May I Have a Personality Transplant, Please?

This is one of those days when I wish I was a different type of person. The type of person who looks for connections and grabs them. And notices any little connection to someone famous (or at least famous in some small circle of the world) and is willing to contact them and say,

"Hey! Hi, there. My name is Dot and we lalalalala...." Replace the lalas with the relationship or commonality.

But I'm not. I tend to shy away from that. To be honest, I will probably keep my head down and try to avoid contact and not be noticed first. If noticing does happen, They must notice me. And, even at that, I hesitate to use that potential familiarity to my own advantage.

This is to an extreme. I don't envy the social butterfly who is acquaintance-friend to everyone but best-friend to none. I don't wish to be the kind of person who is always always "on" so that every breath and step and glance must have meaning and significance. That would be exhausting and I have to know what is real and what is less or not real.

Today in my blog reader, WOW! Women on Writing popped up with a name right there that I know. I've never met her, but, gasp, the featured interviewed writer is a relative. (Or was a relative; her marriage to my paternal uncle lasted 16 years - and that ending was a long time ago.) My uncle was a writer - whom I rarely saw. He lived an exotic life in other cities and was married several times. I never met this wife - only heard of her in whispers for reasons that are publicly available on the eHarlequin website.

But now, Bonnie Hearn Hill has written a popular YA series, the first book, Aries Rising, has just come out and she's taking it on tour. WOW! talks to her about this book and her jealousy-inducing three-book-deal on their blog.

And I thought, for a minute, "Cool! A connection. A published author (she has a bunch of mystery books before the YA) with newspaper experience." And I imagined for another minute that I could call her up and say

and say

"Hi, my name is Dot Hearn and, why yes, we are sort of related in a long ago and distant kind of way. And I am an author, too, and can you help me get an agent and an editor and a publisher, please?"

...not...

That bubble burst really quickly. But for a moment I almost imagined Me being a They with connections.

And a book deal.

With royalty checks and plenty of hours to think and percolate stories and have literary gems roll off my fingertips with minimal effort. And trips and retreats and bubble baths and. Time.

Hey, Bonnie, remember me? Oh, right, we never met.
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