2016's final blog

2016's final blog

I know I haven't written in months and for that, I am sorry. I'm new to blogging, journalling about myself and it comes hard. I'm a fairly private person except for my books and my doctor and now he's gone and I have to figure out how to start all over again with a new one. Kind of like this year. It's technically  gone - a week left - and I have to figure out how to start all over again with a new one.

Especially with the new President coming in. He's not my President, I'll never acknowledge that and if I lose a bunch of you to that, too bad. He's rotten to the core, that's all I'll say about politics on this page, and that I will miss the Obama's something awful. No scandals in family or office, the first President to have that in... decades. Goodbye, best President ever, best First Lady ever since Jackie Kennedy. 

Since I was last on with all of you I managed to pound out a new novel. Oh, it's done but it's not finished, if you know what I mean. I have places to fill in, places to change, places to smooth out, but the story is basically done. Finished. All the big stuff is done. That is part of the reason why i've not been on, the other reason is that I developed a severe depression. It was so bad I couldn't write, edit or even read and other  books. I pretty much laid around and did only what I had to. Since the book was written, I didn't have to worry about that, Earth Maid 8 wasn't going anywhere since my artist Marija was having a melt down as well and couldn't do any drawing at the moment. This cover is proving to be a hard one; we're not even halfway done yet and we're on the 4th attempt. Marija is feeling better; I'm between not and there, so not a lot is getting done there. I did send the next step; I just don't know how long it will take before it comes back and I see if it meets my requirements or not.

Now I don't know what I was going to say next; the phone rang and I had to deal with a mini crisis. Nothing big, just one friend to another and I'm the go-between. I don't mind, it's nothing that will hurt anything, in fact, it helps. So I solve a problem and talk to two people I love. But it totally blows out what I was going to say next here. Anyone else have that problem?

So I'm binge-watching Dr. Who while I edit and write this. Sunday is the newest show, the Christmas special and I'm eager for it. Usually the writing is good but lately I'm confused by what they put in some of it. I guess my brain is getting old or else the writers are taking more licence with the show than they used to. I dunno which, but I still enjoy most of  it. 

What are  your plans for the holidays? Rushing about to fulfil financial obligations, spending 5 months worth of wages for gifts for family and friends? Going out of town to spend time with family in a quiet celebration? Single family? Full family? Different holidays than other people do? or Church, no matter who your god is? Well, I hope all is well for you, that you have a fulfilling holiday time and a good New Year celebration, whenever that comes about, for I know it's not just Jan 1 for a lot of people. In a world where hate is reasserting itself, we must come together and accept the cultural differences our neighbors have. So may your days be good, your rituals be right and your nights be restful. And may your love always be strong, for everyone who comes your way.

Goodness to all of you,

Taborri Walker

Once again, I'm sorry...

Depression has left me without energy to write anything or even edit. And I've had computer trouble; it really needs to go to Best Buy so the Geek Squad can clean it up and get it running happily again. But that's 100 dollars! I do have half of that hidden away, but I have to get the other half, plus I'd say $25 more just in case a repair is needed.

And then, I didn't have enough money to do a full winterizing and tune up on the car because our Dividends were cut in half and i had to use 200 - 100 on the car at another shop to get it aligned and found out it couldn't be done because the ball joints are worn out. I can still drive it, I just have to raise a good $600 for parts and $400 for replacing them, sigh... somehow I'll make it. And then the holidays are coming and I need $60 for three precious granddaughters.

So about my writing...

After my husband destroyed 5 novels by burning them, I had a mental breakdown and couldn't write for a long time. We finally got divorced in August 1993, almost 15 years I'd spent with that abusive asshole because of what the church we were in, and biological families' beliefs. But now I had a house to babysit, 2 shelters I could go to and then a tiny 9x9 bedroom in a double-wide trailer, and be the family's slave in return. I was on the housing list and i bugged them. Boy, I bugged them. Called 3x a week to ask where I was on the list. Between all this I was learning to type at a training program and I loved it! When I got back to the house of "we are christians, we go to church but we sin constantly because god will forgive us" people, we would lock ourselves in the little room and watched TV, read or went to bed. When I got the "Yes you got it", we were ecstatic  and I knew just what to do and where to go. I had been in touch with the landlady and she said yes, they take housing. So we moved in, the kids went to school, one across the street, one a mile and a half down the road.

I started getting ready to go to college. Social Services was the closest to what I had wanted to do. In the meantime, I was working on a series that had been one book only until a friend told me it should be a series. Good ol' Steve Walls, He and his wife were my safe house when my husband got violent. I'd just take Glori on one arm, take Matt's hand and we'd walk out the front door to their house, a block and a half away, no matter what the weather was. My husband would come over in a few minutes but Steve, a Master Sgt., would talk to him at the door and tell him they's send us home when he could be nice, and shut the door in his face.

Then I started having a dream that about drove me nuts! This commercial played a short riff of a musical song that I had never heard before and it got stuck in my head! I went to bed that night with the dumb song still ringing in my skull. 

That night a story played out in my head: a woman, dressed in all black - pants, shirt, vest, jacket, socks and shoes too was out-of-her mind in anger at the priest who lived in the village, as he had forced sex from all the village, even the adults, and had killed the man when catching him raping a boy. She had the villagers set up a pole and wood for burning the body and everything of his. Watching her so upset sparked something in the boy's mind, for her suddenly able to tap into the lady's computer and put on the piece of music I'd heard. Then he and the lady danced, she picking him up and swinging him, I woke up and hurried to my desktop PC and wrote it all down, Now I had a story to write and a song to find. Doing what I could, I called each television station and found the person to talk to, but no one seemed to know. For days and days I made calls, and then one day it happened. I made the call just as the commercial played and asked; one person knew which song it was and told me.

"That's ,Music Box Dancer" he told me and I thanked him so much and ran for my computer again. I had a P2P program on it and it came up with 5 variations, and I downloaded them all. When I listened to it, I was ecstatic! I played all 5, picked my favorite (there were 2, and here's one - https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=music+box+dancer+by+frank+mills)  and kept dreaming of the woman and child I had. It was easy to dream of them; I just went to sleep actively thinking of them. When I woke up, I kept talking about my dream and put it  down.This  book (still unpublished, it needs a cover and to be edited in the Kindle edition, a huge job) is called "The Long Trip Home." It's been edited for content several times and a couple for spelling, so when I put it into Kindle, I'll ck spelling too.

But my series was never far from my mind. I kept thinking about it too. I worked back and forth between the two novels, finished the second one and put it away while i finished my work on #2. But now I had created a bad habit; putting down one novel to work on another. I knew it was a bad habit, but what else could I do? I might lose the work that popped into my head! So I worked back and forth, and wrote several novels in between. I finished the 9th book in the series in 2010, all done with the book and began looking for publishers that would take all nine. I had seen series pop up all over the place, so if that was happening, why couldn't mine? I made applications, following the rules - and got rejection papers like a flood roaring down the dry creek bed. Discouraged, I went back to writing and got some work done. But I needed Beta Readers to read the books and help me.... more about that the next time I write, hopefully not that far from now.

I love you my readers, I love all of my friends, you know who you are! extra MWAH's for friends because they are family! Have a great weekend!

Hugs!!!

I'm so Fucking down, I need a stronger word than Fuck

I'm so Fucking down, I need a stronger word than Fuck.

I'm really sorry I haven't written in a while, for you 0 people who read this... I've been really down. It's  been a hard summer for me. As my brother put it, I stepped into the way of a storm of bad shit that Karma flung out. 

First, my car gets stolen. Two teenage girls come over to ask for a ride to Muldoon. I said "sure" and they said, "where's your car?" I grabbed my keys and ran outside - my car was gone. Just gone! I knew where I had parked it and it just wasn't there. I called the Police and made a report, downloaded the form and filled it out and took it to the Police station. I also called my insurance company and filed a report and claim for the stolen car. It was found 3 weeks later with a stolen license plate on it, a woman driving it who said she bought it from a guy for $500. The thieves had taken off my tires and replaced them with shit ones and a bent rim, my front bumper was replaced with a black one and the sidepanel was black too. They also cannibalized parts from the inside. There was nothing of mine left in the car. When I drove it home, the engine was sputtering and growling, so it was damaged, and when I put it in park the tranny let out a scream I'd never heard before. So I put it in reverse and got another. scream. The insurance company totaled it and cut me a check. I found a car for $1500 with a full set of studded tires. It had some problems but we fixed most of them with what I had left over. 

Then some of the newer teens coming over set some small fires outside at the trash bins. One kid ran in and said something to a kid and ran back out. I asked what was going on and he said "nothing." I should have gotten up and gone to see. Instead I hear about it from a neighbor who took pics of the group. And I got yelled at for it! I didn't tell the kids to do that, I had no idea they were going to. So they haven't been back since. I told the teens that were good to pass along the word that they better never show their faces again or I'd plant my foot up their ass so far they'd choke on my toes. I was now officially the women who lets bad kids come over.

I went to the Neurologist for my constant headaches again and he told me they were at their wits end for medications for me, except for the new treatment, Botox shots. I was terrified! But he talked me into it - the amount is just a bit less than a teaspoon, spread out across the forehead, in the neck and shoulder muscles and in the temples. When I went back for the shots, I started to back out but he talked me into trying it again. I had him get a nurse so I could hold hands. The ones in the temple made me shriek! They really hurt. And while I'm waking up without headaches right now, which is wonderful, the headaches build up during the day until they're excruciating. I've had one so bad I was hallucinating and i knew it, but I couldn't stop it. It scared the bejeebers out of me. It lasted several hours until my alarm went off at 10am. Luckily I had the day to recover but couldn't write.

 

Three weeks ago I ran to the store and managed to rush about in my avoid-the-crowds way, and when I got home, I dropped my wallet in one of the bags so I could carry the four bags and my wallet in both hands, keeping my keys out to unlock my door.. Well, my wallet must have fallen out near the car and I didn't see it. Inside I put away my things and didn't think about the wallet not being there until the next day when I went to pay a bill. I frantically looked everywhere for it, including in my car, but it was gone. My bank card, my new driver's license, my Amazon card - all of it. I called the bank first and got the card shut off and went to get a new one. Problem was, my HOUSE KEY was in the wallet, a spare if I ever locked myself out!

The next day I had 3 appointments back to back so I went, sans Drivers License, hoping I wouldn't get pulled over for any reason. I drove carefully! I saw my Therapist, my Psychiatrist and my Neurologist for the shots I talked about. And when I got home, there was my cat, pawing at the door to get in! I was flabbergasted! How did she get out? I didn't let her, so I went inside. Fist thing I saw was the koolaid jug lying empty on the floor, smashed open and puddles of koolaid everywhere. I had been burglarized, I realized, so I called the police and they sent an officer out. I discovered they took my camera too, the rotten buggers, and all the packets of koolaid except one, which no one but a good kid named Isaiah liked. I bought that packet especially for him. But the dumb shits didn't think about stealing any of my sugar! The officer took pictures of the places where the items had been, didn't dust for prints because the cabinet was covered with prints of all sorts of people. We both doubted this would be solved. A couple days later, I discovered they took my penny jar with about $15 in it, and my whole tool kit from under the kitchen sink. All my tools, some which a friend gave me when she moved out of state, the rest I've had ever since I got divorced. So I have NO tools and no money to get any. And rather go out the front door like they had arrived, they busted out my screen and got out that way. That's how my cat got out. It took me 2 hours to catch the cat when she jumped out the window again, for me to discover the screen wasn't in it. I got it back in so she can't escape anymore.

And then the hooligans got into my car! Seems I also had the spare car key and fob in my wallet too, and they got into my trunk. My fob went off that day and I didn't realize why until an hour later and ran outside to see. The thieves had gotten into my emergency supplies, took my hunting knife and all the cracker sandwiches I had in them for a little food. I went and got the signal changed on my fob and got a steering wheel to brake lock for the car so they can't steal the car. They can get in but it hooks around the steering wheel and again around the brake arm so they can't depress the brake peddle to put it in reverse. But what a pain, having to lock and  unlock it all the time!

So now I hoped all the bad stuff was behind and began to work on editing again. I actually got quite a ways when I had a doctor's appointment. She sent me to the lab for blood and urine work ups, the results would be phoned to me in a couple days. In that couple days I went to the vein clinic because my right foot is swelling up and no one in my regular doc's office can say why. I had tests done, for my heart and to check for clots and blood flow in the veins. The Dr. had just left the room after telling me my blood flow to both legs was poor, and it was deep inside my legs. They can't do anything for that, exercise won't help, no surgery for it, nothing. And then I have something called Lymphedema in my right leg, where the lymph nodes aren't doing their job. Google it - it's incurable and serious. And I have to wear support hose   for 3 months total before Medicare and Medicaid will let the doc move on to the next phase. Luckily I was wearing some already, but they pinched at the knee and hurt, so I ordered thigh high ones. Well, they won't stay on my thighs, they roll down to the knee where they hurt really bad. While I was waiting in the dr. office for the nurse, I got a call from my dr. office: I'm Pre-Diabetic and my Cholesterol is high, 125 when it should be under 100. The Dietitian called today, I see her Thursday to discuss food. Well, I've researched and with my many food allergies and not enough money to buy food that's fresh every week, there's nothing I can do to change my way of eating. I rarely eat sugar, I only have butter on occasion, I don't eat the fat on meats, my main meat is chicken and ground beef because I can't afford anything else. We'll see what I walk away with Thursday. I'm not giving up anything I eat! I have a small enough diet that I can't afford to lose anything.

So there's what my luck has been the last few days. Summer has sucked big time; the only good thing that has happened is I finished the first draft of my newest novel, temporarily called "I Went to Nursing School... Where?"  I sent it off to the lady it's being written for, to read thru it and she hasn't contacted me yet. I need to email her and ask, I'll do that tomorrow morning. Right now I want to get back to editing and get lost in Landa's world for a while. That will help me feel better.

So I hope none of you has gotten in the way of the shit fling. I hope that all that has come your way is good, and if little things happen, that you can solve them quick.

All my love and HUGS!

Taborri

P.S, How do you like the new cover for Earth Maid: The Thread is Found (book 1)? I think it is really awesome! I'd love to hear your comments!

I'm Still Here 

Sorry for being gone so long. Things haven't been easy around here... I've had computer problems, I really need to take this thing in to Best Buy and let the Geek Squad guys work on it, but I managed to get it back to smooth working on my own. Still needs work but it will have to wait and see if I have money left over from the Alaska PFD we're getting in a few days. (It's a check from the profits of oil we sell here in Alaska. We're the only state with a PFD.)

Stress is too calm a word to use for my life lately. After getting my car stolen and recovered, totaled by the insurance company and i got another car, some teenagers I let in my house for koolaid and to chill out and talk or watch a movie in the bedroom started setting little fires out back near the garbage bin. A neighbor came over and blamed ME, as if I had told them to. She had pictures of them on her camera, so she agreed to come over (we set a day) and I'd download them to my computer so I could ID them to the Police, but she never came over. Anyway, I told all the teens who came to visit after that to spread the word, the arsonists were banned. They've never been back, and the number of kids coming over slowed drastically. Then I dropped my wallet, probably outside in the dark where I park my car and it was picked up. Instead of bringing it back to me, they used it. Some money, my spare car key and fob and my HOUSE spare key.

Damn, the little shits let themselves in and burglarized the place. They stole all the koolaid packets I'd just bought for them (28 total), the tool kit except for the vice grips pliers, so ALL my tools are gone, my screwdrivers, pliers, hammers, knife, etc, I let them use the tool kit to fix their bikes, and stole my camera. They took the Arizona tea jug with some Koolaid left in it and put it on the floor and smashed it open, spreading a pool of it all over the floor. (At least they were too stupid to steal a 10 pound bag of sugar!). Five days later I went to put my pennies in my glass jar and found it was gone - $15 of pennies, my clear strapping tape and now I forget the last thing. I ckd my movies and it seems they are all there. So we know it was teenagers doing it, taking what they wanted and leaving the rest. I on the other hand, have to replace every single card and am still doing that. Lucky it's just the little things now. - Oh, they took all my colored sharpies that were in a gallon bag, that is what they stole too. So the owner, when replacing the doorknob that night, said "all the teens can't come over anymore. They make too much trouble." I spent a lot of tears telling the good teens that they were also being punished for the acts of others. Two of them hugged me when I started crying - these were the good ones! And I can't see them anymore.

And that's not all. My health is unsteady again. My headaches are so bad, and the only course left to the Neurologist was the Botox injections. I was so scared but I went, then was so terrified I told the doc forget it, but he gently eased me into trying it. He found a nurse and I held his hand, and damn it hurt! I squeezed and squealed and yelled when he did the temples. But it's working some. Tonight I have a massive headache, but it's been almost a week since I got the shots and will do more in January. I'm taking my case manager to hold his hand the next time. Four five days I have had no headache when I woke up, a record! And only tiny headaches until tonight. And my R foot and ankle is swollen, so the Heart Institute did and Echocardiogram and my heart is fine, and a sonogram for clots and venous flow. No clots, but I'm getting insufficient blood flow to the foot, so I go to the Vein clinic on Friday. Tomorrow I see my regular doc for a diabetes and cholesterol check, give her my 5 Wishes for Dying papers and get my blood drawn. There are some other things I'm going to talk to her about too. But I won't go into those. I'm just terrified that I'll have the big D now, cuz all the members of my family have had it, so far I've dodged the bullet and hope I will again. We'll see.

So after this week, I'm hoping things calm down. I have a car steering wheel car lock in my car so it would take a lot to steal this car now, it locks the brakes and steering wheel together. No depressing the brakes to put the car into gear. I got the frequency on the fob changed so the other one won't work. The company I went to did it for free after hearing the story, the boss was so pissed about it. I was very thankful and will send business their way. 

Now I'm really in solitary confinement; no teens come over, only 1 neighbor here speaks to me more than 4 words. I do have my 1x a week volunteer work and it was nice and quiet tonight. I even stayed an extra hour and a half to sit with Crystine while she did phoning and I crocheted. We kept being interrupted tho, it was like a sign saying "NO phoning tonight" cuz in all that 90 minutes she only got 40 out of 60 minutes done. Other than occasional trips out, I'm alone. Right now I'm okay, no loneliness has set in.

So summer was more a trial till now. I'm still under a shit cack load of stress, which ain't helping my physical health much any, I'm not eating much but starting to gain a little more weight, which is a horror to my mental health. I'm either cold all the time or hot; I've long been done with menopause so what this is I don't know. Will ask the doc tomorrow. I'm just hoping after this week things will start to improve; at least, have answers and be able to start improving.

Next time I get on I have another writing story to tell and again, it's not pretty. I must write about it, it something to get out and off my chest to you, who will read it (maybe, no one's read anything yet, I think) but it will be good to get out. And it's vital to my writing history.

I love you all, and here's more HUGS

Yours, 

Taborri

I'm late posting... sorry...

I meant to stay sat and go straight here but got distracted. After the distraction came supper, then the cat wanted to play so we played with her fishing pole with the mouse on the end for a good two hours. She likes to walk off with the little mouse in her mouth to some other destination and play with it on her own for a while and I either have to chase her down or she brings it back for more play. And when we're done and I put it away, she has to try and get at it still. So I hang around for a minute and prevent her, move her on and off to something else. Now I can sit down and write!

I had a hard emotional moment after the last blog. It was a difficult time and I was just making it through it with my mind intact. But I had to, for my children's sake so I kept on. After the divorce the kids and I were homeless for 6 months; we did have friends who helped us some but it was still bad. But I got housing assistance and we moved into our little two-bedroom apartment.

I still didn't write. I was too busy with kids in school, their friends and teenage behavior issues. But I wrote occasional letters to the Editor of the Anchorage Daily News (now defunct) and my letters got noticed. I was invited in the mid 90's to be a Columnest for a monthly Community Voices  column for 6 months, to write on issues relevant to our city. I was floored! Of course I accepted. I had my picture taken and would work on what I wanted to write about every month, all month, writing it over and over again until it felt just right. (Sorry, I don't have the columns anymore. At some point along the line of my life I must have gotten rid of them for some reason, probably during a depressive state. I tend to purge things from my life then and regret it later...)

Out of the six columns I wrote, only one was turned away and I had 2 days to write another so I had to fill it with a "be safe in winter driving" POS. But that was accepted, the more political one wasn't. I did write a searing column about the lack of Child Protection in our city, about a child in trouble over the 4th of July weekend because everyone was off for the holidays. CPS jumped to their job as soon as the article came out and changed their policy to have emergency crews on over holidays after that, so I guess in a way I changed things for the better in our city, in a little way. Those monthly columns sparked my writing bug again and I started writing again, just a little.

It wasn't much and was mostly discarded, but then I got a tune stuck in my head and couldn't identify it. It was an instrumental tune, part of it used on a commercial but I loved it and it stuck. It drove me  nuts! I called the radio stations, begging to know if anyone knew the commercial and the tune, and finally called the TV stations, having not thought of that first off, and went through several people asking about the commercial until I found someone who had seen it. The name of the tune was Music Box Dancer.

Elated, I looked it up and found 5 versions, downloaded them all and set them up for continual play. I would listen to them in my sleep, even, and one night I got a dream, a very vivid dream. It was of an American woman in South Korea, dancing with a little boy to the tune late in the evening. The whole village joined in too, and to the tune they danced until they all settled down, tired out, and slept like a pile of puppies there in the front clearing that night. I woke up, got up, booted up my computer and started writing it down. As I did, more of the idea came to me and I spent half the night writing. My first story, The Long Trip Home, was begun. I stuck with it, worked with it, chopped it, rewrote sections and finally it was done. It hasn't been published yet, but I plan on getting it out sometime after I get my Earth Maid series done. 9 books, I'm working on #8 now, but we're redoing the cover of #1 right now for lack of money to do cover #8. (If you want to help, I take PayPal and my account email is callmetaborri@gmail.com for those of you who might want to get your name in my acknowledgments page - unless you want to be anonymous. Yes, I just plugged for money to help get my covers done, I'm not ashamed to admit that!).

I also started college in 1997, going for Social Work at first. Less than halfway into the first semester the college got their Human Services Program up and running, so many of us in Social Work appealed to change our majors and got approved.

Now I did a LOT of writing... for school. The APA method. Whether in a group or solo, I poured papers out and found I did pretty good at writing, I got good grades. And there was a gentleman from Puerto Rico who could speak fine, he just couldn't write. So he'd tell me what he wanted to say on the paper and I'd write it down and arrange it properly, let him read it and make corrections, then save it to his floppy disc for printing out at college. Yes, dear kiddos, we had these large, flat discs we saved our work onto. Half the time they failed and the paper got scrambled, though. But teachers would be lenient, they would see the scramble and let us have a couple days to rewrite the paper, since we couldn't save to our harddrives yet. That came later. Then we got these smaller, hard discs to save to and while they were better, some of the new systems weren't. The new Gateway computers often ate our papers or scrambled our group work when we met in the computer room to work on our collaborations. But I made it through college, even graduating cum laude! I was proud of myself.

And I kept writing on my first book, and wrote on others as well. When I would get an idea, I'd write as much of it down as I could remember, since ideas always seemed to come in dreams. I wrote a lot, and sent my first Earth Maid story to a friend, Steve Walls, who read it and said that it should be a series. So thanks to him, you have 9 stories of Earth Maid instead of just 1. I also started saving stories to the new CD's and sending them to friends to read, one who were interested in my writing.

But I made a major mistake. I didn't save my work to discs here, just on my hard drive. And about 2005, I experienced my first major computer meltdown. I turned it off one night and couldn't turn it on the next morning! Frantic, I took it in to the expert I had who pronounced the hard drive totally fried, everything on it lost. I didn't really cry so much as go crazy with grief. All my work, gone again, this time my own fault! I emailed my brother, telling him (on the new computer I had to buy) of the loss of everything I'd written. I had forgotten what I'd done.

He said, "I'll send everything you sent me back." And suddenly things weren't quite so bad. His disc was a year old, yes, so there were many things he didn't have, but I remembered the others I'd sent things to, some very recently. So I reached out to everyone I'd sent writing to and asked them to send it back, and why. Soon I had compiled everything again, up to a month back, and saved it to disc too. After that, I saved every week. Went through a LOT of discs this way but I always had my work. Now I save to USB drives. One contains everything I want, then what I want is spread between 3 others. I save faithfully. 

And... I think I'm about to have a computer crash. I Hope Not, but it's acting up really bad. I'm going to finish this and shut down, then restart and run my Fix Me stick and other programs then restart and hope it acts fine for a while. It will take a hundred dollars for a clean up at Best Buy, so I'm saving up for that. This machine is only 2 years old, I should be able to shovel another 2 out of it at least.

So that's all for now. I started writing again, survived a crash and got going again. More later, if my computer stays alive. Love you all and HUGS!!!

Invention and Destruction

On my last blog I said I never graduated. That's  true. Before getting married, my fiance told me I could go to college and get my GED, the night we were married he turned evil and tore up the paperwork and "put me in my place" biblically. So we fought a lot over the years.

Ten years later we're in Texas. He's in the military and I'm still a housewife. But I see in the paper an advertisement for getting your GED, so I get determined to go for it. But when I brought it up, I got a NO. 

So I went on strike. No laundry, no cooking, no cleaning for him, and especially, NO SEX. Period. He wasn't going to let me get my GED, why should I give him anything?

We fought. Boy, did we fight. But I stood my ground and he finally gave in. I had a friend who was a 5th grade teacher who taught me what I needed to know and some pre-algebra so I could pass math, and she was the first to tell me I had a severe learning disorder in math too. But she was patient, I cried a lot but I got enough down to take the tests. But my husband still fought me on it, right up to the day of. He threatened to take the only car we had so I wouldn't have it, so in the night I got up and took his sets of keys and kept them with me, sleeping on the couch, protecting the keys. We had a physical altercation - he lost because I knew more tai kwan doe than he did - and I drove him to work where he limped all day and I went and took my test.

I was nervous, scared and on the verge of tears, but I bullied myself through the tests. Then came a week of waiting... the letter came... I had PASSED! Math was low, but I had passed! There was a ceremony planned and though I didn't want to go, just go collect my paper, but now my husband got nasty. He knew I had a problem with crowds, so lo, we were attending the ceremony! So we went, we graduates too our "walk" and were given our GED diploma and hands shook or hugs given. I was shaking and panicking the whole time. And when my husband went to kiss me congratulations, I had the balls to shove him off snarling "no way, asshole! I had to fight to get this, you didn't want me to get it, you don't get to kiss me!" to which several mouths dropped in astonishment and all of a sudden no one wanted to mingle with him anymore, but crowded me (oh, godz help me!) and gave me kudos. So I got my GED ten years into my marriage. 

My mind continued to churn with stories, though. But I did nothing about it, for I was busy with home, children, church (ugh), pets and all sorts of other chores. A lot of times when someone would be talking to me I'd manage to get by with "uh huh, yes, sure, that's right," while really not listening, my mind a million miles away. 

We moved to Alaska, his "overseas" assignment because our daughter needed a good neurologist and at that time there were no doctors of that kind overseas. We had quite the adventures driving to AK, mostly fun. Some not, but mostly good. And all adventurous. Once moved in, though, I thought it was time I started doing some writing, so I got a notebook and pencils and tried to write that way. But my brain ran too fast for my fingers and everything was jumbled and mixed up. I took to writing short notes to remind me of what i was thinking about and left it.

But I had to hide it from my husband. I didn't think he'd like me writing, so to protect it, I hid it very carefully, I hoped. And I bought a manual typewriter and a ream of paper and set to writing while he was at work, putting it away in the hidey hole before he got home.

It worked! The story began to come out. It was about a married woman, an orphan, who took frequent trips out looking for her family, she told her husband. But what it really was, was that she was a Super Hero. I had the plot for the movie "The Tuxedo" starring Jackie Chan, way ahead of when they did. My woman pulled on a special suit and lo, she was far more than a human could ever dream of being. The suit connected all over her body and took it over when needed. She could perform every type of martial arts, absorb the impact of everything from bullets to stinger missiles - although they would toss her a ways on impact, she wouldn't be hurt - she could think faster, react quicker and run faster than a cheetah. No one knew who she was as the suit was black all over, including a facial mask, but if she rolled off the head piece to a collar, she could have the suit assume the look of other type of clothing at her thoughts and still be armored and connected. It was a good story line, I loved it, it was pouring out.

I had 5 books written. It had taken a couple years of hiding my project, but I was doing it. I hid my latest writing and the typewriter and went grocery shopping. I was feeling good, pumped. My stories were coming out! I was loving my writing. 

Getting home, I noticed my husband had the BBQ out and was doing something on it. Was he actually taking initiative and cooking supper? That would be nice for a change, and I pulled into the garage and took two of the paper bags of groceries and headed into the house.

And dropped the groceries on the sidewalk. The asshole had my stories! And he was burning them! I promptly started snatching at my work to be palmed in the face, which knocked me on my ass, and he tore the papers in half and fed them to the flames. "Why?" I screamed at him, to get a nasty smile. "No wife of mine is going to do anything I don't tell them to do," he answered. "You obey me, I do what god tells me to do and you do what I tell you. Writing books isn't part of it." He kept feeding sheaths of pages to the fire until all my writing was gone, gone. And I never saw the typewriter again either. The fight carried on into the house and for the first time, I told my husband "fuck you!"

Standing at the top of the first half of the stairs he screamed "I will have respect in my own house! You all will respect me!" I screamed back "respect is earned, not given, and you will never have my respect! You had no right to destroy my stories!"

"I will do what I want in my house," he bellowed back, "and you will obey me like god says you should!"

"I want a divorce," I yelled back, and suddenly silence fell. We stared at each other for a long minute, then he went upstairs. I sat down on the couch and bawled. My stories were gone, my mind was shattered. Whatever I had of the stories was gone, all gone. Three years ago I managed to put together one of the books in the middle of  the series, but that's all I've been able to reconstruct. 

We did go on and divorce in 1993. It was convoluted, it was nasty. The Pastor of our church negotiated the divorce but there was one thing he didn't know - my husband told me that if I said there was physical abuse in the marriage,  he'd get a lawyer and take away the children from me. And at the time, he could do it. The Air Force would provide him with a lawyer. I couldn't get one and I didn't know about any place that could help me. So I agreed and kept my kids.

I didn't write again for many years. More to come later. I think I need to cry some, sorry. 

Love you all, HUGS

The First Thing I Ever Wrote - and What Happened

First thing I need to tell you is that this isn't going to be a terribly nice story. There's mental abuse in it - my family was extremely abusive. In every way. You'll probably hear more about that as other blogs come out but for now know that this actually played a large part in my writing later on. 

I lived in a world of total imagination. Anything I could see on TV or hear on the radio, I lived in to keep me from the reality of the awfulness of what I was living in. I made up adventures and followed them through, I peeked through the cracked bedroom door at night and watched TV shows denied us children for content disagreeing with our religion, but the adults could watch it. So I soaked in a world of writing, but I didn't know that then.

It took till third grade to learn the alphabet, and until age 16, I couldn't read more than a first grade book, and that was with difficulty. We moved so much from when I was born to age 14 that I barely learned anything at all. 21 times, sometimes not even unpacking the boxes, but being put back in the truck and moving on again. But it counted as a move. So I was sorely lacking, and because the little sister and I were way behind in work, my older brother passing through all his work and wanting more - that and their belief that High School was literally "the Devil's Workshop", teaching children to deliberately disobey parents and commit crimes - we were secretly homeschooled.

Now, back in the early 1970's, homeschooling was illegal in the state we were in. So we were "enrolled" in a "private" christian school and every morning we made noises like we were leaving our side of the duplex in case the next door neighbor was watching, then went very quiet and did our illegally obtained schoolwork in silence or whispering until the father retired and they bought a house on a lot and a half and we were enclosed in our own little world. Then hell set in.

Being taught to read meant reading out loud from an old-fashioned Primer, the same sentence over and over until the mother was convinced it was being read correctly, word pronunciation and emphasis too. If she felt I got it wrong, I got told I was stupid, being it deliberately so just to make her mad and raise her blood pressure. So if I was going to do that, when I KNEW how to read it, I would suffer. And I did. I got whipped with a 1 inch thick oak paddle with holes drilled in it, words carved in, "for Patti Anne" by the Father. I was made to sand the thing and shellac it, knowing he had gleefully made it just for the beating of my body, and it was used several times a day. 

Then the time came and reading suddenly made more sense and books began to open themselves to me. I climbed the ladder of grade heights and with it, read the books that the parents thought worthy; the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, Josephus, Anne Frank, the bible, of course, and many christian kid's novels likened to Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. And I continued to live in fantasy through all the pain and anguish I was suffering in. Now, now I could read! And now I was being whipped for reading too much... I couldn't win for losing in that family.

Now came the point in schooling when I was to write a long story. I had to flesh it out, use a certain template to plan it, then fill it in and I did. Here, greatly abbreviated, is what I wrote.

The great Spanish explorer, Ponce de Leon went looking for the new world, to find the fabled Fountain of Youth, capable of restoring youth and curing illnesses. He and his crew did find Florida, a wild and tropical place, thick with vegetation, many streams and rivers, lakes and ponds. But they did not give up, but kept searching. One morning, Ponce got up early and prayed to the Lord God that he would be granted the blessing of finding the Fountain of Youth that day, and, believing that God would lead him, went on a quest on his own.

Suddenly the great man felt dizzy! He sweated in his armor and stumbled about, feeling heavy and hot. Then there was no longer dirt and vegetation under  his feet, but something hard and smooth, and ahead of him was a rowhouse, containing many doors. Over each door were letters, which he could not read, but the outward beauty of one door led him to enter there.

Inside were maidens of tremendous beauty and wonderous form, barely clothed! They greeted Ponce de Leon with laying on of hands and even sweet kisses, then began removing his armor, piece by piece. They placed him in a magical pool, bubbling and hot, and washed him all over, including his hair. Then he was sat in a chair and his hair and beard were trimmed to look the way he had been the day he had left Spain, handsome and magnificent in his looks. After this, he was laid on a table and two women began to squeeze and pummel his muscles! At this he began to panic, wondering why they were beating him so.

"Why," exclaimed one, "don't you want to be young and vibrant again? After all, we are the Fountain of Youth Spa and Hair Design..."

Upon hearing those words, Ponce de Leon realized he should not ever tell anyone the horrific truth of the Fountain of Youth! Springing off the table, he seized his armor and fled back the way he had come. Again he was dizzy and disoriented, and then there was dirt and plants under his feet. He made his way back to camp and though his crew pummeled him with many questions about where he had gone and what happened to him, why was he just in his underwear, he never revealed the secret about

The Fountain of Youth.

There. That's the basics of the story. There was 5 pages of it, descriptions I carefully looked up in our encyclopedia, drawings copied carefully of plants indigenous to the area and more. I handed it in with pride in my writing and story, very happy that I had written such a good tome.

To look up later when the mother barged in, the story in her hand torn to pieces, her wielding the paddle. I was beat about the head, shoulders and back, cursed, scorned and told I was the spawn of Satan for such a story! It was horrible, it was sinful, it was of the devil and I had to take the pieces outside and burn them in the garbage pit after she wore herself out beating me, then the father took his belt and beat me silly outside for the story too, and he hadn't even read it. I was made to write a story about a character from the bible, the story carefully followed to be along totally "christian" lines that were approved of by their beliefs. THAT story was handed in and I got a low grade on it anyway. I was 17 when this happened and needless to say, I found ways to be busier about the property and less in the school work. I didn't write for years after that - coming in another blog - and I didn't graduate either. School was almost a failure, but at least I got reading down... which I kept doing, but as long as I lived under the parents' roof, it was what they decided was fit to read. I had no say. So I read a lot of one-sided, christian-belief only books, but never could entirely believe any of them. I questioned everything - and got beat, slapped, hair pulled, ear twisted, oh, tortured - and told to just BELIEVE it, quit questioning. Maybe it was the devil in me, but I didn't stop. Couldn't. I had questions and I wanted answers. I just learned to tone it down some. 

So that is the story of the first story I ever wrote and what happened. What do you think? Should I have been punished so severely for my story? I'd like to hear comments... even if you don't believe this story! I'm telling the truth. I lived this horror. Everyone who can corroborate it is dead now, so there's only me, but it's the god-damned truth. I had insane parents who loved to beat the shit outta me for no good reason and they did, every day. So I went on living in my stories in my head. At least they were safe there!

Love you all and HUGS!!!

My Very First Blog on Dream Come True!

My Very First Blog on Dream Come True!

Wow. Have things started becoming crazy here! If you're a friend of mine and reading this, you've found out from my FB page that I'm blogging here so it can be published on Amazon.com too. I will still blog on my FB website but it will be different than the blog on here to some extent because I cannot have 2 exact same blogs anywhere, damn it. That means I have to spread out my mind on how to say the same thing 2 different ways, or talk about the same thing differently. OR say something different in each blog area and tell you to check the other one. 

I hope all my friends on FB will follow me here too. Like FB, it won't be an everyday thing, because I don't believe in publishing everything about my entire life to everyone. I did post on FB today that I'm depressed and I am; being overlooked is hurtful, even if it was meant to be nice to me. I have to explain that to the person who did it and hope they understand. But I don't think I should display my whole life; "Oh my god, I had the greatest homemade chicken burrito for dinner," (followed by picture,) or "another headache again. When will they stop?" sort of thing.

I will write about my writing, I might give some history of my writing; in fact, I'm sure I will. I think it would be very cleansing for me to write about it and for you to see that getting published, even though it is self-published, is a great big huge wonderful happening for me.

So the picture above is of book number two. Why not book #1? I want to revisit the cover and see if we can clean it up some. It's all right, it's just not as good as others that have been done. It's taken my artist, Marija Vemic, practice and time to make the covers better and better. Over time I'll change the title cover so you can see my other covers. I'm currently up to book #7 out of 9 in the Earth Maid series and will start on #8 in about a week. Why?

Because I'm writing a new book, which is turning out to be for a friend, initials QW. She innocently asked (I had already started the new novel but it was in beginning phases and hadn't talked about it) what it would cost to have a character put in a novel. I said "Nothing... why?" She wanted her deceased son to be mentioned or be a minor character in a novel to immortalize him, is the way it turned out. I said give me a bit of time and started grinding my gears on the book.

Now, I write in chunks usually. Here on the blog, no, but on a novel I write what has come to mind and stick it where it belongs. Thus I might write the end of a novel first! Or the middle, then some of the end, then part of the beginning, etc... and I shift it around where it should go. And I mull over my new book when I'm going to sleep and usually dream about it! And lo, a character came up, a major one, for her son. When I told QW she was so happy! She told me she will pay for the cover for the book and buy copies for all her relatives. She also wants to read the first draft of the book, which is close to being done, and I want to write on that for a week, starting tomorrow. Why tomorrow? Because it is Late - almost 10 pm, because I'm still kind of depressed, because the cat is in my lap making this difficult, because my brain isn't working on the book right now. I need to set it up and I'm not sure a section I've written is right. It may be thrown out in the 2nd write. So with all the becauses, I'm putting it off for my comfort. 

So now I end this long, rambling blog. Forgive me if it's dull, I hope to get better at it. I'll talk to you later. I have to post in FB about my new Blogger page and my Amazon Author page too, which will link to this page. I'll try to get the link on here somehow, I'm still totally new to a blogger's page and not sure how to do it. But my facebook page is Taborri Walker, so look it up and see the blogs I've written there, if you're new to me. I promise to discuss enough about my writing to titillate your senses enough to hopefully buy the books!

Love to you all,

Taborri Walker