If you’ve made it this far, you probably read. A lot. So take a deep breath. Let it out. And brace yourself. Feel free to recoil in horror but keep reading.
I grew up in a small Texas town with no public library. No summer school, so I had no access to books all of June, July, and August. Plus my parents weren’t big readers so we had only a set of encyclopedias at home.
Take another breath now. You’re past the worst.
That was my childhood. Other than the book drought every summer, it wasn’t bad. Riding my bike for hours without checking in. Fishing for crawdads in the creek. Playing hide-and-seek around half a block of suburban homes. Okay, it was mostly good. And I read. Newspapers, cereal boxes, my brother’s handful of Golden Age of SF paperbacks when he wasn’t looking. The encyclopedia A through Z in under a month. If it had words on it, I read it.
Since those days, I’ve moved away from that small town (from the East coast to the Pacific Northwest and points between), graduated college (twice), traveled a lot, and married my best friend. My husband is a reader and the biggest supporter of my writing. He’s even beginning to understand that when I’m staring into space, I’m not tuned out. The story is simmering. Or maybe boiling. For my part, I’m learning to say “Working” before I sink really deep into the story in my head so he knows to leave me alone.
My new-to-me quirky old house has enough built-in bookcases to hold my all my books (yes, all!) and has stunning views of valleys and volcanoes. Otherwise, it’s full of love and laughter and two shelter cats who supervise it all.
Pull up a chair, place your beverage of choice on the side table, and simply read. Read anything, but perhaps …choose one of mine. Then another and another and …
|
