Mallory, being the character she is, had to research the purpose of the crystal … what its healing properties were.

      “Anyway, malachite has been used for thousands of years for healing, protection, drawing out negative emotions, and clarifying intention.” She ticked the uses off on her fingers. “I’m sure that’s why Madame Vadoma gave it to me.”
     “What’s why?” I didn’t see how that explained anything.
     “She gave you the journal for a reason. I’m not sure what that is yet, but she must have known you’d need some help, especially with intention.” She settled her glasses firmly on her nose. “Like with the frogs … It’s also supposed to help with shyness and timidity.”

The frogs Mallory is referring to were accidentially released, but that is a post for another time …

“She calmed me down and told me the nicest things. She even gave me a crystal.” She opened the drawstring bag and held up a round stone which had been carved into a skull, dark green with bands of turquoise, and shiny.

Whether you believe it the properties of crystals to help calm, provide better focus, influence your behavior or life — or whether you only believe in its ability to make food taste better (table salt, which is a crystal made up of sodium and chlorine ions arranged in a lattice) or make your computer run (computer chips are made from crystals—a lattice of silicon atoms), crystals are a part of our daily lives. So why a crystal skull?

Some associate a skull as being a symbol of death or dying. Look at Sugar Skulls and their association with Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) — and the symbolism inherent of both death and rebirth. But some view crystal skulls as a means to awaken human consciousness and include self-awareness and creating balance. Besides, they are simply cool.

In The Journal of Angela Ashby you’ll find illustrations by the fabulous Mister Sam Shearon and the illustrations have been made into a pack of playing cards which can be purchased here.

The post The Journal of Angela Ashby: The Malachite Skull appeared first on Be the Cat.

One of my first brushes with the concept of an Angel of Death was in the holiday classic by Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol. Every Christmas Eve, I’d wait up to watch with chilling anticipation for the silent, scary, Spirit of Christmas Future. The frightening thing about this spirit for me was the refusal to speak and the cloak covering everything except the outstretched bony finger when it directed Scrooge’s attention. Far more fearsome than the other two spirits because of the unassailable silence. Does the Grim Reaper always move so silently?

Sam Shearon did an excellent job of capturing the reaper for the brief moment it appears in The Journal of Angela Ashby. The work in progress, The Star Warriors and the Secret of the Red Key also deals, much more in depth, with the concept and personification of the Angel of Death. It should be a fun topic to grapple with.

In the middle of the layout, the Ace of Spades drew me in. Smoke from the candles created a foggy layer and the image wavered and morphed into a winged hooded figure carrying a scythe through a graveyard. The angel of death. I blinked and ran a hand over my eyes. Once I lowered my hand, the card showed the black spade and letter ‘A’. Nothing else. Not even a gravestone.

During this scene, Angela went back and forth from being freaked out to thinking Madame Vadoma was a fraud. But this moment Angela knew was no trickery by the mysterious fortune-teller … but what did it mean???

If you would like to subscribe to receive a notification about blog posts OR signup for my newsletter, please do so below:

The post The Journal of Angela Ashby: The Angel of Death appeared first on Be the Cat.

I had actually been researching information for a post that is formulating about the increase of Middle School anxiety and why, when my attention was caught by a post on Facebook exhibiting some of the exact reasons why anxiety has been increased over the past few years. The original post was an image highlighting the inconsistency of media reporting these days. Which is true. I don’t care which side of the political spectrum you support, the media coverage of any and everything has a schizophrenic quality to it, and extreme bias is shown when the media is supposed to be impartial purveyors of facts. And on that post was an escalating exchange between a father and daughter (both adults).

Mom and Dad

Let me be clear … my parents raised me to have my own opinions and to be fiercely independent — which was definitely NOT an easy task for either one of them. And I’ll be candid … my dad and I butted heads — regularly. But that head-butting always took place privately and never in a public forum. The major reason for that is that along with teaching me to form my own opinions, and to be independent, I was also raised to respect others — even when whole-heartedly disagreeing with them and the things they believed.

Unfortunately, all you have to do is pull up social media these days to find it dripping with peremptory dogma, malice, and often hatred. And what we don’t realize is the major impact that malice and hatred are having … not on the people who we are expressing it against, but to ourselves. I have established a routine of being on social media as little as possible simply because the seething anger is damaging to me and causes me stress, which I need to avoid for my own health benefit. I cannot imagine what it must be like walking around with all that hatred boiling all the time — we are killing ourselves.

Back to my point. Whenever I see families, in particular, taking such sides and expressing feelings that are ultimately damaging to the relationship, it brings my dad to mind and how much animosity I carried at some points in my life toward him. And every single time I have that thought, it is followed by how THANKFUL I am that we had resolved those issues prior to his passing. Had he died when my last memories of him would be the anger I held? I shudder to think of it. My mental health would have taken a huge nose dive and who knows when or IF I would have pulled out of it. Grieving for him was hard enough, without extra heapings of guilt for not having resolved our issues.

Those issues were not resolved by agreeing with every word he uttered. Again, that’s not how I was raised, but by letting go of the animosity, by letting go of the emotional intensity surrounding the issues, and understanding that while we may not agree, he always thought things through and probably had good reasons for holding his opinions as I did for holding mine.

Why didn’t I jump into the thread and say these things, instead of coming to my blog to express it? There are none so blind as those who refuse to see; and none so deaf as those who refuse to hear … a quote probably stemming from the 1713 ‘Works of Thomas Chalkley’ which have roots back to the Bible.

What I would like to say is “How will you feel if your dad was gone tomorrow? Will you have a clear conscience with which to grieve for him?” However, that is extremely personal, and I recognize how close that would have cut to the bone.

We are coming up on 28 years since my father passed, and while somethings are easier with time, others are not. For example, the big things that hit me are the things that never can be. Like winning an award for writing — something my dad never understood because he wanted me to have financial safety and security on my own. And right there is one of the points of contention I had with him. He wanted me to have a safe existence and the ability to support myself.

He couldn’t see writing novels as a potential life career because he wanted what was best for me. He didn’t see that writing for me is an essential part of my life, even if I were not to ever sell a single word, and at that time, I saw his lack of support as thinking I couldn’t do it, and didn’t recognize his fear of my being rejected (which is part of the publishing industry). I saw his attitude as a lack of support, a lack of love (something he had an extremely difficult time expressing), but fortunately figured out his reasoning prior to his death. I know, without any doubt whatsoever, that were he living today, he’d be bursting with pride over my accomplishments, and would be bragging about me more than I would like. I get emotionally overwrought because he isn’t here and I can’t share my successes with him. He may not have understood how important writing was to me, but he would have been one of my biggest supporters.

So in this long, rambling post, my point is to always treat (at the very least) family and friends with respect, realizing they are far more important than any political agenda, and it is not worth carrying around the animosity — because you never know when you’ll be facing the memory of them instead of the person. Will you be able to do so without guilt clouding your sorrow that they are gone?

The post In Memory of Dad appeared first on Be the Cat.

Rose photo © Artem Sapegin

When I ran across the photo of the rose, I knew immediately it summed up everything I needed for the piece named, Daddy’s Death. The bud, wilted and drooping, yet the stalk still straight and the leaves green. When we lose a loved one, it is how we feel; as if our essence has been sapped, we’re wilted, our life is crumpling around the edges, and yet, there is still life, and it flows around us. It was so perfect to me, I almost left the title and name off the cover—there was no need for anything else.

Some writers draft with a basic destination in mind, and at every turn ask the question, “what’s the worst thing I can do to my characters now?” and build it into the story. From before I wrote the very first word of Misfit McCabe, I knew Katie would lose her father to cancer. For me, it was the central reason why the book had to be written. What happens when a teen girl loses everything she holds dear—her father, her home, her best friend? And how does she cope when sent to live with strangers?

While I have always maintained, and still do, Katie is not modeled after the teen me, there are certain traits or experiences we share. And I’ll admit it was easier for me to connect with her emotional state and understand what she was going through with the loss of her father because of experiences I’d had around her age. At twelve and again at thirteen, I nearly lost my father to cancer. At that time, the surgery he had was experimental and the survival rate wasn’t good. But the chance of survival would have been 0% without it. I wish I could share those moments with you—what it felt to hear the news, whether it was a tearful good-bye when he went off to the hospital (probably not, knowing me because I wouldn’t show what I thought to be weakness), what the waiting felt like—but I can’t. I don’t remember—and not because it was so many years ago, I wasn’t able to remember even a few years later. I do remember how shocked I felt when my mom told me he had been in the hospital on two separate occasions. It had all melded into one in my mind.

When someone experiences the possibility a loved one may die, as was the case with my family, they go through the stages of grief, even though the person survives. My way of dealing with the difficult situation was to bury it—AND DEEP! Whether I will one day remember those moments or be able to sort out the different visits to the hospital instead of lumping them all into one, or whether they will forever remain buried somewhere in the recesses of my mind, I believe the experience is what allows me to connect so closely to Katie and her feelings and maybe why she chose me to tell her story to.

With this excerpt from Katie’s diary, I kept the notes before the story and the teaser short. She needed the opportunity to get what she needed to say out of her system, and nothing much more needed to be said… kind of like the rose on the cover. Teaser: The loss of a loved one is never easy.

Diary of a Misfit is available now for Kindle. A portion of the proceeds from Diary of a Misfit will go to the Shaka Franklin Foundation for Youth.

The post Diary of a Misfit – Daddy’s Death appeared first on Be the Cat.

Crosses photo © Chrisharvey
Background Dreamstime Stock Photo 26793

The mind of a writer is a strange thing. Or maybe I should qualify that and say the mind of some writers …. Because I can’t speak on behalf of all writers, but I know others who deal with some of the same things I do. My mind is kind of like a co-op with my characters. My stories are character driven, and in order to do that, I need to know how my characters would think, act, talk, feel in any given situation. They live in my head and speak to me to tell me the story line. I feel their emotions … sometimes over and over, in order to capture them on the page.

In July, 2011 I ran across an article about Samuel Hayes, who had drowned in a river with a blood alcohol content level of 0.27. Samuel was only sixteen-years-old. While I felt saddened by a life being cut short, the effect it had on my character, Katie McCabe was much greater. She asked to write a blog post about Samuel. A week later, we read an article about fourteen-year-old Takemi Rao who died of alcohol poisoning in her own home, and another post was written by Katie. We then went on an emotional journey as google searches revealed Samuel and Takeimi were not alone. More than 5,000 teens die every year due to alcohol related incidents. And sometimes, words are not enough, so Katie and I put together a video to help share our feelings about so many lives cut short. It wasn’t what they had a chance to do in life, but all the things they would never have a chance to experience which caused the greatest sorrow.

And there is a relevance for Katie which made her feel guilty. She has made the same sort of mistake Samuel, Takeimi, and the others made … but she didn’t die. Remembering What Isn’t To Be is the shortest piece in Diary of a Misfit, but if readers only remember one story in the collection, this is the one I hope sticks with them.

Takemi Rao, Samuel Hayes, Arman Partamian, Warren Kimber, Brett Elder, Shelby Lyn Allen, Dayne Cutler, Scotty Roberts, Dylan Lyford, Samara Stricklen, Elizabeth Mun, Paris Shorter, George Desdunes, Olivia Hyten, Jason Wren, Makamae Ah Mook Sang, Joe Loudon, Mackenzie Frazee, Karen Kappelman, Lexi Hagen—All these names have one thing in common—they died too soon.

Diary of a Misfit is available now for Kindle. A portion of the proceeds from Diary of a Misfit will go to the Shaka Franklin Foundation for Youth.

The post Diary of a Misfit – Remembering What Isn’t To Be appeared first on Be the Cat.

This is hard. I’m struggling to find the words I want to say.

In July, after reading about Samuel and Takeimi, I couldn’t stop thinking about them. So I googled a few things and found out that Samuel and Takeimi are not alone. One story led to another. More than five thousand teenagers die every year because of alcohol in some way. That’s too many.

I felt like I needed to do something because thinking about Samuel and Takeimi would bring me to tears. It’s just so sad. Sarah told me it’s because Daddy’s death is still so close to me. I miss him so much it hurts, but my tears were for Takeimi and Samuel and all the others for the things that will never be, the things they’ll never get to do.

They only live on in memories. I never knew any of them personally, but through reading their stories, I feel like I carry a little piece of them in me. I have to stop now, or I’ll start bawling again. Please watch the video and remember.

The post Remembering What Isn’t To Be appeared first on Be the Cat.

A couple of weeks ago Takeimi Rao was looking forward to starting high school, or at least that’s what I’d expect from a straight A student. But last week, during a slumber party all her dreams of what she was going to do with her life came to an end. She had three friends spending the night, and they decided to sneak some vodka and spike their sodas with it. I understand. I really do. They probably giggled as they poured the vodka into their drinks, because of the thrill of sneaking it. They were being daring, but “safe” because they were at Takeimi’s house. What could go wrong?

Three of the girls got sick, and Takeimi died. I’m sure she didn’t want to. She probably didn’t even know it could happen. She was only fourteen-years-old. The same age as me.

I’m not gonna lie…I’m no angel. I made the same mistake Takeimi did — not exactly the same, but close enough. From what I’ve read, Takeimi didn’t have a drinking problem, she was considered a “good girl”. In fact, she reminds me of my friend Jewelz in a way. She was outgoing, social, and loved music and theater, just like Jewelz.

The school and police keep saying that hopefully Takeimi’s death will cause parents to talk with their kids about how dangerous alcohol is. Especially for kids my age and younger. Daddy used to talk to me about drinking and why I shouldn’t do it. But I did anyway. Because even though I listened to his words, I didn’t really hear them. Not in a way that matters anyway. I thought he was just trying to scare me by exaggerating how dangerous it is.

Even after Tim and I burned down a shed, it didn’t click that if we hadn’t been drinking or smoking it wouldn’t have happened. It was just an accident. Maybe parents need to find examples like Takeimi and Samuel, kids just like us, and talk about what happened and why they’re afraid it might happen to us. I know their stories have hit home with me, and maybe I’ll remember the next time I’m tempted to take a drink.

It might not end so well.

And I’ll bet the kids who went to school with Takeimi won’t forget what happened to her. Would you?

The post Takeimi’s Legacy appeared first on Be the Cat.

This is a picture of Samuel Hayes. He died last week, probably because he had too much to drink. He was sixteen-years-old, only a couple years older than me. I didn’t know Samuel. We don’t live in the same town, but his story hit me hard. He looks like a nice guy, and sixteen is too young to die.

Samuel drowned in a river, and when they did the autopsy on him, his blood alcohol level (BAC) was 0.27!!! Apparently someone bought him some whiskey and it would take about 10 drinks to make his blood alcohol level that high. That’s a lot of whiskey. All I know is after the graduation ceremony at his school, he was given a half-gallon of whiskey and wound up dead.

I think why this story hit me so hard is that it could have been me. Tim and I got lucky when we tried drinking. He took some of his dad’s rum and we nearly burned Mr. Pickford’s shed down. It could have been so much worse. We both lived, and the shed didn’t burn out of control. It was still scary though.

I think another reason why I really feel for Samuel is that he drowned in a river. And having nearly drowned after Harvey left me blindfolded, gagged, and bound in a river, I wonder if Samuel panicked like I did. Or whether he was too drunk to know that he was drowning. I hope in a way he didn’t know. Those moments in the river will stay with me forever. It was awful, and I don’t like to think of him going through the same thing.

Sixteen is too young to die. There was too much ahead for him that he now won’t do. Something for us all to think about.

The post Alcohol and Death: Something to think about appeared first on Be the Cat.