Fame and Fortune?

I used to wonder if being a writer would turn me into an egotistical monster.

My hometown library keeps me humble. Eleven books, not one if them are stocked by my hometown library.

I can't fault them too much, though. I didn't put my own books on the shelves with the "real" books in my own library until I moved.

Luckily, my transplant town shows me a lot more love.

In truth, most of the time I look down at checks from my publishers and think to myself - I can't believe someone actually pays me to do this.

I've never been recognized on the street. No one has ever come up to me except when I was sitting with a stack of books at a conference event or a book signing.

When I was a teenager, I was afraid to try publishing because I thought it would stop my life from being "normal." I can now say with complete confidence that being a writer does not automatically make a red carpet and paparazzi appear in your living room. You don't have to go grocery shopping with sunglasses. And even if you're at a party and you SAY you're an author, the vast majority of the time, no one will have heard of you. That's simply because, if you're not Stephen King, with the many books and diverse tastes in the general population, unless you're a social butterfly, the likelihood of you running into somebody who's read your book at a social gathering is pretty low.

Sometimes I'm overwhelmed about how much writing professionally *didn't* change my life.

So, am I worried that someday I'm going to turn my nose up at a McDonalds cheeseburger and be a general snooty asshat? No, not really. And I'm not hoping to be a person like that anytime in the future.