My next book - Results May Vary!

Book news ahoy, friends! There is a story about this story.


First, for every wonderful person who's been asking when my next book will be out, I finally have an answer: Results May Vary is slated for publication in August 2016! You can pre-order or add to your wish lists here:

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Results-May-Vary-Bethany-Chase-ebook/dp/B0180T0J1M/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1451582394&sr=8-3&keywords=results+may+vary
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27833513-results-may-vary

Now, the unexpected part of this news. Remember the excerpt you read at the end of The One That Got Away? About Sarina's friend Hilary and Eamon's brother Colin and the accidental pregnancy? Yeah, this is not that book. That book exists! I have written it! It is good! It is going to be published in the future! But in one of those things that happens in publishing sometimes, my editor read a fetal draft of what we thought would be my third book--Results May Vary--and she absolutely fell in love with it. So much so that she elbowed Hilary out of the way and pushed the lovely Caroline out of the wings into the spotlight, and we are all incredibly excited about the decision and in love with the book and we hope you will be too.

So who on earth is Caroline? Caroline is an art curator in Massachusetts who is happily married to her high school sweetheart, until she discovers he has been having an affair... with a man. And all of a sudden, everything she thought she knew about him and their seventeen-year relationship is upended. As Caroline struggles to make sense of what her husband’s hidden life means to both their history and their future, she gradually begins reshaping her own identity without the one relationship that always defined it. But the life she’s tiptoeing into isn’t without problems of its own: her newfound closeness with her younger sister threatens to unravel over a long-buried secret, and the foxy guy she can't get off her mind is a bad idea for a whole list of reasons. As the months tick down until she can formally initiate divorce proceedings, she must choose between two impossible alternatives: rebuilding her marriage to a man she loved but never fully knew—or living the rest of her life without him.

Check out the Pinterest page I made, for a taste of what the book is about... https://www.pinterest.com/mbethanychase/results-may-vary-inspiration/

And watch this space for cover reveal, giveaways, and all sorts of goodies as the summer approaches!

In Deep: competition and other unhealthy impulses

Book + beer + boat = my kind of summer day

A couple weeks ago, my wonderfully talented friend Terra Elan McVoy invited me to join some other author friends of hers in celebrating the launch of her new book, In Deep, by sharing our own stories of when we got ourselves into something way in over our heads. As I mulled over the book, which is about a high school girl getting way too ensnared by her need to compete in every aspect of her life, it reminded me of the highlight of my own crappy teenage behavior, so I wrote about that for Terra here (it's the second entry on the page).

In Deep is an interesting, challenging book, and I felt it was important to talk about the ways in which I related to it. Other people might respond negatively to the book because the main character, Brynn, is "unlikable," but this book to me is an example of an unlikable main character who really works. Let's be clear here: Brynn is a little jerk. She cheats on her boyfriend without a moment's hesitation, and she does it with the guy her best friend is dating. She spends a lot of the book blowing off her schoolwork and blaming other people for her problems. A sweet, appealing character she is not. But what she is, is real, and honest, and complicated. She is also pathologically competitive, which is a trait that I personally happen to find fascinating (I put a pathologically competitive character in my own book who also happens to be a swimmer--as I said to Terra, I think that of all the elite athletes in the world, people who compete for wins where the margin is literally hundredths of a second have got to be the most intense of all). And I can relate to that competitiveness. Especially when I think back to how I behaved when I was sixteen: I was a hell of a lot more selfish then. I wanted to win at everything, including boys. And then I started to grow up and become a better human being--just like Brynn does in this book, in a really believable and heartbreaking way.

All in all, I think the character that Terra built in In Deep is fascinating. Brynn is a young girl obsessed with proving her strength, both physical and mental, and maintaining that strength at all costs. Through her, we see a glimpse of the extraordinary discipline and mental toughness that elite athletes have to possess, and the ways in which that same toughness can turn corrosive if it's not channeled the right way. Brynn is not somebody I'd particularly want to be buddies with, no, but I cared what happened to her, and got drawn into her story just the same. This book is a terrific study in exploring some of the more unsavory parts of human nature, and showing how they can ruin us if we let them.

Summer of Summer: The From-Aways, and some tips for steaming clams!

The opening line of my friend and agent sister-wife CJ Hauser's incredible debut novel, THE FROM-AWAYS, is so good that I can recite it from memory. "I have two lobsters in my bathtub and I'm not sure I can kill them." That right there is one of those powerful first sentences that both intrigues you and lets you know you're going to be in good hands as the story unfolds. Leah, one of the book's two narrators, has moved with her new husband from Manhattan to the small Maine fishing village where he grew up, in an attempt to dig down and create roots she's never had. Cooking lobsters, Leah feels sure, will be a shortcut to those roots, via a sacred local culinary tradition. "This is my plan: I will get blind drunk and then I will kill these lobsters," she decides. Except, she looks at their wiry antennae and spotted backs and can't bring herself to kill them.

The more I read, the more I've come to realize how easily I'm hooked by the power and uniqueness of an author's voice, and this book has one of the strongest voices I've encountered in a long time. Even though Leah and the book's other narrator, Quinn, have their own distinct character voices, they are unmistakably (and brilliantly) created by the same person. And the rest of the book is as good as the opening, as the two women dig deeper into their relationships and enmesh themselves in the town's problems. Nothing is pat in this book, nothing is tidy; the protagonists make bad decisions, and decent people do bad things with good intentions. It's vibrant and wise and wonderfully real, and brings its salty setting vividly to life.

The weekend after CJ's book was released, some other sister-wives and I ended up throwing a slightly spastic virtual dinner party on Twitter in celebration, and I decided to make it into an actual meal. Except, when I actually thought about it, I couldn't kill lobsters, either. I readily admit to being an absolute hypocrite here, because it's not that I have an issue with the eating of lobsters--I will eat the crap out of a lobster that somebody else has already killed. Can't do it myself, though. Nope. They have eyes.

Clams, though, are another matter. Steamed clams, plus drawn butter and cold beer, happen to be one of my top five favorite summer meals, and while I know they're just as alive as lobsters when they get put in that pot, they're a hell of a lot less sentient. Allen and I first attempted a clam steam over Memorial Day, with fairly poor results--the clams took forever to cook, and since we didn't want to overcook them, we were pulling them out of the pot as they opened, three or four at a time. I decided to try it again, and, with the help of my friendly neighborhood seafood shop, Fish Tales, I can declare my solo clamfest to have been a rousing success. Here are the critical things to keep in mind:

my Summer of Summer clamfest

1. If you can, buy the clams from a local fish purveyor rather than a chain grocery store--they will be fresher and better quality. On our first attempt, out of the six dozen we bought from the grocery store, about 20% of them turned out to be dead. When I bought them from Fish Tales, every single one of the four dozen clams was alive.

2. But still, buy maybe a half-dozen more than you think you'll actually want to eat, just in case of casualties. Casualties include any clams with cracked shells, or any that simply never open after being cooked--those aren't safe to eat.

3. Do the cornmeal thing. When you're ready to eat your clams, one of the prep steps is to bathe them in cool water for 30-60 minutes, to prompt them to spit out any grit they have inside. I tried the suggestion I'd seen, of shaking a little cornmeal into the water to encourage the clams to spit, and it definitely seemed to work. Once they've sat for their assigned time, scrub the shells to make sure any last grit is gone, and then you're ready.

4. I prepared mine straight up--no wine or herbs in the broth, though there are plenty of recipes like that. The only flavor I added was to sautee a minced clove of garlic in the pan for a couple minutes before I put the liquid and clams in.

5. Put them all into a big steamer pot (I used my cast iron Dutch oven) with just a little bit of liquid at the bottom. I used about 3/4 of water for four dozen clams. They can all go in at once.

6. Cook them for longer than you think you need to. When we looked online, recipes were saying to cook them for 3-5 minutes... this is FALSE. The guys at Fish Tales told me ten minutes for my four dozen clams, and they were right on the money. We were used to steaming mussels, which literally only need about 2-3 minutes of cooking before they're ready, and which will quickly lose texture if they get overcooked. But clams have much thicker shells than mussels, so it takes longer for the heat to penetrate, and also their hold on their shells is stronger, so it takes more time for them to cook enough to release. Cause what happens, we learned on our first attempt, is if you start checking your clams after five minutes, you'll see a few ready, but the rest will need more time; and meanwhile you've just let a bunch of your hot steamy air out when you checked. Resist the urge to check. Let 'em steam.

7. Use salted butter to make the drawn butter. Recipes I saw said to use unsalted, but I far prefer the salty flavor, and it makes no difference in the mechanics of preparing the butter. (Boil it for a minute, let it cool undisturbed, and then skim off the solids without mixing them back into the clear melted butter beneath.)

8. Prepare copious lemon. I am a whore for lemon juice in all of its forms, and squeezing it over seafood is one of the most important forms. I don't like a delicate little spritz, I go to town. I got through 3/4 of a lemon all on my own with my clams.

So there you have it--possibly the world's first and only book review/clam steaming how-to. But in the Summer of Summer, these things go together.

And your tune for this post makes even less sense, unless you're my husband, his brother, or my sister-in-law. Paul Davis, " '65 Love Affair." Just substitute the word "clam" for "love" every time he says "65 love affair," and don't worry about it too much. It's summer. Enjoy your clams, everybody.

Summer of Summer: wait, summer comes with bugs?

One of my favorite sights - Overlook Mountain from the Saugerties exit off 87

In a stroke of dumb luck, our favorite cottage in Saugerties was unclaimed for the Memorial Day weekend, so that is where we headed. Saturday we had mostly crummy weather, and I drowned two spiders in the shower stall and picked up a tick just by sitting on a bench in the back yard. It's been so long since my grassy childhood that I had forgotten what total assholes ticks are. They serve absolutely no purpose other than to feast on blood and be disgusting. Seriously, screw the little bastards.

On Sunday, we broke out the hiking boots we got for Argentina, and headed for Catskill Park, and the North Mountain hike. Allen had printed out a highly detailed trail guide, which explained to us that the beginning of the trail would have some rocks and water, but that it would improve after that. "After that" turned out to be at approximately the 46% point, because this trail followed a creek bed, which was sometimes more dry and sometimes very much less dry, the entire way. We squelched through mud and clambered over rocks like loudly complaining mountain goats. But still, this was our reward:

That teeny blue ribbon on the left is the Hudson.

The top of Ashley Falls

On Monday, we rested. Or, we meant to. And then poor Allen stepped barefoot on a wasp while setting out our breakfast dishes inside the cottage, which again brought back long-buried childhood memories of needle-like pain and itchy swelling and baking soda plasters. And what I realized is, I romanticize the country, but that's because I've mostly forgotten how god damn BUGGY it is. Shower spiders, lawn ticks, floor-dwelling indoor wasps... and that's not even mentioning the mosquitoes. After breakfast, we parked ourselves on the shady deck with book (me), laptop (him), and beer, and remained blissfully unmolested the rest of the day.

Yes, his T-shirt says "The Lannisters" on it.

My read was Emily Giffin's newest, THE ONE AND ONLY. Texas, football, and divided loyalty under one gorgeous cover... what's not to love?

Your tune: vintage 80's Journey, thematic to the book and intended by God to be blasted at ruthless volume on sun-soaked pool decks: "Girl Can't Help It." Follow your heart, gang. Steve Perry would never lead you astray.

The Opposite of Love: a case study in "no two persons ever read the same book."

The Opposite of Love

As a writer, I thought I was pretty comfortable with the notion that every reader brings their own personality, and their own baggage, along with them to every reading experience. It makes sense--we're all different, so we will all absorb a creative experience like reading a book in different ways. We run every book we read through our own personal filter.

When an early draft of my book, The One That Got Away, was in its initial-feedback stage, mixed in among the helpful critiques I received was one that was such, in my view, a strong over-reaction to a very small element of the story that it seemed obvious the book had touched on one of that reader's personal sore spots. I mined the critique for what I found helpful, and shrugged off the hyperbole. It was a lesson in how sometimes reviews are much more about the reader than the book.

I had this experience again recently, from the other side of the coin. I had just finished Julie Buxbaum's The Opposite of Love, and as I often do with books I really respond to, I dipped into Amazon and Goodreads to see what other readers had to say. The type of comments I saw there:

"This is a refreshingly smart chick-lit novel."

"This is a novel about a young woman finding out who she is."

"This story is about a Manhattan attorney who breaks up with her boyfriend and then has to figure out what she wants from her life."

Which, yes. Absolutely. All of those things are true.

But what I didn't see as I skimmed the reviews, and I grew more and more surprised at its absence as I skimmed, was:

"This is a story about a young woman coping with the loss of her mother."

And then it hit me: that was my baggage. My sore spot. The reason that what stood out to me about the book was not the Manhattan-attorney part or the smart-chick-lit part or the self-discovery part was that all those parts got caught in my filter. What made it through the filter, what felt to me like the purest essence of the book, was the theme of loss. How it damages us, how it haunts us, how it hurts us, long after we think it should still be able to. How we try to protect ourselves from it.

What's fascinating to me is that both my take on the book, and the take of readers who focused on the storyline more than the theme, are accurate. All that stuff is there. But because, like the book's narrator Emily, I lost my mother young, I was quite literally sobbing with recognition at the specificity of the heartbreak that's there on the page. Like Emily's bitterness and frustration that, fifteen years after her mother's death, she feels as though her mother has been reduced to little more than a series of photographs and anecdotes that have gotten worn from re-use, because there are no new photos and no new memories, and countless tiny memories not strong enough to make an impression have simply faded away. I live with that exact pain, so to stumble across it in someone else's book was extraordinary. And to me, Buxbaum's exquisitely rendered portrayal of Emily's loss, and her obsessive need to imprint her living loved ones deeply onto her memory to prevent them from disappearing when they eventually leave her behind, was the heart and soul of this book.

Yet, many other people didn't feel that aspect as deeply. They've never experienced it, so they have no way to know how true it is. Maybe they skimmed over those passages, to find out what happened with Emily's job or her boyfriend. And that's valid, too. But if we accept the idea that fiction is at its best when it reveals the truth of life, then that is where this book shines so beautifully.

Summer of Summer

My first and perhaps last experiment with footie clams.

I don't know about you guys, but summer has always been a bit of a bait-and-switch for me. Magazines do a bang-up job of selling us all on the dream of the season: long, sunny days by the lake; elaborate al fresco meals; beach parties with bonfires and clambakes and sand between our toes. But not since I was a teenager has summer meant that much relaxation and time outside... as a Brooklyn girl with neither beach house nor lawn nor even a balcony the size of a bath mat, I spend most of my summer inside. Cause here's the thing: New York City in the summer is hot as all hell, with no refreshing breezes to be found anywhere except the waterfront. And it smells like garbage. Literally. The heat warms up all the effluvia that leaks out of every trash bag left on the sidewalk outside every restaurant and apartment building, so not only are we all sweating through our T-shirts as we walk along, but we get treated to a vague odor of overheated compost while we do it. 

The other problem is, New York is still New York. Every summer sees a busy and vibrant calendar of cool, fun summer activities in the city: festivals, concerts, and other performances. When I first moved here after college, I eagerly dove into these--free opera on the great lawn of Central Park? Wonderful! Free Derek Trucks concert at the Prospect Park bandshell? Fantastic! But guess what? Everybody else thinks it's wonderful and fantastic, too. It turns out the Central Park opera performances get so crowded that your picnic blanket overlaps that of everyone around you, and you can overhear their conversations as clearly as you did while squashed between two aggressively bragging lawyers on the 4 train that morning. No matter what you do, you can't get away from the crowds.

So every spring, I get all kinds of notions about what I might do with my long, sunlit weekends; and every summer, I just hide in the air conditioning.

THIS YEAR WILL BE DIFFERENT.

This year I am grabbing every conceivable opportunity to get my ass out of town, and, while in town, to make the most of the season. I will gaze at the sea. (Or a lake, or a river.) I will get sand between my toes, or at least grass. I will read books outside in the sun, with an adult beverage in my hand (beer, wine, fruity cocktail; I'm equal opportunity). I got off to a great start last weekend, visiting my sister-in-law's family in lovely Madison, Connecticut.

The beach club in Madison, CT

I read and thoroughly enjoyed Beth Kendrick's newest release, CURE FOR THE COMMON BREAKUP; if you're looking for a funny, light-hearted summer read, you cannot do better than this.

For a summer tune, this sparkly remix of Seals & Croft's "Summer Breeze" is the ultimate. Listen, and wait for the fruity cocktail to materialize in your hand. Works for me every time.

So, tell you what. I'm inviting everybody along. This is the Summer of Summer, and it's going to be good. I'll see you there.

True love and vomit.

This past Friday was a big day for me, you guys. I finally achieved a milestone of adulthood that most people my age passed a good 15 years ago: I got my wisdom teeth out.

I know - weird, right? Usually that's a tucked-between-college-semesters type of thing. The only reason I'd had them for so long is because I believed I was a specimen of superior evolutionary advancement. Unlike everybody else I knew, whose third molars came in impacted or crooked, crowding their other teeth, all four of mine came in nice and straight and easy. Fine, upstanding citizens with plenty of room, not screwing with any of their neighbors or causing me any grief at all. But of course, every dentist I saw still wanted to yank them. 

"What do you have against them?" I'd say. "Aren't they straight?"

"Yes."

"No impaction, right?"
"No. But... are they causing you any pain?" the dentist would say, voice uplifted in an unmistakable tone of hope.

"No, not a bit."

Whereupon the dentist would subside, disappointed, and reluctantly agree that I could keep them for the time being. But the one thing I couldn't argue with is that the damn things were impossible to keep clean enough, since I don't have an extending jaw like a snake, so after a recent cleaning wherein it was pointed out to me--yet again--that it really would be better in the long term if the teeth weren't left sitting there waiting to accrue decay in years to come, I agreed to yank them.

After an informal survey of my Facebook friends convinced me to get the loopy twilight drugs for the procedure (the frequency with which the words "sawing" and "screaming" and "horror movie" appeared in the responses of my friends who had NOT had the loopy drugs was a pretty convincing argument), I set it up, got in the chair, and had the deed done. In the taxi on the way home, I had to text responses to my husband's questions, because the entire lower half of my face felt like it had been replaced with a cabbage--except for the bottom right extraction site, where the cabbagey feeling was quickly being replaced by a drilling ache. One horse-sized ibuprofen later, I was holding ice packs to both cheeks and crying from pain, so that sweet man of mine called the doctor and got permission for me to advance to Vicodin, and all was well.

Until yesterday morning, when I bounded out of bed at 8:30, swallowed more meds, and quickly discovered that horse ibuprofen on an empty stomach is far, far more nausea-inducing than the Vicodin I'd taken the day before.

"I think you need to eat something," said Allen, and made me a dish of the perfectly moist, tender scrambled eggs he's been practicing at. I worried a few mouthfuls of them down.

Then I got up to refill my water glass and the scrambled eggs reappeared, quite without warning, all over the kitchen counter and floor.

And it struck me, as I knelt on the kitchen floor with my face over the trash can, whimpering "sorry sorry sorry, gross gross gross" in between waves of retching, that this was really one of those true love moments. Because my husband, instead of flinching with horror like a normal human being and fleeing the room, was kneeling beside me, helping me clean up. Telling me it was okay. That he would not only help me, but presumably even still find me physically attractive at some point in the future once this whole episode is behind us, is a thing of no small wonder to me. Not only that, but that this is ultimately where you want it to bring you--all those thrilling first dates and sexy kisses and endless rounds of discussion with whoever's on the roster of your own personal NFL pre-game show. The end game isn't the ring or the wedding, it's those moments when you see each other at your worst and all you want to do is reach out to help. That is true love, right there. Offering you a handful of damp paper towels.

My seven favorite books of 2013.

Book tree from the window at Literati Bookstore - please buy from them!

They have a website! It is so easy!

Yes, my seven favorite books. No, seven is not a nice civilized, complete-feeling number like five or ten. It's a little arbitrary. But when I compiled the list of books I read this year, and thought about the ones that really touched me and amazed me, that glued themselves to my hands and made me postpone meals and bathroom breaks and subway stops, well, it was seven. And so here, in no particular order, they are:

GONE GIRL, Gillian Flynn. You guys have all heard about this book, and for good reason. It's extraordinary. I will confess to being one of those for whom the ending was not entirely satisfying, somehow, but it doesn't even matter--I have never read a book so utterly compelling in its tension. Spectacular book.

BLACKBIRDS, Chuck Wendig. I first discovered Chuck via his blog, where he delivers road-tested (you can tell by the mud stains) writing and publishing advice, and I grew interested in his novels through the sheer force of his personality. Having read his craft advice gives me an interesting--and slightly voyeuristic--perspective on his fiction ("oh, here Chuck is deliberately abusing his characters like he's always telling me to do!"), but also gives me a heightened appreciation for the skill on display in his writing. BLACKBIRDS is the first installment in his urban fantasy series about Miriam Black, a young woman whose pyschic gift--experiencing a vision of the time and manner of a person's death when she touches them--has corroded her existence and forced her into a life of unsettled drifting. Miriam is a wonderfully drawn character: tough yet compassionate, opportunistic yet loyal to her own asymmetrical code of ethics, and this twisting story of her misadventures with dark places and darker people is wonderfully atmospheric and addictive. (And, a quick FYI: THE CORMORANT, the third book in the series, was just released today.)

CRIMINAL, Terra Elan McVoy. I loved this book for two reasons. First, Terra's writing is tight and fierce and compelling; and second, it made me think. I love fantasy and historical novels and all the attendant blood-letting and general abuse that often accompanies them, but when it comes to fiction with a contemporary setting, I will be the first to admit that I gravitate toward stories that take place in my own sphere of life: Privileged, Well-Adjusted Middle-Class-hood. As I worked my way through CRIMINAL, I felt a mounting frustration with the main character, Nikki: she's needy, and spineless, and she heaps one horrifically poor decision on top of another as the story continues. And then, finally, it clicked. She truly doesn't know better. Terra has created a heartbreaking portrait of a young woman raised with so little love and so little self-esteem that she risks everything to protect the brutal man she loves, simply because she is so starved for affection that his sporadic attention feels like the only worthwhile thing in her life. Nikki's story is all the more sad by virtue of how very believably Terra has rendered it.

It reminded me of a conversation I had with my dear friend Liz this summer, where I mused aloud that I couldn't understand how people could still become involved in meth use, even after seeing its catastrophic effects on other people around them. Liz, who is one of the most compassionate and thoughtful people I know, turned to me and said, "Because some people were never brought up to believe that their lives were worth anything at all."

THE LOVE WARS, L. Alison Heller. I will skip a longer description of this one since I already wrote a full review here, but suffice it to say, I adored this book. I'm counting months until Alison's second release, THE NEVER NEVER SISTERS.

WHY CAN'T I BE YOU, Allie Larkin. The heart of this book. The warmth, the vulnerability, the unadulterated charm. The mistaken-identity plot felt, at first, like it was going to lead me into a tale of wacky hijinks and supposedly-comical misunderstandings, but that couldn't be farther from the truth. The critical point here is that Jenny, the main character, goes along with the mistaken identity of Jessie because she is so unbearably fatigued with her own bleak life. Jessie's friends offer a heady dose of warmth and humor that are absent in Jenny's own colorless existence. With a light and empathetic touch, the book offers a wise lesson on the meaning of family--sometimes it's not the people you're born to, but the people you choose.

ELEANOR AND PARK, Rainbow Rowell. I started this book last week, on the recommendation of several friends, and by the end of the third chapter it had marched right up and stolen my heart. I only put my Kindle down to pee. This story of first love is tender and piercingly bittersweet, but never saccharine, and perfectly calls to mind that incandescent wonder of the first time you discovered the way another human being could make you feel.

FOREVER, INTERRUPTED, Taylor Jenkins Reid. From the opening words of this novel, I loved it. I also hated it. I hated it not because there is any flaw in the writing or story (there isn't) but because I knew it was going to make me cry ugly, hiccuping tears, and that is exactly what it proceeded to do. It is a beautiful love story, unraveled alternately in the present and in flashback, and it's made all the more moving by the fact that you know from those very first words that one of the lovers is doomed. This story is a painful and yet ultimately hopeful take on life after loss, and the way love transforms us even after the person we loved is gone.

Ms. Autumn Woman flees the city once more to frolic amongst the leaves.

This #selfie is a #failie. I don't care, I love it.

This year I was lucky enough to manage to squeeze not one but TWOOOOO October weekends up in the Catskills: one with my husband, and one with my girlfriends. Our girls' weekends are always heavy on cooking (it helps when one of your friends is a professional chef) and card games and general nerdery, and this one was no exception. We rented a beautiful little farmhouse in West Hurley, and went for rambles around town and took a spectacular late afternoon cruise on the Hudson.

I'm not somebody who enjoys the bone-rattling chill of winter, but I love the way that fall weather is cold - enough to make you want to burrow into your favorite wooly sweater, but you know the whole time that you'll warm up as soon as you step inside. And if you can walk around with a cup of hot cider to keep your hands warm, all the better. And yes, I absolutely recognize that my affinity for all of the special rituals of fall makes me Ms. Autumn Woman. At least I own it. ;)

When fear leads to freedom: facing a high risk for breast cancer.

I know you've all seen them - those inspirational quotes about fear, that we all love to post and tweet and share to lift ourselves and other people up. About how fear is our enemy, the quicksand that sucks at our legs to keep us from pulling free into achievement and triumph. And if we're talking about a fear of failure holding us back from trying something new and brave, then of course. Yes. It's all true.

But there is another side to fear, which I have been thinking a lot about recently.

Ever since I was twelve years old, I have been afraid of my own body. My mother died of breast cancer when I was thirteen. My mother's mother had also had the disease as a young woman, although in her case she survived it. And before I ever knew anything about the cancer-causing gene mutations that have been discovered since my mother's death, I knew there was often a familial link.

The other thing I knew is that my mother seemed to have somehow provided me with more than her fair share of her own genetic material. We have the same coloring, same height, same build, same eyes, same freckles. Same smile. Even the same maddeningly high-maintenance prematurely gray hair (I haven't been a natural brunette since about 2003). I once asked my aunt, her sister, whether I resembled my father at all; her response was, "Not a bit. I've always thought she just cloned herself."

So I have always believed, with a fear too strong for reason, that she had given me her cancer as well. For more than 20 years, I have regarded my breasts as ticking time bombs, just sitting there on my chest slowly growing something that would eventually harm me. The fact that at age 71 my aunt, too, developed the cancer only served to confirm my conviction.

When I tested negative for the BRCA mutations three years ago, the genetic counselor assured me that with that result, I had no reason to pursue the preventative mastectomy I had been considering (now forever known as the Angelina Jolie Thing). We would do aggressive screening, and I would take a five-year course of Tamoxifen, a drug with excellent results at controlling existing breast cancers and preventing new ones. "This isn't your mother's situation," the counselor told me. "We have much better screening technology, we are catching these cancers earlier and earlier, and they are very treatable." I made my decision, and elected not to pursue a destructive and psychologically damaging surgery out of fear.

And then, this week, I noticed a little lump. I pointed it out to my doctor, expecting her to tell me it was just normal tissue, but instead she frowned and said, "I see what you're talking about. Let's get you checked out." And with those words, I plunged right back into the terror that's shadowed me for most of my life, except this time, it wasn't a hypothetical - I had actually found something in my breast that didn't feel right. My friends immediately reminded me that almost all breast lumps turn out to be nothing; but my panic just screamed back that for the women in my family, the lumps have never been nothing.

And then my brain started with the guessing. How big was it? How long had it really been there? Could it have been there early this year, somehow undetectable in my baseline mammogram and sonogram that had both come back normal?

Because the thing that makes cancer so uniquely terrifying is that the length of time it has existed in your body is directly correlated to the likelihood it will kill you. Whether or not it has had the opportunity to spread beyond its point of origin - that question is literally everything. It might mean chemo. It might mean worse.

To my indescribable relief, the lump was nothing. But I was prepared for the very real possibility that it might not have been. And I am equally prepared for the fact that next time, it might not be.

And what I realized is, I don't know if I can take the chance. I fully understand my doctors' hesitation to have me undergo a major surgery, exposing myself to pain and the possibility of infection or complications, over fear of a threat that may never materialize. Or that, if it does materialize, can be effectively dealt with.

But what my doctors can never understand is what it is like to live with this fear. Cancer is not an abstract concept to me; I have seen it. I watched my mother's horrific suffering, her pain, her fear. Her loss of another half-lifetime's worth of memories and love and joy. As an adult, I understand now the shattering grief she must have felt, knowing she would have to say goodbye to me and my father and everyone else who was precious to her. I felt it when I fell asleep next to my husband the night before my tests, thinking, "what if there were a time when we knew we only had a few weeks together left? How could we bear that agony?"

So. I had decided against the surgery, but I think I may have to consider it again. Counter-intuitive though it may seem, I was actually disappointed by my negative BRCA result; if I'd tested positive, then I would have known my prognosis, and what to do to protect myself. Instead I am still walking in the dark. But common sense and the medical community agree that there are likely other genetic factors, still undiscovered, which may account for strong incidence of the cancer in BRCA-negative families.

It feels like sunshine, the thought of being able to face my future without the fear of this disease. Without the fear that I might someday regret not having had the tissue removed before it became dangerous. The fear that even with my screening regimen, something might get enough of a foothold in my body to kill me. I'd be making a decision out of fear, yes, but with the goal of eliminating that fear for the rest of my life. And there's something freeing in that, after all.

Ritual and memory and stained-glass leaves.

It's a known fact among my family and friends that I can be counted upon to repeat myself. I am a creature of ritual, most especially when it comes to family gatherings... the mystery of the new is often overshadowed by the comfort of the familiar.

One of my very favorite traditions is the annual fall Woodstock weekend that my husband and I spend with his brother and sister-in-law. The first year was actually a late summer gathering, but I, mountain-bred girl that I am, needed a fall weekend with time spent among hills patchworked with gold and green and orange, and the rush of wind in glowing leaves over my head. So I co-opted the weekend from August to October. Two years ago, the weekend took place days after we got engaged; last year, it was the weekend of our wedding. This time (our fifth year) was our first anniversary.

Every year we do the same activities (flea market, apple picking) and visit the same restaurants, and that process of layering year after year of similar memories on top of one another is just the most magical thing. "Was it the wedding house or the mountain view house that had the crazy staircase?" "Do you remember when we were packing up after the wedding weekend and there was that insane ladybug swarm?" And of course, "What year was it that Bethany got baked for the first time?" (Some day I will tell you guys that story.)

So this year we did old things and new things, both of them equally precious. New layers of memory were added to the pile: the morning hour I spent alone on the balcony at the house, listening to the wind in the golden trees; the sweetness of the port that the owner of our wedding venue gave us with our anniversary dinner. The fire we built and proudly maintained until four o'clock in the morning.

If you really want to feel the mood, click this link and listen to the most exquisite country-folk harmony ever recorded by a pair of Swedish girls: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC57z-oDPLs

This was our fireside, where we sat up late listening to music and laughing and telling stories:

And then we woke up the next morning in our little mountain house to these leaves: 

And then went for a ramble around town:

Woodstock Flea Market

My dream house, on Rock City Road 

 And then slowly drove home the next day, stopping for apples and donuts and whiskey and wine.

Dressel Farms

this year's haul

Tuthilltown Distillery

Brotherhood Winery

It was a perfect, magical weekend, the way each of them has been. And as soon as the vibrancy of the leaves fades from my eyes, I will be looking forward to the next year.

Kelly Wearstler's Miami Viceroy

Aside from our various adventures with hair dryers and alcohol, we did really enjoy our stay at the Viceroy. I've been looking at photos of Kelly Wearstler's spaces for years, of course, but I've never before had the experience of exploring a space designed by such a strong and unique viewpoint.

These were some details from the main lobby and elevator bank:

A detail of the giant fu dog lamp and patterned dresser in the room:

On the way out to the pool deck:

And a detail of the massive marble table in the area where our friends had their ceremony.

One thing's for sure, I'd love to stay in more Viceroys around the world to experience the unique personality of each!

Even more drinker

wikimedia commons/user quinn norton

And by the way, this wedding we were attending was a great wedding. I just want to share with you the sequence of stream-of-consciousness texts that my husband's drunk buddy sent to him from the rooftop club at about 1:00 in the morning, after the two of us had retired for the night. Original grammar and spelling are preserved throughout. Please, if you will, imagine them being spoken in Michael Shannon's dramatic reading voice:


Holy shorthairs

Holy shot this us loud

Even more drinker

& louder

Even more drinker

I know where the red lights were coming from and I do not like it

Blow-drying with wine bottles: my failures at girliness.

Wikimedia commons/user Justcurious

A couple of times a year, like a meteor shower or some other planetary phenomenon, I become suddenly obsessed with the pressing conviction that I ought to try to be a better girl. For a few weeks (it never, never ever ever, lasts more than a few weeks), I launch a multi-pronged initiative that involves me pre-planning the week's outfits, wearing makeup to work even when I don't have meetings, and not only painting my nails, but removing and re-doing the polish before it starts to take on the texture of second-hand dinnerware.

Weddings have a tendency to bring this out in me, what with the knowledge that all the other ladies in attendance will be primped and pressed to their respective nines. This weekend we flew to Miami for a friend's nuptials at the Viceroy, and so taken was I with my renewed commitment to grooming that I gladly consigned half the space in my overnighter to non-TSA-friendly bottles of product. Including nail polish that leaked all over everything else in my makeup bag.

Our beautiful Kelly Wearstler-designed room at the Viceroy

Now. Another element of my historically poor performance in the "polished and put-together" department has always been my chronic overconfidence about the amount of time these rituals demand. On two consecutive years, friends have arrived for our holiday party at the specified hour and found me dripping and shame-faced in a bath towel. (Seriously, though, who shows up exactly on time for a house party? It's fucking heartless.) So this weekend, I made sure to allow way more time than I needed. I departed the sunny pool terrace where we had been lounging two whole hours before I had to be ready. I had a plan. This is what it was:

Item 1. Draw bath in glamorous soaking tub (pictured above).

Item 2. While enjoying relaxing soak, remove old polish from fingers and toes, and reapply at a leisurely enough pace that everything will dry before I can find anything to smear it on.

Item 3. After bath, retire to shower for actual cleansing. Relish the luxurious water pressure like a woman in a plumbing fixture ad.

Item 4. Apply full, flawless makeup without borrowing it from anyone* or rushing through it at the last minute** or applying any part of it in a moving vehicle***.

Item 5. Gracefully arrive at the wedding ceremony like a hummingbird alighting on a twig.

As soon as I entered our room (solo; husband was still at the pool with his friends), I spotted the bottle of wine on the hotel dressing table - this would be the perfect touch to enhance my pampering experience! It was only a half-size bottle; how expensive could it be?

Thirty-six dollars, is how expensive. For a half bottle of wine. I couldn't do it, you guys. But what I could do was crack open the rum mini that the bride & groom had graciously included in their welcome bag, and pour a bunch of it into a glass with the unrefrigerated Coke that had been in the bag next to it. I don't particularly like rum & coke, but I had to work with what I had. And god dammit, I was determined to enjoy a festive beverage while I soaked in my bath.

And speaking of the bath, since I don't think I've taken one at all since moving to New York (I've only ever lived in pre-war buildings, and trust me, bathtubs do not make the list of amenities contributing to the charm factor of that type of apartment), I was remembering a vague childhood paranoia about bathwater never being quite warm enough. I ran it hot, figuring I'd add just enough cold water at the end to make it the perfect temp.

My bath turned out hot enough to boil potatoes. After several minutes of swearing, whimpering and scrabbling, I managed to sufficiently drain and refill the water until I could lower myself into it without shrieking in pain. I took a soothing sip of room temperature rum & coke, and reached for the emery board to begin filing my nails.

I bet you guys probably don't know what happens to an emery board when you get it damp. Why would anyone know that? Normal people file their nails when their hands and everything around them are dry. Well, I'm here to tell you that what happens is the little crystals on the surface disintegrate. Instead of the board filing away my nails, it was happening the other way around. But it was fine. It was fine. Nobody was going to notice my scraggly uneven-length nails, anyway.

Finally it was hair and makeup time. A recent and life-altering revelation for me was the discovery that if I spray my bangs with volumizer, wind them over a roller brush and then zap them with a dryer, they will take on a covetable gently-curved shape instead of hanging against my forehead like overcooked linguini. This has quickly become part of my daily regimen; it's dazzling to me that such a rudimentary trick could make such a visible improvement to my appearance.

But did my roller brush make it to Florida with me, my friends? The answer is no, no it did not. And it turns out that roller brushes don't rank alongside shampoo and dental floss in terms of the emergency toiletries that hotels keep on hand; not even at the Viceroy. So when the Big Moment arrived, instead of whipping out my brush to do the Magical Thing, I had to spend an anxious 90 seconds ransacking the hotel room for any workable stand-in. My eyes skipped over a peanut jar (too short) and a Voss bottle (the heat will release BPA's from the plastic!) before settling on my dear old friend, that little upstart $36 half-size bottle of wine.

I held the bottle. My husband held the dryer. Together we pressed the poor woebegone bangs in place against the curve of the bottle, since there were no brush bristles to work with. It was the first cooperative grooming effort of our fledgling marriage, and we pulled it off in style. My bangs were as curvy and bouncy as the D-cups I will never have. And I even made it to the ceremony on time.

Wine-bottle bangs. Pretty respectable!

But I've still got lipstick on my cheeks cause I forgot my blush.

*I did this at the last wedding I attended
**I did this at that same wedding
***I also did this at that same wedding