When I become rich and famous as a writer, I know that people will ask me how I managed to survive while I wrote my bestseller. It wasn't easy, people! I almost starved on several occasions. The first time was when my husband refused to let me scrape the bottom of the ice cream carton. I had to hit him over the head with the ice cream scoop before I got a bite. Then there was also this time when my kids caught me stealing food off their plates and they stuck a fork in my hand. They have a lot of nerve. For God's sake, I was a starving artist. (OK, Blogspot is at it again. Now it won't let me make paragraphs. Sheesh. Bear with me, ok?) OK, so I was a starving artist. And as I starved, I took part time jobs to feed the children, lest they starve, also. Any self respecting mother would NOT let her children waste away, and I was among them. And then there's the cat who bites me if I don't feed him and after a few chomps on the leg, I wasn't going there. So, here's how I made the bucks on my way to stardom. First there was the job selling used trailers in trailer parks. That was a good one. It gave me tons of material for the novel CRACKING NORMAL that I just finished and it was while on that job that I was told the story that became the basis for bad girls club. Lots of material in those trailers. When that got old (business went dead), I moved on to working with my husband in his manufactured housing business. That had its cool moments. I got to install a new phone system. I brought the internet to every desk through a very complicated mess of telephone wire and cable which no one but me could decipher. No lack of forethought there. I knew if I ever left (which I did) that no one would be able to figure it all out. Ha! Well, that grew old. Actually, it just got really rotten, so I left. And I went back to being a staring artist until I really started to starve and had to find another job. That's when I took the job at Bunionville, the shoe store (name disguised to protect the innocent) where I learned everything there is to know about feet and then some. Feet are an interesting thing. They come in all shapes, sizes, and smells. I actually met a man one day whose feet were purple and black (dying, folks) and he was in complete denial. There was the lady who let a doctor perform 15 surgeries on her feet (and ruin them) without a blink of the eye. I saw lots of botched surgeries (names withheld to protect the innocent). The list goes on. Bunions. God, lots and lots of bunions. Big bunions, little bunions, surgeryized bunions, bunions that became mangled feet, bunions that no one could fix. Old ladies with bunions. You get it, bunions! Eighteen long months of bunions, calluses, fallen arches, bunionettes, plantar fasciitis, tendonitis, infections, amputated foot parts, amputated feet (or foot because they wouldn't be in a shoe store if they didn't have ONE foot), and then, of course, normal feet. Unfortunately, this job did not provide material for a book. There were a few characters there, useful for another book, but really, no plots jumped into my head and said, "BOO!" What the heck kind of job is that? Really... And it does make me wonder. Do I have to go back to selling trailers to continue as a writer? I'm just not sure.
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