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October 2001 Page Four |
Embrace Your Fearby Janette RallisonAfter the book came out, on a lark, I decided to see if I could find out what ever happened to Richard. I typed his name in a search engine, got his web page, and found out that he was teaching a seminar in Flagstaff in one month. The seminar was on overcoming fear, which was ironic, because suddenly I could think of nothing more frightening than going to that seminar and facing Richard Hatch. I mean, I wanted to meet him. I even had this quaint vision of me handing my book to Richard and of him being terribly impressed that I'd put him in the dedication. But one month?! That didn't give me much time to transform myself from a dowdy housewife into--well, I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to transform myself into, but it would have been nice to have six months to plan ahead so I could get in a few sessions of plastic surgery beforehand. To say I was nervous was putting it mildly. I probably would have talked myself out of going, but my "quaint visions" wouldn't go away, and besides, it just seemed wrong to skip out on a seminar about overcoming your fear because you were afraid. I went. And despite the fact that I had hung Richard Hatch's poster in my bedroom, decorated my journal with doodles of he and I together, and at 12 years old was planning our wedding, I was determined to act cool, collected, and sophisticated when I actually met the man. When Richard walked in at breakfast, some in the room immediately started fawning all over him, but not me. I said a casual, "Good morning," to him over the pancakes and then returned to my seat. It was just coincidence, really, that he sat down next to me. I let those around us dominate the conversation with him. I was determined not to act like I did when I met Lex de Azevedo--gushing over what a fan I was until he probably considered me as stalker potential and started looking around the room for Security. Finally, towards the end of breakfast, Richard looked over at me and said, "I recognize you. You've been to my seminars before." "No, we've never met," I said. "Really? he said. "You look so familiar. I could have sworn I'd seen you before." "It must have been that poster I had of you in Junior High. I knew you could really hear me when I was talking to you." So much for portraying an air of sophistication. Of well, I suppose he was bound to discover the truth about me sooner or later. I mean, how do you remain sophisticated while telling a stranger you put them in the dedication of your romance novel? I was a little worried about how I was going to work that detail into casual conversation. I mean, he was there to give a seminar. How was I going to actually give him my book? ("I'm not sure if you like reading romance novels, Mr. Hatch, but I thought I'd give you this one. . . .") As it turns out, I couldn't have scripted the conversation better if I'd written it myself. At lunch I asked him about how he wrote his books (he's written three Battlestar Galactica books), and mentioned that I was a writer, too. "Have you ever sent anything out?" he asked. (Why do people always assume I'm unpublished?) "Yes, my fifth book is coming out next July." "Really? Did you bring any with you?" (Isn't that an odd question? How many authors travel with copies of their books?) "As a matter of fact, I did. I brought one to give to you because you're in the dedication." He didn't even seem surprised. Maybe movie stars are used to frequenting book dedications. Anyway, after lunch I gave him a copy of my book. He read the entire dedication out loud and said, "That's beautiful. You're a poet." My best review ever. After that, we all went down to the "challenging ropes course," which was basically logs and ropes suspended 35 feet in the air. We were supposed to conquer it and thus learn to "embrace our fear". Richard laughed at me as I was getting my harness on. "You just came to say 'hello' to me and now I'm making you do stuff." He seemed entirely too amused about this. But really, after getting up the courage to face him and give him my book, climbing swaying logs 35 feet in the air seemed pretty tame. Everyone was impressed by how well I embraced my fear. Who will I put in my next dedication? I'm not sure. Next time I'm going to think about it really, really carefully. I think I've embraced all the fear I want for a while. |
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