I've been thinking about age lately, not just because I, like everyone else, am aging, but because I'm thinking time and my series. When you start writing a series that you hope will run for years, you need to think about the age of the characters - and how quickly they will age. Especially if you're writing a thriller series where the characters wind up putting themselves in danger - at what age do you start and at what rate do they grow older?

It seems like a silly question - but I've seen authors who didn't realize they would be writing a series for twenty years regret choices they'd made about age. If you start a character in her late forties - which is still, in my book, reasonably young  - and you age the character in real time, i.e., you put out a book a year, twenty years later, your character is approaching seventy - which is a little old to be trading punches or climbing walls.

Daniel Silva, who writes the Gabriel Allon character in his espionage thriller, tied his character to a real historical event - the justice exacted by Israel on the killers of Israeli athletes in Munich in 1972. His character is now in his late sixties. It's still a good series, but Gabriel is getting a little long in the tooth to be personally wrestling with terrorists. Not that it stops him - but at some point, it will become questionable. 

On the other hand, Miss Marple, in Agatha Christie's books, started out as a little old lady and never seemed to change. Of course,  her activities were knitting, figuring out clues,  and being adorable, activities that can be done as easily at an older age as at a younger age.

Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky, both writing women detectives who were more likely to get shot or shoot back than Miss Marple, had different approaches. Sara Paretsky initially aged VI Warshawsky in real time. Books are published a year apart, and V.I. aged that year in between. However, in 2010, Paretsky changed V.I.'s birth year from 1950 to 1957. Kinsey Millhone in Sue Grafton's book did not age in real time. The events in Sue Grafton's books, although also published a year apart, took place almost immediately after the events of the previous book.  But that made for a little caginess about in what year her book were taking place.

So what have I decided? I don't know if I'll be writing the Kolya Petrov series for twenty years - but maybe. I really like him, Alex, and the supporting cast. So I'd like to leave my options open. This means that I'd like him to do some aging, but not so much that I can't send him off on dangerous mission.

I've made two decisions. I started Kolya and Alex at approximately age 34 or so, which is damn young, and gives me a little flexibility.  And 34, while young, is still old enough that both of them have had sufficient time to gain a reasonable level of experience and accomplishment in their professions of secret agent and attorney, respectively. But I'm also making the decision that the time in the books will not exactly correspond to real time. The events of Nerve Attack are close to real time - they happen eight months after the events in Trojan Horse, and the book will be published almost a year after Trojan Horse. The events of the book I'm working on now are four months after Nerve Attack, and the book will be published in the summer of 2022 (assuming I finish it).  So in two years, Kolya and Alex will have aged one year. Which means that if both I and the series last twenty years, Kolya'll be somewhere in his forties, still young enough to be that active character that I'm writing, but not so old that I would feel guilty at forcing him to hang off the side of a cliff.  After all, the series is in something of an alternative world - the President and all the politicians are fictional (although Bernie Sanders exists in this world) and there is no Covid - so why not bend time a little?

So what do you think? If you're a writer of a series - what decisions have you made about your character's age? If you're a reader - what age do you prefer for the protagonist - and do you have any thoughts about whether they should age in real time?

Last night, I woke up around midnight and then spent half an hour staring at the ceiling and asking myself why  write novels. It takes me at least a year to go from idea to book - numerous hours actually writing, then there's the obsession time, when I'm thinking about what I'm writing.  When I'm not writing, I feel guilty. Then there are times when I just stare at my computer, not sure what to write next, or the times when I decide that what I've written is total crap.

Writing swallows most of my day. It's absorbing, and on occasion, infuriating and painful.

I do have other interests. Guitar, French, photography, chess. I love to bike and cross country ski, in the appropriate seasons. I'd like to go back to riding horses someday before I'm too old to do so. Yet I spend my days with imaginary people in imaginary worlds.

When I was practicing law, I earned something between $300 and $500 an hour. My first novel, Trojan Horse, came out last October. I couldn't even begin to calculate how many hours I put into writing and editing the numerous drafts. I've had wonderful reviews. A prominent British critic listed Trojan Horse as one of the best thrillers of 2020 and yet my sales have been less than overwhelming.  I would have made more money practicing law for one hour instead of the hundreds of hours I put into this book. My financial bottom line for Trojan Horse, considering all the money I've put into marketing is probably a negative several thousand dollars.

Last night, I was thinking about the obvious truth that, setting aside the superstars like Lee Child or Michael Connelly, the people really making money at writing these days aren't authors of fiction. They are the services selling reviews, selling tips on how to be a best selling author, selling advertising, selling the opportunity to give your book away while offering the hope that  people will read it for free, like it, and then shell out money for your next book. 

Okay, I knew all this going into writing my novels. (I'm on my third Kolya Petrov novel now, the second in the series will be out in September.) I'm fortunate in that I don't need to live on my earnings as a writer. I write, like so many of us, because I feel empty when I'm not writing, because I love creating stories and characters and living in the world of my imagination. Still, nevertheless, there is ego involved here.  I would like to be more successful in selling my books, although I'm going to be damn careful about the services I use to get there.   It's easier to justify how much time I put into writing when there is a tangible reward. There is another reason why I want to be successful, though: to share my stories and my characters on a bigger scale than I do now. The  more successful authors share their stories with thousands of people, and book clubs and organization are thrilled to have them speak. I have to admit, I have an ego. I'd like to have a few more people wanting to read my books and hear me speak.

 The ego is a terrible taskmaster, isn't it? 

This gets me to the incident yesterday which probably prompted my ceiling staring session - although in retrospect I think this could have been an episode on Shitts Creek.

I had joined a very small  - 3-4 people -  local book club and the  scheduled book for the month of March was my book, Trojan Horse. I looked forward to this session for days. I knew it would be only a few people but I thought we'd discuss the themes, the characters, how and why I made artistic choices in writing in book. Have I mentioned that I love talking about my books?

So I signed on to the Zoom for the book club hour. There were two other people on initially, a woman maybe in her eighties and a man, maybe in his fifties or sixties, who, I believe, had been a professor of something. The guy told me he couldn't read my book because of the violence in it. For him, it wasn't just that there was torture but that a woman had been murdered in the opening of my book. Because he's very tuned into the horror of violence against women, although the most explicit violence in the book is experienced by a man."Okay," I said. I understood. I do know that some people have problems with the level of violence. 

The older woman told me that she read the book.  The torture scenes bothered her, but it was a real page turner, and she couldn't put it down. And that was all she had to say about it. I talked about why I wrote explicit torture scenes in Trojan Horse - which actually had to do with the deeper theme of morality and choices: that these scenes were necessary for readers to appreciate the level of betrayal of the character and also raise the issue of characters willing to go along with an evil that they didn't personally witness.  That discussion took five minutes because it was basically a monologue. No one wanted to actually discuss it.  

So fifteen minutes into what I'd thought would be an interesting discussion of Trojan Horse, the two other participants started throwing out the names of books to read next time. The guy, who found my book too violent to read, wanted to read a book about a man volunteering to be sent to Auschwitz to try to organize a revolt. He couldn't read my book because of the violence - but he wanted to read about people in Auschwitz?

Another woman joined the group fifteen minutes into our session. She also was probably in her eighties, and she had trouble getting her mike or her camera to work. She hadn't read my book, either. Apparently, she hadn't even tried. Once we got her sorted, the guy who found my book too violent but was fine with reading about Auschwitz launched into a forty minute narrative about his family background, his family name, what other books he was reading, what he thought about the other books he was reading. He talked about his family leaving Israel - and I realized he meant the expulsion of Jews from what was then their home in around 79 A.D. (We were an all Jewish group - so his family's expulsion from the land of Israel in 79 A.D. wasn't exactly unique to him.) Our newest arrival thought he meant that his family had left Israel within the last few years, prompting a five minute session to explain that he was telling the story of his family's migration over two thousand years. Then the hour was up.

My husband later noted the irony: that a man who was so deeply woke about how women were treated that he claimed he couldn't read my novel had hijacked a meeting that was supposed to be discussing a book written by a woman - to talk about himself.

​I wound up both infuriated and amused, both because of the absurdity of the man taking it over and at my own reaction to it.  That session was supposed to be about me, damnit. About my book. Not about his family or family names. Ego really does take over sometimes, doesn't it? His - and mine.

Dibs on this scene for a comedic novel in the future.

So why do I write? Still don't exactly know, but maybe it has something to do with the fact that my first reaction to the book club session that I just described was to mark it down for later inclusion in a novel. All of which circles back to the fact that I write  because I can't imagine not writing.

My second novel, Nerve Attack, will be out in September. If you haven't yet read Trojan Horse, please check it out on Amazon. https://amzn.to/318VaGy 

I am in the realm of in-between. I just turned in my latest manuscript, Nerve Attack, which will be coming out from Encircle Publications on September 22, 2021, and I haven't yet started a new novel. I have lots of books to read for research, a number of ideas, but I haven't even started an outline. So I am in-between. I thought I'd like being here. Right now, I'm not so sure.

From my window, I can see the hillside covered in snow and the rare vision of sunlight illuminating tree branches and turning the dull white of the hill into glistening diamonds. It won't last long - more snow is expected this afternoon and then for the next three days. It's Vermont. In other years, I would be out cross country skiing. (Actually, to be honest, in other years, I wouldn't be here, I'd be in Florida. Most years we spend January and February close to Ft. Lauderdale. We still get plenty of winter when we return to Vermont since snow in April is not uncommon, but deep winter can be on the grim side.) This year, though, I'm staying close to home. Which is one of the reasons being in between is something of a pain.

Yes, I do have plenty I can do. I have way too many hobbies from playing guitar to taking photographs to learning French. Thanks to my daughter, I recently discovered on-line chess and I've been playing several games a day against the computer. There's a stack of novels I'm working on, and I love reading.   And while I am not going out to trails to cross country ski, I have a lovely big yard, where I periodically traipse through the snow  and woods that are lovely, dark, and deep.

(I also could clean my house and do laundry, but that's a whole other subject.)

But I was doing most of the above when I was still working on Nerve Attack. (Except cleaning my house.) My mornings were for writing and editing, but I would take periodic breaks to indulge in my various hobbies. Working on a book gives my day focus. Purpose. Yes, I have more time now to play, but I don't feel like it.  I feel like something's missing. I'm waiting. And even if you have plenty to do, who really likes waiting?

And, by the way, aren't we all in-between at the moment? Waiting for something to start. In many ways, we've been on pause for a year (maybe four years) - and we can see the  end, but we're not there yet.

We all have lots of things that we say we'd do if we had the time. But what happens when we do have too much time? How much do we really do? Because we don't just need things to do, even fun things to do. We need purpose and direction. And that's what I find to be problematic about being in-between. 

I initially thought I'd take a few weeks off from writing, but since I'm not enjoying it as much as I thought I would - maybe I'll start on my outline today or tomorrow.  My chess game may suffer, but that's okay. I'm lousy. 

Here's to all of us ending our national in-betweenness as well. 

I've been working on the next book in the Kolya Petrov series, which is due at my publisher's by the end of November. I probably should be writing the next chapter. Instead, I'm writing this blog.  (ADHD. Whaddaya want?) But while I am working on the new novel, I've had to make a decision. Nerve Attack (working title)  takes place in the year 2021, but the Kolya series is generally an alternative universe with different political figures and, while some events  in our past also occurred in Kolya's past (9-11 and the invasion of Afghanistan) - not everything is the same. Since Trump was never president, nothing that happened over the past three and a half years because of the Trump administration occurred in my novels. So I started to think - what about Covid? Did it happen? It's hard to ignore the effects of Covid on our lives, on the economy, on the world. But do I want to write anything about Covid into my novel?

So the case for writing about Covid: is a book realistic that's set in the contemporary world but that ignores the existence of the virus? After all, it's here, it's overwhelming all of us. I haven't been in a grocery store since March 11 - and while I know that I am a little more extreme than most, almost everyone has had their lives changed because of the pandemic. And in a lot of ways, I feel we're being tested by this virus- our fortitude, our endurance, our love for each other, our senses of self - and humor.  A thriller by definition challenges the characters to react to extreme situations. Wouldn't readers want to see how these characters react to the same challenge that all of us are enduring? Would readers have a problem relating to characters who don't have to social distance or wear masks?

The case against writing about Covid: my books are international thrillers. If my characters have to restrict travel, social distance etc - would the situations I've created even work? How do you write an international thriller when no one is traveling? Also, are readers possibly tired of Covid? By next summer, will they want to read an international thriller where the characters are forced to do all the stuff we're presently doing to keep safe? Would readers prefer to escape from the presence of Covid into a world where there are threats that have nothing to do with risking  your life from a microscopic virus every time you go to the doctor or the grocery store? I know some people are reading Camus, The Plague, or Stephen King, The Stand, or watching pandemic movies on Netflix or Prime. Not me. I can't stand watching or reading anything about plagues or pandemics - and my preferred genre is thrillers. It's bad enough living in this reality. I don't want to experience it in fictional version.

So maybe I've answered my own question. After all, writing a novel is a huge investment in time. Between now and November, I envision dividing my time between writing the new book and promoting Trojan Horse, which is debuting on October 16 - with a small break for the High Holy Days. If I can't even stand to watch a two hour movie about a pandemic, do I really want to spend all that time writing about the real one that we're all experiencing? 

What about you? If you're a writer working on a book, are you including anything about Covid? If you're a reader, do you want to read about it? Inquiring minds want to know.

 

Why do most fiction authors write? Certainly not for fame or fortune. For me personally, I could earn vastly more money per hour as an attorney than as a writer. .As far as fame goes, the vast majority of us, even those who are relatively successful, are generally unknown except to each other and a few dedicated readers. Even the most famous of us would have less recognition walking down the street than the guy on television doing All State commercials. I write for the joy of telling stories and creating characters and the worlds they inhabit. The problem is - once you create them - your characters sometimes talk back to you. And it can be a trifle disconcerting.

The protagonist in my espionage series - Kolya Petrov - a Russian Jewish immigrant who became an American intelligence operative -is now eying me with annoyance because I'm insisting on writing a blog instead of working on the the next novel in the series.

Me: Do you want to talk about why you became a spy?

Kolya: Intelligence operative. Not spy. You write this stuff, you should know the difference.

Me: You called yourself a spy in Trojan Horse.

Kolya: I was being ironic.

Me: Yeah, me too. So back to the subject at hand - why you became  - an intelligence operative.

Kolya: I preferred it to being a lawyer. Or flipping burgers. But I also believe in the ideals of this country, however imperfectly they've been carried out over the years. It's why I risk my life - or to be precise - why you keep risking my life.  Even though it's a somewhat different world than yours, with different heads of government, and different threats than what exist in your world. Why'd you do that, by the way.

Me: Do what?

Kolya: Create an alternative political universe with a different President of the United States and a different President of Russia.

Me: I didn't want to deal with real political situations.  At least not in my novels. Things change too quickly - and you have get all the details right. Besides, I've never been a fan of putting real people into novels. I always wind up wondering what actually happened versus what is fictional.

Kolya: Well, thank you for that at least. I'm pleased not to be in your world, right now. 

Me: Horrible things happen in your world.

Kolya: I still prefer my imaginary world, even though you often have me clinging to cliffs by my fingernails, figuratively speaking, to the world you're in. Your world sucks right now. You have people wearing swastika face masks. You have a pandemic. Have you even been out of your house in the past six months? Then you have murder hornets. Sharks killing swimmers off Maine. Doctors who believe in demon sperm. Things are fucking crazy in your world, and they're getting crazier by the second.

Me: So why are you visiting me right now?

Kolya: You mean, why am I here in your blog instead of on the pages of your novel? Beats the hell out of me. You're the one procrastinating. I'm hanging off that fucking cliff, waiting for you to write me out of this situation.

Me: OK, let me just check my email.

Kolya: No.

Me: Facebook? Twitter?

Kolya: No and no. You're going to get into a political argument and then you're going to be too distracted or mad to write.

Me: We could have a political discussion here.

Kolya: I know you want to. But this is neither the time nor place. And anyway, American intelligence operatives should be apolitical.

Me: That's not really possible.

Kolya: Maybe not. I'm talking ideal world.

Me: Which is neither of our worlds.

Kolya: Point.

Me: So let me just write something on Facebook. One thing. He wants to put off the election. You can agree that's bad in either world.

Kolya: There is no world in which fucking with the American election is good. So okay, you can go write one thing.

Me: Well, thanks.

Kolya: One thing. That's it. Someone responds, let it go. No flame wars. They never accomplish anything anyway. Then get the fuck back to work.

Me: You're such a pain in the butt. And you curse too much. 

Kolya: Of course, I am. Of course I do.  (He smiles, and the smile looks very familiar.) I'm your creation after all, aren't I?

​ 

So just watched Gentleman's Agreement on TCM. It's a 1947 film in which Gregory Peck plays a writer on a magazine who decides to pretend to be Jewish in order to expose the anti-Semitism of the time that excluded Jews from certain neighborhoods, hotels, jobs, club, and subjected them to insults and stereotyping.

The film is clunky, objectionable, and flawed - for a lot of reasons. Hollywood apparently believed that the film had to have a non-Jewish character experience anti-Semitism for it to resonate with the audience. There's the fact that two years after World War II - in a film about anti-Semitism in America - there's not one mention of the six million Jews who were just murdered in Europe. Not a mention of the camps - of the virulent form of anti-Semitism that allowed those murders. The anti-Semitism depicted is humiliating and disturbing, but there's no hint that it's dangerous - that this kind of prejudice lays the foundation for genocide. There's also the fact that the film doesn't have any element or discussion of Jewish culture or Jewish history - just the idea that Jews pray in synagogues instead of churches. There's a lot of discussion of Jews being the subject of prejudice, but nothing to celebrate the richness of Jewish life.

Then there's the fact that the movies is incredibly dated, to the extent that it's almost painful to watch. It's preachy rather than dramatic. There's stilted dialogue: characters say "gosh" and "gee whiz" and other slang of the day that is just laughable.  There's the smart, funny career woman who is great as a best friend, but passed over as a love interest for a soft, whinny, very traditional and incredibly boring woman, quite apart from the fact that she's a closet anti-Semite. Finally there's the phony tacked-on happy ending - where the society woman and closet anti-Semite realizes that she has been enabling anti-Semitism, does something that shows how she's really not as anti-Semitic as she's been depicted through the film, and gets the fake-Jewish guy after all.

Nevertheless, there are some interesting moments that are relevant to today. The theme - that it's not the overt anti-Semites, the ones yelling kike or denying Jews entry to hotels that are the real problem - it's the polite and educated liberals who disapprove of anti-Semitism but go along with it, keeping their mouths shut at anti-Semitic jokes but continuing to go to hotels that exclude Jews, living in areas that don't allow Jews to rent - that hits home today.

In today's world, while anti-Semitism exists and Jews are still attacked, it's not on the level that it was in 1947. It's hard for many Jews to realize just how bad it was for us in this country not that long ago. Still, we Jews - or at least we white Jews (yes, there are Jews of color)- share in the privilege of the white world. We can hide our identities - people who don't want to be known as Jewish can change their names, join a church - and blend in - unless of course, the new Nazis take over and start tracing Jewish lineage so they can kill all of us with at least two Jewish grandparents. But the central theme of the film remains true: that the real obstacle to equality for marginalized people (people of color who don't have the luxury of "passing" that Jews can enjoy) is not the overt racism practiced by the KKK or their ilk, but the polite and quiet people who would never dream of using a racist taunt, but are enjoying the benefits of a racist system - and don't flip over the table when someone tells a racist joke, excludes people of color, or stereotypes someone based on their race.

The one Jewish character depicted in the film said that anti-Semitism isn't a Jewish problem, it's a Christian problem. The same is true of racism - it's a white problem.

Sunday morning, and It's currently a bracing 14 degrees outside at my home in Vermont. I know I'm mentally back in Vermont, after over a month visiting my kids in Los Angeles and New Jersey, because the 14 degrees now seems comfortable. But then it was eleven below Friday, when we arrived. We hurried ourselves and our cats inside, and my husband looked at me with the expression of - you wanted Vermont? It was so cold that even with the furnace going and a wood fire to supplement, we were shivering despite huddling in sweaters and blankets. The cats, miniature heat seeking missiles that they are, never left our laps until we locked them out of the bedroom and then they cried all night. I felt guilty, but not guilty enough to put a foot on the cold floor and and traipse down the freezing stairs to let them into the room.

More on the cats in a minute.

We arrived the day after a big snowstorm, and the roads were terrible, probably because of the subzero temperatures.The satellite didn't work, and I trudged through high drift to knock accumulated snow off the dish while losing feeling in my fingers.  Since then we've had about seven inches of snow more. It's beautiful, but I have a feeling that by April, I'm going to very sick of it. This is the first winter I've spent up here since we moved here. Every other winter, we have fled in early December and returned in March, just in time for mud season. This year is different. We will be here - because Lizzie our cranky black cat needs too much care to be left with a cat sitter and might not survive the travel to Florida. For our visits to Los Angeles, my husband and I went separately, so that one of us would be available to babysit the cat. Last year, we left her with our son for January through March, but under the present circumstances our son didn't have the time or the interest to take on the Lizzie project for two months.. He did it for two days, but that was enough.  

So the good things about being home: I can finally get back to writing. And to comedy. (Nothing more hilarious than being in Vermont in the middle of January, is there?) I'd taken a break from both while traveling and while freaking out over Lizzie - an update on Lizzie coming. Promise. And the good thing about being here in Vermont when the high temperature is 14 degrees, is that I don't have much temptation to do other things. While I do like cross country skiing, I like the temperature to be over 20. (I'm so picky.) Not much temptation to go out to dinner or a movie. Not much temptation to go anywhere much, as a matter of fact. 

Of course, my main distractions tend to be on line - and I'm very bad about it. But I at least have my desk. I have my notes. And I now have a lot of incentive to get to work. Two comedy gigs coming up. As for the novel writing, well, no spoilers, but I will be sharing news soon.

I actually pulled up the draft of the novel I'm rewriting and reread the beginning. It's not bad. Will share the beginning here soon. I even wrote a new sentence. I'm back! I also put my comedy notebook on my lap, on the thought that maybe some jokes will ooze through the paper and jeans and be absorbed into my essence. So far, not noticing much increase in funniness, but it's early going.

SO I just have to decide which I'm working on at any particular time. I just have to ask myself whether I feel like torturing and killing people (writing thrillers) or making jokes. It's possible to combine the two. Maybe down the road. Right now, the comedy and thriller writing are separate paths.

As long as I'm working on either comedy or thrillers - I'm good.

Update on Lizzie: if you've been following my blogs or posts, you would know about Lizzie, my 16 year old cat with renal disease. Back in November, she'd stopped eating, and I was afraid it was the end. It wasn't. She still needs pills twice a day and fluids twice a week, but she's eating a normal amount, sometimes with a lot of coaxing and sometimes, like yesterday, she gets downright pissed that I won't feed her more than her two cans. I don't know how long she'll go on, but then I don't know that about myself either. For now, she's good - and I'm good.  

I wrote a blog on hating New Years two years ago when I was a member of Rogue Women Writers. The news channels are showing the best of 2019, I was having these same thoughts again - of loathing the count down, the forced gaiety - everything in fact - and considering writing another blog along the same lines. But I'd already written it - so why reinvent the wheel? 

Enjoy.

I hate the New Year’s holiday. Always have. Well, not always. When I was a kid, it was the one day in the year when I got to stay up until midnight. I’d eat potato chips with onion dip and watch the stupid ball come down, usually with a babysitter because my parents were usually at a New Year’s party. I envisioned an elegant, fun filled evening of romance – an illusion I kept of New Year’s parties until I hit dating age and the pressure of having a special someone for the holidays – which I rarely did until I met my husband in my late 20s.
 
Now, much older and happily married, I still dislike the New Year’s holiday. As someone who tends to be a bit on the depressive side, I just get worse around New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. So, at this time of year, with everyone making lists, time to make my list – of ten things I most loathe about this holiday.
 

1. Television news listing the most significant events of the past year. I know that journalists, like the rest of us, want to take the week off between Christmas and New Year’s, but this is just lazy. And, yeah, yeah, I know Trump won, and Aleppo was destroyed.  I don’t need to be informed that these were significant events. I’m already aware. Which leads me to…

 

1. The annual listing of the people who died in the calendar year. Can you spell d-e-p-r-e-s-s-i-n-g? Or morbid? They died. I’m sad. I’m still mourning Carrie Fisher and now her mother. I have a black patch on my Jedi robe for Carrie Fisher, and a black patch on my umbrella for Debbie Reynolds, famous for Singing in the Rain, an oldie favorite. But please, do we really need the parade of the dead that we get every end of the year?  Wasn’t it sad enough to hear it once?

 

1. On a lighter note – New Year’s hats. They’re stupid looking. Enough said.

 

1. Restaurant dining on New Year’s Eve. So, maybe you give in to the idea that you should do something to welcome the fact that you’ll be writing the wrong year on your checks – if you still use checks – for about a month and decide to go out to your favorite restaurant for your favorite meal. Only your favorite restaurant isn’t serving your favorite meal. It’s serving a $200 per person New Year’s Eve special. With Champaign – which is supposed to make up for the fact that your meal is $180 more than you wanted to pay. And you have to drink Champaign – leading us into number 5….

 

1. Champaign. It’s expensive. It’s festive. We’re supposed to love it. I don’t. As generally served, it’s a sweet fizzy drink. If I want a drink, I’ll take Scotch. Glen Livet is very festive. If I want sweet, I’ll have a milkshake. But we’re supposed to drink Champaign, because that’s what we’re supposed to do. Kind of circular, but there you are.

 

1. The forced gaiety. This is especially true at parties, where you tend to not know half the people. The music is ear-shatteringly loud, and people who don’t know how to dance are bumping and grinding into each other. You’re supposed to be dancing along with them, with a brief period of kissing everyone within reach when the clock ticks down to the new year, even though you just want to flee for fresh air. Then there’s the forced gaiety of the people you see crowded into Times Square waiting for the stupid ball to come down as it does every year. Those smiles you see on the faces of people in the crowd on television – they’re either too drunk and stoned to know what’s happening or they figure this will be the last image their loved ones have of them.  Hence the grins to fool the families into thinking their last moments were good ones.

 

1. People shooting guns or fireworks at midnight. Usually happens just after I’ve fallen into a deep sleep, having resisted the social pressure to stay up past my usual bedtime. Scares the dogs. Scares me, especially when idiots fire actual bullets into the sky, and yes, people sometimes do fire actual rounds into sky.  Don’t people realize that what goes up….

 

1. New Year’s resolutions. No, I don’t make them. Why set myself up for almost certain failure once a year? I do that all the time. Don’t need to make a big thing about it.

 

1. The darkness after the holiday. After New Year’s Day, all the decorations come down. The trees, the strings of lights, even the scary Christmas balloons, they all disappear until next year.  It’s the lights, bright colors or even just strings of white lights shining in the dark, that I especially miss. They disappear, and we’re left with the coldest, darkest, and most depressing month of the year. January just goes on and on until it turns into February, the second most depressing month of the year. We could use some festive lights, at least until Valentine’s Day. And some more presents. Make every Friday in January a day to give one present to someone you love. Only not chocolate – I’ll still be fat from not having made a New Year’s resolution to lose the holiday weight. Books make really good January presents.

 

1.  Finally, let’s get to the essence of the holiday. New Year’s marks just how quickly time goes by and how fleeting our lives really are. This may in fact be the core of my whole shtick about New Year’s – because the holiday just underscores what I already know – “what heart heard of, ghost guessed: it is the blight that man was born for….” We are mortal. Time is short. Yada yada. All the hats and the Champaign and the fireworks and the forced gaiety are just trying to conceal that truly terrifying fact. 

 
 
So, yay, another year gone. Take a deep breath and plunge. May the coming year be, well, tolerable.
 

It's a week until Thanksgiving. Here in Vermont, the rain turned into a driving snow while I was out searching for more varieties of cat food to tempt my sick cat. She has kidney disease that will kill her sooner or later. Three weeks ago, she stopped eating, and I thought it was the end, but with an appetite stimulant and some meds for nausea, she started eating again, although it's stop and go. She's refusing to eat the prescription diet, and I have an ever growing stock of foods that, while not prescription, are lower in phosphorus and protein than the average cat food, because if she doesn't eat, she'll die even more quickly. Some days she eats pretty well, others not so much.  

I'm not writing my thrillers. I'm neither performing nor writing comedy. I've been rewriting the same chapter in a thriller for the past three weeks - and having trouble watching any television show where people or animals die. This, in fact, is the first long piece I've written in weeks. My life is now consumed by nursing this cat. I'm giving her fish oil and B12 supplements, and every three days, sub-q fluids. I'm coaxing her to eat another bite, opening cans until I can find something she'll tolerate. Today, she's not eating as well, so I upped the meds, and if she doesn't eat later, I'll rub the appetite stimulant onto her ear.

I found her in our window well in Trenton when she was two weeks old, on a cold May night, and she probably would have died if we hadn't brought her in. I bottle fed her. I wiped her little behind with wet paper towels because mother cats lick their babies to stimulate the passing of waste. She adores my husband who didn't wipe her behind and didn't want another cat, and she tolerates me most of the time. In the sixteen years that she's been a member our family, she's bitten me, my son, my daughter - but rarely my husband. She's had three close calls up to now, a fungus that grew on her brain  - that nearly killed her twice - and then she had an encounter with a ribbon that required surgery. The vet says now that she could have anywhere from three months to two years. I doubt the two years, but we'll see.

Since I've been an adult, I've had four dogs and five cats, and part of the pet experience, is that they will die all too soon. The dogs are gone and three cats: we now have Lizzie, 16 years old, and Xiao, 9. It's never been easy when a beloved pet get close to the end, but it seems particularly hard now, with this cat that loves my husband more than she loves me.  I keep thinking if I just do the right thing, give her the right supplements, the right food, she'll keep going. Maybe we'll get the two years. My kids and my husband tell me I'm feeling too much responsibility for keeping her alive, that my anxiety and guilt are not rational.

I also know it's not rational, and I'm planning to see the therapist who helped me when my mother died. Somehow facing Lizzie's mortality has brought up all the guilt I felt and still feel because I wasn't there when my mother died - and all the guilt I feel at being unable to save my father from dying of Alzheimers.  Then there's the thoughts of my own mortality and that of my husband - thoughts which most of the time I manage to keep locked away in the back of my mind. After all, my mother lived to 88; my father to 95 - and I'm very healthy and very active. so is Jim. Still, I'm feeling that cold fear and the panic.

And yet Lizzie is still here. So am I. So is my husband. It'd be nice to enjoy whatever time we do have, wouldn't it?

I have to remember that Lizzie isn't the only one with a disease. Anxiety is also an illness, but there are treatments. Maybe my therapist will help. I know one thing he'll suggest: doing things where I can be totally present - the way I am when I write. Maybe that's why I decided to write this blog.  And maybe tomorrow I'll try writing something else. 

Wish me luck.



  

Good morning. It is Yom Kippur. So, I am proudly Jewish but not a believer in the God that is depicted in the Torah and Bible. I go to services for community and in an acknowledgement of my people's long history and heritage. So in Jewish mythology, every year, God opens a great book on Rosh Hashanah and in it writes the fate of every living being for the next year. The ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are supposed to be days of reflection and repentance to change God's mind should He/She have written down you down for a bad end. On Yom Kippur, Jews fast in an act of purification, and at the end of the day, the book is closed and sealed for the year.

My favorite story about Yom Kippur involves a very famous rabbi who every year would disappear from the congregation, and the congregation believed that he ascended to heaven to argue for them. One Yom Kippur, a man who didn't believe the story decided to secretly follow the rabbi. The rabbi himself dressed as a peasant, went into the woods and chopped firewood, (btw, it is strictly forbidden on Yom Kippur to do such work) and then carried the wood to the home of a sick old woman who could not afford wood and built her a fire. When the man who had secretly followed the rabbi returned to the congregation and was asked if the rabbi had ascended to heaven, he replied, "The rabbi went even higher."

So for all those who believe and those who don't (like me), I nevertheless wish you the traditional greeting of this day: May you be written in the Book of Life.