Author: Gina Wilkins

Izzie and I would like to take this time to wish all our friends a merry Christmas and a safe and happy holiday season. During the hustle and bustle of the festivities, I hope you’ll find a quiet time to curl up in the sun, like Izzie, or in a warm, cozy spot with a good book.

I’m starting an exciting new series for Silhouette Special Edition after the holidays. I’ll tell you a little about it in a few days for a sneak preview.Thank you for visiting me here in my quiet corner, and I hope you’ll come back again soon.

(Photo taken by Courtney Wilkins)

I’ve been watching my world grow smaller all afternoon.

Even though I have an “official” office with a desk and computer hutch, I usually prefer to write in a chair in my den. I prop my feet on a footstool, rest my computer on a lap “wedge” I bought at an office supply store and set a cup of tea on the table nearby. Usually I wear headphones and listen to iTunes while I write. In the winter, I enjoy having a fire burning in the big brick fireplace right next to my chair.

I’ve tried to figure out why I prefer writing in the den rather than in my office. Recently another writer commented that she enjoys writing in coffee shops and outdoors more than at a desk because when she’s at her desk, she feels like she’s working. When she’s somewhere else, she’s creating. That really resonated with me, so I suppose it’s part of my subconscious reasoning, as well.

In my office, my back is to the window that looks out over our backyard. In the den, my chair faces a glass door that looks out past the patio and across a five-acre pasture. In the summer, my hummingbird feeder hangs directly in my line of vision from my chair, so I can watch the little ruby-throats zipping aggressively around the openings. All year, two bird seed feeders and a suet holder are within my sight, so I can watch such varieties as finches, sparrows, doves, cardinals, mockingbirds, bluebirds, juncos and woodpeckers either on the feeders, the tree branches or the ground below. I was thrilled one day to see a pair of rose-breasted grossbeaks on the feeder (birds not generally seen in this area). From my chair, I’ve seen deer, squirrels, rabbits, skunks (I’ve named one of them Pepe, because he visits so often), raccoons and even an occasional snake. All but the deer have ventured onto the patio and are fun to watch (I don’t mind either skunks or snakes as long as they’re on the other side of the glass door from me).

I spend a lot of time gazing out at that view, watching the seasons change, the leaves grow, turn and drop, sunny days, rainy days, rare snowy days. Watching cars pass by on the road on the other side of the pasture, C-130s fly over our property as they prepare to land at the nearby airbase. It’s my window to the world and I love the view.

Today, I’ve watched a thick gray fog creep across the pasture and toward my window. As it comes closer, the world behind it disappears. I can no longer see the houses in the distance, nor the road between us. It’s almost as if they no longer exist. The pasture is just a blur with the hazy outlines of winter-bare trees barely visible against the fog-gray sky. The trees in the photo above are gone now, completely enveloped by the dense cloud. Everything seems quieter than usual, as if the people and cars I usually see passing have retreated into their own warm caves to wait for the fog to lift.

It’s no wonder that fog and darkness have been featured so prominently in so many scary scenes in fiction. When our eyes can no longer see the features around us, our imagination kicks in. It’s all too easy to imagine bad guys or monsters or fantastic creatures lurking in that concealing fog rather than the deer and squirrels and rabbits I’d see on an average clear day. I hear a noise coming from the pasture, and my writer’s mind ascribes all sorts of improbable causes for that sound. And I don’t even write scary stories. I can imagine how Stephen King and Dean Koontz and others in their genres must be inspired by such imagery.

I love my window to the world. Especially since I am blessed to have a warm, comfortable home from which to view the wonders of nature. I read an article on-line only this afternoon about the homeless who, for whatever mental, emotional or financial reasons, have no such safe place for shelter, and how hard economic times have drastically reduced the assistance available for them and other charitable causes. It made me so grateful for the blessings I have received, and which I too often take for granted.

At this busy time of shopping, socializing and celebrating in our ever-smaller world, I encourage all my friends to remember the less fortunate  with donations of food, warm clothing and blankets, and any spare cash to the charities that are suffering through these difficult financial times. Even a little donation goes a long way for those who have nothing.

Back when I was in school, I had a couple of pen pals from other places. I don’t remember who they were or where they lived, or even where I got their names, though I think that might have been through school assignments. It was always fun to write about myself, then to receive letters in the mail. After a couple of letters, the pen pal relationship fizzled away. I loved writing even then, but it was difficult to maintain a friendship with someone I’d never met and who had never met me. I’ve heard of pen pals who maintained their correspondence for decades, but that never worked out for me.

After I became a published writer, I was delighted to receive letters from readers who had enjoyed my books and wanted to let me know. Though I tried to answer every letter I received, I couldn’t keep up a continuing correspondence with all of them. Even with my writing friends I met at conferences all around the country, it was difficult to find the time to keep in touch through the mail.

And then came the internet. As slow as I am to jump into the latest trends, I’ve become active on a couple of forums (fora, to be more formal), and I’ve made friends there. People I’ve never met, some of whom I know only by quirky screen names, but friends, nevertheless. When my mother became ill, my on-line friends sent prayers and cyber-hugs. And that gave me some comfort. When she passed away, they sent their sympathy. That, too, was consoling. In return, I’ve worried about their sick children, celebrated good news with them, grieved with them in bad times. My concern for them has been genuine.

On-line friends drift in and out of my life; some post for a while, then disappear, leaving me to wonder what happened, if they’re all right. Others I’ve been in contact with for several years; I know their names, where they live, a few things about their lives. I haven’t met them, but I consider them friends. Very good friends, in a few special cases.

I know the downsides of the internet. I’ve warned my children about being too trusting with people they “meet” on-line. People who may be far different in real life than they present themselves in the anonymity of cyberspace. People who have nefarious motives for making those virtual connections. I worry about the children who are stalked by predators, the vulnerable senior citizens taken in by financial scams, the lonely men and women victimized by heartless con artists. I’ve seen people who are close to me harmed by that very anonymity, others who let themselves be seduced by it to their own detriment. I’ve seen hateful, cruel and inexcusable comments made by — well, lowlife who hide behind false names while they display their ignorance, their intolerance, their viciousness. That’s why I tend to stay on sites that are well-moderated (sometimes maybe even over-moderated) and to be very careful who I “friend” on-line.

I warn the kids to remain on guard about what they post, reminding them that anything placed onto the internet remains there forever. I’ve heard the stories about people who lost jobs or were unable to run for public office or were turned down for exciting opportunities because of some foolish and indiscreet post they made while drunk or angry or just too young to consider future consequences. It took me a while to understand why they wanted to spend so much time “talking” to strangers. Second Life? Facebook? My Space? They all sounded very strange and slightly dangerous to this relic of an earlier, non-connected generation. Frankly, I worried about even starting a blog (I have this unfortunate tendency to babble, sometimes a bit injudiciously). But my connected kids (yes, I mean you, Kerry and Justin, and you both know how hard I resisted), convinced me to take a leap of faith.

Despite all my fears, I continue to believe stubbornly that most people are good. That the vast majority of those who enjoy interacting with other people from around the globe have only good intentions — wanting to share interests, to expand their horizons. I continue to enjoy the on-line friends who drift in and out of my interactions, each one enriching my life in some way.

Someone on one game I play asked where everyone was from; the answers have astonished me. I’m sharing my enjoyment of that game with people from all over the world – England, Ireland, Scotland, Iceland, Poland, Spain. All over the U.S. and Canada, and too many other places to remember at the moment. It’s just a little farming game, but it has the same appeal to all those other people as it does to me, reminding me of how much we all really have in common, despite our differences. Which reminds me that Harlequin books are published in over one hundred countries, over twenty languages, so that the stories my fellow authors and I tell are read and enjoyed all around the globe. Something else so many of us have in common.

Each day, this world grows a little smaller, a little more connected. Good and bad, decent and evil, and every shading in between. It still scares me a little — but it gives me hope, too.

Can we ever really have too many friends?

As preachy as I have been about every woman getting regular mammograms, I have been less vocal about colonoscopies. Yes, I know colorectal cancer kills — an estimated 50,000 people in the U.S. were predicted to die this year from the disease. I knew it killed Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Montgomery, Walter Matthau, Joel Siegel and Tony Snow, among so many thousands of others. But I focused more on breast cancer, which attacked my mother twice, getting my mammograms on a fairly regular basis and encouraging others to do the same. Let’s face it — mammograms are easy.

I know doctors encourage all patients to be screened for colorectal cancer beginning at fifty (earlier as indicated by symptoms or family history). My doctor strongly recommended it when I turned fifty three years ago. But I brushed off that advice. Just the thought of a colonoscopy made me shudder. It seemed so much worse than a mammogram. It’s unpleasant, it’s invasive, it’s expensive … it’s embarrassing. Even to blog about. I had no intention of having that test this year. Maybe later, I thought. Maybe when I’m sixty or so.

A few weeks ago, when I had my annual physical, there was a worrisome result on one of the routine screenings my very thorough doctor always conducts (a fecal occult blood test). A second test also came back positive. She recommended a colonoscopy, and I reluctantly agreed. After all, I have a strong family history of cancer, I’m over fifty, and I’d met my insurance deductible for the year … so why not? I was sure nothing would be found. I figured her tests were wrong, or could be explained by the anti-inflammatories I’d taken recently for tendonitis in my shoulder.

So, I did the prep. Twenty-four hours of clear liquids, lime jello and banana popsicles with two liters of a strong, rather oily laxative as a chaser. It was not pleasant. I get cranky when I’m hungry. But to be honest, it wasn’t quite as bad as I expected.

Because I’ve been blessedly healthy, never having been hospitalized for anything except having my three children, I was a little nervous. Again, it just wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. An IV was placed in the back of  my hand, I was sedated so that I felt nothing and barely remember any of the procedure, and it lasted less than thirty minutes. There was absolutely no pain, and no embarrassment. The medical staff made sure of that. I was amazed at how much I had dreaded this procedure for so long, and it really wasn’t a terrible experience.

When the surgeon informed me that he’d found and removed a very large polyp that would almost certainly have turned cancerous within a year or two, if it wasn’t already (a 1 to 2 percent chance, he said), I was very glad that I finally listened to my primary care doctor’s advice. The lab results will be back in a few days, but whatever the results, the polyp is completely gone and will require no follow-up except another screening next year.

I said in a former post that pink ribbons aren’t enough to fight breast cancer. It requires action, in the form of regular screenings and funding for research. I will now be an advocate for regular colorectal screenings (in addition to annual pap smears for women and prostate checks for men). With one daughter in medical research, another receiving her MD in a few months, and a son who’s a pre-med major, I get plenty of encouragement (and by that, I mean nagging) to stay healthy myself and to serve as an advocate whenever I can for preventative health care.

Cancer is a heartless, relentless adversary. It sneaks in stealthily to claim its victims. It is up to us to be vigilant against it. In addition to regular screenings, we should be eating more fiber, fruits and vegetables, and less fat. If you smoke, please consider quitting. For myself, I need to lose a few pounds and be more physically active, since writing is a sedentary job and lack of exercise has been linked to colon cancer.

If finances are holding you back from having your regular screenings, believe me, I understand. I’m self employed. I carry a very high deductible just to afford the premiums. Health care reform must be high on the new administration’s agenda. Too many uninsured and underinsured Americans are dying because they can’t afford routine preventative care. But there are ways to get those screenings, by working with the providers to make payments, if necessary, or through public assistance programs. Talk to your doctor.

If embarrassment or fear or a busy schedule are holding you back from any of those screenings, I urge you to reconsider. I will make time and budget for that second colonscopy next year (they’re recommended only every  five to ten years if nothing is found in the first screening). I won’t look forward to it, but I’ll have it. Cancer may take me some day, as it has so many members of my family — but I’m not ready yet. I have more things to do, more places to see, more books to write.

I’m in this fight for my life.

Probably the most common question I am asked as a writer is, “Where do you get your ideas?” My answer is always that ideas, for me, come from everywhere. From the newspaper, from songs, from snippets of conversation I overhear in restaurants (I’m a compulsive eavesdropper, I’m afraid). From anecdotes other people tell me, though I rarely use an incident exactly as it happened. My family has grown accustomed to telling me an amusing thing that happened to them, only to find an altered version of the tale pop up later in one of my books.

Long before I was published, I worked in a clerical office for a retail chain every summer during high school and college. I heard all kinds of stories there, some of which sparked ideas in books I wrote years later. One of the women in the department came in laughing one morning about a strange phone call she’d had the night before. It had been storming, and the reception had not been particularly good, so when she got a call from her dad and couldn’t hear him very clearly, she didn’t question that something about his voice sounded different. They chatted for nearly ten minutes before they realized that he’d called a wrong number. It wasn’t her dad.

Several years later, after I was published, I remembered that incident and I used it as the inspiration for a book I wrote for Harlequin Temptation (HOTLINE, 1991). In my version of the story, a single man dialed that wrong number, reaching a single mom. Thinking at first they were talking to their siblings, they quickly realized their mistake, and while laughing at the situation, a spark of interest ignited between them. That call led to others, and an ensuing romance — with, of course, complications to overcome before their happily-ever-after ending. I was pleased with the resulting story, and it was well received.

Category romances (the numbered, series books published by Harlequin and Silhouette, such as Special Edition, Desire, etc) stay on the shelves only a month, though they are occasionally reprinted a few years later, so by 1999, HOTLINE had long been out of print. In October of 1999, I received an email from a librarian I had never met telling me that she thought someone had plagiarized that book. She gave me the name of the author and the offending book, which was on the shelves even then.

My first reaction was that she must be mistaken. Authors frequently joke about unintentional similarities between our books, saying that there are only so many ideas and Shakespeare already used them all. Similarities of ideas is not plagiarism, nor is a book or movie that is inspired by another story (Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story and Valley Girl are examples of three totally different takes on the same idea — star-crossed lovers from incompatible backgrounds). An idea itself can’t be copyrighted, only the words used to convey that idea. So, skeptical, I popped into a bookstore and picked up a copy of her book.

I knew after reading the first page that this was more than a coincidence. The scene was mine. The words were mine. Page after page of that book had been lifted wholesale from HOTLINE. Sometimes she paraphrased my words, but there was no doubt that she had taken my book line by line, changing only the names and a random phrase or two. A hotel room described in my book was described exactly the same way in “hers.” She’d added a subplot that had nothing to do with my story, but in all, over a hundred pages of my book were blatantly stolen by her and passed off as her own.

Continue reading “Stolen thoughts” →