HATE TO SAY I TOLD YOU SO

But, really, I did. As the past three weeks of radio silence (or should that be blog silence?) has shown, I meant what I said. I'm really bad at keeping up with this. Oh well.

That does bring me to my point today, however. Self-fulfilling prophecy...and I guess, moreover, fate. I'm not going to say that I put all my coins in the 'destiny' bag (I find that to be a wee bit egotistical), but I'm not against the idea either. I like to use it as reference, especially on those days when I wonder what the hell I'm doing.

Here's an example. Sometimes I wonder how I let myself get stuck in this tiny ass town (smaller than the hometown I SWORE to get out of), working a retail job, living in a crappy apartment, etc...Then I actually think about all of the things (mostly my cats) I wouldn't have if I hadn't gotten this job and all the people I would not have met. Thinking about it this way, makes the not-so-perfect seem much more bearable.

Before you say to yourself, that's not really fate, hear me out. It may seem silly when I talk about destiny on the level of jobs or friends, but on a bigger scale it has so much more of an impact. If someone could trace an meaningful event (think BIG) to single decision, or even a set of decisions, that may have happened days, months, or years in the past, what does that say about the control we have over our lives? It's amazing to think that something as insignificant as not getting into art school--something hundreds of hopeful students face each year--could lead to creation the most murderous dictator in history. If fate teaches us anything, it's that we don't have control.

While this subject has been on my mind lately, it became a particularly dominant thought this past weekend after talking to my sister about what she thought of Benajah's Keeper. She mentioned that she skipped ahead to the end (claiming she needed to study and not read books for pleasure...) and was surprised that what she had anticipated was not what happened. Without giving anything away, I will simply say it had to do with who turned out to be the "bad guy." Hearing her say this made me think: how would it have turned out if I made that decision instead? How would it have changed my characters?

Now, this is not to say that I am rethinking my ending. I know that Benajah's Keeper ends the way it's supposed to end. But the second novel in the series is still VERY moldable, and I think that this conversation may have just changed that book--and the one after--for the better. It opened up a brand new wormhole, one that I cannot wait write.

And with how crazy this weekend was, I don't think anything but kismet can explain it.