It’s my birth month, yay! I’m counting this as the first year of my thirties because, honestly, the last two years have been a crap show.
With that being said, I’m busy. Like most moms, I’m juggling childcare, housework, my failing mental health, and another pregnancy. I know, I know. We’re well aware of what causes that. Nice dad joke. 🤨
On top of those things, I’m doing my best to carve out a place for myself on Amazon’s new serial platform, Kindle Vella. If you still haven’t heard of it, even after my constant blabbering on social media, it’s serial fiction. In other words, it’s like TikTok or Reels for readers. Each story is broken into easy-to-consume episodes which are perfect for your morning coffee or lunch break.
Seriously, you’re on your phone anyway. Why not look at something besides lip syncing influencers?
So far, I’ve done reasonably well, and last month, I made enough in bonuses to seriously consider paying for editing and cover art. As a writer that’s never earned that kind of money for writing fiction before, this accomplishment is HUGE!
Currently, I have one ongoing horror story that’s hanging out on the first page of the #horror category. Considering there are about 1,000 stories under that tag, I’m extremely proud of how far it’s come since its release on February 1.
With that being said, I’m itching to release something new. So, as a teaser, I’d like to send out a snippet of the short story that’s inspiring my next serial. And for all the tired, fed-up housewives out there, this one’s for you ✌️🏼
{Links to current Vellas below}
1958
Every day in Miriam Ford’s life is the same. Or at least it has been since she married Hank at the tender age of nineteen. Sure, they’ve added a couple of babies since then, which livened things for a bit. First came Jimmy, then Ethel, three years later. Still, each day is the same.
It’s exciting enough for the average housewife. Miriam’s life is “fulfilled” in the words of her mother-in-law.
Miriam’s mother would agree too. Hank scooped her up from that holler in Virginia and carried her off to the suburbs, where he works for the Federal Narcotics Board, taking care of that reefer madness business. Yes, she has a husband that supports her, two beautiful children, and a sparkly new laundry room. What more could a girl of her standing ask for?
A life of her own, that’s what.
See, Hank is a misogynistic dunce that kindly ushers Miriam back to the kitchen when she has any thought that pushes the realms of critical or abstract. He wants her neat, pretty, and in an apron.
It’s a growing pandemic, or at least it is in Miriam’s eyes, who’s used to seeing women take on a more active role from her deep Appalachian upbringing. Down the street Beatrice, Penny, Susie, and Rose all complain of the same monotonous frustration day in and day out. Motherhood is hard, but being a mother while cramming all free thought into a pretty little hatbox while one’s husband holds the lock and key is excruciating.
That’s why Miriam pays for a discreet nanny one day a week to watch Ethel while she drives back to her holler. Her particular region of Virginia, where the sun barely peers down over the mountains, is like traveling back in time a decade.
Her granny grows a special supply that the housewives on Lexington Boulevard clammer after, kitchen aprons blowing in the wind and bobby pins flying. With one relaxing two-hour drive there and a two-hour drive back, Miriam has secured enough green to keep the neighborhood wives from drowning in their boring lives for another week.
She’s the head wife in this suburbia and she learned the game from her great uncles that used to run moonshine during prohibition. She could run that too, but the other wives have plenty of liquor hidden in their China cabinets as it is. No, she has her crop that never leaves a wife too groggy to care for the casserole in the oven.
Most of the husbands are too dense to suspect, anyway. Bloodshot eyes are nothing for a woman society has already deemed hysterical. The men assume their wives have been crying over her dry pot roast and move on.
Except for Hank.
That’s why Miriam always keeps her personal product tucked away in the root cellar, behind the beans, carrots, and potatoes. Hank wouldn’t be caught dead cooking, so it’s a safe enough spot.
He comes in, smug, gloating about breaking up some country boy’s operation or raiding a record store on the wrong side of town. None of those people are hurting anything. No one is giving out joints to school children and teaching them to worship Satan. Miriam grows more resentful with each cackle and “you should’ve seen them run” story.
But nothing changes and each day runs into the next. At least with her side business, it’s a little less painful.