Today, I have a guest blogger who needs no introduction on my part. She’s perfectly capable of introducing herself.
Call me Grace. I am a muse. Specifically, I am Hart’s muse. We bonded when she was ten. Her fourth grade class’ tarantula died a few days before open house. Heartbroken, she wrote her first poem which her teacher posted above the abandoned cage. And that’s how we met. Though she didn’t actually know me yet.
In seventh grade, she decided to write a book about her adventures at a private girls school from the point of view of a bug. Don’t mess with me here; I came up with the idea, and it was a good one. Unfortunately she never got very far with it. She still hopes to write a memoir about her experiences at the school, but I think the bug didn’t make the cut.
In high school, she and her best friend began writing a screenplay based on a historical incident. She also fell in love with the Beatles. I couldn’t compete with the Beatles, and her friend served as her muse for some years. I retreated, remaining idle for a long time.
This is the way of it for us muses. Unless the creative one opens her soul up to us, we wither a bit, but we never die. Some artists—and I’m using the term in its general sense here—believe their muse has deserted them when in reality their fertile field needs to lie fallow for a little while. Or for those of a more technical bent, their computer needs to reboot.
I reentered Hart’s life when her high-school-and-after friend had moved on, and she opened the door to me once again. I handed her the third book in a series she’d begun reading many years earlier, and after she reached its end disappointed, I offered my best to her—a story in need of telling, a story she’d ache to tell.
Poor Hart. It took her years to fully realize what I had given her, but when she finally surrendered to my magical gifts of whimsy and myth, the story took off. She has now published book 1, Fractured, with book 2, Tainted, to follow within the next couple of weeks.
I have to admit, though, that I can’t wait to dig into the final book, Blooded, as this book hasn’t been written over and over. Save for the characters, everything about it is new. Nothing more enticing to a muse such as myself. I plan on participating fully throughout the entirety of the process of creation on this one. All I can say is it’s gonna be fun. And there’s nothing more exciting to a muse as the potential for fun.