A promotional blog for the works of Donaya Haymond, and also a celebration of writing, crafting, and other creative endeavors by the wider artistic community.
To the sides you can see my Cupidthulhu prototype. I will be offering them mid-January onwards when my shop reopens after Break, just in time for Valentine's Day shoppers. I stopped using Red Heart and now use solid-color Cascade yarn from Old Town Yarnery. It costs more, but not too much more, and is much, much more pleasant to work with. I will be charging $17 to fellow students in person and $22 online for these pink ones, because the buttons drive up cost of materials (as opposed to the standard green, which are $15 in person and $20 online). I think it's worth it though, for teh cutes.
During Winter Break my Etsy will be in vacation mode, but I will be building up stock and taking photographs in preparation. I've found Red Heart kelly green yarn works fine for Cthulhus, though if I marathon crochet the rough texture hurts my fingers. Have to take breaks.
When I was born, I started turning blue (known as cyanosis). My mother’s doctor in Denison had me care-flighted to Medical City. Once there, they sent me to Children’s Medical Center. They did tests and concluded that I was born with a congenital heart defect known as Tetralogy of Fallot. The word “tetralogy” indicates that there are four abnormalities when ToF is present. Two of my main problems were that the valve used to pump blood to my outer extremities was missing, and I had a hole in my heart. I had my first surgery on October 13, 1990, when I was barely one day old. The doctors put in a temporary shunt to basically keep me from dying until I could have a total repair surgery. They said that they did not want to operate on a newborn heart unless it was absolutely necessary. I had my open heart surgery to repair the birth defect on January 31, 1992, when I was fifteen months old.
Babies who are born with ToF are supposed to have regular check-ups done by a cardiologist, usually every eighteen months or so. During the course of my life, my parents gained and lost insurance due to their income. While I was still covered, however, my cardiologist told my parents that I would probably need the valve that was constructed for me replaced when my heart reached adult size, because the valve would not grow with the heart, thus not allowing the heart to pump properly. According to the American Heart Association, “Some long-term problems can include leftover or worsening obstruction between the right pumping chamber and the lung arteries. Another problem can be a leaky pulmonary valve and enlargement of the heart’s right side. Patients with repaired Tetralogy of Fallot have a higher risk of heart rhythm disturbances called arrhythmias. Sometimes these may cause dizziness or fainting.”
In 2007, I was without insurance and started having symptoms concurrent to those attributed to patients whose valves had been repaired initially and were beginning to malfunction as described above once they entered adulthood. I voluntarily went a local emergency room, but nothing was done. I also visited my former pediatrician in 2008, who suggested that I see a cardiologist on the grounds that he suspected that I had acute ventricular tachycardia. However, I was again unable to see a cardiologist for lack of funds.
I dealt with these issues up until early 2011. In April, I had to be taken to the emergency room by ambulance because I could not breathe, walk, or talk, and my heart felt like it was quivering and skipping beats. Once there, they put me on an EKG machine and gave me a halter monitor to wear for a few days, which would then supposedly be analyzed by a cardiologist, but yet again, there was no way to see a cardiologist because I could not afford it. After this, I visited a local general physician at a clinic that has a fixed rate for all doctor’s visits. He diagnosed me with tachycardia and angina, simply from my descriptions, because he could not “catch it” with his stethoscope. No additional tests were done. Again, I was told that I needed to see a cardiologist, because he could not do more for me, as he was not a specialist in that area. He informed me, however, that he strongly believed that it had to do with the valve that I had replaced when I was fifteen months old, and that I should see a cardiologist soon. I told him that I had no insurance and no way to pay to see a cardiologist, and he gave me a prescription for a beta-blocker, that acted as an anti-arrhythmia medication. It helped for a while, but when my prescription ran out, the doctor refused to refill it.
My symptoms are getting progressively worse and I have been forced to quit college and stop working, because the strain is too much on my heart. I am getting denied insurance coverage by every company that I apply to because of my pre-existing conditions. I can no longer do simple, everyday tasks such as laundry or grocery shopping, because these “attacks” happen more severely and more frequently when I am active. However, they also happen when I am at rest; sitting in a chair or lying in bed. I feel as if I will pass out, and sometimes I do black out for a few seconds, my heart sort of shakes and quivers and seems to skip beats and I cannot breathe without gasping for air. I turned twenty-one years old on October 12, 2011.
Wick'd Creation makes cool shaped and scented soaps and jewelry. FRIENDS20 will get you a 20% discount at checkout. I would buy from her myself if I were not trying to break my shopping compulsions and not spending non-essential money for the next month.My therapist said they are delusions,
these ghosts that I believe haunt me
and that the “names” I hear whispered
are merely a child’s way of labeling the unknown.
Still, I cannot stop running, cramming my mouth
full of yellow cupcakes and fruit, yet never feeling full,
all food in sight devoured, making myself sick,
to calm me, to help me buffer the dread, give me fuel
to escape, to fly from them, the four neon ghosts
that meander through the maze of my life.
My wife suffers just as I;
differentiated only by clothing, not fate -
(she’s worn the same bow in her hair for longer than I can remember)
our estrangement from dual anguish tearing us apart,
even as our perditions are so similar.
We are trapped in our own labyrinths of darkness
trying to escape our personal hells, our Minotaurs,
our four private Horsemen of our own Apocalypse:
Inky, Binky, Pinky, and Clyde.
New official song for Seasons Four Behind Closed Doors: "All Arise" by The Decemberists.
I wouldn't have made it to class today without playing "Heartlines" by Florence + The Machine on repeat and listening to it as I walked. Made it a little late, but at least I made it. Pushing on through. NaNo is one of the brighter spots in my life right now, actually, aside from my wonderful loved ones of course, readers of this blog included. 6503 words so far.
Up to 5400 words now, and in Chapter 2. Much enjoying the comments. NaNo seriously came for me just in time, because it gives me something positive to distract me from the rough time, moodwise, that I've been having lately. It's kept me out of a lot of trouble and given me an important thing to get up for in the morning. So I'm glad of that. I wish I didn't have to do my Chinese workbook now, though.
Up to 4022 words as of now, and I really should do some homework. I've been functioning at only partial capacity due to this most recent bout of depression, but I'm working on that, and the writing really seems to be helping. 
It has begun! I eagerly awaited midnight, fortified with orange Izzes and pumpkin bread and apples, and wrote 1358 words before I went to bed around two-ish. I am now at 1720, as you can see by the screenshot. I have a special playlist, I got a lap desk to improve the ergonomics of my marathon typing sessions, a bunch of my friends are doing it too, and I'm super-excited. I feel like I'm kindling the forest fire again. And I plan on blogging at least every day about my experiences. Seasons Four Behind Closed Doors
......
Doing double-duty for NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month), I will briefly chronicle how this goes every day, and provide links to read my output if you are of age to do so. My BlogHer page is here. Publicity and prizes, people! XD
A logical question to pose someone with multiple published novels at the age of 21 is why she would wish to take an Intro to Creative Writing class at all. My knee-jerk answers have been that this is a prerequisite for other Creative Writing courses that I want to take, I need the credits, I believe I still need plenty of assistance before I reach a level I want to be (regardless of where I am compared to my classmates), and that it's more fun than anything else I can see around here that will help get me to graduation. These are all true, but upon reflection there are some deeper things going on here. First, I am retaking this class to spite the universe for giving me a health-related catastrophe that forced me to withdraw last time. Second, I am struggling to get through the driest writing period I have had in six years, where I am writing more than most people do, yet all the while internally panicking about whether the well is running shallow.
It hasn't been writer's block, fortunately, because the last time I seriously had that it was the worst three months of my life. I've been able to eke out the little bits and one decent short story you will see in this compilation, though it's been like going from dancing to shambling in terms of ease. I'm also working on a one-act play for a different class. I even produced a few well-received pieces of one of my old guilty pleasures, fanfiction. So someone who doesn't know me well could look at my output and think that I am being productive.
I don't feel like I am, though, not compared to the real me. I was used to writing at least ten pages a week of unassigned original work for the sheer joy of it, constantly eager to get to the next book over the horizon, playing out scenes in my head every waking moment not occupied by immediate concerns. I don't know what happened. And when I try to talk about this, people usually say I've written plenty already, that it's okay to be low on inspiration for a while when I have done so much. Guess what? I've eaten three meals a day almost every day of my life, but eating nothing one sandwich every two days would leave me hungry and weak no matter how well-fed I was to start with.
Taking this course has been part of my attempt to fix this issue. If I was required to write, I thought, maybe I could tap into the source again by sheer brute force. Perhaps the prompts would awaken something. At least in the meantime I could refine my phrasing and improve my cliche elimination rate, get better at receiving criticism, possibly be helpful to others, and work on all the other little things while the big things elude me for a while.
I succeeded at the last, anyway. The short story is pretty good, especially after the editing help, and I think is worthy of sending out to be published. The journals were at least therapeutic. The exercises have their moments of charm, the occasional clever sentence. I am still feeling pretty empty and alone in my head. It reminds me of the end of The Amber Spyglass when the heroine can no longer magically use a certain oracular device, but instead has to learn how to read it slowly and painfully. I realize that this may sound ludicrous to many. I have a candle flame to light my darkness, still. I feel petty for it, but I long to have a forest fire again.
There’s a song I’ve got stuck in my head as I watch my premature infant struggle to breathe in the incubator. By Death Cab for Cutie, a song called “What Sarah Said”. It’s got a nice piano backdrop to it, better than the hiss and whir of various machines trying to hold back the inevitable.
My baby is only about the size of my partner’s two fists pressed together. My partner is still recovering from her ordeal. I’m not sure if they’ve told her the percentages, the steady unravel of all these months of expectation and hope. She’ll pull through, the doctors say, but they don’t want to stress her until she has a better handle on remaining with us.
Technically it’s not “my” baby in the sense that I am not a man, I did not insert Tab A into Slot B. But my cousin donated the sperm. More importantly, I’m the one who held my love’s hair back as she threw up from all those days of morning sickness, the one who fetched her toasted seaweed chips and pho from the Asian market downtown when she yearned for them, who rubbed her feet, who picked up the slack of taking care of the two cats and chinchilla. I feel this is pretty much the same amount of involvement as a father has. I was convinced I was okay with being Mommy Number Two.
She’s such a misshapen doll, our baby. We came up with girl names once we knew, but if I start thinking of this little scrap of fading as the name we liked best, I know – just know – that I’m going to break.
This was supposed to be a celebration of life.
“It better not be contractions,” was how she broke the news to me, “but we should get this checked out.”
How I prayed. You’d think a minister’s prayers would hold weight, but then again there is no guarantee that heard prayers will not be denied anyway, for part of some greater scheme. I have to hold onto that.
She waves her little hands feebly. I wonder where she thinks she is. I wonder how much she’ll notice the slip from here to eternity.
I’m not even sure why they bothered putting her in an incubator if they’re so sure she’s not going to make it. I suppose because you have to let them go on their own schedule. You have to try, so you don’t spend the rest of your life wondering if you accidentally blocked a miracle.
My stomach growls, and I am dismayed at such a mundane thing breaking into what is supposed to be tragic. Yet I am not crying. I’m not doing much of anything. I am sitting very still, watching the millimeters’ rise and fall of her little chest, and I have an alternative rock song running through my mind’s ears.
I’m not sure how you love a lump of flesh that will soon become a shoebox’s worth of burial. What earthly good does that love do anyone? All I know is that I do. Maybe it’s best that my partner is not present.
I must tell her myself, when she wakes. I owe it to her.
The fingers stop moving. The breathing dwindles. A lump is a lump is a lump.
And I’m thinking of what Sarah said:
That love is watching someone die.
House of Plush again. Suzanne works really fast.
Isn't he lovable? I got him from http://www.etsy.com/people/houseofplush for just $20 plus $3 shipping. She finished him in just one day! I think I have to get a Ferdinand to keep him company. 
http://eternalpress.biz/book.php?isbn=9781615724352"One more time. You turn these knobs, and water comes out. One knob has hot water and one has cold water. You adjust the amount depending on your preference."
"And then what do I do?" Edofine stood inside the shower, gingerly poking the pipes. He was still in full Elf regalia, complete with dead leaves and grass stains.
"Cover yourself with soap and stand under the water so that it washes off. Do you think you can handle that?"
"You do this every day?"
"Yes."
"What a waste of time and water."
"Way to be sanctimonious, kid. I am merely teaching you how to conform to local hygienic standards. When you live indoors in small apartments, washing frequently becomes very important. Some even enjoy it. I'll leave you alone now to get acquainted with it."
Kryvek was growing annoyed with having to explain these basic things to his cousin. He knew Edofine wasn't being obtuse on purpose, but helping him was like having a child to take care of. Kryvek's stomach growled again and he looked at his watch for the fourth time in ten minutes.
Panic rose in Edofine's throat, which, coupled with his hunger and disorientation, made him worried he might vomit. "You cannot leave me. What if I do something wrong and I scald myself? What if the magic governing these pipes breaks down? Anything could happen."
Kryvek was about to dismiss Edofine's fears, but he saw the hurt in Edofine's drooping shoulders and bowed head and changed his mind. "All right. I'll stand right here in the doorway and talk you through the process. First take your clothes off.” Standing in the shower, Edofine disrobed. Kryvek noted many scars and bruises underneath the grime. “You have to put the clothes outside of the shower, otherwise they’ll get wet.”
“Now turn the hot knob…”
“Aiee!”
“I meant turn it while standing sort of away from the stream of water, so it wouldn’t hit you full force. No, don’t turn it off! Turn on some of the cold!”
“I think you are trying to kill me…”
Leave a comment to have a chance to win a free PDF of either this novella or one of my three other published books of your choice!
The Story of Vampire Blood
Author’s Revised Edition by Kathryn Meyer Griffith
A rerelease of my 1991 Zebra paperback romantic vampire novel
out from http://www.damnationbooks.com on July 7, 2011
In 1990 or so I’d just got done releasing my first three paperback novels with Leisure Books, a romantic historical (The Heart of the Rose 1985) and two romantic horror books (Evil Stalks the Night, 1984 and Blood Forge, 1989), and because I wasn’t making much money on them, was looking, as most so-called restless young authors were doing, to move up in the publishing industry.
So I wrote snail mail letters to three established authors of the day – Dean Koontz, Stephen King and Peter Straub – asking for a little advice and a little help. What do I do next? I want to be one of the big dogs running in the big races. I want to make the big bucks. Be famous like you. (Ha, ha. I was so naïve in those days!)
Well, Stephen King and Peter Straub never answered my letters but one rainy fall night I got a phone call from Gerda Koontz (Dean Koontz’s wife) and she said Dean had gotten my letter and wanted me to have a name of a brand new agent who I should call or write to and say I was recommended by him. If I thought it strange that Dean Koontz himself wasn’t actually talking to me I was told by Gerda that he was a shy man and had had a particularly hard couple of months because of family problems (I think it had something to do with his father in a nursing home or something, but can’t exactly recall now) and he’d asked her to call me. She often did that for him, as well as helping him with the business side of his writing career. He (through her…and I got the impression that he was actually nearby telling her what to say the whole time) said I had to have an agent (I didn’t have one) and then he gave me the name of an ambitious one, Lori Perkins, just starting out and his advice on what I should do to advance as a writer.
I do remember being incredibly touched that he, a famous busy novelist that I admired – I loved his Twilight Eyes – would take the time to talk to me, even through his wife. They were both so sweet and we talked for nearly an hour all about writing, books and everything.
I took their advice and contacted that agent and she agreed immediately to represent me on my fourth book, Vampire Blood, no doubt, because I said Dean Koontz had recommended her to me. Name dropper! But Vampire Blood was the reason I’d contacted those famous authors in the first place. I thought it was the best book I’d done so far and wanted it to go to (what I thought at the time) would be a better publisher than Leisure Books, which contracted and hog-tied their writers with a horrible ‘potboiler’ one-size-fits-all ten year contract with low advances and 4% royalties. Yes, I got a whole whopping 14 cents a book in those days, but, I must confess, they did print thousands of paperbacks each run and had a huge distribution area. I thought I could do a lot better. Anyway, Lori Perkins wanted me to send her the book and she did like it and eventually sold it, and then three others zip-zip-zip right after, to Zebra Books (now known more as Kensington Publishing) at 6% royalties and double the advances I was used to getting. They slapped a sexy blond vampire with a low dress on the cover and a hazy theater behind her. Lovely colors. I thought it was an eye-catching cover. I was so happy. I thought I’d made it! Again, so naïve.
Vampire Blood. A little story about a family of vicious killing vampires who settle in a small Florida town called Summer Haven and end up buying and fixing up an old theater palace to run, and pluck their victims from, and a divorced, down-on-her-luck ex-novelist and her hard luck father, who along with friends, help thwart them.
Now to how and why I wrote it.
My husband and I lived in this small Illinois town, Cahokia, at the time and there was the neatest little hole-in-the-wall theater in a nearby shopping center we used to go to all the time…run by a family of a sweet man, Terry, and his wife, Ann, and sometimes their three children, two teenage boys and a girl named Irene. Such a friendly, but odd couple. The run-down theater was their whole world it seemed. The kids helped take in the tickets, pop the popcorn and sell the candy snacks.
Now the minute Terry and Ann found out, in one of our earliest conversations, that I was a published novelist they were my greatest fans. Terry went right out and bought all three of my books and they all read them. Terry always thought they’d make great movies. Next time my husband and I went to the little theater Terry and Ann greeted us like old friends, so delighted to see us, and refused to take a dime from us for anything. We got in free whenever we went from then on. Now in those days my husband, my son, James, and I were pretty broke. I worked as a graphic designer at a big brokerage firm in downtown St. Louis (across the Poplar Bridge from our Illinois town) but my husband was in between jobs. We lived on a shoestring. Hard times. So I always was so tickled that we could get into the local movies for free. We went a lot, too, as we loved movies, especially science fiction and horror films.
One night I was watching Terry and Ann and their joy in running that little theater, with the kids bustling around doing their jobs, and I got the idea for Vampire Blood. Just like that! Use them and the theater as a backdrop for a vampire novel. Hey, wouldn’t it be neat, I off-handedly mentioned to Terry one night, if I wrote a book about a family of vampires that was trying to pass as a real human family, the man and woman wanting so badly to fit in and lead a normal life for a while, renovating and then running a theater together…but the kids are wild and, as kids always do, make trouble for them in the town…killing people? Terry loved the idea and I asked him if it’d be all right to use him and his family as a template for the vampires. He was thrilled to be part of anything to do with my books and said yes. So…I wrote this book about them (sort of), the theater (making it much grander than it was, of course), a small town terrorized by cruel, powerful vampires who can change into wolves at will….and a saddened lonely woman, her brother, and her ex-husband (who she still loves and ultimately ends up with again after he saves her life) who finds herself again, but loses a lot, as well, fighting these vampires. Vampires she doesn’t believe in at first.
I was very happy with the book when it was done and dedicated it to Terry and Ann when it came out in 1991. Terry and Ann were thrilled, too.
So Vampire Blood came out and did very well for me, second only to my Zebra 1993 Witches. As the years went by it went out of print and when, twenty years later, Kim Richards at Damnation Books contracted my 13th and 14th novels, BEFORE THE END: A Time of Demons and The Woman in Crimson, she asked if I’d like to rerelease (with new covers and rewritten, of course) my 7 out-of-print Leisure and Zebra paperbacks – and I said a resounding yes!
So…here it is…Vampire Blood…twenty years later, alive again and better, I believe, than the original because my writing then was done on an electric typewriter, with gobs of White-Out and carbon paper (I couldn’t afford copies), using snail mail; all of which didn’t lend itself to much rewriting. And in those days, editors told an author what to change and then the writer only saw the manuscript once to final proof it. Who knew what those sneaky editors were slipping in inbetween and before the final book was in an author’s greedy little hands. Hey, and I was working full time, raising a son, living a life and caring for my big extended family in one way or another, too. Busy, exciting, loving, happy and sad times.
For this new version, Damnation Book’s cover artist Dawné Dominique made me an astonishingly intriguing cover of a lovely vampire (Irene the youngest vampire who turns out to be the most brutal and ancient in the end)…but, thank goodness, without the low sexy top. And my DB editor, April Duncan, helped me make it a better novel.
A lot has happened to me and my family in these twenty years, as well. Both my parents, and my beloved maternal grandmother, the storyteller of her generation, have since passed away. Many people we used to know have. Old boyfriends, old friends and relatives. I miss them all! I no longer have that agent; she went on to bigger advances and bigger writers. I lost my good job at the brokerage firm, bumped around in lesser jobs for years, always writing in my spare time, and now, at long last, write full time while my husband works way too hard in a machine shop to support us.
Rewriting the book brought back so many good memories…and tears over those no longer here. The theater closed sixteen years ago, the owner believing it’d served its purpose and used up its time. Terry and Ann, heartbroken, were never the same. They had other jobs, none they truly cared about. Ann is still with us, but Terry died a few years ago, I heard from someone. We lost contact once they stopped running the theater and we moved from Cahokia to a nicer town miles away.
But I’ll never forget those early days and the stories that came with them. Days of high hopes and far distance future dreams…some of which have come true and some which haven’t. I’ve never made the big bucks, never gotten truly famous, but now, at long last and to my great delight, all twelve of my older books, from Leisure, Zebra, and The Wild Rose Press are being rewritten and reissued from Damnation Books and Eternal Press between June 2010 and July 2012. Better than ever after I’d rewritten them. I have plans to write more books and short stories, too, when they’re done. Most importantly, I’m living a good life with a husband I adore and brothers and sisters I love. Writing the stories I was born to write and happy I am. I have my memories. All in all, I’m a lucky, lucky woman.
So, all you writers out there…never give up and never stop writing!
Thank you!
***
Kathryn Meyer Griffith has been writing for nearly forty years and has published 14 novels and 7 short stories since 1984 with Zebra Books, Leisure Books, Avalon Books, The Wild Rose Press, Damnation Books and Eternal Press in the horror, romantic paranormal, suspense and murder mystery genres… and all 12 of her old books, see below, (and two new ones) are being brought out again.
Here’s a list of all my published novels and short stories:
Evil Stalks the Night (Leisure,1984; Damnation Books, July 2012)
The Heart of the Rose (Leisure,1985)
Blood Forge (Leisure,1989; Damnation Books, February 2012)
Vampire Blood (Zebra, 1991; Damnation Books, July 2011)
The Last Vampire (Zebra, 1992; Damnation Books, October 2010)
Witches (Zebra, 1993; Damnation Books, April 2011)
The Nameless One (short story in 1993 Zebra Anthology Dark Seductions;
Damnation Books, February 2011)
The Calling (Zebra, 1994; Damnation Books, October 2011)
Scraps of Paper (Avalon Books Murder Mystery, 2003)
All Things Slip Away (Avalon Books Murder Mystery, 2006)
Egyptian Heart (The Wild Rose Press, 2007...out again from Eternal Press in
August 2011)
Winter's Journey (The Wild Rose Press, 2008...out again from Eternal Press in
September 2011)
The Ice Bridge (The Wild Rose Press, 2008...out again from Eternal Press in November 2011)
Don't Look Back short story (2008...out again from Eternal Press in 2011)
In This House (short story 2008...out again from Eternal Press in 2011)
BEFORE THE END: A Time of Demons (2010)
The Woman in Crimson (2010) ***
