So I had a thing happen the other day. I was at the gas station and prepaid. There was no line, took all of two seconds to walk in, hand my money to the cashier, and walk out. Or it would of. If I hadn’t had to get my daughter out of the car, walk her in to the store full of candy, pay, walk her out, have a heart attack when she narrowly being missed getting hit by a truck rushing through the parking lot, and buckle her back in before pumping gas.

I didn’t do it for her safety. I did it for mine. And when a police officer pulled into the parking lot, I went, oh, thank goodness I didn’t leave her in the car, because people have literally been arrested for leaving achild in the car for an observed time of two minutes on a cool day. 

It’s a mental debate I have with myself every time I take the grocery cart from my car to the cart return. “Should I bring her? But people are backing out, pulling it, it’s so dangerous. If I don’t, am I going to lose her?”

Let’s be clear, I’m not talking extreme heat. I’m not talking about extreme cold. I’m not talking about walking into a store, searching the aisles and checking out. I’m so sick of these “Awareness”campaigns and slanted statistics creating this massive danger where there’s not one. I’m tired of literally putting my child’s life in more danger than she would have been in in the car to protect her from an imaginary threat that has almost no chance of happening if any logic is used whatsoever.

“Oh, but Kaitlin, I heard from a friend of a friend of a friend that one time someone jumped into one of those cars and drove off, not realizing there was a child in the backseat.”

Yeah, you know whose fault that is? THE PERSON WHO STOLE THE CAR. And by the way, that completely fictitious scenario has only a .0002% change of happening at all, ever.

If that is parental neglect, so is letting your child sleep in their own bedroom because a home invader COULD come and kill them while they sleep but bypass your room completely. It’s possible. It’s happened before in the entire history of the world (actually it happens a lot more frequently than children die from getting left in a car. Just sayin’).

Let’s break down the statistics. About 24 children died last year from being left in the car.

“Wow, those horrible parents,” you might be thinking. Not so fast.

 

Only four of those children were intentionally left in the car. 13 Were left in the car by accident.

HOW CAN YOU FORGET YOUR CHILD IN THE CAR?

Easily. Every driven somewhere and realized you can’t remember the drive? Driving has a way of making people zone out. There’s science behind it but I’m too lazy to look it up. But here’s what happens.

Mom or Dad drove past the daycare on autopilot. When they got to work they walked right in because they remembered dropping their kid off at daycare. They didn’t realize they were remembering yesterday. The same thing happened to them that happens to non-parents all the time. They left point a, arrived at point b, and somewhere in the middle spaced out and don’t remember the drive. Mom or Dad drives back to daycare at the end of the day to pick up their kid, and only when they realize their child isn’t at daycare do they remember they are in the car. The child died hours ago. It’s horrible, it’s tragic, it was a mistake. And I promise, nothing you can do to those parents will touch them inside because they will carry the guilt with them forever.

What should we outlaw? Oh, oh! I know! We should make it illegal to get out of your car without checking the backseat. Any parent seen getting out of their car without looking in the backseat will be fined or thrown in jail for neglect. That’s reasonable, right?

Wait, no, it’s ridiculous.

Seven of those children weren’t left in the car at all. They snuck in. Yup. That’s a thing. Kids want to play taxi driver, so while mom is in the shower, they grab the car keys and run to play with the steering wheel. Sometimes they accidentally turn on the car in their garage. Sometimes it’s a million degrees. Sometimes they get in but can’t figure out how to get themselves out. Should we outlaw showers? Car keys? Cars in general?

Compared to the number of children who died because they were shot (555 in 2015) or in car accidents (THE leading cause of death for children in the US  so why not outlaw cars? That’s reasonable, right? ) it’s not much.

“One death is too many Kaitlin.”

True, so let’s not compare apples and oranges.

How many children were hit by cars in 2015, like how I’m scared of my daughter getting backed over in a parking lot? 44.

Oh, well, thats not so–

A day.

Oh.

The entire debate is ridiculous and I really don’t get why our society gets off on keeping parents chained to their children 24/7 and blaming parents for absolutely every potential thing that could ever go wrong, ever. Our world is not more dangerous now than it once was. Statistically, it’s actually less. So can we give parents some breathing room here? Not much. Just enough to return their grocery carts without the very real possibility their child will be traumatized by being sent to a foster home for months on end while the legal system tries to determine whether or not the kid was in danger? It’s not much to ask.

 

 

 

 

Enjoy this incredibly, super rough draft of a scene that MAY open one of the books in the Daughters of Zeus series. Disclaimer. It is very rough. It may change or disappear completely. Also, this scene links three entirely different myths that are not actually linked in mythology. Do not count on this to be an accurate representation of the Pandora myth.

Pandora was the box. The myths always get that part wrong. When the mortals overstepped and stole fire from the God-King’s domain, Zeus molded the perfect woman out of clay and breathed, not a soul into the woman’s small frame, but something darker. Ingredients to break mankind.

“She looks like us,” Ares said in surprise when he set eyes on the first mortal woman. “Mostly.”

At the time, the human body held an entire soul, two heads, four arms, and four legs. They were complete and perfect beings. However, perfection did not bring them satisfaction. The human drive to always do more, have more, be more, left them hungry for more. Already they had stolen the fire of knowledge from the gods. Now they longed for Ichor and the secrets of immortality.

“This is the only way?” Artemis asked, glancing at the woman with unease. “Are you certain?”

“I’ve seen it,” Apollo replied. “The mortals current path will destroy us all, god and man alike.”

Resolved, all the gods of Olympus came forward to contribute to Pandora’s creation. Athena taught her wisdom, Hephaestus curiosity, Ares passion, and Artemis strength. As her lessons progressed, Pandora’s love for all but one of the gods grew.

Zeus frightened her. She saw the way he treated his children and it was not with kindness. So when he sent her to live among traitorous gods and men alike, she resisted.

“You’re asking me to infiltrate, to spy, to destroy,” she protested. “There must be another way. Please, don’t make me do this. Don’t send me to them.”

“You were made for this,” the God King decreed.

Eventually her love for the gods prevailed. She loved Zeus’ children and knew that if men no longer had need of the gods, the gods would soon die for want of worship.

Love makes monsters of us all.

The humans regarded Pandora as a curiosity, as she did not resemble them. Little did they know they were looking upon their future. The humans were kind to Pandora. She grew to love their company, but sensing their nature found she could not entirely dismiss Zeus’ plan. She broke off pieces of her not-soul and sowed them among mankind. But all her attempts to cause division within the human soul were met with failure. They were too complete, too content, too perfect in their formation to bend and break to the plagues, cold, and darkness.

The traitorous gods on the other hand were more amenable to distraction. Pandora was too much like the goddesses the brothers left behind on Olympus to ignore. Devoted though they were to the cause of man, they still longed for home. Epimetheus resisted her charms not at all, Prometheus for little longer. The brothers fell to infighting, and when, nine months past and the first demigods were born, chaos swept across the land.

The children only held half a soul, yet for all their inadequacies, the humans could not help but love them, could not help but want them, could not wish but to be them. Here was the answer they’d been waiting for. A single, golden step between the mortal and divine. First one soul, then another rent in two and remade themselves in the semidivine children’s image.

But instead of becoming stronger, the humans became weak. The worst traits amplified, their best halved. They spread across the globe, intent on consuming more and ever more. By the time they realized their mistake, they could no longer find the missing pieces of their souls.

Her grim mission complete, Pandora returned to her Olympian home, eager to be reunited with her gods.

But Zeus did not welcome her back to Olympus.

“Where am I to go?” she demanded, heartbroken.

“Live among men or throw yourself off this mountain for all I care. You’ve outlived your usefulness.”

Unsurprised, Pandora took her box and left. It did not take long for Ares to find her.

“Did you know what would become of us?” he asked, already wearied of his new role of war god.

“When their souls split, your role expanded to include the dark sides of your gift,” Pandora replied. “Man must always need you if you’ve any hope of surviving. There’s a price to balance.”

Ares shook his head, staring down the mountain as if his gaze could pierce the fog so he could see the battle and bloodshed below. “This is no kind of balance.”

“It will be.” Pandora drew Ares to her and whispered the last piece of her soul into his ear. A single word that had never before been uttered.

“Why me?” he asked, voice hoarse.

“You’ll need it more than anyone.”

 

The TV series Avatar: The Last Airbender was an exercise in character development. Every.Single.Character in that show was ridiculously thoroughly developed, had incredible arcs, and memorable character traits. They had distinct voices, personalities, and motives.

Step one in creating a character arc is to create a distinct character. Take Zuko for example. He’s immediately distinct due to his physical scars and angry personality. Not a word of his dialogue would sound natural coming from the mouth of another character.

Step two to a great arc is to add depth. This is most often achieved through weaknesses, flaws, and motivation. Zuko’s flaws seem obvious at first glance. He’s a bad guy. He’s impulsive. He’s got an attitude problem and a temper, he’s an ungrateful brat to his uncle, and he’s obsessed with honor and his duty as prince of the fire nation. He’s a perfect foil for Aang who is calm in matters of temper, happy, well mannered, on the side of good, and terrified of being forced to do his duty. Opening scene Zuko wants nothing more to be prince, opening scene Aang wants nothing less than to be Avatar. One is exiled from his role and has no other goal but to return to it. The other is actively running away.

Each scene Zukko is in chips away at his exterior to reveal what he’s like inside and to reveal his backstory. He’s a victim of abuse, he’s afraid, he’s desperate to regain his honor, not for himself, but because he thinks if he’s just good enough his family will accept him. The writers gave him very concrete, very universal motivations so viewers, while frowning at his methods, can’t help but feel sorry for him.

Halfway through the character arc there’s typically a major character transformation in motives, not flaws or methodology. Most often this is achieved by the character getting what he wants, only to discover the price was too high or that what they wanted wasn’t what they wanted after all. Zuko makes a choice that results to him being  welcomed back to the Fire Nation only to find that there’s no honor in being on the side of evil. At this point he joins team Avatar, but he still has a long way to go.

During the downward slope of the characters arc the character gains strength, whittles away at flaws, takes a major stand and is tested in the worst ways. This is where that belly of the whale moment comes in. For the character arc, this is called the dark night of the soul. If the character survives it, they come out the other side stronger, resolved, and at peace with their transformation.

His is the most obvious arc in the story, but it’s not the only one. Every character was brilliantly developed, even his sister. Gosh, that episode on the beach…If you haven’t watched Avatar: The Last Airbender, do. It’s amazing.

 

I will be attending Athcon next year, but for this year it’s just not in the cards. There just wasn’t enough notice. It was really nice of them to offer me a place on the panels and a table to sell and sign my books, and I’m absolutely signed up for next year. But for this year there was just no feasible way to stock that table in enough time for the convention or prepare for the panels. I tried everything I could to make it work on such short notice, but at the end of the day I had to come to terms with the fact that as excited as I was to do my first panel and my first signing, going in half prepared would do more harm then good to everyone involved.

To anyone hoping to see me at Athcon, email me. I will coordinate a time to meet up with you this weekend. Promise.

I just found out I’ve been invited to my first Con! Well, the first as a guest, I’ve attended a few. If you’re in the area, come out and meet me and some other cool guests this weekend at AthCon in Athens, Georgia.  January 16 – 18. Learn more at www.ath-con.com

I’ll be posting photos to social media from the event through Instagram, which will filter through to Facebook and Twitter. Please follow along at those sites. I’ll make sure to tag the posts with #AthCon.

As a writer, the single best thing I’ve ever done for my writing is join a writers group. I can’t speak for all writers, but for me, having the steady deadline keeps me writing with a specific goal. The feedback of my group becomes the voices in my head when I write saying random gems like “‘it’ is a missed opportunity.” Reading other people’s raw work through a critique lens helps me see errors in my own. There are many benefits to joining a writers group, more than I can count.

But writers groups are very delicate things. They only work when everyone in them feels like they are getting just as much from the group as they put into it. Our group doesn’t have issues with one person slacking yet expecting a lot out of their critiques, our issues are more numbers based.

Too many people in a writers group can kill the group. Members get bogged down in submissions and the actual meetings last all night while the members say their piece. You can institute things like comment limits, and shorter word counts, but my group likes being thorough, we like round-tabling submissions, we like the freedom to interrupt each other with our opinion on “x” or clarification of what “y” is. So when we grew too large we put a cap on membership and started screening new members to make sure their genre was something we could critique (living in a university town we often had writers come through with academic papers and such).

We did such a good job that a little over a year later we had the opposite issue. Our group shrank to the point where we had an average of three people at each meeting, which doesn’t sound so bad except that if each of those people submit something, there’s only two people to give feedback on their work. That’s more of a critique partnership, which does have its place, but critique groups meet for a different purpose. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. We balance each other out. Plus, with numbers,  if one person doesn’t get something that eight other people did, then it might just be them, if seven people don’t get it, it’s an issue with the writing.

This isn’t the first time this has happened. Groups ebb and flow. The new year brought with it more members and we’re slowly stabilizing. The important thing is what we did in the meantime to hang on in both cases. We made adjustments. We hosted write-ins instead of critiques when we didn’t have enough voices. We held book clubs on books on writing when we didn’t have full manuscripts to read. We found new ways to reach out to the writing community to bolster our numbers.

Keeping a writers group together takes effort. It takes commitment. It takes time. But that time is worth it. Today is the seventh anniversary of our writers group. I’ve been a member for six years and in that time, I’ve written five books start to finish, published four (one will be out shortly, the other is in queries), and I can say without a doubt, that wouldn’t have happened without my group. It’s a major time commitment, no doubt, but that time has more than paid off in my writing.

So Happy Birthday Writers Group. I owe you big time.