When Things That Don't Exist Come to Life

Rome wasn’t built in a day.

It’s an awful sentence.  Negative.  And weak-verbed to boot.  I know all about sentences like that.  I’ve been hunting them down in my manuscript.  Eight hours a day, five days a week.  I finally feel like a real author.  Even with the [unpublished] preface.  Here, on revamp #258.  Okay, it’s not really that bad.  But that’s how it seems.

Back to the Rome sentence.  It may be awful, but it’s also very true.  Applicable for cities, families, and books.  Maybe especially imaginary world books.

I’m currently reading the true account of a reject horse named Snowball. (See Elizabeth Letts' The Eighty Dollar Champion.) Dog meat material turned jumping champion in the middle of the last century.  The author’s done a tremendous job of digging into the story, setting the stage, bringing the characters to life, taking us to the scene of the triumph.

Oh, but goodness, it makes me glad I’m writing fiction.  I’d really hate to set up camp in a Surnian library to research their history.  And the Elite?  I don’t know how I’d portray them faithfully.  They’re much too terrifying.  I’d be afraid of them decapitating me in the middle of the night if they didn’t like what I said.  Which, of course, they wouldn’t.

The good news is the characters are putting on flesh and blood.  Really.  Bounding right off my computer screen and into the house. (Don’t worry.  I locked them in the basement last time.  I don’t think they’ll try it again.)

Until next time . . . Enjoy your coffee and the color green. (Hopefully not both at the same time.) I’ll be staring at my computer screen, seeing all sorts of things that don’t exist.

(Oh!  Thought you might like to eyeball this relic from Surn.  Found it in the village library.  Squashed between a teenager’s journal and a recipe for fried frog legs.  Apparently, no one thought it was very important.  I snuck it over to the Xerox machine when no one was looking.)

My Imaginary Friend

Meet Jerusha.

Fifteen years old.  Five foot five.  Black hair.  Brown eyes.  Orphan.

And my favorite part:

Completely a figment of my imagination.

Or she was until my talented friend Kelsey Turner sat down in front of her computer and brought a figment of my imagination to life.  Aaahhhhh!!!  It's Frankenstein!  Everybody run! . . . Oh.  Sorry.  Wrong book.

Now Jerusha is stalking facebook walls and blog posts, taking her first hesitant steps towards fictitious immortality.  In my mind, just the fact that I can actually see her puts her well down the road towards Hollywood fame.  Gotta love the mind of an aspiring author.

Anything is possible.

For now, I'm greatly enjoying the writing process and watching the talents in others come to life in this world through the venue of another world.  Surn.  You've never been there, have you?  Don't worry.  Give us a little more time . . . We're very much hoping to take you there soon.

May the wind ever make your eardrums beat and the broccoli ever flee the cracks between your teeth.

Dear Book Worms and Lab Rats

Dear Readership,

After countless bug-eyed hours spent reading tiny little words on a great big screen and the waves of brain cells irretrievably lost in the process, I can now declare with great sincerity that I know more about publishing than I did two weeks ago.  I am so enjoying this newfound wisdom, in fact, that I am inviting you to join me.  Mwah-ha-ha-ha! (Was that evil laughter?  Oh dear.  Where did that come from?)

We’re called The Guinea Pigs.

Actually, I’m not really part of the group.  I’m more in the role of presiding mad scientist, though I have yet to track down a white lab coat.

The Guinea Pigs really do exist.  Or at least they will until I exterminate them.  Corporately.  Not individually.

Here’s the grand announcement in regards to my non-published aspirations:

If you are a book worm longing to be a lab rat, and if you have a handful of hours to spare in the next month, and if your eyes can stand the hours of healthy computer screen radiation, then I (the mad scientist without the lab coat) invite you to join The Guinea Pigs.

It’s quite simple.

As an unpublished author who knows more than she did but still doesn’t know much, I am working the kinks out of my book.  Yes, even mad scientists have kinks - and it has nothing to do with my hair.  I am inviting all family, friends, perfect strangers even to read through my manuscript in three segments and answer a few painless questions at the end of each.  No mad editing skills needed here.  Just gut reactions.  I am greatly hoping this will get me more in touch with the reality of my book and less captivated with the fascinating but slightly illogical illusion I’ve been staring at.

If you are interested, please send me a note, and I’ll sign you up with the rest of my brave Guinea Pigs. (Don’t worry.  No one’s been poisoned yet.) If you’d like to know more about the book first, click on Et cetera on the blue strip above.

May your slippers ever warm your toes and the robins never catch your fingers.

Most sincerely,
the authorship