A Day To Be Remembered...Again

I have lived in the Boston area for the last twenty-nine years. My husband is from Boston and it’s our home. What a beautiful day Monday was. After an awfully cold and bitter winter, it was great to enjoy a day of sunshine, baseball and the Boston Marathon. Anyone that lives in this area understands the magnitude of the marathon, even if you have never run a race in your life.

My hubbie was off for the day. It was a holiday in Boston- Patriot’s Day. We watched the Red Sox win with a walk-off double against Tampa Bay. I called my mom. Right after I talked with her, she called right back and wanted to know if my kids were okay. Okay? I hadn’t a clue what she was talking about. I turned on the television. The next moment, the whole of the terror reigned down on me. Immediately, my husband was on the phone. Thank goodness everyone in my family was accounted for and was safe. Not all families were so lucky. In a blink of an eye, life changed once again.

For me the memory of September 11^th was vividly relived. My husband lost friends on a one of the flights from Boston. I remember every detail of that day as I’m sure I will Monday. Besides my writing, I work at a major hospital in Boston that received victims of the bombing. When I got to work that night, I had to walk through a barrage of police offices. Quite surreal. It puts life in perspective.  

EMBRACE OF THE ENEMY

Embrace of the Enemy—the second book in my series, Winds of Betrayal, is free today and tomorrow. Amazon offers these free days as a promotion to help with your sales. It’s a great way for readers to get a taste of your writing.

 Honestly, I feel strange running a promotion right after the bombing at the Boston Marathon. When you set your date for the promotion, you also set dates to promote your book. So the promotion is on going. Sometimes you make money from your promotion; other times you don’t. But I made a decision. Not only will I donate any money I make from Embrace of the Enemy but also the other books of the series. Winds of Betrayal is set during the American Revolution. It was inspired by American Patriots. So it’s appropriate.

All sale proceeds from the Winds of Betrayal Series from April 16, 2013- April 21, 2013 will be donated to the American Red Cross to benefit the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing. This will include all three books of the series—The Cry For Freedom, Embrace of the Enemy, and Kiss of Deceit.

If the series doesn’t interest you, I encourage you to donate to the American Red Cross. ARC has always been there for us.

My Red Cross moment

In 1991, the Spousal Unit and I decided to move from Pittsburgh to Minneapolis. That move is a saga unto itself, complete with lost cats, motels from hell, getting loss on the Dan Ryan in Chicago at rush hour, and a blown tire on the U-Haul. And that was all just the first 3 days of moving.

Anyway, we managed to get him moved in early June (with the cats), into a one bedroom apartment at a large complex. We were going to stay there until we could house hunt and find a new home. I then returned to Pittsburgh to wrap up the sale of the house and finish up some work. The moving van came on July 3 and took our Stuff, and I was left for a week sleeping on an air bed with no other furniture except a clip-on lamp and a tiny portable TV.

A week later, I arrived in Mpls to begin the new life. We settled into our cozy little apartment with three cats. Yes, cozy. The building we were in had 9 units, 6 that faced the garages, 6 that faced front. We faced the garage where our belongings were stored. Rather than pay a storage unit fee, we just stuffed everything into a garage. This is a pertinent fact for what happens later.

A week after I got in town, DH and I were out roller skating, came home about 7 PM and found fire trucks surrounding our apartment building. The top 3rd floor unit above ours was blazing away. We were on the ground floor. We could see our cats, pressed against the patio door, their eyes as big as saucers. Alarms were screaming, water was pouring into the building, and flames were shooting out. And my cats were inside.

I begged to go in and get them. Nope. No one allowed in. I pleaded. "They're right there. I can get them!" Nope. I have never felt so helpless, so angry, so worried.

After an hour or so, the blaze was under control. Another hour and the firemen told us we had 10 minutes to get into our apartments, grab what we wanted, then we had to leave. We raced inside. Water was about 3" deep and still gushing out of light sockets. Our cats literally ran to meet us, leapt into our arms, and clung to us. We stuffed them into cages, grabbed a litter box and cat food, tossed some clothes in a bag, grabbed our Important Papers, and got outside.

To what? We had 3 cats, and a car. It was now 10 at night and we had nowhere to stay. We'd been in town about 4 weeks. Didn't know anyone well enough to ask them to take in us and our pets.

That's when the Red Cross came through. We were then living in a far western suburb, mostly undeveloped (this was before Eden Prairie became 'civilized'). There was one motel, and they did not take pets. Well, the RC bullied the proprietor into taking us in. He had signed a deal with the RC to help out, and by God, he was going to help out. They gave us emergency supplies (toothbrush, shampoo, etc.) and one volunteer put us in touch with a vet, who made a motel-call to check the cats FOR FREE. God love him.

The next day we had to figure out where to live. We had 3 days paid in the motel and after that, we would be kicked out. To make a long story short, we ended up renting another unit in the apartment complex which was far, far more expensive because we had things in storage there and thus, we couldn't leave -- we had to stay at the complex or move our stuff.

So I supervised a move to another unit (DH had just started a new job and couldn't help). We ended up staying there 2 months, then bought a house right before the Halloween Blizzard when we got 3' of snow in 24 hours. We stayed there 8 months, then moved again. So I moved 4 times that year. And that's the move where my husband was in England, so I had to ...

Well, that's a story for another time. Suffice it to say, I support the Red Cross to this day because they came through for us, as they do for so many people.