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.

#SCENTsational Saturdays- Through the Years- Wild Heart by Trisha Yearwood

I received Wild Heart from my parents for Christmas the year I was 17. I think I was also wearing a lot of Coty's Wild Musk and Lady Stetson at the time. I listened to Garth Brooks almost constantly and I liked Trisha Yearwood, too. I was just starting to learn to type by using my dad's old college textbook. It was orange and you sat it up beside your typewriter and read along as you typed the lessons out. I'd just gotten my Smith Corona Word processor, as well.

One of my best friends and I didn't speak for almost a year after that Christmas because of a stupid fourteen or fifteen year old boy who looked older so he played it up that he was already 18. Damn, we were stupid 17 year old girls to fall for his bull.

I honestly don't remember what Wild Heart smells like, but I know it was floral and it was loud because it often gave me a headache, but I still loved it. Funny how that works, isn't it? When I think of this perfume, I think of Garth singing "Wild Horses." I would share the video, but apparently Garth shares NOTHING on Youtube which just makes me want to cry.

The very thought of this perfume brings back vivid memories of that holiday...of my youthful stupidity because I had hopes just like any other girl who didn't feel attractive, that someone had taken an interest in me. Unfortunately, he'd taken an interest in a LOT of girls I knew and he played us all for fools.

Standing on my parents' front porch in my mom's green Army jacket, shivering from head to toe as snow fell, the only light from the Christmas lights on the shrubs. Breath puffing out, nose red from the cold, laughing and believing in something...Yeah, I hadn't had a boyfriend yet, so I was believing in love...but that just wasn't meant to be...Ah....Lesson learned. Stupid boy!

Hope you have a SCENTsational Saturday

and an

AWESOME Autumnal Equinox!

#Writerly Wednesday- Shattered #poetry #writing

This morning's Writerly Wednesday will be just free flowing thought/poetry because I need an outlet for some built up emotion.

Peering through the darkness
My mind stumbles over
A sliver of yellow light

Dust motes swirling, teasing
So distant, yet so tangible
That I reach out, grasping at a shadow

A shadow of what once was
That slips through my fingertips
I follow it down a long gray hall

The golden fragment
Twists and spirals
Beckoning me with a seductive ripple

Taunting me to remember
That time, that life so long ago
That love that once was mine
 
I come upon a pane of glass
Transparent yet tarnished
A window on my past

Wipe away the dust and time
I see his face, his smile, his eyes

 I catch my breath
I taste the salt
A heart arrested in my chest
Unbidden tears demand to fall
 
Fingers skim the icy surface
A pop, a crackle, then
Shattered!

A desperate cry escapes my throat
Air forced from lungs
I breath again
 
The heartache just too raw
The fractured images splinter out
Left with only reflections
Staring back

Shards of memories
Frozen
In moments trapped forever
In my heart

(copyright Taryn Raye August 2012)



Have a great Hump Day!
I can see the weekend from here!

Memory Lane Mondays- How Much Is That #Doggie...

As an aside I'd like to mention that I used to love dogs, but I lost a great many of them in my childhood. My first pet was actually a dog I named Macaroni. I was around 3 and I remember my mom asking me what I wanted to name him while we sat on the stone slab near the water pump when we lived out in the country. I named him from the childhood favorite "Yankee Doodle" song-

"He stuck a feather in his hat and called it macaroni."

My grandparents took in a lot of dogs that were dropped where they lived, but not all the dogs survived. Bandit, Mickey, Spot, Spike, Butterscotch, just to name a few.

My aunt had a male mutt named Lucky and my grandpa had a female named Molly and from them, I picked a pup from the litter when I was around 14 or 15 and named her Tinkerbell. My grandpa called her Bad News Brown. LOL
By that time, we'd lived in town for quite a while and my dad had brought home a dog and we named him Buster, but he was a handful, always finding escapes under the fence, through the chicken wire my dad put all around our backyard fence to keep him in. It just didn't work. I came home from school one day to find him gone. My parents said he "ran away" while we were having a garage sale because people were coming in and out of our backyard to come in the basement where everything was set up and he just slipped out and never came back.
I later found out they took him and dropped him somewhere- so when I picked Tinkerbell to be my dog, I only got to claim her at my grandparents' house. Way out in the country, where most people back then (and even to this day) don't make a point of keeping all dogs chained up. She was 6 months old when she got hit by a car and died. I haven't had a dog since then. The idea just hurts too much, even though I know I'd be more responsible for a dog nowadays.
To this day, I've believed that's why I'm more of a cat person. Losing so many dogs over such a short span of my life hurt, hurt terribly.

What pet do you miss the most?

WIPlash Wednesdays- Didn't We Almost Have It All... #writing

As an author who writes romance, I'm often taxed with the responsibility of finding relationship problems for the climatic break-up or often the misunderstanding that occurs before my hero and heroine can confess their love or find their happily-ever-after. This usually has to be suitably BAD, but NOT UNFORGIVABLE and it has to make SENSE.

Unfortunately, it has been my experience that, often times, relationships end in confusion, without closure, without certainty as to the reasons why it fell apart to begin with. In romance novels, you can't do that. You HAVE to tie up all the loose ends so that YOU and the READER are satisfied with the results.

I spend a lot of time when I'm writing pondering over questions like~

What could happen that would create problems that would drive a wedge between them?
How can they overcome that problem once it exists?
Is this problem too extreme?
Can she forgive him for what happened?
Would he still love her if she confesses her secret?

There are so many ways it could go and I'm no relationship expert, so what works for some might not work for others. I've had my fair share of relationships and each one ended for different reasons. I mean, there are some things that are just a given- you both care about each other, but don't love one another.

Some relationships end for very clear reasons- abuse, obsessiveness, possessiveness, addictions, controlling or opposing personality types, unhappiness with each other or even with yourself, finding out you have less in common than you thought, or sometimes TOO much in common can be the kiss of death for a relationship if it makes Jack & Jill a very dull, unhappy-together couple. Sometimes people who think they're perfect for each other find out that they just don't have the same dreams or goals for their future or they have flaws and pet peeves that just can't be overlooked. Sometimes it's simply best to go your separate ways.

But what about "the ends" that don't make sense to the logical mind, to the sentimental heart, that believes Love doesn't just "end"~ that there has to be a "reason" why it doesn't work? What if the door doesn't get closed completely? What if it doesn't make sense? What if you can't break it to your heart?

Sometimes I feel I do Love a disservice because I almost have to "trivialize" what makes or breaks a relationship.

I was reminded of this a few nights ago while talking to my 9 year-old daughter about not taking things for granted. She's lucky to have a television and DVD player in her bedroom. I was 20 years old, living in my apartment before I ever owned a TV or VCR. A friend gave me the TV and a guy I was once engaged to bought his sister's VCR to give me as our first Christmas together gift. This brought up a fond memory from that relationship & I related it to my daughter-

The story goes a little something like this- This ex-fiance of mine once walked through 2 foot of snow from the neighborhood he lived in, to the florist in the shopping center not far from my house, through the park, accidentally getting lost a few streets over and helping a person getting their car out of a snowy ditch before he finally made it to my parents' house~ just to bring me a birthday present, a stuffed Ty cat named "Boots" who was black and white- even though we were broken up at the time.

The look of awe that crossed my daughter's face nearly broke my heart. I could see the wheels turning. She thought it was one of the sweetest, most romantic things her 9 year-old mind had ever heard and she smiled and said- "Wow! He must have cared a LOT about you to do that."

I said, "Yeah, well, he and I were together off and on almost 4 years and when we finally broke up, it boiled down to him telling me I can't love you if you don't have a job. I wasn't working at the time because I was taking a writing workshop and even though he knew I wanted to be a writer, but my dream wasn't as important to him as it was to me."

Her mouth hung open only a moment and then she said, "Well, that's just stupid!"

I told her it was okay, that had I married that guy, I wouldn't have met her daddy and she wouldn't be here, so things worked out the way they should after all. I subscribe to the belief that all our relationships are there to touch our lives, to teach us something or us teach someone else something they need to grow as individuals.

But after I tucked her in and came back to the computer, I teared up. I don't cry often about it, but I realized, unlike my characters, who WILL find they have more reasons to be together than apart, I still, even after all these years have trouble understanding how we went from-

"The first day I saw you at work, I lay in bed that night and thought, that's the woman I'm going to marry," turned into "It's over, give me the rings back. They don't belong to you."

Or how, "Nothing anyone says will ever change how I feel about you," became "I can't love you if you don't have a job."
I was everything he wanted and then...well, I wasn't. "Didn't we almost have it all" seems like the most logical thing to say about it....

Like I said, sometimes REAL relationships end without everything being tied up into a nice neat package. Sometimes it's not fair that the puzzle pieces don't fit together perfectly. Sometimes we're left with loose ends, just dangling there and not sure why. To this day, I can't wrap my mind around it, but what I do know is that within a year, he was married to someone else (while we'd been together off and on for nearly 4 years) and all I could think was- it wasn't that he didn't want to get married, he just didn't want to marry me. But I also know now, looking back, that I didn't love him the way he deserved either and I would not have been happy as his wife.

My peace of mind comes from knowing I have my characters though and I have my writing and I can always make sure they get their HEA. Not everything in my life is so cut & dry, but I'm okay with that.

Sometimes you have to risk it all to find out if it was all worth the risk.

WIPlash Wednesdays- Question from Joey R.

We're always attracted to the edges of what we are, out by the edges where it's a little raw and nervy.

~E.L. Doctorow~

Joey R.- Do you sometimes use actual events or things that has happened to you or people you know in your work?

Not really, but I do draw from life. Though I write romantic fiction, it is based in reality, so there are certainly bound to be topics or ideas that I've taken from the life around me, though I haven't written anything directly that could be tied to one event or person, or even myself specifically, because I take bits and pieces of knowledge, common sense, experience and mesh it together. They say, "write what you know" and I do, but not always the way you would think.

Any events in my novels are the indirect result of living and paying attention to my emotions, my situations as well as being observant of what others have gone through or are going through. There are a lot of things that are just common ground for all of us.

Most people have had their hearts broken by someone they love. Most everyone has lost a loved one or known someone in a bad relationship. Some have been abused, neglected, mistreated, or felt that way. Illness can strike anyone whether it's mental, emotional or physical and that includes things like bad habits, addictions, quirks and behaviors.

We are results of our environment and experience and subject to a plethora of things- accidents, deaths, debilitating disease, job loss, running into an ex at the grocery store. It's all happening around us, all the time, so I have a vast world of ideas at my fingertips. We're all also very adaptable, whether we like change or not, and we also all have a singular goal in common for the majority of our lives and that is to seek out love, regardless of where it comes from- parents, siblings, relatives, friends, acquaintances, lovers.
I draw from all that because I know it is the human condition, our compulsion, to seek love and approval through our work, our hobbies, our relationships and in most everything we do. Even my fictional characters need to be real, believable, fallible. They have quirks, mixtures of my own loved ones' idiosyncrasies, emotional outbursts, hidden sorrows, broken hearts and life experiences and that never-ending need to be loved, find joy and live happy, just like we all do.

Truth is, though that by the time they come to life on the page, I find it easily conceivable to believe they are living people who's situations are just as real to me as anything else I've ever seen or experienced myself.

Thanks for the question Joey!

If anyone else has a question, feel free to ask, leave a comment.

Feel free to leave me more questions in the comments here at anytime.
I'll be happy to answer them.

Happy Hump Day! I can see the weekend from here!

A Love Story was Born- Castaway Hearts

At some point in early 2007, before Facebook had appeared on the horizon and kicked Myspace's butt to the curb, I was on there a LOT. I posted blogs daily, or just about daily. I was catching up with old friends and making new ones. It was my hangout and there were awesome backgrounds to choose from for your profile, so one day I was searching for something to suit me and I came across a profile background with this image-

I sat, staring at it in quiet amazement- feeling drawn to the picture- the sadness it aroused within me, the heartache I felt the young woman feeling. The ghostly ship was ominous and the entire picture just gripped my heart and I felt tears prick my eyes. I thought, "Wow, she's just so, so sad. She lost her lover at sea...."

The idea made my chest hurt. Love lost is never a funny matter. I set the image layout to my profile and though I went back to doing whatever it was I was doing that day, I kept going back to look at it. I couldn't shake it and every time I saw it I was moved to tears again. I went to bed that night unable to put the image out of my mind.

Then I remembered somewhere in old scribbled notes and papers I has the beginnings of a historical I started to write when I was in my late teens. Just one sheet, front and back in my very youthful chicken scratch. A girl named Catherine, boarding her grandfather's ship in England to sail away to a life she's never known.

Bit by bit, the story started to unfold as I lay in bed, listening to my husband snore while I couldn't sleep for all the thoughts and story ideas that were swirling around in my head. What if she sailed to Virginia? What if she met a young man on the ship and believed she was in love with him? But what if he sailed away once she arrived in Virginia, and left her feeling lost and alone? What if she promised herself to him in secret? And what if his very own brother, burned by the past, became her confidant? Became her friend? And what if the sea took the man she thought she loved, after she'd already fallen for another? How devastating could that be?

It would be as devastating and heartbreaking as that image above. It would move me to tears, whispering the pain, the sorrow, the madness of grief and guilt that a young woman might feel in Catherine's shoes.

And so, my Myspace background haunted me and Catherine's story began to take shape over several months. This story, that I once put aside because I lost sight of my own writing dreams, a story that had once been frozen in thought at the outset, was beginning to warm, to incubate, beneath the heat lamp of this image that was searing itself on my brain. It was fertilized by that haunting picture that branded itself on my mind and my heart. It started to grow into a story that went much deeper and had more aspects than I first intended.

I didn't just start writing it though. I began researching and reading up on the history of Virginia, of the late 1700's. I spent several months researching online and with books I ordered online. And in a search for images that I could use purely for my own inspiration, I found Catherine Barrett, Dawson's sweet sweet Cathy, in this image of a young Kate Beckinsale.

And I found Dawson Randolph, residing in a plantation home similar to this, with dark blue shutters and a blue front door. A lonely man, widowed far too early in life, I realized that I saw Dawson Randolph in James Scott's portrayal of Stefano DiMera's father, Santo DiMera on Days of Our Lives. I've been a DOOL fan all my life (I remember watching when I was like 5 year-old.) I was watching Days at the time I wrote Castaway Hearts so "Santo" fit what I saw in my mind perfectly. Handsome, sophisticated and melancholy to find real happiness in a world that had failed him and taken love away rather than given it to him.

Catherine and Dawson deserved happiness, and I knew it was up to me to find it for them- to clear the path, to make sure they weren't two "castaway hearts."

And so there you have it. A love story was born from something seemingly as simple as an image.

Happy Valentine's Day, Lovelies!
Hope its special!

Sooner or Later (Favorite Book Spotlight)

It all started with years ago, with a little known TV-movie from 1979 starring Rex Smith and Denise Miller called—It also starred some, I would assume, pretty big names at the time- Judd Hirsch, Barbara Feldon, Morey Amsterdam, Lynn Redgrave.

I didn't discover this movie until I was probably 15 or 16, well into the late 80s, early 90s. I had a weakness for old B-movies and used to stay up and watch them on USA's Up All Night with Rhonda Shear or Gilbert Gottfried on Friday and Saturday nights. Sometimes I could even find a hidden gems on WGN at that time of night, as well. There were so many cheesy movies I discovered, like Getting Lucky, The Girl I Want, and Summer Job to name a few. The one that stuck out- Sooner or Later.

Thirteen-year-old Jessie falls for seventeen-year-old Michael after she sees him and his band performing at the mall in Lodi, New Jersey, the same day she had a beauty make-over while out with her best friend Caroline. She never expects to see him again, but when she decides to take guitar lessons---he turns out to be the instructor assigned to her. When Michael doesn't recognize her, she realizes it must have something to do with the fact that she wasn't wearing make-up to her guitar lessons like she was the day they made eye contact while he was performing, so she starts sneaking around and wearing it and Michael starts noticing.

Of course, Jessie loves the attention, but when Michael's interest grows, she lies and tells him she's 16 and soon the lies pile high as she creates more convoluted explanations for why he's never seen her at school, etc. Of course, things become more & more complicated and her best friend advises her that "Older boys aren't like younger boys, they're like men, only younger."

In the process of guitar lessons, she also goes with Michael to band practice one afternoon and discovers he's written a song called "Simply Jessie" just for her, and it's made up partly of the chords he's been teaching her.



Afterward, she agrees to a date at the drive-in on a night she knows her parents are going out of town to a wedding and will be gone late. The heartache erupts when Michael tries to put the moves on her and she bursts into tears, the truth comes out and he takes her home. Of course, the matter remained, could Michael forgive her for lying to him? Does love conquer all, even age?

As cheesy as it is, I bawled and bawled through that movie every time I watch it, so glad that there was a happy ending but then, I wanted to own the movie. It was one of those rare wonderful guilty-pleasure films that made me want to come back over and over again. It didn't hurt that I thought Rex Smith was just a dream and the fact that the majority of the soundtrack was sung by HIM, just made me love it even more.

We had a VCR, but I didn't record it that night and it wasn't like we had a home computer where I could go look it up and find out more, but I kept thinking about it a LOT though and then it happened~

It wasn't but a few days after I watched that movie on WGN that I went to Rite-Aid to look at magazines and they had one of those swivel wire book rack, so I thought I'd just check out what kind of books they had to offer. Usually they had very little, other than when a new V.C. Andrews book came out and I would purchase it there. I consider it Kismet, fate, what-have-you— but this is what I found-

On that rack I noticed first one- Sooner or Later and then I realized, wait, the same/similar girl on the cover of these other two books, so I pick them up and read the blurbs and already my heart was pounding and I was nearly ready to squeal right there in the middle of aisle. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks- I didn't have enough money to buy all three, and those were the ONLY copies.

Old as I was, I went home and begged my dad to advance me my allowance so I could purchase them before they were gone. And so I did. I cried when I opened the first book, content that I could not only read the story, almost just like it played out in the movie, but Waiting Games and Now or Never chronicled MORE of Jessie and Michael's story. Still, I longed for the movie.

My parents tried to get it at a video store, but when asked, it turned out they had one copy, but the owner wouldn't take less than $75 for it because it was such a rare movie. (I've had that kind of bad luck a lot over favorite old movies.) He offered to order my dad a brand new copy for upwards of $90, but that wasn't happening. My mom found out when it was on and recorded it for me one year and gave it to me as a Christmas present. Several years later, I was dating this guy and we went to that same video store and they still had that copy of it. I ask the girl at the counter about it and she called the owner, who agreed over the phone to sell it to me for $10. I was utterly blown away.

Of course, a couple of years ago, when all the VCRs in our house started to eat tapes and die of magnetic poisoning, I ordered a copy on DVD for just under $20. I haven't watched it in a while, but, just like my copies of the books are there to read, it's there to watch whenever I want to.

*a side note- Bruce Hart, along with his wife Carole, wrote these books together. Bruce is also most famous for having composed the lyrics to Sesame Street.

So, what are some of your favorite books that came to you in an unusual way?

Have you ever discovered a great book simply by accident?
Or is it possible that all the pieces fell in place at just the right time for you to stumble upon it?

Please come share your favorites!