When Daddy Lies About Cheating

“You lied.”

Two simple little words that carry so much weight 

when spoken from a broken heart. 

In “The Legacy,” one of the short stories in Sins of the Father, Angie confronts her dad about an incident of adultery.

He lied. She knows he lied and she states it simply. It takes some decision-making, but she finally confronts him. But how often does that happen? It's not an easy choice for Angie, but I know self-assured women who probably would never dream of it!

I remember a friend of mine telling me that her dying father had said he really needed to tell her something, and she kept putting him off because there was a certain air of finality to it that was breaking her.

He insisted and told her that he needed to tell her something before he died.

Not a man given to true confessions, she tried to come up with the worst-case scenario, and the only thing she could think of was that he was going to admit to an affair. He was also not likely to cheat, but it was the worst thing she could imagine.

And as much as she loved her father, she was ready to tell him off (if it was about an infidelity), but she also couldn't even bring herself to say it out loud. I think most women would probably find themselves inside that maddening dilemma. 

It turned out to be something serendipitous but sweet (it’s not really my story to tell). Ultimately, it was a secret kept but its omission was no sin.

Catching a parent in a lie, and knowing that it points to a larger deception is a horrible burden to put on a child, made only more horrendous as the child matures. Understanding the nature of relationships, commitment, love and the honesty and trust required to maintain it all is crushing because it is also a constant reminder that one parent did not keep their end of the deal towards the other.

While there are support groups for adult children of alcoholics and adult children of divorce, there is no single therapeutic group for adult children of adultery. Though they experience a lot of the same emotional turmoil, I think the shame is so personal and so damaging to the core that many probably would rather not share it.

And seriously, isn't growing up hard enough without the added knowledge of a parent's infidelity, and its implications (many misguided as they are left undiscussed)? It's worse for kids who know the other parent is aware of the deception and accepts it without making their partner account for their dishonesty, I think. 

Certainly many carry their torment through a lifetime of failed relationships. Some, though, like Angie in “The Legacy,” get to look the culprit in the eye and say what she’d wanted to say since she was twelve, “You lied.”

Of course, Sins of the Father  is available at Amazon and other online retailers (visit the Facebook page for The Mistress for more links!).

Triggering Nostalgia

One of the stories in Sins of the Father is about a woman’s relationship with a recurring boyfriend. He came and went from her life for years, and they maintained a relatively amicable relationship despite the recurring breakups.

His plan included booty calls into their late 80s.

Check out https://www.facebook.com/mistressbook for links to all online retailers

But nothing lasts forever. The relationship did not end for the obvious reasons, though…

Another story tries to tie in to current events – especially because the whole Ashley Madison hack amused me. Granted, I’ll say it again: doxing is wrong and I cannot endorse it. But at the same time, I can’t feel any sympathy for people who sought a service to help them cheat on their partners.

But then, that was not the focus of the story. I touched on something that I find troubling and hope that I did not contribute to the problem. I keep seeing stories where the female characters are victimized and they act as if that kind of thing is both normal and acceptable. Nobody ever leaves, fights back, falls apart under the weight of the horror, or goes to the police. More importantly, there are never any consequences to the behavior. That’s a little one dimensional, I think. I tried to break out of that mold.

Another story speaks of a woman facing her husband’s infidelity and, literally, staring it in the face daily for years. There is the remembrance of adultery when the heroine was a small child, and then from another character in her tween years. Another character faces the cheater in his deathbed.

I told an old friend that I inter-mingled truth and fiction in these stories and she is dying to try to decipher which is which. But for those people who may not know me as well, I wonder which character will bring them memories of their own.

I’m not saying that you must have had a firsthand experience with infidelity to get these stories. Knowing someone who knew someone will do, but mostly what I think people will respond is to a specific moment in time.

If any of my stories strike a match in the dark attic of your mind and you find yourself riding a wave of nostalgia because I triggered a memory of your own stories, then my job is done!

And this is precisely why I love vignettes. In the end, those little scenes that come to you and measure the value of your days in your heart, those are vignettes. I want to start liberating those for you, so you can chase more of them.

Please Buy Sins of the Father

This is the cover of the paperback: coming this weekend!

Sins of the Father is finally done! Sins drops on Black Friday: of course, of course!

Kindle Stores have the e-book (internationally), as well as Smashwords. Kobo, iBooks, Nook and other e-book retailers will get the book later this weekend. CreateSpace and Amazon will carry the paperback edition.

Sins of the Father includes stories about how the infidelities of father figures affect the children in their lives. Some stories have funny moments, some have tragic moments, some stories have horrific details that will shock you.

Some events in this collection of stories are based on real life.

The scenes of atrocity and names of the guilty have been changed to protect the disenchanted so that they may continue on their bloody trail until fully healed (who knows if that's even a thing!?). Although I left a few details that may get a few feathers ruffled...

For the record: there are good men in this world – men who are committed, loving, and ethical. These stories are not about those men.

If you buy a copy and read it, I'd appreciate a review.

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Sins of the Father is Coming!

There appears to be a blog post missing here, but I did not save it… At any rate, I have less than a week to finish my book!

There is one more story to go and it is being a little prickly.

As it turns out, the first volume of stories skews towards a particular theme that I had not seen emerge. Freudian? Not really, there are other stories, but these were easier to finish and edit.

The result is this:

There are a few funny moments. Some witty bantering… There are a number of heartbreaking moments in these stories. Some based on true stories.

There are five stories ready (and if the sixth does not work, they are meaty enough to hold their own). In one story, a daughter gets to confront her father after years of holding in her anger. In another story, a woman remembers a postcard moment from her childhood and puts a little perspective on it. A third story speaks of the fears of a woman for her child turning out like a father she misjudged. There’s the story of a woman whose father figure had a secret or two. Another story is about an adoptee coming into herself. The sixth story will be a little different (if I can make it work). 

Additionally, I am trying to finish a special gift for folks who buy the e-book… 

OMG! Do I have time to do this? I didn’t participate in NaNoWriMo this year knowing I would not able to do it justice, but now I have a *massive* deadline looming over my head.

No time to play: I have wrongs to write!

Gearing Towards All Consuming Disenchantment!

After a full day to myself, I finished two short stories and I believe they’ll require little to no tweaking. These are likely to go into the upcoming compilation.

Also, I have been toying with a few cover elements, some of which I include here – feel free to critique, if you feel like it. None of these is likely to be the final version.

There are a couple of days left to make the choice, but I will not be participating in NaNoWriMo. I’ll be too busy trying to finish The Bloody Trail of Disenchantment, and it doesn’t technically qualify as a novel.

I can do a word count and see if I can manage 50,000 in finishing my project, but I am not sure that’s the same.

Of course, I may change my mind before Halloween or on the Day of the Dead… Who knows? Writers can be fickle.

To my friends participating this year, you know you always have my support, and anyone who wants to buddy me for the occasional sounding board and moral support, add me. Good luck!

Multitasking Should Be an Olympic Sport

Surviving months and months of famine (in the “feast or famine” proverbial way, not literally), I suddenly find myself working on three different projects and trying to put the finishing touches on the short story collection.

I can compartmentalize and prioritize to make sure my clients get exactly what they contracted me for and perhaps just a little more.

The stories, on the other hand, have surprised me. I started some stories, finished a few, and started filling out a repository for the collection. While auditing what I have so far, I've discovered that the stories skew towards men as perpetrators, when I intended the stories to be more inclusive.

It does not point to men being the only creatures who commit adultery, it just seems as if those stories were easier to write. (Especially because I may have been familiar with one or two of the plotlines exposed.)

There is a danger of overexposing yourself when you commit memories your fiction, to come off a lot more naked than you ever intended, but the truth is that you are even in the more fantastical details of steampunk. Just as well, you want to protect the people whose tragedies you may be relating. The ones in the stories that are auto- or semi-biographical are all dead or unlikely to ever realize it's all about them. Mostly, what I want, is for these to get lost in the collection and appear as fictional but realistic pieces of the life inside the world in the pages of the book.

If I am to keep to my self-imposed production schedule, I need to make an editorial decision. I can keep the stories I have and make it a specialized volume -- A Guide to Post-Modern Lotharios -- and extend it to a two-volume project with the promise of more to come. Alternatively, I can try to finish and polish two or three stories that will achieve the original goal and keep it to a one volume.

Then it occurred to me that there really is no reason I need to limit myself. I can try to polish some of the stories I have not finished yet, but if they remain too rough for publication, I can release them later in another anthology (like a three-novella book, for instance).

It also occurred to me that I could try something different and include profiles, as I started for the FB page, almost as interstitials.

Of course, I need to finish something and release it! There is plenty of work to be done.

The house is starting to smell like a tiny bakery, with the Halloween cookie production already in motion. If that doesn’t awaken the Muse of Setting Fires Under One’s Ass, I don’t know what will!

But before I can fully tackle my adulterers, I have book covers to manipulate and convert, manuscripts to format, and proofreading to perform…

Right now, life is both a sprint and a marathon. Multitasking should be an Olympic sport!

Treating Setting as a Thing

It’s October and NaNoWriMo is barreling towards us at increasing speed. I am not at all sure that I will participate this year, though it seems to me that I need to – if only to focus my efforts.

In fact, one of the stories started as NaNoWriMo sits untouched because after some time it became clear that it was derivative without any good twists to make it truly a gem. It can remain in the dark until I can salvage it (from itself or for parts, as the case may be). I’d rather not publish than release subpar material.

To me, this is not a failure so much as a reason to try something else creatively. Perhaps I am being too hard on myself and the story ought to be told as a fantastic ridiculous little tale meant to amuse and nothing else.

I have produced less this year than I intended. I did publish The Mistress, and have been writing a collection of stories (Bloody Trail of Disenchantment). The plan is still to have it on sale for the holidays.

One of the stories seems to have escaped me. The moment I felt it coming on, I should have just started it. I took notes on the setting and a passage I wanted to see in the story (all setting, nothing plot-related). I lost the feel of the characters because I no longer understand the motivation of one or the reactions of the other.

And while I am saddened by the probable loss of what may have been a fantastic tale, I would like to advocate writing scenes where the object is nothing more than to preserve scenery.

Setting defines a place, but it also helps with mood and ambiance; and sometimes it becomes part of the story, as an additional character in the story (that is one strong and enduring place!).

What I am advocating is writing observations about places, lyrical and clinical alike, with or without characters (they are not what's important in this exercise). Keep these notes in a drawer – or a database, thumb drive or sticky notes. Preserve the scene like some omniscient CSI... 'cause setting is a thing.

Even if you are not dedicated to a story, a novel, or any one specific project, you are still writing.

More importantly, these seemingly throwaway scenes can become part of your writing later. Reading through your own writing, even if it belongs to no particular story will help you brainstorm with yourself – try to ascribe story to setting, if all other inspiration fails you.

Not everything that you write will be golden, but it shouldn’t stop you from writing. Think of it as exercising that part of your brain that sees these stories before the rest of your brain lets you in on it.

There is an upcoming interview that may bring the story back in some other guise. There’s research to do, songs to sing and poems to write. I may have slowed a little, but I ain’t done… There’s plenty of story left in me. And come Black Friday, there will be a few cheaters between the sheets (for the paperback at least). 

So back to work, I have stories to write and a cover to design!