NO MORE EXCUSES!

Well ive run out of excuses and i had to start writing again. Karen Parker Parks volunteered to be my editor (poor thing). Its crazy but who would of guessed that a high school friendship that was born 38 years ago would be such a blessing today!
Don't worry Deborah Warner is still giving advice but with her success in writing her Magna novels, producing her cooking show and im sure a dozen other projects going on in any given day it was time to make a solo run.There comes a time when mama bird tells baby bird to fly...lol
So with chapters 1, 2, 3,completed and the rest of the book underway i may have something available by June or July.
BUT i warn all of you this book is wonderfully naughty i may have to sell it in a plain paper bag!!!...lol!
Stay tuned for more details...

Write What You Know

Isn't that the advice that everyone gives you after they roll their eyes? Well its always the advice i have heard people say.
And it was what i went with.
I knew things that nobody else knew. I knew how to make lemon aid when life gave you lemons.
I was the oldest of 7 children, my father drank too much, and my mother cried too much, my uncles touched to much. I went to school with my hair in braids and a pair of shoes that had to last all year.
I was good in school despite all the setbacks.
When i got older i learned what boys wanted and how that gave me power.
I could turn a "c" in math into an "a" just by shedding a tear and wearing a tight sweater.
Please don't think that im feeling sorry for myself, actually those were the worst and best times of my life. I  wouldn't trade them for anything.
Those years made me who i am today.
I learned to be a survivor. There was nothing wrong with getting knocked down just as long as you got up again.
Years later when i got my Real Estate license i excelled in a whole new way.
I wore a suit and carried a briefcase and worked with women who were some of the best of the best. They put a whole new meaning to the word "shark".
Oh and yes i learned one more thing success gave you both money and sex and no street drug came close to the feeling or power that brought you.
I wanted more!

No Turning Back

Over the next couple weeks i started to make a different kind of scrapbook. This was more like a journal. The kool- aid voice was right, i had never read a real book. In fact i didn't even know the difference between fiction and non-fiction.
When i did go to the library or book store i wandered around until i found a book with a pretty cover. Then i would read the inside flap and if the book didn't hold my interest in the first couple of paragraphs i just put it back.

I know alot of you really successful writers will just think of me as uneducated and shocking and maybe even vulgar, but when you were going to college and getting your degree i was home having babies and making diner.
And before you say" well what about elementary school" in that hands to pearl necklace kind of way. Let me say just this, im the oldest of seven children in a Latin family. This means while most kids were in bed until their moms woke them up for school, i was up at 5am making my fathers lunch for work and taking care of my brothers and sister while my mother was in the hospital having another sibling.
Remember im the oldest of 7, this also meant i missed alot of school.
By the time high school came the kool-aid was being served.

More determined than ever i did not let this stop me, in fact i was all the more hell bent on doing this writing thing. So with my journal in hand i made a list of likes and dislikes.

The Universe Finally Speaks

I was sitting in bed one evening, cutting up magazines and working on the scrapbook of my life, still not quite sure how all this was going to happen.
But that wasn't my concern,i knew the Universe was shifting and turning like a giant rubics cube to put me in the best possible position for opportunity.
My scrapbook was way past picking out the basics, i had designed my new home, the location,and its interior. I even choose the people i wanted in my life and erased the people i didn't!
OMG! Did you hear what i just said? I erased the people i didn't want in my life...You have no idea how mind blowing this was for me!
I didn't kill them, i didn't wish them bad, i just erased them.
My retail job, co workers, family members, all peacefully gone, erased!
I think the last time i played  this hard with my imagination it involved Barbie dolls. But looking back i had a great imagination.
I had invisible friends, i spoke and had complete conversations with my dog, and even built  a tree house with my brothers where we named it the "Jupiter 2" and explored space and had alien filled adventures.
I don't know when it happened but i drank the kool-aid.
This potion makes you forget completely who you are and you just blissfully go through life fulfilling the dreams and aspirations of others.

Well NO MORE!
I turned on the television and channel surfed. On a back channel there was a "Sex in the City" marathon, Great i needed more fashion tips for my scrapbook.
It just so happened that it was the episode where Carrie Bradshaw was trying to decide who she was and how she wanted herself to be portrayed on her book cover.
I laid there thinking how marvelous it would be to just write down all your snippy little ideas about life and have them get turned into a book, and get paid for it!
I sat straight up in bed, like i had been shocked.
I knew this was the sign i had been waiting for! It was the universe speaking directly to me.
Just like "The Secret" said it would.
How could i be so sure you might ask?
Because the very next thought that came into my head was,stupid girl, you cant write, you have no time for this, you've never even read a real book, and the books you have read have Fabio on the cover!

Oh, i knew that voice well, i had heard it all my life, it was the voice of the kool-aid.

The Secret

THE SECRET

So i dove into the book, devouring every morsel of information.

• I tried to see the positive in everything (easier said than done)
• I cut up magazine after magazine making scrapbooks of what my perfect life would look like.
• i even started drawing (i dont draw)
• I started looking to the universe for signs

What i unknowingly had done was to ask myself what i wanted, all my life i did what others expected of me. I was a wife, a mother, and now a grandmother.
Not that these were bad things but they were things for other people.
I prayed/ chanted and as i did this my mind wandered, and opened it self up to the possibilities.
The book teaches, if you want it, imagine it, don't tell yourself its not possible.
If you want a new car don't  tell yourself you cant afford it, go out and test drive it, feel yourself behind the wheel, the plush leather seats, drive around town on your test drive.
Or back up a minute and think, if i had that car what would i wear driving it? how would it make me feel? how would i want to act wearing my new outfit and driving this new car?
I was excising my imagination! I was never good in language arts in school never took a writing class, ever!
But with the help of this book i started daydreaming about the endless possibilities and i started writing them down.