A Peek into my Life as Writer and Mother

Typing furiously, I kept my mind focused on the scene unfolding in my head.

Katherine lifted a shaking hand to her face. It felt oddly cold and sweaty at the same time. She didn’t feel so good. Her stomach flip-flopped at the exact moment the ground shifted under her feet . . .

"Mo – o – o – m - m, I need your help!"

My fourteen-year-old son burst into my home office with a frantic look on his face and babbling disjointedly, "It’s broken. It doesn’t work. It won't play the rest of the movie," He looked at me expectantly.

Now, I've been known to perform a few magic tricks in my time. I've found missing shoes just by mentioning a location in the house without even leaving the room. I'm about 95% accurate at predicting when my seventeen-year-old daughter is going to call and ask for curfew extensions. And I'm nearly 100% on the money when I'm going to be hit up for . . . you guessed it¾money.

But, I've never been asked for assistance with anything electronic. Especially anything belonging to the various stacks of electronic equipment that seems to multiply around our television on a regular basis. So, when my son came running to me as his last resort, I knew it was serious and I had better have the answer.

Unfortunately, he blindsided me with his untimely and impatient interruption. I was about five layers deep into writing the third chapter of my novel, hoping that I could get a fainting woman from her front yard to her living room in less than a page. I really wanted to finish the last sentence before the pivotal scene slipped away. So, without a word to my son, I held up my hand in the well-known gesture of "hold that thought" and finished placing my heroine on the sofa with a muscular young man next to her, dabbing a damp towel on her flushed face. Then, I turned my attention to my restless son.

Bouncing from a size 9 1/2 foot to size 9 1/2 foot his energy level registered a full 6.0 on the Richter scale. Repetitive, incoherent statements spewed from his rapidly moving mouth. “I push play it goes and it stops. I push fast forward, it won't go."

After counting to ten and putting on my "thank you for interrupting me" face, I asked him to start over¾in English this time.

He got the pointedly obvious hint and apologized for interrupting me, then continued only a few decibels lower and at half-speed,

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