Malevolent Metaphor

The sunset thawed into a puddle of orange, which was our personal covenant after our marriage vows. Fred looked me in the eye after the final, “till death us do part,” and promised me that there would be a blizzard at Gulf Shores before he’d ever quit loving me. God, I loved that man, and his eyes penetrating my soul told me he felt the same way. The gulls called to us, and the sea salt sealed our fate.
“Anne, you are the most beautiful woman that I’ve ever seen. I can’t believe God has given you to me. I love you more than mere words can express.”
“Fred, we have something so special. Let’s never take each other for granted or go to bed mad.”
“I’ve never loved any woman until I met you. I thought I knew what love was all about, but I was wrong. You’ve shown me what real love does to a man’s heart.”
We kissed, and then he slowly maneuvered my see-through Teddie off me. He kissed me again.
Since we both loved the beach but couldn’t afford the property, we moved to Robertsdale, Alabama. It was close enough to spend the day at the beach, and we could drive home for our nightly kiss. Robertsdale was a farming community where most people knew everyone in town. Although we were newcomers, we fit in because we joined the First Baptist Church and the Bar-B-Q Club. We were transplanted Westerners and found the South charming.
At first, we had a hard time understanding our friends and neighbors when their soft syllables rolled off their tongues as easily as butter melted on a good, hot biscuit. We had two children, Angie and Tom, and Fred joined the Volunteer Fire Department. I was homeroom mother and PTA president. We both felt that our roots found rich soil. Our love produced contentment and joy. Life was very good.

Since I was better at math, I’d always paid the bills. As a prudent spender, I’d set us up a savings account.
“Honey, I know you’re tired, so I figure I’d take over the bills, making one less thing you’d have to do.”
I was so appreciative of Fred. How did I end up with such a good man?

One day I drove out to the beach to walk and think. It was very cold. My intuition said something was wrong in our marriage. Snow started falling from the sky, and I knew the covenant had been broken. It took me six weeks to find the copies of the bills he had thrown away, just as he had thrown our marriage away.
I confronted him, and he lied. I watched the snow provide a covering of white in Robertsdale. It was almost as cold as his heart.

A Palette of Incubi

I couldn’t believe what my shrink told me about my husband. Dr. Anderson set up an emergency appointment to warn me of my impending death. Dean was a psychopath, and he planned on killing me.

I looked around Dr. Anderson’s office and noticed, perhaps, for the first time, the print of the Marrimac and Monitor fighting in the Civil War. It was done in shades of grays and blacks, which matched his décor. I burst into tears that cut a trench in my wrinkled skin.

My doctor was my personal friend and felt the need to warn me. He wasn’t one hundred percent sure that Dean meant it, or if he blew up and had a hizzy fit. My doctor wasn’t compelled to tell the police or FBI, but did not want to take a chance with me.

Dean and I probably crossed each other on the Interstate. I had the advantage of Dean’s not expecting me to drive to Mobile from Monroeville. He would come home to an empty house. Dr. Anderson warned me not to leave a note.

Would Dean position himself to kill me as I got out of my car? He was a great shot from being on the Monroeville police force. That would be his out. No one would believe he shot me on purpose. Dr. Anderson would then inform the FBI.

I drove home in an ocean of dark olive evergreen trees. Normally, this far south, we didn’t really have a fall. I wanted a sign that I’d know what to do. Maybe Dean would be gone, taken our son to a neighbor, and left pissed off at me. In my own kind of way, I was praying.

I hugged the steering wheel, driving as if hypnotized. Then in the ribbon of different shades of green was a thin spot of bright red, my favorite color. Was this the sign Id asked for to protect my son and me? I thought so. I turned my thoughts from negative and scared to determined and brave. I’d do whatever it took to save my son’s life. If it meant giving up mine so he would be put away for life, I knew I’d do so without even thinking about it. That was the mother in me. I’d been in my late thirties when I had given Jason life.

I eased closer and closer to home and sat straighter with more confidence as I narrowed the distance between my fate and my son’s fate. Soon, I rounded the curve and saw the two twin oaks that were on each side of our drive. No lights were on. Was that a good sign that no one was home, or that Dean was waiting on me? I entered the house to my son’s crying I switched on the lights and Dean held a gun to our son’s head. I knew what I had to do.

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A letter to myself as a writer

Dear impatient self,

Do you remember the days that you submitted trash because you were too impatient to do it right? You did have sense enough to take a writing class. Each week you learned something new, you revised your manuscript. It took you sixty-six drafts to finally get it right. You worked five and one-half years to have a polished copy of your first novel. I hope you’ve learned to slow down, listen to your critique partners, go to writing conferences and learn the art of editing your work.

You still have a nasty habit of submitting before a work is ready. One recent short story you submitted presented itself as a first draft because you quickly edited it, rather than sentence by sentence. Never embarrass yourself again by doing something so silly. The editor happened to be a very nice person who gave you a personal rejection and even showed you her notes on the manuscript. Hopefully, you learned from that experience.

I’ve seen you grow in learning how to kill your babies and tighten up a story. You aren’t very good at this, but you’re willing to develop a new skill. Your stories are very good, but you must slow down and learn how to write them as best as you can.

Continue to enjoy writing that first draft. Let your right brain take over and become involved in the story. Have fun and get it down without worrying about the writing. Let it flow. This is your strength. You have a muse that whispers to you most of the time. You’ve been able to speed up your writing of a polished draft. But realize, after the fun part comes the hard part: switching your skills to your left brain to edit, polish and downsize the manuscript to make it tight.

Each time you write, you are synthesizing knowledge into your product. You are getting better at it, but you sometimes let that go to your head. Get off your pedestal and read your work out loud and listen to those mistakes that clearly show up in the spoken word. You’ve gotten a Kindle and sent your work in progress to it and then turned on the text to speech and listened carefully to the flow and the rhythm of the story. You’ve learned this is a great tool in editing your work.

You’re humble and take criticism seriously, and apply it to better writing. You’ve developed a thick skin and can take those rejection slips in your stride. You calculate mathematically that there is a number that will reach a probability that someone will take your manuscript and publish it. This is where you are patient and determined. You never give up. You try to learn what is off when you keep getting rejections, and you tighten up your work and submit it again. Your perseverance paid off in 2009 and it will pay off again if you keep your sight on a well developed manuscript.

Hopefully, this will show

my output of writing and submissions over the past 7 days. Here goes nothing:

I've got my work really cut out for me.

I am basically rewriting the story "Ouija Board" to have it smoother and attract a YA audience. My deadline is in two more days. So, this will be short because I must start writing. If you want to follow the protagonist of my book, she too, has a blog. Follow this link: http://leethames.wordpress.com/ As you all remember, Lee tells it like it is. Mature content. If you haven't read my book, In and Out of Madness by N L Snowden go here to purchase the paperback for $14.95 or to the Kindle store to get it for $0.99. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=In+and+Out+of+Madness+by+N+L+Snowden

I want to thank all of my readers for your encouragement and taking the time to read the blogs to keep up with the author and the protagonist.

Bless all of the people and animals

in Hurricane Irene's path. It may only be a cat 1 or 2 but it is going to drop massive amounts of rain, will have high winds, and cause power outages. So, it's going to impact a lot of people's lives.

I'm heading to my critique group today. We are all so close that we take negative remarks well. (as long as they pertain to the story or characters.) I've written a new short story "Ouija Board" to submit to a literary e-zine. The deadline is the 31st. My critique group, hopefully, will tear me a new one to make this a better story and draft.

I love my critique group and every one who is in it...and those who left to form a YA critique group.

When I get home, I'm starting to edit "Suicide Bomber" and hope to send it to the better literary magazines.