Dream Bathroom

Sometimes I fantasize about what my perfect bathroom would look like and the one thing that is consistent in all my dreams is that I would have a master bath without a bathtub.

I always shower. I can't even tell you the last time I took a bath. It just seems like a huge waste of time and I'd have to hop in the shower anyway to wash my hair, so why bother? And yet every house I've had has had a tub. :-(

Tubs collect dust and they take up valuable real estate that could be purposed for something more useful--like a shower that is large enough for a seat and totally luxurious. Or how about a slightly bigger shower and a linen closet that isn't taking up space in my walk-in closet? (This is making me insane.) Or a vanity where I could sit down to mess with makeup and such. Said vanity could even have big drawers, something my current master doesn't have.

This house has two other bathtubs, so it shouldn't hurt resale and no tub would make me ecstatically happy.

Of course, I can't afford to redo my bathroom and so I'll have to live with this tub. Sigh. But it is nice to dream.

One Harsh Word

I saw a poster today that said: "One Harsh Word Can Destroy a Dream."

This was on Pinterest and my first inclination was to pin it, but then I thought about it a little longer. There's a difference between dreams that are nice little fantasies and dreams that are passions. As an example, I've always dreamed of being an artist and sketching effortlessly. However this falls under the wistful fantasy category because I'm not willing to put in the effort or time it would take to improve.

On the other hand, writing is a passion. As many times as I walked away from it, I always returned and I was always willing to put in the work I needed to improve. Discouraging words? I guess rejections fall into this category. But even with rejections, I wasn't able to stop writing. I always came back to it.

So when I think about someone giving up a dream because of one discouraging word, I can't help but think that they must not have wanted that dream badly enough.

There's a really great video on YouTube called: The Last Lecture - Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. If you haven't watched it, I highly recommend it. But the man speaking (Dr. Randy Pausch) said something really profound for me. "The walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough."

So if one word can stop someone's dream, then I tend to believe it wasn't something they really wanted. That doesn't mean we should go around and stomp on someone's dreams, but it does mean that if someone says, "You'll never be a writer" that the answer should be, "Oh, yeah? Watch me." If the answer is, "he's right, I'll never be a writer" well, then that person was never meant to write because it's a tough, tough field for those who can't handle discouraging words.

Dream On

A few years ago, I blogged about pursuing dreams (not here, but on a different blog). I wasn't prepared for the angry responses I received for a post that I thought would be encouraging. It's entirely possible that I didn't write it well enough, but watching the Olympics got me thinking about chasing dreams again.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be an Olympic figure skater. It was my dream. At six, my parents signed me up for lessons. Unfortunately, the class was too big and the teacher didn't seem to care about actually helping students learn to skate. It was more like he was there and that was it.

Despite my disappointment, I kept at it because I wanted this. At least until I fell during class and broke my leg. The tibia. But the dream didn't die, and even though it took me three years to work up my courage again, I got back on the ice. My friends taught me how to skate this time and I had a blast. So much fun that I wanted to go the next day.

And I fell and broke my left ankle.

The dream of being an Olympic skater died then. I wasn't willing to risk breaking a leg for a third time. But you know what? Just because that dream was gone, didn't mean I didn't find other dreams.

When I was in eighth grade, I discovered fiction writing and fell in love. I always had stories in my head, but now I'd found a way to share them with others. I found a new dream--to be a professional writer.

Selling my first book might have satisfied the basic dream, but then I grew it, let it become more. My goal now is to be successful enough at writing to be able to do it full time. I'm still chasing that dream, but I know that if I ever reach it, I'll come up with a new dream because life is a journey, not a destination and I need something to shoot toward.

So when I got the backlash from my blog post years ago, I didn't understand why people couldn't/wouldn't pursue their dreams. If someone is married with children and their dream is to run off and backpack solo through Europe for a year, well, maybe it's time to adjust that to visit Europe for a couple of weeks with the spouse once the kids are in college.

If the dream is to be an Olympic gymnast and someone is in their 30s, well, that boat sailed since most gymnasts are in their teens, but this is where I would find a new dream, like switching from Olympic figure skater to writer. Do I still feel a pang when I watch figure skating? Yes, but I also know that I'm not strapping on skates again for any reason and I let the regret go. Life is about choices and I made mine.

Dreams shouldn't be stagnant. There is nothing wrong with finding a new dream, even if it's simply taking an online class to learn something that's always been an interest. If circumstances decree that the original dream isn't feasible, then what's a new dream that is doable?

Just as an FYI, I turned off comments on this post. This is something I never do, but I simply don't have time or energy to deal with anger if I managed to say things wrong again.

Sometimes the Weird Is In My Head

Sometimes the weird stuff just happens. This one came from a conversation at work. Sort of. :-)

I was talking to one of the guys last week about how I'd only had one hour of sleep and complaining about how I always start the week sleep deprived because I can't sleep on Sunday nights. He suggested melatonin. Hmm, I thought. It might be worth a try.

So Sunday night, I took a melatonin, went to bed, and fell right to sleep. I was only a little groggy on Monday morning. Here's the weirdness part of the whole thing.

I get up and as I'm walking out of my bedroom, I think, I know Google Images will have pictures of the inside of a NASCAR race car. I'll have the information in no time. And then I had a few sips of coffee (still groggy from the melatonin) and thought, What story am I writing that I need a picture of the inside of a race car?

The answer was I'm not writing that story. I have no idea what I was dreaming last night, but apparently it involved me working on a NASCAR story. This isn't going to happen.

Not to offend any racing fans, but I find auto racing to be almost as boring as golf. Driving around in an oval? Um, okay. If I ever wrote a sports story, it would involve baseball, something I enjoy and know a lot about. But I would like to know what my dream was.

1776

Last night, I watched 1776 a musical with William Daniels, Howard Da Silva, and Ken Howard. It's actually one of my favorites, but that wasn't what I planned on watching on an October weekend. Unfortunately, what I did plan to see left me bored, and after studying my DVD collection, this was the title that I felt like watching.

A strange thing occurred to me as I watched it. I suddenly remembered all the times I'd been asked: If you could meet anyone living or dead, who would it be? It's a question that I've never had an answer for because I'm not into celebrity and I couldn't think of anything else. Last night it dawned on me that I wish I could have gone back and talked to the founding fathers--John Adams, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock, and the others.

Wouldn't it be cool to travel back in time and sit in a corner to watch the Continental Congress debate independency? To find out first hand what they envisioned, what they were thinking?

I understand that the real men are unlikely to resemble the way they were portrayed in the musical, but I still think it would hugely interesting. Jefferson was in his early 30s. Adams his early 40s. And they were part of one hell of a creation.

And when I went to bed after it was over, I dreamed about aliens invading Earth and blowing things up ala Independence Day, another favorite movie. :-) I don't know how my subconscious transposed a sweet musical with an ET invasion, but hey, at least it wasn't dull.

If Not Now, When?

I'm reminded again of the fragility of life. This morning I learned that a woman I work with and have known for years was taken to the hospital yesterday. She'd had a stroke and was continuing to have strokes at the hospital. The last update I've received said that she's doing well and undergoing surgery for a blockage in her neck. I've been stunned all day. It was a reminder that none of us know how much time we have on this Earth.

And it reminded me of the "some day" people. The ones who have a dream, something they always wanted to do--some day.

I blogged once on another site about pursuing dreams and was amazed at the rancor that showed up in the comments. Here I thought it was an uplifting and empowering post and I was hearing things that were so negative about the topic that I was shocked. Of course there are limitations. If you've always wanted to be an Olympic gymnast and you're out of your teens, that boat has sailed. Or if you want to be a jet pilot, but the cost of the flying lessons would be a hardship for your family, then of course, you can't pursue it right now. That's not what I meant.

Because I'm an author, I've had a lot of people come up to me and say, "I've always wanted to write a book." I used to reply with, "then you should!" And that's when I got the yeah, buts. There are a billion excuses you could put in the blank, but the most frequent was yeah, but I don't have time. I used to tell them that there's never time to write, that you have to make it. Like instead of watching some lame reality show, spend that hour writing. There'd be more excuses. Always. And that's when I stopped trying to encourage people to pursue their dream of writing. When they tell me know that they want to write a book some day, I tell them that's great and leave it at that.

If they're not passionate enough about something they call their dream, there's nothing I can do to change that for them.

I know pursuing dreams isn't easy and I've spent a lot of years in my life not writing seriously or even not writing at all. I understand the fear of pursuing a dream and failing. Or succeeding. I also know that people who do pursue their dreams draw anger and animosity from those who haven't had the courage to chase their passion. Maybe it's because they don't want to see someone taking the chance they're too frightened to take themselves. I don't know.

What I do know is that if you've always wanted to write, or learn to dance, or draw, or learn to crochet, then you should do it. Now. Life is short. My coworker's sudden stroke is proof of that.

Even In My Dreams

Sometimes people ask me why I write action/adventure romance. I usually end up saying something about Speed and The Terminator being my favorite movies, but it goes beyond that I think. Last night I had this dream...

The hero and heroine are strangers who have to work together if they have any hope of getting out of this dangerous situation alive. For reasons that aren't clear in the dream, they're both forced to go to a warehouse and receive a shipment. They don't know what it is, but it's in a large crate.

While they're waiting, a blond woman strikes up a conversation with them. She's waiting for her own reasons and she ends up giving them her shipment as well. After the crate the h/h are waiting for arrives and is offloaded, the bad guys don silver, asbestos suits that will protect them from very high heat and try to incinerate my couple. The woman they were talking to is killed, but the h/h jump in a truck (conveniently loaded with their crate and the dead woman's) and make a mad dash escape.

The bad guys pursue and for the rest of the dream, my hero and heroine have to work together and trust each other to continue to allude the bad guys. When they finally come out victorious, they walk off into the sunrise, ready to start the rest of their lives together.

If there were more details of the mad dash chase and the victory over the bad guys, they're long gone. Maybe driven away by the alarm or maybe they were just never there. Dreams can be funny that way.

But this is part of why I think I love action and adventure in my romance stories--I'm just wired that way. I totally wanted to just lie in bed this morning and immerse myself in this dream. Replay parts of it, work out who the h/h were and maybe see if there was something that could become a story here. There isn't now, not from the dream alone, but if I played with it and went, "what if...?" then maybe it could become a story.

I have a lot of dreams like this--when I remember my dreams. Some of them have been prodded and shaped until I could write something down, although none of the books I've actually written have been dream-induced. Some of them never become more than a bedtime story I tell myself before I fall asleep.

I used to think about my Work In Progress while I laid in bed waiting to fall asleep, but I stopped doing that when it led to me not sleeping. Instead of relaxing me, my mind would rev up and try to work out problems and I'd either have to get up and write the solutions/words down or I wouldn't work them out and get so tense as I continued to try that I'd end up with a couple hours worth of sleep. But I always imagine stories to myself while I'm lying in bed; I have since I was a child and I can't sleep without them. My solution is to tell myself stories that I know I'll never write. There's no stress to unravel plot issues, no need to remember the words so that I can write them down, no driving need to pop out of bed and work. It's perfect.

And now I have a new story. Tonight, I'll toy with the dream and entertain myself with it.

Chasing Dreams

I'm a big believer in chasing dreams. Not unachievable dreams like being an Olympic gymnast if you're 60 years old, but doable dreams. Real dreams. From the time I was 14, mine was to be a writer, to tell stories and share them with others. Dreams are good.

But I'm not going to talk about me today. I want to talk about someone who never, ever gave up on his dream even when it would have been easy for him to do it. The man's name is Bobby Scales and he's an infielder currently on the Chicago Cubs roster.

Bobby Scales has been in the minor leagues for ten years. He played 1013 games, had 3303 at bats, and 942 hits. He had to supplement his income by substitute teaching in the off season in his home down in Georgia, but he still pursued his dream. He never gave up.

I have the utmost respect for this man. He's 31 years old and kids younger than him were called up. How many players has he watched come and go while he toiled away in the minors?

Here's what he said about why he didn't give up:

"A lot of different things," Scales said. "From the baseball side of it, just a belief I could play. It may sound hokey but I knew in the depths of my soul that I could play this game. I felt I could help a big league team win games in whatever capacity that a manager saw fit to use me. I knew that. That's part of it and the support I got from my family. My wife, my mom and dad have been unbelievable.

And in his first major league game with the Cubs, Scales got his first hit, scored his first run, and struck out for the first time. In eight big league games, he's hitting .333, has 1 home run, 5 RBIs.

He achieved his dream after ten years of working hard. That's a pretty darn big deal. Are you still pursuing yours?

Random, Totally Random

I needed a blog topic for tonight and was getting desperate. I searched news headlines for articles I could maybe talk about about, but nothing grabbed me. Then I thought, well, maybe I'll head over to Google and search for someone who has suggestions about interesting blog topics. That was no help. My next idea was to use the "I feel Lucky" button on Google. For some reason, I thought it would take me to a random website, but unfortunately that isn't what it does. It takes you to the first website listed in your search results. Pfft. That wasn't what I was looking for.

Then I googled "random website" and lo and behold, there are sites out there that do just that--take one to a random website. The first one I found is called Random Website Dot Com and the other was Memory Cloud/Random Website Generator.

In my exploration for a topic, I was taken to a website with wallpapers--some cool ones, an animal rights group website, zombie nation, and project censored, the news that didn't make the news. Some of these were meh, and others were interesting and I've bookmarked them to explore later. But while I did find some cool stuff, I still had no blog topic. :-(

Then I was taken to the Inspirational Quotes website. Now this is something I can go with. I love inspirational quotes. So my quote of the day is:

If you have built castles in the air,
your work need not be lost;
that is where they should be.
Now put the foundations under them.

~Henry David Thoreau

Is that cool or what? To me, what he's saying is that the dreamer should do more than merely dream. He's saying that the dreamer should do the work necessary to make his/her dreams come true. I totally believe that. I can't imagine looking back and having regrets.

Now granted, some dreams are impossible, but I'm not talking about things like becoming an Olympic gymnast or something that would bankrupt a Rockefeller. I'm talking about pursuing reasonably achievable dreams. Like writing. Go for it!

Childhood Dreams

This summer, not long after I bought my new iPod, I was over at iTunes U and saw one of the top free downloads was called Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. Cool, I thought, and downloaded it. For months now, it's sat on my iPod without my making any effort to listen to it. What kept stopping me? It was an 1:16 minutes long. Yesterday, though, I finally played it--and was blown away.

This is one of the most wonderful, uplifting lectures I've ever heard. I've already listened to it twice and I printed out the transcript--That's how incredible it was.

The lecture was given by Dr. Randy Pausch, a professor from Carnegie Mellon University. You might have heard about him on the national news over the summer when he passed away from pancreatic cancer. Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams has another title, one that it's better known by--The Last Lecture.

Before you think, wow, how depressing was that speech, I can tell you it was the farthest thing from depressing. Dr. Pausch was upbeat and funny. He didn't talk about cancer, he talked about dreams: His own, how to enable others to pursue and achieve their dreams, and what he'd learned. I'm going to recap a couple of things that I found especially important.

...the brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.

Wow! That's just incredibly profound and very true.

I've always wanted to draw. I can see beautiful pencil sketches in my mind, but my attempts at drawing are, frankly, pathetic and I'd do one or two, see the results, and give up. The brick wall there was my lack of interest in practicing, in putting in the time and effort it would take to get good enough because I didn't want it badly enough.

Now let's look at writing. I started my first story when I was in 8th grade and I kept at it no matter what. From time to time, I'd let it lapse, but I always found my way back to it, and if something wasn't good enough, I kept working on it until it was. And if I couldn't fix that story, I'd move on to the next and the next. I was on the school newspaper my freshman year, the school yearbook my Sophomore, junior and editor my senior year. I majored in copywriting at the University of MN. I kept at it. My first rejection in my mid-twenties stopped me for about six months, but then I decided that if the editor thought I wrote two-dimensional characters, then by God, I'd learn and grow and become good at characterization. And one of the comments I get over and over from readers, reviewers, and others is how real my characters seem. I love hearing it.

Brick walls. Check. I didn't want the art badly enough, but I did passionately want the writing and no brick wall stopped me for too long.

So my next piece of advice is, you just have to decide if you’re a Tigger or and Eeyore.

This is something I need a lot of reminders about--attitude. I tend to be a glass-half-empty person and I'm farther toward Eeyore than I'd like, but I can learn and change and grow. I can take a step back when I'm going down the Eeyore path and try to be more like Tigger.

I'm going to stop here, but the entire speech is filled with great life lessons. It's definitely worth a listen and I've been telling everyone and I do mean everyone that they have to watch this video. Most of it is audio, so if you're like me and not able to watch, you won't miss too much. The second time through I saw the graphics and there are some funny shots, so if you can see video as well, that's even better.

You can find the lecture at iTunes U, just search for "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" and it's from Carnegie Mellon. If you don't do iTunes, you can find it on Google Video at Randy Pausch's web page on the CMU site. It's about halfway down the page. There are also links to other videos, the transcript of the speech, and the PowerPoint slides among other things.

Please, listen to this talk. It's that cool!

Too Slow, Darn It

I redid the banner on my website this weekend. Unfortunately, I think it's loading far too slow for anyone on dial up. I'll have to double check that when I'm at my parents' house, but as I watch the way it loads on broadband, I can only fear the worst. I'll have to mess around with it some more and see if I can't make it smaller so that it doesn't take so long. I was too tired to do it last night.

While I was working on it Saturday night, I watched a really interesting show on the National Geographic Channel about the Galapagos Islands. They showed the different animals that call those islands/rocks home. And it made me feel hugely guilty for cheering for all the el ninos we've had. The poor seals (or were they sea lions?) and lizards who live there lost nearly 50% of their populations. Of course, the show ended with man messing up everything by coming in with their cruise ships and disturbing the creatures who call the area home.

The writing did not go well this weekend. Drat it all. The problems started with how late I slept on Saturday--I didn't get up until nearly 11:30. Not good. I dug out my extra winter blankets, washed them, got the bed all set up and had a bizarre dream on Saturday night. In it, someone was sitting on my lap while we rode in a car and I felt like I couldn't breathe. When I woke up, I realized it was probably the weight of all those blankets that triggered the dream. :-)

But back to writing. I think the problem is that I'm not 100% clear on what I want to accomplish in the scene. Oh, I have a general idea, but I think I need to sit down with my notepad and come up with a list of goals. I know how I want to end the chapter, so that's one plus. And I know some of the information I want to convey, but I'm stumbling around, trying to figure out how to get there. I guess I just need to sit down and write and worry about getting it right later.

Another plus, I might--maybe--have my heroine's name--still. I'm not ready to say it's for sure a done deal yet, not until I've written more in her POV than I have already, but I'm hopeful.

Just Stuff

Boy, the laptop is really slowing down. I'm not talking internet connection speed, which is still at dial up since I'm not networked, but the actual computer speed itself. I'll have to run a spyware scan when I get home from work today, but I'm thinking it's probably the fact that the laptop is over two years old and there is a lot of crap on it now. I really should wipe the drive and reload the stuff I want, but I did that with my desktop a few years ago and I still don't have everything back on it. And it is a lot of work to save everything off the hard drive, wipe the drive, reload all the programs, and then reload all the files. It's probably easier to just buy a new laptop. :-/ Maybe I'll get lucky and it'll just be spyware.

I tried to get to bed a little earlier last night so I'd be rested today. It started out so well, but I woke up around 1:30. I think it was my dream. Over and over, these little creatures with huge teeth kept leaping at me and sinking their teeth into my left arm. I even think I know what inspired that--my left wrist, arm, hand and thumb have been painful the last couple of days. Bad enough that I started babying it yesterday. Anyway, I didn't fall back asleep till nearly 4am and then the alarm went off. I'm a hurting unit right now.

Oh, and Shards of Crimson is up for two NOR Awards. This award is in conjunction with Night Owl Romance. You can go over and vote here.

Quick One

I'm not going to blog long today. I have to go back to the Evil Day Job tomorrow and I want to get as much done as possible.

It was warmer (notice I did not say warm) and sunny yesterday, so I took my notepad and sat on my deck to work on chapter goals. I needed my jacket and it was really cool in the shade, but it was nice to get outdoors.

Last night, I dreamt I met Sting after a concert. You'd think in my dreams that I could manage to be smooth socially, but nope, I was as big a geek in my sleep as I am in real life social situations. Sigh. It doesn't seem fair.

Oh, yeah, I ordered more flowers to plant--someday.

Happy Easter!

For those who celebrate, Happy Easter!

Day 1 of the writing marathon did not get off to an auspicious start. :-( I picked up some bug, I think it's a 24 hour one since I feel okay this morning, but I spent most of yesterday in bed. Sigh. When I wasn't in bed, my mind wasn't working real well. I called it a night at 7pm and slept till 7 this morning. I'm beating myself up over the lack of production, but I'm not sure I could have written anything keepable yesterday.

I did have some cool dreams, including a trip to Vegas with my cousins. LOL! And a really cool story that I'll never write because there are too many other shapeshifter to jungle cat stories already out there. At least it was an entertaining way to be miserable.

It's a Sunshine Day

Hello, World!

Today, the sun is shining brightly--in fact, it woke me up--the snow has been steadily melting, we're supposed to hit the mid-40s, and I saw deer tracks in my front yard. I wish I'd seen the deer themselves, but it's still cool. This morning anything seems possible. :-)

My local writing chapter meets today, and while I'd like to go, I'm staying home to write. I will write lots, I have to, because I realized yesterday that I need to cut somewhere between 20-25 pages from the beginning of the book. It's boring and it has to go, but it's going to hurt.

I'm also hugely thankful that I've never had a precognitive dream. Yep, I had an icky one. I dreamed I was staying in a hotel, lying in bed and watching planes take off from a nearby airport. In my dream, one of the planes seemed a little low and a little too close to the hotel. Sure enough, a wingtip hit the building. I immediately started getting ready to get out of the hotel because I knew we were going to be evacuating. In the dream, I heard twice "100 people died." :-( Like I said, I am hugely grateful that I can't predict or see the future.

Once, years ago, I did work with a woman who had dreams about plane crashes and she was eerily accurate, right down to the colors on the plane's fuselage and the exact circumstances of how it looked to bystanders as it went down. I used to say to her, "let me know if you have one of those dreams, because I'm not flying if you do." She never had enough information to tell anyone and it could be a lot of months before what she saw happened, but there was only one instance where she "saw" a crash that didn't occur. How freaky would that be? Like I said, I am hugely grateful I can't see the future.

I do wish I was good at dream interpretation, though. I'd love to figure out the meaning of what I saw--especially the part where I heard the number of the dead. Twice. Numerology would be 1+0+0=1. According to NumberQuest, the number 1 means:

Unity, Beginning, Focussed concentration, Goal-striving, Action, Independence, Originality, Courage, Invention, Leader, Self-reliant, Ambition, Pioneer , Will, Conscious Mind, Positive.

Okay, this is pretty good even if the dream wasn't. I'd like to think this means that the WIP (AKA The Book From Hell) has turned a corner. I also think it has something to do with realizing what I can't control (the plane hitting the hotel) and what I can control (my reactions after the crash). I feel better about the dream now.

What Ifs

I found out yesterday that Eternal Nights was nominated for a 2006 Single Titles Reviewers' Choice Award! Yea! That was a great surprise!

Second announcement. The Crimson team drew the winner of the Super-Deluxe Crimson City Action Pack Contest and the winner was Kevin T. from NC. Congrats to Kevin and thank you to everyone who entered!

Now on to my topic of the day. Last Saturday, I watched (and reviewed) Sliding Doors, a movie starring Gwyneth Paltrow. This morning, I've been thinking about it and wondering what if? about my own life. Nothing as small as missing a train, of course. There's no way to consider how different your life would be on something as minuscule as that. I've been thinking more about what if I'd made other decisions at certain turning points in my life.

What if that ad agency in Chicago had called before I accepted the job at NWA? There's no doubt I'd be making a lot more money now, probably a ton of it, and I'd be living in Chicago instead of Minneapolis, but I don't think I'd be writing. Advertising is a fast-paced and demanding profession. There'd be no energy left at the end of the day to tell stories. Would I be wearing suits to work? Would I be a creative director, meeting with clients and interacting with movers and shakers in industry? Would I miss writing or would I find a different type of fulfillment?

I can't imagine myself as a high-powered executive too easily, but while I wouldn't be writing in this situation (at least I don't think I would be), I'd still have the stories in my head. I'd live near my cousins and be able to go to Wrigley Field to watch the Cubs play whenever I wanted.

Or what if I'd stayed at the University of Minnesota at Morris instead of transferring down to the U of MN in Minneapolis? Would I be married to a farmer and living in some small town in the outstate area? Actually, the thought of wrangling children and volunteering for the PTA boggles my imagination. It was easier to picture the ad executive thing. Maybe, since I'm having trouble visualizing this scenario, it's unlikely it would have happened even if I had stayed.

What if while at the U of MN Morris I'd understood my computer science programming class? I'd started out as a computer minor, but after one quarter of being completely at sea, I dropped that idea. What if I'd pursued it instead?

What if I'd gotten more involved in extracurricular activities in high school? What if I'd realized how stupid the cliques were when I was a teenager? What if I'd quit NWA before my four month probation was up? I almost did that because I hated the job I had then so much. What if I hadn't broken my leg--twice-- when I was in grade school? What if I'd gone to college in Colorado like I'd thought about when I was fifteen?

Anyway, it goes on and on. I don't think there's a person who, if they looked at their life, couldn't come up with their own list of what ifs. I think it's kind of fun to imagine how different we might be if only for a moment or two.

But I also believe that everything happens for a reason and that we're where we're supposed to be when we're supposed to be there. I can also look back at my life and pick out the decisions that made writing an almost inevitable part of my life. I was interested in so many creative areas--not just writing--but it was as if the door was shut on them one by one. Or in some cases, my personality shut the door.

An example is art. I always wanted to draw. Always. And I have very little talent this way--or do I? What if I'd continued to draw and worked at it as hard as I worked at improving my writing? Would I still be a bad artist? Or would I have achieved some level of competence? I'll never know because I didn't feel passionately enough about drawing to accept being less than perfect while I learned. I wanted to sit down and create exactly what I wanted to create without putting in the work.

But it was never like that with writing. I worked and worked and worked at it even though it never really seemed like work, if that makes sense. I think it's because it is my passion. I could accept not producing perfect stories because I knew I'd continue to improve and I could fix them later.

I don't know, but this whole thing about destiny and fate is interesting to think about. There's a great quote from Jawaharlal Nehru:

Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism; the way you play it is free will.

Promo Stuff

Last night, I think I dreamt about Ryne and Deke (the h/h from In the Midnight Hour). At least I woke up with them on my mind and there was no reason to do that unless I had been dreaming about them. The Deke in my mind when I woke up looked just like the Deke on the cover of the book. :-) The woman still doesn't look like my Ryne, but 50% isn't bad. I just wish I could see the final version of the cover. The book never feels real until I have that and can start using it for promotion.

Speaking of promotion, I've been trying to figure out how to promo this book and when everything needs to be done. I always do bookmarks and I'll probably mail out a postcard to bookstores alerting them to the release, although I'm not sure the timing on sending that, and I'm looking at doing another book trailer for it, although a more elaborate one than what I did for Eternal Nights. It's difficult to make decisions and I'm busy. :-) Seriously, how far away are we from human cloning?

Since I'm a little crabby this morning, I'm going to talk about a pet peeve of mine--authors promoing themselves on Yahoo Group loops. Especially loops that are all writers. It's bad enough that I have to hear how "excited" the author is that her tenth book received four shamrocks from St. Paddy's Book Reviews, but then I have to scroll past all the one-line congratulations messages. If it's a first book, yeah, I do believe they're excited. Everything on the first book is exciting. Tenth book? I doubt it. It's gotten to the point that on some loops, all I do is glance at the index of notes and hit delete. There are some authors that just never stop.

I just get so tired of this blatant "ME ME ME" stuff. Yeah, it's a tough out there, and yeah, writers read, but it's out of hand. I could vent for a while longer, but I won't. Y'all can post thank you comments below. :-)

Here I go Again

I did it again. Hugely overslept. Gah! This all goes back to a bad decision I made at bedtime. I always turn my heat down to 64 degrees for the night, but it's so cold here and I was freezing last night! I decided to leave the thermostat at 68 degrees instead. I know I get warmer as I sleep and I have a down blanket, but I figured if I woke up, I'd just turn down the heat then and go right back to sleep. I was half right.

About 1:15 this morning, I did wake up because I was hot. I did get up and turn down the heat. I then laid in bed trying to fall asleep for hours. I didn't hear the alarm for a really long time.

I also dreamed about a shark attack. Sigh. I used to have shark dreams all the time, but now they're rare. I wish I'd skipped this one. The only plus is that it was in kind of a past tense way, so I wasn't actually seeing the attack, just the results of it.

It was interesting to see what Super Bowl commercials received the public's votes as favorites. I was really surprised to see the Sierra Mist commercial with the beard comb over was in the top 5. I could practically hear crickets chirping when it was over, that's how lame I thought it was and a guy at work commented on how that spot bombed. I'd assumed he'd seen feedback already and I hadn't at that point. I also so bits and pieces on the local news of commercials I'd missed, like Oprah and David Letterman. That one wasn't listed on MySpace, but I did rewatch the fake dalmatian spot for Budweiser. That dog was just so cute!

Gotta run. Again.