News clip on The Key to Her Heart.

I've got the print copies of The Key to Her Heart.  We had to slow things down, one because Hope, Todd, and I were all sick with something close to pneumonia or bronchitis and two because Megan had some pressing things that have taken alot of time and energy and have a fastly approaching deadline.  So I promise I will get information to you about the print copies.  In fact I was thinking of doing a sale through me on paper copies of The Key to Her Heart for $7 dollars a copy plus shipping if you want to get in touch with me through facebook for Black Friday.  Otherwise, copies will be $10.95 plus shipping.  We should have it set up on the website soon, and you can still order though CreateSpace too.  Happy Reading!

Kids First Please!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Something is really bothering me today.  It is what is going on in this country, and it is what is going on in our own communities.  Two different articles I read:  http://www.myfoxdfw.com/story/19990633/couple-gets-60-years-for-starving-baby and http://www.westernjournalism.com/the-problems-of-women-in-combat-from-a-female-combat-vet/ both talked about parents and selfishness.  The first one was about parents who because of their concern with smoking and drinking didn't feed their nine month old son nor change his diaper or do basic care for him for days at a time, and at worst maybe as long as two months let him go without food.  I cannot imagine.  That is horrible!  There are just no words to describe how sick inside that makes me feel.  Luckily some teenagers heard him crying and found him, and he's alive and doing well now with a foster family.

The second article was about women in the military.  Whatever side you are on, and whatever your feelings, there is one thing that struck me while I was reading this.  How parents will chose to put career advancement ahead of their children.  I realize all of us want to accomplish, and want recognition.  I also realize career opportunities come with lucrative benefits.  In my own defense to publish my book I had to sacrifice some things in order to give the book the attention it needs.  But it was usually my sleep so that I could still take care of my kids and make sure they had enough attention and all their needs were met.  In fact the last two weeks I have cooled down on the book so that my daughter Megan who is my right hand person can finish some important career stuff.  That's just it right there...

My children have never, nor will they ever come second to any career or goal.  That is not so in many families.  At the end of our life what will be most important?  Whether you are Christian or not--  Whether you believe in God--  When you are taking your last breath and thinking over your life and maybe wondering if there is an eternity--  What will be your crowning achievement here?  Will it be the fact your children are there with you and love you?  Or will it be something you found so important that you ignored your family or put them second just to waste the years you were given only once?

Let me tell you about my oldest daughter.  She was born to me when I was twenty.  I became pregnant with her while on the verge of a modeling career, and chose to give up that dream to have her.  I became a single mother.  Her father (her biological father) was involved with another woman, but was still excited I was going to have her.  In her first few weeks of life he visited her and spent lots of time with her, but then the visits tapered off.  By the time she was seven months old he really wasn't coming to see her at all.  At eleven months old he had renewed interest in her for about a month.  When she was thirteen months old I moved from Riverside, California with my parents to the Midwest.  I tried to tell him, but he didn't really care.  Two months after we moved he called not realizing he was calling Indiana.  To make a long story shorter it took three more years before he saw her again.  Then he came with presents and great affection, and he tear up at how much he missed in those years.  The next year I got married to a wonderful man, and he visited again soon after that with presents and lots of tears.  She absolutely loved him and enjoyed the visits and he would promise such wonderful things and she would feel like a princess for the time he was with her.  The problem was the in between.  First he would call often and talk to her, then the calls would wain.  She would be heart broken.  He would promise to send her something then it would not happen.  By the time she was seven she refused to talk to him because "He always tells me one thing then it's not true.  He's just a liar.".  The sad thing is the statement was pretty much true.  I am sure her biological father did not mean to be this way, but his business always took prescience over Megan.  He would explain it as "Don't you understand, I am building this for Megan.".  She didn't talk to him until she was eight, and this time the cycle started all over again.

Her childhood proceeded to be a rollercoster of elation to devastation.  My husband by the time she was five and half had become dad and her biological father was just known by his first name.  She took my husband's last name. This went on until adulthood.  When she gave birth to her own son she had high hopes he would finally really be involved in her life.  He was so excited to have a grandchild, but to her devastation once more his excitement dimmed.  This time it is more serious.  She says "I won't let my son spend his childhood waiting for him, Mom.  I'm done. Alex has you and Dad, and you guys are wonderful grandparents."  By the way, her biological father's business that he spent all those years building is gone and he has nothing to show for it.  With it went his health.  He had another child too, but he like Megan wants nothing to do with him because when he should have been participating in their childhood he found other things more important.  His other child's mother has faced the same emotions with her child as I did with Megan, and for what?

I find so many families willing to make these sacrifices.  And it really bothers me.  Our children are only children for such a short time.  We are the ones that shape their future.  Do we really want to be careless?  Is our pride/need/whatever more important than their future?  It's not just basic care, but it's attention and love.  Do we really want someone else making the memories with them while we gallivant off in our glory?  Oh! It's for our children.  No it's for ourselves.  Truth is the time we spend teaching them the skills of life is for them. The other adventures is just pure selfishness at our children's expense that we try to justify by saying it is for them.  There is something I use to say to my girls.  "Just because you say it is that way does not make it so."  Just because we say, "This is for our kids" doesn't make it true.  Search your heart-- What is the most important thing in the world?  You'll find it easily.  It is what you invest everything you have in-- All your time, All your energy, All your resources.  When you are doing something else your thoughts will be on that very important thing/person.  If that isn't your children and your family-- suggestion-- For your happiness's sake, readjust your priorities.  Make the kids first.  You will never regret it, and neither will they.  If you want an awesome movie that deals with this pressing issue in our nation, watch Courageous.  It is a favorite around here that always brings both Megan and I to tears.  Please put your kids first.  They need you, and you know what?  The amazing thing is you need them!

Print copy of The Key to Her Heart will be available within days.

---------PRINT COPIES REALITY!!!!!!!!

O.k. --Yes!  I am just a weeeee bit excited.  Could you tell???  Really???  So here's the scoop.(below)

I received the proof copies Monday which allowed me to flip through and see if I found any errors.  It also allowed me to talk to a few people about my book.  So spent the rest of the week doing just that.  --May be setting up a book signing (happy!) and in the mean time just kinda excited about having a physical paper copy of my work!  It's real!  Like waaaaaayyyyy too real!  I just hope this works.  I hope that it's well read because it is a wonderful story --if I do say so myself!  Getting the e-book out there was awesome, but the paper copy is just so cool.  It makes me feel like a 'real' author.

So here's the deal.  We ordered the books today-- not proofs and confirmed the copies.  So within 5-7 days the print copy of The Key to Her Heart will be available on Amazon.  The other cool part is in town here we are talking to a store manager about doing a book signing.  With that possibility, maybe there will be others in town and within a hundred mile radius that will also do the same.  I am hopeful.  Maybe by Christmas it will have a place on some store shelves and a multitude of people receiving my book as a Christmas present.  I know I am dreaming, but all of this has been a dream.  Yet it has happened.  Heck I just started this journey in June, and here we at the beginning of November with printed books!  That's quite amazing. So maybe my unbelievable dreams are possible.  At any rate I have decided I'm going to continue envisioning what I want to happen because at the very least it gives me a road map to where I'm trying to go.

Meg should have a link on this blog site to Amazon to order The Key to Her Heart, and on the website we should have a place to order in the next few days to a week.  Baring those two possibilities you can go directly to Amazon/Kindle if you are interested in purchasing a copy-- Yes that is a shameless plug!  With the addition of a smiling face :).  But I figure since you are reading this-- ahhh I don't know anything is possible, right?

I'll let you know more in the next few day.  Until then... Happy reading!
This is Cat out.

The Story of the Storyteller Part 2 (The storyteller's family and how writing and storytelling are different)

Alright, using a quick recap.  I have five children-- technically.

Megan is my oldest daughter and she has a two year old son (Alex)  he's one of the womb warped twins.

Rebecca, my next oldest daughter, is Tory's birth mother (Tory is the other half of the womb warped twins).

Hope is my sixteen year old super girl (she's graduated and taking a CNA class because she decided it was the first step she could take to becoming a nurse-midwife.  She has been working somewhere between twenty-thirty hours a week for the last seven months since she got her first job literally two weeks after she turned sixteen, and all this time she has been battling an illness that sends her to bed for days at a time.  She still always has a smile and kind words for everyone and works on her dreams no matter what's going on with her health 99% of the time-- that all qualifies her for super girl).

Peter is my only son.  He is twelve and  has battled with learning disabilities and handicaps all his life.  He's my conqueror like Alexander the Great.  Our battle this summer was restoring his sight from almost blind in his left eye to almost normal sight and correctable with glasses.  He's my almost super boy because he has had so much to overcome in his twelve years-- but his almost teenage attitudes don't quite get him there YET.  We keep working out 'tude problems, so hopefully he'll get to super boy status!

Then there is Tory, who we adopted when she was almost a year old--  She's my Joy girl plain and simple. Like her beloved 'Aunt Hopee' she always has an easy smile!

So these are my story providers for the most part.  These are the real live characters in my ongoing life story.

Tory will have a smaller part because she is still so small--  Just don't let size fool you; she is pint-size energy and attitude!  She keeps us all hopping and laughing.

Now, Megan is my super great writer person.  She is the most awesome editor!  She's the one that can take my story and add incredible dazzle without changing my story except to make it more interesting by a million! She is also a publicist extraordinaire and the person you definitely want to go to if you are trying to navigate social media and websites, or the internet in general. But by her own admission she is not a storyteller.  She can write stellar articles and she can take what I see and write down the details I have in my brain better than anyone I know, but she doesn't have that filter thing for stories.  She was the first person to give me a glimpse of the difference between writing and storytelling.

Rebecca is my picture writer.  She draws out her inner world, and journals by drawing and painting.  I can tell her what I see and she can draw it out in a picture, and she can help others to see her reality even if they do not like it. She can even draw emotion and you really do feel it.  She is the person that drew the cover for The Key to Her Heart.  Simply put, she is incredibly talented. I am not even close!  But I am not an artist by any stretch of the imagination.  Drawing a decent stick figure is difficult for me.  Telling a story is not her thing though.

Hope is my researcher, tender heart, and goto person for anything to do with natural health, vitamins, and believe it or not copy center things.  She is an absolute miracle worker with children.  She seriously thought she was going to be a teacher until she spent time in a classroom as a volunteer.  It wasn't the children that made her change her mind, but the district politics she got first hand introduction to.  She is my detail person where personality comes to.  She can read a person quicker and more discreetly than anyone I know.   She pulls together what they say with their body language, and what she knows about them innately without too much thought, and she's darn close to a 100% correct. She is becoming more of a speaker than either a storyteller or writer, though she can do both.

Peter is my storyteller.  He can spin a story about anything or anyone and, unlike me, has not a bone of shyness.  He is able to tell you all about it as if it happened.  In fact the first few times you hear one of his tales you will be shocked to find that most details came from his imagination (some would say overactive imagination).  He is fun to listen to and has captivated our whole neighborhood.  They love to listen to him and he loves the attention his gift brings to him.  The only problem with it is he tends to embellish even real events, and change the facts of things he doesn't want you to find out about.  Yes, though it tends to be getting better now that he has faced a few consequences, he does lie.  I am trying to teach him to write so he has a place to take his stories.  Some of them are incredibly good.  He also likes it when I read him things like the Chronicles of Narnia and stories from a book of heroes that I've had for all my children.  He loves it when I help him write down history details and let him embellish what he's learned to his hearts content.  He will tell me that Charlemagne wanted his grandfather's kingdom, and was glad when he became the sole ruler.  Adjective, adverbs, and prepositional phrases are his best friends not because he loves English or writing, but because they give him a way to describe what he gets inside of him naturally.  I expect as he gets more comfortable with reading and writing he will be more of a writer as I am, but I don't know with his propensity to tell his stories where ever we are  he could be some kind of speaker--  an attorney, a priest, a salesman-- I don't know.  He is a storyteller, and that seems to be his strongest gifting.

In alot of ways Meg and I are alike.  We are both writers and really have fun with the writing process.  But in many more ways Peter and I are identical. Seeing the world through eyes that view through details and telling an altered form to an audience seems to drive both of us internally and gives great pleasure.  Rebecca gets that kind of joy from drawing her world.  Megan gets that kind of enjoyment from singing.  Tory and Hope both seem to derive pleasure from the smiles they receive from others or helping people.  Tory though we will have to see where her giftings are as she gets older.  Maybe I'll have another storyteller-- you never know.

So that's the whole thought process I had with the differences between being a writer and a storyteller, and I hope my descriptions and opinions did not offend.  In the process I guess you really got a way too deep analysis of my life-- or maybe just the story!
Keep reading (even when I get like this) please!  This is Cat out.

The Story of the Storyteller Part 1

There is a great difference between a writer and a storyteller.

Let me explain.

When my children were young with or without a book I would sit beside their bed and tell them a bedtime story.  Sometimes it was one about my own life.  Sometimes it was completely made up and fanciful. Sometimes it was a wonderful story written by someone else.  As they got older sometimes it was something I was writing.  It was always the lure of telling the story that caused me to sit there with them drawing them into a world far removed from their own.  It also was the draw of hearing it myself.

I love stories so much that I collect books.  We have a library of over five thousand books and my family knows that the hardest thing to give up for me are my books.  It's a world of stories to read and to tell by reading them out loud to someone else.  I would by far prefer to read than to ever sit in front of a T.V., and even much prefered over that is to work on my own story.

Even now, that is what I am doing.  One of my twitter follows/ers made a statement about storytellers, and it sparked a story in me--  The story of the storyteller.  That's me.  It started when I was born perhaps????  At least as long as I have known, the need to tell the story and hear the story has been there.  It's a part of who I am.  My father encouraged it by reading fairy tales and fantastical stories from worlds I had never seen every night to me.  They became a link to the reading world, and gave me great desire to learn to read well ( I am dyslexic and did not learn to completely understand reading until I was in seventh grade.).  After I began reading something amazing happened- I remember the very day it happened.

I was standing in the lunch area at the high school I attended and I heard a girl reading a poem she had written and I realized everything written had a person behind it that was telling me a story.  So I wrote my first poem-  I was thirteen, and it had to have been within days of my grandmother's death-- my grandmother was more like my mother.

She was the reason I lived.  Her death nearly destroyed me, but it also caused me to write just for expression of my own story that I could not tell people yet.

Realizing I could write the stories inside of me changed my world!  When I would read a book, and I didn't like the way it was written I would try to write it different--  The way I saw the story going.  When I would hear a situation I would write it from my perspective.  When something happened I would journal it and that would help me make sense of it.  In a year's time writing had given me access to my soul!  The stories had always been there.  It was just that being a ghostly shy child there was no one I would dare tell them to. Writing gave expression to that which until then was stuck inside of me with no way out.  Then at fourteen my writing changed.

Another piece of the puzzle came together.  None of my scribblings were ever connected.  They were not a cohesive flowing complete story.  As I ferociously read everything I could get my hands on, I realized each was it's own story.   Even if it was a collection of stories still they all fit together to make one complete whole.  I decided that was how I wanted to write.  I wanted people to read my stories, and wanted them to think about the story. But it had to go together into one package.

It was out of these thoughts that The Heart of the Family began.  It wasn't at all what it has become, and if anyone had read it then no one would have been able to stand it!  But it was in this time that every experience somehow went into my written story.  It was in this time I developed my filter-- if you will-- so that every event that happened to me or around me somehow morphed into something my characters would do or would happen to them.  I would put it together in my mind as I watched.  It slowed my reaction times, and made me think of what would happen if I reacted this way or that-- or how would the outcome be if this person had done this thing over here different or had walked another way instead.  In my writing I began to experiment with these variables and my characters became alive!  To my closest friends I would talk about them as if they were real!  I wonder how many people thought I was off my rocker?  How many of you reading this think that now?  To this day my characters are still a real part of my life, and everything goes through my filter and into my stories in some form or another.

Lately-- like since June-- I've had this new medium, though too.  That is this blog.  It's more like my journaling when I first started writing as a kid, and I love retouching this type of story writing.  In this I can take the topic of storytelling and turn it into a story about it.  As in this post.  Being a writer is awesome, but what it does is give flight to the stories that a very part of my soul!

There is a second part that I am going to begin right after I finish with this.  There are those that are writers and only writers, and there are storytellers that are only storytellers.  I have one of each in my family.  Then there are picture writers-- artists.  I have one of those too.  That is all a part of the second part of this though!  Keep Reading!  

To stay or move: That is the question!

This blog has nothing to do with my book, but with my life.  Is it possible that the dark descent that my family has been through has to do with choices made in the last ten years?  I am a Byzantine Catholic.  I became such ten years ago.  I will never regret that decision for as long as I live.  It was a miraculous doing of God that was in process from the time I became a Christian in 1988.  What I do regret is living so far from my church. (four hours one way.)  Is it possible that my family being without community in essence has made for a continuous uphill  battle that has not let up in all of this ten years?  I have one daughter who turned to drugs and then to a, shall we say, 'alternative lifestyle'.  I have one daughter who struggles on every front and almost gave up the battle entirely.  I have one daughter who struggles with her health, and just prays to make it through the battles in one piece.  Finally I have a son who struggles with the battle of kindness.  He has a good heart, just a flippant mouth that he can't or won't get under control (he's twelve and struggling with rebellious tendencies too.).   So could being without a community of believers, or 'forsaking your fellowship' as scripture calls it cause this destruction?  Maybe this is over dramatic, or me just not thinking straight, but it seems in the time we have not had fellowship except when we could get to our church (started out every two weeks, then recently it's been almost impossible due to my youngest daughter's illnesses.) that life around here has been in a steady downward spiral.  We try very hard to maintain our Christianity, but how does a child understand when all the 'mentors' around him are not?  At pascha when we spend close to a week at our church I watch my son's whole attitude turn around, but then we have to come 'home'.  There begins the descent again, each time worse than the year before.

My second daughter's drug use started in our neighborhood with local kids, despite homeschooling and trying to provide good friends for her to be around.  Her lifestyle now is not something I have ever approved of, or would want for my child and very honest I am scared to the roots of my hair that my son is going to fall into a similar pattern if we don't change something drastically.  All the counselling in the world can't fix the situation you live in day in and day out if you don't work on it.  I'd say that is true for the community also.  My oldest daughter claims she feels likes she living in Earthly hell, and I really can't argue.  She has been through a hell that no child or adult should go through, and all of it has happened within this community.  When she went to California, even though more worldly, she definitely could see the difference and if it wasn't for her family being here I am sure she would have stayed there.  Here lies my battle.

Community, or lack there of, is important.  Maybe even more important than the best parenting--  but then isn't that part of parenting?  So then if we stay where we are am I being a negligent parent?   Knowing what I know?  I am asking the question.  Is security enough to keep us where we are not thriving?  I posed this question to my dad, and his answer was 'Baring the weather.  You make your own community.  If you don't like the weather then you should move.  But just because bad things happen...'  The weather is the least of my problems, but I do realize that the climate of the people do change my mood.  Living in a place where there is no support for the way you are trying to raise your family can it make it impossible?  And what if because of my beliefs my community that I made is four hours away?  Maybe my dad is right.  We do make our own community-- but I made mine at my church.  Isn't that then where my family should be?  Shouldn't we be among those that count us as friends?  Those that love us even when we don't make sense?  If that is the case, then what am I doing here?  Perhaps that is the reason that God has allowed us to face such dark times?  Maybe it is a way of letting us know we aren't suppose to be so far from what he has given us?  But then it has been so dark, that it's hard for me to see the light and see if my thoughts are right.  So I pose it here in this forum because, even if no one makes a response, just the writing it down helps me sort it out and figure out what to do.  I guess in final review the title to this one is:  'To stay or move: That is the question!'

How do I do this? Any suggestions from seasoned veteran writers out there?

Though I have been writing all my life-- or at least thirty years of my life (since a teen), I have never published before and now that I have finally gotten my book online as an e-book with the print copy coming out (finger crossed) in November, my thoughts turn to marketing.  How do I bring people's attention to my life's work?  How do I advertise something so important to me without sounding totaling like I'm tooting my own horn?  How do I bring it to attention for those who have never heard of me or this adventure? I have tried to be humble-- truly humble, not just sounding like I am-- all my life.  I don't like attention, and I don't want to say 'look at me', but yet everything I read tells me this is what I need to do.  There has to be a way to give The Key to Her Heart full light without illuminating me.  This is about the story, and how it will be healing to some, and perhaps fun for others.  I know my story is not for everyone, but how do I help the ones it will be good for to see it?  What avenues can I use?

Most of my extended family don't even seem to be interested.  How do I interest a public I don't even know?  How do I keep myself from being slightly disappointed that only a few people have even looked at it?  This story has been loved by those who have read it, but they are close to me, and now I wonder just how good it really is if those are the only ones even interested now that it is out there for the public to see, and no one  is looking.  Is this disappointment normal?  Is this all I should expect?  Or have I missed the way to do this?  Or am I taking this too personally to early, and wanting more than I have a right too?

I figure I have to do an excellent job marketing.  Maybe that is what I am missing, but then I do not know how to do that and stay within the bounds of who I am.  I need help, but I do not know who to trust for advise.  Point blank I don't know how to do this!!!!

Beyond everything else, I am scared of failure and scared even more of success, and most of all confused by the barrage of emotions I did not expect.  There is disillusionment and disappointment when I expected to be feeling as if I had finally done it.  I thought I would be ecstatic to just have my life's work story out there.  But it didn't feel any different than the moment before when I was only a writer and had not published.  Now it's like I'm saying 'I'll believe it when I've sold a thousand copies'.  Instead it is not enough.  Will that even do it? Or am I just fooling myself?

I am so bewildered by my sudden need to see it become 'popular' for lack of a better word.  At the same time I am in a place I have never been.  This publishing thing is one of my life goals that I made when I was just a child.  It has been my most important one, and now I've accomplished it.  Is this all there is to it?  Does this change my life?  Or do I remain who I have always been?  What if I only sell one copy?  or five? or ten? or even a hundred?  Will that ever be enough?  Are we just programmed to never accept what gifts we have been given?  Are we just greedy?  Or maybe it's just me.  Does anyone out there have an answer?  Please respond.  I need to hear from someone with more wisdom than me.