Destiny Allison's Blog, page 21

Amazing Woman Tracey Allen

I’m pleased to welcome Tracey Allen to the conversation.  Tracy is a non-fiction writer focusing on sustainability.

Tracey Allen is a Prince Edward Island based writer and member of the Professional Writers Association of Canada. Her printed work includes book reviews in Atlantic Books Today, marketing columns in both The Insider and The Network, and various articles for National and Atlantic publications. She writes marketing copy, business articles, reviews, and some articles just for the fun of it! Her hobbies include organic gardening, tennis, and travel.

THE Q & A

From where do you draw inspiration?

My books are non-fiction so my inspiration is the next generation. Books are centered around sustainability. My desire is to motivate, to help and to educate, as much as possible, things I’ve learned, and as I learn.

What is the hardest thing about your creative process?

Getting the time to focus on writing and developing stories around non-fiction topics.

Do you work every day, or only when inspiration strikes?

I work when I can, as I’m a marketing consultant doing project work, in addition to writing. Some days are better than others.

How do you feel about the current art market/art climate?

With everyone expecting things for free it is hard to make a living doing what you love. That said I believe there are more opportunities today for writers and other artists than ever before with the Internet allowing more direct purchases.

If you could change one thing about the art world today, what would it be?

A greater appreciation for the time it takes to create and publish a book or develop a painting etc.

Talk a little bit about your current project and why you decide to embark on it.

My first book Do It Yourself Press Releases: Helping to Promote Your Organization http://amzn.com/B005DAY01W was ‘test the waters’ book, to see how e-books and self-publishing worked. It was based on previous articles I’d written plus the curriculum I developed teaching Marketing at the Unvirsity of Prince Edward Island for five years. The content was readily available and the book was pretty well ready to go.

My second book The Sustainable Table: Take Back Your Plate http://amzn.com/B007R6051O was a labor of love and written to hopefully encourage people away from the world of processed foods. The development and written took a few years and changed many times in the process. It is really an introduction to those considering taking a change in their lifestyle towards a sustainable living.

My third book Building a Passive Solar House: My Experience Shared http://amzn.com/B008TAFOZE was an adventure shared with the hopes of inspiring others to build sustainablity. The book is unique in that it is from a home owners point of view rather than a technical point of view.

My most recent project to be released in the next few months is The Sustainable Business: 5R’s to Boost Business Profit$ is an attempt to collect examples from my own experience and others on ways to incorporate the 5 R’s of environment sustainability to reduce business expenses thereby increasing profits.

How does being a woman impact your work?

Women are great mulit-taskers and I’m thankful that I have this ability! Not to mention women are great at promoting other women a real advantage.

If you had the chance to address a group of young girls, what would you say to inspire them?

You can do whatever you set your mind to do, whether it is labeled or not!

To find out more about Tracey, visit:  http://www.amazon.com/gp/entity/-/B005E68KWA/ref=cm_sw_su_e

Sample chapter of my new novel

Chapter 1

I dreamt again a river of blood and misery, the endless parade of human need.  Even in sleep I cannot escape the surging cacophony of paltry lies, endless excuses, and unabated anguish.  The noises, colors, and sheer volume of despair drown out any small hope of joy, or even quiet.  While I dread the days, it is the nights that plague me and I am grateful for the mercy of morning.  I dress, grab a quick coffee, and put up my hair before stepping out into the long, lean shaft of daybreak.

It is better on the street.  At this hour the menacing silhouettes that populate the park at dusk have retreated to wherever it is the hopeless go after the hunting grounds are empty and the prey is consumed.  I remember a city bright with lights.  I remember the time before, when fear was fallacy and dreams were good.

At the bench, I pause.  Soon, pigeons will crowd the walks and the Callers will come.  “Spare some, lady”  “Hey babe, I got whatchu need.”  “Oh man, I wan’ me some a dat!  Woo Wee!  Lookin’ mighty fine today.” I can’t help the shudder that rattles me.  If they’re watching, they will know me for what I am.  I shake my head, missing the feel of long hair swinging heavily against my shoulders and glare into the shadows.  It is a dumb thing to do and will not hide anything.  My face is already too pale.

For a moment, I allow myself to believe that I am safe.  It is still early and they don’t normally crawl out from their dens until the sun tops the first low level buildings.  In this morning bright, there is at least the memory of another life.  Holding my purse tightly, I settle on the concrete bench.  It is stained with years of toxic rain and human excretion, bird droppings, and old food.  It is a comfort.  It too has seen it all and survived.  Wrapping my arms around my body, I try to dispel the dreams and revel in this brief respite of quiet.  I take a deep breath.  In through the nose.  Out through the mouth.  Ocean breaths.

Do I still remember yoga?  Did we go for coffee, laughing and gossiping, after class?  Was there a time when my girlfriends gathered to share tragedies that seemed important then?  I shake my head again and close my eyes.  In through the nose.  Out through the mouth.

Something brushes my ankle. Opening my eyes, I jerk my leg away from whatever slithering thing has braved the thin sun.  I slap at the pavement with my heavy purse, hoping to scare the thing away.  When I hear nothing moving, I dare a glance under the bench.  At first, I don’t see her.  Shredded trash bags, dead leaves, and sundry debris from the night are piled against the tree trunk at the back of the bench.  As my eyes adjust to the dim of shadows, I see a thin arm lying in the filth.  I do not scream.  I want to, but that would rouse the Callers from their dirty sleep.  I don’t need that.  I don’t need to do anything but leave. What, after all is one more body, one more tortured thing finally free?  The sun is climbing and I have to get to work.  The living are of far more concern than the dead.   I am just about to stand when I hear a tiny voice scratch out a noise that sounds horribly like, “Please.”

I want to pretend I haven’t heard it.  I want to walk quickly away, striding with confidence as if my job is also my purpose, as if there is anything to do but log the despair.  I hear it again, a little louder now, a little more desperate, though it is still no more than a thin whisper. “Please, help…” Then there is nothing.  No voice, no wind, no movement.  The old, scarred square seems to be waiting.  Like some surreal play in the off-Broadway years of long ago, everything will take its cue from me.  I am the melting clock, the upside down horse, the thing that does not belong in the landscape.  Where normal used to be, there is now only this dark carnival and I do not know its rules.  The Callers are in the shadows.  The sun is rising. The clock is ticking.

Pretending to adjust my shoe, I peer again beneath the seat.  She is mostly naked.  Her bare body is bone thin, model thin, the kind of thin people protested about before protests didn’t matter anymore.  Her starved skin and prominent bones would have been, in those days, something to envy.

I suppose I know her, if you can call seeing someone every day knowing them.  She is that frail, thin, wisp of a girl with the too big eyes who hangs around the park in late afternoon.  She is not one of the Callers.  I don’t know if I remember her ever saying anything.  She just looks at you with those big eyes and hugs herself.  Had she been born in time to go to high school, to know proms and boyfriends, to learn to pull her hair into just the right pony tail so it hung river sleek down her narrow back, she would have been beautiful. Her eyes alone are captivating and I can only imagine what her life might have been if she had learned how to bat them coyly.  Instead she learned to dumpster dive and cook rats. She is one of thousands, millions maybe, who were born a fraction too late.  She is just another street waif, a barely living legacy of corruption and human greed.

Like most of the Workers, I try hard not to look at the lost children on my way to and from work.  It is best not to get too close or know too much.  The Drivers caution us against them, warning of theft, disease, and any number of unsavory possibilities.  I often wonder if they are actually warning us against something else, something worse.  Some small part of me suspects that the lost children can hold up a mirror that makes their horrors pale in comparison with my own.  After all, they have an excuse.  They are just trying to survive.

“Please,” she says again, her small voice holding me like a cold hand on my throat.  I glance around.  The park is still empty.  I get off the bench, turn and squat, wary of placing my back to the concrete expanse behind me.  I reach in and pull away some of the leaves that plaster her skin.  I look at the length of her. One eye is swollen shut and blood has dried in a trickle down the corner of her mouth.  There are bruises on her shoulders and around her neck. My eyes, against my will, travel further down her body.  Her nipples are raw and red.  Her belly is peppered with welts.  Her hip has been kicked or hit fiercely. Her thighs are drawn close together and around one ankle is a pair of dirty panties, crusty and stiff.

Oh God.  Does it never end?  Will they never leave us to forage what we can unimpeded?  Do they always have to exact the same price by tearing out the small shred of self we have managed to covet and rendering us, year after year, daughter after mother, only mewling shells and empty vessels?   When it is done, when they have taken all they can, we can barely care for ourselves, much less each other.  And what am I to do now?  Leave her for the dogs?  Let her drain out what’s left of her life with what’s left of her will, hoping rain or cold will get to her before night when certainly someone or something will find and ravage her yet again for the little meat on her bones or the hard pleasure of her final, futile cries?   Why couldn’t she be already dead?

I glance behind me.  The first of the pigeons are on the ground, wobbling this way and that in search of crumbs long gone.  The sun is lighting the second story windows above the vacant shops.  The callers will be here soon.  If I am late, I won’t get my ticket and there will be no meal today.  My Driver will leer and offer me an exchange.  The thought of his hairy hands, slick with sweat on my breasts, makes me cringe and I pull my coat tight around me.  His meaty thighs have parted me more than once in trade.      Each time, I die a little more but that slow death is never enough to quell the hunger in my belly or the ragged breath in my lungs.  My heart, in spite of itself, still beats.  It will not risk the absence of normalcy.  It needs the daily dinner and the chipped rectangular surface of my desk.  My heart demands something more than mere survival.

When I was a child, the world was my present, a great gift to be unwrapped after I finished school and was properly settled in marriage and career.  As the only daughter of a well off, middle class family, I had been spoiled.  I did learn to pull my hair into that shining tail and bat my eyes coyly.  Third generation Slavic stock, my family had adjusted in most ways, though they named me Vanessa in deference to times past and battles won.  In my youth, I wanted for nothing except a name generic enough to be truly American.  Still, I had exotic eyes, heavy dark hair, and was curvy in all the right places.  I belonged.  The boys wanted me as much as I wanted them and my name made teachers think I hid my intellect on purpose.  They reveled in trying to release it.

I did all the right things.  I played volleyball, scored B’s in my classes, and drank enough, but not too much, at the weekend parties.  For my sixteenth birthday, my parents bought me a car. It wasn’t new, but it was cool – a slick blue, two door Honda that I named Marie.  She took me everywhere, to the lake and parties, the games and movies.  She took me from girlhood to womanhood with a boy who thought he was a man and I was driving her when I told my best friend, Lisa, that I had done it. After high school, I went to the StateUniversity.  I thought I would major in TV journalism or sociology.  I had no calling and was grateful for it.  I was happy to just be average.

The change began in my sophomore year.  At first, we thought it was nothing.  The Occupy movements were for hippies, druggies, and homeless people. The news didn’t even bother to cover them and we were oblivious to the wail of the 99% except when the police barricades surrounding the encampments impeded our easy access to the coffee shop we frequented.  We laughed with everyone else when comedians spoofed them and figured the camps would disperse when winter came.  They didn’t.

Instead, the occupiers got leaner and more determined. When government officials, motivated by well-endowed donors, called the police to disband the camps the undeterred protesters went underground.  For awhile, there were lots of videos floating around the internet of police brutality.  Students were encouraged to take a stand. We didn’t.  We watched, shocked by the images, then were distracted by a cute guy or our favorite TV show.  At that time, no one knew who the Occupy organizers were or where they had gone.

Her voice, softer now, snaps me from my reverie.  There is a tear coursing the muddy track of her face.  What to do?  How do I do anything?  Though I am fed, I am not strong.  The dinners I get are barely more than dumpster sustenance.  I cannot drag her from what will surely be her last resting place into the light of morning and carry her anywhere.  Where would I go?  What, if I could manage to think of a place, would I do for her?  There is no extra food.  There is no medicine, unless you are desperate enough to go to the medical center with its dirty bandages and vermin infested beds.  Even if I were that desperate, how would I explain why I happened to be there with her when I am supposed to be at the sorting office separating the newly dead from the newly departed, and the barely alive from the not worth feeding?

I touch her.  I try to be kind.  I push her stringy hair off her battered face and let my fingers linger a moment.  I remember tenderness.  I was full of compassion once.  She raises her arm, lays her palm against my shoulder and moans a little.  Another tear falls.  Oh the hurt!  The staggering loss!  I can do nothing for her.  Not now anyway, with the Callers waking, the Driver waiting, and the day beginning.  Still, I find I cannot leave.  I too have been naked in the dirt — torn, bloodied and without hope.  I am sure that unless I find the courage to go, I will be here again.

They used to tell us that it was not our fault.  We were free to wear what we would, go where we wanted, and go alone.  If something happened, it was the perpetrator’s fault.  He was the only one to blame.  We were women of the new generation.  Feminist’s daughters were to be without guilt, shame, or fear.  We were, they said, finally equals.  What they didn’t tell us was that in the dark, on some soiled frat bed or behind ornamental bushes, held against our wills by guys who didn’t care, none of that mattered.  If we hadn’t been there in the first place young, beautiful, and alone it wouldn’t have happened.  Being guiltless is irrelevant when your panties are ripped, your body is brutalized, and your soul is dead.

A call rings out across the square.  “Woo Weeeee!  Gonna be a fine one today!”  Startled, I fall backward onto the ground in my rush to flee.  I glance under the bench.  The girl is well hidden.  There is nothing I can do for her. If I don’t move soon, there won’t be anything I can do for myself.  It is time to go. Without looking back, I stride across the square as if I have purpose, as if I am someone other than myself, toward the bus stop where there will be others like me, armed patrols, and normalcy.

 

This is what happens when you make room for passion….

You think you are starting a discipline, just flexing muscles and practicing, and all of a sudden you are knee deep in a novel you didn’t know you had in you!

Over the last month, I’ve been writing furiously.  The new novel is just one chapter shy of being a complete first draft.  For perhaps the first time in my life, I’ve allowed my creativity to be purely for fun and I’ve been having a blast.

Below you will find the first chapter (unedited) and I would love to know if you are intrigued.   For the record, this new book is totally off platform and different from anything else I have ever done.  Please share your comments with me.  Enjoy….

Chapter 1

 

I dreamt again a river of blood and misery, the endless parade of human need.  Even in sleep I can not escape the surging cacophony of paltry lies, endless excuses, and unabated anguish.  The noises, colors, and sheer volume of despair drown out any small hope of joy, or even quiet.  While I dread the days, it is the nights that plague me and I am grateful for the mercy of morning.  I dress, grab a quick coffee, and put up my hair up before stepping out into the long, lean shaft of daybreak.

It is better on the street.  At this hour the menacing silhouettes that populate the park at dusk have retreated to wherever it is the hopeless go after the hunting grounds are empty and the prey is consumed.  I remember a city bright with lights.  I remember the time before, when fear was fallacy and dreams were good.

At the bench, I pause.  Soon, pigeons will crowd the walks and the Callers will come.  “Spare some, lady”  “Hey babe, I got whatchu need.”  “Oh man, I wan’ me some a dat!  Woo Wee!  Lookin’ mighty fine today.” I can’t help the shudder that rattles me.  If they’re watching, they will know me for what I am.  I shake my head, missing the feel of long hair swinging heavily against my shoulders and glare into the shadows.  It is a dumb thing to do and will not hide anything.  My face is already too pale.

For a moment, I allow myself to believe that I am safe.  It is still early and they don’t normally crawl out from their dens until the sun tops the first low level buildings.  In this morning bright, there is at least the memory of another life.  Holding my purse carefully, I settle on the concrete bench.  It is stained with years of toxic rain and human excretion, bird droppings, and old food.  It is a comfort.  It too has seen it all and survived.  Wrapping my arms around my body, I try to dispel the dreams and revel in this brief respite of quiet.  I take a deep breath.  In through the nose.  Out through the mouth.  Ocean breaths.

Do I still remember yoga?  Did we go for coffee, laughing and gossiping, after class?  Was there a time when my girlfriends gathered to share tragedies that seemed important then?  I shake my head again and close my eyes.  In through the nose.  Out through the mouth.

Something brushes my ankle. Opening my eyes, I jerk my leg away from whatever slithering thing has braved the thin sun.  I slap at the pavement with my heavy purse, hoping to scare the thing away.  When I hear nothing moving, I dare a glance under the bench.  At first, I don’t see her.  Shredded trash bags, dead leaves, and sundry debris from the night are piled against the tree trunk at the back of the bench.  As my eyes adjust to the dim of shadows, I see a thin arm lying in the filth.  I do not scream.  I want to, but that would rouse the Callers from their dirty sleep.  I don’t need that.  I don’t need to do anything but leave. What, after all is one more body, one more tortured thing finally free?  The sun is climbing and I have to get to work.  The living are of far more concern than the dead.   I am just about to stand when I hear a tiny voice scratch out a noise that sounds horribly like, “Please.”

I want to pretend I haven’t heard it.  I want to walk quickly away, striding with confidence as if my job is also my purpose, as if there is anything to do but log the despair.  I hear it again, a little louder now, a little more desperate, though it is still no more than a thin whisper. “Please…” Then there is nothing.  No voice, no wind, no movement.  The old, scarred square seems to be waiting.  Like some surreal play in the off-Broadway years of long ago, everything will take its cue from me.  I am the melting clock, the upside down horse, the thing that does not belong in the landscape.  Where normal used to be, there is now only this dark carnival and I do not know its rules.  The Callers are in the shadows.  The sun is rising. The clock is ticking.

Pretending to adjust my shoe, I peer again beneath the seat.  She is mostly naked.  Her bare body is bone thin, model thin, the kind of thin people protested about before protests didn’t matter anymore.  Her starved skin and prominent bones would have been, in those days, something to envy.

I suppose I know her, if you can call seeing someone every day knowing them.  She is that frail, thin, wisp of a girl with the too big eyes who hangs around the park in late afternoon.  She is not one of the Callers.  I don’t know if I remember her ever saying anything.  She just looks at you with those big eyes and hugs herself.  Had she been born in time to go to high school, to know proms and boyfriends, to learn to pull her hair into just the right pony tail so it hung river sleek down her narrow back, she would have been beautiful. Her eyes alone are captivating and I can only imagine what her life might have been if she had learned how to bat them coyly.  Instead she learned to dumpster dive and cook rats. She is one of thousands, millions maybe, who were born a fraction too late.  She is just another street waif, a barely living legacy of corruption and human greed.

Like most of the Workers, I try hard not to look at the lost children on my way to and from the sorting office.  It is best not to get too close or know too much.  The Drivers caution us against them, warning of theft, disease, and any number of unsavory possibilities.  I often wonder if they are actually warning us against something else, something worse.  Some small part of me suspects that the lost children can hold up a mirror that makes their horrors pale in comparison with my own.  After all, they have an excuse.  They are just trying to survive.

“Please,” she says again, her small voice holding me like a cold hand on my throat.  I glance around.  The park is still empty.  I get off the bench, turn and squat, wary of placing my back to the concrete expanse behind me.  I reach in and pull away some of the leaves that plaster her skin.  I look at the length of her. One eye is swollen shut and blood has dried in a trickle down the corner of her mouth.  There are bruises on her shoulders and around her neck. My eyes, against my will, travel further down her body.  Her nipples are raw and red.  Her belly is peppered with welts.  Her hip has been kicked or hit fiercely. Her thighs are drawn close together and around one ankle is a pair of dirty panties, crusty and stiff.

Oh God.  Does it never end?  Will they never leave us to forage what we can unimpeded?  Do they always have to exact the same price by tearing out the small shred of self we have managed to covet and rendering us, year after year, daughter after mother, only mewling shells and empty vessels?   When it is done, when they have taken all they can, we can barely care for ourselves, much less each other.  And what am I to do now?  Leave her for the dogs?  Let her drain out what’s left of her life with what’s left of her will, hoping rain or cold will get to her before night when certainly someone or something will find and ravage her yet again for the little meat on her bones or the hard pleasure of her final, futile cries?   Why couldn’t she be already dead?

I glance behind me.  The first of the pigeons are on the ground, wobbling this way and that in search of crumbs long gone.  The sun is lighting the second story windows above the vacant shops.  The callers will be here soon.  If I am late, I won’t get my ticket and there will be no meal today.  My Driver will leer and offer me an exchange.  The thought of his hairy hands, slick with sweat on my breasts, makes me cringe and I pull my coat tight around me.  His meaty thighs have parted me more than once in trade.      Each time, I die a little more but that slow death is never enough to quell the hunger in my belly or the ragged breath in my lungs.  My heart, in spite of itself, still beats.  It will not risk the absence of normalcy.  It needs the daily dinner and the chipped rectangular surface of my desk.  My heart demands something more than mere survival.

When I was a child, the world was my present, a great gift to be unwrapped after I finished school and was properly settled in marriage and career.  As the only daughter of a well off, middle class family, I had been spoiled.  I did learn to pull my hair into that shining tail and bat my eyes coyly.  Third generation Slavic stock, my family had adjusted in most ways, though they named me Vanessa in deference to times past and battles won.  In my youth, I wanted for nothing except a name generic enough to be truly American.  Still, I had exotic eyes, heavy dark hair, and was curvy in all the right places.  I belonged.  The boys wanted me as much as I wanted them and my name made teachers think I hid my intellect on purpose.  They reveled in trying to release it.

I did all the right things.  I played volleyball, scored B’s in my classes, and drank enough, but not too much, at the weekend parties.  For my sixteenth birthday, my parents bought me a car. It wasn’t new, but it was cool – a slick blue, two door Honda that I named Marie.  She took me everywhere, to the lake and parties, the games and movies.  She took me from girlhood to womanhood with a boy who thought he was a man and I was driving her when I told my best friend, Lisa, that I had done it. After high school, I went to the StateUniversity.  I thought I would major in TV journalism or sociology.  I had no calling and was grateful for it.  I was happy to just be average.

The change began in my sophomore year.  At first, we thought it was nothing.  The Occupy movements were for hippies, druggies, and homeless people. The news didn’t even bother to cover them and we were oblivious to the wail of the 99% except when the police barricades surrounding the encampments impeded our easy access to the coffee shop we frequented.  We laughed with everyone else when comedians spoofed them and figured the camps would disperse when winter came.  They didn’t.

Instead, the occupiers got leaner and more determined. When government officials, motivated by well-endowed donors, called the police to disband the camps the undeterred protesters went underground.  For awhile, there were lots of videos floating around the internet of police brutality.  Students were encouraged to take a stand. We didn’t.  We watched, shocked by the images, then were distracted by a cute guy or our favorite TV show.  At that time, no one knew who the Occupy organizers were or where they had gone.

Her voice, softer now, snaps me from my reverie.  There is a tear coursing the muddy track of her face.  What to do?  How do I do anything?  Though I am fed, I am not strong.  The dinners I get are barely more than dumpster sustenance.  I can not drag her from what will surely be her last resting place into the light of morning and carry her anywhere.  Where would I go?  What, if I could manage to think of a place, would I DO for her?  There is no extra food.  There is no medicine, unless you are desperate enough to go to the medical center with its dirty bandages and vermin infested beds.  Even if I were that desperate, how would I explain why I happened to be there with her when I am supposed to be at the sorting office separating the newly dead from the newly departed, and the barely alive from the not worth feeding?

I touch her.  I try to be kind.  I push her stringy hair off her battered face and let my fingers linger a moment.  I remember tenderness.  I was full of compassion once.  She raises her arm, lays her palm against my shoulder and moans a little.  Another tear falls.  Oh the hurt!  The staggering loss!  I can do nothing for her.  Not now anyway, with the Callers waking, the Driver waiting,  and the day beginning.  Still, I find I can not leave.  I too have been naked in the dirt — torn, bloodied and without hope.  I am sure that unless I find the courage to go, I will be here again.

They used to tell us that it was not our fault.  We were free to wear what we would, go where we wanted, and go alone.  If something happened, it was the perpetrator’s fault.  He was the only one to blame.  We were women of the new generation.  Feminist’s daughters were to be without guilt, shame, or fear.  We were, they said, finally equals.  What they didn’t tell us was that in the dark, on some soiled frat bed or behind ornamental bushes, held against our wills by guys who didn’t care, none of that mattered.  If we hadn’t been there in the first place young, beautiful, and alone it wouldn’t have happened.  Being guiltless is irrelevant when your panties are ripped, your body is brutalized, and your soul is dead.

A call rings out across the square.  “Woo Weeeee!  Gonna be a fine one today!”  Startled, I backward onto the ground in my rush to flee.  I glance under the bench.  The girl is well hidden.  There is nothing I can do for her. If I don’t move soon, there won’t be anything I can do for myself.  It is time to go. Without looking back, I stride across the square as if I have purpose, as if I am someone other than myself, toward the bus stop where there will be others like me, armed patrols, and normalcy.

Opportunity for Women Authors and Reviewers

Women on The Verge is a fabulous organization.  They are looking for authors and reviewers for an upcoming issue of That Magazine.  Here’s what they said:

Writers and Readers, We Need You

August 24, 2012

If you have a book, or want to read a book by a fabulous author on the verge, this email is for you.

Women on the Verge, in collaboration with THATmagazine for women needs books and reviewers for the January/February 2013 issue.  If you are an author, this is what we would like.:

1. Books that have been released within the last 6 months

2. Books that will be released within the next 6 months

3. Already released books that have upcoming sequels to be released in 2013

If you have a book that meets any of the above criteria and would like to have it reviewed, please let me know as soon as possible, so it can be assigned immediately and be read and reviewed before November 1, 2013.

If you are a reader and would like to review a book, please let me know.  Also, if you have read a book by a Women on the Verge member and would like to write about it, please let me know as that will also be considered.  Here is the list of Books by the Women on the Verge.

You can email Ana at wotv (at) co-opweb (dot) com

Living your Passion

I’m honored to be featured on All things Audrey today.  My guest post is entitled, “Living your passion.”  Here’s an excerpt.

In a fit of anger I slammed my hand against my desk and shouted, “Can you PLEASE turn down the TV?”  The boys jumped and a minute later the movie was no longer blaring.  It was, in fact, so quiet I could hear another of my sons shooting zombies on his X-box and my husband on the phone with his mother in another part of the house. 
 
I gave up finishing the blog post I was writing, poured a glass of wine and settled myself into a rain-damp chair on the back patio.  I had just started to enjoy a peaceful moment when a car pulled up in front of the barn.  My dogs took off after the perceived intruder, barking at full volume all the way down the hill.   I held my wine glass in both hands and blinked, trying to stop the tears from falling. Inside the big, beautiful, noisy life I had created, there was no room left for me.
 
My husband got off the phone and followed me outside.  His warm, blue eyes darkened with….  To read the rest of the post, click here.

Continuing the blog tour

I am honored to appear today on Margo Dill’s blog.  My guest post is entitled”The Unique Challenge of being a woman artist.  Here’s an excerpt:

The Unique Challenge of Being a Woman Artist

Guest Post By Destiny Allison

It was late. The children had long been asleep. My husband was working an overnight shift and I had the house to myself. The dishes were done and put away. Sundry toys, bottles, blocks and bears were back in their appropriate places. For a moment, chaos was tame.

Ahhh, silence, that vast, sweet quiet! It was soft as the skin of my infant, tender as my toddler’s kiss, and limitless as the dark sky sparkling with distant stars outside my window.

As I settled in front of the sculpture I had waited all day to contemplate, I heard only the sound of my own breath. It was rhythmic, a peaceful rise and fall as calming as a sea breaking on distant shores. Finally I was alone–able to engage in my passion and give voice to that part of myself rendered small in daylight hours. Tonight, for a little while, I would speak.

I looked at the tiny face of the clay woman in front of me. With the tip of my finger, I stroked her tangled hair and traced her round belly, full breasts, and the lines of her arms. There, that was it! That was what had …. To read the full post, click here.

If you leave a comment on Margo’s blog, you will automatically be entered to win a free copy of Shaping Destiny.  I also welcome your comments here.

Amazing Woman Artist, Roka Walsh

The power of social media to connect people is constantly amazing me.  Over the last few months, I’ve gotten to know Roka Walsh and am very excited to hae her on the blog today.

Roka is a photographer.  She has had a sucessful career as a graphic designer but is now pursuing a degree in Art Therapy while she continues to produce and show her beautiful, digital art work.

Roka says, “A thing of beauty can evoke an emotional reaction within us and cause us to feel at peace, even if just for a moment. Therein likes the “why” for doing what I do.

I love finding beauty in the world and re-imaging it for you to see”

~ Roka

I am 58 years old and a photographic artist. I often take my photographs and create a different form of art with a few photographs, my imagination, and a digital “paintbrush”.

THE Q & A

From where do you draw inspiration?

My immediate response is that I find my inspiration in nature, it’s beauty and quirkiness. I also find inspiration in connecting with other artists, but where I find my most powerful inspiration, is deep inside of myself. There are times when I just have to go out and shoot some photos or play with my photographs. My passion for what I do is certainly a part of that desire, but it’s something else that that compels me and it’s just as strong. Perhaps it’s instinct.

As for what inspires me overall in my art, I love the ephemeral nature of flowers. They come into being—awe us with their beauty, form, color, scent, and texture—and then they quietly go, reminding us that life is fragile and fleeting, serving as a symbol of our own inherent transience.

What is the hardest thing about your creative process?

My biggest challenge to my creative process is a simple lack of time. It really is my biggest and, at this point, only roadblock. As a full-time student, graphic artist, mother, grandmother, partner, AND artist – there just isn’t enough time in the day and/or night.

Do you work every day, or only when inspiration/opportunity strike?

I would work with my art all day, everyday, if I could. Between terms, I spend a lot of time in the field or in my studio. My academic goal is to be certified as an art therapist. I’ll be starting this particular career as my friends are retiring. Adding the “art” to the “therapist” gave me an excuse to take more art classes, so there are many terms where I am playing with art other than my art that might be considered “work”.

How do you feel about the current art market/art climate?

Of course, I wish that the current market for art were better, more supportive of the arts. The market isn’t what drives me to create and I am thankful for that. I would love to get to a point where I could rely on my art in order survive, but that’s just not the case. I think the challenging part for me, is that I see less appreciation and support for the arts than I used to. Not just in the art market, but all over the spectrum… especially in the schools, where art (or music, or PE) is now less likely to be offered in the curriculum.

If you could change one thing about the art world today, what would it be?

I would introduce the value of art to children at a very young age so that it is incorporated into their everyday thinking: Teach them about the creative process and how art is an opening into other worlds of thought, vision and ideas.

Talk a little bit about your current project and why you decide to embark on it.

My work is coming very slowly on a couple of new digital paintings—somewhat experimental. It’s time consuming and I have to remember what brushes and brush attributes I’ve used on the pieces (screen shots are very helpful). I’m looking forward to the summer term being over so I can move forward with these projects. I’m forever trying to stretch what I can accomplish in PhotoShop and still stay in a somewhat realistic zone.

How does being a woman impact your work?

I think being a woman has impacted my work in much the same ways that it has impacted other aspects of my life. Expectations for whom and what I was supposed to be…artist certainly wasn’t a part of that language. As women, we have expectations placed on us all of our lives—expectations that have little to do with our own purpose. My earliest memory of wanting to create something and seeing my gender as an obstacle was when my Dad was in his woodshop with my brother and they were making something. I believe I was 7 years old and asked to learn how to use some of the tools so I could make something, too. Well, that didn’t go over very well, to say the least. “Tools aren’t for girls” “Go play with your dolls”… or something to that effect. I remember feeling completely powerless and being very deeply disturbed by it. It was the first time that I wished I wasn’t a girl. The only other time I remember wishing this was in high school when I wanted to take shop, but I was only allowed to take home-ec, so I could learn how to take care of other people instead of myself. I pursued art throughout my life—jewelry, glass, illustration—but I always approached it with the idea of making money from it, which is one reason I became a graphic artist. I wasn’t able to give myself permission to create art just for the sake of creating it.

Much of my art draws on the feminine. I guess flowers are considered “feminine”, but it’s more than that. I think in many ways, it’s about taking my power back. Perhaps even as far as taking my photos into PhotoShop and manipulating them… maybe it’s a need to control the process—not the outcome, but how I go about creating. It’s something I wasn’t able to do before.

If you had the opportunity to address a group of young girls, what would you say to inspire them?

I would want to convey to them that when and if someone tells them that they can’t do something because they’re a girl, to not take it to heart… to not let it stop them.  I would want them to understand that they each have something to offer to the world and being a girl/woman can enhance that offering, rather than to limit it. Whether they strive to be an artist or a scientist, they may have to work harder to overcome the gender boundaries, but it’ll be worth the journey. I would urge them to give their passion a voice and listen to it. If they feel an urge to create—just do it—without expectation, without an end in sight—just do it.

Don’t forget to follow the blog and/or leave a comment to join the conversation.  The more we share, the more we learn and grow.

To find out more about Roka, visit her website at http://ImagesByRoka.com

or like her on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ImagesByRoka

Our Lives are Our Greatest Works of Art

Thanks to Cheryl at CMash loves to Read for having me as a guest author today.

My post is called, “Our Lives are Our Greatest Work sof Art.”  Here’s an excerpt: 

This morning I woke to possibility.  Sun and birds, the sight of my husband opening his arms to me as I staggered one-eyed into the kitchen, the sound of my dogs rising to greet me, and the smell of breakfast gone cold overwhelmed my senses like the first strokes of  vivid color on the vast white of a blank canvas.  What picture will I paint today?

Will I push the dogs away as they nuzzle against me?  Will I ask my husband why he didn’t wait for me to join him for breakfast?  Will I rub the sleep out of my eyes and settle into my computer chair to greet the day electronically – placing emails and analytics over the realities of my life?  Will I let habit win, or will I do something different?  What would the day look like if I made time to kiss my husband deeply or dropped to the ground to play with my loving mutts?

It seems that every minute of every day, I am faced with these kinds of choices.  Most of the time, my decisions are out of habit or necessity.  My husband is ok with his quick hug and the dogs never seem to mind when I ignore them.  They all know my routines and understand that I will greet them, if there is time, once my eyes are fully open. But what if I surprised them?  What if I…  To read more, click here.

Blog Stop # 2 — A slice of life writing

Linda Hoye has a lovely site and I am honored to be a guest today.  She asked me to write on the relationship between art and life.  Here is an excerpt:

When I think about the relationship between art and life, I think about the story Howard Ikemoto told. “When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work.  I told her I worked at the college – that my job was to teach people how to draw.  She stared at me, incredulous, and said, ‘you mean they forget?’”

Drawing, painting, building forts, and playing make believe are just some of the creative acts intrinsic to childhood.  As we get older we leave these acts behind.  We let the voices of the world steer us toward responsibility and productivity and away from some of the most important parts of life – passion, curiosity, and creativity.

As a young girl, I remember being under constant scrutiny.  Peers, teachers, parents, and strangers all watched to see if I fit, measured up, or was on track toward achieving what they felt it was important for me to achieve.  I was paralyzed for a time – doing my best to color inside the lines.  In retrospect, it seems that my education was about teaching me everything I needed, except how to be myself.

I think many people, by the time they hit adulthood, are afraid of being themselves.  Doubts plague them and … click here to see the rest of the post.

Kicking off the Blog Tour!

I am so excited.  Today, I kick off a month long blog tour for Shaping Destiny.  The first stop on the schedule is WOW Women’s blog, The Muffin. 

Robyn had prepared a wonderful interview, with intelligent and relevant questions, but she also surprised me with a wonderful review.  Given the focus of WOW women (writing) I was especially honored that she listed my book in her top 5 favorites.  This was a great start to a Monday and I am very grateful to WOW for hosting me.  Check out the review and the interview by clicking here.