What's New:

• Inspiration: Dream #2
• Creativity: Do Three New Things Each Year
• The Sinister Umbrella: A new blog entry and the latest good feedback.
• You Are the Road: A longer description of my memoir-writing process and a description of the photo used on the page.
• Minor changes to most other pages. (Gremlins sneak in at night and leave typos.)
• The February Newsletter is out. If you didn't get a copy, sign up for eMail. It includes an offer to read the current version of The Sinister Umbrella, comment, correct, and/or suggest ideas.
• Living the Dream: a true story about a dream that came true in an unexpected way, featured in the February Newsletter.
• Newsletter Archive. If you missed one, you can find it here.

Writing:

• Damn The Dream, a published story
• The Sinister Umbrella blog
  • my thoughts about how and why I started writing the story
  • the changes my first draft is going through
  • feedback on the first seven chapters from critique group and alpha readers
  • a chance to be an alpha reader
    
• You Are the Road That Led Me Home, a memoir in progress
• Stories memories, anecdotes - What are yours?
• Creativity Where do you find it?
• Inspiration How do you find it when you need it?
• Memes Some are for fun, some might inspire you, and some might help release your creativity

Sandy Reay, Author

In her late twenties, Sandy woke up one morning and asked herself, "How did I get here?" Nothing was drastically wrong with her life, but nothing was exactly right, either.

She decided that she had made negative choices. Any time she had to choose, she'd chosen Option B because she didn't want Option A. She'd never explored the other letters or numbers.

That day, she promised herself that she would make positive choices and be open to whatever came along. She wanted to reach the end of the road remembering all the adventures. If she had any regrets, they'd be from sins of commission.

Guess what? Opportunities opened up. Sandy reinvented herself many times, from bored housewife to career woman, from a house in the city to a horse ranch in the mountains, from overworked wage slave to owning her own business, from photographer to jewelry maker, from race car driver to river rat.

And now, thanks to Damn The Dream, she started her latest reinvention: from songwriter to published author.

It's a wonderful ride. Welcome aboard. Enjoy the journey.

Many thanks to:

• All the alpha readers and critique partners who provided feedback on The Sinister Umbrella.
• Joanie O who sent me a photo of A Cow and her story many years ago
• Lynn Kopelke of Open Crown Productions for the drawings of Don Quixote Now
• Jennifer Epps for three of the images used for Women Who Write
• Roberta Crownover for suggesting a darker color for the background
• Joanna Springer for the photo of her journals in the heading image
• Shawn Wiinchester for the photo of Sandy sitting on the moon
• Bill Patterson, Patterson Photography for the photo of Sandy on her profile page
• Rona Golfen, RonaPhoto for the photo of the Inspiration tree, and the story and photo of the crabapple tree growing out of a dead cherry tree.
• Deb Ewing for the Creativity restroom sign