I’ve gone through every picture that was in the boxes in the guest room. Decades of pictures. Some made me sad like ones from my first marriage where it’s obvious I’m head over heels for my first husband, because I know how it ended, and I looked so happy. I also prove again and again that I had not yet discovered the right hair care products for my curls. *laughs* But I found one picture that I thought I’d lost, or rather didn’t know I had, at all.
People are always asking me, how do you do it? Write books, have a career, how did I write 35 novels and one short story collection, and have both my book series be best selling series, and hit #1 on a regular basis? How do I have a husband who loves me, and who I’m crazy about, and successful poly relationships, plus a daughter, and a writing career? How do I do it all? Well, I found a picture that sort of answers the question.
That’s me writing in my office, in the first house I ever owned. Yes, that’s a very tiny, Trinity laying across my arms, as I type. Why was I holding her like that? Because she cried if I put her down, and I needed to write. The rhythm of my arms and hands moving soothed her. That was how I wrote a lot of the the fourth Anita Blake novel, Lunatic Cafe, with my newborn balanced across my arms, lulled to sleep as I typed. At three months she went across the street for two hours and I wrote furiously while she was at daycare.
Something about writing the latest Merry Gentry book, A Shiver of Light, made me ready to go through all those old memories. I think it was Merry having her own babies, that made me want to go through all my own photos. There’s something about mile stones, even fictional ones apparently, that make you look back, as well as forward. You get to meet Merry’s newborns on June 4, 2014 when A Shiver of Light is published. You can see my only newborn in this picture. I’m so glad that Trinity wasn’t a multiple, one was hard enough. *laughs* Of course, Merry has many more fathers to help her than I did. One mother and one father seemed outnumbered by one newborn. 🙂
How have I succeeded at so many things? I think this picture says, how I’ve done it, better than almost any other I’ve found. How do you accomplish great things? Be driven, be as determined as the woman in this picture, because I was committed, dedicated to succeed. I was obsessed! Writing isn’t my job, it’s my calling.
