Saying Thanks on Thanksgiving

A Typical Thanksgiving Post: Thanks for everything!

November 22 was Thanksgiving in the USA, and, as usual, it was an important day for many. I celebrated with my husband's family because my own is across the country on the east coast. We ate turkey and all the trimmings, enjoyed the littles, and left feeling sleepy. All in all, a day well spent. 

But this year, I have to look back on myself as an author and I feel that I've not said "thank you" enough to the people who have always supported me on this journey. Being a writer isn't something that most of us choose, it's something that we're born wanting to do. We can choose different paths, and different careers, but we inevitably come back to the stories in our heads and hearts. Whether we publish or not, we writers are a solitary lot, finding solace and companionship with our characters more than our flesh-and-blood families sometimes. When we're deep down in the darkness, or flying in space, or digging a trench, we're there with our characters, living through them. This can be a difficult thing for our families to understand. Many times, our characters are as real to us as the men, women, and children we share our homes with. I know that my friends and family who aren't writers don't always understand when I talk about my characters as if I know them. But, I do. I know them as well as I know anyone else. Hell, sometimes better! I created them! 

I'd like to take this moment to say "thank you" to all those folks out there who know me, my eccentricities, strangeness and daydreaming, and still want to love me, know me, and be my friend. I say this partly in jest, and partly in truth. I live a large part of my life inside my own head at my laptop and that can be difficult to live with! My husband knows that I dive deep, and I do my best to come out of my imaginary worlds to share the real one with him from time to time. Now that my children are older and more self-sufficient it's okay for me to say, "Mom's writing so you'll have to make yourself some dinner!". I know they understand and support me, so THANK YOU, to them, too. 

Thanks to all my writer friends, who chat incessantly about character arcs and heroes and internal and external conflicts. (You know who you are). Thanks to you for telling me to write when I'm grumpy because you know I'm holding on to too much inside my head. Thanks for listening to me whine when I don't sell any books, or when I can't seem to get past a certain part in a story. 

Thanks to my beta reader who never fails to tell me when I've screwed something up in a story. She doesn't hold back or mince words, and she'll set me straight in a hurry! Without you, Ann Marie, readers wouldn't get the best book I could write. 

Thanks, lastly, to the readers. The people who stay up until 3am with their noses deep in the pages of a book, who sneak to the couch when their husbands and wives complain that the light of the Kindle is keeping them awake. You're the lifesblood for a writer like me. I write these stories for myself, but they're for you, too. I've always hoped that my words can touch lives the way my favorite stories have touched mine. CHEERS, to the folks who plan lazy Sundays around trips to the library, hot tea and stacks of books. Those of us who love the smell of old books and the wonder of a bookstore filled with promise. Thanks to the other authors like me, who have written stories that take us places we've never been, or make us remember what it's like to fall in love. Thanks to the artists, the musicians, the creators, and all the people who love us. 

I've said my piece, and I hope that this holiday finds you warm, fed and loved. Remember that whatever you're looking for, it's out there, between the pages of your favorite book. 

Sincerely Yours,

AR DeClerck