At age six I fell in love with words, and how you could make pictures and stories out of them. I collected them like seashells, and hoarded them in little notebooks. I decided "When I grow up I'm going to be a writer and write books." I also wanted to be a jockey and ride racehorses, or maybe a firefighter. Instead I got married and handed over my life to someone else for four lonely years, supporting him thru grad school. I was very young, drowning in a lonely marriage and not brave enough to break away. Somehow I began to write poetry in secret. It was not very good poetry, but it began to show me who I was, and It was not who I wanted to be. Rumi said "When the knife reaches bone, the life must change." After I left, I went wherever life called me. That was how I learned things. After my shameful failure of both career and life, I set out to find a life of my own, beyond the shadowy periphery of his. I had adventures, I made mistakes. After 30+ years, several careers, and decades of stories to tell, I finally made the commitment to writing, and that's where I am now. Through the hardest times, dark nights of the soul, I turned in secret to the empty page when there was noplace else to go, and no one else to tell. Even In times I was so lost that I could not even speak, I wrote. To the open page, I poured out my loneliness my regret, my despair at the life I had made, but also my fragile hopes for something more. Poetry was my refuge, my therapy, my one true mirror, my small voice singing in the silence, and ultimately, my salvation. _____________________________________ I've written and published A book of poetry titled A Space Between Rains: Poems About Endings and Beginnings, Two books of essays: More About This: Metaphysical Thoughts and Questions of the Heart, and INCHWORMS, a chapbook: Poems, Sketches, and Stories. By the first book 280 pagesof my memoir (The Burning Barrel) I realized it was going to be much too long for most publishers. So I took an immense leap of faith and absurd bravery, and decided to self-publish it as a Trilogy. This gave ne more time and space and tremendous relief. The first book has been published: Victory Is My Name, Book One: The Burning Barrel. (Paperback 978-0-9841730-9-9 and Ebook 978-0-9841730-4-4. If you've read this far, Thank you. You deserve my appreciation. So if you like, you can download and read the first book of the trilogy as a Ebook, for free, as my gift. Go to: http://www.darkhorsepress.com/betareaders.html Click "download" for the Ebook. You are invited to vist my WriterBlog, http://w2w.victoriachames.com or my personal blog: http://moreaboutthis.wordpress.com Thank you sincerely, Victoria C.