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Wecome to Rebuild Shattered Dreams - Blog
By LaRene | May 13, 2008
Welcome to my site! It isn’t a secret story anymore. The book you see called How to Rebuild Shattered Dreams is what started this site. Along with the seminars and articles, you can read here.
By request from readers, I have written the articles and started seminars. People have wanted in depth information on how to remove permanent emotional scars. The secrets are going to be revealed here and through the seminars.
With the seminars, I’m going to be moving to a on-line format. It will give more people an opportunity to get involved. Sign up for an email update, if you are interested in watching the seminars unfold. Please take the surveys that I will have from time to time. They will help to determine what I teach in the seminars. Thanks again for visiting me and your help.
Topics: Personal Development, success | No Comments »
Sorry, I messed up!
By LaRene | May 12, 2008
I want to apologize for being slow on finishing my articles on Color. I’ve been hit with trying to get Stones’ Quest: Redemption of the Curse to the printer. In the next two days, I should have the book to the printer. With the book at the printer, I should have more time to talk about what I promised. The information for the contest to win a free Nintendo Wii has been setup and announced. So I should have a little more time this week to get back to the colors. (You can what I’m doing by going to the website.)
For an update on the seminars, I’m interviewing systems and places where we can have a live seminar on the Internet. I will get something lined up soon. I’m also working on a page for the seminars so I would like your opinion on it when I launch it to the server.
I’ll get back to you soon. Thanks for your support!
Topics: Journel | No Comments »
The Power of Color - Part 3
By LaRene | May 5, 2008
We continue with the article. Before, I move on with it. I want to talk with you about color. The next part of the article, we’ll be talking about different colors. I want to give you some detailed information regarding color that you might know about.
You know that each color has different colors within it to create the color. There are three colors that you can always count on being there. They are blue, pink, or gold and you call them undertones. One of the three colors will always be apart of the mix of colors to recreate what you are looking at. If you do not see it quickly, it’s okay. You have to be trained to see it and I’ll show you how in a few minutes.
Since we are going to be talking about red. I have a red against a lighter background. Do you find your eye bouncing between the two colors?
I used a tomato because it has gold in it and I hope it works. If you can’t see it, you can try it at home. Make sure you have good sunlight. Can you look at the tomato comfortable or does your eye jump between the pink and tomato? After a few minutes, you find yourself wanting to look away? Or does the tomato just stand out and how would you feel if the tomato was larger or matched the size of pink?
This is what happens when you put colors together with the wrong undertones. You can use blue and pink with gold. They are colors that stand alone. We know them as Periwinkle blue and peach. Remember this as we talk about colors.
Before I leave, let me tell you the secret on how to tell if a color has the undertone of gold or blue and pink. I like to wear a silver or white gold ring and a yellow gold ring on my hands. I try to do this in sunlight. If you place the two rings on a color and you find the yellow gold ring stands out. Then you know it has blue and pink undertones in it. If the silver jumps out, then it mean you have gold undertones in the color.
If you find your eye jumping between the two colors, then you know that the two colors have both gold, blue or pink as part of the mix. I hope this helps you.
Now, let go back to the article.
“If colors exert such a powerful force on mental and physical health, it behooves us to know more about them. Here is a spectrum of colorful facts.
RED – THE EXCITER
The red family includes everything from maroon to crimson to pink(although pink-red mixed with white seems to have properties all its own.) Several years ago, Robert Gerard, then a doctor candidate at the University of California, Los Angles (UCLA), studied the physiological reactions of people in a colored room, measuring blood pressure, respiration rate, heartbeat, muscle activity, eye blinks and brain waves. The rate of activity in all these indicators went up in a red room. Brain-wave activity, which showed an immediate response, stayed high for more than 10 minutes. People who were already anxious found red even more disturbing than those who were previously calm. When the same people went into a blue room, all the physical indicators went down.”
If you are using red in your room, it works well in a room that is normally cooler than the rest of the house. As you can above, people will feel warmer in a room that is normally colder than the rest of the house.
My daughter has a room in her home where it always stays colder than than the rest of the house. The room has a lot of floor to ceiling windows and it gets very little direct sunlight. The walls are a dark blood red with means it has a blue undertone to it. The floors are wood and it works great in this room.
Once a group of our friends stayed in condos at a resort. One of the condo’s had red walls, red carpet and drapes. Everyone staying in that condo keep coming over to ours complaining that they wanted to choke everyone in the condo. They would come to ours to calm down and they would return after a couple of hours angry and frustrated. It didn’t make sense to them. After I learned this, it made a lot of sense to me.
Here is a little more information that I found in other books regarding red.
“The lens of the eye has to adjust to focus the red light wavelengths; their natural focal point lies behind the retina. Thus, red is literally a come-hither color. It advances, making red objects seem nearer than they really are. A bossy, color, it grabs the attention and overrules all surrounding colors. The way it says, ‘here I am!’ makes it stand out in a crowd—whether as a party dress, an official’s red cap or a package on a supermarket shelf. Its consciousness and power to command makes it the obvious safety color stop signs and light.
The attributes of red are almost all superlatives. Red has the longest wavelength and lowest energy all the visible light. It is thought to be the first color perceived by babies or by any person long exposed to light, the first hue to re-intrude on awakening sense. This physical phenomenon is reflected in language where it is among the oldest color names, the first to appear after distinctions between light and dark. Of the warm colors, it is the hottest and near in wavelength to infrared, which actually produces the sensation of heat, It is fastest-moving color in terms of catching the eye, and has the greatest emotional impact. Red sits at the top of the rainbow.
Red shift refers to the change in the frequency of waves of sound or light, which occurs when the source and receiver are in motion relative to one another. It is most often experienced in the sound of passing sirens. When the source and the receiver are approaching each other, just as sound becomes higher pitched, light becomes bluer. It becomes redder when source and observer are moving apart.”
Next time, we will talk about pink. It a big color.
Topics: Color | No Comments »
The Power of Color - Part 2
By LaRene | May 3, 2008
It seems like you want more so I’m going to keep going. So I’ll add a few more paragraphs from my favorite article on the subject of color. The article was out of a magaize Called Heath - July 1982 by Leslie Kane.
In any given society, particular colors affect almost everyone in the same way. “Colors have a uniform effect within a Western European tradition, which includes Japan,” says Margaret Welch, director of the Color Association of the United States, which standardizes the 192 colors in current use by industry and government.
In general, dark colors strike us as heave and foreboding, while light colors seem not only cheerful but physically light as well. Bonnie Bender, color marketing manager at Pittsburgh Paints and an authority on color and psychology, reports that in an experiment testing the psychological effects of paint on worker productivity, researchers painted heavy boxes while and light boxes black. Workmen had considerable more trouble lifting the light black boxes than the heavy white one.
Marcella Graham, a medical technologist, color consultant and interior designer, described an equally dramatic example of the use of color to lift depression and stimulate activity. Called in for a consultation on staff and patient apathy in a hospital, she found the whole place painted light and medium chocolate brown and two shades of grey green. Graham advised painting the hospital floor by floor, using pumpkin orange, strawberry pink, emerald green and lavender. (Simply putting in pink curtains or orange bedspreads produced its effect.) Patient’s response to the brilliant colors was immediate and positive. Elderly men shaved and dressed to get out of bed each day. Female patients began circulating and visiting in the halls and requested powder, combs, lipstick and stockings. Even staff moral picked up.
If colors exert such a powerful force on mental and physical health, it behooves us to know more about them.
Next time, we will break down each color. I’ll start with this article and add research from other sources.
Topics: Color, Personal Development | No Comments »
The Power of Color Series - Part 1
By LaRene | May 2, 2008
A couple of days ago, I was talking with a group of people. When we got on the subject of color, everyone seemed very interested in my knowledge of color and how it affects us.
I explained that I had found this research by going to the library in the early 1980. I haven’t done a lot of research since then. If I knew where I could get more, I would love to read it.
Someone requested I put my finding on my blog. So I went through my papers and found the information that I dug out of the library. My information is all from out of print books and magazines. If there someone out there who can add to it, please do by leaving a comment at the end. I want research and not something from a book that isn’t backup by research that you can go read yourself.
Looking over my papers, I still like this article, The Power of Color. I found some of her sources on my own and I found her information to be actuate. Today, I found myself enjoying the article as much as I did in 1980. It was written by Leslie Kane in July 1982 for am magazine called Health. In my research, I found a book I think was well written all about research. It was printed by Architecture Digest in the early 1980. I only have pages copied out of it because it was a limited edition. So please me know what you want. I’ll start with the article. Here are first first three paragraphs of The Power of Color - and you can decide for yourself.
“Why should hanging pretty red wallpaper in your bedroom inspire you and your spouse to make war and not love? Why does a teacher who holds sway in a yellow-and-brown classroom complain that your child’s fidgety and inattentive while a teacher who instructs in a blue room calls him a model student? And why should your job suddenly become more depressing instead of less when the boss finally shells out for a paint job and your dirty white walls get a coat of nice fresh green?
It’s a matter of science—the science of experiencing color.”
This next part, I found to be true in a couple of other books that are out of print.
“Colors are electromagnetic wavebands of energy,” says Alexander Schauss, director of the American Institute of Biosocial Research in Tacoma, Washington. “Each color has its own wavelength. The wave bands stimulate chemicals in your eye, sending impulses or messages to the pituitary and pineal glands near the brain. These are master endocrine glands that regulate hormones and other physiological systems in the body.” Stimulated by response to colors, glandular activities can alter moods, speed up heart rates and increase brain activity.”
If you find this information interesting, I will continue entering her article and other information from books that are out of print. Please let me know how you feel about this by leaving a comment below. The picture above is one of my favorite picture from the Hubble telescope. The color is beaufitul and this is apart of our universe. Color is important to your well-being.
Topics: Color | 6 Comments »
Survey for seminars on How to Rebuild your Shattered Dreams
By LaRene | April 24, 2008
You can go directly to the survey that is next to this article now or read what the survey is about.
It has been a while since I have written and it hasn’t been because I haven’t wanted too. My life has been turned upside down. Readers from my book “How to Rebuild Shattered Dreams,” have requested me to hold some seminars in our local area.
At the same time, I started to do them. I received notice that I needed to rewrite six chapters of my new book due out in June. Everything I was working on was pushed to the side, including the blog. During my three seminars, my eyes were opened up to how many people are struggling with emotional pain and frustration. I have been healed for so many years, I had forgotten what it was like.
It has been overwhelming to realize how many people want me to personally help them rid themselves from emotional pain. Originally, I thought I could do it through blogging, telling people about how our mind’s processes our life experiences. On the blog, I planned on explaining out to rid yourself of pain and prevent new pain to crowd in on your life.
I have spent forty years studying and researching how to heal or remove emotional scars. Somewhere a long the way, I discovered how to unlock the mysteries and heal. The best part of it, what I learned is permanent. This has started a frenzy with others, wanting help.
The most interesting part of doing the three-hour seminar, I learned how much knowledge I had collected over the past forty years. I expected in the three hours to expel all that I knew. Instead, I found myself lightly skimmed over the surface. When I went home from the first seminar, I wrote a outline of what I knew on each subject. The outline was single spaced and I had nine pages worth of material that I could expound on.
People are asking me for longer seminars. So I put together a short survey to learn what people want to learn. Then I’ll put the basic questions in a twelve to seventeen hour seminar. Please take the survey and tell me how you feel. Besides the survey, I would like you to leave comments on my blog, telling me about how you would feel about being apart of a seminar on how to rid yourself of emotional pain and live with passion.
Tell me, if there was away to erase tragedy in your life, what would it be worth to you? Please leave me a comment below and let me know how you feel. If you want to learn how my seminars are developing, you can sign up for a email update. Thank you for your time. You can go to the seminar at the top of the page.
Topics: Personal Development | 4 Comments »
Part two of four - Depression: Charge it up too Your Thoughts
By LaRene | April 7, 2008
Depression can be complicated because it can have so many facets and triggers. In this series of articles, I’m going to attempt to break them down. This article is going to cover how we perceive what is happening around us.
Our perceptions of life are based on our thoughts. If you have negative thoughts, you see nothing but negative perceptions. Some can say “Hi” to us and we can take it as “What do they want?” We interrupt their words totally wrong, if we are embracing the negative side of life.
Love has a lot to do with our thoughts. Let me start by saying, love and hate are at the feeling and it is attacked to every thought. You might be wondering why love or hate is at the base of every thought? Our spirits come into the world fill with love. So every thought is anchored with the emotion. Somewhere, we choice to deplete our love and hate replaced it.
When we allow others to deplete our love, we can start deep a road of depression. With us being on this road, we see the negative side of everything and decide there is no beauty. If we can’t say something nice about someone, it means, we could be on this destructive path of depression. We could be depressed and not know it.
For an example, I found intermingled with depression was anger. We are usually anger about something. Anger is dangerous to hang onto. When you find your self thinking “this angers me,” you need to move quickly through it and let it go. Some of us chose to hold onto our anger and it can do some serious damage to our body. I can tell some story about it but I’ll talk about it in another article.
We need to let go of our negative thoughts. Another example, we have proven with plants how negative and positive words can affect them. If a plant gets exposed to a contact diet of words of hate. They will grow away from the source or they die. So what are we doing to your self? Depression is the by-product of negative thoughts. Hate and anger can sometimes hold us in this state of depression. You might be in complete control of your depression and maybe not. The maybe not, I want to walk about next.
Some people tell me that they find it hard to think of something positive. Others have expressed to me that they feel depressed about something. They can’t see it or have any knowledge to why they should feel this sad heaviness that is always there. Lately, I’ve heard a lot of people express that they have learned that depression runs in their family. So now how can this happen?
Scientists have proven lately that thoughts and feeling can be passed on from one generation to another. I can explain how this happens scientifically but I won’t go into it now. Right now, you need to know it happens and you need to make a decision on how you’re going to handle it.
So how do you identify if what you are feeling is your thoughts or ancestors? If you’re feeling negative feeling like a heaviness, loneness, and etc, it could easily be an ancestral thought. Especially, if you try to change it and you find yourself frustrated because you struggle to see anything-new happening. You might be able to will a new decision for a while but if you relax for a moment. It is right back there.
When this happens, it can be very frustrating. You feel like you are hitting your head up against a wall, trying to function. You can’t push it away and ignore it. This is a painful depression because you feel helpful to rid yourself of it. When this happens to you, we as humans tend to blame ourselves for your life not going the way we want. It might not be your fault.
If it’s ancestral, you can break the anchor and I’ve learned how to permanently heal the ancestral decision. To give you an example, let me tell you about a man, I happened to be in a class with. When we got onto this subject, he mentioned that he had a problem with hating his in-laws. He explained that he had never experienced anything negative with them but he felt anger and hatred towards any of his date’s parents. Yet, he was quite emotional expressing that he deeply loved his present in-laws. He emphatically expressed they had done nothing to him but show him kindness. So why did he feel this way?
The teacher asked his mind to research out the reason why? In his mind, he shortly saw his great grandfather standing on a porch of his fiancé’ house with a dingy single light. They wouldn’t allow him to see their daughter because they weren’t going to allow her to marry him. They felt he was the right person for her. He made the decision to hate in-laws. Since it was a decision made with a lot of emotions of hate and anger. It affected his progenitors. The decision attacked to his DNA and was passed on his grandson.
Once he had identified the problem, the teacher showed him how to reverse the moment with his great grandfather and permanently erase that memory from being apart of him. He walked out of the class never feeling that emotion again. When our ancestors chose not to forgive someone for their imperfections, their decision can be pass on to you and it can leave you confused and frustrated because you have no idea why you feel this way.
Next time, we’ll talk about more negative decisions that you can control and they cause depression.
Topics: Personal Development, Personal Growth | No Comments »
Part 1 of 4 - Depression: Charge it up too your Thoughts
By LaRene | April 1, 2008
On our local news the other night, they gave the national and local statistics on depression and suicides. It was disturbing to hear how high the numbers were. The numbers, I assume were based on people receiving help or those who have already committed or attempted suicide. What about the ones who are in denial or sitting on the edge?
It bothered me because I have been at both ends of the spectrum. As a child, I was very depressed and it was comfortable to be there. So what changed and how did I work myself out of this dark place. First, you need to know what caused the depression if you want to come out. For me, it happened at the age of four. My mother died and our father walked out on us. This experience plunged me into deep waters for survival.
Luckily, I was too young to understand how to end my life. My mother had taught me to pray before she left. Each night, I prayed for God to end my life. While other children were praying for a bike or something new. I wanted to stop breathing. The pain was too much for me, and I went deeper into depression every time I woke up.
So what happened? How did I come from such a dark beginning to a bright and wonderful life leaving all scars behind me? I did it without medication so I know exactly what steps I took. For the record, there isn’t a magic bullet. You can take steps to prevent yourself from getting in this state and keeping yourself out. Once, you get help.
I want to share what I did in hopes you find something helpful. The turning point in my life came unexpected and it showed me how scarred I was. I was an adult and my negative thought patterns were deeply entranced in my mind. In my book, How to Rebuild Shattered Dreams, I go into detail on how I got into this depression and how I came out. So here, I’m going to only give a highlight. If you want more information, there is always the book.
If you had asked me about depression years ago, I would’ve answered that I had never felt it. I wasn’t lying. What I’m saying is, I had never felt joy so I did not know the difference. How do you understand light, if you had never seen it?
This is what I discovered and I plan on covering it in the next four-blog articles. The plan is to break it down into small bits so you can see something useful to ingrain into your life. We are in denial not because we want to be. We are there because we do not know better or we’re afraid the truth might be unmanageable.
Before you can help yourself, you need to see where you truly are. This can be very frightening. At least, it was for me. Years ago, we had a son from his birth who always seemed angry. He had a big chip on his shoulder.
After weeks of trying different ideas, my husband, Jack came up an idea of taking our son to a mirror and not letting him leave until he had told himself twenty-five times that he loved Josh. After the first week, our son started to change.
For the next few paragraphs, I’m taking excerpts from my book.
In my amazement, Josh started to change. He became happier. One day, Jack invited me to see Josh repeat his words, I love Josh, twenty-five times. Grinning, Josh passed by as Jack smiled at me. Reaching a hand out to me, he asked, “Can you do it?”
Fear consumed me as I attempted to follow Josh. I said, “Sure, anyone can do that. It’s easy.” Before I could leave the doorway, Jack had a hold of my wrists and yanked me into the room. Leaving me in front of the mirror, he stood in the doorway and said, “You do it.”
As I stared at myself, I became even more afraid. The fear became so strong that I felt like Jack had just shoved me into a cage with a hungry tiger. I felt trapped, fear charging throughout every cell of my body. I looked at Jack with my face as white as a ghost. Not giving him notice, I charged him, expecting him to move.
He didn’t and I was so afraid. Not realizing what I was doing, I stepped on his thigh, attempting to climb over him. Jack grabbed a hold and pulled me down. With his arms wrapped around me, he easily brought me back in front of the mirror and repeated his words.
Seeing myself in the mirror, I fought to get away from his grip. Being only ninety-eight pounds, it was easy for Jack to hold me. He repeated his words and I pleaded with him to let me go. When he said no, I felt the invisible arms join him.
Being so familiar with Him, I pleaded with Him to help me get away from Jack. Instantly, I knew HE was was on Jack’s side as well. Looking at myself, I started to cry from the depths of my soul. By doing it, I saw in mind all the layer of shock that I had endured at the hands of others. For the first time, my soul felt the love from the invisible arms.
After being in Jack’s and my creator’s arms, I couldn’t get the vision of all the layers of scars out of my mind. What were they made from? How would i see them now for the first time? I had so many questions, not realizing what was being opened up to me. Hope was being breathed into my life, my soul, and my heart for the first time. It was a chance to rid myself of the pain I had endured for so many years. It started to consume me.
You have to see and embrace the fact you are depressed before you can change anything and get help. Next time, I want to talk about how to recognize the thought patterns that take you down the path towards depression. If you understand how to get there, you will know how to bring yourself back. Sign up for a update at the site www.Rebuild-Shattered-Dreams.com for the next installment.
Topics: Books, Personal Development, Personal Growth, spiritual | 4 Comments »
Relieving Stress the Old Fashion way. Breath!
By LaRene | March 25, 2008
Lately, we had the manufacturers of outdoor equipment hold a show in our city. They paid for a poll that the news reported on. The poll asked teenagers across the nation what outdoor equipment they liked or were interested in the most. The outdoor equipment folks were shocked by the answers to their questions, which caused our local news to report it.
Teenagers weren’t interested in anything that had to do with outdoors. They would rather watch other people enjoy it on the Internet. This is helpful since Yellowstone just put “Old Faithful” on the Internet. You can see eruptions from your computer. Since, I’ve seen “Old Faithful” erupt in person numerous times. The mist on your face and feeling the power of the geyser really adds to the experience.
My next story is dedicated to those people who would rather enjoy the outdoors on the Internet. Since, we all know that breathing deeply releases stress from our bodies. I request you take some deep breaths now and during the story. So you can benefit from the exercise and adventure that I’m about to tell you.
This story takes place on a twenty-eight thousand acre island that sits in the middle of the Great Salt Lake. The largest salt-water lake in the world and it’s only thirty minutes from downtown Salt Lake City. Our mountains are close by, you can reach them from fifteen to thirty minutes from downtown. The time depends on where you are going.
On Antelope Island, you can bike, camp, hike or do my favorite, horseback riding. We share the island with approx. 550-700 bison or buffalo, as I like to call them. When you are on the trails, you can see coyotes, mule deer, prong horned antelope, bobcats , badgers, porcupines and jack rabbits. The animals I see the most are buffalo and jackrabbits. Winter, late fall and early spring is the best time to ride on the island. The summers are too hot and we would rather ride in the mountains where it is cool.
What I like about the island, there is no civilization on it. You feel like you are back in the old west. There is one bird species on the island that I dearly love. The meadowlark is there abundantly. In the spring, you can hear them all around you singing back and forth to each other. They are my favorite songbird.
One day, my husband and our neighbor were riding horses on the island. They were following the trails like they were requested to do. This day, the trail they were on went along the edge of the shores. The water was still and blue. Then the trail left the shores and headed up the side of a tall hill. They were reaching the top when they encountered a lone buffalo bull all by himself.
As they passed him, my husband pulled out his camera to take a picture. Before he could take it, the bull charged them. Somehow, he held onto the camera but lost his cowboy hat. His horse, Socks, bolted down the path with our neighbor following him. They hadn’t gone far when the bull stopped chasing them. Our neighbor had been riding on the island for ten years and he had never had a buffalo bother him. So he decided to go back for my husband’s hat.
When he reached the hat, Jay got off his horse and picked it up. The bull decided that he wanted the hat. He charged them. Jay jumped on his horse with the hat and off at a full gallop. Touchy, his horse, was fast. It became a race and the bull was gaining. Now, we understand why our ancestors wrote in their journals that it was dangerous to hunt them. They can ran fast or faster than a horse.
They have a strange shape and you wouldn’t think they could move fast because of it. It didn’t take the bull long to have his head in the tail of Jay’s horse. Before he rammed his horse, the bull just stopped.
What a memorable ride. I hope you were breathing deeply so you get the advantages of the exercise and relieve some stress. It’s great to get out and take a deep breath of fresh air. it really has a great affect on us.
The next time, you need to relax and you can’t go on a ride, hike, or walk. Close your eyes and take in a deep breath. It will relieve stress and it might help you get through the day a little healthier and easier. Have a great day!
Topics: Personal Development, Personal Growth | 2 Comments »
Part Three: My Journey to Becoming an Author
By LaRene | March 20, 2008
The words of the story started to pour out and I quickly became entrenched in these people’s lives. I knew a paragraph ahead where the story was going and there always seemed to be a new twist that I wasn’t expecting. There were no preconceived ideas on where the story was going. I just let it flow. If I had planned on writing it for someone else to read, I wouldn’t have made it past “Time out. I hate time out.”
There was another factor that would have stopped me from writing the story if I had known before hand. When I finished writing my story, I was shocked to learn it was placed in the Sci-Fi genre of literature because it took place in another galaxy. I do not like mythical creatures and wierd monsters so I had always shyed away from reading Sci-Fi. Yet, I dearly love Star Wars. They are no mythical creatures or monsters in it. George Lucas wrote a story of a struggle between good and evil that took place in another galaxy and so did I.
Each day, I found myself spending eight hours a day in my office writing. At night, I found my condition, making it hard to sleep. The experienced taught me that I like to take a deep breath in my sleep. This would cause me to wake up coughing hard and it sent me running to the bathroom. My bladder didn’t do well when I went into these coughing spells. For some reason, I would never just cough once. It would go on and on. Then I would be quiet for a period of time.
For some reason, my coughing would happen around five in the morning. I would lay there trying to go back to sleep but my mind would wonder where the story was going next. So I would get up and move my humidifier and air purifier to my office. This shocked my family. I’m not a morning person and seldom was awake at sunrise. They are really beautiful. I never appreciated sunrises until I started to write.
My oldest son lived less than a mile away and he would stop by to see how I was doing. When he found me in my office working on something mysterious, he became suspicious. He wanted to know what I was doing that seemed to make me so happy. I tried to discourage his interest but he seemed to be relentless.
When I told him, he wanted to read my story. There was no way. I wasn’t going to let anyone destroy my newly created world, by laughing at me. The joy of living in my secret world was wonderful and I was weary of criticism. Day after day, he would stop by and ask to read my story. Finally, I broke down because he promised not to laugh. He had never done anything to break my trust in the past so I let him into my world.
Each day, he stopped by to exchange pages. To my amazement, he was excited to know what was going to happen next. It wasn’t only me. With the holidays coming up, we met as a family. Everyone was there but one son who was living out of the country. At the table, my oldest son started to ask me about the history of these people. Where did they come from? What was there culture like? Why was it so different from ours? Without thought, I knew and would write it down on my pad of paper that I carried everywhere with me. He happened to be at the opposite end of the table. So everyone read my answers as the paper traveled to him. I still didn’t have a voice.
My second to the oldest son asked to read the story. He shocked everyone. This boy or man had never read anything for fun. He made fun of those who did. He read but for information only. I trusted him and made him promise to not share it with others outside the family.
A couple of days later, I heard from my second son. One morning, he called to leave a message on the answering machine that he was angry with me. The night before he had stayed up until two in the morning reading. He was upset to hear the alarm clock go off at six in the morning, telling him it was time to get up for work. He was caught in the intrigue of the story and discovered how fun reading for pleasure could be.
They pushed me to publish the story. Yeah! I wasn’t going there and I refused. It took me two months to get through the first book. Instantly, I knew there was another one. So I continued writing because I had no voice. The first of the year is your prime time to get listings in real estate. With no voice, I was still trapped in my office. So it meant that I wouldn’t be able to bring in new money for about six months with my pipeline dry.
My sons and their wives wouldn’t let up on getting the story published. I finally consented to doing it. Shortly, I mysteriously stopped coughing and I could take deep breath just fine. My voice was back so I could go back to real estate.
To keep my promise to my children, I sent the first book to a local small publisher who accepted manuscripts as a contact. I hoped they would tell me that the story would make a lousy book.
Instead, they told me I had a very strong story. They were going to turn it down because it wasn’t written in story form. They were interested in seeing my new writings. This wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I wanted them to tell me that the story was weak. I knew it wasn’t written in story form and they would refuse it.
I was disappointed because I knew their answer meant work. For the first time, I really wanted to lie to my children but I couldn’t do it. Everything, I had ever taught my children were on the line. Could I practice what I preach? This was the hardest situation, I had ever been in.
When I did the research on my story for genre, I had written fiction, Sci-Fi/ fantasy for young adults. This is the hardest arena to get into. There were so many books to compete with. They are hard to market too. What had I done? My kids were watching me expecting me to live up to everything I taught them about not quitting. In my heart, I didn’t want to get started but I had promised them. So I put my heart and soul into it, hoping they would appreciate my sacrifice.
This is what kept me taking one more step. You probably don’t want to know about the rest. So I won’t go into how I got it published. It wasn’t easy. This is how my career got started. My example to my children kept me picking up myself and moving forward. Many times, I had wished that I never let my oldest son read it. Then I read an email from an excited fan and it gives me the courage to take another step forward. I would’ve never published it or started a new career, if had kept it to myself.
You can read the first chapter at Stones Quest history.
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