Heather Masterson

Ok, seriously, ya’ll — I need a recording device of some kind in the shower, because I’m tired of walking around the house sounding like a lunatic.

Without fail, the best stuff comes to me when I’m in the shower. I think I end up losing at least half of it, if not more — by the time I get out of the bathroom, it’s all gone up in smoke. I end up wandering around the house, trying to remember things.

Not long ago, I had not one, but three things hit me (for book two) in the shower, one right after another, and I was certain that I was going to lose at least one of them. I ended up chanting them out loud, over and over and over again. I figured that was the best way to make certain that I didn’t forget something; all I had to do was keep chanting until I could get to a piece of paper. I almost lost one of them anyway, because somebody chose to ask me a question the moment I stepped out of the bathroom, and by the time I yelled, “NOT NOW, I’M TRYING TO REMEMBER THINGS!” one of them had escaped. It took a good five minutes of digging around in my head to get it back. I’m almost seventy-five percent certain that I remembered it correctly.

Naturally, I always end up losing the very best things. All the stuff that I’ve forgotten? Pure gold. I’m certain of it. The really good stuff smells like fresh-baked bread and flies away on wings made of rainbows and marshmallows. The stuff that sticks around is always the dodgy bit that lurks in corners, baseball cap turned backwards, smirking at me. Picking its yellowed teeth and leering.

Which explains quite a lot, actually.

A visual representation of my memory. The yellow bit is either the good bit, or it’s the bit that sucks out all of the good bits.