The Word Is My Oyster

These days it seems that the business of being an author is more exhausting than the act of writing.  Keeping up a blog (which I apologise for have been very lax at writing recently), dealing with the taxes and licences necessary to run a business...and oh yes...being an author is considered running a business...and all the other mundane concerns have infringed upon my precious time of actual creativity.  Left brain paperwork and right brain storytelling do not necessarily go hand in hand, and even this Gemini is sometimes getting whiplash from changing hats so often.

The West Hollywood Book Fair is coming up 2 October, and I will be doing a reading in the morning and signing books till early afternoon.  So far, so good.  It is not, however, solely about the reading and the signing, but about all the preparations which go before the actual event.  New head shots; the old one was in black and white and colour was preferred.  Bookmarks...I know I didn't order enough.  Even the silly little annoyance of trying to find the little adhesive-backed pieces that transform a photograph and biography sheet into a stand-up, only to discover they need to be ordered in quantities of over a hundred and even then the company won't ship unless a minimum dollar amount is met, and  they won't guarantee delivery in time to meet my deadline..  Fortunately I have a creative husband who was able to make them...probably not as pretty, but hey...who's going to look behind the stand-up to see?

And now comes the worry...will the books, ordered in what should have been ample time...get here by the end of September?  I can always pass out business cards, but it's not exactly the same thing.  Will the weather hold?  Early October in Southern California can range from triple digits to poring rain, and this event is outside.

Yes...everything will come together all right.  Yes, the event will be a great success.  Those wonderful people at the Greater Los Angeles Writers Society and the Chamber of Commerce of West Hollywood have a track record with this event, and I should just relax and sit back and do what I do best...write fiction.  However....

I tend to write scenarios of disaster and death, of unexpected revolutions and battles of historical proportions.  I tend to expect the unexpected and imagine "What if...?" in a myriad of timelines and possibilities.  It is all fantasy and I can control it all with the flick of a delete key and the tapping of my fingers upon the white letters set into the blackness of my laptop computer.  The word is my oyster and I can open it and pull forth a string of pearls if my imagination so dictates.

This is life, real life,

Sigh.