I’m pretty sure I might be crazy.
I know. I know. It’s my JOB to spent a lot of time in fictional places with fictional people. Very real people pay me very real money to do just that! Which is a good thing. Because it justifies me being crazy.
Take, for example, Marci.
You see, now that I am self-employed it means that I am in most ways a one woman operation. Sure, I have my amazing editor and my awesome agent and co-agents and people who help me with all my web stuff (which is a life saver because I literally don’t know how to do 99% of what all of them do), but if something needs to go to the post office I’m the only one around here who is going to take it.
And that’s why I frequently dream about the day I will hire a personal assistant.
And in my dreams her name is Marci and she is super efficient and very sweet and never says anything caddy when she comes in to work one day and finds me wearing the exact same pair of yoga pants and the very t-shirt I’d been wearing the day before.
And did I mention Marci cleans? Marci LOVES to clean. And unload the dishwasher.
And go to the grocery store.
And track down the addresses for any thank you notes I need to write.
And stuff envelopes for fan mail responses.
And research stuff for when I find myself asking “Hmmm…I wonder what a good Russian surname would be?” Marci says “Let me go look up a list for you.”
And when I start planning online chats with cool authors like Alan Gratz, Marci will gladly research all of our chatting options.
And when I get an email from the library saying I have three overdue books, Marci will drive to the library and drop them off.
And, on the way home, she’ll gas my car up for me.
And I wouldn’t have a big pile of tax stuff on the bed in the guest bedroom because Marci is an excellent filer.
And that room full of boxes that haven’t been unpacked yet? Marci would have taken care of that MONTHS ago!
And when people ask me “what foreign rights have you sold?” I would know. Because Marci would keep track of such things.
And you know how sometimes I forget to get haircuts? Marci would totally make those appointments for me.
And when I say things like “I cannot go downstairs and watch the HEROS I tivoed last night until I get to page 50″… Well, then there’d be someone here to hide the tivo remote. You know, just in case.
So just remember the next time you find yourself thinking that you wish Zach or Josh were real that I think that’s very sweet of you.
But of all my fictional people the one I would wish to life is Marci.
Because Zach and Josh don’t clean.
(And if they were showing up here every day I’d totally have to put on clean yoga pants!)
-Ally