Oct 26, 2012
Frankie can suck it.
One time a massage therapist told me “You really don’t know how to relax.” Well, I thought to myself, isn’t that your problem? I mean, there’s a lot of shit going on inside my head. I can’t help that I’m thinking about work, the laundry, if I filled the dog’s water bowls this morning, reworking the scene for my novel, and how much my herniated neck hurts which is why I am on the table. While she’s digging into a knot in my shoulder, I think yeah that one right there, it’s a bitch isn’t it.
“Stop helping me.”
“Pardon?” I asked, anticipating how I would feel once the session was over. Better I hoped.
“Stop helping me and relax. You’re holding your head up.” She said this as I was laying flat on the table. Holding my head in her hands, I knew she wasn’t going to drop my melon, how could she say I’m not relaxed?
It was true though. Little by little she was able to get me to fully disengage muscles and at one point she was able to turn my head further than it’s gone in two years, and it didn’t even hurt.
Those words stuck with me, the “not knowing how to relax” and the fact that I was “helping” her while she was trying to give me a massage. So every night when I put my head on the pillow I think, ok, am I truly relaxing into the pillow? Then I sink a bit more. But I never quite get there. Meanwhile my hubby’s head hits the pillow and he is out in a matter of minutes. I have never been able to master the trick of going right to sleep at night. Usually I lay there thinking about various things, for most of my life it was stories I’d make up in my head, eventually writing them down or typing them the next day. Sometimes it was the same scene over and over again, I’d think about it on the way to work, I’d get it on paper and read it to myself until I was completely satisfied, which for a writer is nearly impossible, so you settle.
I am just now starting to get to a point in my life where I feel confident in my writing. Obviously, I’m blogging, I shared parts of a memoir that’s a work in progress, I love to facebook/twitter with a secret desire that everyone reading thinks I’m witty. But the stories I write...that’s something that’s harder to share. They’re like little diaries of things that happened, just not to me. But they’re obviously things I think about.
So, for the first time ever, I am going to share what would be the “back of the book”. A novel I have been writing for (holy bananas) over a decade. The one I started taking seriously this year and hope to publish. Here goes:
After being on a long hiatus after the death of her father and a failed marriage, Kate Harris is ready to put the past behind her and get back in the music business. Kate is offered the opportunity to manage the comeback of reclusive rockstar, Chris Logan, who hasn’t been in the public eye for years due to bad reviews of his last album and some time in rehab. With her mom continually calling to brag about how great her brother Daniel is doing, the stress of orchestrating Chris’s return to the stage while living in his huge mansion alongside his protective brother Nick, and a person from her past back in the picture, panic attacks are the least of Kate’s worries, but she seems to be having them anyway.
“Waiting for the Night” is about Kate’s journey back into the music world and getting to the thrilling moment she cherishes most…when the lights go down, the crowd starts to roar, and the first chords of a song fills the arena as the singer takes the stage.
Yeah, that’s it in a nutshell. I’m at about 50,000 words and it’s got about 50,000 more to go but now I’ve at least shared something I’ve kept under wraps for a very long time. Now maybe I can relax...