Having learned how to read and write around the tender age of four, I began creating little fold-over paper books, which I also illustrated, distributing them to kids my age, both in my family and to classmates. At one point, I was selling these little books for a penny apiece.
Until Mama found out. " 'Tis better to give than to receive," she said.
(Daddy just smiled at his little entrepreneur!)
I look back on my life now - a life full of chasing and living my dreams, a life full of the memories of raising and helping to raise ten children (having born five and "marrying" five more) and of more than fifty grandchildren and great-grandchildren - and sharing stories, rhymes and bedtime ditties of my own creation, for 43 years. What better type of person to decide to write a book for children?!
Since my youth, I have kept diaries, journals and notebooks recording my life experiences and the beginnings (and sometimes the full drafts) of books I've dreamed of publishing. Many have been lost during this move or that, but I've always tried to replicate them in new journals. My bookcase houses the stuff of my own books.
In 1996, at the ripe old age of 42, I discovered computers and the new concept of the "personal website". I taught myself HTML code and created my first site that year. Since then, I have created and maintained nearly a dozen websites, spanning subject matter from personal and traditional philosophies to research on medical/health issues to theology/sermon topics, nearly all flavoured with a fair bit of humour. To date, I still maintain four of these sites, including my newest author site, "The Old Fossil Writes".
This first book, as well as three others, draws upon the memories of the most loving experiences I have of my own mother...with a bit of poetic license taken...and so is my homage to her. I only wish she was here to see it.
In all, I have found that there are at least six books residing in my soul. I intend to publish every single one, beginning with "Mama Always Said...I Love You More!' providing, as my Mama-in-law used to say, "Good Lord willin' and the creek don't 'rise!"