My life’s passion for writing has taken me on a journey I never thought I would go.
After the death of my mother, I found myself in such a state of grief as I have never experienced. I seemed to be drowning in my sorrow from my loss. Less than a year after her death, my marriage of 28 years died also. What was I to do? All I had ever known was being a wife and mother; it was all I had prepared for.
With no husband to tend to and children all grown, I was lost. My deep state of grief, all but consumed me. Then my daughter-in-law suggested, I go back and finish a book I started around 15 years prior. I had no idea what I was doing. But I seemed driven to it. I spent my days and nights doing nothing but writing. It was as though I had discovered the best drug possible for me through words, words I could not get enough of.
Through a friend I found a wonderful editor, who was willing to help me. She taught me the ins and outs of creating a novel. I had been an incredible cook, a creator of canned goods, and a crafting artist, but nothing brought me to such ecstasy as creating my first novel.
Once the novel, “What Darkness Lay Within,” was complete my editor suggested I try my hand at writing short stories. She felt it would assist me in my writing technique, and give me the increased exercise in writing different forms, so I did. That is when, “Beyond the Zone of Comprehension,” was born.
The stories are avant-garde, sci-fi/fiction. During this time I started another novel called; “Иoiznemid.” My dear friends, Penny and George inspired Иoiznemid. I was working in one of their small domes which George had built.
George had created whimsically shaped windows for this dome. I gazed outside to view the woods while I worked. I could see George, who was always busy inventing machines to assist their thriving business. Humorously, Penny was always interrupting his work. It was these little moments that spurred the creation of Иoiznemid in my imagination.
Right around 16 years prior to all of this I had a webpage that I created. In those early days of the internet, we had to create pages with HTML. There were no programs to help us. I had become a community leader in geocities.
In order to create a page that would appeal to my audience, I started writing an ongoing story. And I had gained an audience that was clamoring for me to finish. It was called; “The Invitation.” I had decided to end it rather abruptly because I thought I might want to make a book out of it someday. With Иoiznemid well on its way, I knew exactly what I would do with this story. I would expound on it, and eventually I would incorporate it into the now flourishing novel of; Иoiznemid.
While writing it, and completing stories for the Beyond book series I began another novel; “The bed-and-breakfast.” This book was quite different from my other works. It was a romance, mystery. It came out of the period of time when I was dating quite a bit. My many encounters with gentlemen inspired, “The Bed-and-Breakfast.”
I had a lot of fun writing it. The characters were inspired by people I know, or dated, or wish I had dated. I had no problem creating and enjoying their company while I wrote the book.
I thought the book was a perfect novel for women who could relate with all the many interludes that the various characters had. And Perry, the host of the Inn was also an easy character to develop. His love of creating food as a comfortable environment had been my life when I was married.
After finishing; “Beyond the Zone of Comprehension” I began working on; “Beyond the Zone of Certainty” the second in the series of my sci-fi tales. I had this book professionally critiqued after I had it published.
For me this was very cathartic, the review expounded on his appreciation of my style of writing. And I quote; “You have an intriguing style. It’s almost as though you have a link to the old group of horror writers from the fifties that gathered around H.P. Lovecraft. Your stories have that touch of the eldritch , as Lovecraft would put it, that is guaranteed to produce a mental shudder in the mind of the reader. Your, “The Observer” put me in mind of the narrator of, The Tell-Tale Heart.”
I know I still have a lot to learn, and I never stop being a student of words. Where I hope my writing goes from here? Everywhere! I love to write, I live to write. What took so long for me to get here… well that does not matter, all that matters is I got here, and I am staying.