To read the first chapter of The Bright Side of Disaster, scroll down--or, to see that chapter posted by USA Today, click here!

To read an excerpt from Chapter 2 of The Bright Side of Disaster posted by The Dallas Morning News, click here!

And here is a chapter from Katherine's NEW NOVEL, Everyone Is Beautiful, due out February 2009!

Everyone Is Beautiful:

Chapter 1

The morning I decided to change my life, I was wearing sweatpants and an old oxford of Peter’s with a coffee stain down the front. I hadn’t showered because we’d slept the whole family in one motel room the night before, and it was all we could do to get back on the road without someone dropping the remote in the toilet or pooping on the floor.

We had just driven from across the country to start Peter’s new job. Houston, Texas to Cambridge, Massachusetts. I’d had the kids in our ten-year-old Subaru the whole drive, two car seats and a booster across the back. Alexander kept taking Toby’s string cheese, and the baby, except when he was sleeping, was fussing. Peter drove the U-Haul van on the theory that if it broke, he’d know how to fix it.

On the road, I was sure I had the short end of the stick, especially during the dog hours of Tennessee. But now Peter was hauling all our belongings up three flights of narrow stairs, and I was at the park, on a blanket in the late-afternoon shade, breastfeeding Baby Sam. Peter had to be hurting. Even with our new landlord helping him, it was taking all day. And I was sitting in the shade, just waiting for him to call on the cell phone when he was ready for us to come home. Or as close to home as a curtainless apartment stacked high with boxes could be.

We’d been at the park since midmorning, and we were running out of snacks. Alexander and Toby were galloping top speed, as they always did. I’m not even sure they realized that they were in a new park. They acted like we might as well have been at home, in Houston, the only place they’d ever lived. They acted like the last five days of driving hadn’t even registered. I, in contrast, was aching with loss.

I didn’t like this park. Too clean, too brand-new, too perfect. The parks at home had character—monkey bars fashioned like cowboys, gnarled Crape Myrtle trunks for climbing, discarded Big Wheels with no seats. And we’d known them backwards and forwards—every tree knot, every mud hole, every kid.

This park, today, felt forced. It was trying too hard.

I surveyed the moms. Not one of them, I decided, was a person I wanted to meet. And just as I was disliking them all and even starting to pity them for having no idea what they were missing, park wise, Toby—my middle boy, my sandy-haired, blue-eyed, two-year-old flirt—watched a younger kid make a move for the truck in his hand, and then, unbelievably, grabbed that kid’s forearm and bit it.

The little boy screamed as Toby pulled the truck to his chest. “My truck!” Toby shouted. (He always pronounced “truck” like “fuck,” but that was, perhaps, another issue.) And then, of course, all hell broke loose.

I jumped up, startling the baby out of a nap and off my boob. I ran across the park, wailing baby on my shoulder, shirt unbuttoned, shouting, “Toby! No!” Toby saw my horrified face and instantly started to cry, himself—though he was no match for the little kid he’d bitten, who was now screaming like he was on fire. His mother, too, had sprinted from her perch, dropping her purse on the way, and was now holding him as if he’d been shot. “Is it bleeding?” she kept asking the boy. “Is it bleeding?”

It was clearly not bleeding. Isn’t that the number one rule of parenting? Don’t Make Things Worse?

All the other parents, meanwhile, had gathered around us to see what the heck was going on. My shirt was hanging open, the baby was still shrieking, and I remembered from one of those parenting books I used to read—back when I used to do that type of thing—that when a child bites, the parent of the biter must give attention to the bitee. I turned toward the little boy and reached out to comfort him, and, at the same moment, his mother actually tightened her grip and rocked away from my hand so that I missed him altogether. As if I myself had done the biting. As if I were about to attack again.

I regrouped. “I’m so sorry about that, sweetheart!” I said to the son, who was not, you might say, in a listening mode. Next, I tried his mother. “I’m so sorry!” I said. “He’s never done that before!” She was staring at me, but not at my eyes, and it took me a second to realize that it was, in fact, my uncovered magenta nursing bra she was looking at. I buttoned my shirt and started to try again when Alexander took that moment to push Toby down and take the very truck that had started all this commotion.

Toby let out a wail like a scalded dog, and Alexander threw the truck with all his might into a nearby bush. “No biting!” he said, pointing at Toby. “Biting is rude!” Toby got up to run after the truck and soon they were both tangled in the bush, wrestling for it.

Here was a moment when I was truly outnumbered. With two kids, in moments like this, you at least have two arms. With three kids, you’re just screwed. “Stop it! Both of you!” I shouted, sounding just like my own mother had years ago when she had been outnumbered, too.

And then, I did the only thing I could think of. I set Baby Sam down on the sidewalk—at ten months, he wasn’t crawling yet, or even thinking about it—stepped into the bush, took the truck, and wedged it high in the branch of a tree. Then I grabbed the two boys by the scruffs of their necks, dragged them to our blanket, sprinted back over to my now-almost-purple-with-hysteria Baby Sam, picked him up, put him on the boob as I stood there, and then marched back to where the boys were.

“Anybody who moves off this blanket gets a spanking,” I said in my meanest mom voice, sounding for all the world like a 1930s gangster. It was an empty threat. Peter and I weren’t spankers. And I wasn’t about to spank anybody in front of the still-gaping crowd of Cambridge parents ten feet away. But, honestly, what else was I going to do? Send the boys to their room? I wasn’t even entirely sure where our house was.

The bitee and his mother eventually gathered themselves up and limped out of the park, giving us the cold shoulder the whole way. It occurred to me that park etiquette probably dictated we should be the ones to leave. But, since we were waiting on Peter, we stayed. We ate our remaining snacks and drank our remaining juice boxes. Alexander and Toby soon forgot about the whole thing—though not until after I’d given them the best talking-to I could muster about how we all had to work together in this time of transition—and they were back on the swings in no time. Alexander, sweetly, got down from again and again to give Toby another push.

The old crop of parents trickled out, replaced by the after-work crowd. This batch was preppier and wealthier—pushing Bugaboos and carrying 200 dollar diaper bags. One woman caught my eye as someone I might like to be friends with. She wore stylishly frayed khakis and clompy leather sandals. I kept an eye on her and willed her to come over and talk to me. The bitee’s mother excepted, I hadn’t talked to an adult since ten o’clock that morning, when we’d said goodbye to Peter.

And then she did come over. Her daughter toddled up to our blanket wanting to look at Baby Sam, who was now eating from a spilled constellation of cheerios in front of him. The mom stood beside us, and I squinted up at her in the late afternoon sun. I could tell she wanted to ask me a question. And from the way she was composing herself, I guessed it was a good one. I was hoping for, “You’re new here, aren’t you?” or something like it. Something that might lead to a real moment of exchange between the two of us, or, at the very least, a phone number from her and an invitation to call. I’d only been away from home six days, but already I was hungry for friends.

She did have a question for me, it turned out. And it was not about diapers or wipes. Here’s what it was: Tucking her hair behind her ears, she squatted down next to her toddler—who was now picking up our Cheerios one by one, too—took a gander at me, sitting next to my ten-month-old, and said, “When are you due?”

Here is my policy on that question: Don’t ever ask it. Even if you’re talking to a woman who is clearly about to have quintuplets. Just don’t ask. Because if you’re wrong, you’ve just said one of the most horrible things you can say to a woman. If you’re wrong, you’ve ruined her week—possibly her month and even her year. If you’re wrong, she will go home and cry, and not even be able to tell her husband what she’s crying about. He’ll ask over and over as she lies face down on their bed, and she’ll have no choice but to say, “It’s nothing,” and then, “Please just leave me alone.”

This woman in the khakis, she was wrong. And I did go home and cry, but not until much later, because just at the moment she spoke, before I had even settled on a response, another woman approached us and leaned in to peer at me.

“Lanie?” she asked.

I met her eyes. I was pretty certain I didn’t know a single person in Massachusetts, and, so, given the circumstances, it was amazing, even to me, that I recognized her. It was Amanda Hayes from Houston, my high school’s favorite cheerleader, and, even fifteen years later, she had not changed at all. If anything, she looked better. But still exactly as blond, lean, and smooth as she had been all those years ago. She might as well have been carrying pom poms.

“Hi!” I shouted, too loudly. “Hello!”

I might have been fueled by my fight-or-flight reaction to the woman in khaki pants, but I stood up and gave Amanda Hayes, who I’d barely known in high school, a hug. Then I threw myself into a kind of conversation-on-steroids with her, acting far more delighted to see her than I might have otherwise. I would have been friendly in any situation, just as we’d always been friendly to each other during assigned seating in Chorus, but I might not have been quite as riveted.

I was hoping that, witnessing a reunion of two women who had a real connection to each other, the when-are-you-due girl might feel out of place and wander off. She didn’t. Her child continued to eat my cheerios, and she continued to stand there, smiling as if she were a part of the conversation, as if the three of us moms were friends, drinking mojitos and whiling away another afternoon with the kiddos.

I asked Amanda every single question I could think of, trying to fill any conversational pauses before Khaki Pants started up again with her pregnancy topic. What was Amanda doing in town? How long had she lived here? What were her thoughts on Middle East peace? Where did she get those great sunglasses?

And Amanda, bless her, met my enthusiasm for our chat head-on. She answered all my questions, and volleyed several back at me, and just when I was starting to feel like we’d built a conversational wall that the woman in khakis couldn’t scale, Amanda’s daughter, Gracin—who was almost four and, it turned out, exactly one day older than Alexander—came running over to ask for a band-aid.

“Did you get an ouchie?” Amanda asked.

Gracin pointed at her arm. There was no ouchie.

“Oh.” Amanda peeled a band-aid from a stash in her pocket, then put it on Gracin, who ran off. Watching her go, I noticed she had band-aids all down her legs.

“She loves band-aids,” Amanda told us, with a what-are-you-gonna-do shrug.

And then, in that moment, Amanda paused to gaze at her daughter, now climbing up the ramp of the slide, and to take one of those small moments that parents sometimes indulge in when their children are a little at a distance. She was admiring her, and possibly even wondering what stroke of insane luck had brought that exact child into her life, and feeling grateful for all her blessings. Amanda got caught up watching her daughter, and I got caught up watching Amanda, and so I was a split-second late cranking up the conversation again—and into that little gap, Khaki Pants leaned in, touched my sleeve, and said, “So. When are you due?”

To pre-order Everyone Is Beautiful, click the yellow box (above)!!!

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Here is the first chapter for Katherine's debut novel ::

The Bright Side of Disaster: 

Chapter 1

The end began with a plane crash. Just before midnight on a Tuesday in February. A girl I'd never met or even heard of died, along with her miniature Dachshund (under the seat) and a planeload of passengers in the kind of commuter plane I'll never fly in again. I've pictured it a hundred times now: the quiet hum of the motor, the sleeping passengers, the sudden jolt, the cabin steward thrown sideways before he could finish his instructions. In my mind, it always looks like a movie, because I have nothing else to go on.

That night, I was asleep, safe on the ground, miles away in Texas in my hand-me-down bed, nestled under a patchwork quilt made out of ties from the seventies.

Since getting pregnant, I fell asleep before the double digits. It was something my not-quite-yet-husband, Dean, teased me about. He was a night owl. And I had been one, too. These days, a month before my due date, I was in bed with my swollen ankles up on pillows as soon as the dishes were done. He was out in the living room with his headphones on, likely playing air guitar.

In a slightly different situation, I would have heard about the crash on the news and thought no more about it. I am sure that girl meant many things to many people. And though I didn't know it at the time, and I would not have recognized her if she'd knocked on my door, she meant a lot to me as well—in a roundabout kind of way.

The day Dean came home from the office with the news, I'd been out in the garage for hours pricing things with little orange stickers. I'd quit my job at a fancy antiques store a few weeks back at the urging of the owner. She knew I was planning to quit after the baby came, but she decided it didn't make sense to wait. She took me aside one morning and said that I was, simply, too big. "When you can knock over a piece of Stickley with your belly," she said, "it's time to call it a day." She gave me some coupons for a mani-pedi, promised she'd always give me her dealer discount, and nudged me out the door.

So I was home. And planning our upcoming garage sale with checklists, spreadsheets and a color-coded map of my yard. At thirty-six weeks and counting, what else was I going to do with myself?

When Dean walked in with a pizza, I was slumped over the aqua dinette in our kitchen, drinking orange juice and trying for an end-of-the-day rally. He popped open a beer and swigged down about half the bottle. His tie was wrinkled. Really wrinkled, like it'd been on the floor of his car for days before he'd discovered it. I wondered if it would be my job to see to such things when we were married.

He pulled two plates out of the cupboard, and just as I was thinking how much I loved it when Dean brought me pizza, they slid right out of his grip and shattered on the floor.

"Fuck!" he shouted. "Fuck!" He turned and slammed his palm against the cabinet.

I didn't say anything. After five years with him, I knew to lay low. My best friend, Meredith, and I called these moments "occasional eruptions of inappropriate rage." They were, you might say, a part of his charm.

He pressed his head against the cabinets, and I set about picking up. I had to bend over my belly to reach the shards, which made great clanks at they hit the metal bottom of the garbage can. When I went for the broom, he moved to his chair and sat down. Then he said, "A girl from work died last night."

"Died?" I said. "How?"

"Plane crash."

"Big plane or little plane?" I asked.

"Puddle jumper," he said.

I finished sweeping and leaned the broom against the counter. "Who was it?" I asked, sitting down.

"Just a girl. She worked in graphics." He lifted a slice and took a tentative bite, as if it might not go down well.

"Was she somebody you knew?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said, mouth full. "I definitely knew her." Her cubicle was around the corner from his, and she - her name was Tara - used to stop in and say hi. She had worked there for a year. She had been planning to come see his band.

We chewed for a while. Then, not sure what else to say, I shook my head and said, "I thought plane crashes only happened to people on the news."

"Well," he said. "She's on the news now."

After dinner, we sat out on the porch swing, as we did many nights. Our house was in one of the few historic neighborhoods in Houston that hadn't been bulldozed for townhomes or mini-malls. By some mystery, folks in our neighborhood were restoring their houses instead of replacing them. Living here was like living in another place in time.

On good nights, we'd go on talking after dinner. But tonight he kept quiet, nursing beer number three. He was holding the memo they'd passed out at work with details about the funeral and where to send donations. It had this girl Tara's picture on it.

She was Asian. Shiny, straight hair and kissy lips. The picture was from her company ID photo, but even so, she was smiling as if the guy who'd taken the photo had been flirting with her. She certainly seemed very alive. And she was the kind of pretty that wasn't up for discussion.

"She's pretty," I said, looking over his arm.

"You think so?"

"Dean," I said, giving him a look that said, Come on. At the time, a little lie like that seemed sweet to me. I assumed he was trying to be a good fiancé by pretending not to know she was pretty. Like he only had eyes for me. "Yes," I said. "She's pretty."

"Was," he said.

"Was."

I tried to start up some other conversation after that. I told him that my friend Meredith had bought a leash for her cat. I told him about a report I'd heard on a hurricane in the Gulf. I told him I'd heard a woman singing a version of "Hush Little Baby" on the gospel radio station that afternoon, and the sound had brought tears to my eyes. But the words came out of my mouth like sparks and fizzled before they hit the ground.

Some nights were like this, when Dean just couldn't rise to the conversational challenge. Meredith said he was moody, which was true. But we all had our shortcomings. Still, if we weren't going to talk, I wished he would rub my neck, or hold my hand. But he didn't.

Dean wanted to take a shower, so I followed him inside. I put on my Don’t Mess With Texas maternity nightshirt before I headed into the kitchen to clean up, and when I got there, I noticed the girl's picture was on the fridge. Dean had put it up with butterfly magnets, one placed in each corner. Very few things on our overloaded fridge merited more than one magnet. Not our list of frequently called numbers, not the picture of us at a wildflower garden on our road trip to Austin, not the liner notes for Dean's band's only album. But there she was, securely placed and there to stay. I wasn't sure I wanted her there, and I thought about taking her down and sticking her in a drawer with the takeout menus.

But I left her. She had the kind of eyes that followed you around the room. I'd thought that only happened with paintings in museums, but here she was, in my kitchen, watching me. While I did the dishes. While I took my prenatal vitamin. While I did a final sweep for pieces of broken plate. She even watched the door for my return while I took the pizza box outside to the trash. Back inside, I turned the deadbolt, started the dishwasher, and stood with my hand on the light switch. We held each other's gaze for a few minutes, and then I left her in the dark.