Maggi Myers - Fiction Writer. Monkey Wrangler

It's that time of year again - National Novel Writing Month. A whole thirty days to write eighty thousand-ish words worth publishing. Now, I'm going to sit here and pretend like the last eleven months haven't possessed a certain NaNoWriMo-esque quality...or maybe that was time spent possessed...semantics, really. Anyhow, I digress. Focus, Mags. Novel-ember 2015 - a month for good things to come together. November and I have history, you see. It was three years ago this month that I published THE FINAL PIECE. I'm excited and I'm scared, because it's been seventeen months since my last book was published, and I'm not quite done with my third. Cue the NaNoWriMo anthem!! We have one, don't we? Here's  my NaNoWriMo anthem . I don't know many writers who aren't pumped by the anticipation of our event. It's ours, we own it, we are authors, here us...click-clack like bees on crack, down to the wire on 11/30 at 11:59 p.m. It sounds li...

"Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change" - Brené Brown I adore Brené Brown. If you aren't familiar with who she is, you should take a look at this  TED talk she gave back in 2010. I learned about her from one of my professors when I was studying to be a LCSW back in 2011. Did you know that about me? That's right, I'm a college drop out. Not once, but twice. I don't particularly like that about myself. It dredges up old memories of feeling like I'm not smart enough. For the record, I dropped out of college in 2012 with a 4.0 GPA. Still, the girl who overcame a learning disability and went back to college with 2 special needs monkeys at home felt like a failure. Ridiculous. At the time, my husband was taking a job in Germany, and I'd used the break between semesters to write this book called The Final Piece . It was a transitional time to say the least. I thought I'd take the fall semester off, publish my book, and ...

Make a Wish trip to Disney World It's almost been a year since Lily Love was released. It's also nearly been a year since my son became ill. Is your life lacking a little dramatic irony? I've got a ton you can borrow. When I finished  Lily Love I was certain my life was on a specific path - professionally, personally, I had it all under control. Epiphany #1 - I'm a dunce who'd learned nothing from writing about a woman who had to accept a new reality in the face of her old reality crashing down around her. Way to fail, Mags. I thought we were done with diagnoses nine years ago, when my youngest was diagnosed with Autism and Childhood Absence Epilepsy. We'd been through years of ABA, OT, PT, ST...you name it, we did it. For a while, my entire life revolved around scheduling two toddlers for therapies between nap times and meal times. Since the monkeys were a little older, I thought we'd found a way to balance everything. The days of endless app...

Those words, so rich with possibility, are the scariest words I've ever heard. Life hasn't exactly been conducive to creativity in awhile. Seriously, just read a few posts previous to this one. The good news is Cameron's condition has stabilized enough for me to go back to writing full time. <insert nervous breakdown> At first, I drove myself crazy trying to pick up where I left off with Ruby & Finn. Type. Delete. Type. Delete. Type. Delete. Delete. Delete... It didn't take long to realize that I needed to shelve them until I could do there story justice. When you make your living writing emotionally charged stories, it's unnerving to find your stamina for that sort of thing is being used up elsewhere. To put it simply, I needed a break from my own writing. I felt creatively empty, and it scared me senseless. I cried. I yelled. I ate copious amounts of chocolate. Nothing made me feel better, until I started to daydream about a girl named Rowan. Her story...

I met my husband in the fall of 1994, when we were both students at Florida Atlantic University. I saw him before he saw me, and I remember turning to my friend asking "Who is that?" Let me just say --I was not a boy crazy girl. I was friends with a lot of guys, and had a boyfriend or two, but I did not swoon for any boy, but I did when I saw him and it scared me to death. I was sharp and brittle on the inside, but had mastered the appearance of someone soft and genial on the outside. When Steve smiled at me from across the quad, it felt like every inch of my facade was exposed. I wish I could say that I marched right up to him to introduce myself, but I didn't. However, my friend did and while she chatted him up, I slunk away like the coward I was. Later that evening she told me his name was Steve Myers and he'd just transferred from Palm Beach Community College. He was a junior, majoring in engineering. She told me what an idiot I was being, and how I should just t...

If ever there were a nickname befitting my son, it is most certainly Super Cam. His first act of heroism was saving my life in utero. His tiny kidneys filtered blood for both us, when my own were failing. He rushed into the world ahead of doctors and nurses, who were woefully unprepared for his arrival. We haven't been able to slow him down since. He's a force of nature, a charming flirt, a boisterous clown, and the most compassionate child I've ever met. I know I'm biased, but consider the people whose lives he's changed: -There was a woman he met in the grocery store who was going through chemotherapy, and had lost her hair. When he asked her why she was bald (to the chagrin and mortification of his mother), she said she was sick and the the medicine she took made her hair fall out. Cameron didn't hesitate to wrap his little arms around her and tell her "I have seizures," followed closely by "take your hat off, the sun helps things grow....