The Journey

The problem is in the journey. That is my opinion anyway. You start out with the idea of being an author. For some reason you believe that it is glorified, glamorous. You will write a great story, with the cleverest catch or subplot. Everyone will love it and read it, right. Wrong. Most of your friends will nod politely, but they will never crack the covers. Then you believe you will easily land an agent and get that wonderful deal, with upfront cash that lets you right for a living. Ha. That is the few and far between. Instead, agents reject every version of the manuscript you can think of, and getting through the three rounds of committee makes publishing unforgivably impossible.

The journey. The honing your craft, while other writers that don't seem to even know the English language, journey. The submitting and publishing to every imaginable anthology but unable to land a major deal, journey. And one day, it clicks. Out of desperation you write a story on a whim that is not in your genre, not something you are even proud of, and guess what. It's a hit. Folks want more. And you have sold your soul for the game.

Well not quite that dramatic, but your lofty ideas about edifying the common good and glorifying literature at its best, take second place to finally tearing through the bureaucratic malaise and getting a book deal. Which is how I found myself writing erotica.

As Blair Underwood writes in Casanegra's Acknowledgements, "Often, the journey is not as politically correct as some would like and sometimes the journey is sordid, dark, and even erotic. Nonetheless, the odyssey must be embarked upon for one to discover and embrace the peace that lies within each of us."

The journey. The journey. The journey. I shake my head and sigh. I am miles away from the inspirational fantasy fiction I first drafted and rewrote and tried to shop, to no avail. I wrote it free- without thought of selling confines. It is unrestricted and unbound. Now I write with the publisher in mind, scripting fully aware that the product has to be sold and following the script for that sale to happen. In the beginning, I simply placed pen to pad and let the story unfold, without regard to publisher's desires or potential earnings.

The journey. I am coming full circle. I am remembering how to listen to my heart and write what I love. I am learning to love my works enough to carefully shop them. I have stopped giving away work for free in a desperate attempt for validation. I now know that my writing, all of my writing, has worth and value and I treat it as such. I have matured. I have transformed, through this twisted journey.

Loved Me Most of All

Loved Me Most Of All

My family is a talented one. Or was. Depending on how you look at it. September is a rough month for me - my birthday is shared with the most tragic event in US history. A day I really thought I was going to die - my job having been only two blocks from the White House as the plane missed it and plowed into the Pentagon instead. And the two most important people in my existence were born in Septemeber, my grandmother and grandfather, birthdays 9/9 and 9/4, respectively. And they are both passed on.

So the month of September finds me alone, remorseful, longing and missing. This Sunday it was magnified. As I drove home from church, the old gospel song "Tomorrow" filtered through radio waves. My Uncle Joe, the youngest of my grandparents 9 kids, and undoubtedly the favorite, used to sing that song like an angel. The culmination of a multitalented family, he attended college on a music scholarship. His pure falsetto could make a grown man cry like a baby, his rich alto made women act a fool. And he sang Tomorrow at my cousin Teddy's funeral. When Cousin Teddy was mysteriously killed in a car accident in his 30's. Another unthinkable devastation.

The song came on the radio, my mind flipped back to Uncle Joe, to the patient love and creative influence he had on my life. On how I adored him. He played the guitar, I listened, hummed along learned music. Later I picked up the piano. Wanting to compliment his instrumentation. I thought of his melodic voice. And my heart split in half, remembering, with a start, that he dropped dead two years ago, walking into church. Inexplicably. Something I often fool myself into forgetting.

Those who loved me most of all are all dead.

And I am left here to grapple with life, trying to cocoon myself in their memory, in their abounding love, to face each day, each moment, despite not having them. And sometimes, it really hurts.

{Posted at www.myspace.com/discoverkai}