It was not a Norman Rockwell moment. I was sitting on the living room floor in front of my laptop. Ruby was rubbing her chin against my wireless connector, threatening to knock me off line in the hopes I'll pay attention to her, and when that didn't work she proceeded to scratch at my back to get noticed. Cocoa laid spread out on the floor beside me, begging to be petted. Outside, snow quickly piled up on my driveway and front lawn. If the meteorologists are correct, northern Virginia will get 20 inches of the white stuff before the storm passes through on Sunday (and as a transplanted New Englander who misses snow, I'm excited about this). And in the midst of all this, I stared blankly at the computer screen, at a loss for anything to write.
So I started surfing my favorite horror-related websites, if not to get ideas for this blog, to at least waste some time under the illusion that I was working. That's when I discovered that the horror writing community suffered two losses the last two weeks.
One was screenwriter Dan O'Bannon. He penned the screenplays for numerous horror and Sci-Fi movies such as Alien, Total Recall, the B-17 sequence in Heavy Metal, and two of my favorite movies -- Lifeforce and Return of the Living Dead. Dan passed away after a 33-year struggle with Crohn's Disease.
The other was mid-list novelist Z. A. Recht who wrote the zombie sagas Plague of the Dead and Thunder and Ashes, both of which sit in my library. He died suddenly, leaving behind his parents and two siblings.
That's when I got the idea for this blog. I know it sounds cliche, but reading about the passing away of these writers reminded me about how much I have going for me. My health. A roof over my head. Job security. A house full of furry loved ones. And, thanks to Shadowfire and Living Dead Presses, the fulfillment of my dream to become a published author. It puts everything else into perspective.
I'm going to close out this blog and go feed the rabbits some treats. If I'm lucky, I'll get a few nose licks out of it.
Happy Holidays.
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