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I wrote this a few days ago, but never got to post it, so here it is,one of my lessons for the year. Enjoy.

I got up just past dawn to write on the new book, Affliction, but I’m only now getting to my desk at 8:07, so what was a doing for the last couple of hours? What was so important that it kept me from my desk and work? Glad you asked.

I had to take the dogs outside before I dared to bring them over to my office, so I grabbed leashes, and found the lower third of two of the leashes wet – one was very wet. I smelled my hand and it wasn’t water. We have three dogs, two males, I knew it wasn’t water, and in fact if it had been it would have been worse, because that would have meant a leak in the ceiling somewhere, that would be worse than Sasquatch our pug having peed on the leashes, really that would be worse, but standing there with dog pee on my hand and two useless leashes I wasn’t thinking that logically. How do I know Sasquatch was our perpetrator of pee? Because for some reason Mordor was still in his crate. When my sister, Chica, left for work she must have put him back in, and let me say his crate will need to be cleaned out later. *sigh* I grabbed extra leashes from the back of the pile and finally managed to take the dogs out. I then cleaned up the pee underneath the leashes on the floor and on the pair of snow boots that have been sitting there for months. Why didn’t the snow boots go somewhere else? I have no idea, they aren’t mine. *deep breath* *let it out slow*

It was a beautiful chilly autumn morning, almost cold enough to see my breath, and there was a flock of birds in one of the tall trees. I think it might have been cedar waxwings, one of my favorite birds, but I didn’t have binoculars so I couldn’t swear to it. Normally, I’d have taken the dogs in and run for the bionocs, but I knew I had to clean the leashes first, so I soaked them in soapy water, applied anti-urine stuff to them in the hopes that the dogs won’t now think they are markers to be remarked forever, then I washed the leashes again, marveling at how our twelve-year-old pug had gotten this high up on the dangling leashes. He’s spry for his age apparently. *grumble* The leashes are now hanging in the downstairs bathroom to dry. By the time I got down the flock of maybe cedar waxwings had vanished, of course.

I was grumbling to myself, “I bet James Patterson doesn’t have to clean up his own dog mess.” I was being childish and a very grumpy bear, so when I got to my office and treated the dogs with their favorite snacky bit, I decided I’d mediate and get back into the headspace to write.

I lit my candles, I knelt on the meditation cushion, but was still too agitated to meditate, so I reached for my runes, the Norse runes. I have several sets made of different types of semiprecious stones. I find often when I can’t still my mind and heart that picking my rune for the day helps me find that inner quiet, that inner strength. Yesterday’s rune was rose quartz and I was going to put it back in the velvet bag and reach for another one, but in picking up the bag I spilled all the runes out in the storage area underneath my altar. I thought, “Really? Really!” Well, yes, really the universe seemed to say, and I proceeded to hunt the spilled runes through all the other paraphernalia underneath my altar.

Rose quartz is a heart stone, and for me it’s always about emotions and heart issues, as I hunted and searched trying to make sure I didn’t lose one of the runes it was not lost upon me that I’d just dumped all my “emotions” and was having to gather them back up. I had to laugh, because I love the Norse pantheon, and Odin especially has a sense of humor, or of the obvious, and this was such a lesson. I said, “Thank you, Odin.” I found a stone I hadn’t worked with in months, but it’s box held one of the pink rune stones, though the stone is black and holds a star within it. Black star diopside, in fact. Most of the stars in my life have come from very dark places, and it also represents the blackness of space full of stars and I need to look outward more and not narrow my vision down quite so much. The mundane things have to be done, like cleaning up after the dogs, but I can’t let the mundane mire me into it, because I’m supposed to be following my star. That was one lesson, but the other was more important. I couldn’t find two of the runes. One Mannaz ended up still being in the bag with two other runes that hadn’t even fallen out, but the one I couldn’t find was Wunjo. I found a whole unopened bag of rose quartz rune stones that I’d forgotten I bought as a gift for someone. I thought I can use the Wunjo from this, but I wanted my Wunjo, my rune.

The meaning of Wunjo is joy. I’d lost my joy, and as I sifted through everything underneath my altar I was determined to find it. The rune turned out to be somewhere I’d already looked, I swear, but it was my altar and like altars is a place of mystery and miracles, so one misplaced stone isn’t that surprising. I found my Wunjo, my joy, but it was upside down, reversed, which means the opposite of it’s normal meaning. I had found my joy, but I wasn’t joyful, and I wasn’t. Spilling the runes had calmed me down, but I was still grumpy and prickling with all the small issues that had delayed me this morning, and they were small problems. It’s funny, no matter how much death and destruction you live through, there will come a morning where the mundane problems make you insane again, and then you have to remember, or be reminded of your joy.

We have had Sasquatch for twelve years. He’s the oldest purebred pug I’ve ever owned, and he’s my third one. The other two died by the age of nine from heart complications, or some other genetic defect. Every day extra with our olden dogger is a blessing.

Our two Japanese chins, Keiko and Mordor, make me laugh and roll around on the floor with them more than any other dogs I’ve ever had.

I get to be in my beautiful office which I helped design. The trees are turning their autumn colors gold, orange, scarlet, as if the world is beginning to smolder. The view is great. There was a time in my life when the kitchen table, or a type writer stand on wheels was all the office and privacy I had to write, and now I have this huge room of my own.

I get to work on the twenty-second Anita Blake novel, Affliction. My first novel, Nightseer, was supposed to be the first of four novels, but my editor at that time rejected the second book, because the first one hadn’t sold enough, as is typical of a first novel. I remember when I got the first contract for the Anita Blake novels, the first one was complete and they’d bought it, but they gave me a contract for three books. I remember thinking, “Well, at least I know there will be three books in the series.” I am writing the twenty-second novel! That is so cool.

I have eight books in the Meredith Gentry series, and yes, there will be a ninth, but Merry and I are negotiating with each other on what that next adventure will be. I was pretty grumpy that my main character wasn’t cooperating to the degree that I had to miss a deadline and wait for her to talk to me again, but to have a fictional character so alive in my head that she argues for her life and her happiness is an amazing gift. I have faith that when Merry and I finish our lover’s quarrel/feud that the book that comes from it will be better than anything I could have come up with on my own without her input.

I’m a writer, all I’ve really wanted to be since I was about fourteen. How many people get to follow their dreams and be successful at it? I mean, that’s pretty cool when you think about it. Sometimes I get caught up in the deadlines and the work, and forget just how amazing that is that I am a #1 New York Times Bestselling Writer, and I have exceeded every goal I ever had a as a writer. How amazing is that?

Two huge crows have come to sit in a tree near my office. One is calling out over and over, I thought there was a hawk, because that’s what the call means. Apparently, there is no hawk, but it is time for me to get back to making pages on Affliction. You think it’s just two crows that happened by, well maybe, but then again, maybe not? There is more magic around us every day than most of us realize, and there is more joy to be had even on the grumpy bear days. I’m off to honor my Wunjo, my joy, because part of what the rune means is that joy in the face of whatever may come. It is going smiling into battle, not because you know you will win, but because you get to go and try yourself against the odds, against the others, the elements, all of it. Go joyous into your day, not because it’s perfect, but because it’s your day – yours- own it, love it, find your joy, just remember sometimes you have to work for it, hunt for it. Joy requires effort to find it sometimes, but it is so worth it.