Let me be clear. I have a good life. I do. I do not want to leave it behind, dump it, change it, or erase it. I am blessed, and I know I’m blessed. And I am thankful.

But I also have a life outside of this plane of existence. It’s a world of my own making. I control the characters, the lies, and the pain. I feel the love, the confusion, and the magic of the world around me.

No, I’m not psycho nor psychic.

I am a writer.

I tend to get lost in good books too, but I am finding I am falling in love with the worlds I create. In my books there’s passion, insecurity, fear, and curiosity. There is no war, no prejudice. There is making love and fun sex but not pornography. It may seem quite vanilla in my worlds, but, to be honest, there is enough crap going on in the world around me that I don’t need to deal with it in my fantasy world.

Are my stories reminiscent of Harlequin novels? You know — girl meets boy, they don’t hit it off at first, they both have a problem to overcome, they are attracted to each other, they fight the problem, they overcome it, then fall in love and get married.

In some form, yes. In most other ways, no. In my stories they lovers don’t always wind up together. Or they do. Or they want to but can’t. Or they can. It doesn’t matter because it’s the journey that counts.

We all have our way of writing. Our own themes. Our own demons. As I’ve said in past blogs, I often wonder how authors like Stephen King or Dean Koontz get into the blackness of the mind and spread it across their books. Do they get off on digging deep and writing scary stuff? Do they become the madness, the psycho, at least for the time they are writing about it?

I believe that if you are passionate about your writing you can’t help but get lost in your stories. Whether they are short stories, novellas, or novels, you can’t help but take a particular point of view. Are you the antagonist? The victim? The virgin? The pompous ass?

Each character you develop helps you get lost in your fantasy world. You want your pompous ass to really be an ass, you want your troubled couple to be passionate about each other. You want poverty or wealth to be real, and your fantasy names to be easy to read.

Sometimes I want to spend more time in my fantasy worlds than I do in my real world. I love my fantasy worlds, my time-travel worlds, and my modern worlds. I work hard to make my worlds believable, along with the people who populate them.

Perhaps that’s why I get so lost in my own creations. I still cry in certain parts, and feel my heart flutter and race in others. I still get pissed off at some people and feel lost when they feel lost.

I hope that you get lost in your writings, too. Don’t hold your story at arm’s length. Get into each chapter, each character. Leave your world behind. Forget the politics, the job, the housework. Find a place both physically and mentally and just let loose.

You won’t always be hot..You might not always “feel” it. But don’t give up. Because when it comes back it will hit you like a lightning bolt. And when it does you better go with it.

Come back to your reality when you have to, but live in your fantasy world as often as you can.

You won’t be sorry.