A Better World

When you're the parent of a three year old, you're living in a world that exists somewhere between reality and fantasy.

Part of that world is not unlike the one you knew before. There's still the evening news with nothing but bad news. There's still a job to do so that you can pay the bills. And there are still cooking and cleaning to do back at home. But all of these seem just a little more complicated now that there's a kid in your world. The bad news on the evening news makes you fret over the world that he will grow up in. Getting to your job and doing the cooking and cleaning are not as easy as they once were because, well, there's that little gremlin always to deal with, tugging at your legs.

But the other part of the world is filled with fairy tales and swashbuckling adventures. It's a pretty cool place, filled with all that wide-eyed wonder and innocence that is childhood but tempered by the knowledge and experience that comes with age.

Years ago, I'd kicked out of my life the likes of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. All because they weren't real. What a terrible thing to do.

But now, thanks to The Kid, they're back, and my world is a better place for it. They're no more real than they were before, but they are to my son. So, even though I know that they don't exist, I act as if they do.

All parents live in this fantareality world. Getting to see the world through a child's eyes is perhaps the greatest gift an adult can get. Because it opens the door to a world that you once lived in but which had been closed to you for much too long. You can once again believe in the unbelievable. The impossible can become the possible.

Vacations are not the same as they were before you became a parent. Captain Hook is not just a Disney employeee in costume but is actually the Captain Hook. And the tick-tock you hear is not your own alarm clock at your bedside but is inside the belly of an oversized hungry crocodile.

Jousting at the Bristol Renaissance FaireWeekend excursions are not the same, either. The knight on horseback at a Renaissance faire is not just an actor but is truly jousting for king and country. And when he raises his lance in victory, you cheer because of the skill and daring he has displayed and not because he is  following a staged script. Sure you know that the competition is fixed and that the winner is predetermined, but you pretend that it is not.

A Disney cruise and a Renaissance faire are not things that I would have done before I became a parent but they are things that I do as a parent because they are the world that my son lives in. It is a much better world than the one that I knew before he came along, and I feel fortunate that he has reintroduced me to it.

Just a year ago The Kid wanted nothing more than to grow up to be a chimney sweep, just like Bert (Dick Van Dyke) in Mary Poppins.  But that life's aspiration went up like a puff of smoke. And not just because he figured out that it was a job that required cleaning, a task that for him falls on the disagreeable scale somewhere between walking and bathing.

No, what happened is that he discovered his true life's calling is to be a knight in shining armor. He foresees a world where he'll get up in the morning, slip into his armor, and go off to work, a sword in his belt and a lance in hand, as a knight. His days will be spent jousting, guarding the castle and protecting his king.

You know that one day, not too far in the distant future, he will wake up with the knowledge that there are no jobs for knights in the world today. Only ones for actors whose job it is to put on a knight costume and a good show.

That's part of life, part of growing up.

You wish it didn't have to come to that. The world today could use a few good knights in shining armor.

I'm just thankful that I have a son who lets me live in a world where they still exist.   

Is It REALLY Happily Ever After?

Rule of thumb: You don't want to waste readers' time.

Rule of thumb: Staring at a blank page is a waste of time.

Those two rules of thumb explain why, when I gave my website a makeover last week, I dropped the Appearances page on the left sidebar down a few notches. There were no appearances on it, and there hadn't been any for over three months.

What I learned from this? When you drop the Appearances page down a few notches because you have nothing to put on it, you will find something to put on it.

What does all of the above mean? After a long break, I return to the road. Just one appearance, but it's an appearance nonetheless.

On Wednesday, August 16, I'll be on a panel at the Schaumburg Township District Library, 2nd Floor, Adult Classroom, 130 South Roselle Road, Schaumburg, Ill., from 7-9 P.M. Joining me on the panel discussion, Is It REALLY Happiliy Ever After, will be other local first-time authors Simone Elkeles, Jimmy Jack, Gail Lukasik, Ann Macela, Morgan Mandel, Joseph Rizio, and Marcus Sakey. We'll be discussing what it's like to sell and market that first book. You kow, the one that you put your life's blood into. 

So, is it REALLY happily ever after? Oh, I can't ruin the ending for you. You'll have to come by the Schaumburg Library and find out for yourself.

Yet another makeover

Well, if you stop by here regularly, you've undoubtedly noticed that things have changed a little.

I think this is the fourth complete makeover I've given the site. They seem to occur not so much out of a glaring need, but out of my own boredom. When you look at the site as much as I do, occasionally you need to give it a change of clothes. The old ones just start looking a little worn and dated.

This new look, I think, is a little cleaner than the last one. And a little less green.

Anyway, let me know what you think. Your feedback is always much appreciated.

Writing with relish

A month ago, the Chicago Writers Association cooked up an idea to write a serialized novel, with each chapter being written by a different member.

Cool idea, right?

Yeah, unless you draw the short straw and get stuck with the unenviable task of writing the first chapter.

That job, as fate would have it, fell upon me.

In conceptualizing the opening to this story, I set out to accomplish three things:

1. Make it a story that other writers could relate to;
2. Make it ooze Chicago; and
3. Make it fun.

        CHAR DOGI hope that I achieved all of those goals. Read it and decide for yourself. The first five chapters of Char Dog are now online exclusively at chicagowrites.org. The author of Chapter 1 is, of course, me. Let me know what you think? Tasty? Undigestable?

While stopping in at chicagowrites, also check out part 1 of my interview with the fabulous Chicagoland mystery author Libby Fischer Hellman.

Two funny little words = another 1st for me

Two funny little words:

Pickles and hiccups.

That's what started it all.

Turn back the clock to a little over a year ago and I'd just returned home after a family vacation to Florida and I was dead tired but I had an idea in my head for a Toddler essay that would be about, well, a family vacation to Florida. When you're a writer and you get these ideas in your head, you know the drill: you have to get them out or they will nag at you like a pesky mosquito buzzing in your ear drum. Non-writers don't get this at all; they just think writers are sleep-deprived nuts.

Pecking away at the keyboard late into the night, propping my eyelids open with toothpicks, I finally hit Save & Close well past the witching hour on "Pickles and Hiccups," which would go on to surprise me when it became the most commented upon entry on my blog in 2005.

Jump ahead about ten months and I take a leap of faith and enter my book, Lost in the Ivy, in the Mate E. Palmer Communications Contest, which is sponsored by the Illinois Woman's Press Association (IWPA). While completing the entry form, I'm surprised to find a couple of other categories that I might just be able to compete in. One for website development/creation; the other for web content for personal or hobby sites. With nothing to lose and everything to gain, I entered this website in the website development/creation category and two essays that I wrote for this website, "A Cubs Fan Finds Hope in Sox's Success" and "Pickles and Hiccups," in the web content for personal or hobby sites category.

Hop forward another couple of months and the most amazing thing happens: I take 1st place in each of the categories I had entered. Each of those 1st place winners went on to national judging, in the National Federation of Press Women's Communications Contest.

Take one last leap with me, to earlier today, when I get an e-mail from the IWPA and it's the announcement of the winners in the national contest. Right at the top it says that out of the 42 IWPA member 1st place winners that went on for national judging, 15 have been named national winners. Out of those fifteen winners, there are four 1st place winners, four 2nd place, five 3rd place and two honorable mentions. But to find out who those are you have to open an attachment. As I wrote the last time I got one of these kinds of e-mails from the IWPA, it is at this point when your heart starts racing and your palms get all sweaty. You don't even want to read it because you tend to think that good things just don't happen to you. But you open it and then you see the names of the winners but they're in alphabetical order so you have to read almost all the way to the end before you see your name.

So you've already guessed what comes next, right?

Yep, 1st place in the web content for personal or hobby sites: Randy Richardson for "Pickles and Hiccups."

The Toddler, who has since grown into The Kid, thought pickles and hiccups were funny words. They are. But I wouldn't have appreciated just how funny if not for him giggling so hard his belly ached when he said those words out loud over and over again. 

Funny, isn't it? It all started with two funny little words.