Mother’s Day: Bah, humbug

We celebrate motherhood in this country with cards and flowers and phone calls. We make a big Hallmark holiday deal out of the day, but somehow, it’s never seemed fair to me that people who’ve lost a mother, or can’t, for one reason or another, have a relationship with theirs, have to endure the day. I remember when I was a little girl, one of my friends, whose mother had tragically died a few months before, spent Mother’s Day weekend with us. I remember feeling guilty, almost embarrassed, that my mother was alive. I remember wondering what my friend was thinking. How lonely and isolated she must have felt.

That was one of the themes that prompted me to write SET THE NIGHT ON FIRE, my seventh novel and first stand-alone thriller. In it I explore what happens when a mother, who died giving birth to her daughter, turns out to be a totally different person than the daughter thought. How might that affect her life, her sense of self, her future?

Lilia Hilliard, my protagonist finds out.

Lila is a thirty-something financial analyst who comes home to her father’s house in Chicago for the Christmas holidays. She goes out to do some errands, and when she returns, her father’s house has gone up in flames, trapping her father and brother inside.  But that’s only the first attack. It turns out that someone is trying to kill Lila, and they’re serious. In her increasingly desperate search to find out who is after her and why, she uncovers information on her father’s computer that indicates her parents, activists during the late Sixties, were not the people her father had led her to believe they were.

The middle section of STNOF goes back to those times and traces the lives of six young idealists who came together at the Democratic National Convention of 1968 and lived together for two years. During that time, the reader will discover Lila’s parents’ secrets, secrets that threaten to kill her forty years later. But Lila still has to discover those secrets, and more important, save her life.

During the story, Lila comes to terms with her mother – and her father – and learns who she is. But she’s one of the lucky ones.  For those of you whose mothers aren’t around, I would like to celebrate YOU on Mother’s Day.  I hope you spend it with people you love, whoever they are.

So, Happy Mother’s Day

The Joys of GPS

by Lee Sinclair

When my sister came to visit me, I got to experience the joys of GPS for the first time.  We used her car to travel about the countryside because it’s a hybrid and gets fantastic gas mileage compared to mine.  It also has a GPS navigation system so we didn’t have to worry about getting lost as we hit the road in search of new and exciting adventures.  She programmed our first destination into her GPS and we confidently sallied forth.

We successful navigated our way out of town and soon picked up the state highway that would take us most of the way to our hotel.  But then there was a blip.  Right after we passed the first exit, the nice GPS lady told us to make a legal U-turn and take the next exit.  I grabbed my road map to see if I could figure out what the problem was.  There didn’t appear to be any, so I told my sister I thought we were already on the right road.  She explained that sometimes during the early part of the route, the GPS lady would try to get us to take an alternate route that she thought was better than the one we were on.

So when we passed up our next opportunity to exit and she once again told us to make a legal U-turn and take the next exit, we chuckled at her instructions—a bit smugly I might add, since we felt superior to the GPS lady.  We knew where we were going.  The third time it happened, my sister assured me that the GPS lady would eventually give up and see it our way, once she figured out we were determined to take the route we were on, even if she did think it was the wrong one.

As we continued on our way, we alternated between simply ignoring her repeated instructions to make a legal U-turn and rudely sassing her back.  An hour or so later, we turned off the navigation system, since the GPS lady had remained quite persistent about wanting us to take every exit we passed.  And in spite of the fact that we finished the trip unguided, we were still able to reach our destination, though admittedly we did take the “scenic route” and had to backtrack to get to our hotel.  But that actually worked to our advantage since we were able to check out where we wanted to go the next day.

We never tried to use the GPS again while we zipped about the countryside, not even when we weren’t sure where we were going.  I’m afraid we had lost confidence in the GPS lady.  So my sister drove and I navigated using some maps and our instincts, an old-fashioned combination which always got us to our destination, although usually via the entertaining and indirect “scenic route.”  Still, we were never completely lost and didn’t really need the GPS lady.  But I do have to say one thing for her—she never once lost patience or became irritated with us, never once raised her voice, no matter how blatantly we ignored her or rudely talked back at her.

And in that respect, I’m sure I failed a number of times.  For instance, there might have been a hint of impatience and even irritation expressed during our “discussion” about why my sister turned left when I told her to turn right and whether our next destination was northeast or southeast of where we currently were.  And no doubt my voice rose a little as I told her, “We need to take the next exit.  Move over any time. Watch out for that car coming up next to us, but we need to be in that lane.  This is the exit we want.  We should be getting off the freeway here…….  Okay, if we take the next exit….”

Upon reflection, perhaps we should give that nice GPS lady another chance the next time my sister visits me.

REVIEW: A SCATTERED LIFE

Reviewed By Sandy Nachlinger

A Scattered Life (by Karen McQuestion) is a sweet, entertaining book. Told in three distinct voices, the story follows three small-town women whose lives intersect, creating a moving and often funny tale of two young mothers, one mother-in-law, and their families. Skyla, a young matron and the main character, lives a well-ordered life with her staid husband and perfect young daughter. But has her desire for stability come at the cost of her free spirit? Skyla’s mother-in-law Audrey suffers from a severe case of empty nest syndrome and is trying to find a way to be useful again. Audrey has definite ideas of what a young mother should and shouldn’t do, and her daughter-in-law isn’t living up to those standards, especially when she takes a part-time job. Skyla’s new neighbor Roxanne is a baby-making machine with five children (and longing for another.) Her life is the chaotic opposite of Skyla’s predictable existence. They become friends, much to the dismay of Audrey.

Revealed through their interactions, the quirkiness of the three characters gives humor and unpredictability to the story. Though the ending isn’t as upbeat as I would have liked, I’d definitely recommend this book.

By the way, here’s an interesting note from Ms. McQuestion’s bio on Amazon: She originally self-published A Scattered Life as an e-book for Amazon’s Kindle. Within a few weeks, the novel caught the attention of an L.A. based production company and became the first self-published Kindle book to be optioned for film.