Heather Masterson

Seeing my author page on Amazon gave me a serious jolt, and not in a good way. We are waaaay past my comfort zone, but these are the things one must do. Or, at least that’s what everyone keeps telling me.

Here’s a confession: Years and years ago, I was working for a ginormous telephone company, and my cube-neighbor was a very nice lady who loved to read. We talked about books a lot. Eventually, I told her that I was a writer, but that I was afraid of publishing a book. At the time, I was thinking about worst case scenarios —  like people actually wanting me to do book signings and similar public appearance horrors. This should be the best case scenario, right? But I’ve never really thought of myself as a people person, and what I really wanted to do was lock myself inside a log cabin and just write. When I finished a book, I would chuck it out the window to an invisible courier, and then all that publishing/marketing stuff would happen safely out of my line of sight. We embarked upon a long, multi-part conversation that coalesced into a silly little plan: I would hide out in a cave and do the writing, and she would play the part of me in public. She was cute and bubbly and loved meeting people — she was clearly much better suited to that sort of thing than I would ever be.

I didn’t do that — I promise, this is really me. A plan like that would never work, not in this day and age. You might have been able to pull it off B.I. (Before Internet), but not in 2018. It’d be stupid to even try it, because you’d probably alienate a bunch of people once the truth came out. Nobody likes to be fooled. Especially me, I hate that. But it wasn’t about fooling people, it was about just wanting to write. The writing bit is the bit that I care about. Me? I’m just the delivery mechanism. Pay no attention to the wanna-be hermit behind the curtain.

Odds are, none of the things that I dread will come to pass, but I’m a mildly pessimistic person. Also a frustrating one, if I can believe half of what Derek says to me.

I can picture that conversation now.

Him: “Good news, honey! It’s a best seller, they want you to travel around doing book signings, and maybe even go on a talk show!”

Me: “Son of a BITCH.”

Him: “There’s something seriously wrong with you.”

(Note: Derek denies that he would say that something was seriously wrong with me, though he did add, “…at least not for that.” Emphasis mine, but I know he was thinking it.)

Doesn’t matter how much light I throw on it, this corner is always dark. Naturally, this is the writing corner. I do better when bright colors aren’t getting in the way of my thousand-yard stares. (The Queen Anne’s Revenge suffered damage when it was attacked by a cat-kraken hybrid. It’s due to be replaced, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.)