Strange name for a blog, right? Well let me introduce myself...I am J. Delaney Hansen; novelist and artist. I live in the city of Pontiac in South East Michigan on the ninth floor of a suburban high rise so my view of the world is From Nine Floors Up. I'm a mother of two grown daughters and grandmother of six. A fifty-eight year old digital typesetter and graphic artist forced into retirement early by the economy and numerous chronic health conditions including arthritis, COPD, type 2 diabetes and carpal tunnel syndrome. I love nature, indoor gardening and writing. I truly love to write.
I have dreamed of being a novelist nearly all my life. I say nearly because there have been times the dream was clouded by the pursuit of other dreams. (Yes, you are allowed to have more than one, more on that later.) My first memory of wanting to write comes from very early childhood. I have actually found Little Golden Books in my mother's basement with my scribbles in them that keyed a memory of sitting in my little child sized chair with Crayola in hand making those marks and wishing with all my heart I was writing that book. I couldn't read yet, did not even know the alphabet at that point, but in my little girl heart a dream was born and it never went away. Proof we never really forget our true selves.
No matter how many times that dream was temporarily set aside as life interfered, homework had to be finished, a living made, babies, houses and husbands tended, it was still there. The dream of being a novelist continued to beckon from the recesses of my memory. In junior high (that's what middle school was called back in the 60's) I was convinced every body's writing was better than mine. However I could not stop writing. I tried but ideas continued to hound me and I felt compelled to write them down. I wrote secretly late at night in my room, hid it in a box beneath my bed and never shared it with anyone. In high school I wrote poetry and even had a few pieces published in the school magazine along with some of my artwork. In college there just wasn't time. I've since then learned to squeeze small increments of writing in while waiting in the examining room at doctors offices, the parking lot at the kids schools or work place, the drive through at the credit union or fast food restaurants. I have even jotted down plot or character notes at a traffic light.
My determination has begun pay off, for recently I managed to finish a novel called The Last Star Sage and it will soon be published as an E-Book. That's not to say I haven't written a novel before, I've written hundreds of them, this is just the first one I believed in enough to actually finish. Previously I always lost focus, got bored, got side tracked by life, finished the plot outline and no longer felt compelled to write the story. Many times the idea just sort of fizzled out completely and it sits in a neatly labeled folder in the back of my file cabinet. So what made this one different?
I had a vision, just a quick flash to start with. It seemed like a very simple vision at the time, but it would not go away. As I began to pursue it the story grew, characters developed, their stories grew. One book became two, then three and has now expanded into five separate full length novels in the fictional fantasy genre. Not novelettes. My Between the Worlds series has become a labor of love that began over fifteen years ago with just one simple little vision.
So don't lose hope, stick to whatever dream you have. That dream can come true in some way for you too. I'm proof dreams can happen.
