I’m still here on this website. I’m not on Substack or Medium, I didn’t start a podcast, and I haven’t yet published a book. So, still blogging. In fact, if/when (WHEN) I do publish a book I will still blog.

Current mood: querying agents. That’s the part of the book publishing process in which the writer sends a very specific letter and various sample pages to agents via email or a service called QueryManager, seeking representation for her manuscript for the act of selling it to a publisher. It’s like finding a REALTOR to help you sell your home, except that where there are far more REALTORS than houses for sale, in this case there are far more books for sale than literary agents.

But. There are a LOT of agents. As one agent recently told me, there are thousands of them, and it’s all about finding that one person who is right for you and your book.

I finished my manuscript last fall, just about a year ago, and a full ten years from the day that I started writing it. (During that ten years, I lived a lot of life, so even though it took me so long to finish writing the story, it became much richer and dare I say better for it.) I spent the next 8 months making sure it had no typos or formatting errors, and writing the synopsis and my first versions of my query letter. Then I started querying in earnest in July.

So I’ve been at it now for over three months. It takes me about an hour to do each query because I research the agent and what they are looking for, try to find anything they have said about their current taste online, maybe anything we have in common or something that would help me personalize my pitch, then I labor over just the right thing to say, then I click send or submit. Today I tried to do more of them, because I am realizing that it’s a numbers game – the more I pitch the more likely I am to find that one special person who connects with my story.

I even met that one agent in real life last weekend at a writing conference hosted by our local library system. It was a fantastic day – free of charge – featuring panel discussions and Q&A’s with published authors, one-on-one meetings with literary agents, and small group chats with editors. I had a 15-minute one-on-one with a lovely agent who had already been on my list to pitch. She was kind and gracious and gave me great feedback on my pitch. I also met other writers who are also in various stages of the pitching process. It felt great to be submerged in a community of creative people for a whole day like that. Kind of like the world of blogging back when we first started.

Days go by when I don’t hear anything from the agents, and then every now and then I’ll get a response. Almost all of them have been kind rejections. One of them was a request for me to send my full manuscript! But mostly it’s crickets. Prevailing advice for debut novelists is to get right into working on your next book while you are querying, to take your mind off of the waiting and channel your energy away from dwelling on rejections and into something creative and new. Welp. Writing this novel took a lot out of me. I am not ready to launch a new novel manuscript yet, but I wanted to at least keep writing, so I have been noodling around with a few ideas, and tonight I came back to this space where I used to work out my raw emotion, beating it into words and sentences and until I feel better.

And it worked. Until next time…

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My first-born child, this baby who was born on the day of this overshare, the same person who was a precocious toddler, an inquisitive and enthusiastic child, a smarter-than-you adolescent, and a fiercely brave teen…

…is going off to college.

I moved away to college in August of 1989. I remember being excited and scared. I remember the luggage my parents gave me for Christmas in preparation. Fast forward through 4 years of college, through soul-searching years of figuring out what I wanted to be when I grew up, through meeting my husband and choosing to stay in California and make a family.

Then blink, and I discover I’m pregnant. I remember being excited and scared. Fast forward through all the years of parenting two kids and creating a life and a career and a home.

Then blink again, and that pregnancy became a whole person, with a whole life.

What magic is this?

I am excited and scared. How far into the future will we be, when I blink again?

The post Move-In Day appeared first on House of Prince.

Grilled sierra mackerel over salad

Husband and I are in the middle of a 10-day detox diet using a book by Dr. Mark Hyman. Basically you cut out all foods that are processed or inflammatory, just for 10 days, to see if you feel better. Then you slowly work some of those things back in. I jotted down some thoughts because I want to make the overshare blog a thing again.

Day 1:

Measurements: weight only. Baseline.
Water: Three refills so far.
Supplements: Pills taken. Forgot the fiber at lunch.
Journal: See below
Breaths:
Bath: First I have to clean the bathtub and I am in no condition to do that.

It started last night, really, with a few hours spent in the kitchen where I generally like to only spend a few minutes. I made cream of broccoli soup. I looked up “is canned coconut milk supposed to look like that?” I measured out tablespoons of hemp, pumpkin, and chia seeds. Later, because of the general state of my body, I didn’t sleep well.

It is 1 PM and I feel sick. A general malaise has joined the stiff joints and sore muscles in my hips and back. This is the condition that led me to the detox diet. Maybe by ridding my body of first world toxins accumulated over a lifetime of loving processed food, caffeine, and alcohol, I will free myself of this constant pain. But right now I am suffering from a lack of said caffeine. My head feels like it is spinning, I really need a nap, and despite these conditions I am still sitting at my desk at work on a Monday, foolishly thinking I can comprehend complicated material when it takes me twice as long to comprehend a basic email message from a coworker. She wants to meet on Wednesday morning. I can’t – my calendar says I’m booked already. That’s Thursday, she corrects.

Day 6:

Measurements: weight only. Minus 5 pounds.
Water: So much water.
Supplements: Forgot morning pills. Fiber x2.
Journal: See below
Breaths:
Bath: The kid is supposed to clean the bathroom. It’s 5 PM and he has not done this yet. Even when he does, he will probably not clean the bathtub. I am too tired to object.

My back and hip pain haven’t gone away. Every third night or so, I have trouble sleeping because of the pain. I’ve done chiropractic and physical therapy for 6 weeks now, and I’m still at square one. Monday I will call an orthopedist. This is 51.

I still miss coffee and bread and muffins and cheese and also cheese. But I have lost 5 pounds and I feel good about knowing that I’m only putting healthy foods into my body. It has only been five days so it’s still early. Even ten days isn’t long enough, really. I did an elimination diet in 2014 that was 90 days long. Felt like 90 years. The end result of that was learning that I am allergic to pizza. In the ensuing nine years I did not avoid pizza, and here we are today.

On this diet I have a smoothie for breakfast that has all those seeds and nuts in it. It does keep me full until lunch. I drink a ton of water, which I pledge to continue when the diet is over. Lunch and dinner are mostly salads with your choice of protein, in other words, leaves and lean meat.

I do notice that I haven’t had heartburn, upset stomach, gas or other gastrointestinal malfunction. This is major, because on the American processed food diet, I get those all the time. 

Cat watching me do morning stretches

Because of my hip malfunction, I’ve felt generally terrible since January, and it’s often hard to walk, or sit down or get up. I am starting to see myself in those drug commercials where fake patients talk about how they “push through” their chronic illnesses to lead productive lives. Cue the upbeat music, the images of ladies on motorbikes, their hair swept back from their faces by the wind. But I’m sitting here in my day pajamas in a messy house, craving a good nap but unable to find a comfortable position, and too tired to do the things I want to do. 

Just writing it out makes me feel a little better. I’ll come back on Day 11. (The diet is only ten days.) 

The post The 10-Day Detox Diet appeared first on House of Prince.

At dinner before Kathy and Sue’s wedding, July 2022

Hello! Hi. My name is Kim and I am the publisher of this blog. You might be wondering what happened to me and my family. More likely, though, probably not, because the only people who ever read this thing anymore are the people I am connected to in other places (Facebook, instagram, real life) and I share just as much as I feel comfortable sharing and that is fine.

I’m here today because my first born child (who now goes by Skye) is turning 18 in two days. It is a reality that I am so lucky to be witnessing, and still so moved and surprised and nostalgic about it, even though I’ve known for all these years that it would happen eventually. In other news, my second born child will turn 16 in ten days, so I was looking around for pictures of him to send to Aunt Kathy, who, in a tradition that she is creating for all of her grand nieces and nephews and niblings, is making a photo book of his life.

Finding these photos was more difficult than I anticipated because my old photo libraries are on an external hard drive that is so full that the Mac app Photos will not even try to open them unless I move them to a disk with more space. So now I am copying a HUGE photo library and that is going to take four hours. In the meantime, I decided to look through the blog archives to see which eras of Brady’s life I want to review pictures from.

And you know how that goes. Two hours later, I’m deep into blog archives, wishing I had continued blogging as frequently as I did when the kids were younger, because they were so funny and sweet, and if I hadn’t written their stories down I would have forgotten them completely. I shared some of them with Stewart, my husband, and he said “Yeah, we don’t remember because we never slept.”

The teen years have been rough, my friends. Each kid went through long stretches of barely smiling at me much less smiling for a photo. The pandemic sent them into their bedrooms to play video games and connect with other kids on Discord and they have just barely emerged. They are basically young adults now. They have, for the most part, preserved their core personalities: Skye is endlessly inquisitive and learns all day long and spouts facts. Brady is the class clown and loves to be social and play sports. Neither of them knows what they want for their birthdays or even what they want to do. I guess I am the only one who is derailed by their milestones.

Here are some things that happened recently that I will preserve here because likely in 10 more years I will have forgotten them.

1. Last night I took them to see John Wick 4. Good God what a terrible movie. The outing cost over $70 for three adult tickets, two large popcorns, two regular fountain drinks, and an Icee. That is far too much money to have paid to see 2 hours of gunplay and martial arts plus an hour of meaningless exposition. But for time spent together, I’ll consider it money well spent. (To be honest, though, I would rather have watched it at home so I could have folded laundry or something while it played.)
2. Skye downloaded an app that helps you identify plants. They went for a walk around the neighborhood pointing their phone at various plants (and animals, and humans) and marveling at the names of flowers, lemons, felines. (The app identified George as a “domestic house cat.”) During this adventure, Skye met a neighbor who has a beautiful drought-resistant garden in her front yard and they appreciated the plants together.
3. In a very long story made short, Brady, who has played baseball since he was five years old and fought like hell to get on the high school team and once wanted to play professionally, quit baseball in January and joined the volleyball team and is obsessed with it. He practices every day with the team and then a few times a week at the gym and yesterday he got up early to go to the beach with a friend and play volleyball there.Celebrating a rare win
4. Skye passed the driver’s license test and is now driving to school and sometimes takes Brady to the gym. We have sent Skye on grocery errands at least once and this is a game changer, just like parents of older kids have told us. Passed on the first try!
5. Stewart will be retiring soon. This is too big to comprehend and if I write another blog post anytime soon I will cover that subject there.
6. I am the same: getting older, but still willing to be ridiculous. The photo below was a thing I did for a laugh in my team meeting. It occurred to me recently that I am, let’s say…more youthful than other 50+ professionals at the organization where I work. Sometimes I wonder if I should be more professional than I am. Probably. But that feeling doesn’t last long. I like myself the way I am. Besides, I clean up just fine (see above) and can pretend to be mature and professional when necessary.

The worst part about this photo is the amount of flyaway hairs I can’t unsee.

The post Hello, It Is the Future appeared first on House of Prince.

My novel is about death, and grief, and life, and how all three of those very big things exist alongside each other. It’s about our human hope that life doesn’t end with death, that the spirits of our loved ones live on after they leave their bodies. It’s about pain and loss and sadness and how we climb out of the depths of despair to continue living after people who are important to us are gone.

A little light reading.

I live in privilege. I grew up in safety and health and with means and opportunities. I have been thunderstruck when someone I love died, because it was rare. I understand that around the world or even in my own neighborhood, other people are much more accustomed to death and loss and tragedy, and have vastly different attitudes and ways of dealing with them.

But I am fifty years old now. Time has broken down those privileges and brought death to the forefront much more often. Many of my friends are this age, too, so now our conversations  include stories of deaths. Deaths that are sudden and tragic and shocking, or a long time coming yet still tragic for the holes they create for the people left behind. And because I’ve been working on this novel for so long, those stories leak into my work.

It’s a very heavy project, sitting down with my manuscript every weekend, making sense of my editor’s notes and wading through the emotions that my characters experience, because as I tell their stories I feel their feelings. Not every chapter is about loss, of course; some of them are hopeful or funny or sexy or full of descriptive detail. But because this is my first novel, I have poured everything I know into it. I haven’t tried to separate real life from this story. Even though it is fiction, my novel is informed by my own experiences.

One of these experiences is a conversation I had with the late Jane Gassner, my original writing coach and developmental editor. It was June of 2021. I was officially done with my first draft, after laboring over it for years. Jane was with me all of those years, listening to me whine about it, reading early drafts, guiding me and coaxing me and sometimes sternly admonishing me for judging myself or for not going deep enough.

That day last June she was already feeling unwell, so I drove across town and picked her up and took her out to lunch. It wasn’t COVID, but she thought it was pneumonia or something, because she had trouble breathing. (Realizing only just now: this is exactly how my grandmother’s fatal lung cancer started back in 1992. How could I have been so obtuse?)

After lunch, at her kitchen table, we talked about What To Do Next with my novel. I wanted to make sure it made sense, that there were no plot holes or inconsistencies, that the character development was strong, that the reader gets lost in the story. In other words, I wanted to make it great. I read so many novels that are intimidating in their greatness, that transport me and move me and stir such envy in me. I think “I wish I could write like that.” When I would say those words to Jane, she would say “My darling, you can.” 

So. I’m crying as I write this, because I miss her so. She had such a way with words.

In You Will Be Just Fine, there are two main characters who were best friends: Joanne who is alive, and Caren who is dead. It switches back and forth between their points of view (POVs) so we experience the normal mundane world of a working mom, and the completely other world of a newly deceased soul. Jane told me bluntly, “I don’t think you need Joanne’s POV. I am much more interested in Caren’s world, as I am closer to hers than to the life of a mother with young children.”

I remember laughing a little, trying to dismiss that concept, because a) I am 100% attached to both of my main characters and b) I could not bear to think about Jane ever dying.

When it was confirmed that she was sick with lung cancer, we continued to discuss the project but it was clear Jane could not continue working on it. I hired a different editor, who said I could cut Caren’s POV. The life of the working mother and how she deals with the loss was so much more interesting to her. And guess what: she is much younger than Jane was and is a working mother.

I guess that means that my book has something for everyone. What’s most important is that in this story, the impenetrable barrier between the worlds of the living and the dead gets crossed. Isn’t that what so many of us dream of?

Both editors urged me to identify my theme, so I have since embraced that the theme is the fine line between life and death and how closely they coexist, and how our lost loved ones live on because we make it so. In the words of my dead character, Caren:

I will be in [their future] only as a memory that fades over time, only flaring up when Joanne comes across a photo of us together, or a video, all of us captured in a moment caught in a digital recording. That love never goes away.

The post A Matter of Life and Death appeared first on House of Prince.