Filed under: books — Tags: book, Stones Quest — LaRene @ 12:20 am

Jasper jumped when he heard feet walking behind him again. Whirling around, he saw the white-haired man had followed him. This time Jasper recognized that he was wearing an I-Force uniform, his cloak flowing with each step.

Stopping in front of the boy, his eyes seemed to sparkle with life as he spoke. “Son, you can’t stay here. It’s too dangerous for you now. They’ll come back for you.”
“Why?”
“Because you have the white Stone that they are looking for.”
“I don’t have a white Stone. I don’t know what you are talking about,” shouted Jasper with all innocence. He had no memory of the white Stone. The man’s voice gave Jasper the courage he needed to run again. His desires were strong to get to the safety of his home.

Entering the grove, he headed for his house. Quickly, he realized something was wrong. The grove of trees was covered in a cloud of dust. Everything looked eerie and unrecognizable. He choked and coughed, picking his way among the trees. Trunks and branches loomed through the grayness. Evil shapes and shadows seemed to taunt him.

Finally, he stopped for a minute to pull the bottom of his shirt up over his mouth to breathe more easily. He stood peering through the dust in search of something that looked familiar, but recognized nothing.

As his tears formed little trails in the dust on his cheeks, despair felt more stifling than the air settling over Jasper. I want to go home, he cried inside.
“TURN TO YOUR RIGHT A LITTLE AND START WALKING. YOU WILL FIND WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR,” soothed the Master Stone in his pocket.

Jasper didn’t question the voice as it kept him quiet and feeling calm again. He headed to where the voice told him to find his home. The voice kept encouraging him every time he felt discouraged. The dust had thinned out, when he reached the stream that ran across the meadow. Jasper knew exactly where he was. He jumped it and excitedly ran towards his home.

Coming out of the dust at his backyard, Jasper stopped stunned. This was his backyard, but the shed and the house were gone! In place of the shed was a smooth patch of dirt, as if the whole thing had simply been picked up. Where his house had been, there was a giant hole.

Jasper walked to the edge of the hole. It was several feet deep. The sides and bottom were smooth except where a stream of water was dripping out on the far side. The water was coming from the underground pipe that ran to the house, and it looked as if it had been sheered off as cleanly as the dirt and shrubs and grass at the edge of the hole.

Jasper just stared at the water as it continued to splash into the hole. Where was his house? Where were his mom and Jamie and Buster? Jasper began running around the yard searching for any sign of his family. Nobody answered his cries. After several frantic minutes, Jasper collapsed on the grass in fear, shock, and fatigue. His mind kept repeating his wonders. Where was his house? His family? His father wouldn’t be home for hours yet. How could he get word to his father? Does he know about this?

A soothing familiar voice interrupted his thoughts. “Son, you have to leave now.”
Jasper faced the same white-haired man walking across the lawn toward him. “Come with me to my ship, and we’ll find your family,” assured the man.
Should he trust this stranger? The man was wearing an I-force uniform.
“JASPER. GO WITH HIM. YOU NEED TO HURRY AND GET OUT OF HERE.” It was the same calming voice that calmed him in the grove of trees. Jasper didn’t move and the voice added, “HE WILL PROTECT YOU AND KEEP YOU SAFE UNTIL I-FORCE CAN BRING YOUR FAMILY BACK. YOU WILL FIND YOUR FAMILY, IF YOU GO WITH HIM.”

Jasper felt peace from the hypnotic voice. Standing, he headed for the man as he left for the meadow. The white-haired man led him back through the meadow, but in a different direction.  Jasper followed the man for some time in peace as they wandered in and out of the different groves of trees. He stayed very close behind him. Eventually, however, Jasper grew tired of the silence.

So he ran up to the man’s side and asked, “Where are we going?”
“My ship,” the man replied with a smile.
“Why aren’t they coming for you?”
“I don’t want them to get shot down like I was.”
“Was that your Star Skipper?”
“Yes.”
“Was anyone else on board?”
“No. I was the only one.”
“Where did all of the other men come from?”
“My, aren’t we brimming with curiosity.” The man paused as if considering something. “The other men were from a Galaxy Creeper,” he finally said.
“Did they take my family?”
“Yes.”

The man started to walk again with Jasper staying beside him. He continued, “I heard people walking around us and they were afraid of I-Force. Why couldn’t they see us?”
“You’re full of questions! And bright, too. How old are you?”
“I’m seven years old. How old are you?”
“Old.”
“You look old.”
The man smiled. “Thank you.”
He repeated, “Why did the KOGN come here and take my family?”
The man knew he couldn’t tell him if he didn’t remember the white Stone. He had already asked him about it and the boy seemed to not remember it. The man expected it and wanted to make sure the Stone was safe, with Jasper forgetting about it. He took the boy all because of the Stone. He saw him pick it up.

Changing subjects, the man asked, “What is your name?”
“Jasper. What’s your name?”
“My name is Dapper.”
He pointed at the insignia on Dapper’s uniform and stated, “You’re a general in I-Force, aren’t you?”
“You are right.”
“Someday I’m going to join I-force and fly one of your spaceships.” Dapper’s lip twitched at that. Jasper repeated, “How come the KOGN soldiers didn’t find us?”

“You’re persistent,” stated Dapper, looking at him. He told him that he had a secret weapon that enabled them to be unseen. Actually, the general had the ability to become invisible for himself only. Knowing the boy had the Stone, he chanced the Stone would help him hide the boy too. It did.
He didn’t want the boy to know that he had mastered the ability. It was a secret that only a few knew about. For the boy’s safety, Dapper didn’t want to tell him the complete truth.

After Dapper told him what he did, Jasper seemed to stop questioning him. They walked on and Jasper seemed to lag behind. So Dapper stopped and asked him if he was hungry or thirsty. Jasper’s head bobbled up and down. Dapper reached into a small compartment on his belt to retrieve something for him.

He pulled out a white substance that Dapper called field food. Jasper quickly took it, but Dapper pulled it back. He saw blood on the boy’s hands. He motioned him over to a tree and they sat. The general put the food back and took out a disposable wet cloth. He wiped Jasper’s hand, seeing it only made the cut bleed more.

Jasper told him that he got it earlier in the day and his mother had put a second skin on it. Somehow, Jasper had torn it off and Dapper guessed it happened when he tried to fight to get away from him.
The general applied medicine and a second skin over it so it would be protected. Then he gave Jasper the field food. Jasper ate while he watched Dapper take the washcloth and rub it between the palms of his hands. When he pulled them apart, it had disappeared. Jasper wanted to know how it happened and Dapper explained the friction changed the washcloth into solid gases and disappeared.

Dapper explained that I-Force never left anything behind so they couldn’t be tracked easily. Jasper asked him questions while he ate. He was surprised that the field food took care of his thirst and hunger.

They got up and Jasper noticed other objects on Dapper’s weapons belt. It started him on a new path of questions.
He asked, “Dapper, in one of my books it says I-Force soldiers carry six knives. I don’t see any knives on your weapons belt.”

The general removed a short four-inch stick that fit nicely in his hand. Suddenly, a knife blade appeared and it was replaced with a new one. Dapper went through all six blades. Jasper didn’t see him touch anything that would cause the blades to appear and disappear. So he asked how he did it.

Dapper explained to him about harmony. In the military especially, a person needed to feel the energy waves of their equipment. Once in harmony, they would ask the equipment to perform.  He told him that he would see it a lot on the ship. Everything the captains did to fly the ship was done that way.

The general was impressed that the boy knew their blaster had military purposes. They could fire a laser blast, project a time, or just light up so they could see in the dark. He was even aware of their field glasses. Dapper showed him how they could activate them to talk with others in the field. They could ask them to show things from a great distance up close. This was called long view. Jasper even knew about the glasses’ abilities to form a black light to show them metallic substances that were hidden. He didn’t know about the glasses’ ability to let someone see perfectly at night, and they protected their eyes from the sun’s rays.

There was another thing Jasper knew about that surprised Dapper. They had a red stone with their equipment that made the knives leave and go. They called it an energy stone and only the military had them.

Dapper felt the signal of his ship getting stronger. He knew they would be there soon. He glanced at Jasper to see the boy wrapping his arms around himself. The general looked over at the sun quickly disappearing behind the hills. He sighed to know that it would be dark soon and they wouldn’t make it to his ship in time.

Looking at Jasper, he told him to come in close and he would share his cloak. The boy clung to it, relieved to get some warmth. When the last golden rays of light slipped behind the horizon, Dapper said, “Stay very close to me, Jasper; I can’t give you a light. There are spies out and about, and I don’t know if they are KOGN or I-Force’s.”

Jasper cuddled in closer to Dapper after his words. He was afraid of spies. Johnny and he had made up some great story about spies in their games and adventures. With cloud cover, a storm seemed to be coming in. It was going to be a cold night and with the two moons being hidden, it was going to be dark.

Dapper went slower than he wanted. It was very important that he got this boy back to the ship, since he was carrying the white Stone. The general wondered how long it would take for the boy to remember the Stone. He knew he couldn’t touch it. The Stone would come to him when it was ready.

Suddenly, they reached a small clearing. Dapper stopped abruptly and acted nervous. Jasper couldn’t hear anything but…a soft humming sound. He sharply looked up at Dapper when he started to hum softly in a different tone. It almost sounded musical to him. The general surprised him by pulling him in and wrapped his cloak completely around him. Jasper was about to ask what they were doing, when he removed his cloak. The boy immediately grabbed a hold of it and wrapped it around as best he could. He wanted back the warmth from being underneath Dapper’s cloak.

He could hear people walking, but he couldn’t see anyone. Dapper hummed in a musical tone and it was returned. With the sounds coming closer, Jasper was scared. He moved closer to Dapper and asked, “Are they spies?”

He didn’t answer but he put his hand over the boy’s mouth. The cloak went around him and he stopped breathing to hear footsteps. They became louder with each minute. Jasper wondered what it would feel like to be shot with a blaster. He could feel Dapper reaching for his.
Suddenly, the humming started again and it sounded like it was right next to them. Dapper let go of Jasper and said, “I’m here.”

Jasper peered up at a group of men surrounding them. One of the moons started to rise from the clouds, allowing him to see something. One of the men moved his hands quickly and Dapper responded to him the same way.

Dapper looked down at the boy and whispered, “Stay with me. We need to hurry. There are spies in the area.”
Jasper nodded as he looked at the rising moon.

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Filed under: books — Tags: book, Internet, novels, Stones Quest — LaRene @ 10:38 pm

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.

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Filed under: books — Tags: books, movie, Star Wars, Stones Quest — LaRene @ 1:22 am

If Star Wars had come out as a book first, instead of a movie, how would you describe it? This is the reaction of many reader of the Stones’ Quest series. They have compared it to the charm and excitement of Star Wars.

It’s hard to live in a galaxy where evil has already begun to devour it. People in the galaxy are disappearing and they do not want to admit it. But suddenly you find yourself right in the middle of it with a small group of people. They are ones who found the all-powerful Master Stones that can stop the evil Suzair the Great. At what price does this small band of people have to pay to restore the Master Stones to their power?”

So I’m putting it out there to the fans of Star Wars. How would you describe your beloved story so people?

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Filed under: Personal Development — Tags: Stones Quest, Thoughts of Encouragement — LaRene @ 11:37 pm

Thoughts of Encouragement are always helpful. I would like to tell you a story of hope. It’s really a simple story. It was a dark day in my life when my mother died and our father left us. I was four and my world had just shifted into what felt like a deep, dark pit. I would wake up shaking, wondering what horrible thing was going to happen next. Every day brought additional pain and sorrow. I went from a happy-go-lucky child to feeling like I was a freak. Isolation, embarrassment, and the painful sense of loss all seemed to consume me. My siblings and I were told no one wanted the three of us.

Soon after our father left, my siblings were taken away, causing me to mourn for my sister and brother. All I wanted was to feel safe, loved, and wanted. Those I lived with always introduced me as the child with no parents. Their introduction always made me fell like I wasn’t a part of their family, just someone staying for a short period of time. It hurt deeply to see th looks in people’s faces. It was always mixed with sorrow and pity. I had a label over my head that often made me feel like an outcast.

I went into a deep spiritual depression at five and never came out of it until I was well into adulthood. It was a miracle that I found my way out. When It happened, I felt like it was an answer to my prayers. At the moment of realization, I received a vision that showed how deep the layers of scars were and how starved my spirit was for love. After this experience, I decided to find a way to permanently remove the layers of pain and sorrow. It became an obsession and for the first time in my life, I had a dream.

At the time of this vision, my circumstances were wonderful. I was in a healthy warm, loving environment. Yet, I couldn’t shake the depression and completely feel the love that was around me. My past refused to allow me to feel it. Not knowing where to start, I prayed and was guided first to books. I went in every direction that might teach me how to be free from my invisible prison that life had placed me in.

Today, I’m out of this prison and I’m free to be me. I wrote a book about my story so others would know it was possible to remove emotional scars and live a healthy, happy life. One of the books is called, “HOW TO REBUILD SHATTERED DREAMS.” At request, I started this blog to give out additional information. It took me some work to free myself and it took a combination of many laws and principles to do it.

I went from darkness into light. Without the vision to compare my life to, I would not have realized how dark my life was and how it stopped me from enjoying simple moments. To learn how to cut the chain, it made the experience very valuable to me. I deeply love and appreciate my struggles and tumbling into darkness. The rebuilding process is what has given me the greatest joy. Now, I know anything can happen in my life and I will be okay. I understand the tools and laws it takes to rebuild it any way I want.

My heart goes out to the youth of our world. Since my depression started when I was five, I also wrote a book for them. I took everything I learned about rebuilding your life and put it in a fictional fun story. My greatest desire was to reach out to them. I wanted them to know that they will be okay. My story to them is the “STONES’ QUEST” series.

To give you a synopsis of what I have learned, I will list it below:

• How to get affirmations to work perfectly for you.
• How to erase negative thoughts and replace them with what you want to have happen in your life.
• How to replace trauma emotionally or physically with peace, only taking the lessons you learned with you into the future.
• Learn the value of who you are and the feeling of success every day of your life.
• Learn how to bring what you truly want into your life and not what life has programmed you to expect.

I can go on, but I’ll stop here. The point is people have asked me to teach the principles so you can learn how to do this for yourself. So I’m working on the seminars that I will be holding on the Internet. I have a nine-page single spaced outline of information.

I hope to have the seminar ready to start by the middle of the summer. In the meantime, you can learn what the seminar will be like by reading my books. “HOW TO REBUILD SHATTERED DREAMS” is for the adults and the “STONES’ QUEST” series is for the ages ten to seventeen.

You can go here to learn more about the seminars and books. Click here!

I hope you find these Thoughts of Encouragement helpful.

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Filed under: Getting Published — Tags: books, fun, galaxy, ideas, Journel, literature, lives, publisher, real estate, Star Wars, Stones Quest, story — LaRene @ 1:38 am

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.

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