Have you noticed how all book blogger bios are alike? We love books! Devour books! Want to share our thoughts about books from our corner of the internet! (Does the internet have corners?) Books, books, books. They’re important to book bloggers.
Tell me something I don’t know.
I’ll skip the David Copperfield jazz. Holden Caulfield got it right: birth, education, all that. It’s not important.
Here’s what’s important:
Meredith Rankin doesn’t exist. It’s a pen name.
Meredith got here because of the Oxford comma.
The what?
Look it up. But the real me–Meredith wasn’t around–got into an argument with a relative. Christmas dinner. Eating turkey & potatoes. Avoiding politics & education & other trigger topics. I never thought there’d be an argument over punctuation. But there was. A while back, there was a lawsuit that was settled, in part, by the lack of an Oxford comma.
This was apparently morally offensive. Cue stupid argument.
Sometimes we all need a fresh start. I’ve been seriously writing for a decade, pursuing publication, building a platform. It went nowhere. Unfortunately, I’d been aiming at the wrong demographic. When I started out, I was writing in a different genre, flailing about to find my target audience. I know better now, but I didn’t know how to start over without, well, starting over.
I’d batted around the idea of a pen name. Fresh start, a second chance to get this writing-thing right. It would be such a hassle. Decisions, decisions: I couldn’t decide.
The comma argument decided it for me.
If I were published I wouldn’t be able to handle the judgment of relatives about everything from the marketing to the cover to, yes, the comma debate. Thus Meredith was born from the need to hide from relatives. That makes her either smart or cowardly. Take your pick.
So here I am. Starting over.
Books take us places. Mine have taken me to dark places: fears, doubts, the ugliness that lurks inside. They’ve also taken me to places where there’s the possibility of a new start. Redemption. Forgiveness. For everyone. Even for a snarky-serious comma-fanatic like me.