- tattooedbibliophil
- Jul 17
- 4 min read
So Book #2 was supposed to be out in 2024... it's now half way through 2025, and well it's mostly written... just can't seem to put the finishing touches to send it to my wonderful editor, I am hoping to have it done by my next convention, not sure if I will have it in hand to sell but I sure am going to try... fingers crossed.
Why am I writing this right now? instead of working on the book? Well, two parts, one I needed to explain/ small vent to you all, and two, I had to update the website.
Sometimes I don’t understand myself, and I don’t get why I do things the hard way. Why do I have to take on challenges that people throw at me? Why do I have to do things the hard way? Because that’s a part of life and growing up often just sucks.
Since I was a child, (yes my mom will tell you this is true) I have taken every challenge almost personally. When you were little, kids made fun of me for being a “dumb” blonde, blue-eyed girl. I was a Barbie girl in their minds. I get smarter. I made the honor roll from 2nd grade all through grade school. Almost straight A’s in high school. Even graduated with Honors in my master’s program.
When I got to middle school, I was the typical tomboy, skateboarding, soccer, volleyball, Girl Scouts, and swim team. I wanted to be busy. Then a health issue arose, Lyme disease. They told me that it was something that could affect my entire life from then on, and I didn’t have the energy to play my sports. I had to practically quit soccer and volleyball, running caused asthma, which was scary to me. My toned and honestly healthy body started to portray me. I couldn’t get out of bed or off the couch much in those days. It took years of pushing my body to just stay in motion. To this day, my body, some days, is not having a productive day.
If the joint problems weren’t bad enough, my healthy, amazing immune system crashed, and I would get sick from those in the same classroom. Began the slight paranoia of crowded areas. I barely went to school parties or went to dances. I went from an athletic tomboy who would drink out of a hose to an overweight, lazy person who watched too much TV and read a lot of books.
Not much has changed in that last part, I own over 1500 books (to date), I pay for almost all the streaming services, and I don’t regret anything.
Life is hard.
Full stop, there isn’t a lesson here, but facts. Hard to deal with events that happen all the time to everyone. No one has a perfect life, and if someone tells you they do, well, it’s either a lie or really good drugs.
That’s why we need to read, the escape into a world that isn’t our own. A mini vacation from the real or challenges of the everyday. We read romances to feel loved in a lonely world. We read mysteries to prove the bad guys are caught and justice prevails. We read nonfiction to learn about things we don’t experience in our day-to-day lives. We read science fiction to know the future will be a better place. We read fantasy and fairytales to tell ourselves life gets better if we just believe in the unreal (if you want some life lesson on that see my fairy tale post lineup). Reading is the cheapest way to live out fantasies, go on a vacation, or experience thousands of different lives.
I wrote this post because I wanted to just give up on my writing, to just let the dream go and get a “real” full-time job. Most likely at some office, answering calls and wasting my life away as a cog in the machine. A small part of me knows the probability of making it big as an author is low, probably close to the odds of becoming the next Taylor Swift.
But I couldn’t, I sat down next to my mother, had dinner, and just listened to her fully normal, routine day. She’s retired now and works part-time to have extra spending money. She’s been a cheerleader, an alarm clock, a momager, and a positive light in my life since birth.
She’s sat through all the doctor’s appointments, all the principal office meetings, all the sports games, all the honor roll assemblies too. She was a high school cheerleader. An overly positive go-getter, she wasn’t like me, the gothic “dark” brainiac.
We don’t have a lot in common, but she’s there for me. Any time I needed her, even when I was away at college, she would talk me through it. She would sing me awake, in an attempt to motivate me on those bad health days. She would be just as proud of my athletic achievements as my academic ones. She knew in the way that moms always knew, that her dark, gothic, witchy daughter was going to figure it out. She made sure I had a place to land when the challenges overloaded me. She picked me back up when I didn’t want to go anywhere.
One of the best things she ever taught me was that if you aren’t happy, there's always a beautiful sunrise to start the next day. After all, a life without challenges isn’t real. Here are a few Sunrise/ Sunsets she's taken on our journeys, she loves them, I'd rather sleep in.
