The writer whose dream to finish her novel has become reality!

Reading has been my thing since I was my son(10) and daughters (13) age. I was  one of the anti-social kids who always had her nose in a book. If you read my previous blog I also read in part to block myself from the bullies, and the snobs I went to school with. I equipped myself with learning anything an everything! My Mom used to pick a word from the dictionary and we would learn its meaning. So cool. Also nerdy,lol..

 I felt that knowledge was power. As a kid we never had a lot of money so we would spend our summers, and weekends at the library. It is one of the best memories I have. Libraries are the best invention next to hot water heaters as far as I am concerned lol..

 At Age 10  I wrote my first story. A women in the civil war, and it was 30 pages long. I still have it. I have since added lots of history to it, and changed it. That is one of my many books I want to write. So this is just one of those stepping stones to get published.  I do have two short stories that I published,  on amazon so its a start. 

One of the authors I started reading when my son was a newborn was; Debbie Macomber, She was a mom too, that wrote when her kids were young, and ended up sending out a manuscript and she used her last $ to do it. She was such and inspiration to me. I got to meet her in 2001, she was as lovely as I thought she would be, and so nice.  So she is the author I am selecting this time to highlight.

http://www.debbiemacomber.com, the first book I read of hers was 

~Lonesome Cowboy; it is a Texas series set in a small town. Similar to her Cedar Cove series. All her books are heartwarming an charming. Filled with great little towns, everyone wants to live in. So I hope you will check her out. She has inspried me a "nobody" to go for this dream and live it.

When I started this blog I was excited about my accomplishment. I had finished my novel. It took me 10 years and three months to write it. This book has changed so much since I started. I think is my sixth version.Those have all been stepping stones, and many stairs, I have climbed to get to this point. I think that life is always a work in progress. A journey and its moves in all directions, and sometimes not the ones you plan. That may seem like a long time, but in those ten years, I went to college, moved states, had two children. Worked in retail mostly, and watched several of the stores I had worked for close. I have had so many lows, and so many highs in that time. Yet I feel like this is a brand new start, and exciting challenge. I was unable to go to the critique due to family illness, but as soon as I go I will post my observations and what we are reading. Happy reading, dreaming, and writing! Jess

The writer who reads to escape bullies!

I saw this quote and thought about how this writing journey of mine began. I was in the fifth grade and I was going to a snobby Christian school, my family was the one of the most poor families in the school, we were allowed to go at a discount because my dad did maintenance on the building, and drove the church van. The constant bullies were the rich girls who had dimaond earrings and frosted hairdos at ages 10 and 13? It was crazy to me. They would bully me on field trips because I didn't have trendy clothes, I didn't have diamonds. I looked at them like they were aliens and continued to read my books. Series books were my favorite because I knew the character  I loved would be back. Little house on the praire, Nancy Drew of course. In high school the Sweet Valley High series, and Christopher Pike.

My absolute favorite was a series called Mandie; by Lois Gladys Leppard. It is a little known fact that she wrote her first Mandie; book the Secret tunnel, when she was just eleven years old. Her character was the same age as me and I felt like Mandie and I were best friends. So in response to the bullies whom I ignored. I retreated from people, and social interactions Instead of being negative I turned it into a positive. I volunteered in my English teachers class after school, and the library during school. I sat with little kids in the library and helped them pronounce words. I even sometime recommended stuff to moms. It was here in these two rooms that I discovered my love of reading and the want to write a story that meant something. My English teacher used to give us a word of the day then we would have to define it and write a paragraph about this word. I thrived in this environment I yearned for it. I was the most amazing experience I can remember. Knowledge defiantly has power. So even though I was picked on, I found something that I loved. Reading, and learning.

I have put this dream off for many years, but I have always written stories. I have never shown them to anyone outside family. So this next step will be a huge one for me. I am going to a critique class next week. We shall see what the group thinks of my first baby. I am including a link to the Mandie website if you have any girls looking for a great young girl series. Also Lois's biography. I will try an highlight a different author with each posting, and explain how they inspired me to my completed novel.
~Moral to this is sometimes when bad things happen, in my case bullies. You can chose to make it a positive and it will propel you forward into another direction entirely and it may become what you have always been looking for. =)

Thanks for stopping by! Jess

~Lois Gladys Leppard is the ever-popular and prolific writer of Mandie Books. She has also been a professional singer, actress, and playwright. Lois studied at the New York School of Music and the Voice Beautiful Institute in New York under Glenn Morris Starkie. Additionally, she and her two sisters, Sibyl and Louise, sang professionally as the Larke Sisters and appeared in the operetta Bohemian Girl and were presented at Carnegie Hall. As a drama student, she was in the group that organized The Little Theater in her home town. She has written several plays and was employed with Columbia Pictures.

She wrote the first Mandie book, Mandie and The Secret Tunnel, when she was eleven years old. However, the book was not published until many years later.
http://www.mandie.com

The elusive novel finished, what now?

It has been a huge dream of mine to create a novel, it is a book I have been working on for over ten years. Last month I wrote the last paragraph! I am astonished. I mean you have a goal for a very long time you never think your going to achieve it. I put if off so many times because I was a mom, and a wife and working all the time. However I never let that dream fade even when people I love told me, "writing a book is not a real job." "Its a fairytale Jess, not real." I have listened to the naysayers for years. Sometimes I actually listened to them. Now I am stepping away from the past and reaching for the future which is publishing my novel. I hope this blog will serve as a resource to others who are on the same path as me, ones who have this dream, and want to complete it. This is step one. I hope you will follow me all the way.

www.facebook.com/authorJessicaPOwen
 Thanks for reading this. Jessica