A Wisp of a New BryonySeries Novel

"I think you have one more novel in you."

Thus Ed Calkins, Steward of Tara, has said to me more than once.

At first I thought his comments were wishful thinking on his part.

But he may be right. 

Maybe.

A very small wisp of an idea started floating arond my brain a few weeks ago. But with so many other projects (some other book projects, some not) filling front and back burners, the wisp can just float untended for a while.

OK, maybe I'll throw it a few kibbles now and then, just to se if the idea is hungry and wants to grow.

I'm strangely excited at the thought of writing another novel, which is turning into "I probably will" as I write these words.

And I'm already musing, "Standalone?" "New trilogy?"

Seriously. (shaking head at myself).

That's great news for the small audience that love my books.

And that's great news for me, too.

For I've spent some of the best thousands of hours in my life taking half-formed ideas out of my imagination and shaping them onto the page.

If you're an artist of any kind (and I think anyone who creates anything is an artist) you'll understand.

Happy Tuesday!

Help Us Promote Reading in Will County This Summer

Last August, WriteOn Joliet participated in Kidz Fest in downtown Joliet for the first time.

We gave away nearly 90 locally authored books for kids and adults, which I purchased with my manuscript editing funds. 

We also gave away approximately one hundred bookmarks people could color at home.

We distributed eighty-five special subscription offers to The Herald-News in Joliet.

We gave away word finds and crossword puzzles based on some of the books.

And our word blocks were hugely successful, especially after the books disappeared. Kids and adults enjoyed manipulating our 48 double-sided blocks (so 96 words in all) to create fun sentences and simple short stories.

On Aug. 2, WriteOn Joliet will participate in Kidz Fest again this year with the same activities.

Except this year, I'm hoping to give away even more books. You see, those 90 books were gone in the first 90 minutes of a five-hour event.

Now, I do have one small sponsor (so far) to help with said book costs.

But otherwise, I'm planning on self-funding the books again.

Would you be willing to help my efforts to connect local writers with local readers?

Why are we doing this?

Because reading scores are low at both the high school and the grade school level.

Because not all families can afford new books.

Because even when families can afford new books, a free book is a no-risk way to explore the works of unfamiliar authors and books.

Because families should read together.

Because when kids see adults enthused about books, they will often naturally follow.

Because the level of our excitement at our table as familes scooped up the books was off the charts, and we wish to create that experience again, both for the families and the WriteOn Joliet authors.

How to help

1. Browse our list of WriteOn Joliet authors (below) with links to their books.

2. Purchase the book(s) you'd like to gift for the giveaway at Kidz Fest.

3. Mail to: Denise M. Unland, P.O. Box 2789, Joliet, IL, 60436.

4. Add a note for the author if you like. I'll make sure he/she/they recieves it.

Can I deduct my purchase at tax time?

Unfortunately, since WriteOn Joliet is not a nonprofit, you will not be able to write off your purchase at tax time.

But your gift will encourage local writers to keep writing.

And your purchase will place locally authored books into the hands of readers and nonreaders alike.

For kids who struggle with reading or who aren't enthused about reading, simply taking home a book written by someone in their community can help strip the mystique sway from books.

And perhaps it may spark their own creativity, knowing writing a book is really, really possible.

Because someone in their own community has written the one they are reading.

WriteOn Joliet Authors

Books links in bold are for young children and up.

Book links in bold and italics are suitable for middle grade and up.

Most adult books are suitable for young adult, except where adult themes are noted.

Finally, if you are unable to help, be assured we will have plenty of books to give away. I've worked on extra projects over this past year to raise the necessary funding.

Happy browsing!

Mauverneen Blevins 

Original photography and text of local birds for young children

I KNOW That Bird!: Introducing Young Children to some common birds of the backyard

Edward Calkins

Literary nonsense, adult themes

Ruthless

The Fifth

Recovering Ruthless

Denise M. Baran-Unland Irish Genealogy

Holly Coop

A Cup of Inspiration To Go Please: My Heart Runneth Over

Heart Strings: Forever Wanderer

Locks of Love: A Book of Encouragement

A Line in the Sand: A Journey Towards Forgiveness

The Rooster Diaries - Nuggets of Wisdom, Whimsy, and Woe

Russ Enfire

Slasher romance novel, adult themes

The Kindler

Diana Estell

Fantasy novel

Abyss of the Fallen

Dale Hansen

Inspirational

Always Moving Forward: Who is Running your Life?

When Life Gets Shaky: Parkinson's and Life's Trials

Tom Hernandez

Short fiction, slice of life essays, poetry

Chocolate Cows And Purple Cheese: And Other Tales From The Homefront

Abundance: A Collection

The Edge of Middle: Thoughts from the top of the hill

The Weekly Fruit And Vegetable Report: Tales andTidbits from a New Grandpa

Brothers: and other stories

Cean Magosky

Local history

Historic Impression Volume II: The Second Year ofArticles

Schools by F. S. Allen

R. Michael Markley

Christian crime novels

Necessary Death

Necessary Blood

SusieB Midlock

Line's Big Discovery

Rudy's Terrible Fright

Sue Mydliak

Paranormal romance novels, Southern humor

Rosewood Collection: The Complete Series

Night Games

Southern Shorts

Elspeth

James Pressler

The Book of Cain

Small Town Monster

Colleen H. Robbins

Young adult fantasy, slice of life essays

Return to Ganagar

Night Breeze and Moonbeams: Stories and Poems of Myth,Magic, and the Medieval

Invasive Species and Other Light Horror

Daraga’s Quest

Stories of a Sheltered Suburbanite

Jennifer Russ

Young adult novel

The Heart’s Bone

Chris Sarcletti    

Travel books

Bits and Pieces of a Tasty World

See, Live, Eat: Globetrotting with a Fork and a Conscience

A Family Travels as One: A North American TravelMemoir

Kevin Trusty

Supernatural short stories, baseball stories

Beyond Silence and Light

(Not) Just Another Ballgame: Stories from Baseball's Past

The Mournful Threads

Denise M. Baran-Unland

Inspirational

Nine Months of Kindness

For a list of BryonySeries books, visit "Books of the BryonySeries: A Quick Overview" and select books there, ordering in the same way as the above books and mailing to the same address.

The Bertrand the Mouse books are suitable for young children. 

The Adventures of Cornell Dyer and The Girls of the BryonySeries books are suitable for age eight and up.

For bulk rates on BryonySeries books or if you'd like to purchase an entire trilogy or subseries, email us at bryonyseries@gmail.com.

Pictured: WriteOn Joliet Mauverneen Blevins happily shows off our empty table, less than two hourts into Kidz Fest last year.

The Cat on the Back of the Desk Chair

Timothy snapped this photo one day of Faith and me one night when he popped up to my room while I was still working.

It's typical Faith and me, since Faith has shared my desk chair since she was a kitten.

Sometimes she sits behind me, which is why I almost always sit perched at the end of the chair, even when I worked in an office before the COVID-19 pandemic.

In fact, during hose first few weeks in January 2014 when I became an actual Herald-News employee after being a freelancer for fifteen years felt strange without Faith sitting behind me, so I'd placed Snip there instead.

But if I leave my room for even a minute, I take any open drinks with me.

I learned my lesson years ago when I still worked in my attic office in Channahon.

One time, I ran downstairs to heat up my coffee, and then, when I returned,  my story was filled with random letters and lines and my keyboard was filled with water droplets and an ice cube.

Now if I could only train Faith to copyedit...

The Blogs I Didn't Finish This Week

Good morning!

This morning is super busy, which is leading into a super busy Friday into a super busy working weekend and into a super busy Monday.

June was already packed full and then our family had two emergencies at the top of this week.

I had a blog nearly ready to go for this morning when something unusual in the moth world (I'm told) happened to me yesterday afternoon.

So after a later-ish day of working, I started to write this blog when Jasmine and Rebekah decided we were going to Walt's in Joliet for ice cream.

Jasmine and Rebekah had spent the evening dying BryonySeries shirts for the.July 3 Independence Day celebration at the Billie Limahcer Bicentennial Park and Theatre in Joliet. 

Well, a really fun feature story sat behind us and the side trip for ice cream turned out to be a time for taking photos and talking to folks while my ice cream melted (that's currently sitting in the freezer).

I hope to finish next week's blog after work this weekend. The working titles are: July 3, 1998, Baby Shower Pictionary, and the The Luna Moth on my Window.

I hope everyone who took the time to to read these ramblings has a Thursday that's filled with many blessings.

And now - I'm off and running, already behind.

Fredrik Backman on Creative Anxiety and Procrastination

First At-Home Writing Retreat of 2024

Today I begin my first at-home writing retreat of 2024, and I couldn't be happier.

I also couldn't already be more behind.

I overslept (a poor way to start), and I am losing part of the day because Bertrand and I are reading two of his books to my youngest granddaughter's class (a very sweet and much anticipated way to lose part of the day as I've pushed this opportunity out all year).

Although I do work on my BryonySeries on projects throughout the year, I shoehorn most of that writing on weekends I'm on weekends I'm not working and among the activities of family life.

So it's a real blessing that vacation time at The Herald-News does not carry over from one year to the next. It gives me the perfect opportunity to just focus on and immerse myself into one story for a great length of time.

Read this post to see what these retreats typically look like.

The book I'm currently working on is called "House on Top of the Hill." It's the third book in the BryonySeries Limbo trilogy and the trilogy's tagline is this: What happens when time stops in a fishing village in Northern Michigan? The supernatural reigns.

The entire book is loosely drafted. So my goals for this retreat is to get one chapter completed a day and ready for final editing by the end of summer. I'm done through chapter eight already, so I should be halfway through by the time I return to work on Memorial Day.

Below is a synopsis, chapter titles, and cover concept.

Wish me luck and full cooperation of my muse!

Change comes slowly to Munsonville, and for Steve Barnes, who spends his entire life in the village, that's just fine. From boyhood to manhood, he savors the slow pace and friendly smiles, even while working by his parents' side from sunup to sundown to run the family diner.

The only blight is this fishing village's preoccupation with an empty mansion in the woods, whose tales of former glory and catastrophe fueled a rampage of ghost stories. Steve doesn't believe them, but some do – and no no one can deny the power the crumbling old building holds over them.

Especially when it changes everyone, including Steve, forever.

Prologue

Chapter 1: The Traveling Salesman

Chapter 2: Roundtable

Chapter 3: Bottle of the Red Stuff

Chapter 4: Cracking Open the Nest Egg

Chapter 5: Scrawls on the Wall

Chapter 6: Whispers of the Heart

Chapter 7: I Run at Night

Chapter 8: Laid to Rest:

Chapter 9: Necking

Chapter 10: Spider and Fly

Chapter 11: Death Heard Round the World

Chapter 12: Mine

Chapter 13: Second Sight

Chapter 14: Chop, Sizzle, Broil, and Bake for it and some against it.

Chapter 15: The Rage

Chapter 16: Hard Choice to Make

Chapter 17: Through the Camera’s Eye

Chapter 18: Words Enough For Me

Chapter 19: The All-Hallowed Albatross

Chapter 20: Dancing in the Past

Chapter 21: The New Professor

Chapter 22: Enigma in Residence

Chapter 23: Rain

Chapter 24: From Fry Pan to Factotum

Chapter 25: Nutty Tina Swanson and Kellen

Chapter 26: Preternatural Guest

Chapter 27: The News That Changed Everything

Chapter 28: A New Lease on a Very Old Dream

Chapter 29: Journey of a Thousand Heartaches

Chapter 30: Severed Links

Epilogue

Cover art concept for "House on Top of the Hill " created by Timothy Baran

WriteOn Joliet

For anyone who writes, wants to write, is seeking feedback on their writing, is looking for writings by local authors, or event just wants to hang out with some awesome people who happen to write -  WriteOn Joliet just might be for you.

WriteOn Joliet is a welcoming, diverse group of writers of varied skills, interests and experience. The group includes professional journalists, fiction novelists, bloggers, screenwriters, musicians and poets. We promise a safe, comfortable and supportive atmosphere to share your work, and constructive feedback so that everyone can benefit from our shared knowledge.

Some of WriteOn's members have self-published or have been traditionally published. Others are still exploring their writing options and interests. Regardless of our place in the writing world, WriteOn welcomes everyone looking to write, read and grow.

WriteOn is a dues-paying organization. Your first visit is free, so please come by and check us out!

Dues are either $50 for the year (January through December) OR $5 a meeting not to exceed $50 for any 12-month period for regularly attending members OR $35 for the year for online members 

These help pay for the website (and other marketing materials) and in publishing our annual anthology. Dues also help fund special events including guest writers, projects, and social gatherings.

WriteOn Joliet held its first meeting in February 2012. We still have original members who attend nearly every meeting, and we continue to expand, evolve, and grow.

For the rest of 2023 through November, we will meet from 6 to 8:30 p.m. on the first Thursday of each month at the Joliet Public Library, 3395 Black Road in Joliet.

We will also meet from 6 to 8:30 p.m. on the third Thursday of each month on Zoom.

Our anthology release party will be held at 6 p.m. Dec. 7 at the Joliet Public Library.

A members-only holiday gathering will also be held in December.

For more information, visit writeonjoliet.com.

How to Get a $5 Gift Card to the Book and Bean Cafe in Joliet

If you're a reader or writer in the Will County area (or know a reader or writer), here's an event for you.

The Joliet Public Library is hosting WriteOn Joliet co-leaders Tom Hernandez and me from 6 to 8 p.m. Feb. 24 at the 3395 Black Road inJoliet.

The library is one of WriteOn Joliet's community partners. The other is The Book Market in Crest Hill.

During this two-hour program, Tom and I will discuss the writing process, as well as WriteOn Joliet and the opportunities this adult critique group provides for local writers. 

Tom and I will share a few excerpts from some of our writings.

And Tom and I will sell and sign books - the individual books we have written and anthologies written and published by WriteOn Joliet members.

Tom will also provide details about the last stop on his "Tip Jar Tour."

And the BryonySeries table (my table) is offering a special gift with select purchases of BryonySeries books: a $5 gift card to the Book and Bean Cafe in Joliet while supplies last.

If you make your book purchase before the program begins, you may use your card immediately since cafe will be open until 8 p.m. that night.

Gift cards are not limited one per customer. But for each additional card, you must still purchase one of these four combinations:

1) One "regular" young adult or adult BryonySeries book (choices include any book in the "drop of blood" trilogy, Lycanthropic Summer, The Phoenix, Ruthless by Ed Calkins Steward of Tara or any of the Before the Blood books) or Nine Months of Kindness.

2) Any two books in The Adventures of Cornell Dyer series.

 3) Any three books in the Bertrand the Mouse series.

 4) All three of our BryonySeries cookbooks.

 To check out our books, visit bryonyseries.com/general-store.

And to check out the Book and Bean Cafe's menu, visit bookandbeanjoliet.com. 

Don't live in the Joliet area? 

Message me at bryonyseries@gmail.com.

I will discount any book by $5 on Feb. 24 only.

Then you have $5 to purchase the treat of your choice.

Happy browsing! 

Happy reading!

Calkins Day 2022: Celebrate Creative Writing on Feb. 10

For the first time ever in the BryonySeries world, our Calkins Day celebration will not be held on Calkins Day, which is February 13.

That because Calkins Day this year lands on Super Bowl Sunday even as Omicron is still having its way with the world.

Someday, of course, a Calkins Day celebration, complete with parade, will supersede any thoughts of Super Bowl Sunday, and it will be the Super Bowl that will be forced to reschedule. But we are not quite there yet, and Ed and Nancy Calkins agreed.

So at the behest and in honor of Ed Calkins, Steward of Tara, the BryonySeries will hold its first Calkins Day Chat.

The event will be held from 6 to 8:30 p.m. Feb. 10 on Zoom. The event is free, but registration is required through the BryonySeries website.

You see, after we released Ed's first novel last year, he joined WriteOn Joliet, where he has enjoyed meeting other writers, as well as reading and commenting on their works.

But he's only had the oppportunity to chat with members of the group just twice outside of meeting times: at our anthology release party and our Christmas party, both in December 2021.

So he asked me, "Can we just hold a WriteOn Joliet meeting and just talk? And can we open it up to others?"

Of course!

Who should attend?

Anyone who wants to talk about and/or promote their writing.

Anyone who likes to read.

Anyone interesting in fictionalizing a real person in their creative works - we've done it!

Anyone who has questions about the BryonySeries.

Anyone who wants to meet the world's first dyslexic Irish vampire who is also now an author.

Anyone who just wants to listen in.

And everyone else.

My WriteOn Joliet leader Tom Hernandez won't be joining us as emcee this year because he has a work commitment. So you are stuck with me.

I hope that doesn't dissuade anyone from tuning it. But we are being transparent about it.

What is Calkins Day, you ask? It is Ed Calkins' birthday. And it's an opportunity to celebrate laughter and creativity. 

Register at bryonyseries.com/registerforcalkinsday.

The Anatomy of an At-Home Writing Retreat

Since I've used zero vacation time all year and vacation time doessn't carry over inot the next calendar year, I've decided to schedule a couple at-home writing retreats.

The first begins shortly.

If this sounds like fun, please know it only "sounds like fun." I've done a few of these now (thank you, finances (2018) and COVID (2020 and 2021), and they are intense and grueling.

The goal is to turn my outlined, very rough draft of Call of the Siren into a solid working draft that I can shape, revise, and edit. I have my "homework" divided into sections for each day, to keep me on track.

Wish me lots of luck (I'm going to need it).

Here's what an at-home, writing retreat typically looks like for me:

Sunday night: OMG, I'm so I excited! A whole week of writing a world of make-believe. I've got coffee. I've got inspiration. Here we go!

Monday: Well, I didn't get quite as much done as I wanted. But I've got most of the week left. I can make up for it.

Tuesday: Mind roams, not as focused. Underestimated the amount of research I needed on "x" topic. Get pulled down a rabbit hole of one unrelated click after another. Forgot to post Bertrand on Instagram, so get distracted by that. Didn't meet goal. Don't care as much as I did yesterday.

Wednesday: I hate writing. I hate coffee. I hate fiction. This writing retreat is stupid. I need a vacation. I can't wait to go back to work.

Thursday: The time pressure is on. Sprint writing.

Friday: Marathon writing. Skimming over more details than I want. Will have plenty of extra work in the revision stages because of it.

Saturday: Becoming resigned that my goal was too lofty. Get a realistic amount of writing done and set some goals for Sunday and the following weekend.

Sunday: Distracted writing. Pushing the undone work to next weekend. Mind roaming to the features writing I'll be doing on Monday. Checking some work email.

Now this week will have some variations.

For instance, I have today off because I worked the weekend, so my actualy vacation time doesn't start until tomorrow. So I took next Wednesday off, too.

And I'm giving myself a break on Thursday because Rebekah is having surgery. So anything post-Thursday might look different, too.

One clarifcation: by "break," I meant break from Call of the Siren. I will have my laptop with me at the hospital finishing up Cornell Dyer and the Calcium-Deficient Bones.

Again, please wish me plenty of luck.

The "Other" Writers Group

One of the goals my WriteOn Joliet co-leader Tom Hernandez and I set for last year was to be more "ecumenical" - in other words, to pop into a couple other local writers groups at least once.

Of course, when we set that goal, we had no idea what would transpire in 2020.

Neverthless, I did make one Zoom meeting of the writers group in New Lenox (and the leader's been so kind in patiently inviting me).

And I've also found some writing fellowship with a group called the 5 A.M. Writers Club on Twitter. (#5amwritersclub).

I stumbled upon this one quite by accident.

Some of my followers on my BryonySeries Twitter account are other authors. And as we talked, I discovered this group. A few of these members lived on the east coast and had met in person a few times before COVID hit. So they moved to Zoom and opened the meetings up to whoever wanted to join them.

I was one of them.

The whole purpose of the group is to write for an hour every day, starting at 5 a.m., before the rest of your responsiblities begins. Everyone doesn't make this every day; life happens. And people make it at different times of the day, depending when 5 a.m. occurs in their part of the world.

The only time this becomes a bit rough for me is every three weeks. That's when we meet on a Friday over Zoom. Because their 5 a.m. is my 4 a.m. and that meet often comes right on the heels of WriteOn Joliet's meeting the previous evening - and Friday's are very full for me anyway.

So I often check in late - and in the case of this past Friday when I was dealing with a new, temporary medication that made me tired - not at all.

But the group has brought new connections and new opportunities.

We had a holiday party over Zoom between Christmas and new year. We're having a virtual writing retreat at the end of next month (just got my schedule yesterday - I'm super stoked!), and I'm co-leading a meeting on self-publishing in August as I may be the only author in this group that self-publishes. The others have traditional contracts with traditional publishers or they are in the querying stages.

Yes, 2020 was definitely a challenging year filled with tragedies for far, far too many people.

But there's something remarkable about the human spirit that just doesn't allow tragedy to get the final word.

And even among last year's horribleness, tiny green shoots of hope and new life are edging their way out.

Illustration by Kathleen Rose Van Pelt for "Bryony."

Three Wishes for You Today

  Today is super busy, but...

...no day should be so busy as to forget the people who stop by this blog.

So while I was almost tempted to skip it, I'll share my three wishes for you today.

1) That you stay safe from anything that threatens to harm you.

2) That you receive a blessing, no matter how small some might perceive it, that makes you smile.

3) That you will always have someone to love.

When Worlds Collide

Today I woke up before the alarm clock. Instead of hitting snooze, I got up and, while feeding cats and making coffee, mentally ran down my list of undone projects, debating which one I'd choose.

And then - the lightbulb moment.

I has a project I forgot to put on my weekend list, oops!

The project needed a little time to complete, one reason why I kept pushing it to a weekend. But I'd done that so often, the project finally fell off the schedule altogether.

I really couldn't delay it another week, especially since I'd promised to finish it.

Yes, it's a story.

Yes, it's a BryonySeries story.

And, yet, it's a story I was asked to write, not a story I simply decided to write. In fact, writing this particular story never occurred to me.

For me, as a writer, writing an assigned a story with a theme and then trying to figure it out how to connect it to the existing fictional world is challenging.

But I got it done this morning.

Yes, you will be able to, eventually, read it.

And now I'm waaaaaaaay behind.

Happy Monday! 

Illustration by Kathleen Rose Van Pelt for "Bryony."

Walking

I remember sitting in Sister Laudiose's French class at Providence Catholic High School in the mid-1970s and noticing the sister's wrapped foot.

Sister Laudiose told the class she had foot surgery and was not allowed to walk on it for six weeks. I remember thinking how horrible it would be not to walk for six weeks. Even then, walking, as well as bike riding, was a tremendous stress reliever for me, a way to think, let my mind unravel.

And it still is.

When I became a "real" writer, walking also helped me mentally work out stories. I've written chapters and scenes on foot, and I've "written" many first drafts of stories for The Herald-News after I've moved away from the computer and walked a bit, sometimes even walking around the office building.

Now that electronic music is so handy, I sometimes walk to music, although not always.

Sometimes I catch up on personal phone calls, although not always.

Walking has been a part of prayer and meditation, but sometimes walking is just walking, so the rest of me can be still.

I enjoy walking outside, but I also enjoy walking indoors, where I have to be less aware of my surroundings and less mentally engaged.

I've walked outside in extreme heat and cold (temperatures over 100 degrees and below zero), but I'm a little smarter now and stick to inside walking during these times.

To lose the ability to walk would be a real loss on my levels.

I never take it for granted.

10 Surprising Facts About Me

A rare piece of self-indulgence.

For those who'd rather here about my writing updates, a quick summary of this weekend: some reading, some walking, good progress on both The Phoenix and Lycanthropic Summer, and some editing for two clients (first round on a book of short horror stories and third round on a literary novel).

Scant progress on the short story for a special project.

LOTS of great interviews set up for today for Herald-News features stories.

Have a wonderful Monday! :)


10 Surprising Facts About Me


1) I have never colored my hair.

The gray is in there...somewhere. And will eventually overtake all the brown. I'm cool with it.

2) I eat the same thing for breakfast every day.

Banana, cereal (uncooked oatmeal, wheatgerm and reconstituted powdered milk), half a cucumber, water, dark roast coffee

3) My childhood pets were goldfish.

Even if I wasn't allergic to everything else, my grandfather raised goldfish. He had a beautifully landscaped pond in his backyard on Parnell in Chicago (before it was chic to have such things) and built a 90 gallon tank into the floor of his basement.

He griped about the kids who crept into his yard and stole his fish by carrying them away in empty coffee cans ("Don't they realize you need a gallon of water for every inch of fish!" he'd fume) and surprised me on the Christmas when I was nine (the first year I realized Santa Claus truly didn't exist), much to the annoyance of my mother. I named every fish.

4) My favorite activity in the whole world is reading.

The real reason why I write. Writing is work; reading is heavenly. I have to make myself write every. single. day.

But I love great stories. So I keep pushing myself to write one.

5) If you are talking to me on the phone, I am probably walking.

Unless I am interviewing you. If not, I am up and moving. As soon as the phone rings, I am on my feet.

6) I was one of those weird nursing moms who nursed their kids for a long time.

Average weaning age: 4. And lest you think it makes kids "dependent," my six kids are some of the most strong-willed, opinionated, independent group of adults you'll ever meet.

7) I'm allergic to the world.

Real allergies, the stuff that sends people to the ER and and for allergy shots for a long time. Too many to mention all here.

And I have chronic hives, for which I've been prescribed off-label amounts of antihistamines. And asthma. I cover up in the sun or I wind up in welts. I layer up in the cold or I end up in welts.

Molds, trees, grasses, animals, peanuts, sunflower, several antibiotics: the list goes on.

8) I'm alive because I figured out my own rare tumor.

It's called a pheochromocytoma.

I figured it out by tracking symptoms and my blood pressure and glucose levels with home monitoring systems. The endocrine team was impressed at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, although it was pretty scary to have a semi circle of these professionals surround your bed because they're concerned of how sick you are. Especially when you have little kids back home.

This will kill you unless it is discovered and then removed by someone who knows how to handle this tumor, which is a landmine of lethal catecholamines.

Read more about this rare and dangerous tumor here.

9) My husband and I remodeled parts of our property to support a youth group.

Our church had no space for one. So we spent upwards of $30,000 to convert two garages, a wooden shed, and the built another structure to create space for a playroom, work shop, game room, and movie room complete with a state-of-the-art TV (at the time).

We called it The Higher Ark and we ran it from 2005 to 2009 until my husband (who wound up with early onset dementia) was too ill to continue it. He lost his job the following year, and we lost our home (which his parents built) in 2013.

We are now divorced, and he is in a nursing home. But if he was proud of anything in his life, it was The Higher Ark.

10) In 2006, I had a Grammy award-winning singer perform my backyard.

My favorite Christian band is Petra. Its lead singer John Schlitt (all my husband's idea) hung out with the youth group and their families on the feast day of St. John the Baptist that June.

We had a pig roast and John performed karaoke style on our back porch. We have the DVD and newspaper clippings to prove it. The next day, he attended church with us and gave a short performance at our church.

When All That's Left Are the Words

Experts say hearing is the last sense to go.

But it may also be the sense that continues.

Two years ago, the granddaughter of a a woman I interviewed twice for The Herald-News in the early 2000s, who, I found out after the first story ran, turned out to be a neighbor of Sarah's, messaged me on Facebook, wanting to hire me to ghostwrite her mother's memoirs.

I turned it down. I absolutely, positively did not have time for another project. Nope!

The woman persisted. Her mother had begged her to ask me and only me. I politely refused again, but I felt myself wavering, especially since she and Sarah had been close.

As a mother, I've often encouraged my children never to refuse an opportunity that moves them in the direction they wish to go. And I wish to become a better writer.

Reluctantly, I agreed.

And then the woman, who's in her mid-nineties, became seriously ill. Twice.

And it seemed as if we would not write the memoir after all.

I figured that was, perhaps, for the best. Because, in the meantime, I had received extra duties at work, which slashed the long spaces of time I needed on weekends for writing fiction, an activity that is extremely dear to me.

At the time, I also trying to finish the last novel of Before The Blood. But the complexity of the novel meant I needed many consecutive hours to think and write, and these hours were already retreating and fading.

Also around the same time, I had some lab work come back that hinted at the reappearance of the pheochromocytoma, spurring an internal urgency to finish the last novel before the tumor finished me.

As these events unfolded, woman recovered. I was told to repeat the labs in six months (They were normal, FYI). And so we began, this woman and I.

For most Sundays for the next year and a half, this tough-as-nails-woman with her portable oxygen and walker drove to my house to spend the afternoon - and that was after her Sunday meetings and lunch dates with friends.

She came with photos, snippets of paper, and notebooks of stories she'd tried writing over the years.

She read; she shared; she retold certain stories with additional information.

I took notes.

Some weeks we did not meet. She was out of town; I was too busy; it was a major holiday.

On off weeks, I sifted through hundreds of pages of notes: cutting, combing, arranging.

We are coming into the cliched homestretch, and I, again, feel that sense of urgency.

She is slowing down and, as she has shared with me, feels as if her "time" is drawing near. Instead of meeting in person, as she has always insisted, we've met the last few times via phone - and for shorter periods.

I'm determined she will hold that book, which is close to a hundred edited pages, before her "time."

It's arranged in novel form, topically, as opposed to chronologically.

I have one chapter left to write, along with some selections on "gratitude" she wants me to include.

The basic formatting is done. Rebekah will help with inserting photos and cover design.

I offered to hand off the manuscript to the woman for her to review. She likes my reading voice and preferred I read it to her.

I've made few corrections, and she is amazed at my accuracy and my ability to capture her voice. I give the credit to my journalism training.

She told me yesterday she thought I would just transcribe each sessions, type it up, and that was that.

I reminded her that, no, her memoir will be a real book her loved ones can hold in their hands and read.

But a memoir, I'm realizing, is a cross between journalism and fiction.

For instance, in journalism, when I quote a source, I must quote each word as the source said it.

In fiction, I make up the quotes. In fiction, one loses the "natural" sounds of the human voice when the voice is written as we speak.

My penchant for exactness is showing up when I'm reading the memoir back to this woman. As I read, I find myself stumbling over, and verbally eliminating all together, the superfluous words, the fatty words, that muddy up the "sound" of her voice and keep it from shining over the syllables.

Yes, I am trimming her speech.

Because once her "time" arrives, all that will remain are her worlds, and I want her family to "hear" her voice whenever they read them.

You can't imagine how humbled and honored I feel to be the conduit through which that eternal voice flows.

Illustration by Kathleen Rose Van Pelt for "Bryony."

You Still Have To Do The Work

Many people have an image of writers (and I've seen some sellers of various products use thia image in their marketing pitches) that looks something like this:

You lazily wake up without an alarm, mosey to the kitchen to prepare a cup of coffee, enjoy a leisurely breakfast, and then spend the day blissfully transferring the stories living in your imagination to the computer, where (if you only had this marketing product), they sell millions of copies to adoring fans.

The End

Hahahahhahaha!

My mornings look more like this: wake before dawn (after hitting snooze a few times), stumble out of bed (to the delights of the cats because I'm FINALLY going to feed them), make coffee, stumble back upstairs, and sign onto the computer.

After posting a Bible verse, some good mornings on my social media pages, and birthday greetings, I then spend the next couple hours answering email and scheduling posts.

I then spend a couple hours working on my story budget while working out, as well as making phone calls (personal and work-related, and keeping up with email and social media.

The rest of the day is spent keeping up correspondence, keeping an eye on pages, writing and editing stories and news releases, editing pages, designing pages, and conducting interviews.

I am never finished and almost always push today's work into tomorrow...and into the weekend. I do not, as a strict rule, work on personal writing and editing projects during the week (no time), so all of that writing is kept for the weekend (or a vacation day).

The only day that MAY look like the aforementioned fantasy scene is Saturday, a truly magical time. For a few short hours, deadlines vanish. I've even had a few Saturdays where I've had NO "work" work to complete (rare), and I've spent an entire day working on a novel.

Here's what this past weekend looked like:

On Saturday, I actually did spend a few productive hours on the werewolf story before heading to New Lenox for a dentist appointment.

Afterwards, Timothy treated me to a cup of Gloria Jean's, which I enjoyed while addressing some BryonySeries related, non-writing chores with Rebekah, who was now home from work.

I scanned some photos for Monday's "An Extraordinary Life" photo list, took a break at sunset to get into the pool with Rebekah (the first time all year that happened), and then spent another couple hours scanning and processing photos.

On Sunday, I skipped church because I had to finish the "An Extraordinary Life" and design the page. Yes, I could have done it on Saturday, (or stayed up extremely late on Friday), but I felt this story needed a few hours of unbroken time and a fresh mind - so that's what I gave it.

I also ducked out to take a photo and, because I was in the area, to run over to Menards to look at fake fireplaces with Timothy and Rebekah (because they're considering buying one).

I then spent twenty minutes cleaning the house, and then two hours with Phyllis, a Joliet woman in her 90s. For the past year and a half, I've been working on her memoir. We are coming into the home stretch, and she actually cried when I read portions back to her.

After picking up my medicine at Walgreens, Timothy and I headed for Morris, where we spent a couple hours with Ron in the nursing home, a bittersweet experience.

Bitter because he's lost more weight, has pneumonia, and the dementia has firmly set in. "Sweet" because he was thrilled to see me. Enough that one nurse said she hadn't seen him look this happy in days.

Although he was extremely surprised I wasn't going to smoke with him and even more surprised that I had never smoked. Which left me wondering if he hadn't mistaken me for a former girlfriend in his younger years, which actually made ME grin. No matter, it made him happy for awhile.

Then it was back home for a quick dinner, a workout, and that was the weekend.

The point of this post is that a writer's life looks like anyone else's life: work and the rest of life.

Yes, there's those glorious moments of bliss in the craft, but many of those are planned, and the rest are elusive. Mostly, it's work, and you have to show up to do the work.

A writer writes, then rewrites, then cuts, edits, and (sometimes) goes online the next day to correct any typos that were missed in the process.

This is not counting the amount of time spent posting finding ways to connect readers with the stories, because many people don't read newspapers as keenly as they once did. This process is even more difficult with fiction.

Now, I'm glad I put that time into yesterday's An Extraordinary Life. I received some great feedback on it yesterday and not just from the man's loved ones.

But this, ultimately, is not where writers find most of their satisfaction. Because praise is fleeting.

Rather, the satisfaction comes from the hours spent in thinking about the structure and then hammering it out letter by letter, and then dismantling all that effort like a kid knocking down a stack of wooden blocks because it's not the castle he pictured, until finally you read something that makes feel good you wrote.

Or, at the very least, makes you relieved you made deadline and are able to go to the next project.