A LATE HARD FROST, the sequel to COMPASS NORTH, is now available on Amazon.

The link for the ebook is https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07897V7LJ
 
The link for the paperback is https://www.amazon.com/Late-Hard-Frost-Stephanie-Joyce/dp/1942623771

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A LATE HARD FROST returns to the world of COMPASS NORTH, and the entangled lives of Merry, Cassandra and Nick in the quirky small town of Homer, Alaska.

Cassandra's life as a talented but isolated artist hides the emotional wounds that haunt her.  Now, unexpectedly, she finally has the love of the one man she's adored for so many years.  But that love has come at a terrible price:  the destruction of the only true friendship that matters to her.  As Cassandra struggles with the massive changes ricocheting through her life, a sinister figure lurks in hiking, watching her, waiting for his chance to claim her as his own.

I'm planning to be back on the blog very soon, but in the meantime, take a look at the book trailer for Compass North just released by Duncurra (my publisher).  Very nice I think!  What do you think?

    There was a bit of a stretch of time between week 9 and week 10 blogs, but my “year of new” project is still ongoing—and great!  Finding time to write about each week’s new event has been the issue—but more about that later.

    Friends have climbed on my “year of new” bandwagon and have helped with ideas and, on occasion, have been my intrepid partners for adventures.  Susan found the Groupon for the drag queen brunch, and suggested we go.  It definitely qualified as a new experience for me. We collected some other friends and six of us abandoned the bright Seattle sunshine on a Sunday afternoon to sit at the long plank tables in a packed, small darkened theatre, facing a dimly lit stage.  We sipped our mimosas (part of the Groupon) and awaited the show.

    Okay, I’ll be frank here.  I had an idea of what a drag queen is, but honestly, I wasn’t sure that I had it right.  So I did a little online research:

    The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a drag queen as a homosexual who dresses as a woman especially to entertain people.

    dictionary.com states that a drag queen is a male transvestite, especially a performer, who dresses as a woman to entertain the public.
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    Both those definitions were straightforward.  But the most intriguing information came from a Huffington Post blog:
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-bartolomei/10-myths-about-drag-queens_b_2979249.html

    It turns out that in the drag queen world there is nuance.  For examples:  Most drag queens are gay, but there is a small minority who are straight.  “Bear” or “slag” drag queens don’t shave their facial hair.  It’s a little more complicated than it first appears.

    Our show began with the introduction of our mistress of ceremonies, a roundly robust and extraordinarily festooned and wigged figure with a voice that could flatten a room.  We were exhorted to drink heavily, tip the performers liberally, and applaud at pretty much every juncture.  Audience participation (and tipping), we were told, were the keys to a great show.  

    Then began the parade of acts.  The performers lip-synced to very loud popular songs while dancing around the stage in spike-heeled boots, sequins, feathers and fans, fishnet stockings, giant wigs and headdresses.  The two main performers were strikingly attractive, with figures any woman would envy.  In spite of their heavy makeup and restricting costuming (imagine Cher all dolled up, but even more so), they were masterful dancers and athletes.  

    If there was a defining theme, it was that vast excess was required.  One drag queen wore contact lenses that made her eyes glitter and glow like an alien from another planet.  The drag queens were accompanied by dancers, men not in drag, but in very puzzling costumes.  I couldn’t tell you why one dancer in the finale wore only a silver bikini and what appeared to be a silver submarine on his head, topped with the number 12.  (Well, I do know about the number 12, because this is Seattle and 12 is shorthand for support for the Seahawks.  But still.)

    For me, it all fell a little flat.  I’m fine with bawdy (and there was plenty of bawdy) but somehow the energy in the room didn’t build to a crescendo.  The cast worked hard, but the show didn’t quite come together—perhaps because this was brunch, and for most of us, a mimosa is all we manage on a Sunday afternoon.  Perhaps if this had been a late-night show with late-night energy and more alcohol, the experience would have felt different.  It was an interesting experience, but I don’t think I need to go again.

    But one thing I did realize:  These are hard-working people.  They strutted and danced and jumped and cartwheeled—they didn’t hold back.   
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    It must be frustrating for them when the right energy doesn’t materialize in the audience during a show.  Crowd energy is such an elusive quality, that invisible thrum, almost a pulse, that surfaces at great parties and concerts, sometimes emerging unexpectedly and spontaneously with a swelling updraft of pure fun and even joy.  We’ve all experienced it—but it’s finicky.  Sometimes it’s just not there, and that’s all there is to it.


    So…why the blogs might be a little further apart in the weeks to come…​

    I am still pursuing my “year of new.”  It’s infused me with optimism.  In fact, it’s helped me regain the focus I need to recommit to finish my next book.
    I don’t know if all authors experience the stages of writing in the same way, but I think most do.  In the book writing world, composing the first draft is a dreadful slog.  You’re putting together the bones for your book, and although the story may be living in your head, it’s a painful and slow process to pull it out of your brain and get it into written words.  It takes a long time and it’s exhausting.    
    (Stephen King wrote that first drafts of books should take no longer than three months.  If he could show me how to manage that, I would worship at his feet.)
    I began my first draft of the sequel to Compass North before Mark received his devastating cancer diagnosis.  As he struggled through treatment, the draft languished.  There was no help for that.  I’d pick it up periodically and write a scene or fiddle with some language, but I couldn’t give it the attention necessary to move it forward.  
    Then, when Mark died, I felt as if I’d dropped deep below the surface of an ocean.  I was submerged in grief and loneliness and loss.  It’s taken a long time to emerge from that, and though I’ll never be the same person I was before, I’m back in the world.
    I have a wonderful event coming up in late October (more about that in later blogs) and I am determined to finish the first draft of my next book before then.  It’s a huge amount of work to do in a short period of time, but I think it’s attainable if I work diligently.  So I’m diving back into the world of my story, and already I’m experiencing some of the less desirable side effects.  I miss turns when I’m driving because my brain is gnawing on a problem with a scene.  Emails go unanswered.  Garbage cans don’t get moved to the street on pickup days.  I open the refrigerator and find, to my surprise, that there’s nothing for dinner because I haven’t thought to go to the grocery store.  It’s all part of the process.
    The completion of the first draft, of course, is only the beginning, but it’s a huge accomplishment.  For me, it will mean the worst is over.  I love the process of revision, of chewing on words and sentences and paragraphs, of rearranging scenes, revisiting my characters.  It’s hard work, too, but it’s so much fun!  
    So yes, the “year of new” is continuing, but if there are reporting gaps, it will only mean that I’m once again putting in time at a table at Starbucks, Bose noise-cancelling earphones firmly clamped over my ears, and I’m probably frowning at my computer screen because the right words are sometimes so darn elusive.
    Wish me luck!

    It’s not always the big changes that whack you sideways.  Sometimes, it doesn’t take much at all.  

    This week, I tried out a new gym class called “Core Essentials.”  I expected we’d be doing sit-ups and other nasty abdominal work, the kind of workout that’s standard in the gym world.  To my surprise, however, the class was led by a graceful and obviously accomplished male dancer, and the work involved a lot of dance moves and balance.  Not my strengths.
 
    I clunked my way through it, overheated and a little flustered.  I wobbled on one leg as we swung our other leg through space while swaying our arms “gracefully” above our heads.  We flung ourselves into arabesques and dropped into plies.  We rose from deep knee bends to perch on our toes.  George, our instructor, was the picture of grace.  I felt like the dancing hippo in Fantasia.  (Actually, the dancing hippo was a lot better than I was.)  

    But now, as I get more new experiences under my belt, I can start to generalize about this world of new.

    Approaching these new situations, even the small ones, makes me anxious.  It takes a bit of a mental shove to get me going.  I’ve mentioned before that I think we get out of practice at being beginners when we graduate out of childhood and assume our status as competent adults.  We don’t want to look stupid.  We don’t want to lose face.  Taking chances is not what we do.  Each week, I have to give myself a little talking-to before I jump into a new situation.

    This week’s experience also reminded me of a snippet from a motivational talk I heard years ago.  I couldn’t tell you now the subject of the talk.  The sound bite I remember is, “You can do anything, but you can’t do everything.”  The speaker’s point was that we make choices in our lives.  We aren’t gifted with unlimited time and energy.  As we invest in developing our expertise in one area, we forego other options.  An extreme example is the Olympic athlete, who spends so many hours every day honing her skills.  She makes a choice, and as a result there may not be room in her life for much else.
 
    Although I do envy instructor George (and some of the other graceful souls in his class), they have probably spent years practicing dance skills and have muscle memories that I can only dream of.  I will keep going to this class because I think developing good balance is important, and I’m a little shocked by how poor mine seems to be.  I expect I will stumble and wobble and curse under my breath, but that’s okay too.  I’ll add this to my list of new experiences and move forward, without having any expectation that professional ballet is in my future.

    So what if I looked like a deranged dancing hippo?  No one was paying attention to me anyway.  They were all trying to get their own legs pointed in the right direction.  I got a fine workout and I was once again reminded that there are many, many things I’m not good at.  It’s an important reminder.
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    So far, no matter what the outcome, I’ve enjoyed a little thrill of accomplishment after every experience.  I feel a bit more alive, as if I’m edging my way back into the world.  

***

    Grieving isn’t a linear process.  I know I’m moving forward, but there are still days when the reality of my loss slays me.  This last week, I could feel the dark abyss looming behind me.  I was missing Mark and feeling very sorry for myself.  As an experiment I decided to make a deliberate effort to break out of my dark place.  I marched myself down to my local coffee shop, bought myself a frothy coffee, and took out a notebook.  For an hour, I scribbled, as fast as I could, a list of things for which I’m grateful.

    At the end of the hour, I had 115 far-ranging notations of gratitude, including the cheerfulness of hummingbirds; fresh salmon, tart blueberries, and very dark chocolate; my sister-in-law’s prayers; nice gel pens; Mary Oliver’s poems; and of course, having been fortunate enough to have 30 years with Mark.  Little things and important things and silly things.

    Half way through the hour I found myself grinning.  So many reasons to be happy.  And of course it’s not an exhaustive list.  As I walked home (still smiling, I think), I was mentally ticking off new reasons to be grateful:  the feel and smell of slick wet clay in the pottery studio, an auto mechanic that I trust, Rusty’s goofy dog grin…

    Meditation practices often incorporate gratitude into their repertoire.  However, I am a terrible meditator.  Controlling my “monkey mind”—the term yogis use for the continuous mental chatter that fills our heads—is very difficult for me.  But somehow, this simple act of listing so many positive aspects of my life led me right into a happy place.​

    I don’t give advice to other people about grief and recovery.  I’m not qualified to do that.  I’m working through my own  grief as best I can, with the help and support and love of those who care about me.  I think our paths through grief may have common elements, but each journey is unique too.  But today I’ll make an exception:  I found this exercise, this consciously taking just an hour to reflect and record what makes me happy, to be very powerful.  If you’re feeling a little low, it might be worth giving this a try.










































 








































        Grif

In an early scene in the movie Pretty Woman, Julia Roberts’ character enters an exclusive clothing store on Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles.  She’s a down-on-her-luck hooker.  Richard Gere’s character, an extraordinarily rich businessman, has handed her a wad of cash and told her to buy an outfit for the evening, but the store’s two saleswomen refuse to wait on her.  They pretty much throw her out of the store, telling her that she doesn’t belong there.  It’s painful to watch.  (Happily, there’s payback later in the movie.)

Roberts’ character enters the store oblivious to the scorn she’s about to engender.  But for some of us, visiting an establishment that markets pricey couture clothing is nothing short of terrifying.  I know, I know, you may have no idea what I’m talking about.  But class distinctions still shadow some of us.  I grew up in an immigrant family, with parents who turned frugality into an art form.  My mother had lived through World War II in England, and the deprivations of that time marked her.  (She would squirrel away leftover pats of butter in her purse on our rare visits to a restaurant.)  We were clothed from thrift store gleanings, long before it was in any way fashionable to forage for the vintage.  

The trappings of the well-off were foreign to me, and frightening.  I had no training in how to act in situations where wealth and advantage were taken for granted.  Nowadays, my life is very different, but my history remains intact.  As comfortable as I may be with my life now, I cringe a little at my belief that I’d still be horribly out of place in the halls of the rich and famous, sticking out like the proverbial sore thumb.

And so, this week, I put myself to the task of entering a couture studio and having a significant interaction.  For years I’ve walked past the Luly Yang couture store in the graceful Fairmont Hotel in downtown Seattle.  In the picture windows, formal gowns ranging from the demure to the outrageous face the street.  These gowns are amazing.  Up to now, I’ve admired them from afar but I’ve never entered the store.  One of Luly Yang’s signature creations is in this store:  the Monarch Butterfly dress, a couture formal silk corset and petaled skirt that clearly evokes the butterfly.  It’s theatrical and magnificent.  I decided I would go to the store and ask to try on the dress.

Again, I know, some of you will think that this isn’t much of a new adventure.  But like trees, we bear the marks of our years inside us, no matter what our exteriors now show.  If you cut a tree in half, you can tell the years that the tree suffered from lack of water or environmental stress from the size and quality of the growth rings for those years.  Those rings never go away, even though they may be covered up with new robust growth.  Like trees, our past is always inside of us, always with us.  For me, walking into that store was just plain scary.  

The store is compact and quiet, with pale beige carpet and small glass tables.  One of the two saleswomen, both clothed head to toe in black, asked if she could help me.  I’m just here to look at your lovely dresses, I said.  She smiled and told me to let her know if I needed any help.

I wandered through the store.  Half the store is devoted to exquisite wedding dresses.  The other half is primarily for evening wear, of the very showy kind:  lots of satin.  I glanced at a few price tags.  Each piece I looked at was priced at thousands of dollars.

The original butterfly dress rests there, the central showpiece of the collection.  I chatted with the saleswoman about it.  She was friendly and charming, not frightening at all.  She told me that the they could customize a new gown like it for me, but that the original could also be rented.  In the end, I didn’t ask to try it on. I just didn’t want to, after all.

When I got home, I found I was curious about renting the butterfly gown—a purely theoretical curiosity, since I certainly had nowhere to wear it—so I emailed the store about what it cost to rent.  They responded that they had made a mistake and the dress was not in fact now available for rental, but that I could buy it for $25,000.  

Well, as you may guess, I’m not buying the butterfly dress.  ​

The whole experience, though, was remarkably empowering.  Analytically, I know that there is absolutely no reason why the salespeople would be cold or rude to me.  I looked perfectly respectable.  But inside I am still carrying that uncertain fearful girl in thrift store duds, devoid of  self-confidence, the girl who got picked on because of her funny accent and her bad clothes.  She’ll always be in there, a ring in my tree that’s a little shriveled and puckered, but today she has a hint of a smile.  

My self-imposed project of doing something new every week doesn’t necessarily mean that each week will bring a big exciting adventure.  

Such was the case this week, when my friend Susan and I subjected ourselves to our first timeshare presentation.

We had just rounded the final corner of an organized 5K walk when we spotted the freebie tents at the finish line.  We were helping ourselves to the usual bottled water, banana halves and protein bars, when we were snagged into a booth promising cheap vacation travel.  We were offered an amazing deal:  For a few dollars, we could spend two nights at a cushy resort hotel.  It sounded pretty darn good, but after we handed over our credit cards, I had a sudden epiphany.

“Wait,” I said, “Is this a timeshare deal?”

I’d heard horror stories from friends who had attended timeshare presentations.  They’d practically been held captive while a salesman pressured them to buy.  

The nicely dressed young man hesitated.  “Well, we’d ask you come to a two hour presentation about our program.”

We were both ready to snatch back our credit cards.  “Should we do it?”  I asked Susan.  “It’s only two hours.  And they can’t make us buy anything we don’t want to buy, right?”

We stood in the booth staring at each other.  “Well,” Susan said, “you haven’t attended a timeshare presentation before, so this could be your new thing for this week.”

That clinched it.  We signed up and got our information packets telling us where to go and when to show up, later in the week.  

When we arrived, it was very clear that this event was going to be meticulously orchestrated.  No, we were told, we couldn’t stay together.  Each of us would meet individually with our assigned representative.  

Our representatives led us to small round tables in a large meeting room, each table with two or three chairs.  In addition to Susan and me, there was a young couple with a small baby and a smattering of others.  I tried to take a seat facing the center of the room, but was firmly directed instead to take a chair with my back to the room, facing my representative.  

Steve wore a pink polo shirt that contrasted awkwardly with his very red face.  He immediately  peppered me with questions about myself, in staccato fashion, without seeming to listen to the answers.  What was I going to do this afternoon, what kind of dog did I have, how old was the dog, what breed is the dog, what are the traits of that breed of dog?  This, I assumed, was somehow designed to make us bond, but it was just weird and bewildering.  His questions turned to how and when I vacation.  As he made notes about my answers, he tried to fashion his pitch to fit my vacation habits, which was a near impossible task, since I favor group adventure-based trips.  When I told him I wasn’t interested in a timeshare, he repeatedly insisted that this deal really wasn’t a timeshare (even though the printed material I’d received stated in bold print that this was a solicitation of timeshare interests).  

We all faced the front of the room for a group slide presentation, focused on why this program was such a good deal, and the vast sums of money we would all save over the years by using this program for our vacations. It was an artful approach.  If you accepted all the assumptions that supported their conclusion, you could conclude that yes, this was a great deal.  But if you stepped back and thought about the unpredictability of where you would be and what you might want to be doing in the future, it really didn’t add up.

Then we went back into conversations with our individual representatives.  Steve seemed quite perplexed at my lack of interest.  Abruptly he stood up and turned me over to an older man with rumpled hair, who toted a fat well-worn notebook binder.  I noticed that this was happening throughout the room:  Team 2 was arriving on the scene.  

At this point Susan caught my eye and sent me the look.  You know the look.  She widened her eyes just a little, one corner of her mouth lifted just a tad, and she stared into my eyes for a beat or two.  What the f—, the look says.

I asked K why he was replacing Steve at my table.  He told me that Steve was new, and that he would be better at answering my questions.  I told him I didn’t have any questions.  He shrugged, and opened his binder.  It contained all the same information we had been given during the slide presentation, and I told him I’d already seen it.  K was much more aggressive and challenging.  Why would you not want to do this?  What can you find negative about this?  Why did you come here today?  He leaned across the table, essentially growling at me, and I wondered how this approach was going to succeed.  Was I supposed to be intimidated into signing up?  I looked at my watch:  We were closely approaching the two hour mark.

Finally, K slammed his binder closed and snarled, “Thank you for your time,” before leaving the table without a backward glance.  I was hurried through a station in another room where a financial counselor was ready to offer me payment information (“no thanks”) and then I was ushered back down to the reception area by Steve, who asked me to please rate him excellent on all categories of the exit survey.  If I didn’t, he told me, he wouldn’t get some accrued points that he really needed.  

Susan and I chatted for a few minutes out on the street before going our separate ways.  We’d both found the experience unpleasant, and neither of us had been tempted to sign up.  

I keep thinking about that young couple with the baby.  They seemed to be in deep conversation with their salesperson, so maybe they were considering buying.  I so hope they don’t do it.  The underlying assumption that life is predictable bothers me.  It’s not that we shouldn’t plan for the future, but I know all too well that the future is a fragile and amorphous thing, and it’s not going turn out just as you envisioned it when you’re in your twenties, part of a bright new family with a darling little baby, imagining about how you’re going to vacation for the rest of your life.  The future will include some curve balls that you’ll never see coming.   ​

And those two days at the resort hotel for such an amazing price, our prize for sacrificing two hours?  Well, it turns out that there are some restrictions that we didn’t hear about when we signed up.  Time will tell if we can even book our resort stays.  It’s a good reminder:  If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

(Moving forward into my second year of widowhood, I’ve committed to do one new thing—new to me—each week for a year.  It can be big or small, important or silly—but it has to be new.  It’s a way of reminding myself to focus forward, into my future life..)
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    Sensory deprivation tanks, also called isolation tanks, have been around since the 1950’s, but now they’re called float tanks.  Floating in the tanks can supposedly reduce stress and chronic pain, by promoting deep relaxation.  Their inventor, neuropsychiatrist Dr. John C. Lilly, must have been quite the character.  He floated in the tanks after taking LSD, and by some accounts, discovered new dimensions and had encounters with aliens while floating.

    I wasn’t seeking encounters with aliens, but floating sounded like an interesting new experience.  (And, there was a Groupon deal, so it was pretty cheap.)  The company advertised  “Athletes, Meditators, and Creatives have been floating widely since the 1960’s.”  

    Back in the early days, though, the floater was fully immersed in a tank with a bizarre-looking mask that blocked out all sensory input.  This company’s pictures showed tanks that looked more like plastic clamshells—not exactly appealing to me, but not terrifying.  The tank water is saturated with epsom salt, and that provides buoyancy to keep a body afloat, even though the water is only about eighteen inches deep in the tank.

    The float company’s lounge area was clean, well-lit and smelled vaguely of the ocean.  While I waited, I was serenaded with the sounds of water burbles and faint strains of new age music.  On top of a large coffee table lay a book in which clients have written about their float experiences.  I leafed through the pages.  There were some sketches, some general accolades (“it was relaxing”) and a very sad, long entry by someone who was hoping “to turn his fake smiles into real smiles.”  I suspected he might need more than a float.  

    My favorite entry:  “This is definitely the most L.A. thing I have ever done.” 

    My attendant—enthusiastic and clean-cut, with a lean long-distance runner’s body—escorted me back to my float room:  a small, vaguely industrial space with an open shower, a place to hang and stack my belongings, and of course, my pod, which was emoting eerie green light and bubbling.  I was given my instructions:  Take off all my clothes (you do this buck naked), put in earplugs, shower and shampoo hair, turn off the room light and get in.  After I was settled in, I was told, I should hit a button on the tank wall that would turn off the tank light.  At that point, I would be in complete darkness and silence, floating in body temperature water.  I was to “just relax,” and when my hour was up, the light would go back on.

    I confessed that I was very nervous because I tend to be claustrophobic.  Not a problem, he said, once you turn the light off you won’t be conscious of being in a small space.  Well, okay.  I showered, stepped into the tank and closed the lid.  So far, so good.  I slipped into the water, or perhaps onto the water, moving my arms into a goalpost position as I had been instructed.  Then, I hit the button and turned out the light.

    It was utterly dark and immediately disorienting.  I floated, listening to myself breathe, for maybe five minutes.  Then, I decided I wanted to turn the light on briefly, just for reassurance.

    I couldn’t find the light switch.

    The float tank isn’t that big, but in any total darkness, disorientation is common.  I flapped and splashed around like a hooked salmon, slapping the tank walls, not panicked exactly, but close.  Finally I shoved open the tank lid.  With the help of just a shred of light from the room, I found the light switch.

    Whew!  Well, by my estimation, only about ten minutes were up, so I needed to try again.  Lie back, turn off the light…but this time I did take note that the light switch was very near the lever bar for the tank top, just in case.  

    I floated and tried to relax, but I found it progressively harder and harder to breath.  The humidity was intense and I couldn’t shake the impression that I was suffocating.  My brain went into overdrive:  “I’m suffocating, I’m running out of air, I’ll pass out and no one will know until the hour is up, and I could just die here…”  Definitely not the stuff of deep relaxation.  Nudging the tank lid open just a sliver with my foot, I let in a trickle of cooler air.  That, of course, lowered the air temperature in the pod ever so slightly, so that the air and water temperatures weren’t exactly the same, which is how it’s supposed to be, but I don’t think I would have stayed in the tank otherwise.

    I tried to enjoy the experience, and maybe I got close, for a time.  I didn’t feel weightless, but more like my body was supported on a hard rubber-like surface that was perfectly fitted to my body.  I never attained a sense of timeless relaxation.  If fact, when the light went on to let me know that my hour was over, I was relieved. ​

    After I’d showered off all the salt and dressed, I talked to the attendant.  He was clearly disappointed that I hadn’t been delighted with my experience.  When I told him about my breathing issues, he said there were runners’ breathing techniques that would help.  He asked me if I’d be back, and I told him that I’d have to reflect about that.  But really I don’t.  I’ll just chalk this up to a new experience, but not one I think I have to repeat.  If I decide to search for Dr. Lilly’s aliens and other dimensions, I’ll have to try another route.