by Toni McGee Causey
As I write this, there is a mosquito in this room, trying to pack me off for lunch. The buzzing is so pronounced, I’d have sworn the Goodyear Blimp was coming in for a landing, but I am not quite fast enough to see the danged thing and get to it to kill it before she jumps to the other side of the room. I could swear he’s over there saying, “Neener neener neener.” I’m sure he has his friends perched right outside the back door waiting, because as soon as I step outside, three billion of the damned critters will point toward me and the sky will darken and Moses will wonder who’s taking his schtick, and it’s ME, the WALKING DESSERT. Geez. It’s summer already. How on earth did that happen?
And in spite of how fast the summers seem to be arriving, I still look forward t
o this time of year with the longing of a school kid in the middle of finals. For the last three years, though, it has meant being in the throes of the best part of writing—working on the next book. For the last two years, it’s also meant actually getting to visit a bookstore and seeing a book out. (I once stood and stared so long, a customer who’d been browsing said, “Honey, it won’t bite.”) First it was Bobbie Faye’s Very (very, very, very) Bad Day (and when I sold it, there were SIX “verys” in that parenthetical. I may have lost my mind a little. I am having a hard enough time typing that sucker out every time I need to, can you imagine THREE MORE? “Hi, Ms. Causey, you just won the Carpal Tunnel First Place Ribbon if you can lift your hands to accept it, and it should like nice right there next to the WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING? statue.”)
As I write this, there is a mosquito in this room, trying to pack me off for lunch. The buzzing is so pronounced, I’d have sworn the Goodyear Blimp was coming in for a landing, but I am not quite fast enough to see the danged thing and get to it to kill it before she jumps to the other side of the room. I could swear he’s over there saying, “Neener neener neener.” I’m sure he has his friends perched right outside the back door waiting, because as soon as I step outside, three billion of the damned critters will point toward me and the sky will darken and Moses will wonder who’s taking his schtick, and it’s ME, the WALKING DESSERT. Geez. It’s summer already. How on earth did that happen?
And in spite of how fast the summers seem to be arriving, I still look forward t
o this time of year with the longing of a school kid in the middle of finals. For the last three years, though, it has meant being in the throes of the best part of writing—working on the next book. For the last two years, it’s also meant actually getting to visit a bookstore and seeing a book out. (I once stood and stared so long, a customer who’d been browsing said, “Honey, it won’t bite.”) First it was Bobbie Faye’s Very (very, very, very) Bad Day (and when I sold it, there were SIX “verys” in that parenthetical. I may have lost my mind a little. I am having a hard enough time typing that sucker out every time I need to, can you imagine THREE MORE? “Hi, Ms. Causey, you just won the Carpal Tunnel First Place Ribbon if you can lift your hands to accept it, and it should like nice right there next to the WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING? statue.”) 
The new one, out this week, is Bobbie Faye’s (kinda, sorta, not exactly) Family Jewels, and I swear to you, the next series will have one word titles. The sad thing is, I did this to myself.But wonderfully, the summer is still about books. Reading is, I believe, my first love, and in elementary school, the summers meant no more getting up at the butt-crack of dawn. It meant no more massive school projects late at night (er, 3 a.m. because I am an overachiever as the procrastination).
The weird thing was… I started anticipating, and dreading, the books. Anticipating because it was HEAVEN and I could read until my eyes fell out my head (which was a serious possibility, I read so much). But it also meant that when school rolled back around and we had to do that dreaded “what did you do for your summer vacation?” essay, I was going to have nothing. Nada. Except that I read books.
I could literally go weeks without setting foot outside. My dad would often drag me to the door and say profound things like, “This is the back yard, and don’t be afraid of that blue thing up there, that’s the sky, it won’t fall on you.” Honestly, I’m surprised he didn’t toss a book out there in the middle of the yard to watch me freak out, run to it and then slam the door behind me just to prove to me that I wouldn’t die in the sunlight. [And right now, my dad is reading this, thinking, “Damn, I should have done that.”] I’m pretty sure the only reason he and my mom agreed to let me have a car as a teenager was because I could not read and drive at the same time, and to get in the car was, by definition, “outside of the house.” (My mom and dad tried to take me camping once. Referred to by our family as “That Camping Trip” and referred to by me as “Hell.” I refused to pee. At all. Three days, people, and I wouldn’t go. Not behind a bush, a tree, or with any sort of enticements. I think they cut the trip short because they didn’t want to have to explain to Social Services why their child exploded.) When Lois Greiman mentioned at RT that she and her son had been purposefully camping across an entire state or two and actually hiking, my inner book geek went, “iiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeee” and nearly fell over dead. (Strangely, I played softball and we ended up having a winning team; I’m not quite sure how my dad managed to convince me that outside was okay enough long enough to play a sport. I consider this one of those wonders of the universe.)
I knew, though, that the end of summer was coming, and I had nothing to report for the “what I did for my summer vacation” essay, and it would really start to bother me. After the first couple of years of reporting that I’d read books, (and I don’t think “annoying the crap out of my little brother counted as a reportable activity), I sensed the teachers (and the kids) were thinking I was somehow… not an extrovert. Maybe even… a geek. The eye-rolling would commence and the teasing, and somewhere along about the third or fourth year of having to do one of those stupid reports, I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t say the same thing all over again, so I made up a story about my summer. Just completely fabricated the whole thing, acting as if it was real, and turned it in.
I’m not entirely sure how the English teacher knew that I hadn’t visited Morocco and slayed a couple of dragons, but geez, she was wily and she knew. And she gave me an A+. She also gave me that pursed-lipped angled-over-the-glasses glint, but I didn’t realize it was because she was on to me. I thought it was just because of the twist at the end where I’d saved a couple of street kids. (I thought that was a nice touch, for a ten year old.) That’s when I realized, though, that my summer vacation was wherever my imagination took me. Books and dreams.
It doesn’t get much better than that.
So how about you? If you had the ability to have a long summer vacation, even you people who like to go outside and do stuff, what would you do? Where would you go? What would you dream?
Toni McGee Causey lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She and her husband, Carl, are licensed general contractors and, in order to support her writing and reading addiction, run their own civil construction company. You can visit Bobbie Faye and Toni (and view videos, read excerpts and participate in contests) at www.tonimcgeecausey.com
Toni will be giving away a signed copy of Bobbie Faye's Very (very, very, very) Bad Day and a $15 B&N gift certificate. Leave a comment to enter the contest!
