. There are all sorts of sick perverts crawling the Internet "chatting" with YOUR children. I don't have kids, but if I did, the computer would be set up in the dining room or living room where I could see exactly what they were doing. They're kids. They need to have someone looking after their best interests, not left to the pedophiles trolling the internet like fishing trawlers.

Aside from that, I make a point to exercise daily, to at least try to get out and see real people on a daily basis, I have writing groups that I attend and I learn more about writing. I won't use the words "to hone my craft" - I'm sorry but it sounds like a difficult knitting project or something really pretentious. If I ever refer to writing as "my craft" please shoot me. (No don't shoot me, but you can tell me how ludicrous I sound - all I would need would be a pashmina draped artfully around my neck to complete the image, wear really heavy makeup and act weird - ugh!) I write ergo I am a writer. Not a crafter.

Sorry, that got a little off-topic. Pet peeve of mine.

Regardless, I need to ensure that I turn off my laptop and do something else. Yes, I can always find interesting things on the Net and interesting things about my Macbook to play with (I love Garage Band and iWeb). But that doesn't involve other people. I need physical/verbal contact with other human beings who sit at a table with me, walk down the street with me, go to the movies/shopping with me.

No one is an island, but damn, we're working hard on making that saying irrelevant. We need to take steps away from all the technology competing for attention in our lives and just BE. Be with your friends, your lovers, your families, your co-workers, the cashier at the store, whoever. And maybe then we won't be so separated from our humanity, which sometimes seems to hold us back so much. If only we could have computer-like efficiency. But we don't. We are human.

Not cybernetic organisms jacked into ethernet cable.

100 Things I Want in a Man

2009-01-05T21:30:00.010-05:00

I was speaking to a friend today and somehow we got onto the topic of what we would like in a man. She told me that about a year ago, a friend of hers had written a list of 100 things she would look for in a mate/man. And then out of nowhere, she meets a man and lo-and-behold, he matches almost everything on the list she had written a year previous. She hadn't looked at that list since writing it, but remembered it and decided to take a look at it.

So maybe the act of writing down what she wanted in another person helped her to subconsciously look for the person who would suit her best. Sort of like a subliminal suggestion. Sort of like the book "The Secret" but for relationships.

So I thought, why not? The only stipulation of the exercise was that you had to write things you wanted, not things that you didn't want. A positive list instead of a negative list which concentrates on the bad instead of the good. I think if you keep saying that you don't want certain things, then for some reason, you are so focused on not wanting these things that you actually get what you didn't want. Did that make any sense whatsoever??

So I wrote my list. Surprisingly enough it didn't take that long. At first I thought there's no way I can come up with 100 things I look for in a man. But after the first 15 items or so, the character traits that I look for just came spinning out of my fingers and into a Word document. Amazing. I had been so concentrated on what I didn't want instead of what I did want.

The other surprising thing? Not one item on my list had anything to do with how the man looked. I don't know if most women would put in tall, dark and handsome but it never really occurred to me to put in what to look for in terms of looks. Sometimes I think I am odd for a woman. Looks are so subjective for me. If I think a person is a nice and good person, then they are attractive to me. If I think a person is not a nice person, then they are unattractive to me. I refuse to watch Brad Pitt movies anymore because all I can think is that he cheated on his wife, therefore he has become repugnant to me. Maybe I take things too much to heart, I've been told that this attitude of mine is a little hard-core. And maybe they're right, but I feel as I do regardless.

So, what, you are asking, could I possibly be looking for in a man? Well, I'm not going to post the whole list but the words compassionate, loving, intelligent, honest, honorable, reasonable, playful, loyal, helpful, passionate, kind, flexible, hard-working, emotionally available and reliable were some of the traits I look for in a man. I think most men would agree that they would look for these things in a woman, as well. Men and women, I think, are not all that different. Yes, there are differences but down deep we all want the same thing. Love and acceptance.

So now, I am going to put my list away and not look at it for a year or so. And then I'll see what has happened after a year. Maybe nothing, but maybe something really wonderful.

Facebook Blues

2009-01-02T16:43:00.002-05:00

Facebook and other social networking sites are great. You get to contact old friends and meet new friends. Even though I've never met many of my Facebook friends in person, I have had conversations with many of them and I genuinely like them. They're nice people.

And when someone is kind enough to accept my friendship request or extend their friendship to me, I feel it is polite to acknowledge them with a nice thank you note. I was doing that today, I had a lot of people to write to, but part way through my list, Facebook blocked my access to making wall posts.

I hate being rude. It doesn't sit well with me. It leaves a bad impression with people and a bad taste in my mouth. So being cut off is upsetting to me. To some people, it may seem silly to be upset by this. But it really annoys me. It's like being told to "shut up" while greeting someone in public by some busy body.

So I've emailed Facebook to see if this is a permanent thing or if I can somehow get off their

"sh**-list". I explained what I was doing and why. Maybe if I keep my thank-yous down to ten per day that will be enough.

So for those of you who haven't received a post from me yet, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I appreciate your friendship and would like to get to know each of you better in the future.

Okay, I feel a bit better now.

New Year, New Wishes

2009-01-01T00:00:00.005-05:00

If I could have or do anything, anything at all, in the whole wide world, what would I have? What would I do?

Win a multimillion dollar lottery.
Travel around the world.
Pay off my mortgage.
Have my novel, Pitch Dark, become a New York Times Bestseller.
Write five more brilliant novels.
Be totally healthy and completely happy.
Have my family and friends be totally healthy and completely happy.

Well, I might have a shot at one of the above, but the rest…the rest are unlikely to happen. But that's sort of what new years are about. Dreaming of a perfect future, a perfect life. That which will make you happy. What would I do if…? What changes could I make if…? What do I want for my life?

Big questions. Uncertain answers. It seems that everyone and their dog wants to lose weight and get in shape. Sounds good, fitness clubs do a booming business in January but then many seem to stop going and start eating McDonald's and Wendy's again.

I think the problem is that people are thinking that, "now my life will begin. Now I can make my life perfect." And when that takes too long, they give up on their dreams and goals and think, "well, maybe someday".

Someday is now.

You want to change? Really, really, REALLY want to change? Your best bet is to get whatever help you need to make the change you want. Within reason. I mean, somehow I don't think I'm going to grow two inches taller in this lifetime. And I will never weigh what I did when I was fifteen unless I went on a starvation diet. I'll never be a rocket scientist because I'm not interested in doing it.

Be realistic. If you want to lose weight, go visit your doctor to rule out any health problems that may contribute to a weight problem. One to two pounds per week is all you should lose or you will just gain it back and screw up your metabolism to add insult to injury.

If you want to have loads of self-esteem, feel good about who and what you are, do things that will make you feel better about yourself. Take a good, GENTLE look at yourself and don't judge yourself harshly. The world judges you enough already, so you need to be like your very best friend who always supports you and listens to you. Feelings and thoughts are not just things that pop into your head - your feelings and thoughts are a product of your core belief system. Examine your core beliefs and see if they help you or hurt you.

Learn to set your personal boundaries so that other people don't take advantage of you or abuse you. Stand your ground, remain calm and repeatedly state what you need of the other person. Their problems are not your problems. Don't take on something that is not yours to deal with. This is something I've learned in the past year and it has made an immense difference in how I feel about the world, other people and myself. No, I won't do five people's jobs. No, I can't work ridiculous amounts of overtime. No, I have other plans. No, I don't need to explain myself to you. You are not required to justify your actions to anyone but you, unless you've done something illegal or unethical.

Get out of any destructive relationships, personal or professional, even if you are frightened, because you only hurt yourself and feel worse about yourself. Get counseling if you need it - there are organizations out there who will provide counseling services for a nominal fee, if not free of charge, if you cannot afford it.

Exercise. Not just to tone your body but to tone your mind. Exercise releases endorphins which make you feel better mentally and emotionally. And it's always a boost to fit into those jeans you haven't fit into in years.

Take a look at all of you, instead of just parts of you. "Oh, my nose looks like a ski jump. My lips are too thin. My eyes are too big/small. My legs are too short. I have thunder thighs. Oh right, and I have hideous feet." Give yourself a break. Work with what you have physically, mentally, intellectually and emotionally. You think more about your imperfections than anyone else, so try not to be too self-conscious. Easier said than done, I know.

So this year, I make no New Year's Resolutions. My changes will take longer than one year and are ongoing. Make a commitment to yourself and see what you can accomplish.

What I have learned (or already knew) in 2008

2008-12-30T14:45:00.019-05:00

We've made it through another year (heaving a big sigh). 2008 had some ups and some downs. So what have I learned?

My family supports me through thick and thin. I knew this before but in the past year it was very clearly illustrated to me. I really, REALLY know this now.
Really good friends are like diamonds. Hard to find but precious to behold.
Democracy is very fragile, even in first world countries. Look at the current Canadian political crisis.
China can paint a cheery face on their massive social problems, but in the end, it's just stage makeup. Wonder what happened to all the Beijing vagrants after the Olympics.
Rampant greed on Wall Street adversely affected the entire world, trashing the world economy.
eHarmony and other online relationship websites seem to be taking off in popularity, now more than ever. Good thing? Maybe. Bad thing? Just be careful. Meeting people online requires that the genuine participants exercise due diligence when meeting their matches or giving out personal information.
Salsa dancing is great exercise, fun and sexy as hell.
Letting go of past hurts is essential in order to move forward.
When threatened with violence, act as insane as humanly possible, if you can't get away. No one wants to mess with insane people.
No one has the right to emotionally, mentally, verbally, sexually or physically abuse you or your family. Protect yourself and your family.
Live your life with a musical soundtrack - makes commuting, housework, working, writing so much more enjoyable.
Dance at least once a day.
Sing at least once a day.
Laugh every day.
Exercise a little every day.
Feed and nurture your body properly and take care of yourself. You only get one body. Don't pollute it.
Feed and nurture your mind properly. You only get one mind (unless you have multiple personality disorder which is a whole other problem) so be aware of what you're feeling and why you are feeling a particular way. Your core beliefs inform your feelings - explore your core beliefs and if some do not serve you well, change them. Get help if you need it.
Love yourself. No one else knows you better.
Meditate on a daily basis.
Stand up for yourself. You are your best champion. Set your boundaries and stick by them. You teach others how to treat you, so teach them to respect you.
Achieving your dreams takes patience, persistence and more persistence.
Do something that scares you (but won't hurt you or anyone else) like public speaking. It expands your life.
You are perfectly, fragilely human.
Don't point fingers. Someone said once something like "let he who is without sin cast the first stone".
Instant messaging/chatting online is great but can land you with some startling results. No, I'm not explaining this one :)
"No" is not the final word, unless something criminal or unethical is happening.
Miracles are scientific or spiritual things we don't understand.
Try to be nicer to people than necessary because you never know what they're going through behind the scenes.
The unexpected happen every day.
You can change your life in a single second.
There are exceptions to everything.

That's probably not all I learned or knew in 2008 and I could keep going but I'm going to stop here.

Have a wonderful, prosperous, Happy New Year and may all your fondest dreams, desires and wishes come true.

Don't you just hate...

2008-12-18T14:18:00.014-05:00

Don't you just hate it when you call an airline for information and they send you through voice menu hell? I swear, sometimes the most unhelpful companies in the world are airlines. And no doubt the staff at the airlines dread having to deal with customers driven irate by the endless menu options that are no real option at all.

Why can't I just press zero and get some assistance, for Heaven's sake? Now voice menus have gotten rid of dialing zero to get an actual real live person on the other end. No doubt too expensive to have to hire someone - they've taken away meals, soft drinks, water, movies and hand you a teeny-tiny bag of cardboard pretzels as compensation. Now you need five dollars to buy a can of soda, after having paid hundreds if not thousands of dollars to get to where you need to go.

They've gotten sneakier with ways to hide how to talk to a person. Sometimes you have to press "#" or "*" or some combination thereof. Or if you do get a real person on the line, they tell you to call another number where the other number puts you through voice menu hell. Again.

And when you do get someone, they have no idea what they're talking about. Even if I ask about really, really basic things like can I get luggage loss insurance or health insurance for my trip. Even that is asking more than they know, and some of these people are the supervisors. I called one of the Internet airline booking services the other day, by some miracle of Christmas, I got the supervisor on the line and even he couldn't tell me if I could insure my baggage against loss. He didn't have a clue. He would only tell me that I could have health insurance. What kind of travel operation doesn't have luggage loss insurance, I ask you? I can't even ask if I have a connection that I absolutely, positively must make, will the airline ensure I get to where I need to go. Will they hold the airplane if they're late because I need to make it to my destination or I might as well just shoot myself. It's just insanely stupid.

Why won't someone at the airlines or travel agents' booking offices just talk to me and tell me the truth? Why can't I rely on the travel industry to train their people so they know what they're talking about? Why are the travel people on the telephone so unhelpful? Why, why, WHY? Aaaaaaaarrrgggggghhhhhh!

I realize the time of year is not conducive to travel agents being able to help everyone with their plans. Christmas is an insane time in the travel industry. But they know it comes every year - why can't they plan to have more people on staff through the Christmas season? Why is there no back-up planning in evidence?

They just want to herd us onto planes, trains and automobiles at outrageous prices and not hear a word of complaint. And if you're paying many hundreds of dollars for service, why is all the service at an extra charge? Oh, you want to choose a seat for your flight? That will be $22. Oh, you want to have a guarantee that we may be able to get you to your destination on time as required? That will be another $35. Oh, you want headsets to listen to the movie that cost you $5? That will be another $5. Oh, you want to be fed on a twenty hour flight? That will be another $75 - each way, thank you very much for acting like the mindless automaton we want you to be. Just hand over your moola.

Oh and really, the flight crew isn't required to be polite to you, even if you are always polite to them. And, by the way, we forgot to tell you that, tee hee, your pilot was trained in the jungles of Papua New Guinea so the pilot doesn't have any verifiable flying credentials. Have a wonderful flight. Buh-bye!

For God's sake.

I'm going to wait until later to book my travel even though it'll cost me more because I can't deal with these people now. ***rolling my eyes***

Fear Not, My Love

2008-12-17T16:53:00.011-05:00

Fear not, my Love,
The passage of time against which
We sail into the unknown ages

To make love of our words,
To experience our expense,
To laugh at our selves, our lives,
Was worth the price

Subtlety amidst the obvious
Shrouded against the world
We converged souls and grew to be more,
Became one for a single spark of eternity

Though we never met
We are together
Though we never touched
We are lovers
Though our time short
We are forever

Copyright © Brooke London 2008

Live the Music, Write the Music

2008-12-17T15:33:00.005-05:00

Music has been a part of my life since I was seven years old and my parents bought a secondhand practice piano from a convent for, I think, $200. I can’t say I appreciated the thought behind it at first. Being forced to sit there every day for fifteen minutes with the timer on the oven set. As soon as the buzzer went off, I took off. And sometimes I got away with not practicing. However, we did have a cat for a short time who seemed to love prancing down the keys at midnight.

I think I was thirteen when I stormed out of my last piano lesson and stated to my mother than I was never going back to lessons ever again and I would never touch the piano again. My two sisters had already given up playing piano before that, so I couldn’t understand why I was being tormented with lessons. I was a crap player, didn’t like the music I was playing and didn’t see the point. What can I say, I was thirteen.

Two years later, at the age of fifteen, I heard the beckoning call of the poor instrument abandoned in the basement. It was a beautiful piano, oak I think, but with one small chip on the edge of the key of middle C. The sounds it produced were rich and vibrant, like a wonderfully aged port. Time had imparted a particular deep resonance to the notes when played. None of this tinny sounding honky-tonk stuff – a comforting, inexplicable, full sound emanated from the strings as the soft hammers struck them.

And I was hooked. With additional maturity, I found I was able to play and enjoy more complex pieces. I loved that piano. It was the place where I found solace from the pains of adolescence and anxiety of life. I would lose myself in the music because playing it pushed everything but the music out of my mind. I played that piano whenever I could throughout the rest of grade school and to the end of university.

After university, I traveled for a year and a half and didn’t have the opportunity to play. When I arrived back home, I couldn’t afford to take the instrument with me when I moved to Toronto so it was sold. I wanted to cry.

For eleven years after that, I didn’t have a piano. And then one day I was ‘given’ a piano as a ‘present’ from my then-significant other. It was also a beautiful instrument with a wonderful sound. And it was like I had never been without a piano. Again, I could play more complex pieces and truly appreciate the art behind the music, appreciate the composer, appreciate the mind-clearing reality of music and just be.

It was with playing piano and listening to other music that I was able to write my first novel. Music inspired me, it led me to different conclusions, different methods, a different…me. If I wanted to write something upbeat I would listen to upbeat music. If I needed to write a sad scene, I’d write to sad music. All the moods in the world captured in time and in writing with music.

When my relationship ended with my ex, he took my piano away, took back his present to me, even though he did not play the piano. And so now, I do not have a piano again. I seem to keep losing them in one way or another. I will buy another one someday.

I like to live my life with background music of my own choosing and playing, sort of like that spoof soap opera back in the 1970s named ‘Soap’ with Katherine Helmond. The matriarch of the wealthy family, played by Katherine Helmond, wanted to live her life to a soundtrack. At the time it was just a joke to describe her wacky, oblivious character.

Geez, maybe I’ve turned into a wacky, oblivious character. Although owning an iPod helps me to have a soundtrack for my life. You can never tell where life will lead you I guess. But I will own a piano again and this time it will be all mine. That is a promise.

So You're Writing Your First Book...

2008-12-09T18:18:00.005-05:00

A little while ago, a Facebook aspiring writer asked me for advice on how to keep the motivation going to complete her first book. I don't pretend to be an expert by any means, but this was my answer with some edits for clarity:

Congratulations on writing your first novel! It's an exciting, frustrating time for you.

I think writing your first book is more difficult in some ways than writing your next books. For a lot of authors writing their first book, they're sort of out there in the wilderness without any support and just winging it, hoping it'll turn out. One of the best things you can do is to join a writing group - they help to keep you motivated and moving forward. It's inspiring to hear how others in your writing group succeed and how they did it. Also gives you more ideas on what you can do. Having a critique partner is also motivating and encouraging.

Also, for writing, some days your muse is on vacation. In those cases, don't stop writing - just write about something else other than your book, update your blog if you have one, journal. Just something to keep you writing and your brain functioning. But don't stop writing.

You can try to set aside a period of time each day, a date with your manuscript every day, and just sit in front of your computer for twenty minutes. Often, just forcing yourself to sit there and stare at the thing helps to get everything going.

Be patient with yourself. Some people take years to write a book. Kelley Armstrong took seven years to write her first book and now she's a New York Times Bestselling author.

If you've run into a road block and don't know what to do, I have found that there is normally something wrong with my plot. It may take me a month of whacking my head against the wall before I realize it. So if you find you can't move forward, revisit your plot to see if something is not working there.

My advice, and some may say differently, is not to worry about finding a publisher until you've at least completed your first draft. Do take a look at which publishers you think will be interested in your writing and their guidelines ("The Writer's Market" is a must-have book for all the publishers, editors and agents out there) but don't approach them until you've polished your manuscript. For first time writers, the publishers want to know that you can complete a book you've started.

When it comes to submitting your manuscript, expect rejection. You will be rejected, maybe less than other writers, maybe more than other writers. I'm not trying to discourage you. I have a binder full of rejections from publishers and agents. Most writers have a drawer, file folders or boxes filled with rejection letters. They say (whoever they are) that on average if you're going to be published it takes five years. I don't know where this is from but in my experience it's fairly close to the truth. Most writers I know have 5-6 manuscripts collecting dust under their bed before they sell their first book. Some will sell their first book - I did but that's a little unusual - but it took me one year of writing, one year of editing and two years of schlepping it around before a publisher contracted me.

Editors, publishers and agents are not infallible. If they get your manuscript when they're having a bad day, then your manuscript could be rejected. After all, they are human too.

I hired an editor to do a manuscript evaluation on my book before sending it out to anyone. I wanted to know if what I wrote was total garbage - it's easy to lose perspective on your own writing. I found my hired editor a little pricey but absolutely worth the cost - I learned a lot from her including the fact that in her opinion the book was marketable as long as I made the changes that she suggested. And she was right, I made the changes and a publisher contracted it.

If you feel the editor you hired is totally off-base, then go with your gut feeling. Give your most honest friend your book to read, so that he/she can give you really, really honest feedback. You don't want to be squeamish about this, but at the same time you need to trust the person giving you the feedback and take it with a grain of salt. If you feel strongly that something you've done is right, then go with your feeling.

I hope I have provided you with some ideas.

Let My People Vote

2008-12-07T13:02:00.014-05:00

I have a few (okay, a lot of) hot button issues that are guaranteed to get a rise out of me. Politics, emotional, mental, physical or sexual abuse of anyone but especially of children, terrorism, genocide. The other topics annoy me mildly: traffic, waiting in long lines, high heels, the outrageous prices of food/gas/electricity, you know, the everyday issues. But politics…politics are driving me nuts in the past week.

In Canada right now, we are having a huge political crisis. The crisis is unprecedented in Canadian history: we're pulling ourselves apart. Neighbor against neighbor, friend against friend. Canadians are known for being somewhat apathetic when it comes to politics; after all, Canadians know that politicians are people with massive clay feet who speak out of both sides of their mouths. It comes down to a choice of the lesser of two/three/four evils. Cynical? Maybe. But also realistic and pragmatic. In Canada, unlike the USA, we vote for a party instead of for an individual President. The party elects their party leader and if that party gets more votes than the other parties, then that leader will be Prime Minister.

Until the past week and a bit. Canada had a federal election on October 14 2008 and we elected a minority government. The previous government was a minority government that lasted two years or so. Prior to that, minority governments didn't generally last more than a year, not including during WWII. Anyway, the parties who lost are now banding together to form a Coalition government backed by the Quebec separatist party, making the separatist party the 'king maker' and giving the separatists veto power over all decisions that affect all Canadians.

This is apparently not unconstitutional, but I feel...I know it is unethical. After all, no one in Canada voted for or against a coalition government, especially not one backed by a separatist party whose only interest to undermine Canada in whatever way possible. You have to know that when a proposed government allows a separatist party unprecedented power in something they wish to destroy, there are some serious problems with the people in charge of the situation. The opposition parties are attempting a bloodless coup in parliament, a blatant power grab, for something they could not gain legitimately, hoping that the Canadian people will behave as they normally do: apathetic and fatalistic.

The opinion polls indicate that if Canada went to vote again that the current minority government would turn into a majority government in of unheard of proportions because many people, Conservatives, Liberals and NDPs alike, including myself, think this is a subversion of democracy in the most cynical, selfish, self-aggrandizing way possible. I can accept that the minority government will fall on a non-confidence vote. What I cannot and will not accept is a coalition government, backed by separatists, which no one voted for or against. There was no coalition party option on the ballot I used to vote. This is a bait-and-switch tactic.

During the run-up to the election, the opposition parties flatly denied that a coalition would be a consideration. If the current minority government falls, I call on the Governor General of Canada, Michaëlle Jean, to immediately dissolve parliament and call a new election. I want my vote. Canadians who believe in fair play want their votes. This attempted theft of the House of Commons is unacceptable on all levels. It is the desperate bid for supremacy by the losers of the last election, who will do anything for power. They do not have the best interests of my country at heart, they think only of themselves and their political scheming, acting like Canada is a Monopoly game.

I can't even get my federal government representative, my Minister of Parliament (MP), to return the telephone call I made to him last week. I will be making daily calls to his office in an attempt to speak to him; he is supposed to represent his constituents and I am one of them. It is my impression that he believes he will be the next Prime Minister, the great pretender to the throne, if the coalition is successful in this heinous plot.

Moses said, "Let my people go."

I say, "Let my people vote."

Inigo Montoya's Lessons in Honor

2008-11-29T01:08:00.013-05:00

"My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

I have watched The Princess Bride so many times that I have lost count. Originally I watched it because my sister had a thing for it, so at Christmas we would watch The Princess Bride and Dr. Zhivago. I categorically refuse to watch Dr. Zhivago anymore - don't get me wrong, it's a great movie but seeing it twenty times wastes too much Kleenex and kills too many trees. I suppose I could just let the tears run down my face but then my clothes get wet. Or watch naked, but we won't go there.

Buttercup and her prince charming, Wesley, the Dread Pirate Roberts, fight against the evil Prince Humperdinck, his dastardly minions, huge rats, the fire swamp, the Pit of Despair and the prince's nefarious plot to kill Buttercup on their wedding night. Buttercup has despaired of ever seeing Wesley again and has agreed to wed the prince, not knowing he plans to kill her in order to accuse a neighboring kingdom of murdering his bride and thus justifying a war. A lust for power. Although, what guy in his right mind would kill the lovely Buttercup? Obviously not in his right mind. Must remember that.

Although Buttercup, Wesley and Humperdinck (sounds kinda crude doesn't it) are vastly entertaining, I find the character of Inigo Montoya the most engaging. Mandy Patinkin was so cute is the eighties. And he makes a lovable hero, avenging his father's death at the hands (or digits) of the too-many-fingered minion of Humperdinck. Stopping at nothing to fulfill his pledge to his dead father. He is driven by passion, by justice and by the child he once was who adored his father. He is driven by his sense of honor, a word that seems to have no or little meaning in society anymore except in the most negative sense (ie. so called honor killings, disgusting). I'm also not suggesting that vengeance is a good idea because that leads to a vicious cycle of reprisals and more destruction.

Honor is a code of ethics one lives by. Honor is having personal integrity about who you are and the actions you take. Honor is about taking responsibility for yourself and your actions. Honor is having a standard and not abandoning it just because it is inconvenient.

There is not enough honor in the world today. It seems to be dog eat dog, with little concern given to what is right or honorable. Todays children need to learn about honor and personal integrity but not many people bother to teach their kids this. Do the parents have no personal integrity themselves? No, I don't necessarily think so. I think parents are so busy trying to make things work financially that they throw money and things at their kids to substitute for time with their children. Understandable, in a way, but not so understandable in another.

The school system does not set a child's moral compass. That is the job of the guardian or parent of the child. I know that in most families, both people have to work. That is a simple reality in our world. Those who can afford and want to have one parent at home are fortunate. But that doesn't mean that one can abandon a child to the school system, X-box, iPod or the Gap for Kids and hope they learn what they need to know. Parents must take an active role in shaping their child. I'm not talking about programming any child down to the last iota of brain cell. I'm not talking about smothering a child with endless rules and regulations. Kids need to be kids. But parents need to be parents.

Parents need to instill in their children a personal code of conduct, a personal code of honor. A realization that everyone is a part of a larger society that must work together to succeed as a whole. That keeping your word means something. Your word is your bond. This all sounds old-fashioned to some, but if you can't rely on people not to lie to you, not to cheat you, not to try to steal from you, then you end up with the society we have today--severely dysfunctional and driven by greed. Just look at the current economic crisis. Caused by the greed of the few to infect the entire world with financial malaise.

We need more Inigo Montoyas in our world and fewer politicians.

I'll get down from my soapbox now.

Labyrinthine Love and Life

2008-11-27T20:31:00.008-05:00

The book I'm currently writing has a reference to the Chartres Labyrinth in France. So I went looking for one in the city I live and I found one! The other day, according to tradition, I walked the labyrinth and I started thinking as I paced the path. Uh oh, you're thinking, she's contemplating again!! Horror! Run, run fast, run far far away!

But since you're still reading, I'll assume I'm not scaring you and shall continue. :) The labyrinth is made up of four sections and it loops closer to the centre before moving away from it, out to the far reaches of the structure. And it occurred to me that the labyrinth is a metaphor for life. And for love.

At first, I followed a straight path until I was almost halfway to the inner sanctum, my goal, a six petal rose. The path forced me to detour around the circle, closer and farther away from the centre. Close, so tantalizingly near to my goal, only to be led in another direction. Such is life. Such is love.

We always seem to be on a path in our lives, one that takes us closer to ours goals and then moves us away from what we want. A pushmi-pullyu sort of animal. Dr. Dolittle has never seemed so profound.

Life can be a maze with dead-ends and wrong turns leaving you lost and alone. But life for me is a labyrinth, one path, a circuitous, winding road that gives us some of the things we want--love, home, hearth. But it also leads us away from what we what, only to have teasing glimpses of our goals.

I suppose I could have just run to the centre, ignoring the path, but what would be the point?The path teaches one patience. The path teaches one wisdom. The path teaches one discipline. The path teaches one about life. Running to the centre would have cheated me of the journey, the process of reaching my goal.

When I reached the centre goal of the labyrinth, the six petal rose, I walked into each petal and did a little spin, celebrating the fact that patience had won out over impulse by walking the path. It took me 20 minutes to get to the rose. I then left the rose and followed the path out of the labyrinth, again winding closer to and further away from the petals.

When I left the labyrinth, the only thing I could think was, "I will be back."

Salsa Confusion

2008-11-23T10:15:00.002-05:00

I went to my first Salsa Practice yesterday. It's a group of Salsa enthusiasts who get together once a week to practice their moves. Or their non-moves, as in my case, or maybe confused movements is a better description of what I was doing yesterday.

The practice session doesn't include lessons, it isn't a meet market--people are just there to dance, enjoy themselves without any pressure and learn from the different partners they dance with. Rank beginners, like myself, intermediate level dancers and those who really know what they're doing. At each new song, people switch partners (I let anyone I danced with know that I am a beginner, just so they understand that I don't know what I'm doing).

And despite being spun off balance a few times, stepping on my partners' feet and bumping into them at inopportune moments, I had fun. I went to a Salsa nightclub a few weeks ago and the night-clubbers apparently only want to dance with people who know what they're doing and look really good doing so. I am not one of these people. Too much pressure and snobbery for me.

I just want to learn to dance Salsa. I don't have a partner with whom to take to lessons, I can't afford private lessons, so Salsa practice is a wonderful way to accomplish what I want to learn. I'm assuming, of course, that I am not totally uncoordinated and will catch on, like everyone tells me I will, in 5 to 10 sessions. I practice the basic steps at home, but the spinning thing doesn't work well without a partner - I overspin without someone there to stop me. The kitchen counter or a chair don't work well as partners.

So maybe, just maybe, in a couple of months, I won't be spinning off-balance, stepping on feet and bumping into my dance partners. What surprised me the most was that the numbers of female and male dancers were pretty well even. I had originally thought that there would be a bunch of women there, but no. Fairly even numbers and everyone was friendly and understanding and the men knew what they were doing.

I don't know if anyone else has tried to drag their significant other to dance classes, but I used to do this, only to discover that if the man doesn't know how to lead, then I can't follow and I try to lead. Which only irritates all concerned.

So yes, I am very happy if a man knows how to lead and lead well. I am a feminist, but somethings just work better when you don't try to lead. I don't want to lead--I don't know what I'm doing. And the rules of hand-to-hand (contact??) dancing are that the man leads. Some feminists will argue that the rules of dancing need to be changed, but I am not one of these. I don't want to change the Bible so that God is referred to as a woman. I don't care. It doesn't matter to me. What matters to me in terms of feminism is gender equality before the law and in society. Domestic abuse (although either gender can be abused), prostitution (ditto), equal legal rights, equal working rights, freedom from sexual harassment etc are far the more serious issues that feminism should deal with. Not dancing.

It's dancing for God's sake, not war.

A Cobbled-Together Life

2008-11-21T16:45:00.001-05:00

Life is like a box of choc-o-lates. (Sorry for the plagiarism from Forrest Gump). You never know what you’re going to get—the yucky ones, the not so yucky ones and the ones you LOVE. My favorite is the cherry centered one with the actual cherry and the gooey syrup in it. And I think, maybe ol’ Forrest had a point.

Life comes at you at the speed of light these days, the good, the bad and the ugly and sometimes I think, “This wasn’t what I had planned”, or “This wasn’t supposed to happen”, or “What am I supposed to do with this situation/person/dilemma/success/failure/illness/health?”
I was on the subway today, staring blankly out the window as the train stopped at each station as I made my way downtown. Staring at all the different tiles lining the subway walls and floors and stairs. All cobbled together into a single, pulsing organism that moves people from one end of the city to the other. The life of a subway system. All walks of life, all types of people, with a common goal—to get through this day and onto the next. Busy, busy, busy. Confused, bewildered, scared, focused, successful, unsuccessful, worried, happy, sad. A kaleidoscope of humanity, like a kaleidoscope of types of chocolates in a box.

The chocolate you take a bite of and spit out because you find it disgusting. The chocolate that tastes like a bite of heaven. The chocolate you eat anyway, even if it isn’t your favorite, but hey, it’s chocolate! Everything cobbled together into a single box for your dining pleasure.

In a cobbled-together life, you don’t know what’s going to happen next. You don’t know if your trip to the store will be a pleasure or a pain. You don’t know if someone is going to walk up to you and change your life. You don’t know if a bus will hit you as you cross the street to get to the other side (no chicken jokes, please—I know, I know, I just handed that one to you, what ARE you going to do?) You don’t know. We only know what we have experienced in the past and the moment that is happening right this second. Now. While you’re reading this.

I think we all like to plan our lives to a certain extent. To have security. To have a home. To have a way to make a living. But life can’t be entirely planned, some of it yes, but not all of it. Your entire life can change in a single second, that’s all it takes. One second to change where you are going, to change your focus or to change yourself. To change the flavor of your life.

Sometimes to truly live, you have to totally let go of everything familiar, throw yourself off the metaphorical cliff and hope for a not-too-bumpy landing. (Please don’t throw yourselves off anything dangerous, I couldn’t take the guilt.) And you discover what you can do, what you can accomplish, what you can dream. A heady, exhilarating feeling.

You, just you, are a box of chocolates all on your own—the good, the bad and the not-so-bad. A group of people is a box of chocolates in and of itself—the good, the bad and the not-so-bad. A world of people is the “cornucopia of awesomeness” box of chocolates—the good, the bad and the not-so-bad.

No one is completely perfect. No one is totally good. No one is wholly bad-to-the-bone. We cobble ourselves and our lives together to fashion it into a lifetime of adventure, a lifetime of sorrow, a lifetime of discovery, a lifetime of happiness, all intertwined together. We, each of us, have many lives to live in a single lifetime. We, each of us, have untapped resources we are as yet unaware of. We, each of us, cobble together a life to live.

Make sure your cobbling creates a box of life that you can love and can be proud of.

Why??

2008-11-20T11:48:00.003-05:00

This is normal?? This, this disaster, these consequences, this life is normal?? I don’t know about you but I have asked myself these questions any number of times. I guess what I am really asking is, ”Is this fair?”, “Did I really deserve this?”, or, “Why does everyone else seem to have such a normal life?”

It’s a child’s question, really. “Why is the sky blue, Mummy?”—“I don’t know, dear, it just is.”, or, “Why is grass green, Mummy?”—“It just is, dear.”, or, “Why do I have to go to school, Mummy?”—“Everyone has to go, dear.”

Things just ARE. Yes, there are logical, understandable (by human standards) answers for some questions and some answers you just have to take on faith. No one understands everything. Hell, we understand so very little in the grand scheme of things. We have barely scratched the surface of what it means to be human. We don’t understand ourselves, we don’t understand others, we don’t understand the world and we don’t understand the universe. Why, why, WHY??

I have a hard time with “why” because I want to know why about everything. I have a hard time just accepting an answer – I want to know what went into the answer. This urge to know why is wonderful at times and a hellacious trial at other times. And sometimes, I just want to shout out (maybe on my balcony—I can be a deranged Juliet), “Okay, I’ve had enough. I know that adversity builds character, but I have enough character now to last me a number of lifetimes. Can I please just get on with it?”

But howling won’t help me. Not much, if at all. Actually, when I become angry about something/someone and I vent, I just feel worse afterwards. More angry, more guilty, more out of control than before. It’s a cycle that feeds on itself, spiraling into a fire-breathing dragon. I have tried meditating through it, breathing through it, talking myself down out of my anger. But I’m still mad.

I have to experience things for myself. It’s a part of my “why” problem and not accepting answers without question. I’m just lucky that when someone (probably one of my parents) told me not to play in the street, I stayed off the road. So at least I don’t have to learn “everything” first hand. Although it does come in handy for a writer.

Trying to put things into perspective is probably the most helpful thing I can do and trying to treat myself like my best friend would. I know I can’t control everything—least of all, anyone else. I can control the things I do but I can’t control how my body and mind react, not instantly anyway. My pulse speeds up, I start jiggling my foot up and down jack-rabbit fast if I’m sitting, the flight/fight instinct kicks in and off to the races I go. But I don’t want to go to the races. I hate the races. I want to go back to being calm and philosophical. Relaxed. Breathing slowly. Simple stuff.

Beneath all the fancy clothes, makeup, haircuts we have, beyond the technology we possess and our so-called superior lifestyles, we are still cave people, hunter-gatherers. Driven to huddle beside our primordial fires to keep the wild beasts at bay. Defending our little clans with clubs against marauding invaders who would steal our resources, our peace of mind, our security. I guess some of us (who, me?) are just more primitive than others. Reacting to negative or positive stimulus as though they are imminent dangers. That’s how humanity has survived for, what it is, 100,000 years or so?

I am learning to slow down my reaction times. Instead of a knee-jerk, shoot-from-the-mouth reaction, I'm backing away mentally to think about what is really happening. Is this reaction warranted by the circumstances? Am I blowing things out of proportion? What are the facts versus what am I feeling? Do the facts support/qualify the feeling? Giving myself the space to pick and choose my reactions while still assertively reinforcing my personal boundaries.

“An unexamined life is not worth living.” This is a quote from some ancient Greek philosopher, Socrates, I think. He isn’t advocating suicide or killing people who don’t contemplate life. He is saying that the “cost” of living life is too great not to examine it in detail. Sort of like buying a house without having done a house inspection before plunking your hard-earned cash down. Your life shouldn’t be a lemon you bought for a bargain but now want to return. The cost of life, the responsibility of life, is too high if you don’t know who you are and why you’re doing what you’re doing. Making life, through examining it, worth the costs of living it. And that means not driving myself crazy with “why”.

Know thyself, goes the saying by the Oracle of Delphi from two thousand or more years ago - I don't know the actual date. I think it’s an important saying. Knowing yourself will help you live the life you want to have. Shaping and crafting your life into something that is pleasing to you.

It’s the only life you have.

There. Now I feel better. I’m not even going to ask “why”. It’s a gift and I’m accepting it.

Silent Words, Silent Worlds

2008-11-15T22:35:00.005-05:00

Imagine if you will...GMail and its chat capability. Not what you were expecting, was it? Hee, hee. Gotcha. Anyway, I shall continue.

The person you are emailing suddenly shows up as a glowing green dot saying that you can reply by chat. You are so startled that you end up "chatting" by accident. Yes, Google has taken over your life and is directing it, or so it would seem. They said it would happen eventually. :) The future is now. If Google could come up with a way to wash all your clothes, dry them and put them neatly away, that would be great!

It comforts you, in a way, to know that your “pen pal”, for lack of a better word, is on the e-mail server at the same time as you. A tenuous, but real, connection. Looking at that little green dot doesn’t seem like much in the whole scheme of things. But it means worlds to you. You both know that the other is on GMail at the same time and probably thinking of the other person. An unsaid link, a silent communication, a mute message all in itself, saying, “I’m thinking of you.” Even though neither of you says anything, the nothingness is charged with meaning.

"Nothing" has never meant so much.
"Nothing" has never been so eloquent.
"Nothing" is…something important.

Sighhhhhh. Just a thought.

A Rose

2008-11-12T15:35:00.000-05:00

Poem by Galaway, Inner Tennis

When We plant a rose seed in the earth,
we notice that it is small, but we do not
criticize it as “rootless and stemless”. We treat
it as a seed, giving it the water and nourishment
required of a seed.

When We notice that it is small, but we do not
criticize it as “rootless and stemless.”
we treat it as a seed, giving it the water and
nourishment required of the seat.

When it first shoots up out of the earth,
we don’t condemn it as immature and
under-developed; nor do we criticize the buds
for not being open when they appear.
We stand in wonder at the process taking place
and give the plant the care it needs at each
stage in its development.

The Rose is a rose from the time it is a seed
to the time it dies. Within it at all times it contains
it’s whole potential. It seems to be constantly in the
process of change; yet at each stage, at each moment,
it is perfectly all right as it is.

Live in Your Fingers and Toes

2008-11-04T12:14:00.005-05:00

Like many writers, and other people, I tend to live in my head. That's how I write and so that's where I seem to spend the majority of my time. But I just realized something. I'm realizing a lot of things these days, so please bear with me while I have my epiphanies. However much I live in my head, analyzing problems and situations, my body knows what's wrong in my life before I do. Even my dreams know what's wrong in my life before me.

Sounds crazy, huh? I think I am one of those people who disconnect their head from their body and just drag their body around for the ride. I was in a bad relationship and during that time my health suffered. I got sick all the time, had back problems and many weird nightmares. One of my worst nightmares would be when I thought I was awake but I couldn't move. I would hear someone creeping up the stairs to the bedroom and feel them standing over me - I could even feel their breath on my face. Freaked me out. The grim reaper standing at the foot of the bed with his blade also was one that I feared.

I left the relationship and my health improved. My dreams, however, were still weird. The one that sticks out in my head goes something like this: I am in Venice (I think). There are canals flowing amongst the streets and I am riding in a horse drawn carriage of some kind and I am sitting with the driver. We round a corner and I see puddles all over the ground. Some are big and some are small. One of the puddles has a disconnected head, no body, hovering next to it. The head, a man in a top hat, says to me, "You have to get rid of the poisons" and he spits (gross, I know) into the puddle. As soon as he spits into the puddle, his body reappears and he is a whole person. At that point I wake up.

This dream, in retrospect, makes total sense. I had disconnected my body from my head. The poisons (my relationship issues, my "bad" emotions, etc) were keeping me from making "contact" with my body. I ignored my bodily issues because my head was in the clouds. I was stuffing my emotions down, out of my head, and into my body. Poor body had taken a terrible beating because of this.

Rationally and logically, I know there's a mind-body connection. But I never really felt that connection before the last year or so. What's happening in your head is happening in your body. Your mind controls your body in ways that you can't even imagine. Or at least I couldn't.

So now, I try to be very aware of my emotional state and my physical state. I try to live, at least more of the time, in my body. Feeling how my body moves when I stretch or exercise, noticing small pains and areas of tension. Wriggling my fingers and toes, almost like pushing my mind into the fingers and toes. There you go - live in your fingers and toes - the very furthest appendages from your mind.