Well, everybody. It has been one hell of a overwhelming summer. I didn't blog about this yet, because I didn't have the right words, but for a number of different reasons, I decided to move back home with my parents. So far, I think I made the right decision. Another puzzle has come up. My apartment puzzle has been completed. My next puzzle? Traveling. I am going to be traveling a lot for my musical and presentations. How will I get from place to place? (I refuse to fly with my power wheelchair.) How do I work it with my assistants? I'm not entirely sure, but I am open to any suggestions you might have.  

Two weeks after I moved home, I was off to Camp Chatterbox, a camp in New Jersey for kids who use augmentative communication. Highly recommend it if your child uses a communication device. I was a mentor there. I helped the campers use their devices more in their therapy sessions, as well as gave a presentation to the parents and therapists. I only hope I helped as much as I had fun. 

Camp Chatterbox is my favorite place on earth. Outside of camp, everybody who doesn't know me doesn't know that I type with my head, so when I don't answer right away, they probably think that I can't answer. At Chatterbox, everybody knows what a DynaVox is. Everybody knows what I am doing with my head. Everybody knows to be patient with me. Not to mention the awesome awesome awesome people I meet there. 

Tonight I am just going to relax and watch The Fault in Our Stars. It's out today. YEY. 

Sara P

When they first asked me to go to the Adult Music Camp, I have to be honest. I did not want to go. I mean, I know plenty of adults go to camp, but me? I already had my beautiful camp days over ten years ago. However, by the end of the week, I met some people I would really like to stay in touch with, had the Frozen song Let It Go dedicated AND sung to me, and premiered my musical. 

Yes, musical. 

When my partner, Lucas Richman, said he told the camp we would perform it for the camp, I thought he had lost his mind. It was not done! However, with my mad script writing skills I never knew I had and his mad song writing skills I always knew he had, we were able to pull it off. And it was amazing. 

So, here I am, Lucas, publicly admitting that I was wrong. Try not to enjoy it too much. :) 

One Single Voice is a 30 minute musical presentation, with me playing myself, and a professional singer playing my inner voice. This time, it was his niece, Jenny Lester. I can't say enough how amazing she was. Basically, I want the message to be to treat people with disabilities as equal. We hope to take this on the road to middle schools, high schools, and colleges. 

In other news. I have a month before I have to go to another camp. I am going to be helping out with it, and I'm so excited about it. In the meantime, I will be rewriting all of my presentations. I am now booking for this fall! Contact me if you are interested! 

Until my next adventure, 
Sara P

Happy Six Month Anniversary, Readers! 

That's right. It has been six months since I released Dancing Daisies to the world. Considering that it was my first book and I self published it, I couldn't be happier with its success. The love. The support. The feedback. It's all more than I could have asked for! I can only hope the love, and the support, and the feedback continues to grow from here! 

Thank you, everyone, for supporting me! 

Update on the second book. I have written the beginning. However. How do I want to say this? The second book might become the third book, and I might start a "new second." Without giving too much away, what I was writing about might come off as a little controversial to some people. I want to write about this concept, and, in a way, I need to write about this concept, but not just yet. I just need readers to get to know Brynn more, get to know my writing style, and know that I really don't want it to be offensive. And besides, I think this "new" second book is going to be cool, insightful, and . . . just cool. 

Maybe I will have the first draft done by December 6th! 

Ha. 

I don't know why I set such unrealistic deadlines. 

A little about what I have been doing in the past month. I attended a Summit with all different organizations that help people with disabilities. I went to spread the word about my book and my presentations, but I ended up doing some really great networking. I am going to get involved with CHANGE, a program at Children's Hospital that encourages young people to be more involved with their health care decisions. A nurse from another agency is also interested in teaming up with me to do some presentations to parents. Needless to say, I'm so glad I could make it to the Summit! 

I had the privilege of doing a presentation at Harvard. I'm sorry. I have to type that again. I had the privilege of doing a presentation at Harvard. About music. Not only did I get to talk about what music does for me, I actually co-wrote a song with a student. Their choir performed it along with another choir for people with disabilities. You want to talk about an incredible feeling? Hearing seventy voices come together to sing a song you helped created. Incredible. 

I will post the videos when I have them. 

Lastly, I went to talk at my old high school about creative writing. Except it wasn't my old high school, because they built a new high school. So that was weird. And I was a little nervous, because I had never presented about writing before. But my presentation was okay. I wish I had more time to answer more of the students' questions. The bell rang and I had to stop mid sentence. I felt bad. It was still fun, though! 

Again, I just want to say thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I have a pretty interesting summer ahead of me, so stay tuned! 

Okay. I think I have said this before. I have this thing called P luck. P luck is not necessarily a good or a bad thing. It is where you find yourself in outrageous, ridiculous, unique situations. AKA, things that only happen to me.

Apparently, 2014 is filled with it.

Let's go back eleven days ago. My birthday. I have a nice lunch with my friend, get a lot of facebook posts, and what not. At 4 o'clock the fire alarm goes off. I go outside. Nobody else comes out. I go back inside. Fire trucks come and go. I figure if it is something important, they would tell me. Ha!

Around 7:30, the fire alarm goes off again. I take my time, but I decide to go outside again. On my way out, I hear something dripping. I turn, thinking my PA left the sink on or something. All of the sudden, something starts BEEPING in my kitchen. I have no idea what to do, so I turn, open the door, and get outside as fast as I can.

While I am frantically texting for help, water starts gushing out of my apartment. Apparently, it was so cold outside, the sprinkler pipes burst, damaging twenty apartments. You want to talk about a complete disaster?! I have been with my parents ever since, and I'm hoping to go home Wednesday. We shall see.

Like that wasn't enough.

This Friday. My parents were taking my grandma and my aunt to Niagara Falls. Because I don't have my apartment or PAs at my parents', I had to go with them. Okay. No problem. I always wanted to go to Niagara Falls. It will be cool to get out of the house.

We get to the hotel.  Really nice hotel.  (Hilton Niagara Falls is the place to stay if you ever go there)  Our room was awesome.  We were up high, overlooking the falls. Awesome, awesome view.

My parents said they put off fireworks every night at 9.  I was looking forward to this.  You see, I have an awful startle reflex to loud noises. I totally freak out.  So needless to say, I have not seen many firework displays.  This was going to be cool. I would be indoors, eye level with them, and not hear the boom. 

We got settled in.  We were going to go down to the casino and mall when my
wheelchair decided it was done for the day.  Like it was seriously not working.  So much for the casino and mall.  I'm not big on casinos anyway.  I work way too hard for my money.  So it looked like it was a movie for me.

At 8:55 I reversed my chair over to the window to watch these amazing fireworks.  They promptly started at 9, and were promptly over at 9:05.  So much for these fireworks.  I sneezed and missed most of them.

Now comes bed time.  I sleep in a totally black room.  I can't sleep with light.  This room has an awesome bathroom with a huge Jacuzzi tub.  There is a huge, I am talking 6 feet by 6 feet window, between the bedroom wall and bathroom wall.   Who puts a fricking window in a bathroom in a wall that separates two rooms? My grandma and aunt went to bed.  Their bedroom was on the other side of the bathroom.  I am not sure who the culprit was, but one of them left the fricking bathroom light on.  So we are talking 6x6 feet of light shining on me while I am trying to fall asleep.  You can say sleep was out of the picture.

Day 2. We go to leave.....hotel valet dude goes to get my van......the battery is fricking dead.......van won't start.  That would be called P luck......However, they were able to jump it and bring it to us.  You might be thinking, ok, not too bad they got it started, its all good, but that is not the case.....P luck continues. 

It is about 10 degrees outside with 25 miles an hour winds, and guess what! I go out to the van, and the wheelchair ramp is frozen.....It will not come down.....Can you say "I am FREEZING"?  The valet guys were all very kind and tried to help.  They offered to help my dad lift my chair into the van.  But being that my chair weighs over 500 pounds and they were all over 60, this was not an option I saw happening.  Oh yeah, one more thing, one of the valet guys looks at my tire and says "Did you know your tire is almost flat"?

After about 45 of trying different things to make a ramp, my mom gave the buttons one more try......POOF! the lift came down. 

We loaded in the van so fast and sped away like a bat out of hell.

Stay tuned.......It is only January 19th......
P

If you were to ask me what I thought about self publishing three months ago, I would have given you my grrrr face. In fact, I did give some people my grrrr face when they suggested I do it. I would have told you it was for lazy people, for amateurs, for people who don't know what they are doing. Now that my final step has been completed and I have an ebook out as well as a paperback, I know there is nothing lazy about the self publishing process.

Confidence. Confidence. Confidence. That is the first step to self publishing. You have to have confidence. Self publishing is kind of a big investment. You have to have confidence that you have a kick ass book. Confidence that you have readers. Confidence that you can not only break even but you can make money from what you are doing. Also, be prepared for somebody to not like your work. It doesn't matter if you are talking about rainbows and butterflies. Somebody is going to get offended. Know how you are going to handle it. You don't have anybody else backing you up but yourself.

Knowledge is power. I absolutely cannot say this enough. If you are going to do something like this, you have to research the HELL out of it. Know everything from what trim size books are to how much other people are selling books for. Research. Research changed my enemy to my best friend. It can change your mind, too.

I didn't write this for a pat on the back. I wrote this just to let you know. The next time you think something is the devil, research it. It just might be the answer to your prayers.

That is a lyric from the song Defying Gravity from the musical Wicked. It has been my motto for years. When I was feeling lonely in high school when nobody would talk to me. When I was feeling lonely in college because I didn't have a boyfriend. Even now when I am feeling lonely in my apartment when I don't have anybody to talk to.

Once again, the Wicked lyric sums up everything that is going on in my life.

I just got official word today that Skyhorse, the company who I was hoping to be working with, is not going to take my book. They believe it's too long and the characters don't really fit in with the young adult genre. I am going to be honest, I was pretty bummed to hear this, and I may or may not have shed a tear or two. But you can't be an author without a really good rejection story, can you?

I, however, believe differently. I believe that the length doesn't really matter. I believe my characters can't get any more like teenagers. (There is so much drama in this book......) I believe I have an audience for this book. I believe people want to read this book. I believe people need to read this book. I believe in this book.

So what am I going to do?

Amazon has a self publishing company called Createspace. There is a strong stigma against self publishing, but after doing some research, I feel like this is way to go for me. Yeah, you have to pay for everything, but they offer interior and cover design, they do print AND ebooks, you can sell your books on Amazon and your website, and you get higher royalties.

I will be starting the process within the next week or so. I will keep you updated.

Thank you for your support!
Sara P

It's September. When did this happen? How did this happen? Time is flying! The tree outside my bedroom is already yellow. I am not ready for this. I did not get to do nearly enough summerish things. Although, if I am being completely honest, fall is my second favorite season. It still can be warm, my favorite shows come back on, and you have the Pumpkin Spice coffee creamer. The best.

Last weekend, I did, however, get to go camping with some friends. Okay, more like we rented a really nice house in the middle of the woods with beds and everything. I had a super cool personal assistant, we went on two nature trails which were so beautiful, and I couldn't stop eating s'mor...roasted marshmallows with a peanut butter cup. Amazing, by the way!

Just tried to upload some pictures, but I couldn't get it to work. I will have to work on that.

About my book. It has been eight weeks, and I haven't heard anything. I really thought I would hear something by now, so I have decided to start looking for alternatives. While I would absolutely love to work with this company and I will always have a special place in my heart for Nicole, I am going to start looking if I have other options. Who knows? This company could still be awesome, or I could end up with something better.

Off to do some research. Wish me luck! Again.
Happy September!
P

Ready. Go.

I was doing okay until about Wednesday. Then my nerves kicked in. Now I am writing this to give my mind something to do. 

I don't know if I ever wrote out the entire story of the process of what I have been going through for the last nine months, so let's back up to last fall. I was getting ready to submit my manuscript to agents, and, of course, I was obnoxiously posting on Facebook that I was getting ready to submit my manuscript to agents. A friend of mine who has a son with CP emailed me like "Here. My niece works in the publishing industry. Here is her email." Did not know what she did. Did not know where she worked. Being that I like to be just so damn independent, I wanted to email the agents and see where that took me. 

I emailed about fifteen agents. Not one of them wanted to see my full manuscript. 

So, I'm like, "Alright, I will email this Nicole girl and ask her if she knows of any agents." She said she did. She also said she worked for a publishing company and asked to see my query letter. Okay. I sent her my query. She then asked to see my manuscript. Okay. I sent her my manuscript. She then asked to submit it to her editorial manager. 

WHAT?! 

No matter how independent you think you might be, a little help can go a long way. 

My manuscript went all the way to the publisher. Although they really liked the concept, they said it needed work. They could not make me an offer, however, they gave Nicole permission to help me and said we could resubmit when we were done. So, every week for the past six months, Nicole would work on a chapter, sent it to me, I would change whatever, and we would go on to the next chapter. We did this for 32 chapters. 

We resubmitted it last Thursday. Part of me is like "They have to take it. We worked on it for so long. It is a THOUSAND times better, all thanks to Nicole." But part of me remembers them saying no guarantees, and that keeps playing in my mind. Like I said, I was doing good until Wednesday. I had friends come last weekend. We hung out, went shopping, went to the mall (about that later), got cheesecake and frozen yogurt. But now I am getting nervous again. 

So about the mall. One of my staff and I went to the mall and a guy who was awesome awesome awesome waited on us. He talked to me, joked with me, and treated me like normal. So my friends Angie and Kelly were like go back and tell him. Kelly showed me this video. Since I always complain about how people don't get it and how they don't talk to me, I felt like I had to go. 

This is what I said. 

Hey I don't mean to be awkward or anything. I just want to tell you that I appreciate how you talked to me the other day. Most people don't talk to me directly, or don't talk to me at all, and I am trying to do a lot of disability awareness to change that. I even have a book about it coming out. I just wanted to come back and tell you you really made my day because you talked to me, and joked with me, and treated me like anybody else. I really, really, appreciated that. You are awesome. 

My friends were saying the worst he could do was be like okay, cool, thank you, see you later. And that really was what I was expecting. This is not me. I don't usually go up and talk to people I don't know, let alone tell them what I told him. To my surprise, we had a fifteen minute conversation where at the mention of my book, he whipped out a piece of paper, wrote down his number, stuck it on my DynaVox, and told me to text him when my book comes out. I was shocked! Completely shocked! Maybe we will be friends. Maybe we won't. Who knows? I'm just glad I did it! 

Stay tuned to see if I go absolutely insane with waiting! 
P

Seriously? I seriously haven't written since I have been in my apartment? Why didn't somebody tell me? I guess with Facebook, it's easy to forget to actually expand your thoughts when you are writing little blurbs all the time. I can't believe I did this! 

Okay, maybe I can believe I did this. 

Anyway, I have been in my apartment for three months. I absolutely love it! I love the personal assistant program. They come and go throughout the day when I need help. I don't have to have somebody stay with me all day everyday. There is somebody on call if I have an emergency. If I want to go out somewhere, I just schedule someone to be with me at that time. I just LOVE it! 

As you can see, I redid my website. I wanted to make it more personal. I now have an About page that I actually like, and I decided to share some of my advice for teachers and parents. I also think I will feel more comfortable blogging about more of the fun stuff I am doing since it is more of an autobiography. So check it out! Let me know what you think! 

As far as my book goes, we are SO close. Like, ridiculously close! Like, I am going to have news any day. That kind of close! Ahhhhhhhhh I'm so excited!! 

Stay tuned! 
Sara P