From the Desk of…

Last week, a neighbor came by to drop off a package he saw on our doorstep. It was large enough that he didn’t want to leave it there. My office sits in the front of the house, and he stepped inside it to have a peek. “So this is where all the books come from,” he said.

After he left, it occurred to me that he’s not the only one who has said something similar. So, for whatever it’s worth, here’s where I write.

It’s not a very large room. It used to be the formal living room. We have a family room just a few feet away. I have no idea why people in Georgia like formal living rooms, much less what you really do with them, so we converted it to a library years ago and to my office back in 2010.

The furniture isn’t particularly fancy – a desk I bought years ago from a store that was going out of business, and a chair that lost so many screws that I don’t know how it still functions. I use an old tea cart to hold the cabinet, a phone, and some storage boxes. My side table is a desk that  my parents bought from a garage sale when I was eight. It’s where I did all my homework and where I probably wrote my very first story. The desk used to be washed out sage color, but my dad refinished it to a dark brown a few years before he died. The matching chair serves as a guest seat.

For all my geekery, none of the equipment is new. I think the speakers are the oldest, and they came from a PC I owned ten years ago. I don’t listen to music while I write and seldom when I edit, so it’s not like they get a ton of use.

The snack is dried pineapple and a glass of sweet tea (I live in the south after all). You can’t read what’s on the glass, but it has a picture of Oreos with the words Got Milk? above it. I think it’s sort of faded out now. There’s a minion on my desk, too. And yes, the No Guts No Glory sign is pinned to the wall.

The standing lamp and the low-wattage ceiling fan lights are the only lights in the room. Yes, it gets pretty dark in my office at night. All the better to write creepy stuff, don’t you think?

There are eighteen gargoyles watching over me, not counting the three in the picture above my side-table. My other guardian and side kick is Ronan the Beelzepup who is nestled in his bed and watching out the window. A painted wooden sign sits on my side-table in honor of Tasha, who no longer hangs out with me while I write. The sign reads:

It came to me that every time I love a dog, they take a piece of my heart with them, and every new dog who comes into my life gifts me with a piece of their heart. If I live long enough, all the components of my heart will be dog, and I will become as generous and loving as they are. 

Throughout the office, you’ll spot a few Harry Potter items. On my shelves you’ll find a row of Stephen King and Dean Koontz novels. A fake raven rests in front of a leather bound copy of the Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe. My husband’s favorite military thrillers and Star Wars take up a row or two.

The show stopper (besides Ronan), are the ten-foot built-in library shelves complete with a functioning old-fashioned ladder.