Before my grandmother came to live with us, she had only been a woman in photos, a stranger who happened to be my grandmother. I’d never spoken to her on the phone, or received a card or presents. I only knew that she’d grown up in Germany, had my mam quite young, and had moved to the west coast of Ireland when my mam was a toddler. My mam called her Mutti, and I called her Omi.

Her name was Tara, a name she said she gave herself as an acknowledgement of a new phase of life after her arrival in Ireland. She wouldn’t tell me her birth name. She said it was a name for a past stage and therefore irrelevant to the present.

However, she still had a German accent and said mit instead of with. I don’t know why she used this one word of German because her English was otherwise flawless. Maybe, she was paying homage to her ancestors. Maybe, it was simply her stubborn nature. She had a steadfastness and pride about her that beguiled me. And for the short time I knew her, I came to adore her. Her accent and bearing made her seem like some foreign noble. Someone special. And her presence and attention made me feel special. Like there was more to me than just being a weird kid. I felt like I had been waiting for her the entire eight years of my life.

She told me that there were things about my ancestors my mam didn’t want me to know and that my so-called weirdness had to do with this. That I was just tuned to a higher frequency, something other children couldn’t comprehend. Her words ignited my world yet I sensed our time together was limited. Three months later she was gone again and with her departure my parents’ dull account of family history regained its hold.

I’d always accepted my oddness and its shadowing effect on my life as the way things were. Compared to other kids my imagination was like some wild thing in need of taming. When I went to get neighbourhood kids out to play sometimes their mothers didn’t invite me in. It wasn’t verbalised, I just felt I wasn’t meant to cross the threshold. Waiting on the step for my friend to appear, I would drink in as much of the pristine interior as I could see from the door. A portion of plush carpet, a fireplace, glasses in cabinets, family photos lining the hallway. How I longed to get through that doorway and experience that normality. Where was the dust and other signs of life? It was all so orderly. My mam couldn’t perform this miracle of immaculateness like their mothers could. The minute one of them stepped into my house, the light from the windows seemed to ignite the dust and cobwebs. Papers, books, dishes and bits, seemed to be strewn everywhere.

It’s not like my mam didn’t strive to be like everyone else; she just couldn’t pull it off. Usually when she spoke to people, I’d spot that look of bewilderment spreading across their faces. I couldn’t stop it happening no matter how I tried to cut her off and derail her train of thought. It was just something about our family.

Tara insisted that our otherness was important, and related to a powerful, ancestral heritage. That my pre-historic kin had lived in perfect connection with all living things, in a world flourishing with untouched natural beauty: pristine mountains, forest and ocean abundant with nourishment.

She said the rural area of Ireland I lived in still had a helping of that raw, wild beauty my ancestors had enjoyed. But like the entire planet it was under threat as humans continued to assault the natural world, consequently ushering in their own demise. This was because the old ways had been crushed by the intruders. That’s what she called most people, the intruders.

Whenever she came with us grocery shopping, she’d give sideways glances at laden trolleys and later in the car ask me if I’d seen the junk the intruders bought. Or if I was watching TV, she’d comment on the intruder brainwashing apparatus.

One time, Tara came with us to the playground and minded me while my mam posted a letter. Spotting some girls from school, I ran over to the slide calling to them. Turning, they mumbled hello and then completely ignored me. Tears stinging my eyes, I walked back to Tara and sat down next to her on the bench. Taking my hand, she held it tightly.

“It’s not you who doesn’t fit in, it’s them. The intruders! They don’t belong here,” she said.

A feeling of ownership surged through me as if these clumsy children before me were intruders into my realm. I sat up straight, mimicking my grandmother’s posture.

“Your mother should tell you the truth,” she muttered.

As soon as my mam returned, I asked her straight out if it were true.

“How ridiculous,” she said, bringing me away to the ice cream van. Waiting in the queue, I watched my grandmother sitting on the bench, grim-faced watching the children play.

From then on, my parents began to control how long I was alone with my grandmother and no matter how I approached it, my mam refused to engage in a discussion about these mysterious ancestors and terrible intruders.

(I have friends reading it, but would love some feedback from strangers.)

https://www.amazon.com/KEEPER-FLAME-Lisa-D-Verdekal/dp/B0CD12P8QP/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

The first excerpt shared below is the first piece of writing I professionally published. I could finally call myself a writer and author. It was the best feeling ever. I went on to write a regular column in Virginia Craft Beer Magazine, and I published several articles with them. The second excerpt is from my most technical writing piece, and the last excerpt is part of my favorite opinion feature. I was born to write, but I pay the bills by brewing craft beer. I haven't shared that on Prose before today! Publishing articles about my day job gave me the confidence to start writing about everything, and Prose gave me the place to do it. Thanks for that :)

"An American Girl in Bavaria"

Being a woman in the professional brewing industry isn’t for every elegant lady, but for the past five years, I’ve dedicated my life to craft beer. From the beginning, I joined Pink Boots Society to link up with fun loving, beer making girls like myself. Pink Boots is an organization for women in the beer industry, and their main goal is to help women advance their careers through education. They offer a ton of amazing scholarships throughout the year. As I was perusing the Pink Boots website this summer, one of the scholarships jumped out at me. It was a trip to Germany for ten days to visit breweries and hop farms, and learn about German brewing traditions. I have a passion for traditional brewing, so I applied immediately. A couple of weeks later, I got the news that I was chosen for the scholarship along with six other professional beer ladies. It was off to Bavaria for us, and Germany did not disappoint.

https://virginiacraftbeer.com/an-american-girl-in-bavaria/

"Digging Into the IPA Hops"

The history of IPA is common knowledge nowadays. Centuries ago, British brewers realized that hops have a preservative quality, protecting beer from contaminates and bacteria. Romantic folklore claims that beer was safer to drink than water. On the long road to India, brewers packed beer with hops to endure the long journeys. IPA=India Pale Ale. It’s important to acknowledge this history lesson, but the story doesn’t end there. IPAs are constantly evolving. One thing remains constant though. IPAs have lots of hops.

https://virginiacraftbeer.com/digging-into-the-ipa-hops/

"So You Wanna Be a Brewer?"

Unfortunately for all brewers, regardless of their gender identity or zodiac sign, no one ever asks what we actually do at work all day. People think the job is cool, but they have no idea what a glorious shit-show it really is. Try asking me how I spend 8+ hours a day in a haunted warehouse full of stainless steel tanks and brewery hoses. How many spray nozzles and gaskets have I replaced in my life? How do I identify the faint sound of a faulty CO2 connection, and what do I do when every pallet is broken or a stupid size? Why doesn’t anyone manufacture a good squeegee? How often does the production schedule change, and how many colors of dry erase markers do you need to brew quality beer? What’s the best music for canning days, and how long does it take to fold 500-case trays? Do I love my forklift more than my best friend?

https://virginiacraftbeer.com/so-you-wanna-be-a-brewer/

For there was no ill wind here. There was the beautiful tranquility of calm, fresh air. Following the entrails of string of the broken kite that had crashed into me, I made more progress away from the fog itself until it was gone. What I had crossed was, in fact, a levee.

With my back to the water, the roar of the chemical surf slowly morphed into the blowing of a fearsome horn, but this sound fragmented until it had been replaced by the horns of tugboats. These in turn faded into one fancy horn—actually, a steamboat calliope, which began playing proudly with all of its bellowing and whistling. It was a very full sound, a dynamic range of a tune. And it stopped me cold, for I could pick out a certain skeletal measure.

My song!

I continued to experience my cold sweat but was finally reassured by the rest of the melody. The boombox dirge I had heard recently, which wrought the death knell, was now fanned out, its ominous cadence diluted throughout by interpolated complements that gave it a joyful fullness.

I didn’t turn around, but instead continued to look forward. I looked to life over the levee. The sky was blue. And there was the city below, the beautiful city of New Orleans. It seemed bustling. There were multi-colored kites in the air, happily floating over Jackson Square, merely for the loveliness of simple existence, none at all concerned for the loss of one of their brethren. The unkempt levee I had crossed was the one that guarded the French Quarter from the Mississippi river, from whose waters my song was gushing forth. There was landscaping ahead, the care and detail becoming more meticulous toward St. Louis Cathedral, along my line of sight.

There was the sound and vision of a city I had known so very long ago. If I had landed in the most terrible place of all, then there was a fine line that divided that place from this vision which I called normal. It was as if I had not slain myself back there but had slain only my demons, liberating me, I hoped, to roll back down to a stable reality bowl. I was at a threshold: I was crossing over with the knowledge of good and evil; and I was redeemed from my original sins, because I had died a type of death for them.

I sat on a grassy and clovered knoll, honey bees sharing the spot, going about their busy little bee day. I was not yet on the carefully landscaped scenery that was part of the park that symbolically separated the city from the river. That is, I was still on the utility part of the barrier between culture and nature. But there was green, and grass was a welcome site and a soft feeling. My journeys had involved so many urban adventures and desolate beaches that it was good to feel something living under me again.

I watched the scene below me. There were airplanes passing over periodically. There were those stylish outside elevators moving up and down the avant-garde buildings that so handsomely appointed the clean downtown skyline. It all looked so healthy, so purposeful, so innocent. How many of the terrible places I had been through recently could have looked like this from a distance? I asked myself. I wondered if I was being set up for a shock when this did in fact turn out to be the worst of all nightmares. I wondered if I was going to visit here only to see horrors that can only be seen close up. But then I elected to be gullible, since I didn’t have enough psychic energy to distrust my destiny.

I wore clothing that was tattered. I wore the vomit of my travels here. I wore that baby grease stuff of my dead child, and I know I still had on me some of the blood of the double-crossed suicide victim that had awaited my own as part of her twisted unilateral bargain.

My face wore the shroud of the fat fiend’s — my doppelgänger's — facial exsanguination. I must have been something terrible to behold, yet my appearance did not frighten the child that scampered my way only in frolic, not escape. As he did, he spooled back up the string of his broken kite that he was following.

“Hey, Mister,” he called to me. I stopped short, stunned. He must have been about five or so, about Les’s age, and he was the antithesis to Les in every way. He was nimble and bright-eyed and chipper. He was a beautiful fair child with sandy-blonde hair. He had no cares in this world, because as he approached he became preoccupied in the silly act of hopping on one foot. Just for fun.

He was everything Les could never be. Les was impaired, handicapped — special. This child was perfect.

How I wish I could have a child like that, I thought, to raise, to guide—to finally give something back to the world. But this thought made me feel the slightest bit guilty, for wasn’t there anyone who would wish for the children like Les, anyone who would want to try to fly the broken kite? I supposed so. Could I? Some people are better suited to deal with that sort of disappointment and pain. But this child! So beautiful—the kind anyone would dream of having.

“Yes?” I answered him.

“Have you seen my kite?” he asked.

Breaking my reverie, I was amazed to come across such beauty at this time. Crumpling my face at him in regret, I pulled the string toward us which dragged his mangled toy into view. I feared the disappointment I would see on his face, perhaps even the anger for such a senseless wasting of a good toy. To my surprise, he threw his head back in laughter and skipped off singing. I followed him, enchanted by his puerile beauty and the glory of his innocence which symbolized everything I had longed for. Even when he had run happily out of sight, I still followed the path he had taken, as if he were an angelic guide to my predestination. The calliope continued.

____________________

Link https://www.amazon.com/Slider-Gerard-DiLeo-ebook/dp/B00729FP7A?ref_=ast_author_dp&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.gnj5JHF4upm_klRj8Iv0uzpQNJ27gRpcI31sEYCb0B0N5q2ulfvciYTb7LLKCrqHuyzm3UjoiKFTzb15p1gErAo9aYChMfwXT-qutF1jX3wdYw2n3q3JCpwLABzxPBtPq5vcrLc_fOEu_6a4FIrgH986x8u_MFaH9caZnKnqdZ5Owt5XGxH-6PZ67di1-1MM.PfmsbmDjIJkkwu0eqNzW22EBkQAityxkDu_BMAGKS54&dib_tag=AUTHOR

Tyler worked in a dark, dingy bar in a port town. Customers smelled like their day's catch and salt. For most of the day he stayed in the bar or his small, meager room. Vampires like him weren't fond of the sun.

Halter loved its gossip. At night the pale vampire loaded ships. The sailors discussed the kidnapping. "King and queen reported they were goblins. That the case prob'ly ay witch 'hind the scenes commandin' em," a gruff grey bearded pirate said in an odd accent.

"I heard they's willing to pay his weight in gold," another sailor said.

An idea popped into his head. "So you'd say they'd give, just about anything?" he asked, careful not to betray emotion.

https://www.theprose.com/book/3602

Savannah flung Gayle's office door open, barely flinching when the door stopper made its obnoxious spring at the force, declaring. "Why would you do this to me?"

Gayle, who had been duteously working through the peaceful quiet of the night, cried out in fright. Her body attempted to leap up in fear, but her knees painfully collided with the underside of her desk, causing her large coffee to spill its contents onto the table and drench the papers that littered its surface. Gayle let out a resounding and eloquent, "Fuck!" and attempted to use her discarded sweater to soak up the coffee, but it was too late to salvage her work. She swung her bloodshot eyes toward Savannah in enraged disbelief. "What the fuck? Do you know what time it is? Do you not know how to knock?"

Savannah met Gayle's glare with a glare of her own. "You wrote, 'come see me in my office.' So here I am."

Savannah watched as Gayle's face pulled into a fierce sneer. "During my office hours, Savannah. You can't just show up at someone's office in the middle of the night."

Savannah tossed her hair over her shoulder, unimpressed. "You should have specified."

Gayle hums. "You call me an old hag and nearly kill my niece. You're right; you so deserve my favour." She says dryly.

Gayle ignored Savannah who continued rambling angrily, instead leaning back in her chair to survey the state of her desk. She groaned in obvious despair, ripping off her glasses and throwing them aimlessly on the table before letting her face fall into her hands. Savannah stood by the doorframe, a prickle of guilt slowly blossoming in her chest. Maybe that was a tad dramatic.

After a painfully long minute, Gayle responded, face still covered by her hands and words muffled. "Did you at least read my comments that explained in detail why I gave you an unsatisfactory?"

Savannah blanched. She had completely forgotten about the red ink that filled the margins of her assignment, too hopped up on the fact it existed in the first place. Savannah's eyes scanned Gayle's desk. The coffee-soaked papers were the writing assignments of her classmates. Her eyes flittered across Gayle's meticulous comments that she had hand-written on their papers. Gayle's responses were undoubtedly detailed, kind, and helpful—an unfortunately unusual combination, as most teachers did not have the time or patience to help their students so thoroughly. Savannah shrank in on herself. It must have taken Gayle hours to grade these assignments, and now they were ruined.

"I...I'm..." Her apology got caught in her throat. Savannah struggled with apologies. It's not that she was too narcissistic to see her faults (unlike what her ex form highschool thought, that great big bag of dicks) or failed to recognize when she was in the wrong. Savannah knew she was in the wrong here. She was too upset at her grade to remember that Gayle had left detailed comments on her assignment. Savannah had even gone so far as to complain to the Dean of all people, and when that failed, she had aggressively confronted Gayle in the middle of the night and was the singular reason Gayle's hard work was now ruined. The blame solely fell on Savannah's shoulders, and she knew it.

Which was personally devastating.

An adolescence of incessant apologizing from her  haunted her ability to apologize now- overuse of her tongue forcing it to knot in on itself the moment accountability striked which was a genuine epidemic.

Growing up as the only daughter of an elite man in New York for a good portion of her life, perfection was expected from her. And when she did not achieve that perfection, she was taught to take the blame rather than criticize the unreasonable standards that were unfairly placed on her. Younger Savannah found herself apologizing for things that were not her fault. And the more she apologized, the more it was reinforced in her mind that she was doing something wrong—that she deserved the guilt and her toxic self-blame. Which, in turn, destroyed her confidence.

And when she became this powerhouse in junior year of high school—strong, beautiful, fierce, and independent it just became harder and harder for her to apologize. She did not ever want to feel that pathetic, that vulnerable, ever again. She had strength now, something she never had before, and she was not going to apologize simply because it was expected of her to do so—simply because it was expected for women to take the blame for the shortcomings of the patriarchal society that they lived in.

So as Savannah stood witness to the series of her wrongdoings that had culminated in wrecking Gayle's hard work, she desperately wanted to apologize, but her childhood trauma, daddy issues and sizeable ego froze the words in her throat.

Gayle took a deep breath in before slowly exhaling into her hands. It appeared that she was not going to acknowledge Savannah's presence. Savannah felt more and more choked by the silence. "I...I thought you were punishing me." Savannah stammered out.

She winces at the admission, loud in her ears.

Gayle lifted her head from her hands to give Savannah an exasperated look. "What does that even mean?"

Savannah gave a weak shrug, "Well, I almost killed your niece and you've been ignoring me since forever, so, I thought..." she trailed off. Gayle looked at her in exhaustion before returning her head into her hands. Savannah suddenly felt...her physical age. A brash barely-adult who threw a fit because they didn't get what they wanted. And from the look Gayle had just given her—her face slightly older than Savannah's, more mature, wiser—she felt that Gayle was thinking the same.

Gayle lifted her head again, rubbing her temples before running her hands through her hair. "I'm not avoiding you, Savannah. And my thick-skulled blood can handle being tossed on her ass. But...I'm not going out of my way to seek you out, either. I'm your teacher. You're my junior student. You're- what, in your early twenties? And I'm thirty-one in...less than an hour."

Savannah's eyes snapped to the calendar on Gayle's wall: today was September 26th. Tomorrow was Gayle's birthday, and she had spent the night before staying up late to grade assignments Savannah then ruined. "I'm just trying to be conscientious of the optics. It would look...weird, to say the least, for us to hang out on and around campus." Something passes in her expression, dazedly dropping her eyes to do a toe-to-head sweep. Clears her throat. "Especially considering. We have appearances to keep up. Roles to play. And I take my job very seriously. So, if you've come to my office at...11:17 PM to harass me, you know where the door is and you can see yourself out. But if you've come to ask for help, then say it. You obviously have my attention now." Gayle finished bitterly.

Savannah cringed. The past five minutes did not go how she expected them to. Why was Gayle always catching her at her worst? Is it your worst, or is it your normal and for once someone is not putting up with your shit? She hated asking for help. She liked to do things on her own. Being alone and independent meant that she had total control over herself. And asking for help required surrendering some of that control to someone else—Gayle, in this case. She didn't want to give Gayle any more control over herself than she already had as her professor. And she didn't want the other woman to perceive her as weak or incapable.

But...she could see that Gayle genuinely cared about the success and happiness of her students. And while Gayle might be a sassy asshole sometimes, she was kind. Savannah shut her eyes and took a large breath before quietly funnelling the words out on the exhale, "I'm sorry. Can you help me with my assignment?"

Gayle waited to look Savannah's in the eye with an unreadable expression, and Savannah felt like she was being dissected alive under her gaze. Finally, Gayle sighed, her lips quirking into a tired smile. "Was that so hard?"

Savannah threw her a self-deprecating grimace. "More so than I could ever begin to express."

Gayle took a final glance at her desk before pushing her chair back and standing up to pull on her leather jacket. Savannah stared at her in disbelief. "I've just done the incredibly uncomfortable task of apologizing and asking you, of all people, for help, and you're...leaving?"

Gayle shot Savannah a mischievous look, responding, "It's after office hours." Gayle grabbed her motorcycle helmet, continuing, "I appreciate you finally admitting you need help. But I'm not going to help you now." shooting Savannah an impish smile.

Savannah stood in shock. The growl of frustration that was bubbling in her chest turned into a laugh at the pure absurdity of the situation. Gayle tossed her a grin in response before she ducked to reach under her desk to retrieve a red motorcycle helmet. Gayle stood and turned off her office lights, and as she brushed past Savannah on her way out, she shoved the red helmet into Savannah's chest. She looked at Gayle in confusion, but Gayle just jerked her head toward the empty hallway.

"C'mon, I know a place. And you owe me big time."

Here's the full story!

https://www.wattpad.com/1070326669-ms-no-strings-attached-wlw-lesbian-chapter-1