What’s on your nightside table? I have several books all the time that I am working on. Right now it’s Eve by WM.Paul Young, Euphoria by Lily King and Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson. I have always loved books and reading because it is fun but bottom line it makes you smarter!
March is National Reading Month and it’s important to not only grab a great book and READ but to also share those great works that have moved us with others so they can experience it for themselves too.
Today the book industry has changed so much as we go towards a more digital world there’s been talk of a day where library’s are shut down and book stores are a thing of the past. I sure hope not! One positive thing that has really changed in the publishing world is the ability for anyone to write and publish a book. With solid content and a few clicks you can be an author and offer free e-books and print on demand. With that said, I have had a lot of friends that have done just that. Rick Gillis has published five books with is latest Promote! Likewise Minerva Perez and Damali Keith both well known faces in our homes for years, have taken their talents as journalists to write books and share their experiences. Minerva’s I’ve got a story has been so successful that as she signs and tours currently she is working on a second body of work entitled MORE STORIES. Damali’s A Great Day to Live is a wild journey through domestic abuse and raises awareness to a problem often overlooked and left to fix itself. Too often women die at the hands of those they think love them.
It probably wouldn’t surprise you to learn that years ago I hired an agent and actually sent out countless query’s pitching a children’s book collection and a cartoon series. Both are still neatly compiled in my drawers unpublished as I don’t take rejection very well and wasn’t willing to self publish because the industry was so sketchy. Today though things are very different. I have been working on several books for a while now and the first will come out this fall. I’ll go ahead and answer the question what’s the title? with a resounding and confident “I’m not sure yet.” When I asked Damali Keith about the title of her next book she smiled and said Accepting Her Life. Both Rick and Minerva… same thing. Not me though I am winding through some pretty traumatic stuff of my childhood writing those pages and like peeling back an onion and traveling through layers of my life, I know it will come to me. I can only liken it to those new parents that come see me for their maternity portraits and I ask them “what are you naming the baby?” Some know immediately and others contemplate and say things like “we are waiting to meet him or her.” I know like birthing a baby (which by the way is what this is starting to feel like), a title will come in time.
It’s exciting that all of us are now in an age where we all can be an author. Each of us has stories to tell and some have dreams that one day they could have careers like Stephen King or J.K. Rowling. Like David Sedaris, who by they way is one of if not my favorite along with Fannie Flagg, those books coming out of us all are little pieces of our souls. What makes for great reading is when writers are passionate about what they are trying to say. I hope that each of you will find a great book for your nightside table this month (I’ve given you several in this column!) and if the idea of becoming an author has ever been a fleeting fantasy; that this month you’ll not only be reading but you’ll start writing too!
Take Care of YOU!
~A
Are you wanting be a published writer? What are your stories? What great books have you read that you think others should as well?
Email me at: alisamurray@yahoo.com
