Anyone remember Project: Happiness?

It was supposed to be my focus during 2012 — a chance to remake my life and rebuild myself, a chance to start over. It didn’t get very far, despite a lot of thought, much of which was shared on this blog. Somehow, I got derailed.

Part of it was Striking Distance, the toughest book I’ve ever written. I have a tendency to lose myself in my stories emotionally, but this was more than that. I came face to face with my physical and emotional limits while writing this novel. Because writing was such a struggle for me, I made it my No. 1 priority. In doing so, I hurt myself — and that made writing harder. It was a downward spiral.

The result is perhaps my best I-Team story to date, but that doesn’t justify or make up for fourteen long months of treating myself like shit.

I tried in the immediate aftermath of finishing the book to be kinder to myself, to get away from the computer, to do things I enjoy and restore my sense of happiness. Benjamin and I went up into the mountains several times, disconnecting entirely, and enjoying the amazing beauty of what is kind of like our own backyard. And it felt great.

Photo: Mud Lake near Nederland

I kept very busy in June after turning the book in and on into July, catching up on almost a year’s worth of neglected projects, heading off to RomCon and then RWA.

While at RWA, a friend touched on a sore spot that drew an emotional response from me. This led to a personal conversation lasting hours that left me feeling shredded, raw, and exposed. It felt to me like my friend was saying, “Quit living in the past. Get over it, and get your shit together.” I know that wasn’t the content of my friend’s message or how the message was delivered — it was more compassionate than that and came with the best of caring intentions — but that’s how I heard it. That’s how it felt.

I cried for two days after I got home.

It’s not that I haven’t tried to “quit living in the past.” In fact, I think I’ve fought pretty damned hard to make something of my life. But when your past includes violence, sexual assault, being attacked in your own home by men with knives, falling off a mountain, and living with physical limitations and almost indescribable chronic pain for years, it’s not so easy to “get over it.” No one who has not lived through those situations can understand them. No one who has not lived with severe chronic pain can understand how much of your joy, your energy, your life it steals.

And yet this kick-in-the-ass conversation, no matter how much it hurt, had a point. This is my life, and every day I don’t claim it and shape it for myself, is a day lost that I can never get back again. Since I have no idea how long my life will last, I need to focus on being happy not in some theoretical future, but right fucking now.

Now.

I had to look at how far I’d come in the past couple years and admit that, although I’d written a novella and a novel, my personal circumstances and my quality of life hadn’t improved. I remembered Project Happiness — yes, I’d kind of forgotten about it. In fact, I’d given up without even realizing it.

I also realized that Project: Happiness was flawed in that it was a plan, but it wasn’t an action. I was thinking about things, but I wasn’t doing much. Change requires some forethought, yes, but more than that it requires action. I realized I couldn’t wait until my next book is done or my house is clean and organized or there is a royalty check in the bank to start taking care of myself. I realized I needed to do that now.

I was talking to my beautiful beloved sister about this when I had a pretty huge realization.

An image of a butterfly pinned inside a museum display case came to my mind, and I realized it was a metaphor for how I felt about myself and my life.

I have put off for so long things I want to do because work needed to be done. My life and who I am has been about some “to do” list that never gets any smaller. I want to get back into drawing and painting. I want to quilt again. I want to get back into shape and feel healthier. I want a rich life that’s about more than writing, a life that inspires and supports writing because of all the great experiences I have. And, most of all, I want to return to Denmark and travel.

Photo: Rådhuspladsen in downtown Copenhagen, my favorite city

I kept thinking there would come a day when I would magically have the time and freedom to do these things. But it has come to me that I have to make the time and give myself the freedom to do these things — or they will never happen. The rich life I want can’t happen if I don’t let it happen.

I’m pinned down because I pinned myself down. I have the freedom to live the life I want, and if not now, then when?

Upstairs on my bedroom wall is the artwork my kids made while in school. I love child art. There’s something so creatively fresh and compelling about it. One of my prized items is a collage by my younger son titled, “The Butterfly Who Flashed His Wings.” The words are written in a child’s scrawl above the painted paper butterfly you see at the top of this post.

It’s time to free myself and flash my wings.

Writing can no longer be more important than I, myself, am. Exercise and healthy eating have to be No. 1 right up there with getting enough sleep. I have to have a social life, time with friends, time to reflect and do other things. If I don’t have these things, my writing well will dry up, and so will I.

This is not a plan or simply rumination. These are actions. I’ve been going to the gym or taking a long hike or walk almost every day and have lost more than 10 pounds this month. I’ve been eating better. I’ve been reconnecting with friends — and making plans to spend more time with them.  I am taking “weekends” now, days when I don’t write but do something fun. Yes, fun. I’m spending less time on the Internet. I’m trying to do things that are difficult and physically painful for me for the sake of feeling more independent. And it feels good!

Perhaps most exciting, I am starting to plan for a trip to Sweden, Denmark, and France this spring to visit family and friends. I want to spend time with my sister in Stockholm, to spend time with dear Danish friends I’ve known and loved since I was 17, to hang with Benjamin in France and visit the battlefields of World War I. Whether it will happen depends in part on things that aren’t entirely under my control, but I will do all I can to be airborne by May 2014.

I will be writing again starting tomorrow, working on the erotic prequel to Striking Distance, which I have titled First Strike. It tells the story of how Laura Nilsson and Javier “Cobra” Corbray, the couple from Striking Distance, meet in a hotel restaurant in Dubai and then spend the next three days in bed together having mind-blowing “no strings attached” sex — only to go their separate ways wishing there were strings.

I plan to have First Strike, an erotic e-novella, out to you by Oct. 1 so that you can get to know Laura and Javier intimately before their book comes out. And though I will still give my emotions over to my writing, I will actively work to keep balance in my life and to feel good each day no matter how many words I put on the page.

For the first time in a long time, I feel excited not about plans that might be years down the road but by the opportunities I have today.

Coming soon: 
Excerpts from Striking Distance
Some I-Team games
A MacKinnon’s Rangers audiobook giveaway
The cover reveal for First Strike

It’s been a very busy couple of weeks since my last blog post. I’ve been working on Skin Deep, but I’ve also been taking time to go to the gym and to stay on top of things around the house. With all the unseasonably warm weather we’re having, I’ve also needed to spend time outside watering my rose bushes, my flower beds and our trees and shrubs. Between all of that, my column for the paper, my work for the Happy Ever After blog, and getting a new endeavor off the ground — you’ll hear about that soon — there hasn’t been much time for blogging.

So it’s time for a Project: Happiness update.
Last time I talked about body, not only my own experience with my physical self, but also that of women in general and the ways that society influences how we live our lives in our bodies. This week I thought I’d talk about the mind.

Way back when — it really does seem ages ago now — I explained how I viewed the human experience as being comprised of three elements: body, mind, and spirit. Mind being in the middle  is kind of appropriate because I think it links the three together. Our spiritual self starts in the mind, and mind has a powerful influence over body, too. The brain, the organ that houses the mind, is a bodily organ.

So what does it mean to have a healthy mind? It’s not about being intelligent or educated. I’ve always been very confident of my intellectual abilities. My brain comes with some unique talents — a facility for foreign languages, for example.

A healthy mind is more about how you think about life. Maybe because of this, most people associate the mind closely with happiness.


Of course, we know that body influences mind. The intense spinal pain I endured from January 2008 through August 2010 proved that to me. I went from optimism to frustration to despair. Chronic pain can have a real impact on how a person thinks. That was true for me.

Physical pain and lost sleep tends to bring out the worst in me in terms of my mental attitude. So doing whatever I can to decrease spinal pain is very important. I had a bad week last week and into this week, and I got a refresher course in how much it sucks not to be able to sleep.

But I really realized I needed to re-vision my life was when my own “inner monologue” became darkly negative. And that had very little to do with pain and everything to do with writing. Writing is a very stressful activity at times, and writing under the conditions I faced toward the end of Defiant resulted in my feeling extremely depressed and negative.

My sister was here at that time, and thanks to her, I caught of glimpse of how my self-talk, if you want to call it that, looked from the outside. It wasn’t good.

I had to be honest and realize that I often get that way while writing. It wasn’t just Defiant. I very often reach a point of self-loathing when I’m writing because I just can’t accomplish on the page what I’m trying to accomplish. What I feel inside about a story so rarely makes it into a book. And the frustration that causes is overwhelming at times.

“You need a new routine,” Benjy told me after Defiant was done.

By that, he meant that there has to be a happier way to write books. Project: Happiness grew out of my desire to create this new routine.

I knew my new approach could not include the positive self-talk modeled by Stuart Smalley on Saturday Night Live: “I’m good enough. I’m smart enough. And doggone it, people like me!”

Puhleaze!!! I’m too cynical for daily affirmations, even ones that aren’t silly.  A good Buddhist koan or a line of poetry, sure. Affirmations? No.

So what is my new routine?


No more self-hatred. If I start getting into that mode, then it’s time to do something else no matter how much writing I got done.

Get enough sleep. A mind can’t work well without rest. The book deadline isn’t as important as a full night’s rest.

Get exercise. It has been proven to help mental function and mood. The brain and the mind it contains are part of the body, after all.


Accept that nothing I write will be perfect. This is really, really hard, because I am a perfectionist. I want to write something perfect. So even as I try to accept this, I’m still fighting like hell to achieve it.

Do nice things for myself—things that are healthy. A nap, a trip to the theater to see a film, a bit of Angry Birds — try to incorporate fun, not just work, in to every day. All work and no play makes Pamela a bitch. But I think a lot of people do things to be “nice” to themselves that aren’t good for them in the long run. That chocolate bar. Spending too much money on clothes. Sitting in front of the TV too often and for too long. Food has long been the “nice” thing that I do.

So far, the first three and the last one are moving along pretty well. But accepting that I will make mistakes and fail at my goals to one degree or another is very, very hard for me.

I will persevere. 

In other news:  

Skin Deep is moving along. I’m more than 25,000 words into the story. I ran into a really tough scene, which I wrote and now must rewrite. I anticipate two more weeks of writing, a week of editing and then a few days to get it uploaded and see it go live. So probably the end of April. Sorry! It’s that perfectionism problem I mentioned.

I will be certain to make a big announcement about it — you can read more about the story in the blog post below this one — and send out a newsletter so that no one misses the release of the novella. You can also stay in touch by joining my Facebook page.  If you want to sign up for my newsletters, click here. I only send them out when I have news, and I don’t share the info with anyone.

The copy-edited pages of Defiant are on my computer. I need to proofread them one last time and get them back to New York. So advance review copies will be going out probably at the end of the month. I’m putting together a list of events and fun ways to celebrate the release of Connor’s story, so stay tuned for that.

The Defiant discussion group has launched. Today’s chat about Surrender was a lot of fun for me. We continue through July, working our way one by one through the books in the series and ending with Defiant.  Thanks to Jenn LeBlanc for setting this up!

On Tuesday, April 3, I’ll be receiving the Colorado Coalition for Sexual Assault’s Excellence in Media award for my work on the issue of sexual assault. This is an amazing honor, given my own background and the fact that I went into journalism almost entirely because I wanted to be a voice for women. The ceremony will be held on the steps of the state capitol in Denver. I am deeply touched and honored by this.

Also, I’ll have an announcement possibly this week, maybe next, of a new endeavor that I am a part of and very excited about. If you read the article in RT, you might already know what I’m talking about. If not, expect an announcement shortly.

Last but not least, it will soon be planting time on the urban farm. We’ve got most of the prep work done. Depending on the weather, we’ll be planting our crops soon. We try as much as we can to eat food we grow because it doesn’t come with e coli or listeria or pesticides/herbicides. The new studies that showed a strong tie between certain cancers and common pesticides/herbicides really strengthened my resolve to have as much control over our food supply as possible. We rarely eat anything that isn’t organic.

Last year we grew: arugula, kale, swiss chard, romaine lettuce, onions (red and yellow), green beans, broccoli, acorn squash, delicata squash, zucchini, summer squash, radishes, carrots, cucumbers and tomatoes. We lost a lot of the broccoli to some damned egg-laying creature — white flies, I expect. So this year, I may get floating row cover to protect everything.

Growing food is such intensely difficult work requiring a lot of attention and time. But the result — being able to grab dinner out of the garden and know it’s good for you — is wonderful. As much as I think, “Maybe I’ll just join a CSA (community supported agriculture) this year and let someone else do the work,” there’s something about this time of year that calls me back to the dirt.

Have a lovely week, everyone!

Cover image by Jenn LeBlanc/Text design by Jennifer Johnson

Remember I was going to write a Christmas novella? And then I somehow couldn’t get Defiant done to my satisfaction until January 20, making a Christmas novella a bit untimely?  And then I got pneumonia so I didn’t write a damned thing for the entire month of February?

Good times! Not.

Well, I got to work the moment I started feeling better, opening the novella I had started, setting aside the Christmas theme and just working on a straight novella — my very first I-Team After Hours novella.

I’m using I-Team After Hours to brand these I-Team spin-off stories as being somewhat different than a regular I-Team novella and also shorter. My average novel is about 120,000 words. These novellas will come close to 40,000 words, making them about one-third the size of an I-Team novel. Accordingly, they’ll be priced at about one-third the cost of an I-Team novel — $2.99.  I’m self-publishing them straight to ebook through Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and Smashwords. It will be available in all ebook formats, including Kobo (Smashwords) and Apple. If you don’t have an ereader, you’ll still be able to enjoy the story by downloading a free ereader application from Amazon or B&N that will enable you to read the story on whatever computer you’re using right now to read this blog post.

The first novella is titled Skin Deep. No doubt you’ve already noticed the delicious cover image provided by friend and fellow Colorado journalist Jenn LeBlanc, who is also a romance author. Jennifer Johnson of Sapphire Dreams did the text design. But what we all notice are the abs, the muscles in the arms, the veins. Yes, the veins... Ahem.

Skin Deep is about half finished and will be available as soon as I can have it edited, formatted and uploaded — perhaps before the end of the month, but definitely by early April. Make sure you’re subscribed to my newsletter if you want to make certain you are notified when the book is released. To be added to the newsletter, click here.

This is a new venture for me and a way to give stories to characters in the I-Team series that would otherwise not get a story.

I’m starting with Megan Rawlings, Marc Hunter’s little sister. Those of you who’ve read Unlawful Contact know what a terrible life Megan has had. I won’t elaborate in order to avoid spoilers for those who haven’t read the book.

Here’s the blurb that would go on the back cover of the book (if it had a cover):




Broken on the inside

Megan Hunter has worked hard to get back on her feet, leaving the nightmare of her teenage years behind. The last thing she wants or needs in her life is a man. But when she is attacked by someone from her past, a scarred stranger intervenes, saving her life and that of her little girl. Looks can be deceiving, for despite the man’s rough appearance, she feels safe with him. And for the first time in her life, she knows the stirrings of desire.

Broken on the outside

Nathaniel West paid a high price serving with the Marines in Afghanistan. He returned to his family’s ranch in the Colorado mountains to heal—and be alone.  Disfigured as he is, he has put all thoughts of sex and romance aside. But something about Megan brings him back to life, heats his blood, makes him feel like a man again. As danger pursues her, and the truth about her past is revealed, he vows to protect her—and to heal her wounded spirit.

But confronting the past is never easy—especially when it’s carrying a gun. Megan will have to learn to trust Nate to survive and to claim a passion that is much more than …  Skin Deep.

That gives you a quick overview. I’ll be posting an excerpt soon! Stay tuned for more!



MacKinnon’s Rangers news:  Jenn LeBlanc just finished reading Surrender and Untamed and loved them so much she decided on her own to start a closed Facebook discussion group for anyone interested in reading the series and discussion the stories in preparation for the release of Defiant.

Anyone who wants to read and discuss the stories can ask to join. Jenn’s plan is to start reading the books on April 1, I believe. If you’re on Facebook and are interested in joining, click here.



Project: Happiness Update: I continue to improve my eating and to go to the gym, though I find it difficult to write, keep a clean house, be on the Internet, go the gym, cook healthful meals and write. My instinct when the story stalls is to drop everything — good eating habits, the gym, getting enough sleep — just to get the story back on track.

But that’s what I can’t do. That’s what I’ve always done, and in the end it doesn’t do me any good. So, despite feeling stressed about finishing the story, I did go to the gym, cussing all the way. I wasn’t cussing when I came home, however. The moral of this story? Go to the damned gym.

 Sorry it’s been so long since my last update. I’ve been writing and doing other things that have resulted in my having less time to be online.

Last time I wrote about Project: Happiness, I wrote how I was dividing life into three areas: body, mind and spirit. I wrote how I viewed those as a kind of personal trinity, these three aspects of each of us coming together in a whole. My goal, I wrote, was going to be to make sure each of those areas of my life received attention each day.

Today, I wanted to write about the body part of it, which is in some respects the most difficult for me and, I suspect, many other women. Our bodies are objectified, commodified, politicized, hyper-sexualized and subject to abuse and violence. This isn’t new. It has always been true.

During much of history, women were viewed as less capable, weaker, less intelligent creatures whose purpose in life was to serve men in and out of bed and to have babies. At one point, the male leaders of the Catholic Church actually debated whether or not women had souls. It’s not surprising that so many men and women viewed being born in a female body as a kind of curse.

Many still do.

In ancient Greece, as in many places today — Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, parts of Africa — baby girls were often killed after birth because they were viewed as useless and expensive. The ancient Greeks sometimes gave their daughters to brothels, a practice mirrored in Nepal and India, where young girls are often handed over to traffickers or straight to brothels by their own family members in exchange for money.

Even here in the United States, being female comes with strange expectations foreign to men. No one debates the need for Viagra, because it seems clear to people that Men Need Sex! Erections are important! No one asks whom men will have sex with once they pop their blue pill. Their wives? Their lover? A prostitute? Their porn co-stars? (Viagra is used widely in the porn industry to help men perform.) Apparently, we don’t feel the need to question men when it comes to sex.

But when it comes to contraception for women, some folks can’t accept that Women Need Sex, Too. The discussion becomes religious and revolves around chastity, marriage, and motherhood. The double standard is still alive. Men can enjoy sex for its own sake, but women must be chaste till marriage and then pay for sexual pleasure with the suffering of reproduction. Women who don’t live according to those standards can expect to be called names. There are even people alive today who think women shouldn’t be given pain relief during labor because of some words in Genesis. Give me a break! Can you imagine such widespread debate regarding what men can do with their bodies? It won’t happen. Ever.

I have strong feelings on these subjects, which I don’t intend to debate. You’re free to believe what you want—and to post it on your own blog. From my point of view, a woman can choose for herself what she does with her body sexually and reproductively. Period.

But let’s not get sidetracked by the culture wars. The point I’m getting at is that we still haven’t reached a point in human history where women’s bodies are considered their own. So if you grew up feeling confused about your body, whether you were supposed to be a fertile Madonna who lives to please her husband and her 25 children or a skinny, sexy nymph with big breasts who knows how to adorn a set of satin sheets you’re probably not alone.



So that was the macro view. Now let’s get personal. Every woman has her own unique relationship with her body. What follows is a history of mine. You may not wish to read this.

I was a skinny, very active little kid, who hiked, played outdoors all day, got stung by bees every summer because I ran around barefoot, who climbed trees in dresses and generally enjoyed being alive in a body.

That changed when I was 10. I went to a friend’s house after school to play. She wasn’t home, but her father invited me in to wait for her. He raped me on the living room floor. Soul Train was on TV, and I remember an ugly black velvet painting of a burro on the wall. He threatened to tell my parents what a dirty little girl I was if I told anyone what had happened, and so for a year I was silent and terrified and alone.

I saw a program about sexual assault on television, and I told my mother. What followed was in some ways worse than the assault, as I was taken to a male doctor and examined. I remember thinking that all men really cared about, whether they were a friend’s father or a doctor, was whatever was between my legs. It was horrible and humiliating. There was no concrete evidence by then—no semen, no DNA—and so the whole thing was basically shoved under the rug.

The fallout from both experiences was devastating for me. Night terrors in which I woke up shaking and terrified and thinking I was going to vomit. A withdrawal from the world into myself. Serious depression. A desire not to be alive any longer.

Kids picked up on this in school. I’d been a little on the shy side before, but after that I was bullied, truly bullied. I pleaded to stay in for recess because being on the playground meant being shoved around and called names. My parents actually had to call the school, and I was sent from the classroom while the teacher chewed out the entire class for picking on me. I remember it vividly.

I hit puberty, and it got worse. My hormones added to the confusion I felt about sexual assault. I avoided boys like the plague, while finding fault with the body that had been such fun when I was a little girl. My body went from being a partner, an ally, my friend, to being something to be controlled and manipulated. A part of me wanted a boyfriend, and another part of me didn’t. A part of me wanted to be attractive, and a part of me just wanted to hide.

I ended up joining the track team, where I pretty much blew everyone else away when it came to long-distance running — both boys and girls. I outran every girl and half the boy’s team every day. Running became a refuge for me, but it wasn’t necessarily positive. I learned to abuse it, running to stay thin. Six days a week. Three to 10 miles a day. Rain or shine. Up at 6 AM and out the door. If I ate too much, I’d make myself run more. I think it may even have been a form of exercise bulimia.

Rape victims seek above all else control over their bodies. Eating disorders run rampant. But I digress...

Gradually, I made friends again starting in junior high — pot-smoking artsy friends — and the worst of the pain of what had happened to me just kind of slipped away. Except that something like that doesn’t just go away.

My relationships with men were rarely positive. As I posted before, I was beaten up when I was 14 while stoned at a party with adults in their 20s and 30s for refusing to have sex with a guy who was 22. In Denmark, I met a man, fell in love, and then fell into a depression when he couldn’t find it in himself to be faithful. I called off the wedding and came back to the U.S. reluctantly, got married on the rebound and got pregnant (by choice) my freshman year of college.

Some women enjoy pregnancy. I did not. I was very sick throughout my first — pre-eclampsia and hyperemesis. I had high blood pressure and constant nausea and vomiting for nine months. It sucked. I wanted natural birth. That sucked even more. The pain was obscene, ridiculous, brutal, unforgiveable. More than that, the entire experience conjured up the nightmare of being raped and left me traumatized. I actually had nightmares about it. Some 7 percent of women suffer from trauma after giving birth, and most of them are... rape victims. Sounds crazy, right?

Well, think of birth as losing control of your body again, as suffering inside your body again, as being in pain because you’re female. I have no idea what most women feel emotionally during labor. I felt rage and despair. It felt unfair, like a form of torture that was being inflicted on me because I was a woman. I asked for pain relief, and I didn’t get it because I had no insurance. (The second time I had health insurance and demanded an epidural the moment I hit 4 cm, and that was that.)

Of course, I love my kids. The one very female thing I’ve done with my body that has been very positive is breastfeed. There’s no relationship more pure than that of a mother and her newborn. And although there were challenges learning this new skill, I stuck with it until we had it down. I breastfed my older son for 15 months and my younger for 10. 

 For a lot of women, childbirth and breastfeeding bring them a greater appreciation of their bodies. For me... Not really. Though I came to a place of comfort with sex, learning to enjoy it and even revel in it, I can’t say I made peace with my body.

I was eager after my second child to get fixed so that I would never get pregnant again. Some would argue that having surgery to control your fertility is a form of violence against yourself. Whatever. For me it was a great help and a source of comfort to know I couldn’t get pregnant again. I was taking control. Permanently. I had never intended to have more than two kids, in part because I had other things I really wanted to do with my life and in part because I just didn’t want to go through all that again. Nor did I want to risk getting pregnant through sexual assault. Yes, I actually thought about that.

And why wouldn’t I worry about that? Alec was only nine months old when the creeps with the switch blades broke into my apartment. Almost being raped again — this time by two men — threw me in to a tailspin of post-traumatic stress disorder, complete with waking nightmares, panic attacks and severe depression. My body became a thing that did work — child care, cleaning, making meals, going to the store, carrying laundry. I used food to escape stress and depression. But I didn’t nurture myself. I was barely surviving.




 That pattern continued after therapy and after the PTSD was brought under control. I began working at the newspaper, and I channeled a lot of rage about what had happened to me into my work. I covered women’s issues primarily, and somehow writing about other women’s traumas gave me strength and was immensely healing. But I still wasn’t in sync with my body. Although I was still working out at the gym and running, I moved into the “work till you drop” phase. It didn’t matter how tired I was. If I needed to write an article and it kept me up till 4 A.M., that’s what I did — while still raising two little kids. And if I ate a pound of M&Ms while writing that article so that I could stay awake, so be it.


Then I fell off a mountain, broke bones, lost about a third of my right quad, had a brain injury. (Click here for the gory details on that story.) No more gym. No more running. It was infuriating and frustrating, and I think this revealed the truth behind my relationship with my body. The two of us, though intimately joined, were adversaries. The only things my body and I enjoyed together were food and sex. And now I had finally reached a point where I could no longer banish the calories I ate by running too much. So I just forgot about my body and focused on work. My body was a tool, nothing more. This went on for 15 years.

Which pretty much brings us up to the end of 2011.
 So now what?

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that, and I’ve concluded the only thing I can do is become friends with my body again, just like I was when I was a little girl. I need to recapture that joy. I need to rediscover the fun of having a body.

If I think of my body as a person, I can feel great compassion for it. It has survived sexual assault, violence, a serious fall down a mountain. It has been neglected, overworked, deprived of sleep so that I could write news articles and books. It has been fed too much junk and too much caffeine in an effort to make it stay awake so that I can keep working. It’s had multiple surgeries, the most recent to repair my cervical spine. Its needs have been ignored no matter how loudly it shouted for me to pay attention and help it. And yet it still serves me as faithfully as it can each and every moment.

Why do I neglect this ally of mine, this lifelong friend, my body?

This is going to be the greatest challenge I face in Project: Happiness because it brings together so many things — sexuality, food, physical injury and limitation, overall health, self-image, how I deal with stress, my need to get work done vs. my need to get enough sleep.

I came up with a set of goals to help me navigate these rapids, some of which are physical and some of which are emotional:

1. Go to bed on time and get enough sleep.
2. Stop eating sugar and other empty calories.
3. Go to the gym, hike or walk six days a week, but don’t go crazy. Start slowly.
4. Find new ways to deal with stress.
5. Rediscover ways to have fun (riding my bike, swimming, horseback riding).
6. Don’t let emotional stress build up in the first place by demanding too much of myself.
7. Listen to my body.
8. How I look and what I accomplish matter less than how I feel.

I’ve fallen short of these goals already, however, I’ve also taken steps to meet them.

Although I’ve stayed up late to write (I’m up too late now so that I can get this done), I’ve gone to bed on time lots of times and have taken naps.

I’ve eating things that weren’t good for me, but not for a while. I can feel a difference.

I’ve missed the past two days at the gym because I was writing — not a good excuse — but I’ve been to the gym four times. One of those times I went swimming — first time in more than a decade. That was amazing, as was the five seconds of running I allowed myself to do on the track. I just took off running, and it felt so good. I knew I couldn’t do it for long without hurting myself, so I stopped. Benjy said, “That’s not something you see an overweight person do everyday.” Because I still run fast. Even though I’ve been injured and have no feeling in my lower legs, I’m still pretty darn strong. All of those years of activity are still inside my body somewhere. If I care for my body, maybe I can have that back.

I’m having an easier time not hating my own guts when I’m not happy with how my writing is going. I tell myself, “It will work out. It always does.” And then I do something else for a while, because nothing is worth getting so upset about that I put my body or my spirit through hell. The tortured author thing has to stop because the impact it has on my well-being is extreme.

I can’t expect to forge this new relationship with my physical self overnight, but by consciously focusing on it, by trying hard to hear the voice I’ve ignored since I was 10, I can help bring balance to my life overall and become healthier in my late 40s than I’ve been in a long, long time.

Now I think about it this way: I’m having fun with my body, and I’m in training not for a race or to look sexy in a bikini, but to live a healthier, happier life.

This was a very long post. Thanks for reading through it, those of you who made it to the end. I didn’t intend for this to be so long. I hope that by sharing it, it can help other women who face similar challenges.

I hope those of you who’ve committed to your own version of Project: Happiness are making progress, too.

Next Project: Happiness update: The Mind

Let me just say that pneumonia sucks. I totally understand now how this illness can kill people. There were a few nights when I wondered whether the combination of asthma and pneumonia would make me either faint or just stop breathing. That’s how hard I was coughing. The world would just start to go gray. My doc was giving me about 24 hours to get better, or I was going to land in the hospital.

Fortunately, I have come back to the world of the breathing — mostly. Inhalation is a sweet thing. Thanks to all of you for your emails, tweets and Facebook posts. Your encouragement meant a lot to me.

Before I launch on a Project: Happiness update, I wanted to let you know about some upcoming events and contests.





I am a proud Leap Day baby. And this year — 2012 — I am celebrating my 12th real birthday. In honor of that, I am giving away 12 books through Goodreads — six copies of Surrender and six copies of Untamed. You need to be a member of Goodreads to participate, but signing up is easy. A lot of you probably already are Goodreads members.

To sign up for the Surrender giveaway, click here and scroll down the page to where you see “Win A Copy of This Book.” To sign up for the Untamed giveaway, click here, and do the same.

(Side note: If anyone has librarian privileges at Goodreads, please email me and let me know or message me through Goodreads. There are some things on my books that need to be updated, such as the new covers for Surrender and Untamed, and I don’t know how to make that happen.)

Unfortunately, I’ve had to limit participation in this giveaway to addresses in the U.S. and Canada. Now that I’m not working at the paper, I just can’t afford overseas postage. I feel terrible about that. I’ve never limited participation before, but you gotta do what you gotta do.


Yes, Valentine’s Day is behind us, but on February 27, Under the Covers Book Blog is having me on as a guest. I’ll be bringing you a MacKinnon’s Rangers extra — a chapter-length look at Iain and Morgan offering Annie and Amalie some Valentine’s day affection. The mini-story takes place on Feb. 13-14, 1760, at the MacKinnon farm on the colonial New York frontier.

I didn’t want to give away any spoiler for Defiant, so I set the story just before Defiant opens. This means the action is taking place between the ending of Untamed and the epilogue of Untamed. Annie has just had her baby girl, and Amalie is eight months pregnant — and fearful of what is to come as women were back in the day when childbirth so often meant death. I find it very romantic when men find a way to nurture their women at times like these when what we think of as romance — hot sex, seduction — aren’t necessarily possible. Marriage isn’t a constant stream of hot sex dates so much as a commitment to live each day together and love each other fully. I try to give you some romance in daily life in this story, showing Iain and Morgan’s tender sides.

Those of you who want a taste of the MacKinnon brothers to tide you over to Defiant’s July 3 release date are in luck.

I’m uncertain of the details, but I plan to give a book or two away that day. Watch Facebook and Twitter (@Pamela_Clare) to get the live links.




I wouldn’t say that Project: Happiness was derailed by pneumonia, but my focus was entirely on getting well. And that’s fitting, as a huge part of Project: Happiness for me is learning how to take care of my physical self.

I’m a history geek, as you know, and in my study of the ancient world — 10 years of Latin, people — I was always very touched by the old Latin adage, “Mens sana in corpore sano.” This translates to, “A healthy mind in a healthy body.”

It was an ideal to which philosophers at least adhered and which grew out of the almost identical Greek concept: “Νοῦς ὑγιὴς ἐν σώματι ὑγιεῖ.”

It’s amazing to me how ancient people’s saw the world so clearly and understood human life so well. We hire personal trainers and nutritionists and spiritual gurus to impress this concept on us today. So many people think starving themselves or pushing themselves to exercise and be thin or muscular or physically perfect is the key to happiness. Others spend years educating themselves or pursing worthwhile intellectual work — only to sit at a desk 24/7 and find that, while their minds are strong, their bodies resemble nothing so much as a pile of mashed potatoes.

How many people truly find balance? Probably not many.

I would like to be so bold as to propose an update to the Greco-Roman ideal and offer this: “A healthy spirit and a healthy mind in a health body.”

I see people as a blending of the three — body, mind and spirit. Each plays its role in leading us toward growth in this life and toward meaningful happiness. Neglect any one of the three, and the potential of our lives diminishes. Oftentimes, people neglect spirit until age or illness deprives them of their bodies. Each is an equally important part of our human existence. Although I’m not religious in the traditional sense, I think of them as a kind of personal trinity — the Three in One that is reflective of something higher.

I’ve had some time to think about how I want to undertake Project: Happiness. And, yes, I mean to create a road map, a way to quantify making qualitative progress in my life. After 47 years, I’ve concluded that we make progress in our lives when we devote true energy toward our desired goals. If you have no plan, if you have no road map, you have no way to measure your efforts or their results. In other words, shit doesn’t happen unless you make it happen.

As my grandmother used to say, “Wish in one hand, and piss in the other, and see which one fills up first.”

This is no longer about wishing. It’s about achieving. I don’t have decades left to goof around. What I want to be, I must become. What I am tomorrow is what I’ve built today. If I have a goal, I need to draw it out of my heart and make it real. As strange as it may be to say that happiness is something one can set out to achieve, I believe it truly is, not by chasing it or going to parties or escaping into other distractions, but by doing the hard work of becoming the person I was meant to be in all areas of my life.

In upcoming blogs, I’ll focus on each of these areas — body, mind and spirit — and the steps I plan to take and the challenges I know I will face.

To start with, I am thinking each day of what I am doing for each of these three areas of my life. What did I do for my body today? What did I do for my mind? What did I do for my spirit? A day that involves adequate rest, exercise and nutrition, together with satisfying work and prayer or meditation could be considered a successful, balanced day, for example. By consciously planning to achieve something for each part of myself, I hope to bring balance to my life — and to expose the areas where I need to work harder.

So stay tuned for the first exploration: Body.


And, yes, and more MacKinnon’s Rangers, too!

Plus, watch for I-Team news! 

 Thanks so much for your wonderful responses to my last blog entry. So many of you contacted me via Facebook or email to express your heartfelt support, many of you talking about ways in which you need to change your own lives. If we can support one another and make 2012 a year of unprecedented personal change, I’m all for it.

Yes, Project: Happiness is underway and has already brought change. Simply declaring my intention has helped to harness my energies in a positive way.

Since posting last Tuesday, I’ve chosen a gym that I’m going to join together with Benjamin, who is gearing up to apply for Officer Candidate School with the U.S. Coast Guard. We visited health clubs today and decided to join the city-owned rec center. They have several facilities and are dirt cheap, which fits my budget. I need to get back into shape. Benjamin needs to get into the best shape of his life. And unlike other times when I’ve joined a gym, the purpose isn’t going to be to work out as hard as I can, as if I were still the woman who could run 6.5- to 7-minute miles. I’m going to take care of myself and not injure myself.

Some of you asked to see some of my artwork from back in the day. It’s been a long time since I painted or drew with oils and charcoal and chalk. Most of my artwork was destroyed, so I have very little. But I have photographs of a few things, and I actually have what is perhaps my most priceless drawing.

Up at the top, you can see a photo of Pedersborg Kirke (Pedersborg Church) in Pedersborg, Denmark, a tiny town just on the edge of Sorø, where I lived. An enormous lake surrounds the town, and I used to run around that lake every morning six days a week at 6 a.m. The church stands up on the hillside above the lake, and one afternoon I headed over with a sketchpad and a set of oils and drew what I saw. The photo and sketch are from slightly different angles, and the drawing doesn’t have all the detail from the cemetery. But you get the gist...

I was 17 when I drew it.

This drawing still exists (I think). I gave it to my host parents, who still had it when I visited DK in 1999. It’s not Da Vinci, but it does show how I used to spend a couple of spare hours when I had them.



I dug through my old photo albums looking for anything I could find and was surprised to find this.  This painting was a joint effort and was put together for a Christmas choir concert when I was in 9th grade. I didn’t paint the outer corners or the star. As “Most Artistic” student, I was asked to paint the rose in the center. The rose was supposed to represent Jesus and was put in a spotlight during a Christmas choral piece titled “The Rose.” Other students painted the rest of it.

And now for what my sister and I might jokingly call The Piece of Resistance, poorly translating the French expression “la pièce de résistance.”

I drew this portrait of a crying Jesus when I was 14. I drew it with an ordinary pencil on a cheap sketch pad. I figured if Jesus knew everything that people did in his name, he’d cry. So here he is, hanging his head in grief.

I am not a religious person, but rather a spiritual one. I don’t go to church largely because organized religion leaves me unimpressed, and the last thing I want to do on Sunday morning is get out of freaking bed. I mean really! Whatever I feel with regard to God is between me and God, not me and everyone else on this planet. I don’t want the art here to create an erroneous impression.

This isn’t a great photograph of the piece. I had to take it off my bedroom wall to photograph it, and the light was reflecting off the glass. There’s a reflection of the wooden canopy from my bed on the glass, too.

I gave this to my maternal grandmother when we learned she had lymphoma, and she had it on the wall in her house. (She was religious.) After she passed, I took the drawing back because it meant so much to me.

Among the pieces of artwork that are missing include a charcoal and chalk drawing of a mother eagle with her chick that won first place in an adult art show when I was 15. I really wish I had that! There were some other drawings, as well as a couple of paintings and some prints.

I hope to ease my way back into this by getting some art supplies for my birthday and taking some classes through the recreation center, which offers them for $25. That’s just a way to get my feet wet after decades of not drawing or painting. It’s another reason we joined the rec center and not just an athletic club. They have lots of classes, including some that cover other interests of mine, such as organic veggie gardening. And they have a climbing wall. YES!


Fiction news:

I have an outline for a novella about Megan. It was going to be a Christmas novella way back when. Now it’s just a novella. I hope to start writing it next week and have it up and available for $2.99 through Amazon, B&N and Smashwords by the end of the month.

We’ll see what’s become of Megan since the end of Unlawful Contact. For those who have forgotten, she’s his little sister, and her life has involved serious trauma. She needs a lot of love and a lot of healing to have a real relationship with a man. We’ll see Emily, who is now 4. And, yes, we’ll see Marc and Julian, too. Marc will be in full-blown “protective big brother” mode, as you can imagine.

I haven’t heard from my editor about Defiant yet, but I’m certain I’ll hear soon. When I have any news, I’ll share it.

Have a great week, everyone! I plan to spend all of Sunday reading. We’ll be starting at the gym this week, and I hope to be writing again soon.

Warning: What follows here is some deeply personal introspection. If you want to believe that I’m a superhero with no human failings, please do not read it.

No, I haven’t forgotten about this blog. I’ve been busy cleaning and reorganizing the house and doing all those chores and little tasks that get ignored when I write. I’m also trying very hard to de-stress and unwind — not an easy thing for a Type A personality like me to do.

It became abundantly clear to me as I was finishing Defiant that I need a new game plan, a new way of relating to my life, my writing, my health. For so long, I’ve lived my life like a workhorse, the result primarily of having married the wrong man for the wrong reasons too early, having had babies too young, and having no real plan, beyond knowing I wanted to write novels … someday.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

All of us have competing impulses for ill and for good. We lurch through our lives torn between pursuing our own good and our own self-destruction. Canadian musician Bruce Cockburn calls human beings “the angel-beast,” and that’s a pretty accurate description of most of us, myself included. It’s very hard for most of us to exorcise the beast and give our inner angel wings. Even Gandhi, whom I consider to have been a saint, struggled with his own weakness.

He wrote this prayer about his struggles: “I know the path. It is straight and narrow. It is like the edge of a sword. I rejoice to walk upon it. I weep when I slip. God’s word is, he who strives shall not perish. I have implicit faith in that promise. Therefore, though through my own weakness I fail a thousand times, I shall not lose faith.”



It comes down to how much we love ourselves — love in the deep sense, not in the self-aggrandizing, egoistic sense. And, for whatever reason, the stress of writing tends to bring out the worst in me.

I’m not the only author who has this problem. Writers are many times more likely to suffer from depression than other artists. That’s other artists, not the public in general. They’re also something like 19 times more likely to commit suicide than other artists. Why?

For one, writing is a very isolating activity, more so than any other art. You have to live inside your head at the expense of real connections in the world. 


But also writing requires an author to maintain a mental state of emotion for prolonged periods of time that, I think, affects our own real state of mind. If I’m writing a scary scene or a grief-filled scene, I need to feel it to write it. If it takes three weeks to write that scene, I’ll be “feeling it” for that period of time. If I’m not very careful to cleanse my emotional palate, I end up carrying those emotions with me beyond that scene —  Gabe’s untapped grief and anger, for example, or Zach’s self-loathing, or Lady Sarah Woodville’s self-blame.

I contrast that to the experience of painting, which was the first creative art I explored. Although I had always wanted to write books, I took art classes in junior high and discovered I have some talent in that area. I was voted Most Artistic in my schools throughout my secondary education and really loved painting and drawing. Unlike writing, it was a very cathartic thing to do. I would just drift away into the wordless world of art, which was all about color and using color to create the image in my mind. It was almost a form of meditation for me. Hours would pass. And I would come away from it feeling as light as sunshine.

I quit painting when I left school. No money for art supplies, which are insanely expensive. I did take a few art classes in college. One of my professors urged me to switch departments and get my MFA. When I told him I couldn’t afford it, he said, “Forget the cost. You’ll be making 80 grand two years after you graduate.”

But I didn’t heed his advice mostly because I couldn’t fathom how my paint splatters could garner that much attention. In fact, I considered myself to be one of the least skilled students in his class. He disagreed. “Everyone else looks around them at the outside world before they work on a project. You always work from inside,” he said. “That makes you much more creative than your peers, no matter how technically skilled they are. I can teach you technique.”

But back to writing…

When writing is going well, it feels like I’m flying. There’s a real high. When it isn’t going well, it is agony. And although I’ve written 11 novels, there’s always a niggling fear inside me that I won’t be able to do it again. So when I come to a difficult scene, rather than viewing it as a challenge, I start hating my own guts for “failing” to produce what see in my heart.

Some writers are able to produce drafts of a book and feel fine leaving some scenes as mere sketches or knowing that they’ve written crap. In fact, they give themselves permission to write crap, knowing they’ll fix it later. I can’t seem to do that. I tried it with Naked Edge, and the result was two months of lost writing time. Having been an editor for so long, and being used to getting exactly what I want to say on the page very quickly as a journalist, I can’t seem to settle for anything other than perfection. And I never achieve perfection, at least in my own sight. When I fail, I beat up on myself so mercilessly that I end up feeling despair.

What’s up with that?

That’s part of what I want to sort through this year.



I think part of the problem has always been the bottleneck of my life — single mother, full-time journalist, author. Too many hats, too little time. And let’s face it — I wasn’t exactly happy at the newspaper. Au contraire.

But the problem goes deeper than that. I’ve had more than my share of trauma. Here’s the short list: sexual assault at age 10; dating violence at age 14; a break-in by men with switchblades and attempted rape at age 23; near-fatal climbing accident at age 30 that left me partially disabled; two stalkers; several death threats; having guns held on me twice. I’m not saying this out of self-pity. It’s just an inventory. I’ve had an equal number of blessings, because I survived each of these situations and got stronger along the way.

I’ve been open and public about the fact that I was sexually assaulted by the father of a classmate when I was in fifth grade. That experience left me feeling tainted in a way that really only other rape victims could understand. I withdrew emotionally from the world and felt different from the other kids. My childhood evaporated at that point.

In junior high and high school, I started doing drugs as much out of curiosity and a desire to have fun, as well as the need to escape my own pain. By the time I was in 10th grade, I’d tried most everything that existed at that time — marijuana, amphetamines, narcotics, angel dust, cocaine. Some of my experiences from those days were hilarious and recklessly fun; others were scary, such as the night when a 21-year-old jerk beat me up at a party because I wouldn’t sleep with him. (I was 14 and stoned out of my mind.)

I don’t regret those days — they gave me great material for books — but I also recognize that they were part of a self-destructive impulse. Fortunately, unlike many girls, I was able to turn away from that scene when my life began to feel too out of control. I simply walked away. No addictions. No rehab. I was just done with it.

I had a few good years after that. I traveled to Denmark as an exchange student and saw a completely different way of life, one that I love to this day and miss very much. I worked hard to learn the language, to make friends, to see everything I could see. I took up running very seriously and reached a point where I could click off consecutive 6.5- to 7-minute miles and ran 10 to 13 miles a day six days a week. I met a Danish man, fell in love, got engaged. Then, oppressed by the idea of monogamy, he broke off our engagement.

And the pendulum swung from angel back to beast.



I went back to the U.S. at the age of 20, dabbled in drugs again, though not for long. I met a guy on the rebound and married him because he was... there. I got pregnant almost immediately, tried to make the marriage work and failed. I won’t go into that because that impacts my kids.

I will say that one huge factor in that was the break-in. “The Break-in.” That’s what we call it in my family. That involved two men with switchblades, me alone at home with a 9-month-old baby. I escaped being raped at knife-point by a margin of seconds — an experience I’ve shared publicly. The ordeal, coupled with the sexual assault when I was a kid, resulted in five years of horrid, terrible post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

If it seems like I write a lot of emotionally traumatized characters, that’s why. I relate to that side of them perhaps more than any other.

Of course, many things that seem terrible at the time come with hidden blessings. My bad marriage gave me two wonderful kids. The mountain climbing accident that deprived me of my ability to run helped me find an inner strength I didn’t know I had (and gave me part of the plot for a novel). Having been a victim of sexual assault 1.5 times fueled my desire to confront the bad guys as a journalist, which I did head-on to the benefit of other women. Battling PTSD gave me an empathy for others that I might not otherwise have, making me a better reporter.

But now everything is changing again, and the pendulum has been swinging in the wrong direction for a while now.

I turn 48 on February 29 — Leap Day. My focus for the past 28 years has been on my kids, my work as a journalist, and my writing, even at the expense of my health. I’m finding it hard to keep up with the changes in my life. The kids are grown. Benjamin is home for now, but that won’t last long. I’m not longer the editor-in-chief of a newspaper and have no steady income. And writing has turned into a brutal boxing match of me vs. myself.

No, I don’t drink. I haven’t touched drugs in eons. That’s all far behind me. It’s more a case of the self-destructive voice in my head, which I sometimes jokingly call “Grima Pam-Tongue.” (For those of you who aren’t Tolkien fans, that’s derived from the character Grima Wormtongue, who fills the mind of King Théoden of the Rohirrim with evil, magical lies that sap him of his strength and will.)

I have two adult children, a lifetime achievement award for journalism, a National Journalism Award, and 11 published novels, but the voice in my head tells me I haven’t done anything with my life. I write books that get higher-than-average reviews, and the voice tells me I can’t write. I’m free to spend more time than ever doing what I want to do with my life now, and yet that destructive voice tells me I have nothing to live for.

The more exhausted I am, the emptier my creative well, the more stressed I feel, the louder that negative voice becomes. Physical pain plays a huge role, too. I’m less than two years out from my big spinal surgery and still have nights where I can’t sleep from pain, though things are a zillion times better than they were before I got my new neck.

Toward the end of working on Defiant, my sister sat on the couch beside me till 3 AM, all but holding my hand. When I reached a point where I wanted to scream, she helped me stay focused.

“I fucking hate myself!” I would shout. “I can’t write at all. Why in the hell did I ever think that I could write books? I should toss my computer in the trash and get a job at Burger King!”

And she would say in a deadpan voice, “Another glimpse at the productive inner monologue of Pamela Clare.”

Have I ever mentioned how much I love her?

Yesterday, she sent me this parable:

“A fight is going on inside me,” said an old man to his son. “It is a terrible fight between two wolves. One wolf is evil. He is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other wolf is good. He is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you.”

The son thought about it for a minute and then asked, “Which wolf will win?”

The old man replied simply, “The one you feed.” 



I’m going through a huge life change right now. More than that, I’m having to face once and for all the wounded part of myself and heal it so that the fear and pain don’t control my emotional life. I have to take control of that inner voice and turn it toward a higher purpose.

I need to quit believing the lies Grima Pam-Tongue tells me. I need to feed the right wolf.

That’s what I’m working on right now. I’m focusing my energies on rediscovering what I love about life. I’m going to ask for some art supplies for my birthday so I can draw and paint again, something I long to do. I want to build up the strength in my body to be able to do some of the sports I love — hiking, snowshoeing, cross country skiing, whitewater rafting. Next year, I hope to hire a ski coach who can help me re-learn to downhill ski despite my damaged spine.  (I have no feeling in my lower legs thanks to spinal damage from a broken neck.) I want to find a way to face the frustrations of writing that is functional and not destructive so that I can enjoy writing again.

And so I have launched Project: Happiness, an effort to overcome negative habits and thinking, to foster creativity and actively to pursue The Good. I am setting out deliberately to create happiness in my life. I’ve been reading, watching movies I’ve never seen before, listening to new music, going for regular walks and thinking about what’s really important to me. I’m re-filling my creative well.

The timing is perfect for this. The same changes that have thrown me off balance also open the door for me to transform my life. I hope to share the journey with you on this blog over the course of the next year.

I am determined to succeed.

Coming soon:
News about I-Team novellas
More peeks at Defiant
MacKinnon’s Rangers Reading Challenge