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Divine Misdemeanors is book eight in the Merry Gentry series. The first story arc ends with book seven, Swallowing Darkness. Merry makes her choices in that book. We conquer a lot of enemies have major Deity magic, love, grief, violence, sex, mysteries solved, dead relatives avenged, and talk about what would you do if you were offered a crown to a magical kingdom, but the price was someone you loved. We’d, Merry and I and all her men, had worked for seven books to get to that moment. When it came Merry threw out the last third of my entire plot line that had been sitting on my wall of sticky notes for nearly ten years. She made her choice, and in the end we could all live with it. It was a very Merry choice, and when a character is alive enough to slap the writer up side the head and go, “I am so not doing that.” Well, it’s magic.

The Q & A on Facebook for Barnes & Noble was fun and confusing. I’m glad so many of you could participate, but Paul Goat Allen, one of the moderators, made several good points, but one in particular is really pertinent this time of year. It’s actually the last few lines of the book, and its not really a spoiler which is interesting all on its own. “I think we’re supposed to be of the world, not apart from it, but we’re still supposed to be sidhe. We’re still supposed to be magic, and help the people around us see that they’re magic, too; it’s just a different kind of magic.” Paul asked me if that was accidental, and no, it wasn’t. It was when I first wrote it, just another message from that weird and shining mess that is my imagination, but as I reread it I realized that really is the message for Merry and me from this point on in the series. I think its perfect that the cover of Divine Misdemeanors doesn’t show one of the great warriors of the fey, but one of the soldiers that Merry rescued on the battlefield in Swallowing Darkness, and who we see again in this book on a different battlefield. Magic is everywhere. Its all around us and inside us. Every breath we take, every thought we think, every smile we give is nothing short of a miracle. If you doubt that try to explain how it all works, why you think what you think, why some things make you smile and others don’t. It’s a mystery to me. If you know the answers, then you are a better man than I, Gunga Din.

Think of the long line of ancestors that had to live long enough to have children just so you could be sitting here reading this. Understand that each of us is a new world. Each of us will think thoughts that no one else thinks and see the world in a slightly different way, that’s one of the things that make writers and other artists unique when they find their own voices, because they are unique. We all are. Never doubt that there is power in magic of the everyday. If it wasn’t true then I think the universe would run only the big, epic battles of life and skip the rest. There is an importance in the everyday that we forget, because its so everyday. Look for the special and it will be there. Notice I didn’t promise it would be pretty, or happy, just special, embrace it, it will be all right. You can do it.

Merry chose to ruin my great epic battle and find a different life in a way that seemed more mundane than I had planned for her, but I realized what she’d been trying to tell me all along. There is grace in simply getting up today, getting dressed, getting breakfast, hurrying the kids off to school, and facing the day. There is grace, and power, and honor, to meeting your responsibilities and taking your happiness where it is offered, not necessarily where you thought it would be. Don’t let the hustle and bustle of the commercialized holiday eat up all your good cheer. Remember what all the holidays this time of year are about. It’s the rebirth of the light, the return of the Sun, however you spell it. In the depths of winter’s darkness, on the longest night of the year, the wheel turns and the next day there will be just a little more light, and a little less darkness. That’s what’s its all about, lighting a candle in the dark, and trusting that the planets will turn, the universe will move, and tomorrow there will be just a little more sun to light our way. If you have doubts, that’s OK, doubt is part of who we are, but believe even in the most confusing times that the light is out there and it is coming, and tomorrow will be just a little bit brighter.