Fearful Women by Rolynn Anderson

Recently I read an article, “It’s Not Cute to be Scared,” in the February 21, 2016 Sunday edition of the New York Times.  Writer Caroline Paul, a firefighter, had a beef: Girls are primed to be afraid; boys are prodded to face their fears.  End result: girls turn into women who exhibit ‘deference and timid decision making,’ when they face challenging situations.  Paul cites studies where boys are encouraged to take risks, while girls are warned away from difficult physical tasks.

This explains how many women reacted to my 25 years as co-captain on two big boats my husband and I owned.  Men were jealous of the experience; women usually cringed.  They asked me: “Aren’t you scared?”  They never asked my husband the same question.

At no time in our quarter of a century cruising the Inside Passage (sometimes as far as from Washington’s north coast all the way to Alaska anbd back), were we ever reckless.  Did bad seas, wind, current, debris, whales, and boat malfunctions challenge us?  You bet.  Was I frightened at times when we encountered unforeseen challenges?  Of course.  But why would some women ask me if boating scared me when they never asked the same question of my husband?

Listen.  I grew up side by side with the feminist movement.  Gloria Steinem is older than I am, but I consider her an icon, a mover and shaker in the women’s movement.  My parents, however, weren’t privy to Steinem’s exhortation for parents to treat boys and girls the same way.  Luckily, I grew up in a period when parents left us alone to experience life; my upbringing was probably more 'free range' than I see child-raising today. 

In this helicopter parent age, are girls and boys challenged equally?  When you read  Gever Tulley's “50 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Children Do,” are you translating inclusion of all genders in the equation?

This makes me want to ask: Were you, as a female, told by parents, teachers and friends, to be careful all the time?  Were your brothers/male friends cautioned in the same way?  Did you grow up scared?  Were you ever given the idea that being afraid was 'cute'?  I'd love to hear about your experience.

All this being said about 'nurturing fear into boys vs girls,' some children are actually born as high anxious beings.  This concept comes into play in FEAR LAND.  

Here’s the blurb and the buy sites. 

Tally Rosella, an acclaimed psychiatrist who helps children fraught with anxiety, avoids adults because their brains rant at her.  But the chance to start a second child study and connect her findings to PTSD, sets her squarely among devious colleagues at a big California university.

Army Major Cole Messer, Tally’s new neighbor, won’t admit that trauma from combat tours in Afghanistan, destroyed his marriage and hampered his ability to lead.  As a teacher of college ROTC and single parent, he’s focused on enrolling his highly anxious son in Tally’s study and getting back to active duty.

Someone is dead set against Tally’s presence at the university, and blowback from her battles with co-workers put Cole and his son in jeopardy.  Watch what happens when people struggling with shades of anxiety collide with corrupt, revengeful foes.

Amazon: http://amzn.com/0985814861
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/587797  

  

Suspense Stories Everywhere! by Rolynn Anderson

The scenery on the north coast of Kauai is too glorious for words, a range of spiked green mountains falling to bright blue seas edged by miles of warm sandy beaches.  Dazzling beauty.  Makes me want to buy a house overlooking Hanalei Bay, taking in the Bali Hai vista, forever.

So when I saw an OPEN HOUSE sign beckoning me to check out such a house, I did.  Drove my car right up that driveway. Never mind the house's five million dollar price tag.  Though it's much more fun to view this spectacular place in person, here's the house on a quirky YouTube, in two parts.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5lrwqK_zRU  Wendy's Amazing House

But the house is only one part of my blog topic.  More interesting (since we can't buy the house), is the fact that Wendy, the owner, is the widow of a man who was 'lost' in a desert in California.  Her husband was found much later, dead, in a car, in the Los Angeles river, with his hands chopped off. AND HE WAS A WRITER! The story is being told to us by Wendy's present boyfriend, the real estate agent who is helping her sell the five million dollar house.  Can you believe it?

Even while I drove away from the house and the gobsmacking vista, my novelist brain was awhirl!  Who was this handless man and is there some relationship to who he was and how Wendy became so wealthy? Plots begin forming in my mind.  How about in yours?  The funny thing...I was less interested in the real story than I was in developing scenes and characters that went in directions I controlled.  Is that something peculiar to writers, I wonder?

Once again, with this chance encounter, I learned how truth is stranger than fiction...and how my brain whirls when delicious suspense (and fabulous views) brighten my life.  Question is: based on your experience, do writers experience life in different ways than non-writers (like this need to take real plots in different directions)?

Example for me:  I watched a TV show about savants, including an actor.  These were people who have weird ways of remembering events.  Did I want to learn more about her?  No.  I wanted to develop my own 'savant,' entangled in a suspense plot.  Result:  Lie Catchers, set in Petersburg, Alaska, a heroine with a strange 'filing system.'

Blurb:

Two unsolved murders will tear apart an Alaska fishing town unless a writer and a government agent reveal their secret obsessions.

Treasury agent Parker Browne is working undercover in Petersburg, Alaska to investigate a money scam and a murder. His prime suspect, Liv Hanson, is a freelance writer struggling to save her family’s business. Free spirited, full of life, and with a talent for catching liars, she fascinates Parker.

Trying to prove she’s a legitimate writer who cares about Petersburg’s issues, Liv pens a series of newspaper articles about an old, unsolved murder. When her cold case ties in with Parker’s investigation, bullets start to fly.

Parker understands money trails, and Liv knows the town residents. But he gave up on love two years ago, and she trusts no one, especially with her carefully guarded secret. If they mesh their skills to find the killers, will they survive the fallout?

FALLING OVERBOARD-I'M GOOD AT IT! by Rolynn Anderson

We’re still Falling at Roses of Prose.  For November the topics are: Fall into Winter, Fall Overboard, Fall from Grace, Fall into Wrong Hands

Falling Overboard...I'm an expert.  I’ve been dunked twice in my long boating career, and I’m alive to talk about those experiences.  Embarrassing?  Oh yes!

Many of you know that my husband and I have just sold our boat after thirty years of cruising.  I never fell off INTREPID, the 42 foot trawler we just sold, and if you take a look at her, you can see she’s built to keep us aboard and safe. 

But our first boat, a 34 foot twin gas engine boat, came without railings, and even worse, it had cleats for tying lines screwed onto the surface around the boat…perfect for tripping up a person.  Yup, that’s what happened to me.  Worse, the accident occurred in the locks leading from Lake Washington to Puget Sound.  I was in such a hurry to grab the line from the lockmaster, looking up instead of at my footing, that I lost my balance and fell into the water.  I didn’t have a way to get back on the boat, so I had to climb the ladder to the top of the locks, where hundreds of tourists watch the action in the locks.  On this day, they observed me emerge off the top of the ladder, a drenched, red-faced woman.  I raised my hands and said, "No pictures, please!"

Two weeks later when we returned from our vacation, the lockmasters remembered our boat and hollered at me not to take a swim in the locks again.  How embarrassing!

The second time I fell overboard was off a rented barge in the Burgundy region of France.  We chartered and captained this barge with another couple, enjoying two weeks going up the man-made canal.  Gorgeous countryside, relaxing pace-a wonderful experience-until I fell off the boat on a rainy day in a lock.  You see, these canals have numerous locks we had to traverse every day, sometimes with a lockmaster to help, but sometimes on our own.  Once again, I was busy handling lines to a lockmaster when I slipped on the wet surface of the boat, lost my balance, and fell into the water.  The trouble was, I hadn’t figured out how to get back on the boat from the water, and there were no ladders up the lock wall.  Awkward, embarrassing and frustrating, for sure.

Truth is, falling overboard in the locks is dangerous because both water and boats are moving as the water sluices in or out.  In both cases, I was lucky to get out of trouble without injury.  And here’s the positive spin on falling overboard: I’ve done it twice and I survived.  In both cases I didn't panic and I found ways to get to safety.  But that’s it.  I passed the ‘falling in the locks’ test.  No more!

Sidenote: Check out LIE CATCHERS, my latest novel, set in Petersburg.  Here are the Amazon and Wild Rose Press buy sites:

http://amzn.com/B00HJDS1LG

http://www.wildrosepublishing.com/maincatalog_v151/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=235_236&products_id=5607

THE JOY OF COGNITIVE DISSONANCE by Rolynn Anderson

This month’s choices; Fall in Love, Fall to Pieces, Fall into Place, Fall by the Wayside

I’ll pick FALL INTO PLACE, which I'll call 'cognitive dissonance,' our human approach for making decisions and feeling comfortable with them.

From Wikipedia:

Leon Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance focuses on how humans strive for internal consistency. When inconsistency (dissonance) is experienced, individuals largely become psychologically distressed. His basic hypotheses are listed below:

 1. "The existence of dissonance, being psychologically uncomfortable, will motivate the person to try to reduce the dissonance and achieve consonance"

2. "When dissonance is present, in addition to trying to reduce it, the person will actively avoid situations and information which would likely increase the dissonance"

Welcome to my newest cognitive dissonance.  After 30 years of boating, we’ve decided to sell our beloved INTREPID (see her here: http://intrepid-for-sale.blogspot.com/) and move on to other adventures.  We’ve spent four summer months on our boat for at least 20 of those years; now it’s time to try other modes of travel to brand new and exciting places.

         You hear the cognitive dissonance at play, already, don’t you?  Here are some more of our new ways of thinking which make us feel better about selling our boat:

         1.  We only have to keep up one house, not two.

         2.  We’re physically fit for travel now…we shouldn’t wait.

         3.  We’ll increase our savings by selling the boat

         4.  We’ll use the money spent on maintaining the boat for travel

         5.  We’ve seen about all we can see of the Inside Passage

         6.  We’ll deepen our friendships in CA, by having only one residence

         (I could go on with 20 more...see how easy this is?)

         I don’t call this fickle thinking or merely a process of rationalizing.  This is the human, humane, comfortable way of making decisions feel good.  How about you?  What’s your latest trip down the road of cognitive dissonance?

Intrepid Journeys  -  http://steveandrolynn.blogspot.com/

http://rolynnanderson.com/