~ New Year’s Resolutions – Yay or Nay? ~

Do you write New Year’s resolutions? I used to back in the day. Then, I’d fret all year long because that list would stare me in the face with a baleful eye, reminding me I hadn’t followed through on anything. Then, I’d get all resentful, and it went downhill from there. The definition of the word resolution according to my handy pocket Oxford is this, Resolving; Great determination; Formal statement of a committee’s opinion. Well, my committee quit on the whole thing. I stopped writing resolutions in my twenties.
But naturally, being a writer, I couldn’t just go cold turkey. I had to write something. So, my sister and I came up with a reasonable alternative.

We started writing personal lists of “intentions” for the New Year. It has a much nicer ring to it and so does its definition. Consulting my Oxford, Intention means, With concentrated intention, What one intends to do. Sans the formality and sans the committee, writing intentions felt less intimidating and more doable. And likewise, the flavour of the items on the said list changed up a bit also. My New Year’s resolutions used to be grand and overwhelming like I will find a publisher this year. I will meet my soulmate, and I will travel overseas.
In contrast, I found myself writing intentions that were far more friendly and more doable like I intend to start doing a second daily meditation; slow down; do less; wear dresses more often, and so on.

They say that when goal-setting, you should set out the short-term, achievable steps needed to attain those big goals. If the steps are too large, or too far out of reach, people will typically never start. That might be true, but these days, I far prefer writing out intentions which give me a warm glow at the time of writing and also in the doing, and I leave my big life goals for noting in a separate notebook, no deadline, no time frame. I’m a firm believer in taking the pressure off myself where possible.
According to the College for Adult Learning, under HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT, LEADERSHIP & MANAGEMENT, they list 10 steps for effective goal setting:

1. Believe in the process
2. Write it down
3. Set specific goals
4. Set measurable goals
5. Set attainable goals
6. Set realistic goals
7. Set timely goals
8. Remain accountable
9. Don’t be afraid to ask for help
10. Continuously assess your progress

Each year around this time, I start to think about my list. It formulates slowly. I try to frame every thought with kindness towards myself and others. We writers tend to be fans of physical notebooks. I have at least a dozen. My usual tradition during the day on the 31st is to take a fresh page in my Intentions notebook and bling it up with stickers, glitter, and dodads. You can add emojis to a page on your phone, but where’s the fun in that?

Then, I ponder my intentions more closely, and I write them out with colour pens, adding flourishes, doodles, and love hearts! See, not so grown up after all. But it’s so much fun. And it gives me a feeling for where I’m heading and what I’m aligning myself with during the year ahead. It’s like a compass or a touchstone that I can come back to again and again for guidance. And unlike my phone, my notebook never gets lost, stolen, or runs out of charge. I love it and can’t wait to get started on my list for 2023.
What about you? Do you set resolutions? Happy New Year!

Talk to you later.
Keep creating!
Yvette Carol
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Don’t look back, you’re not going that way. ~ Mary Englebreit

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~ HAPPY NEW YEAR ~

No matter how bad the year has been, I always try to take time on December 31st to think about what I’ve achieved during the year and all the things I have to be grateful for. My dear grandmother used to say something wise at the end of every visit. As I would reach the door, having hugged and kissed and said our farewells, reminding her when I’d be back again–the following Thursday for our weekly lunch and afternoon together–Gran would say something wise, usually the same few old sayings over and over. I never tired of hearing her say them. I felt I needed to hear the words that often to get the message. And one of her favourites was to say, “Remember, my dear, to always look for the silver lining and you will find it.” I loved that saying then, and I love it now.

I remember, Gran, I hear you saying the words and it helps guide me in my life. You had certain wisdom you passed onto me that has become part of who I am and how I deal with things. In the most horrible of situations, I try to look for the good that can come out of it. My grandmother was a great believer in “the power of positivity” as she called it. Gran believed and often told us about the transformative power of having an optimistic attitude. She was an ardent admirer of the Methodist minister Norman Vincent Peale’s work, and The Power of Positive Thinking was her favourite book, one she often quoted from. She would grab her well-worn hardback copy, kept in a bookcase by the front door, and open the plain blue cover to thumb through and read aloud a much-loved quote. “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”

I respected Gran’s enthusiasm for the topic and warmed to Peale’s ideas immediately. I have several Norman Vincent Peale’s inspirational books in my library and refer to his wisdom often. It helps to have tools such as these when looking back on 2020, as I was doing last night.

As I say, I take the time on New Year’s Eve to appreciate the twelve months gone before. When I looked back on the year we’ve had, it was hard at points to see the good in it. Man, it has been and continues to be a struggle. 2020 took a toll on me. The strain and anxiety around the whole Covid situation was intense, my concern being for my two younger boys. Both are at high risk. Nathaniel, the youngest, is asthmatic, and Samuel lives with a condition called “wet lungs,” caused by his aspirating food and fluids. Both boys were/are highly susceptible to infection, and Covid would be a death sentence. So we lived through months of tension and strife just going to the store.

At the same time as being confined to my home with two huge teenage boys and an adult nephew underfoot, I was editing The Last Tree and revising the first two books in my series, The Or’in of Tane and The Sasori Empire. I had a release date that kept getting pushed further and further back because it took so much longer than expected. Home, property, and kids went neglected as I slogged my way through editing day and night. It turned into six long months of stress and toil, PAINFUL in the extreme. I thought it would never be over, and I vowed I’d never release three books at once, ever again.

But I got there, releasing The Chronicles of Aden Weaver on October 10th. That was a big win for me in 2020. The book launch was the culmination of fifteen years writing this story and pursuing a dream, and I’m proud of myself. The trilogy sits on my bookshelf, the crowning achievement of 38 years writing for children. I’m glad I achieved that goal. Now I have these books and my children to leave as my legacy to the world which is a good feeling.

When I looked back, I saw other blessings too. I’ve made positive changes for my health and wellness. I doubled my meditation time, so now I start every day with twenty minutes of meditation, and I have more barefoot time in the garden, which helps me feel grounded. The boys are well and have done more reading. When schools reopened, we found a carer supporter, so Sam started Special Olympics basketball, and Nat made it into “A-team” in volleyball. All good things!

Gran you were right, I looked for the silver lining and it was there. What’s your silver lining?
Here’s to 2021. Happy New Year!

Talk to you later.

Keep creating!

Yvette Carol

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Change your thoughts and you change your world. ~ Norman Vincent Peale

~ Fourteen Going On Forty ~

I’ve been running around all week like a flea in a fit. The youngest son has been home from school, suffering from his allergies, and as any parent knows when a child is sick it creates a ton of extra work. Also…he likes to talk. He’s one of those people who once he gets going on a topic that interests him can ramble on and on, making it hard to get away. So each day, he’s lain on the couch, sneezing, talking, and watching anime, surrounded in a cotton cloud of spent tissues, while I’ve tried to get all the usual stuff done as well as look after the patient. These are the times you need to clone yourself.

I suspect the youngest son has an active mind. The other day he said, “Do you know what I’m looking forward to the most about growing up?” A number of things went through my head like leaving school, independence, money, etc. He said, “I’m looking forward to having rational conversations.” I think my jaw hit the floor. Say what? Yes. He said he gets tired of the ridiculous things his friends say and it drives him crazy. I was amazed by that. I hung off every word my friends said when I was his age like a brainless gibbon. I had no such discernment.

Since he was a tiny child the youngest has always been wise for his age. And decisive. While I’m dithering about on a decision, like what to name a new pet, the youngest son will deliver a verdict immediately. As the years went by, I started to rely on his instantaneous decision making because he always seemed to make the right choice. He’s fourteen and to him things are very clear. It’s a quality I envy at times. To me things are very grey never black and white, however, I may have gotten jaded with time.

Over a month ago, he begged me to take him to an information evening about junior space school. The $10,000 price tag for two weeks at Space Camp didn’t faze him. He negotiated with his father and has started working every weekend with him as a builder’s hand. He’s saving the money steadily. “I want to do this more than I’ve wanted to do anything else in my life,” he told me. I believed him and want to support him in fulfilling his dream in every way that I can. The other day, in a questionnaire for school, he said they asked what he wants to be when he grows up. “I wanted to write astronaut but thought it would sound stupid.” “It’s not stupid to have big dreams,” I told him. “Dream as big as you like and anything is possible.”

I admire him because I know how far he’s come. I guess when you’ve faced death on the operating table at the age of five it changes a person. But the youngest son survived his double bypass open heart surgery, without brain damage or the possible side effects of paediatric heart surgery like emotional/developmental/behavioural difficulties. He came through perhaps a little weaker physically than his peers. Otherwise he is no different except for his high level of intelligence and a well of compassion as deep and wide as Lake Taupo. I would say he’s an extraordinary individual. If anyone could grow up to be an astronaut, it’s him.

I tell friends, “he’s fourteen going on forty” as a way of saying he has an old head on young shoulders. I remember we were driving back from his physiotherapy one afternoon, and the boy racer in the car next to us screeched to a halt half a car’s length over the stop lines on the road. The youngest said, “Why do that? He’s just showing off. It’s silly.” I thought if I closed my eyes that could be my father speaking, you’d never think it was coming from someone nearly eligible to be a boy racer himself.

It’s humbling being a parent. As Kahlil Gibran said in his famous book, The Prophet, your children are not yours, they are the arrows and you are the bow that sends them forth into the world. As a parent you want the best for your children. You create them, raise them, guide them, love them and then you let them go. Yet, with my youngest sometimes I’d swear he’s the one raising me.

What about you, do you know a child who seems far older than their years? Or are you the old soul in your family?

Talk to you later.

Keep creating!

Yvette K. Carol

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Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. ~ Kahlil Gibran

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~ IWSG: NOVEMBER AND BOOK LIMBO ~

It’s time for another group posting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group! Time to release our fears to the world or offer encouragement to those who are feeling neurotic. If you’d like to join us, click on the tab above and sign up. We post the first Wednesday of every month. Every month, the organisers announce a question that members can answer in their IWSG Day post. Remember, the question is optional!!!

*I took the option of not answering the ‘optional question of the month’.

I exist in that strange, no-man’s-land, the limbo on the other side of having finished a book. I only just surfaced from the gruelling, nitty-gritty hard yards of getting The Last Tree to a publishable standard at the weekend. Any Indie will sympathise. Those few weeks and days were late nights and early starts, and staring at the words on the screen, word by word, until I could barely see anymore. Then, I delivered the novel into professional hands and went into free fall.

Slowly I can feel my extremities again. I am relieved and pleased all at once.

I tried an experiment with this book. The first two books in The Chronicles of Aden Weaver trilogy cost me upwards of $5000 each to produce. To bring the price of publishing my stories down to a reasonable level, I cut out the proofreader and the copy editor, which saved $3200 and instead paid $70 for a year’s subscription to ProWritingAid.

I worked with the online editing program and my blood, sweat and tears.

Last weekend, after developing this book for two years, the deadline for delivery to the book designer was Monday. It locked me in a deadly embrace with time. I can’t stand deadlines. However, they work to prod you into gargantuan herculean efforts of which not even you thought possible. Sunday night I was still at my computer editing hard at eleven, and on Monday morning, I was up at five to start again.

I cross my fingers and toes that by doing it all myself; I have done enough. I really hope so.

The Monday deadline also meant I needed to get the second pen and ink illustration done, because I had only completed one. The weekend of editing was so intense, I gave myself “art breaks” and during those allotted times I doodled and inked in the second picture. It was so much fun! I think I like the resulting illustration the most out of them all.

I blogged last week about the cover art arriving. After the long haul of editing, when you reach the finish line, it’s like time speeds up and everything happens at once. These vital pieces fell into place. On Thursday night, the cover art brought the world to life. I finished the second pen and ink illustration. I prepared the accompanying copy for the back cover and the end pages. I liaised with the book designers and set up the printers.

Monday eleven o’clock, I reached the words The End and realized I had finished the editing. It was an emotional moment. At lunchtime, I emailed the whole package to BookPrint. Then I drove over and sat with the designer for an hour and a half. The great thing about going to BookPrint again is they have the files of my last two books so it should be a relatively seamless job to produce the third book in the same style as the others.

For the actual printing of the books, I compared the costs of printing at local firms and took $400 off the price by giving the job to another local company, 3A Signs. Altogether, I have halved the price of production, bringing it to $2500. But have I done enough as the proofreader and copy editor to make the savings worthwhile? I don’t know.

I have an author friend who recommended the online editing program, and she has successfully used it for her last three books. Will it work as well for me? I don’t know.

I wait to see the cover and the layout. I’m looking forward to getting the proof copy. I want to sit and read The Last Tree as a reader would. I did the very best I could, and now, the test, does it hang together as a great story that was worth telling? I hope so.

I hope this book makes the mark, however; I don’t know, hence my insecurity at present. I linger in book limbo. Help! Thanks IWSG, for the chance to rant!

Keep Writing!

Yvette K. Carol

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The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
– Eleanor Roosevelt

~ A CALIFORNIAN ADVENTURE, Part 1 ~

Last Saturday, the youngest son left New Zealand along with twenty-six other kids, on this year’s ‘Californian Adventure.’ The trip is organized and run each year by Koru Care NZ, a charitable trust based in the South Island of New Zealand, whose mission statement is ‘making dreams come true for seriously ill and disabled children.’

As the last days counted down before departure, the tension began to mount, which escalated into pure adrenalin. We all got swept up in it. The tide of enthusiasm skipped from the kids, who were racing from all parts of the country to meet at Auckland International Airport, to the parents, whether through the Facebook page they’d set up or via those who could be there in person.

The kids were so happy, it was a force to be reckoned with.

The photos started flooding into the Facebook page, which has became my favourite port of call every day since. The organisers have been brilliant, because through the steady stream of pictures, we parents have been able to follow along for the ride.

Part one of their grand adventure has been spectacular.

The first day in California was a free day, to give everyone time to get over the jetlag. There were pictures of kids swimming in the pool and eating ice creams and visiting the local food joints. In these pictures, I can see the youngest son is still finding his feet, still feeling a bit awkward with his new companions. Their second day, they took a bus ride to visit the California Highway Patrol where the kids watched demonstrations by the officers and learned about the work they do. They received souvenirs and were allowed to take photographs sitting on the bikes and cars.

At this stage, the kids and the adults were visibly starting to relax more in the photos, and it seemed they were getting to know one another. I could tell the youngest son had befriended the other heart kid he was sharing a room with. In the pictures, the kids were chatting and getting on.

The whole group dynamic seemed to be becoming more like a family.

The fourth day, they took a bus tour to see the Hollywood Walk of Fame. There was a video taken of the kids screaming when they saw the Hollywood sign. The excitement was infectious. They went to Universal Studios, where they visited Harry Potter’s World and the Staples Centre. In these photos, the youngest son is having fun. There is a hilarious video posted on the KoruCare page of my son and others standing in front of a huge transformer.

The robot knocked off the son’s cap and said, ‘Pick up your hat.’ The son picked it up and the transformer knocked it off again. This was repeated four times to greater and greater laughter from the crowd, and the funny part was the transformer laughed each time too. The group of kids around the youngest son seem tight-knit, and everyone’s in a great mood. The footage absolutely made my day.

It constantly amazes me how much joy my son’s good fortune is bringing me. I’m so happy for him I could burst!

Today, being the fifth day of their Californian Adventure, the Koru Care team visited SeaWorld in San Diego. That would have been the first time my son has ever seen a display like that, and I’m sure he would have been in awe and wonder.

The way the trip has been organized, every morning the kids are told where they are going that day, they have no idea beforehand. The youngest son’s carer had explained the intention behind it being ‘that every morning will be like Christmas morning.’

I wish I could be a fly on the wall for tomorrow morning. Because tomorrow they get to go to … drum roll, please … Disneyland!

The reactions should be priceless. My son will be over the moon. As his cousin was pointing out to me today, ‘This is a big step up from having gone on his first roller coaster ride, this year.’ In January, the boys and I had visited our first ever fun fair. The boys couldn’t get enough of the rides, and the youngest son said it was the most fun he’d ever had. So, for a treat, in May, I paid for him and friends and family to go to Rainbow’s End for his thirteenth birthday. He spent a delirious day going on every ride. That was when he went on his first rollercoaster. And here we are, in October, and he’s about to go to Disneyland! He’ll be in seventh heaven.

I’m so grateful to the good folk who do all the fund raising for these trips and the running of Koru Care Nz What an incredible organization. Support in any way you can. Thank you!

 

Talk to you later.

Keep on Creating!

Yvette K. Carol

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“May your dreams be larger than mountains and may you have the courage to scale their summits.” -Harley King

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~ A CALIFORNIA ADVENTURE ~

A few months ago, our family got some great news. The youngest son had been chosen as a “heart kid” (a child who has undergone open heart surgery) to go along on this year’s ‘California Adventure.’ A trip to Disneyland is organized and run each year by Koru Care Charitable Trust NZ, ‘making dreams come true for seriously ill and disabled children.’

I overheard a conversation the youngest son was having yesterday with friends while playing Fortnite. One member of the squad asked, “Why do you get to go to Disneyland?” and another answered, “It’s his reward for surviving heart surgery.” That’s the truth and yet, my youngest felt bad about accepting the gift. He said he felt someone else should be going on the trip in his place because he ‘didn’t deserve it.’

And so, I gently reminded him of the terrifying journey of the first five years of his life. It was an endlessly harrowing ride for me as his chief nurse and caregiver.

The youngest of my three boys was born in 2005, with complex congenital heart disorder (or CHD), although we did not know that at the time. The first clue came when he started coughing at three weeks old, though he had no other symptoms of ill health.

The cough would come and go from then on, however when he did contract the flu, then his health would plummet fast and the cough would become life threatening and continuous. It took me five years to figure out what was wrong, as we went down the road of misdiagnoses and educated guesses, and countless trial treatments.

Finally, after trying everything, I told our doctor the whole story. She listened carefully to his chest. Her diagnosis of a heart murmur then led us on to the hospital tests, which finally confirmed the actual problem was a sizeable hole in his heart or atrial septal defect. The medical part of our journey began there.

In 2010, he underwent double bypass open heart surgery. The operation was later added to the “unusual casebook.” The “hole” in his heart was ‘more than just a hole, there was only a rim between the upper chambers,’ the surgeon, Dr. Elizabeth Rumball, told us later, ‘and his heart had grown a single vein from the liver to the bottom of the heart,’ something she had never seen before. Dr. Rumball had to figure out how create an autologous pericardial patch to fix both issues.

After six hours of surgery, my five-year-old woke up in Pediatric Intensive Care, with a gash down his chest, in a lot of pain. Only three days out from the surgery, he’d been moved to the high dependency unit and was already taking his first steps. Three days later, we were released to go home.

We’ve come a long way since those days. The youngest son starts high school, next year. One of the teachers asked me how having had the surgery affects him now. I said, he’s fine now, yet, he will always be that little bit “fragile,” and he won’t have quite the same stamina and energy levels as other kids. Child heart patients are also susceptible to emotional, developmental and behavioural problems. We haven’t had any issues there, so far.

He has to take daily medications and rest a little more than other kids his own age. But, generally he is healthy, fit and well. He bikes to school each day. And, wonderfully, gone are the days and nights of coughing. He has quality of life and the prospect of a healthy future ahead.

With a bit of gentle prodding on my part, the youngest son had remembered his journey and accepted that maybe it was acceptable for him to go on the California Adventure.

After another month and a half, I started the process of medical clearance for him to take the trip. I started on doing the paperwork, and buying the things he would need to take with him. I borrowed luggage and we went to get some money changed into U.S currency.

As the weeks have gone by, the pressure to have everything in order has increased. And in the last two weeks, I’ve been flat tack. Tonight, the bags are packed. The boy has had his nails trimmed, and he’s had a haircut.

Everything is done, at last.

On Saturday, he leaves on the California Adventure with twenty-four other lucky kids.

The youngest son said, “I don’t feel happy very much, but about this trip, I feel the happiest I’ve ever been.”

The joy! What parent doesn’t want to hear that?

Talk to you later.

Keep on Creating!

Yvette K. Carol

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You don’t have favourites among your children but you do have allies. ~ Zadie Smith

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~ Your Ultimate Writing Goals? ~

It’s time for this month’s group posting with the Insecure Writer’s Support Group! Time to release our fears to the world – or offer encouragement to those who are feeling neurotic. If you’d like to join us, click on the tab above and sign up. We post the first Wednesday of every month. I encourage everyone to visit at least a dozen new blogs and leave a comment. your words might be the encouragement someone needs.

OPTIONAL IWSG Day Question: What are your ultimate writing goals, and how have they changed over time (if at all)?

That’s a brilliant question because it really made me sit back and think. My goals have changed a lot. When I started penning kids’ fiction as a seventeen-year-old, I was far removed from the reality of being an author.

Believe it or not, when I started out, personal computers were not yet a thing. Although some people had them, no one I knew owned one. And the internet was just a twinkle in the eye of a brainiac, somewhere. I spent the first decade writing the good old fashioned way, with a pen and paper. I was a teenager, starting out in the 1980’s, just following the thread of what interested me in terms of subject matter and genre.

I worked a string of other jobs and often second jobs as well. Writing stories was what I did in my spare time, and it still is.

When I started out at seventeen, I wasn’t thinking of publication. I was impelled to share my creativity through children’s stories, so I followed it. It took me another ten years to start submitting to publishers. My ultimate writing goal at the age of twenty-seven was simple, to get published and make money.

I have an old book of ‘Intentions,’ which I write up each year like resolutions. I discovered that by the age of thirty my ultimate writing goal had morphed into: “I want my books to be a huge success like Harry Potter.”

Wow, I sure didn’t aim low in those days. I was quite surprised by the audacity of my intention.

I admit I’ve reduced my ultimate writing goals as I’ve gone along. Which I think boils down to figuring out what you really want to do with your time. As you grow older, time becomes more precious. The entry for 2017 reads: I raise people’s awareness and bring joy, inspire and make people feel better through the power of story.

And with age, you get more realistic. I might not be the next J. K. Rowling.

These days, I’m a stay-at-home mum and caregiver to my thirteen-year-old and my middle son who has Downs’ syndrome. I write part-time. I have two stories published and two books which I self published. My wish list these days tends to focus on more meaningful things like wanting joy, and a sense of fulfilment.

These days my ultimate writing goal is to write more of what I love.  However, the series I’m writing is anthropomorphic fantasy fiction about insects. It gets some strange reactions at times.

I’ll never forget the response of one assessor to my book,  The Or’in of Tane Mahuta. She said, “Great story, but lose the insects!” I couldn’t lose the insects, they were an integral part of the machine of the story.

One day, I will move on to new fields in fiction. For now, I want to see this series out and do the best I possibly can.

One of the authors I like is Lee Child, author of the Jack Reacher novels. He’s a real storyteller. Asked to give a tip recently for writers, he said, “Ignore all the tips. It’s got to be 100% your own product. As soon as you start thinking about what you should do, there’s a compromise and the spark goes. You’ve got to do what you want to do.”

Child really gets it. He’s talking about listening to the gut and the heart of the story. I love it. I’m ignoring all the tips. It’s 100% my anthropomorphic fantasy fiction about insects. If I want little critters creeping and flying and turning into human hybrids, I must write them. You’ve got to do what you want to do, right?

I wonder what my intention for 2019 will be? I think it’s going to be something along the lines of ‘I just want to be myself and enjoy the process!’

What about you? What are your Ultimate Writing Goals for 2018? Have you met them yet?

Keep Writing!

Yvette K. Carol

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In a totally sane society, madness is the only freedom. ~ J. G. Ballard

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~ A TRIP OF A LIFETIME ~

In October of this year, my youngest son will be going on the trip of a lifetime. He and eleven other lucky kids from across New Zealand have been chosen to go to Disneyland.

Two weeks ago, we received an invitation to apply for a place on the coveted annual trip with Koru Care New Zealand, through our association with Heart Kids NZ. Yesterday, we got the happy news he had been accepted, and we’ll happily do our bit to help raise money for the trip, as this is such a great opportunity.

Koru Care New Zealand is a charitable trust established in 1983. It’s run by volunteers ‘making dreams come true for seriously ill and disabled children.’ Heart Kids NZ is another charitable trust. It’s committed to providing lifelong support to those born with congenital heart defects and heart disease.

The youngest of my three boys was born in 2005, with complex congenital heart disorder (or CHD), although we did not know that at the time.

The first clue came when he started coughing at three weeks old, though he had no other symptoms of ill health.

The cough would come and go from then on, however when he did contract the flu, then his health would plummet fast and the cough would become life threatening and continuous. It took me five years to get a diagnosis, as we went down the road of misdiagnoses and educated guesses and countless trial treatments.

Finally, after trying everything, I went back to our doctor with the whole story. She listened carefully to his chest. Her discovery of a heart murmur led to the hospital tests, which finally confirmed the problem was a hole in his heart or Atrial Septal Defect.

In 2010, he underwent double bypass open heart surgery. The operation was later added to the “unusual casebook.” The hole in his heart was ‘more than just a hole, there was only a rim between the upper chambers,’ the surgeon, Dr. Elizabeth Rumball, told us later. ‘And his heart had grown a single vein from the liver to the bottom of the heart,’ something she had never seen before. Dr. Rumball had to figure out how create an autologous pericardial patch to fix both issues.

After six hours of surgery, my five-year-old woke in Pediatric Intensive Care, with a gash down his chest, in a lot of pain. His recovery process began there. Only three days out from the surgery, he moved to the high dependency unit and was already taking his first steps. Three days later we were released to go home.

We’ve come a long way since those days.

They say it takes paediatric heart patients a year to get their energy back and a decade for the body to recover to the pre-surgery state, however, he is in good health these days. The difference with heart kids is that they are a little “fragile,” they don’t have the same stamina as other kids. They are also susceptible to emotional, developmental and behavioural problems.

My son has thrived since the surgery. Gone are the days and nights of coughing. He has quality of life and the prospect of a healthy future ahead, thanks to the wonderful doctors and staff at Starship Children’s Hospital.

While we were in hospital, we joined the amazing Heart Kids NZ foundation. We put his name down on the list of kids interested in going to “Heart Camp,” a weeklong retreat each summer. From the age of eight, he has gone to camp every year. He’s learned adventure skills like kayaking, abseiling and rock climbing. He’s sat around campfires, and gone swimming, ridden the flying foxes and water slides. He’s made friends and had important experiences of independence. Because he was well known at heart camp, his name came up when Koru Care said they had places for four Heart kids on the Disneyland adventure.

My son was the right age and state of health to be eligible, so his name went forward with a lot of others. And we were lucky enough to get picked. He was excited when I told him the good news because he has never travelled anywhere or been to a theme park, and he’s always wanted to go. This sweet boy who has been through so many trials in his life, will get to go on the adventure of a lifetime, to Disneyland!

Thank you to Koru Care New Zealand and to Heart Kids NZ and to the medical staff along the way for making all of this possible and for making a boy’s dream come true.

Blessings come in many ways, even when they’re sometimes dressed as catastrophes.

Talk to you later.

Keep on Creating!

Yvette K. Carol

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If you can dream it, you can do it. ~ Walt Disney

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~ How to Handle the Silence of Self-Publishing ~

For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day. ~ Ernest Hemmingway

When you are “post book,” you exist in this strange no-man’s land where you’re not sure what should happen next, but in your secret heart-of-hearts, you’re hoping for applause in some form, hopefully financial.

What nobody can really prepare you for, when you start out as an author is the great echoing silence of self publishing.

A novel requires burning the midnight oil writing the story, and questioning every word, every sentence. After having put “bum-in-chair” for days upon weeks, after suffering the agonies of self-publishing, and the indignities of self marketing, to cross the finish line and release your fiction upon the world, it’s natural to expect reward. It’s natural to want to hear some noise in response.

There are more books being published every day now than at any other time in our history.

To gain traction, many motivated Indies will ask their “street teams” and friends to share about their release, to write reviews, to generate buzz in various ways. If you don’t dance up a storm, your books don’t sell, you might not be paid. Apart from that self-generated sound, however, there is nothing.

When I put out my first book in 2015, there were some lovely messages on social media from friends and well wishers. Apart from that there was…s i l e n c e. A great white-washed, sound proofed wall of nothingness.

Silence is something we’re not used to these days. In our hyper-connected present, we expect reactions to our every move. We wait with our self worth balanced on likes, loves and comments and shares. We’re conditioned to feedback.

As yoga-teacher and author, Claudia Altucher said, I find that ultimately there is a little side of me that still clings to the idea of being “chosen” (by a publishing house).

Any writer can relate. With the first book, there’s this great hope of being “discovered.”

“How are things going with your book?” asked well-meaning friends. “Have you sold many?” The mythology goes, all you need do is release work in order to get paid, to get recognition. The truth is the majority of self-published authors will sell less than a hundred copies.

Few authors write a second novel and even fewer a third once the fiscal realities become apparent. After an author visit to an Elementary School in the States, author, Ellen Warach Leventhal, said her favorite response from a fourth grader was, ‘You work hard, you don’t know if you’ll ever get paid for it, and you aren’t rich? Man, not sure I want to do that.’

The first book is like a trial by fire. If you walk through that flaming doorway without getting burnt, then you carry on writing but as a cleansed, reduced version of oneself with revised expectation.

Nick Ripatrazone’s sage advice to the author is, Share your work, but don’t wait for likes and retweets and mentions. Get off your phone. Get back to your desk.

I read somewhere, the traditional reaction to a book being published at any other time in history has typically been little to none. Authors wrote and released books and went on with their writing. They didn’t expect a parade.

In our digital present, it is easy to forget that silence has always been the most common response to literature and art. ~ Nick Ripatrazone

After I published my debut novel, ‘The Or’in of Tane Mahuta,’ (http://amzn.com/B015K1KF0I), I started developing the next story in the Chronicles of Aden Weaver. The narrative unfolded and it drew me into another world, where I got lost in the creativity. The firestorm was therapeutic. I remembered the most important thing was the art itself.

I understand now why authors advise to get on with writing the next book.

I published ‘The Sasori Empire,’ (http://amzn.com/B075PMTN2H) last week. This time round, I experienced it differently, with more realism. I didn’t expect mega stardom or even a conversation.

I was ready for the normal silence that surrounds any newly-released work.

I discovered it takes a certain amount of surrender. And, faith, that I can survive the fall. I was prepared for the sudden drop-off of adrenalin and commitment that follows on the heels of each book birth. I’d already bought the chocolate bars. I pampered myself with treats.

My process seems to have settled into a pattern of write-edit-publish-rest-repeat. I relaxed for two days after the book launch. I listened to music, weeded the garden, and I did some baking. For a minute, I thought, I’m free!

Now, I’m writing book three, the final book in the series, ‘The Last Tree.’

How do you handle the silence post-book?

Keep on Creating!

Yvette K. Carol

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Cherish yourself and wall off an interior room where you’re allowed to forget your published life as a writer. ~ Lan Samantha Chang

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The Or’in of Tane Mahuta

Book One, the Chronicles of Aden Weaver http://amzn.com/B015K1KF0I

The Sasori Empire

Book Two, the Chronicles of Aden Weaver http://amzn.com/B075PMTN2

~ Celery Grows in the Dark ~

~ I’m afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery. ~ Aldous Huxley

When I started writing fiction as an adult thirty-five years ago, I did so for the love of it. I wrote because creativity wanted to pour out of me that way. My “certain set of skills” happened to lie with prose and that’s where I ran wild with the giddy rush of youth. I was not preoccupied or clouded by the need for publication. I wrote to explore the parameters of my imagination, to see where I could go, to travel to far-flung places and report back. The possibilities and the horizon were equally endless.

Five years ago, when I began my first steps into the world online and social media, I set up author pages, started making friends and finding out more about the online writing community. It wasn’t long before I felt the pressure to have something to show for my years of writing effort. I needed something to hang my shingle on. In 2015, I made the death-defying leap from unpublished to Indie author.

What I didn’t know then is that once you pass over that threshold, you leave innocence at the door. After that, the gloves are off; you have entered the arena of life. And life is brutal. It wants to eat you. Every move you make as an author or artist these days is public and hung out to dry in the open marketplace. Whether you make it or break it is global, everyone’s going to know. As the Indie author, you have become your own middle man; you manage everything from advertising copy, to every aspect of book production, to hawking copies at book fairs. The marketing machine never stops and you can never feed it enough.

If you’re a savvy Indie, every step you make after that has an angle. Every friend you make is a prospective customer. Every post, every tweet, every conversation is another way to sell your product.

What this does to my creative soul is like toxic gas, it slowly poisons the ground.

Author and teacher, Lan Samantha Chang, addressed this phenomena in her speech, Writers, Protect Your Inner Life*. ‘We are taught to believe that the publication of a book is the happy ending to a long journey of working and striving, but according to many new authors with whom I have spoken, publishing is only the beginning of the journey of learning to navigate the world as a public writer, which is the opposite of making art, and it requires learning to protect that inner self from which the art emerged in the first place.’

This is something I’ve really been thinking about a lot lately, is how to preserve and keep alight this flame of purity inside me.

How do I protect my dignity, my artistic integrity?

How do I maintain my ability to enter the shaded places of childhood, the secret inner recesses of my soul, in order to write the rough draft?

It pained me that in my reaching for public attention, I had forgotten the innocent joy of writing for the sake of writing, not for the buck. Not for the fan. Not for the “likes” on Facebook. Not for the bestseller list. Not for status updates. In my struggle to be heard, in my fight to get my book on the front shelf to be seen, I had lost sight of what was really important. Or why I started this journey in the first place, to ‘live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories,’ as Ray Bradbury put it so eloquently in his day.

Like the celery that only grows in the dark, the artist, the creative soul requires time in stillness and solitude and retreat in order to gestate.

I have learned the only way to preserve and protect my inner life as a writer is to carve out regular prolonged time away from marketing and (if possible) social media. I call them ‘net breaks,’ and they’ve become as necessary to my creative spirit, as walks outdoors or glasses of water are necessary to my health.

Sometimes I need to turn off all my devices and get out into nature. I need to forget about the end point of the sale and refocus on the love of writing – that eternal spark. Only then, can I truly re-enter my own private Eden from which I can create worlds.

How do you protect your inner world?

Talk to you later.

Keep on Creating!

Yvette K. Carol

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‘Cherish yourself and wall off an interior room where you’re allowed to forget your published life as a writer. There’s a hushed, glowing sound, like the sound coming from the inside of a shell,’ said writer Lan Samantha Chang

*http://lithub.com/writers-protect-your-inner-life/

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