After a five-week hiatus, The Adventures of Kara Picante is back!
Off and on, I have debated with myself over whether I should keep posting content to Kara's website or if I should "freeze" her blog as part of her legacy. After all, from one point of view her adventures have finally come to end, while from another they are only beginning but in a radically different form. And woohoo, after some soul-searching (and researching, you might say), I have chosen to go with the first option!
You see, a few months back, I discovered what is called the Continuing Bonds model, a theory that sees grief as ongoing and rejects the idea that wanting to remain attached to a loved one is pathological. This concept echoed what I told our acupuncturist a few weeks after Kara sparkled on: "I can't do this 'move on' shit. I will never move on. I need to find ways to continue my relationship with my wife."
Coming back to her blog is part of how I will continue my bond with Kara, and if you choose to follow along with us, I hope we can provide that service to you, too.
To be clear, this is just how I choose to move through bereavement. As there is no one way to face a cancer diagnosis, there is no one way to cope with the loss of a loved one. That said, it is my hope to carry on with the adventures here and to expand and refine the blog into a resource for people dealing with life-threatening illnesses, caregiving, and/or bereavement. Right now I'm not sure about specifics, but I know the direction I want to take what Kara started five years ago.
I will sign off for now with an announcement with the disclaimer that there will be plugs here and there going forward. (As if Kara didn't do a little shilling on her blog, often under the nagging pressure of her husband.) A couple of weeks ago I sold my first short story in almost three years, an adventure story in the fantasy subgenre of sword & sorcery (think Conan the Barbarian). What is more, it is about Kara as a warrior-queen and super-sorceress! At 12,000 words, "Queen of the Fire Arch" is almost a novelette, and it is my favorite thing I've ever written. No weird parodies or stylistic experiments, just straightforward magic and battles! If interested, you can find this anthology (I am just one of several contributors) on Amazon or Weirdpunk, the publisher's website.
Final thought: I was re-watching Madonna: Truth or Dare the other night (so much to say on this one, and how it stands up thirty-three years later) and was struck by certain similarities between the Queen of Pop and the Queen of Sparkle...
Anyway, until next time.
--Charles Austin Muir
"All right, ladies, on your knees!" (quote from the movie)
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