Finding independence ...

I hate the Fourth of July. Always have. As a child, the sound of fireworks scared me to death, and as an adult, I cannot stand seeing amateur, drunk pyromaniacs getting a little too close to setting my lawn on fire.

So tonight, I decided that today would be a different kind of independence day.

I have taken control of my independence, my career, my destiny -- and started my novel.

I have been dragging my feet on doing just that, for various reasons (namely that I would prefer to not fall on my face), but a trip to the grocery store this afternoon provided some unintentional clarity. In the middle of the juice aisle in the Lakewood Safeway, I took notice of the song on the loudspeaker -- a song that played an integral role in "Inside Out," my first full-length "Lois and Clark" story.

The story that went on to win multiple nKerth Awards. The story that provided a distraction when I needed one the most. The story that started it all.

When I heard that song playing, more than three years after I sat on my couch in the middle of the night, typing its lyrics into a Word file, it all came rushing back to me. How I could work on a scene for hours. How I would sit in traffic in downtown Seattle, running dialogue in my head. How much I loved writing.

Some people find it amusing that I write fanfic -- about Superman, no less -- but the bottom line is that it provided me a means of coping with my infertility. I couldn't control my body, but I could control what I wrote, when I wrote, where I wrote ... it became my therapy, and to this day, I maintain it was one of the smartest things I have ever done.

Type A people don't do well without a project.

But this is different. This is business. This is serious.

This isn't Lois Lane chasing the Pulitzer and Clark Kent chasing Lois Lane.

These aren't characters with established back stories and actors who have played them. Their histories, their descriptions, their emotions ... they're all mine.

And I'm ready.

I know her birthday, her address, her husband's name. She has a career, a best friend, a couple of cats. And she has a goal, one single-minded plan, that is driving her every thought and every move.

Her name is Alexandra.

She isn't my distraction.

She is my dream.