/ en-US Mon, 18 Mar 2019 19:52:06 -0700 60 / 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg /author_blog_posts/15014079-how-to-be-pregnant-in-regency-england Wed, 19 Apr 2017 10:48:31 -0700 /author_blog_posts/15014079-how-to-be-pregnant-in-regency-england
1. You’re not “pregnant.��

Such an ugly word. You’re also not “with child.�� Or “breeding.�� What are you, livestock? Save those terms for the lower classes. If you’re a gentlewoman, then you’ll be looking forward to your “confinement.�� Because that doesn’t sound at all, confining. *ahem*

2. Don’t eat for two.

No meat, wine, spices, coffee, tea, or eggs for you. Also, you may be bled if your pregnancy looks like it needs help. Because everyone knows that loss of blood is fantastic when hoping to ensure a healthy mother and child.

3. Get your affairs in order.

Nearly 20% of mothers (and their babies) fail to survive childbirth, so give your husband a kiss, don’t worry that the attending physician hasn’t washed his hands in a fortnight, and be assured that if things do take a turn for the worse, they’ll probably bleed you. Again.

4. No midwives for you.

Women attending a birth is SO eighteenth century. And how would a fellow woman know what it’s like to have children? Better to bring in a doctor (or accouchement) to keep you lying down, order the birthing room sealed up, and forbid you proper nutrition for several days following the birth of the child. That is, if you survive it.

5. Suck it up, Buttercup.

Anaesthetics weren’t used in childbirth (or at least accepted) until after Queen Victoria used chloroform for the births of her eighth and ninth children. In the 1850s. So if you’re looking for any sort of pain relief, better look elsewhere (just not at any of the attending physician’s instruments�� they haven’t been cleaned�� ever).

posted by Quenby Olson on March, 18 ]]> /author_blog_posts/15008536-characters-of-the-firstborn-sophia-penrose-brixton Tue, 18 Apr 2017 11:10:04 -0700 /author_blog_posts/15008536-characters-of-the-firstborn-sophia-penrose-brixton
Sun_and_Moon_Flowers_1890

And then Lucy finds herself with child, without a husband, and with the eyes of their entire hometown glaring down at them through shades of scandal.

Sophia does what she thinks she must. She finds a new home for them, a home where they won’t be known. She takes on the guise of a widow, and raises her sister’s son as her own.

Simple enough, right?

Of course not. There wouldn’t be a story to tell if everything had tied itself up so neatly.

Lucy finds herself too young, still reeling from her parents�� deaths to care for her child, and so is too quick to leave her son to Sophia’s care. So when a certain Lord Haughton comes calling, claiming to be the child’s uncle and making demands left and right about the boy’s care, Sophia balks at the threatened loss of control over her own life�� and the life of her nephew.

Even worse for her is the fear that her nephew will be taken away from her entirely. A woman in nineteenth century England had a frightening lack of rights, and a member of the peerage, and one with the funds to see things done, would’ve had no difficulty swooping in to take a little boy from a woman deemed unfit (i.e. poor) to raise him.

But Sophia is not the type to back down without a fight. And at the end of the day, more than anything, it is her love for her nephew that fuels her resolve to remain a part of his life.

***
Excerpt from The Firstborn:

“It does not make a whit of sense,�� Sophia said, as she began to crumple the edge of the letter between her fingers. “Six weeks ago, he came here ready to settle a large sum of money on us in exchange for our silence, ensuring that no one would ever discover George’s connection to his great and illustrious family. And now he’s inviting us to his home, to mingle with his sister and make banal conversation about the weather over tea and light refreshments?�� She shook her head. “I simply cannot fathom what has worked this supposed alteration in his behavior.��

Lady Rutledge slipped a bracelet from her wrist and held it out to George, who crawled quickly over to her side and babbled excitedly as she dropped the bauble into his grasp. “You suspect all is not as it seems?��

“Well, I certainly don’t believe he was visited by angels on the road to Damascus. I simply…�� She exhaled heavily as her shoulders slumped forward in a most unladylike manner. “George has been in my care for his entire life. Even when Lucy was still here, she never�� She always treated him as a burden. And I do understand how she could think such a thing. Children are not easy creatures to care for. They are maddening and exhausting and consume your entire life in a frightening amount of time. But even so…�� She closed eyes that had suddenly become watery. “I don’t want to lose him.��

For a moment, there was nothing but the jangle of Lady Rutledge’s bracelet and the satisfied sounds of George as he attempted to shove the sapphire concoction—along with a great deal of his fist—into his mouth.

“And you believe Lord Haughton will take him from you?��

Sophia blinked several times and looked across at Lady Rutledge. “I don’t know. A part of me wants to think he’ll spirit George away forever as soon as I enter his home. But another part of me—a much smaller part, I must admit—hopes that he is truly penitent and wishes to…I don’t know, create some sort of compromise that will benefit George.��

“One in which you don’t lose access to him,�� Lady Rutledge pointed out.

As George crawled his way towards her part of the drawing room, Sophia reached down and removed the bracelet from between his teeth. When he began to fuss, she merely tickled him under his arm until his cries turned to damp-cheeked giggles. “Or that involves him lording his control over me with a few coins,�� she said, her fingers lightly teasing George’s plump chin.

“More than a few coins, if your description of his offer was accurate.��

“Quite accurate,�� Sophia said, her eyebrows raised at the memory. “Perhaps it was foolish of me to turn him down, but I could not like the idea that I was somehow being purchased, like a horse or a bolt of silk.��

A moment of silence passed between them, apart from the steady thump of George’s knees and hands as he crawled across the floor.

***
And so Sophia finds herself dealing with someone very much like herself, someone who has been trying to keep tabs on the behavior of a younger sibling, trying to clean up the mess of their mistakes �� and all while making a few mistakes of their own.

Sophia was thrill to write, a character I would very much love to meet in real life (and preferably have on my side during a fight).

*The Firstborn will be available for purchase in paperback and ebook from several major retailers on May 9th, 2017*

posted by Quenby Olson on March, 17 ]]> /author_blog_posts/14969525-rooting-for-the-bad-guy Mon, 10 Apr 2017 09:19:24 -0700 /author_blog_posts/14969525-rooting-for-the-bad-guy
But sometimes�� Well, sometimes I like to give the bad guy a chance. I know that’s not always something that sits well with prospective readers. We (and I do include myself in this group, sometimes) want to see things in black and white. Frodo, good. Sauron, bad. Ring must be thrown into the fire. (Isildur! NOOOOO!!!) And yet, doesn’t the “bad guy�� get to have his shot at redemption?

It’s a thread I’ve noticed running through some of my stories more and more. Someone screws up. Someone screws up badly. And yet, they get their second chance (or maybe it’s their third or fourth or seventeenth chance by the time we run into them.) One of my future releases, The Bride Price, features an antagonist who early readers dislike. Vehemently. Give him a moustache and he’d be twirling it. But down the road, I still plan on giving him his own story, his own shot at fixing his life and trying to make up for past mistakes.

Some people who know I plan on giving him his own redemption story are NOT PLEASED about this. Well, okay. That’s your thing. But it’s interesting how people see villains, how they want to keep them tucked into their little box of evil and not let them out to make something better of themselves.

Is it because we like to keep things clearly delineated? Good is good and bad is bad and never the twain shall meet?

Does the young woman who gives up her child for her sister to raise and takes a large sum of money in return always have to be portrayed as bad, or do we get to revisit her some years down the line, when age and acquired wisdom have perhaps changed her views and made her regret some of her previous choices? (Yes, that character will have her own story down the line, too. Believe me, I have a lot of stories in the planning stage. Probably more than I should.)

Maybe because I’ve grown older (well, slightly older�� middle-age older) I like to write characters who are not perfect, who might fit the role of antagonist in one story but work their way to hero or heroine in the next. Maybe because I’ve seen people change over the course of years (and years) that I’m more inclined to reflect those alterations in personality in the fiction I produce. Or maybe I just like messing with people. That could be it, too.

*Originally posted on Wordpress:

posted by Quenby Olson on December, 05 ]]> /author_blog_posts/8916454-strong-and-sweet-shall-their-tongues-be Thu, 20 Aug 2015 07:47:00 -0700 /author_blog_posts/8916454-strong-and-sweet-shall-their-tongues-be
It began in upstate New York, already a religious hotbed with the advent of Mormonism and also the activities of the Second Great Awakening. And it began with three sisters, the Fox sisters, who claimed that on March 31, 1848, they had made contact with a spirit.

This is where the practice of “rapping�� has its start, where one would ask questions to the air and hope for a response of knocks against the tabletop standing in for speech, like a ghostly Morse Code. The Fox sisters were quickly taken in by the Quakers, and from there the movement spread, other young women stepping forward with claims of having been visited by spirits, healed by spirits, receiving vital messages from spirits. And the women were often young, often lovely, and so able to draw a crowd.

Spiritualism appealed to the upper and middle classes, and especially those who had recently lost a loved one. And with the Civil War breaking out only thirteen years after the Fox sisters responded to those first knocks, thousands and thousands of families watched their sons march to battle and never come home again. The search for life after death began in earnest, beyond Christianity’s teachings and promises of eternal life for the soul. Seances soon became the order of the day, despite their being likened to the practices of witchcraft (and even being blamed for the Civil War on at least one occasion) Seances were even conducted in the White House during the years of Abraham Lincoln, and Spiritualism was often embraced by those who shunned organized religion.

Which is not surprising that the two didn’t go hand in hand, as both Christians and Jews adhered to the verse in Leviticus 20:6 that states: “I will set my face against the person who turns to mediums and spiritists to prostitute himself by following them, and I will cut him off from his people.��

Well, then.

But many seances or “sittings�� at the time had overtones of attending a small, intimate church service. The attendees would often pray, asking God for guidance in their search for knowledge and attempts to communicate with the spirits who were believed to exist on a higher plane than mere humans. Christian hymns were sung, verses from the Bible were quoted (though not the one from Leviticus, I’m sure.) Everything was meant to have the feel of something like a Bible study or meeting at someone’s house. Nothing one would usually associate with a movement later exposed as being riddled with fraud and chicanery.

Which isn’t surprising, really. During a time when hundreds of thousands of men lost their lives to a hideous war (and Spiritualism would see another surge in popularity after World War I took the lives of over seventeen million people), the scientific community was buzzing with the findings of Robert Chambers, who published Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation in 1844, and Charles Darwin, who published his Origin of Species in 1859.

And along with these things, slavery was on its way to being abolished in the United States (and had already been abolished in England in 1833), and with the move into the Industrial Age which allowed more women into the workforce, women began to fight for the right to vote and for equal pay. So during all of this upheaval as the western world was thrust into the modern age, as people became disillusioned with the organized religion of the nineteenth century, it’s not surprising that some people began the search for something that would give them proof of life after death, that there was still something more for them beyond this existence, and that not all of life’s mysteries had been solved by the scientists and industrialists of the age.

And it was women who often stood at the head of the Spiritualist movement (though many men became famous mediums as well). Women, who were believed to be more sensitive to the messages being sent from the other side of the veil. Though this perceived weakness in their sex allowed many of them to become adept businesswomen and performers, touring across the United States and Europe to sold-out crowds. That is, until many of their lauded tricks and materializations were discovered to be nothing more than animal livers and old sheets.

Spiritualism still exists today, mostly stripped down of its hallmarks of levitating tables and automatic writing and ectoplasmic figures. But for many years it drew interest from people like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens, and Pierre and Marie Curie, and even Queen Victoria was rumored to use the services of a medium to contact her beloved Prince Albert and hear his messages to her from beyond the grave.

In writing The Half Killed, I researched a religious movement that traced its origins to three sisters in upstate New York and followed its spread across the continents. Women sometimes benefitted greatly from the Spiritualist movement, suddenly finding themselves in places of power and recognition, their voices not only heard but revered. Despite the steady disintegration of the movement in later years and the skeptical eye laid on it as the nineteenth century wound to a close, it signalled a change in how women were regarded in matters of religion, science, and industry. Changes that are still rippling through the ether to this day.

posted by Quenby Olson on October, 04 ]]> /author_blog_posts/8915559-to-the-pain Wed, 19 Aug 2015 16:59:55 -0700 /author_blog_posts/8915559-to-the-pain
One out of every four pregnancies ends in miscarriage.

That’s the statistic they gave me as I laid on a stretcher in the emergency room, after they’d changed the sheets and various bed-sized pads for the second and third times, the previous sets sitting on the floor in sodden piles, amid smears of blood and so much worse.

I was nearly twelve weeks pregnant, almost to the end of the first trimester and that point when it’s supposedly safe to proclaim to the world that you’re pregnant. But on a Saturday morning, six days before my thirty-fourth birthday, I woke up and realized I had started to bleed.

It was my fourth pregnancy, the first three all having culminated in bouncing, screaming, healthy babies being delivered into this world. I knew what was normal for my body and what would trigger a call to the doctor. Blood was bad. I knew this. So I picked up the phone and dialed the number.

I wasn’t having any cramps or pain. The bleeding wasn’t heavy. I was told to stay home, to rest, and see if it stopped. At lunchtime, it nearly did. But by dinnertime, the bleeding picked up in strength, and by bedtime, I was having contractions.

I called the doctor again. They told me to go to the emergency room.

My mom came down to watch the kids, who were all slumbering peacefully in their beds, and my husband and I braved the cold for the fifteen-minute drive to the hospital.

As we waited to be admitted, and as we were asked the same questions over and over about when the bleeding began and how many pregnancies I’d had and whether I smoked or drank or took my prenatal vitamins, the contractions grew in strength. When we’d arrived, I would’ve put them on a 4 or 5 on the pain scale. By the time they led us back into the ER, they’d leaped up to an 8.

The nurses tried to remain positive and optimistic at first. Bleeding didn’t necessarily mean a miscarriage. Even the contractions could be a symptom of something else, something not connected with me losing my child. But then a particularly strong contraction swept over me, and a particularly large amount of blood came out of me. The nurse rushed in to check on me and change the pads and the sheets beneath me. She glanced down at the soiled pads. Her expression changed. She announced that it no longer looked positive.

At that point, I knew I was in labor for a child that would not live, that probably was no longer even alive. I had never been in that position before. Me, the one who had gone through three complication-free pregnancies and complication-free deliveries. Had I started to think too highly of my fertile body? Or was this merely a fluke, my turn to add to the statistic stated to me by the doctor who came in to assure me that I had done nothing to bring on this miscarriage?

As the night wore on, my husband dozed as much as he could and I flipped through the cable channels, settling on Phineas and Ferb and hideously awful purses on one of a half-dozen shop-at-home channels. And as I laid there, dizzy from morphine and exhausted from everything else, I continued to bleed, and I watched as my belly slowly shrank down, as if there had never been a baby in there in the first place.

What I don’t want is for this fourth pregnancy, the first of mine not to make it to full-term, to become nothing more than a statistic. I was pregnant. I went through morning sickness, just like the others. I had already started experiencing weird food cravings and a constant need to pee, just like the others. I had looked forward to feeling the baby kick, to finding out if it was a boy or a girl, to holding that messy little newborn as it blinked through the goo on its eyes and took its first breaths of stale, hospital air.

But because those things didn’t happen does not make it any less than the others, relegating it to a lower status. I have been pregnant four times. I am a mother four times over. Should I become pregnant again, it will be my fifth pregnancy and my fifth child.

***

I didn’t write any further than that. I’m not sure I needed to. By the time I tapped out that last paragraph, I was spent. Some of the pain and the grief had drained out of me, leaving me feeling numb.

I went through a difficult time after that. A hard winter with bitter cold and a tremendous amount of snow and ice didn’t help matters. I was probably depressed, though I hadn’t experienced anything like it before and didn’t understand until afterwards what was going on. But I felt very little, simply moving forward through each day, thankful for making it to the end of it, and going to sleep at night, hoping not to dream.

My father’s health took a downturn at the same time. The winter was even harder on him. By spring, we knew it was going to be his last year with us, perhaps his last summer. But he didn’t even make it to summer.

And the pain is different now. With losing the baby, it was immediate and sharp, leaving a grey void in its wake that slowly faded into nothing. With my father, perhaps because there was such a build up towards the end with his chronic health problems, it doesn’t feel the same at all. I feel it constantly, but only if I allow myself to. After the baby, there was the cold emptiness. With my father, the sorrow is a living thing, always alert, waiting to pounce on me the moment I let down my guard.

My urge to write, then, is different, too. After the miscarriage, it was like pushing poison out of a wound. Putting my chin to my chest and writing as many words as I could, as quickly as I could, without a thought as to typos or mistakes. Just going, going, going until I was too tired and I could finally close my eyes and sleep. Now, I’m distracted. Wanting to take on a bajillion projects at once, unable to concentrate on anything for more than a few minutes at a time.

Because pain and grief are these strange, intangible things. There’s no right or wrong way to approach them, because they are never the same animal. One might be strong enough to always hold you in its grip, while the other might release you with nothing more than a sigh.

And here I sit, the words still pouring out of me, not even sure if I have a particular point to this post or any kind of message I wish to impart to the world. Beginning, middle, and end is how these things are supposed to go. But our lives, and the pain left behind when a life leaves us, don’t always seem to follow that arc.

Beginning�� middle�� end.

And still it hurts. And still I write.

posted by Quenby Olson on March, 09 ]]> /author_blog_posts/8820315-the-half-killed---where-it-all-began Mon, 03 Aug 2015 06:30:57 -0700 /author_blog_posts/8820315-the-half-killed---where-it-all-began The Half Killed, a supernatural murder-mystery set in London at the end of the nineteenth century.

Now, I don’t know when the idea of The Half Killed came to me. It started with a scene. And then another scene. And then another and another, until I had an entire world in front of me and a wider variety of characters than I could have ever anticipated. Of course, once I’d written several thousand words and a few chapters, I realized I needed to slow down and research and make sure I was happy with what I was producing. I didn’t mean to slow down to the point that it would take nearly a decade to finish the book, but there you go.

This little scene was the first thing I wrote. I clearly remember sitting up very late at night (this was pre-marriage and children) and scribbling this whole thing down in a notebook, my hand cramping up as I reached the end of it but not wanting to stop for fear that the words would dribble out of my head before I could get them onto the page.

At this point, my main character didn’t even have a name. (She’s Dorothea Hawes now, but she was simply Spiritualist Girl at the beginning). But from this bit grew another 90,000 words and 24 chapters. And even more stories for these characters to tell.



The Unveiled



The hush came quickly, as it always did. Even the coughing ceased, and I knew I had them. They would hold all of it in: the noises, the whispers—even the scratchings were postponed for a time, until the lights came up again and that aura of the mysterious lost its hold.

When the curtain rose, a shudder passed through the crowd, hundreds of bodies moving forward, shifting for a better view. The immediate disappointment was an almost palpable thing. The stage was mostly bare but for a chair, a table, and a few other knick-knacks that wouldn’t serve any purpose as the evening progressed. But Marta insisted on them, claiming that a few baubles were necessary to entertain the eye.

The edge of the curtain was my barrier, my point of no return. Behind the heavy fabric that smelled of dust and age, I tried not to give in to my curiosity, my head bowed as I assured myself that no one out there could hear the erratic palpitations inside my chest. The hiss of the gas jets was something of a comfort, and I exhaled through parted my lips as I closed my eyes and pretended—for a moment, at least—that the performance had already arrived at its end.

The people would stand then, find their way back towards their homes, and I would escape to my room, if Marta allowed it. More often than not, there would be a private audience she would wish for me to entertain, and once again it would be long past midnight before I could stare out my window, until I could allow the voices to fade to a low buzz of whispering inside my head.


My feet were cold. Understandable, since I was not permitted even a thin pair of stockings for protections against the drafts that rattled through the old theater. I had complained to Marta about it, and what had she done? Nothing, as usual. Because it had been her idea in the first place, to send me out only half-dressed, as if I were some kind of nymph, a child of nature, recently caught gamboling with elves and sprites before turning onto Regent Street for a quick show in front of the natives. That is, if the natives arrived at the door with no less than five shillings and an air of respectability about them.

Marta liked to tell me I was made for this, and there were some days when I was inclined to agree with her. She claimed to have seen a promise in the soft lines of my face. Maybe of beauty, or wisdom, but something vague enough to allow people to apply any future they pleased to my unblemished features.

Perhaps that was part of my charm, my lack of age, or of the artifice that generally accompanied a person of advanced years. Every night, when I looked out over the crowd, I saw the need for trust. The people wanted to put their trust in me, because I stood there, the evidence of their second lives in corporeal form.

Marta’s voice reached my ears, her dulcet tones telling the audience what they wished to hear—that their prayers would be answered, all of their skepticism laid to rest. And there were always one or two skeptics in every crowd, usually the sour-faced man or woman leaning back in their seat, eyes narrowed as they hoped to catch a glimpse of the mirror, or the string, or the obvious tool that would transform all of my lauded powers into mere sleight of hand or trickery. Even after afterward, there would always be a few who still refused to believe. But I wasn’t there to convince them. If I’d had any choice, I would n0t have been there at all.

Marta finished speaking, and then she was again at my side, prodding my shoulder with her knuckle.

“Give ‘em a show,�� she whispered into my ear, the blast of her breath on my skin raising the hairs on the back of my neck. “You always work too quick. Stretch it out some. It’s the tension they want, the suspense. Make ‘em feel it, and then we’ll see those seats full to bursting through the end of the week.��

The heat was there the moment I stepped out from behind the protection of the curtain, as if I’d deserted one world and walked into another. In this place, I looked out with eyes wide open, unflinching when I observed the look of pain or horror I’d brought to someone’s face.

But there could be joy, as well. Despite my wording, some only heard what they wanted, translating my speech into something more palatable, shaping it into a comfort that would wrap itself around them the next time they closed their eyes to sleep. A few people merely wished for closure, and I was able to offer it to them. But with closure often came the end of hope, a door or window sealed shut, one that might have remained open for years and years.

That was why they came to see me, for the assurance that death was not the end of all things. To them, death was simply another part of life—an often unseemly part, yes—but one that had to be gotten through before they could enjoy the next stage of their existence.

That is what they told themselves, those who believed their spirits would carry on long after their bodies had been lowered into the ground. That there was more life to be had, that their time on earth was but the blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things.

And there were those who believed they would return after death, and that others could and did. That the rattling they heard in the attic wasn’t an infestation of squirrels, but rather the restless spirit of their dearly departed mother come back to reveal a great secret that would shake the family’s foundation to its core. Of course, those were the ones who could not be helped. Their beliefs were the most steadfast. Tell them the truth, and they would call me a liar.

The stage was gritty, though I knew it had been thoroughly swept some time in the last few hours. One night, when I moved too quickly, a thin splinter of wood forced itself into the soft flesh near the arch of my foot. A wince at the corners of my eyes, and the audience must have been convinced I had received a vital communication from the spirit world. And all I could think about was finding a warm foot bath and a pair of tweezers.

But the memory of the splinter reminded me of Marta’s constant advice, that I should be more demonstrative with my emotions. I had seen other ones like myself, or the ones who claimed to be like me. And for all I knew, they were the truly gifted while I lived with a controlled sort of madness. I had seen them put on their shows—their demonstrations—and they were all theatrics and light, smoke and mirrors. An evening of diversions and misdirection. Waving one hand to distract the audience while they picked their pockets with the other. And the people adored them.

The woman—and it was almost always a woman—appeared on stage as if that itself, her grand entrance, was enough to steal the very breath from her audience. There were colored lights to dazzle the eye, and a mist of artificial fog that clung to the edges of the stage, settling at eye level with the front row. Many handkerchiefs were drawn from pockets, and the more delicate even admitted to having been overcome by the fumes. Later, I knew that they would claim it was due to having been in the presence of such divine power, their souls stirred into a state of exhilaration their feeble bodies failed to contain.

They worked with the senses, those other intercessors between the living and the dead. The smell of roses was in the air, they said. Of lilacs. Of soured milk. Of coagulated blood. And they would claim to have heard a voice. A wispy voice. Female, more than likely. But occasionally a man’s voice, robust and chagrined all at the same time. Sometimes they would even go so far as to alter their own voice, to mimic a speech pattern so unlike their own there could be little doubt that it must have come from another speaker, a spirit inhabiting their body.

And the show would often be peppered with allusions to art. I once witnessed a well-constructed tableaux vivant, rich with costumes, with colored lights that shimmered from fire pans set at the sides of the stage. And there had even been a few manifestations, always the highlight of a successful performance. A vision of a wandering spirit, lit by white light, the picture gaining opacity as the artist sank more deeply into their trance.

I used none of those tricks. Marta told me that I should, implored me as she counted the takings from the previous week. I could’ve been a sensation. Add a tremble here or there, a kind of high-pitched keening when the pressure of the spirits became too much to bear. Do all that, and I could have found myself putting on a show in the presence of royalty.

The people who crowded into the theater every evening—twice on Saturdays—the easy cadence of their lives was more than enough. To say that I was aware of their entrance into the theater sounded more like what I ought to say than the actual truth. I felt nothing from them, sensed nothing. Standing where I did, just behind the curtain, I was mostly ignorant of the shuffling of feet, the brush of velvet against silk, a scrap of lace torn from the hem of a lady’s skirt. I had only what my imagination could conjure.

But it was what the people brought with them that alerted me to their arrival, the unseen visitors tagging along, clinging like a cloud of smoke, able to penetrate and glide through the most solid of objects. And then it was a cacophony inside my head, like the ringing of church bells. Only there was no such holy connection with what I heard.

I stood in the center of the stage, my eyes closed. The table was to my right, and I put out my hand—for support, I assured myself—and gripped the edge of the wood with knuckles that rapidly lost their color.

In my head, I heard them start. But that wasn’t quite true. They’d been talking for some time, daring to shriek while I used no small amount of strength to subdue them. In front of me, there was silence. No coughing, hardly a sniff despite the cold and the damp that seeped through the building’s framework. And then the crowd gazed up at me, waiting. For a sign. For a revelation. For an evening’s entertainment.

I wanted to tell them all to leave. The instruction danced on the tip of my tongue, quaked in my limbs. The urge to yell and scream, to tear out my hair and rave like a madwoman, spitting obscenities while the sound portion of my mind, what was left of it, recited a prayer.

Dear God, I will give you my life, my soul, if you will free me from this burden, if you will give me some meager amount of peace.

But there was no reply. There never was, no matter how many times I sent those words towards heaven. The communications between the two of us had been demolished years before, and so I was simply speaking to the air, my plea lost amid the terrible, mocking cries that poisoned my every thought.

The audience waited for me. I had to give them their show, no matter how unsatisfactory my performance turned out to be. Some would walk away calling me a fraud, a charlatan, or—if they wished the barb to truly stick—a mere actress. I’d be the topic of conversation over a late supper, and then I’d be forgotten. But not everyone would have that luxury. Others would hear my words, their eyes widening as I painted a picture of torment for them. And they would go away with a pain in their chests, like a fist closing around their heart, and even then, they would experience only a hint of my suffering.

And then, it was time.

I opened my eyes, and there were the faces. I didn’t study any of them, afraid that one of them would be familiar to me, that Marta’s dream would be realized by my acquisition of a following. Even then, I suspected that I’d become a sort of holy personage to a few of them, divine proof of the connection between this world and the world beside their own. A simple nod of my head, and I heard a woman gasp in anticipation of whatever that small movement might come to signify. But it was only a nod, nothing more. A mere welcome to the audience before me. Both seen and unseen.

posted by Quenby Olson on February, 15 ]]> /author_blog_posts/6622922-real-women-have-shapes Fri, 11 Jul 2014 12:28:00 -0700 /author_blog_posts/6622922-real-women-have-shapes
My parents were both slender. My father was 6' 3" and almost too skinny to join the Navy. My mom was 5' 6" and not even 100 pounds. So once the baby fat wore off, I was a bit of a twig.

But honestly, I didn't even realize it. I was homeschooled, so I didn't have to endure any taunting about my gangly limbs from that quarter, and the kids at church had known me since I was a baby, so there really wasn't anything to comment on.

And then I started taking dance lessons when I was nine years old. Dance lessons meant being in a leotard and tights for every class. Leotard and tights that were actually baggy on me. Every costume had to be taken in. EVERY SINGLE COSTUME. And all through this, I kept growing taller and taller, my arms and legs and back getting longer, so I was obviously gaining weight, but the weight kept going straight into more and more height and it was just a whole lot of awkwardness all around.

And then... I became a teenager.

Until then, no one had really pointed out my resemblance to a toothpick in a negative light. But, of course, when you're a teenager, and you're surrounded by other teenagers, then suddenly everyone becomes SO WONDERFUL about pointing out your flaws and just being generally catty and awful to one another. As hormonally-charged, insecurity-ridden teenagers often do. All of a sudden, I couldn't be skinny just because I was a naturally skinny person. No, I must be anorexic. I must be bulimic. I needed to eat more. And more. And more. And more. And while surrounded by other girls who were constantly stressing about wanting to LOSE weight, I wondered why I was different, and what on earth was wrong with me.

And so I started to notice my body. I saw the bones of my rib cage sticking out. I saw my spine, my shoulder blades, my twiggy little thighs and the bony arms and wrists that people just loved to come up and wrap their fingers around in order to better illustrate how small and abnormal I was.

I stopped wearing shorts, first. And then skirts and dresses that showed off anything above the knee. (Funny enough, my mother is probably one of the few mothers who encouraged her teenage daughter to wear short skirts and cute dresses while stressing that I had "great legs". I, being fifteen years old and wallowing in low self-esteem, did not believe her.) I layered my clothes. I wore bulky, heavy outfits - even in warm weather - to hide my body.

I also started to keep track of everything I ate. I became obsessed with counting calories. NOT to keep myself from eating too many, but because I had to make sure that I was consuming enough. I filled notebooks with daily lists of everything I'd eaten and how many calories were in each serving (I also made sure to round the numbers down in order to keep the totals low and thereby make myself eat more). If I hit my daily goal (usually around 3000 calories) I put a little foil star sticker next to the total. If I didn't hit the goal? It went into a deficit account that I had to make up by the end of the week.

Into my early twenties I continued to keep the notebooks and the lists and the numbers. (Seriously, you know you have a problem when you voluntarily introduce MATH into your daily life.) I kept layering clothes, putting on leggings under jeans and tank tops under shirts to make me look "thicker". I would hear the saying "Real Women Have Curves", and I would get angry at my hip bones, at the sharp angles that made up my body.

Then, when I was twenty-eight, I met my husband. (CORRECTION: I started dating my husband a second time. But this is the time that stuck so it's the one that goes in the books.) I still - STILL - felt bad about my body. I didn't want him to see me. I wanted him to think I was curvy, that I had a bosom, that I looked like the other women that he most definitely-obviously-no-doubt thought were better looking than me. But he always made me feel beautiful. He always made me feel like I had the most perfect figure imaginable. He made me feel confident and gorgeous.

I stopped stressing about my weight... a little bit. Gone were the notebooks, the constantly checking out the Nutritional Information on every package to see if it something was fatty enough to even be worth my time to eat. And then, I found out I was pregnant.

Morning sickness was evil. I hardly ate anything for about six weeks, and having started out at 125 pounds, losing ten pounds was a bit scary. But I knew my body, and I knew I would bounce back as the constant illness began to wane. I remember going in for my first prenatal appointment. I remember the ultrasound and hearing my baby's heartbeat for the first time. And then, the doctor sat down to ask me a few questions.

The first question? Did I have a problem with gaining weight?

My first thought was that she meant did I have difficulty gaining weight? Which I do. I've always been skinny. And I started to point this out to her, and then something in my head... clicked. She didn't mean would it be physically difficult for me to gain weight, but would it be mentally difficult for me to gain weight. And at that moment, as tears pricked my eyes, I felt all of my teenage insecurities rush back at me, hitting me with the force of a flash flood.

So there I sat, pregnant for the first time, knowing that my life was about to change in so many wonderful and amazing and frightening ways, and I had to defend myself. No, I was not anorexic. No, I had never had an eating disorder. Yes, I was just naturally skinny. No, I didn't need to speak to a counselor. Yes, I was sure my baby would be fine without any sort of an intervention. I don't know if she believed me. Frankly, I didn't care. But I wanted to be out of there so much, because just a little bit of my pregnancy happiness was suddenly sucked away from me.

Over the next six months, I gained forty pounds. I loved those forty pounds. I gloried in them. My arms, my legs, my belly, my CURVES were gorgeous and spectacular and I wanted to bottle them up and keep them on a shelf so I could bring them out again whenever I was feeling down. I had the pregnancy glow in spades, and I didn't even mind when someone got a glance at my legs or my upper arms.

And so here I am, nearly five years after the birth of my first child (and with two more children tagging along behind her), and I have to ask myself: Why am I writing this?

Well, I have daughters. Two daughters. Two daughters born to tall, skinny parents (I'm 5' 11" and holding steady at about 130 pounds, while my husband is 6' 2" and averaging around 170 pounds) so I won't be surprised if they end up tall and slender, too. But my hope - my fervent, fervent hope - is that after going through what I went through, after hating my body for so many years, after feeling myself pull further and further inward every time someone would tell me I needed to eat something, or would ask if I was TRYING to lose weight (in that oh-so-concerned tone that still sets my teeth on edge), that I will be able to tell them that they're not alone. They're not abnormal. They're not ugly.

Will their ribs be visible during the worst of their growing years? Probably. Will they have the "coveted" thigh gap (that I loathed with every fiber of my being)? More than likely. But I want them to know that they are beautiful, that they don't have to worry about how others look at them, what others say about them, what others accuse them of when it comes to health and nutrition, AND that they absolutely, positively do not need to eat a sandwich just because their upper arm is not as wide as their elbow.

Oh, and shorts. I definitely hope they wear lots and lots of shorts.

posted by Quenby Olson on March, 05 ]]> /author_blog_posts/6421361-a-new-story Sat, 07 Jun 2014 04:44:41 -0700 /author_blog_posts/6421361-a-new-story
I have a new book!

But this is different from my first book, "Knotted". And not just in style. "Knotted" was a fun, frothy YA story with a bit of romance. But this new story is different. It's fantasy, for one thing. And it's darker. But I didn't enjoy writing it any less than I did "Knotted".

This new book is titled, "Out of Darkness", and is the first in a series. (I would love to say how many books there will be in the series, but only the first one is complete, the second is in first draft stage, and anything after that is still just dancing around inside my head or in notes scribbled down on whatever scrap of paper happened to be closest to me at the time.)

But here's the Really Big Thing (and part of what makes this Great News): You can read it FOR FREE!

I've decided to post this book, chapter-by-chapter, on Wattpad. Every week (or two weeks, depending on much life decided to blow up in my face that week) I will post a new chapter, free for anyone to read. Just click and read and done!

And why am I doing this? Mostly, because I want my stories to be read. I love to write, I love to create, and I also love to try new things. Wattpad is something I've never tried before, but I've known of it for sometime, and have always had a niggling thought in the back of my head that I would like to try it out and see how things go. And "Out of Darkness" seems to be the perfect fit for it's chapter-at-a-time posting approach.

So, go ahead! Give the first chapter a read. The second chapter will be up in another week or so, and so on, and so forth, until the ENTIRE book is posted up there for you to read.

And don't be afraid to share with others, or leave a comment telling me your thoughts. I'm always ready to grow and learn as a writer, and other people's feedback is incredibly important to me.

Oh, and one more thing (because you wouldn't be able to do much without this), here's the link:

Go, read, enjoy. And have a great weekend!

posted by Quenby Olson on February, 15 ]]> /author_blog_posts/4559551-babydom Sun, 21 Jul 2013 11:56:59 -0700 /author_blog_posts/4559551-babydom
Well, anyway. This post is about my children. So that's my warning to you now.

I don't talk much about being a mom. That doesn't mean I don't talk about my children. I talk about them ALL THE TIME. I've no doubt I'm swiftly becoming one of Those Women that people hate, the kind that uses every other Facebook update to quote something absolutely adorable said by one of their children, or to remark on one of their most precious of little quirks, or to wax poetic on how their children are the greatest children to ever grace the planet and when they cry it is to produce crystalline tears that fall on the ground and replenish the earth with all of their life-giving properties.

But I don't really go very much into what it's like to BE a mom. And that's mostly because... well, I can't.

It's one of those things you can't sum up in a few choice words. And I don't mean that in the "ALL LOVE THAT I FEEL FOR MY CHILDREN IS THE GREATEST LOVE AND MERE WORDS WOULD ONLY SULLY SUCH PERFECTION" sense of the phrase. What I mean is... It's too crazy. Too chaotic. Too exhausting. Too full of astonishing, perplexing, frustrating experiences for me to be able to sit back and say, "Meh, it's okay."

So how do I even begin? Where do I begin? It probably helps (or maybe it doesn't help at all and the hormones currently racing through my body are making me CRAZYPANTS all over the place) that I'm about nine days away from my due date. With my third child. So all of those things I mentioned above? The frustrating bits and the perplexing bits and the astonishing bits? Yeah, I'm dealing with those in spades.

So back to the beginning. You've gone through the pregnancy, you've picked out names and nursery colors and oohed and aahed over all the cute baby clothes and imagined how wonderful it will be to be have your child in your arms, frolicking through the dew-touched woods with the other nymphs and sylphs as you embrace motherhood and nursing while just imagining how great a mom you'll be and how you'll never give your child sugar or a pacifier or jarred baby food and you'll wash out every single cloth diaper (woven from the silken threads of magical tree elves who only use chlorine-free material recycled beneath the waxing light of a gibbous moon) with your bare hands and it will all be MAGICAL, truly MAGICAL.

No. No, it won't be.

It will be scary. At least, that's the first thing I experienced. And not because I was suddenly in charge of a squalling little ball of baby acne and screams that threatened to punch the nurses in the face when they tried to weigh her at the hospital. It's also because after nine months of dealing with nausea, exhaustion (I'd say "fatigue", but seriously, that word sounds so dainty and ladylike, and there is nothing ladylike about snoring loudly while drool collects on your chest and you're still wearing the same clothes from two days ago because the thought of opening a drawer or turning on the faucet to take a shower is more than enough to make your muscles ache), contractions, midnight hunger, swelling, hot flashes and 5,000 other less-savory symptoms that I won't take the trouble to name here, I then went through over fifteen hours of back labor, several hours of pushing, and all to bring my crying little pugilist into the world.

So... imagine having the flu, and then being beaten with a sack of rocks. And then someone hands you a baby. Yeah, that's pretty much your first exposure to motherhood right there.

And so I foundered. And I cried. I also didn't sleep, I didn't eat, until at the end of the first week at home with my oldest daughter, I dropped her into my husband's arms, locked myself in the bathroom, and refused to come out.

Because it wasn't MAGICAL. I wasn't dancing with wood-nymphs or weaving flowers into my hair or planning out organic, GMO-free menus for the months ahead when my child would begin eating food. I bawled, and ate my own meals like someone who had been born without taste buds, and all while rambling around the house in the same pajamas I'd worn for a week, smelling like sour milk and I-don't-want-to-know-what-else.

But that isn't all there is to being a mom. That's only one, tiny, infinitesimal little portion of it. Because having started at the bottom, feeling completely raw, completely overwhelmed by how difficult everything was, then every achievement, every day that ended with some measure of my sanity still intact became the most glorious of victories. Another week passed by. And then six weeks. And then I was counting in months. My daughter was still alive. I could kill any plant I'd ever touched. Pets just seemed like so much work. But a child... a human child... I was able to not only keep it alive, but it thrived. So then, when I was graced with that first smile, that first laugh, that first moment when she locked eyes with mine and I knew - I KNEW that she recognized me and was glad to see me... Well, that's when I started to feel a bit more like a "Mom" and a little less like "Random Person In Charge of Pooping, Puking Infant."

So... being a mom. That's just a little bit of what it's like, or at least what it's been like for me. And that really only touches on the first few months. That's not even covering first words, and baby-proofing, and potty-training, and lots of other things that may or may not need to be hyphenated. My oldest daughter will be four years old in September. My second will be 2 1/2. And sometime during the next week or so, I'll be introducing another little one - a boy, this time around - into the fold. And I'm sure that I'll be just as tired, just as frustrated, and just as smelly all over again.

But with a good bit of that GREATEST LOVE mixed in with everything, too. I definitely can't forget that.

posted by Quenby Olson on March, 11 ]]> /author_blog_posts/4510197-the-half-killed---excerpt Fri, 12 Jul 2013 12:29:00 -0700 /author_blog_posts/4510197-the-half-killed---excerpt The Half Killed, due out in March of next year.

The story follows a young spiritualist (what we would most likely call a medium or a psychic nowadays) over the course of a few weeks during her life in Victorian-era London. Strange things are happening, dead bodies turning up with no clear evidence as to how they were killed, and our spiritualist, Dorothea Hawes, is pulled into the task of finding the murderer and connecting the current crop of crimes to the death of her parents over a dozen years before.

So that's the gist of it.

Anyway, I know this is out of order and out of context, but this bit is just a glimpse into some of Dorothea's back story. Please excuse any typos or grammatical errors that are still in need of being fixed. I'll get to them once I go through the manuscript with my Red Pen of Doom.

They gave you your own room, up at the top of the house, and after all of the fuss and the crying, you were glad to be away from the rest of the family, away from your cousins, the twins, who pretended to be afraid of you when their parents were present, but liked to pinch you and call you names when they thought no one was looking. But your Aunt Dancy indulged them, giving them all sorts of cakes and things, and you wondered that they weren't ill from devouring so many sweets, but instead they ran and jumped and screamed until their father threatened them with his belt, and then they were quiet, for a time.

The bedroom was large, but empty, and with only your little bed and the dressing table beneath the window, it would've been an easy thing to fancy yourself locked away in another world, a world so much bigger than your own. But the window was so high that you couldn't see out of it, and all of the noises of the house seemed to carry up the stairs to rattle the walls, until you thought you could see the dust shuddering through the air. And then the twins came up when only old Mrs. Prim was there to watch after them, and they pushed things through your keyhole, and laughed when you yelled at them or threw something at the door, until you understood their ways and learned not to pay them any attention.

You wore the one dress that Aunt Dancy bought for you, and it was black, and she refused to curl your hair but made you wear it in a braid that ran down the middle of your back. She said that the black was less punishment than you deserved, but when you asked what she meant, she only shook her head, muttering your mother's name on a soft breath that sounded like a prayer.

You were to stay in your room when visitors came to call, and you knew how they spoke of you, of how wicked you were, and that Aunt Dancy hoped you would not have an ill effect on the twins. The twins never stopped with their tricks, and when one of them bellowed out that you were a murderer, you smacked him hard, even though you were sure that your Aunt would find out. And when she did, she locked you in your room and threatened to let Uncle use his belt on your backside. But Uncle never came with the belt, and two days later, when you were let out again, Aunt Dancy declared to have had enough, that she'd done her part as your nearest relation, but there was nothing of her sister in you, only wickedness. And didn't she have the twins to think of? So she sent Mrs. Prim to pack up your belongings, the old woman glaring at you through a wrinkled, narrowed set of eyes.

For Mrs. Prim had the bedroom nearest to yours, and no doubt she heard what happened after the lamps were put out and the fire burned down to its lowest embers. But you'd tried not to sleep when it was dark, only grasping a few hours of rest once the sun came up, but even then, she must have heard when the dreams visited you, though you'd taken to sleeping with your face buried in your pillow, your head hidden beneath as many layers of blankets as you could tolerate without fear of being smothered. And you knew she kept an eye on you after the downstairs maid found the dead cat on the back stoop, it's neck torn open as if it had been seared with a hot blade. Even the girl who came to build up the fire looked at you differently after that, but she said nothing, and always scurried away as soon as her task was finished.

Aunt Dancy didn't say goodbye, and Uncle was off at the bank for the day, and no doubt the twins were thrilled to see the back of you, though they were losing a great deal of sport now that you would no longer be around to taunt and tease with their vile words and pinchings. But Aunt did say that she would visit, her gaze pinned to the floor as she spoke. You told yourself they would not visit, and you hoped that they would not, even though you confessed that you would very much like to see her again. Her eyes flickered then, and no doubt she guessed the lie. But then the cab came around, and Mrs. Prim said it was time to go, and her hand was at your back, her split nails digging into your dress as she picked up your bag and pushed you out the door.

posted by Quenby Olson on July, 23 ]]>