Hey Sunday Brunch lovers! I can’t tell you how thrilled I was by how many of you actually spent time thinking about what Disneyland ride you’d want to live in! I thought I was the only one who wanted to live in the Haunted Mansion or Pirates of the Caribbean.
Coincidentally, my son went to Disneyland last night with his friends, and I had such a pang of envy. I guess I really am still kind of in love with Disneyland. I miss the days when I had an annual pass, and if I wanted to I could just go on a weekday afternoon and walk the kids around in a stroller, have a snack, watch a parade, and feel like a special part of a really unique fantasy world.
Last week’s winner? Jess1
Here’s how my Sunday Brunch Blog works: I invite a couple of your favorite authors to my blog and ask them a question. Sometimes my questions are silly, sometimes they’re thought-provoking.
My guests will share their answers with me and you, gentle readers, can give your answer to my question in the comment section below. I’ll choose one random person from the comments and reward them with an ebook surprise, it’s that simple!
Tell me what your answer to today’s question would be in the comments, and you could win an e-book!
This weeks question is:
What is your deepest, darkest desire?
Cause I’ve got it right here
What is my deepest, darkest desire?
Sh… you have to promise not to tell. It’s evil, I tell you. Evil. The height of decadence. Enough unmitigated desire to make you queasy. I swear.
So, you guys remember The Brady Bunch?
You do?
Remember Alice, the Maid?
I want Alice. To come work for me. And clean my kitchen and my bathroom and cook my food and remind me when I have appointments and to live in the upstairs and have no life so she can help my house look beautiful and my kids have clean clothes and my husband to never have to come home and raid the snack corner because I haven’t gotten dinner ready either.
*nods vigorously * Yup! *shudders * A clean kitchen. That’s sexy enough to have sex on! Oh my God! *fans self * Uh-huh. The very thought of it makes me hot. I’m going to go have some private time…
And then I’m gonna start dinner! — Author Amy Lane
Pre-order Christmas Kitsch at Riptide!
My deepest darkest desire…
I want to move to Catalina Island.
I know. Probably not what you were expecting. In fact, kind of ordinary run-of-the-mill fantasy, right? Wanting to move to a desert island? But…it’s not for the Mai Tais and the balmy ocean breeze. Well, I don’t object to those things, but that’s not the main attraction.
The main attraction is specific to Catalina. Have you been there? It’s like a trip back in time, a trip back to the 40s and 50s. In some ways, it’s like a living museum. It’s small, it’s isolated, it’s well-preserved. Like me. They have jazz festivals and film festivals and art festivals. They have buffalo and rain and oarfish.
The water around Catalina is some of the most polluted in the state. And there may or may not be a problem with teenage gangs. It’s expensive to visit and it sounds even more expensive to try and live there.
I don’t think they have a real bookstore and the theater is only open one night a week. But it has that giant old casino. And lots of watering holes. And very few people for half the year.
You can hear the seals at night. And the ocean. You can see flying fish.
A tsunami is eventually going to wipe the whole place out.
I want to run an annual writing retreat there. I hope it doesn’t take place during a tsunami.
So why is my wish to live on Santa Catalina a “dark” desire? For the same reason everyone’s wish to move to a desert island is a bit dark. Because a large part of that wish is the desire to escape, to isolate oneself. Myself. Not just for a vacation. All the time. Maybe that’s partly the reaction to a job where inevitably I spend so much of my life on line and on stage. Maybe it’s the desire to escape from responsibilities and the demands of being an adult. Maybe it’s not so sinister, maybe I’m just longing to remove myself from the modern, busy world and slip into a slower pace, step back…and then back again. But there’s no denying I like the idea of being out of touch, hard to reach. I’m afraid JohnDonne had it right:
No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
And speaking of deep, dark desires, how about a jolly little story about recovering from addiction? Alcohol addiction in this case. — Author Josh Lanyon
Amy, I’m sad to tell you the maid thing doesn’t free up nearly the time you imagined it would. Coz the truth is, she’s just picking up the slack for all the stuff we never got around to doing anyway. 😉
*clutches heart* NO! Oh Josh, say it isn’t so!
And I have to say that Santa Catalina isn’t *quite* my favorite idea of running away– but I *have* always favored a lonely beach house off the coast of anywhere with briny spray and seals. I feel you– there’s a reason writers tend to want to huddle in quiet places to be alone with the people in their own heads 😉
(Twenty-six miles across the sea, Santa Catalina is waiting for me, Santa Catalina the island of romance… romance… romance…)
LOL Very good! That crazy, crazy little song…
I always felt like an idiot, asking someone to do something I wasn’t willing to do myself. I was so embarrassed, I finally gave up the service I used because I kept narrowing down the places they could go. “Don’t bother with that, I’ll get to it.”
At the end, they were only mopping the hallway that leads to the front door.
Right? I would need to actually kNOW the person and TRUST them before I gave them access to my mess. And then I wouldn’t want to subject anyone I knew and liked to my frickin’ mess!
Office and library are off limits. Everything else, they’re welcome to. The thought that I will never have to scrub a shower or a toilet again sometimes cheers me during those lonely midnight hours. :-
D
*gets a little moony eyed* Yeah…
You and me both, Amy…
I would LOVE that. I have four kids. I’m never going to have that house whose bedrooms you can walk into without taking a partner and a rope tied to something you can follow back.
Even mine is an absolute disaster. (and it’s all, all my fault and the fault of this little sickness I have for shoes.)
My own room is being taken over by scarves…
Ha, I love ya’ll! My darkest desire is to live in the mountains with my honey bun, my son, and my Kindle, and only have to see other people when we want. There are lots of people I love, but I really just want to be alone most of the time. I’ve hung out in Granby, CO (shout out to Jeremy Bunny!), and I didn’t want to leave.
The new books are on my TBR list, and they sound good. You guys always write what I want to read (preferably in the mountains)…
omg! You’ve lived in Granby? That’s AWESOME! (I actually have a question to ask about that if you wanna ping me offline!) And yeah– living in quiet always seems like I’d get so much done. Actual reading, actual knitting, lots more writing…
No, I wish I’d lived in Granby! I rented a house and vacationed there. My favorite kind of trip. Hubby went hiking and had a blast taking pics of moose and other animals, while I spent most of my time on the balcony reading and looking at the water. We drove to Grand Lake and ate at the restaurants there and souvenir shopped. Everyone was so friendly and relaxed. I want that for myself. For now, I’m grouchy and tense. 🙂
What do you need to know about Granby, Amy. If I don’t know, I probably have friends that do. 🙂
Oh yeah! I love the silence of the woods. And that clear, thin air that reminds you that you’re still alive because you have to work for every breath. 😀
Uhm, yeah. That right there is why I love being at sea level. Or, you know, at the sea!
Me too. Imagine being a Denver football player!
I have a friend with a cabin in Colorado, and I have NEVER enjoyed anything so much as a little weekend we spent there. It was all clattering aspens and dueling hummingbirds and bear cub footprints on the porch.
On the last night, it was also mice running across my feet in the darkness though. Even paradise has a bog or two, I guess.
Ooh. Yes. In my darkest desire, everyone goes away and leaves me alone for as long as I can stand it. No interruptions other than the ones I want, no wandering in and out of my office, no coming to show me random YouTube clips. But…someone to bring coffee or beer and the occasional bite to eat.
Ah, someone to make me healthy food and it would just BE THERE, no thought required…
A chain attached to the desk can help with some of that. 🙂
Now that’s disturbingly tempting, Josh…
This might sound weird but, I just hired a new cleaning service last week cause I hate scrubbing bathrooms, and they were amazing! My house was spotless, they even made our bed. Which is the weird part, that made bed had the same effect on me that a clean kitchen has on Amy Lane.
I have always wanted to run away and live on a houseboat. When you need to get away, just pull up anchor and go.
Thank you, Colette, for returning my cherished fantasy back to me! A housekeeper WILL make my life complete, I know it!
But my housekeeper would have to be Jeeves, not Alice, because while I love the idea of a clean house, I think Jeeve’s sarcastic wit would suit me better and really, I would feel better if Alice could simply marry her butcher Sam and have a life of her own.
There’s something about everything being clean and organized that frees my mind for work…even though I wasn’t ever going to get around to scrubbing the tiles anyway.
I love the idea of houseboats. My books would actually sink a houseboat if I were to try living on one. 😉
I know! Houseboats would be great but between books and yarn, where would I live?
You’d need a barge pulled by the houseboat to carry the yarn and books… or one of those British Longboats. Plenty of room in one of those, surely?
My deepest, darkest desire? God, this is going to sound awful…. but it’s to not have to answer to anyone. To wake up in the morning and be able to make decisions that impact no one but myself. That is my idea of perfection.
And I spent one summer on Catalina island. I was 21, and John Davidson ran a ‘singers summer camp’ at the old Wrigley compound. He parked his private yacht just offshore. It was pretty heady stuff for a bunch of kids; drinks on the yacht with John. One thing I did learn that summer – buffalo’s are not terribly social creatures. One of them had gored John early after his arrival, quite near the family jewels on his upper thigh, and so we were all warned to stay away. One night we’d been enjoying adult beverages on the boat, and were walking back up to the compound when he noticed that all of the lights were out up the hill. Startled, we started drunkenly discussing why the power might be out when we smelled something… well, actually pretty vile. Come to find out, the lights weren’t out, we just had a buffalo the size of a small RV between us and the buildings. We backed away v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y.
And there goes another cherished fantasy, because that whole buffalo thing is not romantic at ALL!
I’ve got to tell you, I had no idea how BIG they got, or how BAD them smell. I have a whole new respect for the plains Native Americans, because bringing one of these things down with a bow? I can’t imagine. Other than that? Catalina actually is pretty amazing.
Oh! What a great story.
Yeah, buffalo are huge! Imagine how terrifying the plains must have been when they were covered with buffalo!
I’m with you on the not having to answer to anyone.
I guess that’s partly why, as stressful as the whole writing for a living thing is, it’s always a joy to know that every single day I’m making it up as I go.
I might have to add my deepest darkest desire to this, I’ve always wanted to live on a boat. (And I know that as soon as I did live on a boat, I would no longer want that.)
But I had a friend in high school whose family lived on a converted navy sub-chaser in Terminal island and we used to sit on the fantail in captain’s chairs and watch the longshoremen across the harbor unloading the cargo ships, big cranes lifting those rail box sea containers from all over the world. Ships come and go, all under different flags.
We’d drink tea and imagine it was our boat, and where we’d travel… That was a big enough boat at 112 feet to seem safe and comfortable, although I never did get used to a toilet you flushed by pumping the water out.
Later I dated a man who lived on a 37 foot teak vintage sailboat in Newport harbor. We’d take the boat out and hook up with other boats to make a kind of flotilla for parties. Watch the sun rise in the morning, although most times, the marine layer would hide us and everything around us in a thick blanket of fog.
I don’t suppose I ever will live on a boat, but I’ve toyed with living a nomadic sort of life in a nice RV, like some kind of suburban Captain Jack Sparrow, never putting my head down in the same place twice. “Bring me the horizon.”
That is a lovely fantasy–I can see the appeal. But me, I’m more like a mouse in a hole– I like knowing where the corners of my town are, the places with the best crumbs, the shortcuts, the history. Knowing that my children went to that school or they played soccer here a lot or that there’s a hidden park behind this suburban street– these things make my world comfortable, and my mind travels the corners busily, looking for new nooks and crannies and idea 🙂
Suddenly I see why you tend to YA and New Adult storytelling so much, Amy. All the nooks and crannies of youth seen from a distance…huh. Cool.
I love the romance of boats.
But…I have to confess I am prone to seasickness. 🙁
NO.
Well. There goes that Barefoot Cruise just for my favorite writers of m’m romance and me fantasy I’ve had in the back of my mind.
It’s embarrassing. You can see why I held off admitting it.
😀
Hmm, that’s kind of hard to choose. I guess right now it would be the motorhome. I want to grab hubby, jump in the motorhome and just cruise the country from one end to the other. Stopping when we want, going where we want and I can keep trying to write while doing all of this traveling.
My other desire would be to retire and buy a log cabin in the woods and own the local bar, the place where all of the locals go to hang out. I’d serve simple fare like chili, soups and sandwiches, salads, quiches. Breakfasts like sausage gravy and biscuits, etc…sigh.
MMmm. I want to go to your bar and have the biscuits and gravy!!! 🙂
Right??? I want both of those lives. I’d like to go on the barbecue circuit with one of those big, ridiculous smoker trailers too sometime. Just for giggles. Invent my own barbecue sauce.
When I was in high school, my family took a 6 week RV trip together, with my grandparents (who owned the RV.) It was AWESOME–but I used to go to bed and dream of the road moving under the wheels. I could do it for a vacation, I think, but eventually the road would need to stop.
Secret desire…….. I want an auto-chef like Eve and Roarke have from the In Death series by JD Robb. Actually, that would still have to be stocked, so maybe just a housekeeper, chef, massage therapist all rolled into one. And, I’d want him to be a snarky, sarcastic, power bottom that kept me laughing all the time.
Yep, that’s my secret desire
RIGHT? I have been waiting for a self-stocking auto-chef for YEARS!
Maugham said, “American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers.”
And I say amen to that sister. You are preaching to the choir.
I could certainly go for a chef/masseuse on call 24/7! I was thinking yesterday that — as much as I enjoy cooking now and then — it would be so convenient to have meals delivered as though by room service. 😀
To have any sort of musical ability. I see around 40 concerts in a good year and am always blown away by anyone who has the ability to write and perform a song. My one ill advised foray into piano lessons when I was younger did not end well.
Oooh, good one. I love musicians. I have such respect for anyone who can really read music and play (at the same time). Especially things like the violin which are all just endless practice and muscle memory and translating what’s in your head to the tips of your fingers.
Oh yes. I’ve always wanted to sing. I mean, I CAN sing. Just not well.
Yes, to be able to communicate through melody is a wonderful thing. No words required, really. A minor chord can bring people to tears — even when they don’t understand the language. I find that amazing.
Deepest, darkest desire? Well, I’m not gonna tell you my deepest, darkest…it involves Shemar Moore and a private island 😉 …my secret desire would be to not have to work…or at least be able to work from home. All the time to read and/or write that I would like…yep…that sounds near heaven to me…
I admit when I thought up that question, my first thought is well, I’m actually living my deepest darkest desire. I’m a working writer. I write enough that I don’t need an outside job (but that’s largely due to the fact that I started when I was a stay at home mom.)
But doing what I love and paying my kids college tuition? Priceless.
I think I had this fantasy when I started writing full time, that I would somehow be able to keep a clean house and write full time. Alas, no. But other than that, it’s still my dream job, so that’s still pretty awesome!
I read this and thought…”Those whom the gods wish to drive mad, they grant their wish.” 😀
But you’re right. Madness and occasional bouts of panic and anxiety aside, it’s pretty cool being your own boss and working from home.