Tag: Family

Posted in D.S. Williams Worlds, Ramblings

And Just When I Thought It Was Safe…

Posted on by Nememiah

I started of 2023 with all good intentions, and thought we had a reasonably good chance of this year – 2023 – being a little less stressful than the last one.

If you’ll recall, 2022 was filled with a couple of big issues, and some little ones – all of which totalled up to mean the year didn’t go the way we planned. Planned renovations got pushed to the backburner, things didn’t work out quite the way we’d hoped, and for the most part, we stumbled through the year lurching from one catastrophe to the next.

And don’t get me wrong, I am eternally grateful that our catastrophes were painful, and awkward, and frustrating, but we were still much luckier than most.

Consequently, as I talked about in my last post, we started off 2023 hoping for a better, less stressful year. Which lasted for approximately five minutes before things started to get pear-shaped. First of all, my dearest SIL’s Mum passed away on New Years Day, not an auspicious start.

Then, there was that pesky hamstring tear in early December – the one I got when I went off adventuring on my own for the first time in ages. With one thing and another (Christmas, SIL’s Mum, a dose of COVID for the DH and the Bonza Babe and my beloved GP heading off on holidays) I didn’t go back for my follow-up appointment to discover the results of my scans until last Thursday.

Now keep in mind here, that while it’s still causing me some grief, it’s not particularly painful. I’m still relying on a crutch a lot of the time, but that’s more because I’m a bit nervous about giving it another yank because I never – ever – want to feel that sort of pain again and the grounds around our house, Wilyerup are notoriously treacherous to walk on. And to top off all that, the DH’s physio had told him that generally, they don’t both do surgery for hamstring injuries in people of ‘our age’.

Imagine my surprise when I rocked up at the beloved GP’s office, and lo and behold, she wants me to have an MRI, because the tear in my hamstring is nearly 5cm x 4cm x 1cm… and is unlikely to heal on it’s own. So color me delighted, because now I’m off to the Orthopaedic Surgeon to discuss what will be required to fix my hamstring and the recovery time will likely be counted in months, rather than days.

And that’s only the beginning of things which could go wrong in 2023. Because the DH, who was medically discharged from the Air Force back in 2020 had his own results to get from the beloved GP. Turns out that he is looking at the possibility of up to THREE surgeries this year. The two definites are his shoulders, to fix degradation resulting from years of pushing open hangar doors and lifting heavy stuff at work. The other, more serious one will be decided once he’s had some treatment next week – he has a lot of degradation in his upper cervical spine that in all probability will need surgery, but we’re going to try cortisone injections first.

Which means a couple of things going forward. For starters, we were off up to Perth this coming weekend for a 48 hour trip to celebrate the birthdays of the Bonza Babe, Son #1 and Son #2. Living in the country, its sometimes quicker to get medical issues dealt with in the big smoke, so our 48 hour trip has been extended out to nearly a fortnight so that the scans and the injections can get done in a timely manner.

And the DH and I are in negotiations regarding just what renovations will get done at Wilyerup this year – because our original plans have most definitely fallen by the wayside. But I’m hoping against hope that the shed (which we’ve had since mid 2020) might be the one plan that comes to fruition this year!

And moving forward, my New Years Resolution for 2024 is going to be that there will be no New Years Resolutions!

Posted in D.S. Williams Worlds, Ramblings

Some Thoughts on the way to a New Year

Posted on by Nememiah

Like many people, my 2022 was less than stellar. Fortunately, it wasn’t major, life-altering events, although my son’s two reasonably serious accidents were enough to add a few grey hairs to my head. (Didn’t have the same effect on my DH, who is practically bald anyway, but he certainly experienced plenty of stress.)

We certainly experienced our fair share of financial issues, although unlike many we were fortunate to get through them relatively debt-free. The renovations to our grand old dame of a house, ‘Wilyerup’ have certainly needed to be put on the backburner however.

As I said, we were among the lucky ones. Rather than life altering disasters on an epic scale, we were hit with regular and constant issues which drain the bank balance and had a detrimental effect on my mental health. We lost a treasured pet, the car shat itself to the tune of an almost $4000 bill, as mentioned Son #3 had a serious workplace accident, followed up six months later with a serious home-based accident, which saw him miss work for nearly the entirety of 2022. Son # 2 had some issues of his own, including a brush with the Black Dog, and some ups and downs with his workplace due to other health issues.

With one thing and another (and I’m not going to get into them all here) every month of 2022 held some new disaster, some new mess to sort out, some new issue which needed addressing. It meant that there wasn’t a time during our year when we weren’t under some sort of strain, some mental or physical issue which needed addressing.

To put it bluntly, it sucked.

But it didn’t suck anywhere near as much as many other people’s experiences in the past twelve months and for that, I’m grateful.

So now we face a new year, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a wee bit anxious about what it might entail, but one of the things I’m going to try to leave behind me is guilt, and worry about other people’s opinions of me. I’ve carried that shit along for far too long, and it weighs me down in so many ways that I need to find a way to offload it.

Relationships with my family are fractured, and I suspect now that they always will be. I can’t fix the relationships, not alone, and without help from those who feel I’ve somehow wronged them, there’s no way to heal the rifts. I made choices in my life regarding my mother which were the right decisions for me. They were very clearly the wrong decisions in the eyes of some of my family members, but I’m trying to accept that this is okay. This is their truth. Not mine.

I can’t fix what they see as wrong. I can’t be what they want me to be. I am who I am, and while that’s not always something I’m proud of, I’m learning to accept the truth of who I am, and I’m (almost) okay with that. I don’t need negativity in my life, I don’t need to carry the weight of other people’s opinions of me.

I am enough.

And in 2023, I hope to reaffirm this truth and spend less time fretting over those that would cut me from their lives without discussion or the opportunity to give and take. Those that would refuse to talk about things, but use passive aggressive wording to confirm they blame me for past events.

I won’t try and fight against the flow of the water any longer. I’m going to face each new challenge with hope in my heart and reminding myself that others have had it worse.

And with any luck, I’ll find some time in there for my passion, and write a few new books along the way.

Posted in D.S. Williams Worlds, Ramblings

Dropping By To Say Hi…

Posted on by Nememiah

I’m the first to admit. I’m a terrible blogger. It seems the older I get, the worse I am at this promotion malarkey.

2022 has been particularly tricky, because straight out of the blocks in January, Son #3 had a workplace accident, cutting straight through a nerve in his calf and losing all function in his right foot. Cue his parents heading up to Perth for umpteen weeks to provide nursing while he recovered, and making sure he got to all the appointments he had to attend for medical treatment, assessments, physio and whatever else needed to happen. Fortunately, six months down the track he is almost (almost!!) ready to return to work.

Son #3 and his sister, The Bonza Babe

To add insult to injury, being in Perth meant absolutely nothing was getting done down here in Bridgetown – remember how we bought that old house (built in 1904) which had bucketloads of work to be done to it, and we took it on as a project now that the DH has retired from the Air Force? Yep, that’s the one. And it’s now nearly two years since we moved in and we are yet to get the new shed up that we bought just before we moved in. Bridgetown is a lovely place to live, but the weather in winter is not particularly helpful for working on outside projects (it’s actually known as ‘Fridgetown’ during the winter months).

And then, not too long after we got back to Bridgetown, we were devastated to lose Angus McFangus, who crossed Rainbow Bridge at the grand old age of 13. He was such a character, and we were so sad to say goodbye to him.

Angus McFangus

Now the thing about losing Angus, was that up until his death, we had never NOT had a dog in 32 years. We’ve always tended to have a puppy and a middle aged dog, so that as the years pass we always have a younger dog bringing up the rearguard and are never completely dog-free. After McFangus left us, both the DH, the Bonza Babe and myself were like lost souls and we quickly found ourselves two new furry friends, a rescue Cane Corso X who has been named Mollie, and a sixteen week old American Staffy X who belongs to the Bonza Babe and is named Stanley.

Mollie
Stanley

These two have been our saviours since McFangus’s death, and they’re both beginning to reveal particularly entertaining personalities as they settle in here at Wilyerup. Mollie especially is proving to be a joy, because she has quite a vivacious personality now that she’s comfortable enough to reveal it and it’s delightful because she’s a rescue who has a very sketchy background and suffered a lot of abuse. She loves cuddles and kisses, and is quite OCD about the way things should ‘be’ in her life, but that’s okay and we’re learning to work around her little habits. Stanley (AKA ‘The Fluffy Muppet’) is growing like a weed, absolutely loves chewing and digging, and generally runs amok for quite a bit of the day. It’s a good thing cuteness makes up for his behaviour sometimes.

So that’s the first six months of the year done and dusted, with hardly any progress at all – but I did (finally, finally, FINALLY) finish ‘The Seven Sentinels of Camelot – Carnell’ – the first book in a new series. It’s currently with my editing SIL and my good friend Ange, who are giving it a thorough go-over before I hand it in to my publisher. It took a long time to get this one written, but as always there are hiccups with mental health and sometimes, life just gets in the way no matter how hard you try to avoid it.

So that’s a rundown of the first half of 2022. I’m hoping that the second half will have less drama, and much more writing. And maybe even a few more posts over here…

Posted in D.S. Williams Worlds, Ramblings

Hallelujah! we’ve kissed goodbye to 2020.

Posted on by Nememiah

Oh my goodness, I’m glad to see the back of 2020. This was a year that wasn’t particularly kind to any of us, although we here in Australia have gotten off lightly in regard to COVID-19 – certainly when compared to our fellow humans in the United States and many other countries around the world.

Sadly, at this early stage of the year, it seems as if 2021 is not going to be much better, and I’ve been keeping up with the news regarding the terrible situation currently playing itself out in Washington and finding in myself a sense of disbelief over what I’m seeing and hearing.

But I digress. I’m not a lover of resolutions – don’t get me wrong, over the years I’ve made dozens of them, and in some cases, I’ve actually managed keep them, at least until near the end of January.

In recent years though, I’ve started being a bit kinder to myself, and I no longer commit to ridiculous promises to myself to behave in a certain way, or suddenly turn over a new leaf in regards to things I will or won’t do in the upcoming year. In fact, this is my current pegboard, which went up a couple of days ago.

So in the spirit of ‘casual promises to myself that I’m under no obligation to fulfil’ – here’s this years non-resolutions.

  1. Be kind to myself. Don’t focus on the negatives. Look for positives that will lead me to liking myself, if only just a little bit more.
  2. Write – for myself. Don’t worry about whether it’s good or not, or whether anyone would be interested in reading it. Write the story, enjoy the process and to hell with whether it meets anyone’s expectations. The only expectations which matter are mine.
  3. Try new things. I realized late last year (in that hideous 365 days known as 2020) that I tend to avoid things edible and otherwise, because I’m under the assumption I won’t like them. This year I’m going to choose the item on the menu I haven’t tried before, taste the flavors I’ve only assumed I won’t like. I’m going to use the items I’ve been ‘saving’ and write in the notebooks I’ve been hoarding. I’m going to visit places I’ve been too anxiety-prone to go and I’m going to try and focus on the positive and push away the negatives.

And hopefully, there’s some room for improvement in the remainder of this new year…

Posted in Uncategorized

Sitting on the flipside

Posted on by Nememiah

Well, that all went pear-shaped quite quickly. All the way back in March (March!!) I was casually thinking that I might be doing okay, that I could tootle along in my usual fashion and keep on writing.

That proved to be extremely optimistic. Along with the rest of the world, I watched the year descend into madness, with borders closed, hospitals overwhelmed, and rumor and innuendo only adding to the drama that was 2020. And it still continues, as we face heading into 2021 with the same COVID-19 issues we’ve had in 2020.

Foolishly, I was under the misapprehension that by the end of the year we’d have reached the ‘end’ of this saga, that we’d be facing the new year with optimism and the world gradually healing from this insidious virus which seems to keep popping up no matter what the world does to combat it.

Not so.

Back in March, I was feeling marginally optimistic, but that optimism got swallowed in a tsunami wave of anxiety and a wave of manic episodes which have pretty much sidelined me for most of the year. I’ve kept functioning (just), but those words which were still flowing in March pretty much died out about four minutes after I hit ‘publish’

But just recently… just in the past few weeks… the creative juices have started to flow a little, despite a bout of depression brought on by messing up my medication regime while we’ve rushed to finish renovations in our little old house (which we bought in July, shortly after the strict travelling bans were eased).

So I’m looking towards 2021 with a modicum of hope, and although it’s always a battle, a teensy bit of optimism. And I’d like to wish you all a bit of that same hope and optimism, and add a sincere wish that you can make the best of a Christmas and New Year which will no doubt look vastly different for all of us who inhabit this planet than it has in previous years.

Posted in Ramblings

Thoughts from the dark side…

Posted on by Nememiah

Boy. Every time I think I’ve delayed putting up a blog post by months, I manage to break my own record. (And no, that’s not something I’m particularly pleased about.)

I join you in something of a world gone mad – as Coronavirus spreads across the world, I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve actually found myself stuck in some crazy movie. World War Z seems to have happened and I’m seeing people stockpiling toilet paper and stealing face masks and alcohol swabs from hospitals.

And I can’t get my head around it. The worldwide panic seems to be happening in a different world to the one I’m living in. I keep reading the reports, and while Disneyland is closing down and football games are being played without audiences, I’m reading that the death rate from the virus is less than 2%. It seems so strange, and I waver between panic and placidity over what’s to come.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complacent. I’ve washing my hands carefully and thoroughly to two renditions of ‘Happy Birthday to you’ and I’m naturally retiring so I’ve pretty much contained myself at home most of the time anyway, but it still bothers me that this is something out of my control. Out of everyone’s control. I’m less worried about myself than I am about the single most important people in my world – the Darling Husband and the Gang of Four. I think the thing that most freaks me out is that having traced the family history, I’m fully aware of the losses suffered during the Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1918 and I don’t want that to happen to my family, or anyone else’s family for that matter. I just hope this doesn’t reach those same levels of morbidity, because that would be a terrible thing.

So my advice (such as it is). Follow the advice you’re being given. Don’t be an asshole and buy up all the toilet paper and hand sanitizer – leave some for others. And stay safe.

Posted in Ramblings

Five Minute Fiction

Posted on by Nememiah

(I’ve placed this under five minute fiction, but there’s a lot of truth which cuts close the bone in this short burst.)

“Are you okay?”

It was a question I’d been asked half a dozen times so far today, and each time I’d repeated the same simple response.  “I’m okay.”

Except I probably wasn’t.  My mother and I had a complicated relationship, fraught with emotion and difficult at the best of times.  Don’t get me wrong; it wasn’t abusive, or based in hatred.  It was a relationship based on love – but too much love.  The fact of the matter was that she’d loved me too much, obsessively – and she had her own mental health problems. The diagnosis I’d come up with that she was most probably a narcissistic sociopath – but she didn’t believe there was anything wrong with her.  With my own diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder, a severe depressive disorder and numerous anxiety issues, we were almost destined to clash.

And we did, regularly, with fireworks and anger, and on my behalf,  a healthy dose of hatred.  She came close to driving me out of my mind, even though she didn’t intend to.  She just couldn’t bear to let me go.

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The cost of that obsession was high – instead of living out her twilight years with a strong, loving relationship with her  daughter, we ended up in a tempestuous, argumentative battle, which ebbed and flowed, but never improved.

And I’ll admit, I often wished her dead.  It’s not something I’m proud of, but it was a reliable indicator of how distressed she made me, because that love came with arguments; battles in which I would always be painted as the one ‘in the wrong’, with her a masterful twister of words, working on my weaknesses to bolster her arguments.  No matter what happened, that was her main ammunition – preying on my weaknesses to further her own agenda.

So yes, my answer to the question of whether or not I’m okay is to say ‘I’m fine’.

But the answer is so much more complicated than that.

Posted in D.S. Williams Worlds, Ramblings

Yep, I’m still alive…

Posted on by Nememiah

I hadn’t realized just how long it had been since I wrote a blog post, until I checked on this page today.  2019 is one of those years which has gotten totally out of control, not least because the DH (upon our arrival in Queensland in January for a new posting) had no sooner arrived at his new base before he was given the news that he was to be discharged on medical reasons.  Consequently, we’ve spent no time settling into our new home before we began prepping for the trip back across the country to our home state of Western Australia.

I have to say, I’m cheering over this change in our circumstances.  While we couldn’t have anticipated the need for a medical discharge, it means one important thing to me – the opportunity to go back to be reunited with seventy five percent of our family – our three boys, who remained in Perth when we travelled across here.  Not only has it been a wrench for us, but also for our daughter, who chose to come with us to Queensland.  We’re an extremely close family, and being apart from the boys has been extra especially tough – even more so because we went from living with the six of our together in one (boisterously loud) home, to just the DH and I for a couple of months, and now us and our daughter.  I can honestly say it’s been one of the toughest separations I’ve every dealt with, and there will be lots of catch-up hugs, and teasing, and laughter, when we get back home just a day or two before Christmas.

With everything going on, there hasn’t been much done in the way of writing, other than a number of small, practice pieces I’ve written to keep my hand in.  The cast of ‘Tokens’ are particularly vocal, and I suspect there will be one or two new novels coming from the setting of Garrison, Montana in the future.

Right now, I’m up to my armpits in prep work for the move home, but I thought I should pop my head in and say ‘Hi’.  For those who have come across my novels and in turn started following my adventures through ‘The Worlds of D.S. Williams’ – Hello!  Welcome! – It’s great to meet you!

There has been some fun during our whirlwind, eleven month sojourn on the other side of the country, in particular we had a visit from BIL and SIL, during which we visited some of Queensland’s theme parks, one of my favourites being Dream World.  Tiger Island is always fun to visit, and with my brand-spanky-new 80X Optical Zoom camera, I was able to indulge my love of close up photography.  I also realized I apparently have a bit of a ‘thing’ for paws – they pop up regularly in my photo files!

DSCN0455

I promise I’ll try to do better with updates… just let me get back to my home state, where no doubt lots of new adventures will be had as the DH and I settle into his retirement.

Posted in D.S. Williams Worlds, Ramblings

A Change of Pace

Posted on by Nememiah

I’ve been considering this situation for quite some time. Being bipolar means my ‘feels’ are sometimes exploded beyond what is rational, my decisions are spur of the moment, and taken without thought of the ramifications.

So it is with no small amount of consideration that I’ve come to this decision, a decision based on what I think is best for me.

As of this week, I am unlikely to update this page, or my blog page in regard to D.S. Williams and Leah Dempster’s writing work. Promoting myself is something I’m increasingly uncomfortable with, and in all honesty, the effort doesn’t seem to make any difference.

There are so many authors out there. So many. It makes my head spin when I see the amount of writers who are publishing, and trying to get their work noticed. And it suddenly occurred to me, a few weeks back, that what I’m doing isn’t fun. I’ve gotten myself caught in a Catch 22 – I’m publicising to get my books noticed, I worry because I don’t get sales, and in all honesty… it occurred to me that I don’t want to reach the next level. Or the one after that. I don’t want to publicise myself, or my books, or try and cajole people to read them. I don’t want to attend meet & greets, or conventions, or book signings. It isn’t my style, never has been, and never will be. I don’t want to be ‘famous’. I don’t want to be well-known. And in all likelihood, that would never happen anyway, so why flog myself to death trying to achieve something I don’t want?

The past six months, I think, for all writers have been tough. Tougher than I’ve experienced before now. Quarter 1 of this year netted me a grand total of $36… that’s for three MONTHS. I’ve just received advice regarding my Quarter 2 royalties and they amounted to just over $28.00 – again – this is my income from writing books for THREE MONTHS. Clearly, if I’m relying on this gig to get rich, it isn’t going to happen.

And I’ve found, more and more lately, that I don’t write much, and if I do, I write with one eye on what readers are going to like or not like. I’ve forgotten to write what I like and that’s a real shame, because I’m at my happiest when I’m writing from my heart, rather than my head.

So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to write for me, write for the fun of it, write as though nobody is ever going to read it but me.

My books will remain available, although I suspect I’ll be following through with a decision to part ways with my publisher at the end of this upcoming quarter. The books will revert to being self-published, available for anyone who has a desire to read them. New books might end up available, if I decide they’re worthy of being shared. But the decision will be based on my heart and gut, rather than a need to please others and with one eye on the bottom line.

The next few months are going to be stressful as we move into a new chapter of our lives. We’re leaving our (adult) kids behind here in Western Australia while we move to Queensland for a few years. There will be lots of changes, lots of new things to get used to, and I hope, new writing adventures for myself without the pressure of being ‘a published author’. In the majority of instances, those pressures are ones I place on myself, but I think it’s time to step back, and take a good look at the direction I’m heading in.

Posted in D.S. Williams Worlds, Ramblings

It started with a snowball… in her gloved hand…

Posted on by Nememiah

snowball

Pheweee.  It’s amazing what you come across when you’re editing a first draft, stuff you didn’t even realise you were writing.  Or repeating for that matter.

In Tokens of My Confection, which is heading towards publication in (hopefully) the not too distant future, one scene involves my heroine Cady, who is hanging out with her sisters in Garrison Park, making a snowman on Christmas Eve.

When I wrote the first draft, like a lot of writers, I was just trying to get it out of my head, getting all those little bits and pieces and all the ideas in a pile on the page.  At that stage, I try not to think too hard about the final product and avoid, wherever possible, editing while I’m still getting the story out of my head.  (Of course, I’m completely hopeless at that and do get bogged down with the editing part, because let’s face it, I’m OCD and anxiety-ridden – I strive for ridiculous levels of perfections.  But that’s a post for another day.)

The editing process has been a little choppy, particularly because the Darling Husband surprised me with an announcement last week that we would be moving at the end of the year.  He’s a nearly thirty year veteran of the Australian Air Force, and we’ve outstayed our welcome here in Western Australia, but this time we’ll be moving without our Gang of Four – seventy five percent, at least, will remain in Western Australia while we post to a base on the other side of the country.  (Another reason for OCD and anxiety issues).

Consequently, the editing of Tokens, which started of swimmingly, has stuttered to a less than auspicious pace, while I try to get my head back in the game.  (And simultaneously worry about my beloved family being split apart for a couple of years).  Today, I’ve been working on Chapter Twenty Six, which includes the above-mentioned snow scene which has turned out to need a considerable amount of editing.  The scene itself is fundamentally good, and I’m happy with it, but its the persnickety details which are giving me grief.  And in this case, it’s the snowman the girls are building and the amount of time I’ve mentioned ‘snow in their glove-covered hands’.  Obviously, I wanted to set the scene, and give the reader a ‘vision’ of what is happening in that scene – the scenery, the women, their outfits, what they’re doing.  But I obviously (obviously!!!) got bogged down on those glove-covered hands.  They’re EVERYWHERE!  And repeated with endless abandon.  And way too much.  Over and over and over…

You get the picture, and as a writer, and an editor, it’s one of the things I warn people (including myself) to avoid.  Don’t ever hit your reader over the head with information.  Don’t repeatedly repeat the same piece of information.  Give your reader some credit and know that they can invest themselves enough in the story so that when you mention someone’s eyes, you don’t lead with the color of them each and every time.  (This is something I’m guilty of doing!).

And once you’ve put those gloves on those characters, and set them to making a snowman in a park in the middle of winter, don’t keep beating the reader over the head with THE GLOVES!  They’re there!  We know they are on their hands!  Don’t beat this snippet of information to death!

And now, I go back to the grindstone and beat those gloves into submission!

‘Til next time.