Excerpt from Snapshots of Fictionalized Facts

So I've been looking for a way to do a short plug for my new book that came out this week. I some some pretty cool ideas on YouTube where people make videos or do readings from their books. I might still do this, but for now. Here is a short section of my book, Snapshots of Fictionalized Facts. Hope you enjoy!

Secrets. As I type these memories, my daughter asks me to read her some of my story. She, like most children, loves to hear about my childhood and frequently asks my husband or me to tell her a story about a time when we were growing up. We, like most parents, look for funny stories that will give her a sense of who we were without exposing her to anything that might taint the world she lives in or the esteem that she holds us in. I wonder if all parents censor in this way.

Ironically, telling real stories is much weightier than recounting The Three Little Pigs. You are left with a responsibility not only to your child, but also to everyone else that she loves and adores. To tell a story that portrays a loved one negatively will forever alter the perception she has of that person.

I tell her, “No, this isn’t a book for children.” She of course plagues me with the question that all children like to torment their parents with, “Why?” Somehow it doesn’t seem appropriate to tell her that I am writing a book about my dad who is not Grandpa Kenny.

Even as I type this, I wonder what her stories will one day be. Will her childhood be an open book that she can skim through at leisure, pulling any memory any time, or will they be sifted through and selected with care? Will she one day decide to record her own memories and have a daughter of her own asking her to read a section only to find that she can’t? That it isn’t appropriate. What will her secrets be?

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It was fall, and my family had just moved. We went from having a three bedroom, one bathroom house in the city with a tiny yard to a three bedroom, two bathroom ranch on a half-acre of property.

I was only nine, and this was an exciting time for me; I was getting my own room, I had always shared with my sister before, and a whole new school. Kelly was less ecstatic; probably because in the past year this would make for our second move and our third new school. She was eleven at the time and a lot quieter than me; she was tired of moving and making all new friends.

I, on the other hand, was the type of kid that never shut up. The one that you worry will take off with a stranger. I didn't care that I was leaving behind friends. After all they'd only been my friends for the last year. I only thought about the new friends, the new teachers, the new possibilities.

My only regret was that the new school didn't have an orchestra, but on the upside, this meant I could join band. I had wanted to do both in the city, but my mom made me pick one, so in a way now I was getting to do both.