Have you ever wondered how your life could change if you wrote a novel?

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.

You can link to part two from here.

People have been talking about placing novels on the Internet. What do you think about it? Here is the beginning of a copyrighted and published novel for young adults ages 10-17. Read the first couple of pages and you tell me if you would rather read it on the Internet or in print form. I would like your comments. It starts:

The Journey Begins

“Timeout!” Jasper threw himself onto his bed. “I hate timeout!” He shouted while burying his head in his pillow. “I’m always the one who gets timeout! Buster never gets sent to his room. I think Mom likes him better than me. I’m seven years old. I’m not as young as he always treats me!” The pillow muffled his yells so he wouldn’t get in more trouble, but he quickly found it hard to breathe. Rolling over, he looked around his room. The fleet of models that decorated his room looked crisp and invincible, but they didn’t seem to care about his plight.

Reaching out, he pulled one of his favorite models off the shelf. It was a miniature Star Screamer that his father had given him only a few weeks ago. He had been really excited because it was a bigger model than the ones he had seen in the commercial center in town. It was about ten inches long with more details than his previous ones. It was surprisingly lightweight for its size, and if you touched a spot on the underbelly of the ship, the main bay doors would snap open. It had come with a small transport that could fit in the main bay, but it wasn’t in there now. Buster probably stole it, he thought to himself.

Right now, nothing would have made Jasper feel better than to see Buster grounded to his room for a week. Jasper ran his fingers over the sleek silver ship and swooshed it over his head a few times, wondering what it would take to have a different life than the one he had. Where they lived made it hard to have friends, and his best friend, Johnny, had moved away yesterday. Now he only had his brother and sister to play with, and there was no way he wanted to play with his brother. He and Buster didn’t always see things the same way.

“Now I won’t have any friends at all,” Jasper whispered to himself.
Today he was really feeling the pain of his loss. When his parents had moved out to the countryside, the idea of having lots of trees and grass seemed exciting. The only other family that lived within walking distance was Johnny’s. They had a small farm about a mile away. Jasper had met Johnny on the first morning he had walked out to the transport to go to school. Johnny had smiled at him with a face full of freckles, and the two boys became instant friends.

Living away from the city had seemed an adventure with Johnny. The two of them had their own secret world away from the other kids at school. Now he felt alone.

I wish Johnny’s father didn’t get a job transfer to the other planet. I’m going to miss him, he thought while he put the model back on the shelf. Johnny told him they would be moving closer to a military base. “He’ll be seeing the real thing. Star Screamers and Galaxy Creepers,” whispered Jasper.

Going back to his bed, he stared at the ceiling. Jasper threw his arm up over his eyes, trying not to cry. I miss my friend. I’ll never find anyone like Johnny, thought Jasper as a few tears escaped the corners of his eyes.

Suddenly he heard a strange voice whisper in his ear, “JASPER, I NEED YOU.”
Jasper sat up with a start, expecting to see someone in the room. There was no one. I must have imagined it, he thought, as he wiped his last tear with his sleeve. Dismissing the voice, Jasper allowed himself to fall onto his pillow.

When he put his arms over his eyes, he heard, “JASPER, I NEED YOU! HURRY! COME TO ME.”
This time Jasper jumped from his bed and called out. “Who are you?”
“A FRIEND,” the voice answered hypnotically. “I NEED YOU. I’M IN TROUBLE.”
“Where are you?” asked Jasper.
“I’M OUTSIDE. COME TO ME NOW. HURRY.”

Jasper ran to the window and plopped knee-first on the cushions and small pillows that were in the window seat. As he did, he felt his knee hit something hard. Jasper reached down and moved the pillows. He found his galactic atlas. He had left it there after giving up on his homework about the history of the Ellisarius Galaxy. Jasper picked up the book and tossed it to the floor. Rubbing his knee, he looked back out the window, searching for something.

It all seemed the same. They had a backyard with the meadow right behind it. He saw no one outside, so where did the voice come from? He surveyed the grove of trees that were behind the meadow and they stretched off into the distance.

The grove was the place Johnny and he had spent hours making up adventures about alien planets, moons and galaxies. Jasper was very familiar with the meadow and the grove, being it was their secret place to play. To see them, Jasper’s heart ached, and his anger flared in retaliation. He hated the meadow now. Clenching his fist, he thought, Why should I get timeout for being angry, anyway? No one cares that Johnny is gone.

Jasper was about to leave but decided to search the whole area behind his house again. Standing, he felt confused and embarrassed.  I’m hearing voices, he surmised. Jasper stepped back to leave when something caught his eye. Quickly, he leaped onto the pillows and pressed his nose up against the window.

Out of the sky came a flying object with fire and smoke shooting out the back. Jasper watched it plunge across his view, eclipsing the planet Suzair’s two moons. He gasped as he realized that the strange fireball was going to crash into or behind his grove of trees.

He held his breath as the burning object disappeared behind the grove. Plumes of dust and dirt from the impact rose high into the air. It had definitely been a ship. Jasper waited to see if the trees caught on fire. It was then he heard the voice again.

“JASPER, HURRY TO THE TREES. THEY ARE COMING! I NEED YOU NOW.”

Jasper was frozen, mesmerized by the scene. “JASPER!” Suddenly, the voice became his world. He felt consumed by peace and reassurance, and he knew that he had to move immediately.
He ran to his door, leaving the room. Swiftly, he moved down the stairs to the main floor and bolted for the back door, not giving a second thought to the fact that his mother, in the kitchen, would surely see him. At that moment, he didn’t care. Everything around him seemed to be blocked from his mind.

As luck would have it, he shot past her just as she opened up the door to the refrigerated pantry. As she dug around for something cold to drink for lunch, she happened to move a container that made a loud scraping sound. She never even heard her youngest son run through the kitchen and out the back door.
Outside the house, he knew instinctively where he was going and what he had to do. Keeping his eyes fixed on the smoke that was swirling behind the trees up into the sky, he entered the meadow.

Buster exited the shed in time to see Jasper cross the backyard. He seemed a little surprised to see his brother but said nothing. Buster figured Jasper had sweet-talked his mother into ending the timeout early. It never occurred to Buster that Jasper was outside without permission.

Now Jasper was out in the meadow. He searched for rocks and the stream that ran through the meadow. Jasper found the flow of water meandering in its shallow bed and stopped. He tried to slow his ragged breathing as he searched for his favorite place to leap across the water. The stream was not very wide at this place, but it was deceptively deep. He made the jump and was caught by a blinding white light. The glow totally surrounded and blocked his view.

“JASPER!” came the voice again. He heard, “THERE IS A WHITE STONE AT YOUR FEET. DO NOT STEP ON IT, BUT PICK IT UP. IT WILL PROTECT YOU FROM OUR ENEMIES.”

The light dissipated and he blinked a couple of times as a white Stone came into view. Without thought, he picked it up and slipped it into his pocket. Then he heard the voice urge him forward towards the grove of trees. For some reason, he felt that he would be safe there. Danger was starting to fill his heart.

With no memory of the white Stone, Jasper ran into the grove of trees. There, he stopped to catch his breath. Finding himself tired, Jasper leaned against a nearby tree, listening to his beloved grove of trees.
There’s something different, thought Jasper as his breathing became regular.

In the past, the trees housed a numerous amount of birds that at times seemed too noisy. Today there was total silence. It was so quiet he could almost hear his heart beating.

After a few deep breaths, he felt drawn to the crash site. He wanted to see for himself a spaceship. Leaving the tree, Jasper heard a twig snap behind him. Whirling around, he found himself alone. Slowly, he resumed walking. Again, he heard leaves crunching underneath someone’s feet behind him. Before he whirled around to see what caused the noise, Jasper felt a hand around his mouth. Then he felt someone’s body against his as he was jerked quickly over to a nearby tree.

Before he could comprehend what was happening to him, a cloak covered him. He felt someone’s body against his, pressing him against the tree trunk.

Here you go. This is about as much as you get into a blog page. Would you like to wait for the a next installment or would you prefer to just purchase the book. Click on the survery at the top of page. From you answers, I will continue or not having daily five pages. That is about what you can get on a blog page. Or you can purchase the book called, Stones’ Quest: In Search of its Master, here at this link for $19.95 + shipping. Also, you can leave me a comment.