Never had a place of my own, not really.

An online author colleague and good friend Anne R. Allen posted this innocently enough on Facebook, and I found I could hardly bear to look at it.

I think there’s a powerful image of an author in most of our minds. Some variations- maybe tweed jacket, maybe poor man’s sweater, elbow patches optional. Probably tea, very often cats. Fireplace, perhaps- excellent light and something comfy to recline in. Oceans of quiet. Writers have that. If you don’t, ergo igitur or whatever- you’re not.

My life? So not.

In Search of My Own Place

As a kid, I willingly moved into the basement to get away from my sisters. Dank, mortared

stone walls, no windows, and cold every second of every day. I donjoned myself because I thought I was at war. And outnumbered- in my defence, there WERE five of them.

But other than that? Big public school, always in the play or running for class pres; roommates in college (both genders!), eleven kids in the cabin at summer camp. Students on the boarding corridor as a teacher. Small apartments, and now a townhouse where the entire downstairs is one open room. I work from home, so my PC sits on a desk just south of the refrigerator. I have to skooch forward whenever my lovely wife needs to get plates from the cupboard. Still more women than men around.

But it’s also a home-school. Flute lessons, math problems, arbitrating cat-fights, the TV and the phone- it all happens in this one space. To compose the tales of Hope, I sit in the same chair, stare at the same screen and tap on the same keyboard that I use to write technology advice for my company’s clients.

So what, besides a little boo-hoo?

Did you notice where this post is?

Sacred Space- in Cyberspace?

What I’m getting around to saying is, actually two things.

Writing, the act of chronicling the Lands of Hope, has been a deeply rewarding vocation for me since 2008. If I can clear away the distractions- not often- and peer through that same PC screen that normally shows me telecom trends and the latest technology advances, if I stare at it long enough, I can see my world, the one I know better than anyone. And take some tiny part of that story down. So the screen becomes a window into a sacred space.

And here, today I suddenly have this website, created for me as a gift- another woman, I tell you I’m surrounded- and I have to say I like it very much. I hope you will take a moment to look around my online cathedral, the electron-temple I’ll be living in from now on. I have listings for all the current Tales of Hope; some cute tickers over to the right where you can see the work ahead and wonder if I’ll make the deadline; I moved the Compendium of the Lands here so you can click through to find out more about the history, theology, and customs of the world where my heroes hail.

Here is where I’ll be ranting and notifying much of the time. It’s so… big. Plenty of room, yet it feels right. The cats don’t knock over my figurines in here, nobody hung a little felt bumblebee on the end of my halberd. And I’ll be setting out some knick-knacks over time, maybe putting more of- ahem!- a man’s touch on the place.

It might take awhile. I’ve never had a place of my own before.

But now I virtually do.

Thanks Katharina. And to all my readers too.