So. I have to admit something I don’t want to admit. I noticed, through some Facebook posts that one of my exes just had a baby. I heard that he was going to have a baby, which didn’t phase me. Then today I read her name, the baby’s, and it was a name that had been on my shortlist of baby names. It was the name that I went by in French class in high school and, ironically, is the name of the main character of my first novel about a woman who does not want to have children. Olivia.

I’ve felt weird about it all day. It’s just a name, but it’s odd. It makes me feel connected to someone I don’t want to remember. It makes me think of the roads not taken and makes me feel like those untaken roads are somehow running parallel with mine. And, this is what I don’t want to admit. Secret Thirty-Four, Revealed. I felt sad.

Why? I don’t know. I really don’t want to be with that guy. I don’t want to have a baby right now. I think it’s more that my life feels stagnant at the moment. I’m working on my second novel but it probably won’t be finished for two more years. The first one was never published. I have a fine job, but it’s just fine. My husband and I are good, thank goodness, but our lives are all about work.

I’m wanting something new, exciting, glittery, explosive, fantastic in my life. And when I think about that name, Olivia, I don’t think about an ex-boyfriend’s baby, I think about a character that I loved that never fully came to be. I wish my Olivia was alive, had jumped from the pages, and into bookstores. I wish I had officially staked claims to that name first, as petty as it sounds, and am upset that now, if anyone ever wants to publish my first book, I’m going to have to change the title and the name of the main character. A name I just freakin’ loved. Somehow The Unthinkable Thoughts of Olivia Rachel Rose won’t be the same without Olivia. But for the record if any ex-boyfriends come lurking around my name pool, I’m official driving a stake in the ground for Victoria Rachel Rose as well as the characters of my newest book—Elizabeth Virginia Small and Lillian Lee. Victoria, Beth, and Lily are mine, bitches, so back off.

(Sorry, I’m finding that trying to lose weight makes me swear more.)