If you’ve considered having your DNA analyzed by one of the popular testing services, is it because you believe secrets lurk in your family tree? As I recently discovered in doing research for my Romancing Our Roots novels, many people are talking about DNA surprises, also called (MP) misattributed paternity or (NPE) nonpaternity events/not parent expected.
Unfortunately, these surprises are pitting the testers against their own parents, particularly their mothers, since their biological fathers may be strangers. According to some articles published in medical journals, pediatricians and other medical professionals may have been pulled into conspiracies to falsify family medical history unless “a clear medical benefit outweighs the potential harms.”
I’d read about case histories like this, but thought they were rare. But a recent article in The New Yorker caught my attention since my romance series deals with DNA puzzles. Staff writer Jennifer Wilson described a survey of 23,000 DNA test takers done by Baylor College of Medicine in 2022. They reported 61% of respondents said they learned something new about themselves or their relatives, including information that they were possibly adopted or donor conceived. Three percent of those surveyed (nearly 700) discovered they were NPEs.
I’ve taken a DNA test, and so has everyone in my immediate family, mainly for the reason the tests are advertised: “trace your ancestors’ journeys and so much more, find new relatives through shared DNA, connect with relatives up to 13 degrees removed.” So far, no surprises such as these.
Not everyone can say the same. The New Yorker article led me to search for Facebook pages that she mentioned detailing NPE stories. I was fortunate to receive some scientific papers and to find some relevant podcasts, including Lily Wood’s NPE Stories, and Alexis Hourselt’s DNA Surprises podcasts with accounts from actual NPEs.
I’ve only scratched the surface so far in listening to these stories, but the ones I’ve heard describe the moment they discovered the deception as earth-shaking, as if they lost all physical sensation, as if their body had broken into a million pieces. Some refer to learning their true paternity as a defining moment where their lives before were one thing, and now they are living an altered reality. The range of emotions would be astronomical: feeling shock, denial, anger, grief, confusion, blame, shame, empathy, bitterness, conflicted, obsessed, defiant, insecure, depressed, hurt, disillusioned, panicked, relief, scorn, betrayed, curious, resentment, and determined, maybe all in the first few moments of learning the truth about their own identity. All these emotions are elements of a good romance novel, drama you’d like to read about, but want to avoid in real life.
However, for an increasing number of people, this drama is real and will likely become more prevalent as more people take direct-to-consumer DNA tests. Laws that protect the secrets held by previous generations need to be challenged. Birth certificates may need to include additional options for biological parents who are not the ones raising the child. Medical organizations need to update their stances on condoning falsified medical histories of patients.
I intend to continue studying this issue in my own non-scientific manner, and I may circle back to this in future writings. If you are interested, visit the sources listed within this blog or below.
Jennifer Wilson, “Missed Connection,” New Yorker, August 25, 2025
Wenzel, Richard, (2023) “Buying my existence. Just $49, free shipping included,” Journal of Genetic Counseling, 00,1-4. https://doi.org/10.1002/jgc4.1686
Wenzel et al., “Misattributed paternity discovery: a critique of medical organizations’ recommendations,” The American Journal of Human Genetics (2025), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajhg.2025.01.006
You’ve probably heard discussions about American Eagle’s jeans advertisement that states Sydney Sweeney, their celebrity model, has great genes. You can read about that story from other sources. I’m just talking about genetics here, as my eighth romance novel, Lucky Genes, is about to launch.
Your high school biology class probably lauded Gregor Mendel, an Austian monk, who is widely credited with the discovery of genetics back in the mid-1800s. He conducted controlled crossbreeding experiments with pea plans, focusing on traits like flower color and seed shape. His experiments tracked how traits appeared across multiple generations, and that “factors,” which we now know as genes, determined these traits. Much later, in 1953 James Watson and Francis Crick uncovered the double helix structure of DNA, which was a revolutionary view of heredity. Then the Human Genome Project beginning in the 1990s mapped all human genes, which got us to the place where genetic medicine and biotechnology took off.
I won’t try to explain the whole concept of the laws of segregation and assortment when it involves alleles and genes, but while genes exist on the same chromosomes, they are inherited independently of each other due to the process of meiosis. In a nutshell, while you receive half of your genes from each parent, you may be sneaking in specific traits from your grandmother or grandfather, or more distant ancestors, due to the constant resorting of genes when producing what ultimately becomes the embryo.
So, the genes you get are a matter of luck. Spin the wheel, roll the dice, procreation is a random mix. This makes genetics so interesting. It’s fun to look at just a small segment of genes passed down such as the ancestral regions associated with our genes. I believe this is determined by a concentration of similar genes in certain locations of the world. My husband and I and our three daughters took DNA tests. Farmer Husband had genetic links mostly to Germanic Europe (52%), not surprising since nearly all his ancestors came from Germany. Not so much on my side, only 19% from Germanic Europe. But the middle child has 68% Germanic Europe, and the youngest has 57%, both more than either parent, so a throwback to a previous generation.
In the Lucky Genes book, Cheyenne, wants to avoid having children because she’s concerned about passing along her father’s volatile temper, and her mother’s addiction issues. She worries she doesn’t have great genes. Some evidence shows that there is an association between a specific gene called the monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) gene and aggression in humans. This gene regulates neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine, and several studies have shown that men with a weakness in this gene were more likely to be violent. Similarly, substance use disorders can be partially traced to genetics, and partly to environmental factors.
Genetics aside, the characters in Lucky Genes can consider themselves lucky for several reasons. Archer, the male main character survived a near-fatal attack. Eddie, his best friend and employee, graduated from law school despite struggling with learning disabilities. Jacinda, a police officer, arrived at the scene of the crime after the damage had been done. Darcy, Archer’s sister, was able to detangle herself from a relationship with a career criminal. And Cheyenne, the female main character, discovers her worrisome genes are not as expected. Her genetic discoveries are the driving point of the book, and she accepts her new reality.
If you’d like to read more about Lucky Genes, it will be released on August 11, 2025.
Those who read or write romance are well aware of the presence of tropes, predictable situations that help structure a relationship between two people as they fall in love. Let’s get that out of the way. The first Rule of Romance Writing is that two people have to fall in love and there will be an HEA, Happy Ever After, or a Happy Now at least. In today’s world, where you can’t always count on government officials following the law or whether your job will be there tomorrow, escaping to a world where rules are followed and outcomes are assured is comforting.
Although my first introduction to tropes smacked of tired clichés, I soon became a believer. They make it easier for readers to identify if they will like a particular book, a boon for both author and reader. As a reader, I’ve mismatched myself with plenty of books that bored me halfway through, and as an author, I never want to read a review that says someone “did not get what they expected, and not in a good way.”
In my current romance series, I’ve tried to use different tropes, working hard to bust out of my personal “secret baby” preference. The most prominent tropes in The Love Genes are Family Saga (across multiple generations), Single Dad, Age Gap, Dual Stories, Grieving Lover, and yes, Secret Babies times two couples. In Lost Genes, you’ll find tropes of Hidden Identity, Single Dad, Smalltown, Alpha Hero (the twist is the heroine doesn’t let him save her), and Found Family. Lucky Genes, now available for pre-order, for an August release, has these tropes: New Girl in Town, Opposites Attract, Dark Secret, Emotional Scars, and Alpha Heroine. Book Four, my work-in-progress, sports tropes like Politician, Enemies to Lovers, Secrets and Lies, Single Mom, and Soulmates.
If I have repeated the Secret Baby trope, I’ve so far avoided some of the others that feel overworked, such as Forced Proximity, Grumpy Sunshine, Friends to Lovers, and Office Rivals. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve read some great books with these tropes, but they are used often.
Romance also provides us opportunities to mock the genre, as it should never take itself too seriously. Here are a few ways it can feel ridiculous:
Spit it Out Already—Why is it so hard for the main characters to say “I love you?” They fall into bed without a second thought, but love? How can this be love? Don’t know when the intimacy vs love ideas got flip-flopped, but someone should put them back in order.
Who seriously wants to fall for a Bad Boy? Maybe a flirtation, but he’s bad; avoid a lifetime of heartache.
The hero thinks the heroine is “not like other women.” Of course she is, you’re just not paying attention to what other women think.
One of the main characters is “Too Dumb to Live.” This happens more often with suspense elements. Don’t go in that barn alone. If you’re in danger, take steps to protect yourself. Why is this your partner’s job?
The hero is always drool-worthy, with a ripped physique yet no evidence he ever hits the gym. The heroine often has severe self-esteem issues, but that is rectified with a Pretty Woman-type makeover. Perhaps getting to the core of her low self-confidence would make more sense.
The Grand Gesture doesn’t always feel like a grand old time. Sometimes the hero acts like a jerk and is forced to humiliate himself by singing karaoke badly, or something that may represent a sacrifice on his part, which rarely satisfies the reader. A better gesture of love and appreciation is like the library that The Beast provided Belle, something she could uniquely appreciate without humbling The Beast.
Romance books are designed to be objects of your affection. Romance Rules, like others, are made to be broken. Just make sure you search for your HEA along the way.
This story starts out being about me. Facebook reminded me this morning that it had been five years since my brother, Clay, and I went to visit the Art Institute of Chicago. It was quite inspiring for me, and probably more so for Clay, an artist who paints with oils.
One of my favorite paintings was of a woman lying on a bed in a boat, her long blonde hair fanned out around her. She appeared to be asleep or dead. The caption accompanying the painting led me to believe she was being returned to her home by boat for her funeral. A man piloting the boat was dressed like the Grim Reaper. I remember the details of the painting were sort of romantic and haunting. I took a photo of the painting with my phone but failed to note the name of the work or the artist.
Which has bugged me ever since. So today when Facebook nudged me with the photo of the painting once more, I did an online search for the painting using words I would use to describe it such as funeral, boat, dead blonde. I have done this same search numerous times, and I have never found the painting.
I gave up on Bing and tried Google. Then a pop-up appeared suggesting I could upload an image to search. Would that work? I took my low-resolution image that Facebook saved and put it in the image search box. Voila! Immediately it found the artist and the name of the painting. It was called “The Beautiful Elaine.” Wouldn’t have gotten that in a million years.
It turns out I am not the only one who was haunted by “Elaine.” The artist, Toby Edward Rosenthal, was born in West Prussia in 1848, and his family moved to San Francisco when he was ten. His artistic talent became apparent early in his life, and he was sent to Munich at age sixteen to study at the Royal Academy. His artistic style was true to the realism of the nineteenth century, and his dramatic portrayals often hinted at stories of romance, danger, abandonment, and death. You can read more about the artist here: Tobias Edward Rosenthal | The Society of California Pioneers.
T.E. Rosenthal
While Rosenthal studied in Germany, he sent some of his work back to his parents who exhibited them at art fairs in San Francisco. This led to a commission by a wealthy San Francisco banker, a Mr. Parrott. He wanted a portrait based on Alfred Lord Tennyson’s epic poem, Idylls of the King. Tennyson was the British poet laureate during Queen Victoria’s reign. I remember Lord Tennyson’s distinctive mug from playing the card game “Authors” as a child.
Idylls of the King included a story about the legendary Elaine, who died from her unrequited love of Lancelot. Yes, that Lancelot, whose obsession with Queen Guinevere mucked up King Arthur’s Camelot and the Knights of the Roundtable.
I also ran across an earlier version of this Elaine, which I prefer. Her Daddy had his own castle, and Lancelot showed up to compete in a tournament, fighting against King Arthur’s men while in disguise. He wins but is wounded, and Elaine helps him get back on his feet. She is smitten, but his heart still belongs to Guinevere, so she tricks him with a magic potion or two, and he ends up marrying her and fathering her children. The eldest becomes a more successful knight than even Lancelot. Of course, this version doesn’t end with her floating on a barge down the Thames toward Camelot clutching a farewell letter and a lily.
This is not the only legend, poem, or painting dedicated to Elaine. She is sometimes called the Lady of Shallot.
I digress. Back to Toby Rosenthal’s painting. His benefactor, Mr. Parrott, grew tired of Toby’s delays and demands for more money, so he commissioned another artist to paint what he wanted. Rosenthal sold his finished painting to a Mrs. Johnson, who paid several times the original commissioned price. The painting was later exhibited in San Francisco, and large crowds lined up daily for twelve days to see the dramatic painting of the tragic Elaine. Rosenthal’s proud parents were in daily attendance at the public frenzy surrounding the exhibit. Then the painting was stolen! The crowds lined up to view the empty frame. You can’t make this stuff up.
The thief was caught, the painting returned, and over ten thousand people viewed it. The painting won a gold medal at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in 1876. Eventually, it was purchased by Mrs. Maurice Rosenfeld, a Chicagoan, who donated it to the Art Institute in 1917 where I saw it one hundred years later.
If this doesn’t read like a Historical Romance novel, I don’t know what does. No wonder I couldn’t forget the image of Toby Rosenthal’s painting, and I didn’t know half of the story. Perhaps this is the reason I put a nineteenth-century painting in my latest novel in progress.
I’ve been writing a series of books set beginning in the late 1960s. The first, Catch It Spinning, was published recently. One of the fun things for me in writing in this era is to remember some of the ways that world was different than the one we now inhabit.
In 1968, in the middle of my high school years, a telephone was just a telephone. It was a communications instrument hard-wired into the wall, or if you had extensions in various rooms, as my parents did, into several walls. Electricity was supplied to the phone through the wires, so even if the power in your house went out, you could still use the phone, assuming the central telephone office still had power.
When you wanted to call someone, and teenagers did that frequently even then, you usually went through a gatekeeper, mostly the other teen’s parents. If someone was using their phone, you got a busy signal. You had to wait until their line was free. Or possibly they took their phone off the hook, accidentally or on purpose. Not everyone was aware that there was a way around this scenario. I found out by dating a boy whose mother worked as a long-distance operator. You could call the operator and ask to have the line verified or interrupted. The operator could actually go in on the line and hear if there was conversation. If so, she would tell the person inquiring that the line was in use. If nothing was heard, the phone could be reported out of order and a repairman would be dispatched to that location.
Another option was that the line could be interrupted by declaring an emergency. The person declaring an emergency was supposed to come up with a reasonable explanation such as “I’m in jail and this is my one phone call.” If the operator deemed it an emergency, she would go in on the line and advise the parties talking that she had an emergency call for number 432-1234, and ask the parties to hang up to receive the call. Then the inquiring party could make their call.
If there was no one at home, or someone just didn’t answer their ringing telephone, you had no recourse other than calling later. At that time, you could let someone’s phone ring for hours though, so if you thought they were ignoring you, you could annoy them at length. The good-mannered rule of thumb was to let the phone ring ten times, in case the party was in the shower or unable to get to the receiver quickly. I wouldn’t think of getting out of the shower now to answer my phone even if I heard it ringing.
We got an Ericofon like the one pictured above when I was a kid. It was fun and very space-agey. But for practical purposes, it was a little heavy for the long phone calls I made when I was a teenager, because the dial was in the bottom. Plus, ours was in the kitchen where anyone could hear your very private conversations. Better to hide out in the parents’ bedroom where you could close the door and sit on the floor by one of their twin beds. It was easier to cradle the receiver on your shoulder using their rotary phone when you wanted to talk to a boy. The conversations that went on for hours could probably have been condensed into ten minutes if you deleted the repeated stories and dead air. The point was that you talked to him for hours, not that either one of you had something significant to say.
If you wanted to call someone you didn’t know well, you looked up their father’s name in the phone book. Everyone had several phone books, depending on how many extensions you had. These were supplied by the only telephone company in town. Almost everyone’s father’s name was in the phone book, although you didn’t always know the name of the father of the classmate you were calling. You looked up the last name and called every phone number associated with it. Then it was a game of “Is this the residence for Susie Snodgrass? No? Then do you happen to know Susie Snodgrass and what her father’s name is?”
When you were out shopping, sometimes you had to use a telephone. There were payphones near every store, on street corners, sometimes in clusters. These were usually in phone booths with folding doors. Often payphones had been vandalized and were not working. Sometimes the dimes just got stuck in the coin slot. But when they worked, it was a handy way to get mom to approve a purchase you wanted to make at a store downtown, or tell her you missed the bus. Again.
Another thing that was different about the phones then is that people could transmit emotion using them. Happy people would often play with the coiled cord connecting the receiver. Angry people could slam the phone receiver down and make a loud noise in the listener’s ear. Try that trick with your Android.
Phones came in different colors. For a princess phone in your bedroom, you might choose a coordinating color with the carpet or bedding. The Ericofon came in several bright and neutral shades. Your phone could make a fashion statement in your home or it could also make a statement that you didn’t care about that.
What a phone wouldn’t and couldn’t do was tell time or give you the forecast. There was a number for that you could call to hear a recorded message. It couldn’t give you any games. There were plenty of board and card games at home. It certainly didn’t connect you to the internet since that wasn’t invented yet. No email. No social media. No podcasts. No audiobooks. No online banking. No calculator. None of the other zillion applications you have on your palm-sized device. A phone was for making calls. And as a teenager, you had to wait your turn.
“And they lived happily ever after.” Is this just a fairy tale? I tried to end each of my four stories in my book, HERside of HIStory—Finding My Foremothers’ Footprints on a positive note. However, I don’t think I have seen anyone live every moment happily. At some point, we all have to die, and that may involve some pain which I would interpret as unhappiness. I think the best we can hope for is “mostly happiness.” That’s what I should start wishing people, a life with mostly happiness, or more good than bad.
One of the first things you read as a newly minted author is that conflict makes the story. Conflict reeks of unhappiness. I certainly found that it was more fun to write about people arguing or undermining each other than those who were always pleasant and agreeable. One could even argue that a certain degree of unhappiness is necessary for happiness to occur. A cosmic duality, yin and yang if you will. You don’t know what you got till it’s gone.
So you have to expose a problem or two when writing a novel and show how your heroine overcomes the adversity. And grows. Or yes, this experience is supposed to make her grow in some way. I don’t know about you, but in real life dealing with adversity just makes me tired, and cranky. Or it makes me grow older. Not so much wiser, but maybe I am selling myself short.
In that vein, I am going to add some “outtakes” from the aforementioned book. The section “Nellie” contains the most conflict. I omitted this part of the story when I was trying to cut back on the content. Stephen King suggested reducing your book by 10% in the second draft, and I took his advice. This was on the cutting room floor, so to speak:
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THE BREAKUP
This scene takes place in Brewster, Kansas, in 1919 after Nellie and Ben had been dating awhile, and she realized they kept having the same argument:
She knew it was time to be as honest as she could with Ben, and hoped he would do likewise, even if it meant they had to stop seeing each other.
“This is not working for either one of us,” she told him a few days before Thanksgiving, as they were walking to the Cochrane house, where she was picking up her sister, Zella. “I think we are getting too old to go out partying every weekend. For one thing, it is too expensive. If you are ever going to have anything worthwhile in life, you have to save your money to buy a house or a farm, something that is an investment. I know you say that you don’t want to turn into your father, and have all those responsibilities, and that is your choice. But going forward, I think that is what I want for my life, to have a business or a job, be able to have some sort of stable home life, with children, and just do what other people do. I think we just want different things. Maybe we are wasting our time trying to be together.”
He was clearly a little shocked. “You’re telling me after all this time, you don’t wanna be with me? Now you want someone like your daddy. I think you would just get bored. Maybe I won’t want to be a free spirit forever, but I am still sowing my wild oats after being cooped up in that so-called army training camp for almost two years. But, hey, if that is what you want, I guess it ain’t me.” With a note of sarcasm he added, “See you around, Sweetheart.” Then he turned on his heel and walked the other way, back toward the store.
By Thanksgiving Day, she had gotten past the initial pain of breaking off a relationship, but she had not gotten up the nerve to mention it to her family. It was easier just to not think about him at all. She was in the middle of making her favorite chocolate meringue pie when she heard a racket outdoors and looked out to see her young brother, Verner, and her nieces Lazetta and Beth all laughing over a dark furred puppy that Ben was holding out to them. Oh no, she thought. Why is he here? I suppose he was invited weeks ago, maybe Mom even mentioned it to him, but surely he realized that everything has changed now.
Just then, five-year-old Beth came running into the kitchen, cradling the dog, followed by the others. “Aunt Nellie, look. Look what Ben brought for me! Isn’t he just adorable? I’m going to call him Gobbler cuz I got him on Thanksgiving. Do you want to pet him?”
She gave the dog a pat, and had to admit he was very cute. Then Beth raced off to show the puppy to her grandfather, who was in the living room. Nellie gave Ben a questioning look, but he simply acted as though everything was fine, and he went to talk to her father about the dog. That just made her angry, as she was two days into forgetting about him, and he just showed up as though nothing had changed. At the dinner table, she didn’t speak to him unless it was to ask to pass the potatoes, but kept glaring at him while he tried to entertain her family with his witty anecdotes. No one seemed to notice except for Zella, who began to look back and forth between Nellie and Ben. She confronted Nellie when they went back into the kitchen while clearing away the dishes.
“You two had another fight, didn’t you? No, NO…you broke up with him? And he still came to dinner?” Zella asked, reading Nellie’s face.
She hadn’t expected her tears to betray her, but she wasn’t able to stop them. She reached for her heavy coat hanging on a hook in the hallway. “I’m going outside. Would you ask him to come talk to me?”
“Aren’t we having dessert?” Ben called out, when he found her on the back porch.
“Dessert? No, this is the part where you explain why you are here. Why did you come to Thanksgiving dinner with my whole family after we broke up? I thought you agreed that we didn’t belong together.”
“I don’t do explanations or apologies, I thought you’d figured that out,” he muttered. “But I’m here, I want to be here. I’m willing to try it. Can’t you just see that?”
“What do you mean, you are going to try? Are you saying you’re going to settle down, stop going to the clubs, save your money, plan a future? What is it you are trying?” she asked, wiping away a warm tear from her frozen cheek.
“Whatever you want. I am trying to be what you want. I want to be with you, and if that is what you want, I will try.” She smiled then, not quite believing her ears, and wrapped him in a warm embrace.
“Can we go have some pie now?” He sounded like a little boy.
He was serious about changing his lifestyle, Nellie soon realized. He stopped going to Goodland, unless it was on an errand for Mr. Horney, or to take her to a picture show. He mentioned that some of the clubs had closed with the enactment of the Eighteenth Amendment, which had started nationwide alcohol prohibition. In Kansas, the speakeasies were even under more scrutiny because of the strong presence of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union there. He spent more time at her parents’ farm and even begin asking her father for advice on setting up a dairy business.
****************
You will find the rest of Nellie and Ben’s saga in the soon to be published book.
Title: Gene Donor: Found Fatherhood Romantic Suspense
Author: Claudia J. Severin
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Book Blurb:
She couldn’t imagine falling in love with a politician. Until she met him.
Kane Cullen seizes her big break—a lucrative contract to uncover the hidden crimes of Washington DC’s hottest new congressman, if only she can keep her mind on the mission, and not his broad shoulders, square jaw, hazel eyes, and bold braids. Exposing this bad boy is her only hope to revive her circling-the-drain career in investigative journalism.
Representative Waring White Feathers keeps a low profile, quietly attracting followers and towing the party line. He must avoid even a breath of scandal after his predecessor was ejected from office. At best, he knows his job security has a two-year shelf life. Yet when a charming reporter requests hours of his time for a series of interviews, he sees a golden opportunity to spruce up his public image and stale dating life.
When Kane’s daughter goes to work for Waring and convinces him to take a DNA test, the anonymous donations he made decades earlier pop up to haunt him. On top of that, his former chief-of-staff lies to the FBI to frame him, and defamatory social media posts and deep fake podcasts sprout up like weeds. Who’s behind this smear campaign? Could the woman he’s fallen for be in cahoots with a powerful, vindictive enemy operating behind the political scene? When the attacks turn violent, this peace-loving beta hero defends his own.
Enjoy reading Gene Donor, a perfectly patriotic love story with ribbons of suspense connecting the secrets of a found family that knows no end.
Excerpt:
CHAPTER FOUR: KANE
Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Two weeks later
I hadn’t told Charity I’d be coming home tonight. I’d surprise her with my early arrival. Her car wasn’t in the driveway, so I took my usual spot in the two-car garage. When I entered my mid-1970s-era house, I could see she hadn’t straightened up her kitchen clutter. Takeout containers and dirty dishes littered the counters. How old do children have to be when they realize they should clean up their own messes? Maybe she’ll never learn, living in my place.
After grabbing a soda from the refrigerator, I wandered into the dining room to sort through the mail she’d accumulated on the table, but my attention leaped to a legal-sized envelope that I hadn’t seen for a long time. I recalled retrieving it from its secure hiding place only once about ten years ago.
Bright Horizons Clinic was stamped on the upper left corner of the envelope. In the center of the packet was a client identification number, which I had committed to memory twenty-four years ago. Angst filled my gut seeing this gold nine-by-twelve package, as if all my heartbreak and joy were folded neatly within its paper casing.
I settled into one of the four walnut chairs at the table. The rugged table and chairs were a gift from my parents when Brian and I started a family. I ran my fingers over the smooth laminate finish of the table. How many meals had I served at this table? Not nearly as many since Brian moved on. The table had held up well, much better than my marriage.
I sprayed open my can of pop, my gaze drifting back to the envelope across from me. What was it doing here instead of in a storage box on my closet shelf? Charity must have been looking at it. I’d shown it to her during that fateful talk when she was thirteen, explaining how her father had left us. Wanting to reveal all the painful truths at once, I also showed her Brian Kettelhut had not actually been her biological father, that his low sperm count had driven us to this clinic, where our infertility nightmare had ended.
I reached across the table and snatched up the envelope, dumping out its contents. I read my name and Brian’s name at the top of the form. Next was a donor’s identification number, physical description, and medical history. I’d read that information over and over, marveling at the miracle that resulted in my pregnancy and later my baby, my precocious child, who became my independent teenager. In my gratitude, I’d studied the two photographs they included of the donor as a child. The photos! They’re not here. Why did Charity take the photos?
“Mom! You’re back,” my daughter sang out as she unlocked the front door, swinging her backpack.
I stuffed the papers back into the envelope. But I had nothing to hide. This was my property, not hers. She set down her backpack, giving me a one-armed hug around my neck, and took another chair.
“How was your trip? Your interviews go well?” Charity asked, taking a sip of my cold drink.
“It was okay.” I tapped my fingernail on the table. “What is this envelope doing here? Where are the photos?”
Charity stared at me for a moment. I’d seen that look before when she’d done something a mother wouldn’t condone, and she wanted to break it to me gently. “I’m kinda thirsty myself. I’m gonna get my own drink,” she said, rising. “Oh, I have some popcorn too, from that new place near the nail salon you like.”
I watched her. She was buying time. She’d turned into a ten-year-old manipulator who could charm her way out of most consequences. That always worked better on my ex-husband. When she settled back at the table with her soda and a big bowl of popcorn, she removed the paper copies of two photos from her backpack.
“I did some sleuthing. I have a college buddy who knows all about cyber-tracking and facial identification—stuff way beyond searching a name online. He helps the alumni association find people who have graduated but have not provided any forwarding information. He found these photos, these exact photos on someone’s old social media page. He showed me the profile of this sperm donor’s sister. One of these photos is a school picture, the other is the donor and his big brother.”
I looked at the familiar photos the clinic sent me over twenty years ago and compared them to a printed version of someone’s social media post, which was captioned, “Happy Birthday to my goofy little brother.” Renee Gardner posted her greeting ten years ago. Her photos did look identical to the ones sent to us by Bright Horizons.
I squinted at Charity. “Are you saying you identified the sperm donor?” This was unimaginable. “You think you found your biological father?”
“I can’t be one hundred percent sure yet. I need to convince him to do a DNA test. You might be able to help me.”
“How could I help you? You want me to reach out to him?”
“It won’t be hard. Renee Gardner’s maiden name was Lassiter. The man I’m looking for is Waring Lassiter, who now goes by Congressman Waring White Feathers.”
I sat staring at her while she placed a dozen news photos taken over the past ten years of Waring’s face in front of me. There were markings circling his eyes, brows, the distance between his eyes and nose, his mouth, teeth, and chin, all indications of some facial identification program tying these images to a geometric analysis of the boy in the grade school photo.
The man Arturo Templeton hired me to expose, to help him destroy due to some yet-to-be identified malfeasance, may be my only child’s baby daddy? I am so screwed.
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Ebook is on sale $2.99 for a limited time in early April.
I much prefer spring and autumn due to the milder temperatures for working and playing outdoors. I got engaged on the first day of spring and married on the first day of autumn many years ago, so I think spring awakens a sense of romantic anticipation. The first trip to the gardening center each spring is a commitment to renewed energy and beauty.
Why is your featured book a must-read this spring?
We’re celebrating the 250th anniversary of the start of our country. What better time to enjoy a romantic novel featuring a congressman and an investigative reporter? While the story is not heavy on the politics, I dropped a few Easter eggs about compromise and paying some homage to both blue and red. It also speaks to the dangers of believing unconfirmed stories on social media, and the breakthroughs made possible by DNA testing.
Claudia J. Severin is keeping it real, starting with using her own name. That doesn’t work for all authors, but she writes what she wants to read: love stories with romantic tension between the characters that are full of surprises.
Romance and mysteries were always her go-to reads as a child. Even amateur sleuth Nancy Drew drove her hot beau, Ned around in a roadster. Now she’s writing love stories with more twists than a Red Vine.
If you’re ready to swoon over hunky alpha men and root for the conquering women, join her in a sentimental journey through romantic suspense. It’s as easy as opening the book cover.
You’ll know when you’ve reached that golden age, when suddenly you become a magnet for all sorts of medical interventions. Are your joints stiff? How about a knee or hip replacement? Blood pressure jumped up a few notches? We’re happy to handle that with medications. Cataracts? Let’s banish those and improve your vision instantly. Once you’re on diabetes meds, you’ll be dancing across television screens amid pastel flowers and happy music as long as it takes to list the myriads of side effects.
It’s no mystery why you’re popular with the medical community: Medicare. Most seniors have medical coverage, and although it pays a lower “allowable rate” for procedures, medical providers don’t need to worry whether the patient will pay or default. Medicare comes through.
That brings me to the core question concerning me this week. When your intention is to avoid outliving your money or your health, how much medical interference do you want to tolerate? The medical community, understandably, strives to save your life first and foremost. But an individual patient needs to assess the pros and cons of intervention in the natural aging process.
Here’s the current conundrum: Farmer Husband had an angiogram a week ago. He’d already been through several tests that showed a possible partial blockage such as a calcium score test, stress test, and an echocardiogram. He was told that once they did the angiogram, a diagnostic procedure where they do x-rays using contrast dye to visualize blockages in your blood vessels, they would do an angioplasty to open up narrowed or blocked arteries using a balloon catheter and stent placement. Keep in mind that I’m an author, not a medical professional: this is all written from a patient’s bird’s eye view.
The doctor came back after the angiogram, drew this diagram on a whiteboard, and said Farmer Husband needed a surgical consult because his heart looked like this. One artery leading into the heart was ninety percent blocked, one was eighty percent blocked, and the other was sixty to seventy percent blocked. He didn’t use the stents because they don’t believe they are effective if the blockage is over seventy percent.
They recommended triple bypass surgery and scheduled it three weeks from now. The heart surgeon came in offering to answer questions, but we were too unfamiliar with the subject to know what all we should ask.
Farmer Husband was still loopy from the twilight anesthesia they’d given him for the angiogram.
Since then, we’ve availed ourselves of YouTube, which he considers to be an authority on most any subject. Please note that he has not had any symptoms other than occasional fatigue, has never smoked, but is taking meds for high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes. He’s on the fence whether or not to have the surgery, now that he knows they’ll be cutting through his sternum, and extracting other veins to do the patchwork.
If you’re reading this and have had bypass heart surgery, or have opted not to have it, I’d be happy to hear from you.
Most novels and stories have at least some scenes that require suspense. Others build suspense throughout the story. Your suspense scenes need to contrast with other plot elements so readers feel the emotion of jeopardy. Suspense requires periods of “relief” to re-establish a baseline. Use these techniques as you write suspense scenes:
SELECT POINT-OF-VIEW (POV): Choose one character’s POV, and stick with it. Avoid shattering suspense for the scene or chapter break that a change in POV requires. The protagonist (good guy/hero) or any “needer” are easy choices. A needer, such as the classic “damsel in distress,” can observe without revealing the hero’s strategy. The antagonist (bad guy/villian) POV can work for revealing the extent of danger while keeping the hero unaware.
ADD MYSTERY: Build layers of unknowns. Being tracked by a familiar beast is suspenseful; being tracked by an unknown something is scarier. Unfamiliar settings dispel assumptions and cause discomfort. Establish setting, props, and characters in advance; then worry us with the unexpected. Lock that door in Scene I so when it’s ajar in Scene III, we have to wonder why.
ADD TWISTS: Surprises make readers jump. New complications push the goal further out of reach. Clearing a hurdle only to be denied achievement causes frustration. Two hours tunneling toward the getaway route—then finding it collapsed or flooded—adds to the suspense. Paint into a corner so readers see no solution. Beware: If you make the twists too silly or unbelievable, readers will stop caring. Loss of caring kills suspense.
USE SENSES: Characters feeling suspense enhance their awareness. They rely more on senses. They might hear strange sounds, fear that odd smell, taste the unfamiliar, feel cold or cobwebs or crawlies, or see shapes in the mist. It’s hard to focus when sensory overload keeps turning your head. Great writers use this to stretch the suspense.
SLOW THE MOTION: Manipulate the pace of the writing. When urgent, shorten sentences and paragraphs, spread text down the page, move eyes fast. As suspense returns, go slow-motion. Take it a step at a time. Wait. Keep using senses. Add frustration. Surprise us! Wait… Describe details, searching for clues, mystery… Beware: Don’t break tension with too much information.
STRETCH, DON’T BREAK: Great suspense stretches us taut. It strains to the breaking point. It barely leaves us able to snap back. Set a time limit, a ticking bomb, an antidote beyond reach, but don’t keep extending it. Be careful not to stretch too far, or readers will stop caring. You can withhold the promised payoff only so long. Don’t cheat readers, but do make them wait.
Taut suspense scenes are impossible to stop reading. They engage readers and keep them alert. They add intensity to every kind of story.
Would you like another suspense tip?
Oh my, I’m almost out of time to tell you, and there’s a spider on the keys, something cold crawling up my back…
We see images and reports of wars in foreign lands daily on the TV news. It has desensitized us somewhat to the actual horrors the participants experience, but I’m sure those on the scene are forever affected.
Like many men of his generation, my father fought in World War II. He spoke to us very little about his wartime activity, but I found a letter that he wrote to my grandmother, his mother-in-law, in October of 1942. Dad would have been twenty-one.
Here’s what he wrote:
Been some little time since I received your most welcome and enjoyable letter. Sorry to have been so long in answering. Beg forgiveness on the old alibi grounds of being too busy.
Had a nice old problem to occupy our time, and believe me at this, the rainy season being in New Guinea’s jungle is no privilege. Makes one appreciate the small comforts of our little camp.
Here’s what he probably meant:
It’s wet here. We are not occasionally wet, it’s constant. Wet, muddy day and night for weeks on end. The trees drip eternal moisture, the ground oozes endless rivulets, clothes, food, and equipment, all are at the near saturation point. Just finding a dry piece of paper or a working typewriter was a challenge. The sun might be visible for a few misty minutes every two weeks.
And hot. Feels like 120 degrees in the shade. The mud is ankle-deep, and we’re fording streams constantly. In the jungle, the gas cape is a necessity, like a water-proof poncho, or more like a personal tent and blanket rolled into one. To sleep, we lie on a bed of wet leaves with our heads on our packs, and cover ourselves with the gas cape, hoping not to be discovered by a poisonous snake.
Food consists of rations. We go months without fresh meat, milk, vegetables, eggs, butter, or any of the niceties that are taken for granted where we hail from. On the rare occasion that we are given bread, it is prized like a delicacy.
The army keeps us busy with the business of war. The Australian forces have trapped the Japanese at the Sepik River on the east as we move in on the west. For the most part, we only have to cut off their supplies and many of the enemy soldiers are dying of starvation or disease.
He wrote this:
The big news of the Philippine invasion here did not set nearly as well as the European one. We were all planning on opening that deal. However, have not completely given up hope of seeing both the Japanese and the Philippines. Would be a welcome diversion after seeing nothing but the Fuzzy Wuzzy who are becoming a bore.
He meant this:
We’re stuck in the jungle while the Allied Forces landed in Normandy a few months ago. At least the 151st wants to get in on the action when we return to the Philippines. We’re bored of this place and don’t speak their languages. What’s next?
Later in the letter, Dad wrote this:
Life seems to be pretty disconcerting for post-war planners. Not much one can do about it until this is all over. Think most of us give it a lot of thought, perhaps too much. Have had a couple of boys go whacky worrying about it. Rather a surprise to find out the weakness of some of the people’s mental makeup.
If he’d read this passage later in life, he might have said this instead:
Combat stress is a real thing. PTSD wasn’t treated widely in 1942. Now researchers know that military training makes your responses as automatic as possible, because you may not have time to think in a combat scenario. Reflection and critical thinking are discouraged as a result. Even mental health experts are sometimes mystified by how PTSD affects a soldier or veteran’s psyche.
Note: Within six months of the date of this letter, Dad’s unit was sent to the Philippines, where he received a silver star for assuming command when his commanding officer collapsed, and he reorganized his unit while under attack. He fought on the Zig Zag Trail in Bataan. He also was awarded a Purple Heart when a bullet grazed his temple.
Dirk Hikken Baumfalk married Folka Freese in Norden, Germany, on April 26, 1862. He was twenty-eight, she was twenty-six. I have a porcelain teacup with a painted inscription that looks like “Fuleke Baumfalk geb, Freese.” When we inherited this item through my husband’s family, I assumed it was used at this wedding. Since then, I have been unable to trace any mention of a personalized teacup being used such as this at a wedding.
Today for the first time, I looked at the bottom of the teacup. There is an off-center blue stamp with the letters KPM and what looks like a blue vertical line over the letter P.
That was much easier to trace. The Royal Porcelain Factory in Berlin, Königliche Porzellan-Manufaktur (abbreviated as KPM) was founded in 1763 by King Frederick II of Prussia. KPM is still making porcelain four centuries later. According to Mayfair Gallery, Blog – KPM Porcelain: Guide to Berlin’s Royal Porcelain Factory | Mayfair Gallery 6 September 2018, KPM specialized in porcelain dinner services during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, among other things.
King Frederick granted his factory the use of its now-famous emblem, his royal scepter. Although the markings on the KPM pieces have changed from time to time, after 1837 the letters KPM were added underneath the scepter mark. The KPM factory has produced a vast amount of porcelain for a wide variety of clients, including some one-off commissions.
So, it is possible that there was a group of KPM artists who did “made-to-order” pieces for special occasions, such as weddings. This could have been an expensive keepsake, which may explain why it they took special care to insure its survival despite the fact that Dirk and Folka had eleven children and relocated from Germany to southeastern Nebraska.
While searching for more information, I did chance upon a few other interesting tidbits of German wedding history. First was the legend of the wedding cup. These were made of pewter or other metal, not porcelain. The legend dates back to fifteenth-century Nuremberg. A wealthy nobleman didn’t want his daughter to marry a goldsmith, so he had the prospective groom thrown in the dungeon. Instead of the daughter abandoning her love, she became deathly ill. Her father told the goldsmith if he could fashion a chalice that two people could drink from separately without spilling a drop, the couple could wed.
Then there was the other pre-nuptial activity, Polterabend, which involved porcelain. Supposedly the wedding guests thought it would be a nice gesture to visit the home of the bride and/or groom the night before the wedding ceremony bringing breakable dishes to smash. The racket made by the breaking plates and cups was meant to ward off unwelcome spirits. Then the lucky bride and groom got to sweep up the mess symbolizing their team effort should continue into married life.
Did this tradition keep KPM in the porcelain business all these years? I wish I knew. If anyone reading this has any more insight into the personalized wedding teacups made by KPM, drop me a DM. Danke.
I’m sure many of you have done a DNA test now that they have become widely available for matching up relatives. Even if you haven’t, many television programs focus on how detectives can use DNA to identify suspects in crimes, and how genealogists use genetics to trace the guest stars’ roots. The science becomes more precise every day.
As I reviewed my familial matches from my DNA testing, which was loaded onto two different family tree websites, it reminded me of a story that had been passed along by an elderly relative. She told us that her aunt confessed to giving up twin babies for adoption in California although she lived in Nebraska. This must have been in the 1920s or early 1930s. This woman had no other children, and she was in her forties when she married.
Was there a way to trace the descendants of these children who had been adopted? I had no idea what their names would have been. I doubted that the mother provided her true name on the birth certificate. Even if I could narrow down the location within California, my understanding was that adoptions were sealed about the time these births occurred.
I have had distant relatives contact me through my public family trees. What if some descendants did have some information tying the adopted babies to our family? We have the same surname as the mother had nearly one hundred years ago, and we are living on the land where her family broke sod in the 1800s. Could DNA testing tie up the loose ends of that story?
So, this book is that “what if.” And then I added another. What if I could make it a romance?
