Uncategorized – aliciajoseph

Is it Writer’s Block or is the Thrill Gone?

I received a notification from WordPress that this year marks my 11th anniversary with them. No. I didn’t pop champagne bottles. It wasn’t a celebratory anniversary of that kind. The news mostly made me reflect on the last 11 years.

2014.

I knew nothing about blogging. A friend had mentioned I should look into it back in 2005 or 2006. I asked him what blogging was. He told me people just write things, and that Rosie O’Donnell had one.

I liked Rosie. She was funny. I had nothing against her; I just wasn’t interested in reading about her daily musings. I didn’t understand the curiosity one would have in strangers writing about their lives.

If I wanted to read something, that’s what books were for, and books were edited for quality.

Then 2014 came around. I published my first book. A novella called Her Name. My editor at the time told me to start a blog. Get myself out there. It’d take me 8 hours to write less than 600 words. I pondered every word, wanting every post to evoke perfectly the emotion I meant to convey.

I felt a sense of accomplishment after each post, and this new excitement of checking how many people visited my blog, especially those from other countries, was an experience I hadn’t known before.

I went all in. I wrote two blogs a week. I put much effort into deciding what to write about. I had a folder filled with blog ideas and newspaper cutouts. I treated my blog as if it were an assignment.

As I write this blog, nearly four months after my last post, I miss the newness of it all. The excited wonder of who will read my blog and what I will write next. I was new to most of social media in 2014. I had just joined Twitter and discovered the wonderful writing community. It was such a supportive and welcoming space.

Everything seemed so much nicer then. Am I a victim of looking at the past with rose-tinted glasses? Or have things really changed that much? Twitter, now X, still has a writing community, but I’m not as engaging as I used to be.

It’s probably me. I’ve allowed time to make me jaded. I’ve let the enthusiasm I once felt wilder away. Half the year has almost passed, and I haven’t written more than an outline. In the early years of 2014-2017, my passion for writing kept me locked in my room for hours. Now, it takes four months to settle myself into writing a blog. Did I say I used to write two blogs a week?

I’m too young to be so jaded and too old to waste time.

Is it common for writers to go through periods of hating, no, despising writing? Of wondering if it’s even worth it anymore, if the joy is gone?

Is it worth blogging anymore, when vlogging has been the trend for years now? Do people even read blogs anymore? But I’ve always been late to trends. I’ll probably start vlogging in 2033, when everyone else has moved up to the latest technological way people communicate with each other.

I’ve got a little more than 6 months to turn this horrible attitude around and start my book.

What methods have worked for you?

You Used to be my Valentine

You used to be my Valentine. For fourteen years, the sweetest and most loyal Valentine a girl could want. Always ready for a cuddle. Never backing away from a kiss– And there were many of those cuddles and kisses. Yet, somehow, they now don’t feel like enough.

You used to love me. I used to be your world. Your every day revolved around me. You hated when I’d leave the house, even for a quick grocery run. You waited for me anxiously, as if worried you’d never see me again, and then greeted me as though years had passed since you watched me walk out the door.

That’s a hard love to get over, but I’ve been without you for exactly two months. There are moments I still expect to see your beautiful face in your usual spots, but then reality slaps me in the face, reminding me that you’re no longer here.

It’s a heartbreaking moment because my every day also revolved around you. You also used to be my world, and I miss you so fucking much.

The night after your suffering had ended, I went outside in the front yard. I walked around the trees and imagined your body in front of me. I even looked out for coyotes that I was always certain at any moment would jump out of the shadows and attack you.

I was your protector as much as you were mine.

I imagined us walking back to the front door together and then I headed to the place on the counter where your jar of treats used to be. No matter how sick you were in the end, you never forgot that you were due a treat every time you came in from outside, whether you did anything or not.

Uncle had moved those treats immediately after your body left the house, as well as your dish bowls. It was too hard to see any reminder of you, even though your presence had lingered so heavily in the house in those immediate days after.

Months later, you’re still there.

That night, I brought your bed and favorite blankie downstairs to my room. You hadn’t slept down there in many months.

I had washed your bed after I was sure this was the end. I wanted you to die in a freshly cleaned bed. After a week of lying in it and then dying in it, the bed smelled comfortably like you. So distinct. So safe.

Two months later, with the bed remaining in its place in my room, your scent still keeps me close to you.

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day.

You used to be my Valentine.

For the first time in fourteen years, I won’t have my Valentine cuddling next to me. But I’m in no hurry to find a new one.

You can’t replace perfection.

Phil, you were your Mama’s greatest love, and I can’t wait to see you again and give you a kiss on the top of your nose.

Happy Valentine’s Day, my love. My boy. My Angel.

It’s Cicada Time Again

I have two trees in my front yard. One is covered with them, the other, only minimally. I took my dog out and felt like I was in a scene from the movie The Birds. One by one they descended upon me, flying into my face and my hair– the way the black birds attacked the kids in the movie. (Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a little, but those flying insects do come at you.)

The cicadas are back in town. Spread the word around. (Pat yourself on the back if you immediately started singing the song.) Though my fun with boys is limited, ’cause I’m a lesbian, I can emphatically say cicadas are not as fun as boys (you’ll get this if you know the song).

Cicadas are a fucking disaster.

My state is one of seventeen states currently experiencing the emergence of these very noisy and very ugly insects. Why couldn’t cicadas look more like lovely butterflies rather than Freddy Krueger with wings.

I’ve been around cicadas since I was a kid. Every thirteen and seventeen years a new brood of cicadas have come up through the trees. I remember the noise. I remember them clustered all over the trees stumps and branches, and the crunch under your shoes as you stepped on a shell or, accidentally, a live one. But I don’t remember the attacks.

I have two trees in my front yard. One is covered with them, the other, only minimally. I took my dog out and felt like I was in a scene from the movie The Birds. One by one they descended upon me, flying into my face and my hair– the way the blackbirds attacked the kids in the movie. (Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a little, but those flying insects do come at you.)

Thankfully, unlike the birds in the movie, cicadas don’t bite. I think they just gravitate to whatever object is moving. That has been my non-expert observation.

Everyone I know is bothered by them. No one was looking forward to the arrival of these red-eyed flying bugs, but I read in the Chicago Sun-Times that people from parts of this country, and other countries, are traveling to my state. Apparently, Illinois is the “hotspot” location for “cicada observers” or “cicada enthusiasts” or just those good old-fashioned nature lovers.

According to the article, central Illinois will have the most tourists because that area will be host to both the thirteen-year and seventeen-year cicada species. I don’t know which species is making all that racket outside my house, I’m just amazed that people are excited to spend money to see these, as my mother likes to call them, “little fuckers”.

“Fuckers! All of them!” A friend texted me today.

I think you get the picture of how the locals feel about the temporary cicada invasion.

My neighbor texted me this afternoon to get a cicada out of her bedroom. It had come into the house the night before. She had slept on the couch. Equipped with a broom and a flashlight, I found the little bugger alive under her bed.

Just today, after coming in from outside with my dog, I thought I had felt something in my hair, but it was very faint, so I went on. Then about six seconds later, it moved and made its high-piercing sound right next to my ear. I dropped my head and shook my hair. The ugly thing fell to the floor.

My mother yelled, “Kill it! Kill it!”

I did not. I picked it up with a paper towel and let it back outside. Even though I’m not a fan of insects and bugs, I don’t kill them when I find them in my house. If I can pick them up with a towel, I will let them outside. If I can’t pick them up, I leave them be. Figure they’ll just crawl back into the walls or something, and I won’t see them again.

But things always don’t end up like that, despite my good intentions. The other day I came in from outside. Went to the bathroom. Sat on the toilet. And then I heard it. That high-piercing screech. I shot up. Shook my hair. Looked in the mirror and saw the thing stuck to the back of my T-shirt.

I flicked it to the floor, grabbed some tissue, and I crushed that son of a bitch.

I’m sorry. But that was neither the time nor the place to make your presence known. RIP, Crushed Cicada.

I hope this post was helpful to anyone curious about these insects. I was going to include a picture of a cicada. I have so many huddled around my tree, but no way was I bending over to take a picture of them. I shudder to think how many cicadas would end up on my back and in my hair.

Google is a beautiful thing.

Edit: I included a picture of a cicada from the public domain. I did not take this myself.

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When Someone Shows You Who They Are …

Believe them? I guess. That’s what we’re told to do, right? Someone behaves in a manner we find uncivil, rude, inappropriate, or has a disagreeable character (values) or personality (attitude), and we write them off, ghost them, block them from our life.

Are there exceptions to this rule? Or are we forever defined by our imperfect moment/s? Is there no consideration to a person’s mindset? How do we decipher if someone’s behavior is actually who they are versus a behavior influenced by many of society’s unjust and unfair ways?

Some people have been treated so badly in personal relationships (abused, used, lied to, cheated on) their learned cynical nature interferes with their true behavior, clouding the person they really are.

I read this saying a lot on social media, “Be kind. You don’t know what people are going through.”

Some people give second chances, even third and fourth chances. While some give none. For those who give none, life must be wonderful to be so perfect.

When the Classroom was my Safe Place.

I graduated from high school in 1994. I spent twelve years in classrooms without the words “school shootings” meaning much to me, because I had nothing to attach those words to–those now very prevalent words.

The classroom was one of my safe places. Places, like my home, where I walked into with the assumption that nothing bad could happen to me.

The only time that assumption was challenged was in 1988, when a woman named Laurie Dann, walked into a second-grade classroom, told the class she was going to teach them about guns, and then shot and killed one child, while shooting and injuring at least eight others.

The face of the woman plastered all over the news is one I’ll always remember–dark hair, dark eyes, a turtleneck– because of the horrendous acts that face is attached to. There was otherwise nothing worth remembering about her face, nothing distinctive evil that you would expect to see in someone who could shoot and kill innocent children. To my then twelve-year-old eyes, she looked so…. normal. Like any other mom.

Even after hearing that story of a woman going into a school (a school not very far from mine) and shooting children, killing one of them, I don’t remember getting ready for school the next day being afraid. Worried. Concerned that someone may come into my school and shoot me. That particular school shooting was an anomaly. Shootings didn’t occur regularly enough for me to think it could happen at my school.

I was twelve years old in 1988. In the seventh grade. I was old enough to understand that a child had died, and more children had been shot. I was old enough to grasp that a mother and father had lost their child. Classmates had lost a friend.

As devastating as all of that was, I still felt safe going to school the next day, despite that that school shooting happened less than an hour from my own school, because I believed something like that could never happen again. Not at my school. Not at anyone’s school.

Children today don’t think like that. Children today watch news of the latest school shooting and think, “My school could be next.”

School shooter drills prepare them for the occasion they may be right.

My school prepared us for fires and tornados.

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Photo downloaded from public records.

Happy New Year

I didn’t mean to let so much time pass between blogs, but life happened, as it tends to do.

Last month, a sudden illness landed me in the hospital for four days. I recuperated just in time to spend Christmas festivities with family, only to be hit with a nasty cold bug a few days later.

The New Year was counted down from my couch, surrounded by a mug of hot lemon water, Gatorade, cough drops, a bowl of vegetable soup, and a box of tissue—the necessities for every cold/flu bug.

Past New Year blogs I’ve written usually included planned resolutions and the promise/hope for a better year. I had an optimistic outlook for the future year, which always began with a book about spirituality and being Zen and practicing meditation.

I have no resolutions this year. F. Scott Fitzgerald will begin 2023. I have no interest in being spiritual right now. Maybe things will change later. I hope so. No one knows what the year will bring.

The one thing I know for certain is I have a book coming out, Annabel and the Boy in the Window. I’ll write more about it when I know the exact release date. The date has changed many times. That’s life again getting in the way of how things are supposed to go.

Here’s to 2023. May things go as you plan/hope/desire. But if life gets in the way, may it be a good life.

Happy New Year.

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Free photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net.

Author Carol Browne Writes about a Shapeshifter Called Harper.

A Shapeshifter Called Harper

from Carol Browne

You’re expecting to read about a shapeshifter called Harper now, I know, but it’s why this character is called Harper that is the reason for me writing this blog. The name was originally Tyler.

Tyler was the MC in a sci-fi novella entitled The Star Attraction, which I wrote in 2016. In May 2019, I was offered a contract for the book by my publisher. Said publisher closed down a few months later and that was that. Following this, I found myself dealing with a multitude of life problems, not to mention my other books and the demise of my third publisher. Hence, it was only in July 2022 that I found time to submit this book elsewhere (no verdict as yet!). Meanwhile, I am writing a sequel.

This week I saw a promo post on Facebook for a new release and, lo and behold, the male protagonist is a shapeshifter called Tyler. What are the odds? I might have been the first person to use this name in this way, but the other author got published so Tyler is damned and has morphed into Harper (which seems apt).

In this same week, a fellow author was distraught when she found that her latest manuscript, which she was about to send to her agent, has the same theme as another recently published book. I won’t reveal the theme, but it is such a novel, specific and original concept that it beggars belief that someone else came up with the very same idea. I hope she and her agent can find a way around this dilemma.

Last year I had an idea for a crime thriller, and I believed that the crime and the reason behind it was so outlandish and original that the chance of anyone else coming up with the idea was remote. More fool me. Yet another of those promo posts on Facebook was to show me the error of my ways as a concept I had deemed so unusual and unique was there for all to see in someone else’s stylish new book trailer. Meanwhile, as I toyed with the idea of an epic fantasy involving women with magic powers, I found that my story had already been given its marching orders by The Wheel of Time.

When there’s nothing new under the sun, it’s a challenge trying to create original concepts, and even more difficult to avoid accusations of plagiarism even though you had no idea that your ideas duplicated someone else’s. In the same way, it’s not possible to be aware of every book that has been, is being, or will be published. The fact that there’s no copyright on titles is a small crumb of comfort!

So, what is going on? Is it the Collective Unconscious that causes so many people to have the same ideas at the same time? How often does this happen to other authors and what do they do about it? Would any author reading this blog have changed Tyler to Harper or kept the original name? I’d love to know.

For now, my shapeshifter is called Harper. I lay claim to this in writing in the hope that there aren’t any other shapeshifters called Harper out there already! If there are and anyone has any objection to mine, speak now or forever hold your peace!
Once upon a time a little girl wrote a poem about a flower.
Impressed, her teacher pinned it to the wall and, in doing so, showed the child which path to follow.
Over the years poems and stories flowed from her pen like magic from a wizard’s wand.
She is much older now, a little wiser too, and she lives in rural Cambridgeshire, where there are many trees to hug.
But inside her still is that little girl who loved Nature and discovered the magic of words.
She hopes to live happily ever after.
Stay connected with Carol on her website and blog, Facebook, and Twitter.

Fantasy author Carol Browne is a published author who is currently seeking an agent.

Going Out to Eat

Going out to eat was a rarity when I was young. Most of our dinners were homecooked by my mother. She made delicious meals, so it wasn’t a disaster to eat at home but going out to eat was special. An exciting break from mundane evenings.

I could sense a night out was coming, when, as suppertime approached, and nothing was in the oven, either we were ordering take-out (which was another welcomed rarity), or we were going out to eat.

I preferred going out to eat. I’d alert my siblings. “We’re going out to eat tonight! We’re going out to eat.” I can’t remember if they shared my same excitement, but I’m sure they did because eating out was a treat.

Though I hated getting dressed up, I loved going out to dinner, so I wore whatever my mother pulled from my closet, without much fuss. We dressed up. No jeans. It was nice pants, sweaters, blouses, dresses, or skirts attire. As much as I loved my jeans, especially the ones with holes, I knew better than to even think I’d be allowed to wear jeans when going to a restaurant.

But I don’t remember even wanting to wear everyday clothes. That’s what made going out to dinner special. You wore the clothes you didn’t normally wear. You did your hair better. You wore your nice shoes because you were going out.

My favorite places to eat were steakhouses. The ambiance was very distinct to steakhouses. Almost mysterious. They were darker than other restaurants, lit by candles in red-glass candleholders on every table. The tables were dense and sturdy, made of dark wood. The air was thick with the aroma of seasoned meat and homemade biscuits.

The biscuits were thick and buttery, and Mom always had to warn us not to fill up on them the moment the server placed the basket on the table, but we couldn’t resist. Our little hands dug right in.

My favorite dish was the basket of breaded fried shrimp and French fries. Every good steakhouse had them on the menu. I remember the fries looking enormous to my younger self, who was used to thin fast food fries. But everything was big at steakhouses, especially the baked potatoes they served, cut down the middle and fluffy on the inside, wrapped in foil, with sides of butter and sour cream.

This is how I remember the dining-out experience as a child. It was fancy. Special. You dressed up for it.

I don’t have the statistics, but I’m certain the stats will show families go out to dinner more often now than they did in the early 80’s, when I was a kid. Casual dining has been on the rise for decades, the proof is in the abundance of chain restaurants that have flooded this country’s landscape.

Sure, I’d have wanted to go to restaurants more as a kid if asked, but I’m glad it wasn’t a regular, casual thing. There would have been nothing special about it. I’m able to write this blog forty years later because the excitement I felt going out to eat as a child is still palpable. You don’t get that from casual experiences.

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Photo courtesy of freedigitaphotos.net

What’s This Life For?

Ribbons wrap around trees that line the streets of the subdivision I live. I didn’t know why until yesterday. A 21-year-old woman who lived just blocks from me, away at college for her senior year, was killed by a hit-and-run driver.

Just minutes before, the young woman had been out with friends on a Friday night. None of those friends could know that that night would be the last night they’d hear that woman’s laugh. See her smile. Hear her voice. Feel her hug.

The goodbye they shared was their last goodbye. But none of them knew that until they got the call.

The sudden call that confirms you will never see a person you love ever again.

The call that changes lives forever.

The call every parent prays never rings for them and then is shattered in disbelief when it does.

But all you can do is pray because one can’t control the erratic car, they didn’t see coming, racing toward them while crossing a street at night.

One can’t control which classroom, which grocery store, which concert, which movie theater, or which parade a gunman will choose to spray his bullets.

Our fate is not always in our hands. Even the most obsessed control freak has to concede to that. There is no guarantee to a long life no matter how healthy a lifestyle you live.

You can eat right. Exercise daily. Limit risky behavior. But if your day brings you to the exact spot where a car will run a red light, or a bullet will pass with no warning, what can you do? What chance do you have?

Nobody lives forever. Death is certain. We all know that. But everyone wants a timely death. To die with a wrinkled face, silver hair, and a hundred years of memories lived, instead of just a couple decades.

How some people live long enough to see old age is a combination of good genes, self-care, and having the good fortune of never being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

When lives, especially young lives, are taken in such tragic, unfair, and nonsensical ways, it is easy to wonder what this life is for. Is it worth it? To live and love when your life and your love can be ripped away from you any minute of any day?

Our personal life experiences may answer that question for us.

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Photo courtesy of freedigitalphoto.com

How Did We Get Here?

Maybe there has never been a time since the television was invented where stressful and turbulent, and sometimes just downright depressing, news stories weren’t reported.

The 60’s had its protests and riots over Vietnam and Civil Rights, as well as the assassinations of three of its country’s leaders– John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King.

The 70’s had Watergate, a gas crisis, and political protests over racial and gender equality, and some gay rights activism too.

The 80’s had the AIDS epidemic, the Rodney King beating, Iran-Contra, and Ronald Reagan’s assault on the “welfare queens” while he lowered taxes on the wealthy and big corporations (corporate welfare, but Republicans were always fine with welfare that went to the top, but not the bottom. Never the bottom.). The 80’s represents the decade of corporate greed and will always be synonymous with the movie “Wall Street.”

The 90’s had Columbine, a school shooting that, though we didn’t know it then, was only the beginning of what would be known as mass shootings. My twenty-one-year-old self, sitting in her college library, reading the local paper about the school massacre, had no inkling that such a macabre occurrence would someday be as tantamount to America as apple pie.

The 90’s also had Bill Clinton abusing his power for a blowjob, the stained blue dress, and grunge. Oh, how much I loved those flannel shirts. It was cool to dress like a lesbian in the 90’s. But what kind of lesbian would I be if I talked about the 90’s without mentioning Ellen’s monster “Yep, I’m gay” coming out in Time magazine, as well as how much just the existence of Melissa Etheridge singing songs about loving a woman during the decade I was coming to terms with my own homosexuality? Those two women made this midwestern girl feel not so strange, after all.

The 00’s had 9/11 and the war on terrorism that included two wars, the Great Recession, and the historic election of the United States’ first Black president, Barack Obama.

The 2010’s had the inception of the Tea Party, more mass shootings, including at Sandy Hook Elementary School where 26 people were killed, including 20 six and seven-year-olds. As gruesome as that is, Obama still wasn’t able to get Republicans to agree on even a most basic gun control bill. Simple background checks were a bridge too far for Republicans because this is ‘Merica, the Land of Freedom and Guns, Guns, Guns!

The 2010’s was also the decade that saw the election of a self-proclaimed “Real Estate Mogul” and one of the country’s most popular philanderer to the U.S Presidency. The U.S will feel the burn of having such an inept, self-serving corrupt conman as president for a long time. It will take decades to get the stench of that piece of shit off our country.

The 2020’s started off with a global pandemic that would go on to kill over a million people in the U.S alone, and over six million worldwide after two years, and counting. The 20’s also saw for the first time in U.S elections the denial of a peaceful transition of power. The former corrupt president lied about the results of a fair and legal election that he lost and tried to implement a plan to retain power. When that failed, only because there were some decent politicians who put Country over Party, the conman incited a coup to invade the U.S Capitol and literally try to kill the Vice President and Speaker of the House.

What a time to be alive. But the crazy doesn’t end there. Said former corrupt president is currently being investigated because he stole top secret classified documents regarding nuclear weapons and nuclear intel and stored them at his golf resort. He’s being investigated for violating the Espionage Act. The FUCKING Espionage Act! We had a traitor in the White House!

But the sickest part about all of this is there are people who call themselves Patriots and wave the American flag while defending said traitor. What a truly fucking time to be alive.

I admit, I wasn’t a huge fan of history class when I was in school. I didn’t understand why it was important for me to know about the Puritans and the Quakers, The Industrial Revolution, or anything that happened centuries before I was born, but I remember being extremely interested in learning about Richard Nixon and Watergate. It was closer to my time of birth and what I knew about Nixon was that he did a very bad thing and that intrigued me to know more. I thought what I learned about Watergate was bad. Future history classes are going to blow future generations’ minds when they learn how the previous criminal in chief tried to destroy our democracy.

Of course, the conman’s actions will only be shocking to future generations if we are able to stop them from repeating. If we elect more politicians like him, his crimes will become the norm. Obviously, we can’t let that happen.

Every generation had its turbulent times. But back in the sixties, and seventies, and eighties, TV was limited. We didn’t have 500 channels back then. But now we do. Between twenty-four hours news channels and endless Internet sites and You Tube channels, some credulous, while others spouting out crazy conspiracy theories, it can be detrimental to our mental health to block out the noise.

Take a break. Turn it off. Escape.

Walking in nature, sitting by the water, reading, quiet drives down remote roads, or cuddling with a pet are all great ways to ease your mind and break away from the stress of the headline news. There’s another thing that takes me out of my head for a little bit. I love looking back to the past. Maybe too much, but that’s beside the point. You Tube is a great way to find videos of a time you may wish you had lived or maybe wish you could live again.

As a kid, I loved the movie “Eddie and the Cruisers.” I wanted to be Eddie so bad. He had the voice. He had the face. He had the arms. And he had the girl. I fell in love with the songs in that movie and I remember searching every mall record store for the soundtrack. I was in high school when I finally found it.

One day, when I was in my “looking back” moods, I searched those songs on You Tube and found a video of John Cafferty (the voice of Eddie Wilson) and the Beaver Brown Band playing these songs during a 1980’s New Year’s Eve set. The video was such a relaxation for me that it is my go-to when I need a stress-releaser.

Here’s the video. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.