Award Winning Author

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Karen Dales is the Award Winning Author of "The Chosen Chronicles" which include "Changeling: Prelude to the Chosen Chronicles," "Angel of Death: Book One of the Chosen Chronicles," and "Shadow of Death: Book Two of the Chosen Chronicles." She is currently at work on "Thanatos: Book Three of the Chosen Chronicles" and a Historical Romance set in Edo Japan.
Karen loves receiving emails from fans. If you'd like to email her:

karendales@karendales.com

www.karendales.com

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Care and Feeding of Authors

Some of you may have noticed that I fell off the Internet Social media presence early last week. If you didn’t notice, don’t worry, I’m back. What happened was I got slammed with pneumonia. Yep, you read that correctly – pneumonia. Luckily, I was able to get in to see my doctor a.s.a.p and promptly put on antibiotics (Gods, I so love being in a country with national health care.:) Now this did not instantly put an end to my illness, but I had to do something I hadn’t done in YEARS, which was to sleep as much as possible. No writing. No editing. No reading. Just sleep. I don’t think I did any eating either. For the first time in years I was living the life of a cat, albeit a very sick cat.

It also happened only days before I was meant to attend SFContario. I had never had to cancel my attendance at a conference I was a panellist guest at before and I did not want SFContario to be the first, but it came oh so close. Despite the antibiotics and the copious amounts of rest I seriously considered emailing the organizers to say I wouldn’t be able to attend, but I decided to wait and see how I felt on the Friday morning.

Friday morning rose and I tottered upright. I decided I could go. I arrived at the convention with a tired smile on my face. It, unfortunately, did not hide the fatigue that recovering from pneumonia causes. Many of the other authors there were concerned and offered their assistance in helping me make it through SFContario. Never before had I truly felt such community and friendship with the other authors at a convention. It truly solidified in my heart that these wonderful and creative folks, who were there for the same reasons as I, would rally around and be so caring.

I’m used to the corporate dog-eat-dog style of business when dealing with peers. This past weekend was a solidifying experience that in the world of the creative writers this is not the case. I’ve experienced it before through my attendance at many other conventions, making new and wonderful author friends, but this time, it wasn’t about professional niceties, it was about genuine human caring and compassion.

By Sunday I was feeling more of my normal self. Not 100%, but close enough. I believe that the reason for my positive experience and increase of health over the weekend to be the amazing capacity of the other authors’ compassion.

I look forward to the next convention I’ll be at – AdAstra – to see so many of these wonderful folks and be able to reciprocate their generosity and compassion.

5 comments:

  1. I'm glad your better. I know getting pneumonia can be a very debilating. Even after you recover it takes a while for your body to be back to normal. I will say that I have found Authours to be some of the most supportive people I have met.

    Stefan

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  2. Thanks so much for your kind words, Stefan. It is true authors are supportive people, but in the face of recovering from pneumonia at a con I was stunned at how much they really stood up to help me out.

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  3. So glad you're feeling better and felt the support of fellow authors. It can certainly be a lonely world and when you find amazing support it makes it all so much better.

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  4. Thank you so much, Alvaro and Sarah. It was a long haul to get over it, but now I'm back in the saddle again, trying to get caught up on all the work I didn't get done when I was sick.

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