Author: Jonathon

I worked all day on “Hit List” the next Anita Blake novel. I had two pages for the whole day of work. I had written, rewritten, thrown out, and finally given up. It was time for the gym. I thought about skipping the gym, but after taking four days off for a wonderful weekend getaway I couldn’t skip exercise again. So, off I went to do my upper body gym day. I really felt the days off, and the serious fall off the good nutrition wagon. I felt stiff, shaky, and puny. I did manage to get a personal best on the barbell chest press: 15/12/10 reps at 35/45/55 pounds respectively. So, I was glad I went and happy with my performance.

A quick shower ended with the discovery that my razor blade had a piece missing out of the metal blade and I suddenly had a piece missing out of my leg. Once I got the blood stopped, and had Jon help me bandage it, dinner was ready. Chica had made stuffed bison flank with brocillini and squash. It was healthy and yummy. Trinity, our daughter, and Meerkat helped us eat the bison. Chica had chicken, she doesn’t do red meat personally, but she’ll cook it for us. For those who’ve asked Meerkat and Chica are our family of choice, they have their own home, but we join forces for many things including dinner most nights.

We watched one Tivo episode of NCIS, then Trinity went to bed. Meerkat and Chica went home. Jon and I finished one last cup of tea and a Tivo episode of tonight’s Criminal Minds. Jon’s invitation for this was, “Tea and serial killers?” My husband is way too much fun sometimes, and sometimes just the right amount. *grin*

When Criminal Minds was done I went to close up my office. I was going to make just a few notes for tomorrow. I turned on music and two hours later I had twelve new pages to add to the two I’d fought all day to squeeze out. Fourteen pages for the day and twelve of them came in two hours after I’d given up for the day and was trying to go to bed. I’m not complaining. I’m thrilled that the muse and I managed to squeak out a productive day, but I am a little puzzled. I usually work better in the morning. I usually work better when the sun is shining. But today all the bright, autumn sunshine and the early morning desk time did me almost no good at all. Tired, wounded, so ready to go to bed and cuddle with Jon, and suddenly the book was alive in my head, and spilling down my fingers onto the keyboard.

The question I ask, is why? Why now? Did my subconscious need this much time to work it all out? Is this book going to start writing better at night? Or was it just tonight? I’ve tried to explain to people that what I do isn’t like most jobs. I can’t sit down at the computer and guarantee the pages will flow. I can’t predict how many pages I’ll have in a day. I work well and steadily, but even I don’t always know why the mood strikes and why it doesn’t. So many of you are beginning writers. You ask me questions about how I do it, as if there is a magic formula and if I would just share it you’d be able to do what I do. But there is no formula, there is no magic right way to do this job, there is just persistence, dogged stubbornness and, yes, magic, but not the kind I can explain. Why did I sit at my desk all day and get only two pages, but come up here tired and sleepy, but have twelve more pages nearly pour out of me? Honestly? I have no idea, it’s just the way it works sometimes, and that is the truth that all writers know. Some days you do everything right and the book just sits there. Some nights you give up and the muse knocks you over the head with so much inspiration you can’t go to bed.

I ended today’s writing with Edward getting out some very big artillery. Tomorrow we get to blow things up, on paper. I’m not a sociopathic, weapons loving, assassin, I just play one on paper. Tomorrow Anita gets to see Edward use a weapon we haven’t even hinted at in the books. Nice way to end the work day for me, and an even more fun way to begin the work day tomorrow.

 

I’ve already discussed the emotional issues that can stop the muse and the artist in their tracks in the last two blogs. Today I’ll talk about the more mundane, but no less distracting parts of everyday life. In fact, I find that this is where most artists crash. We can muscle through emotional angst, but it is the everyday, relentless, demands on us that can eat your creativity alive, and leave you with nothing to put on the page, the canvas, or the stage.

Let’s take housework. I hate housework; always have. First, there’s no way to win against housework. You dust and a few days later the dust is back, yes, it’s not the same dust, but it’s still dust, and you still have to dust again. It never ends. Ah! Vacuuming; the same. Dishes, cooking, anything, everything that helps the domestic scene run smoothly is like a Sisyphean task. You never get free of it. I still remember the day my then agent called and told me I’d sold my first book. I’d been folding laundry when she called. I took the call, did the happy dance, made sounds only bats could hear, and then I had to go back and finish folding the laundry. After just learning I’d accomplished one of my major goals in life, it seemed wrong and a let down to have to go right back to it, but as everyone knows the laundry does not fold itself. *pout*

Artists seem to be divided in two main categories on housework. There are those who can’t rest unless everything is spic and span. This type doesn’t produce a lot of art, because domestic duty eats them up. Then there are those of us who will ignore the mess until it either envelopes us, or grows legs and begins to try to take over the world. I’m in the latter camp. I do not notice mess when I am writing. If I’m really concentrating my family is lucky if I notice them. Having said that, I do have a family, a child, a husband, family of choice, as well. So housework must be done, but not by me. I find that if I concentrate too much on that part of life, it saps my energy for writing and since that’s what pays the bills, not good. There are only two reasons that people will help you with housework: love, or money. My first husband didn’t help me. In fact, we were more like two roommates fresh out of college, both waiting for the other to do the dishes, vacuum, whatever. The two of us did this for over ten years. As I made more money from writing, I vowed that since love wasn’t help me, I’d try money. The first person I hired was the wonderful, Sherry. She is a domestic marvel, and can organize the hell out of all of it. She has stayed with me for over a decade, helping organize this house full of artists, because my now husband, Jon is also a writer, and Trinity, our daughter, has been bitten by both the family affliction, and the stage, so she’s a double artist. It means none of us have Sherry’s vision of how to organize a house. It is simply not our strength. I can clean a room if you tell me what to do, but left to my own devices I just sort of move things around, and the room looks just as bad as when I started. The piles are simply in different places.

I have recently been blessed with someone that helps me out of love. Pilar loves to cook, none of the rest of us do, and now most evenings she organizes the evening meal. We sit down as a family with her, and her partner, Carri, and the five of us have our little slice of domestic bliss.

For those who can’t afford help, you must enlist aid from those who love you. This is crucial after children are added to the mix. I don’t know any artist that is in charge of all the housework, once you add children, that still has time to do much on their art. You must have help. Housework and children are two of the deadliest things you can do to your muse. Now, children can inspire and new ideas come from even housework. I’ve gotten story ideas from dusting, and taking out the garbage, but mostly it just sucks my time and energy. I value being a mother and I would be a less well-rounded person without Trinity, but when she was a baby I thought I would go mad. Babies take a lot of time. Toddlers take a lot of time and are mobile. Hell, crawling babies are amazingly quick, and have no fear yet of much of anything. As a parent you must protect them from themselves until they learn things like, fire is hot, gravity works, and just because it looks cute doesn’t mean it won’t bite.

I’ve written Anita Blake books with baby, Trinity, tucked into the back of a kitchen chair with our first pug, Pugsley, beside her. It was a big chair, and I had trained Pugsley that she sat in my lap while I wrote. The pug had been with me for five years before I had the baby. If I didn’t put them both up in the chair Pugsley barked at Trinity like a hound baying a raccoon up a tree. That drove me nuts, so up in the chair they both came. I perched on the edge of the chair, typing on my portable little laptop, while the baby and the dog squabbled over treats behind me. The kitchen table was more frequently my office than my office when Trinity was a baby, because it was baby proofed and my office wasn’t. Also, there was nothing in the kitchen that I would have cried over if it had been broken. Toddler and a small dog; you do the math.

I wrote the end of Obsidian Butterfly with both of them in the chair behind me. It is one of my most violent books. I wonder why? Yes, I’m being sarcastic. I loved being Trinity’s mom, but I hated being a mother and a writer. I have always found combining work and motherhood a very difficult line to walk. If I was with Trinity my muse was tugging at me to get to work. If I was writing, I felt guilty because I wasn’t paying attention to my child. Even as she enters her teens I am still torn, though the Gods know, it’s much easier now. I love this whole independence thing that teenagers do. It’s great! All my other friends are bemoaning the fact that their kids are getting older and they don’t want to hang with the parents anymore. I see it as a healthy sign that we’ve done our jobs and created independent human beings. Rock on, guys, rock on. Actually, Trinity still loves to hang with Jon and me. My friends with slightly older children tell me that will change soon, so we’re enjoying being the cool parents while we can. But I do love that she’s growing into a person I can talk to in depth. It’s great. I found babyhood very frustrating, because she’d cry and was unable to tell me what was wrong. I loved it when she started talking early, it helped.

For tiny newborn babies, it is the lack of sleep that is the muse-killer. I went back to trying to write when Trinity was three months old. She was not sleeping through the night yet. “The Lunatic Cafe” was the first book I finished after she was born. It was one of the most violent books I’d ever written at that time, I was so tired the morning I finished the book I was hallucinating. Those shapes you see out of the corner of your eyes, had turned into mice in my tired brain. Scarily, when I decided to prove to myself there were no mice, and approached one of them it stayed a mouse in my head as I got closer. I actually had to touch a rolled up electrical cord before my mind would see it wasn’t a mouse. I was that tired. It was a horrible year, and a wonderful year, because she was great, but Gods, I was exhausted.

I guess I don’t have any advice on how to combine parenthood and domesticity with being an artist. My solution was to hire help around the house and divorce the first husband. Not a possible, or recommended solution, by any means, but in the end it was what I did. My husband, Jon, has always understood that this was my career, and he was OK with that. My first husband had trouble taking it seriously, and couldn’t quite stop seeing me as the young woman he met and married in college instead of the very different career woman I’d become. I guess that’s my best advice on the home front, pick someone who will support you. Support you by helping divide up the domestic duties, especially childcare. There were nights I met my ex at the door with the baby. I handed her to him, and I went to work. Yes, I should have given him a few minutes to decompress after his work, but the muse was calling. I am aware that the failure of my first marriage wasn’t all him. But I wouldn’t change anything, because it helped me keep up a demanding book schedule and got me to the success I have today, and to a husband that suits me much better, and who I make much happier on the wife front.

I find the demands of everyday to be real soul-killers. It all drains me of energy and takes away from the muse, the art, the ability to produce pages. I always wanted the 1950’s wife, that probably never really existed, but someone that would subsume their life to support me in my career, bring me food and cups of tea and run the household. Problem is I’ve never been attracted to the kind of man that would do that for me. *laughs* I find myself drawn to other artists; writers, painters, sculptors, clothing designers, singers. Though haven written that, Pilar is an artist and a musican, but even there she cooks, but I do not expect her to do all the housework and organizing. That wouldn’t leave her time for her own art. The only Girl Friday I’m ever going to have will have to have a paycheck attached to her/him, not a love affair.

 

I had so many responses about yesterday’s blog from artists who were having issues with their muses, inspiration, etc . . . I’ve devoted today’s blog to speaking to some of those comments. I’ll explore the more mundane Invaders from Porlock in the next blog.

Artists do seem to fall into three categories on what feeds their muse: that first rush of love/lust, the anger and depression of a breakup, or the steadiness of more long term love. I believe that is why some artists are addicted to falling in love. Once they feel that first rush changing to something different, deeper, they panic. (A lot of people mistake that first rush of lust for “real” love. It’s the first rush of chemicals, once it changes, then you can really find out if it’s love or just sex.) But the artist whose muse feeds on that rush and tumult of love, sometimes convinces themselves that without a new love they won’t be able to write, or sing, paint, or sculpt. So, they continually fall in love, fall out of love, and sometimes fall into the habit of setting up the next relationship before they’ve made a clean break with the last. (If you are polyamorous this last doesn’t apply, but I’m trying to stick with mainstream idea of relationships which is usually one on one.) Many of these artists seem convinced that the next one is their true love. The next one will last and inspire them forever, but it’s never enough, because they feed on the first rush of chemicals and craziness, so like any addict they need a bigger and bigger fix to be happy. No, you don’t have to be an artist to get stuck in this cycle. I’m pretty convinced the above is why 80% of marriages in this country end in divorce, and why most people are serial monogamists.

Does the artist need that first rush of love to continue to be inspired? Does their muse truly feed on that first rush? I don’t know. I am so not that type of artist that I don’t feel qualified to answer the question. I find that first rush of delirious, delicious, madness to stop me almost dead in my tracks as an artist. I have to watch myself that I don’t become as obsessed with a new love as I do with writing a new book. I actually have to work through the delirium of lust, love, euphoria and near depression, before I can truly work again. There’s a phrase for it, New Relationship Energy. I find NRE very distracting for my muse and me. We do gain energy from it, but if only I could fall in love when I wasn’t on deadline, that would work perfectly, but you can’t choose what time you fall in love anymore than you can choose who you fall in love with, or at least I’ve never managed it. Having said all that, I wouldn’t trade the rush of it for anything, I just understand that I have to work hard not to get distracted from the work at hand. But what a great reason to be distracted. *grin*

The next type of artist/muse combination feeds on depression, or anger, or pick your negative emotion. I’ve actually had writers tell me that they are in a major depression, and their doctors were urging them to go to therapy, but they’d refused. Why? Because they believed that if they cured their depression that they’d cease to be able to write. They believed that their angst and torment was necessary for their muse to work. I’ve known artists in this category that will actually break up with a person who they love, because they are too happy. They make themselves miserable, because love and happiness makes it harder to do their art. They will throw away love with a real flesh and blood person, to stay wedded to their mystical muse.

Do they have to be miserable to be inspired? This one I can answer, because for years this was me. I didn’t make myself miserable, I just was for a lot of reasons. Good therapy helped me to regain my life, hell, to find I had a life to regain. I wrote some of the early Anita Blake novels weeping at my keyboard, not because it was a sad scene, but because I was just that unhappy in real life. My first marriage did not feed my muse, or much of my heart in the end. But I wasn’t weeping for the marriage, my mother died when I was six, my father abandoned us before I was a year-old. My childhood was never a happy place. Without going into details I’ll just say that through good therapy, my spiritual path, and finding people who actually love me, and learning to love myself, I’ve made certain my own daughter had a much better childhood than I did. I had a lot of issues to work through, and, If you do not work your issues; your issues will work you. There was a time in my life where my issues from childhood made me their bitch. *laughs* I feel much better now.

As I got healthier, I did think back to the writers who had told me they feared getting better, because they felt they would lose their muse. I did think about it, but in the end what drove me to serious therapy was that I became so mired in the depression that I couldn’t write. It was almost the last thing to go. I see it as my muse saying, “Dude, get some help. I can’t work under these conditions.” So I got help, and I healed, and I didn’t know if I would ever write again. But my muse came walking back through the door, sat her luggage on the floor and moved back in to a brighter, happier world. Now, were all my inner demons conquered? No, you never conquer them all, but you learn to embrace them, understand them, even value the lessons they teach you. My muse and I have found peace, and a sure knowledge that simply surviving my childhood will keep my demons busy for at least this lifetime.

My pain got so deep that I had to get help, and I discovered that my muse and I enjoyed being happy. That we had plenty of anger, sorrow, from the past to feed a thousand muses, and that we didn’t need to make fresh misery in order to write. So, all you artists making yourself miserable because you think you can’t write happy, it doesn’t have to be that way. Though the learning curve is odd when changing gears from rage and pain to old rage and pain, and present joy. But it’s a learning curve well worth doing. *smile*

Now to the last kind of artist, the one whose muse thrives best in a long term relationship. This last is definitely me. I like a certain amount of dependability to my life, and a long term relationship is all about that. But I learned in my first marriage that dependability without passion and shared interests doesn’t work for me. I actually thrive best in the comfort of familiarity with the passion of fresh lust. How do I accomplish both? I have no idea. I know that if the passion begins to flag, that my husband, Jon, and I sit down and have a talk. I will never be in a passionless relationship again, so bring your A-game and I’ll do the same. We both pride ourselves on increasing our skill set in this area, and so far, as we close in on ten years, so good. I certainly wasn’t this happy ten years into my first marriage. So, I’ve learned and grown and gotten better at figuring out what makes me happy. One thing I always need to be happy from a man is they have to help lighten me up. They can be gloomy bastards, but not more gloomy than I am, because otherwise we get caught in a cycle of doom and darkness with no relief. I am a moody bastard and always will be to some extent, but I need my partner to help light a candle in the dark occasionally. With Jon I have to return the favor sometimes, because he is definitely another gloomy bastard just like me, it’s just different flavors of gloom.

My muse and I pick people who are complicated enough that years of friendship and love doesn’t make them boring. In fact, after I left my first marriage I seem completely incapable of being attracted to anyone that could ever be called boring. I still need a certain amount of steadiness, but I’ve grown to be my own pole star. I guess, all three types of artist actually share one trait, we can’t stand to be bored. Whether our life is dramatic on it’s own, or we create drama, most muses detest boredom. When I worked in corporate America years ago, by the end of the day my muse was drained and so was I. I had to get up before work to write pages on my first novel, before the routine of work had eaten every bit of inspiration I had in me. Let me just say that getting up at 5AM was hard, and I was so not a morning person, but it was either write then, or not write. It’s how I wrote most of my first novel.

Being an artist is a weird and wonderful way to live, but not all The Invaders from Porlock are outside, some of the hardest to fight are actually the People from Porlock inside our own minds and psyches. Some of us make our lives a misery because we are convinced that’s the only way our muse will help us. Some of us are just miserable human beings and I don’t envy anyone in love with us. Others of us are some of the brightest, most exhilarating beings on the planet. Being in love with us can be breath-stealing, joyous, damn near addictive. The infamous writers block is really our own minds being invaded and then occupied by Porlock. Rally your troops kick their asses out. It’s your country, damn it! It’s your mind, your creativity, your muse. It’s all still in there, you just have to open yourself up and call to your muse. She is still in there. An artist’s muse never leaves them, but it’s like the voice of God, sometimes you have be listening, before either one can talk to you. If your head is full of your own tormented thoughts, or you’ve let other people invade until their voices crowd out everything else, you can’t hear that still, small voice. We’re supposed to be made in the image of God. I don’t think that means two arms, two legs. I think that means that we have the spark of creation in us, a little piece of Deity inside us. Is there any calling more sacred than honoring that divine spark? Honor that fire inside you, sit quietly by it’s light and feel the warmth of it. Be still and listen, and your muse will come out of the darkness, and sit beside you. Don’t panic, don’t startle her. Sit quietly by the fire and let the muse come to you, because if she’s been hiding for a long time, she needs to believe that you see the divine fire in yourself. If you sit quietly and feel the heat of your own inner glow, she will come closer. The muse will take your hand, and the moment that happens, it’s like a piece of your soul comes back to you. The muse, for me, is like true love, the kind that lasts for years, I am made more simply by being with her. Together we are more than we are apart. More fun, more sorrow, more joy, more darkness, more light, more . . . everything.

 

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree :

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem, Kubla Khan, is considered a masterpiece, but it is a masterpiece that will forever be unfinished, because while he was writing it, just as his muse was at it’s soaring height there was a knock on his door. The Man from Porlock knocked, had to be answered, and by the time this mysterious visitor left the poem was cold ashes in Coleridge’s mind. It would be published unfinished with the blame being laid on The Man from Porlock. The idea being that once interrupted the muse had never returned to help him complete the poem. That can happen, actually, but it’s usually more a delay than a complete defeat. Of course, I’m a novelist, not a poet, so maybe there is a difference in the muse for one as opposed to the other. Maybe the muse of a novelist must be made of stouter, more long wearing, stuff just to complete hundreds, thousands, of pages?

But I’ll totally agree with Coleridge on one thing, one small interruption of mer minutes either in person, or on the phone, can destroy hours of momentum in front of the keyboard. There does seem to be a rising tide to writing, and if you miss the peak of the wave your literary board wipes out and you’re rolled along the sand, pounded to pieces by the weight of words unwritten. Sometimes, you just miss the wave all together and you’re left sitting on your board floating, watching the curling, grace, of your idea roll by with no way to catch it. The wave passes and flows into the sea of other lost ideas, and sometimes it is truly swallowed forever, but most of the time another wave will come and you can catch that one, and it will carry you to shore, through exciting moments, and finally breathless safety on land.

But what constitutes an invasion from Porlock for a writer? People are the biggest threat to your creative efforts. The death of your novel is very like any murder, you are over 80% more likely to be harmed by those nearest and dearest under your own roof than any stranger. The love of your life can either be a great asset, almost a muse in themselves, or a muse-killer. Some artists work better when they are in love, that first flush of hormones and thrills. Some artists work better when they are depressed from a break up. Some artists work better with a steady relationship and are completely distracted by either too many highs, or too many lows. I find that either depression or steadiness works best for me. That rush of being in overwhelming lust distracts me, because I’d rather be playing with real people than imaginary ones. *grin* If I were a painter, or used real people as jumping off points for characters I think it would work for me, because I would be able to write and still think obsessively about my beloved. Though sometimes, your love life goes so badly no amount of muse aid can fight their way through the snarling mess of your emotions. So depression only works so well and then it becomes a gloomy wall that you can’t write through. I suppose I prefer a steady relationship. Now steady for me tends to be more passionate and lusty than most. My married friends stopped talking to me long ago about sex in our marriages, because that fire is necessary for me as a person, and as an artist sex is part of what feeds my muse. I’ve never fallen into that long time married slump about sex. I do have to be careful to remember that date night isn’t just about sex, and talking and actually doing other things together is just as important to a long term relationship. One compromise about that first rush of lust that I’ve found works for me is a long distance relationship. I can be in that first flush of lust/dating but I can’t actually do anything about it so I can throw the energy into my writing, but if the object of my affection is at hand then I’d rather be playing for real than on paper. Can you really blame me?

Next up is simply spouses or live-in lovers and how any person that lives with you can impact your ability to write in other ways. Your live-in person is within their rights to want help with the dishes, childcare, and other mundane duties, but all of it can be a muse-killer. Some significant others are better at helping your muse thrive, and some writers are better than others at dealing with domestic interruptions, but rarely are the people you live with neutral to your writing process. I’ll cover that and children in the next part of this blog. For now, today, I need this blog not to become just another invader from Porlock that keeps me from making progress on the current novel.

 

For all of you who were asking what the heck is a kilt blowing, here is a little bit of what I did with Jennie Breeden of “The Devil’s Panties”. Good, naughty fun. *laughs*

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tschnack/4962395614/in/set-72157624737540489/

 

The latest Anita Blake Comic: The Charmer

Released just yesterday.

http://marvel.com/catalog/?id=16109

 

Two years ago I was a workaholic who tried to make everything pretty damned serious. This attitude had helped me build an enviable career as a novelist, and hit #1 on the New York Times list more than once. I’d been to Dragon Con twice before, and didn’t have fond memories of it. It was crowded, noisy, and the elevators broke down early in the con and were never repaired. The second time my husband, Jonathon, and I went there was something in the air vents that we were allergic to, and the schedule for panels one year when I was on my own didn’t schedule time for food between appearances. It was just not fun.

Then 2008 Dragon Con rolled around and Jonathon and I were back at it. It was still noisy, still terribly crowded and the elevator dance of doom was still in place. (really hope that’s better this year) But our friend, Charles, who is one of those people that is to fun what I am to writing, which means he’s as good at finding happy adventures as I am at finding ideas for novels, was with us. He turned to us at the end of a long day of panels, and a quick dash through the dealers rooms, and art show, and said, “No wonder you hate cons. You never do anything fun.”

Now, Jonathon and I were tired, completely beat, but we’d known Charles for a few years and we’d watched him be able to find something exciting and fun anywhere, everywhere. He is literally the kind of guy who can step into a strange city for business, find that his favorite band is playing down the street and he knows someone who works the door at the club. True story. So, in the interest of trying to let his talent work for us, I said, “Okay, what would you do for fun right now.”

He looked at me surprised and said, “Really?”

“Really, what would you do.”

Without hesitation he said, “Kilt blowing.”

“Take us there.”

He gave me wide eyes, and repeated, “Really?”

“Really.”

He gave that grin of his, and off we went, to the kilt blowing, which is run/thrown by Jennie Breeden of “The Devil’s Panties” on-line comic. It is Jennie, a leaf blower, and men in kilts, you do the math from there. It was silly, and fun, and totally not work. We’d met Jennie the year before at San Diego Comic Con, but seeing her again was great, and meeting HappyGoth, DragonConGoddess, and DragonConGod, also known as the latter’s husband/and actually goes by Daven, but he really needs his own nickname, just haven’t come up with the right one, yet. Nicknames are tricky things, they either work, or they don’t.

By the next night, we’d gone to my first con party that had a risque theme. I won’t say a sex theme, because it was one of the most boring parties I’d ever been to, and nothing falls flatter than when you’re trying to be racy and failing. But the point is that I was willing to go and see what it was like. Then it was time for another kilt blowing, and off we went. The kilt blowing was much more risque, but in that tongue in cheek, more fun and frolic way. It was fun, even more fun than the first night because Charles and Jon wore their kilts and got blown. *grin* In fact, Jonathon was Mr. April of the next year’s calender. I continued to visit with DragonConGoddess and Daven, and we all watched Jennie stalk her prey with an impish smile and an industrial strength leaf blower. *laughs* Some men played it for laughs, some were sexy, some were endearingly awkward and didn’t know quite what to do. It was charming, and 3:00 AM rolled around while we were still talking, laughing, and getting to know each other. It was the beginning of Jonathon and myself making some very good friends.

Watching Charles have fun while I slaved away like the proverbial ant and grasshopper had begun my desire to want to have more fun. Dragon Con showed me I had to try new things to have that fun. On-going friendships with DragonConGoddess and Daven, Jennie, and HappyGoth helped me realize there was more to me than just work. That Jonathon who had brought lightness to my life couldn’t keep shoring up the gloom in me all by himself. We needed help, and we found that at Dragon Con. I now need a calender and some hard thinking to know how many times we’ve visited Daven and DragonConGoddess, and they’ve gotten to use our guest room, too. I’ve learned how to flirt, how to enjoy my life and my success, and to own myself, all of me. Dear friends, important life lessons, sanity saving visits, and it all began with this cute red-head, named Jennie, a leaf blower, and men, lots of men, in kilts.

 

Dragon Con fun to share:

We have a booth: #503 in the Marquis Ballroom of the Marriott. We’ll be doing some pretty nifty giveaways. We will be drawing names to win a signed copy of BULLET, a signed complete set of Hard Cover Guilty Pleasure Graphic Novels, and the top giveaway – a signed, complete series of Anita Blake UK edition Paperbacks. One name will be drawn for each of the giveaways on Sunday afternoon. We will call to notify the winner and you can stop by the booth to pick up your prize.

I will also be doing an in booth signing on Sunday from 3pm – 4pm.

The booth hours are:

Friday 1pm – 7pm

Saturday 10am – 7pm

Sunday 10am – 7pm

Monday 10am – 5pm