As I sat in the curtained alcove next to my mother’s bed, I waited, and listened.  I heard fragments of conversation, occasional moans of pain, complaints, even a few jokes, like random rays of sunshine in the linoleum-floored ER.

“Don’t you worry about the hospital bill, grandma,” one patient’s granddaughter reassured her in a thick New York accent. “We’ll take care of it. We’ll just live in a box down by the river.”

“So you fell, grandma?” her grandson said. “Did it knock some sense into you?”

“When are they gonna feed me?” a woman in a wheelchair querulously demanded. “I need to be fed!”

“You’re not supposed to eat,” the floor nurse informed her, “because we’re still waiting on your test results.  But I’ll let you have some graham crackers and juice, and I’ll get your husband a chicken salad sandwich. How does that sound?”

“Why does he get a chicken salad sandwich and I only get crackers and juice?” the woman snapped. “Bastard.”

The woman next to us also took a fall and injured her arm. She was waiting to see if the bone was fractured, and to find out if she’d be going back home or staying overnight.

The good news was, there was no fracture. She could go home. The bad news was, there was no one to take her there. She called several friends, fumbling with her mobile, asking with steadily increasing desperation if one of them could pick her up. No one – including her home health care nurse – could come and get her. The floor nurse eventually arranged for a volunteer ambulance driver to come and get her and bring her home.

Where, I found myself wondering, was this woman’s family? How terrible to be alone  with no one to help her when she needed it most.

An hour or so later, the test results for Mrs Crackers-and-Juice came back; the doctor said she was okay and free to go home. Before she was wheeled away by her husband, she stopped to say her goodbyes to the various nurses, orderlies, and volunteers who had helped her.

Just before she left, she told the nurses in parting, “Thank you all so much! You’ve been wonderful. I hope I never see you again.”

The entire ER erupted in laughter. “We hope so, too,” one of the nurses said with a smile. “Now go home.  And don’t come back.”

Months of desk-bound dreaming about sand and sun and frozen drinks with cute little umbrellas is about to become a week-and-a-half-long reality.

Ah, vacation in the tropics.  Is there anything better?

Doesn’t matter.  Shoes, off.

You think she’d cut me a bit of slack.

Oh, crap. I think I just heard the car door slam outside. Let me go and see if it’s her.

It is. Katie’s back. Damn.  I’ve got to go.

“Darling!” Katie carols up the stairs.  ”I’m home!”

Right, I think grumpily, I’m “darling” at the moment.  Only because my wife has just spent God knows how much money on more shoes or capri pants or, heaven forbid, new knickers, and so she’s feeling a bit more tolerant towards me than usual-

“Come and see what I got!”

I put down my paint roller and step down from the ladder.  ”Be right there,” I call back.  I trudge downstairs, careful not to touch anything with my paint-spattered hands lest I hear about it later.

I make my way into the kitchen, and sure enough, there’s Katie, laden with carrier bags.  ”I’m just in the middle of painting the upstairs hall.  What is it?” I say (a bit tetchily, I must confess).

She sets the bags down on the kitchen table and rummages until she finds the one she’s looking for.  ”Ah, here we are,” she says triumphantly, and withdraws something and holds it out.  ”For you.”

I stare at her.  ”For me?”

“Yes.  Go on, what do you think?”

I reach out and take the sunglasses and turn them over in my hands.  ”These are the ones I spotted the last time we were at the mall,” I say slowly. The lenses are round and tinted a dark brown, very Noel Gallagher; I’ve coveted them ever since I saw them.

I look up at her in puzzlement.  ”But… it’s not my birthday.”

“No, it isn’t.  But I thought it only fair,” she added as she came up and slid her arms around my waist, “to get you a little treat, just because I love you.  After all, you do so much around the house, inside and out. And I really do appreciate it.”

You see?  You see how sneaky and insidious Katie can be?

Never mind the fact that I’m the one who’ll get the credit card bill in a day or two, or that I’m the one who’ll pay for all of this stuff; now she’s gone and made me look like an unappreciative, grumpy git in front of you lot, to boot.  I tell you, I can’t win.

“Thank you, darling,” I tell her as she kisses me.  ”Very thoughtful.  I love them.  And I love you.”

“I love you, too.  I remembered you said you liked them. You see, I do listen to you.”

“Good to know.”

“Before you go back upstairs,” she adds coyly as I turn away, “there’s something in the car I need your help with.”

“Oh? And what’s that?” I ask, as a sinking feeling settles in my stomach.

She gives me her brightest, most winning smile.  ”Well, a vacuum, of course! We needed a new one. I got one of those really nice ones, with no vacuum bag to bother with.  It’ll save us a ton of money on vacuum bags.”

So I bring in the outrageously expensive new vacuum cleaner, the cost of which could’ve financed a skiing trip to Aspen – round-trip airfare and lift fees included – and stand aside as Katie plugs in the new vacuum and switches it on.

My duty here is done. I grab my sunglasses and return upstairs, to my ladder and my painting, secure in the knowledge that, for the moment at least, Katie is happy…

… and, for the moment at least, so am I.

And yes, I read them all. Not necessarily cover-to-cover (who has time for that?), but I read the articles and features that catch my interest.

And my magazine obsession got me to thinking… which magazines meant the most to me when I was ten? Sixteen? Twenty-seven? Thirty-nine? (Let’s stop there, shall we?)

Here’s what I came up with.

Jack and Jill – This was the first magazine I remember buying. While my mom did the grocery shopping, I made a beeline for the magazine rack by the cash registers and grabbed my copy.

One feature story sticks in my mind.  A family loaded up their station wagon and went off on vacation, traveling from Nevada to California. But halfway across the Mohave desert, their car broke down. They were miles from anywhere. This was before cell phones, when there were still great stretches of Nevada desert and deeply rural areas where you could, literally, disappear. They survived for several days by eating… crayons.

I remember taking an experimental bite out of one of my Crayolas, just to see what it tasted like. It was waxy. Not very tasty. But if eating a couple of Sky Blues and Forest Greens meant the difference between life and death, well, I decided, I could do it.

Mad Magazine – I bought my copy at the local 7-11, along with a Slurpee and a pack of Chicklets or Bazooka bubblegum. Then I’d settle down for an uninterrupted hour or so of Spy vs Spy, parodies of the latest movie or TV show, the Mad Fold-In, and whatever other gems of irreverent wisdom were contained therein. I learned that politicians were mostly full of crap, our toys were garbage and our cereals were sugary teeth-rotters, and that satire – and Alfred E. Neuman – was king.

Cosmopolitan – Ah, the ‘Cosmo Girl.’ She breezed through life – and men – with nary a care. Yes, the Cosmo girl was all about getting a man – but not necessarily for keeps. She had fun, she had great sex… and then she moved on. Carrie Bradshaw was a Cosmo girl, with a nineties dash of feminism. Although I wanted to be a Cosmo girl, I never really was. (I guess I just didn’t do ‘breezy’ very well.) But I learned a lot from the articles.

Red, Woman & Home, Easy Living - Right now,  I’m loving British women’s magazines. And Red is the one I grab off the shelf first. Whether it’s Rosie Green’s amusing, yes-that’s-exactly-what-men-are-like stories about Alpha Male, or Dorrance’s charming “Mimi” cartoons, or Viv Groskop’s book picks, I always enjoy the tantalising glimpse into women’s everyday life in the UK.

Yet when I caught up with Ellie, the little girl I used to babysit – now grown and married – she told me that she still remembered those cookies. 

When Ellie and her family moved in across the street, I was a typical teenager who wanted the things most teen girls want – cosmetics, candy bars, the latest issue of Tiger Beat magazine, and CDs (iPods hadn’t been invented yet). I owned a used Camero that frequently needed gas, or tires, or new speakers. (Hey, tunes were important; they had to sound good. Especially in the car.) 

 I always needed extra money.  Babysitting was the perfect solution.

Ellie’s parents both worked, and her brothers were grown and gone; she was a late arrival to the party. A surprise. At nine years old, Ellie was… high-spirited, to say the least. One day she locked her mother out of the house and made faces from the window as her mom banged away on the front door.  (Needless to say, Ellie paid the price once mom finally got in the house.  But she told me later it was still worth it.)

My mother said Ellie was an unmitigated brat. But I knew she was just a lonely kid who didn’t get nearly enough attention at home.

She was smart, and so she could be very trying at times.  (‘Why?’ and ‘I don’t have to, just because you say so’ were her favorite phrases.)  But despite that, we got along reasonably well most of the time. We were kindred spirits. 

We didn’t do anything exciting when I came over; we played board games like Monopoly or Parcheesi or checkers (if she didn’t win, she’d declare the game ‘stupid’ and turn the board over) or we watched television, or we dressed up in feather boas and tiaras, or on rainy days, we baked cookies.  Peanut butter cookies were the only kind I could make.

After the dough was mixed and dropped onto the cookie sheets, I showed Ellie how to press the tines of a fork into the tops to make a crisscross pattern on each cookie.  She loved doing that; it was “her part” to do every time we made cookies.  Then, of course, came the even better part – eating those warm, crumbly cookies straight out of the oven until our poor stomachs begged for mercy.

Years later, in her final year of college, Ellie told me that she never forgot those afternoons with me, baking peanut butter cookies.  And she admitted she thought my old blue Camero was “cool.”  She wanted one just like it when she grew up.  (She ended up driving her dad’s ancient diesel Mercedes off to college instead.  Such is life.)

When my youngest son was small, he was obsessed, not with peanut butter cookies or feather boas, but with GI Joe action figures.  He recently told me his best memories are of the two of us hunting for GI Joes in every drug store, toy store, junk shop, and flea market known to man.  The scores!  The rare finds!  The big slice of greasy cheese pizza afterwards!

It’s clichéd, but true – it’s the little things that matter most.  The memories we build with our kids and grandkids now are the things they’ll remember later, long after the toys and video games and bicycles are gone.

So, what are you waiting for?  Get out there and start making some memories.  (By the way…I have a great, Ellie-approved recipe for peanut butter cookies, if you’re interested…) 

Writing a book is the easy part. It’s what comes afterwards that makes you wonder why you ever bothered in the first place.

I’ve come to the conclusion that you have to be a bit of a masochist to be a writer. You spend a lot of time in your unpublished writer’s void waiting… waiting to land an agent / hear back from a publisher / see your work in print. More often than not, you hear nothing. (Cue the sound of crickets chirping.)

When you DO hear back, mixed in with the “we love its” and “you’re the next Sophie Kinsella,” you will mostly get criticism. It’s good, but the pace drags at the end. It’s good, but can we make the heroine American instead of English? It’s good, but can you rewrite the entire thing… by next week?

So you make the changes. You polish, perfect, and prune your prose. You ruthlessly delete entire scenes (never get too attached to your sentences and paragraphs – every word is expendable). Then you send it off… and you wait.

You get very good at the waiting game.

Besides writing a book, to be traditionally published, you need an agent. You need a presence on Twitter, or Facebook, or Goodreads (or, preferably, all three). It helps if you have a website and/or a blog. You need to be able to work with an agent or an editor to provide the revisions they request – and you need to turn those revisions around quickly. 

And your book has to be good. Not just “My aunt Fanny Fribblestein read my story and said it was better than 50 Shades of Grey” good, but “the editor at XYZ Publishing wants to buy my book NOW” good. It has to have a hook, and great characters, a tight plot, and a point. It can’t just meander aimlessly for 400 pages.

Now, having said those things, here are my Top Five Things Never to Say to an Unpublished Writer:

1. So… are you published yet?  
2. Oh, anyone can write a book.  I’d write one myself, if I just had the time.
3. Oh, you write romance novels, eh?  (This is typically said with a sneer, a smirk, or a little moué of distaste.)
4. I wrote a story. Read it and lemme know what you think.  Oh, and if you see any mistakes, go ahead and fix ‘em, okay?  (You’re a writer; you’re probably good at that grammar stuff.)
5. Tell me… do writers make a lot of money?

♥ ♥ ♥

1. No.  If I was published, don’t you think I would’ve, maybe, mentioned it?  Worked it into the conversation?  Or maybe taken an ad out in the Washington Post or arranged for a flash mob in the middle of Dupont Circle?  Just saying.
2. Go ahead – write a book.  Write a book while holding down a full-time job, keeping a house clean and a husband happy, maintaining a social media presence, and producing a blog every week.  Then get back to me on how easy it all is.
3. Yeah, I write romance novels.  I’m doing some research, as a matter of fact.  (Raises brow suggestively and winks.)  Wanna help me with that, big boy?
4. I’m sure your story is riveting.  While I love to read, two things: (a) I have my own book to write, a revision to complete, a blog post to finish by Sunday, a massive pile of laundry to wash, and (b) I am not an editor.  More specifically, I am not YOUR editor.  Correct your own damn mistakes.
5. I’m sure they do… if their name is Stephen King or Michael Chabon or Jonathan Franzen. Is my name Stephen or Michael or Jonathan? (No.) Am I still working a day job? (Yes.) You do the math.

So the next time you talk to an unpublished writer, remember – handle us with care. Or we might just write you into our next book… and kill you off on page 10.

Well, she’d done it.  Despite a lousy housing market, and despite everyone saying it would take months, the house had sold in four weeks.  It was officially off the market. 

Unlike herself, who was once again back on the market.

She glanced around the living room, with its stone fireplace and vaulted ceiling, and felt a pang.  Their first Christmas in the house, Alex insisted on getting the tree himself.  He’d chosen a nine-foot Balsam pine from the woods adjoining their property, and used a chainsaw to cut it down. The tree was beautiful, she remembered, and perfectly sized for the living room…

… but too big to fit atop their Toyota Camry.

They’d borrowed a neighbor’s truck to get it home; he helped them lug it inside, through the French doors off the kitchen and down the hallway to the living room.  Needles were strewn everywhere. 

But when they finally got the tree up and decorated, it took Dana’s breath away.

She turned away from the window now and headed into the kitchen. She needed a cup of good, strong coffee before she began the dreaded task of packing.  With her daughter Becky off to college, and her divorce from Alex final, there was no reason to keep the house any longer. It was far too big for one person.  Or even two, for that matter.

Although she was relieved that the house had sold, Dana felt a tiny bit forlorn, as well.  An entire chapter of her life was over.  Who knew what lay ahead?

In the kitchen doorway, she paused.  Notches in the wood trim marked Becky’s height at various ages – four, six, eight. She took a mug down from the cabinet. It was painted with a dachshund, once bright blue but faded over the years to pale teal. Alex had brought it back from one of his business trips to Kansas City.

Had his cheating started then? she wondered as she reached for the coffee pot.  Possibly.  Probably.

“Take me with you,” she’d implored him as he’d packed for the trip.  “I’ve never been to Kansas City.”

“You’re not missing anything,” he told her.  “Have you seen my yellow tie?”

“It’s in the top drawer.”

He rummaged in the drawer until he found the tie in question and threw it in his suitcase. “I’ll be in meetings all day. You’d be bored, babe.”

He’d convinced her to stay behind. And later, after he returned, she found the hotel receipt. He’d had dinner in the hotel restaurant, four nights in a row – dinner for two. When she confronted him, he shrugged and said he’d had dinner with a client. And the matchbook from a popular strip club-? His client wanted to go, so they went. You had to keep the client happy. It’s how you played the game.

And she’d believed him. Until, eventually, she didn’t.

The phone rang.

“Have you finished packing yet?” her mother asked. 

“Finished? I haven’t even started.”

“Dana,” her mother sighed, “you can do this. Pack one box. It’ll get easier as you go.  Just sort everything into piles – keep, donate, or-”

“-throw away. I know.” Dana set her cup down on the table. “Easier said than done. I’m still working, you know. And Becs is away at school. And-” her voice wobbled “-this is my life we’re talking about. Not just boxes of china and books and winter coats.”

“I know.” Her voice softened. “I wish I could say it’s easy, but it isn’t. Divorce sucks. But you’ll get through it. You’re well shed of that bastard, anyway. Alex is a womanizing piece of shit. I told you that from the start.”

“You told me he was better looking than Dr. McDreamy, and you said if you were ten years younger, you’d jump his bones yourself,” Dana reminded her. “That’s what you said.”

“So we were both cruelly deceived. Get over it, and move on, honey.”

The doorbell rang. “There’s someone at the door. I’ll call you back,” Dana said.

She went to answer the door. As she swung it open, she froze. “Alex?”

“I was just driving by and saw the sold sign.” He hesitated. “I don’t suppose… I could come in for a minute?”

Wordlessly, she held the door wider and let him in. “Becky’s not here, she went to Charlottesville with Lisa.”

“Hard to believe she’s starting college in a couple of weeks.”

“Not to  be rude,” Dana said, “but why are you here, Alex? You didn’t ‘just drive by.’ What do you want?”

“I don’t want anything.” Annoyance flickered across his face. “I just… I wanted to see the place one last time, I guess.”  He glanced around the hallway, at the Dhurrie rug they’d found in a second-hand store, the Farrow and Ball wallpaper he’d spent an entire Saturday putting up. “And I wanted to say-” he stopped. “I wanted to say I’m sorry, Dana.  For everything – the cheating, the lying. All of it.”

Once, her heart would’ve melted at those words. She would’ve forgiven him, taken him back, tried to keep things together for Becky’s sake.

But he’d said those exact words to her so many times, they had no meaning anymore.  She shrugged. “It’s done. I got over it… and you… a long time ago. But thanks.”

“Well,” he said tightly as he turned to leave, “I guess I deserved that. If you need any help moving-”

“I don’t.”

“Right. Entirely self-sufficient, that’s you.” He put his hand on the doorknob. “I’ll see you at the settlement, then.”

“Yes.  Goodbye, Alex.”

“Goodbye, Dana.”

She closed the door after him, and returned to the living room to start packing.  There was so much to do, it was hard to know where to begin.

There’d be plenty of time to cry, later.

But for now… she had a life to pack away into cartons and boxes, along with the memories, good and bad. But it was okay.

After all, she reminded herself as she reached for an armload of books, she had a whole new life out there, just waiting for her.

… and about a million and one distractions.

First, there’s the most insidious distraction of all – your laptop. It’s filled with evil things just waiting to sidetrack you – things like Twitter, and Facebook, and Pinterest – oh my! And Instagram, and email, and – oh, someone just sent me a Coachella video. Here’s a link to a couple of blogs I’ve been meaning to read, and here’s a sample chapter for the latest Marian Keyes novel. I love Marian Keyes.

I’m not a writer, I realize with chagrin. Nope. I’m a crow, in skinny black jeans and a black t-shirt, because I’m far too easily distracted by shiny objects.

Take the shiny object who just walked in. I look up, and I see him, and I freeze. I swear, it’s Jude Law. Oh. My. God. But the name he gives to the barista is Tom. Still – he could be incognito, right? He could be here in DC, filming, and so of course he doesn’t want to be recognized. He glances over; our eyes lock. Oh, crap, did he read my mind? Does he know that I know it’s him?

My heart races. Is this a Love Connection? Forgetting for the moment that I’m already married, I see the tabloid headlines in my mind:  ’Law and Oliver Wed Following Whirlwind Starbucks Romance’. Or maybe, ‘Katie and Jude – A Whole Latte Love’.

Then I realize he’s not looking at me – he’s looking at someone sitting behind me.  Oh, of course.  His wife.

My daydream crashes headlong into reality. It’s not love at first sight that’s causing my heart to race. It’s an overactive imagination and way too much caffeine.

Okay, focus, I order myself grimly as I return my attention to the laptop. Write. It’s time to name that new male character in chapter three.

Hmmm… how about Tom?  Or Jude? Those are both good names.

Mentally, I shake myself. Focus, focus, FOCUS!

Let’s call the new character Will.  He’s a photographer, with a five-o’clock shadow on his jaw from a late-night shoot, and he’s just about to meet the heroine.  She spills Diet Coke all over him.  Then…

A woman walks in and goes to the counter to place her order. Clasping her hand is the most adorable little Chinese girl, with silky black hair and a shy smile.  She wants an oatmeal cookie. Mommy says no. Adorable little Chinese girl immediately morphs into the thing that emerges from Ripley’s stomach in Alien.

So much for focus.

As I close my laptop and gather my stuff to leave, an idea occurs to me.  Maybe my heroine meets an actor, an actor who’s on the run from his own fame. Can she trust his feelings for her?  He’s an actor, after all. Can he trust her feelings for him? Maybe she’s just another celebrity chaser, hoping to cash in with a juicy tabloid tell-all story after their fling ends.

I hurry to my car and throw my stuff inside, anxious to get home…

…where I can settle down and write. With no more distractions, and no more shiny objects.

Just me, my imagination, and my laptop.

Well, enough of that. I had my own life before Katie, you know. And quite a different life it was, too.

I called myself Olly then. I was the real deal, with piercings and tattoos, Doc Martens and attitude. I was skinny, with a strip of blue hair that stuck up like the bristles of a broom, shorn on the sides. You’d never have guessed I was a nice, middle-class boy from Fulham.

We were pretty good, too.

We had our fans. Female, some of them, and quite ardent. They followed us devotedly from the clubs we played at, to wedding receptions, village fetes, store openings, and obscure (some of them very obscure) festivals.

I fell hard one summer in particular for a girl named Edie Farringdon-Allchurch. Edie was posh, all long legs, short blonde hair, and big brown eyes. We were mad for each other. Her standard festival outfit was a pair of really short shorts, a cropped t-shirt, and bright green Wellies.

She turned her back on her aristocratic family, with their stately pile and their expectations, and threw it all aside to be with me…

…until the end of summer arrived, and daddy threatened to cancel her Barclays card and cut off her access to the family checking account. Edie cried; but she kissed me goodbye and returned to the Farringdon-Allchurch bosom in South Ham posthaste, leaving me to pick up the pieces of my (predictably) broken heart.

Although our band was popular, fame never found us. It not only eluded us; it ran from us, screaming in fear. Eventually, Die or Be Dead fizzled. We drifted off to finish our educations, or took jobs in graphics or IT or, in Danny’s case, drove a taxi. We fell in love; one of us (me) eventually got married.

I washed the blue dye out of my hair and got rid of the Mohawk; I replaced my  ripped t-shirts and jeans with a suit and tie, and exchanged the microphone for a briefcase. I put Edie Farringdon-Allchurch firmly out of my mind.

My transformation into a Responsible Adult was complete.

Needless to say, my parents were ecstatic. I’d morphed from a would-be Sid Vicious in big, scary boots and blue hair to a solicitor in a highly respected law firm-

“Darling, would you bring me up a sandwich and a glass of iced tea?” Katie called down the stairs.

I return to the present with a start. “Ham and cheese okay?” I call back.

“Perfect! I’m just writing this week’s blog, I can’t stop…”

“Be just a moment,” I reply, and head for the kitchen. As I assemble the components of a ham and cheddar on wheat, I smile as I remember how we met.

She was an American, a tourist newly arrived in London, struggling to place her lunch order to the counterman. Did she want her ham and cheese on a bap, or granary bread? Salad cream with that?  Branston pickle?  Ribena, or orange squash?

She was completely and utterly lost.

“He’s asking if you want your sandwich on a roll, or wheat bread,” I explained, “and do you want mayo, or pickle relish.”

She smiled at me then, grateful for the assist, and suddenly the queue behind us, the shouted sandwich orders, the electronic beeping of the till, and the smell of grilling onions – all of it faded into inconsequence.

Now, I’m the occasional maker of sandwiches. The fixer of flat tires. I read Katie’s drafts, offer suggestions, give her a bit of encouragement when she’s losing faith in herself. In exchange, she puts up with my moods and long hours, and forgives me when I misplace the corkscrew in the tackle box.

And, do you know?… I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Sorry, Edie.