A little bit of me
I have often looked at that photo of me as a ten-year-old and marveled at how I simultaneously looked like an angel and a devil. I must admit I was a little of both, although the devilish me made more of a splash. I went to Camp Arrowhead one summer. When the two weeks were up, I was advised that I shouldn't come back the next year. So, the next year I went to Camp Tuscarora and received the same advice after two weeks there. In those days, no one had any idea there was such a thing as ADHD, but it was certainly the problem that I had because I could not control myself. In later years, I had a daughter with the same problem. It was a bit of a nightmare, and I learned to feel sorry for every adult who was stuck dealing with me as a kid.
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About three years after I took that photo in a photo booth at the Five and Dime store, I developed a crush on a girl in Junior High. I never held her hand, took her on a date, or walked her home. I was too shy. So, I wrote her poems. Two or three a week. I would hand them to her in the hall at school, and she would smile and thank me. About twelve years later, I ran into her in a department store. Her first words were, "I still have every poem you ever wrote for me. I keep them in a shoe box under the bed and often take them out to read again." I was quite flattered, to be honest.
Even though I occasionally wrote little stories or poems over those early years, that activity predated home PCs and laptops by many decades. As a result, they were not saved. As life expanded to include children and family responsibilities, time for writing disappeared.
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In my early thirties, I wrote 5 or 6 songs which, in truth, were poetry set to music. Then, for decades, nothing. It wasn't until the age of sixty that the urge to write a novel reared its head. After all, how long could it take to finish? I never imagined the answer to that question being seventeen years.
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While I had completed a rough (make that very rough) manuscript, editing it was interrupted by six years of living in Peru, teaching English, and providing volunteer support for an orphanage there. When I finally returned to Canada, some health issues, including a heart attack, a few gallbladder and blood infections, and anaphylactic shock, slowed me down. Once I recovered from that, I returned to working on the final manuscript and since then, multiple edits have occured.
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I have been fortunate enough to visit several other countries. While in the military, they were Turkey, Greece, Spain, Italy, and England. In civilian life they included Jamaica, Brazil, Chile, and Peru. The first novel stays mostly in Brazil. Book two starts in Brazil and then goes to Chile and Peru. Book three will spend more time in Peru and also travel to Switzerland and Italy. At least that's the plan.
On the home page, go to "Locations: The Second Coming of Angela". Each city location on that page has a link to a travel blog, each by a different blogger, with interesting info on the cities in Brazil that are included in the book.