His question was: “Are you famous?”

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As I sit in my home office on a somewhat drizzly, cloudy Sunday, working feverishly away on the release of my 3rd children’s story, I look out of my window and smile at the memory that I just had. On finding out that I was an author, the gentleman behind the counter at my local post office immediately asked me if I was famous.

This happens every time someone discovers that I write stories, and I now believe that the words ‘famous’ and ‘author’ should be joined together in the dictionary.  My reply to the gentleman was the same as every time I get asked;  “Tell me what you think ‘famous’ means and I will then tell you if I am famous.”

Another assumption that people regularly make, is that any travel that I do must be related to book-signing activities. Alas, this is not the case and I politely explain to them that the books are not my ‘day job’.

I live a very full and diverse life, where balance is everything.  I’m married, mother of two children, work full-time at IBM as a business unit executive, run a small hobby farm, have two books published and working on four more.

I would be lying if I said that I wouldn’t give up my ‘day job’ to write stories full-time, however the fact is, I get inspiration for the stories from this diverse life that I lead.

When I start the creative process, I call upon many different areas and experiences of my life.  Inspiration for a story can sometimes jump out of nowhere, based on a few words that someone might say and then my mind explodes with ideas on creating a story around it.  Other times the story is based on true events that happened on my hobby farm.

A great example of how my diverse life helps, is that my third story (for the Adventures on Honey Bee Farm series) to be released would never have happened if I hadn’t volunteered to represent IBM Analytics at Warwick University’s International Healthcare competition in 2014.

For me, a story is like pulling pieces of puzzles together and these different areas of my life help to do that.   Even if I’m lucky enough to sell so many books that I no longer need to work for an organisation, I’m not yet convinced that I would want to give up that side of my life.

I presume it may just purely come down to the balance and time that I have left, after doing all of the activities that famous people do.

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