~Author
~Entrepreneur
~Environmentalist
~Motivational Speaker
Putting a lifetime of experiences on one page is not an easy task. I think back to when I first had the thought of writing the book “Artie.” As a child, my family had one of the original artificial Christmas trees and many jokes were made about that tree. Because I had been teased and had very little confidence, I knew just how the little tree felt. I was held back in the second grade and unable to read at grade level in elementary school. Unknown at that time, these problems were a result of being dyslexic. As I became an Adult I realized I was not defined my reading and spelling skills because I had a very special talent: “imagination”. I wrote plays for my children, told fun stories to my swim teams and gymnastics classes and used my incredible gift to solve problems. My imagination gave me the ability to see things as they can be, to organize, to plan and bring ideas to life.
I started businesses, wrote training manuals, cleaned the bayous of Houston, Texas and received many awards. But each Christmas I went back to thinking about “Artie”; I knew that I must tell Artie’s story. So one Christmas I began researching the history of Christmas trees. A few years later I outlined the story of “Artie” “and two years later I researched how to write a screenplay. It took a year, but I did it – I wrote the screenplay “Artie.”
At the Nashville screenplay writer’s convention, I was introduced to a well-known Hollywood screenplay writer, Leslie Bohme. After reading “Artie” he gave me five suggestions to make it better. It took months of work and 16 revisions before I heard “Artie” is ready for the world to see. Then Leslie said “Now make “Artie” a children’s book.”
Writing a children’s book was not an easy task, but after 34 revisions “ARTIE: The First Artificial Christmas Tree”, was launched Christmas 2015. It’s a story that deserved to be told. I wish I could read it with each of you but I do know that wherever Artie is, so is a part of my heart.