We'll Miss You, Pa

On Monday, May 9th, our family suffered its second real tragedy. The first was the death of my father in 1998. My kids loved their grandaddy, and I loved my father, more than I thought I could love any man besides my husband. Then Monday, my FIL died. It was sudden and unexpected and it threw us all for a loop. Even though he was 82, he didn't look it or act it. He was one of those men who'd always worked hard, played hard, and loved hard. I met him in 1971 at Thanksgiving. At only 5'6" tall, he'd been tagged with the nickname Little Man and it had stuck. That's what I called him for more than 32 years. But though he was small in stature, he made up for it by being large at heart.

The one thing I'll remember him for most was his ability to make memories. I've finally learned that memories are made either by things often repeated, or by things done on a grand scale. Pa's memories were made from little things, done over and over until they became a part of your life. When my two oldest were small, he took them down to Phil's Corner every time they visited and bought them Chick O'Stix and peanut butter logs. They've never forgotten those trips. He was a wonderful grandfather and was loved by every single granchild.

But the things I'll miss the most are the daily visits to our house where he'd climb out of the truck saying "Another day, another dollar, and the work ain't hard." Or the times he'd call me on the phone and, no matter what hour of the day or night it was, he'd say, "Didn't wake you up, did I?" He was always inordinately pleased if I said he had. And whenever someone left after a visit, he'd invariably tell them, "Be careful on the roads. Don't drive too fast. Keep it under thirty." To the younger family members, he'd add, "Don't talk to strangers."
I miss seeing him working in his garden, miss hearing his voice, miss watching him with my grandchildren, miss the pride in his voice when we told him news of our children. He never failed to ask if we'd heard from them recently. To him, out of sight didn't mean out of mind.

GodSpeed Little Man. Say hello to my dad for me, and save me a seat near you two at that heavenly table.

Tough times

Looks like the government is finally figuring out what we've known for a while. We are not in an economic upswing. They haven't quite come out and admitted we're in a recession, but I figure they'll let us get used to the bad news first before they hit us with the really bad news. But how can anyone think we're in good shape when gas is well over $2 a gallon, groceries have gone up over 50 % in the last couple of months, and working people are on the verge of disaster?

My husband is in the concrete business which is very closely tied to the economy. If business is anything to go by, we've been in a recession since Sept. 11, 2001. My youngest two are feeling it the most. The second youngest is in college, having to take on increasingly heavy loans just to stay in school because his father and I are barely making ends meet. The youngest is the one it's really affecting, though. It's her senior year in high school, a time when she should be walking on air. Instead, she's having to make her own graduation invitations because we couldn't afford the $3 a piece ones from Josten's. She won't get to have a graduation tea like her friends, a graduation dinner, and I'm in serious doubt about the graduation party. If it weren't for scholarships, she wouldn't be going to college at all, but getting her to and from the out of state school she's chosen is going to be interesting.

The publishing business is feeling the pinch, too. Fewer books are being sold, editors are being choosier about what they buy and fewer new authors are being bought. Instead, publishers are recycling old books from popular authors. Personally, it really pisses me off when I buy what I think is a new book, only to find out it's a recycled old one. I've started making note of the publisher's name when that happens, not just the author. I used to be a huge Nora Roberts fan, still am I guess, but I haven't bought one of her books in two years because I can't tell which are the new ones and which are the old. I don't have time to stand in the store and read a few pages to see if I've read it before, so I pass them by. Which just reinforces the book-buying slump. Think the publishers will eventually get the message?

One of my best friends lost her brother to suicide yesterday. Why do people do that? Don't they realize that, while it might be the easy way out for them, it causes such tremendous devastation in those they leave behind that they might never recover? Many hugs and prayers for everyone touched by tragedy today.

Tori

First Book on the Shelves!!!!

No, unfortunately it's not mine. But a good friend of mine, Stephanie Feagan, finally realized a life-long dream with the release of Show Her the Money, an April Silhouette Bombshell release. It's about a kick-ass CPA (yes, Virginia, CPA's can kick ass) who blows the whistle on a mega-bucks energy corporation who's been cooking their books. Did you know mega-bucks crooks don't like people who blow the whistle on them? Whitney "Pink" Pearl finds out just how dangerous, and lonely, being a whistle-blower can be.

Show Her the Money is different from most of the other Bombshells in that it's laugh-out-loud funny. I started reading about 10pm, thinking I'd just read a chapter or two since I had to get up early the next morning. Um, right. Finished it at 3 am. It's a can't-put-it-down treasure.

My, how time flies

I'd originally planned to make this blog a daily thing, then I decided weekly might be better. Then life happened. In the course of a month, I nearly lost my father-in-law, ended up taking over his place in the family business, moved from a sedentary life to one of hard physical labor, and lost almost all my writing time. I also took a bad fall but managed not to break anything.

Went to a local writer's conference this weekend and got some much needed validation about my writing. An agent read the first two pages of one of my mss in a workshop, along with a number of others. Mine was one of only two that she asked to read more. So now I have to polish, print, and get it in the mail tomorrow.

Two sad things this week. The deaths of Terry Schiavo and the Pope. Both received a lot of press, one because it shouldn't have happened, was morally wrong and amounted to murder; the other because it was a loss of a much loved man whose time was up. He got to die with dignity, something Terry was denied. But I'm a great believer in what goes around comes around, and I'm thinking Michael Schiavo will find himself under a microscope, his past, present, and future under intense scrutiny. His children will forever be known as the children of the man who starved his wife to death. His live in will always live with the stigma. Michael will find it difficult to live under this spotlight and to live with the constant censure of the people of America and the world. He may get a lot more than he ever bargained for. Now we wait for the autopsy results. And even if the rulers of this world never find out for sure what part he played in Terry's condition, there is still the final judgment by the One from whom no sins are hidden--and His justice is without end.

Oh, and one other sad thing that hits closer to home for me. Much beloved author, Jamie Denton, has recently been diagnosed with cancer. The doctors have given her a 50/50 chance of survival. Being a writer, Jamie is like most of us--uninsured. Very few writers can afford the exhorbitant cost of insurance coverage and so end up not receiving timely care, trying to push nagging aches and pains aside because they know if it's nothing they'll have wasted money their family needs and if it's something bad, they can't afford to get it fixed anyway.

Jamie writes for Temptation, Blaze, Duets, and several other Harlequin/Silhouette lines, as well as Kensington Brava. If you'd like to help in some way as her friends try to raise money for medical care, pop over to http://www.duetsauthors.com and click on a link to donate, buy raffle tickets, or just stop for a moment and offer up a prayer for a lovely woman who has brought much joy to her corner of the world.

What a week!

This has been a rough 7 day period. Between helping my oldest get her house ready to sell, making trips to the two youngest's schools--each an hour from home in opposite directions--to take them shopping, then my FIL ending up in intensive care with pneumonia and a small heart attack, I'm exhausted. Have I added one word to my revisions? Not in the last 5 or 6 days. It makes no sense. I have a big NYC publisher waiting for my book. And I dilly around, playing Mah Jong solitaire instead of writing. I need a hypnotist or something to tell me "you want to finish the da*n book. You will finish the da*n book."

FIL is doing better, is back in a regular room, and I got to go help the dh get a patio ready to pour. My muscles are screaming. No wonder dh doesn't have a weight problem when he eats twice as much as I do.

Tori

Best E-zine on the web

That would have to be, without a doubt, http://www.wetnoodleposse.com . And yes, I'm biased. Made up of members of the 2003 Golden Heart finalist's yahoo group, the Wet Noodle Posse is one of the most creative, wonderful group of women I've ever had the pleasure of knowing. Stop by and check out the zine, read about the Noodlers, go find their books!

What is beauty?

On one of my loops, we've been discussing whether or not readers want to read about "real-sized" women as heroines. Most are for it, a couple very much against it. As you might guess, the ones for it are "real-sized" women themselves, the ones against are slim women who work hard to stay that way. I have to admit, I'm not the 125 lb size 9 girl my husband married. I've had four kids, a bout with cancer, and a back injury and hernia that make exercising difficult. But does that make me less worthy of finding love?

Well, not me specifically since I have a wonderful dh who loves me anyway. But what about the other millions of women out there who don't wear a size 3? I think this country places way too much value on looks. A hundred years ago, the ideal woman was one who was sturdy enough to withstand hard times and hard work. These ninety-pound weaklings had a hard time back then. Both of my grandmothers were big women. My aunts and great aunts were all big women. My mother, though short, has been big most of her life. Yet they were all healthy, all lived into their eighties or nineties, they worked hard, and were all beautiful women in their own way.

So what's more important? A woman with a perfect body and no compassion? Or a woman with some padding but a heart of pure gold?

I vote for the latter. What about you?

Tori

Introduction

My name is Tori Scott. Well, not really. That's what I hope to use as my pen name should I ever be lucky enough to sell one of my books. At least I think that's the one I want to use. I've batted pen names around for a while now. Some of the other choices were Pamela Arden, Arden Lindsey, McKenna Morris (I still kind of like that one), Kelsey Wallis, Emma Walden, Erin Wallis, Marti Merrick, Morgan McKenzie, and at least 20 others. But Tori K. Scott lets me use letters from my 4 kids' names and my two grandson's names.

Any thoughts on which one you'd like to buy a book from?

What I really, really wanted to use was Rebecca Arden. But my youngest absolutely refused to let me highjack her name to put on romance novels. She's a lit-ah-rare-y type, you know.

This blog is not just for thoughts on writing, but for thoughts on life, love, family, the state of the union...

Oh, yeah, that last one is supposed to be the President's job. But somehow I don't think he has a clue about what's really going on in this country. He has no clue about people who can't affored basic dental or medical care, people who can't afford to buy a car that runs, and if they could, couldn't afford gas and insurance for it.

Oops, I wasn't going to go off on politics. At least not yet. You'll have to come back to read my political tirades another day.

Bear with me while I figure this blogging thing out. I hope you come back to see me soon.

Tori