Thankful Thursday

Though the timestamp on this post will probably tell you that it was actually Friday when I posted this, I have always operated under the notion that the current day doesn't end in my personal universe until my own head hits the pillow. I decided to call this post Thankful Thursday, after my friend, James Melzer mentioned this morning that Thursday should be a day to be thankful for our inspirations. James posted his own blog about the people who inspire him, including new media pioneers like Mur Lafferty, J.C. Hutchins, Scott Sigler, and Matt Selznick. In honor of thankfulness, I wanted to take today's blog and use it to give kudos to a few incredible people who have inspired me.

Neil Gaiman has been an incredible inspiration for the last eighteen years of my life. Gaiman is a master storyteller who has gone places and written things I have dreamed about all my life. It's like he has access to this other dimension that many of us only glimpse in our nightly wanderings, and barely wake to tell of it. While I don't know Neil Gaiman personally, and have never interacted with him on any level, he is one of my greatest inspirations. I truly believe that when all is said and done about two hundred years from now, the supposed big names will be forgotten, and Gaiman will be taught in colleges the way Shakespeare is today.

On a more personal level, my friend Christine Makepeace and her boyfriend Dylan Santurri are an inspiration to me. Who are Christine Makepeace and Dylan Santurri, you ask? They are the mad genius duo behind Paracinema, a magazine that studies Paranormal Cinema from the inside out. Christine inspires me because when we first met, she used to talk to me about how much she admired me for writing. How much she looked up to for braving the long and difficult road of writing. Today, she's a driving force behind one of my favorite magazines. I don't just say that because she is my friend. Paracinema is awesome.

Then there is Jacqueline Roth. When I first met Jae, as her friends know her, I was working as a moderator and mentor at one of the largest fanfiction sites on the internet. We were both submitting authors there, and I got to know her after interacting over a story she was submitting. We started to exchange stories, and eventually became part of a great many enterprises together. We are both founding members of an incredible online literary arts journal called eMuse, and for many years we shared a fantastic, but small online writer's critique site. I watched Jae grow over the years from someone who only dreamed of writing, into a woman who thrived. In the last two years she has had several books published through Cerridwen Press and their sister site, Ellora's Cave. She has written some of the most character driven, amazing stories I have ever read. If you've not heard of her, she comes highly recommended. She's got an incredible imagination. Her successes continue to inspire me on a regular basis.

There are so many people that inspire me that were I to name them all, I would literally be sitting in this chair until the latter part of next week. Since it's going on 2 AM, I'll wrap it up here with a simple and humble thank you to all of the people I know who dedicate themselves to following their creative destinies. You are all an amazing inspiration to me, and your successes, both great and small, light a fire under me every day.

On that note, I will say goodnight, and good Friday, apparently in more ways than one.