Book description
This book tells the tale of how being the victim of a car accident affected my life. It also shows the power of prayer and faith. Faith in myself, belief in the Lord, and never giving up on something I knew I was destined to do.
It illustrates the many ups and downs I had on my journey. The many obstacles that were put in my path, but none of which stopped me from doing what I had to do. Even after being put on child support, after an unfortunate event with the mother of my daughter, I couldn’t give up on her, and of course from making sure I always have money to pay the child support, every month.
Chapter 1
So, for the most part, my memories of that time are fuzzy and sparse at best. But I’ll get to the point I think I should really start at.
The day was July 1st, 1987. My brother and I went to the park with his friend to swim. I know the name of my brother’s friend, but I was supposed to meet a friend of mine after swimming that day.
I remember that we were all swimming and having a good time for a while, then my brother left with his friend to go to his friend’s house. I continued swimming, but at some point I got bored, so I got out of the pool. I really don’t remember what led up to me doing it, but I ended up crossing the street, but not in the crosswalk. I have been told that I was on my way to see a friend of mine, so I guess that’s where I was originally headed.
So there I was crossing the street, but as I got to the middle of the street, I looked to my right and saw a car coming toward me.
I have no idea why I didn’t run, but I was stuck to that spot. I tried to get the car to stop by waving my arms, but it didn’t work, and the car hit me.
From what my brother says, when he left that day, he ended up not even going to his friend’s house. Instead, he just walked back home, which was maybe a couple of miles away.
By the time he got home, my sister told him that I was hit by a car, and being transferred to UCLA. It’s amazing that event happened so quickly.
From family members, I know I was visited often, and prayed upon constantly (thank you so much for your faith), while I was in a coma for two months.
Ultimately, I woke up at Children’s Hospital, but I’ve been told that my eyes were open when I was at Kaiser, but I just wasn’t “there.”
I can’t remember the exact time I woke up from the coma, but I know my brother would push me around the hospital (I was in a wheelchair), whispering jokes in my ear and making me laugh.
The memories I have from when I woke up were my loud roommate, who would always yell for a nurse at bedtime. I almost felt like a prisoner, because I was tied to my bed when I slept, and there were bars on the side. It was a hospital bed, and I had a reputation of wandering the halls at night.
My speech was very slow, I had a limp, and I had to adhere to a schedule that was laid out on a board on the wall in the hallway. I had things like “school,” “occupational therapy,” “physical therapy,” and it even told me when to eat.
Speaking of school, I am left-handed. I actually thought that surviving the accident turned me right-handed. How wrong I was. I think it wasn’t until sometime in the 5th grade that I decided to go back to writing left-handed. Trying to be right-handed wasn’t good for writing. I did, however, play basketball, baseball, and other sports right-handed, and still do.
Sometimes they put me on a standing board, and I would look forward to whenever my dad would come by and say hi. We would hang out, he would have me push my wheelchair, kind of like a walker, I think to help me get better walking straight.
My mom would visit me at times, too. Usually she was accompanied by my older brother and sister. I don’t think my sister was too interested in seeing me, but that was fine. My brother and I would still talk and joke around, trying to have fun.
During my hospital stay, they even let me have weekend visits, and I would go home with my mom. It was such a nice thing, to get out of the hospital, and know I had a room, with bunk beds, and a house I’d be going to when I got out.
If I remember right (seriously, I hope I do), at one point my mom let me know the day they were going to discharge me. I think we even made a little calendar, so I could cross off the days until they let me go. I think it was a Saturday when I got out.
My mom never liked the way my grandmother treated her brother, because she babied him. I guess she figured it was her fault that he was born with that condition, so he didn’t have to do much.
Anyway, I know my mom didn’t want me growing up thinking there was anything wrong with me, or that my condition would prevent me from, at the very least, trying anything I wanted to do. For this reason, I probably never saw a problem going for my dreams, or continuing the path I tried to lay out for myself.
Chapter 2
Soon after getting back home, I resumed school. Because of my accident, I had to go to a special school or a school for people with disabilities. A bus picked me up every day, a short bus, but there were very few other things to make me want to stay.
I don’t know what the reasoning for it was, but after a couple of days just being in one room, they had me go to the other side of the school to take a class with other students who had no ailments. I actually thought it reminded me of doing something like that when I was in kindergarten, where they had me go to another class on the other side of the main room, but back then there was no difference with the students.
I don’t know if going to that one class was an indication to me that I didn’t want to be surrounded by the other disabled kids, but I knew that staying there wasn’t any way for me to reach the goal I had of eventually working in animation.
Before my accident, I was very interested in animation. I got the idea from watching Saturday morning cartoons, and there were even some on during the week. I started drawing my own characters, and it was such a feeling of ennui, I decided to make that my dream.
Eventually, I did enhance my drawing skills, and learned animation, web design, video editing, and sound design, but I will get into that more, further in this story.
Fortunately, I knew that going to this school was something I had to do, so I stuck it out for the rest of that year. I did make comments to my teacher at times, saying I hated it there. There were aspects of that school which weren’t too appealing to me, but hate is a pretty strong word to use for how going to that school made me feel.
After finishing that year, I begged my mom to send me to a “normal” school. I guess I didn’t want the constant reminder that something was seriously wrong with me, no matter how big of a stake it took up in the back of my mind.
The next year, I attended a Catholic school, and was lucky that my brother also went to the school. My mom said the teachers knew about my condition, but I didn’t feel that they treated me any different or anything, so I had as much fun as I could.
I’d attended this school prior to my accident, so a lot of the kids that were in my class had familiar faces.
There were a few key points which happened to me that year, aside from school.
We were living in an apartment at that time, and the man we were living with was the same man (his name was Pedro, but he let us call him Rennie) who taught me to use both of my hands before my accident.
Maybe it was a very impressionable time for both of us, my brother and I, but I was only 11 and he was 13. This was around the time the movie “Colors” came out, and Rennie was an ex-gang member, so he wanted to help us be aware of the dangers on the streets.
My brother and I caught the bus to and from school, but sometimes when we waited, I would throw up one of the signs I saw them do in that movie. I’m glad my brother helped me keep that in check, because if I’d done it to the wrong person, they might not have been so nice.
After that year I went to a public school. I really wanted to be at a school which wasn’t restricted by school uniforms, and I was anxious to meet whatever new faces I’d encounter.
I guess after being at a school where they knew about my condition, and finding out school wasn’t any challenge I couldn’t stand, I wanted a new perspective.
When I was in the 7th grade, even though it was a nice place, I did see a school psychiatrist. My speech was still slower than normal, so she gave me some advice on how to increase the speed.
She suggested that if I listened to and tried to sing along with songs on the radio, or tapes of my favorite artists, it would help. Eventually, rap became one of my favorite genres of music for that reason.
Another reason I liked rap was because they made it sound like they always had things going on, ways of keeping money in their pockets. I later learned that this was really done by keeping multiple streams of income coming in. Nothing lasts forever.
In fact, there was a time, when I had a night job in Wyoming, where I was working two jobs, trying to save up money to move back to California. Unfortunately, I lost those day jobs and lost my nerve from those experiences.
N.W.A. was a popular group around that time, but I still listened to other artists, like Go West, George Michael, Luther Vandross, Sade, Guns N’ Roses, AC/DC, Tears for Fears, and whatever other artists were on the radio.
As a matter of fact, whenever I hear Tears for Fears or Go West, it always reminds me of when we lived up North back in the early 80s. It was pretty much a beach town, and whenever I hear those artists, it gives me a feeling of the peace and tranquility I knew there.
During the 90s, I did get into Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, initially because they had the fastest raps. I still like them, and listen to them to this day (but mostly the stuff they had from the 90s).
While I appreciate Bone Thugs for that reason, my favorite rapper is Tupac. More than having good lyrics, his music actually said something, which is rare.
As a matter of fact, I’m always looking up videos and behind-the-scenes kinds of things on Tupac, which helped me figure out he was more of a revolutionary than just a rapper.
In one video I saw about Tupac, he explained that the tattoo on his stomach, the one that read “THUG LIFE,” had nothing to do with criminal activity or murder or anything like that. What it stood for was “The Hate You Gave Little Infants F— Everyone,” meaning that the little children that are abused and mistreated growing up will eventually be the ones who start a revolution when they get older.
Taking a cue from that is how I came up with the title for this story. It says “The Hearts You Give Lift Our Voices Eternally,” but if you just look at the first letters of those words, it spells THUG LOVE. In no way do I mean this story to cause violence, but it is a tale which exemplifies the true power of prayer and how having faith will move mountains.
Aside from making new friends, the one part of seventh grade that stood out was my pre-algebra class.
I had started the year with a teacher who was kind of tough. I actually appreciated her more because I had to really earn my education. About midway in the year that teacher left, and the next one I got didn’t seem to know as much. She might have even known more, but that’s just the impression I got.
Late in the year, the second teacher gave us a test on fractions, and it had a couple of extra credit questions, too. When she handed back the tests, slowly she called everyone’s name, and I was anxious to get my test back. She ended up calling me last, and she embarrassed me that day, because I don’t like everyone thinking I’m trying to be better than them. I just want to get along with everyone. I got the best score in the class for that test.
One class I took was an art class, but I didn’t really like it. I thought it was more of an animation class, but we ended up doing various projects. I came out of that class thinking, again, that I knew more than the teacher.
I was lucky that when I went to the eighth grade, I was able to stay at that public school. I was kinda getting used to changing schools every year.
During that year, a couple of interesting things happened. I saw someone get jumped into a gang for the first time.
I even tried out for the basketball team that year, but I didn’t make the team for one reason or another. I just wanted to have some fun, and I guess being on that team wasn’t in my path, so oh well.
I guess I was more popular than I thought, because we had a Junior Prom that year. I didn’t bring a date or anything, but it turned out that the girl I ended up slow dancing with that night thought I was cute. I never thought that way, because I’d always say my brother was better looking than me.
My transcripts for high school were originally sent to a high school with a bad reputation, and most of my class from the public school went there, too. I asked my mom to go there too, because I wanted to be with familiar faces. Unfortunately, that school isn’t the best high school in the Inglewood area, and as a matter of fact, my sister was sent there for her freshman year as a punishment, because of low marks in the eighth grade or something like that.
As it turned out, for my freshman year I went to the same high school my brother went to. Thanks to him having some friends who were still there, they helped look out for me while I was there.
I don’t really have anything against that school, except I didn’t care much for the uniforms, again. As usual, I easily made friends, and didn’t tell anyone about my accident. I didn’t want to be judged for anything, and it made life a little more fun.
I am not sure why, but for my sophomore year I changed schools again. (Whenever I tell people of all the schools I went to, or how constantly I changed schools, their first thoughts are, usually, that I was a bad student.)
This school was an all-boys school, and it doesn’t exist anymore. This school did have a dress code. Unlike a uniform, all I needed to do was wear a certain type of clothing, but not the same colors every day.
At first I didn’t like the idea of going to an all-boys school, but I did have a friend there who I knew from the sixth grade. We got a ride to school every day because my mom worked close to where that school was, but we caught the bus home.
The bus solved the reservations I had about the all-boys thing, because there were girls I flirted with. The bad part about that is I found out one guy I was in school with knew the girl I was flirting with, so if she and I had an issue, I’d hear about it from him.
Fortunately, by the end of the school year, I made lots of friends, and I was actually looking forward to coming back there for my junior year. Once again, I had to change schools, but this time my mom told me about it so it wasn’t such a shock to me.
She even asked me where I wanted to go, and I let her know I wanted to go to a public school, which was down the street.
(For my sophomore year, we were living with my mom’s mother. Before the year was over my mom got a new boyfriend, so between 10th and 11th grade, we moved to a safer city.)
I really liked going to a public school for the remainder of my high school career, even though it had a couple of bumps and bruises.
For example, in my junior year I earned a bully who was in my History class. Prior to that, the only person I’d fight with was my brother, but I knew I wasn’t a contender, or nothing like that. I found out that my bully was a gangster, too, but I still got hit.
Every day, at the beginning of class he’d walk over to where I was sitting, and hit me on my right shoulder. I didn’t do anything at first, thinking that my teacher probably saw this and would do something, but he never did.
I went home and told my mom’s husband about it. He suggested I just hit him back. That was some good advice.
The next day, just as my bully was walking over to hit me again I pulled back and hit him first. That stopped my problem, for that year at least, and the rest of that year went off without a hitch. I even met another best friend, Jennifer, in my math class.
Aside from school, my mom’s husband would constantly ask me advice on how to deal with my mom. As a kid, there’s no way I could help him. Besides, I don’t see her the same way he does. She’s my mom, so I don’t get along with her the same way a guy on the street would.
They ended up getting divorced during my junior year, and we had to move to an apartment complex, which was surprisingly close by. The managers liked the close relationship my mom and I shared, and became good friends with us.
Not long after that, my mom’s next boyfriend was found when she answered a personal ad.
My first interaction with the gentleman was the phone conversations we had. He called a few times to ask for my mom, but she wasn’t there for the majority of those times so I asked if I could take a message. I found out that my phone demeanor was one of the reasons he kept contacting my mom, and that kinda made me happy.
He had a 1986 Astro Van, and he would take me on driving lessons after school. We would go through various parts of the city, teaching me to drive in congestion, driving the freeway, to the DMV, learning how to parallel park, and he even let me drive to the Christian church a friend of mine invited me to. I had a lot of fun learning to drive with him.
Speaking of that Christian church, there was one point (I can’t remember if it was 11th or 12th grade), but we went on a retreat which took place at a higher elevation than Big Bear. After getting used to the elevation, I did testify, for the first time, in front of an audience of hundreds, about surviving my accident.
When my senior year arrived, I really got to have fun. They put me in an English class I didn’t care for, but a friend and I had the same teacher for History, again. I asked her what classes she had, and after going to the front office to change English classes, my friend and I had four classes together.
We had the same teacher for English, Math, Video Production Art, and Drama classes. I was always good at English and math, so I had no trouble with it. In the other two, my friend and I had a really fun time.
We would get to play Hang Man in Drama class, for fun, use our own movies from home to edit in Video Production Art, not to mention getting an easy A in both classes, because they were taught by the same teacher.
We also did some clay animation, like Gumby, but instead we tried to do a scene from “Home Alone.”
As for my plans after high school, I really didn’t have any. I knew I had to work, but as far as college, I saw that my mom was a very successful person without it, so I figured I could do the same. Little did I know she had a lot of help on her way to success, which I still don’t know the full details about.
Luckily for me, my dad had been paying attention to the fact that I was so into art for the majority of my life, and no matter what suggestions he made, I always wanted to draw. He knew of a practical way to use my talent, by making signs, because he’d heard about the program when he attended Trade Tech. He majored in Auto Repair, but the major of Sign Making was one he knew I could make a profit with.
Before exiting, on the last month of that school year, I was recognized. I got the “Student of the Month” award, and they even mentioned my accident when they announced it. That was a very nice way for me to end High School.
Chapter 3
My mom did help me get my very first job, in fact. We were out at a mall and she ran into a friend of hers, from High School I think. It turned out her friend was managing a children’s clothing store, and that’s pretty much how I got the job.
The hours at that job were pretty irregular, because I was on the stock team, and we worked after hours. My new stepdad would give me rides to and from work, but I was bothered with how he could do that and maintain his day job, so I didn’t stay there except maybe a month.
Prior to that job, I was constantly trying to get a job at Target. After the first job, I got a call from Target, which made it my job number two.
My stepdad worked at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard, which closed the end of that year. While I was going through my first steps of employment, he was given the opportunity to transfer to the Francis E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
As a matter of fact, he even tried to help me get a job, while he was still at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard, as a fire watch. When I went to apply for the job, I tried to ignore the part where it said I needed to be 18 for that position. I thought knowing him would help me secure the job. I was wrong about that, and someone even mentioned to him that they thought I was a little “slow.”
It might have been a true statement, but aside from not getting the job, it still hurt.
With this information, I thought I could ask for a transfer to another Target in Cheyenne. Everything was going great, but due to customer complaints when I was running around the store messing around with these two high school girls, I was fired. So much for that transfer and we were on our way to Wyoming.
The day before Christmas, 1995, we were in a hotel in Cheyenne. Our furniture had been put somewhere on the Air Force base until we got a house of our own. The biggest shock was all of the snow on the ground. I had barely seen it in California, and never lived in it.
The way my stepdad had things set up, we stayed in the barracks on the base. To keep busy, I’d go for walks, or play pool at the Day Care center, or even see if I could play basketball at the gymnasium. There were other times, when I’d see a Boy Scout cabin deep on the other side of the Base.
The house we got wasn’t too far from everything. I think the biggest feature of the city was the Air Force base, but there was one street which only had restaurants, another street where there was a Target and a mall. The mall only had one level, which was very different than the ones I was used to with two or three levels in Los Angeles.
Another feature of the house was that it was the biggest lot on the street. This didn’t come in too handy when I had to shovel snow, but it made it easy for the other houses I’d shovel snow from, when I wanted extra change.
When we first moved in, after all of our furniture was in place and the trinkets were put away, it was suggested by my stepdad for me to join the Army. My mom even mentioned that I wasn’t doing anything else, so she thought it would be the best thing for me to do.
My stepdad said his brother was in the Army, and they would take anyone. I guess he thought my “condition” wouldn’t be an issue. I should have listened to my father’s advice and stayed away from the military altogether. I still got a couple of things out of it, like a life insurance policy.
When I was a senior in high school, I had talked to a recruiter from the Navy about joining, and I told him about my accident. He would say that there was some checking had to be done because of that, and he’d get back to me, which told me the answer was “no.”
I told my stepdad about what happened, and why I really didn’t want to try the Army, but he told me all I had to do was not mention my accident when I applied.
I was starting to get a bad feeling about my stepdad anyway, and wasn’t sure about the way his attitude toward me was changing, so I went to the Army. I figured it was a great way to get away from him, and if I made it, I’d go back to California instead of living with him again.
After setting up my ship date with the recruiter, I had a month before I left. There was a McDonald’s that was pretty close to us, so I got a job there for that month. The job they had me do was wiping tables, emptying trash, collecting trays . . . nothing too big. I kept reminding them that I wasn’t staying, and my month was over.
For my initial processing, or the first night I was in the Army, I set up a bank account, and had a $100,000 life insurance policy. Another beautiful thing about the first night was no sleep.
After two weeks of being the best soldier I could be, my drill sergeant approached me in the chow line because he said he noticed I was doing things slower than the rest of the company, so he wanted me to see the doctor on the base. That was the beginning of the end of my Army career.
I still had to stay on “Released from Training” status while my paperwork was going through so they could send me back home. There were a few other people in RFT status too, so I had company.
We would help set up obstacles for the rest of the company, mow the lawn, and pick dandelions, something to do. It took another two-and-a-half months before they sent me back to Wyoming.
I really didn’t like the idea that I’d have to go back to living with my stepdad, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. I did learn how to take care of a house, drive in snow, make money shoveling snow, different ways to mow a lawn . . . I learned a lot from him. I just didn’t like the way he went about it.
To get a job, I went downtown and talked to someone in the Career Department. I told them about my accident, and what type of job was right for me, then they connected me to a job which I held until I moved back to California.
It was a night job on a crew with others who had disabilities. We worked stocking the shelves of the Commissary on the Air Force base. Our pay was based on our production, so I cleared about $800 a month.
One day, I went to the house of one of my stepdad’s co-workers. He had three daughters, and one of them was home for the weekend from the Colorado Institute of Art. I had previously shown her and her sisters some drawings I did, so she suggested that I look into attending said institute.
From going through the motions, I found out about a California campus in Santa Monica called the Art Institute of Los Angeles. This was the best way for me to get away from Chris and his abusive ways, which I won’t disclose.
What shocked me was that when I told my mom I was going to move back to California, she wanted to go with me. We put our stuff in storage, and initially moved in with my grandmother who was in a retirement home.
We didn’t stay with my grandmother too long and actually moved back to the apartment complex we lived in before we left California. My mom got back in touch with Rennie, and he helped me pay for a starter kit I needed for the Art Institute.
When I started, I was studying computer animation, but I ended up getting a degree in Multimedia, or Graphic Design. I learned how to make websites, edit video, and create sounds. I aimed my focus on animation within that field, to keep me motivated to finish, and had six different clips to show when portfolio came.
I was offered three or four jobs, but didn’t want to have the same tragic ending with a major job that I did even with the minor jobs I couldn’t keep for one reason or another. I am still very proud that I earned my degree, and I was able to cross “graduating from college” from my Bucket List.
After I finished at the Art Institute, from a suggestion my dad gave me I attended the Los Angeles Trade Tech, and learned Sign Graphics. I learned how to market myself, and I produced samples to show potential clients.
Making signs turned out to be more profitable for me, and more up my alley of creativity. It wasn’t animation by any stretch, but it was fun to make a drawing, then print out a vinyl sign and put it on a window or wall, even a magnetic sign.
I made window signs, magnetic signs, wall signs, flyers, business cards (I learned how to create the right emphasis), and I even put business signage on my car.
Thanks to that signage, one day, getting an oil change at Sears, I left with a $200 job to make a couple of banners. There was also an occasion when I went to Smart & Final to get some milk for my brother, where I got a job from a pastor who wanted to promote his church along the back window of his SUV, for another $200.
As much as I liked making signs, I guess I got too lazy to do the footwork, and promotion didn’t pay what I needed it to. I couldn’t even keep it as a side job. I wanted to devote more of my time to getting a steady job.
For the next 20 years, from when I was 20, I had a multitude of jobs that I couldn’t keep. In California I couldn’t find a job like the one I had at the Commissary in Wyoming, but one of the main reasons I kept working, despite losing jobs every couple of years, was because I had a daughter.
She was born at the end of February in 2006. After her birth, not too long after, in fact, I was put on Child Support. The job I had at that time was a driving job, so it was easy for me to visit my daughter when my route brought me in that area.
I even had a paternity test done to make sure I wasn’t being shammed, and even though I was told not to do it, I visited my daughter before I got the results a year later. I thought, “If it turns out she is my daughter, I don’t want her to look back at these early years and hate me for not trying to know her.”
In 2009, during one of the times I was between jobs, I had a mental episode. Maybe I was stressing myself out, because I was hearing voices that day and they weren’t telling me to do good things.
In 2012, after going to the Employment Development Department in Torrance, I was finally directed somewhere that diagnosed me as having a Traumatic Brain Injury. I was tested by a neuropsychiatric doctor through the Betty Clooney Foundation in Long Beach, California.
I didn’t wait long enough for the Betty Clooney Foundation to help me get Supplemental Security Income, because I was being pressured about the Child Support, and it became too much, so I tried going back to work.
I still have a copy of that report, and am hoping it will help me get SSI and Social Security Disability now.
I did end up waiting a total of three years for a Social Security case, and had a lawyer and all. Unfortunately, probably because I don’t stop working, and with that there aren’t many indicators that I would benefit from Social Security, not to mention that the government is very fickle about who they will allow to get disability, so the odds were against me to begin with.
It was amazing, and disappointing, but I even got the same reaction from trying to work at Goodwill. I really thought they’d be sympathetic because of what I’d been through.
After that, I tried working at another McDonald’s, but this was probably the worst job I could have taken. I was constantly getting yelled at from customers, as well as management, even though I told them about my disability at the time I was hired.
I had another mental episode during that job, but this time I was assigned a social worker.
It took my social worker a long time to figure out how to diagnose my condition after she went through the copy of the report I gave her. Luckily I didn’t give up on her, and I hope she won’t give up on me.
I lost the McDonald’s job, but with help from my social worker I am trying to get both SSI and SSD. Hopefully, this will advance me to the next chapter of my life.
I am still waiting to see if the SSI case will generate anything, but in the meantime, I finally figured out a positive and easy way to generate income.
Throughout this tale, I have talked about trying to do something with my artistic talent. Well, after figuring out how to market myself and produce marketing materials, I now have two businesses of my own, so I don’t need to work for anyone who will let me go in a couple of days, or look at me strange.
Throughout this tale, I have talked about trying to do something with my artistic talent. Well, after figuring out how to market myself and produce marketing materials, I now have two businesses of my own, so I don’t need to work for anyone who will let me go in a couple of days, or look at me strange.
My first business is a Graphic Design business. I produce celebrity pictures on poster board. Once I have my equipment again, I also make magnetic signs, window signs, wall signs, 4×8 signs, and banners.
For my second business, I write stories, or books. I have one I’m working on now, this story, in fact, but I currently have 15 more tales which I am working on. Fortunately, I can finance each story, so not much is due at once, but once the royalties start rolling in from all the books and the Graphic Design thing, I will be rich.
I have been attempting to “publish” my works, but all of these vanity publishers don’t do anything for me. So far, I’ve spent about $3000 in an attempt to get published.
There have been a few people I’ve talked to about publishing my writing, and they told me that it shouldn’t cost anything to publish my stories. I am very stubborn, especially when it’s something I am invested in, so I thought spending money was a quicker way to get published, and I kept doing it.
I was talking to my dad the other day, explaining to him how I’ve been trying to pay to get published, but found out that the companies I was dealing with were just scams. He just nodded his head, because he probably already knew this.
But, I know my dad is more than proud of me. He owned his own businesses on the side quite a few times, and even now that he’s retired, he still owns a car wash. I did a little calculating, and once I can start getting royalties from just one story on Amazon, I will have more than my wildest dreams.
In fact, my dad even thought I was only going to publish one book. While only one will definitely get me by and then some, my whole thinking is, “Why stop there?” I have talked with many people who have published books, but they only talk about one. I have survived many events in my life, and I have a limitless supply of stories in my imagination, so I really think I was meant to be a writer.
Aside from the writing, I am also interested in continuing with my art. Graphic design-wise I know a few ways to make money, going from business to business.
With the Coronavirus going around right now, a good majority of those businesses are closed, and I don’t know if they’ll ever come back. I’m sure a lot of them were forced to file bankruptcy or just close their doors after losing revenue for three months. That’s actually why I started looking into making money with my stories, because especially when people are confined to their homes, one thing that never stops is people reading.
