National Author’s Day. This is cool. Let me tell you a little story involving a couple of authors. I first met TJ in 1999 working together. We had instant chemistry even then. Instant friends. A pair of close goofballs who we could also vent to about our personal lives. We were both struggling writers. I coached her, she beta read me. We pushed one another, we cheered each other on. Eventually we landed Darth Maul stories together at a Star Wars fan fiction site. We kept talking then about one day getting published in something bigger together.

Flash forward many years and other jobs we had together that wasn’t the same mojo we’d enjoyed as our personal lives tailspun. Eventually, we just lost contact with one another. Four and a half years ago, only a few months after separation from my first wife, TJ spots me and my kid in a Panera. She asks me out on the spot. Of course I said yes. You all know what happened afterwards.

For all the success I enjoyed 16 years as a music and film journalist, I was still subversively miserable despite a fruitful three year stint dogging open mikes in Maryland and building a family within who eased some of my angst. My fiction writing was ghastly and it reflected who I was then. It was getting together with TJ when my fiction began to build. I grew stronger. I grew more motivated. I wanted to reclaim what had died inside of me. I wanted to write and I wanted to matter again.

She restored my wherewithal and the happy smiles you see on my face in photos or at a book signing or on the open mike these days is because I have a spitfire author for a wife who isn’t afraid to call me out if I lambaste and lament, chastising myself as a pretender. I know many of you feel me.

We are there to back one another at many of our individual book signings, but the true bliss for me is when we have joint signings. Fulfilling something we only gave voice to and dreamed about in ’99. There is no competition between us. No ego. Only love.

I have begun a gradual acceleration these past few months similar to how I rose covering metal, punk and horror. Those were glorious times which I feel beginning to restack with my new endeavors.

I fearlessly reach out and network to established pros and celebrities in the writing world, because it worked for me in my old life. I know it can happen again. It’s extra special this time, because I have an exceptional woman at my side, another author who deserves to bask in today’s laudatory theme.

To all of my brothers and sisters of the word, no matter your level of success, bask and be awesome, today and evermore. You are awesome for even trying.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.