You see, imagination is the single most powerful attribute we have. That creative spark is what led to leaders of industries creating brand new things never dreamed of before. Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Walt Disney, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. They all had it. That powerful ability to imagine a future and then manifest it into the real world. A dream that became reality. And their imaginations, their dreams, created industry, created jobs, and made this country a leader in many ways.

We still have it. What we must do if we want to crawl out of the hole we’ve dug ourselves into is to stop worshipping at the altar of the almighty dollar and realize that creativity is our greatest resource. We need to nurture it. Find it. Develop it. We need to realize that storytelling, imagination and creativity aren’t things that are taught by teaching to the test. That questioning mind, that struggle to communicate and share ideas, is something we need to foster in our children and our workers if we truly wish to succeed.

Someone imagined we could go to the moon. It became a reality. Someone dreamed they could flip open a communication device (ala Star Trek) and not even 50 years later cell phones became a real thing. A flight of fantasy made flight in airplanes possible. Someone envisioned a day where you could hold a computer in the palm of your hand, and it’s here.  Imagine what we could accomplish tomorrow, or next year, if instead of worrying about how to pound out better engineers or better financial managers, we concentrated on teaching those with imagination how to harness their gift — so that it could benefit us all. It would give those engineers something to create. It would create profits for those financial types to manage. It could create more jobs that we have employees.

And this is not just imagination in the arts, but imagination in science, imagination in math, imagination in industrial technology. We must dream it before we can create it. Someone has to have the creative spark to say, “Hey, what if….”  Rather than shutting them down because it’s different or far-fetched, or has never been tried before, let them lead the way, because they see the path to our future.

Our innovative nature, our creativity, our ability to see the world in a different way and make it so, is the heart of what made America great in the first place. Don’t do it the way others have done, create your own path. That’s the American spirit. And if we want our children and our children’s children to have the a share in the American Dream, then we’d better recognize the power of imagination.

Albert Einstein said it best: “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” And if a man as brilliant as Albert saw the value in imagination, surely we should too.

 It’s 15 minutes long, but both inspiring and though provoking:

LeVar Burton The Power of Storytelling and Imagination from the Tools of Change Conference

Amish Sugar-Cream Pie:

3/4 cup granulated sugar

2 1/2 cup half-and-half

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup cornstarch

1/2 cup butter

1 tsp vanilla

1/8 tsp salt

9-inch pie crust (lightly baked is best)

1/8 tsp ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

In medium saucepan combine granulated sugar, salt and half-and-half. Bring to boiling, stirring occasionally.

In another saucepan (bigger one), combine brown sugar and cornstarch.

Gradually whisk in hot half-and-half mixture. Add butter over medium heat. Cook mixture, whisking constantly, 5 minutes or until boiling and thickened.

Simmer 1 minute.

Remove from heat and stir in vanilla.

Pour mixture into prepared pie crust. Sprinkle with cinnamon.

Bake for 20 minutes or until top of pie is golden.

Place on wire rack. Pie filling will be loose but will thicken on cooling.  Cool completely before slicing.

The Hunter is my cowboy steampunk from Zebra, and more or less what would happen if you mashed the television show Supernatural together with Wild Wild West and added a dollop of Indiana Jones. There’s action, adventure, supernatural nasties, danger, and romance.

The idea for the three brothers, all named after their father’s favorite guns, actually popped into my brain in 1998, when I was contemplating writing an entire linked family series. Winchester, Remington and Colt were the American cousins in the family. I knew the youngest, Colt, was an outlaw bent on being just like his outlaw father, while the oldest, Winchester was a law man determined to be the opposite of dear old dad and a law man. The middle brother, Remington, like so many middle kids, wasn’t like either one of his brothers and is an attorney, able to dabble on both sides of the law.

What I didn’t know about these guys for a long time was what held them together. It wasn’t until I started writing paranormals, that I realized why the idea had been put on the back shelf of my brain for so long, waiting for that little magical key to unlock the story for me. I realized they were paranormal Hunters. These brothers were so different, and yet they shared a common goal, a common history – that of being raised in the ways of the Legion of Hunters, protecting people from monsters they didn’t even know were real. Things like demons, vampires, werewolves, dark fae, ghosts, skinwalkers, and shapeshifters.

But having roots in romance meant that each brother was going to have to come up against an equally difficult opponent. One he would be attracted to and yet honor-bound to kill. So each brother got a Darkin to deal with. For Colt, who’s very much a ladies’ man, it was only fair I give him a succubus to deal with – the firey Lillith (Lilly) Arliss. Only Lilly isn’t like any demon he’s come up against and could be stone-cold about. She’s got a desire to become human again. If she helps him recover his father’s missing piece of the Book of Legend, she wants him to free her from being a demon. But there’s a high price. Higher than either of them anticipate.

My story Shadowlander is really a novella, not a novel, which is why it’s shorter. It’s the start of my Shadow Sisters series for Entangled Publishing. I guess it’s rather fitting that while I have the brothers duking it out in the old west, I have the sisters struggling in contemporary times to keep the dark fae only they can see, from invading our world.

Three rules have governed the O’Connell sisters since the day they were born:

One: Don’t let the fae know you can see them.

Two: Don’t talk to the fae.

Three: Never, ever follow the fae.

The series starts out with Catherine (Cate) O’Connell, the eldest sister being forced to break all the sacred O’Connell family rules in order to try and save her best friend who’s been abducted through the rift into the fae world.

She plans on using the help of a fae who’s been following her since she was 16, named Rook. But once Rook finds out she’s what’s know as a Seer in his realm, his plans to take her to the fae world as a war prize for Midsummer’s Eve take a whole new turn. As a Seer, Cate could change the tide in their upcoming war with our world.

I had a lot of fun developing such different worlds for each series and they’ll keep growing as I go along. But for now I need to celebrate. There’s very few times of celebration between a whole lot of work when it comes to writing. So Happy Birthday my books!

Today I’m looking at my writing process. Every writer does it differently. The truth is the writing process is as unique to the author as his or her voice. Which is why all those fantastic writing classes we take end up having to be filtered through the sieve of our own making so we can save what will work and toss out the rest.

In the last few weeks between finishing writing The Slayer, the second steampunk book for Zebra and starting (and hopefully finishing soon) Shadowlander, the  novella kicking off my Shadow Sisters series for Entangled Publishing, I’ve found I’ve got a weird writing process quirk. It doesn’t have to do with character development (although I do some strange stuff for that, too.). It doesn’t have to do with creating massive maps of my imaginary worlds. It actually has to do with the business part of my writing brain.

Apparently, part of my writing process is to go on a job hunt in the middle of the book. I don’t know if it’s some psychological release valve, helping me cope with the momentary insanity of how-will-I-ever-finish-this-book, or more of a nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach that I should be doing more than I am to support the household bottom line. Either way it’s a massive time suck.

I send out applications. I troll websites. I actually go on interviews and I’ve taken jobs. But they aren’t career builders. They are the day jobs that I can work around the kids’ schedules. Because, really, it isn’t bad enough that mom spends a huge chunk of her time glommed onto the computer cavorting with imaginary people in imaginary worlds rather than playing another round of Uno or folding the laundry that’s piled up on the couch.

Now I’ll be painfully honest and say while it’s been the most amazing year to have four books out on the shelves, it hasn’t been the most profitable. Writers don’t make nearly what you think they do. In fact right now I’d make more substitute teaching six days a month. I’m hoping that’ll start to turn around as my first royalty statements come in, but I’m not going to count those fluffy little chicks until they start laying some nest eggs in my bank account.

I sometimes wish writing were just for the sake of art. It’s not. This is a full time job, mixed with a half-time volunteering position, mixed with a whole lot of crazy. I write because I have to find some way of relieving all this stuff that flutters through my brain. I write because I love ideas and research and characters. I write because I hope that someday I’ll be able to tell my husband, hey, yeah, I really was our retirement plan like you said and didn’t it all work out great.

*sigh* For now it’s just part of the process. It’s how I get the book written. It’s how I cope with thinking I should be doing more. Making more to help out in these tough economic times. Even though I must say getting certified to be a paralegal looks like it might be fun. I considered going into law when I was younger. Or maybe I should try teaching as an adjunct rather than a substitute. I love being in the classroom. I gain a lot from working with others and some days miss it intensely. Humm. Choices. Choices.

Writers should learn from every book they write. Even if it’s a little something about themselves.

It all started when my oldest was in half-day kindergarten. Being a writer, I also happen to be a HUGE reader. Thankfully my children enjoyed being read to, because really in this household they wouldn’t have had a choice anyway. I LOVE to read out loud. And like my mother before me, I use different voices for each of the characters. It’s fun!

But I digress.

Since I virtually knew no one in the little Washington town we’d moved to from Arizona, and I worked from home (which meant my social interactions with real, live people were limited to the phone most days), I volunteered in my child’s class. At one point I offered to start a reading club. We’d meet in the afternoon on Fridays, have snacks, and read Harry Potter and the Sorcer’s Stone. I wrote up flyers. I handed them out.

Only three moms came.

I read out loud to the children. They each had a notebook where they could draw a picture about their favorite part of the chapter and we’d talk about what we read afterwards. They had snacks. They played. The mommies had tea. It was fantastic. And it gave me a group of friends I didn’t have before. Moms like me, who had kindergarteners who enjoyed books and enjoyed tea and were fun to be with. On the last day of school, we took the children as a group to go see the first Harry Potter movie. Some of them dressed up, so I did too, complete with my burgundy velvet cape and black pointed witch’s hat, because really, how many times as an adult to you get to dress up besides maybe Halloween or a steampunk event?

Out of that year of reading Harry Potter, grew some deep friendships. It was also the start of weekly tea for the moms, which we still do all these years later, even though some of my original friends from that reading club have moved to other states or taken up day-jobs that keep them busy all week. (Seriously half the writing I do would not be accomplished without the support of my non-writer tea friends who help keep me sane and smiling.)

Harry Potter gave me a means to connect not only with my children and their friends, and their parents, but also to make new friends of my own. So, thank you, J.K. Rowling for your magical imagination and fantastic stories. Thank you for giving me, and millions like me, not only entertaining stories, but new friends.