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Personal blog of christian
writer & fallible mom
Katy McKenna Raymond
in Kansas City, Missouri

Katy is represented by
Greg Johnson at
WordServe Literary

Read more Katy at
LateBoomer.net

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Recent Posts

• Try
• Becoming Brenda Starr
• Off Beat
• Scattered
• That’s It
• So I’ve Finally Signed With An Agent. Now What?
• The Spoon
• Sciatica
• Sweetheart
• A Woman’s Train of Thought Has No Caboose
• However much we own, we are all still living on borrowed time
• After all, when restaurants shrink portions, they don’t shrink prices.
• As with everything in life, balance is key.
• Slow down, you move too fast…
• Yeah, I know. I have issues.

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E me at katy @ ngenius.com

(No Title) (#736)

I did it! I hit my 50,029 word count this morning at 11:40 central time. I'm thrilled, and thank you for your support!

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(No Title) (#737)

Several of you have asked what happened after the first shoe dropped, as excerpted several entries below. Here is a partial answer: When the second shoe dropped, we gasped in fear, and it was the last breath we took or sound we made for several seconds. My eyes asked hers a lifetime of questions, though, like what is happening, who could it be, and what should we do now? Diana sprang noiselessly from the bed, leaped across the room and turned the lock on the bedroom door. She lifted her desk chair and easily wedged it under the doorknob. I wondered then if she'd rehearsed an eventuality like this, for once she took action, she never stopped to question the effectiveness of her procedures. She flew back to the bed, where I sat huddled by myself, and flung her arm under it until she found the object of our hope. She grabbed the fire escape ladder, and yanked on my paralyzed arm until I submitted to her leading me on tiptoe across the room to her private bath. "Now!" she hissed. "We're getting out of here!" As we scurried into the bathroom and locked this second barricade, knowing full well that the thin doors and elementary hardware would be child's play to an experienced criminal, we heard him trying the locks on the first door, and then banging and murmuring in muffled tones, and finally trying to beat the door down. I pictured Diana's family practicing their fire drill, and wondered if they'd ever thought they'd have to use it in a real fire or, worse, to flee a predator. She threw open the double-hung window, attached one end of the ladder over the ledge, and let the rest of it fall toward the welcoming ground, two stories below. And then, as she was directing me to climb onto the toilet and over the ledge, she reached one hand into the tissue box and pulled out the scariest knife I've ever seen. The last thing I remember before we hit the ground running was hearing a man's voice crying out Diana's name. She kept running like she hadn't heard a thing.

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(No Title) (#738)

I've told you something about Erin's family, the fictional Murphys. Her best friend, Diana, is part of the Bright family, but on Thanksgiving, she wasn't too happy about it. Here's what happened: All the Brights really wanted was a Thanksgiving that was Norman Rockwellian. What they would end up with was one that was George Orwellian. Luckily, it was just the four of them. No other guests were invited, and none would have wanted to witness the spectacle-the charade-that was a typical holiday at the Brights. The "tradition of the candy corn" was one that had been established early in the Bright household, one of the few such traditions that had really taken hold, and not disintegrated in the face of changing relationships and altered circumstances. After grace is said over the Thanksgiving meal, and before the first bite is taken-but not before Peter Bright has two full glasses of white wine-a dish of candy corn is passed around the table. Each time a family member takes a piece, he or she expresses one thing, or person, for which he is thankful. Sometimes, it's an inside joke, sometimes something profoundly meaningful that everyone in the group is already aware of but wants to hear again anyway, sometimes a small, almost insignificant detail of life. Usually, it's an inane bit of trivia about something that happened just yesterday, or even worse, this morning, such as "thanks for the way Mom never spills the gravy on the way to the table," or "thanks for helping Dad make the money to buy all these great pies." This Thanksgiving, though, became a bonafide candy corn fiasco. Mrs. Bright always started the candy dish around, both because of tradition and more importantly, because she was the only one who could get the ball rolling and make the rest of them feel more comfortable about the process. She usually began with something lighthearted, or comical. "I want to thank each of you for being less of a turkey this year than the one we are about to devour," she said, as she demurely removed one morsel from the dish and placed it in her mouth. As everyone groaned, she passed the dish to Peter. "Amanda, I want to thank you for figuring out that God made Sam's Club so that you wouldn't have to spoil Thanksgiving by messing up the kitchen…" Mr. Bright popped a piece of candy corn, looking very pleased with himself. "Give me that!" Jack laughed, as he grabbed the dish from his father's hand. "I would like to say how thankful I am that we're all so close, and getting even closer." He looked too long into Diana's eyes, as he turned to her and offered her the candy. "Jack, I'd like to personally thank you for not pushing your luck," Diana said, without blinking or smiling. She didn't return his gaze as she spoke, but rather stared straight ahead at an enormous cabbage rose on the wallpaper beyond the people. Diana handed the dish to her mother, who tried to interject a little levity back into the rapidly disintegrating situation. "Diana," she said, "I'd like to thank you for always seeing the cheerful side of every situation." The dish moved on. "Jack," Mr. Bright said, "I'd like to thank you for always being considerate of your little sister's feelings. Not all brothers are like that, you know." The dish passed hands. "Dad," Jack gave it another go, "I'd like to say thank you. Everything I learned about women, I learned from you." The dish hurried onward, more frantically now. Diana grabbed it, and began waving it like a flag around the table. "Dad," she hissed, "I'd be grateful if you'd get a clue. And Mom, I'll be thankful when you open your eyes. And Jack, you'll have my undying gratitude if you just shut up!" With that, she flung the crystal candy dish, crashing it against the window across the room, and causing the shattered fragments to splinter into as many pieces as the candy corn, that would now never be matched with a family member's thanks. Traditions are made to be broken.

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(No Title) (#739)

"When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand." Raymond Chandler. I'm sitting at 43,500 words with five days remaining, and lots of doubts. Anybody got a guy?

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(No Title) (#740)

Mullah Omar, considered by the Taliban to be the supreme leader of all Muslims, was about to admit defeat. He had agreed to withdraw the Taliban, head into the hills, and surrender Kandahar, the last Afghan city still under Taliban control. But now, he's had a prophetic dream which has changed everything. "I have had a dream in which I am in charge for the rest of my life." Yeah. Me, too.

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(No Title) (#741)

I just gotta' tell ya'--my novel's up to 32,000 words, and I am pumped. I did 4,000 with a freakin' migraine today, so I'm starting to believe I can beat this thing! Remember, National Novel Writing Month is ALL about word count, and ONLY word count. I'm not editing as I go--that's why God made December.

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(No Title) (#742)

Here's some insight into my fallible novel characters, Erin's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Murphy. Hope you enjoy reading this excerpt as much as I did living it...ooops, writing it. BTW, I'm over 24,000 words now--almost half-way there! Woo, hoo! My mother has very little college education. In fact, when she finishes this semester in a couple more weeks, she will have accumulated twenty-four credit hours. She's only been out of high school for coming up on thirty years, though, so I think she's making progress. I must say in her defense that although she has taken few classes, she has made the maximum use of them. Only a rare woman would have gotten more mileage than my mom did out of this semester's Intro to Sociology class, and that's before the "A" even hits her GPA. "Let me tell you what Dr. May shared in class today," Mom began one night last week, and of course, my dad had no choice but to let her. "We were discussing the inequalities that exist between the husband and wife regarding the division of duties in the home," she went on, with little apparent regard for whatever divisions should exist between two parties to a conversation. "Oh?" my father interjected, still without having looked up from the computer screen. "And Dr. May said that in a typical American family, the husband and wife are each working forty hours per week outside the home, but that the woman is working an additional forty hours per week doing housework and caring for children…" "And the man?" he glanced up. "A measly eleven hours, and I'm pretty sure this includes how much time he spends talking to his wife." "Mmmm." "And she went on to say that sociologists have studied this phenomenon extensively, and have identified four 'techniques of resistance' used by men to consciously avoid contributing to the maintenance of the children and the home…" "I bet." "Do you want to know what they are? Sure, you do. The first is 'playing dumb'-the man pretends he doesn't know how to operate the washing machine or how to separate the darks from the whites, and keeps up the act until the wife gives up, and does it herself." "You're kidding?" "No. The second technique is called 'waiting it out.' The man sees what needs to be done, and knows it must be done, but figures if he waits long enough, she'll do it. Rather than beg him to do the obvious, she does it herself." "Seems so unfair." "I know. Wait until you hear number three-'needs reduction.' This is where the man has an important business meeting, and he asks his wife to iron his dress shirt, which is horribly wrinkled, but she doesn't have time. She apologizes nicely while she's packing five lunches, and scooting three kids into the van to head for school, and then she notices him putting on the wrinkled shirt and muttering something about how his pants and jacket and tie will cover the really bad parts-and then guess what she does?" "She doesn't?" "Yep. The last technique has to be the most insidious of all, in my mind. It's called 'substitute offerings,' and I find it morally reprehensible, if not completely nauseating. Believe it or not, Dr. May says this is the technique women find most acceptable…" "Well-?" "This is where the husband completely avoids helping his poor, overworked, exhausted and dedicated wife, and then bowls her over with some lame compliment, like, 'Oh, honey, you're so good with the kids. It's no wonder they love you best,' or, even worse, 'Nobody nukes leftovers like you, baby.' And then, if the syrupy compliments aren't enough to win her over, he plays Mr. Wonderful and offers to run over to Taco Bell for a ten-pack, to give her a little relief from her culinary responsibilities. What a guy." "The loser." Like I said, my mother doesn't have much formal education, but her rhetorical abilities alone achieve results most women with doctorates never hope for. Inside of a few short days, my father had strung the Christmas lights, cleaned the basement, scrubbed the shower, replaced the burned out lightbulbs, and changed the oil in two cars and a truck. Wow. She's good.

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(No Title) (#743)

Are cardinals in my yard all year long, and I just don't notice them when the trees are lush and full? Or do they migrate to my area as winter comes on, as nature's way of holding back the despair of barrenness? All I know is that a solitary red bird lands on my empty tree, takes flight, and returns again, over and over, all morning long. And that the stark beauty of it makes me cry.

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(No Title) (#744)

Yesterday was my two year anniversary of being a brain surgery survivor. It's not that the brain tumor itself was so life threatening--it's more that I was so unhealthy going into the surgery that I didn't have a lot of confidence in a happy outcome. My health has completely turned around since that day. So I've been celebrating my new lease on life by doing this full-time school thing, and trying to write a complete novel in November. I sure know how to have fun. If you could see my house right now, you'd wonder how there could be any survivors at all.

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(No Title) (#745)

Hey, I'm up to 18,000 words toward a 50,000 word goal, so I'm still somewhat on target. Thanks for all your encouragement while I attempt this crazy challenge. A piece of novel for today: "Call us if you need anything," Dad said, when he dropped me off at her house that evening. "We'll be home all night, and we can run over at the drop of a hat." We had the run of Diana's otherwise empty house all night, with the exception of the locked den, which eliminated any activity involving the computer, or the coveted three thousand books. But we raided the fridge umpteen times, had all the TV and videos and CDs we could stand, took turns in the whirlpool tub and wound each other's hair in old-fashioned sponge curlers we found buried in a vanity drawer. We painted our toes, after a sophisticated and complete pedicure, and finally, around three in the morning, we headed up to bed. As long as the lights were glaring and the music was blaring, and we could peek out the window and see that at least one other neighbor still had a kitchen light on, we were fine. The house was huge, but we were wide awake, and familiar with each nook and cranny and creak. But at soon as we turned off most of the lights, set the alarm system, and tiptoed up the stairs, we both started to get nervous. It's the being in your own safe bedroom that gets you in the end, don't you think? Because even though it is a tranquil sanctuary when you know the rest of your family is downstairs reading, or napping, or playing Nintendo, or even in the bedrooms next door to yours sleeping, when you're in the house alone, in your very own safe bedroom, you're trapped. If an intruder, a bad person, a terrorist, bypassed the alarm system, made your dead bolt alive again, and let himself into your home, and you were alert enough to hear his very first foot fall upon the bottom step, could you get away? We closed the door to her spacious bedroom, but it suddenly felt cramped, small, and without sufficient air. It was the memory of the rest of the house, and its vastness, and the recent deathlike silence that had fallen over it, that made us whisper. You would whisper at the wake of someone you hadn't known very well, wouldn't you? It's not just out of respect for the dead, at that point, but also to keep from jarring and jolting the living. So we, too, whispered, though we imagined we had been intimate friends with the old place, for to offend the house at this late hour might be to invite unspeakable retribution upon our heads. And then we heard it. The first foot fell.

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(No Title) (#746)

A week ago, my husband Doug advised me that I needed to include some excerpts from my novel-in-progress on my blog. This morning, he advised me that I need to be blogging between novel excerpts. Sigh. For once, I wish we could talk about his needs. In the meantime, though, here's another excerpt: I can't believe there was a girl in the world who thought that Diana's brother was anything other than a dream. I'd had a crush on him ever since Diana and I had become friends, with almost as little luck as my brother Brian had had attracting the interest of Diana. Diana shrugged off boys in general, though, laughed at their infatuations with her, in fact, so Brian was just one of many rejected, whereas Jack always had a girlfriend, and usually more than one, and sometimes several more waiting in the wings. It was easy to see why. Every girl I knew who had been out with Jack described him later as the most polite boy they'd ever known. He treated girls like ladies, and while it was true he didn't stay with one for very long before moving on, none of those left behind had a sorry word to say about him. And he made sure their reputations were intact upon breaking up with them, too. He may have made out with some of the girls, but he never took serious advantage of any girl he liked. Jack was outgoing, popular, athletic, and sensitive. He could be the life of the party, but he didn't have to be. I'd seen him hole up in a corner with a date and just talk for hours, not needing or wanting to be the center of anyone's attention but hers. I guess maybe he had a problem with commitment, but after all, he was still a kid-- don't parents discourage teenagers from getting overly committed, too soon? To top it all off, Jack was the most gorgeous guy God ever made, with jet-black curls like Diana's, but with misty green eyes, instead of her gray-blue ones. Hers were stormy skies, and his vast, deep oceans. Going out with him that one, wonderful night was kind of like being with her, only with at least the hint of romantic possibility. Which is to say, it was heaven on earth.

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(No Title) (#747)

From today's work, a little about Erin as a little girl. BTW, I'm up to 10,000 words, which is way under where I need to be by now, but hey, it's better than I would have done without the National Novel Writing Month shot in the arm: I was a little embarrassed because it seemed like my parents were going out of their way to find something really wrong with the Bright's, and I didn't think that was fair. How would they feel if people did that to them? But, as far as I knew, all parents did these surveys, made these calls, asked these probing questions-all before letting their kid go watch "Annie" with a bunch of fourth graders. Do you see what I mean about normal? Back then, I actually figured everybody's parents held certain attitudes, thoughts, and actions in common. Little did I know, mine was the only mother around displaying this type of behavior. Maybe we weren't a normal family-what if we were weird? In spite of it all, I went to my very first slumber party, had the time of my life, and made a new best friend-Diana. It wasn't too long before Mom and Dad sat me down for a heart-to-heart-although their terrible words never really hit their mark-about my new best friend. "Diana's mother called today," Mom started, "and I think we need to talk to you about what she shared." She and Dad took turns then, telling me that Diana's own mother wanted all of us to know that her daughter was a confirmed liar, probably a pathological liar, and that she felt it was only fair to warn us that Diana made up stories-and they were whoppers-all the time, told them with a straight face to anyone who would listen, and that often even her own parents were fooled by her. "It's gotten to where we don't know when she's telling the truth, which makes it very difficult to try to help her," Mrs. Bright confided. "We're starting to worry that even she doesn't know-she's that convincing. If you don't want Erin and Diana to see each other any more, we'll understand…I wouldn't want my daughter to run with someone like Diana, if I were in your shoes…" The upshot was that I wasn't forbidden to see Diana, but from then on my parents were on red alert. They heeded her parents' warning very carefully, and were constantly on the lookout for lies, lies and more lies. "Even if she does lie every once in a while," I assured them, "I know she'd never lie to me. She's my friend, and I would know if she wasn't telling me the truth."

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(No Title) (#748)

I'm feeling very shy and vulnerable about having added a comments feature to my site. I'm hoping that you, however, won't feel the slightest bit shy in using it.

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(No Title) (#749)

Another piece of what will hopefully be a 50,000 word novel by the end of November: I've done a little reading in Intro to Psych, and it seems to me that my dad is in the throes of a mid-life crisis, while my mother is entering the horrible years of her empty nest syndrome. This can be a time when couples edge toward divorce, depression, career changes rooted in unhappiness with the present course of events, and other aberrant behaviors. My father's gone off the deep end and bought himself a new acoustic guitar, and is talking about writing music again in his old age. Mom has started going to college full-time, which is distressing. For me, at least. She is an excellent student, highly competitive with her other non-traditional classmates, but doesn't think too highly of the academic slumber the 18-year-olds are in. Frankly, mom and dad are exhibiting classic symptoms of serious emotional disturbances, and I feel powerless to help them.

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(No Title) (#750)

This morning's excerpt from my novel: I don't know what could be weirder than getting an email from a girl you used to go to high school with that contains the subject line, "Your Mom Is So Cool!" At first I thought it must be a forwarded joke, and then it occurred to me that maybe Kristin had run into my mom at the mall, on a day when Mom had put on lipstick or something. That would be cool. "Wow!" Kristin wrote. "You never told me your mom was a blogger! She's got me hooked…" My mom's a what? I called Brian on his cell, because he's the computer guy, and evidently this is some perverse computer thing Mom's gotten wrapped up in. "Bri, it's me," I began. "Do you remember Kristin Winslow from school? She and Mom have some weird computer relationship happening, and we need to figure out what's going on…" I should mention here that Kristin and I were not exactly friends back in high school, or at any time since. If I remember right, and I do, the few times I got in really serious trouble with my parents were because of incidents in which Kristin played a key role. In fact, it was Kristin's idea to smuggle a box of wine onto the premises of the sophomore retreat, making it even more of a spiritual experience than it otherwise would have been. "Remember," she preached, "the Bible says we should all 'take a little wine for the sake of our stomachs, and our frequent ailments…'" By the time we were finished taking a little wine, our stomachs and our frequent ailments had become well acquainted. And when word got out that the communion service had turned into a giggling, stumbling mass of underage backsliders, our little, quiet Christian school took it on the nose. I took it on the calendar. I've never been on house arrest before or since, but my social life came to a grinding halt that day. It would be a month before I would see Kristin outside of class again, and by then, I didn't want to. Because of her, my boyfriend took another girl to Homecoming. Because of her, I had to withdraw my bid for Student Council Secretary. Because of her, I couldn't try out for "The Sound of Music," and I would have made a perfect Lisyl. Except for the drinking problem. "And now," I told Brian, "because of Kristin Winslow, Mom is in deep. And we have to get her out."

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