I've had many troubles, most of which never happened. --Mark Twain
Having a writer's imagination is both blessing and curse. Blessing, of course, because it allows me to leave the real world behind and live in that imagination for days on end, peopling it with fascinating characters, throwing them in situations that would make me run screaming in real life, and have them eventually triumph. And in the process do something even harder, learn to trust another human being. The curse part? That's because in that real life, the life out from behind the computer (hey, even writers have them, amazingly enough), there's not a situation bad enough, a crisis terrible enough, that I and my writer's imagination can't make it worse. I'm an expert in worst case scenarios, in heaping trouble atop trouble. But as Mark Twain so wisely pointed out--most of those troubles never happen. In fact, come to think of it, none of them ever happened, at least not in the awful way I'd envisioned them. That's not to say bad things never happened, they did and do, but they're never the way my imagination produced them. So finally, belatedly, it occurred to me to wonder why I spent all that time imagining things that would never happen. So I've made a promise to myself to try and save that for fiction, quit anticipating disaster and just take real life as it comes. That's hard enough without that writer's imagination making it worse!
August, 2003
We made it! Got through a record hot July here in Puget Sound. Those in much hotter climes laugh at our whining, I'm sure, but many of them would whine at the damp months on end that I love. But I will say the heat has provided one thing-we have a bumper crop of tomatoes ripening.
More importantly, my baby's out of storage! It's all thanks to the help of a very, very dear friend, Steve Walsh(when you go through something like my husband and I have been through in the past two years, you find out who the really dear ones are!). Steve, who has angel's wings that don't even show, went above and beyond the call to tow a trailer a very long way, so now I have a certain red car those of you who have looked around this web site will recognize sitting where it belongs, in my garage. I'm beyond delighted, and can't wait to take her out for a spin. And yes, it's a "she" because she's bright and sassy and makes heads turn. Men's in particular. <g>
On the writing front, I'm having so much fun with Silhouette Bombshell. The Athena Force continuity series is huge, seriously larger than life, and such a great concept that I'm making myself not read ahead in the series bible because I want to find out how it all comes out as a reader. It's going to be hard to wait for the new installment every month!
I got a lot of comments on the first sunrise photograph I posted here. People asked if the sky was always that color in the mornings. As answer, I'm posting a second sunrise photo that was taken the very next day after the first one. Different, but still beautiful.
Hope you're all having a wonderful summer!
Justine
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