Tag Archives: novel in a blog

My Stolen Diaries – Chapter 4: The Yellow Kitchen Table

Teri's Novelog — My Stolen Diaries, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

CHAPTER 4

THE YELLOW KITCHEN TABLE

February 1960

“Mere Germaine deserves better than this hell hole,” Mom told Mem after we came home from church, after a particularly harrowing night full of the snap, snap, snapping of rat traps.

Mem agreed, but where would she go? Mom mentioned someone I had never heard of before — Samir. Whoever this Samir was, he owned apartments, and Mom said that if she had to get on her hands and knees and beg him to find a clean and safe place for Mere Germaine to live, she would do it.

Mem spoke back to Mom in French, but I understood everything. Mem was telling Mom that if Samir found a place for Mere Germaine, he would want something in return. “Nobody gives anything for nothing.” And Mem warned Mom that seeing me would surely be part of the arrangement.

Me? What did I have to do with any of it? Mom asked Mem if she had any other ideas, and Mem said no. All in French.

I sat quietly, eating my butter and strawberry jam sandwich. “Well, then it’s settled,” Mom said and picked up the phone.

“Samir? It’s Natalie. Yes, I’m fine. Yeah, she’s a big girl already.” I assumed they were talking about me.

“I need your help Samir, but hold on.” Mom kicked me out of the kitchen and told me to go to Mem’s room.

Since Mem’s room was at the other end of the apartment, there was no way I could hear the rest of the conversation.

After church the following Sunday, I helped Mom and Mem move Mere Germaine to the other side of Bridgeport. It wasn’t the best neighborhood, but it was way better than White Street.

As I ran around Mere Germaine’s new apartment, there was a knock at the door. When Mem opened it, a grey-haired man stood smiling at me.

“Look at you,” he said, arms outstretched. I was frightened and looked at Mem, who introduced me to Samir as my grandfather.

He lifted me off my feet and kissed me twice on each cheek. I was confused, but I liked the attention.

Then he put me down, and the two of us walked hand in hand to his house, which was a few blocks away.

While Samir was in the bathroom, I opened his refrigerator. There, on the top shelf, was a huge cow’s head with its tongue hanging out. I let out a scream and slammed the door. Samir flew out of the bathroom, and I pointed to the refrigerator. He laughed and told me I shouldn’t put my nose where it doesn’t belong.

Then Samir turned on the radio and was singing along to a song I had never heard before: ♪ …you can kiss me on a Wednesday, a Thursday, a Friday, and Saturday is best. But never, never on a Sunday, a Sunday, a Sunday, ’cause that’s my day of rest…  ♪ It was a catchy tune, and I hummed along as Samir prepared us something to eat. When he opened the refrigerator door, I squeezed my eyes tightly shut.

As we sat at his kitchen table, a boy in his early teens stopped by.  I was sitting on Samir’s lap, spooning a bowl of coffee filled with ripped-up toasted bread into my mouth like it was soup.

Samir called the boy Luke, and I could see right away that there was going to be trouble. I wanted to jump off Samir’s lap and make a run for it, but I was incapable of moving.

Luke all but blew a fuse and pulled out a gun. I had never seen a real gun before, and I was shaking.

Samir told Luke that I was Tony, Mick’s kid — and his niece, and warned him to think carefully about his next move.

Samir then told Luke to calm down and slowly took me off his lap. I bolted for the closest room, which was the bathroom. I knelt on the cold tile floor and kept the door slightly ajar so I could see what was happening.

Luke called Samir a thief, and Samir calmly told him to put down the gun so they could talk.

Luke put the gun on the table, and when Samir stood up, it seemed like he was going to hug him. But instead, he punched Luke in the face — first with his right fist and then with his left. Blood from Luke’s nose splattered all over Samir and the yellow kitchen table.

I will never forget the look on Luke’s face. It wasn’t pain or anger — it was more of sadness and misery. I can still see his eyes today, brimming with tears.

Oddly enough, I wasn’t scared — I felt pity for Luke. As he backed away from Samir, he called him a shit father.

Then he turned in my direction — one side of his bloody face was already starting to swell.

As I continued to peek out through the crack in the bathroom door, Luke gave me a wink before he left.

Click here for Chapter 5: My First Diary

My Stolen Diaries – Chapter 3: White Street

Teri's Novelog — My Stolen Diaries, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

CHAPTER 3

WHITE STREET

January 1960

Mem and Mom were always talking about the big news of the day. Elvis was in the army; Senator John F. Kennedy was running for President, and Mem got a Saturday job working at the Woolworths lunch counter on Main Street.

During the week, Mem worked at Remington Arms on the assembly line, boxing bullets, and was a seamstress at night and on Sundays. I was upset that Mem was going to be away even more now that she had taken a job at Woolworths. I should have cared more that Mem was killing herself working seven days a week, but I learned quick enough not to think or care too much about anything.

We lived in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in a tenement on White Street, although there weren’t too many white people.

Our top-floor railroad apartment was laid out in a single long line of rooms: from the kitchen to the living room, to the bedroom that Mom shared with Mere Germaine, to my grandmother’s bedroom at the end. I slept with Mem.

The kitchen was large and had plenty of cupboards. There was one extra-large cupboard to the lower left of the sink, filled to capacity with empty shoe boxes. I hated that cupboard. I hated the shoe boxes even more.

The tiny bathroom was directly off the kitchen to the left and lined up with a long creepy hallway that ran from the bathroom all along the length of the entire apartment and ended up at a dark, steep, and narrow stairwell that led down twenty steps or so to the front door.

We never used that door because it was padlocked — sealed shut and unusable. So the only way in and out of the apartment was to climb the several rows of steep stairs in the back of the house and enter through the kitchen. Only one way in and one way out. A real fire trap.

Our apartment was run down, but Mem kept it spotless, which unfortunately didn’t stop the cockroaches and rodents from invading.

I hated the roaches. Big bad cockroaches. They came out fast and furious.  And they were bold. I would stamp my foot next to them to scare them, but they wouldn’t budge. The roach brigade usually made its debut anytime it went from light to dark.

When we would enter the kitchen at night — and turn on the lights, all the cockroaches would frantically scurry around the walls, trying to flee from the brightness. Hundreds of cockroaches would cover the walls of our kitchen. They came in droves. Welcome home.

The roach activity was horrifying.  But it was just the way it was. Mom would carry on and throw a fit, but not me — and never Mem.

But I was most petrified of the rodents. They were probably rats, but I don’t think I could have survived living there, thinking they were rats.

I insisted on sleeping with the bedroom light on even though Mem preferred the light out. No way I was sleeping in the dark. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that on White Street, everything scary came out in the dead of night.

Despite the rodents and the bugs, I never imagined that there was a better way to live. I didn’t realize at the time that we were poor and living in squalor conditions. It was just home to me.

At night I would help Mem set up the rodent traps. I hated it, but the thought of having hungry mice — or worse — roaming around our apartment was even scarier. So, our routine before going to bed was to lay traps all over the apartment. And if Mere Germaine wasn’t already asleep, she would cut up the cheese.  Mom refused to help us.

Poor Mom. She would yelp every time she heard a trap snap. Snap, snap, snap. All night long.

Early every morning, Mem would grab a shoebox from the dreaded cupboard, and roam around our apartment, throwing the successful traps into it. The shoebox would be full of rodents with broken necks. Mem would calmly throw them into a garbage bag and then into the garbage can on our back porch and place the shoebox back in the cupboard next to the sink.

On the first of every month, our landlord would put out a dish of rat poison in the corner, next to our back door. By the end of the month, the bowl was always empty, which made me happy because it meant a lot of dead rats.

I was a curious child, so I asked Mem a lot of rodent questions. I wouldn’t call Mem a mouse or rat expert, but she knew a lot about both.

My math skills weren’t the best, but I knew that where there was one rodent, there were many more. Mem told me that rats have large families — up to forty or fifty. And since rats rarely walk more than a few hundred feet from their birthplace, if I saw one, the other forty or so were probably close by.

The good news from Mem: Rats had a one-year life span, so they didn’t last long.

The bad news from Mem: Rats multiply like rabbits.

And more bad news from Mem: Rats eat mice, so they rarely cohabitate.

Which, for me, meant that the mouse jig was probably up.

As you can imagine (or not), I was obsessed with our uninvited guests. So was Mem, but not in a scared way like me.

Mem would methodically and carefully inspect all of the lower parts of our walls — particularly in the bedrooms, at about one inch from the floor.

According to Mem, rats were wall huggers, so they would leave behind dark oil marks from their hair. Rat hair oil.

I was frightened. But nothing compared to Mom. She was horrified and disgusted and regularly cried and cried out in fear.

All Mom would ever say was, “We have to get out of here.” But I don’t remember ever thinking that we had to get out.

Click here for Chapter 4: The Yellow Kitchen Table

My Stolen Diaries – Chapter 2: To Know Yourself Is to Know Your Family

Teri's Novelog — My Stolen Diaries, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

CHAPTER 2

TO KNOW YOURSELF IS TO KNOW YOUR FAMILY

        Maternal vs. Paternal

For most of my life, I didn’t know much about my family on either side.

[Maternal: Relating to, belonging to, or like that of a mother.]

My very first memory took place on December 25, 1957, and was of my maternal grandmother.

It was late Christmas night, and Mem and I were sitting on the couch, admiring what I thought was a truly magnificent Christmas tree.

Back then, I was known as Tony Michaels and lived with my grandmother, mother, and great-grandmother on the wrong side of an already lousy town.

Mem was my grandmother — my surrogate mother. My mom got pregnant, then married, then divorced, at a very young age, so Mem was raising us both.

I knew very little about my father, but what I did know left me afraid. Fear played a significant role in my early years.

Mem had a theory that when I was a baby, I was confused and couldn’t figure out who was the mom. For a while, I called them both Mom. And then, after some time, I bestowed upon her the name of Mem.

According to Mem, at ten or so months old, I had brilliantly managed to come up with the French-Canadian name all on my genius own.

Mem was also divorced, and I never met my grandfather. Mere Germaine, my great-grandmother, was a widow and lived with us too. And like all the other men in my family, I never knew my great-grandfather either.

Mere Germaine was sleeping that Christmas night, Mom was on a date, and Mem was busily crocheting me an Afghan blanket.

I was four years old, and my head rested on Mem’s shoulder. Mem was preoccupied with her crocheting, and I was trying to be exceptionally quiet because I was hoping that if she forgot that I was there, I could stay up late and wait for Mom.

I closed my eyes and started to drift off when Mem began to poke my arm softly.

When I looked up at Mem, she had a mischievous look on her face as she put her finger up to her mouth to shush me. She then took her finger off her lips and pointed toward the tree.

I took Mem’s cue and gazed at our sparsely decorated tree, adorned with a few strands of blinking lights, some tinsel, and a few ornaments — most of them homemade.

Underneath the tree sat my treasured present from Santa Claus.  She was the most beautiful doll I had ever seen. I named her China because she had a flawless porcelain face and the silkiest long, shiny black hair. China must have been an expensive doll — much more than Mem or Mom could afford.

Anyway, China was sitting under the tree, wearing a red velvet dress that Mem sewed for her, which to my delight, perfectly matched the red Christmas dress she had designed for me.

As I sat looking curiously at the doll under the tree, wondering why Mem was pointing and shushing, I noticed a tiny mouse sniffing around China.

I remember thinking that maybe it was a mouse, or maybe it was something way worse. Our crummy railroad apartment was chock full of all kinds of vermin.

I looked up at Mem, terrified, my heart pounding. But she was smiling ever so softly, still shushing me with her pursed lips. I looked back at what I hoped was a mouse from Mem’s perspective.

As a child, I was molded entirely by the three unforgettable women in my life. What they saw, I saw. What they felt, I felt. It was my alpha female trio and me.

So if Mem didn’t have a problem with the baby-whatever, I was okay with it sniffing around my doll and then snuggling in its lap.

I looked at Mem’s bright and smiling face as she lightly kissed her index finger and then playfully touched the tip of my nose with it.

Taking my cue from Mem, I laid my head back on her shoulder and fearlessly watched the baby rodent until I drifted away.

[Paternal: Of or relating to, or like that of a father.]

My second memory was of meeting my father back in 1960 when I was six.

Here’s how the meeting went down:

I was sitting on a stoop, waiting for my father, Mick Michaels, to arrive. I didn’t know him and didn’t know what to expect. As usual, I was full of angst.

A black vehicle rolled up, and a young man jumped out of the car. He had brown hair and swarthy skin — not light-skinned like Mom, Mem, or Mere Germaine.

I stared intently at him as he came around the back of the car to greet me with his dark — almost black — piercing eyes.

It was then that I noticed a young woman sitting in the front passenger seat, her scowling face pressed against the car window.

He roughly tweaked my cheek, which broke me out of my spell. He had an etch-a-sketch in his hand, and as he thrust it into mine, the woman rolled down the window.

My father turned his back to me and spoke to the woman. “Get in the back.”

“Fuck you. Put the kid in the back.”

He shrugged his shoulders and turned to face me. I was shaking and screaming inside.

He opened the back door, and I miserably got into the car behind the woman.

Click here for Chapter 3: White Street

My Stolen Diaries – Chapter 1: In The Beginning

Teri's Novelog — My Stolen Diaries, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

CHAPTER 1

IN THE BEGINNING

It all started back in 1960 when my Aunt Mona, who I barely knew, gave me a pink diary for my seventh birthday. I wrote in it every day, and when it filled up, I got another, and another, and another.

Too young to know better, I believed those chintzy locks and keys kept my diaries safe from the outside world. All of my thoughts, fears, dreams, and schemes were packed into those volumes for me and me alone to write, read, and reread. And in so doing, to never forget. Or so I thought.

I stored them under whatever bed I was sleeping in. A collection of heartwarming, terrifying, funny, and not-so-funny words. I took those twenty-six letters in the alphabet and created a magnum opus out of them.

In my naiveté, it never occurred to me that anyone could be so deceitful as to read them. And I never thought anyone else would have a faint interest in what I felt or thought anyway.  And yet I kept those diaries safe and sound under locks and keys just in case. At last count, I had over forty of them and a President Kennedy key ring full of tiny diary keys.

I have been keeping a written recording of my life since elementary school. I still keep a diary although now I call them journals.

My treasured Kennedy key ring is gone. And with it all the keys, and yes, the older diaries are gone too.

Stolen, read, and interpreted. Or I should say misinterpreted.

And that’s what this story is about. In the pages to follow I will try to remember the entries, the momentous and not so momentous times in my life.

But the diaries are gone, so I can’t recreate the voluminous entries spanning a lifetime in a Dear Diary format.

But what I can do, is recreate the diary entries from the volumes seared in my memories.

And to the thief, and you know who you are:

You might have been able to dispose of the diaries, but you can never do away with my memories, my words, or what’s in my mind.

Click here for Chapter 2: To Know Yourself Is to Know Your Family

My Stolen Diaries Disclaimer

Teri's Novelog — My Stolen Diaries, , , , , , , , ,

DISCLAIMER

I have decided to go for it and start blogging my novel titled My Stolen Diaries.

In doing so, I first needed to create a blog category, so after much thought, I finally settled on: Teri’s Novelog — i.e. novel on a blog.

One day I’ll turn it into an actual book, but I’ve been saying that for the past thirty years, so in the meantime, here it is.

First things first.

My disclaimer:

My Stolen Dairies is a work of fiction. F-I-C-T-I-O-N.

Although its format is based on a personal diary, it’s not real.

It’s made up.

Places and time have been moved around to accommodate the book, and except the mentioning of some public figures, any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

The events expressed in My Stolen Diaries are those of the characters and should not be confused with the views and opinions of the author (me).

The author will not be held responsible or liable for any perceived or actual loss or damage to any person or entity, directly or indirectly caused by or alleged to have been caused by anything in My Stolen Diaries.

If anyone happens to see themselves in any of the characters, that’s on them and a figment of their overly imaginative imagination.

Click here for Chapter 1: In The Beginning

To Blog or Not to Blog My Novel

Marketing & Publishing, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I have been going back and forth trying to decide whether or not to publish my fiction book titled My Stolen Diaries, traditionally, independently, or chapter by chapter on my blog The Teri Tome.  

For several weeks I have been thinking about how the process of organizing and arranging the chapters would come together while researching examples of formats other bloggers have used to post their books online.

So far, I haven’t found any articles that explain in detail or show actual examples of how blogged books are laid out.

I’m guessing I couldn’t find explicit samplings of how to blog a novel because writers either aren’t blogging their novels, or they haven’t found a functional fiction format.

I did find a few articles about how to blog a nonfiction single-topic book, but in my opinion, the process of blogging a book lends itself well to nonfiction vs. fiction.

Additionally, all of the articles I found regarding how to blog a single-topic, non-fiction book, suggest that to blog a book, a separate blog needs to be created to support the effort.

But my blog The Teri Tome gets over 30,000 page views a month, so why would I want to start all over with a brand new blog that nobody has ever seen or heard of?

I don’t want to create a blog called My Stolen Diaries. What I want to do is blog my novel My Stolen Diaries within my existing blog, The Teri Tome.

The question is: how to blog my novel within a blog?

An actual novel moves methodically page by page through the storyline allowing the reader to pick up where they left off, so blogging my novel is going to be challenging.

What I hope to do is to cohesively blog my novel and weave it all together post by post or chapter by chapter to tell the story in a way my readers can keep up with it, without having to search around for the beginning, middle and end.

And the last thing I want my reader to do is to get to the end of the book before the beginning. Nobody wants to be the victim of a spoiler, and I would totally never want to be that person.

Since I found nothing to guide me as to how to blog my novel, I decided to make my best effort to test out some formats and see what sticks.

While I didn’t find any articles that showed me how to blog a novel, I did find some generally useful articles, although I disagreed with many of them:

  • A blog should have 10-15 categories. [My blog has a hefty 21 categories before I even add My Stolen Diaries so sue me.] 
  • A new blogger should post often if they want to bring significant traffic to their blog (At least three times per week – each post approximately 300 words long, until they reach a minimum of 1,000 posts). [I never post that often, I still don’t have 1,000 total posts and as I stated earlier, I enjoy over 30,000 page views a month. So there.]
  • A dedicated and seasoned blogger should blog their book daily – each post approximately 500 words long). [Blogging a chapter a day of my novel seems highly unlikely, and as the queen of verbiage I need to write way more than 500 words per post. BTW, this blog post is over 1,600 words! And I would consider myself both dedicated and seasoned. So, as they say in my neck of the woods: fuggedaboutit.]  
  • How to create a book flyer. [Here is my post about creating book marketing flyers. As the late great Yul Brynner aka Pharaoh once said: So let it be written; let it be done. And okay, after a gazillion hours of mailing out flyers, I gave up on that too. Sorry not sorry.]
  • How and who to hire for search engine optimization (SEO). [Now I have to worry about SEO? Who the heck has time to write? But okay I went on the website Fiverr, and I’m working on that.]
    • How to add your blog to a blog directory. [The directory most recommended was Blogarama.com, which boasts millions of visitors, so I happily submitted my blog. There is a free and paid part to their site. Since signing up for the free section, I receive regular emails from them, letting me know that they have been indexing my blog posts. But try as I might, I never found any of the supposed indexed posts, so good luck with that.]
  • The best format for creating an About the Author section is to write your achievements, expertise, and experience in the third person. [I originally wrote my About page in the first person, so I changed it up. Click here for everything you wanted to know about Teri (or not) but never asked or cared to ask. Oh, and speaking of asking;  if you wanted to ask but thought better of it, NO my novel Our Romantic Getaway is NOT about me, and YES I am wearing a top in my author photo.]
  • How to set up Google alerts so you can track your business, yourself, or any other kind of stuff. [I went on Google Alerts and added my websites, my name, blog to novel deals, how to blog a novel, worldpress.org, The Teri Tome, and terischure.com. FYI: My g-mail account is now inundated with useless alerts, but don’t go by me.] 
  • Understanding Web traffic. [Quick and easy: Concentrate on your Monthly Page Views, Visits, and Unique Users.]

Back in 2014, I published my first novel titled Our Romantic Getaway, and while it makes some money, it’s a pittance compared to the number of hours over the five long years I spent writing it.

I know, I need to market it, and I will. I might even blog a few chapters of it.

In 2019, I was finally able to finish and publish my children’s book titled The Day It Snowed Popcorn, which I wrote back in 1970 at seventeen. It has already won an award and I am very excited about its future.

And…I have the beginnings of a cookbook sitting on the back burner. [Pun intended.] 

But My Stolen Diaries has always been the bucket-novel I’ve dreamed nonstop of publishing.

Plus, My Stolen Diaries seems like the perfect novel-on-a-blog project, mainly because of its diary format.

So, after much thought, I decided my novel-on-a-blog should be called a Novelog.

I started writing My Stolen Diaries back in the 1990s. So far, I have 168 pages and 117,653 words.

If I assume that each average post will be 1,500 words in length, I need to write at least 78 blog posts for My Stolen Diaries.

Now I recognize, that’s a ton of posts/chapters, so here’s the dilemma:

How do I present the posts/chapters in a way that readers can easily catch up with the earlier posts/chapters they may have missed?

And will anyone take the time to slog through 78+ posts/chapters?

After racking my brain, trying to figure out what to call each post: Chapters, Episodes, Scenes, Events, Entries…

After going back and forth, I decided to keep it simple and go with Chapters.

What have I got to lose?

What harm could it do to post some of my novel chapters into cyberspace and then analyze the traffic?

Worse case, I’ll post a few chapters of My Stolen Diaries and give up if I see that the Page Views don’t warrant my time.

Plus, what better way to test-market my dream book than sharing it with my readers?

And since my novel is only partially written, it won’t be like I’m giving the entire store (in this case, story) away.

Note to my readers: Your opinion about My Stolen Diaries will help me to determine whether or not to keep on keeping on, so I welcome your thoughts and suggestions. Okay, let’s be honest, I NEED your thoughts and suggestions, so please help me with your comments?

And now tada! Click here to read my novelog My Stolen Diaries.