LIFE IS GREAT

THE YEAR MY LIFE BEGAN

It wasn't at birth.  Nope.  I had the most wonderful and unique childhood and the rest of it leading up to the present - well, like everyone, I have had my share of ups and downs.  But as I will tell anyone who'll listen (and yes, this does mean I talk to myself a lot) I feel my life really did begin only a few years ago.  I turn 57 this year.  I awoke one morning - it was a birthday - with an epiphany - I suddenly realised that I had to get my late Dad's book published - somehow.  Dad had finished writing his book shortly before his death in 1993.  For the following sixteen or so years the manuscript and accompanying documentation was passed between my three older brothers and me, hoping that one of us might actually have it published.  When it landed in my hands for the umpteenth time I typed it up but - er, what comes next?

It was on the morning of that particular birthday that I knew I had to get it out - I still do not know exactly why (or how) but I am presuming that my mother's advancing age (late 80s) might have had something to do with it.  Fit as a fiddle (or at least we thought she was but then she was the world's leader at hiding minor issues like health problems...), but.....  .  It was also then that I hit that stumbling block seriously - the same one that halts many new writers in their tracks, sometimes putting them off altogether.  How do you get published?  And that just might have been enough to put me off altogether as well had the memory of Dad's passion for his writing, ancestry and the outback of Australia, not kept nagging at me.  Added to that the thought of Mum and her pride in Dad's efforts - not seeing his writing coming to fruition - and she wasn't getting any younger - right, that did it.  Turning to good old Google I eventually found a self-publishing business that offered precisely what I was looking for.  From there it was full steam ahead.  No stopping this writer.  Dad's book was published exactly a week after Mum died in 2010.

Damn.  But I am assured that Mum knew it was about to be published and that did make her a happy woman at time of death.

Thus was the catalyst for my writing.  It is in my blood and I am now following a lifelong dream of writing and publishing books.

Next off the rank was 'Bullseye', my book about bullying.  Once that was safely published and released, I decided it was time to combine my writing and one of my other passions, the outback of Australia.  My book on stations is a work in progress.  I am absolutely thriving on it.

I do work full time and long hours.  I am also a wife of some thirty years with two adult daughters.  I have now discovered this passion for writing about subjects I am equally passionate about.  I am fighting bullying and making some headway with this.  I have just begun work on the book which will follow my stations one.  Most of this is mentioned in previous blogs and in my websites.  My latest cause is the one covered in my last blog - encouraging the wonderful elderly folk in Australia to talk to their hearts' content about their lives.  Let it all out.  And have one or two people taping and capturing it all.  Before it's too late.  I also edit and proof work for other authors and have several manuscripts in hand now.

As far as I am concerned, life is great.  The sky really is the limit.