Dearest Readers,
Hello! Greetings! Happy 2017!!! No, I did not fall off the face of the earth as someone recently asked me while I was grocery shopping. My last post was in November 2016 because my husband and I closed on a newly built home in Cary, N.C. (Chatham County). We closed on the home before Christmas 2016, packed up our apartment, and spent a weekend and a day moving our belongings from one residence to another. Now we're unpacking boxes and are waist high in packing paper. Christmas was a blur. So sorry to friends and family; however, I only had time to send cards to my mother and brother. Thankfully, my mother completed the Christmas meal or my husband and I might have been having peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Now we are surrounded by boxes and waist high mounds of packing paper! Insanity at its finest!! I have been so stressed with this monumental life change that I broke out in a rash on my face which looks hideous, but what is one to do? The rash happens when I am under major stress and is my body's way of telling me to slow down, set up part of my home office, and write a blog post so I feel like I am accomplishing something in my writing career!
No surprise that I was sound asleep at midnight when the world rocked in 2017. I am on my way to getting myself somewhat organized and functioning again in a home office which is great because I have spent the last two years writing from our kitchen table because we had no room in the apartment for me to have any kind of an office. For starters, I am considering holding a second book giveaway on the website called Goodreads for my first self-published title, Brave Soul Rising: Tales From The Trenches of An Uncharmed Life. It's about making an unwise choice to marry a really awful guy when I was twenty-one years of age, enduring a marriage chock full of domestic violence, leaving my first marriage, finding a job in the corporate world to make a living, and then utilizing my teaching degree to work as a seventh grade Language Arts and Social Studies teacher in a volatile inner-city school. North Carolina teachers especially those in their first year of teaching will find it enlightening and occasionally heart-breaking. Honestly, I think all members of the N.C. State Board of Education should read it particularly if many of them are wondering why teachers are particularly challenged in North Carolina and anyone who wishes to have some semblance of understanding of why so many teachers leave the profession.
Additionally, I will also be making an appearance and speaking at my hometown library in Kernersville, North Carolina on March 2nd, 2017. I will be chatting with members of The Kernersville Friends of the Library Book Club about why I wrote the book, the book's themes, the decision to self-publish, and the trials and tribulations of women who find themselves in a domestically violent/abusive relationship along with the realities of working in the corporate world and the utterly fascinating, calamitous experiences I encountered during my first year teaching at an inner-city school in North Carolina. Also, I am hoping to get the word out about my book to women's shelters, book clubs, and many teachers in the area. So while I am learning my way around Cary and Chapel Hill, N.C., unpacking, and shopping for shower rods, towels, and soap dishes, I will hopefully meet new people and dedicated readers who may be interested in checking out my book or having me come to speak with their group or club. Sometimes I also Skype with book clubs from other states. Here's to the new possibilities in 2017!!
Best,
Grace
(Amy)
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