Author page
https://authorevegarner.ca/wp/2019/10/23/day-2-of-free-colouring-pages/
As Halloween approaches our family has decided to give away the colouring pages we are drawing this week. We hope you enjoy them and don’t forget to check back throughout the week for more pages. We hope you have a happy and safe Halloween!
So where have I been and what is with this book stuff suddenly? Yeah, let me take a moment to apologize once again to those who have checked in from time to time. I am a creative soul and as such I seem to have a hard time focusing. Some hate that about me and some love it. I just accept it, I am loving, fun, hard-working AND I am a scatter brain, dramatic, forgetful and distracted easily.
It is who I am and for decades I allowed others to tell me that version of me wasn’t ok. If you have followed some of my other posts you will have noticed that I am a single parent, yep doing life the right way since the 1970’s. I know some may see this as a negative but the negative was the relationship itself. Not that the other person is to blame, I just hadn’t taken the time to find myself and so the choices I was making were not the right choices for me.
My relationship ended on a bad note and the taste of it sits with me today. I am not bitter with the person I had to let go, I am bitter with myself. I am bitter for not valuing myself enough to take the time to find myself. Let that be a lesson to anyone who reads this blog in their 20’s. If I can give you any advice in life, it is to find yourself and accept yourself so you can attract those who do the same. I have found it to be true, at least in my life that if you are insecure with yourself, you will attract people who perpetuate those insecurities.
Ok, so enough with the drab serious side of life, I have been serious for far too long. I WROTE A BOOK! The first one isn’t bad although it needs to be reformatted but it was written and illustrated in 6 weeks for my daughter who was leaving for a year to teach abroad so although not great, it was done with great love. I CO WROTE A SECOND BOOK! Oh look at me go, so excited! The second book is a story my mom told myself and my siblings when we were little. I had the pleasure of rescuing the story with my mother and illustrating it. The story is really good and I am not just saying that because it’s my mom’s story, people have raved about it for decades, which is why we published it, well that and money. Food costs money and so do lawyers, yep, this is my life. True story.
So how does this tie in with the title? I am loving it! Currently I am writing a book with my 7 year old and there are several tiles in the works. I have finally found what I love and I am not stopping there, I have so many ideas to for a whole new brand and a whole new me. After decades, I think I may have actually found who I really am and it feels great. I hope you will follow the journey with me,
This story was originally created in 1965, over the past 5 decades it has been shared in classrooms, read by children and adults. Now the story that has been loved by educators , parents and children is finally available for everyone to enjoy.
This story based on a little flower that is rejected for being different from the others in the garden has a powerful message about the importance of acceptance. As the little flower begins to bloom the other flowers in the garden wait with anticipation to greet her. But when they see that the little flower is different from themselves they turn their backs on her. Even in her time of need the other flowers ignore her and it has devastating results. Although the other flowers in the garden try to deny blame, in their hearts they know they could have helped.
To get your copy today and discover why The Little Flower has been loved for over half a decade follow the link above.
I did the same thing I am sure the thousands of self published authors have done before me. I politely asked google how to sell my books. it was basically the same information over and over again. So I went to work, following everything my dear friend google suggested. Setting up websites and author pages everywhere I could, spamming the internet with my name demanding to be noticed. Did it work, yes and no. If you search my name or books on google you will now see my name pop up, good. I sort of felt just a tad famous the moment I saw my websites pop up, my amazon authors page and my YouTube channel all there in front of me. However it takes time for people to engage and they have to know what they are looking for, so if you don’t know my name or care about my content, it doesn’t matter if my dear friend google can tell you where I am.
At first I was just going to sit back and wait, I have 21 more books in the works anyway, I am a busy woman. Busy but not patient. I was pleased to see my FB page reach 10 likes within a few hours and my website views increase but I wondered if there was another platform I hadn’t explored. I wondered how I could utilize YouTube. My books haven’t actually arrived yet so plugging them in a video wasn’t an option nor was reading them aloud. So I pondered……(that’s me pondering, in case you were wondering.)
It actually wasn’t until someone sent me a private message offering their services to make a trailer for my book that the idea started to grow. I had seen several simple trailers on various social media sites but they just didn’t inspire me. I have always been dramatic and somewhat over the top when I am passionate about something and this book is something I have been passionate about for a long time.
So, I began to play around and after a few hours I had a trailer, is it depressing and sad? Yes, but that is the reality of being rejected and I want that message to really hit home. This trailer isn’t meant for a little child to love and ask for the book, that is something I am working on as well. This trailer is to get the meaning of the book across to everyone. Even if you don’t buy the book, the trailer should be enough to make stop for one moment and see that a beautiful, perfect little flower was broken by the rejection she received for simply being herself.
The Little Flower Comes To Life After 53 Years.
I had the pleasure of having a great story-teller for a mom. When I was little we would all curl up on her bed as she created magical stories out of thin air. As I grew up I shared the story with whoever I could, so proud that my mom was a writer. I even carted worn handwritten pages to school and begged my teachers to read the faded pages.
Every year the teachers would tell me my mom should publish her story and every year I would dream of my mother’s book being on a bookshelf, in a library, sitting on a bookshelf at a friend’s house. But my mother never did publish her book before now, whether due to her busy life of lack of confidence in her writing ability, she just never got around to it.
So for over 50 years the story was passed around and handed down, everyone saying it should be published but it never quite made it there. it was revised and revised again and lost some of it’s spark, a missing word here, an added sentence there and although the original was different, the new versions still made people cry, the base of the story remained and everyone raved.
One day as life tends to do everything changed. After I published my first book, I asked my mom about working together to fix, illustrate and publish her books. She didn’t hesitate. She handed me the folder containing the pages from all the stories she had written down over the years, a few were missing but I had heard them many times that I am now working on bringing those back to life as well.
And so after months of going back and forth, me correcting some changes and my mom correcting the others, the story began to revert to the original form. There was one intentional change, the little flower found a name during the intense editing process, she had waited 53 years and finally had a name. Once the story had been revived it was time to illustrate, this is the second book I have ever illustrated and before this I wasn’t an artist by any sense of the word. However the The Little Flower had been in my imagination for as long as I could remember. The sun had been there, the bees, the winds, the birds, the little girl and the other flowers in the garden, they had all been there waiting.
As I took the first stroke of my pen, the images started to come, I couldn’t draw them fast enough. each page leading to the next like they had always been there waiting to come out. It took 2 months to illustrate the book which by professional standards may sound like a long time but I am a single mom who had only ever sketched the odd thing before this year. I wouldn’t say they are the best illustrations but they are the illustrations of the little girl who loved this story for her whole life and was the greatest gift to be able to co author, illustrate and publish my favorite story as a child, by my favorite writer of all time.
Today I hold my very own copy of the story my mother and I brought back to life and made into a picture book and I am beyond words. If you would like to follow the story of this book please follow this blog. If you would like to find out more information on this or any of my other books please check out my author page https://authorevegarner.ca/wp/ . If you would like to own “The Little Flower” you can purchase it by clicking the image above.
It has been a while since I last posted. I am trying but sometimes it is overwhelming trying to do it all and sometimes I just need to back off and take a break from the world. Yes, I am trying to make extra money, at least enough to pay for my blogs and not posting for months is not bringing me any closer to that goal. I do apologize and I am hoping to find a better rhythm to balancing everything.
So now for the reason behind my rude disappearance, I wrote and illustrated a children’s book for my oldest daughter:
That’s right, I am an author. I wouldn’t say it has the best illustrations or that it is an award winning story that everyone will want to own but I did it. The illustrations were drawn on a cracked iPad Air and the story roughly based on a ladybug that my daughter and her friends found as children.
This book was written, illustrated and published in 6 weeks. A monumental task and if you have ever published a children’s book in that amount of time, I applaud you. Because I am a single mom, I worked 20 hours a day trying to do it all. My littles definitely ate a few too many hot dogs during that time and my housework suffered as well. But I did it.
When my first proof arrived from Amazon, I opened the box and it hit me. I am now an author. I had published poems before but that was a long time ago, this was different. I have had a rough few years and this was an achievement that was all mine. I wasn’t all the things someone called me anymore. I had shed that and had become a whole new person, the person I always wanted to be but never allowed.
My youngest daughter walked around with that book in her hands announcing that her mom writes children books, grinning ear to ear. The sparkle in her eyes and the pride she had that her mom wrote a children’s book brought tears to my eyes. After really struggling for over a year and a half, she was proud to be my daughter.
I am now publishing a second book this month and my youngest daughter and I are working on a third together. I hope to have more frequent updates but if I disappear for a while please be patient. I am just busy following a dream.
I became a single mom at 46, this was not what I expected from life but sometimes life doesn’t work out the way you want it to and you just have to make the best of what you are handed. This brings me to why everything in my life went on hold, sometimes you just need to shut down and focus on the things that are the most important, to me that is my children. Life can be busy and it is easy to get caught up in what needs to be done and forget to take time to enjoy or pay close attention to your family.
Not that their needs weren’t met, food was on the table, they have always had clean clothes and are well kept. There has always been story times and cuddles, time at the park and crazy fort nights. However, I was so busy trying to be normal, trying to make sure their lives were normal that I had forgotten all that we had been through the past year and one day it started to unravel and it has continued to unravel.
This hasn’t been a bad thing, in fact some of the things that unraveled showed me where I hadn’t taken care of business, some things that started to unravel reminded me just how much I adore my children and just how important they are in my life. Not that there was ever a question but a reminder is never a bad thing.
I stopped everything to clean up what I had neglected to notice while my relationship fell apart. I fought for my rights and I listened, recognized and enjoyed my children even more than I had in the past. Had all of this happened a year ago, I would have been angry and bitter but a year changes people a lot and I have changed my perspective. I won’t allow anyone to take advantage of me but if I end up getting the short end of the stick does it really matter? I have the most wonderful life and being a mom is everything to me.
Sometimes changing your perspective in life changes how things affect you. I thought I was falling but in fact I was leaping into a new appreciation of the life I have and I am truly grateful for every moment. A year ago I was angry, hurt and bitter with the world around me, today I am truly grateful for everything I have. I feel free and happy.
This Mother’s Day I remember how incredibly blessed I am. As I try to make sense of the cruel world that took a tiny little girl back to god leaving a mother’s arms empty today. She came into the world 15 weeks early and touched everyone around her before she made the journey back to God. Only here for a few days her memory will last a lifetime in those she touched.
This Mother’s Day I grieve for her, her mother and her father. Today I honour her mother who in a few short days experienced all that comes with motherhood and today sits with empty arms while she watches the world around her celebrate motherhood. I can think of no other more deserving than her of being honoured today. As a mother I hold her in my thoughts this Mother’s Day and pray for her to feel the support and love of all mothers around her today and always.
That may seem self centred but it really isn’t meant to be that way. I hope everyone has a really happy Valentine’s Day and I hope they have people around them that make them feel loved. However, I also want everyone to take the time to love themselves today. You are awesome!!! I find it sad that Valentine’s Day focuses on couples loving each other and that some single people are somehow alienated from this holiday of love. I remember many years where being single on Valentine’s was embarrassing, how I hated watching other couples holding hands, showering each other with love. Thinking that somehow those people were worth that but I wasn’t.
Then I entered relationships with people who didn’t shower me in love, not just on Valentine’s Day, they rarely showed me love and why would they, I had conditioned myself for many years to feel like I wasn’t worthy of it. For the next 30 years I would hurt and be jealous of couples who adored each other. Not to say there weren’t a few really good Valentine’s Days but the days of showering me with love were few and far between and so it never seemed enough. As write that it seems sad that someone would live that way for so long but things change and life evolves.
I learned that loving myself was the more important than others loving me. Not that I don’t still appreciate others loving me, in fact it has more depth and meaning now than it has ever had before. I can love deeper and appreciate being loving towards others more now than ever before in my life. I give from a place of understanding rather than a place of obligation or need for some kind of return. It is a much happier and peaceful place to be in life.
It seems ridiculous to me now that I was jealous of others love. I am not less of a person because I am single and I am worth the most important love of all, my own love. I am blessed to have wonderful people who stood by me in life and showed me that I was worth my own love. I am blessed that my life overflows with the love of my children. Seeing people loving their partners makes me happy now and fills me with warmth. Seeing those who love themselves however fills my heart with joy because they are loved with or without others.
I hope you wish yourself a Happy Valentine’s Day today, weather you are loved by a partner or single because the most important person to love and recognize as your Valentine is you. Happy Valentine’s Day to you and to all those I love.
