I've been varying shades of brunette for the last ten years, but on a spontaneous whim I decided to dye my hair red...BRIGHT RED!
The work required was nothing short of a marathon! Three nights, two bleaches and copious amounts of fudge hair dye later, the mission was completed with the help of my rather determined younger sister, Emma. Lucky for me, she wasn't willing to give up on the first night or my hair would have remained brown with a red tinge. Not the look I was going for at all!
I'd almost given up on this new transformation and was feeling a little disheartened, but she looked me in the eye with her stubborn face and said, "I'm not giving up until it's bloody red. It's become personal now!" She does make me laugh.
But this decision was not just out of the blue. A mistake I had made the day before my decision to go red was the catalyst behind it...
Imagine for a moment, Bruce Wayne...
He leads a double life. One as Bruce Wayne, the billionaire playboy and his alter ego, Batman the superhero saving the world from unimaginable dangers. They are one and the same person but both are very different.
Now, I don't claim to be a superhero in my spare time, but i have in a sense been living a double life...
That double life came to crashing halt Tuesday afternoon, after an incident involving Facebook...
Tuesday afternoon I received three paperback copies of my book! This was the first time I'd seen the book in a physical form, so as you can imagine I was incredibly excited. I took a beauty shot of the books and uploaded them to what i thought was my author page...
It wasn't.
It was posted to my personal page. *shrieks of horror*
Only my best friend and my immediate family knew that I had written a book. It wasn't that i was ashamed of the book or the fact that i was an Indie Author, it's simply that by nature I am a private and reserved sort of person when it comes to my accomplishments. I don't tend to shout out from the roof tops what I've done. But in keeping that part of me a secret, I'd been hiding a very important part of myself from everyone around me and had split myself into two people.
To the world at large, I was reserved, quiet and apparently to those who know me best, intimidating. According to my mother, think Rosalie Hale from Twilight. I love Roaslie, but she isn't exactly approachable.
Then I have my author self, which is very different. My author self is creative, intense, fun and a little bit crazy perhaps even unpredictable.
So, what I considered at the time to be an epic fail, actually turned out to be a mistake with a silver lining. It made me realise the vast difference in my two persona's and that perhaps it wouldn't be such a bad thing to find a way to combine the two.
And so the decision to be bold and dye my hair the crazy red i wanted was made.
It was a physical way of bringing a part of my crazy author self into my every day self.
I think that Ally could relate to what I'm feeling at the moment. Her transformation is clearly a lot more drastic than mine. I, thank heavens don't have an evil vampire trying to kill me or an ancient prophecy floating about that involves me. But she has to let go of her old self and have the courage to begin the transformation from normal, average girl who is controlled and reserved, sharp as a tack but also lacking confidence in areas to the soon to be Immortal girl whose fate is to go up against an evil vampire that will stop at nothing to kill her.
As I said, mine is not even close to that dramatic but the basics are the same.
In some small way, there is always an element of truth about the author thrown into his or her books and it's true in this case, but my self-conscious mind knew the truth about me before my conscious mind did.
Call it destiny, fate or whatever, but I'm glad i made that mistake and uploaded that picture to the wrong page. It feels like the beginning of a new and exciting journey.
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