Re-editing Some Books

My task for the last couple of days has been to re-edit two books I hope to publish by the beginning of the new year. I just got done re-editing Reclaiming the Balance, which is the book I am wrestling with publishing on January 1st. I’m wrestling with it because it’s one of my Hidden in Plain Sight books, and those aren’t selling like I’d like. I have distributed many free copies of the first book, Gaia’s Hands, as part of BookFunnel promotions, and I don’t know that they’ve yielded too many sales. It’s the burden of being an indie author, not knowing how to market my books. Reclaiming is also an unusual book, where the primary romance is between an artist and a truly androgynous half-human.

Today I’m re-re-editing Kringle Through the Snow, which will go out on October 1 (just in time for WalMart to put out their Christmas decorations.) I have little to change in this; three chapters so far, and I have changed two words. I can’t tell if it’s boredom or anxiety making me go through these stories again.

I might just be killing time. All I have between now and my trip out to New York on the 30th is making some prosthetic impalements for moulage. (Think ripped and charred wood glued to discs for adhesion onto skin). I’m all set up for classes this fall, and I have time to feel like I really have a summer vacation. Or I might be coming to terms with the realization that all I can do is be the best writer I can and hope I get the hang of promotion.

A Missive from the Goddess of Gore

Dear Readers: I am in the thick of Missouri Hope, a training exercise for students in emergency and disaster management, nurses, and other emergency personnel.

Imagine a tornado hits the area, and there are multiple casualties being brought to a triage area. First responders sort the victims by severity of injuries and they are prioritized and sent to a field hospital, where nurses work to stabilize patients before they can find a spot at a nearby hospital. Meanwhile, other emergency personnel search in the rubble and in the nearby woods for other survivors. Incident command coordinates team efforts for where the teams are needed. This is our exercise for three days, with workers from logistics and operations to van drivers to safety officers. Team and lane controller/operators maintain the exercise itself.

Meanwhile, I am the moulage coordinator, leading 4-6 moulage artists to turn volunteers into victims through applying makeup. I am called the Goddess of Gore.

I have been the moulage coordinator for ten years, My view of the event is from a trailer classroom at the top of a hill on university land, where my crew makes up 60-some volunteers for each iteration (there are four over the three days). We simulate scrapes, lacerations, impalements, disembowelments, bruises, broken bones — these are some of the injuries we simulate. We also simulate hypothermia, hypertension, sweats, and hives.

The reason for moulage is to contribute realism to the exercise. Students take it more seriously when they face gaping wounds and blood. I think there is something in the primitive brain that gets triggered and hikes their heart rate up — just as in real life.

It is the end of the second day, and I am tired. But it’s worth it.

Love, Lauren (Goddess of Gore)

Little Hiccups of Happy

This is how I’m feeling these past few days. The weather is finally trending cooler, and autumn has arrived. A gentle rain fell yesterday, and I traveled in its chill. I love Autumn — even the rain, especially the rain.

Missouri Hope last weekend was successful, and I’ve heard lots of good feedback, which makes me feel like I’m doing something right.

A couple of things have happened this week to make me chuckle. The Interim President of the university missed me at coffee the other day. I never thought I’d be able to say that. An acquaintance of mine ordered a paperback copy of my latest romance. He’s a retired Brigadier General. So, yes, a Brigadier General is reading one of my romance novels. I should offer to autograph it.

I’m (or rather, my husband and I are) making progress on the latest Christmas romance. He’s supposed to do some background research for me and I’m looking over our notes. Things are going well, and I feel a hiccup of happy in my chest.

The Things I Love and the Things I Do Well

Sorry I haven’t written the past couple of days, but I was setting up for Missouri Hope, our big disaster training exercise. Then I was doing moulage for Missouri Hope, which means making up 185 volunteers in two-hour stretches (with two other moulage artists). Then I was recovering from Missouri Hope. It’s the most intense weekend of my year.

So, it’s Tuesday, and I have a spare few minutes to write my blog in-between grading and an online meeting that shouldn’t go too long. I have time to think. Today, I’m thinking of the things I love and the things I do well, which are not necessarily the same things.

I enjoy doing moulage, and I do it well. I know I do it well because I get a lot of compliments and attention for it. Doing moulage gives me a boost. I get high from the attention.

Trigger warning: Below is a simulation of a crushed hand:

Back to writing:

I enjoy writing, too. I’d like to believe I do it well, but I get little feedback from publishing my writing. Few people have read my three Kringle novels, my fantasy romance novel, or my Vella serial. I’m not sure this has to do as much with my writing as the whole struggle to get the word out about my writing. I’m not good at putting myself out there because I feel insecure about my writing in a way I do not about my moulage. A vicious cycle, apparently — no praise means insecurity; insecurity means I don’t push myself forward; not pushing myself forward means no readers; no readers means no praise.

I need to find a way out of the vicious cycle, because I want to have the relationship I have with my moulage with my writing, something that I both enjoy and which feeds my need for recognition (which is a small thing, actually). I’m willing to entertain ideas …

Missouri Hope Arrives

When I’m not a professor or a writer, I’m a moulage artist.

I do this work 2-3 times a year, making up volunteers to look like accident victims sporting injuries from broken legs to burns to drowning to long lacerations. It’s illusion, done with wax and grease paint and fake blood (there are good fake blood recipes at the link).

The big event of the year is Missouri Hope, three days of training in the rough for undergraduates, nurses, and emergency personnel. As the moulage coordinator, this takes a lot of preparation — inventory, ordering, prepping materials, and taking a deep breath and hoping I’ll have enough volunteers to help (recruiting is not part of my duties).

It starts this evening. I will have dinner with my fellow staff, from team and lane controller/evaluators to logistics and operations staff to our catering crew. I know many of these people from the university and from previous exercises. One of them is a current student of mine; another a former student. One is my husband. I feel at home in this crowd, which is part of the reason I’ve been doing moulage for 12 years.

This is me doing moulage. It’s my least gory picture.

I’ve gotten to where doing moulage is second nature, and I can do it pretty quickly. I can’t do it too quickly; injuries like lacerations and breaks require a layer of wax followed by a layer of latex followed by a layer of castor oil followed by a layer of makeup.

I have all my supplies (except the castor oil I’m hunting for) ready to go. The fun starts tomorrow.

My Big Audacious Goal

Choosing my Big Audacious Goal was difficult. I can define BAGs as much by what they aren’t as by what they are. I couldn’t choose little management goals as “getting better on my publicity game” (I will anyhow) or goals that don’t require a big learning curve such as “write another book”. “Write a vampire novel” would be a goal with a big learning curve, but it’s an example of the third thing to avoid, which are goals you really don’t feel moved to adopt.

I spent a couple days with my husband bouncing ideas off each other, which meant I usually rejected his ideas. This is a good thing, because it helped me define and constrain the Big Audacious Goal further. I almost chose his suggestion of writing a screenplay based on It Takes Two to Kringle, but I don’t think my talent in screenwriting will trump my utter frustration with the formatting.

Then, finally, my Big Audacious Goal came into sight, and it had nothing to do with writing. It concerns my other hobby, moulage, which is otherwise known as casualty simulation. Yes, I make people look like victims for training. I have created convincing (simulated) victims for mass casualty simulations, car wreck docudramas, hospital evacuation simulations, and more. I have gotten the nickname “Goddess of Gore” for my efforts.

One way to sculpt wounds is by using wax to create depth. The problem with that is that it can melt in warm weather, which is always. I can get around that by using airbrushing and a greater amount of shading.

That’s what I want to learn to do for my Big Audacious Goal.

I may fail. I may give it up. But at this moment, this is my Big Audacious Goal for the year.

Moulage, or How to Make Volunteers into Victims.

Sorry I haven’t written lately, but I spent the last two days riding cross-country in a van in order to spend three days making volunteers into victims. It’s New York Hope time again, and my skill set in moulage gets a workout at a disaster training center nicknamed “Disaster Disneyland”.

I don’t have any pictures to post because they’re just too gory. For example, a long gash down one’s arm with plenty of blood. Or a broken leg with the bone sticking out. A crush injury with lots of bruising. That kind of thing. No burns on this round, but those are fun to make too. We make the injuries with wax and paints and gel and prop impalements.

What do we do with the made-up victims? We train them to emulate victims in a big exercise where emergency and disaster management students work in teams to search and rescue in various habitats, triage, and provide basic first aid. We want to make this as believable as possible, so we have the volunteer role-players.

I do two major exercises a year, this one here in upstate New York, and one in Maryville where I live. I also do some smaller exercises like the docudrama in Savannah this year.

This is something I live for, a hobby that means something, and appeals to my creative side.

Wouldn’t you like being made up as an injury victim?

Moulage (warning: graphic pictures)

My other hobby

I forgot to talk about one of my other hobbies yesterday, or rather, I neglected to talk about my other hobby/volunteer work. I do moulage, otherwise known as casualty simulation. In short, I make people look injured for emergency disaster training.

This isn’t a hobby I can share casually, because, actually, I did a pretty good job. The pictures creep people out.

My favorite story on the realism of my work is going into work after our big disaster training weekend (I’m a professor) and getting the rumor that one of my “victims” was sent to the hospital for a simulation, and they started hooking up an IV on him. He had to stop them from doing so. I mentioned this to another class, and his girlfriend corroborated it.

None of this is real

Moulage requires a certain amount of art and science. The science comes in studying injuries — knowing how they’re inflicted, what they look like on the body, how they change over time. The art comes from recreating them in grease paint, fake blood, wax, and latex.

Examples (warning: do not go below this point if you are upset by these pictures)

Another year of Missouri Hope in the Books

Another successful three days of moulage at Missouri Hope.

I haven’t written because I was really busy! I had a crew of three volunteers and my husband, and we managed to moulage about 150 people to go out into the field to play victims of a major tornado.

Here’s a couple examples:

I didn’t get a lot of pictures because I was too busy moulaging.

As you can imagine, we were pretty busy with all of those people to moulage, but I can credit my team with making it a pretty painless experience. Usually we’re several people behind by the time it’s time to place them into the scenario, but we consistently finished on time.

It’s great closing on another successful year! And I’m SO tired!

Missouri Hope has come.

Missouri Hope has come upon us, and I’m not sure I’m ready for it.

For those of you new to the blog, Missouri Hope is an annual disaster simulation held at a park near here. Participants range from emergency and disaster management students to area police and emergency personnel. Missouri Hope is huge for a disaster management exercise.

There will be, over Friday through Sunday, approximately 240 volunteers, who will serve as our “victims” for the exercise. And I, with a small team of moulagers, will turn these people into victims using makeup.

That’s a lot of people.

Today’s the day I do last-minute shopping (for face wipes and eyeliner pens), do a little inventory, and try to prepare myself for the frantic rush of doing all this makeup.

Wish me luck.