Wishing on a Blue Star Read online

  Copyright

  Published by

  Dreamspinner Press

  4760 Preston Road

  Suite 244-149

  Frisco, TX 75034

  http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

  Blog entries Copyright © 2010 by Patric Michael

  Just Being Copyright © 2010 by Jamie Samms

  Patric Hates AIM Copyright © 2010 by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  When Angels Fall Copyright © 2010 by ZA Maxfield

  So If You're Sand Copyright © 2010 by C. Zampa

  In the Light Copyright © 2010 by Lex Valentine

  Technical Terms Copyright © 2010 by Patric Michael

  With This Flower Copyright © 2010 by Karenna Colcroft

  The Silver Shard Copyright © 2010 by Tame Adams

  Is a Prostate Worth Finding? Copyright © 2010 by Patric Michael

  The Lost Ones Copyright © 2010 by Victor J. Banis

  Mushrooms Copyright © 2010 by Brian Holliday

  The Mentor Copyright © 2010 by Jambrea Jo Jones

  Linchpin Copyright © 2010 by Mary Calmes

  Stupid Human Sex Tricks Copyright © 2010 by Patric Michael

  Dragonfly Copyright © 2010 by Jan Irving

  A Tale of Three Curmudgeons Copyright © 2010 by Jean Lorrah

  Through the Mist Copyright © 2010 by Chrissy Munder

  Leaves Copyright © 2010 by Moira McCain

  The Better Part Copyright © 2010 by Clare London

  Holding Purpose Copyright © 2010 by D.W. Marchwell

  A Place to Belong Copyright © 2010 by Taylor Lochland

  Dreams of Terrible Brightness Copyright © 2010 by Amy Lane

  Edited by Kris Jacen

  Cover Art by Catt Ford

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press at: 4760 Preston Road, Suite 244-149, Frisco, TX 75034

  http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

  ISBN: 978-1-61581-881-5

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Edition

  January, 2011

  eBook edition available

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-61581-882-2

  Table of Contents

  Blogs from Patric Michael are interwoven throughout the book to tell in his words (Patric’s editor’s note: typos and all), the journey over the year. Some of the blog entries included pictures or links—for those interested, you can see the original entries at Patric’s blog (http://blogs.patric.com).

  Table of Contents

  Just Being by Jamie Samms

  Patric Hates AIM by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  When Angels Fall by ZA Maxfield

  So If You’re Sand, Not Rock by C. Zampa

  In the Light by Lex Valentine

  Technical Terms by Patric Michael

  With this Flower by Karenna Colcroft

  The Silver Shard by Tame Adams

  Is a Prostate Worth Finding? by Patric Michael

  The Lost Ones by Victor J. Banis

  Mushrooms by Brian Holliday

  The Mentor by Jambrea Jo Jones

  Linchpin by Mary Calmes

  Stupid Human Sex Tricks by Patric Michael

  Dragonfly by Jan Irving

  A Tale of Three Curmudgeons by Jean Lorrah

  Through the Mist by Chrissy Munder

  Leaves by Moira McCain

  The Better Part by Clare London

  Holding Purpose by D.W. Marchwell

  A Place to Belong by Taylor Lochland

  Dreams of Terrible Brightness by Amy Lane

  Editor’s Note

  Kris Jacen

  “I’ve got a secret no more.”

  These words on a blog just over a year ago brought a pang of sadness to many. It seemed our friend, author Patric Michael, definitely had cancer. A rare form with a low survivability rate.

  As the months passed we’ve shared Patric’s journey, through its ups-and-downs, good periods and bad, and at the end it brought us to this collection. With all of the twists and turns that we’ve taken since that simple announcement, this bend in the road is perhaps the most deeply felt. We who have connected so many times, and so often through the Internet (yahoo groups, author loops, blogs and shared publishers) came to the realization that he might not be with us forever and wanted to honor him in a way he wanted. Not just flowers or donations to a favored charity, but in a way that would, as he put it, “Hopefully touch others as deeply as they have touched me.” You see, if we have learned only one thing from Patric throughout our time together, it is this: what the person dealing with the situation wants is more important than all else, and not necessarily what we might think he wants.

  So we asked him what we could do: How did he want us to remember him after he passed?

  Patric shared with us an idea to collect inspiration. Stories, blogs and even poetry that had some connection with him. As Patric has participated on those groups or blogs, other authors have been inspired by their interactions with him to create stories or characters of their own, so he requested that we gather those stories (or others like them) along with his blogs and a few of his “educational” postings, all in one place. His hope was that someone could somehow benefit from it. Maybe even gather strength or inspiration of their own, whether they were going through the same thing he did, or knew someone who was.

  As a result you now have this collection with stories that sparked from things like talks with Patric about photographing mushrooms or his delight from fireflies or just Patric’s heart. All of the stories are written from our hearts and thoughts, to remember Patric using something he valued highly; words and creativity.

  Whether you’re with us or watching over us Patric, know you have touched all our lives. May you find your Yellow Star as we wish on our Blue Star.

  December 2010

  A story, as I promised.....

  The origins of an email and a title

  I recently told my children that when I was sixteen I was better suited to raising a child than I am now. Bless their fuzzy little hearts, they looked at me like I was crazy. But give them credit for humoring me, they did ask for clarification.

  “At sixteen, I was already a father.” I said. “Or rather damn near, given that I was basically a live-in baby sitter.”

  “Oh, right. You mean Jed and Jeremy,” said my niece, who might just as well be my daughter for all the care and raising I have had of her.

  “Yup. But it was more than that,” I replied. “I was ‘geared’ toward being a father. I didn’t exactly have a life of my own yet, like now, where it’s all wrapped up in personal projects, and work and stuff. I was already accustomed to giving over my needs in favor of the little ones so I didn’t have any transitions to make like new parents traditionally have.”

  “But you were sixteen!” Eric protested. “You were just a kid.”

  Was I? Does age dictate personality, if one leaves aside the hormones and the necessary physiological changes? I suppose so, to a degree, but it is a central fact of my life that at sixteen I found, felt, and followed virtually all the tenets of my personal philosophies that have held me in good stead all these many years since.

  Some were abandoned, most changed according to the times, and a few I held so deeply that only a scant handful knew what oddities I thought about. One such, which I can safely share now that I am at the end of my path, is the story of my email address. Like so many other times, I was sixteen when I “remembered.”

  I’l
l call it a dream in favor of those whose beliefs run counter to mine, but it was, for all intents and purposes, a memory.

  Let us suppose, for example, that like in a dream, one can be both participant and observer. Such was the case with me, though when I looked at myself all I could see was a vaguely star shaped ball of light, blindingly white.

  Just about the time I recognized my shape as nonexistent, I realized there was another shapeless ball of light just above me. Just as white, and just as untethered by wind, gravity, or space. We existed in a featureless red place, with a dark red horizon, and “ground” as red as the sky. The other took off, upward, and I followed as easily as one might chase after a floating “wishie.” “He” laughed, as I did, and the sound was a cascade of blue and gold color shimmering around us both and trailing after as we chased each other across timelessness. We found that we could dive beneath the ground more easily than a fish through water and come back up, pulling mountains after us in impossibly tall crags and spires.

  Flying over these mountains I saw that each was a face. Sometimes old, sometimes new, and all as fluid as the sensation of sound sliding across our “skin.” They would fall back into the ground, sometimes leaving afterimages as clouds, and sometimes as new things altogether.

  Color had texture and weight, in that world. Sound was tactile. Sight was a taste, as eager on an imaginary tongue as candy to a child and we reveled in each other, separated for so long and finally, finally together again.

  All these things I knew in instants, with more clarity than if they had been etched behind human eyes, and I understood everything.

  Except the sudden jolt when I looked up and saw “him” launch skyward. Fear gave me it’s shape, hateful and unpleasant, when I tried to follow and could not. Instead I was pinned to the earth, or so I thought. In fact, I was falling, through the featureless ground that shattered like red glass and tumbled around me into darkness. I fell with the shards, screaming a name that had no form, his name, and begging to get back to him so high overhead. The color of his loss was gold, as mine was blue, and I was the only thing not red and shrieking as the shards fell with me and around me until the world went black. All of his light and mine extinguished.

  Pain came next. And incredible crushing pain that forced me into a new shape, one I could not name. Pressure built and the the darkness lifted as the I was crushed smaller and smaller and the world went a frigid blue white. More pain and another jerking sensation, as though I were being relocated inside myself until the moment the brightness became excruciating and I entered the world screaming and naked, born bereft of my twin.

  Medicine was cruder in those days. My mother later told me the doctors had two heartbeats for a while early on and told her to expect twins, but one set failed for whatever reason and after a while they decided maybe they were wrong. I have since been told that its not all that uncommon for one of a set of twins to fail and be reabsorbed. (And imagine my horror when I read Stephen King’s Dark Half, which was based on that exact premise!)

  I have ever known I should have been twins, and for me, the question of when a baby gets a “soul” is forever answered for me. :)

  The memory is still so vivid, possibly from the telling, possibly from wishful thinking, but it is the basis for the tattoo on my back, and some day, some day, I will once again be reunited with my brother, whom I have loved always and never known. How keen is a loss like that, one that cannot even be expressed or substantiated, or perhaps only how foolish.

  Regardless, I believe what I believe, and have done so for more than thirty years. That’s a long time to miss someone, and I miss him still.

  Patric

  Friday, October 23, 2009

  I’ve got a secret, no more...

  Wow, gosh. A lot has happened since my last post, and since then I’ve received email asking when I would be releasing something new (Thanks folks!)

  I’ve also been pretty sparse in the group lists, twitter, and facebook. Not my usual style, I know, but there is a reason I’m going to share only once, then move on. I told myself I wouldn’t tell folks unless they were directly affected by my lack, and that worked for quite a quite a while, until even strangers asking for new works noticed. Figured it was time to explain myself before I got a reputation I didn’t want! Well, I don’t really want this reputation, but it’s unavoidable at this point!

  Have I beat around the bush enough? Too much, I think. I need an editor for my own blog post! One last thing though... Most folks will find this news rather sad. We’ll talk more about that later, but if that bothers you, now’s the time to stop reading.

  About a year ago, I found a lump. Honestly, I thought it was another hernia. Meh. Only I noticed it didnt act like the last hernia I had. Well... No medical insurance means no way of dealing with it, so ignore it. :)

  Trouble is, about four months ago, it got bigger, and I noticed one leg get bigger, same side as the lump. To make a long, messy story short, it took several specialists, two surgical biopsies and two punch biopsies off my foot to get a diagnosis. (By the way you can see a bit of the punch biopsies here.)

  According to the oncologist, I have angioimmunblastic T-cell lymphoma. It took me a week to remember how to even spell it! :) This is a cancer which most often originates in the lymph nodes near the lungs, but mine started in the groin and pretty much stayed there for a year before it started spreading. That’s part of what took so long to figure it out. (One doctor even said I was wierd. Laugh)

  Some of the websites I read say that this particular flavor represents less that one percent of all known Non Hodgkins Lymphomas, which makes me pretty dang special, yeah? Despite the rarity, there is a fairly common chemotherapy treatment they call CHOP. This is an old acronym that used to represent the names of the chemicals, but there have been many improvements since then and the letters hardly apply. In my case, the protocol calls for 6 to 8 treatments, spread out three weeks apart. That means 18 to 24 weeks of chemo. Ugh!

  We all know that chemo means getting sick, losing your hair, feeling horrible, blah, blah, blah, and yes, that is true, for many people. Each person is different, so each person is affected differently. In my case, for the first treatment at least, I didnt get any of the normal symptoms. I got the unusual ones. Didnt get sick (yay, cuz I hate barfing) but I did get the mouth sores and the erosion of the esophagus (think of swallowing through a twelve inch long sore throat. Ouch!) and I got the blurry vision. All those are transitory though. The one overriding problem is fatigue. Chemotherapy is after all a poison, designed to kill fast growing cells. Cancer cells are fast growing, as are several systems in the human body, so the trick is to kill the cancer without killing me, too. It is a carefully orchestrated race, administered by a man I trust explicitly.

  Those who know me personally know I am very slow to trust, and this guy is phenomenal as a doctor, and as a person. He is the very best of both worlds, and I knew that on my first visit with him. I develop more and more respect for him wth each subsequent visit. Thanks John!

  Sorry, I digressed... I just had my second treatment yesterday, and we got some pretty good news, though I swear I will jinx it if I say it out loud. Given that the response rate of T-cell lymphoma is traditionally poor, forgive me for not saying anything just yet, but he and I are both happy. :) I will say that by the sixth treatment, we may find the last two aren’t necessary.

  So, with all that in mind, we come to what I find the most difficult to deal with.

  Other people.

  I’ve known since the second visit to a doctor when he orded the first CT scan that I had cancer. Call it a gut feeling, or the result of hours of Googling. Doesn’t matter. the point is I have had ample time to come to grips with my situation and my “most likely” prognosis, as well as alternate scenarios. In short, I am simply not afraid of the outcome. To put it even shorter, and at the risk of being crude, I am not afraid of dying, a year from now or forty years from now.

  People who even allow th
emselves to think of the word cancer automatically think of slow, painful, rapid decline leading to death, as though it were a given. I’ve learned much about other people by how they react or respond when I tell them the news. I understand their actions, but I cant condone them when they are directed at me, because to put it selfishly, I need all my energy to get me well, not make them feel better. A very dear friend of mine described it thus: “It’s like choking on a glass of water. Everyone is demanding you TELL them you are fine, when what you really need to do is cough it out.” True enough! And I finally got my family to understand the concept. Friends, most of whom I am actually closer to, took a bit longer. :)

  What I’m going to ask for at this point will sound a bit harsh, and I’ll apologize in advance, but I am somewhat limited in my ability to respond.

  I’d like to thank everyone in advance for the well wishes, and the inquiries, and the sympathies, and say they’ve already been sent an answered. Rather than field a bunch of queries for how I am doing, I’ll usurp my old work blog and post updates there. Probably wont be all that many posts, because frankly, all the drama is done. All that’s left is whatever side effect the chemo is dropping on my head on any given day, and seriously, that’s GOT to be boring reading!

  The only thing that matters to me right now is the fatigue, originally caused by the cancer and and now caused by the chemo. Makes it bloody hard to work up enough steam to keep up with the group messages, and even long emails. (The only way I could write this lengthy post is because the first day after chemo, I feel like myself again. Alas, it doesn’t last long.) :)

  There is one other thing that really bothers me, and it’s the hardest to explain. According to John, cancer doctors largely ignored complaints for a long time because patients couldn’t really articulate what they were feeling, and few reported it. Now they understand the situation and given it a name: Chemo brain. Goofy name, but man is it a pain in the butt. Different people are affected differently, of course, and for me, I lose focus, big time. Can’t think of the word I want, and the biggest hassle of all is that it’s bloody hard to write! It’s like being distracted by every random thing in the room. That’s why I haven’t written much in the last three months. In fact, the Santa Mug was written before the chemo while I was still undiagnosed. Whew! What a task that little story was! It’ll be out in December as part of the Dreamspinner Mistletoe Madness and can be purchased separately (royalties!) or as part of the month long package.