Author: Christina

Christina Metcalf is the author of three books. Each one gets weirder and weirder. She writes women's fiction, romance, and fantasy/,modern mythology. She's currently writing a memoir on liver donation and will soon be releasing a collection of short stories.

my fiction

5 Things You Never Knew About Someday, Never, Always

Post author By Christina
Post date July 26, 2022
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If ever there was an act of vanity, here it is.

I am fairly certain most of you reading this don’t care, let alone know any of these. Not even my husband, who no matter what he says, hasn’t read this book even though his face is on the cover. My mother has also not read this book because she is still trying to figure out her password on her Kindle.

Aren’t we all?

Still, it’s all in good fun that you are humoring me by reading this far. Thank you.

I wrote this book 10 years ago when I worked in corporate America and had twin five-year-olds. Needless to say, I couldn’t even go to the bathroom by myself (meaning alone, not because I had a physical infirmity). The only time I had to myself was my lunch hour. I went out to my car every day and wrote. It took me nine months.
My husband is on the cover. It wasn’t planned. We were on “date night” and we happened upon a store with a display of beautiful black crystals in the shape of wings. He sat down in front of them, wearing dark sunglasses, and a black fedora and Reality came to life. Plus, every TikTok he’s in gets more views than mine so here’s hoping that kind of internet fame translates to selling more books.
I didn’t, and still don’t, believe this book has a market but it was fun to write. Is it modern mythology, fantasy…you got me? But if you know, I’d appreciate you telling me.
All my books narrate themselves. I hear a distinct voice and try to write as fast as possible. Because of this, so far, they’ve all been in first person. I hate writing in first person but my main characters don’t seem to care. They are kind of egotistical like that.
The title came from the idea that in any of our relationships we may think “someday,” “never,” or “always” about a person we are with. Sometimes it’s even the same person we have those feelings about.

When it comes to love, you just never know where the road will lead and who will be traveling with you. And that’s kinda the fun.

Tags books, Christina Metcalf author, someday never always

my fiction

When Was the Last Time You Watched the Sun Set?

Post author By Christina
Post date February 21, 2022
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Serious question on this President’s Day…when was the last time you watched the sun set?

I’m not talking about seeing a sunset from your car as you’re driving to a baseball game (oh wait, that’s me). I mean you go somewhere–even if that somewhere is sitting on your back deck or at your window–and you watch the day end.

When did you do that with the sole purpose to watch that glorious orb sink below the horizon?

Last night, my son went on his first date to a beach to watch the sunset. When I picked him up and asked him how it was he said he had never watched the sun set before. I considered all the times we had been on the baseball field or a road trip and the sun put on a spectacular show across the sky. He admitted he had witnessed the beauty left behind but he never watched that moment that exists between the sun being visible and the sun sinking below the horizon.

Granted, he is 14 and slowing down to enjoy a moment of natural beauty that happens all the time isn’t high on his priority list, he appreciated the moment in a way that gave me a glimpse into the man he’s on his way to become.

As we drove home in silence (assuming you don’t count his muted chuckles over TikTok videos as sound), I wondered how many people seek out a sunset and how many we miss because there’s simply “no time.” The sun sets every day (weather allowing visibility) but how often are we able to watch it? How often do we choose to?

Ehhh, there’s always tomorrow, right?

Right?

Is There a Tomorrow?

Imagine knowing that today would be your last opportunity to watch a sunset.

Who would you ask to join you?

Would you watch by yourself, thinking about everything you’ve seen over the course of your life? All the beauty, all the pain, all the mystery. Or would you make a big party of it?

Would you watch from home or from some tropical destination? Maybe you would revel in the majesty of the pinks and purples or would you ugly cry because it would be your last time to enjoy those colors?

Would you want to know it was your last or would you prefer not to know?

Am I being morbid? Not intentionally. These are ideas I’m working on for my next novel tentatively titled “Pardon the Interruption.” It’s about lasts and firsts and how life would change if you had full knowledge of which were which.

If you’d like to know more about it and when it will be out, sign up for my newsletter.

Tags christina metcalf, sunset, writing

writer's life

Shiny Squirrel and Other Distractions

Post author By Christina
Post date February 14, 2022
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Six weeks ago, my husband and I were in New Orleans, setting of The Confederacy of Dunces (a book you really should read) and home to Anne Rice. There, we ate pizza slices the size of our heads and visited a psychic, not at the same time. Pizza first.

I am a believer that some people know things that others don’t but this gentleman knew only stereotypes. He warned me about gossiping at work. I’m a self-employed writer. Who am I gossiping with? My dog? Gossip is only good when someone joins you and I assure you my dog is not a very vocal audience. Somewhat disappointing, if you just know. She is like my teenaged kids. She mainly just wants to go out.

Anyhoo, the psychic spent 15 minutes giving us relationship tropes and stereotypes.

Nothing hit home.

Until he said this…

You can’t do it all. Pick one thing and get good at it.

Now he said it in context to us as a couple, and that doesn’t fit, but it sure fits me as an author.

I’m all over the place.

Maybe that’s the creative side of me.

I’m currently working on 3 novels, 1 memoir, launching a TikTok whatever they’re called (channel?), creating a podcast, blogging, and a hundred other things, the least of which is the first one in the list.

To be a great writer, you have to write.

But to be a writer who gets to eat, you have to market yourself and your projects.

So I’m going to take the not-so-psychic guy’s advice in 2022 and dial it back, creating consistent habits of things I know I can accomplish like:

working on one compilation of short love stories for people who hate love stories.
getting out there on TikTok (obvious self promotion: @Christina.metcalf).
recording and launching a podcast on quick ideas to help the creative process.

Notice the pattern there?

Short.

Everything is going to be bite size. Because while I hate tapas (never large enough), I love small, quick projects.

Want to know when my podcast hits the airwaves…or internet…errr…waves….or any other new info, then subscribe below:

Follow the adventures of the shiny squirrel:

writing

Being a Writer Is Hard

Writing is hard. Not terminal illness or losing a best friend hard. Okay, it’s not really hard at all.

But ideas are.

Ideas and the time in seat that it requires to hammer out nouns and verbs that agree. Not to mention sticking in a few things to make English teachers go “hmmm.”

That’s hard.

I’m one of the fortunate word slingers. I don’t get writer’s block. There’s a list of 20+ future novels in my notes app on my phone, not to mention all the scrap papers and cocktail napkins that I’ve written my endearing brilliance on. Half of which I can’t read. My handwriting is that bad, despite years in Catholic school with nuns helping me practice penmanship. I must’ve ignored them in much the same way I did my elementary school teachers when they tried to teach me the metric system. I told them it would never take hold in the US. Yes, I was a curmudgeon even then.

But if your head doesn’t resemble my book idea circus, I have a tip for you.

Go someplace that requires your attention on something outside of your own brain like a business meeting, a parent/teacher conference, or your child’s recounting of their latest video game feat.

As they drone on and on, thoughts will begin to percolate. Ideas will vie for your attention.

Listen.

Write that %#$* down.

If they ask, tell them you are taking notes on the conversation so you can refer to it later. Throw in a self-deprecating joke about your memory. Most people enjoy that kind of attention.

If you want to be more creative, have your pick of book or story ideas, and put an end to writer’s block with the same vigor that Jon Snow slayed Daenrys, you’re going to love my new project, Creative Fugue.

Stay tuned for more details. Or don’t. Whatever.

On second thought, you should. You really should.

Let’s stay in touch.

Tags becoming a writer, creativity, writing

writer's life

I’m Giving Up on Meditation. Convince Me Otherwise.

Post author By Christina
Post date June 3, 2020
1 Comment on I’m Giving Up on Meditation. Convince Me Otherwise.

I like quiet.

That’s no secret.

That’s why I had twin boys.

I also like rainy days.

That’s why I moved to the Sunshine State.

While my decisions don’t always make sense, the older I get, the more I understand about myself.

And if there’s one thing I know, I can’t meditate. It’s not that I can’t quiet my mind. I’m actually very good at thinking about absolutely nothing.

I don’t get anything out of meditation other than maybe some well-needed sleep.

It doesn’t calm me or inspire me. It doesn’t make me feel healthier or more in touch with the secrets of the sphere.

You see, in order to effectively meditate I think you need to transcend the sarcasm level of the brain and I am just not able to move past that.

But I will offer one piece of advice for those of us who are meditation challenged…

maybe you’re not meant to enter into a deeper level of consciousness by someone talking to you or some bowl from a far-off land gonging. Maybe you need something different.

I’ve discovered my ideal morning meditation…I read.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CA-T7lkp1Rw/

My perfect morning consists of a beverage and a comfy spot on my balcony on a day when the humidity in the air is closer to 70% than 100. I find that as I read my pages, I lapse into a calm that is good for my spirit and so much better than inhaling and exhaling to someone else counting. I also have amazing thoughts and inspiration as I “meditate” to the written word.

Anyway, that’s what works for me.

Have you perfected meditation or are you like me and just don’t get how people stay awake during it?

Tags christina metcalf, reading, West of You, writing, writing career

writer's life

Train Wrecks and Letting Go

Post author By Christina
Post date May 30, 2020
No Comments on Train Wrecks and Letting Go

Writers are observers.

I tend to be less quick to react in situations because I find myself wanting to watch how it will turn out without getting involved, something I knew would keep me from ever becoming a first responder.

Writers constantly narrate our days in our head as things are happening.

That’s what I consider the difference between a writer and a wannabe. It’s in your blood or it’s not. That’s not to say you’re born with the skills to be a writer. None of us are. We need to learn the language first.

But you are born with a natural capability and inclination to observe and you hear the words in your head as you go about your day. (That being different from hearing voices, of course.) And you care about word choice and you critique TV shows for plot lines and unrealistic dialogue. Language is an obsession for most writers.

And we have other weird quirks.

I read everything allowed as if the words are beats. I break grammar rules so that it “sounds” right using unnecessary fillers like “just” and “some” if I need a longer sentence and pattern. I use commas, not where they are appropriate or dictated by Chicago Manual of Style or Oxford, but where I want the reader to slow down and taste the sentence.

Writers are also ruined.

They have significant impressions on their psyche that they dwell on. Some are small things they like to incorporate into their writing often, like a setting or a particular kind of animal. While other impressions are longer lasting like a question they are trying to answer. For me, I often turn to trains, mechanical failings of things thought to be indestructible, and unrequited love.

And when I write that authors are ruined, that doesn’t mean we all grew up in abject poverty and abuse. It means that somewhere along the way something bothered us enough that we return to it over and over.

In West of You, I told a story of someone who died in a train “accident.” This was plucked straight out of a story I could not process as a child. A well-known painter drove into a railroad crossing and was killed with his name-sake/grandchild in my hometown. I knew the spot well and when I was told about it as a ten-year-old I could not understand how an accident like that could happen with such good visibility to an oncoming train. He had to have seen it. Did he simply freeze or was there a darker intention?

I still think about it nearly 40 years later.

But I suppose it’s not just writers who get caught up on things we can’t let go. All of us do. We repeat the same stories to our friends. And we do this because these stories had such a profound impact on us that we can’t shake the truth behind them.

For some people, these impressions ruin their lives by leading to a series of bad decisions. For others, they become fuel that fires their worldview. For writers, it hopefully becomes our bread and butter and possibly fuel for some bad decisions along the way and more stories.

What are the themes or objects you keep coming back to in your life? Knowing what they are can help you clear out some of the unnecessary clutter in your mind or better yet…

help you dive deeper into the abyss.

writing

The Writing Career Path

When I was 7, I wanted to be two things in life: a writer and a mom.

I am one of the fortunate ones who has had her dreams come true even if I plodded through a very thick, overgrown path to get there.

The author at six, on the right

I’m not going to talk about my path to motherhood. That’s a different type of genre, after all.

But I will tell you how I became a writer.

First, I wanted to. That’s the important part. You have to want to be a writer because you certainly don’t chose this life for the monetary reward, the glamor, the people you’ll meet along the way, or the extravagant business trips.

Writing is a solitary life full of creative problem solving like how you’re going to pay your next bill. Many of us take jobs on the side. Even the famous among us. Well, not Stephen King or JK Rowling. But look at a list of traditionally published authors and you’ll see a lot of teachers, professors, and other jobs cluttering up their resumes. Very few of us are full-time fiction writers. I’m a marketing writer, for instance. I write website copy and articles when I’m not making up tales.

But I digress.

I didn’t go into this blindly. I knew the difficulty behind becoming a writer in a world where people no longer read anything lengthier than a tweet.

Oh. You’re still here? You’re one of the 1%!

When my godmother asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I announced my intentions, she said…

and I remember this so clearly. I can’t tell you why I got up and just walked into this room but I can clearly remember she said…

“You sure do have your head in the clouds.”

Another one of my parents’ friends suggested I follow in my parents’ footsteps and go into medicine but frankly, I’ve never been that caring and selfless of a person.

Later, my father told me to find a job I could live off of. Well, that knocked out writer.

So I tried to divert my energies into other ways writers could make money.

I worked writing:

ceremonial documents for the governor
disaster recovery plans
fashion descriptions for a home shopping channel
marketing collateral for a tech firm

These jobs all paid the bills, but they didn’t feed my soul and that’s a luxury most of us Americans long for. I could never shake the desire to do my own thing.

At one point I worked for a publishing company that published college textbooks. Every year before school started, you would swear you could smell brimstone in the office. Dante knows what I’m talking about. It became hellish.

And there was one particular salesperson who took his dissatisfaction with life out on me. Now, I’m not a perfectionist but I take pride in my work and this particular ripping got to me.

I swore at that moment that I wasn’t going to listen to one more angry anyone. I quit my job about two weeks later.

I’d like to tell you I’ve been writing successfully ever since but it took another 10 years and another shove from the universe masked in “the department is going in a different direction” in the tech company I was working for to get me doing my own thing.

So this whole convoluted blog post was written to tell you this:

sometimes your crappiest experiences are laying the groundwork for you becoming the person you want to be.

Tags becoming a writer, career, christina metcalf, West of You, writing, writing career

writer's life

Dude, Kittle

Kittle on the left in happier times

My best friend took her own life on March 21, 2017. I remember because the date was 3,2,1, which I now refer to as “blast-off day.”

The book West of You is not for her.

It’s for those of us left behind.

Kittle never reached 45. She chose to check out prematurely, leaving no note, and no guidance as to how I was supposed to get through all the ridiculous changes of middle age.

West of You is not her story.

But it is a story of loss and the incredible hole left by a loved one who takes their own life. No other death leaves the same kind of raw, gnawing guilt for the survivors.

Suicide doesn’t end pain; it simply transfers it.