Romance and Chocolate Blog
ON THE PAGE
On October 8 the audiobook of Roller Coaster will become available! Angela’s narration of Touchwood was phenomenal, bringing Louisa to life in that story in a way that matched her voice in my head all these years. So I’m braced for a fantastic rendition of an stage actress facing menopause and a private chef with a personal demon and a bit of a secret.
ON THE PAGE
As most of you know, back in March my father passed away. So there’s that. My brother and I were already gearing up to sell my parent’s home as they’d moved into a terrific senior facility. April, May, June, and July were filled with new carpet, paint, drain backup, septic cleanouts, shoulder-high weeds, new roof, new fence, and on and on. The last day I spent at the house (supervising movers taking the last items to storage) the drains backed up a second time, but it was a very easy fix with a root cause of the house having been empty without water in the pipes for many months.
So it’s been a time.
My mother is doing very well in her new reality without her husband of 68 years, which is a testament to her resilience. A trait I do believe was fully passed on to both my brother and I!Read More
It’s one of the tropes I love to explore: the Fish out of Water. It provides opportunities for misunderstandings that aren’t contrived and humor that arises organically from the situation. It gives characters a way to compare/contrast cultures, and to poke gentle fun at the unique foibles of any group. It can do all of that on the lighter side but can go alongside darker themes, like the universal experiences of alienation, yearning for that place that means “home” to us, and wanting to belong to a place and people who value us.
For the character out of her element, the world is upside down. In a romance that means the world will go rightside up with the right mate comes along. Eventually.
When writing my very lesbian version of The Little Mermaid, I called it A Fish Out of Water as both literal and figurative allusion to the mermaid’s plight. I had a wonderful time plopping a city girl right in the middle of a steamy Iowa summer in One Degree of Separation. But I digress.
The all-things-sapphic site is highlighting stories with the Fish out of Water trope. (You’ll also find Return to Hometown stories being featured this week too! And a lot of books on sale!) The Fish out of Water focus includes my Checked Out where a federal agent determined to complete an assignment finds an equal steely resolve in a local librarian. And lots of cookies.
It seems fitting that this theme is featured as we begin Pride Month. I don’t know about you, but I spent a lot of my younger life feeling like a perpetual fish out of water. And then I found the right waters to swim in.
Here’s the entire I Heart SapphFIC list of Fish out of Water stories. It’s a great trope for romance, but you’ll see that it’s in mysteries, sci-fi, horror, and fantasy. Books like Eule Grey’s Pest Control, Rachel Parisi’s Magic and Mead, and Cameron Darrow’s Death Has Golden Eyes. It even works for creative non-fiction, like Shaley Howard’s Excuse Me, Sir?: Memoir of a Butch.
Happy reading and happy pride!
So many people have commented on my blog and social media posts sending love and kind thoughts for my mom and dad. My dad passed away very peacefully last Friday with my mom, my brother, and me near.
My mom is doing just fine, though he will be much missed. Since he had advancing dementia, in many ways we’ve all been saying goodbye to pieces of him for some time, and this final goodbye – sudden but quick – was perhaps easier because of that. It was time, and my dad would have been the first to think so.
Thank you everyone for your many well wishes and generous thoughts. I’m spending time with my mom as we continue this transition, which includes the arrival of spring weather in the everchanging Sierra foothills. The trees are leafing out, and there’s still snow on the Sierras in the distance. New beginnings!
And my mom and I are both kicking ourselves because we forgot to get chocolate bunnies to enjoy for Easter. We’re much cheered by the thought of day after sales, however. Happiness can come in small bites.
You’ll notice that there aren’t any fancy pictures in this post. I’m composing it on my tablet via a thin, very thin!, WiFi signal. The quick version: my father had a stroke almost exactly a week ago and is now in hospice care at home with my mom. My brother and I are here with them until his body decides its time to let go.
That said, we were fortunate in one small aspect. My brother and I had both already set aside time to get their family home ready for sale since they’ve moved into a wonderful independent senior facility. Yes, until this happened, at 86 and 91, they were largely independent and proudly so. They’ve been married for 68 years and wherever one of them is, it’s home for both of them. (I wrote about how they met in this post about a family Thanksgiving.) Hospice is a great concept for care, too, because, in final days, home is so much better than a noisy hospital.
My father has had a good and long life. He loved the outdoors, worked in a lumber camp as a teen, spent four years in the Navy making sure the USS O’Brien’s secondary engines would work if needed (a supply ship that took fire every day for over three years), and moved on to a long career as a highway patrol officer. During that time he flew in search and rescue missions for years, using his extensive knowledge of the Northern California Sierras. He loved flying so much he got his private pilot’s license, then qualified for commercial status so he could fly the CHP speed control plane. That’s right, if you got a speeding ticket on I-5 coming into Sacramento in the 1980s-90s, it might have been him!
Down to business. Read More
