Per­sis­tence

I love per­sis­tent women. And men, of course.

I have come to believe that noth­ing of endur­ing value comes eas­ily, and that, if you keep ‘show­ing up,’ you’ll be there when the oppor­tu­nity walks by.

And if you’ve been truly awake, you’ll have been get­ting bet­ter too.
Per­sis­tence can achieve ALL.

I love this quote from Calvin Coolidge:
“Noth­ing in the world can take the place of Per­sis­tence. Tal­ent will not; noth­ing is more com­mon than unsuc­cess­ful men with tal­ent. Genius will not; unre­warded genius is almost a proverb. Edu­ca­tion will not; the world is full of edu­cated dere­licts. Per­sis­tence and Deter­mi­na­tion alone are omnipotent.”

(And that is taken from another love of mine, Bartleby’s,where I can find all the inspi­ra­tional quotes I desire, which is, you guessed it, another love of mine. )

His­tory

His­tor­i­cal writ­ers, gen­er­ally, ADORE history.

I am, hap­pily, no different.

I love library stacks.  The mustier the bet­ter.  We love the end­less webs of research, online or in books, and all the funky, fun things there are to discover.

Where oth­ers get their story ideas from head­lines, his­tor­i­cal writ­ers get them from old annals, land sur­veys, and ges­tas.  The account books of a medieval merchant-woman are like gold.  And of course, there are the some­times cranky,  stunningly-insightful, terribly-biased chron­i­clers of the time.  We encounter a small fact, about a woman con­vict, say, who becomes a pirate, and sud­denly the chest starts tingling.

There’s The Story!

Writ­ing Romance

I love writing.

I can feel my fin­gers actu­ally move towards the keyboard.

I love every­thing about it, except the times when I’m dying inside because I can’t make it work.

And later, when it passes, I love even that, for its raw, despair­ing intensity.

I love won­der­ing how to put in ‘cliffhang­ers’ and red her­rings into my stories.

I love try­ing to fig­ure out whose point of view a scene should be in.

I love devel­op­ing tor­tured char­ac­ters. Poor things, to be stuck in my psy­che.

I love fig­ur­ing out who has the most to lose, then mak­ing them lose it.

I love punctuation.

I know, it’s sick.

My Fam­ily

I love my fam­ily, hus­band and son and our dog and while we are cat-free at the moment, that is usu­ally only a tem­po­rary state.  But when she was here, our cat was all fly­ing fur and rum­bling purrs, full of Love and Atti­tude, and she won every fight with our 80 pound dog, from puppy-hood to long lanky dog bones.  She won against the rac­coons too, on one mem­o­rable night.  And she did it with … well, panache.  And fur.  And remark­ably long claws.  How often do you have to trim those things?

Heroes

Okay, I really love heroes.

Alpha. Self-confident. Men on a hunt, with a mis­sion, in control.

Except when faced with that one woman … the one who makes him fum­ble sim­ple objects and get upset when he’s usu­ally so in control.

The one who can get him. Every time, everywhere.

And I like beta heroes.
Kind, quirky, will­ing to let the lady shine and be amazed by her.

Men who aren’t afraid to be quiet, because they don’t need to shout. About anything.

So, what’s sexy?

Kind­ness, to any­one and every­thing smaller and more vul­ner­a­ble than himself.

Self-confidence.

Arro­gance,
when it’s earned and not about judg­ing oth­ers down, but the hero being totally cer­tain in his own abilities.

Insight.

Men who are will­ing to know themselves.

Men who are will­ing to be hurt.

Men who laugh, and make their women laugh. And then smile with­out real­iz­ing it when she does.

Pur­suit.
Pur­suit is def­i­nitely sexy.

Pas­sion.

Want­ing a woman, bad.