Jack, meet Sam

Jack at Chico Basin Ranch, CO

This was a week or sharing and confessing.  I've been telling more and more people about the project and sharing the blog deets.  I usually get one of two responses when I let people in on my secret: 1. Shock and confusion and then they ask for clarification as if they didn't quite understand what I said.  I get a lot of, "Wou're doing what?!" or 2. They ask if they're going to be in it. 

When I told my friend Jack about it and sent him a link to this blog, he didn't do either, but he thought it was cool just the same.  Jack and I have known each other for six or seven years - first professionally, then we just got on so well, that over time we've managed a real friendship.  He introduced me to Hayes Carll and I gave him the gift of Mumford and Sons.  We keep in touch but don't see each other often.  This summer he was in Colorado and we've been in more frequent contact.  That's when I realized that without intent or thought, a character profile I wrote more than a year and a half ago for this project, is a whole lot like Jack. 

Joe Manganiello

As previously stated, I'm not that interested in writing MY perfect story or wish fulfillment so I went against personal type when I was defining Sam's physical attributes and I wrote him with brown eyes, brown hair and a beard...just like Jack.  I wanted Sam to be the character that you root for over and above the heroine, so he had to have a pretty rich, difficult and a past that would make readers sympathetic to his circumstances.  I knew he would be well educated, musical and a man taking a time out on his life in order to find his way back to a better path.  I had always imagined Joe Manganiello as my Sam, so he's taller and more guarded than Jack but the other similarities are pretty damn parallel.  It's scary. What's even more scary, was this weekend when Jack asked about the book, I sucked it up and confessed that as it turned out my fictional Sam was a whole lot like him, almost as if what I wrote so long ago had manifested in real life for Jack and then was shared with me when he came to Colorado.  God love him, to his credit, he didn't laugh nervously and run away from me or the conversation, he only asked if he was going to be famous.  Don't worry though - I'm pretty sure he thinks I'm a crazy pants, but we've been friends long enough that I think he's ulimately supportive of this level of weird.  It'll be interesting to see how this realization about Jack will color how Sam evolves as I write more of him.

Oprah and Poppies

As a woman who grew up in the age of Oprah, I am not ashamed or embarrassed to admit that almost everything GOOD I learned about honoring myself, my spirit and having big plans or dreams, I learned from the Oprah Winfrey Show.  Oprah and of course my beloved therapist, but I gotta give credit where credit is due.   I didn’t quite mourn the end of the era when she ended the show, but I can admit that I sometimes miss her at 4:00 in the afternoon.   Anyway, one of the things that Oprah taught me was that everyone has a universal plan.  Oprah says “God,” I say “the universe.”  I don’t think anyone knows what that plan is, but I do think the universe gives you hints every now and then.  Oprah says it’s a whisper at first.  And if you’re not paying attention or you don’t hear it, the whisper turns to a scream becoming so big and so loud that you can’t ignore it.  Well, I heard the whisper, and then I started noticing the poppies. 

For Dorothy poppies were poison.  For me, they’re inspiration. 

Poppies are symbolic in Commonwealth Countries for Remembrance Day, Armistice Day, ANZAC Day and the like.  Everyone wears a red paper poppy on their lapel to acknowledge military servicemen and women on those special days.  So when the poppies started showing up for me, I had to assume it was Charles pointing me in a direction or reminding me to write a letter or do something for him or for Granny Bob.  Joe and I planted a few seed packets of poppies in my front yard and the week they sprouted up out of the ground, I got the invite to work the job in the UK, making the trip to France to see Charles’ memorial and tour the town where his plane crashed, a possibility.  June 6, 2011 was the 67^th anniversary of D-Day, not to mention, the day Charles crashed, and as it happened, I was in Linden with Granny Bob. That day I planted poppy seeds in her garden and later that afternoon I got a call from the War Department responding to a request I’d made more than two months ago for his military service records.  Some people might be able to ignore or brush off the coincidence.  I choose to believe that it is what, or rather who I think it is, lighting the path and showing me the way.