I was about to nod politely in the way you do when children say random things, when she unzipped her backpack to show me my own character, Mel, delightfully rainbow’d and eyelash’d. Obviously this child had attended my author visit the day before for Dust Bunnies: Secret Agents.

Before Elizabeth could spill the beans that Mel was a tough bunny and would be unhappy in all that crayon mascara, I had her pull out her phone and snap a shot of the girl’s colorful depiction of my bunny. What a great start to the day!

I’ve been lucky to read Dust Bunnies: Secret Agents to four kindergarten classes over three days. We had tons of fun talking about where dust bunnies hide, and what happens when our toys go missing and who might have taken them. We also talked about how old myths used to explain why the sun rose and set, and how stories like Dust Bunnies are like new myths to explain things like where our socks go!

We had tons of fun, and I still have many more classrooms to go, plus the official Dust Bunnies launch will be open to the public at the super cool baby store in Round Rock called Baby Earth on Thursday, May 10 just after school at 3:30 p.m.

I feel very lucky and blessed this week!

All I can say is, “Fourteen years and counting.”

One of the hard things about losing a baby that no one else felt, or saw, or touched is that everyone wants you to get over it quickly. They don’t have the same emotional investment. Pregnancy, with its sleepiness and dream-like quality, encourages the visions of the baby to come, the moments ahead. It’s how you get through the hard stuff—throwing up, bone-tiredness, caution and fear. So we’re wired to already see and experience this baby well beyond the sensations in our belly.

In her book Virgin Blue (which has lots of miscarriage and pregnancy trauma within it), author Tracy Chavalier’s characters, both midwives, talk about how the pregnant mother is always “listening” inside her. She’s distracted, taken out of the outside world, and focused on what is happening within.

It really doesn’t matter when the conversation stops, the day after the positive pregnancy test or during the birth, when some tragedy takes the baby during its final journey to the outside. It’s still a cutting off, a silencing of a relationship that had become the focus of your life.

Fourteen years ago today, I didn’t realize my connection had been cut. I suspected—but then every pregnant mother seems to always have some fear—but until the Doppler was silent, until the doctor was rushed in and the sonogram machine powered up, until he moved and moved and moved the paddle, trying to find an elusive heartbeat for a 20-week baby who should have filled the screen with movement and sound, but didn’t. Until I had proof; I hadn’t known.

April 28 taught me how to listen, how to hear, how to know when the conversation ceased. My next two losses were no surprise. I had learned the difference between the hum that reverberates between a mother and an unborn child and the silence that means the child is gone.

And this year, at 42, I am getting married again and, next month, taking that journey one more time. I don’t even know if the conversation will start. I may not be able to get pregnant at all. The chromosomes in my eggs may be too sticky to divide properly and get the baby on its journey. But I will listen, and I will hear. And whatever conversation I might get, however many days or weeks or months I may get to feel that hum, I will take them.

One thing I’ve learned in 14 years—I am not afraid. I hope, for all of you, who may be reading this after searching the internet about pregnancy loss, that you find that courage too.

After two years of development, Dust Bunnies: Secret Agents is available on the iPad and iPhone/iTouch!

I have to think hard now to remember the night in 2010 that I sat at the dinner table with my daughters and we brainstormed a story to match the exciting app design by the producers at Polycot Labs. They wanted something where the main character could be changed to look like the child who was reading the story, and the names in both the captions and the audio would be theirs!

I knew that the side kicks would be important since the hero would change, and we decided that the Dust Bunnies living under the bed would be ideal. It was my then-seven-year-old Elizabeth who decided the story would be more exciting if the bunnies were secret agents!

The story has evolved through time, based on the art, the audio, and the flow of the story. Each panel had to be drawn with multiple overlays for children who were a boy or a girl, with one of four different hair colors or skin shades. I had to record several lines of the story more than 400 times to read off the most popular boy and girls names.

And finally it’s here!

Watch the story trailer! And if you like it, pick up a copy in iTunes store. And leave a comment  in the store! We love comments! Plus, the Dust Bunnies have their own Facebook pages and love to talk to fans. Go leave a comment there and they’ll get back to you!

Maureen Johnson also weighed in on this, separating the act of writing from publishing. Writing was good. Going public was not.

On the forums I participate in, both public and private, the overwhelming sense has been that these parents were dead wrong, that publishing is a business meant for experienced and seasoned writers, and kids should stay withing the printed-and-stapled variety of book production.

Whew.

I tended to stay out of the threads, because goodness knows I had done this very thing myself. And the backlash among authors was pretty hard to bear.

Yes, I published my daughters’ book. I had started a little publishing company and done all the paperwork, the filing fees, the accounts. And couldn’t do the book I planned to because it was full color and the overseas run was just too expensive for me right after my divorce. I had a company and no books. I was going to chuck the whole idea.

And that summer, the girls got a book idea. It was something we could do together, a picture book where we’d use my photography rather than drawings. When I checked for similiar titles on the subject on Amazon I was shocked to see there were NONE aimed at children. (A couple have come out since.)

My friend had just gotten her masters in publishing and was willing to design the book for us to have a sample (the world was smiling on us.) We all spent about eight weeks producing the title. I had no expertise whatsoever in the subject matter, so I really had to rely on the girls. They dictated; I typed. I ran changes by them. I did help make sure the sentences were consistent, especially for the part my seven-year-old did.

The book now pays much of the overhead of my small press two years later. It’s sold thousands of copies. The girls had an event at Barnes and Noble, by invitation. We look at each invitation to do an event, or talk to a classroom, and decide if they want to do it or not. We turn down most things, as they want to go on with their normal kid lives. The book has gotten some criticism, which I talked to them about and they realized–hey, good points! But they had their reasons and still stood by their ideas. These were all teachable moments, to learn about the personalities of people online. As long as I was there to introduce it, to remind them—whew, people can be mean! It became an excellent conversation on how people act online (before either of them got exposed to it WITHOUT me being there to give them perspective.)

It’s been an incredible experience, and I think even if this hadn’t happened, if we had sold ten copies to grandparents and gone on, that wouldn’t have mattered either. It was something we did together, and a project we’re proud of. We didn’t expect fame or fortune—it started out as just something to put through my press because I had nothing else. The fact that the girls have money in accounts to go toward college and that I had seed money to put out the book I dreamed of is just—well, life smiling on us.

I think anything any parent does can go well or go badly. Maybe it’s publishing a book, maybe it’s forcing them to try out for commercials, maybe it’s never encouraging them or taking their artistic sensibilities seriously. There are a thousand ways we can err, but only the parents and child within any given situation can really know if a path they’ve chosen was a good one, or something that can do harm.

Author Pamela Ellen Ferguson (Sunshine Picklelime) had just finished recording a session. “Louis Sachar is going to be here later! You’re in good company!”

I wondered if I could skip picking up my children from school to meet Sachar (Holes, Wayside School) as he would arrive the same time as the dismissal bell. No, my kids would kill me if they found out. We’d watched the movie of Holes together and later read the book at bedtime.

Mainly I worried I would have a coughing fit in the middle of recording Baby Dust, or more likely, burst into tears. At least I didn’t have to worry about how I looked. We would be hidden in little booths the whole time even though I was having a rare good hair day.

I was introduced to volunteers of Learning Ally, a local branch of a national organization that records books for use by people with dyslexia or visual impairments. They are currently in the middle of their Record-a-Thon, where local celebrities, authors, politicians, and others record one-hour sessions to raise awareness and help them fund the coming year.

“What is your book about?” one asked. “Is it a lovely little children’s book like Pam’s?”

I couldn’t bear to tell her that mine was about death.

I should have practiced saying the hard stuff then, though, as when Project Director Carter York led me to a booth to teach me how the recording would go, he said, “The first thing we’ll record is the dedication.”

Whew, boy. My little babies, all dead. Suddenly I wasn’t sure I could read a single page.

But Carter made the transition to reading the book super easy. I made mistakes, and laughing about them made reading the difficult material more bearable.

Afterward, I met some of the members of Learning Ally who actually use the services, listening to books that range from essential textbooks to beach reading. I wondered who might choose to listen to Baby Dust, and what circumstances they might be in. While my novel has been chosen as required reading for a college social work program in another state, I know it’s tough material.

I’ll be a regular at Learning Ally, which, I’m sure, is what they hope for from their Record-a-Thon.  I am thrilled at the opportunity to read my book aloud.

Before I left, staff took a million pictures. Me, in headphones. Holding my book. With volunteers. With another author. Someone whispered, “I should have done my hair!”

Yep, I was glad for the good hair day. And waterproof mascara.

To learn more about Learning Ally, or to donate during their Record-a-Thon to cover costs of producing audio books for people with visual or learning disabilities, visit: http://www.recordathon.org/

Go take a peek!

And if you missed it, see my feature on the Indie Snippets web site, a scene from the collection as well.

Certainly, those of us who feel things a little more deeply than others take this day in, really feel the burn of it, even if it’s really just a fake holiday to sell flowers. Doesn’t matter. It’s a reminder. And all the red-and-pink romance around you is definitely going to make things worse.

In my bad years, I wrote short stories. They are not especially flattering to people in my life, but once you’re 40, you kinda say f*ck it and write what you want. I wanted this collection out in time for the big VD this year, as not everyone feels like teddy bears and roses.

So if you are NOT handling your breakup or divorce with dignity and grace, this collection of short stories was written just for you.

Ranging from hilarious to harrowing, each of these seven stories has a song playlist to set the mood for characters who are bitter, tormented, or just plain pissed off.

An extensive list of songs themed by misery, rage, or revenge also appears at the end of the collection to provide the perfect soundtrack for your bad breakup or anti-Valentine’s Day.

When allowed, lending is enabled so you can pass your collection on to the friend who needs it next.

Available for:

Amazon Kindle
Barnes & Noble Nook
Apple iTunes store

Remember you can download Kindle and Nook books to your Mac, PC, or smart phone.

The songs listed in this collection are just wow. Remember that no matter how popular or mainstream a song gets, it starts from somewhere, and often that place is exactly where you are right now, if you feel the same thing when you hear it.

Reviews of Single Edged Blades from readers on Amazon:

The characters in these stories draw you in, then keep you emotionally off balance–torn between sympathizing with their passionate embracing of life and love, and wanting to shake some sense into their heads as they careen, almost naively at times, toward total self-destruction.

This is gritty material artfully realized. From the young woman having difficulty removing her former lover’s Nuvaring, to the woman impelled to cut herself, they react to love’s ardent promises and its bitter disappointments.

J Jones

The characters are so real. I understood what they were going through and felt myself right there in the middle of their stories.

K Hinshaw

Back in the days of Geocities, it was all so easy. Toss in a few animated GIFs, make a little flashy text. Everyone was WOW, ZOINKS!

I learned some HTML. I bought FrontPage. I put up sites pretty quickly and had great fun with them.

Now, I seem to break them.

Flash, HTML5, mobile sites, JavaScript. I can’t keep up. I get by with WordPress and buying portfolio templates I barely know how to customize.

Today I broke a site totally. I’ll have to get someone to bail me out of this one as I knew enough to make it go blank, the giant text “FORBIDDEN” stretching across it like a banner, but not enough to set it right.

Someone take away my Internet connection.

But here, for your enjoyment, a link to the internet archive of one of my early sites. Too hilarious. (Yes, I was still married back then…)

http://web.archive.org/web/20010702232236/http://deannaroy.com/family/

The singer, who died a few days ago, had a way of making those words spear straight into you. You didn’t just listen, you ached.

One of my favorite songs is one of her most famous, “At Last.” This song ate me up during a time in my life when I felt it utterly described the love I was feeling.

I’m glad my “I’d Rather Go Blind” days are behind me, as that is sometimes the way that “At Last” feeling ends up. That one did for me.

I can finally listen to it now without feeling the misery of it. But there was a time when this song would force me to pull over my car, as I couldn’t see to drive anymore.

I’m lucky now. Today’s “At Last” moment will actually last. I’m getting married (again) in June. Let’s hope we can keep it going like this. Thank you, Etta.

My Facebook family was instrumental in helping me develop the list that you’ll find in the e-book of Single Edged Blades: 7 Stories for a Broken & Angry Heart. Each story has a sound track and a thorough listing appears at the end of the book.

I’m going to put my top choices in each category here for your listening pleasure or derision. The full list runs from Punk to Country to Hair Metal — every genre. Feel free to add suggestions for other songs in the comments.

Misery

Rage

Revenge

You can pick up the story collection for 99 cents at your favorite vendor, Amazon, Nook, or iTunes.