Bad Mommy

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A friend, and one-time guest blogger, Tina Jordan, just turned me on to a great blog that is carried by the New York Times called “Motherlode.” There, author Lisa Belkin expounds on a variety of parenting topics, often employing guest bloggers herself. Thanks, Tina. Now I’m really not getting anything done. See, it’s one of those blogs that is alternately fascinating and informative. I don’t really feel like I’m wasting time, because often I learn something. And there are also those times where I’m screaming “AMEN!” at the computer, because here I thought I was alone.

Did I mention that I hold the title of “Meanest Mom Ever”? True that. I told the child who bestowed the honor upon me that I strive to be the best at everything I do, and that includes being the meanest. Ever.

I visited the site the other day, which you can access at www.nytimes.com/motherlode and read with interest about one of my favorite topics: snacking. Let me give you a little back story: years ago, when I quit my in-house job to stay home with child #1 while gestating child #2, I started frequenting the local playgrounds and parks, if only to counteract the incredible boredom that comes along with leaving a high-paying, exciting job that offers you the company of fascinating people (hindsight is 20-20 after all) to spend your day with a four-year-old who, previously, has been coddled and mentally stimulated (for a small fortune, of course) by a nanny with only one charge. After my one thousandth game of “Candy Land,” I decided it was time to branch out. After lunch one day, I went to a park within walking distance of our house dragging only me, my kid, and one single, solitary, warm juice box, in the event that said kid would get thirsty. I’m not so worried about hunger, but I do worry about thirst. We got to the park and the kid went off to play, while I sat amidst other moms who were surrounded by coolers full of perishable food, not to mention a cornucopia of dry goods like pretzels, Cheez-Its, Rice Krispie Treats, and a host of other carbohydrates. Child #1, upon gazing at this Bacchanalian spectacle of little kid food, immediately pronounced, “I’m hungry.”

“She couldn’t possibly be,” I protested to the women who had turned their collective suspicious and derisive gaze toward me, “She just ate two slices of pizza. And she only weighs thirty-six pounds.” It never even occurred to me to bring food to the playground. Weren’t we there to play?

But my protestations were in vain. I was “bad mommy.”

When I was a child, we ate three meals a day. We occasionally came in looking for other sorts of treats, but they weren’t to be had. Nobody was cutting up oranges for us to consume at halftime during our CYO basketball games. Dare I say I even went to school a few days without even having eaten breakfast? The horrors. Today’s mothers and fathers are constantly monitoring their children’s food intake, making sure they are sated and hydrated with such fervor one would think that food and drink is scarce.

I was in the post office a few weeks back waiting on an interminable line behind a very pregnant woman with a barely-two-year-old little boy. He made one peep and she started digging around in her very big rucksack for food, offering him oranges, pretzels, water, juice, milk, a half a sandwich, and crackers. Once he made his decision of oranges, she wiped his hands with hand sanitizer (did I mention that he was sitting on the floor in the United States Post Office?) and gave him his snack, which he promptly dropped on the floor, picked up, and shoved in his mouth. When he was done with the oranges, he drank the milk. Then, he started on the crackers. By the time he was done, I think I had gained three pounds just from watching.

Okay, maybe the kid was hungry. Maybe he had hadn’t eaten since the day before. Maybe the mom knew something about his blood sugar that I didn’t. But I can tell you that no child that I know has ever been that hungry that they needed to eat a small meal in the post office a half hour prior to the dinner hour. Where did parents get the idea that kids need to be fed constantly? It’s baffling to me.

Back at the playground, someone eventually gave child #1 a pretzel rod or some such treat and she went off to play, something that the children who had the four-course meal awaiting them at the park bench seemed not to do. They circled like vultures, eating everything their parents had packed up for them, instead of swinging on the swings and playing on the slide and running on the basketball court. Eventually, I succumbed to peer pressure and began bringing a half-eaten bag of whatever snack was in our house, if only to show that I wasn’t completely cruel and heartless mother who denied my child her god-given right to eat a six-foot Italian wedge in between games of hopscotch.

Please feel free to chime in with your own bad mommy stories, Stiletto faithful.

Maggie Barbieri

Angel Encounters

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Last week I wrote about Angels and was asked to tell about an Angel encounter.

Here’s my favorite.

A young mother I knew was coming home after attending a retreat, and was driving over a mountain pass. As I recall her telling of the event, the weather was bad and her car veered off the road, landing in a ditch. She was thrown out of the car and landed with her head back at an angle which made it almost impossible for her to breath.

A man came along and held her head up and gave her encouraging words. When the paramedics arrived a long time later, she asked to thank the man who’d been holding her head so she could breathe.

The paramedic told her, “Ma’am, no one was on the scene when we arrived.”

She was told it was a miracle she hadn’t choked to death on her blood.

That was an angel who kept that from happening.

Another encounter happened to my daughter and son-in-law years ago when they were very young and before cell phones. They were on a seldom traveled, narrow mountain logging road. They were with another couple and for some reason that I no longer remember, the women were in one car and the men in the other. The men were driving too fast, and the car they were in went off the side of the road. Horrified, the women stopped. The men’s vehicle was about halfway down a ravine.

The women didn’t know what to do. They were too far to walk anywhere to find help. All of a sudden two men in a truck came by. They went down to see if the husbands were okay–they were hurt but not seriously. The strangers had what was needed to pull the car back up on the road, checked to see if it ran–it did.

Before anyone could ask who the men were, they jumped back in the truck and drove off. They were angels. Skeptics might have other answers, I prefer to believe that angels are here watching out for us.

I bet other people have stories they could share.

Marilyn

Missing Person Alert: Where’s Ina?

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For a bunch of writers, I notice that we all watch a lot of television. So no surprise that this entry is not only about television programming, but a complaint about its delivery.

In my town, you have two choices for cable television. If I choose one, then I can’t get MSNBC. Not acceptable. If I choose the other, which I did, for the last three weeks I couldn’t watch The Barefoot Contessa or House Hunters. Cablevision and Scripps were engaged in mortal battle and in the meantime, both the Food Network and HGTV were not available. Heck I could give up Keith Olbermann, but Ina Garten? Grrrr

There was a third alternative, but I’m hoping that environmentalists and historians will applaud my decision not to subscribe to DirectTV. Here’s why. We actually did use their services, quite happily, until we made the fatal mistake of upgrading to one of those big TVs with High-Definition, which means I can see the pores and plastic surgery scars of actors on crime shows, and my husband and kids can watch sports ad nauseum, constanly murmuring that it was better than if they were in the stadium (for one reason, there’s no cost for constant snack service). So once the new television was delivered, I called DirectTV and was even perfectly willing to pay the premium for the upgraded service. I was only mildly annoyed when it appeared that they had cancelled the appointment without telling me. But in fact, they hadn’t cancelled the appointment, they had, in effect, cancelled me. It appears that the 200+ year old tree in my front yard was blocking the necessary reception for the upgrade and I had only one choice. Cut down the tree (horrified gasp) or change providers. They were astonished I chose the latter and continue to inundate me with constant entreaties to come home again, albeit treeless.

Of course, like more than 50 percent of cable-TV watchers, I see no program during its original showing. I DVR anything of interest and watch it at my leisure. Or if I just want to watch the highlight that is being discussed around the (virtual) water cooler, I check out YouTube. First, I rarely stay up late enough to see any of the better dramas – and a device that lets me skip ads – worth its weight in gold.

A far cry from when I was growing up. Then you built your week around the television shows you wanted to watch. If you missed an episode, you were resigned to waiting months until it was shown in reruns during the summer. Then came VCRs, and while I never did master the art of scheduling a taping, I was still able to amass a small library of tapes of my favorite shows. Of course, then the guys in suits (almost all male) realized that folks were willing to actually pay to buy a tape(s) of entire seasons – and if they threw in a couple of commentaries by the director or stars (who often seemed surprised at the episodes in which they appeared) – there were big bucks to be had.

Which brings me back to my original whine. Until late Thursday night, it appeared that I was going to have to put Ina Garten on a milk carton in order to find her. Even if she adores fennel – which I loathe – and even if she has never met a stick of butter she didn’t use or a tablespoon of salt that she didn’t add – I adore her recipes (modified as necessary) and her style. I love that when asked by actress Jennifer Garner, another fervent fan, if she could appear on her show – Ina, size 24 and proud of it, politely declined and said “Only my real friends appear on the show.” And how about House Hunters? Despite the fact that the couples inevitably pick the ugliest house of the three they’ve been shown, I want the opportunity to yell at the television set in the vain hope that they’ll change their minds and buy themselves a house that doesn’t have an “open floor plan” where everyone in the living room can see their dirty dishes.

I was ready to rent a billboard with this warning: Scripps/Cablevision – get this settled or things are going to get ugly in the Evelyn David (Northern half) household. Don’t make me tell you again or it’s on your head that a perfectly healthy old tree will be kindling.

Another victory for tree-lovers everywhere.

Evelyn David

My Deep Dark Confession and Zombies

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Paul Tremblay is the author of The Little Sleep (Henry Holt, March 3, 2009). His second novel, No Sleep till Wonderland is forthcoming (February 2010). He is a two-time nominee of the Bram Stoker award and has sold over fifty short stories to markets such as Razor Magazine, Weird Tales, Last Pentacle of the Sun: Writings in Support of the West Memphis Three, and Best American Fantasy 3. He is the author of the short speculative fiction collection Compositions for the Young and Old and the hard-boiled/dark fantasy novella City Pier: Above and Below. He served as fiction editor of CHIZINE and as co-editor of Fantasy Magazine, and was also the co-editor (with Sean Wallace) of the Fantasy, Bandersnatch, and Phantom anthologies.

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I’d like to thank the Stiletto gang for giving me the forum to make a public confession. No, not that (and quiet, you).

Here it is: I didn’t want to write, never intended to write another book featuring my lumpy, grumpy, reality-challenged, narcoleptic PI Mark Genevich. There, I said it.

I even told my agent after finishing The Little Sleep that I wasn’t writing any sequels or follow-ups. My agent said, “Right on. Anything you say, Paul. By the way, you’re so handsome and talented.”

There’s nothing innately wrong with book series, of course. It’s just that I tend to be a little ADD as a reader and a writer. When I first started writing I wrote horror short fiction, but now I like hoping from genre to genre when I can (and when it suits the story). As a reader, I seek out as many different types/styles of story as I can, and consequently, I generally don’t read series. I know, I’m weird.

So there’s that (my..um..weirdness), and there’s how I tend work as a writer. I’m a character first, plot second kind of guy. For The Little Sleep I had Mark, and then I built the rest of the story and other characters around him. He was my starting point. So after Henry Holt kindly paid for two Mark Genevich books, and when it came time to sit down and write the second, I subconsciously and not-so-subconsciously rebelled. I kept saying to myself, “Self, I already wrote Mark’s story.” Further, I have to admit, writing with a deadline and contract over my head for the first time added new pressures. I’m really a delicate flower and need to be treated as such.

Regardless of my delicateness, my publisher expected me to sally forth. So. Book two. Okay. First, I considered mixing in zombies, zombies that wear high heels, zombies that wear high heels in South Boston in the winter! just you know, to keep everything fresh and hip. But zombies aren’t big right now, so I’m squirreling that idea away for later.

Other than zombies, I was kind of stumped and frustrated. I had a hard time getting over the I-already-wrote-his-story roadblock. So I started simple, went back to the first book, and thought about its themes, about why I wanted to write it, about why Mark was who he was. The Little Sleep is really about the mystery of Mark, and ultimately, the mystery of self; of reality, memory, and the past, and how malleable they all are. So yeah, thematically The Little Sleep was about Mark learning who he was through his past.

Consequently, Mark Genevich’s present became the theme of No Sleep till Wonderland. The book is less about the unreality of Mark’s dreams and is more rooted in his daily grind, how he tries to live and cope with his narcolepsy. No Sleep till Wonderland zeroes in on what’s missing from his life in the here and now; friends, love-life, general companionship, the want and need to be more than the self. Like The Little Sleep, there is a mystery that Mark has to solve, but it’s very much tied to Mark. His personal stakes remain high: can he learn to trust others if he can’t even trust himself? The mystery for Mark (and the reader, hopefully) is other people this time around.

So yeah, the actual writing of No Sleep till Wonderland was a challenge, but I learned a ton about myself as a writer, and more importantly, I’m very happy with the book. So happy with the book and the overall writing experience, in fact, I could be talked into writing a third Genevich novel.

If there is a third book, there will totally be zombies. I promise.

Paul Tremblay

Headshot photo credit – MJ Maloney

Kill ‘Em

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We kill people for a living–or at least an approximation of a living, in my case, since my books pretty much pay for my own book addiction and not much else!. But I digress.

We kill people or a living, but do you ever find yourself holding back and not killing off someone who really and truly should be done in, and quickly? A writer friend of mine (Tonya) made the hard decision to kill off a beloved aunt in her WIP. “I had to do it,” she said in her Kentucky country girl twang. “She had to die.” Sometimes it’s tough, but, like Tonya said, sometimes you just have to pull the plug. I have occasionally found myself in that precise situation, and when I do, I now have something to turn to (besides chocolate) to put my job back into perspective. Behold, the YouTube Video Kill ‘Em, by Parnell Hall. I believe it speaks for itself.

Tell us your favorite bit from Parnell Hall’s Kill ‘Em. We’re dying to know. Mwahahahaha….

Misa

The Way Things Are

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Yesterday I attended a PTA meeting at a local coffee shop, where a few members gathered to hash out some details about an upcoming fundraiser for our high school. I grabbed a cup of coffee from the young woman working behind the counter, who happened to be the fifteen-year-old daughter of a good friend. We chatted for a minute about the long weekend we had just enjoyed and school in general.

When I took my place at the table that the early-arriving members had snagged, I ended up sitting in a seat facing the window of the coffee shop which just happened to face the driveway where deliveries for the stores in the strip mall are made. As we discussed a fundraiser that we’ll be sponsoring at the end of February, I noticed a young man walk over to a collection of bags, blankets, and other personal belongings, reach into one of the bags and take out a container of jam which he proceeded to eat with his fingers. I became completely preoccupied with the sight, missing most of the PTA discussion. I finally asked the other members of the board to look out the window and asked them if they, like I, thought he was homeless.

We all agreed that that was the case.

A few years back, while volunteering at a local soup kitchen, I had the occasion to try to help a young man who was completely without any sustenance or shelter. I spent a few minutes calling the local police department and then the Volunteers of America to find out where in our affluent community and county one could send someone who had no place to go. I was told that there was only one drop-in shelter in this county and that it was about twenty miles south of here in a very tough neighborhood in a pretty tough city. Our options limited, we opted instead to send the young man to a shelter north of here at a monastery, hoping that they would take him in even though the focus of the shelter was on rehab and recovery, not plain homelessness. We prayed that this would work out, because by the looks of him, he wouldn’t have lasted an hour in a rough shelter, besieged by mental illness and a host of problems we probably didn’t even know about.

Knowing that our options were limited, I approached my friend’s daughter at the counter and asked her and her coworker how long the man had been living outside; they thought it had been about twenty-four hours. They thought that the owner of the shop—who had gone home hours before and was not coming back—was aware of the situation as well. I asked them to give him a call to find out what, if anything, he wanted them to do upon closing. I was a little concerned about a fifteen-year-old and her not-much-older counterpart closing up shop and departing with someone living on the grounds in their path. I was jumping to conclusions, but my mind was racing at this point as to what to do or how to help this man. I didn’t want to call the police because truly, he wasn’t bothering anyone. I also knew that if the police got involved, he would end up in the rough shelter and that might not be the best thing for him. I wondered if I should talk to him to find out his story and help him find somewhere to stay. In the end, I decided to go home and get the wise counsel of Jim.

I left the coffee shop and noticed that the man was surrounded by a group of people, one of whom seemed to be sharing the food and shelter with him, bringing our current total of homeless up to at least two, if not more, judging from the group. They were young, happy, and seemingly having a great time; one of the group’s members had a laptop, I noticed curiously. I got into the car and went home, my first phone call going to my friend, the one whose daughter worked in the coffee shop. She was alarmed and immediately called the coffee shop owner to find out what was going on and what we should do, if anything.

Turns out that the homeless men were part of a group a young woman who lives in our town had befriended overseas while visiting a youth hostel. The men were from Brazil and headed there; she planned on accompanying them. She brought them back to town without telling her parents, promising them a place to stay while they regrouped before the next leg of their trip. Her parents, none too pleased with this turn of events, denied her request to put them up and told her to find somewhere else for them to stay. They’ve been camping out as well as couch surfing, and the makeshift set-up they had next to the coffee shop was erected for them to air out their camping equipment.

Ah, youth.

I travel into New York City on a regular basis and see so many homeless people that it almost absolves me from doing something for each and every person I encounter. I also know that the infrastructure in the city for dealing with homelessness exists in a far more structured sense than it does here, as evidenced by my quest to find a bed for a homeless man at the soup kitchen. But to see someone in my own town who may be without a bed and food was a new sight as well as one that I didn’t know quite how to deal with. The average age of a homeless person in the United States today is NINE. And I think we’re going to see more people in the places we live struggling for survival. I feel like yesterday’s experience was a test and has allowed me to figure out exactly what I will do when confronted with homelessness again. Because with the economy, joblessness, and poverty becoming more common-place, it will not be IF the situation happens again, but WHEN.

Maggie Barbieri

Ghosts and Angels

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Anyone who has known me for anytime at all has heard about all the haunted places hubby and I have stayed or visited: The Queen Mary, Room 17 in the Bella Maggoire Bed and Breakfast, the hotel across the street from the Alamo. Just this weekend we went on a ghost tour and visited the haunted Ventura Courthouse (while wandering around in the dark halls of the jail I’m positive I glimpsed a wraith) as well as other old hotels in the area.

My grandkids sincerely believe our house is haunted–and it may be, we have doors that open and close on their own. I have my own theory about ghosts, I think they maybe no more than echoes from the past. If you think about the fact that their might be another dimension, what went on before could very well still be hanging around.

Angels are a whole other story. Because I am a Bible student, I firmly believe that angels are surrounding us all the time, many examples are in the Bible, Old and New Testament. Good ones, those who look out for us, and the fallen angels (demons) whose agenda is totally different.

I’ve heard far too many miracles where angels intervened. According to the Bible, angels sometimes take on human appearance–hence the stranger who helped out at an accident and saved someone’s life and then disappeared before anyone could find out who he was. (And yes, I do know some personal stories where this has happened, but it would take far too long to recount them.)

Anyone who believes in ghosts ought to believe in angels too. Ghosts are fun to think and talk about, but the angels are the ones who actually intervene on our behalf.

Marilyn
http://fictionforyou.com

Bring on the Drama(s)!

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Now that Jay Leno is moving back to being the king of late night television, there should be five prime time hours in the NBC schedule opening up for new dramas. I can’t wait!

Since the Fall TV season started, and some long-running NBC dramas were cancelled, I’ve moved most of my drama watching to CBS and TNT. With the Leno shift change, I’m hoping for new NBC shows like the cancelled ER, a show that had strong female characters and broad appeal.

My favorite top ten, current, dramas in order are:
The Good Wife – one of the best shows I’ve seen in years. Great multidimensional characters.
The Closer – wonderful ensemble cast.
NCIS – Mark Harmon, Mark Harmon, Mark Harmon
Criminal Minds – despite the very dark mysteries, the ensemble cast is appealing.
Medium – long time favorite with characters to care about.
In Plain Sight – interesting female characters with unusual mysteries
Leverage – fast, fun, with quirky characters and the good guys win in the end every time.
Men of a Certain Age – despite the lack of female leads, this is a quiet charmer.
Law & Order – love the original, the theme music will hook me every time.
Burn Notice – strong female characters – and I’d watch anything with Sharon Gless in it.

I don’t watch many comedies and I’ve never liked the over-the-top ones. Instead of laughing, I’d feel embarrassed for the one getting the pie in the face. I didn’t love Lucy. I didn’t love Raymond. The Golden Girls were more a pale yellow in my mind and Gilligan could keep his island. Cheers was kind of sad. I liked MASH but it was more of a drama than a comedy. I like PSYCH and MONK for the mini-mysteries. I liked Frazier for the dog, Eddie.

Maybe the reason I’ve always liked dramas best is that I was rewriting the endings in my mind all these years. Writing an extra joke or two doesn’t do much for me, but writing a better or extended ending to a drama is something I can really get my writer’s teeth into.

What are your favorites? Do you prefer dramas over comedies? Or vice versa.

Rhonda
A TV Addict in addition to being the Southern Half of Evelyn David

The Weirdness of Being a Writer

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by Susan McBride

Here I go again, getting all geared up and nervous for a new book release (11 days from today, to be exact!). I’m strapping on my mental Kevlar vest and my sturdiest virtual helmet, and I’m crossing fingers, toes, legs, eyes, whatever’s remotely cross-able. On January 26, THE COUGAR CLUB will be available in bookstores all over the place, and three women who have lived in my head since I signed a contract in September of 2008 will be unleashed on the world, at which point they will cease to belong only to me. They will be wide open to public scrutiny, and I’ll have to accept the inevitable: some readers and reviewers will find these women fabulous and inspiring and all sorts of good things, and others will hold their noses and declare them odious, pounding out angry one-star reviews on Amazon that warn others not to spend a single penny on such drivel. Gulp! And I will have no control over either. (Sweat is breaking out on my upper lip as I type this but my positive thinking will surely evaporate it in no time, right?)

It’s a weird thing sometimes, being a writer. I mean, it sounds really fabulous when you decide at some point, “I want to be Margaret Mitchell (or Harper Lee or Barbara Taylor Bradford)! I have stories to tell! I want to share my wild imagination and love of words with the universe!” Only you don’t stop and think how unsafe an occupation it truly is, and there are no OSHA rules to protect those of us determined enough to proceed. It’s one thing to have your mother read your first manuscript and declare, “This is brilliant! Pure genius!” It’s another to peel one eye open enough to read what Publishers Weekly or Library Journal or Romantic Times decided about your latest opus. To put it bluntly, publishing can be scary!

Like, simply writing a book isn’t tough enough. I was emailing with Ellen Byerrum (who’s on a crazy deadline) the other day, and she asked me if the process ever got any easier. I didn’t need to think too hard to answer, “Nope, it never does.” THE COUGAR CLUB will be my 10th published novel–and number 11 has been in the can since last January–and even before I was under contract, I wrote 10 manuscripts that will never see the light of day. Whew, it makes me tired just recalling how much blood, sweat, and tears I’ve dripped on my keyboard through the years. Those of us who write don’t do it for the glory or the money. Anytime I hear a starry-eyed novice proclaim, “I’m going to write a book and make a lot of money so I can quit my job and support my family,” I have to fight the urge to say, “Are you crazy?” How nice it would be if it worked out that way! (Plus, you never know. I mean, if your name is Stephenie and you had a dream about a vampire, then that’s pretty much how it went.)

For those of us who are mere mortals, success doesn’t come overnight. It comes through persistence, determination, sacrifice of time with friends and family, lots of travel and self-promotion, and the unflagging hope that “maybe this will be the one.” Because, honestly, in this business you never know. It’s not always possible to predict where lightning will strike in book publishing (or else publishers would only be putting out best-sellers, as they say).

Despite the odds, despite how weird this game is to play (with the rules ever-changing), despite the naysayers declaring things like, “Books will be obsolete by 2025”–okay, I made that up but someone probably did say it!–I can’t imagine doing anything else. Words have always been my passion. I was the kid in grade school scribbling stories in my Big Chief tablet just for fun, not because it was homework. I was the student who grinned when I heard the phrase “essay test,” because I knew I could write my way through anything. I’ve always played “what if” in my head: “What if that boy on the bike is running away from something…what did he do and where is he going?”

It’s who I am, it’s what I do, and, God help me, but I love it. It’s never easy, but it satisfies some part of me that I can’t even explain. And I worry over every new book that’s about to be released, no matter that I realize I can’t control what happens to it any more than I can control the weather. So in eleven days, I’ll hold my breath for a second when I wake up, knowing that I’m letting THE COUGAR CLUB out into the wild. At least I can be sure of what my mom will say about it: “This is brilliant! Pure genius!” (You’ve gotta love moms!)

Sneak Peek at The Cougar Club by Susan McBride

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Kat Maguire on getting older:

Aging gracefully isn’t about aging gratefully. It’s about living life with your engine on overdrive, making love with all the lights on, trashing your diet books, and diving into the chocolate cake.

Chapter One

When it rains, it pours.

The sky opened up just as Kat Maguire exited Grand Central Station after taking the express train from Chambers Street in Tribeca. She’d left Roger’s loft without an umbrella as the chirpy meteorologist had promised “cloudy skies with a slim chance of afternoon showers.” Right! Maybe she should have peered out the window instead of sparring over whose turn it was to pick up the dry cleaning and running around like a chicken with her head cut off before dashing out the door. She had a client meeting scheduled for eight-fifteen, and it was nearly that now.
The late February drizzle turned the air gray around her, and Kat shivered in her trench coat. Mist settled on her face and falling drops pelted her hair. With a resigned sigh, she did the only thing she could, much as it pained her: she set her black leather Coach briefcase atop her head and merged into the mass of shuffling humanity. She noticed plenty of them had umbrellas.

She ignored her stomach which loudly complained about skipping her daily fix of coffee and bagel from Hot ‘n Crusty. She was running late and couldn’t afford to slow down much less stop. The BuzzShots account was too important to the advertising agency’s bottom line since profits weren’t what they used to be. With an unsettling shake-up in the employee ranks of late—“thinning out faster than Donald Trump’s hair,” as one nervous staffer had put it—Kat felt like her career was on the line as well.

Just a block to go and she’d be standing in front of the building that housed Dooney & Marling set smack across the street from the stone lions guarding the New York Public Library. Good thing she could walk it blindfolded after fifteen years, because she could hardly see two feet ahead of her. She didn’t slow her brisk pace until she pushed through the glass doors. With a “woo” of relief, she lowered her briefcase and her aching arm then brushed damp strands of hair from her brow.

“Raining cats and dogs out there, eh, Kat?” the white-haired security guard quipped as she passed his desk with a cursory wave. “Bet it’s the dogs part you hate.”
Ha ha. He was lucky she didn’t have a moment to waste, or she might have tasered him with the lonely weapon dangling from his utility belt. Her mood was as foul as the weather.
“Hold it, please!” Kat called out as she made a beeline for the bank of elevators just as a pair of doors slapped shut. Dammit. Sneezing, she sent soggy brown bangs into her eyes again as she pressed the “up” button. While she waited, she stamped on her drenched leather boots, leaving tiny puddles on the marble floor. She watched the long hand on the clock above the elevators tick ahead a notch, to 13 minutes past eight, and panic set in.

Mindful of the slick tiles, she hurried toward the stairs. High heels tapping, she climbed rapidly at first but had to slow down around the fourth floor. When she arrived on nine, she was panting, heart skidding against her ribcage. With no time to catch her breath, she pushed open frosted glass doors and trudged through the lobby of D&M, homing in on the glorified cubicle that served as her office. She’d scarcely gotten off her coat to hang it up when someone cleared their throat behind her.

“Ms. Maguire? Mr. Garvey wants to see you.”
“Now?” Kat blinked at the pony-tailed stranger standing at the cubby’s threshold. Gertrude, her secretary for a decade, had departed just last week in another round of brutal lay-offs, and everyday there were fewer familiar faces and more per diem fill-ins floating around the place. “I’m sure it can wait.”

“He said ASAP,” the girl insisted, her un-rouged skin positively blood-less. She gnawed on her lower lip, most of her plum-hued lipstick already chewed away.

Kat laughed. “Like that’s gonna happen.” She quickly wiped off her boots and briefcase with a handful of Kleenex and tried not to drip on the paperwork she’d dumped atop her desk. “I’ve got a meeting in the conference room that started already. I’ll duck into Chace’s office after I’m done.”

The temp cleared her throat again. “He said it’s urgent.”
“Urgent?” As in her client meeting had been canceled? Kat couldn’t imagine any other reason for being summoned pronto. Had she missed an important text?
Kat snatched her BlackBerry from her bag but it didn’t show anything but a fresh message from Roger—the only way they communicated lately besides arguing—getting in the last word on the Great Dry Cleaning Debate: Its UR turn! And wld U plz get Chinese 2 nite while UR at it? Wow, placing his dinner order already? Well, at least he’d said “plz.”

“Mr. Garvey’s waiting, Ms. Maguire,” the girl prodded, obviously not going away. “You want me to walk you down there?”
“No, thanks, I can manage,” Kat said brusquely and left her BuzzShots files on her desk. She couldn’t very well blow off her boss, even if it meant having to apologize profusely to the energy drink execs. Kat just hoped her two juniors on the account had arrived early enough to ply the clients with Krispy Kremes and coffee. “You can let Mr. Garvey know I’m on my way.”

The temp scuttled back to her desk as Kat marched toward the office of Chace Haywood Garvey, Jr., the very young senior vice-president who lorded over the New Accounts division. She passed the conference room en route and glanced through the glass panels to see Steph and Marsh on their feet, well into the Power Point presentation she’d been working on for weeks.

Kat jerked to a stand-still, so startled they’d begun the pitch without her that her head spun. She nearly barged into the room, forgetting Chace altogether; but a weird feeling in her gut made her reconsider. Something bad was brewing, and it wasn’t the Sam’s Club Kona. One foot in front of the other, as her daddy liked to say; so she moved on.

“Morning, Maryanne,” she greeted her boss’s secretary on the way into his office; but the frizzy-haired woman didn’t even peer over her monitor. In fact, she seemed intent on looking down at her keyboard, avoiding Kat’s eyes.

Uh-oh. Kat drew in a deep breath before briskly knocking on her boss’s door. She didn’t wait for an invitation to step inside.

“Do you realize Steph and Marshall are mid-pitch with BuzzShots, and I’ve been slaving over that account for months?” she complained as he rose from his desk and motioned for her to take a seat. “Whatever you have to say, please make it quick.”

Chace frowned, puckering his baby face. “Uh, yeah, sorry about that.” He seemed to have as much trouble looking up at her as Maryanne. Usually, he was all smiles and back-slapping, like he was still in the frat house at Penn State and not a decade removed. He didn’t even mention that she looked like a semi-drowned rat.
Run, Kat’s intuition was telling her. Run straight back to the loft and call in sick. Only it was too late for that. She sat down opposite him, and the anxious knot tightened in her belly.
“I don’t know an easy way to put this.” Chace leaned forward and blinked pale-lashed eyes in her direction. “The economy’s not doing us any favors. We’ve had to make some tough choices here at D&M, and sadly that means letting go of valuable employees on every level.”

“I’ve already lost Gertrude so what else do you want from me?” Kat asked and rubbed her hands over her knees, wondering who was next. “Are you breaking up my team? Steph’s a little green, but she’s a fast learner and ambitious as hell—”
“We’re not letting Stephanie go,” Chace interrupted.
“You’re laying-off Marshall?”
As soon as Kat said it, she knew it wasn’t possible, considering her boss had been the one to hire him, a fellow Penn State grad and brother in Sigma Chi. The two of them hit bars together after work. Which could only mean one thing, couldn’t it?

Oh, shit, it’s me, Kat realized just before Chace puffed his cheeks and exhaled. “I’m sorry, Kat. We hate to lose another seasoned player, but things are tough all over. We either have to trim the budget or take down the whole ship.”

A neon EXIT sign started flashing in Kat’s head, though the rational part of her thought no, no, no, this can’t be real.

“I’m being pink-slipped?” She grinned like a goof, praying it was some kind of bad joke. She’d been with the agency since well before Chace’s family connections had gotten him his cushy veep gig. Hell, since before Chace had taken his first legal drink. “You’re kidding, right?”

For a third of her life, she’d devoted herself to this place, sacrificing holidays, her family, and her social life, all so she could ravage her manicure climbing the ladder from lowly copy writer to New Accounts Team Leader. If the BuzzShots campaign scored a hit, she’d be due a more senior position with plenty of perks and more job security.

“It’s a scary world,” she heard Chace saying as he slid a dreaded red folder from beneath his pudgy hands. “Nothing’s certain these days.”

Like loyalty of any size or shape?

“I think you’ll appreciate the package we put together for you. A year’s severance, a year of Cobra, glowing references,” her boss intoned as he rose from his ergonomic leather chair and skirted his desk to drop the red folder in Kat’s lap, snapping her out of her momentary haze. “It’s painful, I know, and I guarantee it hurts us as much as you.”

“So you feel like a million Ginzu knives just impaled you?” she asked, bitterness flooding her voice as she flattened her palms on the file, unwilling to open it up and look inside. That would make it all too real. “How can you do this to me?”

They were keeping Marsh and Steph, who were barely out of school, but letting a veteran like her go? Kat suddenly wondered how many of the recently shed D&M staff were old-timers like her, deemed too expensive to keep?

“Please, don’t take it personally,” Chace murmured, giving her a wounded look, but Kat wasn’t having it. “We certainly appreciate all the contributions you’ve made to this company. If only things were different.”

But Kat heard instead: if only you were younger. She felt like she’d been kicked in the gut.