If pain's the price of admission, what's joy but the payoff?

Wrods to live by.

Jilli, I squee for you! I've got bats in my tummy (no butterflies, here, nosiree, not for you) that you knock the agent dead.

And I am as Bev. It took me a long time to get to the point where I could tell the difference between what I should accept as my fault and what I could never have had any direct influence on. Sometimes, I swung from taking no responsibility when I should have to taking it all when none of it was mine. It would have been nice to have had that built in from birth instead of having to learn it the hard way.

Not feeling the publication love...unless it's the fucked up kind where they torture me because they like me so much. Not sure where I stand on the personal choice thing because some of the stuff I have to slog through? I didn't get a vote on.

I think that while most of the time you don't get to choose the shit that you have to slog through of course, you do get to choose how you handle it.

I think that while most of the time you don't get to choose the shit that you have to slog through of course, you do get to choose how you handle it.

This. While things that happen to me are often random, the way I react to those things and how I handle them are totally my choice.

OK, a writing question. As in, info requested for Cleveland Rocks, and my WIP readers might want to skip this one, since it's a bit of a spoiler for what happens in the next couple of chapters.

Character A is young, a marathon runner in his spare time, totally healthy except for a mild intermittent cardiac arrhythmia, for which he takes the occasional low dose of a specific medicine, as required.

He's just spent a week working on a project with my narrator, JP. He's stayed with JP and Bree. They came to know him, and really like him. Bree's mother Miranda - established in book one - is a surgeon. Important part of story arc.

They get a call that character A has been found dead of an apparent heart attack - he dropped dead, flatlined, while jogging near the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. No apparent cause for the heart attack.

JP is about to be handed a very strong reason to believe that something was done to Character A to take him down. Compounding this is the fact that Miranda had met Character A and spent some time with him during his visit. She's puzzled and uneasy about him dying the way he did.

Here's my question: what's the protocol, if she wanted to ring up Character A's cardiologist in Cleveland? Since the patient is dead, would she have to jump through HIPPA hoops to talk to the patient's heart doctor?

Deb, there's a HIPAA page with searchable FAQ's.

Woot! Bookmarked. Thanks, bebe. I was spelling it HIPPA (edit: which sounds ranmdom but isn't - didn't know where to look. Now I do.)

The post I thought was Connie's read, "perceived specialness isn't actual specialness," (paraphrased) in regard to my "connections."

I knew my love for a well-turned phrase would bite me in the butt. Ah, well.

But a lot of the posts are assuming what I think, like, "I think you like it when people fawn over you for your connections."

I try to avoid telling people what they think. If I did that in that post, my failure of rhetoric.

In the other, I'm going with the person who says, "I think that you think you are close to Minear, but I don't think he'd say the same about you." Because that ripped my heart out. The poster also said something about a fan never being able to be a friend (paraphrasing again) which put my heart back in. That all read to me as dried up and angry, and designed to put me in my place out of an intense dislike for me. I didn't think it was Connie, but maybe it could have been. It doesn't change what I think the motivation is.

That, thankfully, was not me. That's a festering sort of jealousy I hope I got over in high school when I realized the cute geeky guy didn't know I existed and preferred the Head Cheerleader. Plus it presumes I know how Tim thinks, and Tim may think Allyson is the greatest thing since sliced bread and cheese in a can.

I'm not sure if you were expecting an argument out of it, but I had thought it was you when you mentioned things that were being said in GWW in my LJ, and it hasn't changed the way I think of you or post with you.

Thank you, that is gracious and appreciated. I didn't want to introduce ugliness here, but I thought putting a somewhat identifiable personality to at least one of the posts might clarify some points for you--or at least clarify some confusions. Well, plus I was hoping to prove not everyone who posted anonymously was a "spiteful needy no-life." I suppose that's yet to be proven.

ETA: What has changed is how to quote your posts in my chapter, which is right now credited to Anonymous, and I'm not sure if you'd like that changed. Let me know.

I haven't yet put anything out on the net that I'm afraid to put my name to, the Anonymousnes of that post notwithstanding. Feel free to put Connie Neil on any quotes you use, including any identifying information you're aware of--well, not my email, of course, naturally--that you think would illustrate what you're trying to say. I'm not afraid of the truth as I see it.

Oh, and my apologies, Allyson, for being wary of your reaction. Your civility and continuing regard make me more than a little ashamed of myself.

Oh, and my apologies, Allyson, for being wary of your reaction. Your civility and continuing regard make me more than a little ashamed of myself.

Connie, that's nicely said. So was everything Allyson said about.

And cheers and goodonya both for it. It goes a long way toward proving that, while the wide open spaces of the net may be uncharted and unsafe in a lot of ways, long familiarity with fellow/soror posters can - and damn it, should - breed trust.

Thank you, deb. Graciousness costs nothing and is pretty damned powerful.