“Of all the gin joints in all the towns, she walks into mine.”
Rick Blaine, Casablanca

When my friend Jo Leigh invited me to blog here at the Blaze Authors Blog, my first response was blog? Who? Me? I’ve never done it, though I follow a few blogs all the time. But honestly, being invited to share on the Blaze blog could not be more thrilling. I am new at Blaze, and so happy to be part of this family. My first Blaze, out in April 2009, is a time travel called “Once a Gambler.” Now, let’s face it, given the parameters of that genre, it wasn’t a write-what-you-know situation. But it was a lot of fun dabbling in that paranormal world of time travel and imagining ‘what-if..

The whole thing got me to thinking though, about destiny. You know…if a hero and heroine can find their destinies together in another time, what about us civilians? I read today that Jen and Ben’s (do we really need a last name?)new baby, Seraphina, was actually named by their little girl, Violet, who was quite certain of the name from the first time she learned of the baby. She said– pointing to Jen’s belly bump– “Oh, yes, that’s Sara.” Like she was an old friend. She was quite insistent, even though they didn’t know yet the sex of the baby yet, that it was a girl. It made me wonder, was Sara someone Violet (the 3 year old) actually knew from, well… before? By the way, Seraphina is one of those classic names that mean ‘Angel.’

*Twilight Zone theme music here*

Ooh, that kinda stuff gives me goose bumps to think about. Do we travel in soul circles? Intersecting over and over? Could all these different ideas we have about dimensions and time travel actually be possible? Or is it just wishful thinking and everything is simply random?.

When I think about how randomly I met my husband (years ago!) and how if we both hadn’t been in that same place that night (Okay, it was a bar, all right? But being a cocktail waitress was only one of the three jobs I was juggling as I tried to make it as an actress in Hollywood) we might never have met. We absolutely never would have intersected in this huge city. Our ‘circles’ were far apart. We would never have had two great kids, our lives together…etc…. He certainly wouldn’t have been the one who’s given me faith in the whole ‘happily-ever-after’ scenario.

But what if it wasn’t random at all? What if his walking into that particular ‘gin-joint’ was meant to be? And in hindsight, it’s kinda hard to look back at your life and think of it as random when everything since that moment has been so deliberate.

Do you ever think about the near misses in your life? Like what might not have happened if you hadn’t walked down that particular street, or been delayed by that piece of chocolate you’d tucked away on the top shelf of the pantry, or got stuck waiting in a line? Is your story rife with incidents you just can’t explain any other way? Do you like reading stories about destiny or do you think they’re just hooey? I’d love to hear what you think.

Carrie

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 14th, 2009 at 6:00 am and is filed under Guest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.