by Charmaine Ross

My first foray into The Future was through Buck Rogers, the television series in the eighties – yes I am showing my age. My head filled with moments of wonder and excitement when I watched those images flashing across the TV screen. Imagine my absolute glee when I managed to track down the series on DVD. I ordered them all, sat through the first episode and realised that my adult brain didn’t quite enjoy it as much as my ten year old brain did… Oh well, it was made in the eighties!

However, my imagination and excitement hasn’t changed since I was ten. I still anticipate days ahead with a certain amount of positivity. Why, I wonder? Days ahead, whether they be just around the corner or fifty years down the road are filled with promise and possibilities. They are an open slather, unmarred, unbruised, and filled with hope for better, happy days. They haven’t been lived yet, so no mistakes have been made, no bad things have happened, where everything across the board in my life has the same amount of potential. And I tend to flavour the future with optimism.

I can make of them what I want. The decisions I make today will shape the days, weeks, years ahead, whether it be in the long term, or just for tomorrow. I can create my days ahead simply by putting things into motion today. Then tomorrow I can build on what I’ve done today and keep building, keep creating. I plan for the best and hope that they will turn out how I imaged. Whether this is just wishful thinking, I don’t know, I only know that I enjoy planning my future. It’s an exciting, ever-changing reel of vision.

I’m also excited about the prospect of technology. I can’t imagine that my life in fifty years time will contain the same things as it does now. Maybe computers will be able to connect straight to my brain and I won’t have to key in words and correct my constant typos. Maybe we’ll have robots to cook, clean, wash – all of the things that I personally hate doing. Maybe we can plug intelligence into our brains and learn extraordinary amounts of information in an eighth of the time it currently takes now – and we’ll remember everything we read. Maybe we’ll create a pill that will keep us healthy, looking like we’re twenty when we’re actually one hundred. Maybe we’ll then live to be two hundred years old and still be able to hop, skip and jump until the day we pass onto the next world.

I mustn’t forget, however, how important yesterday is. Filled with golden nuggets of learning, precious gems of memories, even the not-so-good ones. Don’t underestimate the power of the not-so-good days. In reality they have been your best friends, shaping who you are today. Without them, you might not know how to handle that difficult situation, not know how grief feels in order to prepare yourself, you might not know how it feels to lose so that next time you can try harder, faster, study that little bit more, strive that little bit harder. How many times have you asked yourself, ‘If I only knew now what I didn’t know then, I would have done things a lot differently.’ – I’ve said that to myself more than a few times. In reality my one word – duh – says it all in moments like those. Oh, I know them well.

Then again, maybe I just like day-dreaming…

But without daydreams and imagination, there can be no future. Is that why I like sci-fi/futuristic/time travel romps so much? Absolutely. I only know that the future is open slather filled with promises, excitement and possibilities.

Charmaine’s most recent novel features a woman who puts everything on the line for the hope of a better future – until a dangerous adversary moves to town and threatens everything she hopes for. 

A sexy, sugar-laden David vs Goliath story about a local bakery, a national chain, and what really matters.

Clover Loveday has worked hard to get her café Four-Leaf Clover up and running — her ticket out of an increasingly alarming financial situation and her dream come true. When she literally falls off her ladder into the arms of sexy-as-sin Liam Sinclair. The same Liam Sinclair who owns the new bakery being built just across the road…the new store by bakery chain Upper Crust owner! Clover decides then that no matter how nauseated she is about the idea, it is best keep your enemies close, rather than leave things to fate.

Liam has never put too much thought into the competition when he opens a new outlet, other than taking their customers and strengthening the Upper Crust brand. But here in the beautiful Dandenong Ranges, Clover Loveday’s cafe is a little too close for comfort, and Clover herself a little too good-looking. So Liam asks his PA to put together a ’fact sheet’ about his new competition. He has a business to run, a father to please, and hundreds of people to keep in jobs. Surely information can keep an unwanted strong sexual pull at bay…

A sweet, caffeinated, satisfying story about unexpected temptations, forgiveness, and putting love before money.