Never would I have imagined in my earlier years that I would become a published author. My love for the art began when I was in high school. My freshman English teacher found my writing assignments to be promising. Although I was only 14 year of age, my teacher’s words continued to sit with me somewhere deep inside. Even so, it wasn’t until I was married with two of my four children that I began to dabble in writing, again. Avidly reading to my children day after day, I began to flourish with ideas for children’s books. I took a night class at a local college called Writing for Children. It was then that my ideas became stories on paper. My kids were my audience since the stories became their new nightly adventures. Although Willie the Mouse was never published, it became new entertainment for the boys.
Time passed and son number three came along, and then number four. There was never much room for mom time. However, I enjoyed every part of raising my boys, from their mischievousness to watching them run to home plate at their little league games. I would never give those years up for anything as my family is most important to me. At the time, I also worked from home doing data entry and transcription jobs on our new home computer. Writing was put on a back burner for a while. However, just after the year 2000, I began creating human interest articles, poems, etc. Some were published in local newspapers and some were not. Meanwhile, I began what I thought would be a short romance story that I could perhaps submit to a popular woman’s magazine. This short story became longer and longer until it turned into a novel rather than a short story.
Over the course of the two years in writing Love For Angela, life at home was still hectic, and became even more so when I found a part-time job working the night shift at a local hospital. My lunch break at 3am in the morning consisted of coffee, a snack, and jotting down a chapter or so of my manuscript. Upon arriving home at 7am, the kids got off to school, my youngest, only 4, watched Sesame Street and Blues Clues, while I updated my home computer with whatever I wrote during the previous night at work. After dropping the little one off at pre-school, I returned home to nap until having to pick him up a few hours later. Then I was a housewife and mom with everything that goes under those titles.
It was the end of 2003 when my manuscript was accepted for publication, and was in print by April of 2004. What an exciting time it was as I made my book known to the reader’s world amidst everything else I did with four boys, a husband, a home, and a job. I even added a few more night classes in at the time, some in health care and others in English which I enjoyed the most. My job changed from part-time at night to full time during the day. Somehow, I kept up with book signings and other avenues of marketing. A highlighted moment for me was talking with Marie Osmond on her radio show she hosted at the time. Her agent called me after I wrote a letter to her studio. The topic one day was about moms finding their creative selves while raising kids. It was a perfect subject for me.
Well, the kids are older now. The youngest just started high school. Not only have I added freelance writing to my daily agenda, I have also written my second novel, We Can Love Again. It has been published as an ebook, with paperback status to come by the end of the year. Although I still work full time, there is quite a bit less to do with the boys as the older three are all in college. Writing We Can Love Again has been a nonchalant experience as I sit with my laptop on my lap night after night and my little maltipoo, Bella, at my side.
If there is one thing I have learned, it is that if there is something you love to do, it is possible to find the time to do it no matter how much you have on your plate. Even today, I can still hear my English teacher’s comments and how he made me feel as a writer. The chaos of life gets in the way at times, but it doesn’t have to take over a dream.
