What Lies Within.

I am sure many of you have seen this many times before, I personally never get tired of watching it. The callousness of the judges and the people toward this frumpy looking woman, then the change once she sings that first note.

What I see when I watch this clip is not just a social problem, but a metaphor for the soul.

To me this proves that we are not just our crust. We are much much more! Inside each and every one of us lies a soul with infinite talent, beauty and worth. A soul that has the capacity to change the world, to influence people and shine so brightly at times that others can't help but notice.

Susan Boyle brought more than cheers to that audience, she brought change. She made us look inward for a moment and helped us see the beauty that lies within each of us.

Never doubt we are Divine! Never.

Silvina harvested her first Love Potato on Framville today

Blogging is not the only way I shamelessly promote my book. Facebook, Twitter, and a slew of other networking things are great ways of promotion. Not just for books, but for everything!
I know some of you get annoyed when someone tries to push their business on you while you are trying to shoot the breeze with your long lost elementary school friends, and your second cousin twice removed—but it happens.
It smells a little bit of telemarketing, you may say. But such is life, you find a way to reach a large number of people for free and WHAM! You get someone trying to sell you something or…in my case, trying to promote something. 
Bragging, promoting and even selling on Facebook, I get. What I don’t get is Farmville and Fronteerville (I didn’t even know about the latter until a few days ago). Perhaps someone should educate me on those things and their obscure messages.
I’m inclined to bet that half the people that post from Farmville have no idea what’s going on, or that they are doing it.
Just the other day I was in a hurry. I was checking my e-mail right before starting school (always a bad idea), and I made the mistake of leaving my Facebook page open on the desktop. I walked away and got my kids started on their math, and forgot all about the computer and leaving that page open.
Later I saw my three year old banging on the computer keyboard and all kinds of things popping up on Facebook as she did so. One of those things was an invitation to Fronteerville. Time seemed to slow down as her little hand was suspended above the keyboard and she smiled at me knowingly.
I told her to “Step away from that computer”, but that only seemed to confirm to her what her next move should be. I ran to the computer as her hand lowered one more time, but it was too late!
I desperately tried undo the damage, but there seemed to be no way out. There was no decline button, no escape at all from Fronteerville. There were only two choices, accept or enter. I clicked the X and got out of Dodge—hopefully for good.
So now, you should thank me. Because you will not be seeing any cryptic Fronteerville entries from me—only my shameless book promoting!

Judge tenderly of me.

I don't want to wake up at six every morning! I've always been a night owl, not an early bird. But my children have turned me into an early bird because they are night owls, and they sleep in until 7 or 8 am. This gives me exactly two hours to write!

This time is precious for me, not only do I get to unload this story on to my computer's memory, but I also get to be alone...all alone. I don't even turn on the lights! I just sit here and write by the light of my screen.

While I wait and wait and wait for the next step in the publishing world to take place, I have been writing the second book in my series, called "LIVING SOUL".

This story--I thought--would be easier to write, since I had to pretty much figure out what happened in this part of the story, before I finished the first one. Oh... it was hard to focus on the first novel and get that done, before I jumped into this one. I wrote bits and pieces of it here and there, when I couldn't restrain myself.

But now, that VEILED is done and third in line (I'm told) to be published, I am having a hard time with Living Soul. Inspiration is not really a problem, I make sure I wake up and inspire myself by drinking a hot sip of mate.




The trouble seems to be rooted more in that innate insecurity that we all feel at times. Emily Dickinson said it best, when she wrote:


"THIS is my letter to the world,
That never wrote to me,—
The simple news that Nature told,
With tender majesty.

Her message is committed 5
To hands I cannot see;
For love of her, sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me!"

Parallel Story

There is a whole other side to the story behind the story. And that is the story of Mack and our Homeschooling journey. We do a type of homeschool called "Thomas Jefferson Education" (TJED). It is based on the premise of Classics and Mentors, just like the education of Thomas Jefferson.

I've always known that educating my oldest would not be as easy as loading him on a school bus every morning and sitting him down to homework every evening after soccer.
He has ADHD and Aspberger's, making it virtually impossible for him to focus in a public school environment. So while he was still in first grade I started looking of other options. A friend suggested I read "A Thomas Jefferson Education" by Oliver DeMille, and after I did, I realized that that would be the only way to give Mack an education.

I've always been a great fan of reading the "Classics" in literature, I myself have had the privilege of learning from the classics, so I knew that it would work.
There's a saying in Spanish, "Del dicho al hecho hay largo trecho", which translated means: From saying to doing, there is a long road.
Homeschooling is not easy, especially when you have to shed so many preconceived notions about how schooling should be done. Here I had to trust the process, that if you "inspire and not require" your child will willingly learn to love learning.

As you can imagine, this is not something that happens in a week or a month--it takes years and it's been a bumpy ride. But I've learned a few things along the way.
One, you need mentors. So if you can't be a mentor, find one.
My sister-in-law Heidi, came to my rescue when we were just getting started. She took Mack on Fridays and played Math games with Mack and her kids. She loves math, so she was the perfect mentor for him.
Heidi got him out of his mental math block and freed up the way for me to do math again with him.

Then we had to tackle reading. This I could mentor him in, because I love to read.
I started to read to him out loud every day, from a children's classic. We read "Black Beauty" first, because he was taking Horseback riding lessons. Then we read "The Chronicles of Narnia" all of them!
He started reading on his own, books like "Ready Freddy" and "The Magic Tree House" and from there he jumped into "The Lightning Thief" and "Fablehaven". We still read books out loud, and we are currently reading "Johnny Tremain".

The last issue with school that I had to address was his complete refusal to write, and this is where my book comes in. As you can imagine a lot of these things have happened simultaneously for us, and writing has been one of the these things.
It was incomprehensible to me how he could hate to write, because I've always enjoyed writing. Right at the same time I started reading Oliver and Rachael DeMille's follow up book called "Leadership Education: The Phases of Learning". Here they give those trying to educate a recipe, their recipe. They say "you, not them" meaning if you want them to do something, you do it. If you want them to play the piano--you play the piano every day. In short, model the behaviour that you want them to have.

This gave me the courage to work on a dream of mine, that elusive dream "that one day I'll write a book". I always thought that I would have to put that dream on hold until I was retired or had all my kids in school! Well... that was not going to happen now, so I decided to start.
Every time I sat down to work on my book I would tell Mack, "I love working on my book! It's so much fun to make up stuff and write it down.". Yea...I laid it on really thick, but it worked!

A few months ago he came up to me and said: "Mom, I want to write a book too. Will you publish me, if I write a book?"
I told him that I most certainly would, and he has been writing on his own; full sentences at a time! I know that this might not sound too miraculous for you, but it is for me.

For him to sit down and willingly and happily to pick up a pencil and write is nothing short of a miracle! It is a thing of beauty that brings tears to my eyes.
If nothing else, this alone makes this journey worth it.

The rest of the Story

I first got the idea for Veiled while reading the scriptures one morning. Yea... I know it sounds very churchy, but it's the truth, so...there.
I was in fact reading about pre-mortal life, something that us LDS (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) people believe in.

I wondered what it was like, to be there in the Spirit World, waiting for our chance to live. I wondered how we might have felt at the thought of crossing the veil and forgetting all we knew. All our loved ones, all our knowledge, all about God and Heaven....

That's when I saw them. The two main characters standing before this great mass of whiteness (made that up, no one knows what the veil looks like). They were holding hands, they loved each other, they wanted to be together but they knew that as soon as they stepped through they would be born into this life and forget!
They were looking at each other for the last time, wracking their brains trying to figure out how they were going to remember...

From that moment on the story spilled out. It was like I had just turned on the faucet full blast, and I only had a teaspoon to fill my bucket. I immediately wrote the last chapter of my book by hand.

I set up a schedule for writing, because I have a life--a very full life, complete with three homeschooled children and a husband. I only wrote for two hours a day, at first during nap time. When that was done away with, and I grieved its loss, I started waking up two hours earlier--not an easy task for me.
When the story was done, I started learning about the publishing industry.

Fortunately for me, my great friend Naomi Delatorre--also a writer and a blogger (www.organicmotherhoodwithcoolwhip) and a homeschooler--patched me through a blogger friend of hers. Swatti had just recently been picked up by a publishing house www.TreasureLineBooks.com , and was kind enough to introduce me.

So that--my friends--is the rest of the story.

I skipped a lot of parts, like the many friends and family members who kindly read my manuscript and still are reading it, so it could be the best.
So thanks Mom, Naomi, Jen McG., Erin C., Allison B., Allison N., Lexi M., Brigitte H.(I hope you guys read my book for book club--I'll host!), both my brothers and the girls (Ally H., Isabelle M. and Stephanie W.) who participated in my target audience experiment. And of course to my hubby, who is my rudder,the one who steers me in the right direction and slows me down (in a good way).

There is parallel part to this story as well, but I'll save that for another entry.

Thank you! Thank you! for your warm congratulatroy facebook comments, they mean a lot to me! And thank you Linda Boulanger for picking me up!

Edited Part III

After the whole camp was up, dressed, and fed they mounted their horses and set off to meet the Dauphin.

I kept a sharp lookout for those around her that might show the slightest sign of treachery. But I didn’t sense anything, not until we got to our destination. The Dauphin, was surrounded by the type of people who said one thing, but thought quite another.

After some waiting, Joan at last was invited in to see the Dauphin—having been warned beforehand by Valerie that a trick would be played on her—Joan was ready for anything.

Sitting on a throne at the end of the room was a man, I quickly discerned his thoughts, and knew that he was deceiving her. In fact all those present were draped in the same aura of deceit.

Most of them hid their thoughts quite well, and some of them were giddy with the fun of the trick and their thoughts were easy enough to discern.

“Joan” I whispered in her ear as she entered the room. “The man sitting on that throne is not the Prince you are looking for. The real Dauphin hides in the crowd.” I told her and she set out to look for the man through the crowd. But she had never known or seen this Dauphin, so it was up to me to guide her through the sea of strange faces.

Hidden in the shadows I saw a man, who was dressed as any other man in the group, but this man’s thoughts were racing, he seemed nervous and had a shroud of pride around his aura. He caught my interest so I waited, then a thought escaped him and I caught it.

“What? She does not go straight to the throne? She has never seen me, how could she know?” He thought, as he retreated further into the shadows.

“Here!” I shouted to Joan, who immediately turned toward the sound of my voice.

“Your Dauphin is dressed as a common man, and he stands here.” I pointed to the man.

She cut through the crowd deliberately now, making a straight line for the spot where I hovered over the prince. He looked ashen and beads of perspiration were forming on his forehead.

Joan's eyes were riveted on the man I was pointing to her, and made no sound as she bowed to him. Gasps were heard throughout the room, the Dauphin himself stood frozen with his mouth agape.

There was complete silence for a moment, “I’m at your service.” She humbly said to her prince.

“How did you know…?” The dauphin could not finish. She made no reply, she feared being miss-interpreted.

The crowd gathered around her and the Dauphin helped her to her feet.

“Well done Tess!” Valerie exulted as she flew to my side. “I knew you could do it!”

“I'm afraid that this test was easy. In fact, I'm pretty sure that this has sealed her fate." I whispered to Valerie, for fear that Joan might hear me. "This miraculous display, may have won her the support of some, but it has also stirred the jealousies of others."

Sarah Brightman's Album cover

I often listen to www.pandora.com ,it's an online free radio that plays the music you like. I draw a lot of my inspiration for my writing from Celtic music. My personal favorites are Hayley Westerna (I uploaded one of her songs in one of my earlier posts) and Lorena McKennitt. Lots of other artists pop up as well when you listen to Pandora radio, so that's when I saw this. I first approached the computer because I liked her singing, and I wanted to see who was singing. Then I saw the cover! I loved it! If I could choose a cover for my book today it would be this one. There are only a few things I would change about this, her tiara, I would make that to look more like an aura...not a halo, an aura--brightness emanating from her.

I have other ideas as well, but this has my favorite colors and is so beautiful... like her singing!