Tanya Writes About Astrocytoma Glioma and Turk Is Toast

This blog was initially inspired by romance heroes, when I published my book Midnight Bride last year. But it quickly evolved into a blogspot honoring real-life heroes, people in my life kicking cancer in the ass. Including my precious husband, my personal hero, who celebrates one year remission on April 8.

Here's someone else dear to me, who's literally kicking ASS-trocytoma glioma. It's an ugly brain tumor she named "Turk" that struck her a few months ago. Since them, surgery, chemo and radiation are working, but Turk is still taking his ugly toll, and more is needed to fight this vile brain cancer.

My daughter's sorority sister Jackie, of the gorgeous smile and lovelier spirit. They've gone from Rush week and invites and winter formal and spring breaks on a cruise ship to post-grads living at the beach in Hermosa to young career women. They visited Australia together.

Then Turk reared his ugly head.

Jackie spent this last weekend with my daughter, and some of the conversation was heartbreakingly poignant. "Don't you ever worry about wrinkles. Embrace getting old," she said. "I might not get to."

And I feel myself flush with shame. Here I worry that the L'Oreal lip plumper isn't working.

To help kill Turk and his buddies afflicting other people, I ask you to help support Jackie's "Turk is Toast" team, raising funds in San Francisco on May 2, 2009, in a walk sponsored by the National Brain tumor Society (NBTS).


Turk is Toast!

T.C. came upon us during a rainy weekend....we thought it was a hernia. Jackie's Turk came upon her during a normal day at the office.

No one can know. But every knowing person can care. Find it in your heart to help.

Thanks, and hugs.

Tanya Writes About the Heroes of 9/11

Where were you when the world stopped turning....
that September day?

When the towers were hit, I was driving to school, mourning my Beta fish Elizabeth. (Yes, I know they're male, but my friend Betty gave it to me and I named the fish after her. This one ended up Elizabeth I. I bought Elizabeth II later that day.) And because of my mood, I had on a relaxation spa tape and not KHAY, the country station which has frequent newsbreaks.

So not knowing a thing, I walked into my office and saw my ever-so-hard-working colleague glued to the TV set. I asked what was wrong.

Oh my God. I called my hero right away. A firefighter, his thoughts were with the brotherhood marching UPWARD into hell while everybody else was coming down.

I was scheduled the next day to attend a college counseling conference two hours away. Although I prayed the thing was cancelled, it wasn't...and I headed out that night to a hotel.

I can't explain how weird it was, no planes in the sky. Something that subtle suddenly not there was so unbelievably noticeable.

I wore a red and white top with a denim skirt to the conference, trying for patriotism. A night or two later, my hero and I attended a candlelit ceremony at the county government center....with hundreds of others.

This past summer, we visited Ground Zero. The temporary museum (the "real" one won't open until I think 2012.) supplies boxes of Kleenex every few feet. There really aren't any words a human can use to describe the pain that lingers there. The taped messages of loved ones who waited...and waited. One firefighter's wife said, everybody thinks September 11 was the worst day. Well, for me it's the 12th...the day they found my husband's body.

Make that body parts. I think only one late firefighter came out whole.

Ladder 10 is right across from the site. On 9/11, the entire shift crew perished. My hero went into talk to the guys. The memorials are heart-rending. A bronze mural down the side of the station features Truck #343.

The unimaginable number of firefighters lost that day.



I'm getting shivers just writing this. On our subway (make that "train") to Yankee Stadium, my hero had on a firefighter logo T-shirt. A guy sitting across from us started up a conversation. On 9/11, he'd been six-weeks retired from FDNY, and the minute the towers fell, he and almost 1,000 other retirees came back on the job. Nothing would keep them away.

Well, I know firefighters. Nothing can hold them back.

And I'll always have in my mind and heart the yellow Lab guide dog, Roselle, leading her man safely down 80 stories. Reading an article on them years later while I waited for an oil change had me sobbing in public.

Oh, I'm shivering again.

God bless the USA.

Tanya Writes About Romance Book Cover Heroes

See today's picture? You must agree that's a romance book cover waiting to happen. That hat. That confident pose. Can't you just hear the drawl? That's my friend Richard and yes, he just happens to be from Texas. I don't write contemporary romance, but if I did....

Or if we remove those shades and stick Richard on a horse....

Yowza. Any self-respecting romance reader will agree with me.
We've all got hearts, souls....and libidos.

Once again, I write about heroes. Those hunks who inhabit the books I like to read and write.

After all, women read romance novels for the guys, not the gals. Of course we don't want our heroines to be bimbos or weaklings. They should be liberated in every way, beautiful of course but not overwhelmingly so. Not too slutty and never stupid. But it's the hero that makes a book. The hero has got to be somebody we fantasize about.

He must make our hearts pitter. Our skin sizzle. Whew.

And how best to draw a female's attention? A smokin' hot book cover!

Scroll below to July 13 to see my friend Charlene Sands' latest cover. How's that for a hero? Smoldering gaze. Determined jaw. Stetson situated just right. A bit mouth-watering, right? Notice what's missing?

A girl! We females don't need any competition. Heck, we might not measure up to some artist's vision. And we gotta identify with that heroine.

Another writing pal landed book cover art that's sans the hero's head. It's a close-up his chest! Shirtless. We get to do our own imagining as to what he looks like. Other than those chiseled abs.

Now, my own personal hero, my husband, is always the standard for my fictional guys. Dark eyes, dark hair, a moustache. Forceful and strong but gentle and caring. A man of few words but who makes each syllable count.

However, you will notice that Midnight Bride's cover hero does not have that moustache. Well, in the book he started out with one, but the cover artwork was so gorgeous without that I excised facial hair in the edits. Whew. I think Jed Jones is dreamy. That's one face the artist didn't need to leave off.

But back to real life and real-life heroes, including my pal Richard. We've all got 'em in our lives. Those who triumph over adversity, who stand by our sides no matter what, who lend a hand when we fall. Most times they do it before we know we've tripped.

Dang, my hero has spared me plenty of skinned knees.

Here's to real-life heroes. May they all have story-book endings.


Tomorrow: My RWA Adventures in San Francisco

Tanya Writes About Being Back in the Saddle

Hmmmmmmmm. During those harrowing days of of my hero's chemo, I couldn't write a word. Well, other than this blog where upon I scribbled sometimes, so late at night it was the next day.

But creating, or even reading, took a different set of brain cells, and I just had other things more important inside my head.

But now that we're on the road to Normal, now that my hero's journey has us wondering if those horrible months were just a bad dream, I can get back to writing.

I'm doing just that. I've started a Western that deals with Nate Bertell, a hottie cowboy who plays a small role in Midnight Bride. In that story, he figures he had a chance with Carrie (heroine) but didn't claim her hand soon enough before Jed (hero), a gorgeous stranger, arrives in town stating she'll lose her ranch unless she weds him. I just figure I've been so lucky in love that everybody, fictional or not, deserves some really good lovin.'

So I'm crashing some inspired words every day. Thursday, I spent several hours at the local Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, slurping caffeine with my writing buddy Sarah Dale while we both worked on current projects.

Today, Sarah and I met for high tea with three other writers. I write Westerns, Miriam writes mystery, Sarah erotica, and Ellenie urban fantasy, but we've all got a common goal: Romance.

I mean, I'm going to have a happy ending. Why not everybody else?

Tanya Writes About Deliverance

It's on. Right now on some cable channel. Deliverance.

Now you might ask, so what? It's not a girl movie so it can't be Tanya's favorite.

Or can it?

Well, this blog is about the hero's journey. No, not those yahoos on that canoe-trip gone wrong. A hero who met me way back in high school.

No, we weren't sweethearts then. He was Big Man on Campus and I, well, I was a dork. Yearbook editor. Honor Roll.

He was Football Team Captain and Boyfriend of the Head Cheerleader/Homecoming Queen.

But college was good to me. Four years later we met again at a Christmas party. OMG, it was truly an across-the-crowded-room deal. So I immediately concocted a New Years Eve party so I could see him again.

He beat me to it and called me the next day.

Leave it to me to almost ruin it before it started. Burt Reynolds was the hottie of the day. I guess he'd be the Orlando Bloom or Matt Damon or (God forbid) Justin Timberlake of today. So any movie of his had to be a good choice for a first date.

And that's just what I picked. A Burt Reynolds movie.

Deliverance.

I remember sitting through Ned Beatty's memorable scene and dying inside. He thinks I'm a pervert. He'll never ask me out again.

But he did. We rocked at my New Years Eve party...

...and have been together ever since.

So wherever your hero's journey takes you, hang on tight and stay by his side.

Tanya Writes About The Last Three Months

Thinking back over the last three months, I'm still amazed at my capacity for tears and fear, for faith and unbelief, for nightmares that took my breath away and dreams that always have happy endings.

I'm grateful to God for giving us the confidence in those dark days to plan four vacations over the next six months. For giving us friends, family and neighbors who are everything good and nothing like the morons in sitcoms.

I thank God every day for giving us hope and strength, medical science and savvy doctors, nurses so tender and loving my eyelashes get wet just thinking of them...and along with my gratitude, I pray for a chain of people with dreadful needs of their own just now, the same people who prayed for my wonderful hero.

Oh goodness. It's a gorgeous spring day going on outside and I need to pick up a few groceries. The best part: my hero wants to go along, get a Coffee Bean then walk around the harbor a bit! Oh, these small mercies. I will never take our boring life for granted. Sometimes the last three months seem like a blur, other times so clear I am not in my own head but watching on some un-reality TV big-screen somewhere.

Other times, it slow-motions down undurably in my mind and I remember the sobs and the screams. Yet now he is well. I don't understand why it happened at all, other than bad things happen to good people. I know it strengthened my faith--I am sooooooooooooooooo glad I had already started going to First Church...but other times my faith went into the blackest of holes. Whew.

Well, as normal life begins to cover us like molten butter over popcorn, I mention that Midnight Bride just got two great reviews in two days, so that was feel-good. Makes a total of six. Yowza. And another project is doing well in a fiction contest after getting perfect scores in another one. Well, that's good too.

If anybody's reading this, I'll be guest-blogging at a wonderful Western romance site, www.petticoatsandpistols.com next Thursday, May 1. There will be prizes. Hope to see you there.

And hey, thanks for the prayers.