I have always been fueled by stories.

The first story that fed me was The Wizard of Oz.  CBS would air it once a year and, from one year old, I would watch.  The concept of fiction meant nothing to me.  Dorothy and her friends and the Wicked Witch with her winged monkey were as real to me as the people next door and my older brothers, most of whom no longer lived at home.

As I grew older, I saw and heard more stories.  My mother and brothers read to me and I continued to tune in for my yearly viewing of The Wizard of Oz, adding The Sound of Music into the yearly viewing schedule soon thereafter.

When I learned to read, I tiptoed into the world of telling my own stories.  I did not start as an avid reader–why read for myself when others would read to me?  But then I discovered a girl named Ramona, who lived only an hour away from me, and I found another story to live through.

I was a lonely child.  My siblings were all considerably older than I was and all of my neighborhood friends were either a little older or a little younger than me.  While I did have friends at school, my world was divided into home and away, and neither place seemed to fit.  So I began to make up my own worlds.

As I grew into a teenager, I began to write these worlds down.  They were long, rambling narratives, devoid of any real plot but filled with odd characters.  And I continued to read into other worlds, dividing my time into the literature taught at school and the paperbacks I would buy with my allowance.

When I entered college, I continued to write.  However, I was now writing papers instead of stories and reading between the lines instead of for enjoyment.  I began to grow into an adult but, at the same time, I began to lose my story.

Life happened and I never forgot that girl who lived her stories.

Several years ago, I began blogging.  I started just by writing an online journal, which morphed into an attempt at a “mommy blog” as I became a mother.  In writing, I began to dive back into reading and then I brought the two together in a book review blog.  And I loved it until it became too much.

As any book blogger will tell you, it doesn’t take long until the requests for reviews start rolling in.  I will admit that I lacked discipline–I had begun working with a publicity company, which was wonderful, but I also began taking in other books to review.  And, before I knew it, it had taken over my life.  My blog, which I had loved, had become a millstone around my neck.

At the same time, a spark started to make itself known inside of me.  A new story, with new characters.  I spent a few years mulling this over, getting to know these people and their loves and their losses until this past November, when I began to let them out on the screen of my laptop.

It’s a process and it is one that isn’t even near the end of the beginning, but I realized that it is the process I need to focus on at this point in my life (especially as that spark has now been joined by a few others, waiting for their chance to emerge).

I am writing.  I am a writer.

This is the first time I’ve put that out into the world.

I feel as though I am a new person and, with that new identity, comes some changes.  I have left my book blog behind and have started building this new home.  I’m not longer reviewing books in a formal sense, although I will definitely recommend books that touch me.  I will also talk about the stories I see and hear, what works and what doesn’t.  I will write about the story of my own life, as well as the stories that are coming from my life.

I won’t be posting incessantly.  I have a blog hop from my previous blog that I will be continuing here (if you have any pictures you would like to share, please come by on Saturdays!).  But, beyond that, I will be posting when I have something to say or a story to tell.

Thank you for joining me on this journey.  It is going to be a wild ride…which is good.

The best rides are the wild rides.