TOOTING YOUR OWN HORN

On Saturday I attended a seminar by a local writer who uses her blog as a means to sell her books. She urged all of us to start blogging if we don’t already, and to talk about our books in it. I have spoken of what I am writing on now, the struggles, the rewrites, the additions, even the desire to throw the entire manuscript out of the nearest window. But I haven’t written about the books I have completed and published, the two that are on Amazon.com.

I have been writing since the age of ten, although holding down a full-time job for twenty-six years and raising two children brought it to a trickle for many years. Upon my husband’s retirement, I decided to follow my heart and write. I began with nonfiction, which was not my first love, but where the money was. I was quite successful but I still wrote short stories for my own entertainment. In all those years, I never sent one piece of fiction out for consideration.

In those early retirement years, we traveled a lot and moved around Southern California. When we finally settled in North San Diego County in 1997, I found that my writing had really fallen by the wayside. I heard about a creative writing class at the local Senior Citizens Center taught by a retired college professor. I enrolled. It was the best decision I had made in years for it was in this class that I wrote the stories that make up the collection in “The Quilt Maker.”

There are twenty-two stories in the book; each has the title of a quilt pattern and that quilt appears somewhere in the story. Some of them are based on fact, others are purely figments of my imagination. Many of the stories have been published in magazines or literary publicatiions; others won writing contests. One published story read by Paul Harvey prompted a call from his office to tell me how much he had enjoyed the tale. To my amazement, the book is still being purchased (and I hope enjoyed) by readers five years later.

“Growing up Barefoot in the South” is a collection of personal essays written as a memoir of my childhood in the south (with a few more modern tales thrown in). I began writing these essays because my brother (ten years younger) challenged me. “You’re the writer in the family. I want to know what it was like for you growing up and about some of those kin I really never knew.” I began to write, send him copies, then he sent them to cousins—the feedback caused me to seek publication. It is a book I am very proud of. I’ve had emails/letters from all over the country reminding me that, no matter where we grew up, we all have many of the same memories.

So, I’ve told you all about my books. I have done my duty according to the blogging/author expert. I even hope you’ll buy one of my books—and the next ones that appear on Amazon this year—I hope.