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I write a lot of different kinds of stories. I’ve written a vampire paranormal, a psychic detective, a mystery, several angsty romances, and a romantic suspense. I made a very brief foray into historical for a short story. Truly, I’m still so new at this that I strive each time to find my voice and flex my storytelling muscles just a little bit more each time. Sometimes I feel as if I succeed better than others, sometimes success eludes me in some vague and indefinable way.  But through all these seemingly unrelated strings of words I hope a pattern is emerging.

In fact, hope is the pattern I hope is emerging. Hope for a better world. Hope for a nicer population. Hope for understanding, for compassion. Hope that people can find it in their hearts to use gentle humor to hide discomfort until they can find empathy. Hope that people can find empathy -- eventually -- and compassion for one other. By the way, I write these as much to remind myself of this as I do to send the message to others. As the mother of four kids, everyday I find a new reason to hang on to my patience and reserve judgment, to simply laugh my way through things I never thought I’d experience.

For myself, humor is the outward manifestation of hope. It’s as necessary to me as breathing. It’s hard to imagine, for example, getting through my mother’s passing last year without it. The conversation between the main character’s mother in Jumping Off Places, my part of the Because of the Brave anthology and her caregiver where she insists she’s dead, is actually nearly word for word one I had with my mother. (Except my mother really believed she must be dead and we were all keeping it from her so she wouldn’t get upset.)

I sometimes wonder if shared laughter isn’t a true state of grace, or a mental time-out to call when things get tough. It’s the outcome -- sometimes -- of being stretched to a breaking point, spiritually or physically, and serves the same basic function as crying. I can almost remember a single event, way back in my childhood when I first made the decision that if I had to choose between laughter and tears, I’d rather laugh. It’s an elusive, very early memory of falling off a ladder.

Whether it’s evolved on the side of the road after a massive car accident, or in childbirth, or from the death of both my parents and my husband’s, or because my children have done something that appalls me (or I’ve done something that appalls them), I can honestly say that my best comedy comes from things that don’t seem funny at all.

So what I guess I want people to take away from my work, if they take anything, is the sense that even in the darkest of times, in laughter we always have a gift we can use to take a breather and a spiritual Band-Aid for what hurts. In laughter we have breathing room to look for hope.

And what I think is funny right now is that after all the vampires, psycho killers, addictions, broken hearts, uncaring parents, and terrible crimes in the stories I tell, this one little blog post may be the most serious thing I’ve ever written.

**Muah** Best wishes for lots of laughter and hope in the year 2010, for everyone,

~ZAM~

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Learn more about author ZA Maxfield and her work by visiting her website, or her blog. She also has a Yahoo Group where fans or her writing can commute with her and with each other.