April Fool!

Hmm... Easter was yesterday, April Fool's Day is today... I can't recall that Easter has ever fallen on the first of April, but apparently it will in 2018 and 2029. Just imagine the fun you can have with your kids! You can put rocks in their Easter baskets and tell them the Easter Bunny is on strike, or fill up those little plastic eggs with spiders and hide them in the yard.

On second thought, better not. Some kids would be scarred for life.

Still, while that alignment might not prove to be earth-shattering, something happened on this date five years ago that forever changed my life.

That's right. Today is the fifth anniversary of Slave's release. I was excited, of course, but I will also admit to feeling as though I'd been slightly jinxed. Would people think my writing career was a bad joke? Considering everything that's happened since then, I still haven't decided whether or not that jinx is still in effect, or if it ever existed to begin with.

Not long after Slave reached the bookshelves, I was talking to an astrologer. She told me that since Pluto had entered Capricorn, my life would undergo a series of changes (as I recall, the word she used was "upheaval") for several years. When I asked how many years this would continue, she replied, somewhat apologetically, "Fifteen." To say that there have been changes is putting it mildly. For one thing, I'm now a romance writer as opposed to a nurse. I can't say I didn't intend for this to happen, but what I can tell you is that it didn't happen quite the way I thought it would.

To further illustrate, I pulled this off a site called Alpha Life Trends: Pluto in Capricorn (November 2008 to2023)

CAPRICORN - Pluto moving into Capricorn causes you to shift your focus and opens up your intuitive insight. You have grown your own inner world and grown those qualities that truly matter. Your inner world has grown in deepening the values and power that naturally come with a Capricorn's ambitions and goals. Pluto moving through Capricorn, your own sign, pushes you into the type of directions that you have wanted, however your journey will have plenty of twists and turns. Ultimately, Pluto's movement into Capricorn shifts the type of journey into being one that is least expected. You will find that you have to run just to keep up with this new pace of your life. Pluto empowers and forces you to expand you energies into so many directions at once and you'll have to eat and sleep on the run. Your life will take off into a new direction and it won't return to anything that resembles "normal" in a long time. You will be running at a faster and faster pace. Then with Pluto continuing to transition through Capricorn, you will find that the spotlight is on you and you have become the important person overnight. This takes you into a ball game that you least expected, but yet one that has you in your field of expertise. Your confidence level is strong, but you are in a whole new league. You will find that your ambitions and goals will become very visible and you will become the spotlight of leadership according to the inner qualities that you have grown while Pluto has been in Sagittarius. Many Capricorn's will come into positions of leadership from situations experienced while Pluto shifts through Sagittarius and continues to unfold the Capricorn opportunities to meet issues of ethics in business dealings head on in order to show your true capabilities.

I can't honestly say that I'm "in the spotlight," nor have I become an "important person overnight," but I can certainly relate to that part about "running at a faster and faster pace." I've slowed down a bit in recent months, but I have a feeling even that will change before long--particularly in light of that part about all the "twists and turns" on my journey.    

Just hope I don't get washed away in the flood.