Marge B. Fulton, click
here to update your pages on AuthorsDen.
Blogs by Marge B. Fulton
Glimmer in Appalachia 10/11/2008 5:59:14 PM
Thoughts after my first book event. I just got finished watching the movie, ATONEMENT. The emotional aftermath of that movie feels like a heavy dew. Funny how, I never had any desire to see this masterpiece before. Even funnier that it is a writer's movie.
Now that writing is my focus in life, I am transformed. A year ago at this time, I was repainting my house. The car wreck we had in December, moved me to write. I could pour my anxiety over the accident into a story that paralleled the incident. Then my struggles with grief over my mother's death, found a partial cure with fiction as well. In a few months, I created a world of characters as unique as my D.N.A. Today, they became even more real.
My first book event was Appalachia Day. At Alice Lloyd College dulcimers played and people congregated along craft booths. I sat with the authors on the porch of the dining hall hoping for a nibble or a bite or two.
Yes, I have been transformed. I felt shy at first talking to strangers about my book. First a new found friend bought her one. The ice was beginning to break. I am totally amazed at what happened next. I looked up and a tall man stood before me. He had a trustworthy manner. I found it easy at that point to tell what the stories represent.
This man was a psychologist. When I told him that having come from a dysfuntional family, I write in a truthful edgy style, of course he understood. I said that having been a Special Education teacher all those years, I know firsthand about hardship and handicaps. I told him that alcoholism and drug use are elements of my stories. That they are not all serious; that a few are very lighthearted to balance things out. He voiced that he wanted to encourage many of his patients to write about their demons or the downsides of their lives. My book may be an icebreaker for them.
I go to bed tonight with an elated feeling. A doctor bought my book! Later in the day a man from Virginia Beach who owns a used bookstore bought one along with a woman in a striped bucket hat. My concerns about marketing and logistics are eating at me but I am content. I hope the friendly counselor finds value in my book. My book has some of the glimmer of a blockbuster movie to me now. My epic stories have found an audience.
