Cathy Lamb's Blog, page 18

DNA tests and premonitions. What can go wrong?

Here’s a chapter from my new book, All About Evie, out October 29th…

I can’t always see the future, but now and then, curse it all, I can.

It’s been a plague my whole life.

I started having premonitions as a kid. I would see the future for someone. Sometimes it was scary, or bad, and sometimes it was wonderful. It led to a whole lot of mental distress and trying to save people, or choosing not to save people, and committing minor crimes along the way, like breaking and entering, trespassing, small robberies, destruction of property, hiding things people owned like their car keys so they couldn’t drive, one time locking my favorite librarian up in her home so she wouldn’t get hit by a train, things of that nature.

All of my tiny criminal acts or legal interventions have been to slow someone down so that the premonition will pass them by. So many times in life an accident hits that if you waited one minute, one, it would have shot past you. I try to make that minute happen. All the crimes were necessary. I don’t regret any of them. I knew what was going to happen to those people—innocent people, often friends, people I loved and cared about—if I didn’t.

That’s the curse of having premonitions: You know what’s upcoming for people.

You may have to become a criminal momentarily to save them.

But I have had one premonition off and on my whole life, starting when I was about five years old.

In that premonition there are two women, one of them me, and one of us dies. I don’t know if it’s me or the other woman who heads up the golden staircase to heaven. I have not been able to figure this out, which is strange.

My endings for my other premonitions are all quite clear, but there’s a fuzziness here, as if the premonition doesn’t even know precisely who is dead at the end of it.

I don’t know who the other woman is. I don’t know how old I’ll be. I don’t know when it will happen. What I do know is that I’m driving on a road, wide enough for only one car, alongside a mountain on my right. On my left side is a steep cliff. The ocean is in the distance, peeking through the pine trees, and there’s a whole bunch of orange poppies. I see the oncoming car, and we both swerve, and crash.

Sometimes one car shoots over the cliff, sometimes both cars. Sometimes there’s an earsplitting explosion, crackling flames and black smoke bubbling up from the bottom of the cliff, sometimes not. Sometimes we’re sandwiched together, teetering over the cliff, up and down, sometimes not. It’s blurry, this premonition. Like rain is blurring the full photo, but there is no rain.

It’s troubling to know that a car crash, on a cliff, may kill me.

Or it may not.

Other than the premonitions? I am utterly, completely normal.

Which means that I’m one hot mess.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NCPSX2X/...

Powell’s Books: https://www.powells.com/book/all-abou...

I love fall.

I love sitting out in my garden and reading, or thinking, or eating chocolate chip cookies, as I take healthy nutrition very seriously.

I hope you have a peaceful week.

 

 

 

My new book, All About Evie.

Nine dollars and 99 pennies.

Out on October 29th.

For women who like to read about sisters, mothers, and aunts who wear flowery hats and hide terrible secrets.

Well, I’m counting it down. Less than six weeks before my new book, All About Evie, is out.

Evie owns a book store in the San Juan Islands.

Evie has a little house, right on the ocean, on property her family has owned for generations.

Evie’s grandmother jumped off a cliff, and her mother and aunts always wear flowered hats.

She also has premonitions.

I so hope you like it.

Powells: https://www.powells.com/book/all-abou...

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NCPSX2X/...

A 105 year old cookbook.

Six generations of women.

Four countries, four languages

One mystery.

 

No Place I’d Rather Be is on sale for $2.99 for those who love stories about cookbooks, journeys, families, life. Oh, and Montana.

 

 

I’ve been asked about my writing process many times, so here it is, short and sweet:







1. First, I think up all sorts of bad ideas for my books. My editor and agent are good enough to tell me that they are bad ideas. I think up more ideas. They’re still bad.



2. FINALLY, I have a good-ish idea. My agent and my editor like it. I celebrate by eating chocolate.3. I start driving in the country. I garden. I daydream. I walk and walk. Why? I need the first line of my book. I do not write a book without knowing that first line. I wait for it to magically pop into my head. Like a spell. Or a curse.

4. Next, I write 2,000 words a day, 10,000 words a week, or I don’t go to bed on Saturday night. I’ve had some real late Saturday nights. But I have to set goals, or that dang book will not get written, friends, no, it won’t. Why? Because I would rather play than work. I would rather hang out with Innocent Husband and The Kids. I would rather call my laughing sisters and my dear brother. Writing books is haaaard. (Whine, sob, sniffle.)

5. When the first draft is done, I goal set again. I edit five single spaced pages a day. All of those pages are a total, complete mess. They’re an embarrassment. The writing is terrible. I told Innocent Husband that if a gargantuan stork ever carries me off and my book is still in draft form, he is to have a nice bonfire with it. When I’ve edited the whole wretched book at five pages a day, I move to ten pages a day, to fifteen a day, etc. Yes, it is brain-numbing.

6. I edit all my books eight or nine times before they’re off to my agent and editor. Right about the sixth draft I start thinking I should have been a carpenter.

7. I edit again with my editor’s comments, then through copy editing and proofreading. It’s about 12 times total. Did I mention the brain-numbing part?

8. When I finally send that edited book off, I get myself a mocha and sit and relax and go back to day dreaming.

Happy reading all.

Some days you just have to go and hang with flowers.

I hope your day is filled with books, flowers, and peace.

And some people say I can’t bake….

One woman on an island who sees things she doesn’t want to see.

Two eccentric aunts in floppy, flowery hats.

One mother who lied. What could go wrong?

All About Evie, out October 29th.

Years ago I was in a dusty, old violin shop in our downtown buying Adventurous Singing Daughter a violin.

She was very young and she loved playing the violin when she wasn’t playing outside. The one we bought was 80 years old. There were a few scratches and dents.

There was a slight stain that looked like blood in a butterfly shape. It played beautifully.

She loved it.


 


When I left that shop the spark for this story, The First Day Of The Rest Of My Life, was in my head and churning/spinning around.


 


It’s on sale for less than six bucks now.

https://www.amazon.com/First-Day-Rest...