Books

I love books.

I love the way they feel in my hands as I curl up and drink hot chocolate and fall into a world so different from my own. I love the way they smell, especially when they are new, like fresh hope. I love the way they smell when they are old, like they've seen more life than you have and are ready to share their wisdom.I love the feeling of desperately turning the page, almost ripping it off, to get to the next line, your eyes scanning for the next moment to relish. I love how they make me laugh and cry and dream and love and hurt. I love characters so real you can feel them, almost physically touch them as they share their life and become a part of your own. I love the feeling of wanting to pause life and sit alone and get back to your friends, your experience, your inspiration... back to reading.

I love to read, but even more than reading, I love to write. It's more than love...writing is like breathing to me. I love to imagine. To create. To twist words and phrases and feel their impact in the soul. I often wonder about my readers. I wonder if they find themselves desperately turning each page, almost tearing it off, to get to the next moment to relish, the way I do with my own books. I wonder if my characters seem as if they have become friends, and others are invested in their lives and experiences. I wonder if they read my novel the way I read novels--slowly, delicately, turning each phrase and line in my mind and letting its weighted impact touch deep inside me, to resound and resonate on my own life and thoughts. I hope that for even one person, just one, I can do that. That alone makes writing worthwhile.

I know Johnny, Elsie, Julia, Dawson, and Katie Taylor are all made up, for the most part at least. But not to me. I see them in my mind's eye. They live and breathe and exist and feel.

 And I love them. 

Until Next Time: 

"A room without books is like a body without a soul." -Cicero