I have hit a few bumps in my life. Most of us are intimately acquainted with bumps: The washing machine dies just as you’ve overspent more than a bit on Christmas, and you don’t discover this situation until, of course, the dirties have piled up to a measurable depth on the laundry room floor. Merry bumpin’ Christmas.

It felt at some points like single parenting was one long bump of guilt, inadequacy, fatigue, loneliness and stretched finances. Running your own law practice can feel the same way, particularly when opposing counsel is a litigating shark on crack, and your client insists you make nice-nice.

In one of my trips through the slough of despond, my oldest sister brought up the topic of gratitude. She suggested that in cases such as these… I might consider starting where I honestly could, with perhaps a little thank-you to the Deity or the Universe for the ability to breathe on my own, or to walk upright unassisted through my day. To sleep when I was tired, even if I couldn’t sleep long enough. She challenged me to search around in what I felt to be an oppressive darkness, and light one teeny, tiny honest candle over something positive: gratitude, relief, humor. Something. Anything honestly positive.

I do not avoid challenges, as a rule.

I have clients for whom a public guardianship has been decreed by the Court. These are adults who have lost all their buttons, and worse, all their family worth the name. Decisions regarding their care must be made by the local Department of Social Services. These folks have no one left who can be trusted to consider their welfare. Nobody. In such circumstances, it is perhaps a mercy they also generally aren’t very aware of their surroundings. One client was named Hiram, and he’d been institutionalized and comatose since the age of fifteen. He was eighty-six.

They scare the daylights out of me, those guardianship cases, and they give me a flashlight to go looking for my candles in the darkness.

I am grateful for the ability to breathe clean air on my own, the ability to chew my own food, to tend to my own hygiene. You bet I am. I am grateful I have a child who’s similarly blessed. I am grateful I have a trade, and a family who loves me. I am grateful for sunshine and pets and a mind that spins fairytales for grownups even as I drive to work.

If I make the effort, pretty soon I can find some honest gratitude. Not guilt, nor obligation, but happy little doses of gratitude.

Writing for me is like life. I get into dim corners, the words slow down and don’t sparkle, the whole business gets sticky when I want it to be light and easy. So I start with a word, a single word or a phrase that feels honest: “Once upon a time…”

I didn’t say it had to be original. Then I fuss it up to sentence status, focusing on honesty. “Once upon a time, he’d wanted an intelligent wife.”

I don’t know who he is, but I’ve got one honest sentence. The darkness is lifting. I can hear a tallish man muttering in the gloom. He has a Scottish accent, and he doesn’t sound happy. It’s a start.

So if you’re in a dim corner, a dark corner where you can’t even see the unlit candles, consider borrowing a little flashlight of honest gratitude. If you’ve misplaced yours, you may certainly acquire one of mine. You will find them at the bookstore.

To one commenter, I’ll give a signed company of “The Black Hawk,” by Joanna Bourne, a book for which I’m really grateful. What are you grateful for?

I’ve fallen in love a few times in my life, and I hope I fall in love again and often. I’m not talking about falling in love with a person, though that’s noteworthy when it happens, I’m talking about a less fraught version of the same experience.

I fell in love with horses before I could read. The only thing I could draw as kid was a horse, and I managed that by building a make-shift light box and tracing the Connemara pony stallion from “Ponies of the World.” I had the World Book article on horses about memorized, I knew the parts of the horse better than I knew the nomenclature for my own anatomy.

I was twelve before my loved ones helped me buy a cranky old Quarter Horse gelding, but prior to the arrival in my life that Eponymously Named Most Noble Steed, Buck, I clutched close to my heart anything that looked, smelled, felt or moved like a horse.

The same thing occurred with the piano. Once I realized, “I can do this,” I practiced at all hours. If I wasn’t practicing, I was reading biographies of the composers, trying out other instruments, learning theory, singing, teaching piano, accompanying instrumentalists and vocalists, or learning to fake. That I was a hopeless disaster as a performer mattered naught. I loved the piano.

Still do, and I still love the ponies, pups and kitties too.

Now, I’m also enthralled with writing. I often have several projects going at once—a book I’m just thinking about, a first draft being created scene by scene, a finished work in major revisions, and a submitted manuscript moving through the publishing pipe line. I love it all.

I love coming up with that perfect, best, where have you been for the past six months, opening line. I love hunting typos in the galleys. I love excavating a better book from a rough draft, and I love sculpting a still better book from a smooth draft. Yes, there are rough spots. I loathed getting tossed off my horse, hated the performances that ended in disaster as a musician, and I dread the mean reviews (though thankfully, all of those experiences have been rare) almost as much as I dread the prospect of disappointing my readers.

What I’m finally figuring out, though, is that passion is its own reward. Parts of writing a novel are hard for me; some parts take longer than others, and some leave me feeling utterly inept, and yet, I’m in love. I’ll deal with the dips and twists because this is the ride I’m supposed to be on. I’ll get there, I’ll figure it out, I’ll make do, I’ll persevere because I’m in love. I’ll land on my backside seven times and get up eight times because I’m in love.

And there’s no place I’d rather be. This is how I want my characters to feel about their relationship (by page 343), and this is why they will get that happily ever after eventually.

What about you? Fallen in love lately, or does the whole notion make you cringe?

To one commenter below, I’ll give her or his choice of a signed Grace Burrowes book.

Sometimes my back hurts, but certainly not all the time, and never very badly. I figure an achy back goes along with wrinkles, gray hair, and other blessings of continued life. My brother Tom is a few years my senior, and has been through more after-factory replacements of hips, knees, and parts thereof than anybody else I know. So I when I was wondering about my own twinges and aches, I asked him, “When do you know if it’s a problem?”

His response was immediate and simple, “If it keeps you from getting sleep you need, then it’s a problem, whether it’s your hip, your marriage, your job. Anything that persistently comes between you and your rest qualifies as a problem.”

Wow. That is so simple and accurate, it qualifies as wisdom. I define wisdom as truths that can save you time, resources or heartache. My brother Dick is the first person to share this piece of wisdom with me: “If I’m contemplating doing something I’d be uncomfortable telling my adult children I did, then I’d better rethink the decision.”

My mom passed this one along early in my life, and it has had frequent application: “Don’t make decisions when you’re tired. If you can, wait until you’re rested and then take another look at things.”

Wisdom drops into a troubling situation with a sense of bringing relief, of shedding light into a murky darkness. My dad has come up with a few of my favorites:

“If you don’t know what you want to do, pay attention to what you’re sure you DO NOT want to do, and maybe the decision will seem simpler.”

He is also the guy who told me, “I don’t care how besotted I am with a person, a job, a social group—I do not want to spend my time around people who don’t want to be around me.”  Which is to say, pride, or at least self-respect, can save us from some falls.

When next I see my daughter, I will ask her what wisdom sayings she attributes to me, and hope the question isn’t met with awkward silence.

As I list these personal proverbs, it occurs to me that they are exactly the kind of advice a good secondary character will pass along to a hero or heroine at some critical juncture of a romance novel. So what are your personal proverbs? And be warned: You might see the hero’s best friend reminding him of your granny’s favorite quote in some future Grace Burrowes romance.

To one commenter below, I will send a signed copy of “Lady Maggie’s Secret Scandal.”

I believe there is such a thing as being in the right place at the right time, as, for example, when I found myself standing in line at a bar, and a friendly editor with a knitting bag happened to be waiting for a glass of water (swear to goodness) right beside me.

I hardly ever drink alcohol, but considering it was the first conference where I’d put myself up to pitching, you could say—I would say—that a lucky thirst possessed me. The editor not only extracted a pitch from me, but ended up offering me contracts (plural).

I also believe bad things happen to good people, which some of us might call bad luck.

I do not believe bad luck and good luck can always be distinguished from each other.

Take, for example, my dear old dad, who as a young man wanted nothing in this life so much as to own a dairy farm. Dairy farming is relentlessly hard work, dangerous, and difficult, but this was his dream—his only dream.

As dreams go, owning a dairy farm has a drawback. A modest dairy operation with a decent herd, some acres, equipment to tend those acres, a milking parlor and tank, living quarters, and all the other accoutrements of the trade costs an immodest fortune. Then too, my dad had not been raised on a farm, and the skills involved—everything from commodities economics, to meteorology, to bovine veterinary science, to agronomy and many other disciplines—is not easily or quickly learned from books.

Dad is nothing if not determined, though, so he mapped out a course: He’d hire on with the company that went from farm to farm and collected the milk from the holding tanks. He’d get to know the various farms in the area, and then go work with one of them. A few cows at a time, he’d start his own herd, or share of a herd, and so the dream could be attained one moo cow at a time.

Alas for my dear father. He got the job with the milk collecting company, and shortly thereafter forgot to tighten some coupling between two hoses. Awfully bad luck there—he’s not a forgetful man, by any means. A semi-trailer worth of milk spilled onto the ground, dad was promptly fired, and his dream went into the dirt along with all the moo juice.

Except… my great uncle pointed out to Dad that one could study dairy science up at the college. Up to the college Dad did go. Turns out, there wasn’t much known about how milk is produced at a cellular level, and the subject fascinated my father. In very short order, he was a tenured professor with graduate students from around the world (milk is serious business for most developing counties), publications stacking up left and right, and—more important than any of that—a job he loved that made a meaningful contribution.

The next time you drink milk from an opaque plastic jug, remember the young man whose dream went into the dirt. He instead figured out that light alters flavor compounds in milk, and had great fun doing it.

So… was it bad luck, the day Dad forgot to tighten that coupling, or good luck? I fare best if think in terms not of good luck and bad luck, but of good luck and good luck in disguise.

What about you? Ever had some good luck arrive in disguise? To one commenter below, I’ll give away a SIGNED copy of Deanna Raybourn’s RITA Nominated “The Dark Enquiry.”

Under the More Good News category: In addition to this week’s RITA nomination for Lady Sophie, “Lady Maggie’s Secret Scandal” has earned starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and the Library Journal. LJ called Maggie’s book a “tantalizing, delectably sexy story that is one of the best yet from an author on the way to the top.” 

And for those of you of the Kindle persuasion, The Heir, The Soldier, and The Virtuoso are being sold as an e-bundle from April 17-30, for $16.99. The Amazon order link is here.

Watch this space for Maggie’s blog tour, which will start up late April in anticipation of Maggie’s April 1 launch date.

New in the word corner: Swivet.

My dear old Dad was a scientist during what some call “The Golden Age of Academic Science,” meaning When It Was Easy to Get Funding and—if you published—Tenure. This period started off with the post-WWII industrial boom, continued on during the relative prosperity of the sixties, and probably didn’t really end until the eighties. Science was very, very good to Herr Doktor Professor Burrowes, Ph.D., allowing him to raise seven children and offer every one of them a shot at an affordable college education.

Himself was not best pleased when I decided I wanted to major in music. “The arts are subjective,” said he. “You can be very, very dedicated to what you do, and find some critic takes you into dislike. You’re popular one day, and you’re accused of losing your edge the next. Go into the sciences, and good, solid, hard work will always be rewarded.”

He has a point, or half of one.

Any creative endeavor—throwing pots, raising a child, arranging flowers, drafting a report, writing a book—has an element of subjectivity on the part of people perceiving the results. A pretty pot to me might be a disgraceful waste of clay and glaze to you.

For me, this is one of the hardest aspects of publishing commercial fiction. A lot of people may like what I write, but the people who don’t like what I write loom large in my awareness as well. I don’t want to disappoint or offend anybody, much less take their money and then have them feel that way.

What I can do to minimize the occasion of disappointment in my works is represent them as accurately and consistently as possible: I write historical romances with steamy scenes and happy endings, and my prose is generally not simple. I try not to pop out with any surprises, but rather, to be the same author for each story, though perhaps a more skilled version of that author with each book. In publishing parlance, I try to stay true to my brand.

And yet, my best is not going to be good enough for some people. I haven’t figured out how to make my peace with this reality, but I realized one thing: My father, somewhere around age eighty, lost his funding. After decades of doing good work for the National Institutes of Health and other organizations, after making significant contributions to what’s known about the chemistry of milk and other foods, Dr. Burrowes’ projects no longer made the cut.

The grant officers continued to approve his requests—the work was creditable and meaningful—but the projects were not ranked high enough on the priority ladder to receive funding.

Guess what? Even in the hallowed, rational realm of academic science, an element of subjectivity creeps in. While I’m sorry my dad’s work had to be cut back, the idea that there is not freedom from subjectivity even among highly educated and rational scientists was a relief.

And yet…. When I’m found wanting, it hurts and I don’t like it. So I’m asking you: How do you move past those times in life when you’re judged not good, or not good enough? When you’re passed over for the promotion, damned with faint praise, and otherwise given an opportunity to doubt your own competence,

One commenter below gets a signed copy of the Grace Burrowes book of his or her choice, and yes, you can choose a copy of “Lady Maggie’s Secret Scandal,” though it might take a few weeks to pop one in the mail.

There I was with my best old breakfast buddy Graham, solving the problems of the known world one after another, when I happened to mention that a lot of significant scientific discoveries are made by people working either at the start of their careers, or working just outside the borders of their chosen specialty. This caught Graham’s ear, and he asked for cites.

I’m pretty sure I came across this observation in a delightfully readable little book, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” by Thomas Kuhn. (Don’t let the high falutin’ title fool you. It’s a marvelous book.) Discoveries can, of course, be made mid- or late- career, but Kuhn’s subject of study (about which, more in some other blog) brought the trend to his attention.

Upon reflection, it’s not hard to find reasons in support of his conclusion, starting with the plain truth that the status quo is seldom shaken up by those who have an investment in it. (This is similar to the idea that organizations born to solve a particular problem develop a tendency to perpetuate the problem, and couldn’t we ALL just blog about that?)

Though the British royal family had its children inoculated for small pox as early as the 1720s, more than a century later, the moral theory of disease propagation (bad people get sick/sickness is ordained by God to teach us something) was still a force to be reckoned with.

The moral theory of disease has some advantages: Everybody can learn something from a spate of illness, and everybody has some Bad Deeds in their past which might appear to justify a retributive affliction. The hypothesis fits the data, more or less. The hypothesis also kept Victorian moralists busy trying to get all the wicked (often starving) sex workers to repent of their sins. This is a laudable undertaking, and had much more appeal (to the generally well fed moralists) than trying to fund public health wards where syphilis, gonorrhea and the like might be treated. The hypothesis fit the agenda of the established interests—church, medicine, and dominant society.

To be fair to the Victorians, they wised up, developed the science of epidemiology, and tackled more enormous problems successfully than many a previous society attempted (to wit: the London sewers, some of which dated back centuries).

Kuhn’s observation has another angle, though. Knowledge is a burden that can hamper imagination. Think of that little kid who pointed out to the state trooper, the truck driver, and everybody else in the growing traffic jam that letting some air out of the truck’s tires would allow the semi to roll through an otherwise too-low tunnel.

The boy didn’t know soggy tires are bad, flat tires very bad. He couldn’t recall panicked calls to AAA, or the feel of road-grit grinding into his shins while he peered under a chassis to figure out where to put a rinky-dink car jack.

What we call ignorance can be innocence, and a powerful kind of innocence at that. It can be the innocence that lets us tackle enormous problems with common sense solutions, or the inspiration to dream impossible dreams. Ignorance is not bliss, but it isn’t always a curse, either. Ignorance, determination, and an open mind can be a wonderful combination.

When I became a mom, I had no idea what I was getting into, and had I known, I probably would have been too scared to embrace the best thing that ever happened to me.

When has ignorance aided you more than hindered you?