Blogging the Rapture

It was 6 PM. My husband, my daughter, and I were standing outside by a pond near our house, looking for minnows. To tell the truth, I didn't know what time it was. I had spent the day writing submission guidelines for my publisher's website, just in case the end of the world didn't happen and I still had to get those books out to a reading public.

I suppose I must say here that I am spiritual, in a vague sort of way. I don't enjoy talking about it - I find that religion is a much more intimate thing to discuss than mere sex, and I won't even be touching that topic here.

So I don't talk about beliefs, and I don't write about them, except for a scene that I include in every book that shows the power of prayer. Not prayer that goes to any specific god, or to God, even; it is just prayer that is born from despair - when things are overwhelming and the soul has nowhere else to turn.

I do believe in that. For a writer who writes about magic and fantasy, I think that prayer is the ultimate magic - magic that is real.

At that moment, when I stood by the lake and watched my daughter in the water, covered with duckweed and muddy up to her armpits, as the sky changed from blue to orange to red to purple, I had a thought in my head and my heart that one could call a prayer.

That thought was, "Thank you, whoever you are, for leaving all this here, just as it is right now."