Bethany Hagen's Blog

So most of you know that I spent the last two weeks drinking Guinness and taking pictures of castles and cathedrals so I could make my friends jealous.  But if you didn’t know, then here is a post to immerse you in all the damp splendor that is the UK and Ireland.

We arrived in London and promptly fell asleep, but after that we went to dinner on the South Bank and then took a river cruise of the Thames.

That’s the Tower Bridge in the background.

The next day we started our bus tour.  I really enjoyed it, actually.  The tour company organizes the itinerary, the hotels. the ferry rides and more than half the meals, while also handling tickets for all the attractions.  There’s still periods of leisure throughout the day, so my husband and I were able to strike out on our own and find some of our own restaurants and museums.  Plus, we had an awesome tour guide, Jonathan, who was a bald Englishmen who enjoyed drinking and knew impossible amounts of history.  The only downside was the fact that I COULD NOT stay awake on the bus to save my life.  But narcolepsy aside, it was a pretty good way to see so much in so short a time.

We saw Stonehenge:

Stonehenge, where the demons dwell.

We saw cathedrals:

Salisbury Cathedral

Bath Abbey

Christchurch Cathedral

Jedburgh Abbey

Yorkminster Cathedral. This one was probably my favorite–eventually I just had to stop walking and sit and absorb.

And of course, castles.

Cardiff Castle

Kilkenny

York

Hogwarts

And booze!  Lots of booze!  Ale, Guinness, Scotch, yum.

Basically, aside from missing my kids like crazy, I had an amazing time.  I think the best part was being away from library, away from the house, away from all those every day obligations that stunt and stutter creativity, and just allow myself to plunge entirely into my imagination.  It had ample food, with all the haunted pubs and ruins and green rolling hills.  I felt refreshed and inspired. I felt that magic of atmosphere that I hadn’t felt in so long and I felt connected to centuries of people who had felt the same way in the same place.

I know the hard truth of being a working artist/creative type is that you have to let the work flow, even when it’s constantly interrupted by dishes and day jobs and oil change appointments.  But it was nice to take a step away from all that, and to enter a foggy bubble where there was nothing but my husband, my brain and green grass studded with ancient stones.

Well, and booze.

Today at the library, the very first question of my roving shift came from a young woman.  “Can I use your phone?” she asked.  I did my usual Wary Phone Questioning.  “Is it for a ride?  Or do you have an emergency?” I asked.

“I’m sort of homeless and someone’s been mean to me, putting his hands on me to hurt me,” she said.  “And I feel like it’s an emergency.”

And so I embarked on a two hour odyssey of our city’s limited social resources.  We called over fifteen numbers–each place telling us they were full, no they couldn’t help, but here’s another number–and so on and so forth until we found ourselves given numbers we had already called.  An ouroboros of phone numbers, tired volunteers and no vacancy signs.  Ultimately, I was no help.  I called every number for every temporary housing/homeless shelter/church I could find.  And the only one that could take her was too far away for her to reach on foot (since she had no bus fare.)  I gave her all the numbers I could, numbers for employment networks and free cell phones and free counseling.  I felt like I was made of numbers, as if the only thing I could ever give anyone was numbers and names and addresses and scraps of paper–all flung fluttering into this abyss that could never be filled, not by paper, not by numbers, not by a handful of free meals and a job at Taco Bell and a completed application for Section 8 housing.  I just wanted to lay my head against the laptop and scream.  If I–with my upbringing filled with preventive health care and parents who sacrificed time and money so I could go to journalism camps and get black belts, with my education and job training in finding resources–couldn’t find one fucking useful thing, how could she ever hope to?  Without a phone, without education, without the confidence that comes from a lifetime of love and affirmation?

I handed her the paper of numbers and addresses.  “I’m sorry,” I told her.  “It’s not enough.”  I wanted to say more.  I wanted to tell her I was sorry that she never finished high school.  I was sorry that she didn’t have parents that cared if she did.  I’m sorry that she had to use her body to have a roof over her head.  I’m sorry that she had to live with her lizard brain–that portion concerned only with FOOD FEAR SURVIVAL–and that no matter what she did and what choices she made in the future, that her past choices would leave those telltales scars and shadows on her body and on her mind.

Yet.  And yet.

At the same time that I racked my brain for different ways to help, at the same time I felt this overwhelming despair and anger at our broken world–at the same time as all of this, I felt a part of myself recoil from her.  From her appearance which mirrored her circumstances.  From her speech, with its words curled in on themselves, with its stunted sentences, speech that would have been at home in the trailer park I grew up in.  From that kicked-dog expression and the way she said “ma’am” after every statement, question or request (how often do we in the middle-class call each other ma’am?)  I wasn’t just looking at one woman and at one abyss, but at a systemic problem, at legions of women, bruised and tattered with broken teeth and dreams.  I was looking at an abyss that spanned from California to Maine and even if I did help this woman, I could never help the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of others.  No amount of money or compassion could ever hope to fill a pit like that and suddenly I found this craven, wormy part of me thinking don’t feed the strays.  Don’t give them money–they’ll spend it on drugs or booze.  Don’t help them find a job–they’ll just get their first check and walk away.  There’s nothing you can do for these kinds of people.  They made their bed, now they can lay in it.

Why?  Why did this sightless, slimy, scaly part of me rise up?  Is it because this woman mirrored my origins?  That I still feel like the trailer park and southern Kansas City are these dirty skins that I’ll never quite molt off?  Or is it because when we face the abyss of need–of the mewling want of the hungry, the cold, the addicted–that it is easier to let the craven voice do the convincing than start chunking the stones in, hoping to make a bridge?

“I’m sorry it’s not enough,” I told her again.

She thanked me profusely and said I was the first person to be nice to her in a long time, and that I had helped her a lot.  And she left and I realized that I had never even asked her name.  I had stood next to her for two hours, she had told me painful details about her life, and I hadn’t even bothered to learn her name.  

I never even thought about it.  I never even thought to ask.  Here I was, allegedly the most helpful person she’d encountered in days, and I wasn’t even compassionate enough to extend her that courtesy.

When I got home, I was still pensive.  Still upset.  And I sat next to my husband, who looked as tired as me.

“I had to watch the full, unedited video of the Columbine shooting in training today,” he said.  “They made us listen to the audio too.”  He paused, and for a moment we both stared at the television.  “Some people are just evil,” he said quietly.  “Our whole training today was on stopping school shootings, and it was good but how do you stop people from being sick and violent in the first place?”

I didn’t have any answers for him.  How do you stop evil?  How do you stop the indifference of a society that wails about giant cups of soda being restricted while people exchange sex for a chance at a warm night’s rest?  The cop and the librarian, bound by their total inability to protect the public.  To protect them from bullets and illiteracy and the endless cycles of poverty begetting poverty and anger begetting violence.  But we still go back to our jobs, day after day.  Jobs with frozen salaries.  Jobs that are chronically understaffed, that overwork us, and hope that those fluttering pieces of scrap paper and active shooter strategies will at least save someone.  That they will build at least one bridge across the abyss.

It’s not enough it’s not enough it’s not enough.

I’m sorry i’m sorry i’m sorry.

And I wax philosophic about dystopian books.

http://presentinglenore.blogspot.de/2012/08/author-interview-bethany-hagen-previews.html

Sad little NICU baby

Two years ago, after about seventeen hours of labor, three doulas, a heart rate crash and an attempt with forceps, my bed was rushed into the OR of Overland Park Regional hospital, and my daughter was born.  She was born after several minutes of a dangerously low heartbeat, covered in meconium, silent and with a scalpel injury on her arm.  She didn’t cry, and for six or seven minutes, there was nothing but tense silence as the NICU team labored to clear her throat and lungs.  Finally, I heard a whimper…and I burst into tears.  A nurse held her up for me to see and then she was put in a plastic box and rushed up to the NICU.  I wouldn’t see her for four or five more hours.

But when I saw her, I knew.  I knew that she was the most beautiful, the most precious little girl in the world and that I loved her beyond all reason.  And so even though we had a rough start, I felt like we made up for it by skipping the “getting-to-know-you” part of infancy and skipping straight to the “I-love-you” part.

Dear Teagan:

You are two.  You can now sing every song that your toys sing, AND do the motions for Itsy Bitsy Spider and sign-babble along to the ABCs.  You are finally talking now too!  You had a slower start with words than your brother–I think partly you saw little need to talk when he was talking so much–and you have a much stronger “baby” accent when you talk.  Which only serves to make you more adorable, of course.  Probably all part of your master plan to conquer the world with your cuteness.

Some favorite Teagan words and phrases:

Wah-dur (water)

No, no, no *inserts whatever someone just asked you here, such as “water”*  For example, Denise’s husband Chris was trying to take a picture of you last night and coaxing you to say cheese, and you said, “No!  No no cheese.”

I want *fill in blank*  For example, “I want eat!”  “I want hippo!”

Bubby (how you say Buddy, which is what we often call Noah.)

Hee-bup (Eyebrow)

Don-NA and a-COLE (your teachers, Mandonna and Nicole)

Cooooool!  (school)

Mooooooo!  (what every animal says, according to you)

kisssssssss; ug (kiss; hug)

But while you let your brother do the orating in our house, you are the master adventurer.  I knew when you started walking at nine months that we were in for trouble, and sure enough, there is not one thing you cannot climb.  You go down slides, swing on giant swings, love to be swung around–basically things that terrify most kids, you are all over.  When we go to the big school to drop off your brother or when you come up to see his Sunday School class, you fling yourself right into the thick of the mess, giggling and running as you get bumped and jostled by the big kids.  You are in constant motion, like a heated particle, and words, babbles, coos and squeals are constantly emitting from your mouth.  You are a night owl and will chirp and chatter to yourself for hours in the dark, but you want to sleep in until 8 or 9 in the morning.  You get fussy when you’re forced up earlier than that.

When you wake up, the first thing you do is run to your high chair and starting shaking it, like a prisoner shakes the bars of his cell.  You eat more than your brother and probably more than me, which is probably necessary given how busy you are.  You’ve come a long way from that deliciously seal-like creature you were as an infant, all fat and smiles.  You’ve leaned out, and with tan little arms and blonde curls, you look like you should have been born in SoCal.  But I still see traces of my Teagapottomus in your dimpled, apple cheeks and your squishy thighs.

Chunky baby!

So that’s it.  You are fearless, fun and friendly.  You ham it up for anybody who will watch, and most “sadness” takes the forms of dramatic fits where you fling yourself on the floor and wail.  Your father already wants to send you to a convent before you turn 16, because it’s clear to us all that you are going to beautiful and reckless and get your belly button pierced by some girl named Boots at a whatever-the-equivalent-of-Mindless-Self-Indulgence-is-then concert.  Don’t think we don’t know this.  We are just trying to hold on to these days when the extent of your rebellion is crossing your arms and snapping, “WHAT” at us, or biting us and then immediately kissing the spot you bit (Teagan the Sourpatch Kid: sour, then sweet.)  We’re hoping that no matter what curveballs your extroverted, energetic personality throws at us, that you will keep the same sweet nature that has you lovingly feeding baby dolls and hugging your brother every five minutes.

I love you,

Mommy

Come see some epicly bloody making out over at fellow WrAHM and overall awesome person Amber Tuscan-Clites’s blog today! Since I wanted to keep Landry Park’s epicness a surprise for everyone, I chose an epic scene from a trunked novel of mine called The Cancer Empire. It was ostensibly about a serial killer hunting an amnesiac in Kansas City, but really it was about people drinking and making out…which is probably why every agent I queried turned it down! But even though the book has structural flaws…and character flaws…and language flaws…there’s still parts that I enjoy rereading. And one of those is the parts that Amber posted, a scene where the main character, Cancer, finally gets to hook up with a musician that she’s liked since she was sixteen. But kissing musicians is never that easy…right?

http://amberafterglow.blogspot.com/2012/05/epic-thursday_31.html

Come check it out!

http://thelucky13s.blogspot.com/2012/05/if-ya-author-wrote-your-love-life.html

It’s been a while.  Partly because of conversations like this:

Noah: Mom…Mom…MOM!!!!!

Me: ?

Noah: Where did the sun go?

Me: Under the horizon.  Well, not really under, but the earth has rotated away from the sun and now it’s dark.

Noah: Rotated?

Me: That means spun.  The earth spun away from the sun.

Noah: *screams* WHY?!

Me: Um…?

Noah: Why does the earth spin?!

Me: Well…I guess when there was a proto-solar system and everything was made of dust and gas, it was spinning and then when the planets accreted, they kept spinning…?  (Can you tell I have an English degree?)

Noah: Why was the dust spinning?

Me: Maybe the sun had gravity and that made it spin?

Noah: Why’d it keep spinning?

Me: *struggling to remember that astronomy class I had in 2009*  Inertia?  The something law of…uh…something momentum?

Noah: MOMMY!!!!!

Me: ?

Noah: Where’d the sun go?

Me: Time for bed.

Here’s another gem:

Noah, upon seeing me chew gum: If you chew gum and then you swallow it, it will get stuck in your butt.

or:

Noah: *holding up his foam sword* I have a sword to help me when the sky is raining blood!

Huh?  This three year old watches less than the prescribed AAP two hours of TV a day, and all of those hours are PG or G, personally vetted by his father or myself.  He has never seen a superhero movie or Star Wars or Transformers or Harry Potter–even though he will eventually since he has geeks for parents.  And yet…when the sky rains blood.

Other than listening to the insane things my preschooler says, I’ve been librarating and working on my YA contemporary WIP.  I’m waiting on my first ever editorial letter for Landry Park, and I am terrified.  I am convinced it’s just going to consist of a giant NO written in red ink.

*trembles*

In honor of The Hunger Games, Caesar Flickerman offered to interview me over at Rachel Simon’s blog. Rachel is a writer in Massachusetts and a fellow Animorph lover, so basically she’s awesome all around.

Without further ado:

http://rachelwritesthings.blogspot.com/2012/03/interview-with-bethany-hagen-caesar.html

My littlest little, Teagan the 19 month old, starts “preschool” this week.  And I am le sad.

I know that she’ll have fun; she loves people and songs and books and playtimes.  And the school–the toddler counterpart to my son’s Montessori preschool–couldn’t be better.  I know that she’ll learn lots and make friends.  I know that on the days that I don’t work at the library, I’ll be able to write and hopefully cut out the number of nights I work in Starbucks until midnight, freezing and yawning and listening to off-key homeless banjo playing.

I know she won’t resent me for having two jobs, for working to further my career, for choosing a safe place for her to explore learning and new faces.

I know this is the next stage for our family.

I know all babies grow up, even dimple-cheeked, feisty blond ones.

Twenty-five-year old librarian Bethany Hagen’s sweeping YA debut, LANDRY PARK, pitched as “Gone with the Nuclear Wind,” to Nancy Conescu at Dial, in a major deal, in a pre-empt, for three books, by Mollie Glick at Foundry Literary + Media (NA).

That’s right — Landry Park is going to be a real book!  When my agent called this week to tell me that someone had made on offer, I almost fainted.  Then I went through the stages of joy — shock; disbelief; repeating the same words over and over; crying while helping patrons figure out how to use their flash drive on the library computers.

After months of hard, slow toil, this has all happened so fast.  Let’s recap:

Monday: Dream Agent emails to say she wants to represent me and my novel.  I do happy jig at the library wearing heels.  Alarmed coworkers remind me that they won’t cover my roving shifts if I break an ankle.

Tuesday/Wednesday: frantic line edits with agent.  Eyes go numb from looking at the screen.

Thursday: Drop contract in the mail, more frantic edits.

Friday: Finish edits, write short bio, send picture, polish series overview aaaaannnnnd OFF TO THE EDITORS.

Weekend: Try to not obsessively research every editor and imprint.

Monday: Offer!  Heart attack.

fin.

So yes, I will be published.  Tentatively, it looks like fall of next year.  I couldn’t be more excited.  My editor called after everything was finalized just to tell me how excited she was that we’d be working together.  Isn’t that incredible?  And the Penguin Young Reader’s Group is INSANELY good.  How good?

Beth Revis is a Penguin author.  So is Ally Condie.  And Marie Lu.  And John Green.

JOHN GREEN, PEOPLE.