biancadarc.com Blog

And the Wheel Turns…

Happy Halloween. Blessed Samhain. Happy New Year and all that good stuff. As I write this, it is approaching midnight here on the East Coast of the United States. Another year cycle coming to an end, and the Wheel turns.

My personal belief system is complex and many faceted. I have a great deal of respect for the traditions of the past and I think there’s a lot our modern religions owe to those that came before. I like the idea of the Wheel of the year with the various parts watched over by the three aspects of the goddess – Maiden, Mother and Crone. We’re passing out of the Mother’s influence as harvest comes to an end and Winter begins – the time of the Crone. But then it won’t be long before the Maiden shows her sunny face in the Spring. My favorite time of year.

I usually enjoy Halloween, but this year, as you may know, I’m dealing with family tragedy in the making. My Mom fell ill at the end of August and by the end of September, we were told it was an advanced stage of lung cancer. She’s not a smoker, and usually very active, so this took us by surprise to say the least. It’s been a shock and a time of turmoil for my Dad and me. He’s eight years older than she is, so we always just assumed that if/when they were to die, he’d go first. Now it looks like that may not be the case and he and I are both lost. Confused, grieving in anticipation of something we don’t know how to deal with and completely lost as we try to look after her.

She’s going through chemotherapy now and I’m having a difficult time dealing with the side effects. She’s not eating and I take it as a personal failure on my part. I’m not a good cook. I’ve never been “domestic.” I was the youngest of her two children (my brother is not involved with the family much and lives 3000 miles away). I never took care of anyone. I never even babysat. I’m single and have no children. So being on call 24/7 as her personal helper is something I’m ill prepared for, but cannot deny her. She’s my Mom. I’d walk through fire for her.

So I’m cooking, cleaning, have remodled part of my house to make a bedroom for her and basically being her cheerleader, coach, nurse, dietician, and all around Gal Friday. And doing my best not to lose it every few minutes. First, I’m scared. More afraid than I’ve ever been in my life. I can’t lose her. I’m not ready. She’s not ready. She has so much to live for. So much to enjoy in life. It’s not fair. Second, I’m ill prepared for the roles I’ve been forced into and feeling incredibly inadequate and guilty for things like her weight loss. If only I could find a way to make her eat more! If only I could cook something she’d actually eat. If only… If only… If only…

One of the worst side effects she’s experiencing is weakness in her muscles that makes it incredibly difficult to walk. She’s using a walker, but it’s pitiful to watch. She shakes so much in fear she’s going to fall and weakness in her leg. I want to cry but I also know she has to keep moving or she won’t be able to. Then I beging to second guess everything – is it a sign of deterioriation? Or is it just a side effect that will end when the chemo has done its job? Am I going to lose her even sooner? I’m so scared. I want to cry but I can’t really cry in front of her. Then I do and I feel guilty for letting her see me blubber and break down. It only makes things worse.

My plate is full. My mind races in a million directions and I can’t take much more. If you believe in such things, please say a prayer for my Mom. I’d like to think that the chemo is working and she’ll be with me for at least a few years to come. But I just don’t know. No one can say. Please pray for that outcome. I need her. I need her wisdom as I try to reassemble the broken pieces of my life. I can’t do it without her and I pray that I won’t have to. Just a little more time. A few more years. I need my Mom with me. Please.

So at this auspicious time – the turning of the year – the Eve of All Hallows and the beginning of the Feast of All Saints – that’s my dearest wish, my fondest desire, my most fervent prayer. If the lines between the realms are indeed blurred tonight, perhaps my prayer will be heard and answered.

Cat’s Cradle Blurb on Coming Soon Page

Cat’s Cradle will be releasing in ebook from Samhain Publishing on January 5th. The blurb just went up on the “coming soon” pages over on the Samhain site. Here’s the blurb:

A match made in adventure… and blessed by Chuck Norris.

String of Fate, Book 1

As bad days go, this one qualifies as one for the books. Elaine knew being late for her jiu jitsu class could earn her a reprimand from her sensei. But the sensei’s not there. And suddenly, neither is her car. Even walking home becomes problematic when she stumbles onto things that most definitely do go bump in the night. One of whom is too handsome for his own good—and too sexy for hers.

An Alpha Pantera Noir—black panther shifter—Cade operates on his immense skill, superior strength, and dominant personality. There’s something about this small spitfire of a human woman that threatens to bring him to his knees. She blundered into the middle of his mission to transport his queen to safety, and now it’s his responsibility to keep Elaine safe as well. Except no matter what he does, danger finds her at every turn.

Thrust into a world where the supernatural is commonplace, Elaine finds her considerable martial arts skill tested to the limit—and her ability to resist Cade crumbling by the second. But when nothing is as it seems, the last things she can trust are her own instincts…

Warning: This book contains bad language, great sex, sometimes hostile, but always sexy, big cat shifters on the prowl, and lots of tuna for Chuck Norris—wait a minute—tuna?

Once Bitten, Twice Dead on Kensington Site

Well, it’s official… Kensington has a page up for my first novel with them: Once Bitten, Twice Dead. You can find their page for it here: http://www.kensingtonbooks.com/catalog.cfm?dest=itempg&itemid=16327&secid=277&linkon=section&linkid=277

I’ve got a page for the book and it’s prequel, the novella Simon Says in the Half Past Dead anthology on my website as well. I absolutely love the covers for both books and can’t wait to see what they come up with for the rest of the series! I’ve just finished writing the second novella in the series, tentatively titled Smoke on the Water, which is suppoed to go in the 2010 Brava Halloween anthology. There will be 2 more novels in the series, untitled as yet. More news as it comes in…

TV – StarGate: Universe

All right… time for a fun post after all the depressing talk about the things going on in my life. I managed to catch a few episodes of StarGate: Universe while my Mom was napping. Luckily it’s on my “On Demand” section on cable, so I could catch it on my schedule rather than try to watch it during prime time.

Lo and behold, I was absolutely thrilled to see one of my favorite actors in a major role - Louis Ferreira. He plays the colonel in charge of the expedition, Colonel Young.

I first became aware of this actor on the chick-based semi-paranormal cop show “Missing”, where he played the head FBI dude. He had some of the BEST lines! He plays a fantastic badass and strikes just the right balance between tough as nails and sort of semi-sensitive. I love this guy! LOL. He plays the “man’s man” incredibly well.

I started watching “Missing” because I liked the premise of a psychic working with the FBI, though the show turned into a vehicle for Vivica A. Fox more than anything. She’s good, but I was more interested in the psychic side of things and also really started to enjoy Louis Ferreira’s character. He stole a lot of the scenes he was in. He’s just that good. I ended up watching the show more for him than anything else. His dialog was snappy and really clever, so kudos to the writers as well.

StarGate: Universe has an interesting premise but could turn out to be a little too contrived to suit me. I’ve seen two episodes now and the magic ship seems to know an awful lot. So far there’s a little too much Deus ex Machina for me, but that could change. We’ll have to see. It’s a grittier version of StarGate with a noir-esque Galactica feel to it at times. I didn’t really like the new BSG. Too depressing and too complicated for the occasional viewer to really follow. I’ve loved SG since the Kurt Russel movie and have really liked every iteration of it they’ve had so far.

I’m hoping SG:U doesn’t go too dark a la BSG. I like the hopefulness of the SG shows. I also like how they’ve kept their integrity through all the different versions, unlike the Trek fanchise, which just seemed to get worse and worse. SG only gets better and better. Here’s to more StarGate!

Update

I know my blog has been rather depressing lately but it’s a reflection of my life at this point. I’m taking care of my Mom 24/7 and I don’t begrudge her a second of my time. I only regret we didn’t do more together when she was still able to zip around and travel. Right now she’s on oxygen and therefore tethered to the machine they put in our home. So she’s limited to the first floor. We moved her into the family room, which we’re still converting into a bedroom for her, and eventually, my Dad as well. Looks like we’re all going to be living under 1 roof for the foreseeable future. I’m moving my bedroom downstairs as well, so I can be around when she needs me in the middle of the night.

Right now, I’m sleeping about 3 hours at a time on the couch that is still in the family room while we’re getting things moved around. There’s a big china cabinet that has to be packed up and taken out along with some other stuff. It’s definitely a work in progress. (Like I really need another task to add to my “to do” list.)

She started chemotherapy last week and is sleeping a lot right now, which they say is to be expected. I only pray the chemo drugs do the trick and halt the cancer in its tracks. I’d love to see some improvement in her condition so that she can travel again, but right now that’s totally out. Which means I’m not going anywhere either. So I had to miss Albacon a week or two ago and I won’t be able to make it to AAD either, even though I helped plan some of it. I’m bummed, but Mom has to come first. I don’t know how much longer she’ll be here and I don’t intend to miss a second of it.

Please say a prayer for her recovery if you’re so inclined and thank you for your good wishes and emotional support. It really means a lot.

Thanks

I want to thank those of you who have reached out to me. I feel very isolated working from home and not having much contact with people outside the postman and the nurses who now come to the house to evaluate my Mom. It means a lot to know there are people out there who actually care what I have to say and are willing to at least lend a virtual “ear” – so to speak – when I begin to lose it, as I did the last time I posted here.

Thank you for putting up with me.

The future is beginning to take shape and it includes chemotherapy for my Mom and lots of work on my part to help make her life easier and more comfortable. It also includes a ton of worry and a painful dose of reality, I’m afraid. But I guess that’s life – nobody gets out alive.

Keep the prayers coming and you are all in my thoughts and prayers as well. It’s good to know I’m not completely alone, even if it is only virtually.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Not sure if I should do this here… if you’re looking for a rah-rah post about an upcoming release or something, stop right here. I’ll get back to that at some point – I hope – but right now I’m just too depressed to do much of anything other than examine what’s going on in my world and how I can make it better. As some of you know by now, my mother was just diagnosed with cancer. It was totally out of the blue and utterly devestating.

She went from being very active (we’ve called her the Energizer Bunny for years) and working to nearly bedridden in less than 2 months. We’re looking forward to starting chemotherapy – maybe this week. Did you catch that? Looking forward to chemo? Dear God, how my world has changed in a few short weeks.

Only now do I realize I’ve been in a sort of semi-depressed state since somewhere around 2003. Let me go back a bit… In the Summer of 2001, I was an Assistant Vice President on Wall Street. I was making oodles of money and had the “dream” job I’d always wanted, but it was like that old saying: Be careful what you wish for. I hated that job and quit it roughly 2 weeks before 9/11. I’ve always thought God had a hand in the timing there. If my boss had wanted me to work out my 2 weeks notice, I probably would have been in my office, in the shadow of the Towers on 9/11. As it is, I wasn’t, and I’m forever grateful for that.

That’s not to say that 9/11 wasn’t traumatic. I had friends there. But that’s enough of that. To bring the story forward a little, let’s just say that my job situation cleared up the following week. My previous employer called me back to be a consultant. I did that for about 3 years until the consulting work dried up. During that time, I pocketed some money to finance my move to writing. After some fumbling – and a run-in with a bad ulcer – I managed to break into fiction in 2005 and was first published in 2006. I made next to no money for the first few years and lived off my savings, which grew perilously low.

I’m making more now, but nowhere near what I was making when I worked full-time. Still, I’ve been economizing and trying to stick with writing so I can spend as much time as possible with my aging parents. I love them. I get along with them. I have one other sibling who lives 3000 miles away and never visits. I’m their only moral support. I’m the only one they can depend on.

And increasingly, they’ve become the center of my universe.

Only now do I realize that I went from being an independent career woman with her own business, to some kind of old kid, reverting to a child-like existence where my parents are my best friends. While I’m glad I’m here to help, I now see that there must be something wrong with my life. And how selfish is that? That I’m weeping about my future when my mother is facing her own mortality and an uncertain lifespan.

Now that I look back on it, I’ve been overly emotional for the past few years. I burst into tears at the least provocation. I’ve been crying like… every day. Not since the news about the cancer. I’m talking since about 2003. Um… something is probably wrong with that.

When I would get choked up, I’d tell myself to knock it off and hide it. Now that I’m sitting with my Mom all day long everyday, I can’t hide it anymore. When I try to tell her why I’m crying - which has a lot to do with her illness, of course, though I don’t want her to know it – I realize I’m scared spitless about my future. Again… selfish. I shudder to think how horrible I am, but I can’t help it right now.

I think I’ve reverted to that pre-college stage where you’re not sure about your future and getting ready to leave the nest. Only this time, I don’t have that 20-year-old optimism about how bright my future is. No, now I’m 40 and realizing that I’ve wasted a good portion of my life chasing a business career I ultimately gave up. While getting a lot of edcuation and climbing that corporate ladder I missed out on dating, marrying, having kids… all that normal stuff. Basically, I’m alone. Well, I have my Mom and Dad, but for how much longer?

Then I cry, dreading a future alone. And I make my living now writing romance. Paradox, anyone?

I hope you don’t mind my blogging about this, but writing it out helps me figure out what’s going on in my head. I’ve had a rude awakening. I can’t hide the tears anymore. Now they’re mixed with tears for my Mom’s situation. I’ve got to work my way out of this emotional black hole, fighting gravity all the way.

I don’t know what to do.