Tuesdays with Taryn~ Sometimes Happily Ever After Happens, AFTER... #TheEx #Life #History

The scariest thing for me in attending my class reunion was the possibility of facing my past. Not high school past, but my early twenties past, or more specifically someone from that time in my life.

I think I finally stopped holding my breath when I realized my ex-fiance wasn't coming. We met up a couple years after our class's graduation, when he started working at the assembly factory where I worked in pad printing. The irony was that he didn't remember me from school~at all~ but he seemed to have it bad for me from the moment we met and even once told me that he went home after that first day at work, lay in his bed and thought to himself, "That's the woman I'm going to marry someday." In fact, I believe he'd told his dad that.

Honestly, I'm not sure if anyone we went to school with even knew we had a relationship but for a fair few who also worked at the same place or those we occasionally ran into when we were out and about. We dated from 1995-1999, off and on, and we were engaged 3 times during those on again off again years.

His encouragement, along with his mom's, was the reason I went for my GED. They were my cheerleaders urging me to accomplish that goal for myself, especially when I had gone for the pre-test the year before but was told I needed to study before I could go for testing. I'd let it go because I had work and other things going on in my life that took precedence, but a return trip to the GED office revealed that my pre-test scores were so high, I could have gone for the test the first time around, so the woman I spoke with set me up for the upcoming tests. He was the one who took me to Frankfort and sat in the car for hours those weekends I had to go for testing.

It was a roller-coaster relationship that had a lot of good times, but also a lot of very sad, hard times that hurt us both on so many levels, I know. I was his "Pretty Eyes" and I felt loved for the majority of that relationship. Even when I didn't know if I loved him anymore and had broken up with him, he was there for me, trumping through 2 foot of snow, across town to get me a birthday present and bring it to me. We had fun together but I know I was also a lot younger and I'm sure I made life a living hell sometimes when I got moody or irritable. He tried to put up with me, even when I was the grumpiest grump grump under the sun. By the end, I sometimes think that he hated me though...after all we put each other through.

Our official, FINAL "ending" was a new beginning for both of us. He married someone else within a year of breaking things off with me, leaving me feeling a bit like Ally McBeal- Do you remember that moment when she realized that the reason her and Billy's relationship ended wasn't because he didn't want to get married, it was just that he didn't want to marry her?

That's how I felt....It shouldn't have hurt so badly after a year, but it came as a bit of a shock to realize that we'd spent years going back and forth over when we'd get married and then he married this other woman after he'd only been with her a year. Seeing him come through my line at the grocery store was hell too- seeing that wedding band on his finger- and still thinking in that deepest part of my heart that he was supposed to be mine for the rest of our lives. He had promised me his love forever and vowed that nothing anyone said would EVER change how he felt about me.

Where was our happily ever after? It was clear then, that any inkling of love he'd once held for me was gone or buried, when he wouldn't or couldn't even take off his sunglasses in the store and look me in the eye when he came through my line, which he did quite often in the afternoons. And every time he left, one of my fellow co-workers would give me a break from the register so I could go to the back storeroom and cry.

I was damaged for a while after that, emotionally, left with questions about who I was as a person if I wasn't with him? What my worth was, if I couldn't be what he wanted and needed? And how had it all ended so badly? I wasn't sure I was worthy of being loved by anyone after that, much as I wanted to be loved, I always felt lacking. My best wasn't good enough. Not for him and probably not for anyone else.

He had been supportive of my dream to become a writer and I was doing a writing workshop as our relationship began to implode upon itself. I had believed I was on the path I was meant to be on in my journey to becoming a published author, but then he pulled the rug out from under me, when other people started questioning him about how we'd survive if we got married when I was such a dreamer, chasing that unicorn I might never catch and filling his head with doubts and fears. There was no way to survive on just his income and he couldn't "love me" if I didn't have a real job...

That revelation shook the very foundation of my idea of "unconditional" true love that was supposed to last forever into that Happily Ever After. Once our relationship ended, I also stopped writing.

What did I know about writing romance? Love stories? How could I write about love, when I didn't know it & didn't have it? I stopped caring about my writing and I put it away for a very long time....

But, it was one of those awkward moments you read about but luckily the pain and embarrassment was averted. Maybe he didn't know about the reunion. Maybe he just had no interesting in coming. Maybe he knew I was going to be there and was hoping to avoid me. Who's to say? I don't think it would bother me to have run into him after all these years have passed, it just might have been weird, more than anything.

But the thing is, I'm older now and I found my joy again in writing and I try very hard not to let anyone else steal it from me anymore. I know who I am and I'm still finding my place- it's down a long and winding road, out past the fear and self-doubt and insecurities that I carried away from that time in my life. And I'm proof that you can chase that dream and catch that unicorn....its a shame he allowed others to make him doubt me...

That ending was my new beginning...as I began again a few times, which I think we all do throughout our lives...always moving, always changing, reinventing, and always adjusting to what Life throws our way. Sometimes that Happily Ever After happens, AFTER.

Something in the Air- Taryn's Tiny Tales

Something in the air this morning caught my attention as we stood on the porch, waiting for the bus to pick up my kids for school. It's a blustery day out there, gloomy and gray and though it was around 50º at the time, the wind was slap-happy and really smacking us around so it felt cooler.

And there it was, this odor that hit my sense of smell and hurled me back in time. It actually caused me to tear up a little. The sudden ache of missing my grandpa, struck my center and hurt more than it has in quite some time. I was transported back to running around the junkyard and scavenging through old car bodies for trinkets- be it a cute key-chain or bauble, climbing to the top of the wood pile or the coal pile and tromping through thick muck in the mule lot.

The muffled sound of an old radio with a wire clothes hanger of an antenna played in the background, country music twanging out the sad notes of George Jones and Johnny Cash, Barbara Mandrell and Crystal Gail. It was the 80s and I was a kid.

The smell of old rancid motor oil and gasoline, automotive lubricants and cleaners enveloped me in a warm embrace as memories of huddling near the stove in the back of that old cold garage on blistery winter days bound vividly to the forefront of my mind. I'd shiver near the stove, gloved hands hovering as close as possible to it without burning myself. I'd be nearly frozen while bundled up, in sweaters and jeans and thick socks, piling on scarves and sock caps and burrowing deep into my mom's old green Army jacket she got from some surplus store. All the while, my grandpa and uncle would work on a car, their breath appearing in front of them like the cigarette smoke that usually encircled their heads.

The crisp aroma of burnt wood and tobacco, lighter fluid and the stinging odor of coal, was enough to make your eyes water while the heat from the stove felt as though it were drying out ever pore in your body. It felt so good though I couldn't help myself. Rotating like the Earth on its axis, I would pivot in a slow circle, the stove my Sun, warming the hills and valleys of my tiny world. I didn't care how cold it was, I only wanted to spend time with my grandpa and my uncle, listening to them talk shop and sitting on a stack of old rubber tires or scooting around on my uncle's creeper, wishing it was a skateboard.

Ah...but the memories fade back and I'm here in the present again and remember that our neighbor has a huge garage across the road, one in which he sometimes works on cars himself and sometimes, on really crisp mornings, the odors are carried on the wind, whisking me back to my childhood, back to my hometown and making me as homesick as ever.

#TuesdayswithTaryn Martin King, #Author Jack Hunter- Secret of the King

Tuesdays with Taryn

Martin King

Help me in welcoming children's adventure book author, Martin King, to Tuesdays with Taryn. I read Jack Hunter- Secret of the King, to my 9-year-old daughter earlier this year and we both loved it. We're eager for the 2nd book to come out- Jack Hunter- The French Connection. My daughter was insistent that we read a bit each night at bedtime and as the story grew more intriguing, there were times she was on the edge of her seat, her eyes wide as I read. Definitely a great book for young and old(er) alike! 

What book(s) most influenced you as a writer? Tintin

What book do you read over and over again? Jennings

Tuesday Trio-

1)      Movie- Back to the Future

2)      Music- Suede

3)      Decadent Dessert- Anything Chocolate

What’s the most interesting or bizarre bit of trivia you’ve learned from researching for a novel?

Novel on your Nightstand:

Who/what are you currently reading? An Autobiography by my grandad.

Whom would you cast as your Hero/Heroine if your book became a movie? It’s a bit difficult to say seeing as it is a children’s adventure, but if we could go back in time and make someone young again, Rupert Grint for sure.

Blurb of Jack Hunter: Secret of the King

Twelve year-old Jack Hunter’s life couldn’t get any worse - forced to move home, ripped away from his friends and dragged to a town in the middle of nowhere.

But then he discovers a centuries-old key that unlocks an historical secret. Suddenly Jack finds himself on the hunt of an ancient treasure trove with the help of some new friends.

Jack Hunter – Secret of the King provides a riveting read from beginning to end.

Look out for the hidden messages within the book and help Jack crack the secret code.

Amazon

Amazon UK

Barnes and Noble

Smashwords

You can find out more about Martin and his Jack Hunter series on his

WEBSITE

Check out a preview of Jack Hunter - The French Connection

by clicking on this Exclusive first look of the cover shown below-
(not the finished article)

You can follow Martin on

Twitter at @theMartinKing

WIPlash Wednesdays- #Research for #CastawayHearts

In 2007 when I started writing Castaway Hearts, I didn't know a lot about Virginia. Originally I'd intended to set the story in Boston, but something drew me to the Norfolk area and the need to write "near" there, rather than further north along the coast. My story also was originally going to be set more in the mid-to-late 1800's rather than the 1790s, but again, situations and circumstances changed as I began to write the story.

One of the most important pieces of research material I used for Castaway Hearts was the book-

I used Wikipedia to figure out the timeline for corsets and stays, when they were and weren't in "fashion."

To understand the proper name for quilt designs I went here- Quilt Patterns Names

Links for other places I used for research follow-

An Outline of American Literature
The Food Timeline
18th Century History- The City of Norfolk, Va
American History Timeline 1780-2010
Great Inventions
Fire and Light
1780s Decade Timeline
Norfolk Highlights 1584-1881
Virginia Historical Society
Tobacco Timeline: The Seventeen Century
Tobacco Timeline: The Eighteenth Century
Virginia History
Virginia, Timeline of State History

I'm not sure I can honestly pinpoint every detail I learned doing this research or what I've used within the story because a lot of it now seems just common knowledge to me. One of the things that always sticks out most is that I learned matches didn't exist yet and therefore my characters, in the 1790s would have used tinderboxes and spills (tightly wound paper) to light their pipe tobacco. And though most of the information I found in these research resources did not appear, by direct means, in my novel, all the knowledge I gathered helped build the scenery and behaviors of my characters and the time in which they lived.

****

Currently I'm still working on the same WIP, I'm up to 63,156 words of approximately 80K. I left off at a very pivotal moment in the hero's life that deals with his mother, brothers and their deadbeat father. The stormy weekend and my husband's oral surgery has bumped my writing time to the back burner while I take care of family matters, but I'm hoping to get back to work on it today.