SIXTY-EIGHT and NEWLY RETIRED, I decided to get serious about writing. Two years later, after receiving feedback from both professionals and friends, I SWALLOWED HARD AND WINCED. THEN I HIT THE DELETE KEY  AND REFOCUSED MY THOUGHTS. Years later, my re-write completed, I had to face the next hurdle: publishing. Before tackling it, I not only had to learn how to navigate the Internet, but I also had to learn how to create a PDF, which wasn’t as easy to do then as it is today.  

Fast-forward eight years. I spent six weeks teaching an author friend how to format her book. As we wrapped up our last session, she said, “MARY, YOU HAVE TO WRITE A BOOK ON FORMATTING.”  – “Me? No. There’s nothing I hate more than reading how-to books. So, no way am I going to write one.” – She persisted. I gave in. As I wrote, I did it my way, with sass. A year later she dialed my number. “Mary,  Formatting Your Fantastic Book came in the mail yesterday, and I stayed up past midnight reading it. I COULDN’T PUT IT DOWN.” 

Early in my counseling career, a young mother opened my eyes to a nonconscious ideology: Santa has always been depicted as White. Create an all-race inclusive Santa? Would I dare? Yes. In my 3-part fiction series, WON’T TELL (filled with romance, mystery, and trickery), I pull Santa into Twenty-first Century diversity by having him wake up on his birthday each year with more or less melanin (skin pigment). THE PROBLEM IS . . . HIS FEAR OF NON-ACCEPTANCE KEEPS HIM FROM LETTING THE WORLD KNOW HE IS ANYTHING BUT WHITE.