"It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction.  Fiction has to make sense." -Twain

It was Easter Sunday many years ago during my struggling to survive single years. Church was letting out. I was with some friends who were in the same situation I was in, single with family far away or otherwise not available. They were going out to lunch at a Chinese restaurant down the street that was open. They invited me to join them. I didn't have the money to spend, and I was an introvert who'd already had my fill of people for the day. I declined with the lack of funds being an honest excuse. There was a guy there with auburn hair, a well manicured red beard, and the bluest eyes I think I had ever seen. He said, "I'll loan you the money."  I knew him because I was friends with some of his roommates. I don't know if we had ever had a conversation beyond small talk and pleasantries. I was hesitant, but everyone was urging me to come. I agreed and of course ended up sitting next to the guy who had offered to pay for me.

I didn't know when I would next see him, but I knew where he worked. He owned an auto repair shop. I stopped by his shop later that week to pay him back for my Easter lunch.  He suggested, "Instead of paying me back, how about if we go out to dinner and you can pay for it. I'll cover the tip."

Honestly, I was paying him back with money I could barely afford to give up. I was recovering from a back injury and was only working part-time. My excuse for not wanting to go to lunch because of financial constraints was sincere. But dinner for two -- how was I going to manage that? I was doing calculations in my head sorting through how I could possibly afford it. Then, he smiled with a mischievous glint in those beautiful blue eyes, and I said yes.

We went to dinner. We had the early-bird special at The Little Venice Italian Restaurant. After dinner, we went for a drive in downtown Washington DC. It was springtime, the cherry trees were in bloom and were lit up all around the Tidal Basin. It almost looked like they were glowing. It was beautiful.

Image from Washington Post

Well, that was many years ago. Now when hubby and I are asked about our first date, or how we met, I smile and say, "He asked me out and made me pay for it."

I've included our first date story as the story of the first date for a couple in one of my novels. I've had some people say they love it. I've also had people say the scene is overdone and unbelievable because no guy would do that and no woman would respond to it if they did. Oh yeah? Hubby says if someone wants to be with you, they will say yes to any opportunity that is offered.

Sometimes the truth makes the best fiction.

Pimp My Bio

There is a writing contest beginning on August 2nd called Pitch Wars . The prize is to receive two months mentoring and guidance in revising a manuscript and pitch to be seen by participating literary agents. Mentee hopefuls are doing a Pimp My Bio Blog Hop. That's when they tell about themselves on their own blog. Editors and other participants hop from blog to blog reading everyone's posts to learn more about each other. It's a good way for the mentors to discover if a mentee hopeful is someone they would enjoy working with.

Problem for me though. I’ve been reading other #PitchWars hopefuls' bios, and I think I am the uncoolest kid in the class. I’ve tried to come up with some fascinating things to tell about myself to convince the Pitch Wars editors that they want to work with me. Um. . . .

Oh, I'm stubborn.

My husband has called me relentless.

It was a joke growing up that if you wanted me to do something all you have to do was tell me it was impossible and I would do it. Someone once told me that solving Rubik's cube was impossible. 

“You think so? Well, I’ll show you!”

This is my fidget basket. Notice the solved cube? When I am editing, or listening to a text-to-speech recitation of my manuscript, or following a contest twitter feed, I tend to fidget.  If I didn't have something to keep my hands busy, I'd probably eat too much. This basket is my solution to my fidget problem. My daughter gave me the mug when one of my characters started quoting her.

I dated a guy whose hobby was caving; he liked crawling around underground, in the dark, under tons of rock, with a light strapped to his head. I realized that if I wanted to spend time with that guy, I would have to learn to like crawling around underground, in the dark, under tons of rock, with a light strapped to my head. Like I said, I’m stubborn. Put a challenge in front of me, and if it is within my physical abilities, I am likely to try. Crawling is within my physical abilities. The rest of it is just dealing with the mental challenges of facing darkness, mud, wildlife, closed-in spaces, and tons of rock over head. Easy.

This is the last cave I went in with that guy. It’s called the Sinks of Gandy. It's in West Virginia. Gandy Creek runs through the bluff  ending into a meadow pasture. Watch out for the cows. Physically, it is a fairly easy cave to do. Just follow the creek. There is no crawling in tight passages involved. When we went, our four kids went with us.  Yeah, I married that guy, muddy boots and all.

As a family we do primitive camping, sometimes along Gandy Creek. Primitive camping is when you bring your shovel and water filter because where we go there are no bath houses, electricity, or plumbing. There is running water in the creek behind the campsite. It's a challenge. I like being challenged.

One of most challenging tasks I've taken on in my life is homeschooling my four kids from kindergarten through high school. I'm almost done, my youngest is a senior in high school. The oldest is in grad-school studying to become a pharmacist.

I've faced physical challenges in my life, and I've faced the challenge of being learning disabled.

I've lived with chronic, almost daily, pain for over twenty years now. I am sensitive to most of the food on the planet and I have a rare disfiguring disease called Neurofibromatosis . Because of my learning disabilities, without technology, especially spell check and text-to-speech software to help me, I probably couldn't be a writer.

So, what does all this have to do with #PitchWars and #PimpMyBio? Because, I’d make an excellent mentee.  If you put a challenge in front of me, I’m going to take it on. I will find a way to succeed. Dark holes in the ground don’t frighten me, not even when there are bats flying past me in a tight passage*, the intimidating prospect of educating four kids through high school didn't stop me. No indoor plumbing or electricity? No problem. Not even puzzles with 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 possible combinations  or eating another meal of rice, beans, and chicken (some of the few foods I can eat) or facing another day of pain can discourage me.

Facing a  marked up manuscript is nothing. Bring it on!


*A note about bats flying around you in a cave. Just stand still, and they'll go around you. If you wave your arms frantically, they will have a harder time judging where you are and how to avoid you.

I Love Writing Contests and Pitch Events

There are a lot of writing contests and pitch events coming up, and I am going to enter every one I can. I love contests and pitch events! All the contests I have entered so far are the result of my participation on Twitter. I love contests with a Twitter feed I can follow. It is at times nerve wracking, but most of the time it is educational and fun. So, why do I enter contests? Let me tell you.

Friends and Community

I have yet to meet any of the friends I've made in contests in real life. But, having a growing network of people I know who I can root for and who root for me is awesome. I learn so much from other pre-published authors. We share cool stuff we find online and encourage each other through the #amquerying trenches and doldrums. It is great when one of the people I've been in a contest with who has gone on to gain agent representation comes back to encourage the rest of us in the next round of contests. Y'all rock!

Feedback

This is one of the main reasons I enter. The hope of getting feedback on my work is such a draw for me. I love getting feedback from other writers and people in the business. Friends and family are generous with their praise and criticism, and I really appreciate their words, but to get feedback from someone in the industry is priceless.

FREE STUFF and Discounts

Some contests are big enough and well known enough that companies will use it as a way to promote their products and offer discounts to participants. That is how I first learned about Scrivener a wonderful  word processing software program that is for writers written by writers. I use it for most of my writing now. Along with companies, individuals often support the contests through give-a-ways of critiques or editing. I have benefited greatly from their generosity.

Winning

Yeah, winning would be nice, but the other stuff is good too. I've made it to the final rounds of a few contests, and that has been great and beneficial, but honestly, I think if I ever do gain agent representation, I will miss the excitement and camaraderie of these contests.

My Fibromyalgia Food Sensitivity Story

There has been a lot of talk about #OwnVoices stories in fiction in recent years. One of my #OwnVoices stories has to do with  living with chronic pain from multiple sources. Here is part of that story.

There was one night a few years ago when I was miserable. My fibromyalgia was flaring, and I had heartburn. I took a heartburn med and propped myself up in bed to wait for at least my heartburn to go away. When my heartburn went away, so did most of my pain. It got down to non-flare level. That was weird.

A few months later, I had heartburn again, took the heartburn meds and both my heartburn and my pain went away.

After two more incidents when my heartburn and fibro pain went away after taking the heartburn medication. I became curious and started to research the medication I was taking, Zantac, ranitidine


It turns out  ranitidine is from a different class of antihistamines than other allergy medicines sold over-the-counter. I began to wonder, “Was my pain caused by an allergic reaction to something?” There had been some people I had met, in person and online, who suggested that for many people some of their fibromyalgia pain might be caused by food sensitivities. I didn’t believe them before, but now I had enough evidence to check into the possibility.

Here is one article, there are many, describing exactly what I was experiencing.

I did an elimination diet. I started with an 18 hour fast. I was almost pain-free. Then for the first day, I ate only rice. I didn't have any increase in my pain. I added chicken. No pain. When I added broccoli my pain flared. I went back to only rice and chicken. By adding one food at a time, I found what foods were triggering most of my fibro pain.

It was a complicated process because the pain wouldn’t show up until 30 minutes to 6 hours after eating the offending item. What made it more difficult was that I discovered I was reacting to corn, and anything derived from corn which I found out was in every vitamin and over-the-counter drug I was taking.

The list of foods I can eat without pain is shorter than the pain inducing foods, but I have found ways to cope. When I eat something I shouldn’t, ranitidine still stops the pain reaction.
I’m not saying this will work for everyone, but it works for me. I still have pain from changes in the weather and other causes, but I would say that I have reduced the occurrences of pain in half.

If you suffer from Fibromyalgia and wanted to try an elimination diet, I would recommend having corn be one of the first foods you try. It is in so many everyday prepared foods and over-the-counter meds that finding out early on would be useful.

Here is a link to a list of foods/ingredients containing or derived from corn. I react to most of them.

Corn Allergen List

And here is a link to the most common food allergens.

Most Common Food Allergens

I am in a lot less pain than I used to be, but now I have another #OwnVoices story.
Food sensitivities and a very limited diet.  More on that later.

To Tell These Stories

After months of hearing that I should have a blog, I'm taking the plunge and starting one. One of the reasons for finally doing this now,  I admit,  is that I always felt left out when people do blog hops during writing contests. I didn’t have a blog because I don’t think I write well enough to have one. Yeah, you read that right.

 I don’t think I write well enough to have a blog. 

You may ask, ‘Then what makes you think you can write well enough to write a novel?’  The simple answer is that I may not write well, but I do a heck of a job revising. As my kids say, my rough drafts sound like they are written by a six-year-old. But then I revise, and they tell me I write as well as, or better than, a lot of the authors who are currently published.

I love my kids. They are my harshest critics and my biggest fans. 

Writing takes time, revising takes, even more, time. By the time I finish writing this post, it will probably have gone through four or more revisions. I’m not a good writer. I’m a good reviser, and I’d rather be revising fiction than blog posts, but I’ve been told that when I become published, it will be good to have a blog.  Another reason I haven’t started a blog until now is partially explained in this blogs title, To Tell These Stories. When I write, I want to write about things I care about. I don’t write to become famous or to have people notice what I have done; I write because I have something I want to say. I don’t know if I have enough things to say, that people would want to hear about, to maintain a blog with what I would expect to be at least weekly posts. But, here it is anyway, a very unimpressive first post. This is my blog, To Tell These Stories. Welcome.