November 2017 – aliciajoseph

Just Don’t Get Us Nuked

I recently got into a tiny argument with my mother about her Xanax prescription. I don’t have my own script. I used to have one and could easily get a new order from my doctor, but I stopped needing the medication daily a few years ago, so I let the prescription expire and never asked for a new one.

My mother used to get 90 pills a month, but now her refills are at 30 and she won’t call her doctor to ask for more. She thinks he will be upset if she tells him she needs more for the month. She also doesn’t want the pharmacist to think she’s taking all of these drugs (as if they care, and I’m sure they’ve seen harder drugs prescribed than .25 mg pills of Xanax).

Surely, if the doctor should ask her why she is feeling so anxious that she needs more pills and she simply responds, “Trump”, the doctor would understand, right? Even if he voted for Trump, the doctor would understand a person’s high anxiety during these fuckingly crazy and terrifying moments when a reckless wacko president taunts another reckless wacko leader of a country with nuclear weapons.

Yesterday, North Korea shot another missile that is said to be capable of reaching the US. Wonderful. Yes, please, Mr. Trump, keep up your taunts of “Little Rocket Man” and all the other adolescent bullshit you tweet about. I’m sure it makes every American proud knowing that your Twitter feed, filled with calling people losers and American journalists liars, will be archived for all the world to see for many, many years.

The stress is nonstop with this guy. If he’s not making us sweat-out three horrible Republican healthcare bills that would have knocked 30 million people off insurance, he’s starting a nuclear war over Twitter or trying to pass a tax reform bill that the Congressional Budget Office reported would hurt poor Americans the most. Awesome. Let’s take from the poor and give to the rich. Nothing can possibly go wrong with that. (Big f*cking sigh.)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know. The stock market is up at record levels. Trump ran on deregulation and tax cuts for the rich and big corporations. Wall Street is responding with a lot of love, but how does it help the middle class — the true testament of a strong economy?

In my basement, there is a room we used to call “Jewel”, named after a local grocery store near my house, because it was the place we stored extra supplies of whatever wouldn’t fit in our pantry and cupboards. Recently, I’ve been buying canned foods and cases of water specifically for that room, and I’ve changed the name from “Jewel” to “Trump’s Gonna F*ck Us Room.” Because be prepared. Always be prepared.

I have yelled so many harsh words as Trump’s orange face glistened across my TV screen and have had many imaginary conversations with him that would get me arrested, but at this point I’m tired and if I were standing in front of him all I’d be able to muster would be, “Please don’t get us nuked.”

Wow. What a presidency, and it’s only been eleven months.

Nukes

Photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

Marci Boudreaux and Her Sweet Romance

Sweet Romance at its finest is what Marci Boudreaux promises and delivers with style. Her books receive top marks for drawing readers into the story with well rounded characters and a plot you can’t help but love. Here is a little from Marci’s new release.

Now serving second chances.

Jenna Reid purchased the Stonehill Café to prove to herself that her ex-husband was wrong…that she could make her dreams come true. Three years later, all she has is a crumbling building, no social life, and her bruised pride.

Pride is something Colonel Daniel Maguire lost long ago and isn’t likely to find living in the alley behind the café. He just needs a little time to get on his feet. In the interim, keeping an eye on the overworked café owner gives him a sense of purpose. He has no intentions of making his presence known until he hears the woman screaming late one night.

He rushes into the café but instead of finding her in dire straits, he finds a broken pipe and Jenna—soaking wet and holding a wrench. With her last bit of hope fading, Jenna accepts Daniel’s help to fix up her building, but it doesn’t take long for them to start trying to fix each other.

This Old Café is available at these retailers:

Amazon – B&N – iBooks – Kobo

As a teen, Marci Boudreaux skipped over young adult books and jumped right into the world of romance novels. She’s never left. Marci lives with her husband, two kiddos, and their numerous pets. Until recently, she was a freelance writer appearing monthly in a variety of local magazines. She now focuses on writing and her work as a content editor.

Romance is her preferred reading and writing genre because nothing feels better than falling in love with someone new and her husband doesn’t like when she does that in real life.

Learn more about Marci Boudreaux on her website and blog. Stay connected on Facebook and Twitter.

A Penny on the Tracks

November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). It is a program that challenges writers to complete a 50,000 word novel in one month — 50,000 words in 30 days. If it sounds insane, that’s because it is, but I’m sure I saw a quote somewhere from Stephen King stating that a writer should be able to finish a first draft in 30 days.

I have never finished a first draft in 30 days — not even a first draft of a 15,000 word short story I recently wrote. That tale took me two months to complete.

For four straight years, I have promised myself I’d take part in this challenge, and for the fourth November in a row, I backed out before I even began. I’m not against pushing myself as a writer. I think this is a great motivator for people to actually finish writing a book because so many books are left unwritten because, well, writing is hard.

So, if this gets writers to stay in their seats and write, great. But I don’t approach writing with a word count. I really hate getting caught up in counting words, which is probably why I have not been motivated to take a shot at this challenge. I shut the word count feature off on my computer so that I can’t see the number as I write.

When I sit down to write, I tell myself, “Alicia, write one good, solid scene.” My hope is that I come up with a page or two of dialogue or prose that either advances the plot or develops the characters, basically anything that moves the story along.

I’m currently writing a book about a teenage girl in the 1950’s called, Annabel. Even if I wanted to compete in this NaNo challenge, I’m too far along in this story (about 250 pages, don’t ask me the word count, because I don’t know) to even attempt to write a thousand-plus words a day. I’m mostly in the “fill-in-the-blanks” part of the writing process.

My YA book, A Penny on the Tracks, will be released tomorrow. It is a 75,000 word novel that took me about a year to complete. I couldn’t tell you how long I had been working on the book before I finally had a first draft completed, but I can tell you there were a ton of revisions. An absolute ton.

But in the end, I came up with a story that I’m very proud of and was totally worth the many frustrating late nights I spent writing it.

Here is an excerpt from my coming-of-age book about life, love, and friendship:

I was making our favorite sandwich—bologna, lettuce, and cheese smeared with mustard and mayo on white bread—when Abbey called for me from the living room.
“Lyssa! Hurry up! Poison’s on!”

The sandwiches lay on the counter amid a mess of open condiment jars and scattered pieces of lettuce and lunch meat. I quickly smashed the top slices of bread onto both sandwiches against the piled-stack of a sloppy mess I had created and hurried into the next room, dropping bits of food as I ran.

Abbey was standing on the couch, shouting out the lyrics we both knew by heart as Brett Michaels’ voice filled the room. I handed her a sandwich, jumped on the couch, and screamed out the chorus to “Talk Dirty to Me.” I took bites of my sandwich during the guitar solo, and Abbey held her sandwich high in her left hand, as though it were the end of a guitar, and strummed her right hand against the front of her shirt. We banged our heads in unison, hair (and food) flying everywhere.

Abbey’s house had a bigger TV and better food options than bologna and cheese sandwiches, but we never could have done what we were doing right then if we were at her house. Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It” came on next, and we both lost our minds.

We dropped what was left of our food onto the table and yelled out the lyrics to our favorite song. Abbey sang the song with more conviction, as though she had a lot more that she didn’t want to take anymore.

The video ended, and we both collapsed onto the couch and finished our lunch. After, I went into the kitchen and grabbed a couple cans of pop from the fridge. Hanging on a magnet, on the side of the refrigerator, was a note from my mom reminding me she was working late that night and that there were frozen dinners in the freezer. At the end of the note she promised a home-cooked meal soon.

Abbey was often envious of the lack of parental supervision at my place, especially when it came to dinner. She was jealous I got to eat whatever I wanted. Even if my mom left dinner for me in the fridge, if I wanted to eat S’mores for supper, I ate S’mores.

“You eat dinner on the couch while watching TV?” Abbey had asked me one day.

“If I feel like it,” I answered.

“You’re so lucky. My mom makes me eat with her at the table, even if my dad isn’t home yet. And I can’t even put my elbows on the table.”

I ate on the couch while watching TV because my friend didn’t know the loneliness that crept inside a person while eating dinner among empty chairs.

But I had forced a smile. “Yep. I am lucky.”

I walked back into the living room and handed one of the cans to Abbey. Abbey didn’t take it.

“My mom said I drink too much pop.”

“Your mom’s not fucking here.”

Abbey smiled and grabbed the can from my hand. About eight videos later and a sore neck from head banging, Abbey had to go home.

I walked her to the door. “Let’s ride our bikes tomorrow.”

“Where to?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere far.”

“Last time we did that we were almost too tired to ride back,” she reminded me.

“That was because of the wind,” I explained. “It was blowing against us on our way back.”

Abbey considered this. “Okay. If it’s not very windy tomorrow, we’ll ride our bikes far.

APennyontheTracks-web — A Penny on the Tracks