September's Balloon

ISBN: 978-1-84747-761-3
Published: 2008
Pages: 92
Key Themes: fiction, depression, anxiety, family, relationships

Description

September’s Balloon is a novel written in first person and told through the eyes of Susan Nolan, the thirty-five year old narrator. Susan is afflicted with anxiety and panic, and struggles with her recently closed company, loss of financial independence and a stale and isolating marriage.

A childhood loss taunts her additionally, and with no emotional support from her husband or from her wealthy and disconnected family, she spirals into depression. She is the mother of her six-year-old daughter named September, who sends a message to God, by balloon, driven by her innate and child-like faith.

September’s parents, Susan and Matt Nolan are at first amused and delighted with their daughter’s idea of sending her rainbow drawing to God as a thank you for the rainbows he’s given to her, until their small town, several weeks later, witness a rainbow of phenomenal proportions and contemplate they’ve witnessed a miracle.

As the story progresses, so do the balloons as one becomes larger when Susan, having an unbearable fear of heights, schedules a hot air balloon ride for her daughter’s birthday.

This is a fiction novel, however, Susan’s emotional disease is a constant current throughout the story and the symptoms and experiences deriving from her illness told accurately and honestly from her viewpoint.

The story’s interesting momentum throughout will grasp the reader’s attention. Sadness, humor, conflict, and unexplainable occurrences from September’s wonderment and faithful belief for answers spawns hope and encourage change for her parent’s Susan and Matt.

About the Author

Kathy Flanary Nelson was born at Camp Lejeune, NC and later relocated with her young military family to attend first grade in Alexandria, Virginia. Shortly after, they moved back to North Carolina where she has lived most of her life.

She found she loved creative writing the day her boss asked her to write an employment recommendation for an employee she hardly knew. She completed the project that night and turned it into her boss the next day who astonishingly praised her writing skills. It also landed a company employee a promotion, but no raises for herself as she recalls.

Kathy achieved plenty and enjoyed diversity and challenge in the workplace before she found her entrepreneurial spirit, then started a competitive business. She contemplated obstacles along the way but never thought she’d become expecting with her first born only eight months into her new endeavor.

With a newborn business and a newborn child, she found herself pulled between the two but managed to continue her business, though downscaled from her original goal, to allow working from home and to care for her daughter during the early years.

Kathy will tell you that it is a mother’s personal choice to leave an outside career for stay-at-home motherhood and that you can’t fight what you’re heart is telling you. She will also tell you that life-changing and stressful situations in life will also uncover new strengths and talents.

It was through that time, when she altered her lifestyle dramatically, that she wrote her first poem, “This is Life”, reflecting the feelings of a new mother. She followed “This is Life”, with a collection of over eighty poems with seventy-five of them published. Added to her work since then are five children’s picture books, one of which became published in 2008, entitled, “You Make Me Want to Sing”, (Music Stories), two novels, one for young adults and one for women’s literature, entitled, “September’s Balloon”, which is coming soon and like the majority of Ms. Nelson’s work was inspired by her daughter. She is currently working on her third novel and doesn’t intend to stop the venue of writing that gave her refuge and one she’s grown to love.

Book Extract

Sunday came again, and another week had passed into the second week of July. I had applied for work for two months with no success. It’s difficult to seek employment with a six-year-old at your side. I’d have to leave these chestnut walls behind and find a fresh house with new air where the sun shines on each corner and with sky lights in every room. I loved light and but the dark walls cast too many shadows. I loved the day and the night but these days had become oblivious, running one into the other and I seldom found a reason to know the day of the week. This place had become a cave and I’d have to make enough money to get us out of here and to support us both.

Again and lying in bed for hours after daybreak I wanted to go back to sleep and give the day to subconscious and strange dreams, but I knew what I had to do and I would have to be at his office by eleven.

Showering seemed a task, but I didn’t want to appear derelict as I begged. My hopes for a photography studio had dwindled along with my sparse clientele just as the money had dwindled since my employment agency closed eight months ago.

I needed money to get through July. I would have to get a brotherly loan and turn my camera equipment over for collateral. I would have it no other way and neither would he. So, today, I would endure every prod my dear brother could deliver from his snide and boyish little head.

I found him to be intellectually numb, while others thought him charming and obvious to all having an insatiable feel for money. This was his way, his acceptable way, Alex McKay, of Graceville, Va.

I made sure my lens’ were tucked securely in their pockets and then picked up the camera. I wrapped it in a soft cloth napkin like a swaddling blanket then tucked it inside the case. I could not believe I had come to the point of selling off my things. I’d worked hard for this camera. My wedding rings were the next to go. I considered pawning as undignified as a hillbilly in a door-less out house without a roll. Matt wouldn’t mind where I got money as long as I had some money to flow.

Alex would find more value in the camera. He knew photography had meaning for me. I’m sure my ambitions to pick myself up and start anew after a failed business had rumored through family channels. There were no confidentialities within our family and I suspected he knew it meant more to me than wedding rings. That would ensure his payment and the return of my camera. A loan to his fallen sister would guarantee ecstasy for his consuming ego under the guise of a good deed before our parents. He is the modern day Pharisee wearing cacky pants and a polo shirt. And they found his antics playful but truth be known to Alex, also annoying. I simply recognized a rascal, malicious and cunning.