I cannot believe it's the 13th!

Nearly forgot once again, but this time I had an excuse - the Swine Flu or Influenza A - this is my first day out of bed after two days of hoping for death and one day of realizing I would live.
Soooo....what do I have to say? I don't know, maybe appreciate what you got? Seems kind of trite. I do appreciate what I have and so do most of the people I know. Life is very short and bittersweet precisely because we know it's short. Would I live forever? Nah...but if I could eat all the chocolate I wanted and still have a supermodel body, enjoy lots and lots of amazing sex, be super healthy and flit from one adventure to another while raising great kids and being flush with cash...oh, and staying around 30 years of age - I might consider living a little longer than the normal human lifespan. And if the fates could throw in a dynamite singing voice - that would be icing on the cake!
That is why I like books. Reading and writing them. Our characters can be anything we want them to be. A man trapped in a mirror can be 500 years old, a thousand years old - no big stretch. We can be vampires, shifters, were wolves, fairies, elves. No dream is too big or too unrealistic. We can disappear into J.R.R. Tolkein's world of the rings and be utterly enthralled. Or we can spend days with George R.R. Martin or Tad Williams or C.S. Lewis.
I learned when I was just a kid that the skull is merely an artificial barrier separating our outer self from our inner self. Anywhere we can go out there, we can go in here. Chances are that the universe stretches unto infinity, well, so do our imaginations. There is no limit to where our thoughts can take us.
So, since I can't do much today but hang out, I think a little Lord of the Rings is called for so I can coo over Legolas, drool over Aragorn, and shiver at the magic of Gandalf.

What does your Muse say about you?

Every Author has a Muse. Every Painter, Sculptor, Dancer, Artist in every form may have a Muse, but I don't know for sure. I just know that Authors have Muses. I know this because I have a Muse and every author I have talked to has one.

I just read a delightful blog at http://tweenyouandme.blogspot.com/ about an author's dealing with a muse. You should stop by and read it.

But after reading about this author's muse, I got to wondering. What does the author's muse say about the author in terms of what the muse looks like?

Every Muse does about the same actions for every author. The muse inspires the author to create. More importantly the muse tortures the author. The muse whispers words of inadequacies and tells you how stupid you are to be writing this or that. The muse sits on your shoulder and prods you. The muse demands you pay for the creative ideas.

Every author knows about the struggle between author and muse.

But not every author has a muse that looks the same way. Some muses are beautiful, or elusive. Some muses are strong manly and courageous. Some are feminine shapely and exotic.

My muse is a gnarly gremlin. So what does that say about me?

Strong Characters and Their Authors

Writers. If we were not writing we may be called schizophrenic.

Writers, Authors of fiction, are continuously assaulted, approached, and visited by people from other times, other places, other worlds.

Take my friend Kelly for example. http://www.kkirch.blogspot.com/ She had a character - a potential character - called Seth visit her. He simply intruded. He made a pass at her and demanded that she put aside her other work and write his story.

My character Morgan Taj Zephyrain demanded that she be allowed to teach him a lesson. Well, I interpreted it she wanted to interview him. She has a mind of her own as well.

As I write this she is inviting him to a brawl.

So, as this interview went on - the author pulled the plug. Or maybe Seth did. He wants his own story, not a fight with some amazon woman.

So, my point? I read the definition of a writer once. It was this --

Someone who has voices constantly going in their heads. Someone who lives in this world but resides in hundreds maybe thousands of others. Someone who may be confused by trying to find the car keys, but who can carry tons of information and several conversations in their heads at a time. And to quote Amarinda Jones:

"Writers are scary arsed people. If they are sitting at a computer with a glazed look in their eyes, with half open junk food packets and smudged specs perched on their nose, back away slowly."AMARINDA JONEShttp://www.amarindajones.blogspot.com/