Smoking sucks !
My dad almost died two days ago because of it… his COPD was so bad he couldn’t breath…. so I entered two days of hell !
He never gets help, never tries to get better till its almost too late, and Monday at 2 am it was almost too late.
My mother is just as bad. Sees a stigma in her dementia she suffers from and refuses treatment !
So there is a lot on my older brother , sister and my own plate right now… no time to really write ! But I want to make this perfectly clear… Dad, I’m done !!!! I threw out your cigarettes, and any others you buy that I find, I will toss !!!!
Not Available?
You may (or may not) have noticed that Forget Me Not has not yet appeared on the Kobo store or the Sony ereader store.
We are currently working to resolve this issue and will let you know once it is resolved.
Writing backwards !
Well at least in the wrong order !
Two nights ago, about 1 am I woke up with the ending of book three buzzing around in my head, and in the horrible process of having to be up and writing it, the scene before that came to me.
So what is with this backwards story telling…. I hear its pretty common. I know in my other stories I write out of order, never holding myself to order although I prefer it, but I have never gotten the end of it this early, and been so certain of it !!
So I am wondering is this common with anyone else other than me ?
Reading it… again !!!
I spent the last few days reading Remember Me again, now reading Forget me Not… AGAIN !
I actually laughed at myself last week while in the midst of Remember Me because I didn’t want to stop reading, wanting to see what happens next…. WAIT A SECOND ! I wrote this book, I KNOW what happened… I MADE it happen !
That I have to admit was a weird moment for me, because usually I do not want to read them again, I know the story… too well !
So here I am in the midst of writing I’ll be seeing you. The novel that is supposed to change it all for me ( if you want the story behind that, just ask, its a little silly) and I start to wonder, what scenes from my previous books that people remember the most, that they can see in their mind, and I wonder what t is they see ?
Well then, back to writing !
Counting blessings
I was watching a rerun of a show today in which I heard the saying “Know blessings, not losses.” It was the personal mantra of a woman who had lost her son when he was four years old. Although I was busy writing at the same time the phrase caught my attention.
I watched how this saying was made into a song, talking about loss. Started me thinking… how does this woman who had lost her only child at the age of 4 take on the idea that she would not focus on the loss of her situation, but rather remember the blessings…. wow.
Since this afternoon I have been making mental notes of who it was I had lost and what blessings they had left me with. Of course there are the obvious ones… but I wanted to look deeper into it, and try to remember the little things, the little things I miss and just didn’t realize I missed them.
I can’t say that the whole concept is comfortable to me, but I think that it is something I will try to adopt in life…. seek out the blessings ! Don’t dwell on what you have lost, but rather what you gained from it all.
This could really work in all sorts of losses… got a couple in mind that I would like to try it with, let ya know how it goes 🙂
101,000 and above !!!
BOTH BOOKS !!!!!!
THANK YOU GOD !!!!!
and thank all of you too !!!!!!!
Love
Harlee !
I’m not okay.
Today … has just not been my day.
So mixed with the emotions of what today is, the emotions surfacing from the third book, and the stress at home… I can in all seriousness say, I’m not okay.
I watched through the memorials this morning, and watched the footage from eleven years ago. I went into work , finished the article I was working on then came home. The entire time I just felt off and wrong !
I think I have said before that I based Hayden ( my lead female character) on myself, on who I was. But I began to realize it was more than that. I have pulled stories from my past and used them in the book. I will not tell you what they are, but there are things that happened to Hayden that have really happened to me. The only difference was there was never a Jordan to save me. I never had a knight in shining armor that even attempted to save me.
There is an old saying…. you cannot judge me until you have walked in my shoes. You don’t know what I have lived through and I seriously doubt you could make it through the things I have and still walk on the way I do ! When you see me smile, understand… I have earned every smile I get !
Yeah before you go off…. people have lived through worse, have suffered more, and have lost more in their lives. I have no doubt of that. But I have never been one for comparing scars. We all have our trials, and they affect us all in different ways. Mine ( though some still seem to be trying to kill me) have only pushed me to be stronger.
Maybe some day I will let it slip which of Hayden’s trials I have personally lived through. Maybe if you ask nice I will tell you. Or maybe someday the books will become enough so Oprah will ask and then I will tell the world !!!
Till then, keep guessing my friends !
So what are you afraid of ?
There is a list actually.
We will start with the serious ones
1 Fire… yes it terrifies me.
2 Clowns… creepy little things they are.
3 Being alone… I really really don’t like it.
4 Not being accepted or loved… this terrifies me more than it probably should, but it really does.
5 Spiders… ummm yeah that’s pretty self explanatory !
6 And last but not least,
SUCCESS
There I said it… I’m scared of succeeding, not to the point of sabotage, but all I can think is… then what ? I’m guessing its time to try to move past that fear, because my fan base is growing. So everyone bear with me as I face down one of my biggest fears… maybe some day I will work on spiders (yeah right!)
Why do you write ?
I wrote a note on my Facebook page several months ago in hopes of explaining why I don’t sing any longer; in truth I was just tired of saying it in person. Although the explanation didn’t seem to satisfy some people I think I made my point. I thought I was done trying to explain myself until recently I had a friend ask me… why do I write ?
Hmm….. let me think about that one a second. Why do I write ? It isn’t for the sheer enjoyment of the the process I can tell you that. I grew up with dyslexia, so writing isn’t easy for me. Maybe it is because the voices in my head tell me to ? ( Just kidding, the voices in my head are angry at me and aren’t speaking to me at the moment 😉 ) This was never the career I wanted. I wanted to be an actor, or a DJ, something fun that didn’t require lots and lots of work… and writing takes LOTS of work. When I first started to write it was entertainment to me. I used it like others use TV shows. The stories I could come up with surprised me and entertained my friends. They were an escape from tough times, and allowed me to be who and what I wanted to be when I was writing !
So what is the serious answer to the answer to the question why do I write ?
Because it was a talent I was blessed with by God. Because it took me forever to realize that. I have so many stories that I have started that are in process that I am hoping someday inspiration of finishing them will come. I’m hoping that these stories and my books in a way touch, or help people. I write… to communicate.
A friend of mine used to in jest call me a tool…. not a tool as in a looser the way most people mean it; but a useful object that can be used to achieve a goal or a purpose. Pretty cool huh ? I will settle for being a tool for the right reasons, if it means that someday someone can look at me and say any of my creations have meant anything to them in life !
harleemills.com 