It is hard to live in a galaxy when everyone is looking for you and it means your life if they find you. This is my story or what I should say, my fictional story: Where the evil Suzair the Great wants a young boy because he found one of the all-powerful white Stone. When a man unknowingly finds the boy first, he finds the whole galaxy is gunning for his ship.

Stones’ Quest: In Search of its Master begins the tale of this great quest of the all-knowing Stones. Filled with mystery and magic, spaceships and spies, the story chronicles an ongoing war between good and evil, and one man’s journey to understand his own place in the universe.

Will they find the rest of the Stones that have the power to stop the evil from destroying the galaxy? Or will they be caught and destroyed before the quest is completed? Who will die and who will live? But, most important, how did the Stones come to leave the galaxy for so long? This is the question I want you to answer for me. Don’t help me unless you are a young adult or you know of one.

Just send me your explanation as to why the Stones left the galaxy for so many years. It will be posted online for a vote. I’m giving away a prize of $100.00 to the person who receives the most votes for their explanation. Here are the rules:

1. You need to join the Stones’ Quest fan club at www.stonesquest.com/history/
This way I can keep you up to date on the contest and future events.
2. Use your own imagination and come up with your ideas on why the Stones had to leave the galaxy.
3. The explanation needs to be under a thousand words.
4. Upon completion submit the article to me at larene@stonesquest.com. I’ll post it on Stumbleupon and digg.
5. The person with the most votes in combination of the two sites will win the $100.00. So I suggest you tell your friends to vote.
6. The cut off time for voting will be September 1st.
7. Only one entry per person.

This will be a prelude into the next contest that will begin in September. I’ll be giving away a Wii for the  grand prize.

People are starting to know me as a novelist. I’m surprised to learn how many people want or are trying to become an author of books. It surprises me because it wasn’t my goal to be an author. Before I wrote my first novel, I never ever thought about writing. Instead, I went to great lengths to avoid it.

From what I hear from other authors, I think my story is unique. Most people, I’ve spoken too thought about writing their story a lot. They planned out what they were going to write, the genre, and the outline of how the story unfolded. For me, my story is different. I accidentally discovered a story that was inside of me. Then I couldn’t’ stop it from coming out.

I’ve found people fascinated with this story on how I became an author, So I decided to write about it on my blog, rebuild shattered dreams. Maybe it might inspire someone to discover a hidden talent that they might have been buried deep inside, like me. Sometime, we have no idea what we can do until we have no choice but to walk through our fears and do it. This is what happened to me. I’m so grateful for the experience. It showed a side of me that I didn’t know existed.

Before I tell you my story, I need to point out one more thing. This is important to know. I found writing anything to be emotionally painful. In my book, “How to Rebuild Shattered Dreams,” I go into detail about why a simple note terrified me. Today, I’m going to tell something that I didn’t put in the book. How I was forced to face my fear of writing.

For five years of my life, I had been a real estate agent and enjoyed it. Finally at the end of my fourth year, I decided to get my real estate brokers license. After, I received it. I made the choice to go out on my own. For me, it was the smartest thing, I ever did. What happened next made it possible for me to deal with the changes that were about to take place in my life.

It was November 2000 and for the first time in my career, I had sold my entire inventory. It was strange to have no buyers either. In my area, November and December are traditionally our slowest months in real estate. Ever though, I have written and presented offers on Christmas Eve. This year, it was going to be different. I was tired and grateful to take a break.

Five days into my vacation, I had the most bizarre event take place in my life that has permanently changed my life. I woke up discovering that I couldn’t speak. My voice was gone. When I tried to force a whisper, it caused my lungs to go into long coughing spells. If I laughed, the coughing spells would appear. It sounded and felt like I was coughing up my lungs.

The problem didn’t make it easy for me to go out into public. I wasn’t sick. The doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with me. They just called it a virus assuring me that I would have to ride it out. Little did I know that it would take me ninety days for my voice to return and my lungs be able to take a deep breath again.

The winter was long and cold. We had little wind and storms in our area. When you live in the tops of mountains, you can easily get an inversion where the cold air is trapped to the floor of the valley. This happens when you have little wind or storms. Even if no one lives in the valley, it can happen. Our inversion spread from Provo, Utah to Pocatello, Idaho and it was thick.

I struggled to go outside and breath the air that winter. Never in my life had my lungs been a problem for me, so why was the winter of 2000 to 2001 different. My health problems trapped me inside a room in my home. I couldn’t be away from the humidifier or air purifiers without my lungs coughing to hard it could cause my bladder to have problems. They weren’t portable. So every morning, I picked a room and stayed there all day breathing fresh, moist air.

In November 2000, I did not have an email address and I don’t think I knew someone who did. Maybe, I did know someone. I just didn’t use them because I was terrified to write. I do know they weren’t as popular then as they are today. Either way, I had to write down my thoughts on a note pad if I wanted something. Remember, I told you earlier that I found writing emotionally painful and it terrified me.

This virus seemed to perfectly design to force me to face my fears. In the process, I discovered something very special regarding me. Those ninety days, I spent trapped in a room with a humidifier and air purifier has forever changed my life. It changed my career and how I view the world in away, I cannot ever go back…

This post is getting a little long. In my next post, I’ll tell you what happened, during those ninety days. My hope is it inspires you find something special about yourself. I’ll see you next time. Below are a couple of the books, I wrote because of this experience.

Have we hit bottom in real estate? Real estate is usually everyone’s biggest investment. So what is happening within the market? According to Fortune magazine, it has been the lowest in seventeen years. So what does this mean?

Let’s break it down and look at it. The most important buyers in real estate are the first time buyers. They stimulate production of new homes because they usually buy existing homes. For every new home that is built, you need a new person in the market to take an existing home. The demand for housing is what pushes up prices. According to Fortune magazine, the newbies in real estate are coming back. If you want to read more about it, here is the link to it.

The downward spiral in real estate we experienced in this country really hit California the hardest. Analysts are seeing some hope, however. In May, they had an 18% jump compared to May of 2007. Yet, they are not saying it is over. Prices took a beating, plummeting 35% during the same period, according to a report from the California Association of Realtors.

What is happening in California and Florida will come back. Americans love bargains. When the price is right, people will buy again. Jonas Lee, a principal of New York based Redbrick Partners, which buys distressed properties all over the country, says he’s watching California closely, but isn’t ready to jump into the dray just yet. When they do, you know the market has hit bottom.

This is why I think they are waiting. California still has too much inventory. The Santa Barbara County area has been particularly hard hit. You can read more by going to the link here.

The point is real estate is still a good investment. It’s like the stock market. The only difference is real estate takes longer to move up and down. When you need to liquidate, it takes longer than stocks and mutual funds. You really need to remember this and keep your long-term money in real estate if this is your favorite investment.

In some areas the real estate market is slowly moving up. “In May, existing homes gained a 2% to an annual rate of nearly 5 million. The National Association of Realtors said that the number of existing homes sold during May rose 2% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.99 million units in May from a level of 4.89 million in April.

“Analysts were expecting the sales rate to increase to 4.95 million last month, according to a consensus of analysts’ estimates gathered by Briefing.com.”

To read more of the article, here is the link here!

So what happens if you really want or need to sell your home? In my other articles, I’ll talk about how to dress up your investment to get the most from your home. I am a licensed real estate broker and I would like to give you some tips. See you in my next post: Ten ways to sell your home quickly.

On our local news the other night, they gave the national and local statistics on depression and suicides. It was disturbing to hear how high the numbers were. The numbers, I assume were based on people receiving help or those who have already committed or attempted suicide. What about the ones who are in denial or sitting on the edge?

It bothered me because I have been at both ends of the spectrum. As a child, I was very depressed and it was comfortable to be there. So what changed and how did I work myself out of this dark place. First, you need to know what caused the depression if you want to come out. For me, it happened at the age of four. My mother died and our father walked out on us. This experience plunged me into deep waters for survival.

Luckily, I was too young to understand how to end my life. My mother had taught me to pray before she left. Each night, I prayed for God to end my life. While other children were praying for a bike or something new. I wanted to stop breathing. The pain was too much for me, and I went deeper into depression every time I woke up.

So what happened? How did I come from such a dark beginning to a bright and wonderful life leaving all scars behind me? I did it without medication so I know exactly what steps I took. For the record, there isn’t a magic bullet. You can take steps to prevent yourself from getting in this state and keeping yourself out. Once, you get help.

I want to share what I did in hopes you find something helpful. The turning point in my life came unexpected and it showed me how scarred I was. I was an adult and my negative thought patterns were deeply entranced in my mind. In my book, How to Rebuild Shattered Dreams, I go into detail on how I got into this depression and how I came out. So here, I’m going to only give a highlight. If you want more information, there is always the book.

If you had asked me about depression years ago, I would’ve answered that I had never felt it. I wasn’t lying. What I’m saying is, I had never felt joy so I did not know the difference. How do you understand light, if you had never seen it?

This is what I discovered and I plan on covering it in the next four-blog articles. The plan is to break it down into small bits so you can see something useful to ingrain into your life. We are in denial not because we want to be. We are there because we do not know better or we’re afraid the truth might be unmanageable.

Before you can help yourself, you need to see where you truly are. This can be very frightening. At least, it was for me. Years ago, we had a son from his birth who always seemed angry. He had a big chip on his shoulder.

After weeks of trying different ideas, my husband, Jack came up an idea of taking our son to a mirror and not letting him leave until he had told himself twenty-five times that he loved Josh. After the first week, our son started to change.

For the next few paragraphs, I’m taking excerpts from my book.

In my amazement, Josh started to change. He became happier. One day, Jack invited me to see Josh repeat his words, I love Josh, twenty-five times. Grinning, Josh passed by as Jack smiled at me. Reaching a hand out to me, he asked, “Can you do it?”

Fear consumed me as I attempted to follow Josh. I said, “Sure, anyone can do that. It’s easy.” Before I could leave the doorway, Jack had a hold of my wrists and yanked me into the room. Leaving me in front of the mirror, he stood in the doorway and said, “You do it.”

As I stared at myself, I became even more afraid. The fear became so strong that I felt like Jack had just shoved me into a cage with a hungry tiger. I felt trapped, fear charging throughout every cell of my body. I looked at Jack with my face as white as a ghost. Not giving him notice, I charged him, expecting him to move.

He didn’t and I was so afraid. Not realizing what I was doing, I stepped on his thigh, attempting to climb over him. Jack grabbed a hold and pulled me down. With his arms wrapped around me, he easily brought me back in front of the mirror and repeated his words.

Seeing myself in the mirror, I fought to get away from his grip. Being only ninety-eight pounds, it was easy for Jack to hold me. He repeated his words and I pleaded with him to let me go. When he said no, I felt the invisible arms join him.

Being so familiar with Him, I pleaded with Him to help me get away from Jack. Instantly, I knew HE was was on Jack’s side as well. Looking at myself, I started to cry from the depths of my soul. By doing it, I saw in mind all the layer of shock that I had endured at the hands of others. For the first time, my soul felt the love from the invisible arms.

After being in Jack’s and my creator’s arms, I couldn’t get the vision of all the layers of scars out of my mind. What were they made from? How would i see them now for the first time? I had so many questions, not realizing what was being opened up to me. Hope was being breathed into my life, my soul, and my heart for the first time. It was a chance to rid myself of the pain I had endured for so many years. It started to consume me.

You have to see and embrace the fact you are depressed before you can change anything and get help. Next time, I want to talk about how to recognize the thought patterns that take you down the path towards depression. If you understand how to get there, you will know how to bring yourself back. Sign up for a update at the site www.Rebuild-Shattered-Dreams.com for the next installment.

How to Rebuild Shattered Dreams! It isn’t a secret story anymore. The book you see called How to Rebuild Shattered Dreams is what started this site. Along with the seminars and articles, you can read from here.

A truly heartfelt and enduring read!

How to Rebuild Shattered Dreams is a thoughtful, inspiring guide on how to succeed in life and heal deep, emotional scars from the past.

Author LaRene Ellis (Stones’ Quest series) details how she healed from own troubled past and lives her dreams to the fullest. Abandoned as a young child, LaRene was tossed from one relative to the next, enduring abuse along the way. She not only survived, but is now thriving and sharing her story to help others.

In this book, LaRene explains how she recovered from the emotional and physical problems she suffered in her childhood through basic, yet very effective laws. She offers invaluable information on how to heal from emotional or physical abuse, how to program the mind to be successful, how to change old thought patterns and behaviors to live a healthy, vigorous life, and much more!

LaRene Ellis proves it’s never too late to realize your dreams. This is truly a must-have for anyone seeking spiritual and emotional solace in life.

Her readers have requested seminars locally. They were so popular that she has moved them to the Internet. The seminar will probably be a once-in-a-lifetime event! The people signing up will receive a copy of the seminar and be able to ask questions. Everyone isn’t going to be able to attend each and every class, so they will receive a copy of each class they missed at the end of the twenty-eight weeks.
Sign up for updates now so you can be informed of when this event will happen! In the meantime, you can read her articles or order a copy of the book for yourself or friends. Click here to order.

It seems like you want more so I’m going to keep going. So I’ll add a few more paragraphs from my favorite article on the subject of color. The article was out of a magaize Called Heath – July 1982 by Leslie Kane.

In any given society, particular colors affect almost everyone in the same way. “Colors have a uniform effect within a Western European tradition, which includes Japan,” says Margaret Walch, director of the Color Association of the United States, which standardizes the 192 colors in current use by industry and government.

In general, dark colors strike us as evil and foreboding, while light colors seem not only cheerful but physically light as well. Bonnie Bender, color marketing manager at Pittsburgh Paints and an authority on color and psychology, reports that in an experiment testing the psychological effects of paint on worker productivity, researchers painted heavy boxes white and light boxes black. Workmen had considerable more trouble lifting the light black boxes than the heavy white ones.

Marcella Graham, a medical technologist, color consultant and interior designer, described an equally dramatic example of the use of color to lift depression and stimulate activity. Called in for a consultation on staff and patient apathy in a hospital, she found the whole place painted light and medium chocolate brown and two shades of grey green. Graham advised painting the hospital floor by floor, using pumpkin orange, strawberry pink, emerald green and lavender. (Simply putting in pink curtains or orange bedspreads produced its effect.) Patient response to the brilliant colors was immediate and positive. Elderly men shaved and dressed to get out of bed each day. Female patients began circulating and visiting in the halls and requested powder, combs, lipstick and stockings. Even staff morale picked up.

If colors exert such a powerful force on mental and physical health, it behooves us to know more about them.”

Next time, we will break down each color. I’ll start with this article and add research from other sources.

We continue with the article. Before I move on with it, I want to talk with you about color. The next part of the article we’ll be talking about different colors. I want to give you some detailed information regarding color that you might know about.

You know that each color has different colors within it to create the color. There are three colors that you can always count on being there. They are blue, pink, or gold and you call them undertones. One of the three colors will always be a part of the mix of colors to recreate what you are looking at. If you do not see it quickly, it’s okay. You have to be trained to see it and I’ll show you how in a few minutes.

Since we are going to be talking about red, I want to tell the difference between reds. A tomato red has gold in it. It does not go with the other reds. A tomato red needs to stand on it’s own. If you aren’t sure that you have a tomato red. Take the different colors out in the sun and if you find your eyes jumping between tomato red and a burgundy or a lemon yellow. You will see it yourself.

A lemon or a banana is a good measuring stick to use in finding out if you can gold in a color. The fruits will let you know immediately if you should put the colors together. After a few minutes, do you find yourself wanting to look away? Or does the tomato just stand out? How would you feel if the tomato was larger or matched the size of pink?

This is what happens when you put colors together with the wrong undertones. You can use blue and pink with gold. They are colors that stand alone. We know them as Periwinkle blue and peach. Remember this as we talk about colors.

Before I leave, let me tell you the secret on how to tell if a color has the undertone of gold or blue and pink. I like to wear a silver or white gold ring and a yellow gold ring on my hands. I try to do this in sunlight. If you place the two rings on a color and you find the yellow gold ring stands out, then you know it has blue and pink undertones in it. If the silver jumps out, then it mean you have gold undertones in the color.

If you find your eye jumping between the two colors, then you know that the two colors have both gold, blue, or pink as part of the mix. I hope this helps you.

Now, let’s go back to the article.
“If colors exert such a powerful force on mental and physical health, it behooves us to know more about them. Here is a spectrum of colorful facts.
RED – THE EXCITER
The red family includes everything from maroon to crimson to pink (although pink-red mixed with white seems to have properties all its own). Several years ago, Robert Gerard, then a doctor candidate at the University of California, Los Angles (UCLA), studied the physiological reactions of people in a colored room, measuring blood pressure, respiration rate, heartbeat, muscle activity, eye blinks, and brain waves. The rate of activity in all these indicators went up in a red room. Brain-wave activity, which showed an immediate response, stayed high for more than 10 minutes. People who were already anxious found red even more disturbing than those who were previously calm. When the same people went into a blue room, all the physical indicators went down.”

If you are using red in your room, it works well in a room that is normally cooler than the rest of the house. As you can see above, people will feel warmer in a room that is normally colder than the rest of the house.

My daughter has a room in her home where it always stays colder than than the rest of the house. The room has a lot of floor to ceiling windows and it gets very little direct sunlight. The walls are a dark blood red, which means it has a blue undertone to it. The floors are wood and it works great in this room.

Once a group of our friends stayed in condos at a resort. One of the condos had red walls, red carpet, and drapes. Everyone staying in that condo kept coming over to ours, complaining that they wanted to choke everyone in the condo. They would come to ours to calm down and eventually return after a couple of hours angry and frustrated. It didn’t make sense to them. After I learned this, it made a lot of sense to me.

Here is a little more information that I found in other books regarding red:

“The lens of the eye has to adjust to focus the red light wavelengths; their natural focal point lies behind the retina. Thus, red is literally a come-hither color. It advances, making red objects seem nearer than they really are. A bossy color, it grabs the attention and overrules all surrounding colors. The way it says, ‘Here I am!’ makes it stand out in a crowd—whether as a party dress, an official’s red cap, or a package on a supermarket shelf. Its consciousness and power to command makes it the obvious safety color you’ll find in stop signs and traffic lights.
The attributes of red are almost all superlatives. Red has the longest wavelength and lowest energy of all the visible lights. It is thought to be the first color perceived by babies or by any person long exposed to light, the first hue to re-intrude on awakening sense. This physical phenomenon is reflected in language where it is among the oldest color names, the first to appear after distinctions between light and dark. Of the warm colors, it is the hottest and nearest in wavelength to infrared, which actually produces the sensation of heat. It is the fastest-moving color in terms of catching the eye, and has the greatest emotional impact. Red sits at the top of the rainbow.
Red shift refers to the change in the frequency of waves of sound or light, which occurs when the source and receiver are in motion relative to one another. It is most often experienced in the sound of passing sirens. When the source and the receiver are approaching each other, just as sound becomes higher pitched, light becomes bluer. It becomes redder when source and observer are moving apart.”

Next time, we will talk about pink. It’s a big color.

I apologize for the wait of the power of colors series. We are going to talk about the color pink. Some people think the color pink is a form of red. In a way, they are right. Yet, pink has elements within it that is totally different than red. The color pink is soothing and calming while red causes the opposite effect. As you read what is in Leslie’s article, you will see for yourself.

PINK THE PACIFIER

Pink is restful: it can even convey a purity that makes people reluctant to desecrate it. In a study done by graduate students at Texas Wesleyan College, Fort Worth, children kept in different- colored corrals were given a variety of playthings, including paints and crayons. The children eagerly decorated all the corral walls except the pink ones, which remained virtually spotless. When the researchers regrouped the children to see if these youngsters who painted the most graffiti would have differently in another group, the results were confirmed: Pink walls effectively kept off graffiti.

A study of 153 men at the U. S. Naval Correctional Center showed that a particular shade known as Baker-Miller pink can curb aggressive tendencies and actually reduces physical strength. When prisons began using Baker-Miller pink, some were able to lower the number of guards on duty. At latest count, says Schauss, more than 1400 hospitals and correctional institutions in America are using pink for its tranquilizing effects.
“The calming effect of pink begins in about two and half seconds,” says Schauss. “It is noticeable in ten to fifteen minutes. In forty-five minutes, it is fully realized. The younger you are, the faster it works on you.”
And like any drug-type reaction, pink responses can get out of hand. For example, pink walls should not be used on psychotics, Schauss says. The pink color relaxes psychotics outwardly, but their minds remain disturbed. This creates a dissonance, which disturbs them, still further.

In other studies, the color pink was found to animate intelligence and respect. The color peach has a different effect on us. People add gold to the color pink to create peach. The gold removes the calming effect of pink. Research has shown gold or yellow stimulates someone to action. If you add it to pink, then you have altered the emotional effect. You have toned down the yellow by adding a calming color and there is nothing wrong with it.

To understand the difference between the two colors is known to be hard. If you want to know the difference between pink and peach, you can use gold and silver. I like to wear a gold and silver ring on different hands. This way, when I happen to see a piece of clothing in a store, the rings help me see if gold is mixed in with the pink.

I place the two rings on the color. If gold jumps out to me, then I know there is no gold within the color pink. If my silver ring jumps out to me, then I know someone has added gold to the color.

Sometimes, your eye jumps back and forth trying to land on a ring. When this happens, it means there is gold in the color pink, but not enough to make it a true peach. You might find it interesting to test it yourself. The color pink is a powerful color and it helps to understand it.

The last time, we talked. I was trapped in a room within my house. My constant campaigns were a humidifier and air purifier. Quickly, my bedroom became boring even though I had a television. I watched movie and read books. In the past, they had been a wonderful way to spend my time. Now, I found myself becoming quickly bored of the constant diet of them. My mind craved for something different. What? What could I do when I couldn’t speak a word or leave my new friends.

In real estate, I was constantly on the go physically and I had to use my mind daily. You are always thinking about how you are going to sell someone’s house or help a buyer find their dream house. With nothing to think about, I was lost. This was a new feeling and it left me frustrated and panicky. What if I never get my voice back?

Years ago, I met a woman who had lost her voice and all she could do was whisper. It was something permanent with her. The thought seemed to torment me. Would I become like her? I needed to think about something else. But what?

It was nice to see my children. I’m a mother of six. They were all adults at this time so I was really left me to myself. My oldest son didn’t live too far from me and he would stop by often on his way home from work to see how I was doing. It surprised him to find me one day in my office with my air purifier and humidifier. It took work to move everything back and worth.

He wondered, what could I possibly being doing in there? I couldn’t use the phone and I had no email address. Quickly, he started to pressure me into divulging my activities. Successfully, I sidestepped them. I didn’t want to tell him why I was there. It embarrassed me to tell him that I was writing a story. I started to dread him stopping by. I was having fun and I didn’t want my newly created world to be shattered by him telling me that I couldn’t do it.

I would like to take you back to why I decided to move my friends into my office. After a couple of day in my bedroom, I decided to move into my office, looking for something to keep me from going stir crazy. It was worth the work of moving everything, if I could find something to entertain my mind that would allow me to avoid my thoughts. The woman I talked about earlier had permanently lost her voice and could never speak above a soft whisper. I remember her story was surrounded by a mysterious illness. My situation was so unique it reminded me of her. It concerned that I would end up like her?

I wanted to do something that would help me not think about her. So I moved into my office finding nothing that I could do without my voice. Shortly after being in my office, an idea came to me. What if I could write a story? Immediately, I went into a panicked state. The thought had triggered my past emotional pain. (If you want to know why I had a fear to write, you can read about it my book, How to Rebuild Shattered Dreams.)

The panicked feeling dissipated when I promised to never allow anyone to read it. Secluded in my office, I felt protected and the story seemed to ward off my negative thoughts. Little did I know that I was about to embark on the most fantastic journey. It was beyond anything I had ever imagined.

I had no clue that I was a creative person and my mind was starved to be one. Since, I had never allowed myself to ever think or do anything with writing. I used to make fun at being a writer. My favorite phrase was, “Why write it when a picture could replace a thousands words.” If it weren’t for this experience, I would’ve never discovered a hidden talent, love and passion for something that I had thought to be unattainable.

One thing, I did years ago before this experience. I took some classes on how the mind worked. We learned that our thoughts are always vibrating and moving. This is why sometime, we can be talking with someone and we both get the same idea or thought at the same time. We both happened to latch onto the same vibration as the thought. So our minds had the same thought.

I wanted to be a receiver of a new thought. Today, I needed it to be a story. So I asked my mind to connect with a wavelength of one and bring it to me. Being a mediating state, I kept my mind clear, waiting for something to happen. How long I sat there, I do not know. I just sat there until it happened.

“Time Out, I hate time Out.” The words started to flow into my mind and I immediately started to type them into the computer. The story changed my life and I dearly love it. This post is getting long. So I’ll continue the story in part 3. If you want to keep up or start from the beginning of my journey to becoming an author. You can subscribe to my email update; you’ll receive the previous post and the future ones.

The words of the story started to pour out and I quickly became entrenched in these people’s lives. I knew a paragraph ahead where the story was going and there always seemed to be a new twist that I wasn’t expecting. There were no preconceived ideas on where the story was going. I just let it flow. If I had planned on writing it for someone else to read, I wouldn’t have made it past “Time out. I hate time out.”

There was another factor that would have stopped me from writing the story if I had known before hand. When I finished writing my story, I was shocked to learn it was placed in the Sci-Fi genre of literature because it took place in another galaxy. I do not like mythical creatures and wierd monsters so I had always shyed away from reading Sci-Fi. Yet, I dearly love Star Wars. They are no mythical creatures or monsters in it. George Lucas wrote a story of a struggle between good and evil that took place in another galaxy and so did I.

Each day, I found myself spending eight hours a day in my office writing. At night, I found my condition, making it hard to sleep. The experienced taught me that I like to take a deep breath in my sleep. This would cause me to wake up coughing hard and it sent me running to the bathroom. My bladder didn’t do well when I went into these coughing spells. For some reason, I would never just cough once. It would go on and on. Then I would be quiet for a period of time.

For some reason, my coughing would happen around five in the morning. I would lay there trying to go back to sleep but my mind would wonder where the story was going next. So I would get up and move my humidifier and air purifier to my office. This shocked my family. I’m not a morning person and seldom was awake at sunrise. They are really beautiful. I never appreciated sunrises until I started to write.

My oldest son lived less than a mile away and he would stop by to see how I was doing. When he found me in my office working on something mysterious, he became suspicious. He wanted to know what I was doing that seemed to make me so happy. I tried to discourage his interest but he seemed to be relentless.

When I told him, he wanted to read my story. There was no way. I wasn’t going to let anyone destroy my newly created world, by laughing at me. The joy of living in my secret world was wonderful and I was weary of criticism. Day after day, he would stop by and ask to read my story. Finally, I broke down because he promised not to laugh. He had never done anything to break my trust in the past so I let him into my world.

Each day, he stopped by to exchange pages. To my amazement, he was excited to know what was going to happen next. It wasn’t only me. With the holidays coming up, we met as a family. Everyone was there but one son who was living out of the country. At the table, my oldest son started to ask me about the history of these people. Where did they come from? What was there culture like? Why was it so different from ours? Without thought, I knew and would write it down on my pad of paper that I carried everywhere with me. He happened to be at the opposite end of the table. So everyone read my answers as the paper traveled to him. I still didn’t have a voice.

My second to the oldest son asked to read the story. He shocked everyone. This boy or man had never read anything for fun. He made fun of those who did. He read but for information only. I trusted him and made him promise to not share it with others outside the family.

A couple of days later, I heard from my second son. One morning, he called to leave a message on the answering machine that he was angry with me. The night before he had stayed up until two in the morning reading. He was upset to hear the alarm clock go off at six in the morning, telling him it was time to get up for work. He was caught in the intrigue of the story and discovered how fun reading for pleasure could be.

They pushed me to publish the story. Yeah! I wasn’t going there and I refused. It took me two months to get through the first book. Instantly, I knew there was another one. So I continued writing because I had no voice. The first of the year is your prime time to get listings in real estate. With no voice, I was still trapped in my office. So it meant that I wouldn’t be able to bring in new money for about six months with my pipeline dry.

My sons and their wives wouldn’t let up on getting the story published. I finally consented to doing it. Shortly, I mysteriously stopped coughing and I could take deep breath just fine. My voice was back so I could go back to real estate.

To keep my promise to my children, I sent the first book to a local small publisher who accepted manuscripts as a contact. I hoped they would tell me that the story would make a lousy book.

Instead, they told me I had a very strong story. They were going to turn it down because it wasn’t written in story form. They were interested in seeing my new writings. This wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I wanted them to tell me that the story was weak. I knew it wasn’t written in story form and they would refuse it.

I was disappointed because I knew their answer meant work. For the first time, I really wanted to lie to my children but I couldn’t do it. Everything, I had ever taught my children were on the line. Could I practice what I preach? This was the hardest situation, I had ever been in.

When I did the research on my story for genre, I had written fiction, Sci-Fi/ fantasy for young adults. This is the hardest arena to get into. There were so many books to compete with. They are hard to market too. What had I done? My kids were watching me expecting me to live up to everything I taught them about not quitting. In my heart, I didn’t want to get started but I had promised them. So I put my heart and soul into it, hoping they would appreciate my sacrifice.

This is what kept me taking one more step. You probably don’t want to know about the rest. So I won’t go into how I got it published. It wasn’t easy. This is how my career got started. My example to my children kept me picking up myself and moving forward. Many times, I had wished that I never let my oldest son read it. Then I read an email from an excited fan and it gives me the courage to take another step forward. I would’ve never published it or started a new career, if had kept it to myself.

You can read the first chapter at Stones Quest history.