Monthly Archives: March 2014

12th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

by

Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

logoAuthorsDen

Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
Cover reveal for Volume II: April 15, 2014

12th Serialized Excerpt, 3/31/14

CHAPTER SNAPSHOT #1

Snapshots of Clara’s Daily Life: Fourteen Octobers, 1963 – 2017

October, 1963

(continued)

I am a little over seven years old. My younger sister, Cassie, is a year-and-a-half. In Bayonne in those days, pediatricians still make “house calls,” meaning, our mother calls when we are sick or she has no way to get to the doctor’s office (in those days, most families in our suburban neighborhoods either have only one car or their mothers don’t even know how to drive). The doctor then comes before or after office hours to our house to check on or treat one of us.

On this day, right before I leave for school, my mom tells me that the doctor is coming to give Cassie a check-up because she’s been coughing a lot. I think my mom tells me this because our house is right across the street from the school and she knows I can see it from the playground.

“When you see the doctor’s car in our driveway,” she tells me, “you will know the reason he’s here and not come running home, scared that something bad has happened.”

I’m walking through the hallways just before the morning bell rings for us to signal the end of before-school morning recess, telling us to go to our classrooms, when I am hit with a physical pain in my butt, on my hip. It feels as if I have been stabbed by something sharp. I look around, but there’s no one and nothing there but me.

I stagger and almost fall into a small staircase next to the stage in the cafeteria/gymnasium. It is so narrow I can put my arms on each wall as I stumble down the few stairs, limping from the pain in my hip.

My vision of the stairs blurs as I “see” my baby sister on my bed and not in her crib. She is crying. The doctor stands over her, our mother next to her, soothing her. The doctor then puts an empty syringe (a “shot”) into a small container which he puts into his black doctor’s bag.

The doctor just gave my sister a shot. Why does my hip hurt? What is happening?

I lurch into the office at the bottom of the stairs, which belongs to the gym teacher, and blurt out: “My sister got a shot and my hip hurts.”

The gym teacher, startled, looks up to see me almost falling over and reaches out one hand to steady me.”What?” she asks me.”Clara, what are you talking about? What’s wrong with your hip?”

I start to cry.”It hurts. It hurts. Tell him to stop.”

“Who, Clara? Who is hurting you?”

Suddenly, the pain stops, my vision clears, and I see where I am.

I shake my head and look at the teacher.”What?” I ask her.”What happened?”

“You tell me!” she demands.

“I saw my sister getting a shot from the doctor. He’s at our house. It hurt, but now it’s fine. I have to go. The bell rang. My hip doesn’t hurt at all anymore.”

“Are you sure you’re all right?” she looks at me intently.

“I feel fine, now. See ya.”

I bounce out of her office and run up the stairs. I walk extra slowly past the principal’s office, sneak around the corner, then race to my classroom as the second bell rings. I throw myself into my seat.

“Made it,” I announce, to no one in particular, panting.

My second-grade teacher, not a nice woman, remarks,”Clara, if you are late to school you have no one to blame but yourself. You live closer than anyone else.”

“Right!” I say, falsely bright.

I lift my desk’s flip-up top to get my pencil, but really so the teacher can’t see my face. I grimace, rolling my eyes at my best friend, Paula, sitting next to me, and stick out my tongue insolently at my teacher, safe behind the wooden barrier from her mean eyes.

Paula grins at me from behind her now-raised desk, rolling her eyes, too.

Class begins and I almost forget about the entire thing.
*******

ESPE: Do you continue to have physically empathic reactions every time you timult?

CLARA: After that experience, I can only recall a few other times when I feel what others are feeling, physically or emotionally, during a timult. I usually get situational concepts or ongoing thoughts more than sensations or feelings of others.

Plus, I figure out on my own how to shield and re-direct fairly soon after this incident. I have to.

Even though I am not a full-blown empath, when a person in a timulted scene is a family member or close to me emotionally, I can still sometimes get empathic bleed-through, feeling their physical or emotional states briefly. My ESP training helps me keep the altered experiences and bleed-through to a minimum in terms of both duration and intensity, now. When I am younger, though, timulting is often problematic.

I also sometimes get empathic contact when I’m intentionally pre-cogging and accidentally, during dreams. In fact, empathic contact and the concomitant sensations are often my first clues that I’m having a pre-cognitive experience. More about pre-cogging in later Octobers in this Volume, all right?

ESPE: Sure. What else do want people to know about your elementary school years?

CLARA: About my being a feminist before I even know that word.
******

The part of my family that lives in Bayonne and near there are on my father’s side: his parents, his mother’s parents, his sister and her new husband, his mother’s brother and family, his mother’s single sister. We see them quite often.
I become an advocate for girls’ equal rights in my family and because of this school and its misogynistic policies. The need for this type of advocacy is all part of the era of my upbringing, unfortunately.

To anchor you younger ones: women my mothers’ age are the first generation of women who grow up with the right to vote in the USA, but women still can’t get credit, loans, property or inherit in their own names in many states until the 1970s. Even these “privileges” are accorded only to white women, remember: African-Americans of both sexes don’t get the “right” to vote until the late 1960s, when I’m in junior high school).

Men “own” their wives and can beat them up, rape them, force them to do whatever they want and the laws upholds these “rights.” Parents also “own” their children; child abuse, incest, neglect and abandonment are commonplace in some communities and there are no laws protecting the children.

There is an incident at our Reform Jewish Temple when I am four years old that is imprinted forever. In the great scheme of injustices and harmful moments, this one is not the greatest or worst by any means, even for me. But, it is pivotal in my feminist awakening.

I do not remember what holiday is being celebrated, just the incident.

We are all there, this aforementioned family of my father’s, along with my parents and my older brother. At one point in the service, my great-grandfather (my grandmother‘s father), my grandfather, my father and my brother are called up onto the pulpit (the small stage in the front of the congregation) to have their photos taken and be honored as “The Four Generations.”

I am furious. In my understanding, the “four generations” members being honored should have been this group: my great-grandparents, my grandmother as their daughter with her sister, my great aunt; my father and his sister; my brother and me. These are the four generations present today in our family, all of us.

Makes more sense, right? I suggest this, but my mother shushes me. She says, as if this explains it all,”Only men are allowed up there.”

I get angrier, especially when my brother senses my jealousy and smirks at me from the pulpit. I stick my tongue out at him. Well? I’m four!

Thus catalyzed, I am sensitized to sexism without having a word for it. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that I am enraged a few years later when I encounter our elementary school’s sexist policies. For instance, there are no girls allowed on the so-called “Safety Patrol,” which infuriates me. I complain about it starting in 4th grade even though the Patrol boys aren’t selected until 5th- and 6th-grade years. I get nowhere.

I am pleased to report that, by the time Cassie comes along, five years later, girls in her class are allowed to be in this elite group. By then, selection is solely based on academic performance. I know that’s also a specious winnowing tool, but it purports to be “gender-neutral.”

Why do I militate to be “on Patrol”? Because it’s VERY COOL! On the days they’re officially “on duty,” the Patrol Boys get to wear a sash and a badge, which look very grown-up. While “on Patrol,” they get to come to class late every morning and leave early every afternoon in order to help the adult crossing guards at the intersections. This “important” work involves herding most of the students to where we’re already going, anyway. They also walk the kindergartners in and out of school for fire drills and situate them for air raid drills.

It’s not the tasks I envy; it’s the status. And, my prime motivation is the general principle of fairness.

(Yes, we have nuclear bomb air raid drills: we are told to hide under our wooden desks or whatever is nearby. The “Cold War” is in full swing while I’m at this school.)

More to be enraged about are the sexism and impracticality which dominate the school clothes rules. We do not have uniforms, but strict policies: girls are not allowed to wear pants or shorts. We have to wear skirts or dresses to school, every day.

Imagine climbing all over the “monkey-bars” (“jungle gym”), doing gymnastics, playing sports and sprinting around in dresses and skirts? We have no gym uniforms until junior high school, either, so we have physical educational games and activities in our regular clothes. Climbing ropes in skirts? Really? Skirts/ dresses really do not function well for active, sports-inclined girls, which many of us are.

As a work-around, passed down from some older girls, my friends and I wear shorts under our skirts every day or long pants in the winter. It’s so ridiculous and also infuriating. We protect our modesty and privacy (no one can see our underpants when we’re climbing or running around) but the double layers are bulky, slowing us down while making us uncomfortable and too hot in the warmer weather. I hate these rules and argue constantly to change them.

Also, my first “civil disobedience” nonviolent resistance leadership actions occur because of this. In fifth grade, I am 10 years old. That spring, as soon as the warm weather comes and we go outside for recess, I get on the playground and take my skirt off, hanging it on a less-used horizontal bar. I wear just my shirt and shorts, same as every day when I get home and all summer.

Many of my friends see me and do the same. We hoot and holler, running around, climbing freely, having a great time, daring the playground supervisors to send us to the Principal’s Office, but they studiously ignore us. When the bell rings, we put our skirts back on and go back to class, triumphant. Small victories.

***********
CLARA: Even odder, we go from this strict, sexist dress code in 1963 to no dress code at all by 1969. More about that later.

ESPE: You become an advocate for girls, you know you can timult, you write stories and songs, you get up to reading over 100 books in one year, and others see you as either a leader or rabble-rouser, all before you’re out of elementary school?

CLARA: Yes. I don’t even see myself as unusual, yet.

ESPE: That’s the weirdest part!
*********************************

Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.

4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.

On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.

#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING

12th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

by

Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

logoAuthorsDen

Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
Cover reveal for Volume II: April 15, 2014

12th Serialized Excerpt, 3/31/14

CHAPTER SNAPSHOT #1

Snapshots of Clara’s Daily Life: Fourteen Octobers, 1963 – 2017

October, 1963

(continued)

I am a little over seven years old. My younger sister, Cassie, is a year-and-a-half. In Bayonne in those days, pediatricians still make “house calls,” meaning, our mother calls when we are sick or she has no way to get to the doctor’s office (in those days, most families in our suburban neighborhoods either have only one car or their mothers don’t even know how to drive). The doctor then comes before or after office hours to our house to check on or treat one of us.

On this day, right before I leave for school, my mom tells me that the doctor is coming to give Cassie a check-up because she’s been coughing a lot. I think my mom tells me this because our house is right across the street from the school and she knows I can see it from the playground.

“When you see the doctor’s car in our driveway,” she tells me, “you will know the reason he’s here and not come running home, scared that something bad has happened.”

I’m walking through the hallways just before the morning bell rings for us to signal the end of before-school morning recess, telling us to go to our classrooms, when I am hit with a physical pain in my butt, on my hip. It feels as if I have been stabbed by something sharp. I look around, but there’s no one and nothing there but me.

I stagger and almost fall into a small staircase next to the stage in the cafeteria/gymnasium. It is so narrow I can put my arms on each wall as I stumble down the few stairs, limping from the pain in my hip.

My vision of the stairs blurs as I “see” my baby sister on my bed and not in her crib. She is crying. The doctor stands over her, our mother next to her, soothing her. The doctor then puts an empty syringe (a “shot”) into a small container which he puts into his black doctor’s bag.

The doctor just gave my sister a shot. Why does my hip hurt? What is happening?

I lurch into the office at the bottom of the stairs, which belongs to the gym teacher, and blurt out: “My sister got a shot and my hip hurts.”

The gym teacher, startled, looks up to see me almost falling over and reaches out one hand to steady me.”What?” she asks me.”Clara, what are you talking about? What’s wrong with your hip?”

I start to cry.”It hurts. It hurts. Tell him to stop.”

“Who, Clara? Who is hurting you?”

Suddenly, the pain stops, my vision clears, and I see where I am.

I shake my head and look at the teacher.”What?” I ask her.”What happened?”

“You tell me!” she demands.

“I saw my sister getting a shot from the doctor. He’s at our house. It hurt, but now it’s fine. I have to go. The bell rang. My hip doesn’t hurt at all anymore.”

“Are you sure you’re all right?” she looks at me intently.

“I feel fine, now. See ya.”

I bounce out of her office and run up the stairs. I walk extra slowly past the principal’s office, sneak around the corner, then race to my classroom as the second bell rings. I throw myself into my seat.

“Made it,” I announce, to no one in particular, panting.

My second-grade teacher, not a nice woman, remarks,”Clara, if you are late to school you have no one to blame but yourself. You live closer than anyone else.”

“Right!” I say, falsely bright.

I lift my desk’s flip-up top to get my pencil, but really so the teacher can’t see my face. I grimace, rolling my eyes at my best friend, Paula, sitting next to me, and stick out my tongue insolently at my teacher, safe behind the wooden barrier from her mean eyes.

Paula grins at me from behind her now-raised desk, rolling her eyes, too.

Class begins and I almost forget about the entire thing.
*******

ESPE: Do you continue to have physically empathic reactions every time you timult?

CLARA: After that experience, I can only recall a few other times when I feel what others are feeling, physically or emotionally, during a timult. I usually get situational concepts or ongoing thoughts more than sensations or feelings of others.

Plus, I figure out on my own how to shield and re-direct fairly soon after this incident. I have to.

Even though I am not a full-blown empath, when a person in a timulted scene is a family member or close to me emotionally, I can still sometimes get empathic bleed-through, feeling their physical or emotional states briefly. My ESP training helps me keep the altered experiences and bleed-through to a minimum in terms of both duration and intensity, now. When I am younger, though, timulting is often problematic.

I also sometimes get empathic contact when I’m intentionally pre-cogging and accidentally, during dreams. In fact, empathic contact and the concomitant sensations are often my first clues that I’m having a pre-cognitive experience. More about pre-cogging in later Octobers in this Volume, all right?

ESPE: Sure. What else do want people to know about your elementary school years?

CLARA: About my being a feminist before I even know that word.
******

The part of my family that lives in Bayonne and near there are on my father’s side: his parents, his mother’s parents, his sister and her new husband, his mother’s brother and family, his mother’s single sister. We see them quite often.
I become an advocate for girls’ equal rights in my family and because of this school and its misogynistic policies. The need for this type of advocacy is all part of the era of my upbringing, unfortunately.

To anchor you younger ones: women my mothers’ age are the first generation of women who grow up with the right to vote in the USA, but women still can’t get credit, loans, property or inherit in their own names in many states until the 1970s. Even these “privileges” are accorded only to white women, remember: African-Americans of both sexes don’t get the “right” to vote until the late 1960s, when I’m in junior high school).

Men “own” their wives and can beat them up, rape them, force them to do whatever they want and the laws upholds these “rights.” Parents also “own” their children; child abuse, incest, neglect and abandonment are commonplace in some communities and there are no laws protecting the children.

There is an incident at our Reform Jewish Temple when I am four years old that is imprinted forever. In the great scheme of injustices and harmful moments, this one is not the greatest or worst by any means, even for me. But, it is pivotal in my feminist awakening.

I do not remember what holiday is being celebrated, just the incident.

We are all there, this aforementioned family of my father’s, along with my parents and my older brother. At one point in the service, my great-grandfather (my grandmother‘s father), my grandfather, my father and my brother are called up onto the pulpit (the small stage in the front of the congregation) to have their photos taken and be honored as “The Four Generations.”

I am furious. In my understanding, the “four generations” members being honored should have been this group: my great-grandparents, my grandmother as their daughter with her sister, my great aunt; my father and his sister; my brother and me. These are the four generations present today in our family, all of us.

Makes more sense, right? I suggest this, but my mother shushes me. She says, as if this explains it all,”Only men are allowed up there.”

I get angrier, especially when my brother senses my jealousy and smirks at me from the pulpit. I stick my tongue out at him. Well? I’m four!

Thus catalyzed, I am sensitized to sexism without having a word for it. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that I am enraged a few years later when I encounter our elementary school’s sexist policies. For instance, there are no girls allowed on the so-called “Safety Patrol,” which infuriates me. I complain about it starting in 4th grade even though the Patrol boys aren’t selected until 5th- and 6th-grade years. I get nowhere.

I am pleased to report that, by the time Cassie comes along, five years later, girls in her class are allowed to be in this elite group. By then, selection is solely based on academic performance. I know that’s also a specious winnowing tool, but it purports to be “gender-neutral.”

Why do I militate to be “on Patrol”? Because it’s VERY COOL! On the days they’re officially “on duty,” the Patrol Boys get to wear a sash and a badge, which look very grown-up. While “on Patrol,” they get to come to class late every morning and leave early every afternoon in order to help the adult crossing guards at the intersections. This “important” work involves herding most of the students to where we’re already going, anyway. They also walk the kindergartners in and out of school for fire drills and situate them for air raid drills.

It’s not the tasks I envy; it’s the status. And, my prime motivation is the general principle of fairness.

(Yes, we have nuclear bomb air raid drills: we are told to hide under our wooden desks or whatever is nearby. The “Cold War” is in full swing while I’m at this school.)

More to be enraged about are the sexism and impracticality which dominate the school clothes rules. We do not have uniforms, but strict policies: girls are not allowed to wear pants or shorts. We have to wear skirts or dresses to school, every day.

Imagine climbing all over the “monkey-bars” (“jungle gym”), doing gymnastics, playing sports and sprinting around in dresses and skirts? We have no gym uniforms until junior high school, either, so we have physical educational games and activities in our regular clothes. Climbing ropes in skirts? Really? Skirts/ dresses really do not function well for active, sports-inclined girls, which many of us are.

As a work-around, passed down from some older girls, my friends and I wear shorts under our skirts every day or long pants in the winter. It’s so ridiculous and also infuriating. We protect our modesty and privacy (no one can see our underpants when we’re climbing or running around) but the double layers are bulky, slowing us down while making us uncomfortable and too hot in the warmer weather. I hate these rules and argue constantly to change them.

Also, my first “civil disobedience” nonviolent resistance leadership actions occur because of this. In fifth grade, I am 10 years old. That spring, as soon as the warm weather comes and we go outside for recess, I get on the playground and take my skirt off, hanging it on a less-used horizontal bar. I wear just my shirt and shorts, same as every day when I get home and all summer.

Many of my friends see me and do the same. We hoot and holler, running around, climbing freely, having a great time, daring the playground supervisors to send us to the Principal’s Office, but they studiously ignore us. When the bell rings, we put our skirts back on and go back to class, triumphant. Small victories.

***********
CLARA: Even odder, we go from this strict, sexist dress code in 1963 to no dress code at all by 1969. More about that later.

ESPE: You become an advocate for girls, you know you can timult, you write stories and songs, you get up to reading over 100 books in one year, and others see you as either a leader or rabble-rouser, all before you’re out of elementary school?

CLARA: Yes. I don’t even see myself as unusual, yet.

ESPE: That’s the weirdest part!
*********************************

Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.

4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.

On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.

#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING

4 stars! #BookReview #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING by Nick LeVar, Free World Authors

by

4-STAR Review of
This Changes Everything, Volume I, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
from Nick LeVar, Founder, Free World Authors, HIGHLIGHTS here (full review link, below)

“Being a sci-fi fan, I look forward to, and enjoy, fictional worlds that are not real, but are real, and events that have not happened, but could happen, and maybe they have happened, and we just don’t know it, yet. Confused enough? Good, because This Changes Everything is not for the fan of simplistic work. And I mean that as a compliment to the author.”

“This Changes Everything challenged my sense of convention.”

“In the first paragraph, Sally immediately piqued my interest by enticing questions. Who is visiting Clara? Are they dangerous? Are they even human? Why don’t they speak when she asks questions? Getting the reader to wonder what they hell is going on is a good way to keep the pages turning. Score.”

“I got the sense that I was in the world as an Earther, feeling what Clara felt, seeing what she saw, and hearing what she heard. The world itself should become another character, and when I can experience the story rather than read it, the author will draw smiles from me.”

“Somewhere in the past, authors have gotten the bright idea to rehash other authors’ stories that have already found success. While borrowing is, in itself, a form of art, I appreciate creativity. This Changes Everything fits the bill. In it, Sally references major events in human history. But that’s not the creative part… I’ll put it this way, you will finish the book wondering what part aliens may have played in the Challenger explosion or the NSA’s invasion of our rights to privacy!”

“If you’re looking for a book that you can skim, then stick to Twilight. If you appreciate a story that reads like the author took her time and was unafraid to challenge what you think you know about story structure, then give This Changes Everything a go. I think you’ll be impressed!”

“4 Stars ”

http://freeworldauthors.com/this-changes-everything/.html

This-Changes-Everything----web-and-ebooks
Cover and logo art by Willowraven.

Available wherever ebooks are sold. Buy links, more reviews, interviews and excerpts from Volume II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, starting March 16, on http://www.sallyember.com
Volume II is in pre-orders via Smashwords, iBooks, Kobo and nook for 50% off @$1.99, 4/18/14 – 6/8/14 and releases 6/9/14 @$3.99 on those sites plus Amazon and everywhere.

“I write like Ursula K. Le Guin”! Couldn’t have been more honored!

by

I took the “Who is the author whose writing mine is most like?” test by pasting about one page from Chapter One, Volume III, This Is/Is Not The Way I Thought Things Would Change, my work-in-progress of The Spanners Series.

I write like
Ursula K. Le Guin

I Write Like. Analyze your writing!

I couldn’t be more thrilled, honored, pleased. http://www.sallyember.com for excerpts from Volumes I & II, reviews of Vol I, interviews, more.

The Cloud People Dance at #sallyember.com

by

“Some nights, with only the trees and mountains to greet them, the cloud people rise up slowly from the horizon and dance.”

The start of my new children’s picture book? A story a character tells in a volume of The Spanners Series?

Cloud People Dance
from http://wide-wallpapers.net

Follow this blog, stay tuned and find out. http://www.sallyember.com

11th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

by

Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

logoAuthorsDen

Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
Cover reveal for Volume II: April 15, 2014

11th Serialized Excerpt, 3/28/14

CHAPTER SNAPSHOT #1

Snapshots of Clara’s Daily Life: Fourteen Octobers, 1963 – 2017

October, 1963

    Age and Living Circumstances/Location:

Fourth-grader, age 9, in Bayonne Elementary School, Missouri; living in Bayonne, suburb of large, midwestern USA city in family home with her: father, Isaac; mother, Rose; older brother, Thomas, 10; younger sister, Cassie, 3; and, a dog.
Many local friends from school, some who live further away from the family’s Reform Jewish Temple and Camp Cedar (residential summer camp run by the local Jewish Community Center).

    Writing:

stories, articles, songs, poetry (published in school and camp newsletters).

    Favorite Books:

Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, Robert Heinlein; A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline L’Engle; The Door in the Wall, Marguerite de Angeli; Charlotte’s Web, E.B. White; The Borrowers, Mary Norton; The Bronze Bow, Elizabeth George Speare; Danny Dunn series, Raymond Abrashkin and Jay Williams; Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series, Betty MacDonald; Miss Pickerell Goes to Mars, Ellen McGregor; The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, Eleanor Cameron.

    Music on the Radio:

“Love Me Do,” “She Loves You,” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” The Beatles; “It’s My Party,” Lesley Gore; “Be My Baby,” The Ronettes; “He’s So Fine,” The Chiffons; “If I Had a Hammer,” Trini Lopez; “I Only Want to Be With You,” Dusty Springfield; “Surfer Girl” and “Surfin’ USA,” The Beach Boys; “Up on the Roof,” The Drifters; “Wipeout,” The Surfaris; Elvis Presley; Patty Duke; Roy Orbison.

    Popular Songs Available in Sheet Music:

“Anyone Who Had a Heart” and other songs by Burt Bacharach & Hal David (sung by Dionne Warwick); “Charade,” Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini (sung by Andy Williams); instrumental music reconfigured for beginning and intermediate players of solo piano by many popular composers.

    Activities:

► Attending (under duress) Jewish religious education services and classes most Sunday mornings (“Sunday School”) during the school year.
► Reading constantly (see above).
► Taking weekly piano lessons and practicing regularly; winning prizes in regional classical piano competitions, ages 9 – 11.
► Playing outdoors a lot, climbing trees, playing hide-and-go-seek, going to play at the elementary school’s “jungle-gym” and playgrounds for kickball, softball, tennis, soccer, field hockey, sprinting, and indoors for balance beam/gymnastics.
► Also, bike riding; waterskiing, canoeing, Israeli folk dancing, swimming, sailing at Camp Cedar (Jewish residential camp, Lake of the Ozarks) and local outdoor pool in the summer.

ESPE: Clara asks me to include some stories and poems she is “guilty of writing when younger” (her words, not mine). She asks that I put each one in the closest year for the October of each of these sections.

Here is her first (and only) fairy tale, dated May 11, 1964. It’s written in pencil, on yellowing, manila-colored, lined paper, in cursive writing. At the top, next to her name and the date, she writes “9 years old” and across the top she prints “DON’T THROW AWAY!!!” Guess she keeps what she tells herself to keep!

“Princess Why” by Clara Ackerman, 9 years old

May 11, 1964

Not so very long ago, in a far-off land, lived a princess called Princess Why. She got this name because the very first and only word that she had ever uttered was “Why?”

The good Queen Falina had given birth to twin daughters, but the evil witch, Zweezy, had drugged the Queen and her husband, the kind King Loten, and had stolen one of the baby twin princesses away. When the good Queen and the kind King awoke from their enchanted sleep, neither of them remembered that there really had been two babies. They now only saw one baby princess, and one was all they now had.

Zweezy, although a very cruel witch, was nonetheless not very smart. She had not remembered to drug the other baby or the royal dog, Kays, and they had both seen Zweezy carry out the terrible kidnapping with their very own eyes.

When the baby princess, who still lived with her parents, was very small, she managed to say her first and only word, “Why?” From then on, she was destined to be called Princess Why.

The word she had spoken was meant to ask: “Why didn’t Mother stop Sister from being stolen?” “Why has Sister been taken away from us?” “Why isn’t Sister back with us, yet?”

For fifteen long years, the good Queen Falina and the kind King Loten ruled their kingdom wisely and well. Princess Why grew older and more beautiful, but she never said anything but “Why?” She grew more and more weak and sickly as she tried so desperately to tell her royal parents all that had really happened on that awful day. She tried very hard, but all she could say was “Why?”

She became very ill, and would have certainly died, but the royal nurse, Vetina, consulted the sickness god, Wade, and the Princess remained alive. For many months, she lingered on the verge of certain death, only able to stay alive by the chants Vetina did at the Princess’ bedside.

One day, Princess Why managed to sit up by her window and look weakly out into the royal garden. She watched Kays, the royal dog, romping and playing with the rabbits and the squirrels. While chasing a rabbit, Kays happened to follow it through a hole in the royal garden wall. As he ran around outside the palace grounds and into the village streets, who should he meet but the evil witch, Zweezy, the very same Zweezy who had taken Princess Why’s twin so many years before!

Kays being a good and loyal royal dog and remembering how he had seen Zweezy do the terrible deed with his very own eyes, pounced upon Zweezy. He tore her to pieces before she could even open her evil mouth to cast a spell on him!

Just then, a strange thing occurred. There was a great rumbling sound throughout the kingdom. Suddenly, in her room, Princess Why screamed and there before her stood her long-lost twin! Both were fair and kind as well as beautiful, and now both could speak and both were well.

The good Queen Fatina and the kind King Loten rejoiced to have both their daughters safe again, and proclaimed the day to be a royal holiday in honor of their daughters’ good luck and good health. They had a Royal Banquet, and at the new Christening, the two Princesses were given the beautiful names of Princess Faya and Princess Fosa.

In the years ahead, both Princess Faya and Princess Fosa would marry and have children and would always be kind and good to all. They especially made sure that Kays, the good and faithful royal dog, and all his pups, lived their lives as comfortably as royal dogs could.

The End

CLARA: It holds up rather well, all things considered, I think.

ESPE: If you say so.

CLARA: I have a comma problem then, same as now.

ESPE: Yes, you do.

CLARA: I suppose someone could analyze this to tedium. Let’s not.

ESPE: Fine with me.

CLARA: How about if I tell another story, my first memory of timulting?

ESPE: Good idea. In fact, I think the more you put in here which helps to explain the ways that your early life experiences and qualities contribute to your being selected to be Chief Communicator, the more easily we can justify spending the time on this Volume. There are hundreds of hours involved interviewing you, interviewing all your nieces, nephews, your son, me. And, you pay me a lot.

CLARA: All right. Your point is taken. Here we go.
*********************************

Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.

4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.

On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.

#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING

11th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

by

Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

logoAuthorsDen

Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
Cover reveal for Volume II: April 15, 2014

11th Serialized Excerpt, 3/28/14

CHAPTER SNAPSHOT #1

Snapshots of Clara’s Daily Life: Fourteen Octobers, 1963 – 2017

October, 1963

    Age and Living Circumstances/Location:

Fourth-grader, age 9, in Bayonne Elementary School, Missouri; living in Bayonne, suburb of large, midwestern USA city in family home with her: father, Isaac; mother, Rose; older brother, Thomas, 10; younger sister, Cassie, 3; and, a dog.
Many local friends from school, some who live further away from the family’s Reform Jewish Temple and Camp Cedar (residential summer camp run by the local Jewish Community Center).

    Writing:

stories, articles, songs, poetry (published in school and camp newsletters).

    Favorite Books:

Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, Robert Heinlein; A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline L’Engle; The Door in the Wall, Marguerite de Angeli; Charlotte’s Web, E.B. White; The Borrowers, Mary Norton; The Bronze Bow, Elizabeth George Speare; Danny Dunn series, Raymond Abrashkin and Jay Williams; Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series, Betty MacDonald; Miss Pickerell Goes to Mars, Ellen McGregor; The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, Eleanor Cameron.

    Music on the Radio:

“Love Me Do,” “She Loves You,” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” The Beatles; “It’s My Party,” Lesley Gore; “Be My Baby,” The Ronettes; “He’s So Fine,” The Chiffons; “If I Had a Hammer,” Trini Lopez; “I Only Want to Be With You,” Dusty Springfield; “Surfer Girl” and “Surfin’ USA,” The Beach Boys; “Up on the Roof,” The Drifters; “Wipeout,” The Surfaris; Elvis Presley; Patty Duke; Roy Orbison.

    Popular Songs Available in Sheet Music:

“Anyone Who Had a Heart” and other songs by Burt Bacharach & Hal David (sung by Dionne Warwick); “Charade,” Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini (sung by Andy Williams); instrumental music reconfigured for beginning and intermediate players of solo piano by many popular composers.

    Activities:

► Attending (under duress) Jewish religious education services and classes most Sunday mornings (“Sunday School”) during the school year.
► Reading constantly (see above).
► Taking weekly piano lessons and practicing regularly; winning prizes in regional classical piano competitions, ages 9 – 11.
► Playing outdoors a lot, climbing trees, playing hide-and-go-seek, going to play at the elementary school’s “jungle-gym” and playgrounds for kickball, softball, tennis, soccer, field hockey, sprinting, and indoors for balance beam/gymnastics.
► Also, bike riding; waterskiing, canoeing, Israeli folk dancing, swimming, sailing at Camp Cedar (Jewish residential camp, Lake of the Ozarks) and local outdoor pool in the summer.

ESPE: Clara asks me to include some stories and poems she is “guilty of writing when younger” (her words, not mine). She asks that I put each one in the closest year for the October of each of these sections.

Here is her first (and only) fairy tale, dated May 11, 1964. It’s written in pencil, on yellowing, manila-colored, lined paper, in cursive writing. At the top, next to her name and the date, she writes “9 years old” and across the top she prints “DON’T THROW AWAY!!!” Guess she keeps what she tells herself to keep!

“Princess Why” by Clara Ackerman, 9 years old

May 11, 1964

Not so very long ago, in a far-off land, lived a princess called Princess Why. She got this name because the very first and only word that she had ever uttered was “Why?”

The good Queen Falina had given birth to twin daughters, but the evil witch, Zweezy, had drugged the Queen and her husband, the kind King Loten, and had stolen one of the baby twin princesses away. When the good Queen and the kind King awoke from their enchanted sleep, neither of them remembered that there really had been two babies. They now only saw one baby princess, and one was all they now had.

Zweezy, although a very cruel witch, was nonetheless not very smart. She had not remembered to drug the other baby or the royal dog, Kays, and they had both seen Zweezy carry out the terrible kidnapping with their very own eyes.

When the baby princess, who still lived with her parents, was very small, she managed to say her first and only word, “Why?” From then on, she was destined to be called Princess Why.

The word she had spoken was meant to ask: “Why didn’t Mother stop Sister from being stolen?” “Why has Sister been taken away from us?” “Why isn’t Sister back with us, yet?”

For fifteen long years, the good Queen Falina and the kind King Loten ruled their kingdom wisely and well. Princess Why grew older and more beautiful, but she never said anything but “Why?” She grew more and more weak and sickly as she tried so desperately to tell her royal parents all that had really happened on that awful day. She tried very hard, but all she could say was “Why?”

She became very ill, and would have certainly died, but the royal nurse, Vetina, consulted the sickness god, Wade, and the Princess remained alive. For many months, she lingered on the verge of certain death, only able to stay alive by the chants Vetina did at the Princess’ bedside.

One day, Princess Why managed to sit up by her window and look weakly out into the royal garden. She watched Kays, the royal dog, romping and playing with the rabbits and the squirrels. While chasing a rabbit, Kays happened to follow it through a hole in the royal garden wall. As he ran around outside the palace grounds and into the village streets, who should he meet but the evil witch, Zweezy, the very same Zweezy who had taken Princess Why’s twin so many years before!

Kays being a good and loyal royal dog and remembering how he had seen Zweezy do the terrible deed with his very own eyes, pounced upon Zweezy. He tore her to pieces before she could even open her evil mouth to cast a spell on him!

Just then, a strange thing occurred. There was a great rumbling sound throughout the kingdom. Suddenly, in her room, Princess Why screamed and there before her stood her long-lost twin! Both were fair and kind as well as beautiful, and now both could speak and both were well.

The good Queen Fatina and the kind King Loten rejoiced to have both their daughters safe again, and proclaimed the day to be a royal holiday in honor of their daughters’ good luck and good health. They had a Royal Banquet, and at the new Christening, the two Princesses were given the beautiful names of Princess Faya and Princess Fosa.

In the years ahead, both Princess Faya and Princess Fosa would marry and have children and would always be kind and good to all. They especially made sure that Kays, the good and faithful royal dog, and all his pups, lived their lives as comfortably as royal dogs could.

The End

CLARA: It holds up rather well, all things considered, I think.

ESPE: If you say so.

CLARA: I have a comma problem then, same as now.

ESPE: Yes, you do.

CLARA: I suppose someone could analyze this to tedium. Let’s not.

ESPE: Fine with me.

CLARA: How about if I tell another story, my first memory of timulting?

ESPE: Good idea. In fact, I think the more you put in here which helps to explain the ways that your early life experiences and qualities contribute to your being selected to be Chief Communicator, the more easily we can justify spending the time on this Volume. There are hundreds of hours involved interviewing you, interviewing all your nieces, nephews, your son, me. And, you pay me a lot.

CLARA: All right. Your point is taken. Here we go.
*********************************

Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.

4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.

On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.

#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING

10th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

by

Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

logoAuthorsDen

Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
Cover reveal for Volume II: April 15, 2014

10th Serialized Excerpt, 3/28/14

CHAPTER ONE

Zephyr Branon, 38, only child of

Clara Branon, Ph.D., Chief Communicator

(continued)

7. Which of the MWC members or other species visitors do you have contact with? How and why, and how is that for you?

ZEPHYR: Again, I’m in a unique position. The Band delegates are kind of like relatives to me, at this point, like uncles and aunts, almost. Not that I see them often, but I hear about them a lot and I have been “with” them many times, as holos and off-p. I am one of the first non-OS trainees, adults, to be enrolled in ESP [Excellent/Extraordinary Skills Program] training, so Mick and I are quite close, I think, since he runs it.

When Kayla, Kendall and I move to California, right near The Campus, in the summer of 2015, that is right before The Campus has its big blow-out celebration for my mom’s birthday. So, we’re here for that. Things heat up, so to speak, right after that regarding the psi Wars and lots of other stuff.

What I mean by that is, my family and I are spending a lot more time being directly involved in MWC activities and with things at The Campus now that we’re so close.

And, Espe, well, you’re like a sister. Right, E? You call me a lot, we hang out, we email and text.

When you have trouble understanding my mom, I am the translator. I think part of it is that we’re the same age, so we get each other. I often have to explain you to my mom as well.

[We both laugh.]

ZEPHYR: Plus, you and Kayla are great friends. Sometimes I think you and Kayla get together so you can vent about the Branons. I don’t blame you!

Of The Band, I think Mick and I are the most “in tune,” since he’s the main tech guy and he also, like me, is very into music. But, I really enjoy the pairPartners [Janis—Diana], and since Kayla is a dancer, they groove with each other very well, too.

When I want to know more about how my mom’s doing or feeling: I ask Janis—Diana.

When I have questions about protocol or Re-sets, issues or politics, Led is my man.
For the ESP training “insider” stuff, like cheats and shortcuts, I go to Ringo. Ringo also knows a lot about what’s happening back on the IGC [InterGalactic Council] mainframe, so to speak, so for up-to-the-minute news about Exchanges, innovations and such, I ask Mick or Ringo.

Most Earthers have to use their iDs, but because I’m, well, me, I have special Access to each of them, directly, you know, telepathically. Only Moran, my mom and I have that, I think. Or, maybe, Epifanio does. I don’t ask him about this, actually.

You can’t ‘path The Band, right E?

ESPE: I cannot. They can ‘path me, though. Usually, they don’t.

ZEPHYR: As far as communicating with other Earthers, especially non-humans, that depends on what I’m doing, I guess, and where I and they are at any given time. Some of the Primates make music with me. The best are the cephalopods, especially some of the Octopuses. They are remarkable!

I get together with musically inclined off-worlders at every Music Exchange. I record some of that, which is so cool. With music, we don’t even need to use the fish [Interspecies Communication System]. Tell listeners/readers to check out my music site, OK? [zephyrbranonmusic.mwcw]

8. What transforms your life more: your fish [Interspecies Communication System], your iD [Individual Access Devices Interface], or travel to other planets/moons? How?

ZEPHYR: Obviously, I love my iD and use it constantly. I love the way my iD has a wireless hook-up to my music players, both at home and when I’m out, so I can get music from ANYWHERE, any time. That is sweet.

I use the fish a lot when I travel or am out in nature. We use it at home to talk with our cat and dog, but not often as an ordinary translator. With telepathy, once I’m at Level 2 solidly, I can understand most species on Earth or off-p, one-on-one, without the fish.

Interplanetary and intergalactic travel are the most amazing addition to our lives that anyone could imagine, and I am still humbled and excited every time I get to go out. I never get tired of that and hope to make many more off-p trips. I want to bring my family on some, too.

We don’t do that, yet, although Kayla goes out and we make one trip together, also. Got to bring the kids, right? It’s what families do on a family vacation, like going to the Grand Canyon or whatever, only infinitely more cool.
As far as transforming my life…that’s harder to see, for me. I’m sure my life is transformed, and not only on the surface, but how to explain that?

I can’t imagine my life without it, all of it. Timulting isn’t my thing.

We change every day, every minute. How, specifically, does the Transition change me…? I’ll have to get back to you on that.

My dad has a hard time with some of it, like many people his age—he’s ten years older than my mom, so almost 70 when she starts being the CC. They talk a lot, which I think helps, at first, but then she gets so busy she doesn’t check in as often, and he’s kind of a hermit-type.

I think my dad is kind of awed and mystified, but he is that a lot, anyway, about many things and people. He’s a Sufi. A mystic. He whirls. Like they do in Turkey. With the big hat and skirt with metal in the hem. Ever see him do that?

[Yes.]

I zoom in on him a lot these days, and I worry too much, probably. Try to imagine: my dad is one of the oldest Spanners, born in 1944. What he’s lived through, the changes he’s seen! I can’t really grok it, myself.

It’s harder for him after we move here, so I visit him a lot. That’s another thing I appreciate: off-p travel methods work on-p as well, so getting to and from, say, old California to old New Hampshire: just a thought and a movement away. No TJ needed, either!

9. How do your friends, family, wife and children feel about your mom as the CC and how does this affect your own relationships?

ZEPHYR: If you want to know how Kayla feels, you best ask her. Kendall has no clue, since she’s not even two. To Kendall, the famous Chief Communicator is just my mom and her grandmother.

My friends are mostly jealous. Completely.

Some of them say things like: “We’re so NOT surprised that your mom is doing this; she’s always been…unusual.” They’re right, of course. My mom is always the one who is way over in the red zone on the Strange Meter compared to my friends’ moms. Good strange, though, not awful strange.

I feel kind of badly when friends ask me stuff and I’m not allowed to say, but they understand, by now. I am allowed to talk to Kayla about things that I can’t talk to anyone else about (I get permission, and so does my mom, early on), and also, to my dad. My mom also talks directly with my dad, so that’s cool.

I don’t know what my dad tells his brother and sister; my grandparents on that side are dead already before the changes set in (my grandfather is dead almost ten years before; my grandmother is already demented and then dies early into the Transition), so, in a way, that’s good, or this would kill them, for sure. They never liked my mom.

I think this would be a lot harder without those permissions, though. That would suck. I know about that a little since I am not allowed to say anything to Kayla or my dad until December, when I know since October, in 2012. Those two months last FOREVER.

Once I am able to talk with them, though, especially Kayla, everything is much easier. She really helps me adjust to the “fame.” I am not expecting that. I blame my mom; she doesn’t put my fame problems in Volume I, which is the only one I see BPC [Before Public Contact]! [laughter]

I do have questions I can’t ask her. Here is one exchange I can share in which I ask some key questions.
********
During one of my ESP training sessions, I ask Mick: “Why does the MWC only come to one member of the dominant species on each member orb to be the Liaison for Transition and after that? Isn’t that a lot of pressure on that one being, their family and friends?”

Mick replies: “Every time we try working with more than one being as Liaison, we have to do extensive Re-sets. This happens on my planet, my CeeCee tells me [The Chief Communicator on Mick’s planet is a relative of his, like an uncle].”

“Problems are two-fold,” he continues. “One, consistency of information dissemination; two, reliability of witnesses.”

I start to ask a follow-up, but Mick’s on a roll, as he often is: “As soon as you have more than one individual telling any story, you run into contradictions and disparities. These widen out the further you go from each individual until the distortions are unacceptable. It’s like your game of ‘telephone,’ yes?”

I nod. I see the problem clearly as he describes it. I know he can tell I understand, because he nods and says: “So, one Transition, one Liaison. Information flows in a straight line from the MWC to the Liaison, from the Chief Communicator via her media contact to the orbs’ inhabitants. Works best. Protocol, now.”

I believe him.

Mick then gives me a nodding gesture with his headpiece and says,”You are our second choice.”

I feel as if he punches me in the gut with that. No way! I could never…

Then, Mick makes his laughing noise.

Whew! Just kidding!
***************
Sick sense of humor. Gotta love that.

I do wonder who else is on their short list, though? No pun intended, Little Mom.

10. What else do you want to tell us about your experiences of Clara as the CC or the Transition?

ZEPHYR: When I am a kid, my mom and dad raise me to be different from mainstream people in about a hundred ways. For example, they really talk with me from a very young age and still do. They and all their friends raise kids the way they raised me, communication-wise. For a while, I don’t know how different I and my peers in this community are.

Then, at about fourteen, I go out “into the world,” away from the private, Waldorf-education-“bubble,” away from our hippie community, into public schools, cities, etc. I am amazed at how different I am from those teens and how far my families in our community are from those families. Values, lifestyles, attitudes, sex and relationships, personal choices, money use, decision-making processes, dealing with emotions, clothing, music, reading materials (that we read for fun at all!), cable TV vs. NPR [National Public Radio]: countless differences that, one at a time, don’t seem significant, but add them all up and we are worlds apart.

Being an adult seems to be more of that same experience: I still see a huge disparity between me and most people, even guys my age “Western” Earth societies. Kayla agrees: I am Clara’s son and it shows.

There is one guy I feel a kinship with, even though we’ve never met: Matt Damon. When I’m a kid, my mom tells me about this feminist researcher on gender roles who writes about her son who wants to wear barrettes in his long hair to keep it out of his face. Since I have long hair (my choice) from age three to sixteen, I am interested. She goes on. This writer explains how much crap the school teachers and others give them, but she and her son were quite happy with his choices. This writer/researcher/mom produces several books about masculinity, raising sons, war toys and other topics in the category of feminist parenting that are dear to my mother’s heart.

Who is that feminist parenting icon? You guessed it: Matt’s mom [Nancy Carlsson-Paige]. I know, if we ever get to talk, we find we have a lot in common.

With who my mom is and her being CeeCee, I feel unique, but this feeling is not unfamiliar, you see? For example, I can cook, do laundry, balance checkbooks, play with kids, plan a schedule, hold a job, manage my life, deal with emotions, communicate clearly (even though I do yell a lot for a while), all by the age of 16. We know people, especially men my age NOW, who can’t do most of those things.

Kayla says I am “the only man she’s ever known who… ” Fill in the blank, with about ten useful or appealing (to her) characteristics or behaviors. Her parents don’t know quite what to do with me or my mom, even now, five years later.

Kayla’s parents are nice, mainstream, good people. That’s the thing. Regular. I don’t mean commonplace or average, just, well, ordinary. Not unusual in any large ways. They are unique, of course; everyone is. But, you know what I mean? They blend.

My mom, even before she is CC, says about herself: “I’m so far from the mainstream, I can’t even hear the river running.”

So, imagine coming from a mainstream upbringing and marrying into this family? Holy shit! I hand it to Kayla: she’s courageous! I tell her, all the time. She laughs at me. In a nice way. With hugs.

Kayla and her parents are offered a trip out with me about two years ago, when Kayla is only a few months pregnant, to go to one of the Exchanges (Cultural collaborations) on Led’s planet, Gliese 581 d. Kayla says “yes” and she does go.

She really tries to talk her parents into coming, but they can’t wrap their minds around it. Won’t come. And, they’re younger than my mom, so it’s not age that’s making them less flexible, less open to change.

Also, Kayla’s parents seem kind of spooked by the whole ESP training and are uncomfortable around me in new ways once I’m in the Program. I think they believe I’m reading their minds or controlling Kayla or something. Sheesh.

Transition and its opportunities are not for everyone to embrace equally.

Me? Mostly, I love it all. And, I love my mom.

I feel very lucky, all around.

Are we done?

This is fun, E. Thanks.

[hugs]
*********************************

Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.

4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.

On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.

#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING

10th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

by

Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

logoAuthorsDen

Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
Cover reveal for Volume II: April 15, 2014

10th Serialized Excerpt, 3/28/14

CHAPTER ONE

Zephyr Branon, 38, only child of

Clara Branon, Ph.D., Chief Communicator

(continued)

7. Which of the MWC members or other species visitors do you have contact with? How and why, and how is that for you?

ZEPHYR: Again, I’m in a unique position. The Band delegates are kind of like relatives to me, at this point, like uncles and aunts, almost. Not that I see them often, but I hear about them a lot and I have been “with” them many times, as holos and off-p. I am one of the first non-OS trainees, adults, to be enrolled in ESP [Excellent/Extraordinary Skills Program] training, so Mick and I are quite close, I think, since he runs it.

When Kayla, Kendall and I move to California, right near The Campus, in the summer of 2015, that is right before The Campus has its big blow-out celebration for my mom’s birthday. So, we’re here for that. Things heat up, so to speak, right after that regarding the psi Wars and lots of other stuff.

What I mean by that is, my family and I are spending a lot more time being directly involved in MWC activities and with things at The Campus now that we’re so close.

And, Espe, well, you’re like a sister. Right, E? You call me a lot, we hang out, we email and text.

When you have trouble understanding my mom, I am the translator. I think part of it is that we’re the same age, so we get each other. I often have to explain you to my mom as well.

[We both laugh.]

ZEPHYR: Plus, you and Kayla are great friends. Sometimes I think you and Kayla get together so you can vent about the Branons. I don’t blame you!

Of The Band, I think Mick and I are the most “in tune,” since he’s the main tech guy and he also, like me, is very into music. But, I really enjoy the pairPartners [Janis—Diana], and since Kayla is a dancer, they groove with each other very well, too.

When I want to know more about how my mom’s doing or feeling: I ask Janis—Diana.

When I have questions about protocol or Re-sets, issues or politics, Led is my man.
For the ESP training “insider” stuff, like cheats and shortcuts, I go to Ringo. Ringo also knows a lot about what’s happening back on the IGC [InterGalactic Council] mainframe, so to speak, so for up-to-the-minute news about Exchanges, innovations and such, I ask Mick or Ringo.

Most Earthers have to use their iDs, but because I’m, well, me, I have special Access to each of them, directly, you know, telepathically. Only Moran, my mom and I have that, I think. Or, maybe, Epifanio does. I don’t ask him about this, actually.

You can’t ‘path The Band, right E?

ESPE: I cannot. They can ‘path me, though. Usually, they don’t.

ZEPHYR: As far as communicating with other Earthers, especially non-humans, that depends on what I’m doing, I guess, and where I and they are at any given time. Some of the Primates make music with me. The best are the cephalopods, especially some of the Octopuses. They are remarkable!

I get together with musically inclined off-worlders at every Music Exchange. I record some of that, which is so cool. With music, we don’t even need to use the fish [Interspecies Communication System]. Tell listeners/readers to check out my music site, OK? [zephyrbranonmusic.mwcw]

8. What transforms your life more: your fish [Interspecies Communication System], your iD [Individual Access Devices Interface], or travel to other planets/moons? How?

ZEPHYR: Obviously, I love my iD and use it constantly. I love the way my iD has a wireless hook-up to my music players, both at home and when I’m out, so I can get music from ANYWHERE, any time. That is sweet.

I use the fish a lot when I travel or am out in nature. We use it at home to talk with our cat and dog, but not often as an ordinary translator. With telepathy, once I’m at Level 2 solidly, I can understand most species on Earth or off-p, one-on-one, without the fish.

Interplanetary and intergalactic travel are the most amazing addition to our lives that anyone could imagine, and I am still humbled and excited every time I get to go out. I never get tired of that and hope to make many more off-p trips. I want to bring my family on some, too.

We don’t do that, yet, although Kayla goes out and we make one trip together, also. Got to bring the kids, right? It’s what families do on a family vacation, like going to the Grand Canyon or whatever, only infinitely more cool.
As far as transforming my life…that’s harder to see, for me. I’m sure my life is transformed, and not only on the surface, but how to explain that?

I can’t imagine my life without it, all of it. Timulting isn’t my thing.

We change every day, every minute. How, specifically, does the Transition change me…? I’ll have to get back to you on that.

My dad has a hard time with some of it, like many people his age—he’s ten years older than my mom, so almost 70 when she starts being the CC. They talk a lot, which I think helps, at first, but then she gets so busy she doesn’t check in as often, and he’s kind of a hermit-type.

I think my dad is kind of awed and mystified, but he is that a lot, anyway, about many things and people. He’s a Sufi. A mystic. He whirls. Like they do in Turkey. With the big hat and skirt with metal in the hem. Ever see him do that?

[Yes.]

I zoom in on him a lot these days, and I worry too much, probably. Try to imagine: my dad is one of the oldest Spanners, born in 1944. What he’s lived through, the changes he’s seen! I can’t really grok it, myself.

It’s harder for him after we move here, so I visit him a lot. That’s another thing I appreciate: off-p travel methods work on-p as well, so getting to and from, say, old California to old New Hampshire: just a thought and a movement away. No TJ needed, either!

9. How do your friends, family, wife and children feel about your mom as the CC and how does this affect your own relationships?

ZEPHYR: If you want to know how Kayla feels, you best ask her. Kendall has no clue, since she’s not even two. To Kendall, the famous Chief Communicator is just my mom and her grandmother.

My friends are mostly jealous. Completely.

Some of them say things like: “We’re so NOT surprised that your mom is doing this; she’s always been…unusual.” They’re right, of course. My mom is always the one who is way over in the red zone on the Strange Meter compared to my friends’ moms. Good strange, though, not awful strange.

I feel kind of badly when friends ask me stuff and I’m not allowed to say, but they understand, by now. I am allowed to talk to Kayla about things that I can’t talk to anyone else about (I get permission, and so does my mom, early on), and also, to my dad. My mom also talks directly with my dad, so that’s cool.

I don’t know what my dad tells his brother and sister; my grandparents on that side are dead already before the changes set in (my grandfather is dead almost ten years before; my grandmother is already demented and then dies early into the Transition), so, in a way, that’s good, or this would kill them, for sure. They never liked my mom.

I think this would be a lot harder without those permissions, though. That would suck. I know about that a little since I am not allowed to say anything to Kayla or my dad until December, when I know since October, in 2012. Those two months last FOREVER.

Once I am able to talk with them, though, especially Kayla, everything is much easier. She really helps me adjust to the “fame.” I am not expecting that. I blame my mom; she doesn’t put my fame problems in Volume I, which is the only one I see BPC [Before Public Contact]! [laughter]

I do have questions I can’t ask her. Here is one exchange I can share in which I ask some key questions.
********
During one of my ESP training sessions, I ask Mick: “Why does the MWC only come to one member of the dominant species on each member orb to be the Liaison for Transition and after that? Isn’t that a lot of pressure on that one being, their family and friends?”

Mick replies: “Every time we try working with more than one being as Liaison, we have to do extensive Re-sets. This happens on my planet, my CeeCee tells me [The Chief Communicator on Mick’s planet is a relative of his, like an uncle].”

“Problems are two-fold,” he continues. “One, consistency of information dissemination; two, reliability of witnesses.”

I start to ask a follow-up, but Mick’s on a roll, as he often is: “As soon as you have more than one individual telling any story, you run into contradictions and disparities. These widen out the further you go from each individual until the distortions are unacceptable. It’s like your game of ‘telephone,’ yes?”

I nod. I see the problem clearly as he describes it. I know he can tell I understand, because he nods and says: “So, one Transition, one Liaison. Information flows in a straight line from the MWC to the Liaison, from the Chief Communicator via her media contact to the orbs’ inhabitants. Works best. Protocol, now.”

I believe him.

Mick then gives me a nodding gesture with his headpiece and says,”You are our second choice.”

I feel as if he punches me in the gut with that. No way! I could never…

Then, Mick makes his laughing noise.

Whew! Just kidding!
***************
Sick sense of humor. Gotta love that.

I do wonder who else is on their short list, though? No pun intended, Little Mom.

10. What else do you want to tell us about your experiences of Clara as the CC or the Transition?

ZEPHYR: When I am a kid, my mom and dad raise me to be different from mainstream people in about a hundred ways. For example, they really talk with me from a very young age and still do. They and all their friends raise kids the way they raised me, communication-wise. For a while, I don’t know how different I and my peers in this community are.

Then, at about fourteen, I go out “into the world,” away from the private, Waldorf-education-“bubble,” away from our hippie community, into public schools, cities, etc. I am amazed at how different I am from those teens and how far my families in our community are from those families. Values, lifestyles, attitudes, sex and relationships, personal choices, money use, decision-making processes, dealing with emotions, clothing, music, reading materials (that we read for fun at all!), cable TV vs. NPR [National Public Radio]: countless differences that, one at a time, don’t seem significant, but add them all up and we are worlds apart.

Being an adult seems to be more of that same experience: I still see a huge disparity between me and most people, even guys my age “Western” Earth societies. Kayla agrees: I am Clara’s son and it shows.

There is one guy I feel a kinship with, even though we’ve never met: Matt Damon. When I’m a kid, my mom tells me about this feminist researcher on gender roles who writes about her son who wants to wear barrettes in his long hair to keep it out of his face. Since I have long hair (my choice) from age three to sixteen, I am interested. She goes on. This writer explains how much crap the school teachers and others give them, but she and her son were quite happy with his choices. This writer/researcher/mom produces several books about masculinity, raising sons, war toys and other topics in the category of feminist parenting that are dear to my mother’s heart.

Who is that feminist parenting icon? You guessed it: Matt’s mom [Nancy Carlsson-Paige]. I know, if we ever get to talk, we find we have a lot in common.

With who my mom is and her being CeeCee, I feel unique, but this feeling is not unfamiliar, you see? For example, I can cook, do laundry, balance checkbooks, play with kids, plan a schedule, hold a job, manage my life, deal with emotions, communicate clearly (even though I do yell a lot for a while), all by the age of 16. We know people, especially men my age NOW, who can’t do most of those things.

Kayla says I am “the only man she’s ever known who… ” Fill in the blank, with about ten useful or appealing (to her) characteristics or behaviors. Her parents don’t know quite what to do with me or my mom, even now, five years later.

Kayla’s parents are nice, mainstream, good people. That’s the thing. Regular. I don’t mean commonplace or average, just, well, ordinary. Not unusual in any large ways. They are unique, of course; everyone is. But, you know what I mean? They blend.

My mom, even before she is CC, says about herself: “I’m so far from the mainstream, I can’t even hear the river running.”

So, imagine coming from a mainstream upbringing and marrying into this family? Holy shit! I hand it to Kayla: she’s courageous! I tell her, all the time. She laughs at me. In a nice way. With hugs.

Kayla and her parents are offered a trip out with me about two years ago, when Kayla is only a few months pregnant, to go to one of the Exchanges (Cultural collaborations) on Led’s planet, Gliese 581 d. Kayla says “yes” and she does go.

She really tries to talk her parents into coming, but they can’t wrap their minds around it. Won’t come. And, they’re younger than my mom, so it’s not age that’s making them less flexible, less open to change.

Also, Kayla’s parents seem kind of spooked by the whole ESP training and are uncomfortable around me in new ways once I’m in the Program. I think they believe I’m reading their minds or controlling Kayla or something. Sheesh.

Transition and its opportunities are not for everyone to embrace equally.

Me? Mostly, I love it all. And, I love my mom.

I feel very lucky, all around.

Are we done?

This is fun, E. Thanks.

[hugs]
*********************************

Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.

4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.

On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.

#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING

9th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

by

Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

logoAuthorsDen

Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
Cover reveal for Volume II: April 15, 2014

9th Serialized Excerpt, 3/26/14

CHAPTER ONE

Zephyr Branon, 38, only child of

Clara Branon, Ph.D., Chief Communicator

(continued)

4. Where are you and what are you doing when you find out about the Many Worlds Collective and that your mom is the liaison/Chief Communicator?

ZEPHYR: My reaction is not the same as anyone else’s because my mom starts sending me the “story” as if she’s writing science fiction novels, in February, 2012. I have a feeling, knowing my mom, that a lot of it is true or about to be true. I don’t say anything like that, at first.

But, when things start happening for her and Espe and for her and Epifanio, just as she writes, I ask her about the rest.

So, around October, 2012, she tells me the MWC are actually coming. I get about a two-months’ head start on most people, about a year to get mentally ready.

I’m all in favor of it. Membership in the MWC, I mean. Earth really needs help. No question.

I know how my mom explains it but I still do not understand why they choose her, of over seven billion humans and all the other, in my mind, more obvious choices among Earthers who could have been chosen. Why not one of the dolphins, for example? No offense, Mom.

But, I’m getting used to it and glad she is CC, in some ways. I get some really cool tips,”toys,” experiences and privileges as the CC’s only child that no one else gets.

5. How do you feel about Clara’s role when it starts? How are you affected immediately?

ZEPHYR: I think I previously answer this. Move on.

Oh, all right.

I feel downright special.

There. Happy, now?

[I nod.]

ZEPHYR: OK, wait. There is one thing. Some people I know start to treat me differently. The way I could compare it might be this: if I had won the lottery, certain people would come out of nowhere and claim to be my friend, but they just want money.

In that vein, some people I haven’t talked to or don’t know well are suddenly going on and on about what “good friends” we are. Some of them go on the media and talk about knowing me and my mom, being at our house when I was growing up, being my girlfriend or best friend, or hers, and stuff like that. When it’s true, I don’t mind. But, some of them are actually lying or wildly exaggerating and that burns me.

My mom convinces me to let them be, so I do. I just don’t get the point: are they that desperate for attention? What tools.

Something else occurs to me, right now, though: I’m glad I’m already with Kayla before all this happens, or I might never know why she’s really into me, right?

In the department of stalkerville: even though our relationship is long-term, committed, monogamous, and known to the public, I still get invitations, sexual and personal, almost every month or so, from some whack-job or another. My mom’s security team collects them; I don’t even read them. Every now and then, my mom or Moran or one of the other OSes tells me to BOLO [Be On the Look Out] for some of these “fans.” When they have show me what these oddballs write to me so I can recognize their “signatures,” I am appalled. That is some crazy shit.

6. How do you feel about Clara’s role, now, 5 years later? How does her role affect you now?

ZEPHYR: I will add to what I say before this question that I am very proud of my mom. I think she’s doing an amazing job. Really. I am a very strong critic, usually, especially of my parents. [laughs] She says if I think she’s doing “all right,” she must be doing great.

Sometimes we have disagreements about what to do, when to do it. She calls me her “best informal informant.” She comes to me quite often, especially when things are going down that affect those my age or younger.

Because of her hearing loss, we have hilarious misunderstandings. Once, recently, I tell her the reason she can’t hear me is that her ears are too far from her head. We both laugh about that for quite a while. Another time, because of her mis-hearing me, we go ’round and ’round and don’t get anywhere in our conversation. Exasperated, I say that talking to her is like talking to a bicycle. That sends us into gales of laughter for another few minutes. So it goes.

My aunt Violet, being so much younger than my mom and not at all hard of hearing, says talking to my mom is like using the auto-correct feature in early cell phones: many ridiculous messages transpire.

It’s a lot like that when my mom and I talk, because of the randomly occurring hearing loss effects. She hears some things perfectly clearly and others very garbled, but she doesn’t know how garbled until we talk about it.

I tell her: “Mom. Get a hearing aid.”

She answers omething along the lines of: “When they make better ones, I do.”

Another age-related problem: increasingly silly texts are sent when my mom doesn’t wear her reading glasses when she’s typing or reading her texts. In 2015, when she gets her personally-adjustable, digital hearing aids and corneal transplants, we all breathe sighs of relief, across the multiverse.

The hearing aids amplify only what she needs exactly as much as she needs, which is what she is holding out for all along. She knows they’re coming so she won’t put up with the substandard ones before 2015. We all suffer.

On a good note, she knows when she needs help and asks for it. My mom consults with me, some of my cousins and some of her younger friends for tech help and to discuss how current policy discussions might be perceived or impact non-Spanners (people around my age and younger). Most often, she talks to me and Epifanio for informal feedback or ideas.

The CC has all these advisors, contacts, others—you know—for formal consultations.

And, you, Espe. You’re great!
*********************************

Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.

4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.

On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.

#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING

9th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

by

Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

logoAuthorsDen

Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
Cover reveal for Volume II: April 15, 2014

9th Serialized Excerpt, 3/26/14

CHAPTER ONE

Zephyr Branon, 38, only child of

Clara Branon, Ph.D., Chief Communicator

(continued)

4. Where are you and what are you doing when you find out about the Many Worlds Collective and that your mom is the liaison/Chief Communicator?

ZEPHYR: My reaction is not the same as anyone else’s because my mom starts sending me the “story” as if she’s writing science fiction novels, in February, 2012. I have a feeling, knowing my mom, that a lot of it is true or about to be true. I don’t say anything like that, at first.

But, when things start happening for her and Espe and for her and Epifanio, just as she writes, I ask her about the rest.

So, around October, 2012, she tells me the MWC are actually coming. I get about a two-months’ head start on most people, about a year to get mentally ready.

I’m all in favor of it. Membership in the MWC, I mean. Earth really needs help. No question.

I know how my mom explains it but I still do not understand why they choose her, of over seven billion humans and all the other, in my mind, more obvious choices among Earthers who could have been chosen. Why not one of the dolphins, for example? No offense, Mom.

But, I’m getting used to it and glad she is CC, in some ways. I get some really cool tips,”toys,” experiences and privileges as the CC’s only child that no one else gets.

5. How do you feel about Clara’s role when it starts? How are you affected immediately?

ZEPHYR: I think I previously answer this. Move on.

Oh, all right.

I feel downright special.

There. Happy, now?

[I nod.]

ZEPHYR: OK, wait. There is one thing. Some people I know start to treat me differently. The way I could compare it might be this: if I had won the lottery, certain people would come out of nowhere and claim to be my friend, but they just want money.

In that vein, some people I haven’t talked to or don’t know well are suddenly going on and on about what “good friends” we are. Some of them go on the media and talk about knowing me and my mom, being at our house when I was growing up, being my girlfriend or best friend, or hers, and stuff like that. When it’s true, I don’t mind. But, some of them are actually lying or wildly exaggerating and that burns me.

My mom convinces me to let them be, so I do. I just don’t get the point: are they that desperate for attention? What tools.

Something else occurs to me, right now, though: I’m glad I’m already with Kayla before all this happens, or I might never know why she’s really into me, right?

In the department of stalkerville: even though our relationship is long-term, committed, monogamous, and known to the public, I still get invitations, sexual and personal, almost every month or so, from some whack-job or another. My mom’s security team collects them; I don’t even read them. Every now and then, my mom or Moran or one of the other OSes tells me to BOLO [Be On the Look Out] for some of these “fans.” When they have show me what these oddballs write to me so I can recognize their “signatures,” I am appalled. That is some crazy shit.

6. How do you feel about Clara’s role, now, 5 years later? How does her role affect you now?

ZEPHYR: I will add to what I say before this question that I am very proud of my mom. I think she’s doing an amazing job. Really. I am a very strong critic, usually, especially of my parents. [laughs] She says if I think she’s doing “all right,” she must be doing great.

Sometimes we have disagreements about what to do, when to do it. She calls me her “best informal informant.” She comes to me quite often, especially when things are going down that affect those my age or younger.

Because of her hearing loss, we have hilarious misunderstandings. Once, recently, I tell her the reason she can’t hear me is that her ears are too far from her head. We both laugh about that for quite a while. Another time, because of her mis-hearing me, we go ’round and ’round and don’t get anywhere in our conversation. Exasperated, I say that talking to her is like talking to a bicycle. That sends us into gales of laughter for another few minutes. So it goes.

My aunt Violet, being so much younger than my mom and not at all hard of hearing, says talking to my mom is like using the auto-correct feature in early cell phones: many ridiculous messages transpire.

It’s a lot like that when my mom and I talk, because of the randomly occurring hearing loss effects. She hears some things perfectly clearly and others very garbled, but she doesn’t know how garbled until we talk about it.

I tell her: “Mom. Get a hearing aid.”

She answers omething along the lines of: “When they make better ones, I do.”

Another age-related problem: increasingly silly texts are sent when my mom doesn’t wear her reading glasses when she’s typing or reading her texts. In 2015, when she gets her personally-adjustable, digital hearing aids and corneal transplants, we all breathe sighs of relief, across the multiverse.

The hearing aids amplify only what she needs exactly as much as she needs, which is what she is holding out for all along. She knows they’re coming so she won’t put up with the substandard ones before 2015. We all suffer.

On a good note, she knows when she needs help and asks for it. My mom consults with me, some of my cousins and some of her younger friends for tech help and to discuss how current policy discussions might be perceived or impact non-Spanners (people around my age and younger). Most often, she talks to me and Epifanio for informal feedback or ideas.

The CC has all these advisors, contacts, others—you know—for formal consultations.

And, you, Espe. You’re great!
*********************************

Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.

4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.

On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.

#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING

8th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

by

Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

logoAuthorsDen

Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
Cover reveal for Volume II: April 15, 2014

8th Serialized Excerpt, 3/25/14

CHAPTER ONE

Zephyr Branon, 38, only child of

Clara Branon, Ph.D., Chief Communicator

(continued)

For the first Technology Exchange, which is on Kepler 22 d in the Earth summer month of July in 2016, I am one of only a handful of Earthers invited and able to attend. We travel there in various ways. I go with my mom, you [Espe], and a few others. When we arrive, many are not feeling so great, especially my mom and I. Something about our livers, a genetic predisposition to problems there for us both, affects us during the off-p traveling experiences.

Knowing that some of us are physically less than optimal seems to instigate a fly-over: We have on our OPTS [Optimal Personal/Positioning Travel/Temporary Suits] for the gravity differential (about 25%), but we’re carrying the head gear since the air is breathable and many of us are reducing our sleeves since the temperature is about 77F/25C.

Led and a few others who are there in physical form (our first time meeting most of them except as holos) come to the enclosure (which has no roof) in which we are staying and hover over us. While they are hovering, a kind of mist or drizzle of some bluish substance begins to emanate, falling towards us from their bodies. When it reaches our heads or arms or wherever it first touches us, it enters our systems via our pores, hair follicles and scalps.

We are immediately calmed, soothed, happy. We are also no longer nauseated, tired, or strained. I mean, like, in one second, human time, from contact to relief.

Amazing. Best drug, EVER. Not a high, but a very soothing relief.
*************
I find out later that this is something they call, in English for our sake,”Travelers’ Juice,” even though it’s composed of something akin to nanobots suspended in a liquid medium. Hilarious.

Led tells us we could drink it, bathe in it, wear it or let it touch us: works in all those ways. Is Travelers’ Juice [TJ] something that falls within technology, health, science, chemistry, or what? You decide.

Whichever it is, Earthers start making and using it from that day onward, as we all know, now. For free. Anyone can go to a TJ bar or fountain. Stores that carry TJ offer it cheaply or free, the way people could get matches, napkins or water a while ago. Widely available.

TJ is a soother, kind of like aspirin if you have a headache, but better. No ill effects, no addiction possible. Excellent. Don’t leave Earth without it!

TJ also works for all types of motion or altitude sickness and depth diving since TJ balances nitrogen to oxyten and rectifies all neurotransmitting chemicals, inner ear workings and whatnot for humans. I have no idea what it does to other species, but all of us seem to dig it.

3. What Transition changes have been the hardest or least favorite for you, and why?

ZEPHYR: Well, it’s very weird having the CC [Chief Communicator] for a mom, or having my mom become the CC, however you want to look at it. It’s not all good or all bad. It’s unique.

People bug me a lot asking for information I don’t have or rudely invading my privacy. I can’t really blame that on the Transition, exactly, but I kind of have to, right? I mean, she wouldn’t be CC if there is no Public Contact. Anyway, I’m not the only one with this exact problem or situation, but I think it’s worth mentioning.

It’s also so WRONG, to make her into a doll or, worse, a teddy bear [Zephyr is referring to the “Clara-Bear,” which comes out as a toy and collectors’ item late in 2013]. Would you like to see one of your parents’ likenesses starting at you from a toy’s face, especially a bear’s? Downright spooky. On the other hand, our daughter, Kendall, who is almost eighteen months old, receives a few every month.

Kayla, my wife, laughs when I get all creeped out by having my mom’s face all over Kendall’s toys. For this, the CC’s son needs intensive therapy. Kidding.

Now that she can talk a little, Kendall calls these dolls or toys and my mom CAH-LAH, since she can’t manage “Clara,” yet. Kendall also calls my mom CeeCee ’cause she hears others call her that. My mom prefers “Grandma,” though. We’re working on it.

Unfortunately for my mom, I think “CAH-LAH” may become “Grandma” for my kids. It’s a tradition in my mom’s family that the oldest grandchild nicknames the grandparents, and since I’m my parents’ only child, it’s all on Kendall.

More seriously, about the Transition and my mom as CC: it is upsetting and scary to hear about all the deaths and psychotic episodes people are having during those first few weeks and even months, AppCee [After Public Contact]. My mom and I talk during this and she explains what’s going on, but, still, I am very unsettled by all that.

We all know people who die, go berserk, can’t handle the T [Transition]. My dad [Abraham Wood Branon] loses a lot of friends, mostly because his friends are a lot older than my mom, as he is [ten years older].

Some of my tech and music friends are cool with it, but a few are quite rigid in their thinking. Their minds can’t cope with the new info—aliens, other species communications with fish on Earth, off-p travel—the whole deal. They freak out.

Some join the Fraggers [Fragmenters] so they can find people who agree with them to join them in yelling or writing public letters about it. They’re angry, but mostly harmless. The scarier ones become Trenchers, fighting the T all the way until they get ReInvolved or Qed [Sequestered].

My cousin, Moran, and the other MWC Psi-Warriors plus my mom and The Band have a lot to do with how nonviolently this all goes down. I’m glad that almost no one is killed during the psi Wars without a chance for ReInvolvement or the choice to be temporarily Qed.

I know my mom does everything she can in advance to help prevent and reduce the numbers of people adversely affected, so no one can say it is her fault or responsibility, although some people DO. Those must be the same people who blame President Obama for Hurricane Katrina’s devastation on the USA southern coastal cities even though he isn’t even President when it occurs, or who blame the hurricanes on homosexuality.

I know my mom still feels badly about not being able to save more people. She’s very sensitive that way. I understand that.
*********************************

Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.

4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.

On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.

#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING

8th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

by

Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

logoAuthorsDen

Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
Cover reveal for Volume II: April 15, 2014

8th Serialized Excerpt, 3/25/14

CHAPTER ONE

Zephyr Branon, 38, only child of

Clara Branon, Ph.D., Chief Communicator

(continued)

For the first Technology Exchange, which is on Kepler 22 d in the Earth summer month of July in 2016, I am one of only a handful of Earthers invited and able to attend. We travel there in various ways. I go with my mom, you [Espe], and a few others. When we arrive, many are not feeling so great, especially my mom and I. Something about our livers, a genetic predisposition to problems there for us both, affects us during the off-p traveling experiences.

Knowing that some of us are physically less than optimal seems to instigate a fly-over: We have on our OPTS [Optimal Personal/Positioning Travel/Temporary Suits] for the gravity differential (about 25%), but we’re carrying the head gear since the air is breathable and many of us are reducing our sleeves since the temperature is about 77F/25C.

Led and a few others who are there in physical form (our first time meeting most of them except as holos) come to the enclosure (which has no roof) in which we are staying and hover over us. While they are hovering, a kind of mist or drizzle of some bluish substance begins to emanate, falling towards us from their bodies. When it reaches our heads or arms or wherever it first touches us, it enters our systems via our pores, hair follicles and scalps.

We are immediately calmed, soothed, happy. We are also no longer nauseated, tired, or strained. I mean, like, in one second, human time, from contact to relief.

Amazing. Best drug, EVER. Not a high, but a very soothing relief.
*************
I find out later that this is something they call, in English for our sake,”Travelers’ Juice,” even though it’s composed of something akin to nanobots suspended in a liquid medium. Hilarious.

Led tells us we could drink it, bathe in it, wear it or let it touch us: works in all those ways. Is Travelers’ Juice [TJ] something that falls within technology, health, science, chemistry, or what? You decide.

Whichever it is, Earthers start making and using it from that day onward, as we all know, now. For free. Anyone can go to a TJ bar or fountain. Stores that carry TJ offer it cheaply or free, the way people could get matches, napkins or water a while ago. Widely available.

TJ is a soother, kind of like aspirin if you have a headache, but better. No ill effects, no addiction possible. Excellent. Don’t leave Earth without it!

TJ also works for all types of motion or altitude sickness and depth diving since TJ balances nitrogen to oxyten and rectifies all neurotransmitting chemicals, inner ear workings and whatnot for humans. I have no idea what it does to other species, but all of us seem to dig it.

3. What Transition changes have been the hardest or least favorite for you, and why?

ZEPHYR: Well, it’s very weird having the CC [Chief Communicator] for a mom, or having my mom become the CC, however you want to look at it. It’s not all good or all bad. It’s unique.

People bug me a lot asking for information I don’t have or rudely invading my privacy. I can’t really blame that on the Transition, exactly, but I kind of have to, right? I mean, she wouldn’t be CC if there is no Public Contact. Anyway, I’m not the only one with this exact problem or situation, but I think it’s worth mentioning.

It’s also so WRONG, to make her into a doll or, worse, a teddy bear [Zephyr is referring to the “Clara-Bear,” which comes out as a toy and collectors’ item late in 2013]. Would you like to see one of your parents’ likenesses starting at you from a toy’s face, especially a bear’s? Downright spooky. On the other hand, our daughter, Kendall, who is almost eighteen months old, receives a few every month.

Kayla, my wife, laughs when I get all creeped out by having my mom’s face all over Kendall’s toys. For this, the CC’s son needs intensive therapy. Kidding.

Now that she can talk a little, Kendall calls these dolls or toys and my mom CAH-LAH, since she can’t manage “Clara,” yet. Kendall also calls my mom CeeCee ’cause she hears others call her that. My mom prefers “Grandma,” though. We’re working on it.

Unfortunately for my mom, I think “CAH-LAH” may become “Grandma” for my kids. It’s a tradition in my mom’s family that the oldest grandchild nicknames the grandparents, and since I’m my parents’ only child, it’s all on Kendall.

More seriously, about the Transition and my mom as CC: it is upsetting and scary to hear about all the deaths and psychotic episodes people are having during those first few weeks and even months, AppCee [After Public Contact]. My mom and I talk during this and she explains what’s going on, but, still, I am very unsettled by all that.

We all know people who die, go berserk, can’t handle the T [Transition]. My dad [Abraham Wood Branon] loses a lot of friends, mostly because his friends are a lot older than my mom, as he is [ten years older].

Some of my tech and music friends are cool with it, but a few are quite rigid in their thinking. Their minds can’t cope with the new info—aliens, other species communications with fish on Earth, off-p travel—the whole deal. They freak out.

Some join the Fraggers [Fragmenters] so they can find people who agree with them to join them in yelling or writing public letters about it. They’re angry, but mostly harmless. The scarier ones become Trenchers, fighting the T all the way until they get ReInvolved or Qed [Sequestered].

My cousin, Moran, and the other MWC Psi-Warriors plus my mom and The Band have a lot to do with how nonviolently this all goes down. I’m glad that almost no one is killed during the psi Wars without a chance for ReInvolvement or the choice to be temporarily Qed.

I know my mom does everything she can in advance to help prevent and reduce the numbers of people adversely affected, so no one can say it is her fault or responsibility, although some people DO. Those must be the same people who blame President Obama for Hurricane Katrina’s devastation on the USA southern coastal cities even though he isn’t even President when it occurs, or who blame the hurricanes on homosexuality.

I know my mom still feels badly about not being able to save more people. She’s very sensitive that way. I understand that.
*********************************

Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.

4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.

On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.

#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING

7th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

by

Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

logoAuthorsDen

Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
Cover reveal for Volume II: April 15, 2014

7th Serialized Excerpt, 3/24/14

CHAPTER ONE

Zephyr Branon, 38, only child of

Clara Branon, Ph.D., Chief Communicator

Interview Date: May 20, 2018

ZEPHYR: Espe gives me and all my cousins this questionnaire and tells us she’s going to call us and interview us on these questions. She tells us that Earthers—that’s what everyone on our planet is now referred to, including communicative and intelligent nonhuman species, like whales, squids, dolphins, orangutans, bonobos, chimps, parrots and gorillas—want to know what the Transition is like from the points of view of younger people, particularly those close to my mom, the Chief Communicator. Well, I guess I’m the closest young person to Clara Branon, since I’m her only child.

I don’t feel that young, though. I am 32 when the MWC holos first come to her and I’m 38, now. But, I guess by Spanners’ standards, I’m young.

Espe is asking us to speak in the present tense (for those of us who understand that, I suppose), to keep with the timultaneity (HA! That’s MY word!) awareness that is everywhere, now. It’s weird, but I say I try. I know Espe fixes it afterward.

We are each responding to the same ten questions, which Espe tells me are like those “Ten Questions for….” famous people interviews that TIME magazine uses. That’s fine. But, I tell Espe I’m going to say what I want. If a question doesn’t lead me where I want to go, I’m going, anyway.

She agrees that my perspective is unique and I am generous to share it. Generous. Sure. Opinionated, more like it. And, very informed. My mom and I talk. A lot.

Most of my numerous cousins are significantly younger than I am. Lavi Ackerman is one year older and his brother, Agam, is one year younger than I, but the rest stair-step down from there, all the way to the Aunt Violet’s twins, Dara and Shira, over twenty years younger. This makes sense when you know that Violet is eleven years younger than my mom and has four children.

Uncle Thomas, one year older than my mom, also has four children. Cousin Lav is his eldest. Aunt Cassie, about six years younger than my mom, has three. [See Appendix E for Family Tree.] Basically, there are a lot of Ackermans.

Kayla Marsh, my wife, and I are married in 2015. She and I are together but we’re not married when the Transition starts.

So, Ten Questions for the twelve of us each to answer, as many as we want. We’ll see how that goes.

[Editor, Esperanza Enlace’s, note: anything in printed square brackets or signaled at start and finish by the “bing” signal, for the vision-impaired or those who are listening rather than reading, are the Editor’s comments or explanations and not the Interviewee’s words.]

10 Questions for Clara Branon’s Son: the Transition, 5 Years Later

1. How old are you when the Transition begins, winter, 2013, and how old are you now?
ZEPHYR: I am 32 when The Band comes to my mom (I name the group that!), in late December, 2012. I am now 38, since this is mid-May, 2018, and my birthday is May 1. [Zephyr names the MWC delegation “The Band” since they all choose nicknames that belong to famous 1960’s pop or rock & roll band members: Led for Led Zeppelin; Ringo for Ringo Starr of the Beatles; Diana for Diana Ross; Mick for Mick Jagger; Janis for Janis Joplin.]

2. What is your favorite part of the changes since the Transition? Why?
ZEPHYR: I really love it when all the Exchanges begin, first Earth Physics & Astrophysics, in early 2014, then all Physical Sciences throughout that year, then Social Sciences and ESP [Excellent Skills Program] studies in 2015, along with Communication & Technological Innovations, Arts, Writing & Music, Cultural Collaborations.

They have one or two each season until we have them all in a regular rotation. I attend the first one of each Exchange, and now I go to about three a year. They’re like TED talks on acid!

My favorite ones are the Technology and Arts/Music ones, because I work in the first area and play in the second, but I like them all. Inventions/innovations are awesome. I especially like going when they have them on planets or locations that are new to me (all of them, almost!).

Space travel is the BEST! I hope every Earther gets to go off-planet at least once. Going “out” changes us. If anyone wants to know more about any Exchanges, use your iDs and Access them.

One story and then I’ll move on.
***************************************************************

Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.

4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.

On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.

#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING

7th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

by

Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

logoAuthorsDen

Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
Cover reveal for Volume II: April 15, 2014

7th Serialized Excerpt, 3/24/14

CHAPTER ONE

Zephyr Branon, 38, only child of

Clara Branon, Ph.D., Chief Communicator

Interview Date: May 20, 2018

ZEPHYR: Espe gives me and all my cousins this questionnaire and tells us she’s going to call us and interview us on these questions. She tells us that Earthers—that’s what everyone on our planet is now referred to, including communicative and intelligent nonhuman species, like whales, squids, dolphins, orangutans, bonobos, chimps, parrots and gorillas—want to know what the Transition is like from the points of view of younger people, particularly those close to my mom, the Chief Communicator. Well, I guess I’m the closest young person to Clara Branon, since I’m her only child.

I don’t feel that young, though. I am 32 when the MWC holos first come to her and I’m 38, now. But, I guess by Spanners’ standards, I’m young.

Espe is asking us to speak in the present tense (for those of us who understand that, I suppose), to keep with the timultaneity (HA! That’s MY word!) awareness that is everywhere, now. It’s weird, but I say I try. I know Espe fixes it afterward.

We are each responding to the same ten questions, which Espe tells me are like those “Ten Questions for….” famous people interviews that TIME magazine uses. That’s fine. But, I tell Espe I’m going to say what I want. If a question doesn’t lead me where I want to go, I’m going, anyway.

She agrees that my perspective is unique and I am generous to share it. Generous. Sure. Opinionated, more like it. And, very informed. My mom and I talk. A lot.

Most of my numerous cousins are significantly younger than I am. Lavi Ackerman is one year older and his brother, Agam, is one year younger than I, but the rest stair-step down from there, all the way to the Aunt Violet’s twins, Dara and Shira, over twenty years younger. This makes sense when you know that Violet is eleven years younger than my mom and has four children.

Uncle Thomas, one year older than my mom, also has four children. Cousin Lav is his eldest. Aunt Cassie, about six years younger than my mom, has three. [See Appendix E for Family Tree.] Basically, there are a lot of Ackermans.

Kayla Marsh, my wife, and I are married in 2015. She and I are together but we’re not married when the Transition starts.

So, Ten Questions for the twelve of us each to answer, as many as we want. We’ll see how that goes.

[Editor, Esperanza Enlace’s, note: anything in printed square brackets or signaled at start and finish by the “bing” signal, for the vision-impaired or those who are listening rather than reading, are the Editor’s comments or explanations and not the Interviewee’s words.]

10 Questions for Clara Branon’s Son: the Transition, 5 Years Later

1. How old are you when the Transition begins, winter, 2013, and how old are you now?
ZEPHYR: I am 32 when The Band comes to my mom (I name the group that!), in late December, 2012. I am now 38, since this is mid-May, 2018, and my birthday is May 1. [Zephyr names the MWC delegation “The Band” since they all choose nicknames that belong to famous 1960’s pop or rock & roll band members: Led for Led Zeppelin; Ringo for Ringo Starr of the Beatles; Diana for Diana Ross; Mick for Mick Jagger; Janis for Janis Joplin.]

2. What is your favorite part of the changes since the Transition? Why?
ZEPHYR: I really love it when all the Exchanges begin, first Earth Physics & Astrophysics, in early 2014, then all Physical Sciences throughout that year, then Social Sciences and ESP [Excellent Skills Program] studies in 2015, along with Communication & Technological Innovations, Arts, Writing & Music, Cultural Collaborations.

They have one or two each season until we have them all in a regular rotation. I attend the first one of each Exchange, and now I go to about three a year. They’re like TED talks on acid!

My favorite ones are the Technology and Arts/Music ones, because I work in the first area and play in the second, but I like them all. Inventions/innovations are awesome. I especially like going when they have them on planets or locations that are new to me (all of them, almost!).

Space travel is the BEST! I hope every Earther gets to go off-planet at least once. Going “out” changes us. If anyone wants to know more about any Exchanges, use your iDs and Access them.

One story and then I’ll move on.
***************************************************************

Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.

4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.

On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.

#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING

Forget your “#authorplatform” and BE NICE! Write better, make connections

by

Building Platform: What Most Writers are Getting Wrong
Mar 23, 2014 EXCELLENT POST by Anne R. Allen

Thank you Anne! Your blog is the BEST!

Best part?

“But guess what is the #1 thing an agent, editor or reviewer wants to find out when they Google you?

“Whether you’re a pain in the butt.

“Seriously.”

http://annerallen.blogspot.com/2014/03/building-platform-what-most-writers-are.html

Part I to this topic, also from Anne: “7 Ways Authors Waste Time ‘Building Platform’ on Social Media”

“The best way to sell books is to write more books. Good ones.”
http://annerallen.blogspot.com/2013/06/7-ways-authors-waste-time-building.html

6th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

by

Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

logoAuthorsDen

Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
Cover reveal for Volume II: April 15, 2014

6th Serialized Excerpt, 3/21/14

I’m practicing remote calling in the basement on a cold April morning when I hear a commotion from upstairs. Liora is taking a shower. I can smell the fruity shampoo she uses as the convection system recirculates heated air throughout the house.

I grab baby Orna and go running up the stairs to see what I screwed up.

[Moran turns to Orna, whose body rises in objection to being called a “baby” to remind her: “You are a little over one year old in this story. Sorry, but that IS a baby!” Orna settles back down to listen.]

My remote call is supposed to send a basket into the bathroom to land quietly on the counter. Instead, I see that it crashes into the shower curtain and almost knocks Liora over. Luckily, it is small and empty, but, still….

When I get upstairs with Orna under one arm, Li is still shrieking, yelling at me in Hebrew and English. The air is steamy and fruity. She is covered in shampoo, holding the basket, water running over her and it, cursing at me. Baby Orna bats at the steam clouds and reaches for her imma [Hebrew, mother].

I put baby Orna down on the bathmat as I burst out laughing, partly out of relief that Li is all right and partly because, well, it’s funny!

This is not my finest moment.

Your imma hurls the basket at me, old-style.

I duck.

This makes Imma curse even more, since it misses me.

        [Orna laughs]

I hastily apologize, go to hug Liora, but retreat at her icy stare. I apologize, stop laughing (almost), and back out of the bathroom, scooping up baby Orna as I leave.

I take you with me to back to the basement.

        [Orna nods approvingly.]

I feel even more strongly after that mishap that you are safer right next to me during my TK practice sessions.

On our way downstairs, you lean out of my arms and grab two empty, brass candlesticks from the sideboard, the ones that hold our Shabbat candles on Friday nights.

I have no idea why a 15-month-old wants anything, but I know how to keep the peace. I do not remove them from your hands. I keep walking, you under my arm like a football, one candlestick in each of your little fists.

We go downstairs where I set you and the candlesticks down.

        Orna squeals: “Yes, Abba! I put the candlesticks down on the rug.”

        “Right, Orna.”

You sit in front of them. You pat the floor next to you, showing me to sit beside you. I sit.

        What do you say?

        Together: “Abba. Do.”

I ask Baby Orna,”What do you want me to do?”

        Orna joins me, shouting: “Abba. DO!”

You wave your hands at the candlesticks, showing me you want me to move them away and up.

For the first time, I wonder if you know more than I give you credit for? You seem to want me to use my newly developing TK to fling these sticks somewhere away from us. Really?

“Okay,” I say to Baby Orna,”I’ll move these. Where do you want them to go?”

Baby Orna looks at me, very keenly, and says,”Abba. Up.” This time, you raise your hands up, over your head.

        [Both MORAN and ORNA demonstrate with their arms.]

I think, Wow. She must be watching me practice TK when I don’t know she is. TK “up” is one of our first lessons.

“All right,” I tell you.

I gather myself, do the special breathing I practice that makes this work.

Once I’m revved, I fling the sticks up. They rise about two feet above the rug. They hover nicely, if I say so myself. Upright and everything.

Baby Orna laughs gleefully, pointing, clapping her hands. Then you command: “Abba! Down.”

I gather myself again, renew the breathing. When ready, I fling the sticks back down to the rug, where they land with a thump and, to my surprise and delight, do not fall over.

I have an idea. Do you know what my idea is?

        Orna stands up and hops from foot to foot, excited to hear this next part. I look at her, teasing, delaying the next part of the story, daring her to urge me on.

        She stares.

        I stare

        We stare.

        She points at me, then up.

        I give my exaggerated shrug, acknowledging her command, pointing to my lap.

        As she sits back down on my lap, I continue the story.

“Orna! Up.” I say.

I look at my baby girl and smile. You are so cute.

I wait. I’m starting to daydream a bit, since nothing is happening.

I lean forward to take the candlesticks when suddenly, all the hairs on the back of my neck and arms stand up straight.

I stare at you.

        Orna jumps around in her excitement at hearing this part of the story.

        She grins at me. We ham up the next parts, as we usually do for an audience.

What is baby Orna doing?

She is staring hard at the sticks.

One candlestick, then both candlesticks wiggle.

        Orna wiggles.

The candlesticks shake.

        Orna shakes.

The candlesticks s-l-o-w-l-y lift up…

        Orna slowly levitates her entire body to about six inches from the ground.

        I give her a mock-stern look, point down.

        She shrugs at my command, her feet dangling above my pointing finger.

        She playfully attempts to kick at it, but I move my finger out of her reach.

        Orna slowly descends until her feet are on the floor. Pointing with her chin at me, she urges me on with the story.

        I point to my lap. She climbs back on. I continue.

Abruptly, both candlesticks FLY up to the ceiling, knock into it hard, then fall back down, almost hitting Baby Orna on the head.

I’m quick: I grab them before they land.

        I turn to Orna and remind her: “You fling those things as if you are always doing that! Not much in the way of control, but, WOW! You are fast!”

        Orna applauds her baby self.

I say,”Orna! When do you learn to do that?”

And, I wonder, what’s with my body hair getting all excited?

You laugh and shout: “Kadima, HEY!”

        You love cheering yourself with a “Kadima, Hey!” just as Liora and I do whenever you do something great.

I join you,”Kadima, HEY, Orna! Way to go!”

        Orna claps and says, to me “Kadima, Hey!”

All our shouting brings Liora down, so I explain what’s going on. Li is skeptical.

I say,”Let’s show Imma!” I look at baby Orna and say,”Orna! Up!”

I feel my hairs rise.

I look at Liora, who is staring at you while rubbing her own arms. Her hairs must be getting excited, too.

        I look at Orna, who rubs her own arms now and nods.

Baby Orna gets both candlesticks to wiggle and rise more quickly this time, doing her excellent fling again.

Liora stands there, gaping at the candlesticks while she rubs her arms absentmindedly.

Then, she looks at us both, shaking her head as she towels her long, wet hair.

Once again, I catch the sticks before they hit you or the ground.

I look up, ready to kvell [Yiddish, gush with pride], but when I look at Imma, what do I see?

Imma is not smiling.

        Orna shakes her head vigorously once, knowing the rhythm of this next part.

Imma is not liking this.

        Orna shakes her head vigorously twice.

Imma is getting all broygis [Yiddish, pissed off]! [Moran waves his hands in the air hear his face to indicate craziness and anger, both, emanating from his head.]

        Orna shakes her head vigorously three times, waving her hands around like mine to imitate someone going bonkers. We do it together, laughing delightedly.

Baby Orna wants her imma to be happy. So do I.

“Kadima, HEY!” Baby Orna and I both say, although mine is a little apologetic to Liora, begging her to go along.

You laugh and clap, again.

Imma‘s heart melts, of course. She can’t resist us!

        Orna nods.

But, Imma is not all together happy, is she?

        Orna shakes her head.

Liora, gesturing to the candlesticks in my hands, asks me: “Now, what? Don’t you start kvelling, yet. How do we keep her from flinging EVERYTHING?”

“We don’t,” I answer.”We teach her control.”

I say to Baby Orna: “Come on, you little k’nocker [show-off, Yiddish]. Let’s go talk to our Aunt Clara about planning your chavrutelah [one-on-one course of study, diminutive form, Hebrew].”

I hop up, grab Baby Orna and ‘path to Liora an “I will handle this” message.
Liora acknowledges my attempt with a shrug and follows after us up the stairs.

My amazing Kadima [little girl, Yiddish] and I start a vid call Aunt Clara to get Janis—Diana to visit and help us. We know we need it!

        Orna approves.”Good story, Kadima, Hey!”

        We both laugh and clap.

        “Sing it with me, Abba!”

        We sing the Kadima song, shouting “Hey!” at each point and clapping our hands. Here it is, in case you don’t know it:

Kadima, Kadima, Kadima for Orna,
Hey, Hey,
Kadimafor Orna!
Kadima, Hey!
Kadima, Hey!
Kadima for Orna,
Hey, Hey,
Kadima for Orna,
Hey!

        “Sure! You always like that one, Shterndl [little star,Yiddish]. Now, gey avec [go away,Yiddish]. Abba has more work to do, here.”

        Orna, smiles, twirls around, takes a bow.

        “Gey avec!” I give the flip-hand gesture to send Orna out of the room.

        She leaves, humming the Kadima song under her breath.

***********
After the candlesticks incident, we all decide and I make a promise not to practice flying or anything else potentially dangerous (if operated by the mind of our toddler), ever again in front of Orna. I intend to keep that promise.

However, as you might predict, when I get to the Telepathy sections, keeping that promise is almost impossible. I can’t “hide” from another ‘path in the same family so easily. Whatever I learn, she seems to learn some or all of before I learn to shield completely.

CeeCee [short for CC, Chief Communicator; what many call Clara who know her well] and I realize shielding needs to be moved to an earlier spot in my Lessons.

And so it is.

More stories later.
***************************************************************

Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.

4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.

On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.

#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING

6th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

by

Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

logoAuthorsDen

Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
Cover reveal for Volume II: April 15, 2014

6th Serialized Excerpt, 3/21/14

I’m practicing remote calling in the basement on a cold April morning when I hear a commotion from upstairs. Liora is taking a shower. I can smell the fruity shampoo she uses as the convection system recirculates heated air throughout the house.

I grab baby Orna and go running up the stairs to see what I screwed up.

[Moran turns to Orna, whose body rises in objection to being called a “baby” to remind her: “You are a little over one year old in this story. Sorry, but that IS a baby!” Orna settles back down to listen.]

My remote call is supposed to send a basket into the bathroom to land quietly on the counter. Instead, I see that it crashes into the shower curtain and almost knocks Liora over. Luckily, it is small and empty, but, still….

When I get upstairs with Orna under one arm, Li is still shrieking, yelling at me in Hebrew and English. The air is steamy and fruity. She is covered in shampoo, holding the basket, water running over her and it, cursing at me. Baby Orna bats at the steam clouds and reaches for her imma [Hebrew, mother].

I put baby Orna down on the bathmat as I burst out laughing, partly out of relief that Li is all right and partly because, well, it’s funny!

This is not my finest moment.

Your imma hurls the basket at me, old-style.

I duck.

This makes Imma curse even more, since it misses me.

        [Orna laughs]

I hastily apologize, go to hug Liora, but retreat at her icy stare. I apologize, stop laughing (almost), and back out of the bathroom, scooping up baby Orna as I leave.

I take you with me to back to the basement.

        [Orna nods approvingly.]

I feel even more strongly after that mishap that you are safer right next to me during my TK practice sessions.

On our way downstairs, you lean out of my arms and grab two empty, brass candlesticks from the sideboard, the ones that hold our Shabbat candles on Friday nights.

I have no idea why a 15-month-old wants anything, but I know how to keep the peace. I do not remove them from your hands. I keep walking, you under my arm like a football, one candlestick in each of your little fists.

We go downstairs where I set you and the candlesticks down.

        Orna squeals: “Yes, Abba! I put the candlesticks down on the rug.”

        “Right, Orna.”

You sit in front of them. You pat the floor next to you, showing me to sit beside you. I sit.

        What do you say?

        Together: “Abba. Do.”

I ask Baby Orna,”What do you want me to do?”

        Orna joins me, shouting: “Abba. DO!”

You wave your hands at the candlesticks, showing me you want me to move them away and up.

For the first time, I wonder if you know more than I give you credit for? You seem to want me to use my newly developing TK to fling these sticks somewhere away from us. Really?

“Okay,” I say to Baby Orna,”I’ll move these. Where do you want them to go?”

Baby Orna looks at me, very keenly, and says,”Abba. Up.” This time, you raise your hands up, over your head.

        [Both MORAN and ORNA demonstrate with their arms.]

I think, Wow. She must be watching me practice TK when I don’t know she is. TK “up” is one of our first lessons.

“All right,” I tell you.

I gather myself, do the special breathing I practice that makes this work.

Once I’m revved, I fling the sticks up. They rise about two feet above the rug. They hover nicely, if I say so myself. Upright and everything.

Baby Orna laughs gleefully, pointing, clapping her hands. Then you command: “Abba! Down.”

I gather myself again, renew the breathing. When ready, I fling the sticks back down to the rug, where they land with a thump and, to my surprise and delight, do not fall over.

I have an idea. Do you know what my idea is?

        Orna stands up and hops from foot to foot, excited to hear this next part. I look at her, teasing, delaying the next part of the story, daring her to urge me on.

        She stares.

        I stare

        We stare.

        She points at me, then up.

        I give my exaggerated shrug, acknowledging her command, pointing to my lap.

        As she sits back down on my lap, I continue the story.

“Orna! Up.” I say.

I look at my baby girl and smile. You are so cute.

I wait. I’m starting to daydream a bit, since nothing is happening.

I lean forward to take the candlesticks when suddenly, all the hairs on the back of my neck and arms stand up straight.

I stare at you.

        Orna jumps around in her excitement at hearing this part of the story.

        She grins at me. We ham up the next parts, as we usually do for an audience.

What is baby Orna doing?

She is staring hard at the sticks.

One candlestick, then both candlesticks wiggle.

        Orna wiggles.

The candlesticks shake.

        Orna shakes.

The candlesticks s-l-o-w-l-y lift up…

        Orna slowly levitates her entire body to about six inches from the ground.

        I give her a mock-stern look, point down.

        She shrugs at my command, her feet dangling above my pointing finger.

        She playfully attempts to kick at it, but I move my finger out of her reach.

        Orna slowly descends until her feet are on the floor. Pointing with her chin at me, she urges me on with the story.

        I point to my lap. She climbs back on. I continue.

Abruptly, both candlesticks FLY up to the ceiling, knock into it hard, then fall back down, almost hitting Baby Orna on the head.

I’m quick: I grab them before they land.

        I turn to Orna and remind her: “You fling those things as if you are always doing that! Not much in the way of control, but, WOW! You are fast!”

        Orna applauds her baby self.

I say,”Orna! When do you learn to do that?”

And, I wonder, what’s with my body hair getting all excited?

You laugh and shout: “Kadima, HEY!”

        You love cheering yourself with a “Kadima, Hey!” just as Liora and I do whenever you do something great.

I join you,”Kadima, HEY, Orna! Way to go!”

        Orna claps and says, to me “Kadima, Hey!”

All our shouting brings Liora down, so I explain what’s going on. Li is skeptical.

I say,”Let’s show Imma!” I look at baby Orna and say,”Orna! Up!”

I feel my hairs rise.

I look at Liora, who is staring at you while rubbing her own arms. Her hairs must be getting excited, too.

        I look at Orna, who rubs her own arms now and nods.

Baby Orna gets both candlesticks to wiggle and rise more quickly this time, doing her excellent fling again.

Liora stands there, gaping at the candlesticks while she rubs her arms absentmindedly.

Then, she looks at us both, shaking her head as she towels her long, wet hair.

Once again, I catch the sticks before they hit you or the ground.

I look up, ready to kvell [Yiddish, gush with pride], but when I look at Imma, what do I see?

Imma is not smiling.

        Orna shakes her head vigorously once, knowing the rhythm of this next part.

Imma is not liking this.

        Orna shakes her head vigorously twice.

Imma is getting all broygis [Yiddish, pissed off]! [Moran waves his hands in the air hear his face to indicate craziness and anger, both, emanating from his head.]

        Orna shakes her head vigorously three times, waving her hands around like mine to imitate someone going bonkers. We do it together, laughing delightedly.

Baby Orna wants her imma to be happy. So do I.

“Kadima, HEY!” Baby Orna and I both say, although mine is a little apologetic to Liora, begging her to go along.

You laugh and clap, again.

Imma‘s heart melts, of course. She can’t resist us!

        Orna nods.

But, Imma is not all together happy, is she?

        Orna shakes her head.

Liora, gesturing to the candlesticks in my hands, asks me: “Now, what? Don’t you start kvelling, yet. How do we keep her from flinging EVERYTHING?”

“We don’t,” I answer.”We teach her control.”

I say to Baby Orna: “Come on, you little k’nocker [show-off, Yiddish]. Let’s go talk to our Aunt Clara about planning your chavrutelah [one-on-one course of study, diminutive form, Hebrew].”

I hop up, grab Baby Orna and ‘path to Liora an “I will handle this” message.
Liora acknowledges my attempt with a shrug and follows after us up the stairs.

My amazing Kadima [little girl, Yiddish] and I start a vid call Aunt Clara to get Janis—Diana to visit and help us. We know we need it!

        Orna approves.”Good story, Kadima, Hey!”

        We both laugh and clap.

        “Sing it with me, Abba!”

        We sing the Kadima song, shouting “Hey!” at each point and clapping our hands. Here it is, in case you don’t know it:

Kadima, Kadima, Kadima for Orna,
Hey, Hey,
Kadimafor Orna!
Kadima, Hey!
Kadima, Hey!
Kadima for Orna,
Hey, Hey,
Kadima for Orna,
Hey!

        “Sure! You always like that one, Shterndl [little star,Yiddish]. Now, gey avec [go away,Yiddish]. Abba has more work to do, here.”

        Orna, smiles, twirls around, takes a bow.

        “Gey avec!” I give the flip-hand gesture to send Orna out of the room.

        She leaves, humming the Kadima song under her breath.

***********
After the candlesticks incident, we all decide and I make a promise not to practice flying or anything else potentially dangerous (if operated by the mind of our toddler), ever again in front of Orna. I intend to keep that promise.

However, as you might predict, when I get to the Telepathy sections, keeping that promise is almost impossible. I can’t “hide” from another ‘path in the same family so easily. Whatever I learn, she seems to learn some or all of before I learn to shield completely.

CeeCee [short for CC, Chief Communicator; what many call Clara who know her well] and I realize shielding needs to be moved to an earlier spot in my Lessons.

And so it is.

More stories later.
***************************************************************

Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.

4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.

On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.

#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING

5th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

by

Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

logoAuthorsDen

Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
Cover reveal for Volume II: April 15, 2014

5th Serialized Excerpt, 3/20/14

After the MWC learns how well Aunt Clara and I do and how fast we learn, they begin to invite other Earthers, many species, into the ESP trainings, which is the reason we move so quickly to establish The Campus near where Aunt Clara already lives.

Over that first Transition spring, summer, and fall, the MWC also sends already-trained Psi-Warriors to Earth, in person and as holos, to the new Campus. We meet “members” from a dozen other planets and moons.

In late summer, 2013, ready barely in time, we deploy the first squadron of Psi-Warriors on Earth. I am co-leading that with an experienced OSOp from off-p because I am not yet ready to be Chief.

I get to tell you a little about my ESP training. [See Appendix F for the complete list of Levels and Skills.]

The first lessons for OSes are from ESP Training Level 1: INVITING MOVEMENT: OBJECTS & SELF. These include Telekinesis and Levitation of the body and other objects, including short-distance “flying.” We start off with the proverbial BANG! Moving stuff around, moving US around. Wow!

Because of the urgency and our commitment or talent or whatever, Aunt Clara’s and my trainings are accelerated. We learn when we’re awake, we learn when we’re asleep, we practice constantly, we talk to each other often and we read a lot. It’s the most intense education ever and I love almost every minute. I am ON FIRE.

CeeCee and I simultaneously train on ESP Training Level 2: PERCEIVING TELEPATHICALLY, which includes Clairsentience, Clairvoyance and Clairaudience; Remote Viewing; and, Psychometry. It is so great to be ‘pathing on purpose and learning to shield, to send and to receive intentionally. Hugely useful. Liora likes this part, she says. Our private life, let me say, is also ON FIRE!

Aunt Clara and I also train in Precognition/ Retrocognition and Presentiment/ Retrosentiment. These show us how to look “ahead” and “backwards” as if (and it really is true, you know) all events are happening in the “now.” Level 2 really helps me understand and use my dreams. More on those later.
*****************
Right now, in this very room, as I talk with my friend, Espe, here, my 6-year-old star, Orna, is on my lap, poking at me, saying things like: “Abba. This is boring. Tell stories.”

I must please her, as her father, her Abba: I am wrapped around any of her fingers, any time. I plan to tell this story, anyway.

“Okay, Orna. Stories.” She hugs me.

“Espe? Orna ‘paths for me to tell the one about the candlesticks. Right. Candlesticks. Telekinesis. All right? I’m going to tell it here like a movie, yes, Orna?”

Orna snuggles in happily for the story.
*****
First, some background. I’m in about Lesson Four or something in TeleK, doing all right. I can snap small objects to myself and fling them away from me, usually without dropping them or sending them crashing into my own face or each other [Orna laughs].

Hey! Some respect, here! I can levitate books, chairs, tables, other things. Just nothing big, yet.
I can call something I can’t see, if I already know approximately where it is, and snap it to me or fling it elsewhere, but it doesn’t always go where I fling it. [Orna laughs even louder].

Voilà! The candlestick story.

[Orna applauds]

***************************************************************

Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.

4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.

On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.

#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING

5th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

by

Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

logoAuthorsDen

Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
Cover reveal for Volume II: April 15, 2014

5th Serialized Excerpt, 3/20/14

After the MWC learns how well Aunt Clara and I do and how fast we learn, they begin to invite other Earthers, many species, into the ESP trainings, which is the reason we move so quickly to establish The Campus near where Aunt Clara already lives.

Over that first Transition spring, summer, and fall, the MWC also sends already-trained Psi-Warriors to Earth, in person and as holos, to the new Campus. We meet “members” from a dozen other planets and moons.

In late summer, 2013, ready barely in time, we deploy the first squadron of Psi-Warriors on Earth. I am co-leading that with an experienced OSOp from off-p because I am not yet ready to be Chief.

I get to tell you a little about my ESP training. [See Appendix F for the complete list of Levels and Skills.]

The first lessons for OSes are from ESP Training Level 1: INVITING MOVEMENT: OBJECTS & SELF. These include Telekinesis and Levitation of the body and other objects, including short-distance “flying.” We start off with the proverbial BANG! Moving stuff around, moving US around. Wow!

Because of the urgency and our commitment or talent or whatever, Aunt Clara’s and my trainings are accelerated. We learn when we’re awake, we learn when we’re asleep, we practice constantly, we talk to each other often and we read a lot. It’s the most intense education ever and I love almost every minute. I am ON FIRE.

CeeCee and I simultaneously train on ESP Training Level 2: PERCEIVING TELEPATHICALLY, which includes Clairsentience, Clairvoyance and Clairaudience; Remote Viewing; and, Psychometry. It is so great to be ‘pathing on purpose and learning to shield, to send and to receive intentionally. Hugely useful. Liora likes this part, she says. Our private life, let me say, is also ON FIRE!

Aunt Clara and I also train in Precognition/ Retrocognition and Presentiment/ Retrosentiment. These show us how to look “ahead” and “backwards” as if (and it really is true, you know) all events are happening in the “now.” Level 2 really helps me understand and use my dreams. More on those later.
*****************
Right now, in this very room, as I talk with my friend, Espe, here, my 6-year-old star, Orna, is on my lap, poking at me, saying things like: “Abba. This is boring. Tell stories.”

I must please her, as her father, her Abba: I am wrapped around any of her fingers, any time. I plan to tell this story, anyway.

“Okay, Orna. Stories.” She hugs me.

“Espe? Orna ‘paths for me to tell the one about the candlesticks. Right. Candlesticks. Telekinesis. All right? I’m going to tell it here like a movie, yes, Orna?”

Orna snuggles in happily for the story.
*****
First, some background. I’m in about Lesson Four or something in TeleK, doing all right. I can snap small objects to myself and fling them away from me, usually without dropping them or sending them crashing into my own face or each other [Orna laughs].

Hey! Some respect, here! I can levitate books, chairs, tables, other things. Just nothing big, yet.
I can call something I can’t see, if I already know approximately where it is, and snap it to me or fling it elsewhere, but it doesn’t always go where I fling it. [Orna laughs even louder].

Voilà! The candlestick story.

[Orna applauds]

***************************************************************

Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.

4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.

On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.

#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING

4th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

by

Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

logoAuthorsDen

Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
Cover reveal for Volume II: April 15, 2014

4th Serialized Excerpt, 3/19/14

I am 27 in early 2013, when everyone hears about the MWC [Many Worlds Collective] holos’ visit to Aunt Clara and what that all means to Earth. At that time, I am a Rabbi in the Jewish Modern Orthodox tradition, teaching middle school in what is then near Cleveland, Ohio, married, living with my wonderful wife, Liora, and our adorable one-year-old daughter, Orna. Aunt Clara is the eldest of my father, Dr. Thomas Ackerman’s, three younger sisters. Abba [Father, Hebrew] and Aunt Clara are only one year apart.

[Orna, Moran’s 6-year-old daughter, walks in and sits beside him, listening.]

I start having “weird dreams” in September, 2012. In these dreams, I’m doing all kinds of things I can’t imagine at that time could be real or possible: walking through walls, flying just in my body, moving objects with my mind, telepathically communicating with other humans and animals, and talking and interacting with some nonhuman-looking creatures, including colorful holograms, seeing them talking with Aunt Clara: stuff like that.

I talk about some of my dreams with my wife, Liora, because they are so vivid and fantastical. She and I share some laughs about my “superpowers,” and that’s about it. Oh, and she does start calling me “Psi-Man,” which, considering how things turn out, is mighty prescient of HER!

There is a long tradition in Judaism, which I practice as an Orthodox Rabbi (teacher and religious leader, BPC) of individuals’ receiving visions, information, and even warnings from Hashem [reference for God, Hebrew] in dreams (think: Joseph, with that specially colored coat and all his vivid dreams, right?). I wonder if anyone else is getting dreams like mine, but no one besides the kids tells me or reports it anywhere BPC.

When we get Aunt Clara’s call, we’re at my parents’ house [see Chapters 6, 7, 8 of this Volume]. My “dreams” suddenly seem not to be dreams. Seeing my niece, Chaya’s, drawing, I am flabbergasted.

My oldest brother, Lavi’s, only daughter, Chaya, has a crayoned picture that she just happens to bring to this fateful Shabbat dinner. The drawing shows a central figure that looks like Aunt Clara (curly, light brown hair, blue eyes, female human) next to the floating, bluish beach ball I now know as “Led.” There is a sort of Tin Man, an orange, robot-looking figure who is clearly supposed to be “Ringo.” The pair-bond, “Janis—Diana,” are there as two large, greenish blobs with legs (kind of accurate, actually) next to a very tall, lighter green, wiggly looking figure (probably wiggling to illustrate his cilia moving all over him) with blinking colored lights on top: definitely “Mick.”

My own drawing of Aunt Clara and The Band of holos would not be much better, I’m sorry to say!

Then, I hear that my nephew, Solomon, my second-oldest brother, Agam’s son, also “knows,” from his own dreams, confirming my suspicions. We’re all connected to the MWC’s Big Reveal, somehow, not just Aunt Clara.

Liora and I are the only ones who know about my having pre-cog dreams BPC. Liora knows about my dreams because I tell her many times how I “see” her for years before we meet and that’s how I know she’s my Bashert. I also dream about our daughter, Orna, before our first ultrasound and that’s the way I know she’s a girl. I dream our current house before we find it. Things like that are common in our family but not usually talked about BPC.

After this Shabbat and the Big Reveal, everyone knows about my dreams because we tell them. Eventually, my timulting becomes important and necessary, but I get ahead of my story, here. Let’s return.

I call and talk briefly with Aunt Clara later that same weekend, after Shabbat (no phone calls during Shabbat). She explains some of what my dreams signify. Mainly, she lets me know that some of us are “talented,” meaning, we’re able to utilize Extraordinary, or Excellent Skills, BPC. Then, the arrival of the MWC delegation catalyzes our ES greatly. I talk about that call and its aftermath later in this Volume.

When Aunt Clara and I get another chance to talk, early in January, 2013, and I explain my dreams in more detail (having many more by then), she immediately puts me on a vid call with The Band, as she and Zephyr come to call the main five holos.

I mostly talk with Led and Mick, that time. They already know everything about me. I mean, EVERYTHING. That’s kind of creepy, but makes our conversation go quickly. Telepathy certainly is a big time-saver!

I find out: the MWC delegates move fast when we Earthers are ready. I suppose I am as ready as I can be. In that talk, which goes for about three hours, they explain what’s coming: the Transition and its inevitable problems; the Fraggers [Fragmenters] and Trenchers; the impending psi Wars, with the development of Earth’s defenders, the Psi-Warriors, to curtail and control the resistance, the Psi-Defiers.

My whole body is buzzing, my stomach flipping around. I’m sweating and breathing heavily as if I am just in from a long run. Standing on my toes, leaning forward, listening with every pore as they talk, the hours fly by. I am mezmerized but on high alert at the same time. I cannot remember ever feeling so energized. I know I have to be directly involved.

But, how? I’m a parent of a toddler and a Rabbi who teaches middle school. What can I do to help?

I’m wondering about my dreams and other future-seeing, clairvoyant precognition and presentience: do these mean I have a key role in all this? I am about to inquire when Led asks: “Moran Ackerman: do you want to help Earth in its Transition?”

When I hear Led ask me that, I feel as I am being summoned by Hashem. Not that Led is G-d, but that this work is my new sacred calling, to help all of Earth. I believe I don’t have a choice.

In Yiddish, we have a saying: Bashert ‘yz bashert. Bashert is not just about finding one’s soul mate: anything can be bashert, like “que será, será” in Spanish. Something that is meant to be, my destiny, my fate, is bashert.

I answer Led with a resounding “YES!” The most amazing feeling, like love multiplied by millions of electric charges, suffuses my chest and then my entire body, as if I am bathed in energy and love. That’s what it feels like when I am doing G-d’s work on Earth.

I become the first human student of the first ESP [Excellent/ Extraordinary Skills Program] trainings for OSOps. I am involved at the start in the development of the OverSeers of all types for Earthers, up to and including the first Psi-Warriors. I become the first Chief of them all.

I AM Super Psi-Man! See, Liora? You are right!

I have only the vaguest idea of what this all is at the beginning, but I catch on quickly. Aunt Clara says that is due to the fact that becoming the Chief is my karma [Sanskrit, Buddhist term for inevitable action, destiny]

When I finish this first monstrously long call with The Band, I turn to Liora and explain it all. Not surprisingly, since she is completely awesome, Liora supports me.

More of a shock: my school headmaster understands. He’s a big fan of Clara’s, he says. At first, he gives me time off for the spring, 2013, semester, but this turns into a permanent leave of absence.

For the first months of my ESP training, there is no Campus. I have vid calls with some of the holos from The Band about every other day for a few weeks, often with Aunt Clara from her house in California, as we begin to plan the ES and OS schools. We also start my training remotely in late January.

Luckily, since there is nowhere yet to go for the trainings, just like Aunt Clara, I train from home, which is Cleveland, Ohio, USA. She trains in the rain in or sun in northern California’s winter, I in the snow and freezing rain, almost no sun, when we have to be outside. Fortunately, most of what we do is indoors at first. Sometimes she and I are training on the same things, so we practice together via vid call, Access, or other methods I explain as I this Volume continues, here.

The trainers, usually Mick or Ringo, sometimes Led or Janis―Diana, come to me as holos or we do lessons and practice via Access. I’m the second person, after CeeCee to be given my own implant iD [Individual Access Devices Interface] and get physical “downloads.”

[See Volume I, This Changes Everything, for descriptions of some of Clara Branon’s early trainings with and first physical “download” from The Band.]
***************************************************************

Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.

4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.

On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.

#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING

4th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

by

Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

logoAuthorsDen

Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
Cover reveal for Volume II: April 15, 2014

4th Serialized Excerpt, 3/19/14

I am 27 in early 2013, when everyone hears about the MWC [Many Worlds Collective] holos’ visit to Aunt Clara and what that all means to Earth. At that time, I am a Rabbi in the Jewish Modern Orthodox tradition, teaching middle school in what is then near Cleveland, Ohio, married, living with my wonderful wife, Liora, and our adorable one-year-old daughter, Orna. Aunt Clara is the eldest of my father, Dr. Thomas Ackerman’s, three younger sisters. Abba [Father, Hebrew] and Aunt Clara are only one year apart.

[Orna, Moran’s 6-year-old daughter, walks in and sits beside him, listening.]

I start having “weird dreams” in September, 2012. In these dreams, I’m doing all kinds of things I can’t imagine at that time could be real or possible: walking through walls, flying just in my body, moving objects with my mind, telepathically communicating with other humans and animals, and talking and interacting with some nonhuman-looking creatures, including colorful holograms, seeing them talking with Aunt Clara: stuff like that.

I talk about some of my dreams with my wife, Liora, because they are so vivid and fantastical. She and I share some laughs about my “superpowers,” and that’s about it. Oh, and she does start calling me “Psi-Man,” which, considering how things turn out, is mighty prescient of HER!

There is a long tradition in Judaism, which I practice as an Orthodox Rabbi (teacher and religious leader, BPC) of individuals’ receiving visions, information, and even warnings from Hashem [reference for God, Hebrew] in dreams (think: Joseph, with that specially colored coat and all his vivid dreams, right?). I wonder if anyone else is getting dreams like mine, but no one besides the kids tells me or reports it anywhere BPC.

When we get Aunt Clara’s call, we’re at my parents’ house [see Chapters 6, 7, 8 of this Volume]. My “dreams” suddenly seem not to be dreams. Seeing my niece, Chaya’s, drawing, I am flabbergasted.

My oldest brother, Lavi’s, only daughter, Chaya, has a crayoned picture that she just happens to bring to this fateful Shabbat dinner. The drawing shows a central figure that looks like Aunt Clara (curly, light brown hair, blue eyes, female human) next to the floating, bluish beach ball I now know as “Led.” There is a sort of Tin Man, an orange, robot-looking figure who is clearly supposed to be “Ringo.” The pair-bond, “Janis—Diana,” are there as two large, greenish blobs with legs (kind of accurate, actually) next to a very tall, lighter green, wiggly looking figure (probably wiggling to illustrate his cilia moving all over him) with blinking colored lights on top: definitely “Mick.”

My own drawing of Aunt Clara and The Band of holos would not be much better, I’m sorry to say!

Then, I hear that my nephew, Solomon, my second-oldest brother, Agam’s son, also “knows,” from his own dreams, confirming my suspicions. We’re all connected to the MWC’s Big Reveal, somehow, not just Aunt Clara.

Liora and I are the only ones who know about my having pre-cog dreams BPC. Liora knows about my dreams because I tell her many times how I “see” her for years before we meet and that’s how I know she’s my Bashert. I also dream about our daughter, Orna, before our first ultrasound and that’s the way I know she’s a girl. I dream our current house before we find it. Things like that are common in our family but not usually talked about BPC.

After this Shabbat and the Big Reveal, everyone knows about my dreams because we tell them. Eventually, my timulting becomes important and necessary, but I get ahead of my story, here. Let’s return.

I call and talk briefly with Aunt Clara later that same weekend, after Shabbat (no phone calls during Shabbat). She explains some of what my dreams signify. Mainly, she lets me know that some of us are “talented,” meaning, we’re able to utilize Extraordinary, or Excellent Skills, BPC. Then, the arrival of the MWC delegation catalyzes our ES greatly. I talk about that call and its aftermath later in this Volume.

When Aunt Clara and I get another chance to talk, early in January, 2013, and I explain my dreams in more detail (having many more by then), she immediately puts me on a vid call with The Band, as she and Zephyr come to call the main five holos.

I mostly talk with Led and Mick, that time. They already know everything about me. I mean, EVERYTHING. That’s kind of creepy, but makes our conversation go quickly. Telepathy certainly is a big time-saver!

I find out: the MWC delegates move fast when we Earthers are ready. I suppose I am as ready as I can be. In that talk, which goes for about three hours, they explain what’s coming: the Transition and its inevitable problems; the Fraggers [Fragmenters] and Trenchers; the impending psi Wars, with the development of Earth’s defenders, the Psi-Warriors, to curtail and control the resistance, the Psi-Defiers.

My whole body is buzzing, my stomach flipping around. I’m sweating and breathing heavily as if I am just in from a long run. Standing on my toes, leaning forward, listening with every pore as they talk, the hours fly by. I am mezmerized but on high alert at the same time. I cannot remember ever feeling so energized. I know I have to be directly involved.

But, how? I’m a parent of a toddler and a Rabbi who teaches middle school. What can I do to help?

I’m wondering about my dreams and other future-seeing, clairvoyant precognition and presentience: do these mean I have a key role in all this? I am about to inquire when Led asks: “Moran Ackerman: do you want to help Earth in its Transition?”

When I hear Led ask me that, I feel as I am being summoned by Hashem. Not that Led is G-d, but that this work is my new sacred calling, to help all of Earth. I believe I don’t have a choice.

In Yiddish, we have a saying: Bashert ‘yz bashert. Bashert is not just about finding one’s soul mate: anything can be bashert, like “que será, será” in Spanish. Something that is meant to be, my destiny, my fate, is bashert.

I answer Led with a resounding “YES!” The most amazing feeling, like love multiplied by millions of electric charges, suffuses my chest and then my entire body, as if I am bathed in energy and love. That’s what it feels like when I am doing G-d’s work on Earth.

I become the first human student of the first ESP [Excellent/ Extraordinary Skills Program] trainings for OSOps. I am involved at the start in the development of the OverSeers of all types for Earthers, up to and including the first Psi-Warriors. I become the first Chief of them all.

I AM Super Psi-Man! See, Liora? You are right!

I have only the vaguest idea of what this all is at the beginning, but I catch on quickly. Aunt Clara says that is due to the fact that becoming the Chief is my karma [Sanskrit, Buddhist term for inevitable action, destiny]

When I finish this first monstrously long call with The Band, I turn to Liora and explain it all. Not surprisingly, since she is completely awesome, Liora supports me.

More of a shock: my school headmaster understands. He’s a big fan of Clara’s, he says. At first, he gives me time off for the spring, 2013, semester, but this turns into a permanent leave of absence.

For the first months of my ESP training, there is no Campus. I have vid calls with some of the holos from The Band about every other day for a few weeks, often with Aunt Clara from her house in California, as we begin to plan the ES and OS schools. We also start my training remotely in late January.

Luckily, since there is nowhere yet to go for the trainings, just like Aunt Clara, I train from home, which is Cleveland, Ohio, USA. She trains in the rain in or sun in northern California’s winter, I in the snow and freezing rain, almost no sun, when we have to be outside. Fortunately, most of what we do is indoors at first. Sometimes she and I are training on the same things, so we practice together via vid call, Access, or other methods I explain as I this Volume continues, here.

The trainers, usually Mick or Ringo, sometimes Led or Janis―Diana, come to me as holos or we do lessons and practice via Access. I’m the second person, after CeeCee to be given my own implant iD [Individual Access Devices Interface] and get physical “downloads.”

[See Volume I, This Changes Everything, for descriptions of some of Clara Branon’s early trainings with and first physical “download” from The Band.]
***************************************************************

Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.

4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.

On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.

#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING

Magnetism

by

People, relationships, attraction, #magnetism: so many connections, micro to macro.

The Seven Worlds

left Magnetism

Magnetism is a class of physical phenomena that includes forces exerted by magnets on other magnets. It has its origin in electric currents and the fundamental magnetic moments of elementary particles. These give rise to a magnetic field that acts on other currents and moments.

All materials are influenced to some extent by a magnetic field. The strongest effect is on permanent magnets, which have persistent magnetic moments caused by

View original post 1,201 more words

3rd Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

by

Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

logoAuthorsDen

Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
Cover reveal for Volume II: April 15, 2014

3rd Serialized Excerpt, 3/18/14

Ranks and Levels of OverSeers (OSes)

(BTW: not all are human)

Enforcers (OSEs) have basic ESP training and function somewhat like peacekeepers or police officers when in non-violent times (have different functions during the psi Wars. Everyone in the OSes starts as an OSE.

Investigators (OSIs) have intermediate Levels of ESP training so they function as detectives, problem-solvers, mediators and assistants to leaders. Many OSOps and members of the Global Unity Leaders Council have OSIs assigned to us, as partners and bodyguards. When communities of any species have crimes or issues needing expert, skilled attention, they request an OSI. Some OSIs are eligible to be and do become OSOps.

OverSeers in special/covert Operations (OSOps) have high Levels of ESP training and function in secret in times of extreme turmoil or conflict of other types, on- or off-planet, within or among species.

In peaceful times, OSOps are the main trainers for potential OSEs and OSIs. OSOps with timult talent are eligible for and may be invited to acquire timult Levels of ESP training. This is where I fit in when I’m not being a Psi-Warrior.

Psi-Warriors (PWs) are those OSOps who also have timult talent and who go through those and other additional Levels of ESP training.

The Excellent/Extraordinary Skills Program (ESP) trainings for OverSeers are not exactly the same as for beings who decide to go into the ESP training for other purposes. Some categories for OSOps are left out entirely, and others are included but not all subcategories, or Skills, are offered during the training. The MWC has this all worked out from eons of experience. We trust them.

When someone (human or not) wants to participate in the entire ESP training, each student may only move through the Levels as that student’s talent, abilities, motivation and intentions permit. Some with “breakout” skills must first learn to identify and control these (tame their tigers) before we allow them to start the initial sequence at Level I, even (especially) when they have higher Levels of breakout skills.

The sequence is set regardless of the reasons for an individual’s participation, but as I explain, some pieces are left out for some training groups.

When an OS trainee fails to complete a Level or section for whatever reason, that student’s training pauses and perhaps ends at that point, which dictates where we place that student after graduation.

When someone wants to continue, if specialized training or tutoring could benefit them, we do offer that. But, usually, it’s kind of self-selecting. Like a colander with holes of different sizes, the ESP training has a sieve-like assessment system that only lets eligibles “through” to go further.

However, because of all our specialized requirements and demands on our time, the ESP training for OverSeers is not the same as for those who go through ESP training for other reasons, all in sequence. Some of the ES are not offered to OSes, or offered only with certain subsections or with some subsections offered just for the parts we need without changing the titles of those sections.

We keep private exactly what training occurs in each Level for any individual OS. We publish the entire list of Skills and Levels, but only I and a few instructors may know what any particular overseer trainee goes through and can do. Except for our Chief Communicator, who must go through it all, everyone has changes and omissions in their sequences of ESP training.
***************************************************************

Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.

4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.

On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.

#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING

3rd Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

by

Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

logoAuthorsDen

Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
Cover reveal for Volume II: April 15, 2014

3rd Serialized Excerpt, 3/18/14

Ranks and Levels of OverSeers (OSes)

(BTW: not all are human)

Enforcers (OSEs) have basic ESP training and function somewhat like peacekeepers or police officers when in non-violent times (have different functions during the psi Wars. Everyone in the OSes starts as an OSE.

Investigators (OSIs) have intermediate Levels of ESP training so they function as detectives, problem-solvers, mediators and assistants to leaders. Many OSOps and members of the Global Unity Leaders Council have OSIs assigned to us, as partners and bodyguards. When communities of any species have crimes or issues needing expert, skilled attention, they request an OSI. Some OSIs are eligible to be and do become OSOps.

OverSeers in special/covert Operations (OSOps) have high Levels of ESP training and function in secret in times of extreme turmoil or conflict of other types, on- or off-planet, within or among species.

In peaceful times, OSOps are the main trainers for potential OSEs and OSIs. OSOps with timult talent are eligible for and may be invited to acquire timult Levels of ESP training. This is where I fit in when I’m not being a Psi-Warrior.

Psi-Warriors (PWs) are those OSOps who also have timult talent and who go through those and other additional Levels of ESP training.

The Excellent/Extraordinary Skills Program (ESP) trainings for OverSeers are not exactly the same as for beings who decide to go into the ESP training for other purposes. Some categories for OSOps are left out entirely, and others are included but not all subcategories, or Skills, are offered during the training. The MWC has this all worked out from eons of experience. We trust them.

When someone (human or not) wants to participate in the entire ESP training, each student may only move through the Levels as that student’s talent, abilities, motivation and intentions permit. Some with “breakout” skills must first learn to identify and control these (tame their tigers) before we allow them to start the initial sequence at Level I, even (especially) when they have higher Levels of breakout skills.

The sequence is set regardless of the reasons for an individual’s participation, but as I explain, some pieces are left out for some training groups.

When an OS trainee fails to complete a Level or section for whatever reason, that student’s training pauses and perhaps ends at that point, which dictates where we place that student after graduation.

When someone wants to continue, if specialized training or tutoring could benefit them, we do offer that. But, usually, it’s kind of self-selecting. Like a colander with holes of different sizes, the ESP training has a sieve-like assessment system that only lets eligibles “through” to go further.

However, because of all our specialized requirements and demands on our time, the ESP training for OverSeers is not the same as for those who go through ESP training for other reasons, all in sequence. Some of the ES are not offered to OSes, or offered only with certain subsections or with some subsections offered just for the parts we need without changing the titles of those sections.

We keep private exactly what training occurs in each Level for any individual OS. We publish the entire list of Skills and Levels, but only I and a few instructors may know what any particular overseer trainee goes through and can do. Except for our Chief Communicator, who must go through it all, everyone has changes and omissions in their sequences of ESP training.
***************************************************************

Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.

4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.

On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.

#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING

2nd Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

by

Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

logoAuthorsDen

Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
Cover reveal for Volume II: April 15, 2014

2nd Serialized Excerpt, 3/17/14

About CHAPTER INTERLUDES I – X

Describing the Many Worlds Collective (MWC) Excellent/Extraordinary Skills Program (ESP) Trainings for OverSeers (OSes)

Interviews with Moran Ackerman, PW, OSOps (Psi-Warrior, OverSeer, special and covert Operations)

Because I, Moran Ackerman, Clara Branon’s third nephew, am the first Earther to become both a Psi-Warrior and an OverSeer in special/covert Operations (OSOps), my Excellent Skills Program (ESP) training parallels the Transition almost exactly. It’s kind of cool because this means what I’m learning is what I need to use almost immediately.

I choose the framework of my specialized ESP training to structure these chapters, which Espe says are called “Interludes,” so I can add stories with examples and details of my experiences for you (what I’m allowed to make public, that is).

So, here we go!
****************

{Background information and important definitions, translations and other hints are provided in square brackets [like these], provided by this Volume’s interviewer and editor, Esperanza Enlaces.}

[By the way (BTW): available in late Spring, 2015, Volume IV, Changes in Attitude, Changes in Latitude, provides a set of perspectives on the ESP trainings from talented, youthful students, starting with children and and grandchildren of the Spanners (humans) and students of other species as they move through upper Levels, including Dr. Clara Branon’s Chief Communicator’s training (which goes further than any other Earther’s, by necessity).]

CHAPTER INTERLUDE I

Chief of the Psi-Warriors, OverSeer and covert special Operations agents, Moran Ackerman: My Stories of the Transition

MORAN: OSOp Moran Ackerman, Chief of the Psi-Warriors, here. Aunt Clara and Espe ask me to tell my stories so everyone’s iD can Access them and I agree to do it. However, I can’t share some aspects of my experiences.

I believe it’s best to divide my story into sections based on what I learn and what happens as I learn as well as what’s going on here on Earth during the Transition, AppCee [After Public Contact]. If I use too many acronyms or short cuts, Espe kindly agrees to come along after me and put in the translations or explanations, which leaves me free just to talk. Thanks, Espe! [Also, please turn to Appendices for Glossaries and other info.]

Briefly, let me lay it out like this, so everyone knows how we’re set up in the OverSeers. Espe says she can capture my comm pad screen, put it right here and I can still add notes. Nice.
***************************************************************************

Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.

4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.

On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.

#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING

2nd Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

by

Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

logoAuthorsDen

Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
Cover reveal for Volume II: April 15, 2014

2nd Serialized Excerpt, 3/17/14

About CHAPTER INTERLUDES I – X

Describing the Many Worlds Collective (MWC) Excellent/Extraordinary Skills Program (ESP) Trainings for OverSeers (OSes)

Interviews with Moran Ackerman, PW, OSOps (Psi-Warrior, OverSeer, special and covert Operations)

Because I, Moran Ackerman, Clara Branon’s third nephew, am the first Earther to become both a Psi-Warrior and an OverSeer in special/covert Operations (OSOps), my Excellent Skills Program (ESP) training parallels the Transition almost exactly. It’s kind of cool because this means what I’m learning is what I need to use almost immediately.

I choose the framework of my specialized ESP training to structure these chapters, which Espe says are called “Interludes,” so I can add stories with examples and details of my experiences for you (what I’m allowed to make public, that is).

So, here we go!
****************

{Background information and important definitions, translations and other hints are provided in square brackets [like these], provided by this Volume’s interviewer and editor, Esperanza Enlaces.}

[By the way (BTW): available in late Spring, 2015, Volume IV, Changes in Attitude, Changes in Latitude, provides a set of perspectives on the ESP trainings from talented, youthful students, starting with children and and grandchildren of the Spanners (humans) and students of other species as they move through upper Levels, including Dr. Clara Branon’s Chief Communicator’s training (which goes further than any other Earther’s, by necessity).]

CHAPTER INTERLUDE I

Chief of the Psi-Warriors, OverSeer and covert special Operations agents, Moran Ackerman: My Stories of the Transition

MORAN: OSOp Moran Ackerman, Chief of the Psi-Warriors, here. Aunt Clara and Espe ask me to tell my stories so everyone’s iD can Access them and I agree to do it. However, I can’t share some aspects of my experiences.

I believe it’s best to divide my story into sections based on what I learn and what happens as I learn as well as what’s going on here on Earth during the Transition, AppCee [After Public Contact]. If I use too many acronyms or short cuts, Espe kindly agrees to come along after me and put in the translations or explanations, which leaves me free just to talk. Thanks, Espe! [Also, please turn to Appendices for Glossaries and other info.]

Briefly, let me lay it out like this, so everyone knows how we’re set up in the OverSeers. Espe says she can capture my comm pad screen, put it right here and I can still add notes. Nice.
***************************************************************************

Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.

4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.

On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.

#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING

1st Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

by

Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

logoAuthorsDen

Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
Cover reveal for Volume II: April 15, 2014

1st Serialized Excerpt, 3/16/14

About This Volume

Hello. I am Esperanza Enlaces, Chief Media Contact (CMC) for Dr. Clara Ackerman Branon, first liaison—Chief Communicator (CC)—between Earth and the Many Worlds Collective (MWC). Clara asks me to organize Volume II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever (the one you’re now reading) in The Spanners Series. Since it needs some explaining, I’m the one to provide info.

Volume I, This Changes Everything‘s stories are all from the perspectives of the adults who actually are Spanners (except for me), but we also want Earth’s teens/ young adults and “new adults” (children and grandchildren of Spanners) to realize that we know how important your roles and perspectives are.

Earth’s Transition to membership in the Many Worlds Collective (MWC) affects everyone differently. Therefore, Volume II is composed of interviews I do with and personal stories from each of Clara’s nephews and nieces and her son, Zephyr Branon. Also, it is interlaced with Moran Ackerman’s stories.

Moran Ackerman, age 27 BPC [Before Public Contact] and in his mid-thirties by the end of Transition, is Clara’s nephew, Chief of the Psi-Warriors (PWs) and OverSeers covert and special Operations (OSOps). He frames the Transition with descriptions of his Excellent Skills Program training and personal stories of his family life.

Because of many requests, I also add a Chapter that tells of my first meeting with The Band, picking up right where Clara leaves off in Volume I, This Changes Everything, so that both of our perspectives can be “on record.” Even though everyone Accesses the vid a million times by now, I think readers/viewers want to know my personal responses, both before and after we shoot that first vid.

Clara reviews the draft and tells me it’s too “thin.” “People want more,” she says.”They won’t like it if you don’t give them more about me, about my life. Maybe you could add some things about my years before becoming the Chief Communicator [CC] and then give them some idea of what being the CC is like?”

I consider this and decide to interview her separately. From these, I insert “Snapshots” of Clara’s life at several key points prior to 2012 and then one for each year of the the Transition through 2018, alternating with these other Chapters. This puts more personal stories from Clara in this Volume. I ask a lot of questions about her early years and her daily life now so that we can accumulate a variety of stories and background. I then create fourteen Snapshots, starting when Clara is nine years old and ending last fall, one about every five years or so, that illustrate her circumstances, personal and professional activities and daily schedule. We also decide to put in at least one personal anecdote for almost every Snapshot.

Therefore, there are the Chapters with interviews, the Chapter Interludes that are narrated by Moran, and the Snapshots interspersed throughout this Volume. Unusual, but somehow, we think it works. Enjoy!

Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.

4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.

On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.

#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING

1st Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

by

Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

logoAuthorsDen

Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
Cover reveal for Volume II: April 15, 2014

1st Serialized Excerpt, 3/16/14

About This Volume

Hello. I am Esperanza Enlaces, Chief Media Contact (CMC) for Dr. Clara Ackerman Branon, first liaison—Chief Communicator (CC)—between Earth and the Many Worlds Collective (MWC). Clara asks me to organize Volume II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever (the one you’re now reading) in The Spanners Series. Since it needs some explaining, I’m the one to provide info.

Volume I, This Changes Everything‘s stories are all from the perspectives of the adults who actually are Spanners (except for me), but we also want Earth’s teens/ young adults and “new adults” (children and grandchildren of Spanners) to realize that we know how important your roles and perspectives are.

Earth’s Transition to membership in the Many Worlds Collective (MWC) affects everyone differently. Therefore, Volume II is composed of interviews I do with and personal stories from each of Clara’s nephews and nieces and her son, Zephyr Branon. Also, it is interlaced with Moran Ackerman’s stories.

Moran Ackerman, age 27 BPC [Before Public Contact] and in his mid-thirties by the end of Transition, is Clara’s nephew, Chief of the Psi-Warriors (PWs) and OverSeers covert and special Operations (OSOps). He frames the Transition with descriptions of his Excellent Skills Program training and personal stories of his family life.

Because of many requests, I also add a Chapter that tells of my first meeting with The Band, picking up right where Clara leaves off in Volume I, This Changes Everything, so that both of our perspectives can be “on record.” Even though everyone Accesses the vid a million times by now, I think readers/viewers want to know my personal responses, both before and after we shoot that first vid.

Clara reviews the draft and tells me it’s too “thin.” “People want more,” she says.”They won’t like it if you don’t give them more about me, about my life. Maybe you could add some things about my years before becoming the Chief Communicator [CC] and then give them some idea of what being the CC is like?”

I consider this and decide to interview her separately. From these, I insert “Snapshots” of Clara’s life at several key points prior to 2012 and then one for each year of the the Transition through 2018, alternating with these other Chapters. This puts more personal stories from Clara in this Volume. I ask a lot of questions about her early years and her daily life now so that we can accumulate a variety of stories and background. I then create fourteen Snapshots, starting when Clara is nine years old and ending last fall, one about every five years or so, that illustrate her circumstances, personal and professional activities and daily schedule. We also decide to put in at least one personal anecdote for almost every Snapshot.

Therefore, there are the Chapters with interviews, the Chapter Interludes that are narrated by Moran, and the Snapshots interspersed throughout this Volume. Unusual, but somehow, we think it works. Enjoy!

Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.

4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.

On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.

#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING

SFR Brigade Presents Excerpt from Volume II, “The Spanners Series,” by Sally Ember, Ed.D. #sfrbp

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SFR Brigade Presents

Excerpt from Work-In-Progress (WIP), This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, Volume II, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.

from CHAPTER SNAPSHOT #9

Snapshots of Clara’s Daily Life: Fourteen Octobers, 1963 – 2017

October, 2012

I switch abruptly to full-on engagement mode, energetically zapping him. I ask, gently, to counterbalance the zap: “Do you love me?”

“What?” His mouth gapes at me, looking with wide eyes, his nose scrunched up, disbelieving what he hears and sensing the energy surge. “‘Do I love you?’ You just told me aliens are coming and you’re going to be a central figure in some science-fiction drama, but the main thing you want me to respond to is ‘Do I love you?’? Are you insane?”

He stands up and starts pacing around the patio.”Are you drinking? Taking drugs? Off some medication I didn’t know you’re taking? What the hell is going on with you, Clara?”

I can’t help it. I start laughing. A few giggles, then guffaws, then uncontrollable, hysterical whooping. Tears are running down my cheeks and I almost pee my pants.

Fanio stops and stares at me as my hilarity escalates. He sits down to wait for it to subside, viewing me the way a doctor views a mental patient in residential care.

Probably wishes he had a straitjacket somewhere close by. The image of his running to get that and trying to put it on me makes me laugh even harder.

Finally, my amusement wanes. How do I convince him? “No, Fanio. I’m quite sane and unaltered. I swear. I know it sounds crazy. Believe me, I do. But, everything I am telling you is about to happen. It’s all true.”

I decide to try a different tactic.”Pretend for a few minutes that you could suspend your skepticism about my story and my sanity to answer my question. Do you love me?”

“How can I believe any of this, Clara? Really? Who would believe you?”

I shrug, I shake my head. “Everyone, Fanio, in about three weeks. I’m telling you, giving you a chance to be an ‘early adopter.'”

Cover reveal for Volume II on April 15.

Cover and logo art by Willowraven.

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Pre-orders for Volume II start 4/18/14. Links on author’s site. On sale everywhere ebooks are sold June 9, 2014, $3.99. Volume I, This Changes Everything, already available everywhere. Buy links on author’s site.

http://www.sfrcontests.blogspot.com for more snippets of other SFR Brigade Members’ Works-in-Progress

My #1980s #Computer Tutors: Thanks to Jaye Alper (sorely missed ) and Mario Cossa

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This week is heralded as the 25th anniversary of the roll-out of the World Wide Web (now known as the #Internet) for laypeople’s use. In commemoration of that, I want to give a belated shout-out to my first computer teachers, one long-time friend, unfortunately the late and very sorely missed Jaye Alper, and my long-time friend, Mario Cossa. Both were early users, smart and talented people who “got it” years before most people.

Mario ran a nonprofit at the time called The Children’s Performing Arts Center (CPAC). For this, he had the use of a tiny, front-room “office” on the first floor of a 100-year-old Victorian mansion on Court Street in Keene, New Hampshire. He had acquired an Apple IIe and a printer.

apple2c.big

This beast took a long time to “boot up,” meaning, minutes. We’d turn it on, go do other things, come back and there it would be: green script, black/grey screen, blinking white cursor. No mouse. Instead, a DOS that required us to learn keyboard commands which Mario had posted on the wall and in a notebook. Floppy disks. No internet hook-up (hook-up to what?).

To see what we created, we had a dot matrix printer, loud and slow, that fed paper up through a slit in the bottom shelf of the new-fangled computer stand/desk or from the floor. It had to use specially designed computer paper that we had to pull out and separate at each perforated page ending and cut the edges off before using or it wouldn’t fit into manila file folders.

Dot matrix printer and paper

All files’ “back up” had to be done to the floppies, which Mario painstakingly labeled. IBM floppies and old Apples used very large, flexible diskettes that later became the harder, plastic diskettes that the “save” icon is modeled on.

With no other system for remembering, Mario invented and we kept a running log of each disk’s contents in a spiral notebook, with each disk’s name at the top of a page and its ever-increasing contents listed below, by file name and date updated (constantly changing). This was a system we continued to use through three more nonprofit incarnations and 15 more years!.

Floppy_disk_2009_G1

Meanwhile, Jaye was an early Apple adopter, also, and she had the first Macintosh I’d ever seen. In 1991, I got an LC because of her tutelage. I remember my many years of “tutoring” sessions with Jaye. I especially remember the earliest ones, in which she patiently and carefully tried to get me to understand “files,” “documents,” “folders,” “saving,” “save as,” “cut,” “paste,” “copy.” Without her help, all of Mario’s great notebooks would have gone for naught. Understanding needs to precede use. I was a slow learner in this area.

LC Mac

To “get” a file in the new world wide web to “live” on my computer’s hard drive, I had to learn a complicated FTP (File Transfer Protocol) and “write” the code language for it to download. To help me and because Jaye was very busy, I took workshops in Hypercard programming language, Filemaker Pro, Microsoft Works and then Word, databases and spreadsheets. Fifteen years later, I taught computer user classes to beginners, in a “great circle of life” moment.

Learning software programs for graphics in the days when there were no “snap to grid” options, all graphics had to be hand-drawn and positioned.This now seems hilarious, but then: what a pain. And, believe me, I am no artist.

The first time I decided to copy a file from a floppy disk to my hard drive, I didn’t know the “rule”: THE MOVING FILE WINS! Whatever is being dragged or introduced takes precedence over what it’s moved to when they have the same file name. Rookie mistake: I lost all my updates, edits and improvements. Lesson learned.

Very excited to have a “mouse” with my Mac LC and not have to remember (or look up) all the commands. But, I still use a lot of the keyboard commands (they haven’t changed much over the decades, luckily). Having “menus” was novel and exciting, a huge time-saver.

First modem: very loud, long time to get connected, many failures and restarts needed. Took minutes for one page to appear on the screen and often only part of it would appear. “Refresh” meant waiting many more minutes each time. Also, “surfing the web” took just a few minutes because besides American Online (AOL) and a few other locations, there were almost no pages to visit, yet. Individuals, businesses, government and other entities had no web presence.

original-mac-accessories

For grant-writing and research, I had to go physically, in person, and use the library’s no-circulating grants compendia, photocopy machines. I had to take notes, use snail mail and keep paper copies of what I sent or, amazingly (for the time), faxed. In the 1980s, fax machines were just beginning to appear in ordinary business offices and homes, using that thin, fragile paper.

When my 97-year-old grandfather was close to dying in 1998, we were talking about all the changes he’d witnessed. Suddenly, he said to me: “One thing I don’t understand: fax machines.” I laughed and said I didn’t understand them, either. Still don’t.

Thirty-one years after that Apple IIe, having worked on both PCs and Macs and now using a PC, being all over the internet with social media and research, uploading and downloading with relative ease, the days of rampant confusion, frustration, modem noises and waiting many minutes for a page to appear seem distantly in the past.

Gratitude to all the programmers, creators, builders, thinkers, teachers, leaders and early adopters, especially my friends, Jaye and Mario, for bringing me into the computer age. I hope you all enjoy the fruits of these people’s and your own tutors’/teachers’ labors as you read this post.

Thanks to Steve Jobs
image from blog.wefeelsecure.com

Acclaimed, eagerly-awaited SPANNERS SERIES’ Volume II Excerpts Starting 3/16/14!

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The Spanners Series by Sally Ember Ed.D., is proud to announce: Vol I, This Changes Everything, is soon to be joined by Volume II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, specially suited for new and young adults as well as adults.

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Excerpts from Volume II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, of The Spanners Series, on author’s website (link below) as well as Wattpad, Authomony and FaceBook and Google+ Series’ pages starting 3/16/14.

Vol II begins pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks, nook, April 18 and releases June 9 on those and Amazon and all Smashwords affiliate sites.

Vol. II BLURB: This Changes My Family and My Life Forever is the story of the first five years After Public Contact with the Many Worlds Collective (2013-2018), “The Transition” to full membership for Earth. Many of the changes, reactions, struggles and circumstances accompanying these years are related from the points of view of the main character, Dr. Clara Branon’s, adult son and his cousins as well as some of those cousins’ children. One of Clara’s nephews in particular, Moran Ackerman, who becomes Chief of the Psi-Warriors and all OverSeers, tells of his experiences and training in assuming those roles for Earth after having been a Rabbi and teacher of middle school. TCMF&MLF‘s content is edited/curated and also partly narrated by Esperanza Enlaces, Clara’s Chief Media Contact, a contemporary of her son’s, so some of her story and many parts of Clara’s are included as well.

Pre-order period for Vol. II, 4/18 – 6/8/14, offers the special discounted price of $1.99 for Volume II on all sites. Starting 6/9/14, Volume II will sell for $3.99.

Vol. I, This Changes Everything , BLURB: Dr. Clara Ackerman Branon, Ph.D., 58, is having the first of many home visits from holographic representations of five beings from the Many Worlds Collective (MWC), a consortium of planet and star systems all around the multiverse, over a thirty-year, increasingly Utopian period. Earth is being invited to join, formally, and the December, 2012, visit is the first one allowed to be made public. Making the existence of the MWC public means many Earthers have to adjust our beliefs and ideas about life, religion, culture, identity and, well, everything we think and are. Clara becomes the liaison for Earth, the Chief Communicator, between Earth and the MWC. This Changes Everything relates the events partly from her point of view, partly from records of meetings of varying groups of the MWC governing bodies, and partly from her Media Contact, Esperanza Enlaces, employing humor, poignancy, a love story, family issues, MWC’s mistakes and blunders, history, politics, paranormalcy and hope.

This Changes Everything cover

Cover reveal for Volume II on April 15!
Cover and logo art by Willowraven:
willowraven-illustration.blogspot.com/

All links on http://www.sallyember.com
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/376197
Amazon, for all countries: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HFELTG8?tag=viewbookat0e-20
Amazon Author page: amazon.com/author/sallyember
Kobo: http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/this-changes-everything-3
iBooks: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/this-changes-everything/id746840776?mt=11&ls=1
Nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/this-changes-everything-sally-ember-edd/1117473726?ean=2940045417921&isbn=2940045417921

Facebook Series Page: https://www.facebook.com/TheSpannersSeriesbySallyEmber
Google+ Series Page: https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/115730970500394047116/115730970500394047116/about
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/sallyember
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/sallyemberedd
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18772075-this-changes-everything

White Holes Without

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I aspire to understand all of this some day. The best part: “The negative square root solution outisde the horizon represents another Universe….The inhabitants [of the two Universes] can meet… and soon meet with regularity.”

my #SFRB post: Lending Actual People’s Bios to #Fictional #Characters: Pros and Cons

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Subtitle: Why everyone who has ever been in a writer’s life should be afraid, VERY afraid!

Writers who invent characters claim they work harder than the rest of us whose characters are drawn from “real” life. How accurate is this claim? Let’s examine the pros and cons of lending actual people’s bios to fictional characters. Then, YOU decide which writers work harder!

Originally posted 3/11/14 in Science-Fiction/Romance Brigade: http://sfrcontests.blogspot.com/2014/03/lending-actual-peoples-bios-to.html

PROS:
1. Actual people already have an appearance, so we can describe instead of straining our imaginations to create features, saving time and energy for generating original plot points and conflicts.

  1. Instead of starting from scratch, we can get a head start on character development by using the people we already know. Then, take whatever liberties we want with their biographies, attitudes, styles, intentions, relationships, even ages, inventing or exaggerating in whatever ways suit our stories.

  2. Some people will feel honored, flattered, amused or intrigued when we let them know we are basing a character on them. Try to choose those people to “borrow” heavily from and not those who would object!

  3. When we put our constellations of former and current relatives, lovers, friends, bosses, colleagues, fellow students, politicians, celebrities and other famous sorts into the skylines of our stories, we can create street riots by having them act out our psychological fantasies, desires, dreams and yearnings without our actually engaging with these people.

  4. Cheaper than therapy, safer than revenge, more satisfying than almost any other way we legally can acquire to work through whatever issues we have with these actual people: write them into our stories. Especially popular is making someone we despised or who betrayed us into a villain or victim. My favorite is to give the heroine or hero a great romance with someone I secretly covet. One murder mystery author’s usual victims or villains are the same type of man…. I wonder which guy pissed her off?

CONS:
1. Make sure to make the drafted characters mostly unrecognizable to avoid the range of possible consequences, from hurt feelings to lawsuits.

  1. Getting permissions can be difficult to obtain, so choose carefully and disguise well.

  2. Even when we make the fictional characters “better” than the originals, the originals may not be happy with our versions. Be prepared.

  3. Keeping straight in the writer’s mind who is who requires a pseudonyms list. Try to avoid calling your actual people by their characters’ names in public.

  4. Changing key details, relationships, and/or circumstances can feel like “cheating,” but may be necessary for everything to work well. If you give the murderer one child because your murderer’s counterpart has one but you need your murderer to have two for a plot point, give him two and REMEMBER than you did. Maintain a spreadsheet of important dates, alterations to “actual” characters’ events, and other changes or you run the risk of causing yourself and possibly your readers undue confusion.

Those who start with “real” and then expand into fictional characters must be sharply focused and spend extra time to keep it all clear. Therefore, I declare the winner of the harder working among writers to be US!

Be careful and have fun!

Bio:
Sally Ember, Ed.D., is a published nonfiction author and produced playwright whose sci-fi/ romance/speculative/utopian/paranormal/multiverse fiction for YA, New Adult and Adults, The Spanners Series, has two Volumes available by June 9, 2014, and eight more to come. Sally also has had short stories and articles published and has co-written, edited, and proofread multiple media. Sally was raised Jewish and is a practicing Buddhist meditator. She is also an almost-daily swimmer, a mediocre singer/pianist, avid feminist, dreamer, and devoted mother/ sister/ aunt/ daughter/ cousin/ friend. Sally has worked as an educator and upper-level, nonprofit manager in colleges, universities and private nonprofits for over thirty-five years in New England (every state), New Mexico and the San Francisco Bay Area (where she now lives). Sally has a BA in Elementary Education, a Master’s (M.Ed.) and a doctorate in education (Ed.D.).

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This Changes Everything, Vol. I, The Spanners Series by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Dr. Clara Ackerman Branon, Ph.D., 58, is having the first of many home visits from holographic representations of five beings from the Many Worlds Collective (MWC), a consortium of planet and star systems all around the multiverse, over a thirty-year, increasingly Utopian period. Earth is being invited to join, formally, and the December, 2012, visit is the first one allowed to be made public. Making the existence of the MWC public means many Earthers have to adjust our beliefs and ideas about life, religion, culture, identity and, well, everything we think and are. Clara becomes the liaison— the Chief Communicator—between Earth and the MWC. This Changes Everything relates the events partly from her point of view, partly from records of meetings of varying groups of the MWC governing bodies, and partly from her Media Contact, Esperanza Enlaces, employing humor, poignancy, a love story, family issues, MWC’s mistakes and blunders, history, politics, paranormalcy and hope.

logoAuthorsDen
COVER ART BY WILLOWRAVEN: http://willowraven-illustration.blogspot.com

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/376197
download excerpts free at Smashwords (or sites below), read more about author or watch author readings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTupok4wCN8

Available for $3.99 on Smashwords (any format), iBooks, nook, Kobo, Amazon/Kindle and many other sites worldwide. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HFELTG8?tag=viewbookat0e-20

Read reviews and leave one of your own on any of the above sites and also
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18772075-this-changes-everything and http://www.shelfari.com/books/37044452/This-Changes-Everything-(The-Spanners-Series) and http://booklikes.com/book/5125922/this-changes-everything-volume-i-the-spanners-series-sally-ember-ed-d-

#FF (FOLLOW) Sally on Twitter: @sallyemberedd http://www.twitter.com/sallyemberedd

#FF and comment her website, which includes blog: http://www.sallyember.com and http://sallyember.tumblr.com/

LIKE and #FF The Spanners Series by Sally Ember page on Facebook or Google + and leave a comment. Add Sally to Google+ Circles: ssfember@gmail.com https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/115730970500394047116/115730970500394047116/about and https://www.facebook.com/TheSpannersSeriesBySallyEmber

#FF Sally’s Boards on Pinterest! Repin! http://www.pinterest.com/sallyember

Listen to archived one-hour interview with Sally on Blog Talk Radio’s Indie Books show hosted by Will Wilson from 12/27/13 for free: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/indiebooks/2013/12/27/indie-books-show-15 with other interviews and reviews links available via Sally’s website.

This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, Vol. II, The Spanners Series by Sally Ember, Ed.D., goes into Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook April 15-18, 2014 and releases everywhere, including Amazon, June 9, 2014.

Seeking reviewers for Volume II starting March 15, 2014, and Volume I, any time. Please contact Sally if you’d like to do a review of either Volume I or Volume II. For a FREE ebook download coupon: be a reviewer, belong to a Book Club or be a teacher/student in a class that wishes to utilize TCE or any other of the future volumes of The Spanners Series for discussion/study. Discussion questions/curricula and author SKYPE or visits available upon request. Contact Sally: sallyember@yahoo.com