First, it was a lot of fun to sell my books at the Placentia Shop Small Boutique. I gave some books as prizes, sold some, and as usual, made friends and connections.
Where am I next? Celebrating Read Locally: Local Author Day at the Yorba Linda Library on April 6 from 2-4. I don't have a flyer to show you, but here is the link: https://www.ylpl.org/authorfest/
I will be flying back from a conference in Columbus, Ohio that same day, so if someone could bring me a Starbucks and slap me into consciousness, I'd appreciate it.
In the meantime, I've been thinking about memoirs recently, having read a couple of good ones, Honeymoon at Sea by Jennifer Silva Redmond, and When Your Heart Says Go by Judy Reeves. I've written a sort-of memoir in my book From the Horse's Mouth, even though it is fictionalized a bit and told in first-person Snoopy. But I've never thought of writing my very own memoir, mostly because I don't believe anything huge and life-changing ever happened to me.
Did I go through two divorces before I found a man I not just loved, but felt safe with? Yes. Did I move from Illinois to California by myself in a Honda Civic with my dog Tyler? Yes. Did I walk away from a lucrative 30-year career as a software engineer in order to write, work with my horse, and be in the room when my son had a question? Yes.
Do these things make a memoir? No, mostly because these big things weren't as important as what went on before, and what went on before was a series of little things. I was 23 years old when my grandfather Hansel died. I was close to him, and I remember driving down 22nd Street in Decatur, Illinois, feeling thoroughly unhappy with my life and thinking that I had to stay here because my parents would be unhappy if I left.
And then it hit me that my grandfather had died, and someday my grandmother would, and then my parents, and I would have lived my entire life trying to keep them happy and have a shell of a life when they were gone. That little moment was the catalyst, the idea that I wasn't living the life I wanted. The trip out west seems anticlimactic by comparison.
I mean, I am 70 now so maybe it's time to write a memoir, but it might never be time to publish it, and the public might not take the time to read it. At least I have a couple of title ideas. I was thinking of:
1. Things I Did When I Wasn't Doing Anything Else, or
2. I Think I'm Boring But What Did You Want To Know?
Maybe I'll stick to fiction.
