Inspiration!

It's an underdog story about never giving in...

Sunday Ponderings

This week, with the ABNA looming over me, I have felt the weakness of self-doubt. I'm not proud of it. After all, I am the tenacious one... the one who never gives up. So, it was nice of my husband to stop and give me a pep-talk when I needed it most. It was very simple. He looked across the table at me, took my hand, and said, "You need to stop doubting yourself. You are amazing, and you need to not forget that."
I write about love and romance, but it is in moments like this that I understand how simple and wonderful love can truly be. It lifts you up and gives you the courage to take your next step.

When someone you have a lot of respect for believes in you, it helps you believe in yourself.
~ Cat Osterman ~

Inspiration!

I witnessed many amazing moments while growing up with 'special' siblings. This boy's family must have felt almost as good for him as Jason felt.

He's used to feeling different, but never this different... never this wonderful.

Picking a Pitch

As many of you know, I am entering Diary of a Freak into the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest in just over a week. The first part of the contest is a review of your pitch for your book. This part of the contest takes the contestants from 10,000 down to 2,000... So, it is very important to have a pitch that draws people in.

Because of the importance of this decision, and the fact that I value all of your opinions, I am submitting 3 pitches for your voting approval. Let me know which one would make you want to read this book.

Here they are:

1) Lauren Hunter has just committed the ultimate crime in the eyes of her mother. She has betrayed her family. As part of her punishment she is now sentenced to write in this diary for the next two months of her life.

A typical teenager, Lauren is busy with pep band, swimming, and friends, but unlike her friends, Lauren is a freak, and it is all thanks to her family. Lauren is the fifteenth in a long line of twenty-five kids. And if that weren’t enough, a good majority of her siblings, that have been collected from around the country, are both physically and mentally challenged. She blames her lack of a social life on the fact that she has been linked up with this band of misfits.

Diary of a Freak is an entertaining YA novel that will make you smile and groan through your teen years again. The witty look into Lauren’s crazy life will resonate with anyone who has ever felt like a freak as they battled their way through high school. It will appeal to readers who enjoy a good coming of age novel, and to the general public who wouldn’t pass up the chance to peek into someone else’s diary.

This is a semi-autobiographical novel. I drew from my own life experiences and deep vein of sarcasm to weave Diary of a Freak into the novel that I wish had been around when I was suffering through the mortifications of growing up in an odd family.


2) Once or twice in a lifetime you find a book that speaks to you. It seems to be talking from your very soul and exposing the unhealed scars that lie within. It makes you laugh and makes you cry and whispers your deepest secret truths. Diary of a Freak is that book for anyone who has ever felt out of place or on the wrong side of love. This is the story of my life.

At seventeen, Lauren Hunter, is your typical teenager. She is busy with pep band, swim team, preparing for college, and still trying to have some sort of a meager social life with friends and boys. But unlike all of her friends, Lauren is a freak, and it’s all thanks to her family.

Lauren is the fifteenth in a long line of twenty-five kids. And, as if that weren’t enough, a good majority of her siblings (that have been collected from what seems like every corner of the earth) are both physically and mentally challenged. It is this very fact, being linked with this band of misfits, that Lauren blames for her lack of a social life.

Sarcastic whit and tragically realistic events bring to life Lauren’s diary as she discovers the truths around her that make up who she is.

Truth: This is a story you will never forget.


3) October 13th, Friday

Today felt like any other day when it all started out. I twisted my hair up into its usual ponytail, jumped in the biggest van in existence with my family, felt thoroughly invisible as I walked down the halls of the school, was browbeaten into swimming faster by my swim coach and intimidated into silence by my band teacher, slobbered on by one of my brothers and mortified by the actions of one of my sisters… Just another day in paradise, right? It would’ve been for me, but somewhere along the way this day careened off the side of a mountain… into a rocky ravine… crashing into a roaring river… over a waterfall… and into a piranha filled body of water… making me feel even more of a freak than I already am… and somehow I got blamed for it!

In a deep need to make someone pay, my mother gave me the rawest of deals. A punishment for grasping for some sort of normalcy. So, these are the terms of my punishment:

1) I am to write in this stupid diary every day.

2) I am to write one true thing at the end of each entry.

3) Lastly, I am to help with my sister's Special Olympics class coming up as a volunteer for three weeks.

Some of you out there are thinking that this doesn't sound so very awful; oh, but that's where you would be wrong. This is the perfect evil-genius ending to a very awful day.

Sincerely,
A Freak

Truth: Whoever it was that said "Always look on the bright side of life." never had to deal with my life.

Top 5 Influences On My Writing

So, I would not say that I was ‘born to be a writer.’ It was more of the twists and turns within my life that led me to the path of writing. One segment of my life would lead to another, and then a new segment would be added and all of the parts added to create the person I have become today.

If I had to pick the top 5 things in my life that influenced my writing, I would pick the following:


5) Jane Austen. I know it sounds totally cliche, but, to me, Jane Austen was a guru at love stories. She revolutionized the modern romance. She can still, in this day and age, make a woman sigh over a proud man who badly insulted the woman he loved.
She was a genius at giving women something to smile about!

4) SHS. The High School that I grew up in was great! It was amazingly clique free and generally welcoming to all kinds of strange and off the wall people… and the students were pretty cool too (:D). It seemed like everyone I met there plays a part in the movies going on in my head.

3) My family has been a HUGE influence on me! My sisters and I have been swapping books for years and laughing over ridiculously funny romance movies since my world began. My Mom has always been my biggest cheerleader. She moves me to tears each time she tells me how proud she is of me. It has definitely given me the confidence to write. But my Dad is the real reason I put fingers to the keyboard. We went on a walk once, many years ago, when he said, ” You would think that with so many kids, I would have one who would be the next JK Rowling.” It still makes me smile. I am no JK Rowling, but I have the tenacity of my father and will not give up until I tell the world the stories inside me.

2) JK Rowling. What can I say? She is a genius! Harry Potter was the first ‘non-romance’ book that I read. I say read, but I mean inhaled. I read the first HP in about 5 hours. It was like a lamp being turned on in a pitch black room. My eyes were blinking back the worlds that were opened up to me. I know that I Wish… never would have come about without it.

I also have to say that her story really inspired me as well. She worked on her books for a really long time, and then when she had finally put her passion into words… she was rejected time and again by both agents and publishers. It took a child to tell them that it was amazing, and look what has come from it.


1) My kids. My kids mean the world to me. I remember curling up on the couch with my infant son and reading Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six aloud to him. He would coo and gurgle and smile as I read through bloody action scenes.
Now, as my kids are getting older, I want them to find more stories like Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia. Stories about good overcoming evil, stories that make them smile and stories that make them cry. I want them to discover stories within themselves.

I’m sure that I could fill another 10 pages with people and places, things and feelings that have inspired me. But, at this moment, these are the top 5 inspirations on my writing.

I am a Dreamer

It is rather funny that you could ask any of my friends, for the whole of my life, how to describe me, and not one of them would say ‘a dreamer’. You would get: practical, thrifty, organized, hard working, sturdy, tenacious, strict, a goof ball… and many more, but never ‘a dreamer’. But, deep down, I have always been a dreamer.

I think that it comes part and parcel with being one of the youngest in a large family. You dream of your own room, you dream of new clothes (not hand-me-downs), you dream of boys who like you for you and not because your older sister turned them down flat (true story!).

I have always had a movie playing in my head and a soundtrack to hum along with it. I like the idea of things and the possibility that anything could happen.

I dream of Lauren and Damien, Lee and Charlotte, and all of the other characters that are acting out a movie in my head.

My name is Tia Harrington… and I am a Dreamer.

In The Beginning...

Every story has a beginning, it is like an unalienable right… it can not be taken away. My beginning, as a writer, came unexpectedly during a state mandated short story ‘competition’ in the 8th grade… Yeah, it was just a test, but it was a test of my imagination. I had a fanciful mind that loved to take boring things and twist them and bedazzle them and make them into fun adventures, but I usually kept it hidden away behind an unassuming facade of intelligence. However, this test mandated that I let my imagination take rein. So I let it.

The story was only 2 pages long, but I giggled and grinned the entire time I wrote it. It was a simple story about an awkward teen girl who showed up for a first date at a boy’s high rise apartment for dinner before a homecoming dance. There were candles and delicate hors d’oeuvres and a starry, moonlit view. The romance was palpable. So, when the he leaned in for kiss, she returned it and… their braces locked. They ended up in the emergency room at the end of the night flanked by both sets of parents. She feels shy and more than a little mortified until he reaches over and hesitantly holds her hand.

I remember that none of us found out the scoring on the papers until the final day of middle school. The gymnasium was packed with kids, and awards were being passed out right and left. They had several for perfect attendance, best high jumper, tag students, teacher’s pet (or maybe not), and then they announced the students with the top 5 scores on the state wide writing test. Mandy Duffenshmirtz… Tyrena Huffenflagen… Bob the Tomato… Lily Momo… and with a perfect score in all of the sections… Me.

It was a complete and utter shock to me. I turned about 20 shades of fuchsia and quietly went to accept my award with a mumble and a head nod and promptly went to sit down again, but on the inside I was dancing the jig and singing the Hallelujah Chorus.

I can’t say that I fell into a life of writing after that, because I didn’t. I still tamped down my imagination and pretended not to care, but I never forgot the feeling of writing that particular story. It gave me joy.

And that is the end of the beginning.