Ravenous Wednesday with Special Guest Toni Sweeney!

Greetings and Happy New Year, everyone! It's been a while since we've convened here at Un:Bound for one of our RR Wednesday chats; holiday madness, vacations, and other obligation got in the way. So I'm very pleased to be staring out 2011 with first time Un:Bound guest author Toni Sweeney, who has written a beautiful post about the power of imagination. It's lovely, lyrical and I can't think of a better way to start out the new year than by welcoming Toni to Ravenous Wednesday and having a good chat. Pull up your favorite chair, chaise lounge, comfy pillow or what have you and say hi to Toni and help celebrate the release of her 17th novel, The Wizard's Wife (with one of the most gorgeous covers I've ever seen...)

WHEN IMAGINATION SPEAKS, LISTEN

This story may or may not be true…it could be apocryphal for all I know…still it makes a point…

Once upon a time, there was a little boy who eventually grew into a bigger boy and finally into a young man.

As he went along this journey, he realized he was going to have to work hard if he wanted to succeed. After all, he wasn’t particularly handsome, or a possessor of any of the usual features stating plainly, “This young man is headed for Fame and Fortune. Watch out, World. Here he comes!” Truth be told, he was fairly ordinary, and definitely wouldn’t stand out in a crowd. He wasn’t a good athlete. He wasn’t tall. The worst thing of all was that he had not one interest in common with those people calling themselves his family. He often had that fantasy that he’d been exchanged at the hospital for some big, hulking linebacker who would be at home with his so-called kin. He was a bookworm, a scholar, a daydreamer… Let’s face it, the kid was a total N*E*R*D.

One thing the young man did have, however, was an Imagination. It led him to all sorts of flights of fancy, and throughout his life, Imagination would stick with him while other things and other people deserted him.

Having nothing fatal to prevent it, the young man finally became an adult. He received an Education, graduating from high school and going to college, all the while resisting his family’s efforts to force him into studies in which he had no interest, and majoring in those things he himself liked…art, English literature, music, drama…

He participated in school plays, specializing in playing corpses or “crowds”; sang in the choir, and—though he didn’t want it to get back to his family—discovered he had rhythm and could give Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire a run for their money (if they had been alive to run, that is). He even had a one-man art exhibit. Sadly, upon graduation, he decided to put all those fun things aside and devote himself to the Real World, in which singing and dancing and plays offered little, if any, chance for success, unless you were Johnny Depp or Brad Pitt, which he definitely wasn’t.

He graduated with a Degree. He found a Job. He found a Spouse, had a Child, lost the former when she decided their lifestyles weren’t compatible, raised the latter by himself. Through it all, he kept his Imagination. He nurtured it and cherished it, brought it out on special occasions to show to his son, allowed it to tell him stories when there was no money for outside entertainment, began to compose tales of his own when he couldn’t buy books…in his mind, of course, never aloud, never allowing anyone but his child to see. It was his and his alone, something precious never to be shared. Until one day, Imagination had enough. It gave the young man an ultimatum. I’m sick of being hidden like a dirty little secret. Use me, don’t abuse me. Tell your stories to the World… or Else!!!

Or else what? he asked, surprised, because this was the first time his Imagination had talked back. They’d always seemed to be of the same mind. Or so he thought.

Or I’ll leave, Imagination threatened. I’ll just go away to Wherever Imaginations go and you’ll never hear from me again! Not wanting to call Imagination’s bluff, the young man thought about that. And thought. Then thought some more. Finally, he decided to act. Sitting at his computer, and feeling like someone suddenly finding himself on a stage in his underwear under a huge spotlight, the young man began to think. He delved into his childhood. Into his innermost longings and loves. He thought of his family. He thought of all the movies he’d seen, hours and hours of sitting in darkened theatres or before a television screen watching make-believe monsters chase screaming heroines while stalwart, chisel-featured heroes rescued them. He remembered all the books he’d read about those same monsters and heroines and heroes, and the idea began to unfurl. Perhaps it had been there all along, just waiting for Imagination to speak up and push him into freeing the germ of the idea. And the young man began to type… He wrote stories of vampires, but not really vampires—not the Undead-rise-at-night-dispatched-by-a-stake-through-the-heart-kind—but of a people misunderstood and set apart from those they might love, a people who hid themselves away, not because they were evil but because people thought they were and because they were afraid of what that meant. He wrote of creatures considered monsters who were more kind and gentle than the people who called themselves human, and he sent out the stories and hoped, and felt crushed when one by one, they came back.

Don’t come whining to me! Imagination snapped. Get back on that horse and send them out again. So he did. Again and again. Until at last, he sent one out and it didn’t come back. And it became a book and he took the copy his publisher had sent him and he held it up for Imagination to see.

Look, he said. I did what you wanted. And here it is. And Imagination said, I knew you had it in you. Now get to work and show me what else you’ve got! The Moral of this little tale? Listen to your Imagination, listen to your heart, keep sending out those manuscripts, and when they come back, send them out again, and again, and sooner or later, they won’t come back, and you, too, will hold that book in your hands and say to your own Imagination: See? Here it is. I did what you asked of me. And you were right!

Wizard’s Wife, my 17^th novel, will be published by Class Act Books in January, 2011. http:://www.classactbooks.com.

Website: http://www.tonivsweeney.com/

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/tvsweeney

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/tvsweeney

BIO: Toni V. Sweeney was born some time between the War Between the States and the Gulf War. She has lived 30 years in the South, a score in the Middle West, and a decade on the Pacific Coast and now she’s trying for her second 30 on the Great Plains. Her first novel was published in 1989. An accomplished artist as well as writer, she has a degree in Fine Art and a diploma in Graphic Art. She maintains websites for herself and her pseudonym Icy Snow Blackstone, and has been associated with the South Coast Writer's Association, the Pink Fuzzy Slipper Writers, myspace, Facebook, and YouTube. Between her own work and Icy Snow’s, Wizard’s Wife is her 26th novel to be published.