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My mother, the car….

Posted in Comments on November 19, 2010| Leave a Comment »

It’s been quite a while since I’ve owned a car.  My last owned vehicle was a Ford van,  which I purchased in 2000.  It was three years old and had ‘work horse’ stamped all over it.  I bought it with the idea of transporting clients back and forth from the airport to my delightful spa place in the country where me and my gang of healers would help women to renew life and spirit.  That dream didn’t pan out as I hoped but as long as I still had the van, it was a possibility.

That was a decade ago.  The van was indeed a work horse and life saver.  My husband was driving when he was hit by another car.  The sturdy van, seat belt and airbag saved his life.  But  it meant that another part of my dream had faded. 

In between, it’s purchase and its demise, the long distance travelling began to take its gas toll on my pocket, so I invested in a small efficient car which served me well.  When the lease expired, just months after the van’s untimely demise, , I had to make a decision.  With the van gone, I needed a vehicle which would meet all my needs.  I had a plan to get another larger type of van-truck combo, but my husband already had another van.  ‘Get a car’ he advised.  And, I did.

I don’t know how I suddenly became aware of how much owning a car is different from leasing.  This is my transport now.  I don’t keep it neat.  It carries everything I may ever need at any given time.  I know that.  It watches over me while I drive with all its electronics and gadgets in constant motion.  Nice,  but my needs are simple.  I have to be able to play my mp3 players.  I have three of them and hundreds of songs to listen to.  The play list is my best friend.  A bluetooth device mostly saves me from distracted driving, if I remember to turn it on. 

In the front seat, with the winter approaching, I notice that there is a growing pile of warm things, like gloves, hats, extra sweaters, scarf, etc.  There are four large handbags, one for each of my different jobs.  When I arrive at work, I just pick up which ever one is designated for that site.  There’s an extra handbag in the trunk, just in case, I get a new job. 

There are wires for my large portable speaker system and a lecturn in case I am doing public speaking and the site doesn’t have one.  I have a full library of books to read in case I get stuck somewhere.  (last count 32).  There is a candle, incense, aromatherapy, oils and creams in case my hands are dry and I need an uplifting scent.  Nail file, and buffer, for that quick on the go manicure.  There are extra wires and USB lines for the endless electronic equipment which needs renewal i.e. computers, Ipod, Bluetooth camera.

It is hardly worthwhile talking about all the binders full of papers, (good if I need to start a fire to keep warm) and shoes.  The only thing missing and the reason why I did this inventory was a lack of facilities.  When my friend and I used to do long distance driving, we had a porto-potty.  That’s missing!  And in the extras ‘I don’t need it category’ are boxes of baby clothes.  Don’t even ask about the number of green bags which I always remember when I am done shopping and the cart, to carry my groceries and save my shoulders.  (Oh yeah! forgot that too!)

Inside my little moving house is everything I need to sustain life and keep in touch with the world.  I am sure most people have as much if not more.  I’ve seen cars piled high with junk.  It is just amazing how much of our lives is spent on the road.  I want a car to take care of me and make me feel safe, with numerous  things inside to nurture me, just as my mother did.  In turn, I will take care of it too.

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Launching the book

Posted in Comments, tagged , , on October 31, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I have to admit to being very excited by the official launch of my book. I didn’t think I would be.  The process of writing and publishing is long…it took me twenty years to get to this point.  Although the effort was not sustained from the beginning, some very cool questions came up during the party and I thought they are well worth reviewing.
Size matters to me in writing. I had a goal of one hundred thousand words which, I felt, constituted a fairly intensive and action filled story. That was my standard.   A novel of 50-60 thousand words is acceptable but not for my first novel.
My manuscript did not languish forgotten for those twenty years. In fact I had prepared a very basic and unappealing presentation of the book, on 8×11 sheets in a three ring binder with a title page.  Anyone who wanted to read it, could.  But, it was incomplete and very poorly done. After all, the story was written originally on a pad, in pencil and transcribed on to a commodore 64, or one of those early pc’s.
Three years ago, a friend read it and encouraged me to publish it.  When I got around to thinking it over,  my original plan was to do that online because, by this time,  my fanfiction stories were growing in number and readers.
All I needed was someone to type it for me. Easier said than done. I did it myself in the end because the format of fanfiction makes it easy.  It was a good thing to do it myself anyway.  I  realized that the story did not sound or feel complete.
Deep in some old boxes, still preserved in a plastic bag, was the manuscript for part two, hand written in pencil, as I did in those days, and waiting  to be completed. I had to write ten more chapters, 30,000 words this time but as I did the work, I fell in love with my characters, the story and the message all over again.  What I can do now, I could not have done twenty years ago.  I have learned that patience and persistance are truly virtues if life is to be fulfilled.
After a year, I completed the novel, had close to the 100,000 words, felt secure that the story could hold up under scrutiny and posted it online. To my surprise, it out performed my other stories. Confident that it could hold up undermore intense and professional scrutiny , I sent it to the publisher for printing.
No book is ever completed in isolation. My thanks, first and foremost, goes to my sister who read it and edited much of it. What is not corrected is only what I couldn’t afford to redo. She did a beautiful job.
The Gershwin family, through their lawyers gave me permission to use the words from a Gershwin song. That process was interesting. I love the cover and thank the photographer who took it. The clock, the bird, the leaves all fit with this time of year and the revelatory events in the life of the heroine. My award winning brother in law deserves credit for taking a great shot of me (Bryan Davies photos) and thanks to all those who read the manuscript before the final priniting and encouraged me to just do it!  The publishers, iUniverse were also extremely helpful and supportive.
I am not one to push my own work, so I appreciate our colleague, Shelley who offered to be my publicist for the launch.
Nothing is ever done in isolation. The women whose life stories contributed to this work deserve my thanks for sharing their intimate selves with me and contributing greatly to the wealth of information about the emotions attached to just getting by, day to day, when life seems to hold you down. Disappointments, doubts, stress and violence are not confined to the poor and disadvantaged, nor the wealthy. It is a circumstance of this life in which we all participate. We must therefore strive to understand those around us whose lives may not be what they seem on the surface. Be a friend. That is the moral of my story.

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Fate, Free Will, Destiny

Posted in Comments on June 13, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Fate is that unseen hand which bends us towards a destiny of its own making.  We are awakened to its possibilities from early on.  Do we listen?  Perhaps we hear it calling in the distance but more immediate pressures and options  keep us from fulfilling its promise.  We are caught in webs of every day life which seduce us into believing that our chosen, free will,  path is the right one.  Free will holds no promises, only experiences.  We ignore the possibilities of our fated journey, choosing instead, the option to engage in the seduction of the immediate.

Destiny is just another word for destination, except for a certain sense of the mystical in the journey.  So our explorations through life should have an energy which  is guided by both fate and free will.   In that way we reach not only our destination through the free will journey but also our destiny through the fated pathway.

In the end, we just want to say that ‘I love what I do’.  We have to believe that every day when we get up, we know  life holds great delight  because what we  are  doing is the very thing which draws the very best from our hearts and souls.

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Life changes

Posted in Comments, Musings on June 11, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Just as I have come to wonder about the value of writing, my online stories are on an upswing.  It always amazes me that people enjoy reading what I write.  It isn’t really writing that I do; it is storytelling and I hope to do it as well as I can.  Romance is one genre but there is some excitement in writing about adventure, fantasy and some science fiction.  I grew up in the era of cliff hangers on radio, soap operas, serialized stories.  They are fun!

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