Tag Archive for: “The Misfit” Series

Obamacare, Trumpcare, Personal Care

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By AB Plum


Ignorance is bliss.
Too many facts confuse us.
Time changes everything.
Sometimes, we know more than is good for us.
Life is a mystery; we can’t know everything.
Waiting and patience are virtues.

Lately, these platitudes and clichés have claimed too much prime real estate in my brain. And, I know why. (The Obamacare/Trumpcare debate plus some reflections about personal health care have made an impact).

My husband and I spent a lot of time over the past six months poring over different medical opinions before we and his docs detected a pattern:  Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus. (NPH). 

We then had to weigh treatment options (Do nothing.  Start with a spinal tap. Go for brain surgery. Wait and see; come back in three months). Next, what were the risks of the brain surgery? What was the best-case outcome? When would we see improvement? How painful was the procedure? What kind of recovery might we expect?

So we made the go-with-surgery decision—with a high degree of optimism—in December. The procedure, scheduled for February 6, was postponed. Time—and a very nasty and persistent sinus infection changed those best-laid plans. Patience became stretched. Waiting involved weekly lab tests and several x-rays to satisfy two doctors that the infection had responded to treatment. March 7, my husband went into OR asking “enough questions so I can do this myself the next time.”

Recovery brought its own challenges, and sometimes we longed for ignorance. But now, we are grateful for his ability to walk normally again. The hard part, as the cliché goes, is behind us. 

Now, we are trying to share the best of our experience with a long-time friend. Her husband has just been diagnosed with Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura (ITP). Wow! Is that a mouthful.

Like us with NPH, she’d never heard of ITP. The mountain of info is overwhelming. The possibility that the cause may not be found for his extremely low red platelet count is scary. The need to wait and see, to sit by a hospital bed patiently waiting for one more test result is exhausting. Googling every vaguely related keyword is tempting, but too often results in being confused by too many contradictions and not enough hard evidence. Going home without a definitive cause for the drop in red blood cells carries both relief and anxiety.

My husband and I had to wait almost a week to say with certainty that his surgery achieved our goal of normal walking. Our friends may have to wait much longer to see if this 5-day stay in the hospital is a one-time occurrence or the first of many stays.

In their case, the cliché, time will tell, keeps popping up. Right now, I’m offering a different heartfelt cliché: Be grateful for every moment and get back to your normal life as quickly—and safely—as possible.

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AB Plum lives and writes in Silicon Valley, where amazing innovations in medical practice and technology meet.


Bubblegum + Paper Bags Lead to . . .

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By AB Plum

Bubblegum + Paper Bags Lead to . . .
Ruination.

Last week with several deadlines looming and promo tasks lurking, I screwed up.
  

Uh-huh, right in the middle of a frustrated, stressed-out, hair-pulling cycle, I got distracted.

By bubblegum.

None of my characters chews bubblegum. Why not? I asked myself. As a kid, I’d loved the sweet, caries-inducing rubber glob I could chew until my jaws ached. 

Against strict parental mandates, I’d slap down my few pennies, inhale the indescribable scent of sugary fruit, pop the pink ball in my mouth, and chew away—lost in a world where I imagined blowing a twenty-inch bubble.  


Surely, even a properly raised eleven-year-old Danish boy—my main character with a dark soul—might discover bubblegum? 

TO Dos wailed. I shoved the question in the back of my mind and went to work scheduling my blog posts. I had two due within a week of each other.

Then, don’t ask me how, I got distracted again. Who invented the paper sack? How could John Pavlos of MoMA, consider that mundane thing “the smartphone of the 19th century”? 

What? Before texting, did people pass written messages back and forth on those smooth, brown surfaces? Did kids hold paper bags, attached with string, against their ears and talk to each other from yards away? Smartphone of the 19th century?
C’mon.

But you can see how I screwed-up, right? Posted one blog a week early.

Not a history-changing screw-up like Napoleon marching into Russia without adequate winter provisions.

Not a mistake like the sinking of the Titanic—on a different scale than Napoleon’s blunder—but an unforgettable snafu by someone in charge of planning for enough lifeboats.

My screw-up only led to my own embarrassment unlike the poor Tampa patient years ago whose surgeon removed the wrong leg and left the poor guy in worse shape than he started.

The public aware of my mistake was minuscule compared to the Super Bowl audience witnessing the ‘wardrobe malfunction’ on live TV in 2004. (Not to mention all the re-runs).

When I reexamine the above list and consider all the screw-ups we’ve seen in the past few chaotic weeks of political transition, I think I’ll change my mind.

My screw-up really falls into the category of messing up.

Messing up vs screwing up.

Uh-huh. I can live with messing up. I’ll depict screw-ups in my fiction (some of which carries a definite autobiographical note).

For now, I’ll forget that none of my characters chews bubblegum or uses brown paper bags. No more distractions.

“Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.” – Oscar Wilde

How about you? Made any mistakes lately?

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AB Plum lives and writes just off the fast lane in Silicon Valley. Unless she gets totally distracted, she plans to release on March 17 The Lost Days, Book 2 in The MisFit Series, her dark psychological thriller about the childhood of a psychopath.



EXCERPT from The Lost Days
The sun’s eerie summer glow disoriented me as much as the headache hammering my skull. Or maybe my confusion came from the man seated next to me, his foot placed at the top of my foster brother’s spine. I gritted my teeth. Dimitri lay crumpled face down in the space behind the driver’s seat. His legs were folded under him like a penitent waiting for absolution.
The man in the front seat turned and flashed a mouthful of piano-white teeth. His piercing blue eyes glittered. I stared. His copper-colored hair glowed in the golden evening light.
He laughed as if I’d said something funny. “For a boy who killed his mother three months ago, you have a face that borders on transparent.”
“You-you’re not American.”
“And you’re not Finnish—despite your mother.”
Involuntarily, I snorted.
Nostrils flaring, he cuffed my right temple with his knuckles. “I already know what you think of your mother.”
My ears rang. Involuntarily, my fingers flexed and twitched as if I’d been electrocuted. I wanted to hit him. Smash his face. Kick his Finnish teeth down his throat.
“We are going to see,” he said, “just how tough you are.”


















































Gratitude Inspired by a Psychopath

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By AB Plum

Some time ago, The Stiletto Gang Bloggers gave two thumbs up to the idea of choosing a subject to blog about every month. We also agreed that if the idea didn’t grab us, we could write about something that did.

In the past, I’ve written on and off-topic. This month’s theme, “gratitude” really grabs me. So thanks, Bethany, for the reminder . . . and challenge.

Challenge, because I’ve scheduled Book 2, The Lost Days in my psychological thriller MisFit Series for release the day after Thanksgiving. I am, from time to time questioning my sanity on this decision as well as the decision to write the whole dark, disturbing series.

Focus on gratitude gives me pause to rethink. 

Eleven-year-old Michael Romanov, the character at the center of the series, is a psychopath. We all have childhoods, right?

Michael feels no sense of attunement with anyone . . . except, perhaps, a thread-thin regard for his only friend, Dimitri. Dimitri is the one person with whom Michael has ever experienced any familiarity. Their real affinity is their differentness not just from their peers but from the human tribe.

Michael claims his mother rejected him at birth. How is that possible? What could he have done to deserve her refusal to express affection toward him? Praise him? Touch him? 

Ultimately, gratitude boils down to social connection. Michael feels only resentment toward his bullying brother. His father’s too frequent business trips allow no time for bonding—if his father even cared.

Uber-smart and handsome. Michael has no visible physical deformities. He lives a life of privilege. Yet he finds nothing for which to feel grateful since no one acts on his behalf. No one offers him protection from his brother’s intimidation or his mother’s neglect. He is a misfit. An outcast by those who should include him in their circle.

Although this character is a creation of my imagination, I’ve met people with varying degrees of his alienation and lack of gratitude. Like you, I’ve read about young men (almost always men) with dark hearts who kill innocents—often children. Regret doesn’t come up on their radar.

When I meet these people or read about them, I am grateful for a mother who taught me to read early. Who did her best to encourage my curiosity. To protect me if I followed that curiosity to extremes. To love me with all my imperfections.

Michael’s mother is the antithesis of mine, but in the case of psychopaths, I don’t think ‘blame-the-mother’ peels back all the layers of the onion. In Michael’s case, I know as the author that brain damage plays a significant part in his inability to retrieve emotional memories—the basis for learning from mistakes. Additionally, he teeters on the edge of puberty—a period when the brain becomes a huge chemical cauldron.

Nature and nurture (none in his case) intermingle to wire his brain differently. No surprise he feels no empathic connection with others.

So, I am grateful after writing these six books to realize there exist humans whose full stories I will never know fully. Mostly, I am thankful for a healthy brain. I give thanks every day for friends and families and memories and stories that keep me from jumping that divide Michael crosses.

Here’s an excerpt from The Lost Years:
The sun’s eerie summer glow disoriented me as much as the headache hammering my skull. Or maybe my confusion came from the man seated next to me, his foot placed at the top of Dimitri’s spine. I gritted my teeth. Dimitri lay crumpled face down in the space behind the driver’s seat. His legs were folded under him like a penitent waiting for absolution.
The man in the front seat turned and flashed a mouthful of piano-white teeth. His piercing blue eyes glittered. I stared. Without the baseball cap, his copper-colored hair glowed in the golden evening light.
He laughed as if I’d said something funny. “For a boy who killed his mother three months ago, you have a face that borders on transparent.”
“You-you’re not American.”
“And you’re not Finnish—despite your mother.”
Involuntarily, I snorted.
Nostrils flaring, he cuffed my right temple with his knuckles. “I already know what you think of your mother.”
My ears rang. Involuntarily, my fingers flexed and twitched as if I’d been electrocuted. I wanted to hit him. Smash his face. Kick his Finnish teeth down his throat.
“We are going to see,” he said, “just how tough you are.”
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Scary comic books, nineteenth century American literature (especially Poe, Hawthorne, and James), plus every genre in-between have influenced AB’s writing. Teaching adolescent boys and working with high-testosterone Silicon Valley tekkies opened up new insights into neuroanatomy and behavioral psychology. She lives in the shadow of Google, writes and walks daily. She participates in a brain-building aerobic dance class three times a week.
This link takes you to The Early Years on Amazon.

Delusional Logic Behind New Psychological Thriller

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Remember when you were little and had your first tough argument with your BFF?

No matter what insults or barbs you hurled at each other, none hurt like being told she no longer liked you. One of you undoubtedly twisted the knife deeper by adding, “I don’t want to be your friend anymore. I don’t like you.”

Ouch! As children, we lived to be liked. Being liked—by teachers, adults, acquaintances, other kids, and even strangers mattered. If we were lucky, we could take parental and family love for granted. Being liked—not at all.



Recently, during the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, I heard the political pundits throw around the concept of the candidates’ likability quotient. From time to time, I heard both 2016 presidential candidates were the ‘least-likeable . . .  ever.’

Is there a road back from the label unlikeable?

Writing my psychological suspense series, The MisFit, I extended the above question: Can stories entertain and grab readers’ attention with a major unlikeable character?

I certainly hope the answer is yes. Because I’ve invested two years and more than a thousand words developing such a character. Michael Romanov is Einstein-smart, Olympic-star confident, fearless, driven, and a psychopath from birth if he listens to his mother. Conflicts with his parents and older brother convince him, by the time he’s eleven, that he’s unlovable. Unlikeable, too, since he has no school friends among the students and faculty. He finds a way to claim justice . . . which is where the story begins.

Arguments hurt our feelings. Leave us feeling vulnerable. Often goad us to over-react. This is certainly the case with Michael. As I wrote his opening scene, flashes of that quarrel with my BFF flickered at the edge of my mind. 

Wow! Writing opened a door to reframing that long-ago memory into a novel of psychological suspense.

What about you? How’d you deal with the hurt from that first BFF-argument? Shoot me a note:  ab@abplum.com. I’ll respond. Who knows, maybe there’s another story lurking in your reply. 

AB Plum writes dark, chilling psychological suspense just off the fast lane in Silicon Valley–where the sun shines nearly every day. Coming soon, The Early Years, the first MisFit Series installment.