Bye, Bye Passion

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Last night I went to dinner with three friends. We met ten years ago, or more. Think Laverne and Shirley meets Thelma and Louise, with dysfunctional families and career changes as the main topics of conversation.

Our little group met some ten years ago, when we all had pie-in-the-eye dreams of becoming published romance authors. Laverne met Shirley. I met Louise and we all joined a newly forming chapter of RWA on the same day and quickly stepped into board roles. Man, oh, man that seems so long ago and yet it’s just like yesterday.

Anyway, years went by and we followed the rules others told us we had to follow in order to see our poured-over-works on the shelves of B & N and Borders. We studied. We wrote. We critiqued. We placed and won contests. We submitted and probably paid a U.S. Mail carrier’s salary for a year. (Fortunately, I married a rural carrier during these years, so I got my money back) And, we received our thank you but no thank you letters month after month.

One by one, other callings caught Thelma’s, then Laverne’s, then Shirley’s eyes and they focused on their new passions. A new passion never caught my attention. I, with thick, stubborn German blood refused to give up on my life-time dream of becoming a published author and continued to study and figured out which rules I needed to break, write, kiss the postman as I handed yet another submission to mail, and waited for the answer I was longed for. Sigh.

Okay, you all know the rest. OBSESSED BY WILDFIRE is on sell now (in e-format only. It’s a fun light-hearted story. Sexy too) and my 2009 Golden Heart entry, a romantic suspense, EVIL’s WITNESS comes out on June 18, 2010. Our gathering last night was in celebration of my first review, which was totally awesome. While laughing and chatting about past experiences we shared, I saw the joy in my friends’ eyes, but I also saw the longing they’d let go years ago.

So my question today, what keeps you from walking away from something that you’re passionate about? It doesn’t have to be writing related.




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