One day, when her second child was new to the first grade, Joyce asked herself what she would like to do with her life. Well, she thought, I would like to write if I had something to say.
She remembered being fresh out of high school and taking the old Art Instruction School Correspondence Course – the one that claimed Charles Schultz as their star pupil. One exercise was with pen and ink. “The painter with the pen,” they called it. A writer is that as well, she thought. That’s it. That’s want I want to be – a painter with a pen.
In college, she found that she liked writing research papers for her Biology classes. And although she was not especially eloquent or flowery in her prose, she discovered that writing put her in that No-time zone artists know so well. And as it is with most gifts, if the purchaser loves the gift, the recipient most likely will as well.
In 2005 she won second place in the Joanna Catherine Scott Novel Excerpt Prize Category that came with a $50 prize. Well, second place, that’s good, but it probably needs work, she thought. So, she wrote, tore it apart, rewrote, and let it percolate for those many years. It’s in the drawer where many first novels belong. That novel has served as a back story and has spawned a second that will not remain in the drawer. The lesson she got from the two novels was that we never know the ramifications of our lives.
Joyce has self-published a couple of books, one about her adventures with horses titled, It’s Hard to Stay on a Horse While You’re Unconscious, and the other about her mother adopting Korean youngsters. Mother’s Letters, and Mine. Before blogging was popular, Joyce printed a little journal called The Frog’s Song and sent it to friends. When her husband’s mother passed away, Joyce received back her many copies of The Frog’s Song neatly tied together with a ribbon. This journal translated into blogging, a fun way of expressing oneself, and can be a contribution when it finds the right eyes.
Joyce and her family moved to Hawaii for a year. That served as grist for the writing mill. There the family lived off the grid with solar power, propane usage, and a water catchment system. They faced torrential rains, tsunami warnings and strange island energies they didn’t know existed. Regal will publish this book, a self-introspection of sorts.
You can find Joyce on www.wishonwhitehorses.com, and www.travelwithjoyce.com
Regal House Publishing is proud to be publishing Joyce’s work, The Frog’s Song, in 2019.
