Haven’t been blogging lately because it’s not always easy to come up with interesting topics.  I know some folks are just happy blogging about any ol’ thing, but I am an important person.  This comes with important person responsibilities.  Like being interesting.  And fighting mummies.  Since I fought mummies just last night (FYI: I won), I guess I’ll try to be interesting today.

As my novelology career continues to grow, I ponder the perils and perks of fame and fortune.  On the plus side, I get to meet people who are nice to me just because I’m famous.  I also get a magic sword that makes fighting mummies a hell of a lot easier.  If you’ve ever tried fighting a mummy without a magic sword, you know what I’m talking about.  On the downside, I find increasingly a wall between me and the ordinary people that make up the bulk of our world’s population.

Granted, I am not really that famous and my fortune isn’t going to pay for that solid gold robot polish I need.  (Jeeves-3000 is looking a bit tarnished of late.)  But even in a cosmic scale, where I am but a speck of dust floating beneath the all-recording optical sensor of The Mighty Robot King, I still am more famous than most people who are reading this right now.  Probably.  Maybe.  Or maybe I’m just delusional.  Just play along in any case.

I’m in a delicate stage right now.  I am just successful enough that many people think of me as being something special, but I’m also obscure enough that most people haven’t heard of me.  On the one hand, this keeps me humble.  On the other, it elevates me in a way I don’t always like.  There are newer members of my writer’s group who never got a chance to meet Alex Martinez, the aspiring writer.  They only know A. Lee Martinez, world-renowned novelologist and mummy fighter.  As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve only been a published writer for a few years now.  I was an aspiring writer much longer.  And when I finally as accepted for publication, there was much rejoicing in my group because everyone knew what a long, hard road it had been.  Now it’s just assumed that I am going to make a living doing this.  When I present something at the DFWWW, it’s assumed that it is going to be published at some point.  This isn’t a bad assumption, but it changes the dynamic of the situation.

Assuming something of mine does eventually become a movie (a big assumption, but more and more possible each passing day) there will come a time when I leap from obscurity (“I’ve never heard of you”) to less obscurity (“You’re the guy who wrote the book that movie was based on?”).  While I do look forward to this possibility, I also realize that this will present a whole new dynamic to my relations with the little people.  It’s not a change I’m particularly looking forward to.

Fame and fortune come at a heavy price, gang.

Do me a favor and just remember that, underneath it all, I’m just a guy who gets paid to make up stories.  The only thing special about me is that I’ve got a talent for it, I didn’t give up, and an ungodly amount of luck.  And of those three things, I rank them (in order of importance) as Luck, Persistence, and Talent.  And I think I’m probably overestimating talent’s importance.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee