Oh, Holy Mo', Love, Is That You!

Oh, Holy Moment, wait--It's Reb!  Don't you remember me?

I don't often shout out loud in the middle of a Starbucks.  But I had to make an exception because:
It had been a good long while since I'd met any holy Mo'...and two five-pound scales had just dropped from my eyes.  I'd done some shocking Googling with hopes of finding some usable quotes from my Kelley Wilde books to help promote my ebooks.  I knew I'd had a few good ones, especially from Fangoria ('Kelley Wilde is the most original stylist working in the genre today'), the Atlanta Constitution, etc.  But I didn't have any copies of those dear dead novels on hand.  Mementos of the Glory Days, lost in a cross-country move.  Therefore, I Googled and--

Well, blow me down.  And shoot me for a billy goat if I hadn't received some of the worst reviews ever committed to paper.  I hadn't been aware of them, caught up in the award I'd won and my hot sense of destiny.  My stomach lurched--

not because the slams were vicious.  But rather because, for the most part, the reviewers were right on the money:  I'd developed certain tics--the worst of them being comic book-sound effects to spare me the need for description:  SWOOSH!  KABLAM!  And then, to help me write more quickly while working a couple of jobs--in the midst of a post-divorce breakdown--I surrendered to James Pattersonitis:  one sentence paragraphs, two-page chapters, etc.

But I cried out to the Holy Mo' because I had been freed at last:  from any sense of my past work as being a lost Eden.  The four books were my apprenticeship and, like most apprenticeships, they were filled with pratfalls.  I'd said goodbye to those books in my head.  Now, suddenly, in a sunburst of pain, I said goodbye to them all in my heart.

Do I regret my past work?  Not at all.  I look forward to taking what I learned on to higher ground.