heather.rainier, Author at Heather Rainier

You took that leap of faith. November 1^st or thereabouts you set fingers to keys and unleashed the visions in your head on the page. You learned a few things along the way:

~It’s harder than you thought.

~You know less about good grammar, spelling, and punctuation than you imagined.

~You realized that plot and structure apply to you as well, even if you don’t want them to.

~Even if you want to break the rules you still have to understand the rules to break them properly.

~It’s necessary to show up every day and put fingers to keys in order to achieve your goals.

Those are all good starting points and NOT reasons to give up.

What do you do now? Save your magnum opus in a computer file and shake your head because who would want to read that? Put it away because you can’t look at it again after working on it for 30 days straight? Or open it to page one today and realize that what you have in your hands is a FIRST DRAFT. It’s not supposed to be perfect.

Oh wait. Did you think it was perfect? *gigglesnort* I refer you to Tymber Dalton’s advice: Go take your meds. Do yourself a favor and go read her own blog post “You Are Not A Special Snowflake”

You may be getting pressure from well meaning friends asking when they can read this creative work of genius they’ve seen you posting progress for on Facebook all month. You may be getting lots of advice about what to do with your masterpiece. All I can say about that is to check the quality of the fruit of the person giving you advice. If they are where you really want to be then by all means skip the rest of this post and do that.

If not, then let me bend your ear (or monopolize your eyes) for a few more moments…

“What do I do with this thing, Heather?”

Many of you are seriously considering self-publishing your NaNo novel. You want to make a successful career out of the writer gig. Awesome. But for the love of all that is inspiring, beautiful, and magical about storytelling…

DO NOT RUSH TO PUBLISH!

You were not “finished” with your book at midnight on November 30th.

Yes, you typed those wonderful words—“The End”—but you were by no means done. This is where the real work begins.

It’s not time to start looking at graphic designers, stock photo sites, or cover artists. That’s one of the last things you need to do.

Revisions. Right now, it’s time to comb through that manuscript and find all those areas of inconsistency in your story. Weed out the content that doesn’t move your story forward. Fine tune your character development.

Are your characters relatable, likable? They don’t have to be perfect but they DO have to be characters your readers will want to root for. Can your readers suspend disbelief to enter your world? Is there a compelling story to keep them in that world?

Correct your typos, grammar, tenses, and punctuation. Yes, a copy editor will also perform this service but don’t think it’s not part of your job, too.

Your readers may be able to suspend disbelief for your world building but if their experience is repeatedly interrupted because you don’t know the difference between there, their, and they’re, or because you’re head-hopping faster than they can keep up, or your heroine’s eyes just changed from blue to green then all that awesome world building isn’t going to carry you.

If an editor asked you to tell them about your book in two sentences or less, could you do it?
Do you know the rules for the genre you wrote your story in? Do you even know what genre your story is? If it’s supposed to be an erotic romance but you spent more time on the comedy than the love scenes, you might want to dial back on the giggles so your readers can feel the heat.

Perhaps you’re from a creative background and you already have some skills, but if you’re a first timer maybe you’ve drawn another conclusion:

IF I WANT TO MAKE MONEY AT THIS GIG MAYBE I’D BETTER BECOME A STUDENT

During a lull in writing last summer, I read a number of self-published romances, both erotic and not-so-erotic. I’d been getting recommendations from Amazon based on other books I’d been reading, and I’d also had some reader recommendations. What the heck, right?

I learned quickly to always choose samples instead of investing the full price. The reason? While the $2.99 price tag may be tempting, MANY of those books were a waste, not only of my money, but of my time, because of issues that were fixable if they had just taken the time to either fix them or get the advice of a professional.

Typos, bad grammar, errors in tense and point of view, head-hopping, improper or missing punctuation. Poor sentence mechanics and structure. Lack of basic description or too much description. Narrative that goes on for pages and pages. Repetition. Choppy, chit-chatty, boring dialogue. All those are bad enough.
What’s worse? Unlikable characters. Storylines that were more contorted and convoluted than they needed to be. Inconsistencies within the stories. Lack of showing versus telling. Missed opportunities. Poor timing, especially in love scenes.

I’ve painted a pretty dismal picture, I know, but that was my experience as a reader. I don’t want to start any wars here but I’ll happily pay ten dollars for a well-written, well-edited story that will satisfy me, whether it was published in New York, or by an indie publisher, or self-published.

So, as the proud owner of a newly completed manuscript, what do you take home from my experience?

You need a professional editor for both content (storyline and character development) and copy editing. Hire a professional who edits in the genre you’ve written in and pay them. (If you ask them and they have no clue what to charge you, they are not a professional.) And don’t expect them to do the work for you. You’re the writer. They’re your edits to work through. The benefit is that way you will learn, by doing, what not to do.
You need a professionally done cover. You’ve been on Amazon. You know what I’m talking about and I don’t need to say anything else, because…damn.
Don’t set a release date and then kill yourself reaching it, only to discover that you have major screw-ups in a manuscript that is now accessible to millions. Your name is your brand and the last thing you want is for readers to feel cheated.
Take your time and put only the best into your readers’ hands every time. No, that is not an unreasonable goal. I’m not talking about perfection. I’m talking about being a professional.

“Heather, I can’t afford to pay an editor, or have that kind of time! I have a day job and bills.”

That’s okay. This is a marathon, not a sprint. The more you write the more you hone your skills, provided you’re educating yourself in the process.

Keep writing. You could be another blockbuster author who writes for the sheer love of it and winds up with a big Rubbermaid tub of manuscripts or a cloud drive full of completed stories. If your goal is to become an awesome writer, one day your opportunity will present itself and you could wind up a millionaire with readers worldwide who adore you. It could happen. It has happened.

Keep honing your craft. Read everything you can on the craft of writing. Subscribe to writer’s and editor’s blogs. Most of what I’ve learned about craft I learned online by asking questions and doing Google searches. The answers are out there. Read bestselling books in the genre you want to write. Dissect them, outline them, (just don’t plagiarize them!) and discover what works about them…and what doesn’t.

Befriend authors online. Observe what works and what makes you come back to them. And learn what the turn-offs are and promise yourself to never air your dirty laundry, political or religious views, or rants over reviews online. Never. Just don’t.

Don’t go for promo gimmicks. Building a following that lasts is a time-consuming process. If you’re doing this to get rich quick, it’s highly likely you will be disappointed in the long-term results. And value the people in your life who will tell you what you need to hear, even if you have to pay them to do it.

The other benefit of taking your time is that it allows you to develop subsequent stories that can dovetail into previous ones. The fact that I’m able to do that in my series is borne completely from the fact that releasing a submitted book takes two months and in that time, story elements from future books can be woven in to previous ones (with care).

I apologize for popping your bubble if you wanted to get rich quick with your NaNo novel. The writing is the fun part. December 1st, the work will have only just begun.

Make the investment in professional editing, formatting, and cover design.
Do the work.
Have it edited again.

Then worry about unleashing that masterpiece on the millions who will love it. That way, when your work stands out, it won’t be because it’s a train wreck, it’ll be because you are the cream rising to the surface in an industry that is increasingly difficult to be seen in.

This post was primarily geared toward those NaNoWriMo survivors who are considering self-publishing. It’s important that you get references for all professionals that you hire. And if someone approaches you wanting to publish your book “for you” if you’ll just pay them a fee, don’t walk, run the other way. That’s not the way it’s supposed to work. Yes, if you want to self-publish you’ll have to pay your team of professionals for services at the time they’re rendered, but in publishing, the royalties should flow to the author not away from them, assuming you want to make money. 🙂

Note before anyone throws a fireball at my head: My thoughts about self-published books are based on my experience as a paying reader. And yes, there have been a few that have been worth the money I paid. My intent is not to denigrate self-published works, but merely to emphasize that self-published authors have to serve as their own gatekeepers.

My professional experience is as an author writing for an independent publisher. I don’t have to worry about paying an editor, a formatter, a cover artist, or a printer for paperbacks, and I don’t have to deal with distributors. They handle all that for me. That means I can do what I’m best at.

Rather than ask for comments about self-published train wrecks you may have read and regretted, or self-pubbed works that you thought were more than up to snuff, I want to open comments up to NaNoWriMo pre-published authors, and those who would encourage them.

Tell us in fifty words or less about your book.

Hook us. Make us salivate for your story. What were some of the challenges you experienced along the way? You’re welcome to comment whether you met the 50,000 word count goal or not. It’s about the journey.

Comments are moderated for first time commenters and posts shaming any author by name will be deleted.

Posted on November 27, 2014

Divine Tease/ HR Roundup

Being Thankful

By heather.rainier

I’ve seen lots of friends posting their days of thankfulness or gratitude on Facebook lately and many of them get me smiling. Facebook sometimes seems flooded with negativity and those bright spots do make it a better place.

One reader is a teacher who shares the occasional random thought from one of her anonymous teenaged male students. What harnesses the mind of a teenaged boy is oftentimes hilarious. But she’s also grateful for her kids, and not just the ones she corrals at home. It’s hard to be a teacher in our culture and the fact that she actively searches for something to smile about makes me thankful.

Another reader comes from a totally different culture from me. We live in the same state but the part of the state she’s from might as well be another country. She’s liberal, I’m conservative. She’s a little woo-woo but she’s okay with the fact that I’m not, but since I kinda get where she’s coming from, doesn’t that make me a little woo-woo, too? I don’t know but I’m okay with her articles about auras and Mother Earth.

A friend of mine is perpetually angry on Facebook. A lot of what she’s angry about is justifiable, and sometimes I get the feeling that she’s right in a lot of what she’s angry about. Yeah, I could unfollow her, but there’s always a silver lining to being her friend because she also genuinely cares for others, so I’m thankful for her.

Then there’s that reader who recently lost a loved one, and if there was any way I could do it, I’d fly to her just to give her a hug. She’s dealing with that pain and the resulting depression the best way she can, and keeps positive, and for that I respect her even more. She faces her pain regularly and doesn’t dump on people in the process. No, instead, she edifies others, lifting them up and making them the focus. That is a gift.

I’ve also been watching several author friends participating in NaNoWriMo this month. For the uninitiated, that stands for National Novel Writing Month, and the goal is for writers to pen 50,000 words in the thirty days of November each year. Time is wearing thin in November and some have kept pushing while others have thrown up their hands. To me, it almost seems unfair to do this in a holiday month when there are so many distractions, but it’s also a time when aspiring authors learn if they have what it takes to write that many words in a month. It gives them a taste for striving with a deadline, but it’s only a drop in the bucket for what’s required to have staying power in this industry. Despite the struggles, I love what I do for a living, and respect the fact that they at least try. And no, is not as easy as it looks, is it?

In this month alone, I’ve watched authors behaving badly, and reviewers getting stalked, seen books being pirated and plagiarized by people who think that’s okay. So when I see authors acting classy, behaving well, having fun and making it look easy, I’m thankful. So very thankful.

We had plans set in place for Thanksgiving, but like all well made plans, they can change in a moment’s notice. This change in plans led to me being thankful. Thankful for my kids.

We parents raise them up, hoping they turn out responsible, self-disciplined, and others-oriented. We hope they don’t wind up being burdens on society.

I have two, and what I see most often are the squabbles, the chore-ignoring, and inconsiderate behavior they show toward each other, and sometimes toward their parents. They’re 12 and 15 and before I know it they’ll be out from under our roof.

My worries were given a moment’s peace yesterday when this change in Thanksgiving plans happened. I don’t want to give too much detail but it involves a pre-school great nephew who became unresponsive yesterday and was showing classic symptoms for stroke. We still haven’t heard what the issue is so I appreciate everyone’s prayers and healing thoughts.

This nephew has a younger sibling and his parents are expecting their third child early next year so the mom is pulled between being at the hospital, being needed by the younger child, heavily pregnant, and dealing with her own stress as well as her husband’s. Not a place where I’d want to send extra kids.

Since she already had her with her, my sister-in-law asked if she could take our daughter with them out of town to help out. Juliet, as she is known online, is extraordinarily gifted in dealing with young children and her help was an asset to them. Our initial reaction was to not want to send more children into an already chaotic situation but they insisted she would be an asset.

Although I obviously am not thankful that my four year old great nephew is in the hospital with a potentially serious condition, I am thankful for the revelation that my daughter’s hands were needed, and also that she dropped her own plans for a relaxing holiday to help out where needed.

But there is another added blessing. It’s the burden of “Number Two” children, and those beyond, that they never really have a chance to enjoy having their parents all to themselves, especially on a holiday. As I write this, Brattley, as he is known online, is on his way home with his dad, and it looks like we are spending the holiday with just the three of us. He’s always made a point of speaking his gratitude for moments where it’s just him and us so I know it will be meaningful to him. And MAYBE it’ll give him a chance to miss his sister and appreciate her just a little. Asking too much? Let a mother have her ~~delusions~~ dreams, damn it. 😀

That’s my Thanksgiving blog post, in all it’s randomness and gratitude. I’m thankful for every one of you and hope you have a blessed Thanksgiving.

Posted on September 25, 2014

Divine Tease/ HR Roundup

A Man’s Hands

By heather.rainier 8 Comments

A few years ago, I had a conversation with a friend that developed into a blog post centered around one of my favorite things about my husband.

(I hear you snickering. Your mind= the gutter! 😀 )

I like work-roughened hands. Callused, hard-working hands. Whether they hold a hammer, a wrench, a blow torch, a steering wheel, pull electrical wire, lay cable, climb ladders, towers, or electrical poles.

Hard working hands say so much about a man, most especially that they’re not afraid of a hard, hot days’ work in the sun, or a long day spent in the cold.

Hands say a lot about a man.

Jack was awestruck as he held out his hands to gently receive his daughter, with just a little help from Emma, as the baby was born. Tears streamed from his eyes as he gazed on her cherubic little face for the first time. Rose Marie’s tiny chin quivered as she struggled to form her first howling cry.

Because I was in Doctor Emma’s point of view for this scene, from Their Divine Doctor, I couldn’t elaborate on what was going through Jack’s head, but I can tell you exactly what he was thinking as he took his daughter in his hands for the very first time…

“I hope I don’t hurt her with these rough ol’ hands.”

Ethan reached out a tender hand and stroked Rose Marie’s downy little head as tears sparkled in his bright, blue eyes and got caught in his lashes. His lower lip trembled almost imperceptibly as he whispered, “Well, you’re just as beautiful as your mama, aren’t you, honey?”

I can tell you that Ethan marveled at how tiny she was compared to his big hand. He was also overwhelmed that this little being was a tiny part of his Gracie.

Adam Davis was a very tall man and could easily have held Rose Marie in one of his large hands. This gentle giant placed a hand on the baby’s back and in a shaky voice said, “Look at those little rosebud lips. She’s the image of her mama.”

And Adam… He was mostly terrified of dropping her the first time he held her. He even made himself a little light-headed imagining that. It was a long while before he could really relax any time he held his daughter. (Of course, readers know that nowadays it’s him that is wrapped around her chubby little fingers. 😀 )

I’m not saying that the hands of a man who works in front of a keyboard, holds a pen, dry erase marker, or a book are less sexy. They get just as busy with other pursuits that rough those hands up when not earning a living, or at least I hope they do.

This topic leads me to a side note.

If you know a boy, a teenager, or a young man, please teach them the importance of a good, friendly, but firm hand shake.

Make sure they know to be gentle with the elderly, tender but solid with the ladies, and firm but not a pissing contest with men.

Few things turn me off more than a man who has a limp handshake. It makes a long-lasting negative first impression so teach those boys not to do that, okay? 😀

I’d blogged on the subject of a man’s hands a few years ago and in the process of re-treading the article for the enjoyment of the Divine Divas, I realized I had more to say on the subject.

The article (from January 2012) wasn’t a long one, but this was a part I wanted to share…

Years ago, I held my [then] fiancé’s hands as we struggled with the death of someone very dear to us. That day I was struck by the gentle strength of his grasp. I think that’s what fascinates me most about a decent, hard-working man’s hands. Power, tempered by gentleness. The same hands that can control a large, recalcitrant animal can cradle the tiniest infant in safety. They are just as valuable for expressing love or passion in a story as any other body part or spoken words. They stroke, grasp, heal, protect and tremble, saying so much without words.

Those same manly hands are working overtime these days, doing the electrical wiring and audio/video wiring on our new home, as well as many other tasks. He’s a Jack-of-all-trades. This is just one more thing to love about him.

What do you think? Is it just me with a weird “hand fetish”? Do you feel the same way? Do my descriptions in books of a hero’s rough but gentle hands do something for you, too?

Posted on September 18, 2014

Divine Tease/ HR Roundup

You Want Me To Say What?

By heather.rainier One Comment

“There are some words a lady does not use.” That’s what my mom always told me. Another line I used to hear a lot of was, “You are too intelligent to use such language.” My mother, God rest her soul, would be appalled by the language I use today, but I think she would have gotten over it quickly.

In the fall of 2009 I wrote Divine Grace. It took 236,000 words for me to tell Grace’s story. After several rounds of edits we’d managed to knock that number down to around 200,000.

Of that grand word count total, I used “pussy” 211 times, “cock” 311 times. (It was a ménage, so the cock to pussy ratio is actually is a little lopsided if you ask me.) And I used “cunt” 30 times. Why the big difference, you ask?

In the originally submitted manuscript, cunt appeared exactly zero times. That was a conscious decision on my part. I grew up in a home where that word was used frequently as an insult. It made me shudder and I studiously avoided people who used it.

My heroine originally had a big problem with the word and so her men never used it. In every other way the story earned the hottest rating that Siren Publishing gives to a book. With the encouragement of my editors and publisher I stripped every trace of purple prose from that manuscript and went for the gold, so to speak. If I was going to write a story for women readers accustomed to seeing it in print, why would I shrink from using the word “cunt”?

I pondered the word “cunt” for a while afterward and obviously grew very comfortable using it in my writing. Why had I held out? The reason was obvious. Training by my mother to never use it and conditioning by the male relative in my life to believe it was fit only to be used as an insult.

If you’ve ever watched “Braveheart” you will undoubtedly remember the scene in which William Wallace’s Irish friend Stephen reports to him, in a nutshell, that the Irish will be helping them in the battle they are facing. Referring to Ireland, he proudly says, “It’s MY island!”

Well, I’ve taken that word back. Cunt is no longer a bad word in my world. It actually makes me quite a lot of money. In fact, “It’s MY word.” Many authors read their manuscripts aloud to catch errors and problems. I have found that to be a helpful tool. The word “cunt” flows from my fingertips with ease but thanks to my departed mother’s training, “cunt” never gets spoken above a whisper. I blame my mother for that. Some training just goes too deep.

This blog post first appeared on August 16, 2011. At the request of my street team, the Divine Divas, I’ll be sharing other looks back at my early blogging attempts. I hope you enjoyed it…and yes, I still have to whisper that word, just not quite as softly. 😀

Y’all have a great day!

Posted on September 11, 2014

Divine Tease/ HR Roundup

On Making Readers Cry

By heather.rainier 4 Comments

So much can happen in a year. Sometimes it’s good to revisit past moments, mental snapshots we take and swear we’ll never forget. But we’re human, and we do. I’m republishing one of the Divine Tease Blog posts that was lost in the changeover last spring. Not because I’m lazy, although I am. 🙂 But because it is relevant once again.

Brokenhearted Beauty received reader acclaim that made me blush. To hear that readers love my books and my characters and wish they could move to Divine makes me giddy with pleasure and burn with motivation to write them more erotic romances set there.

But Brokenhearted Beauty also made readers cry. It made me cry when I wrote it and as I edited it. It wasn’t the hardest book I’ve ever written but it was an emotional rollercoaster and I knew it would be for readers as well.

There’s catharsis in tears, if the reader is willing. Many called it an “ugly cry” kind of book, soaking Kleenex, towels, slinging snot, setting the book down to take a break because it got to them so much. But for every tear I hope there was also a laugh or a sigh. After all, it’s still a love story with a happily ever after.

I was searching for something else and happened upon the blog post I wrote in October of 2013 and wanted to share once again, the deeper inspiration behind Patterson Elder’s character, and my future hero, Noah Cassidy. I’ve yammered on enough, so here it is…

I Once Knew this Kid

My first conversation with him occurred when he was in sixth grade. I was a new parent at the school he attended, where my firstborn was a kindergartner. In an attempt to fight off lingering post-partum depression, I’d volunteered to work in the school office each Friday. It was a difficult task for an introvert like me, but I greeted the kids every Friday and got to know all their parents for many years to come.

He was an extrovert, and that’s all I knew about him until the day my son and I encountered him in Wal-Mart one weekend. He was all banged up, face cut, bruised, and limping, but he was exuberant. You see, the day before, he and his dad had been involved in an ultra-light aircraft crash, and they’d both made it through with just cuts and bruises. The very thought terrified me, but as he described what happened, the only word I can think of to describe his reaction to the experience was exuberance. His eyes positively glowed as he told me about it, and I was a mom he barely knew.

Like many young men, the middle school years were difficult. He was short for his age but he made up for it with a tendency to be aggressive. He was out-spoken, and at times a bit of an ass. I once personally had a run in with him for bullying a student who had social difficulties with underlying medical causes. He bullied this student in my presence and he and I had some face to face time over it. That may shock you but what is even more shocking is that he showed me respect, he backed down, and he apologized. He went through a phase where every word out of his mouth seemed to get him into trouble. But through it all, he was still the same exuberant, extroverted kid.

I’m ashamed now to say that at the end of his freshman year, when I found out he wouldn’t be returning to our school, having chosen to go to the local public high school, I was glad. I thought him to be prideful, disruptive, and at times hurtful to those around him. He discovered in our local high school what many students and parents discover when they seek greener pastures, and he petitioned to come back the following year, for eleventh grade. At that time, I wasn’t happy but I hoped the experience had humbled him.

Instead, he humbled me. Because the young man returning to our school was the same energetic, extroverted leader I knew he would be…only now he was on fire. I was worried at first until I shared a few conversations with him and began to realize he’d changed. I was thankful for the change because by this point my son was a student at this school…and he idolized this young man. All the little kids did, because he made time for every one of them. If they approached him in the hallway, he always got down on their level and give them high fives and encouraged them. Each summer, he helped with football camp and basketball camp, and my son’s admiration for him only grew.

His senior year, I felt blessed to have seen the transformation this young man experienced. He’d managed to grow beyond the uncomfortable, awkward, stinky, hormonally-out-of-control kid I’d always known into a young man with true potential.

I will never forget the morning I pulled up on a Friday morning with the kids in tow, probably running late as usual. He parked behind me with his radio blasting, cut the ignition, got out and sang, at the top of his lungs, “That how country boys roll!” I’m a Billy Currington fan, and he and I shared a laugh over that. The kids were awed.

He was a musician, and an athlete, and a drama student, and he excelled at all three. He and his buddies took a very harsh beating at the state football championships when they were freshman against a team of corn-fed boys who were built like men. I mean they didn’t just beat them, they HURT them.

His best friend told him, “When we’re seniors we’re going to beat the $#!& out of those &*$%@#-&*)*@#$!!”

And you know what?

They did.

Their senior year, they beat that same team for the state championship, transforming our football program for years to come, just because of the belief he and his friends instilled.

During this time, I began writing, pursuing my own fledgling dreams. I was yet unpublished, and I was developing the story for what would eventually become Rosemary’s Double Delight. I was taking a risk with this story because the beginning includes a series of flashbacks from when my characters are young: kindergarten age, middle school age, and high school and college age. My characters were difficult. They didn’t always get along and they hit lots of bumps in the road. As you can probably guess, one character in particular resonated with me, because he reminded me of this young man I knew. He wasn’t perfect but he had a good heart. And that guy somehow wormed his way into my character’s heart. He was so much fun to write.

I watched this guy grow and mature. My career took off, and like with many other friends who have inspired characters, I could never tell him he’d inspired me. It just wasn’t going to happen but I was still grateful to him. He could sing his heart out. He could act the fool on stage with such genius. And he carried the football with honor, heart, and courage.

He graduated from our school and went on to college with a full scholarship with plans to join the military. I hated his new haircut but I was so proud of him. He came back for our home football games and he would smile and wave at everyone. He would talk to everyone. And the kids…oh, the kids adored him, because he remembered them, including my son, who he’d been throwing a football to since he was four years old.

The funny thing about guys like him is that they approach the world head-on with guts and determination, sometimes forgetting they aren’t bullet-proof. Two weeks ago, he got on his motorcycle, without his helmet, and never made it to his destination. A driver failed to yield, and after impact, he flew fifty feet through the air and landed on his head. An emergency worker just happened to be at the scene of the accident and she was there comforting him as his cognitive abilities faded.

The outpouring, the uproar, and the force that is Facebook lit up with the pleas and prayers for this young man. I heard about this secondhand, as I am unable to have a personal Facebook page. But what I heard didn’t surprise me a bit.

At his funeral, which happened in a standing room only crowd, and took two and a half hours because of the stories people shared from his life, I learned something amazing. Because he had signed up to be a tissue and organ donor, with his vital organs, he has already saved the lives of FIVE people. He gave sight to two individuals. His skin, tissues, veins and blood will help between 50-100 people. The donation coordinator was able to go from the operating table where his heart was harvested, to the OR where it was implanted into another person, thus completing the circle of life for an organ donor. One of his vital organs went to his own godfather.

Some people might call it a fluke, the way the accident happened, the fact that he was brain-dead but otherwise uninjured, but I don’t think it was. His funeral was attended by hundreds from the school he grew up attending, from his church, and from his college. His pallbearers were all classmates from high school and fellow athletes. One look at them and it was painfully obvious their hearts were in shreds. His best friend, a sweet, introverted guy, came out of his shell to deliver one of the eulogies to honor him. My heart broke as his mom followed along behind his casket, crying her eyes out.

That day was a hard day. My son sat beside me at the service and all I could think was, don’t smother him with requested promises to wear his helmet if he ever gets a motorcycle, don’t remind him constantly to keep his head up when he’s playing football, and don’t beg him not to text and drive. I had to smile, because I know I’m going to do all those things anyway because I just can’t help myself. He and I went to Wal-Mart today, because he got his first quarter report card and he had all A’s. I promised him a reward for all A’s and he got Pokemon cards. And yeah, he’s a sixth grader, and it makes me wonder who he’s inspiring with his exuberance and extroversion.

Basketball seasons starts soon for our middle-schoolers. On the first game day, my heart will burst with happiness when I see him step aside with a team mate to quietly pray before the game. I’ll thank God, because I know that my son learned by the example of not only his parents, but also from his hero, who stopped to pray before every game. And I’ll think of this guy I knew, who was going to grow up and do great things.

I can’t type his real name here, but you know him as Evan Garner, of Rosemary’s Double Delight, Patterson Elder of Brokenhearted Beauty, and Noah Cassidy…of some book yet to be written in Divine, Texas.

*************ONE VERY IMPORTANT NOTE 😀 This mom feels compelled to share with all of you that my middle school son scored his very first TOUCHDOWN tonight! 😀 High Fives and Hugs to Brattley Rainier!!!***********

If you’ve read Brokenhearted Beauty already, thanks for taking that journey with me. If you haven’t yet, you can find it here. Click on the link to the right and you will find a blurb and preview link for the excerpts.

Today is September 11th. I will never forget.

Everyone have a fantastic day. I think I’m going to go sit in the sun…and just be grateful.

Author: heather.rainier

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