Like a lot of people, I’m big on setting goals. I set weekly goals in the form of my ‘to do’ list and I set long term goals on my birthday which is near the end of August. I’m doing it again this year.

We live in a goal-oriented, results-celebrated society. If there was a Goals R Us outlet near you, would you stop by? I would. I’m always up for new goals. Goals are important. But so is moderation. In the past, my annual goal list was pages and pages – the War & Peace of goal setting. And I usually ended up frustrated because I never achieved half of what I wanted to.

So I took a course from author and psychologist Margie Lawson. Lawson believes in the SOAR process – setting obtainable and realistic goals. She has participants write down how long they think it’ll take to meet a given goal – the anticipated time –followed by the real time when the goal is achieved. People – and I was no exception – often underestimate how long it’ll take to complete a task or reach a goal. If they’re late or don’t get there, they beat themselves up. Focus, focus, focus, Lawson told us. Ignore distractions; choose to achieve your goals. And I have to admit, the process of anticipating the time it’ll take to achieve my goals has helped me cross the finish line on a lot of them.

But.

I started this blog a week ago. Anticipated time – about 40 minutes. Twenty minutes in, the phone rang, which I normally ignore (focus, focus). But it was my daughter and she never calls during writing hours unless it’s critical. Bracing myself, I picked up. She’d finished work early and wanted to chat before I left on a weekend away. She wanted to tell me about a disastrous first date in which the guy asked her to ‘bring snacks’ and then, after they met and ate the requested snacks, he walked her to a stylist so he could get his hair cut. Only he didn’t have his wallet and he needed a loan. (I am not making this up). After hearing more (and, unbelievably, there was more), I offered some motherly advice (run; followed by a pointed question – why didn’t you dump his ass and bad hair in front of that salon?) and an hour was gone. The blog was not written.

Margie Lawson would have been ashamed. A few days later, coming home from my weekend away, I got stuck on a mountain highway behind a police-led escort of a cycling team. A drive that should have taken forty-five minutes took almost two hours. It could have been worse – the Malahat (the name of the highway in question) is sometimes closed at length because of accidents. Everybody at home knows when someone is driving down island, they’re on Malahat time. Anything can happen; you learn to go with it.

It seems to me there is anticipated time, there is real time, and there is Malahat time. Malahat time messes with our goals. It is the unexpected. Sometimes it’s in our control (that ringing phone) but often it’s not (my trip home).

As a writer I need to turn in books and articles on deadline. I need to set goals. I need to consider anticipated time and real time, and sometimes I need to shut my ears to a ringing phone. But in the same way that story obstacles forge better characters, I’m starting to think that Malahat time flavors a richer life.

So this year, I’m not yearning for a Goals R Us or writing a goal list the length of War & Peace. I’m thinking realistically about what I can achieve in the next year. And I’m leaving space for some Malahat time. Because a richer life makes for better fiction. And isn’t that the only goal worth pursuing?

I’m holidaying at home this year. This is no hardship; I live on an island with beautiful beaches, world-renowned vineyards and award-winning restaurants. Staying home not only deepens my appreciation for the beauty in my own back yard, it gives me more time to read . . . and reading is its own kind of travel.

I started the summer with Paris In Love: A Memoir by Eloisa James. In 2009, James sold her house, took a sabbatical from her job as a Shakespeare professor and moved her family to Paris for a year. Her chronicles, told in Facebook-length short vignettes are true bites of Paris, without the calories. James, who is also a best-selling romance author, is sometimes witty and other times brilliantly descriptive as she details life with a dashing Italian husband, an overweight dog, and two children (11 and 15) who are initially less than enthused about the year away. Paris In Love had me nodding, laughing, and, on the last page, wishing there was more.

I was so dazzled by her writing that I picked up a James regency: When Beauty Tamed the Beast. Linnet Berry Thrynne is one of the most beautiful women ever to grace London’s ballrooms. Unfortunately, she’s been involved in something of a scandal and it’s believed she’s with child. She needs a husband. Enter Piers Yelverton, Earl of Marchant, a grumpy beast of a doctor (brilliant but lame; shades of the just ended TV series House) who lives in a castle in Wales and knows one thing for sure: he will never fall in love. He may, however, be in the market for a wife. These two leads had me laughing out loud with their verbal sparring; the supporting characters added great depth. No surprise that When Beauty Tamed the Beast is shortlisted for RWA’s 2012 prestigious Rita award.

Speaking of Rita Awards, another shortlisted book I just finished is Barbara Freethy’s paranormal romance At Hidden Falls. I’m a long-time Freethy fan; I’ve loved her work since Daniel’s Gift. The story opens when Isabella Silviera’s car goes off the cliff en route to Angel’s Bay and she is rescued by Nick Hartley, a man she knows is somehow connected to her recent unsettling dreams. Based on the gift of insight she inherited from her Mayan ancestors, Isabella knows someone in the small community is in trouble and needs her help. Is it her brother? Or is it Nick? At Hidden Falls has secrets, betrayal, intrigue, and true love. A great summer read.

An auto buy for me is Kristan Higgins and her latest contemporary romance Somebody to Love had me reading way past bedtime. After her father loses the family fortune in an insider-trading scheme, single mom Parker Welles is penniless. All she has left in the way of assets is a decrepit house – one she’s never seen – in Gideon’s Cove, Maine. She needs to fix and flip in order to provide for her son, Nicky. Enter James Cahill, her father’s right hand man, who shows up in Maine to help. Though he’s seriously gorgeous and knows his way around a toolbox, Parker is less than thrilled to see him. They have a history, and it’s not pretty. The love story builds beautifully with each character overcoming emotional obstacles standing in the way of a true relationship. The declaration of love was clever and the final kicker scene with Parker, James and little Nicky was both funny and poignant. Oh, and the scene with Parker and a mouse had me both laughing and squirming. Somebody to Love is another winner from Kristan Higgins.

A few weeks ago I wrote an article on confidence for a lifestyle magazine. I interviewed a number of people, one of whom was a friend who’d struggled with a lack of confidence as a child but had, through years of living and many small successes, come out of her shell and into herself. Her story wasn’t unique, but her eloquence provided me with some good quotes.

It’s what I didn’t include in the article, however, that haunted me for weeks afterwards. It’s a story she told me about her eighteen-year-old son, Ben.

I’ve known Ben since he was ten. He’s a deep thinker with a biting wit who is, like his mom used to be, a little low in confidence. He’s also an incredibly talented artist and writer. By the time he was in his early teens, Ben had filled a stack of notebooks with a lengthy and brilliantly illustrated fantasy novel that took him years to write. He didn’t talk about it much, but he had done it and his confidence was building.

Ben entered high school thinking about his future, considering what he’d major in at university. Knowing it would either be fine art or literature, he kept drawing and painting and writing.

Until Grade Eleven. That’s when Ben read Ulysses. And he hasn’t written a single word – other than texts to his buddies or required school work – since.

Ulysses, in case you missed it, is considered one of the greatest novels ever written. It’s number one on the Modern Library’s List of the 100 Best English Language Novels of the 20th century. Never mind that this James Joyce classic runs 265,000 words, was written in 1922, and is for me at least (and probably a few others) pretty much incomprehensible.

For some, it is the gold standard of literature. Given that, Ben decided to read it. It took him forever.

In fact, his mom said, he had trouble finishing it. In the end, he didn’t really like it. Nor did he understand it. But that appealed to his deep thinking nature because Ben found it meaningful. He took another look at his own fantasy novel and found it wanting. Comparisons were made, confidence was eroded. He could never write anything as good, he told his mother. Certainly not in this lifetime.

His mother said all the right things (and she’s not even a writer, she’s a dental hygienist). She pointed out that times change, tastes change, writing changes. She talked about hard-to-grasp literature versus engaging entertaining fiction. She mentioned Harry Potter and all the books Ben loved growing up. She reminded him of his innate talent, talked about how he had years to learn craft and hone that talent. She told him she believed in him.

The trouble is Ben stopped believing in himself.

We all make comparisons. Probably not with Ulysses but very likely with other writers. There is an upside to comparing if we’re studying craft and learning from it. I think that’s part of what Ben was trying to do. But there’s no place for comparing if it drags us down and makes us feel ‘less than.’ Because there’s always going to be someone who writes better or gets the award we covet or hits a list we desperately want to hit. They are not hard to find.

What is often harder to find is acceptance of and compassion for our own work, our own talent, our own process. And self-compassion, said one of the experts I interviewed for the article, is one of the cornerstones of confidence.

Ben was part of my son’s graduating class. In a few weeks, he’ll walk out of his high school forever. I’m going to wrap up a copy of ‘Sometimes the Magic Works – Lessons From a Writing Life’ by Terry Brooks. I’ll give it to him and suggest he might like to read some of Brooks’ fantasy novels too. They remind me of the kind of thing Ben wrote with such passion back in middle school.

And while Ben’s off somewhere reading, his mom and I have plans for his copy of Ulysses. Campfire anyone?

I live in the Northern Hemisphere. Not on an ice flow but fairly far north, well beyond what you’d call tropical.

So imagine my shock when I looked out my office window in the dead of winter and saw a koala perched on a branch of my gnarled apple tree.

Yes, I’d had my morning coffee and, no, it didn’t contain brandy. I saw a koala. At least until my brain slapped my imagination upside the head and reminded me it wasn’t possible; I was seeing things. Seeing things differently.

At least outside my window. Inside was a different story.

Some months prior to the marsupial sighting, I’d been working on a novel, one of the most challenging books I’ve written. This story required the weaving of two worlds. I had everything in place, or so I thought, but readers weren’t getting it. The protagonist was compelling; the writing and dialogue flowed; the goals, motivations and conflict were all spelled out. Editors and agents had said so. Yet they weren’t buying. Readers seemed fuzzy on the secondary world I’d so carefully woven through the pages. Maybe, someone suggested, you could take a specific pivotal event that happens later in the manuscript and use it as your opening. That, they said, would clear things up.

No. Not possible. While I wasn’t married to the opening I had, I did favor a certain order in the unfolding of events. There was a logic to it. Putting that pivotal event at the front of the book would seriously mess up the pacing and ruin the escalating tension.

When the Martian-I-married pointed out that I was, in fact, the author of this particular novel which meant I had complete control over the unfolding of events, the rising of said tension, etc. etc., I told him to (please) go into the basement and work on his car. Then I stuck the manuscript away for more aging while I finished something else.

As these things work – literally minutes before I saw the koala – I had pulled the manuscript and placed it on my desk. But while I had new perspective on the wildlife in my backyard, I was still seeing what I wanted to see in the WIP.

I spent the next few days revising around that troubling opening and maintaining my unarguable logic of why events needed to unfold the way they did. Curiously, the opening did not rewrite itself; the problem still remained. Funny how that works.

On Thursday I decided what the hell. I copied and pasted the pivotal event from the middle of the manuscript to the beginning. I wrote, and rewrote. I fiddled with the middle, writing and rewriting that too.

It did not work. It wrecked the flow in the middle; it raised too many questions at the beginning.

Feeling both smug and discouraged, I went to sign off for the day. And that’s when I saw it. Another koala. Only this one wasn’t in the apple tree, it was on the screen in front of me. I saw, quite suddenly and from a completely different perspective, what that reader had been going on about. I saw beyond the specific event of the pivotal scene to the elements she was after – the danger, the conflict, the setting. And – praise the writing Gods – I saw how to incorporate those elements into a new opening scene.

I saw differently. Obviously seeing things differently is a skill I need to feed. I just hope that koala sticks around.

Book revisions remind me a lot of home renovations. Case in point: the floors in my house.

Last spring, my husband and I decided, on something of a whim, to get our hardwood floors refinished. Our house is old and lovingly cared for. The floors, however, were old and hadn’t been loved in 24 years. Clearly I was in a whimsical decision-making mood at the time because, within days of that idea, I also pulled a dusty old manuscript out from under my bed and decided to revise it.

(Note: more than one whimsical decision in a week may lead to therapy)

When floors are refinished, everything must be off said floors. In the process of removing our kitchen appliances, the squirrel running our refrigerator died, as did the one running the dishwasher. A quick shopping trip revealed a dilemma: refrigerators had gotten considerably larger since the last one went into its alcove beside the cupboards. “We can get a much better fridge if we cut the cupboard down a little,” said the Martin (aka husband with a power tool obsession). Hearing only “much better fridge,” I agreed.

Two months later, when I blinked and looked around the kitchen, we had all new appliances, several smaller cupboards, as well as new lights, a new backsplash, new countertops, and a window seat we’d been talking about getting for fifteen years.

A window seat where I can recline with a glass of wine and read the manuscript I am still tweaking because, funny thing is, like refinishing floors, when you start moving things around in an old manuscript, you may as well get out the power tools because everything is up for grabs.

Here’s what my whimsical self learned:

1. Be realistic. This will be hard. Messy. You may cry. And kill people. To save your soul and the judicial system, with any luck these will be made up people only and not contractors or editors.

2. Keep an open mind. Things may not go according to plan. The book may, as Stephen King’s does in his first draft, ‘speak to you’ even as you’re getting ready to slash and burn. Listen. Serve the book (or the kitchen, as the case may be). Be ruthless.

3. Cut words, cut people, but don’t cut corners. Cutting corners and doing a half assed job may well lead to a half assed product.
Cut the swampy bits out of the book; buy granite for the kitchen. You know you want to. And it’ll be worth it in the end. But:

4. It will cost you. Time, tears, and more cold hard cash than you’d like. Whether it’s the revision or the reno, have your phone and favorite take out menus handy; bribe your kids to dial the number at the end of the day when you’re too cross-eyed to see.

5. Call in the experts: Peeps to read pages; contractors to give consultations. Serve wine. Or not. Unless it’s contractors in which case I happen to know beer or scotch at the pencil sharpening (but not the power tool starting) stage improves the bottom line. Either way, get feedback. Take what resonates; toss the rest.

6. Pretty pots and fancy phrases only go so far. Like a decent stove that fires on all cylinders, craft matters. Pay attention to the important stuff: character, conflict, story goal, structure. Nice cutlery doesn’t hurt either.

7. Remember the promise. When the dust settles and the power tools are unplugged, make sure you deliver that final product. Whether it’s cupcakes or chicken cordon bleu, edgy thriller or heart wrenching romance, give them what they came for. And leave them wanting more.

January 23, 2012 marks the start of the Chinese Year of the Dragon. In Chinese lore, the dragon is the ultimate symbol of success, prosperity, and good fortune. Dragon Years are supposed to usher in Great Things. (And any writer who doesn’t look forward to Great Things has either given up writing or is lying to themselves.)

This year it’s the water dragon. The water dragon last appeared in 1952, the year Queen Elizabeth II became Queen of England. That same year, the field of medicine saw its first successful separation of Siamese twins in Cleveland, Ohio; the polio vaccine was first tested; and the transistor radio was developed.

Along with being a year of great highs, significantly bleak things can happen in a Dragon Year too. A killer fog descended on London in 1952, leading to the invention of the word smog. And the United States introduced two highly destructive weapons – the B-52 bomber and the hydrogen bomb.

But as is often the case, it’s publishing and books I’m thinking about. Ballentine Books was founded in 1952, becoming one of the leading publishers of science fiction and fantasy. Its biggest rival, Ace Publishing, was founded that same year, as was St. Martin’s Press.

Agatha Christie’s Mousetrap opened in London in 1952, eventually setting the record for the longest, continually running production of a play in history (wouldn’t it be nice to have that publishing credit?)

As you’d expect, many books were published in 1952. E.B. White published Charlotte’s Web, one of my all-time favorite stories. Other classics that year included A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas; East of Eden by John Steinbeck; and The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemmingway. Isaac Asimov published three books including Foundation and Empire. In terms of series, C.S. Lewis published the third in his Narnia series; Mary Norton the first in her The Borrowers series, and Carolyn Keene released her 29th Nancy Drew – The Mystery at the Ski Jump. Catherine Cookson published her heart wrenching The Fifteen Streets and Pearl S. Buck saw the release of her classic Hidden Flower. If non-fiction was your thing, Albert Einstein had The Principle of Relativity, and if you preferred short stories you could curl up with Daphne du Maurier’s collection Kiss Me Again, Stranger. (It included the short story The Birds later adapted for screen by Alfred Hitchcock.)

Two books published in 1952 would profoundly impact my life. One was Karen by Marie Killilea, a deeply moving true story about a girl with cerebral palsy. I read that book decades later, when I was twelve. Shortly after, I was asked to baby-sit a young child with cerebral palsy. Had I not read the book, I may not have had the courage to say yes. And looking after Marie brought me many gifts.

The other book was Sue Barton, Staff Nurse by Helen Dore Boylston. I soon devoured the entire series. For a while I toyed with the idea of being a nurse, but given my distaste for all things bloody (and thinking doctors had more fun anyway), I decided telling stories was my One True Love. Some years later, my daughter sourced a Sue Barton book on EBay and presented it to me for Christmas. It sits on my shelf, a physical reminder of the efforts of a Dragon Year and the dreams of a young girl.

Some say the dragon’s originality and imagination is the most impressive of his characteristics. He’s said to see new paths where others might see brick walls. Originality. Imagination. Opportunity. Three key words for this year. Key words I’m taking to heart.

Oh, and since the dragon is associated with spring, to make the most of a Dragon Year, we’re supposed to get started as early in spring as possible.

Ready, set, go!

As I sat down to write this, Amazon released the list of its top 10 best selling books for 2011. Two of the titles were Kindle-only releases (The Mill River Recluse and The Abby), underscoring what we know to be true – the e book phenomenon is here to stay. But I was intrigued by what took the top three spots: Steve Jobs, a biography, along with Bossypants by Tina Fey and A Stolen Life by Jaycee Dugard.

It reminded me of a simple truth. Life is about people. As we rush around making holidays happen or work hard to get words onto the page, it sometimes gets lost. In this age of tweets and status updates, of email and text messages, it’s easy to stay a step or three removed from people. I’m certainly guilty of it. I’m writing this message to people I don’t know and whom I may never meet. The irony doesn’t escape me.

I was blessed this year to connect with a friend I hadn’t seen in over twenty years. We’d been in touch electronically but when we exchanged hugs, when we sat down to eat and drink together, our friendship was renewed in a way that simply doesn’t happen when you’re dealing with those three degrees of separation.

And so my wish for you this holiday season is the opportunity to connect with friends and family. To hug and be hugged. To feel loved and appreciated. And if you’re separated by distance as I am from some of my family, perhaps once phone calls or emails are exchanged, you can put on a pot of coffee, open a bottle of wine or maybe even make a simple meal and then invite someone over to share it with you. Connecting truly is one of the best gifts of all.

I suspect Gail’s guitar is still weeping over our 40th red door retreat this past weekend. As regular blog visitors probably know, we sequester ourselves behind the Red Door for two days four times a year. At our annual December gathering, Gail brings her guitar. Usually on the second night, after working all day and fortifying ourselves with food and drink, we sing. Christmas carols, folk songs, whatever comes to mind.

Correction: Gail sings. Her voice is simply stunning; there really is no other word. What the rest of us do can kindly be described as caterwauling. (It is a wonder the neighbors didn’t call 911 fearing someone was being put down.)

But they didn’t. We were left alone to let off steam after a full day of work. Because that’s what these retreats are about. Sure, there’s laughter and camaraderie (and singing in December) but we come together to talk about the business of publishing and the craft of writing.

The first order of business this time around was discussion about It Happened at Midnight, our soon to be released group anthology of short stories. Now that they’ve been independently edited, we’re moving forward with cover art but we needed some short ‘blurbs’ to describe what each of the stories is about. After spending some time on those, we moved on to the practicalities of release venues and dates. We’re aiming to have the anthology available for download from Amazon early in the New Year. Watch this blog for more details.

A couple of us needed brainstorming sessions so we spent time discussing characters and motivations and plot points. This is one of my favorite aspects of the red door. I find it energizing and helpful to look at all aspects of story, whether it’s mine or someone else’s.

After a long walk to stretch our legs, Vanessa pulled out some whack cards to stretch our creative muscles in new directions. And then we turned back to an issue we all struggle with at various times in our careers – boosting our productivity.

EC pointed out a blog she’s found helpful – Rachel Aaron’s Pretentious Title site – http://thisblogisaploy.blogspot.com
The five of us quickly pulled up her entry for Wednesday, June 8th, 2011. Aaron writes about how she went from writing 2,000 words a day to 10,000 words a day. It was an eye opener. She focuses on three things: knowledge, time, and enthusiasm. If this subject matters to you, go read it. You won’t be sorry. She also has another entry describing how she plots. We glanced at it but didn’t have time to explore it in detail. It’s on my list of things to read before we gather for the next red door in March.

For that one, Gail’s guitar stays home. I’m sure the neighbors will be pleased. But come to think of it, there may be caterwauling anyway. You just never know.

Maybe it’s in my genes. As a kid growing up, my grandparents believed that when things went bump in the night, there was probably something there. As far as they were concerned, ghosts were as real as tomato soup, though even harder to pin to the wall. They believed in magic anything, full fat everything and moose meat.

I never got the moose meat thing. Full fat we won’t talk about. But ghosts, magic and all things paranormal? Yes. Curiously, vampires were not part of the equation. Their tastes extended more to episodes of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir or Tales from the Twilight Zone. I’m sure it’s due, in part, to my grandparents that I adored paranormal fiction long before it was even categorized.

So in honor of my grandparents and All Hallow’s Eve which is thought to be that time of year when the veil between this world and the next is at its thinnest, here are a few books featuring ghosts, magic and things that go bump in the night.

Heather Graham’s Bone Island Trilogy (Ghost Night; Ghost Moon; Ghost Shadow) is set in richly detailed Key West, which becomes a character in itself. While the books are loosely connected, they’re very much stand alone reads. Spooky, sensual and layered with history, the stories make you think and the ghosts make you laugh, particularly Bartholomew, the pirate (correction privateer) who is afraid of a haunted house.

Grittier is Kat Richardson’s urban fantasy Greywalker series. Harper Blaine is a private investigator living in Seattle. After dying for two minutes and being revived, she discovers she can see ghosts and has become a Greywalker, a person able to move through the grey, that area that exists between our world and the next. Though these stories are designed to stand alone, I started this series with book 4 (Vanished) but felt lost a few times. Only after going back and starting with book one (Greywalker) was I hooked.

In the YA realm, I’m currently engrossed in Kimberly Derting’s The Body Finder series. Violet Ambrose has kept her ability to sense dead bodies a secret from everyone but her family and her maybe-he-is, maybe-he-isn’t boyfriend, Jay. And Violet doesn’t sense just any old bodies. Only the echoes from people who have been murdered. Book one (The Body Finder) sets up books two and three (Desires of the Dead and The Last Echo.) Creepily well done, especially the passages in book one told from the pov of the murderer.

Lighter in tone (and not new but worth seeking out) is Meg Cabot’s six book Mediator series. Protagonist Susie Simon has been able to see and speak to ghosts all her life. As a mediator it’s her job to help ghosts deal with their unfinished business so they can move on. Saddled with several annoying step-brothers who keep things entertaining, it’s the sexy 150 year old ghost named Jesse haunting her bedroom who keeps things hot. These are some of my favorite Cabot books which is why they’re staying on my keeper shelf.

Finally, there is Jennifer Crusie’s first new novel in several years – Maybe This Time. A new twist on an old classic (Turn of the Screw), Maybe This Time is trademark Crusie with wacky relatives, witty one-liners and a fabulous heroine named Andromeda (Andie) Miller. There’s romance too but in this novel the ghosts prevail. While they aren’t scary enough to keep you awake at night the story is so good it probably will.

What is your favorite ghost story these days?

Until my last rejection, I never paid much attention to the ‘men are from Mars, women are from Venus’ school of thought. I know the theory and I happen to be married to a man who has his share of Martian. But since he’s deliciously human most of the time, I don’t dwell.

So what if we approach life differently? That’s one of the things I love about him. I also love that he accepts my obsession with writing. That he’ll talk character development and submission strategy. That he’ll read the occasional chapter or brainstorm a nasty plot knot. That he brought me flowers once when I got a rejection.

He is supportive. Hugely so. In case you missed that part.

But a few weeks ago his Martian side flared. And I’ve been running scared ever since.

I’d gone east to see a family member. Before leaving, I reminded him that internet connections could be spotty at my destination. They were. For some reason, I could download email from my personal account but not my professional one. Since I had a full submission out and was expecting a response, I was antsy. (And, yes, I could have alerted the editor that I was leaving town but I optimistically hoped to access my mail. Plus, I didn’t want to give the impression I was nudging for an answer.) When I realized there was an issue, I asked the Martian back home to check my professional account once a day and let me know if there was anything from the publishing house.

He didn’t. To be fair, he had stuff happening. Work stuff. Home stuff. Teenager-getting-his-first-car and having-an-accident-two-days-later stuff. And a kitchen reno he was trying to finish as a surprise for my homecoming (Clearly the whole reno thing is a Martian trait; I would have been happier returning to a clean house and dinner reservations).

By Friday when my son’s accident happened and my relative took a fall, I didn’t think to ask about email. I was simply relieved everyone was still alive. Besides, it was the weekend. I’d be home Sunday. I’d deal with email Monday.

The Martian had a better idea.

His greeting as I came through the arrivals door was loving and warm. He knew my trip had been trying; he was being his usual supportive self. After collecting my bag, we headed to the car.

“What’s that paper on the dashboard?” I asked as he stowed my luggage in the trunk.

“Oh, that’s your rejection letter.”

I laughed. “No. Seriously. What is it?”

“Seriously,” he said. “That’s the rejection letter. I downloaded your email like you wanted me to.”

I still didn’t believe him. My Martian has a wicked sense of humor. Nevertheless, my laughter trickled to a stop. “It’s an acceptance, right? That’s why you brought it?” I was mentally jumping ahead to a waterfront table at my favorite restaurant. Champagne. Sablefish in a brown butter reduction.

He shook his head. “No. It’s a rejection.” Compassion flared in his brown eyes. “I’m sorry.”

My stomach turned upside down. “You brought my rejection letter to the airport?” I don’t think I screamed but people did stare. Who brings a rejection letter to the airport? Who puts it face up on the dash where anyone can read it? “What were you thinking?”

“I thought you’d want to know and face it and plan your next step,” he said as he reached the driver’s side. “I didn’t think you’d want to wait.”

I stared at him across the roof of our spaceship. Emotions danced across his face: sadness, disappointment, confusion. He clearly thought he’d done the right thing. He obviously felt bad. “It’s okay,” I said, squelching celebratory thoughts and climbing into my seat for lift off. It wasn’t okay on any level but why beat up a Martian? Especially one you love. “Let’s just fly on home.”

My Venus peeps were waiting.