Well! That was a long month and a half! I have just wrapped up chapters 11 through 15 of my book and am about to send them off to my editor.

As empires were built, babies were born, wars were fought, marriages dissolved, I obsessed about just the right way to describe my first date with The Doctor and how to portray my ambivalence over the Li’l Rockclimbing Spy. Remember those oldies but goodies?

Yes! That is my life. It’s not a bad life, really. Because when I get lonely in the morning, as I often do these days, I just plunge back into my fictionalized world and there are all my old friends – and enemies! Sexy Boy, but portrayed as a dashing pilot! GalPal #3, portrayed as an award-winning research scientist! GalPal #1 in all her wavy-haired, White-Linen-smelling glory! And certain other people, who I can make as badly-dressed, overweight, and as psychotic as I choose!

As long as the words flow from my pen (so to speak), I am the master of the universe. I make wrong things right. I make messy packages neater. I choose who gets to be in my story, finding that people who were there for me once and aren’t any longer don’t make the cut . Flakes don’t get much sympathy from the ruthless editor in me.

As you know, for a full month of that month and a half, I have – gasp! – not had a boyfriend! Instead, as I mull over my recent misadventures in love, and try to feel lonely without feeling afraid, I have had books. Which have been my friends since I was little and will be my friends until such time as I no longer have eyes that can see (or, if worse comes to worse, ears that can hear).

If I get lonely in the evening, as I often do, it disappears when I crawl into bed with a book. Fictional worlds that it took other authors years to create, I tear through in weeks or days. I mingle with hermaphrodites in the 70s, alcoholics in the 90s, Dutch servant girls in the 1600s. The better the writing, the more I feel the texture of the worlds, and the less lonely I am.

Then I go to sleep, wake up the next morning, and start all over.

Write
Hope
Work
Fear
Read
Hope
Sleep

Repeat.