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I was honored by the Chamber of Commerce. Not something you really expect as a writer. But, apparently, the idea is that by writing about St. Louis and the surrounding area I’m bringing in business and raising the areas profile on a larger scale. Nifty.
I kept thinking that Bert Vaughn, Anita’s boss/business manager/ would so be a member of his chamber of commerce. He would so have been there shaking hands, smiling, making connections, working that room. Can’t you just see it; Animators Inc. as one of the sponsoring businesses? I had the idea that because of Anita’s high profile in the media that the other chamber of commerce members might want Bert to bring Anita in to meet them, or even make a speech. It would so not be her element. No, definitely not, but I think Bert would thrive in it.
What would Anita’s speech be about? I can see Bert making a speech about how you can take an ability that many people see as a problem, or even a curse, and turning into a very profitable business. Anita and I don’t always like Bert, but we have to acknowledge that he was the one that got people interested in raising the dead for money. It was Bert who first thought of approaching the historic societies, and the genealogy people. He was the one who first thought to ask therapists if their patients would benefit from one more talk with dear old dad, or mom. Let’s face it, without Bert’s business acumen Animators Inc would never have existed. Anita might have gone on to get her master’s in preternatural biology, and she might have been out in the field studying the Lesser Smoky Mountain Troll, or something more dangerous. I was always interested in animals that could eat me, more than plant eaters. There’d have been a small percentage chance that she and Richard might have met in some biology class or seminar. Who knows what might have been.
But Bert recruited Anita straight out of college, and he’d already found Manny Rodriquez. That was the beginning of Animators Inc. That was the beginning of Anita and Manny hunting vampires, and putting them in place to be vampire executioners. Without Bert, she wouldn’t have been there for the police to ask for help with the preternatural crimes. Without Bert Anita might never have met Jean-Claude. Without Bert’s business success and money skills, so much wouldn’t have happened. Listening to the chamber of commerce speakers talk about their jobs and how they got started and built their businesses, made me realize how truly pivotal Bert has been. I think of him as a minor character, but in the grand scheme of things his effect on Anita and her world has been anything but minor.
Funny, how me going to something so far outside my usual experience as a chamber of commerce awards banquet made me look at one of my characters in such a different way.
Tonight I’m going to something else that’s outside the usual for me; a Tibetan bowl class. Singing bowls, hand made, and attuned to the different chakras (energy centers of the body). I’ve never been to anything like it before. I wonder what I’ll learn, and how it will make me think about my world? Maybe it will just be about Jon and I and real life, but I find that most things feed into my writing. An occupational hazard, I guess.
I’ll leave you with a quote, part mine, and part Jon’s. I’ve said the first part of the quote for years, but Jon added the last bit, and it just works, like all of us obsessed individuals, it works.
Blessed are the obsessed; they get shit done.