What Do I Say About Me?

I'm really a rather private person. Not J.D. Salinger reclusive, but I keep to myself pretty much.

I'm making my first solo appearance as an author a week from tomorrow. I was just going to do a book signing event, but it turned into a book reading/discussion/signing/meet & greet the author event.

I'm not a very verbal person- unless I'm writing. Speaking in public has never been something I've ever wanted to do. I've come a long distance since my painfully shy childhood and early years. I'm comfortable among friends, but have the family trait of needing some time to warm up to people. I'm a terrific listener. I'm more observant than the ordinary person. I just don't like to talk.

But I'll try.

Except, I really have nothing to say about myself. I was pretty much born a writer. I fell n love with words in kindergarten when the very first word we learned was LOOK. OMG-that was and still is a magical word! Mrs. Suprenant drew black pupils inside the two Os in LOOK making eyeballs that were looking back at us- and that was the key that unlocked reading comprehension for me.

I've written since I was in first grade. I didn't go to school for it. I did enjoy taking every creative writing class in high school and college that I could get into. I was bored one summer when I was 16 or 17 and read the entire Merriam Webster paperback dictionary I owned at the time- cover to cover. I don't suppose too many people can say they've done that. I just love words.

I flex my vocabulary when talking with Kelly who does the same thing. We don't settle for the smallest word possible. We're not afraid to use big words. We more or less challenge one another and make a game of using the most obscure word possible for every word we speak to one another. John, of course, rolls his eyes, stretches out on the couch, turns up the volume on the TV and watches sports. He just doesn't understand us.

I've done a lot of things in my life, but I really have never been anywhere interesting. I've worked as a carpet repairer, a store detective, a campus police officer and then as the night shift campus police supervisor. I've run injection molding machines and made LEGO bricks and storage buckets. I sold office products (Kelly and I share a passion for pens!) and I currently work as a medical secretary, specialized to medication prior authorizations, helping patients get VNA services, PCA services, HHA services, DME like hospital beds and wheelchairs, helping people obtain disabled placards and making sure the doctors sign everything that comes into the office that requires their signature related to all these things I do.

And I write. I write just about every day. When my brain feels tired then I don't write. I clean my house instead.

I honestly don't know what I'm going to say next Saturday. I don't know where my stories come from. I just sit down at the computer with nothing in mind, start typing and there they are. I have a muse and he's prolific, to say the least. I say he's a he because I like the idea that I take dictation from a dashing male muse better than the thought of being the typist for a female taskmaster!

In general, I'm just an ordinary person who happens to write a lot of stories and books. I've been this way since I was a little girl writing at my desk in my room. My mother filled our home with books, filled our Christmas stockings with pencils and paper and always encouraged us to be our own selves.

We grew up in the 60's- those joyful days of hippies, peace, love and Woodstock, but also Vietnam, desegregation, protests and bra burnings. Our parents gave us (my older sister, younger brother and I) love, discipline, a happy home (despite some difficult times), and gentle guidance but allowed us the freedom to grow into who we each are as individuals. We're all very different, yet we share common family traits. My sister writes children's poetry and stories. She likes to write plays. My brother wants to write detective stories but hasn;t even begum writing yet. All three of us are avid readers, however, we all like very different authors. My sister and brother read my books, my daughter reads most of my books, my husband doesn't read any of my books. My friends vary from reading all my books to reading one or two of them. I read my own books and sometimes reread them and just shake my head wondering where on earth they came from! I find partial stories lying around the house and honestly don't remember writing them, or stand there trying to decide if I wrote it or Kelly wrote it. Sometimes the only way I can tell is by the handwriting. My printing and writing is bigger and more flowing than her tiny cramped writing. If the story or partial story is typed (as most are these days) I have to ask her if she wrote it or I did- and sometimes even she's not sure!

Maybe there's a ghost writer in our house? (Not a ghostwriter, I actually do mean a ghost writer! We have a tendency to attract ghosts.)

I'm rambling tonight, trying to find me in all of this stuff.

I guess I'm basically a down to earth, easy going, fairly intelligent, somewhat gifted, more than a little eccentric, pretty private, wildly imaginative, incredibly observant, more than a little creative, ironic, funny, too quiet person who's lacking in self confidence primarily because,to me I am just me. I wasn't raised to be a self-centered princess, a prima donna or a diva.

I'm just me. I'm a writer.

I just write.

I guess that's what I'll say. I just write.