Dear Roger: Love Me, Love My Dog

I am a grown up. I like to think I am a person who does their best to get along with most people and see the basic good and humanity in all until given a reason not to. I tend to try to remember that people were once babies that were hopefully loved by someone, somewhere and that they are often the sons, brothers, fathers, and what not of others and cared for in some way. I don't really wish anyone harm who hasn't harmed me. I know what the 7 deadlies are and I try to avoid them, even when I have been done wrong because I know we are all humans and we all make mistakes. Being forgiving is, I guess, a character flaw of mine. I am especially forgiving, and protective of those who have been important to me in my past and along my journey, and I tend to be very forgiving and protective of the young. I do not think that there is any particular thing that a young man can do or say short of harming one of my children that would make me wish him harm, so when I hear someone else say unkind things or say that they to not care if a young person harms themselves, that goes against everything that I stand for as a human being, and I simply cannot stand for it.
When I was a police officer, I took an oath to protect and serve and as a Southerner and a Texan, I still cling to the old ideologies of honor and compassion and looking after those you care about as best you can with no expectation of anything.
When I was in grade school, there were kids who had cliques and little social groups who had strict social policies and they were often,"If you play with or talk to that person, you cant be our friend and we will be hateful to you." Plain and simple it was bullying and ostracizing people, and guess what? I was one of those who was pretty much the odd kid out.I got so I didn't mind being on my own, I had a few pretty close friends who didn't play that game because they were odd kids out as well and we just enjoyed hanging together.
I have seen that kind of behavior again lately and its affected me pretty badly, in fact its stressed me the hell out. I have odd hobbies and likes and I do things that other people don't really understand or care for, but they are things I am very passionate about and occasionally I run across another person who shares my passion and we become friends in our oddness and we have private little rave sessions. Im a fan of things like,"Firefly" and I know what it means to be a Browncoat and to "Stay Shiny", I also am into Steampunk and Stephen King as well as Cowboy Poetry and exploring old abandoned buildings and I tend to like odd Indie music and I have stayed loyal to the little band that I have been a fan of for the past few years.
They are broken and scattered and in odd bits and pieces, and often its difficult to keep straight who is doing what, but I have done my best to keep up with them and quietly support them. I say quietly because for some reason it is still a very contentious thing to do. Wounds have still not healed in many places and while there are many of us who refuse to support the new band at all due to the management, there are more than a few of us who support the boys and pray for the day they find the magic again and for the darkness to leave. We have worked in quiet and subtle ways in order to keep the peace, but I finally snapped last night and said,"ENOUGH LIVING IN THE CLOSET!" This is not middle school. This is what I like, hes not a bad kid. Hes got a voice that moves my heart and I have missed hearing it and seeing him smile, so I am going to work to make that smile  be seen again, and I don't give a rats ass who knows it, or if he even gives a rats dragging nether regions himself. Im doing it for selfish reasons, I like his voice and his smile makes me smile and feel all warm inside, like puppies and kittens. Im waiting for the others to get their butts in gear and show me what they are doing and ill support the hell out of them too, but til them Im not going to hide what or who I like anymore and if that costs me followers or whatnot, then so be it. Im not in grade school and nobody controls me anymore.
I posted an article today about how the mountain in front of my old house is starting to heal, its been two years for both of us and we are both in the same state, a bit ragged and maybe a little rough still, but on the road to recovery.

Dear Roger:Who Is The Boss?

It has been a very hectic couple of weeks for me around here. With trying to get the website up, trying to keep the book sales up and promote my 3rd book,(not really doing very good at that one), keeping my kids entertained and the house clean, dealing with my dog, getting ready to move to a bigger apartment where Stevie and I will finally have our own bathroom, deal with a 16 year old son that seems to have suddenly decided that he is in control of things, and still work a job, pay all the bills and find some time to maybe keep my sanity and occasionally write, the stress has been about to eat me alive.
I have had a couple of days where I had brief overload meltdowns and had to retreat to behind my closed doors and windows and try to hide from everyone and everything, but its been difficult at time to do that when I know I need to keep pushing forward to promote and sell my books.
My son and I have had some pretty epic battles. He has taken the basic tools I gave him in computers and he has run with it. I am the one who taught him his basic skills such as navigating the internet and using some common programs, but as he was supposed to do, he has gone well beyond my abilities now and he is knowledgeable in things like writing code and basic programming, so I had hired him to set up my website for me.
What my son does not seem to understand, is that when you are hired for a job, you are supposed to do what the employer hires you to do, not what YOU want to do. I had to deal with him over-riding my decisions about what text, pictures and formatting to use, he was snarky, condescending, rude, and he made threats to take down my entire website on a regular basis when I didn't do what he wanted.He was acting like a complete and total jerk, and when I went in and changed some things I didn't like, and even put up a page I had asked him to put up, he came in yelled at me like he was the character,"Nick Burns- Your companies Computer Guy" which is what we all call him around here now, and he went in and changed things, including the size of one of the icons because he said that the way I had it set up looked,"Stupid"  and he also said that I had screwed up the entire site.
He stomped off out the door and didn't work on the site for over a day even though he knew I needed to get it online for a big advertising campaign I am doing for my books that ties in with my Facebook page. I couldn't figure out how to go back in and put things back to the way I had set them up, so I just left them and started teaching myself how to set up my own page. I fully intend to be prepared that if he pulls that crap again, I will know how to fix stuff myself, but what was great was when he came home, there was a little comment he needed to see, a little comment that was a game changer in a lot of ways.
My son has very few men he looks up to or even respects because they always seem to be fuck-ups, liars, or they just fail him or worse, like his step father, abuse him, so he keeps most of them at a distance and just takes a page from a playbook or two and holds a few guys to be,"Not class A-jackasses."
Well, one of those guys he takes a page from had contributed an icon for a page and I had put the icon on the page of the website exactly as I had received it, because honestly I had no idea how to change the size, but when Chance came in and accused me of screwing things up, he had gone in and manipulated the icon and changed the shape and set it the way HE thought it should look. The comment was nothing harsh, just that the image was ,"skewed slightly" but it was the equivalent of smacking my growling puppy on the end of the nose with a rolled up newspaper.
I got an apology last night. He apologized for being an ass to me all week long and he admitted he might not always be right. The look on his face was priceless and I wish I could have captured it, but he needed to be called to heel and reminded that he is not always right, that he is a 16 year old who has been hired and paid very well to follow instructions to do what I want done, not what he thinks should be done. He muttered and mumbled and grumbled for awhile and then went and licked his wounds by playing his guitar for a few hours, but the bright side is, my website is up and running fine, he is being less of a jerk for now and I had the best,"TOLD YA SO" moment of MONTHS last night, so now maybe he will listen to me a little better.
Stevie made it back from camp and she seemed to have had a great time other than she got a huge bruise on her thigh from falling on some balance beam. She has been enjoying having her hair French braided by our friend Jen, and running around with her. Jen has been great for the kids and remarkably tolerant of my personality quirks and inability to deal with people on an extended basis without getting her feelings hurt too badly. I am trying to be a better friend, but honestly, I really suck at it and there is a real reason I dont have lots of close friends, but my kids have enjoyed socializing and Stevie has enjoyed me having a friend that actually knows how to do hair and all kinds of girly stuff, so hopefully my stress will ease a little in the next weeks after I complete my first big sale to the local coffee shop, and I will feel more like hanging out again.

Dear Roger: Running Uphill

Oh my gosh! It has been an amazing few days, and now that my baby girl is back home from her adventures at church camp and I am sort of back to being myself, I am sure they are only going to get more amazing. I have been trying to get word out about my books and my website as much as possible, but its slow going and I have found that most people seem to really like the paper books that I sign and send out to them, or sell to them personally, so what I have been doing is ordering them in, taking orders from people and then shipping them out and selling them. Mostly everyone has been really good about getting me paid and its been a good way of doing business, so I decided to  see if I could expand upon on that by contacting local businesses to see if they would be interested in carrying my book. I had hoped for maybe a consignment thing with a coffee shop, but after a brief meeting, I left with an order for 10 copies of each of my books and they are going to pay me for them in advance, as in BEFORE they sell them! They want ME to "Commit" to a book signing and they will promote me, and I will be be linking my website to them as an early,"Supporter". As I was on my way home, I stopped off at another store and talked to the owner and they wanted to order 13 sets of my books! It may not seem like a huge deal to the big dog authors out there, but considering I was on foot and I had just sold myself completely out of all of my stock and then some, its a pretty damn huge deal! I have no idea how I am going to manage to buy in the stock I need to meet all the orders, but I am hoping that between working some extra hours at my day job and cutting back in a few other ways, I may just be able to swing it.
My son is forcing me to try a Kickstarter campaign, and we have bickered back and forth about it pretty fiercely. I hate asking folks for any money when I know times are hard and people are strapped to pay for food, but he pointed out that the two I had donated to both belonged to people who were not missing meals like I had, they were simply funding artistic projects, and I will go without to fund my attempt to provide a brighter future for my family by getting my books out to people. We set up the beginning of it last night and he is going to film some kind of video for it in the next day or two that explains what we are looking for. I made him limit the time and amount to the bare minimum and if it works, it means we will be able to hit the ground running with enough stock and publicity materials to really get things going.
The website is mostly up and running and as I can corral him to work on it, he is adding in the pages I want. We got the "Inspirations" page up yesterday and Spencer Bell was the first he put up with a link back to the SBL website after the wonderful Bill Bell granted us permission. Today we added in the 100 Monkeys and its sad that there is nothing to link to anymore, but I wrote a little piece about what they were and are to people.
The next page to go up will be the,"Sponsors and Affiliates" page and it is there that I will put the logos and links to those who have supported and helped and who have inspired me and helped other Indie artists along the way. I hope to build a networking place where the links can lead people to connect with the services they need to help get themselves the things they need, like maybe logos or maybe screenwriting or editing or promotions that way we can guide each other along and support each other.
My son is a already working on the music for  book trailer for my "Paying the Piper", he didn't even ask me what music I had listened to when I wrote it, he knows, but he doesn't care. He will write me a new song, he will play it, record it and we will have our own. I have friends shooting the pictures, and we will use them, credit them and it is slowly going from a singular effort that I did quietly and almost ashamedly, to an effort that is a team united by a common goal of paying things forward and seeing all succeed.
I spent several hours this last couple weeks talking to people about following their dreams and writing as well as publishing, and I told them my crazy story about following a band of monkeys to the sunshine. They may have initially looked at me like I was crazy, but I got hugged twice and one little old lady got tears in her eyes, so I guess its a story that makes a point that every has to find their reason and once they do, they are going to want to make sure they pull others along as well.
I cant bring the band that started it all though God knows I would give just about any vital body part to be able to do that, but I can ensure that the legacy continues in my little way. If you are an Indie Artist and want to work with me and network, shoot me a line and lets start connecting things and people brought together by the 100th Monkey effect to ensure that it never stops. JenniferDScroggins.com hit the guestbook and say "Hello!"

Dear Roger: Keep Moving Forward While Looking Back With A Smile

This past week was pretty damn amazing! The stress and tension that had been building over the small part of the universe we dwell in seemed to melt away and there was joy, laughter and smiles to be found and those who tried to bring anything but that, were castigated, outed for what they are, and quickly shunted off to the oblivion they so richly deserve.
There are unexpected heroes moving quietly to keep things interesting and I have hopes that they will keep things alive and positive in ways that those of us who understand will appreciate. My gut is rarely wrong about things...just sayin.
I am now a dot.com! I bought a couple of domains, including my own name,"JenniferDScroggins.com" and another one called,"MonkeyAfire.com". Its slow going when your I.T. guy is your 16 y/o son that has the social life of a young rock star, so I have to deal with working around his gigs, his dates, his church things, his beach vacations, his skate boarding adventures, and his need to eat all the food in the house and sleep for 12-15 hours at a stretch. I have found he is motivated by cold, hard cash and having his Iphone repossessed, so we finally got the primary site online last night with more to follow hopefully tomorrow, and this should make me easier to find but I learned all kinds of ways to curse Html thanks to his efforts yesterday.
Hes also working on writing songs for my next Book Trailers for "Paying the Piper" and "Drifts", so I guess I cant criticize him too much, but dealing with his work schedule is a lot of stress for a Type A person like me who likes to get stuff done as with as little procrastination as possible and he is all about procrastinating. We will get through it though, hopefully with all our sanity intact and with my books getting some attention and sales.
My daughter is working on drawing and designing some table hangars for my book signing that will hopefully be taking place this coming Saturday, (once my shipment of books arrives), and I am excited to finally be getting things out there and promoted on the local level as well. Its slow going and often stressful and frustrating, and sometimes hurtful and heartbreaking, but its worth it, and I hope that I will leave a legacy for my kids that will provide them with proof that persevering and following your dreams is the right thing to do, even when you have been told you are,"Stupid, crazy and a waste of time".
Keeping my kids involved has motivated them to learn things like more advanced coding for building my websites, design for my advertising, and my son Sticky has even gotten involved with helping to promote my books by talking to people and showing them my books, and when we go to ship out books to people who have ordered signed copies, he helps with the packaging and addressing, so he is learning things that will hopefully help him later in life. Stubby has been quietly promoting my books on his Facebook page, not even telling me he was doing it. He carry's the books to the post office for me, and he handles telling the clerk what we need, so this whole endevour is giving them skills to use in the future, and my daughter, Stevie, is wanting to see about eventually publish her own book in the next year!
Im proud of how far we have come, as we start our 3rd year up here, we have made a lot of progress and we will hopefully see even more in this next year with hopes of getting that car and maybe even going to Texas to see my sister and some friends. The ex is going back to Arizona, he found California to be too hard and child support enforcement sent him a letter letting him know they had found him, oh well, I wont miss what I never got, and we will keep on keeping on and rejoice that now California is a safe zone too!

Dear Roger: Two Years Sees A Lot Of Changes

Yesterday was quite a day in our little corner of the universe, the long awaited event finally occurred and my daughters favorite boy finally became a father. I think I will never again hear in the higher registers. I have to wonder, why do little girls find it necessary to shriek when they are happy? I think my poor neighbors probably had small heart attacks when I saw the Facebook status of his sister post and I looked up and said to my daughter,"Hey, guess what? Jackson's finally a daddy." and she let out a shriek of joy that was probably heard by the boy himself wherever he was.
Poor Spencer jumped, the cat ran and hid and my friend Jen, came close to dropping her Iphone on the tile floor as we watched my daughter race around the apartment yelling and laughing and cheering, stopping only to do the math and smile to herself as she said,"I'm either 8 years older or 19 years younger, either way, its okay!" I promptly sprouted gray hairs in places that had been hold outs as I Google searched the phone number for lock down style all girls schools.
It was a happy day, and a busy day. I bought my domains for the internet so I can hopefully get my books out there with a little more visibility and maybe start making some money on them instead of bleeding cash, and I spent a good hour on the phone walking another person though getting their writing self-published. One of the domains I bought is specifically for that kind of thing, "MonkeyAfire" is going to be a networking site for all of us brought together by the 100th Monkey effect, all of us who want to keep that spirit alive and moving forward, and I hope to get people networking and bringing forward those who are working on building their own dreams.
Summer is finally trying to arrive here in Portland and I am glad to see it. The cold has worn on me and with no concerts to look forward to this summer, I had despaired having anything to look forward to, but things are improving, I am starting to write again when I can fit it in between trying to promote my books and make a little money to support my writing habit, and I am still hoping against hope to get that one shout out or bump that makes all the difference for me, but so far knocking on doors, tweeting, messaging and sending my books out into the great unknown has just netted a trickle of interest, but I wont quit, I have my little girl sitting next to me most of the time, encouraging me and patting my back, reminding me why I do what I do, and telling me her plans for when we are finally able to afford, "Good used car and a full months groceries."

Dear Roger: This Month, We Think Of Gratitude

Summer is a time of reflection for me. I woke up this morning on my nice new leather couch in my comfortable living room without anyone yelling at me,(other than Spencer, my dog), and I realized that I have been in Portland for almost 2 years, at first with just two of my kids and then a year and a month later, with all of my kids. Its been two amazing years of changes. I still have my issues, some days are better than others, but I have been steadily employed for almost a year, I am a published author x's THREE and I have FRIENDS that I actually hang out with on a regular basis. I still stay in the house more than I go out, and I still struggle with hyper-vigilance, my stammer, headaches and my temper, but I go more days wanting to be here than not.
I am enjoying my life more. I'm not ducking and dodging and worrying about appeasing anyone so they didn't hurt me or my kids.I struggle and scrounge to keep my kids clothed and fed, and we don't have extra anything, but we are HAPPY. My eldest son is now learning how to drive thanks to my new friend, and I got to go see a movie in the theater with another adult and we acted silly and hooted and hollered and OBJECTIFIED the hell out the men on the screen and I walked out of the first movie I had seen in almost a year, laughing.
I've gotten tougher I think. I stood my ex down and told him to leave when he showed up here in Portland thinking he was going to bully me into supporting him and putting up with his crap again. I went "Keep Awake" on him and I managed to get just the right amount of "scary psycho chick" look in my eye and he scurried away to go mooch off someone else, leaving us with debt we didn't need, depleted cupboards, a cat with worms and fleas, and junk in storage I just managed to get hauled off yesterday. He kept the damn van, deciding he needed it more than me and the four kids.
Its taken us a bit to recover from his,"Visit" and even his paltry contributions of 100 here or there when the mood strikes him haven't done too much to ease the stress of it all, but knowing he wont be back would be more help. I've finally filed for child support, because after his last call where he told the kids he had spent the last two weeks sitting on the beach reading while we were scrambling trying to find money for milk and bread, I knew something had to give. I decided that nothing motivates a man to get busy like threats of going to jail or losing their drivers license. I don't do this lightly, but when it has been years and years of nothing but excuse after excuse for not supporting his kids, for failing them, and being a lazy slob, then something has to be done. Hes not disabled, hes just lazy and its time he gets some proper motivation. My eldest son wants me to go after his father too, and while that scares the hell out of me, he says its time he finally does the right thing as well.
Its going to be an even busier year this next one I have a feeling and hopefully just as upwardly mobile. My kids are happy and safe, I feel mostly happy and safe and I am proud of the progress I have made these past two years. I have grown a lot as a person and I am alive. He has not won, and in spite of his attempts to continually pick at my insecurities and bring me down, he is the one who is essentially homeless and who has done nothing for himself or his kids. I have clothed, fed and sheltered them on my own and I have managed to hold down and job and publish THREE books while all he has done is criticize me for following my dream, but the voice that use to roar right in my face with the straight razor at my throat is now just a whisper at my heels.
My little girl is creating an event on Facebook and inviting people to our "Two Year Celebration of Life" on July 28th. She is stone cold serious. If you can, come join us, it wont be fancy, but it will be happy.

Dear Roger: A Cure For Insomnia?

For the first time in months, I slept good last night. I really shouldn't have, I have about a million things to worry about, including covering all the bills at the first of the month, the ex not helping out and hinting that he might be heading this direction, my 3rd novel is getting bunged up in its opening week out because the e-version's page is not totally ready so no one can preview it and that is a huge pain in the ass, and well, I have had chest pains off and on over the past couple of weeks again, but after a busy as hell day of building my authors page on Amazon and getting things set up for all the international markets and doing all kinds of other work related stuff I needed to do, I took some time and I wrote  a letter to someone very important to me and I put to rest some business that I needed to put to rest, and I think that is why I slept better.
I tend to not be a good follower or joiner of anything. I have always been an outlier and skeptical of the whole herd mentality that many seem content to fall into when it comes to things. I have tried over the years to be a part of things, and I have failed miserably when my need to ask,"Why?" or "Says who?"  comes into play as well as my gut instinct.
When I started off in the military, that was a huge problem and if I hadn't destroyed my knee at Ft. Sill, I probably would have ended up in the stockade for insubordination more than I would have actually served because keeping my opinion to myself has never been my strong point when I have encountered injustice.
As a cop, it caused me problems as well because I have to respect the people giving me commands, and when the person who is supposedly commanding me, makes fun of me for using,"Big words" or "Talking like a lawyer", well then I'm afraid the contempt is going to show in my expression pretty damn fast.
As I have gotten older and the years have taken a toll on me, I've gone less from worrying about belonging to anything to more about protecting those I care about or who need it, and my kids are my primary focus and then there are a few who figure in pretty close right there after my kids. I am pretty diligent about watching out for them and I don't have an agenda and I don't want or expect anything other than people to be safe and happy, because like I have said in the past, time is short and I often feel like a clock that is winding down. When you are in that situation, things have no meaning to you, but making sure you are right with the people you care about and Karma, has a whole lot of meaning.
I am working hard to make sure my kids know about doing the right things and about being skeptical of people with a bill of goods to sell. I used to take most people at face value and give them a chance to lie to me, but now I am more likely to go in expecting to be lied to and hope that the person will prove themselves to be genuine and honest with the same kinds of values that I have and that I have tried to work hard to instill in my children. Dont know if its just a Southern thing, a cop thing, or what it is, but I have gone back to going with my own gut instinct on things and when I do get backed on my feelings by someone I hold in regard, its good to know there are other people out there who have a lick of sense and a moral code similar to mine because it gives me hope that maybe my kids will have friends when they grow up and venture out and they wont be held to be such weirdos.
All I know is I slept a lot better last night and a load is off my mind.

A Modern Calamity: Dear Roger: The Things You Do For Love

A Modern Calamity: Dear Roger: The Things You Do For Love: Today was an amazing day. My teenage son spent most of his day helping me put together the book trailer for my book,"Face In The Rear V...

Dear Roger: The Things You Do For Love

Today was an amazing day. My teenage son spent most of his day helping me put together the book trailer for my book,"Face In The Rear View Mirror." This was not something he did lightly, hes a teenager who was planning on spending the morning playing football with his buddies and then the afternoon with his guitar or napping, but the rain started in and that killed his plans and he watched me struggle along with Windows Movie maker, cursing and squinting through my inadequate glasses, getting more and more frustrated til finally with his trademark," Nick Burns-Your Companies Computer Guy" snarl he said,"MOVE!" and he took over.
He got all the pictures in place, found a picture to fill a gap we knew we couldn't fill otherwise and he then captioned and set up all the animations and fancy stuff that was making me crazy because half of it I cannot see properly and the other half I get frustrated with trying to get match what I have in my mind. He got all the pictures and text in place and it was beautiful, exactly what I wanted and then we hit our first major argument of the day; the music.
He knew what I listened to when I wrote that story, he was sitting next to me on the couch most of the time as I sat there with my ear buds in,alternately either smiling at memories or crying over them and he listened to my stories and some of the music with me, and he knew the one song that inspired me along with the one voice that was in my ears most of the time. When I got up to go referee a fight between my daughter and Stubby over who was farting in the bedroom the worst, he loaded the song and when I came back he had it perfectly synced up and playing along with the pictures.
My reaction was visceral and he didn't know how to handle a mom in tears over a simple song, but he stopped it and asked me why I wouldn't allow him to leave it. I explained that it was most likely tangled up in legal issues that would take years to sort out,and that I was not going to step into the middle of with my paltry little video. I wanted him to record HIS music and he finally agreed after much negotiation and explaining that no matter how special a song may be, sometimes a song from someone close to you is even more special.
He sat and tuned and re-tuned his guitar for at least an hour, driving me up the wall, and he strummed and picked and wool-gathered like musicians do, and he played the one song he had written over a week ago and decided he didn't like it for the video, so he came up with something new.
We recorded it at my kitchen table when we caught a lull in the barking and scratching of the dog, the bickering of the other kids and the noise of the road outside. You can hear a bit of the creak of our chairs and some of the tap of his toes on the tile, but I think it adds to the simple charm of the melody.
He did that for me. He gave up his whole day, working on my video and helping me out when I know he wanted to be off hanging out with his friends, and he wrote a song for me. We may battle like most parents and teens do, but today I feel loved more than a little.

A Modern Calamity: Dear Roger: Comfort Zone

A Modern Calamity: Dear Roger: Comfort Zone: When I am working on something, such as my writing, I can be very single minded and focused. I often forget to eat sometimes even to drink...

Dear Roger: Comfort Zone

When I am working on something, such as my writing, I can be very single minded and focused. I often forget to eat sometimes even to drink or even get up and move around. If im on a writing jag, I will focus on what I am writing about to the exclusion of almost everything else, except my kids, they tend to be very persistent about getting my attention away from anything. 

This single-mindedness sometimes bites me in the ass and I forget to do other things, oh say like, refill my prescriptions for my seizure medications or eat, or even get enough sleep. I have raging insomnia and often get by on less than 4 hours of sleep a night, sitting up working on my writing or reading, lurking in unseemly areas of the interwebz or just woolgathering in the wee hours when I wish I had someone to talk to other than myself. I have been working on trying to become more social and develop better ways of communicating and actually talking about my books in ways other than just blushing and stammering or lapsing into full on stuttering, but its been difficult though today was a little better.

My boss, a woman a little older than me, hit me up for copies of my books the other day, and while I am fairly okay with sending them off to people who are hundreds of miles away from me and who I don’t really have to deal with on a regular basis, I was a bit freaked out about my BOSS actually reading my stuff, but I handed them over and promptly considered moving.

Today, she stopped me as I was out wandering about doing my regular stuff and she wanted to TALK ABOUT MY BOOK,”DRIFTS”. There were other people around and I thought that might give me a way of escape, but, OH NOO! She was adamant! She LOVED IT. She wanted to know about my inspirations and where I got the ideas and then she told me how she related to the character and that it really struck a nerve in her and she imagines that the reason its popular is because it strikes that same nerve in a lot of people.

I had really been wondering. I really hadn’t understood why it was doing so well, but it keeps selling and people keep asking me for copies of it and its the one people ask me about the most. I also get asked if there will be a sequel, and the answer is; I don’t know. I have to get the characters to talk to me again and right now they are kinda quiet. I hope they talk to me again because while it was a pretty dark story when it was first written, it was fun to write. Just like the next story im about to publish. It was a lot of fun to write and it had different inspirations. 

I have been pretty busy getting stuff ready to go and haven’t written too much lately other than my blogs but I have the start of a very dark and twisted tale on my desktop, and while its got a lot of research and observation behind it, its a hard tale to write on ones psyche because its about a side of “Love” and obsession that most are very lucky to escape, and I cant delve to deeply into working on it without my PTSD pinging off the charts, and the research has had me up nights pacing the floor. I’ve gotten one chapter done and 5 outlined, and all the characters developed, even done a quick and dirty outline of it one night on FB with some friends to give them an idea of where I was heading with the tale and they are well aware of how disturbing it is, and what is even worse, is most of  the research has been conducted by observing real people in the small fandom I am a part of. Ill leave that for another day, because I prefer to write the happier stuff, but I am at the mercy of my muse and when he is in one of his moods, it often works for me best to let him lead. He led me along on Drifts and it seems to really speak to people. 

My books and stories are all over the map when it comes to content and inspiration and I never really know when I am going to have an idea strike me just write where I spend days and days in a focused writing jag, even muttering ideas for progression in the plot as I grab a shower or scrawling them on my hand or bedside table in the wee hours of the morning. 

The book that is about to come out was one of those that progressed in such a manner and it was written after my son made an offhand comment about how he respected a man who would man up and be a father to a kid, even when it was inconvenient when his father who was supposedly a macho tough guy, did all he could to hide from a little baby and a woman. It was just the one comment and that was all it took, like so many things.

Trying to learn to talk about my writing is a work in progress with me. I can talk about a great many things, and I think I am getting better talking about my work, and my writing, and I have my temper mostly under control and Lord knows that insults just roll off of me, especially those from women and strangers because they don’t know me or where I have been. I had some heifer try it with me on FB the other day, she tried to insult me by commenting that my picture wasn’t particularly feminine. Uh, no duh? Im 43 years old with 4 kids at home, I have no social life or anything like that and I have lived a bit of a rough life, so I told her to go ahead and say all the things she needed to say to make herself feel better about herself. If calling me less than ladylike made her feel better about herself, well then,”Bless her heart” ,(oh yeah, I did use that), I told her to go ahead and have at it. I’ve been told worse by better.  I took the high road, didn’t use a swear word or a threat or anything like that, I just broke out the Texan/Southern manners and I broke it off in her and left her looking like what she was and funny thing was, she wasted no time in pulling down her comments. Bully’s and mean girls don’t scare or bother me, I see your pissy little teen angst and I raise you a Hells Angel prospect with a straight razor to your throat in a room where your kids are. I have walked through the valley of that shadow and I was the one who made it out the other side. So I guess I will figure out the whole talking about my stuff pretty soon too. 

Dear Roger:Living The Dream In The Red

I know some of my friends are seeing that title and giggling, that’s okay, I meant it in a slightly pervy way, (you know that I, of all people, would), and what I am talking about is working to make a living as an Indie author/single mom/disabled person/nobody with a few crazy friends who believe in you as your only support team. When I first got encouraged to put my work out there for people to look at and read, I was skeptical, after all, these days, you have to kinda already be somebody to get into any kind of entertainment business or you have to have a bunch of money and I have neither of those things in my court. Most months we dont even have enough money to pay all the bills on time, so I was worried about costs and actually getting the actual books put together, but I had time on my hands because when you dont have money, you dont go places or do things so I researched and got all the information and I started small with Drifts. It was my sacrificial lamb so to speak, and I figured if it got ripped to pieces, I would just pull it off the market and go back into my cave.

Drifts didn’t get ripped to pieces though, and as I write this, its hit over 450 sales on its own. That, I have been told, is kinda a huge freaking deal for an Indie author with no agent who self-published and is self-advertising with the aide of their friends on social media only. I was sent an article that said most books never sell over 99 copies in a year, and I have made that in a month. Now,I wish that meant I was getting rich and raking it in, but with most of those being e-sales or digital downloads of which I get a small percentage, I have yet to see a dime, in fact, I have seen nothing from the e-sale version as of yet and wont until 60 days after  I actually break $100 bucks and with that still quite a ways off, I am still very much in the red. My print books have been what have been amazingly making me the most money. People, especially those who are around my age, like to get something for their money, and I dont mind doing the leg work of actually walking my ass to the post office with my kids to mail out the books to all kinds of far-flung places, and once it was realized I am a hell of a lot cheaper than the big companies, people have been just ordering from me, I sign or inscribe the book and then mail it out to them, but still, in the red. Its crazy expensive to do all this stuff and even being smart about it,(which I wasnt in the beginning), it still takes awhile to get the books in, and then make sure I have everybody handled and then I have to wait for a day when its not pouring down rain like we should be watching for Noah to start rounding up critters, which is a bit of a thing in Portland, so I can walk to the post office with the kids since I still cant afford a car.

I published another book that I wrote over the course of a year and its very close to my heart and its very personal. There are a lot of things in it that are symbolic and there is a lot of gallows humor to go along with the Texas humor that comes with growing up back in East Texas in a time when things and people were different. That book has been great for reconnecting me to a lot of people that I would have never reconnected with, and it also helped force me to deal with a lot of things I would have never had the courage to face on my own. Its been a tricky path talking about that book. People want to know more about the characters and I really cant tell to much about some of them because it would spoil the story for the readers. There are a few people who know who is who and what is what and that’s all that matters, maybe after I am gone they will tell tales out of school and put those rumors to rest, but for now, im not going to talk about somethings, including Beau.  I will tell you that the monkey is real, if you have seen my videos or my summer avatar, thats him sitting on the counter next to me. Fergus was real. Those kids? Oh hell yeah, if you follow me on twitter of FB or any of those places, you know all about my little girl and her obsession with THAT BOY. #fml (yeah, im not too thrilled), but I guess it could be worse.

My daughter is my “manager”, she runs the show around my little writing world and tries to force me to get people to pay attention and buy my book, but with my Southern thing I have struggled with the whole insecurity thing and with waiting for the other shoe to drop. I was on the phone with Puerto Rico last night trying to track down cops to get a kid some help and speaking very bad Spanish in the process while she was harassing a fella who was one of the few I dedicated my pride and joy novel to. See, I had sent him and a couple of the other boys copies of the book as a way of saying,”Thanks” for inspiring me and saving me, and while I was glad to know they got them,(that alone gave me a near heart failure moment), she had been wanting to know if they LIKED it  because I had been mopey due to my reviews being low in number,(I thought), and she is a driven lil thing. Shes like a terrier with a bone and will worry it to death,(I am a prime example of that), so she had my computer because hers was dead, she was logged into her account as I paced in the kitchen speaking  my combination of “Bad Spanish” Arabic, and French, trying to not obsess over the fact someone else was on my computer, or that my Spanish was really bad and that I had been called crazy and probably a few other things as she and some of my friends harassed that poor boy like he was a cat cornered against a fence. When he said my book was “Cool” she shrieked. Jumped up, ran around the room like 3 or 4 times, rolled around on the floor and then hugged me and beat on my back until I coughed.   Honestly? I kinda felt like doing the same.

I’ve got quite a few reviews now, and another book about to come out in the next couple of weeks. I don’t know if I’m ever going to make a profit at this, but its a blast to connect with people and see the reactions to my writing , and honestly, I have enjoyed getting all the artists and photographers connected and working together and we are building a little network of people who are trying to keep the memory of something that was amazing, alive.  Its not easy and we may never get rich and famous doing it, but we are united by the 100th Monkey effect and that is rich in many, many ways.

Dear Roger: Leashing In The Control Freak

I have finally gotten some help with editing my writing. Yeah, yeah,  I know! I should have done it a long time ago, but when you are a highly distrustful, highly critical of your OWN self who takes every little mistake pointed out as an arrow directly to the heart, its very hard to do, but a weird thing has happened lately! i have actually been able to work with a couple of people who have been able to help me control my comma habit, and who have been able to point out and help me correct the things my terrible eyes miss on my 500 paranoid rereads, and I haven't gone off the deep end. I have taken the assistance, managed to remember to thank them and I have used it.
I think because they aren't sarcastic and mean, grabbing the back of my neck and smashing my nose to the paper while they yell at me about all the "Stupid mistakes" I have made, really helps. They are really pretty nice about it.
Remembering what has made me such a glitchy, insecure, over the top, unable to deal with compliments or criticism kind of person, has become a lot easier since a person who grew up with me came back into my life. He was 7 years younger than me, the baby of the small group of kids that eventually ran the meadows and East Texas swamplands that I wrote about in my book. He has been great for reminding me of things I had forgotten, or perhaps blocked out due to necessity. We both survived many of the same things and I had wondered about him often over the years and hoped he was well. I am beyond ecstatic to have him back in my life.
Giving up a little control and letting people help me has been difficult, I am not used to getting help with things or accepting help, and I am damn sure not used to having so many people being behind me and supporting me! Its been amazing and terrifying.
My own family has not been so supportive. My West Texas cousins have been, God bless them, I would truly feel like an orphan if not for them, and I will be forever grateful for their reminders that they are there and behind me in my writing, because I am essentially dead to the rest of my family.
When I call to talk to my sis now, I can tell she is uncomfortable and she gets off the phone quickly if my parents show up. My parents are not supportive of my writing at all, and even though I put quite clearly on the book the disclaimers that its fiction and even did a vblog talking about that, they are pissed off and done with me. I've always been the black sheep and I guess this just kinda relegated me to "black sheep with rabies" status, from what I have been told, they have even blocked my FB page from appearing on their computers anymore.
Its not easy being a parent, I know. My son and I are going through that whole,"You need to sort out your priorities! No! you need to stay out of my life!" stage of teenagerdom and its been rough. My muse took a runner on me during the battles and I haven't been writing while I deal with a son who essentially flunked his sophomore year of high school due to his guitar habit. Not because hes on drugs or running with a gang or any crap like that, but because he would rather sit and pick on his guitar until his fingers bleed than do schoolwork. All the work he did, he got "A's" on, because hes extremely intelligent, but hes just unwilling to do the stuff he has to do. I would threaten to sell his guitars, but I really think he would do something dire to me. You don't mess with his, "ladies". While we have been battling and arguing about his seeming lack of understanding of how the world works, (including the fact that his mom can shut off his Iphone at the drop of a hat), I have tried to make sure that he knows I still love him even when he is being hurtful and mean,and using all the cruel things he learned at the feet of his step-father to hurt me. I've heard it all, seen it all, and lived with it all, and I expect it all. I expect him to trash me and tell me how bad I am doing as a parent. I know that his life has not been idyllic or perfect, but I do the best with what I have and I really don't put a lot on him compared to what I grew up with, but its all part of the process I guess. I think its making me more prepared for the whole having my writing out for public perusal and criticism thing, because I am my own toughest critic. I burned most of my art and photography because I didn't feel it was up to standards that should be seen or that was worth wasting peoples time on, so having my writing out there where people can pick it apart and point out every little mistake and missed editing error is just the ultimate in masochistic indulgences for me.
Sending it to people who I respect and admire was the toughest step and I forced myself to do it. I agonized over it and that was what almost caused me to pull everything down and go into hiding all over again, but I did it and when I got word they actually got it? It was akin to standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon and either waiting for someone to tell me the view was pretty cool, or to give me a hard kick in the ass over the edge. Neither has happened, so that feeling of fear lingers. The resounding positive support from long-time friends and associates has been amazing and has gone a long ways towards drowning out the vitriol that is coming from my family.I never expected it. rebuilding an ego is a hard thing, and while I am kinda cocky about a few things, showing mine and what goes on in my head has never been one of them.
My books and stories and poetry are like my children, I love them with all my heart, and I nurtured them and worked hard to make them right, and I want others to love them as much as I do. Hearing that some at least care, that has meant the world and is going a long ways towards fixing many things that have been wrong with me for a long time. Who knew?

Dear Roger: Testes! Testes! What the Bulge?!

Yes, I totally stole that from a friend of mine who was battling with setting up his outgoing voice mail back in the the day. Unfortunately, it was working and it was working and recording everything he was saying as his outgoing message, so when he gave up in frustration and left his office for the evening, everyone who called into the sheriffs department to reach the public information officer afterwards for a day or so, got that particular greeting of “Testes! Testes! Does this fucking thing work?” Back then, it was laughed at and he was assisted with correcting the technology issue, nowadays it would me a major media event and he would probably be accused of a hate crime against testes or of being a man using technology.

Speaking of men using technology…what to say? A picture that left fangirls (and boys) of all ages around the world giggling their asses off and saying a very Takei influenced “Oh MY!” popped up (oh yes, humor very much intented, that too), including my small daughter! I was sitting here postulating on the possible Joel Grey “Cabaret ” influence and the meaning of the cane and all of the Red, when I noticed my my young daughter had tweeted that boy. I looked over at her, not even realizing she had typed anything and she still had a very odd look on her face. “I don’t understand.” That was the first thing she said to me. She was blushing and had a very odd smile, so I reached over and closed the picture on her desktop and said,”Daughter, I am quite sure you are not the only person in the world he does that to, go play with your monkeys and read your books, we will have this discussion in a few more years.”

After she left the room, still wearing her slightly stunned, confused, little smile, that picture was discussed and batted around on the interwebz for hours as the endless possibilities and meanings of all things that could possibly be rambling though that boys mind were contemplated, none of which, at least in the discussions I was privy to were fit topics for an 8 y/o and most werent fit topics for the under 21 , sober crowd. He is the master at inspiring such fun and it was a fun evening full of laughter and wild speculation about all kinds of things, that grown ups tend to talk about when they get the time to get a moment without the trials of life on top of them. My evening was made so much better by the inclusion of an old friend that I have known for most of my life, he was one of the first gay people I ever knew and he was how I KNEW it was not a choice, that it was the way a person was born, because I knew from the time he was 3 years old and wanted to be a Solid Gold Dancer that he was different. He survived a lot of things with me, knows a lot of my secrets of my childhood and we share a lot of common pain. He may not be my blood brother, but he is my brother and he is my chosen family and I am glad to have him in my life again. He brightened my world coming back into it and the fact he appreciates looking at some of the same fellas? Hell! I know we will have much to talk about and catch up over.

By the way, Wordpress still confuses the hell out of me.

Dear Roger: Reading Aloud After Dark

So, in the midst of moving my blog over to Wordpress  http://jenniferdscroggins.wordpress.com and trying to get things sorted out for exploring new ways to promote my writing, it was suggested that I read aloud from my book to give folks a bit of an idea what the story is like a little further on in.
My kids laughed their butts off over the chapter I read because they remember it as it  happened.
The chapter I read from is from the second part of the book and its after the characters have grown and have kids of their own and set out to return where to where things started in Texas.
A few people have commented that they would love to see my little book brought to life in other ways, and while I don't have the resources for that at the moment, my little girl is creative as all get out and who knows what she will be capable of some day, and eventually it will be hers anyway, so if she wants to, or if she wants to just let it quietly vanish into the family history,one never knows what the future holds.

I don't know how much longer I will post here. I'm a creature of habit and it often takes me awhile to get used to something new, if I ever do, so bear with me if I show up sporadically in both places, and if you haven't checked out my authors page on Facebook,(https://www.facebook.com/JenniferDScroggins) please do, I will be posting news about up coming new books and other things related to my writing as well as trying to link together all the Indie Artists and writers out there in our little world so we can pool our resources and help each other along, because that is what its all about, giving everyone a hand up and spreading the "Effect".

Ballad of a Ladyman: Hipster Hanky Codes

Ballad of a Ladyman: Hipster Hanky Codes     Im just gonna drop this here for everyone to read...Im loving it. Either/Or, whatever persuasion you ascribe to, when you see things that make you go,"Hmm?!"  Its nice to know you aren't the only one. So me an my black bandanna will just wander on off to sit and speculate and giggle.

Dear Roger: Guerrilla Parenting?

Sitting around this morning teasing a poor boy that is about to become a daddy for the first time about all the things he has to look forward to with a youngster underfoot, I have been reminiscing about all the things I experienced with my pack of young-uns and I have to wonder, how the hell I am sane at all, and if I am?
Kids do all kinds of things that your reaction to, while you are in the moment, really say a lot about you as a person and as a parent.  When I was a rookie at this whole situation, I used to want everything to be perfect. I wanted my eldest son to always be dressed like a little Lord Fauntleroy and I was always worried about what he ate and how he slept and if his poops were normal and all that great stuff. I didn't even have him snipped because I didn't have a pecker so I didn't know if it mattered or not and I couldn't bear the thought of one little ouchie ever happening to him ever! I carried him around in my arms so long that I swear the child probably thought he hadn't been born yet we were so attached.
I was insanely protective, didn't even cut his hair until he was nearly 2 and his little pink curls were getting him called 'Girly" by all my friends. Ahh yes, my "Friends", the ones who would do things like slip him sips of soda and other junk food when I wasn't looking or who found it highly amusing to teach him bad words like, "Asshole" and other such pleasantries. They especially found it amusing to teach him to use it to address strangers.
Kids are like that, they will pick up on the most inappropriate, foul word that you wish they had never heard and the will fixate on it and then, when you least expect it or want to even admit YOU know what it is, they will trot it out in public or around polite society and expose you for the true deviant that you are. Lately, my middle son, who has Downs Syndrome, has been obsessed with the phrases "Boner" and "Gay Sex" . He is in middle school. He comes home with the most charming things that he has been put up to by the lovely boys, (and girls) of the middle school world and he likes to share them with the world at large. The lady who runs the market we shop at on a regular basis now knows that, in addition to his mustache, he has pubes and that he finds her "Beautiful."  I wouldn't allow his older brother to kill him in the store, but his sister came pretty close. She shrieked in horror and said in a very loud and shrill voice, which carried all the way to the BACK of the store and down the sidewalk a bit,"CONNER!! WE DON'T SAY PUBES IN PUBLIC!"
I cant even pretend they aren't mine anymore. I cant outrun them. You will find as your kids get older, you are just too damn worn out to escape them. That has to be part of their grand scheme. They exhaust you by being so cute when they are babies that you lay there listening to them breathe and catering to their every sigh and whimper, and then when they are toddlers you cater to them to keep the temper tantrums down to a minimum so you don't get stared at like the rolling dog fight in the middle of a circus that you will feel like, and then when they are tweens, you start to realize that things are not what they seem, but by then, its too late! You are stuck! You are exhausted, often broke, and starved for sleep, sanity and decent, non-processed food and you cannot escape and you really wont want to anymore.
Once they are teens, you are totally screwed. I look over at my teen shaped lump that is laying on my couch, (even though he KNOWS I hate it when he sleeps on the couch because he sweats and funks it up), and I wonder, what happened to the little baby with the cute pink curls? Nowadays, he finds it funny to do things like blame his farts in public on me or his sister, and he burps so loud that people turn and stare, but hes looking at ME all scandalized like I did it instead. There are days I cant do a thing to please him, even though I try, and then days when I try to piss him off, that I seem to make him the happiest? Hes a guy now and he makes no sense to me.
Having kids is a crash course in the biological sciences and honestly, bio-hazards. I have had to clean things up and deal with things that have left me wondering just how in the hell its possible for me to ever want to eat food ever again. Children seem to believe that parents clothes are repository's for boogers and drool until they are well into their young adult years, and if you have a favorite t-shirt or what not, HIDE IT! they will find it and they will either paint it with barf, poop, pee or boogers or sharpie in some hideous manner and it wont even be salvageable or Hipster cool. Walls and your favorite art work also become favorite places to stash boogers for later consumption ,(I guess), I have had to gingerly scrape boogers off all kinds of surfaces in my house and I can only assume the child was trying to contribute to the overall theme?
They seem to believe that underwear is disposable and cheap for some reason and that actually pissing in the commode is only a suggestion, especially if they are boys, but when MOM gives them a lesson on aiming, that tends to correct that via traumatic mental scarring.
When you give them toys, forget about the instructions and the rules and the suggestions on how to play with it. Give them the box, get down on the floor with them and go nuts. They don't care about the rules. Kids aren't tiny little psychologists or focus groups, they are kids. Mine usually threw the toy in the commode, stuffed the cat in the box and had a blast beating on the wrapping as we chased each other around with it.
Be noisy and sing weird and inappropriate songs with them. We sang, and still sing "Keep Awake" all the damn time. Yes, people look at me funny for it. Yes, I have ended up in TWO principals offices for it,(so far), Yes! Its probably NOT intended for kids,(there is really no telling with that boy), but you know what? My kids LOVE that song. They KNOW it by heart, every single word to it and we can be walking down the sidewalk in the cold, miserable, Portland rain and my daughter will start singing it and the next thing you know we are ALL singing and laughing, (Even Stubby) and that is something.
Every kid and every family is different and they are all weird and embarrassing in their own way and kids thrive on doing things that make you want to cringe and hide, but some basic guidelines for survival are; keep the ADULT toys in a locked cabinet with the key either hidden or on your person at all times, always clear your cache and log off from your "Special" web sites, know that your friends are going to teach your kids words that you don't want them to say and know that they are going to say them in front of people to embarrass  you, blame your parents or your significant other or just pretend the person who heard it is hallucinating and crazy. Everything is surmountable, don't sweat the small stuff. Laugh at it. Material goods are just that, material goods. The only thing that matters in this life is your kid and what you mean to them and they to you. Love them and laugh with them they will remember that and love you for it.

Dear Roger: How To Be The Perfect Parent

When you find out you are going to be a parent, lots of people tend to offer you lots of advice about things from the ridiculous to the sublime. They will tell you to enjoy your last few days of sleep and sanity before your kid arrives,(that's actually pretty good advice), and they will tell you what to feed it, how to dress it, where to put it to bed and how to carry it, talk to it, and all kinds of crap.
They will judge you on what you eat and drink, how you act or look and all the crap you did before you found out you were going to be a parent, as well as all the stuff you do while you are waiting, (even if you follow all the rules to the letter), as the old saying goes,"You cant please everyone."
I am a firm believer that having a kid is a bit like a crap shoot. You can do everything right, be healthy, live healthy and still get a kid with an issue, or you can be a walking disaster of stress who drank the first few weeks you were pregnant because you HAD NO CLUE! you were knocked up, live like you are a refugee because you are hiding from a psycho, and you can have a totally healthy, textbook example of a perfect child born.
I've been a parent for over 20 years and im still learning new stuff everyday and saying things, doing things and dealing with crap that leaves me mind-boggled on a daily basis. Luckily, the flushing of weird/important stuff down the commode has mostly subsided, but we still keep a plunger and a snake in the bathroom because you NEVER FREAKING KNOW!
I have learned a few things over the years but I don't consider myself an expert by any means at all. My kids are kinda weird at times, a bit contrary and they have moments of sheer cussedness that make me forget I speak English.
I have learned that when a kid has a lovie/stuffy that they carry around and talk to and cling to like its the most important thing in the world, you always rescue it and you don't give it away. You respect that shit and you don't make fun of it. Everything has its time and its reason and if you don't make a huge deal of it, most of the time it will pass or settle out the way it needs to settle. Pick your battles and don't make the lovie one of them, you will lose.
Your kid isn't like everybody else s kid and they all do stuff at different times in different ways and it tends to work best for them. Your kid is also not you, so don't expect them to be,(this one has kicked my ass quite regularly and been the hardest thing for me to deal with), especially with my eldest two.
Your kid is not a poodle, you dont have to pimp and preen and groom to impress with them at the kid park like you do with your pooch at the dog park. Your kid will be happy naked with binky and snot in their hair, but polite society expects at least a diaper. This has also been a hard one for me and all of my sons still resent me for the sweater vests and penny loafers of their smaller days.
Talk to your kid. Not baby talk, though that is okay in small doses and if you are a dude it will totally win you points with women and get you all kinds of cred, but talk to them as they grow to. Also remember that your kids are LISTENING to you and WATCHING you all the damn time. You don't get a pass on any fuckery any more once you have kids. I get my nose rubbed in the fact almost daily that my daughter once saw me drink a beer and smoke a cigarette. "Thats really BAD mom! You could DIE and leave me an ORPHAN!"  Yeah...not cool. My cussing also gets thrown in my face almost daily. I cuss, I admit it. Im a freaking ex-cop! Im supposed to cuss! But I am strict on my kids about it and my eldest son is the strictest on the little kids.
My youngest daughter loves to sing a few songs and a couple of them have cuss words in them, including "Dinosaur" by the Mechanical People. We even remind her, "Stevie, don't forget to Graupner edit", but she usually does and then shes in time out for 10 minutes usually muttering on her way,"Dang it! Ben!"
Your kids listen and you are their first and most important and influential teacher. If you are racist and homophobic or just plain ignorant, you are going to make life hard for your kids while they grow out of it, I know, believe me, I KNOW.
The most vitally important thing that you need to absolutely know and have to be a parent though is this; you have to be ALL IN. You have to have complete and total, UNCONDITIONAL LOVE for your kid NO MATTER WHAT. If they are cute and perfect born to a life of privilege and joy, or damaged, homely, born in a ghetto, if you are all in and love that child with all your heart and soul and they KNOW that, then that child is golden. Never let them feel doubt for that for one minute, even if they test you and do things that break your damn heart and make you crazy, always, always, always tell them and let them know you love them and that you are there for them, because if you aren't, who will be? The difference between the broken and damaged people in the world and those who fly above it all, is that those who fly were loved.
If you are about to become a parent, you are already flying so its your turn to pass those wings on.

Dear Roger: This Wasn't Included The Mom Handbook

Today was a weird day around here, my eldest son had spent the night over at his buddies house again so I was home alone with the three youngest once again. My little girl got up early and took off to church as she usually does on Sunday, and then I was home with my two boys, who often miss out on church because there isn't room in the friends vehicle for them or Stubby just refuses to go because hes afraid I might have a spare moment to myself to find my sanity.
Anyway, the little boys slept in til fairly late and I rambled around the house cleaning and doing my regular stuff til they began to stir. I had everything put to rights and was looking forward to just relaxing away the afternoon and finishing up editing a few chapters of a story and maybe writing some more on a Serial Killer/Stalker story I have been researching for a few months.
Stubby and Sticky came wandering out at the same time, all bleary eyed and grubby boxer shorts hanging off their butts, scratching inappropriate places and whining about wanting things we didn't have in the house for breakfast.I told them to go wash their hands and faces and then have some breakfast while I went to make sure they had shut off their things in their room and left no evidence of anyone messing with or even looking at their big brothers stuff.
The room wasn't too bad, just socks on the floor along with blankets and a few books, but the bathroom...that was where it all went pear shaped.
I know those boys were potty trained when they first stayed with their father in Arizona, I know it because I trained them. I potty trained everyone when they were 18 months to close to 4 years old for Sticky,(Downs took him a little longer), I even taught them the,"Sink the Cheerios" technique of peeing. I had to teach them that because I am a neat freak and having boys who peed all over like elderly cats with bad attitudes would not be a good thing for my sanity. Sticky actually house broke before he potty trained. It took me forever to get him to stop peeing off the front porch and I was afraid he was going to keep getting in trouble at school for peeing on the playground. His father thought it was fine, after all, his main reason for us living so far out in the country was that he wanted a house he could pee off the back porch of without the neighbors calling the cops...charming fellow.
Anyway, my bathroom looked like they had gone in there and turned into wee boy pee helicopters. There was pee on the commode seat, which was DOWN, on the shower curtain, on the bath rug, on the tiles, on the BACK of the commode, and on the oak cabinet! I'm sure my neighbors think I slipped a few gears, but something had to be done, and bad cop came out to get the attention of the pee felons.
I marched them both into the bathroom and we had a refresher course in proper pee techniques, including stance and pecker handling(clothed and simulated), boys were mortified and embarrassed. Mom was mortified and disgusted that her sons were such disgusting little creatures. They were freaked out I KNEW such things,(I did spend a LOT of time around cops, Marines, Firefighters and just..guys), you pick up a few things. They helped CLEAN the ENTIRE bathroom and apologized profusely. Sticky made sure to announce to me each time he came out and peed afterwards, "I lifted the seat and held my pecker! I'm not a helicopter!" Stubby just blushed, but I know he got the point. When Chance got home later, the boys regaled him with their tales of woe, "Man, shes crazy!"
He shrugged at them, "Dudes, its easy, don't pee on the seat, don't mistake a dude for a chick, and just stay out of her way once a month and your life will not suck." We fist bumped. The eldest finally gets it.

Dear Roger: Its All In Your Head?

Being stalked is a horrible thing to experience, I should know, I have experienced it. My stalker was relentless and intelligent and he had help. He was also handsome and charming and well educated in the vernacular of law enforcement and he had friends who were manipulated into helping him continue stalking me for over a year. We had dated and it was a tumultuous relationship, he was and still is what is known as a psychopath and if you ever have the opportunity to read  Dr. Hares book "Without Conscience-The Disturbing World Of the Psychopath Among Us", You will find something called the "Psychopathy checklist", it is a screening tool for profilers looking for serial killers and the like. My stalker met 13 out of the 21 markers.
Back in 1994/95 the stalking laws were not as strict as they are now, though they did gain some teeth after the Rebecca Shaffer incident along with several other high profile stalker/murder cases, but proving you are being stalked is very hard.
I let people know I was no longer seeing him, I told him very clearly in front of people to leave me alone, and yet he would show up and demand to talk to me. He would treat me as if I was confused and he would show up at my work and act like I had called him for a lunch date and then become enraged when I would refuse to leave with him.
We worked with each other until he was advised to resign, and he made my life a living hell. He injured me several times, but they were all,"Accidental" including a broken tailbone, a severely dislocated shoulder, and multiple bruises and contusions.
I would get texts late at night when I was off duty,(before the days of good cell phones mind you) that were police code telling me that the man I was seeing had been shot in the line of duty. I was terrorized for months, followed and even though I was pregnant, he continued with the abuse and threats and assaults...yes, the assaults.
I moved. He found me. I changed phone numbers, he had it in days. I moved again, he found me again and left notes on my car. He denied the baby,(thank God), and threatened me and the child with death repeatedly, and then left flowers hanging on my door.
I moved to a security complex and things settled for a little bit. I had to hide from everyone. I had to cut of almost all contact with all friends, including the department I had started off with and I had to skulk into my own grandmothers house like a thief in the night.
I lost work, I tried restraining orders, protective orders, police escorts and when he tried to grab me at a college campus one night, coming out of the dark all clad in black with no warning, my shriek of terror had him surrounded by 10 very large and angry Tucson Fire Fighters who had been in the class with me and who already knew him from his past reputation, but it was the death knell of my career. I had to hide, so hide I did. I had my son very quietly with no fanfare or announcements and we moved to a place where we had over 150 very large and protective and armed brothers and sisters and for over 5 years we were safe. The state notified him about the birth he denied it, the state determined he was a very credible threat to our very lives and told me that no support or father would be forthcoming for my son, ever.
Before we moved to the far away place, he had tried to break into my apartment. He pointed a gun a me, he was a fan of the knife and razor as well, and the things he did to small creatures he caught on his property still leave me shuddering, so I count us lucky.
My stalker was very charming, he would tell me I didn't know what I needed, that I was,"Confused" and that he would take care of things.  He could be pleasant and fun to be around until that switch turned and then he was the most terrifying thing on the planet. His best friend was a Tucson PD officer who was giving him my personal information every time I updated my DMV records as required for my EMT license, so in essence, I was giving him my address each and every time. When that was discovered the officer was demoted and suspended, but I wish he had been fired because he cost me my credit, due to all the moves,(no allowance for that in most leases back then), and my career. There were days I literally thought I was going crazy and that maybe he was right, maybe I was imaging things, but then when he came to my door and tried to break in when my sister was there, I knew I wasn't and he would not stop until he was stopped or he killed me.
To this day I still twitch a little when I see a blue Toyota pickup truck or my son gives me an expression that looks just like him.
When I became a cop and focused my studies in Criminal Justice, I narrowed my focus to Serialized crimes and Sexually Motivated Homicides because I think I may have a very unique understanding of that line of insanity.
The state investigator who had questioned him and then later came out and spoke to me very candidly said that he was, in fact, quite clearly a psychopath and that I was probably very lucky to be alive and not dumped down some abandoned mine out in the west side of Pima County.
I've gotten pretty good at spotting folks like him and it worries me when I see they have resources like the internet to aide their insanity. I shudder to think what would have happened had my stalker had the net or phones with trackable Gps, or even worse, Google maps and public records databases on the web like those I have observed have to utilize at their fingertips.
I have advice for those being stalked, do not take it lightly, its a very serious matter. If a person has been by your house, that is a credible threat and you are in very real danger and if its happened more than once, they have met the California penal code requirements for Stalking (646.9) and if they have made threats, via electronic media, that is Criminal Threats  (422pc) and is a FELONY and they can go to prison for it and they SHOULD.
I quit worrying about what people thought about me when my kids safety came into play and I lived like a scrub for many years to keep him safe, 16 years later I have a healthy, happy and gifted son who knows what I went through and my stalker is a lonely and bitter man who is still just as scary.
The mental illness behind stalking is quite often Borderline Personality with Narcissistic tendencies, though I have seen what can only be some pretty significant schizo-affective disorder in those that I have observed of late. The interwebz is a scary place, and people send me the stuff of nightmares in what used to be a place of sunshine. God, I hope someone is paying attention.

Dear Roger: Miles To Go

Some times I get a reminder that I still have things to deal with, and I guess with all the stress and things I have been dealing with over the past few days, I was due a good one.
Nobody got hurt, but it took me a while to calm down and the person who was involved in the situation ended up standing on the sidewalk with me having to reassure himself that all was well.
Stevie and I took advantage of a break in the rain to walk to the market to get some milk and bread, as well as to just get the hell out of the apartment. I needed to walk off some of my frustration and work over some of my story idea. I had been talking to a friend on twitter, so I wasn't really paying close attention to things,(my bad), and I had Stevie talking to me and distracting me as we walked down the sidewalk.
I was comfortable, not too worried, a lot on my mind and not paying attention. A tweet came in and I slowed to look at my screen because its hard for me to read being its so small. All of the sudden a male voice said in my ear as they touched my shoulder, "Excuse me".
I yelled, shoved Stevie out of the way and turned to fight. Mind you, we were in an area that is where transients congregate for meal handouts, no one had been behind a few minutes prior and he startled the hell out of me.
He jumped back and immediately began apologizing. Stevie began laughing,(she wasn't hurt or even scared), it was an older man we see all the time walking the sidewalk with his wife.
He apologized and said,"I'm sorry, I was in Nam, I learned to walk light. I didn't mean to scare you, are you a Vet? You act like a Vet."
We stood on the sidewalk a few minutes, squared off while I calmed down, him reassuring me he meant no harm he was just trying to go around me, me apologizing for not paying better attention. We eventually nodded at each other and even fist bumped, and then he turned around and said,"It will get better, just give yourself time." Holy hell! I hope so.
Stevie is taking over some of the more stressful parts of getting my books out to the public eye. She is just more people friendly, and more pushy. She will tell people about my book and try to get them to at least give it a shot when I just want to write.
I am submitting my book to a few kickstarter style projects for authors to see if I can get any attention that way, and I'm trying to get the attention of some agents so maybe I can get it in the hands of someone who could do something with it. The less hollyweird set might see purity of the story so I am edging my way back into Cowboy Poetry and even dusting off some of my old works from those days.
I dont know if I will do a full-length audio recording of it, but Stevie sure wants it and she usually gets what she wants and I have no problem telling a story out loud that comes from my heart.

Dear Roger;Vacation? Riiight!

Its two weeks until the end of school. Oh God....Its TWO WEEKS UNTIL THE END OF SCHOOL! I am not particularly looking forward to this time. Yeah, if we had a way to get out and go do stuff, maybe, but with one kid that meanders, ambles and wanders more than he walks, another who has his own agenda that involves getting as far away from his,"Embarrassing" siblings as possible, and limited resources, I have a feeling its going to be a special kind of hell. I figure the eldest with stay gone as much as possible with his friends, returning home only to eat when we have a fully stocked larder, hit me up for cash, and clean laundry. The other two boys will complain constantly about having nothing to do. Walking to the park with them will result in complaints that its hot and there is still nothing to do.
Daughter will be gone for a week in July to church camp, I guess I am okay with that. last year it was only 3 days and I had a really hard time with it. This year its an entire week. I don't know. Her and one of her little church companions have been having issues and its going to reach a boiling point soon. She came home last night so angry that she kicked a chair and ranted about her for a good 5 minutes. Apparently the other little girl is a snobby little thing who likes to rub what she has in my daughters face and make fun of the fact we don't have much. Shes probably about to get popped in the nose. I've tried talking to Stevie, told her about how some people have to make up for a lack of everything else by showing off material things, and telling her to ignore the brat, but apparently the kid likes to follow Stevie around and get in her face about it.
Little girls are mean bitches. My daughter is a lot like me. If she pops the kid in the nose,(and I have told her violence is not the key), then she probably wont be going to church camp. If she doesn't go,ill have to find a way to keep her busy because when she isn't occupied, all hell breaks loose.
My stress stash is gone. A small bag of chocolates,a pack of cigaretts and 20 bucks, gone. I kept it hidden in the cabinet for those times when I was at the point where the amount of stress in my life had given me a case of  the twitches.The chocolate is self-explanatory, the smokes are a throwback to an old habit I had when I was a cop and I didn't smoke often or much, but it was a calming thing that also got the odor of human decomp out of your sinuses pretty effectively. The 20 was for a nice quality beer,(change to be had, of course), most likely a Guinness Stout. But the thing is, I can only indulge in my stress relief when kids are gone and I have the stash.
I have been really stressed out the past couple of days, its been one of those waiting game, gorilla in the room kind of things.
My book is out there, people have read it and no reviews have posted. The books in L.A. are missing or an unknown quantity. I am an obsessive compulsive personality with severe control freak tendencies. So I am in hell. I had planned to indulge in a bit of stress relief last night, I was going to send all the kids to church, and after munching on chocolate all day long, I was going to wait until they left then hot foot it down to the local market, buy my beer and then sit on my back porch, drink a beer and smoke until I either relaxed or my heart exploded.
Everything went pear shaped the moment I climbed up on top of the fridge. I found a trail of chocolate wrappers leading to the stash spot, they were cast about with an air of disdain as if to say,"Amateur". Reaching the stash spot, I prized it open to find not only the money gone, but the smokes gone as well. BUSTED.
My kids are all rabidly anti-tobacco. They wont care that they were expensive and hadn't even been opened, they probably did horrible things to them and then threw them in the trash or the commode as if they had found a junkies stash.
The 20? Yeah...it was gone too. I could ask about it, but we al know the truth, the little one who smiled at me soo innocently and said,"I don't know what you are talking about" that very morning probably didn't get to keep it and if I say anything to the big brother, then there will be the days long lecture about the evils of smoking.
I think I am just going to cut my losses, pretend it didn't happen and try to just distract myself with other things until all this passes. Its only the whole summer.

Dear Roger: Fearless

I have no thumbnails anymore. I have chewed them to the quick. Grandma would be so aggravated at me again,after all, she was the one who broke me of that habit when I was a kid and kept my nails chewed down to bloody nubs. Granted, her method of smacking me each time she caught me with my hands in my mouth would be seen as a bit harsh nowadays, it was effective at stopping it and a lot kinder than my moms answer of cutting all my nails down to the quick so there was nothing to chew! A few of my nervous tics have resurfaced and im working hard to control them, but of course my teen son has decided to be a full on jerk to me, stressing me as much as possible, so as if I didn't have enough on my plate with the end of the school year wrapping up, financials in crisis, books I am trying to promote, and let me tell you, as a NOBODY, that is hard as hell!
I am Southern, and as a Southerner, I don't like to impose on people, I don't like to keep nudging my way in front of people and begging them to notice me, but luckily I have friends who have been trying to help me get over that. Im working on trying to get my books to a larger audience, but its hard! Im not a well known person even in my own little social circles so just getting attention among them is not easy.
I am good at talking about other peoples stuff, heck, you ask me about those boys and their doings and you better pack a lunch and be prepared to sit a spell and listen, because I can tell you pretty much everything you want to know and then I will twist your arm,(maybe even literally), until you buy some of their stuff, but when it comes to my writing, I just stress and worry and think its never good enough. I sent those books out with delivery confirmations on them and I don't know why the hell I did that other than I must have a masochistic streak a mile wide. After I got notice that a couple of them had been delivered, I threw my guts up.
The two that went to L.A. are still in the wind and haven't been received according to the postal website,(not that I have chronically been twitching every time I get an "New Email" alert), so the rest of my fingernails have remained intact so far, but my daughter has been looking at me funny all morning. "You didn't sleep good last night at all. You are grumpy and jumpy today. Its going to be okay, your book is really cool! I love it, isn't that enough?"
It should be, it really should be, but I want to do well for her and the rest of my kids. I want to be able to give them a better life and maybe some kind of affirmation from somewhere would soothe my soul, but I know that's not coming from my parents, and there have been absolutely no reviews posted on the Kindle site though folks have been kind enough to tweet me some really good ones.
I built an authors page on Facebook last night, and I'm going to film the commercial that my little girl has come up with because its pretty damn funny if nothing else, and I always think that that world could use more funny.
I don't know what to do, Rog. I am no good at this stuff. I'm used to rejection and criticism and I should be fine with dealing with it, but until it comes, its like standing at waiting for that first punch to land, you just know its gonna sting and take your breath away and most likely make me want to do like I did with my art and photography, burn it all and just hide for the next 20 years, but I really cant afford to do that. I have kids depending on me now, and watching me, and I have to lead by example, even when its hard.
I'm going to let my little girl lead the way with most of the talking and the promotion of my writing and such, because for some reason, she believes in me and its so weird to be out in public to have someone walk up to people and say,"Hey! did you know my mom is a writer?! Shes really GOOD! You should buy her books!"  I love my kid, I don't know what I did to deserve her, and I hope I don't let her down.

Dear Roger:Talking To Myself In The Wee Hours

So I finally went and did it, I did the vlog thingy to talk about my writing and what motivates me and what not. I think I look like I need a couple good nights sleep, but considering it was recorded at 1130 at night after a long day of chasing kids around, my options were kind of limited.
I don't get a lot of quiet time in my house for doing things like that, I have either kids making all kinds of racket, a dog scratching his bits and ratting his crate or his collar or jingling the bells on the back door wanting out, or the dryer is running, the dishwasher, or I have a kid needing to ask me a question or even better, I have to referee a fight.
At night, if I am lucky, its fairly quiet. Most of the kids settle pretty quick and I can actually sneak in a little writing without my train of thought getting interrupted, but if I say an idea out loud,(as I tend to do in order to test out how it really sounds), then i often end up with Sticky coming out to see who I am talking to.
I end up falling asleep on the couch most nights and that's not a good thing. Our couch is not the most comfortable, its horrible for my back, and ive come close to dropping my laptop off my lap more than once. My daughter has become pretty insistent lately that I go to my actual bed at a reasonable hour, and she will come and stand in front of me with her ratty monkey and give me the,"Look" until I acknowledge her and say,"Yes daughter, Ill go to bed soon." Shes usually unhappy with my response, but when I have an idea working, its hard to stop it.
Promoting my books has been nerve wracking. A friend of mine said its like having children out there that you want people to love like you do, and she was exactly right, my books are like my children.
My daughter is going to make a commercial for them for me. She has been my biggest cheerleader in the entire family, hugging me almost daily and telling me how proud she is of me, and she brags about me to everyone! Its funny at times to hear her. She was even telling off the ex last night, "Did you buy moms book?" He told her that he had not, and she said,"Well why haven't you? She did a really great job and she has been working hard and I am very proud of her! You should be supporting her!" I was quietly doing a fist pump as he apologized and said that he would order one right away.
She wants to read my books and I have had a hard time keeping them out of her hands. While they are not ADULT content, they do have some adult content that I don't think she is ready to read, even if she has read the Harry Potter books. The kids did harass me into reading them a few chapters of 'Face in the Rear View Mirror" the other night and the laughter that echoed in the living room was infectious and we started telling and remembering other family stories that made us all happy.
The poop in the heater vent is a classic that will remain in family lore for decades, as will the monkey flying out the car window at 85 mph, along with the countless others that didn't make it into the novel.
I read the last chapter aloud to my daughter and she lunged at me and hugged me tightly and said,"That was soo cool! Thank you! When will you write the next book?" I just laughed and told her that it was her tale to tell from here on out.