So you really want to be famous?

The thoughtful, eminently satisfying harmonies of DavidArkenstone are playing in the background. It’s a CD entitled Valley in the Clouds – very atmospheric New-Agey stuff leading me to ponder a topic that’s come up several times lately. Just casually, of course. It’s one of those what-if deals. Fame.

There’s always the occasional friend or reader asking when my books will be available again. And last week my BFF reported her daughter had remarked that “Mary isn’t as famous as she should be.” Recently when I came to the brink of a break (that could still, at this writing, pan out), my dear husband commented that he’d love to see me get famous.

Most of you know how my writing career came to a crashing halt after I switched publishers. (The first one was no prize, either. They’re still in litigation for fraud.) The changeover meant severing ties with the entity printing my books, so even the momentum developing by word of mouth was halted. When it became clear the new publisher was unable, unwilling, or not interested in reissuing my books, I was pretty much left dead in the water.

But “what if?” What if an agency sees potential in my submission? What if they find a publisher and things start to take off? Am I so eager to be famous?

Actually, no. I’m a background kind of person. An observer, a supporter. What I want is for my books to be famous.

Immersed in Oz, Never-Never Land or Narnia, the names L. Frank Baum, James Matthew Barry, or C. S. Lewis never popped into my head. I just wanted to be in the worlds they created. That’s the way I want it to be with Ammanon. Don’t think: Mary Odle Fagan. Think: great empire of Ammanon, its beautiful capital city of Ephaeleon, the confident but love-challenged warrior-emperor Galan and his beautiful, scholarly captive bride.

I want readers to live in this world the way I did when I created it. Walk the winding, cypress-lined road up to the palace; join the hard-riding imperial guards, find the startling messages in the silence of the temple scriptorium. I want you to share my adventure like a companion on an exciting journey.

So please - don’t break the spell by thinking of me! I’m just a nerdy grandma sitting at a computer!