My Inner Lesbian High Priestess

I've very cleverly agreed to lead a ritual, so lately it seems like I've been spending all my spare time hovering over a Garage Band mixing screen trying to pump some life into musically simplistic pagan chants. I'm not sure why, but the version of "Hoof and Horn" that I came up with sounds like surfer detective music. Mark says the rest sounds like bellydance music. Oh well.

So. I was busy trying to meld the 60's "Mission: Impossible Theme" with "Under the Full Moon Light" when Mark burst into the room. "You're Susan!" he yelled.

I stared at him, trying to figure out who Susan was. At first I though he might mean Sarah, and then I wondered if he meant one of our neighbors or if he was repeating something someone else said.

"I just think it's really interesting that you're Susan and Lorraine drew herself into the illustration," Mark continued.

And then it dawned on me. Mark meant Susan from my short story, "Mask Glass Magic." I think I said something like, "What?"

"You didn't do that on purpose?" Mark asked. "Nobody pointed it out to you?"

"What? I'm Susan?"

"Oh come on," he said. "Purple sweater, silver ankh? Just open up your closet."

"Susan is an amalgam of all the new aged women I ever met," I said. "And I don't own a purple sweater."

"When I read the scene where she says she felt like Ishtar I thought you were writing yourself in."

"Well, they say that you write parts of yourself or people you know into your characters. I suppose," I said, "there's aspects of myself in Susan -- but I always thought I was more like the heroine, Michelle."

"Naw," he said. "Michelle's nothing like you."

(Pause for John to reflect that his character is active, creative, and a risk-taker)