Tell us about yourself and what inspired you to start writing.
When I was a child, I knew I was going to be an artist. I enjoyed drawing, singing, dancing, acting and did not start journaling until I was about 11 years old. I won a Reflections Contest in San Diego County when I was five years old and that is when people started to realize that I had a gift. I won numerous art and drawing contests when I was in the second and third grade. When I was a child, I was a difficult child because I had ADHD and did not enjoy reading. I simply could not sit still long enough to do it. I did not think I would be a writer.
My mother’s family was extremely religious devote Roman Catholic. The outside-of-the-box thinking was not well accepted. Any kind of art that did not agree with the teachings of the Bible were unacceptable. My family did not like my artwork because they already believed something was wrong with me. Becoming an artist was a constant battle with no support. No matter if I had support or not, I still continued to do artwork. Although some of my drawings ended up recycled into fire kindling as my father thought my drawings were amateur tore them up and burned them in the fireplace. I had a real attachment to my all of my hard work. Eventually when my father realized it, he bought me an electric typewriter. The typewriter never got used because I preferred normal paper and pen. My father was the first to believe in me. Oddly enough, I still have the typewriter and the ink is still fresh.
As I learned more about writing, I started to spend summers reading and started writing short stories and mini novels. When I wrote poems, I wrote longer poems that went into detail what I was feeling at the time. These were 10+ pages long poems. I was emancipated from my parents when I was fifteen years old, a mutual agreement that I would live with my maternal grandmother until adulthood. When I became an adult, my journals were thrown away, a lot of my artwork was lost. My grandmother had encouraged me to be a writer.
I had a passion for traveling. I lived in Europe for 2 years and worked as a Flight Dispatcher and would hop flights to go new places. I enjoyed poetry books more because my attention span was not long, and I would read them and put them down. I liked Victorian poets especially William Wordsworth, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Rudyard Kipling. I started drinking and writing poetry. I had issues with alcoholism and was using writing and drinking as a way of therapy. I had been to Alcoholics Anonymous program, cleared it, relapsed, and was using cultism/religion that controlled my time (this prevented me from drinking). I left the church and was back in AA again. Even when I moved back to the United States, I still had issues with drinking, though I realized that was not the way to handle problems. I had to stop.
I continued art, lifelong. My father was murdered in 2008, and my grandmother died in a failed heart bypass surgery in 2009, and that is when I started to realize how short life really is, and if I didn’t put what I wrote out, I could die, and no one would ever know what I was thinking. Writing was my ticket to live forever, to be heard. One issue still remained, and that was my mother did not support my writing. I remember pacing the halls terrified of publishing what I had because I knew my mother would reject my writing and maybe even reject me. One person told me that you miss all the shots you don’t take in life, give yourself permission. That’s when I decided to push forward with publishing.
Describe your writing process? Is there anything unique about it?
The strange thing that happens every time I write is that I shut myself away from people. I go into my own world. I disconnect and people don’t see me for days. I found drawing/painting easier for me because I liked the movement. I think to hold my attention when I was busy moving, and it was difficult for me to sit still and write. I had to be drunk or very sick to lay still long enough to write. Sometimes I liked to read other writers work, like short William Shakespeare plays or historical books with photos to hold my interest.
Having endured abuse, the hardest part of being an artist was not judging myself and keeping a positive mindset. Even though I know there is no such thing as perfect art, even Mona Lisa had hands that were incorrect, it didn’t matter Leonardo da Vinci still finished the painting, and that’s just how art is. I remember getting upset with my art when I was a child, I would crumple up my paper and throw it away. I ended up with a pile of crumpled paper. Imperfection is art. It’s important to love what you are creating. You’re not God, and you cannot judge the art. Art creates itself, stay positive, take it as it is.
Have you published any books or do you have a desire to do so?
I have several unpublished works. I was working on a LGBT young adult novel in 2020- 2021 and dropped my laptop. Everything crashed, about 180 pages written, and the hard drive was ruined with no way of recovering the novel. I was livid when I was told it would cost an extreme amount of money to recover the lost document. I did not back it up. I was so upset, I started to write my first book. I later bought a new Acer PC, entered my password to log in and fully recovered the lost novel. I then backed up the novel with a flash drive. I learned the hard way to back up my work.
I was handwriting poems, Tattered: Healing Poetry that was published April 2022. I worked on the book for about a year. I was really torn about publishing it. It was going on about childhood abuse I had endured and exploring sexuality, which was an off-topic conversation to my upbringing, suicidal thoughts, and even dark poems about cultism and death. I was sure my family would reject it, and a lot of my family does not know I published a book. I would be shunned for it. My writing has never been well accepted by my family. My books do not align with my family’s beliefs.
Do you have any favorite poets or authors?
My favorite dark poet is obviously Edgar Allan Poe. Poe’s life was short, and he really didn’t write much, but the sheer darkness of it I enjoyed. Some of my favorite poets to read are Shel Silverstein’s children’s books, “Where the Sidewalk Ends,” and “The Giving Tree.” Silverstein has a fun approach, and I liked that. I was reading Lana del Rey’s poetry book at the time too, “Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass.” She is kind of a wild card like me. I enjoy Maya Angelou, a strong woman and a fabulous poet. My favorite Irish poet is probably William Butler Yeats. One of my favorite American poets is Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken.”
Do you have a favorite book of poetry or poems?
If I have time to read, I enjoy comic books. I like reading Manga and Anime books. I mainly like to look at the pictures because the art is so creative. Before my father passed, the book he tried to impress upon me was “Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century,” by Johnathan Glover, but it’s a very dry read and it’s not my favorite. I usually read for entertainment like Stephen King and Danielle Steele, books that are fiction and really are based off imagination. My father impressed upon me that I should read books that I learn something from non-fiction and learn something. I have a hard time sitting through that. I become uninterested. As I go on, I think I will include more historical events in my writing and challenge myself to sit through dry reads and enjoy them.
What are you reading now?
Mainly, I have been proofreading Tattered, and writing my next poetry book. I have about 70 pages written of my next poetry book. I am thinking about calling it Distracted, but I am not sure yet. Amazon offers Kindle Vella where a person can write books repetitively and add to a series, poetry with episodes. I could write several poetry books back-to-back. I am working towards fitting into the Amazon Kindle Vella genre and reading books that will coach me towards fitting into those venues. I am moving from poetry into novel writing. I still have that unpublished LGBT novel that is so close to being finished. I am working very hard to get these completed. I am hoping for one, maybe two more books to be released in 2022.
Right now, I haven’t been reading too much. I get so sidetracked with social media: Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and not making the time to sit down. When I do sit down, I am relaxing with music. Living life is another thing, working full time is what I do as the writing is not enough to support me financially. I have to do both. It’s sometimes difficult to find time to sit down and read. It’s the life of a starving artist. I wish I had more time to read.
What do you like to do when you’re not writing? Full-time job, pets, hobbies?
I work as a senior supervisor for a Blackstone security company. Corporate work life is very stressful. It’s not easy being a woman in a man’s world. People are very skeptical about female supervisors, and I have to go extra to prove myself worthy of my position. I am constantly juggling and wearing different hats back and forth between artwork and real life.
Pets? Right now, I have a Beta fish named Tym (Tim) and he has a personality. He rolls his eyes at me, and thinks I am stupid. Fish are more intelligent than people? Tym likes to watch TV. I have a pet hamster named Paris Hilton Cantrell. I have never seen a hamster that likes to cuddle without running away, but she does like to cuddle. The hamster’s nickname is “Princess P,” she likes blueberry yogis, cheese and crashing her ball. We also sometimes call her “Whammy,” as she runs into things, gets stuck and claims the closet for her new home.
Hobbies? I generally like food fresh out of the garden. I have an indoor garden with trees, and my goal for this year was to grow vegetables indoors. I have not successfully done that. Microgreens like sprouts in a jar are hit and miss. If they don’t rot, they can be good. It’s more work than I like to do. I prefer picking up garden food from the farmer’s market. Today I got a pepper mozzarella cheese and some sugar snap peas that I am very happy about.
Are you working on a current project?
I am always working on another project. I originally started with novels and went to poetry. Poetry was easy for me because it’s short bursts of emotion, that end fast. I can change topics easily with poetry. I’m not expected to stay on the same wavelength. I can switch it up. Novels are more difficult to write because there needs to be more synchronization between sentences in a paragraph, pages in a chapter and then sections that make up a novel need to flow together. I still find writing so rewarding that I would do both and even explore other venues.
There is not a limit. I have seen numerous people work with script writing, song writing, moving from romance, to thrillers, indie and even horror. If something brings you joy in life, you’re more likely to continue, and writing does that for me. There is no telling where I will go next. There are so many possibilities.
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