Life is Good

[pbray]

Earlier this week I'd mailed out the "friends & family" shipments of autographed copies of TFB. Packages at my sister's apartment house tend to grow legs, so I'd sent her copy to her work address.

Sheila called first thing this morning to let me know how thrilled she was when the book arrived yesterday--and what a stir it had caused when she casually informed people "Oh yes, this is my sister's new book."

It's hard not to get blase about the business, especially when so many of my friends are writers, so to me it seems natural that I walk into a bookstore and see the names of my friends on the spines of books. I forget that many people have never met an author, or even the sister of an author.

Then Sheila said something that really touched me. "After all, how many people actually achieve their childhood dreams? Everyone has dreams, but life intrudes and they put them aside. But you went and did it."

Somedays amidst all the crap and the tough spots, I forget how truly special and wonderful this is. It takes an outsider to remind me that the cup is not only full, it's very shiny.

Turns out my sister can be wise, and who would have thunk it?

But I'm still the oldest.

Comments

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Hee! A couple of years ago Lois invited me to join her and a friend for dinner. My dinner came with spinach and halfway through dinner I completely panicked thinking "Oh my god, what if I have spinach in my teeth and Lois sees it?"

But most of the time I can be calm. We're all fellow writers and we all put our manuscripts together one word at a time :-)

[cammykitty.livejournal.com]

Oh my, the dreaded spinach!!! :D & yes, people get nervous about approaching you. You've got quite a list of publications and are definitely a pro. That's all you've got to do to intimidate some people, and it was enough the first time I was in the same building as you.

The talk to me buttons isn't a bad idea at all. -- although I work with kids with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and it reminds me a bit of a ASD conference I heard about. Since people with ASD aren't always good at social skills, the attendees color coded themselves for "comfortable talking," "will talk but won't initiate conversation" and "oh god, leave me alone please."

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Hey, that's a cool idea! We need "mood" buttons that change color based on how we're feeling at the moment.

[melissajm.livejournal.com]

Sounds good to me! I've already decided that the reason I'm 10X more social at cons compared to normal is that people wear name tages. I'm horrendous at recognizing faces, and I'm afraid of hurting someone's feelings, so normally I'm not very social. At cons, that's no problem.

[melissajm.livejournal.com]

I met Lois because Jennifer Schwabach, Josepha Sherman and I were at the Albacon ice cream social (and meeting Josepha is another of my favorite "Honest-To-Gosh Real Writer stories), and Josepha called "Hey Lois, over here!"

So she joined us for ice cream, while I just sat there thinking "I'm having ice cream with my idol..."

That's when I realized what a classy lady Lois is, because she'd just come in from this long, exhausting trip and she was still friendly to us.