Amber Foxx
has worked professionally in theater and dance, fitness, and academia. In her
free time she enjoys music, dancing, art, running and yoga. She divides her
time between the Southeast and the Southwest, living in Truth or Consequences
during her New Mexico months. Learn more about Amber and her books at her
website.
Frustrations:
Fragmentation
I usually blog about things that
make me happy, so I challenged myself to discuss frustrations. It was harder
than I expected. I have a bias toward the positive. Still, it can be good to
hear someone share a frustration. Recently, one of my students delivered a
hilarious rant about early morning classes as she slumped and sprawled over her
desk—in a morning class, of course. I’m the professor, so I can’t behave like
that, but I agreed with her and felt more normal about my preference to sleep
late. It doesn’t change the fact that morning people took over the world while
we were asleep; it just makes it more bearable to have someone express the same
feelings. I don’t have much to complain about it, and I’m not as funny as she
was, but I do have an ongoing frustration that others may identify with.
Fragmentation.
I heard the following fragments of fascinating facts on NPR.
1. A study found that people who are interrupted
frequently as part of an experiment will continue to interrupt themselves for
one to two hours after the intrusions have stopped.
2. France has passed a Right to Disconnect Law. Workers
have the right to ignore calls and emails from their workplaces while they are
on vacation or after working hours, and employers legally cannot penalize them
for not taking those calls. The purpose of this is to make sure people can
enjoy their leisure, their social events, and their family time uninterrupted.
I would have liked to learn more, but I had to interrupt
each of these stories, get out of the car and go teach a class.
As a professor, my day is broken up into one-hour to
ninety-minute chunks for meetings and classes without enough time in-between to
focus the way I like to. During an hour between two classes, I end up doing lots
of fragmented tasks, such as answering emails. Students and colleagues have
come to expect this as the norm for communication, rather than dropping by
office hours for conversation. I long for uninterrupted concentration. (Did you
notice the rhymes? I could write a patter song from that. Oops. Did you notice
how I just interrupted myself?) All these tiny tasks breaking up my focus are
turning me into an absent-minded professor. It’s my job to read, write and
think, and fragmentation makes it harder. I’ve picked two nights out of the
week on which I schedule nothing after work, so I can stay late to read and
grade student papers in peace, taking as long as I need to.
Because I crave escape from fragments and want whole experiences,
I love getting lost in books, both reading them and writing them. Summers and
vacations are bliss because I can write for hours. I schedule my time around a
few key events—exercise, social life, and sleep—and otherwise I can enter flow
to my heart’s content.
I confess that fragmentation fatigue makes it hard for me to
enjoy most social media. Facebook lets me stay in touch with friends I don’t
see often and fellow writers I only know online, but its busy interface doesn’t
inherently appeal to me. Twitter makes me feel as if hundreds of fragments are
flying at me, and I want to duck them. The only social media form I truly
embrace is blogging. The blogs I follow present fully developed ideas or images
that I can take time to enjoy, with no other visual stimuli clamoring at me from
above or below them. Writing a blog post allows me time to explore an idea and
polish it. While other social media feel like a drive in heavy traffic in a
construction zone with billboards on all sides, blogging feels like a leisurely
walk on a pleasant day.
While I was writing this, it struck me that although my
protagonist is in college (she’s in her late twenties, a non-traditional age
student), I’ve set only small portions of any of my books during the academic
year. As a student, her days are chopped up as much as mine are, between her classes
and study groups and her job at the campus fitness center. The open space of
her vacations gives me more freedom in my plots. Snake Face takes place during a Christmas holiday. The newest book,
Ghost Sickness, is set during her
summer break.
On my own summer breaks, I have frequently and blissfully
attended the ceremonies on the Mescalero Apache reservation that Mae goes to in
the book. I can enter a deep, ecstatic state of pure attention during these
dances. But of course, I can’t give my main character the kind of serene
vacations I enjoy. What I can give her is uninterrupted time to get involved in
a mystery.
Ghost
Sickness
A Mae Martin Psychic Mystery, Book 5
No murder,
just mystery. Every life hides a secret, and love is the deepest mystery of
all.
A visit to the Mescalero Apache reservation turns from vacation
to turmoil for Mae Martin.
Reno Geronimo has more money than a starving artist should. He’s
avoiding his fiancée and his family. His former mentor, nearing the end of her
life, refuses to speak to him and no one knows what caused the rift. Distressed
and frustrated, Reno’s fiancée asks Mae to use her psychic gift to find out
what he’s hiding. Love and friendship are rocked by conflict as she gets closer
and closer to the truth.
Bargain! The first
book in the Mae Martin Series, TheCalling, is on sale for 99 cents through October 28th.
2 comments:
Here's one more sales link, for shoppers who buy from various online stores. The 99 cent sale is everywhere. Thanks for hosting me, Lois.
Oops. I hit submit before adding the link! I guess it goes to show that I really am getting fragmented.
https://amberfoxxmysteries.com/buy-books-retail-links
Amber
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