Into the Night

Well, it’s that time of year again. Every year, between September and May, the Western world gets overrun by those little advertising gnomes who, in munchkinesque voices, demand that we celebrate the season at hand by commercially overspending…

;) I’m not really grumpy… But this is the truth! While I love holidays, and I love giving people gifts (in fact, I much prefer the giving to the receiving, most of the time!), I am adamantly opposed to the idea of spending money just to placate the great industrial machine. What happened to a little bit of tradition and actual CARE in gift-giving? Have we become so wrapped up in what we can buy and give with the minimum amount of personal investment that we’ve failed to capture the spirit of any holiday season, any more? My answer? YES!

We get a hand-made gift, which someone obviously put a great deal of time and thought into, and we just make the appropriate sounds, but we quickly cast it aside for the next commercially made piece of plastic molded crap that the stores thrust in our faces. What happened to hand-knitted sweaters and scarves, those ashtrays that children made out of clay hand impressions (whether we smoked or not), baskets of cakes and cookies fresh from Grandma’s oven, or the hand-painted (and who cared if some of the pain ran, anyway?) ornaments? What ever became of the magical moment when a child opened that painstakingly-wrapped box, and exclaimed in awe because mama had traded home-cooked meals with old Mr. Johnson for him to make that one-of-a-kind, hand-painted wooden doll? THAT was the true spirit of the season at work, the idea that what we give keeps on giving, not in material things, but in a sense of community and love.

Call me a romantic (hell, why else would I write Romance, right?), but even for as young as I am, I grew up in another world, it seems. As a child, I saw the spirit of the season around me all year round, because I saw magic in the world. I’ve done my best, as I’ve entered the world of adulthood, to cling to that magic with everything in me (though, sometimes, it’s very difficult to do). I remember what it felt like to build a fort in the backyard from fresh-fallen snow, climb trees just because they were there, and to rake all the leaves in the yard together, just to scatter them again by jumping in them.

I grew up ladled with adult responsibilities, but I tried with all my might to remember that, as adult as I was, it didn’t mean I couldn’t find some magic in everything around me. And I still, at Yuletide, pull out the box of crafting supplies, sit down, and create a little piece of that magic for everyone I love. Maybe, this year, you’ll join me. Maybe you won’t. But, in the spirit of the season, I wish you all happiness, innocence, and, above all, magic!

I get asked a lot how I got started writing… *grin* I’ve never given the full story before, just kind of glossing over past history.

Why, you ask? Well, they say that life’s only what you make of it, but I’ve learned that’s not entirely true. Sure, you can be optimistic, and think that everything’s going to turn out well… I try to be that way, most times. Still, I’m quite often disappointed (even heartbroken) because, as I’ve discovered, it’s not what you make of life that counts, but what LIFE makes of YOU.

I can see the confused expressions from here, and a few nods of agreement or headshakes of disapproval. Let me explain what I mean.

We’re all ultimately shaped by our experiences. The past is what makes us each a viable individual… If not for the differences in our pasts, upbringing, etc, we’d all be exactly the same, underneath the physical, and THAT would be a true tragedy.

As a few of you know (and the rest are about to find out *wink*), I’ve had a difficult life. Not that it was all bad. I have some very fond memories of events, friends, even family, which I cherish. But I’ve seen more than my fair share of trauma, and I guess that’s effected my writing.

I really can’t remember a time I DIDN’T want to be a writer. When I was wee little (before I even learned what an alphabet was), I would create stories in my head of fascinating, mythical places and strange creatures. I scribbled in the blank (and sometimes NOT so blank… forgive me, I was a baby…*GRIN*) pages of every book I could find, until my parents finally decided it would be safer to give me a notebook I could mess up all I wanted, and leave the rest of the reading material alone. And so began the creation of a writer. I carried that notebook everywhere with me (never mind that even the most talented handwriting expert in the world wouldn’t have been able to decipher it).

Then, when I was about 3, I grew determined to actually be able to read what I wrote (remember, I still thought I was writing words), so I sat down with children’s versions of Gawain and the Green Knight and Beowulf (the pictures in those books always fascinated me), and painstakingly (and with the help of my then-kindergarten-aged brother) taught myself to read. Imagine my surprise (and dismay) when I discovered that what I’d been scribbling all along was just that… scribbles!! Well, that just wasn’t good enough, anymore.

So out came the pencil and crayons and, for hours at a time, I sat and carefully replicated my letters, using the children’s books I loved. Being a perfectionist, even then, I naturally spent more time being frustrated by the fact that I wasn’t mastering it fast enough. I had no clue that, at my age (not even 4, yet), no one expected me to be able to read even a single word, let alone string sentences together and actually WRITE them!

Eventually, I felt I mastered my letters well enough. I turned to vocabulary, then, determined to know as many words as I possibly could. I carried the dictionary with me everywhere, and taught myself 5 new words every day.

By the time I actually started school, I’d mastered reading, and writing my basic alphabet in block letters. And I was hungry for creative expression. Unfortunately, kindergarten does not provide for that kind of expression… So, to cover my disappointment, I buried my desire to write and plodded through school. Until 3rd grade.

My 3rd grade teacher, bless him, saw something in me that most of my teachers thus far hadn’t. He encouraged me to write essays, and then, short little stories where I put myself in the place of an inanimate object (yes, I still have those stories… these days, I wince at how juvenile and uncrafted they sound, but at the time, I was damned proud of those stories! …). And that was when my desire to write was reborn completely, and I made up my mind. No matter what else I did in life, I wanted to be a writer. I was GOING to be a writer.

When I was nine, I went back to my very first literary love… Arthurian Legend. I read everything I could find ever published on Arthurian Legend, from Celtic mythology to Sir Tomas Mallory and beyond. And I grew increasingly more attached to Celtic mythology, and began to form my own views of the legend. Shortly before my tenth birthday, I decided it was time to write down my version… So I got together notebooks, and undertook an epic that I’m still, to this day, hard at work on. So was born my Chronicles of a Dragon’s Realm (now a 17-book series, as yet unpublished, because I haven’t found the right market for it).

At the age of eight, I’d discovered the world of Romance, thanks to a little book by Christine Smith called Murder Most Strange. And I was already deep into reading the works of Tom Clancy and Leonard B. Scott. So, after a while of writing historicals (and after my first meeting with a group of very dear friends of mine who were all Active Duty military at the age of 11… and one man who would eventually become VERY important to me), my interest broadened, and I began drafting the first pages of what would eventually become my first published novel, Tamia.

;) Hope you enjoyed that peek at my life (yes, I know I didn’t go into the traumas I went through… This isn’t the forum for that, as far as I’m concerned.)

I thought I’d take a moment on a day when most Americans are celebrating the freedoms we enjoy so readily, and reflect on those who have been overlooked. The unsung heroes, around the world, who fight for a better life, and future, for all.

These men and women don’t necessarily carry a weapon (in fact, most of them have never touched one, and some have never had a violent thought), but they fight for our lives and freedoms every day.

They might walk a picket line in protest of injustice, craft beautiful words or music that makes us stop, even for just one moment, and consider how we each make the world a better (or worse) place by our own actions.

They might come in white lab coats, or surgical scrubs, and stand watch against the illnesses that consume, guardian angels by the bedside of the infirm.

They might wear helmets and fire-resistant gear, struggling against a brutal element and putting their own lives in jeopardy to bring us safely through hell.

Or they might be that neighbor who calls 911 when something doesn’t seem right, or the friend who rushes in the middle of the night to keep vigil over a friend in crisis. They can even be just a voice on the other end of a phone, who gives hope and strength to face a demon that can’t be conquered alone.

Heroes come in all shapes and sizes, all ages, races, religions, and ethnic groups. For what makes a true hero is not measured in courage or valor. It is not measures in brute strength, or in skill. What gives each and every one of us the potential to be a hero is born in love, and our capacity to care for each other.

So, on this day devoted to freedom, and the heroes that fought and died for it, let us not forget the unsung, everyday heroes. I am thankful every day for each and every one of you.