March 20, 2013 · 5:28 pm

Are We There Yet Papa Smurf?

Papasmurf1We’re on day three of this epic road-trip to fame and already I’m hearing little voices saying, “Are we there yet Papa Smurf?” The answer is “Not  yet, Writer Smurf.”  We still have a few more places to visit and blanks to fill in.

Today we are signing up for both LinkedIn and About.Me.  These are two resources you may never really use on a daily or even monthly basis, but as we saw yesterday, my LinkedIn profile shows up on the first page when my author name is googled.

Go to http://www.LinkIn.com. Register your author name and begin building your professional profile.Yes, I  know you aren’t looking for a job, but agents and editors that you submit your manuscripts to will be looking at YOU. It is also a great venue for making connections with others who work in your industry–authors, editors, agents, and publishers.

If you want, you can also make a profile for your real name and use it to build your professional resume in whatever field you currently work in, i.e. biochemistry, web-design, etc.

Your Author Profile will include:

1. Your current publisher if you have one. If not with a publisher, simply put Author and Blogger

2. Your background in the industry – any work you have had published and who with, also any other relevant information. Mine looked a bit thin at first, as I had no experience. Actually, it looked naked.

3. Fill out the history with as much or as little information as you wish. This is a PROFESSIONAL site, for connecting prospective employers with prospective employees, so keep it simple and to some degree, corporate. If you haven’t already done it, now is the time to make your 250 word Author Bio.

4. upload your Author Picture so that people have some idea of who you are. (NOT the one of you wearing nothing but balloons and a smile at the office Christmas party.)

This blog, Life in the Realm of Fantasy, is linked to my profile there and updates automatically. You will be surprised at how many people you know are out there on LinkedIn. This is how my LinkedIn Profile looks:

LinkedIn prnt scrn croppedIt always surprises me when I get a message that someone has looked at my profile there, although WHY it surprises me, I don’t know. LinkedIn is something I signed up for randomly when I first started this crazy career path. I didn’t have a clue about what it was good for or why I should do it, but look at how it has paid off in terms of visibility.

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The Next Stop is About.me  about.me printscreen

1. Go to http://www.about.me. If the Google page comes up, click on the link that says “http://www.about.me your personal homepage”

2. You will want to copy and paste your author bio that you made for LinkedIn

3. Upload your author photo

4. Add links to your blogs, fb author page and books

5. Sign up for the free about.me email address where you can receive your professional email.

6. Put the link to your about.me page in your Email Signature so that it automatically goes out on both your personal AND professional email. This is how MY outgoing email signature looks:

Connie Johnson-Jasperson
–
My About.Me link in my email signature sends those who may wonder who the heck I think I am a clear message–that I THINK I’m an author! It is a single page with everything prospective agents, editors and fans need to know.
–

In just the same way as Twitter and Facebook, you can play around with this page until it looks the way you want it to look. Don’t freak out if you make mistakes.  Right now my About.Me link takes the viewer to the first version of my profile instead of the newer version I have shown here.  I have a request in to support to help me get it figured out, and soon it will be the way I want it to be.

Just like my little about me profile mix-up you might sort of mess things up a bit as you begin this process, but everything can be straightened out and EVERYONE who is involved in these sites is very supportive of those like me who are complete newbies at this whole internet thingy.

As you gain experience with these media platforms your profiles will grow and become more professional and will represent you in the light that you want your work to be seen in.

And – I am always available here to commiserate when the going gets bumpy!

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March 19, 2013 · 4:58 pm

The Author With the Tolstoy Tattoo

250px-Branding_irons-Dutch_K,_c,_and_kToday’s post will continue the discussion on building your brand through social Media, and today we’re taking on Facebook.

I can hear you screaming, “What brand? I don’t have a brand! Keep that hot iron away from me!” (Cue the theme music from “Rawhide”)

Well, I’m not asking you to be The Author with the Tolstoy Tattoo or anything, unless dead Russian authors really ring your bells. While that would garner attention at the family picnic or the opening night mixer at the writers’ convention, it’s not really a useful tool for getting your name out there.

What you want to do is Brand Yourself through social media.

You will probably write many books, so your book titles can’t be your brand, even if you are writing an epic fantasy series.  Neither my Tower of Bones series nor my Billy’s Revenge series can be my brand, because using their titles doesn’t focus the attention into one cohesive spot well enough.

So what IS your brand? I sat in on a webinar on marketing that was made available to me by the Pacific Northwest Writers Association this last weekend. While I didn’t learn anything I didn’t already know about marketing in general, this is what the presenter said, and it made sense to me:

Your Author Name is your Brand, so you must:

1.            Market the underlying theme that links your books–your AUTHOR NAME

2.            Communicate that brand though social media

3.            Blog, and communicate—write what you know or what you want to read and post it regularly

Yesterday you opened a twitter account.  Today you are going to make a Facebook Author Page.  If you look at my Google page from yesterday, the first 5 things come up in this order:

first page of google 3-18-2013

1>     My GoodReads profile (That will be our 5th and final workshop)

2>     My Amazon Author Page (Once we have all of these media pulled together and you have your book published you will put together an Amazon Author Page with links to all your media.)

3>     This blog, Life in the Realm of Fantasy (See? Regular blogging does pay off.)

4>     My Facebook Author Page

5>     My LinkedIn page

SO – today we are going to get ourselves out there on Facebook.  First, you must go to www.facebook.com and open a personal account if you don’t already have one. You don’t have to use it, but you can’t get a professional page without one. YOU REALLY DON’T WANT TO SPAM YOUR PERSONAL FB FRIENDS ABOUT YOUR BOOK—it’s rude and ruins folks’ cute kitty picture moments.

MH900444793

Once you have that taken care of, you go to the ‘create pages’ page, https://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php . There are 6 squares representing the various sectors of professional pages. You want to click on ‘public figure’.

fb pages chart

Click here ↑  and a new menu will open up. You will select ‘Author’. Fill in your Pen Name exactly as you want it to be.  Place a check in the little box that says you agree to Facebook’s terms and click the ‘get started’ button.

This will take you to a place where you will fill in the blanks and soon you will have your professional fb page up and running.  You can use your personal page to invite your friends to ‘like’ your page once, that is not considered too rude.

My author page on Facebook is https://www.facebook.com/cjjasperson and I’ve fixed it up to represent me as a writer.  Everyone has a different style, this is mine.

You’re telling me it’s just like twitter—you don’t have anything to say. I am telling you that it IS EXACTLY like twitter.

You have plenty to say! You’re an author, you spew words out the ends of your fingers. Keep both your tweets and your Facebook posts light, and keep them short.  This is where you let your prospective fans know what is going on with your work. On  Facebook, occasionally post about things you are doing, such as word-count on a current project, the projected date of publication for the new novel, these sorts of things.

I linked this blog to something called Networked Blogs which is a Facebook app, and my blog posts automatically post to my professional page so that the content there regularly updates itself and my page doesn’t stagnate. That link is http://www.networkedblogs.com/syndication and it is a really good resource.

Now that you have your Facebook page, it’s time to get your Linked In account up and running and also your about.me account.  We will be discussing these two wonderful resources tomorrow!

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March 18, 2013 · 8:00 pm

I Tweet, therefore I Am

Portrait of Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin by Ilya RepinToday’s post begins a 5 part series on social media.

People have this idea that writing books is some sort of higher calling, that authors do some miraculous thing with words and bucks come rolling in.

‘Taint so, sadly. Books don’t sell themselves, no matter how great the cover is.

Even for those authors lucky enough to have a large, powerhouse company get behind their book, the actual work of getting their author name out there is a job they will have to do for themselves.   This is why, frequently, we see books by successful indies being snapped up by the likes of Doubleday (Fifty Shades of Grey) and Little, Brown and Company (Twilight).  The work has already been done – the book is deemed as having been edited properly, and the author has carved out the niche for their book. For the big publisher it’s a perfect deal.

I think there may be a trend there.

We know we have written the best book we are able. We’ve had it professionally edited, and we have commissioned a great cover. But our book has sold only 7 copies, and we don’t have any more friends we can coerce. No one knows our book is out there. No one knows we exist!

As you can see, my author name comes up on the first 10 pages of google. So, what do we do to make our author name come up on the first page of the google search engine?first page of google 3-18-2013

That’s easy.  First, for one week we spend one hour a day laying the groundwork for advancing our career through the various different social media that are proven to benefit authors.  After that, all we need to do is spend 5 minutes a day tweeting, and perhaps 15 minutes checking our various other social media venues. Also, authors need to blog. That can take as long or as short a time as you want it to.

What?  Yes, I said we had to ‘work’ at it.

Not only do we need to find time to write and get the book prepped for publication, we must use the readily available tools of social media to get our name out there.  Fortunately, there is a huge community of indie authors out there on the internet, and they are wonderful at sharing what works and what doesn’t work with us newer authors.

my twitter pageThe first thing they tell us is to make a Twitter account.  It is free, and not really too difficult. You begin with a blank slate, and they give you an ‘egg’ for a picture.

Choose your Twitter Handle (name) Wisely!  I went with @cjjasp because you only get 149 characters per tweet, including spaces.  Your handle takes up valuable real estate in your tweets, so make it reflect your author name and try to keep it short.

Don’t go with the ‘egg’ – upload a picture of your book, your dog or whatever, but ditch the ‘egg’ as it screams ‘NEWBIE’ when your tweets show up.

Twitter will give you the option of linking your blog or home-page to your twitter profile. If you don’t have one of these, don’t worry. By the end of this series you will have all those blanks filled in, and your twitter profile will direct people to your books.

Next, ‘follow’ some of your favorite celebrities.  They probably won’t follow you back, but celebs tweet all the time, and they often have funny things to say.  Especially  @GeorgeTakai  – he’s frequently hilarious.

Now follow some authors that you may know of.  They will have followers that READ BOOKS. Follow some of their followers.  Follow a few people every day at first, while you are getting the hang of it.  THEN – once you have an understanding of how Twitter works you can get down to the real business of growing your followers.  When a new person follows me I follow them back, unless they are a ‘bot’ and those are fairly obvious.  They are usually spammers and the like. If you get a creepy suspicious feeling from looking at their profile, don’t follow them.

Do something called RE TWEETING.  When one of my followers tweets something that catches my eye I retweet it to all of my followers.  It is a courtesy, but that is what social media is all about–courtesy and scratching each others backs.

As a side note – Don’t EVER click on these links that have been going around twitter for years, that go something like this: “I saw this video of you” or “3 people unfollowed you” or “People are saying bad things about you.” DON”T click on them no matter which trusted follower has sent them to you. THESE ARE VIRUSES, and soon your account will be hacked and you will be spreading this virus like poor Typhoid Mary.

At the end of your first week of building your social media platform you will have links to Twitter, LinkedIn, About.Me, WattPad, Pinterest, and of course, FaceBook.

Tomorrow, we will talk FaceBook.

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March 17, 2013 · 10:05 am

No Rest for the Wicked, or Lettuce Give Thanks

Albert_Bierstadt_-_Rocky_Mountain_Landscape_-_Google_Art_Project (1)Saturday was a busy day.  It started out at 6:30 am with preparing two rather nice boys for human sacrifice on the altar of the Bull God. This was followed by a prophetic dream. At about 12:30 I  chatted with a rather witless Minotaur, until 2:30 p.m. when I had to put away my toys, shower, and  get myself properly dressed for dinner out with my old school mates.

I love writing fantasy.

I’ve been working on the ritual sacrifice scene for two days, and gradually it’s evolving into what I want it to be. The prophetic dream scene has also been on the work table for two days, and it too is evolving.  The end is nigh on this manuscript, and I am beginning to chafe at the bit, just wanting it to be finished so I can get going on two other tales that I have sitting on the back burner.

But it won’t be that easy.

No, there’s no rest for the wicked. I suppose attempting to  sacrifice perfectly nice characters on the altar of a dark God qualifies me as being wicked.

At least I hope so.

Irene Roth Luvaul and I have one more trip through Huw the Bard, and then he will be going to the Beta Readers. While he is being read, I will work on my two other projects for a bit, before I plunge back into prepping Huw for publication, and doing a rewrite of Mountains of the Moon.

In the meantime I’ve been writing as fast as I can, and trying to get the first draft of MOTM done, with an actual ending and everything.

Saturday night my old classmates and I dined at a nice local restaurant. It was my first big dinner event since becoming vegan and the meal I was offered was excellent and satisfying.  I had a nice green salad with balsamic vinaigrette, sautéed mixed vegetables, a baked potato with salsa and guacamole, followed by a strawberry sorbet.  It was a delicious meal, and I felt like I’d had a real dinner out.

The interesting thing about dining out, now that I’ve made the change to a vegan diet, is that there is a way that I can eat well without making a big ordeal out of it.  I have to be proactive and take responsibility for my meals by simply calling ahead and speaking to the chef about what items on their menu might be appropriate for a person who eats no dairy or meat.

This is really a life lesson for the indie author too–we must be proactive if we want something positive to happen with our career.  We must set aside time blog, and tweet, and make sure that when our author name is googled we are all over the first page that comes up. We must do this in as professional a manner as we are able, as the drunk-driving rap is probably not going to sell our books. We must establish regular habits of writing our books, writing blog posts, doing the social networking  that we despise, AND we have to learn how to be our own best advertisement. Why, yes, I do just happen to have a copy of my book in my trunk.  Yes, I do accept cash, checks, credit cards and jewelry. Who should I autograph this book to? Yes, I love shopping here at Safeway.

No rest for the wicked.

We can’t sit back and just hope for the best, or we might be stuck with a plate of french fries and a bowl of lettuce.

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March 13, 2013 · 8:39 pm

What the Writer Reads

knights-round-table-2I love author blogs. I love the way authors who write novels think, and that is what I love about author-blogs. You get the raw mind in action when you read these works of art.  For example, today  before breakfast I read:

J.D.HUGHES – A Few Thoughts About Snow.  It’s an awesome post, and the way he describes the scenery and the thoughts that snow inspires in him is really beautiful.  Quote: “I live in a rural area and for the homeless here there are fewer places to escape nature than there are in the city. Every winter, with a regularity that suggests premeditation, an unfortunate is found frozen to death behind a stone wall, in a field or even a doorway and the death is recorded as misadventure. I doubt that person’s life was much of an adventure (I might be wrong), but to dismiss it with an innocuous word like ‘misadventure’ is an insult to the dead. Perhaps we should call it manslaughter or culpable homicide – in the Scottish legal sense  –  since we all partook in the death, by omission, or just by being too busy to notice someone slip from being a live human to being a dead misadventure.”

Then, oddly enough, I was inspired to read Carlie M.A. Cullen’s lovely flash-fiction post on Spring. Quote: “Birds warble as they flit from bough to bough; small creatures rustle the undergrowth, reminding me that soon their offspring will be born.” Such a lovely post today.

After that, Johanna Garth’s wonderful blog Losing Sanity made me laugh and think of how entertaining children are, and what a mystery their minds are. Quote from ‘Life Lessons From a Little Boy“: “Mom, life is a lot like chess,” he told me as I stopped to photograph and tweet a picture of golden daffodils.

“How so?” I asked.

“You have to  have an open mind. Be ready for anything. If you just concentrate on one way of
winning you might not see all the other ways.” He was wearing his oversized blue  hoodie and ripped jeans. Suddenly I had a glimpse of him as an adult, possibly  wearing the exact same outfit.

I really identify with Johanna’s experience as a mother–the most entertaining, intelligent people I know are children. When I read her blog I get a bit of my own experience raising children back, and it makes me smile.

Alison DeLuca’s wonderful blog, Fresh Pot of Tea was on a subject near and dear to my heart–beauty and aging. Quote from her post, Lovely Age: “After watching Driving Miss Daisy on a date years ago, I turned to the fellow who had brought me to the movies.  “You know,” I said, “Jessica Tandy really is a stunning woman.”

“What?” He was horrified. “But – she’s old!”

Yeah, I broke up with him not long after that.”

Alison cracks me up, with her ability to tell the painful truth and make you laugh at yourself.

Then there are the helpful blogs, like Mary W. Walters’ blog The Militant Writer. This week’s post was particularly interesting to me as it is on marketing. Establish a S.M.A.R.T. book promotion goal is this weeks title. Quote: If “to sell books” is all I’m striving for, I’m never going to get anywhere. It’s like setting myself the goal “to lose weight” or “to read Tolstoy” or “to learn another language.” Those are ultimate goals, but they are not specific, measurable, attainable, relevant or time-sensitive goals, which is what SMART stands for (more on S.M.A.R.T. goals later).

I’ve learned a lot from following Mary’s blog since I began this journey.

These blogs are only a few of the ones I read this morning.

All in all, I spend the first one to two hours of the day reading blogs that show up in my email or blog-reader.  Some of the best writing on any given subject is out there in blog-form and it’s FREE!

Get out there and read, my friends.  And if you are an author, do me a favor, and BLOG!

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March 12, 2013 · 3:35 am

Body and Mind

shaky chairArt Glenberg, physicist speaks on  Smart Planet about how the body affects the mind and the way we view the world around us.

“Over the last decade researchers have produced striking evidence that the body, and its relationship to the environment, is completely intertwined in the thinking process. For instance, simply sitting in a wobbly chair makes us judge others’ relationships to be unstable. Wearing a white lab coat, thought to be a doctor’s coat, helps our concentration and focus. Literally washing our hands rids us of guilty feelings.

So seemingly inconsequential events have a huge influence over our emotions, thoughts, and decisions. And this, scientists say, is because our abstract knowledge comes not from some disembodied reasoning within the brain but rather from our concrete experiences interacting with the world from the moment we are born. The very structure of reason itself comes from our visual and motor systems.”

I find his observations to be so true!  When I am in my office I get more actual writing done than if I am on the sofa with my laptop, with the same music and the same quiet.

I am a physical creature, formed by my environment.

I also follow TED . One of the most moving TED talks I’ve watched recently was by  ShaneNisqualley Earthquake - Safeco Field - photo by Don Marquis-MOHAI Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection-Seattle PI.com file Koyczan on being bullied, and how the opinion of other people shapes a person’s view of self. He also affirms the right of every person to be who they are and to be proud of being that person, no matter how different they are. I highly recommend you watch this talk–you will shed tears and be proud of who you are.

I am an emotional creature, formed by the casual taunts and the negative opinions of family and, sometimes, friends.

Through these two different venues, a vision of myself forms.  There is the view of myself – the young adult in a shaky chair, seeing the world as being unsteady. Is it me, or is it the world?  Hiding in books, finding secret refuge in filling notebook after notebook with writing fantasy tales but too embarrassed to tell anyone, because there was no way I could ever be a writer.  Girls in the data entry pool should stick to what they know–key those numbers girl, they pay your rent.

Also there is the view of myself through the eyes of my parents–a too big, rather clumsy girl who spent twelve years in the public school system staring out the window, avoiding conflict and flying under the radar.

A girl who didn’t know who she was, or what she wanted to be. The girl who never quite measured up.

And yet, 59 years on, I am a different person. When the ground shifts today, I know that either the chair is wobbly or we are having another earthquake. I am comfortable with either event and will work around it.

I am still lacking in grace, but now I know what I want to be when I grow up. I’m doing it and I’m taking no prisoners. Sure, I get knocked down once in while, by a sucky review or by the sheer amount of work that one must do get your work out there when you’re an indie writer.

But now when those things loom large I pick myself off the floor and ask, “Was that another earthquake, or is my chair just shaky?”

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March 7, 2013 · 2:14 am

Sitting in a Starbucks

EspressoToday I am in Seattle, sitting in a busy Starbucks, working on my book. It ‘s kind of cool, blogging and working on my book on the ground floor of an office building that houses Amazon.

There is something about this rainy city that I love.  It fires up my creative mind. Plus, I lived in Seattle until I was 9, and to me it has always been home.

The book is rolling along well–so well that I begrudge the time it takes to blog! The characters are occupying most of the space in my mind–to the point that I can hardly carry on a conversation without sounding like an idiot.

Designing melèes with strange creatures and putting my characters through hell  and yet still finding something humorous in their situations–I’ve never had a job more rewarding. (Although, I admit it’s financially rather UNrewarding.) Still, maybe the next book will be the one!

I’m sitting here in a Starbucks, in Seattle, watching the rain and the people and loving my job. I don’t care if I’m not a bestseller and I don’t really care if I ever am. I’ve finished writing four (count them –> FOUR!) books and can all those nay-sayers say they have done that? So I’m not published by one of the Big Six. And so my books aren’t on the hot one hundred yet! I’m an indie and I do the best I can, which is all one can ask of themselves.

I am sitting in a Starbucks living my dream, writing a book.  It doesn’t get much better than that!

My advice is this–do what you love, and do it to the best of your ability. Life is too short to spend most of it waiting for the right time to happen, or for someone to give you permission to live.

Find your “Starbucks” and make your life happen!

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March 3, 2013 · 7:52 pm

Parsifal, Wagner, and the Muse

Parisfal - Creator - Hermann Hendrich PD-Art Wikimedia CommonsThings are back to normal here at La Casa del Jasperson–at least, as normal as the interior of a spinning blender ever is. I strive to create a zen-like home to compensate for the strange detours life takes us on. The way my creative mind works, I need to have an orderly environment or I can’t focus on my work.

Epilepsy is disorderly in the extreme! Dealing with hospitals and life-changing events takes a toll on one’s creativity. Worrying that the new medicine won’t work, or your loved one won’t be able to tolerate the poison is terribly stressful. Thus, despite the fact that I brought my lap-top and spent the same number of hours staring at the screen this last week, I accomplished very little, other than taking my main characters a few steps closer to their doom.  I managed only 3000 words for seven days of writing.

But that changed yesterday when I managed to write 1200 words in one productive hour. The reason my hour was so productive is this—> Three weeks ago, before life took the side-trip, I was suffering from a bout of writer’s block.

I’ve always known what was going to happen with this tale, but I was writing it by the seat of my pants, as usual! SO in desperation, two weeks ago I made a 3000 word outline of where I wanted the story to go, right down to the epilogue. Immediately, I was able to get the story moving again.

I know!  It’s genius! I took my own advice!

During this week of worry and stress, I spent a lot of time out on Wikimedia Creative Commons looking at some of the greatest art ever collected. It is humbling to realize that these artists saw no great rewards for their work, in fact they were barely able to eke out a living at it. I came across the picture that graces todays post, Parsifal, by Hermann Hendrich.  The castle in the background is exactly the sort of place my characters have found themselves. The fir trees and the remoteness of this picture gave a form to my idea, and I was more easily able to create the story of what happens next.

The interesting thing is, Hendrich got his imagination jump started by having seen the Wagnerian opera, Tannhäuser.  (YouTube link here!)

Go figure–an artistic type whose muse is fired up by big, loud, epic music!  Of course I was captivated.  The creative process that others experience is as interesting to me as is their final, amazing product.

Today, it is  7:28 a.m. on an early spring Sunday.  I am listening to loud German opera overtures via YouTube and mentally preparing to get 3000 or more words written today.

So as the world here in Olympia (the navel of the universe) gets back to normal, all will end well for my heroes…or will it…heh heh….

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February 28, 2013 · 10:12 pm

The ‘e’ word, part 2

MSClipArt MP900390083.JPG RF PDEpilepsy.

My oldest daughter had a grand mal seizure when she was 26 years old, and has not had any issues since. She also deals with obsessive compulsive disorder, and is doing well because she is on a good treatment regimen for her conditions.  she is a beautiful, happy woman of 39, with a 6-year old child (The Boy who frequently appears in this column.) Early on, Daughter 1 decided to face her problem and deal with it appropriately. The Boy will be her only child, as she had to go off her meds for that year in order to have a healthy child, and she isn’t going to chance that again.

Adult Onset of Epilepsy with no discernible physical cause is more common than I once thought, though it is still rather rare. It is hard to find information on it. Many adult seizures are caused by tumors, alcohol and drug abuse, or aneurysms, and frequently these can be cured.

However, many times there is NO PHYSICAL CAUSE that is discernible via MRI  or EEG. This is the case in two of my children.

My son, who shares the same father with Daughter 1, always showed the same intensity of thought and purpose, combined with obsessing that his father and his sister had.  He recognized early on that his OCD was crippling him, and sought treatment for it.

He will be 35 in a month, and has only had his seizure disorder for 18 months.  He had trouble accepting it, refusing to believe it could occur again, since his sister had only had the one seizure that we knew of. Then, when he was forced to see that he had “a problem with seizures” he believed he could cure it with the proper diet, and exercise. When that notion was proven wrong, he at last went on the meds that his doctors prescribed, and he went 10 months with no seizures.

Because he is an analytical man, he wanted to see if the meds were working, and went off them for 5 days, and had 3 grand mal seizures and at least 1 minor seizure in 2 days. Fortunately, he was in the hospital, and they were able to get him on a good regimen for his meds.

Now he has faced the reality that he has epilepsy for no apparent reason, and there is no way to cure it. To my everlasting relief, he is making good decisions and going forward with life, instead of letting his epilepsy rule him.

On occasion, a physical cause can be found for the random seizures that characterize this disorder, but frequently no cause can be found. In my children’s case, no root cause can be found, but their father’s side of the family has had some history with random aneurysms and other odd occurrences, such as clinical Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.  Medication treats the symptoms, but also frequently has other effect that are not so desirable.

Thus, the dilemma that all people who must take these medicines face.

As an author, I have the perfect positive escape for the stressful things in my life.  I write, I play games, I read books, and I reorganize my spoon collection–I stay busy. My chosen career is one I can carry with me, so when a family member is having a crisis, I can pack up the laptop and go to the rescue for however long it takes to help them work through the problem.

For a Vegan, this is an adventure, indeed! I have found ways to travel and dine on the road without having to go hungry.

My advice to those living with epilepsy still stands.  Take the poison, and live the life you are given to its fullest.  Deal with the problems when they arise and put them behind you. Happiness is a state of mind that must be cultivated.

Many people spend hours thinking about where they went wrong, and reinforcing the negative thoughts.  This makes them negative, unhappy people!

To be happy, one must deliberately cultivate the positive things that are ALSO happening in their life, and give them more importance than the negative. Make your face smile, even when you aren’t being watched and you might be surprised at how much better you feel!

We all have random bad things that pop in and out of our lives. We live in a sometimes hard world, but we have this wonderful, glorious opportunity to see the real beauty of the world around us.

Grab it, and don’t let go!

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February 24, 2013 · 10:29 am

The ‘e’ word

MP900049975Letting go is never easy.

You are grown up now, you’re a big boy.  You make your decisions, right or wrong.

You’re thirty-five years old.

You have a seizure disorder.  It’s okay to call it epilepsy. It’s okay to say the ‘e’ word. It’s not like we are naming Voldemort. Nothing caused it. Nothing will cure it. It will come and go, and yes it’s a bastard to deal with, but we deal with it. When you take your medicine, the symptoms are controlled.  When you don’t, they are not.

You have this epilepsy thing and you have trouble accepting it, but I believe in you. Nothing has changed, except you have this problem sometimes.

Don’t choose to live your life looking at what you don’t have–so caught up in where things went wrong that you can’t see where they went right.

Life is so beautiful.

Your life is out there, waiting for you to claim it, waiting for you to wrap your arms around it and embrace it.

Life is good.  Don’t become a small, angry person just because things aren’t perfect. Don’t build walls around the you that I love so much. Don’t hide behind stubborn anger, because life doesn’t care if you’re mad or not. Life goes on, and the only way to live, REALLY live is to grab it, and learn to love the life that exists despite the ugly bits.

It’s the contrast of the good and the bad that makes the good in life so beautiful.

Embrace every minute and see the beauty around you. Live in the moment, because you only get one moment, ever–and that moment is now.

Don’t let the ‘e’ word steal your “now.”

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