As an old broad, I am allowed to use an old picture. I am a sixty-three year old widow of thirty four years, with no children and a house full of cats and one dog. I grew up in dry cleaning and decided that was not what I wanted to do. It stinks; it’s hot and steamy all day and year long. In 1974 I got a degree from Ambassador Hotel and Restaurant Institute and managed motels for years until I was disabled at the age of 45. I was still young and couldn’t’t understand that my life was no longer what it was. So I started writing books. Books on ‘how-to’ grew into encyclopedias and dictionaries.
I have had my articles published in religious papers and have written a number of other articles for the local newspaper. The Chamber of Commerce found out that I like to do research and used me anytime that something needs to be found for some program they were doing; i. e. downtown renovated with new streets and they wanted the history of downtown streets and businesses [our streets were brick]. Our church is having its 80th anniversary this coming week and was ‘volunteered‘ to do the history of the church and its pastors. Microfiche is not easy to read and the way they did newspapers years ago is so much different than now.
I am taking marketing courses to open avenues on marketing my books without an agent or publisher. I know that there are a number of ways that this can be done but I would like to know some of the other tricks of the trade. The way a cover will jump out at consumers is just one of many options. Some of the books that I have written are: How-to Build an A-frame; Encyclopedia of Plants; Encyclopedia of Almost Organic Gardening; Dictionary of the Bible; and History of the Bible. As you can see I like research. Some of these books are almost 2000 pages long with out the Table of Contents or Indexes.
