Writer's Envy

Doing a little reading this morning while the boys do schoolwork and the Princess is hopping around on gymnastic equipment...read this paragraph from Jim Butcher's Summer Knight. Just struck me as the kind of thing a writer should be able to do, should be great at. This is a paragraph that Dan Brown could never write. Me either. Which bugs me more than I can say.

I leaned against my door with my eyes closed, trying to think. I was scared. Not in that half-pleasant adrenaline-charged way, but quietly scared. Wait-on-the-results-of-medical-tests scared. It's a rational sort of fear that puts a lawn chair down in the front of your thoughts and brings a cooler of drinks along with it.

Little bit of humor to create/maintain the tone, gives insight into the character, and you know exactly how the narrator feels--even if you haven't felt that way yourself--and if you have felt that it resonates with you in such a way that you are in the moment.