The HEA Cafe

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Yesterday my youngest child graduated from college.  When my sons were younger I thought high school graduation would be the big transition.  Even though that was a milestone, the end of their undergraduate careers felt even more like an end-of-childhood rite of passage for me.

Part of it is I remember what I was doing when I graduated from the University of Florida, which is now my son’s alma mater as well:  I was married, running a household and working full time as a radio news reporter and anchor of the afternoon news.  A lot of responsibility for a 22-year-old, but that was my life and to me it was the norm.  Now I’ve got one son preparing for graduate school, and another who’s going to spend a year traveling and figuring out what he wants to do with his philosophy degree and his life (on his dime, I might add).

One thing I never expected when I got my diploma in broadcast news was that I would end up writing romance novels for a living.  At 22 I saw myself as always being what used to be termed a “news-hen”, a woman reporter/broadcaster/editor/anchor.  And I did live my dream.  I may not have conquered the networks, but I rose to become a news director, producer, and ultimately, radio station owner.

Now that I write fiction full time I realize that the neat thing about life is you never have to let go of your dreams, but it helps to ask yourself if there are new directions to explore.  While I often joke that I hate writing but love having written, the truth is, I love writing.  I loved writing news that informed people with the urgency of a radio bulletin, and I love writing about pirates.  Same dream, different day.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you you can’t follow your dream. Your dream may be to get a degree in philosophy, despite a whole bunch of nay-sayers staring at you and saying, ” How do you expect to make a living with that?”  Or your dream may be to realize one morning that you’d like to write pirate stories with a HEA ending.  It’s your dream.  Hold fast to it, and don’t give up.