Four Books Which Should Have Been Mine.....

When I was 11 and writing my own stories about beautiful princesses, lonely kings, defective dragonflies, kind giants, and helpful trolls, I envisioned my own book of fairy tales one day.  Obviously hasn't happened, because a year later my mom let me read my first romance book.

I absolutely loved this book!  After devouring it several times, I tried to instruct my sister on 'how to act' as we continued the story, inserting ourselves into it.  I was the rebellious daughter of Heather and Brandon, and she was supposed to be my best friend/partner in crime, but I would ultimately get the guy (played by my giraffe coat rack....yeah, go ahead and laugh....) while she would get her own true love.  But mine was the 'bad boy'.  She disliked this game and wouldn't cooperate, so this story stayed in my imagination and is still somewhat swirling around in there.  You might say I 'updated' it from post-Civil War to the present in Wild At Heart....

This was my first Lavyrle Spencer book, read in the early 90's.  I love this one better than ones where the pregnant mama is marrying her dead fiance's best friend and vows to never love again....or there are tons of misunderstandings because of assumptions made by both adults....yes, I'll admit this keeps me turning pages, but it also makes me want to jump into the story and lock both characters in a closet until they TALK to each other!

Why do I bring this up?  While painting my bedroom in summer 1990, my imagination took off and imagined an artist commissioned to paint a mural....she brings her tiny son along....and in walks the man she thought was dead.  He'd been sent overseas and not heard from in several months; word trickled back he'd been killed in combat; and in her grief, she turned to his best friend, but the baby was his.  Actually, you know what?  This sounds an awful lot like...

...but I never got around to writing it down OR even finishing the scene I'd imagined after the initial confrontation!

And since everyone now knows I wrote my own ending to Star Wars (and got it completely wrong....), George Lucas never contacted me for my take on the prequels, ha ha ha!  And I kind of gave up on Fan Fiction after that.

So what do you think?  Was I cheated out of my chance?  Or was I simply 'in tune' with Lavyrle Spencer's muse?  I guess there's always room for my own 'spin' on these stories!