Having it All
Author Megan Thomason
Megan Thomason lives in paradise aka San Diego, CA with her husband and five children. A former software manager, Megan vastly prefers writing twisted tales to business, product, and marketing plans. When she isn’t typing away on her laptop, she’s reading books on her phone—over 600 in the last year—or attending to the needs of her family. Megan’s fluent in sarcasm, could potentially benefit from a 12-step program for road rage, struggles with a Hot Tamales addiction, loves world travel & fast cars and hates paperwork & being an insomniac. Daynight is Megan’s first published novel, but fourth written one.
Is that not the best author’s bio ever? When given the chance to ask her some questions, I couldn’t resist asking some critical questions. Here is the response that I got:
I absolutely love it when I asked questions that force me to think hard. Brooke of Opinionated Consumer asked me how I managed to have it all. She said “she writes, seems totally hilarious, and her kids are still alive.” The answer that came to mind was “Yeah, when I have time; I live in a comedy show; and barely.”
After contemplating for a good 24 hours I decided that perhaps a person can have it all—just not all at once.
I love to write and when I’m immersed in a story I can write for 14 hours straight. My characters and their dilemmas occupy my thoughts and my dreams. I continuously write ideas and notes on my phone. Plotting, crafting, writing, re-writing, editing, more re-writing, more ideas, more re-writing, more editing and proofreading are rather time-consuming. And I won’t even get started on what happens when I try to promote one book and write the next. Suffice it to say there’s little sleep involved.
Writing isn’t my only vice. Just ask my kids and they’ll tell you that I’m a project person. I give 5000% to my projects, whether it be my writing, running the local theatre group’s charity Gala, helping produce same group’s latest production, planning a summer girl’s camp, or planning an overly elaborate Christmas party. A couple projects might have been a little unnecessary… like the world-class weapons collection I assembled this year. Can I count as book research?
Sounds fantastic, right? Well, there are a few downsides to my OCD approach to projects:
– I often get so caught up in what I’m doing that I forget to do the other things I’m supposed to be doing. Like picking my kids up from school. Yeah… I’ve gotten a couple of those calls. “Mom, school got out a half hour ago and we’re still sitting here waiting for you.” Yikes. Ever hear of school buses, state of California? Apparently public transportation got lost a few budget cuts ago. Unfortunate decision (for my children… and me).
– The clutter situation in my house? Bad. Really bad. Except when I make our house my project. Then it looks awesome… for a minute or two. Because my kids are immensely talented, too. At making messes.
– Laundry situation? Yes, there have been times I have bought my kids new socks and underwear instead of trying to find the dirty ones. But to survive as a kid in our household, it’s one of the first skills they learn. All but my 9 year old are fully laundry self-sufficient, including my husband :).
– My work impacts my children, sometimes positively, sometimes negatively. When I extensively volunteered at my daughters’ theatre group, my relationship with them blossomed. But, my teenage son spiraled out of control while I was busy and since I failed to intervene early, the situation sucked up about a year of my time and a whole lot of emotional energy. So now I try hard to stop whatever I am doing any time one of my children says they need me.
So yes, a person can have a great marriage, fantastic kids, well kept home, health, rewarding projects and jobs… it’s just unlikely that the universe will align to have them all at once. Life would be boring and we’d never grow and learn without challenges in one or more of these areas at any given time.
The second thing I know to be true is having anything, much less everything, requires hard work.
When I worked in the software industry, I had long stints of time where I worked 80-100 hours a week. I forego sleep all the time to get things done. As a teenager I always had a job (or more than one job). My family situation growing up was far from perfect, but my mother did teach me a strong work ethic and I’m grateful.
Lastly, Brooke asked me: What inspired the story line (of ‘daynight’)? If you wrote another would it be in this same genre or do you have even more tricks up your sleeves?
While hiking in the canyons of San Diego on a particularly hot day, I pondered what would happen if temperatures got extreme enough that days and nights had to be reversed. This was the impetus for Thera, the setting for my young adult dystopian novel, daynight. Thera became a complete inverse of Earth—from the direction of the sun, to the water and land. As for the evil totalitarian regime—The Second Chance Institute and their messed up purposes… all figments of my twisted imagination. I have a very active imagination :).
daynight is actually my fourth written novel. I wrote a full teen romantic comedy trilogy (with a touch of fantasy): the thin veil, the thin line and thin skin for my daughters and their friends. The trilogy was very well received. One of these days I may do a re-write and publish. I love the stories, but my writing has improved and I refuse to publish anything that isn’t up to my current standards. I’m currently writing two books: arbitrate, the sequel to daynight and B*Lies, the story of a girl who makes the decision to run from her abusive father. I anticipate all my books to be in Young Adult, but not all dystopian.
daynight is a great book I couldn’t put down. It would be a great book for anyone teen aged and up.
Ingeborg says
Wow, 14 hours straight, that’s dedication.
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