The Unsame Ones

Summer!

Ah a delicious breeze is wafting through my window, seasoned with the smell of moisture from the previous rain the night before. Sparrows flit from one branch to another. Puffy white clouds linger in the sky, drifting into pillow-like shapes, giving vivid contrast to the blue background behind them.

It's amazing how the rain can change things. How it can mellow out the dry desert and make it feel like the shire. Warm, green, safe, peaceful.

Flowers, gardens, grass, fields of alfalfa, moist earth warmed by the sun---Letting the sun warm my skin as the smell of blooming Russian olive trees drifts through the air.

It's rather nice. If summer was this green, and wet all the time, I'd wish for it more often.

I'm not exactly sure what I sat down to write about, only that I thought that once I started writing, I would magically know what it was I wanted to say.

Inspiration has not hit me yet.

This last week I've finished a lot of long term goals I've been working on, and am almost nervous to finally let them go.

One of them being, my book, The Unsame Ones. I've gone through several rounds of edits, and shipped off the last round of edits to one of my beta readers for a final going over, and then...well....after I get that final round of edits in, format it for kindle, and make sure all details are taken care of, I'm going to be releasing it, hopefully in the next month or so if all goes well.

 Blurb on the back cover jacket: 

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I was born in January.
So I am January, and everything that it
entails. I bear the same name as a
million other Januaries just like me, the same look, the same genetic makeup, the same job, the same face, the same goals, and the same dreams.

I am and will be a secretary for the rest of my life. I am good at what I do, I was made for my job, and my job was made for me.
I am same.
I have lived the same as every other January like me for 17 years. And a year from now, on the first of January, I will die from the same genetic defect every January has died from. No January has ever lived past 18.
No January has ever wanted to.
Until now.
I believe I have been infected with the Unsame Virus. My head aches, throbs, and pounds
without ever stopping. I know I must turn myself in. That is the only logical thing to do.
It all started with the hideous Unsame One that crossed my path, and thrust a strange object into my hands. It is he who is to blame, and it is I who must fight this. I cannot shut out my master, keeper, and overseer, Time---nor disobey the clock. I will forever march to its dictates, and remain true.
I am a Same One.
I was born same,
I have lived same,
and I will die same.
I am January.
I am Same.

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It's weird to be closing another chapter, on a chapter. :) This next book a little different than my previous books. Different in what way?

It's just different. I've written it in the first person. And to be honest, this book is a little more personal to me than my other books. So there's all the more reason for me to be nervous about sharing it.

The idea behind the book came about in an interesting way.

It was late at night. My sister, Bessie was fixing one of her old violins---she has several she's taken apart, and put back together from the ground up, piece by piece. It's pretty amazing. And the sound they make after she's finished is mind-blowing. 

And these were violins that nobody thought was fixable. Violins that looked like their purpose in life had been outlived, and they were never going to make music again.

Anyway, she was putting in new violin pegs into one of these violins, and taking out the old clunky pegs that weren't working so well.

I was watching her, and chatting. Then I picked up an one of the old violin pegs, and fingered it. It felt smooth, and beautiful. It felt like polished ivory.

I was so taken with the old violin peg, that my sister said I could have it. I gladly stuck it in my pocket and rubbed it like a worry stone.

Then the idea began forming in my mind. The music. The broken violin. Useless things society has cast out and deemed unusable, broken, still had life, still had purpose, still had meaning, value, still had music.

My sister and I began conversing about music, and the power behind it. And how it would be cool to have a story centered around a violin. Violins, after all, were so mysterious, beautiful, untouchable sort of things.

They have a scroll.

Something could be hidden in the scroll.

They are really hard to play. Maybe the violin could help unlock some sort of secret.

What if someone found an old violin with a message inside it?

What if....

Music.

This was the subject of our conversation through the night. That was the beginning of The Unsame Ones.

Actually the Unsame Ones began long before that conversation. It was the fruit of a thousand other Unsame conversations before and after that.

But to be completely honest, The Unsame Ones began the day we were born. Yeah, I know, that sounds a bit odd. But it's true. My life has been one Unsame event, to Unsame event, chapter by chapter, to this point. 

 From my schooling, to the paths I've chosen, to the paths I'm now choosing.  Unsame is just my way of life.

I am Unsame.

 Many times I've felt like I'm broken, that my usefulness has been outlived, and that to the Same's, I have no value. 

But that's a terrible lie. And if we listen to it, how much loss of life, talent, and music the world looses?

It's taken me most of my life to come to terms that I'll probably never be same.And it's okay. And to still like myself for it. To accept my Unsamnes as something good. To fully look at myself and say, I am Unsame on purpose, and I like it.

When you do that, something magic happens. 

When you start to like yourself, and listen to your own heart,

when you stop listening to the sound of the world, and outside things, that is when you really begin hear. That is when you find the music.

 

That is really what this book is about---Finding the music.

It's something I believe we all struggle with. To feel useful, to find meaning, purpose, and reason to keep living. And when we finally find the "music," our life is renewed. And we begin to see that our purpose for existence is much more expansive than any purpose the world of "Same" could have given to us.