Safe till St. Patrick's Day

I'd like to welcome today's guest blogger Alethea Kontis! Alethea's a real renaissance woman in the world of publishing. She's sold short stories to Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show and Realms of fantasy, she's a contributing editor at Apex magazine, small press publisher of Nyx books, author of children's book Alpha Oops: the day Z went first, and, most recently, NYT best selling writer of The Dark Hunter Companion.

She might be a little away from keyboard today, but make her feel welcome so she'll have some Title Magic love when she gets back!

Safe till St. Patrick's Day
by Alethea Kontis
February 22, 2008


"Everybody, it seems to me
Just wants to be
Just like you and me…"
~John Mayer, St. Patrick's Day


The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Your life is what you make it. Be careful what you wish for. We've heard these sayings all our lives, and they all boil down to the same universal truth: perception means everything.

I was four when Mom fought the system and got me into Kindergarten. She went to the ends of the earth, her bored daughter in tow, attacking psychologists who refused to believe that her child was performing above her age level. When they finally decided she wasn't full of crap (as I was reading the TV Guide), they let me into school. It wasn't long before I was spending more time in a fourth-grade science class than I did with Mrs. Murray.

My father loves to tell the story of one Parents' Day, when a precocious young five- or six-year old approached him and announced, "Alethea can spell words I don't even know."

It was no secret: I loved school.
Of course, it helped that I had some pretty great teachers. (Mr. Stafford, Mr. Oberly, Mrs. Bowers, Mr. Hendrick…)

I started writing poetry in the second grade. In the third grade, my Aunt Theda taught me algebra and anatomy (she was premed at Duke and needed a study partner). In fourth grade, I learned the International Sign Language alphabet and used it to send secret messages to my friends. When I took French, I filled up the front and backs of test papers writing scenes using all my vocabulary words. I shaded the thirteen colonies with the flags of the states, and the class voted to give me extra credit. I passed notes in Spanish class…in Spanish. I memorized Shakespeare, and Poe, and Byron, and Carroll, and anyone else in the Literature book who lived in a pretty how town. My junior year, I alphabetized the periodic table of the elements and used THAT to send secret messages.

There are words for kids who love school. Nerd. Geek. Freak. Teacher's Pet. Loser. And there were people who made my life hell because of it.

When you're thirteen and your mother tells you that the kids only treat you the way they do because they're jealous…like hell you believe her. There is obviously something wrong with you, you're no good to anybody and never will be, and no one will ever love you. You let the jabs and whispered insults and cold shoulders get under your skin, and you wish you were dead. You shut yourself in your room and cry every day when you come home from school. You're the most miserable person on the planet and no one understands you.

And that's exactly what they want.

What your mother doesn't tell you when you're thirteen is that the rest of your life is just like high school all over again.

Do what you love and the money will follow. That one's true too, but it's really, REALLY (did I say really?) hard to get there. It's work--hard, unforgiving work--but you do it because you love it, you eat sleep and breathe it, and you can't imagine your life without it. It's an obsession. It runs in your veins.

Cut me and I bleed the publishing industry.

There comes a time in a writer's life when the veil falls away and the romance is gone. When you're slogging through the middle of a project you MUST FINISH because you have things like bills and deadlines hanging over your head. It's the last thing you want to do when you get up in the morning, but you have no choice. Then you finish the project, turn it in to the editor, and move on to the next thing. By the time it actually hits the shelves it's a bittersweet reunion, because you've long since been passionate about something else.

I live in a different world, a world of deadlines and word counts and time travel, a world where everyone I meet and everything I do is inevitably part of my next story. I write my own life, and it's a fantastic adventure.

Of course, it helps that I've had some really great teachers. (Andre Norton, Orson Scott Card, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Rebecca Moesta, Kevin J. Anderson…)

I can't tell you the exact day that I woke up and realized I was on the other side of the Looking Glass…it just happened. And what I saw when I looked back to the Real World was that all those Green People were still there thinking I was some untouchable, ethereal being, and hating me for being happy. I wanted to climb on my soapbox and yell at them, remind them that I was still human. I lost friends and missed family just like everyone else. Last year I was stripped of my privacy and my innocence, was abused and mistreated by crazy cultists, got passed up for promotion, and had my heart broken into a million pieces. I have a laundry list of depressing events, proof enough that I have a right to be just as miserable as all of them.

Suddenly I realized: making me miserable only made them powerful.

Why would I want to lose the magic that makes me ME?

You know, sometimes the grass is just greener. But it's greener because some beautiful man with a passion spends all the time he's not scaling cliffs working to make the world a nicer place to live in. He digs and tills and plants and tends, over seasons and years, and eventually that love shines like an immortal beacon from the top of windswept hills. His garden has every right to be greener, and we should all celebrate him for it.

More importantly, he should celebrate himself.

Do what you love, and the Green People will follow. It's high school all over again. But you can't let that stop you. Ever. You are fabulous. Remember that. The curse of the Green People is that they get to be themselves and wear their misery for the rest of their lives.

You and I only have to wear green on St. Patrick's Day.

I was emailing a friend from high school earlier and telling him about my week. His response was: Who are you? And whose life are you leading?

It's still just me, I told him. But this is my life now. My crazy, happy, beautiful, green, magic and miserable life.

It's no secret. I love writing.

There are words for people like that: New York Times Bestselling Author.