This is Why I Write. I Bet You Didn't Know.

Hello everyone glad to be able to speak with you about something that I have had on my mind for some time. When I started writing a book, it’s been approximately five years ago or maybe a little more. It began with a video I had watched on vacation. Not that it hadn’t happened in normal life before but the video was gripping, and this is why I started my romance novels.

It all started one summer when we had a power outage that pretty much devastated half the state of Ohio and into West Virginia. We were lucky we were only without power close to 24 hours. Unfortunately, there were others that were without power for days and some weeks. When this started, I had been watching some clips on YouTube. I had about an hours’ worth of power at that time and just wanted to have something to do once it got dark before bed. I came across a video of a television show that I had never seen before. When I tell you what wanted is most people will know what I’m speaking. The reason it caught me by surprise and wondered why I had never seen it was it was close to something I had watched when I was a child. At that time that show was a nighttime soap opera. In the era it was shot it was called Dark Shadows, the updated version is called The Vampire Diaries. Now you have to stop and think I had also read a book which it just had been out a few months called 50 shades of Gray. Before we get into great detail, I also ran on to a video on YouTube later on of a minister doing a workshop that dealt with abuse. These all influenced the making of the characters of these books.

In my line of work, I see a lot of different things. Over the last 30+ years, I have seen abuse victims from the time they were children on up until they were in their late 80s and 90s. But this video gripped me as it dealt with not just women that were abused but also men. The pastor talked about what it happened between him and his wife. They were standing in their kitchen one night just in general conversation, and his wife was talking about some different things that it happened between her and her uncle. Now the minister recognized what it happened to her as being sexual abuse where she had shrugged it off or had buried it somehow making it seem all right. You have to understand she was working alongside her husband in the ministry doing this workshop. They were trying to help others who were victims of physical, mental, and sexual abuse while his wife didn’t realize she was also a victim.

For some reason that evening while I was on a family vacation I sat down and started writing this romance novel. And it wasn’t just any romance novel or at least that’s the way I feel about it. This romance novel is geared to those who have suffered because of abusive situations, or those who might recognize abuse to be able to help someone to heal. I am a Christian woman and have been for several years. And I felt as though I was being led to write this book not so that I could bring back bad memories but to help those that had been so violently assaulted and stripped of their identity to heal. I released my first book I believe it was in 2013. I soon pulled that book and had it re-edited and republished on Amazon.com this book became a series called the life storms series. It deals with the abuse of a teenage girl that has now grown into adulthood and has been having difficulty with her adult relationships because of past experiences. It also deals with a young man that she met in her past that she does not remember. He and his sister were left alone tragically when after his parents died in a car crash. He grew up in a foster system, and he and his sister both landed in a foster home to a couple who were very abusive. Now, this is not to say that every foster home that a child enters in is abusive, please don’t get me wrong, this was only a way to introduce how some of these activities affect children and into adulthood.

Over several attempts, I finally was able to have the second book in the series published. I did have a publisher at that time I was not self-published, and it was difficult to get them to understand what was happening in these books. They could not get past the age group associated with this book. They wanted me to change the age of one of the leading characters because it dealt with underage abuse. You have to stop and think about this. I don’t know if they felt that this was a taboo subject or they were just in fear that they may get sued for publishing this information. Their excuse to me was that a child under the age of 18 might pick this book up. There is nothing in the book as far as something that is extremely explicit in regards to what happened. These stories both come from grown adults and their memories. These are not real people; they are only people created by a 50-year-old woman’s imagination and experience in nursing.

Information on sexual abuse and this does not include other forms of violence, one in three women are affected and one in five men are affected. You have to stop and think about this now. As you sit down next to your friends around the dinner table, in a theater, at a concert hall, or in a church, every third or every fifth person that sits next to you has either been affected or knows someone that has been affected by abusive behaviors. On that note, the four-book series that is now out on Amazon.com is the story about a modern-day widowed detective and a trauma nurse who meet and work these issues out together. These books were written to raise awareness of those who have been abused or have been affected by abuse.

If you know someone that has been affected or if you have been affected by abuse in any form, please contact your local police department women shelter or children’s shelter and get help. Don’t be afraid to ask. There is no shame in asking for help.

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The Picture from below is a teaser of the third book Stilling the Thunder.

#aubse #comfort #awareness