Magically Delicious or What's Your Lucky Charm?(Joy Preble)


Rather than talk about me and when I have and haven’t felt like a lucky person, I’ve decided to approach this post from a different angle: Things I used to do when I was a kid that I felt would bring luck. Hopefully some of you gentle readers will remember your own weird luck rituals and we’ll have a little chat about this when you comment. Yup. That’s what I hope.

We’ll call it: Stuff Little Joy Did (And sometimes still does) That She Thought Would Bring Her Luck

1. I used to have a green rabbit’s foot key chain. Not so lucky for the rabbit, huh? The chain part was stuck into the rabbit’s foot at the top where I guess the foot used to be connected to the rabbit. I was too weirded out to actually put my house key on it, so I kept it in my underwear drawer. (What is it with underwear drawers, anyway? Why do we hide stuff there? )

2. Wishing on a star. I still do this sometimes when I see the first star in the sky at night. Have you ever done this? “Star light. Star bright. I wish I may. I wish I might find a star to wish tonight.” And then you wish.

3. Searching for a four-leaf clover. I have never found one. But in Lincoln Park in Chicago where I grew up, there was a lot of clover. I looked a bunch. Sometimes I pretended that a three-leaf clover had four leaves. Yeah. I was that geeky.

4. Knocking on wood. Yeah, I still do this. Lots of stories about where it came from, some folkloric, others religious. But if you ask me how the books are going, I may indeed answer, “Good, thanks. Knock on wood.” I know this isn’t totally rational. But it pops out of my mouth.

5. Letting a ladybug land on my finger and then blowing it away and making a wish. There was a rhyme, too – although I don’t know what it had to do with luck: “Ladybug, Ladybug, fly away home. Your house is on fire, your children will burn.” (See #1 above. Not so lucky sounding for the ladybug) Are there ladybugs in Houston? I haven’t seen one since I lived in Chicago.

6. Wishing on: birthday candles and wishbones. Doesn’t everybody do this? I loved wishing on that wishbone at Thanksgiving, my brother and I grabbing that creepy slimy thing and trying to snap it. Once again, not so lucky for the turkey, eh?

There’s more, but that should get you guys thinking.
Today I'm feeling lucky that Sourcebooks just revealed the supremely fabulous cover for Anastasia Forever. Scroll down the sidebar of this blog and you shall see!

But what I really want to know, is how about you? What were your lucky charms?
If you write, have you ever included some of your luck-bringers in your stories?


Comments

  1. Joy, I believed in all of those except #5. And I still do #4 and #6. I say I don't really believe in luck, but there's just something about those things that make me hold on to them even as an adult. Wishful thinking, perhaps?

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    1. Yes, I still believe in luck, knock on wood! (get it?)

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  2. Love the post, Joy!

    I love wishing on stars, and the turkey's wishbone. We always had to wait until it dried out, which seemed so anticlimactic.

    I have a great Chicago story about a four-leaf clover -- the night my husband proposed (atop the Hancock building) we were making our way back to the car in the parking garage, looked down and found a small laminated circle with a four leaf clover pressed inside. We figured this was someone passing on some luck to us, and we've been happily married 16 years (the 4-leaf clover is framed and hanging in our entryway now).

    Of course, the older I get the more I believe that luck (in marriage and writing!) has little to do with it. It's fun to wish and hope, but nothing gets done without dedication and discipline and sometimes pulling your hair out. So maybe we can make our own luck?

    I have a feeling there are a lot of rabbits and turkeys out there who would love for us to embrace that theory, lol!

    Again, thanks for the post!

    Hugs my friend!
    Chris

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    1. such a great story about the four leaf clover, Chris! Awwwww.

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  3. Great cover and I still knock on wood--or my head if no wood is available. *head thunk*

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    1. Yes, knock on the head! I think everyone does this!

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  4. I have lucky socks. And when my first book was being seriously considered by a pub house, I wore the same pair of jeans over and over, until I got word that an offer was coming. So I have a definite thing for lucky clothes!

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  5. Did you ever wish on an eyelash?

    I had a rabbit's foot when I was little, but I could never stand to have one now.

    And I have a four-leaf clover pressed in the pages of my dictionary.

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    1. Oh I forgot about the eyelash - yes, blow on it and wish. ha!

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    2. That is one scary-ass leprechaun.

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  6. Twinz! I had a green rabbit foot, too. Plus did/do all those things. Right now I nurture a geranium I won at an SCBWI conference just before I was published. I call it my writing plant. It keeps growing and flowering, and that gives me hope.

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    1. Hah! to the twins. And yay to the geranium. And you - the last person left on the Disneyworld bus with me for NCTE, remember? :)

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