It's a process...

I am a chaotic thinker. That translates heavily into everything I do, from writing to housework to creating invitations to watching a show to accounting. Yeah... It doesn't fly well with the accounting thing, but that would be why I steer clear of most of those types of duties.

If you could plug a set of headphones into the base of my skull and hear all of the things that my brain is churning over you would yank them from your ears and drop them at your feet. It's loud in here, horrifying and messy like my teenager's rooms. Thoughts jump around, shout for attention at all the wrong times and rabbit trail into oblivion. Voices talk over each other, push aside mundane tasks and evoke the weird and unresolved. They leave little bits of themselves strung about, pieces of stories that may or may not ever see the back-light of my computer screen, and they often lead nowhere. Like the wasteland of a hoarder's collection, I cannot seem to throw them away, only leave them there to languish and mutter until I find them a home.

My chaotic thinking often results in chaotic doing. I can start out determined to get the kitchen cleaned and end up researching how it is blue birds have evolved such iridescent coloring. Having a conversation when I am in chaotic mode has to be terribly frustrating for my friends and loved ones, although for me it is merely thinking out loud. It's odd and frustrating and funny and exhilarating, all at the same time.

Before you step into a diagnostic role, I do not have ADD or ADHD or any combination thereof. I can concentrate on one thing and I can, to a degree, operate in polite society without awkward silence or inappropriate outburst. It is only in my mind that I am constantly tearing jagged holes in the universe and asking the very writerly question, "What if..."

I don't view my chaotic mind as an affliction, something to be hid away or secreted from view. Rather, I embrace it, revere it like one watching seedlings push through soil. In that moment, when all of my thoughts seem like a jumbled mess of shouty ideas and tangled string, I am watching for the "a-ha!" that transforms the "What if" into something unique, something interesting, something to explore. Like seedlings, which to my eye look very much the same when they push through that dark loamy earth, each will develop into something recognizable, unique, genuine. At that point we decide whether to weed it out of the dirt and pluck it away, or water it and let it grow.

What are you watering today? Hmmmm?

Photo Credit Creative Commons

...And she wears stilettos

I have a muse. Like many creative-types, I owe much inspiration to this creature of myth and mystery but she is not what you would call conventional. She is not clad in a gauzy toga, hair coiffed in a gold circlet up-do, but a more modern version. Someone I can relate to.

She is a chain-smoking, booze swilling, long-legged red-head, dressed in a tight black pencil skirt, a french-cuffed fitted white blouse, and bright red stilettos. She often looks as though she just wandered in from a night on the town, hair askew and wind-blown, a run in her stocking, spent and ready for a greasy breakfast to ward off the impending hangover. She has no walk of shame, but more a stride of pride, an "ask me if you dare" attitude. If you only knew where she'd been... Never mind, you couldn't handle it.

She is impatient, tsks and rolls her eyes, slams doors and storms out when she is ignored. My genius is an entertainer with a foul mouth, a hearty laugh and a raw sense of humor. She is not concerned with decorum or silly, antiquated social norms and has been kicked out of more places than you and I have ever attempted to enter. She is revered by men who want her and women who want to be her. She is that woman that can say the harshest things right to your face and still, you fight to stay in her orbit. Her criticisms do not deter you, but draw you in. She attracts you because she sees your flaws for what they are: the dark, sticky humanness that bubbles like gooey black tar in all of us. Her recognition of this nastiness is not a condemnation, not a judgement, only a reminder that we all have our own ugly bag of crap. She will unabashedly call you on it should you start to feel your bag isn't as bad as the next guy's. Don't even try it, you will come away feeling infinitely small.

My genius, my muse, my daemon is often sitting in the corner, one shoe dangling from a brightly painted toe, swirling her drink, making the ice tinkle invitingly in her glass as she dictates my next sentence, my next paragraph, my next chapter. She tells the tales she weaves in a smoky alto, chuckling to herself when I hesitate to write what she has uttered, for fear it is too harsh, too sultry, too too. She urges me to write it anyway, push the boundaries, tell the real story. And when I fail, when I hesitate and pull up out of the dangerous dive she has us in, she slaps me on the back as she leaves. "I'll come back later, when you're ready to tell the truth," and I hear her shoes click off down the hallway and out the door.

I have a muse and she wears stilettos.

About that...

There are things I cherish about writing. There are things I detest. Then again, that is life, isn't it? A comparison of what we love, what fuels us, what sends us out into the wide abyss of the world with another hope, another try, another idea and the opposing side of our fears, our dislikes, our prideful, hateful, shunning natures warring within the same body, the same mind, the same soul.

I find myself always thinking about this thing I do, this thing I am, actually. I can never seem to let it rest, to let it fade quietly into the backdrop of my task list. It is always there, lurking, desiring to be noticed, pounding at my brain, itching at the tips of my fingers for a few seconds, a few minutes, a few hours at the keyboard.

The mind of a writer is a tortured, tangled basket of ideas, like balls of yarn come half undone. So many strands going this way and that, one story twisting into another, plots threaded throughout and swirling below what can be readily seen.

My job is to sit with that basket, to patiently follow the strands, while I untangle the stories woven for me out of the thin and misty atmosphere of my darkest thoughts. I would tell you it's tedious, but that would be a lie. I would tell you it's difficult, but that too isn't entirely true. I can only tell you that the mysterious things that slink out of my head and onto the page consume me the same way a basket of tangled string does; the task seems never-ending, yet oddly calming. When one ball is sorted and stacked neatly to the side, I am relieved yet there is always another waiting...

Photo Courtesy of Creative Commons

Exposed... Launched February 27th!

Available at Apple, Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Smashwords to name a few

I don't know if there is anything quite as exhilarating or as emotionally exhausting as the launch of a first book. The leap into the depths of this pool was a hesitant, wobbly, flailing mess if I am honest. I wanted to have someone see it, I wanted to be brave and just sling it out there, but I feared the rebuke, I loathed the perceived rejection, I hesitated to accept criticism...

Isn't that the juxtaposition of a new author? That overwhelming desire to tell a story and then the reluctance to have that part of the mind exposed for all to see? (Snort! What a time for a pun...) While I wanted to launch my novel out into the universe, I also wanted to hide it away, get one more friendly set of eyes on it, assure myself with one more platitude that it was "good," "well written," "a fun read."

In the end, what sent me into the open air of the internet was, of all things, a rejection letter. Yes... That's right. A rejection letter, a year after submission, made me brave enough to say, "What the hell have I got to lose?" To be fair, it was the nicest rejection I have received to date and it was from one of the most influential women in the industry I thought I was writing in. Here... Look for yourself:

Dear (Sterling),​Thank you very much for submitting your book Exposed to Ellora's Cave last year. I am terribly sorry it has taken so long for anyone to reply. 

First off, let me say that Exposed is an excellent story, well-written with interesting, three-dimensional characters, and a strong, emotional plot. Presley's journey from tightly controlled narcissist to emotionally connected and caring woman is a fascinating and unique one. 

It is not, I'm sorry to say, an Ellora's Cave book. Our books either have a strong romance story line, or in our Exotica line, focus on a more sexual story line. Presley's story doesn't fit into either one of those categories, and I suspect our readers wouldn't quite know what to do with it. I'm going to have to pass. 

I wish you all the best with your writing and publishing endeavors. I do hope you'll send us something else in the future. I'd like to read more of your writing.

Thanks again,
Elisabeth R. NelsonManaging EditorEllora's Cave Publishing Inc.

While I might have reacted in defeat, my instant response was to be enlightened and encouraged. I don't fit into a traditional type of writing format. It explains the reasons why I have struggled to find a spot in the traditional publisher's game, but it doesn't mean that I am a bad writer! Pretty awesome indeed.

I have thought long and hard about what this means, and I am still working through that... But in the meantime, I have a book out there in the wide, wonderful world and that counts for something!

Feel free to download a copy from your preferred vendor below:

Smashwords
Amazon
Apple
Barnes and Noble

Thank you for your time... I value it above all other things you give.
Sterling