MY LITTLE MIRACLE

http://astore.amazon.com/wwwnancytrose-20

IN BOOKSTORES NOW

RICHES TO RAGS

http://astore.amazon.com/wwwnancytrose-20

Regarding the economy, we're all in this together. One of the speeches I used to give was how I skyrocketed to fame and fortune with the publication of MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES. Prior to this happening, I spent 14 years in the criminal justice system. I started out as a police dispatcher, then became an officer and ended my career as a probation officer assigned to court services. I glanced at one of my last paychecks and saw my wage was under $10.00 per hour, so my story was the classic rags to riches. Then, as we all know, everything changed.

I've always been conservative when it comes to money, probably because I never had any. I had most of my money in my retirement fund when the stock market crashed. Since I'm approaching retirement age, seeing my hard earned money fly out the window was devastating. THE CHEATER is my twelfth book, and most of them were New York Times Bestsellers. I was certain I would have enough money to make certain all of my grandchildren would be able to go to college. That dream is no longer a reality.

Although I was conservative with money, I have an overly generous heart. I also believe wholeheartedly that a person who manages to succeed in life must share their success with those less fortunate. Right after MITIGATING CIRUMSTANCES was released, I adopted a young hispanic girl with a terminal illness. There's more about Janelle in my earlier blogs.

A few years later, I wrote a book for Janelle called CALIFORNIA ANGEL, which is also back in print and available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. My publisher paid me only a fraction of what I made on my legal thrillers, but whatever I made went toward Janelle's care and happiness. In reality, since I was making over a million a year for my thrillers and only made $200,.000 on CALIFORNIA ANGEL, just writing the book cost me $800,000.

Then a small miracle occurred. The TV show, Prime Time Live, did a piece on me and my relationship to Janelle. While doing research on Janelle's rare illness, the producer of our segment got in touch with a doctor in France who was curing MMA patients with liver transplants. Janelle got both a liver and a kidney, and is now in her mid thirties. No one with MMA had ever lived past eighteen, and at the time of the TV show, she was dangerously close to that deadline. To know that I played a part in saving a beautiful young girl's life is priceless.

I became involved in many more humanitarian projects and utilized both my finances and my time to help the world become a better place. No matter how much I gave away, I had more than enough to live on.

Then I got divorced and half of everything I had earned, as well as the rights to my books, went to my ex husband. Getting a divorce is the most painful process you can imagine, almost like a death. I wasn't able to get in my next books on time and my publisher fired me. From that point on, I never made the kind of money I did before the divorce.

One good thing I did was to sell my beautiful home in California right before real estate prices started to plunge. I moved back to my hometown, Dallas, and paid cash for a modest home I believed I could live in the rest of my life. My career was really diving now. Why? I don't really know. If you read my recent books, they are all just as good as they were before. Of course, there was a variety of reasons for my downfall. Publishers who didn't promote me was one. Now that I was single, many people took advantage of me and tied me into predatory contracts.

But I accepted this decline in fame and fortune. I had been a poor, self educated woman who had her first child at the age of eighteen. I always wanted to write so merely being able to see my dream come true was enough.

Then things really hit bottom. My savings were lost and I was working for a very small amount of money due to the decline in publishing. One of the statements I used to make in my speeches really hit home. I used to say that before I became a published author, I couldn't even afford to buy a hardback book. Well, here I am, full circle.

Now my health is failing and my fortune is gone, but I would never change anything I've done with my life or money. I've met people who are hugely wealthy who haven't never given back one thing to their community or to those less fortunate. Ironically, it is the people with jobs like I used to have when I worked in law enforcement who don't even realize that anything has happened, while the formerly wealthy are suffering.

This reminds me of something I read in the Bible. "The first will be last." That seems to be what is happening now.

Regardless, we have reached a point where we all must extend ourselves to others. If you don't extra money, maybe you have time. Or perhaps you have the contacts to help a person secure a new job. I think of all this empty real estate and it reminds me of Mother Teresa when she saw the Vatican. All she could think of was how many of her homeless people she could house with all that space. Finally, the Pope gave in and gave her a small space where she could open a soap kitchen.

Watch out for these mega churches who believe in some kind of philosophy of wealth. God doesn't want your money. He wants your good deeds and your prayers. You don't need to give money to your church to be on good terms with your creator. He can see into your heart and knows all you are suffering.

In my speeches, I also pointed out how a serious injury led to me becoming a bestselling author. I was riding a horse and got thrown, shoving the top of my femur through my hip all the way to my ribcage. I later laughed and said, "God told me to write not ride and I wasn't listening."

Wherever hardship exists, so does opportunity. An injury that could have robbed me of my ability to walk led me to reach my goal of becoming a published author. It's not a great story but it might be one worth remembering.

Peace,

Nancy

NEW NOVELS

http://astore.amazon.com/wwwnancytrose-20

My new novel, THE CHEATER, has just been released. This book is a sequel to my novel, MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES, which has just been released after being out of print for some time. It features DA Lily Forrester, and was the novel that launched my career.

Lily is back in THE CHEATER, which is about a female serial killer who targets cheating men. Everyone loves it, especially the ladies.

The most interesting aspect of CHEATER is its ability to work almost as a truth serum. I know because it happened to me. If you buy this book and place it on your end table without saying anything to your lover or husband, if they are cheating on you, they'll probably become extremely nervous. Then wait for them to ask you what the book is about, and if they're guilty, they may become even more nervous.

I was dating this guy and we both decided that we would stop dating other people and take ourselves off the dating sites. Then one day I got a strange feeling and checked out the site where I met him, finding out he was not only still on the site, but had been recently active. When I confronted him, he broke up with me, saying he didn't have any violence in his heart. The guy was actually afraid I might kill him! Pretty funny, don't you think? For me, I realized that he must have been dating other women all along and was glad to get rid of him.

Just another reason to buy CHEATER, although the story itself is good and the book has received excellent reviews. Let me know if it works for you, but don't do anything drastic. Maybe your partner is just the nervous type. And then again, maybe he's a CHEATER.

ELLE

TAYLOR

SCARY

When I wrote the earlier posts about my sisters joining our new bodies in Dallas, I was only joking. This is just the type of crazy thing that run through a creative mind. Then . . . suddenly my oldest sister, Sharon, booked a flight to Texas to see her sons and grandchildren, coincidentally on the same weekend I was going to visit my son and granddaughters in Dallas, the three little girls in the picture, Taylor, Elle and Remy. Sharon and I both came back, and Linda was ready to undergo major surgery on her back. While in Dallas, I bought a house, not far from where my son and the girls live. Then Linda told me her surgery has been cancelled because her surgeon has cancer. Well, I'm on my way to Dallas in thirty days. Maybe we're reallyl going to join our new bodies! Why fight so hard to keep these worn out bodies functioning? Sometimes you just have to let go and let God send you in the right direction.

Today I had this strange, isolated feeling, as if I was the one of three people alive in the world. I decided to go to a movie, and picked a theater that is right across from a cemetery. I was chatting with my sister, Linda, just before I went into the parking structure. This morning, my teeth were hurting, so I made an appointment with my dentist. When I called my sister, she told me she had just undergone gum surgery. We sound exactly alike, and in recent years, have had a standing joke going that we're two people sharing one body. Out of the blue, I remember saying, "Maybe we're dead, Linda!". When I made my way to the floor where the theater was located, I glanced at the cemetery and saw all these cars lined up, obviously going either to or from a funeral. At least I had a good showing.

My beautiful friend, Mary, suffered a stroke recently. She said one of her legs is paralized but they are rehabiltating her. Strange, you know, because I'm hobbling around on crutches. When I first moved into my house in Marina del Rey, I got lost one night and ended up at Holy Cross Cemetery. A man came up to me and asked me if I was Deacon Raphael and if I was there to attend the rosary. Silly me, I said yes. I mean, why not check out the rosary and whether he realized it or not, Raphael is the name of an archangel. I thought the place was a convent or something. There's a great place in Santa Barbara that used to be a convent. I happened upon it one day and met these wonderful ladies. I go there all the time on retreats, and one of the ladies, Sister Pauline, traveled with me to Fatima several years back, right after 9/11. (If you're interested in our Fatima trip, its in one of the posts on this blog.)

Okay, I drive up and park in front of this large white building. When I went inside, I met two little girls at the front door and one said she was lost. The other said her name was Fatima, which made me think I was hallucinating. After speaking with the lost girl for awhile, I figured out she was there for a funeral and had wandered off from her parents. We finally took her to the right place and I took off.

When I came home after this strange experience, I called my friend Mary and told her what had happened. She cackled and said, "Never let them put you in a box." I told her that must be the reason we need cell phones. We both had a good laugh, imagining ourselves calling someone and telling them to come and get us because we were trapped inside a coffin. Hey, who knows. Maybe I did die today, and that's the reason no one returned my calls.

Now I just thought of something else. What if the so-called house I'm buying in Dallas is actually a cemetery plot? I'm telling you, that's just the kind of thing that would happen to me. Everyone would be too busy and I'd have to arrange my own funeral. Life is fun if you look at it through a slanted lens. Even something as frightening as your own death might be no different than what I've just described. You know, you have to hang around and take care of all your unfinished business. If you were at my funeral today, drop me an email. As hard as life gets, a smile can always make it better.

Nancy

RACHEL

This beautiful young girl is one of the kindest persons I've ever known. She has compassion and love for every living thing in God's universe. From early childhood, she refused to eat anything that had once been alive. Naturally tall and slender, Rachel is on a traveling volley ball team. This makes remaining a vegetarian even more difficult. Tomorrow we're going to work on a writing project she's doing for her school.

I developed a writing program for youth several years back called VOICES OF TOMORROW. At the moment, I'm trying to decide the winner of a contest held at West Holmes High School in Millersburg, Ohio. The kids stories are so great, I ask myself if anyone knows how talented they are. And writing is wonderful at this age, so free of restraints and editorial constrictions. When I published my first novel, MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES, I was furious that this editor person kept crossing off certain words. This was when I learned about "word repetition", which is pretty easy to figure out, but not so easy to implement. Think of how many times you use a certain word, then try not to use it more than a few times in a ten or fifteen page section. Now writing becomes work.

Another thing new writers have to eliminate is cliches. When I was growing up, almost everything my parents said was a cliche. I was talking to someone about the sizzling hot summers in Texas, and recalling how my sisters believed my mother when she said it was so hot that you could "fry an egg on the sidewalk." We once tried to fry an egg and ended up with a gooey mess. Once I became a published writer, I had to edit out most of what my parents said.

Now I'm going to throw you another loop. You're allowed to use cliches, but only in dialogue. The only trouble is you have to remember what cliches each character has said, or they will all sound the same. The same (Oops I did it again) applies to metaphors. Now I have to rewrite the sentence. Metaphors are similar, that works. If one character says, "She's as innocent as a newborn baby," and fifty pages later, another character uses the same metaphor, then you will have failed at distinguishing one character from another. See how hard this is getting. Challenging isn't it? Okay, I could say if another character says something like the first character, then you will have failed at distinguishing one character from another. Got it?

Everyone might say, "cool," or "you know" or dozens of other standard words and phrases, but trust me, they won't all spit out the same metaphors. And metaphors can also be cliches, such as the statement that "it's so hot, you could an egg on the sidewalk."

Everyone knows their strengths and weaknesses. Oh, no, look what I've done now. Two sentences can't start with the same word. In fact, they're not even supposed to start with the same sentence structure. Here's an example:

"Looking around the corner, Jack saw the stupid guy wearing a green hat hiding beside the garbage can. Turning so he could get a better look at him, Jack ....." Both these setences begin with introductory phrases, so this isn't very good writing. A more demonstrative way of writing would be to say, "Jack saw the stupid guy as he peered around the corner." But if all your sentences are demonstrative, it will get boring, and creative writing doesn't ahere to the strict rules of grammer.

To be honest, in case an English teacher is reading this, I don't even know all the rules of grammer. A lot of writers don't. The ones that do are called appropriately "literary" writers. Sometimes the worst writers like myself sell the most books. Well, at least I did in the past. My career is on a slippery slope right now. I might be able to climb again to the top of the mountain, but then again, I could fall off into the abyss.

The reason literary writers don't sell as many books, although they win awards and get wonderful reviews in the New York Times, is because most people can't read above a fifth grade level, particularly in America. I was much smarter before I become a published author. When I decided to write a bestselling novel, which I actually did, which is pretty remarkable, I started crossing off words in my vocabulary that everyone wouldn't instantly comprehend. You know, if you're smoking crack and reading one of my novels, it might even sound slightly better.

Now I don't know where those beautiful words have gone, and its sad. They're lost somewhere in the swirl of this brain crammed so full of books, words, rules, and ridiculous thoughts and ideas. Every now and then, I give myself a treat and read a book by a real litearary genuis, such as Martin Amis, or Ian McEwan, who has done well even if he does use big words and takes thirty pages to decribe one raquetball game. In reality, that's where I put his beautiful, important, and impressive literary book down. I'm saying, "Man, kill someone, will you? My eyes are beginning to cross watching your imginary rubber ball hit and bounce off your imaginary walls."

Nonetheless, I'm in awe of these briliant writers, and would cut off my arm to write that well. Not really, but maybe a toe, under heavy sedation and rehabilation in some swank plastic surgery hospital where all the nurses look like movie stars because they get paid in plastic surgery procedures. Besides, I don't think they're even nurses. Ah, you're thinking, she's been to one of those places. I had some corrective surgery, okay. You know, a mole or two removed so they wouldn't arrest me for being a witch and burn me.

Years ago, and after this I'm going to sign off for tonight and scrounge for food somewhere, maybe that place where the genius writers gather around the garbage cans to see what the hack writers have tossed out. But honestly, back in the witch hunting days, they used to call these men "prickers" because a woman with a mole and a a little intelligence was accused of practicing witchcraft, and they would stick pins in the moles to see if the women would scream. If they didn't, they were deemed witches and burned.

How can women collectively forgive men for all the horrible things they've done to them? There's been times when I wished I could get on my broom and stir up a batch of witches brew to feed to some dumb guy who hurt me.

Oh, well, let's be nice. The Pope came out today and said priest still can't marry. They don't have time, anyway. They're too busy molesting children, or settling lawsuits for priests who molest children. Bad joke, so I'm sorry and I'll say five Hail Mary's and three Our Fathers. This is what I love about being Catholic.

I cook some pretty complex plots, and because I have a police background, people tell me the stories seem authentic. When it comes to metaphors, though, I can sit here staring at my computer for days and fail to turn up one decent or original phrase. I'm also weak in the descriptive arena. I'm have enormous respect for writers who can describe things so eloguently that you instantly visualize them. I guess I'm more or less a "cut to the chase" writer. Oops, there's another cliche. The reason I'm saying "Oops" so much, in case you have no life and are wondering, is because I don't know what in the world Britney Spears has done right to be on the cover of so many magazines outide of that one song that started with "Oops."

I really got a kick out of a movie released recently called Stranger than Fiction with Will Ferrel. I used to tell my mother about something strange that had happened to me, and she'd say, "Oh, you're just running into some of your characters." Is that terrifying or what? It's a sweet and funny movie and I highly recommend it. Now about that awful woman who almost ran over me today in the parking lot . . . A semi truck is barreling down on her. She isn't looking because she's putting on lipstick and talking on her cell phone, and there's this terrible accident. You defintely don't want to be a character in one of my thrillers. The writer in the movie only killed one person. My body count is much higher. Everytime I get bored or frustrated, I just go to my computer and kill someone else. It's only fiction, and I have a lot of frustrations right now. Smile!

Peace,

Nancy

SHOULD WE STAY OR SHOULD WE GO?

I've mentioned this several times, so I thought I would explain it to you in pictures. The three women are me and my two sisters. From right to left, we are Nancy, Linda, and Sharon. The little girls are my son's children, from left to right: Taylor, Elle, and Remy.

Taylor looks exactly like pictures of Linda as a child. Elle, the youngest in the middle, looks very much like my sister Sharon, even her body language. People say Remy looks and acts very much like me. So when my sisters and I experience health problems, or just grow tired of getting old, I tell them it might be time for us to join our new bodies in Dallas. What do you think? Wouldn't it be neat if things worked that way? If this became a reality, would you stay or would you go? Interesting question, isn't it? Only a writer would come up with something this crazy.

Peace,

Nancy

REQUIRED READING FOR BONES

LATEST HARDBACK

I'm a writer, not a computer programmer. Hey, what can I tell you. Below is the cover of my most recent book, but when you click on the Amazon button, the audio version comes up for some reason. Just type my name into http://www.amazon.comor www.bn.com and you can see all the books I've written. Now I've got to get back to work on my next book, especially since I've titled this "Writing a Bestseller." Of course, who in their right mind, would title it writing a flop. I mean, I'll do my best. That's all I can do. The main thing is that people read it. That is, after they buy it.


http://astore.amazon.ca/nancytaylorro-20
marginheight="0" frameborder="0">

NANCY TO THE RESCUE

In the past, I was the best person to call if you were sick or in a jam. All you had to say was you needed me and I'd be there in no time and solve all your problems. About a week ago, I flew to Fort Collins with my oldest sister to visit another sister about to undergo a massive operation on her spine. The point of the trip was that my sister, Sharon and I were going to comfort Linda. Nice thought, right?

Well, I forgot that I live at sea level here in California. I have a heart condition, but its under control and since I run every day, I feel pretty fit. I bet that's what all those runners thought just before they keeled over dead. Higher altitudes aren't the best place for people with heart problems.

If anyone was going to have a heart attack, though, I was certain it would be my sister, Sharon, as she has a heart condition as well, is older than me, and was talking about needing another stint. For anyone that doesn't know, stints are keeping people from undergoing bypass surgery and are one of the many advances in medicine which are helping us to live longer. Even though one of my arteries is completely blocked, my heart formed its own bypass. Such a deal, huh? Some of my relatives were Christian Scientists and believed the body had the ability to heal itself. Maybe it does, but I still ended up in an ambulance rolling code to a Fort Collins Hospital. I kept trying to tell the handsome paramedics and firemen that I would be okay, but they told me the EKG said differently. And yeah, I felt as if someone had shoved their fist through my chest and out the back of my body.

We'd just arrived in Ft. Collins and I'd been running up and down the stairs. Once they get me inside a hospital, they won't let me go without putting me through every test known to man. So here is my precious sister, Linda, the one about to undergo 17 spinal fusions so she can continue to walk, racing to the hospital to take care of stupid me. Man, did I feel like an idiot.

Linda came in my hospital room where I had been left without food or water for about twelve hours as I waited for the doctors to perform an angiogram. I wasn't very happy about this as the last time they did this test, I almost bled to death. Colorado is dry to begin with, and I couldn't talk without my lips sticking to my teeth. I felt like Neo in the Matrix when the computer program called Agent Smith made his mouth disappear. I felt even worse when Linda told me that Sharon had fallen down and landed on her nose, and was now being treated in the emergency room, where I had only recently left.

So here's poor Linda, who uses walking sticks to get around, going back and forth from the emergency room to my room. Her two sisters had done her a lot of good. I doubt if we'll be invited back to Fort Collins anytime soon. This has happened to Linda before. When she had her son, Chris, my mother came to stay and help out. Linda and her husband ended up taking care of my mother. What can I say? At least I know why Linda always tells us not to come when she has surgery.

After a day and night of torture, I was kicked out of the hospital to continue to take care of Linda. In addition to her new pug nose, Sharon also banged her knee. She'd already had a problem with her legs when we embarked on the trip. I'd even ordered her a wheelchair at the airport. I was also limping from an injury I got when I pulled a Tom Cruise and jumped a coach to close a window. I used to jump horses. Now I jump furniture. The problem is I keep forgetting there's nothing underneath me.

Sharon, Linda and I have always been storm troopers, more or less. We do all kinds of things a person in their right mind would never do, and we never consider our physical limitations. Sharon can built a house from the ground up and do it faster than a crew of forty men. She carries these large concrete blocks around as if they were made out of foam rubber. Even with our awful backs, Linda and I have skied, jumped horses, jumped off mountains, rode snow mobiles, and pulled all kinds of dare devil stunts. Its no wonder our bodies finally revolted. I think Sharon has some kind of "get out of jail free" pass because she just keeps going and going.

The point of this is that if you need someone to come to your rescue, you might consider someone other than me. I'm working on my book now, so I'm not going anywhere for quite awhile. Well, nowhere except New York in a few weeks. New York hospitals are crap, so even if I feel as if a safe fell on my chest, I'm not calling the paramedics. What I have is called angina, by the way. You get used to it, they tell me, and learn when your heart is just complaining or when your dying. Of couch, if you make the wrong decision, you probably won't be around to worry about it. Hey, I'm just in it for the ride. That, and all those cute paramedics and firemen.

Stay tuned,

Nancy

THE GREATEST GIFT

They say the greatest gift is the gift of life. The young woman in the picture with me came into my life around her 12th birthday. On the day this photo was shot, we were celebrating her 19th birthday at Children's Hospital in Los Angeles where she spent the majority of her childhood. The bomb that was ticking inside Janelle and everyone who loved and cared for her was a rare genetic illness called MMA. At this point in time, no MMA sufferer had ever lived past 21. You can see the fear etched on both of our faces.

Because I wrote a book called CALIFORNIA ANGEL, which I dedicated to Janelle and used the proceeds to assist with her care, Prime Time Live did a special on us. In researching the story, one of the producers, Ray Lambaise, made contact with a doctor in France who claimed to be able to cure MMA with a liver transplant. When this information was relayed to Janelle's doctor, she became a candidate and we all sighed with relief. There was hope. The dreaded deadline might be extended.

Janelle, however, needed a liver. Lots of people need liver transplants, so I've found out. I decided to give Janelle my liver. For those who think this cannot be done, you don't give your entire liver, just a portion. After the transplant, your liver grows back to its normal size. I underwent tests for compatibility, and the results looked promising. The day of this party was an important date. My eldest son, Janelle's doctor, and myself gathered around a small table meant for children. After hearing what my intentions were, my son agreed that he would support me, as long as I was in good health at the time of the procedure. This particular son is the one who wouldn't be here today if I'd made the decision to abort him. It takes a lot for a child to allow his mother to undergo a risky medical procedure. My son and I have a giving heart. He would never prevent me from saving a life.

As it turned out, Janelle found another donor and the procedure went well. She later underwent a kidney transplant. On both occasions, I was there. In February, Janelle will turn thirty! The dreadful deadline for Janelle is gone, just as it is for MMA patients all over the world.

TRAGEDY IN PENNSYLVANIA

The death of a child pierces our hearts, and leaves us turning our face toward the heavens and shouting, "Why?" What happened in Georgetown, Pennslyvania was not God's will. Five innocent girls lost their lives in a senseless act of violence. The saddest part is the Amish community is well aware of the evils of contemporary society. That's why they live the way they do, trying to build a wall between themselves and the outside world.

There is a way to stop the bloodshed, or at least a large portion of it. We must get rid of the guns. I can already feel the NRA gearing up. Come and get it. Ban guns and the girls in Pennslyvania would still be alive, instead of being lowered into their graves.

I spent fourteen years in law enforcement. One of my friends was shot and killed in the line of duty. The monster who killed him fired over the head of his two-year-old son. Put a gun into someone's hands and the gun takes over. Why? This question does have an answer. A gun is a weapon of death. All you have to do is sqeeze your finger on the trigger and it kills. Outside of killing or injuring, it has no other useful purpose. People say we must be armed because the criminals are armed. I'm not even certain law enforcement officers need to be armed. As to the hunters, they aren't hunting for food. They're killing animals for sport. Make owning or possessing a firearm a crime punishable by life in prison, and eventually we'll live in a much safer society. Sure it will take time. And yes, it will cost enormous sums of money. These are the same excuses we've been giving in regards to global warming. Some scientists believe we've gone so far now that there's no solution. If you don't want to bury your child with a bullethole in their body, get rid of the guns.

Another situation we've allowed to snowball is in the area of mental health. I went out for my run today and saw a man trying to attach a set of blinds to the outside of my gate. He looked completely normal. He was clean and dressed neatly. I thought it was some kind of advertisement for mini blinds, so I stopped and asked him. The person turned and began to verbally attack me. He said he wasn't attaching the blinds to the fence, and for me to go away and mind my own business. I told him I had only stopped to see what he was doing because I lived there. "I'm not impressed that you live in there," he shouted. I knew instantly that he could explode in a violent rage, so I turned my back and walked away. Who will his victim be when the bent up fury I saw today reaches the point where he can no longer contain it? What if he manages to get his hands on a firearm? If he'd been armed today, I would have been in great danger.

Since I originally wrote this, I heard that someone had suggested arming teachers. What really amazed me was that this wasn't a new suggestion, that important people had actually been discussing it for some time. A teacher isn't a cop. Are they going to make them go to the pistol range on a regular basis? Arm teachers and the next thing you'll hear is a teacher panicked and shot an innocent person, or that a kid broke into their desk one day, found their gun and shot everyone in the classroom. The point is to keep guns away from kids, isn't it? Even seasoned law enforcement officers made terrible mistakes and shoot innocent people. Firing a gun is a blink of an eye decision. How could anyone possibly believe that arming teachers is a good idea?

Mentally ill people are everywhere. We don't want to pay to treat them anymore, so we toss them out on the street. If you become a patient in a private psychiatric facility, I guarantee you won't be released until your insurance and money runs out. Then, like magic, you'll be cured. Insurance companies are paying to treat people with minor problems, while the seriously mentally ill are left untreated. They pay for a substance abuser to detox, but refuse to cover the cost of a rehabilitation program. Without rehab, the person will use again.

The media says the man who went on the shooting rampage inside the Amish school intended to molest the girls. The gun took over, don't you see? In the hands of an irrational mind, this evil weapon makes the decisions. It even made the decision to kill the man holding it. Remember that when you're thinking of buying a gun. Remember that if you already have a gun in your home. Ask yourself whose hands will that gun end up in? Your husband's, your son's, your grandchild's, a burglar, a maniac? Gun control doesn't work because criminals don't buy guns. They steal them from ordinary people like you.

FW:

LAUGH OR CRY

Most people think that once you get your book published, everything is great. Well, it is great for awhile, and for some, its great forever. But for most of us, bitter disappointments abound. Today, I experienced one of those days, where I felt as if someone had hurled me and every book I ever written into the ocean to be eaten by illiterate, evil creatures. I'm not getting any respect, know what I mean?

Tomorrow I'm going to sell my house and move into a tent, never to write again. Actually, a tent might be slightly too severe, even in California. I'll sell my house and move into a really tiny box of a house, with no room for a computer, in a very bad neighborhood. I even told this to my husband. You should have seen his face. I don't know why people believe me. I write fiction for a living.

But honestly, I'm going to sell my house and move into a house I hate in a not very nice neighborhood, where I can strap on my buck knife, because I might need to use it in self defense. I'm not really in that good of an area now, so I guess wherever I move will really be awful. No, really, I think I'll sell my house and move to Dallas so I can join my new body. (You have to read the rest of the blog to figure out what this means.) My neck problem is acting up, and I don't even consider my neck problem a real problem. That is, compared to the rest of my battered body. It got so bad a few years ago, I couldn't hold my head up. And no, I'm not going to have surgery on my neck. Well, at least not until I sell my house and ...

Maybe things will look better by the end of the week. I doubt that, as there's only a few days left and I won't hear anything about my book over the weekend. Now I'm really, I swear, speaking the truth. The real estate agents are coming tomorrow. I don't get along well with real estate agents. For some reason, every single time I've wanted to sell my house, real estate agents have insisted on coming inside. Writers don't let people into their homes. It upsets everything, scatters all that creative energy and disrupts the dust bunnies that can be amazingly inspirational if the light hits them just right. Real estate agents are not the same breed as people like me. They talk and call, drive around everywhere in nice cars, and do all kinds of complex things that writers just don't know much about. When I talk to them, I can't figure out what they are saying. I'm like a person who's hard of hearing. I keep saying, "What? What? What?"

This is a terrible thing to say when I love real estate agents so much. My writing career is so disappointing right now that I think I'm going to become a real estate agent. Since I'm not a right brain person, I'll probably have to cheat on the math, but that's okay. I can get away with it. I'm an angel, remember? We can get away with just about anything.

Here's an uplifting story. I wrote a book called CALIFORNIA ANGEL, in case I didn't tell you ten times already, and mention that you can buy it from my website. My writing professor at UCLA, Leonardo Bercovici, a literary genius I adored and would have married if I hadn't already been married and he hadn't been close to ninety, also wrote something about an angel. He wrote the screenplay for the classic movie "The Bishop's Wife," which starred Cary Grant and Loretta Young. Cary Grant played the angel. He was funny, and the movie was delightful. If you can't find it to rent, buy it on Amazon. People said this little company would go under. Pretty funny. I hear they sell new bodies now. And someone told me they sold them a planet.

Leonardo died years before I wrote CALIFORNIA ANGEL, and I didn't even know he'd written about an angel. I knew he'd written the screenplay for the Robert Nathan book entitled THE BISHOP'S WIFE, but I didn't respect him enough to even rent the movie, and it was nominated for an Academy Award. Of course, I have a thing about screen writers as well as real estate agents. I'm kidding, but really, why do they get Academy Awards for writing what's basically an outline from the characters and plotline someone else spent years to create in a novel? Most of the time when they accept the award, they don't even mention the person who wrote the novel. All they do is thank Stephen Speilberg, even if he had nothing to do with the movie. Hey, there's always the next one. Shame on them.

I love real estate agents because they're not screenwriters. A lot of screenwriters steal, too. They steal your work. I've met them buying my books in stores and then saw my story on the screen in their original screenplay. Ask any novelist and they'll tell you I'm not lying. It happens all the time. Last year, they stole a TV series from me. That's nothing, right? Just a very sucessful, Emmy nominated TV series. Have you ever seen the movie "Dogma"? I think I'm a muse instead of an angel. That could explain why I don't get credit for my work.

I'm just feeling underappreciated. Does anyone know what happened to Saint Christopher? Remember how people who'd never stepped foot into a church would wear St. Christopher medals around their neck. Not long ago, the church decided he wasn't that important and demoted him. Now he's not a saint anymore. Since he was the patron saint of traveling, and we've had some very bad things happen to people in airplanes, the church should maybe rethink their position on Saint Christopher.


I have children who've only read one or possibly two of my books at best, when I've been very, very generous with money I no longer have. And my husband has only read one book, which he forgot. Oh, boy, here we go again.

I'm going to sell my house and move to an igloo. My son actually told me about this igloo he saw in the hills above Santa Barbara that he thought would be perfect for a writer. Hint, hint! Stick old Mom in the igloo without a phone or Internet, then forget about her. Shoot, if I died, they wouldn't even have to bury me. They could just kick dirt at the igloo and wait until it rained.

If I sold my house and moved to an IGLOO, even my children, grandchildren, step-children, and adopted children, along with my sisters and other family members would have to feel sorry for me, which no one seems to do at the moment. Think about it? A woman who has written TWELVE NOVELS, six on the New York Times Bestseller list, had major back surgery, serious accidents, one where they sawed off her leg and screwed it back on, a heart condition (heart attack, little one,) is forced to live in an IGLOO in the barren and hostile mountains of Santa Barbara! As my sister would say, "Horrors!" (She invited that genre, by the way. I remember her whispering it in the ear if this guy named Bram Stocker a few years back.)

Would that be anything like Brooke Astor, the 104 year old philanthropist and zillionarie, who was found living in her apartment in urine soaked clothing and sleeping on a urine stained sofa, while the caregiver fed her porrage or something? Isn't it a fact of life that everyone who lives past a hundred wets their pants. I even wet my pants occasionally, and I'm nowhere near 104! (It's mostly when I laugh. All those babies, you know.)

When I lived in Tuxedo Park in upstate New York and my house was for sale because of my dastardedly bankrupting divorce, the real estate lady called me "Poor Nancy" as I cowered behind a bush (it wasn't burning) while gangs of strangers and tiny people the real estate agent claimed were children gleefully invaded my home. This was, of course, the plot to the movie "The Others" starring Nicole Kidman, which I loved and lived, but most people thought was almost as exciting as her other movie, "Birth." I liked that one as well, even though I left the theater blasting on about how obscene it was for her to act as if she was in the bathrub with a little boy, who was obviously wearing a bathing suit and was probably thirty years old. With plastic surgery, you never know. I was told Nicole Kidman was my grandmother, the reason I keep watching all her movies instead of reading great books.

Does anyone ever get old anymore? Did you see the pictures of Charlie's Angels, the three actresses from the original TV series? I'm not going to say their faces looked a little swollen. No, I'm not going to say that at all. What happened here? What is beauty these days?

Oh, regarding the Poor Nancy comment, I later found out that the "Poors" used to live in Tuxedo Park. These are the people who put together this little thing called the Standard and Poors Stock Exchange. I checked to see if I was related, but I guess I'm not. Do you ever think you're related to really famous and rich people when your bank account starts getting low? I swear my son looks exactly like Prince Charles, just younger. His father looked like Prince Charles as well, and he was English. Could he have been Prince Charles? Oh, my, and my middle name is Camille. I didn't say Camilla, silly. Don't you believe in coincidences? There was a guy named James Redfield who made millions off a book called the CELESTINE PROPHECY . The point of the book was that all these coincidences gave you insights and there were ten insights and then you knew everything and were like God or something and could see other people's energy fields. You read the book, only to discover that the tenth, big and most important insight, was held back for the sequel. Then they had CELESTINE PROPHECY study guides, and people formed groups so they could practice the wisdom in what was written as a "fictional novel". I'm just mad that I didn't write it, so I wouldn't have to live in an igloo.

I hope you're laughing. I'm going out to run with my knife and my cool headlight that has a flash feature for emergencies, and see if I can muster up some tears now before I move into my IGLOO! It will probably be so cold in the frigid mountains above Santa Barbara that my tears will cause me to have frostbite and I'll have to have my cheeks amputated. This can't go on. I'm beginning to laugh, and I don't want to laugh. I want to cry and feel sorry for myself for at least ten years, or until I die, or until I get .... As Gild Radner used to say on "Saturday Night Live", "Nevermind."

I'll write soon from my IGLOO. Is that the way you spell it, by the way? I'm trying to sell books, not igloos. People talk like that today. Have you heard them? Its like they but all this emphasis on one word, something like Microsoft, or Amazon, or Google., or Nancy Taylor Rosenberg. That's why I stay to myself. My dogs talk more than my husband, so he's just about perfect.And most of the time, he's so smart, he has no idea what I'm saying. I hope you don't, either.

Nancy

COMMENTS MADE BY POPE BENEDICT XVI

First, everything I discuss here isn't related to religion. Trust me, I'm extremely open about my life, much more so than most public figures. What you won't find is profanity or blatantly sexual content.

Lately, several things have happened that made me want to express my feelings about certain topic related to religion, most of them current events. I welcome your comments, and you can email me from my regular website: www.nancytrosenberg.com.

For all those who have signed up to receive emails when I post new material, which is frequent, you should be aware that I use a lot of photographs and am highly prolific. The pictures are personal snippets from my life. When you put them all together, you should know me. Also, no one else is writing this blog but me, and I'm the only one who reads and answers my email. I love it when people write, saying, "Whoever is reading this, make sure Nancy sees it," as if I have dozens of employees. There's only one person here and that's me. If you send me a book to autograph, I'm the one who packs it up and sends it back. The same goes for the out of print books I offer for sale on my website, all of which were New York Times Bestsellers. The primary reason I'm willing to part with these books is so other people can enjoy my earlier novels in hardback. I also need to free up some room in my garage. If you don't want to buy them from me, check out http://amazon.com as they have a number of used copies for sale at a very low cost. Mine are all in hardcover in perfect condition and autographed. The main thing is for you to read and enjoy them.

Now -- what's on my mind this evening.


John Paul II was a hard act to follow, and I have to admit, I was so saddened by his death that I haven't been paying much attention to Pope Benedict. I do read the newsletter published free of charge daily by the Vatican News Agency. (http://www.vatican.va)

Regardless of your faith, I've found great wisdom and inspiration on these pages. I knew the new Holy Father formerly as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. Within the past week, Pope Benedict made a huge impression on me by some of the changes he is making at the Vatican, some of beautiful ways he described God, but mostly because he addressed the issue of violence being committed in the name of God. His comments have caused a major uproar within the Muslim community, which is unfortunate, as he was only quoting from a medieval test.

Read more about this story: http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/Europe/09/17/pope.islam/index.html. I have been depending on CNN exclusively for news since the Gulf War.

Do you realize what a tragedy it would be if a terrorist, God forbid, were to attack the Vatican? In addition to the loss of lives, the Vatican owns and warehouses the greatest collection of art in the world. Everyone knows about the Sistine Chapel, but that's only the tip of the iceberg. The sculpture halls are so crowded with priceless pieces, its hard to walk. In case you don't know, the Vatican has never been attacked. Some people say one of the reasons is they were Nazi sympathizers during the war. Whether that's true or not, I cannot say. Someone did shoot John Paul II, another reason why I had such great respect for him and the remarkable things he accomplished during his papacy. He even forgave the man who shot him. If the Vatican were attacked, the global response might be too frightening to consider.

The larger issue on all of our minds is how are we going to solve the problems in the middle east? I think we should create a city or country where people who are leaning toward terrorism could live if they swore, under penalty of death, that they would maintain peace and harmony. We'd give them a nice house, a new car, well paying jobs. They would have the opportunity to attend colleges and develop various skills, to worship their religion freely. Although I'm trying to insert humor into a seemingly unsolvable problem, I keep telling myself that these people wouldn't want to blow themselves up if they had more reasons to live. Sometimes the most complex situations are unblievably simple.

I mentioned a movie in an earlier post that people could learn a great deal from called Paradise Now. You can rent it, or purchase it at http://amazon.com. I buy a lot of my movies used for a few dollars. Please, don't bypass this important film because it's in Arabic with subtitles. The acting is great, and the story is profound. When it was released, it received excellent reviews. We must understand these misguided people who want to kill us and themselves, and this film will give you much needed insight.

WHILE VISITING HEAVEN

A week or so after 9/11, my friend, Sister Pauline (a Catholic nun) and I left the sorrows of the world behind and boarded a plane to Fatima, Portugal, a place I equate to heaven. (If you're interested in finding out more about Fatima, go to www.fatima.org.)

To continue, people kept telling Pauline and I to cancel our trip, and things came barrelling at us, which would make any sane person stop and reconsider. They cancelled our original flight. I had to have a last minute root canel, then while driving one day, I noticed a huge lump in one of my breasts. I was single at the time and not dating, and I'd been negligent with my health. This was before my back surgery, and when you're in intense pain, nothing else about your body seems important. Everything turned out to be fine, and we finally boarded our plane at LAX for New York. When we landed, the airport had been evacuated due to a bomb scare. When Pauline and I are together, though, we walk on air. If the airport had actually been bombed, God forbid, we would have still found a way to make it to Fatima.

After arriving safely, Pauline and I began visiting the shrine and praying. The church bells rang in the fresh Portugese air. No one was tense or disturbed. I think this is where God hid out until the smoke settled down. We were elbow to elbow with angels, most of them weary and in need of a little rest.

I wasn't aware they eat so much pork in Portugal. I don't care much for pork, and I tend to be a picky eater. When I was a kid, I wouldn't eat anything but grilled cheese sandwiches. Pauline and I both adore chocolate, so we sometimes ate candy for dinner. One day we were walking and trying to decide what we were going to eat for lunch. I said I would give anything for a simple bowl of soup. Suddenly, this man appeared from nowhere and directed us to what turned out to be the John Paul II Snack Bar. We'd been up and down the same street and never seen it. All I can say was the soup was heavenly.

This reminds me of Mother Theresa again. When she visited the Vatican, she would always look around at all the space and think about filling it with the poor. After she became one of the most powerful people in the world, John Paul gave her a spot at the Vatican, which was a very big thing. The Vatican is run by men, in case you don't know. There are sisters there, but they mainly take care of the men. There's no such thing as women's liberation at the Vatican.

Mother Theresa used this spot as a soup kitchen to feed the poor in Rome. They say John Paul himself used to occasionally come down and serve. If you haven't done anything for someone other than yourself and family lately, you're missing out on one of the greatest joys of life. This is a feeling you can't buy, and there aren't any drugs or chemicals you can take, either. It is priceless. Try reaching out to someone this weekend and tell me if I'm wrong. There's something you can do that's really simple. Smile at people. That's not too hard, is it? And no, you won't look like an idiot. A smile makes even the ugliest person look beautiful. www.nancytrosenberg.com

CHICO

NANCY'S AQUARIUM

Don't you love the messed up candle sticks? I can't stand places where everything is perfect, so I always make certain something is off in every room. Seriously, though, this is a sad picture for me. The power went off not long ago, and a valve was broken in aquarium which caused all the water to drain out. By the time we realized it, it was too late to do anything but watch all my beautiful fish die. Some I'd for raised from babies. They all had names and unique personalities. I even had a puffer fish who would jump out of the water like Shamu at Sea World. Now I'm starting over. Anyone who has ever had a salt water tank knows how long this takes.

My creative mind always comes up with strange ideas about the most ordinary things. Prior to the incident I mentioned above, I started to think of my fish tank as a watery prison, where bad souls could be trapped in limbo. I'm a Dante fanatic, so I got this idea from the DIVINE COMEDY. The INFERNO is my favorite of the three books in the trilogy. The ways of punishing people are really unique.

TAYLOR

This beautiful girl is my granddaughter, Taylor, visiting Daddy when he was in the hospital last year. She's the middle child between two sisters, Remy and Elle. My son is surrounded by females. Can't imagine what it'll be like when they're all teenagers. Yikes!!! Oh, and I'm eating Graduates, which are cookies for toddlers. Since I have two older sisters and we closely resemble the little girls in Dallas, both in looks and temperments, we joke that we'll have to join our new bodies fairly soon.(I think I'm teething)

I named my son after my father, Hoyt, and he named his youngest, Elle Laverne, after my mother who passed away. Its as if he's recreated our original family, except I did have a baby brother. I prayed for Bill, so when my mother got pregnant past the age of forty, she came home from the hospital and handed him to me. Those were the days when parents didn't take any flake over anything. I mean, we even had to pay for the outsome of our prayers. We might be better off if we went back to those days. I remember talking back to my mother and my father dragging me to the bathroom for a lashing. Hey, I turned out pretty good. I just have to wear pants to cover the scars. Please, this is a joke. I only had red marks, not scars. And I adored my father. See, old style parenting did work.

GRACIE IS TOUGH

SUPER COOL WRITER

DEVIL IN A BOX

I showed you the cute pictures because this is a serious subject. Like the rest of the world, I was shocked and saddened by Kimveer Gill's senseless shooting rampage in Montreal. When I read that one of Gill's favorite video games was called SUPER COLUMBINE, crafted after the Columbine tragedies, I was ashamed that we, as a society, would allow such a game to exist. What is next? Super WTC, where kids can practice flying planes into building as aferschool entertainment?

I realize that Gill wasn't a child, and whatever violent games he played were no doubt labeled "Mature". From the reports I've heard, however, he was clearly influenced by the Columbine murders. He wore a trenchcoat, as in the trenchcoat mafia, which the two young men in Columbine had called themselves. When Gill opened fire, he shot randomly and without emotion, as if he were shooting targets in a game. This was meaningless, senseless violence, so much so, that it can only be viewed as evil. People will may claim Gill was suicidal, when in fact, he was homicidal.

I've sat and watched a son of mine, who is an adult and father of three, spend hours playing online games which are both excessively violent and shockingly realistic. Since you play these games with other inidividuals while on line, you must shoot down the targets with lightning speed or you won't keep up with the other gamers. The targets are lifelife looking human beings. When you kill someone, blood squirts out and the imagine looks so real, its easy to see how someone, whether an adult or child, could quickly desensitize themselves to violence.

We are a society who has commercialized evil. The debate about violence in the gaming world reminds me of the debate about cigarettes, where tobacco companies claimed no responsibilty for the millions of people who have died from their products and laid the blame on the consumer. Listen to me! VIDEO GAMES ARE ADDICTIVE, just like cigarettes are addictive. People are lonely, disallusioned, and desperate. Think of all the people who spend a large portion of their days either gaming or surfing the net. We're sitting in our homes, staring at computer screens, and longing to somehow connect with real people. Look at the success of Myspace, where today's news carried a story of a wife who tried to contract a murder for hire because she found a woman's picture on her husband's space. The whole point of Myspace is for strangers to connect and form frienships, but we have no idea who is behind the pictures. Here's another place where we are trying to treat the new "disease" of lonliness which we ourselves have created.

With younger children, parental supervision can been blamed. Just like Big Tobacco, the manufacturers of these games say no one is forcing them to buy them. I visited one of my adult children several years ago and was appalled to find my nine year old grandson playing a game called "Grand Theft Auto". How could anyone want their child to play a game based on a criminal act? I used to send people to prison for Grand Theft Auto.

The games today are far more violent and realistic. Its not always that the parents are negligent. Many times the content isn't reflective in the title, or the game is borrowed from a friend, maybe even a friend with an older brother or sister. Some of the kids get the games from their parents. If you've ever been in the family room of an active family, you'll see games and toys tossed everywhere. Parents are so overwhelmed, particularly since we've sent them back to school with the huge amounts of homework kid now receive daily, how can they keep track of everything a child does or sees?

Evil is at play in the world on so many fronts. Some of it we can do nothing about, such as the wars, acts of terrorism, and misdirected hate. But can't we censor games which glorify killing with more than an "M" on the box? The least we can do is to refuse to buy the devil in a box, then carry him into our homes. www.nancytrosenberg.com


Nancy

SEPTEMBER 11th, FIVE YEARS LATER

Article written for CNN

My step daughter was in Manhattan on 9/11, while I was at home in California. Somehow she was able to make several calls to me shortly after the planes struck the WTC. She told me to turn on the TV because something horrible had happened. I'm not certain exactly what I said to her, but I was strangely complacent. This caused her to snap at me, telling me I was in denial. I guess she thought I didn't realize the magnitude of what had occurred. The truth was I had been expecting it for a long time. I knew something horrendous was going to occur as early as 1997. When it finally became reality, I almost felt relieved.

I'm not employed by any government agency, although I did spend fourteen years in the criminal justice system. Since 1993, I have been a published novelist, and am presently writing by thirteenth novel. I write thrillers similar to John Grisham, a genre referered to as "legal thrillers" due to the success of Grisham's novels. Most of my books have been based on real cases I handled during my years in law enforcement and as an investigative probation officer. I am not a psychic, nor do I believe in the paranormal. I do have what might be classified as precognition, although I'm not entirely certain such a thing exists. I do know that years before I published, my mother told me she saw a store window full of my books. Later, I saw this window at the Barnes and Noble on Fifth Avenue and it was filled with my books.

When these instances of precognition occur, however, I live through the events as though they are occurring in the present. One time I was certain we were having an earthquate and told my husband to turn on the TV so we could find out where the epicenter was and the magnitude. When we found nothing, I was perplexed, and tried to put it out of my mind. The next day, at approximately the same time, the San Francisco earthquate occurred.

I also lived through what I assume was another premonition, but this one was far more frightening. I was driving on the freeway with my daughter and her friend one day when I suddenly felt as if I was in a tunnel. I could feel violent shaking, and saw the road in front of me buckling. When it ended, my fear was so great, I wanted to move out of California, and tried to tell my family they needed to do the same. A number of years later, the Northridge earthquake occurred. The same road I was traveling when I experienced the premonition was buckled, and in the same location. In addition, my son and his family's home was located near Northridge and although they weren't injured, their home was damaged. The phones lines were down, and for hours, I was terrified they had been injured. Not long after, my husband and I moved to New York, where we had an apartment in Manhattan and a country home in an area called Tuxedo Park.

In 1997, my husband and I decided to divorce, which is an emotionally traumatic experience under any circumstances. My husband moved into the apartment in the city, and I remained in Tuxedo Park. Six or seven months into our separation, I began to get the feeling that something terrible had happened. My attorney's office was in the city, and I even called him after looking up while walking one on the street one day and seeing that the top floors of the building had been destroyed. Of course, he didn't take my call seriously, and I felt embarassed to even have brought it up. After 9/11, he said he didn't recall my phone call. At least he was safe, as were most of my friends and acquaintances.

This feeling of impending doom continued to intensify. I attributed it to the stress of the divorce. Many days I would drive to the city and end up sobbing, looking at people on the street and feeling certain some of them would soon be dead. I couldn't put my finger on what was happening, just that I knew it would reach beyond Manhattan and be devastating to the entire country and the world.

On one occasion, I picked up my step daughter, who lived in Manhattan at the time, and I impusively decided to drive to Washington late at night. The capitol seemed like an Internet site to me, as if it had been destroyed and quickly rebuilt. I began to think I was losing track of reality. Why did I feel this overwhelming sense of doom? Was I going to die? Was someone else going to die? Of all my children, only my step daughter and I seemed to be locked in this nightmare. Not long after the trip to Washington, I sold my home in New York and bought a house in California. I felt safer here, but I still felt as if something had already happened and I couldn't understand why I was the only one who was aware of it.

About a year prior to 9/11, I returned to New York. I had gone there to look at apartments to rent, having convinced myself that whatever I had been sensing was not real. Since many of my friends and publishing contacts were in Manhattan, I thought I could regain my sense of well-being and overcome my fears by taking a second place there. One night, I went to a social engagement only blocks away from the World Trade Center. I became violently ill in the taxi on the way home. The next day I looked at a lovely apartment near the United Nations. I couldn't stay, however, as I began crying uncontrollably. All I wanted to do was leave Manhattan as soon as possible. The entire city seemed to be cloaked in tragedy.

When I returned to California, I spend the months leading up to 9/11 working on a novel and sequestering myself in my home. I didn't watch television, date, or see friends. I attempted to recenter myself by doing on indepth study of Michaelangelo's works when I wasn't writing. I also spent a great deal of time in prayer, a part of my life I had previously neglected.

When my daughter called me that fateful morning, I could at least reclaim a measure of sanity. The terrible event I had been waiting for had finally occurred. The feeling was similar to when you have a friend or loved one suffering from a terminal illness, and you receive the phone call that they have died. You are sad, but you have already grieved and are emotionally prepared for their passing. You are also relieved that their suffering is over, and that they are now at peace.

Now I have developed a new problem, and wonder if others might be experiencing something similar. Nothing seems real anymore. I feel as if I'm living in the movie "The Matrix." When I look at footage of the planes hitting the twin towers, it seems surreal, like a movie. Maybe it was simply too real to accept as reality. Or perhaps since I felt it coming for so long, or at times, believed it had already happened, I'm afraid it never really happened at all, that it was somehow staged or that something about what we were told isn't true.

My law enforcement background additionally tells me that cerrain things simply could not have occurred as reported. How could the terrorists passports have been found on the street a day later among such massive rubble? Even our president's actions and reactions that day were so inappropriate that I was incredulous. There's a sense of unreality to the military actions we've taken as a result of 9/11. Who were trying to punish? How were they going to capture the terrorists when they couldn't even be entirely certain who was behind the attacks? Don't try to tell me that I'm naive. I know about locating, capturing, and prosecuting criminals. A country didn't attack the United States. Individuals acting in a group attacked us. We have street gangs with enough manpower, money, and organizattion to cause an event like 9/11, although I don't think this is what we should fear. When I say street gangs, I'm not referring to five or six homeboys, but gangs that spill over from prison to the streets, with enormously high numbers of members. Have we forgotten Oklahoma City and people like Timothy McVeigh?

The deaths of innocent civilians haunt me, and the numbers of the so-called enemies we have killed have never been factually reported. We also don't see the maimed and injured US soliders. They are kept hidden like a dirty secret. So many lost limps, Don't they deserve to be noticed? Are we ashamed of them? Are we supposed to pretend the only people suffering are the dead. The living wounded are the ones who are suffering. God help us, shouldn't we know about them, so we can send them letters of support and visit them? Most of them are so young, they look like children.

Where was the reasoning behind attacking a country to find terrorists, when we had no precise knowledge of where they were hiding? Los Angeles is full of murderers, pedophilles, rapists, armed robbers, aronsists, cop killers and even terrorists. They sit beside us in movie theaters. They walk beside us on the streets. We can't bomb Los Angeles, can we?

A close friend of mine, who has been involved in politics for years, made an appalling statement to me recently. This person said, "I never thought the day would come that I would be ashamed to be an American." I have not reached that point, and will always love our beautiful country, but I now why I felt such overwhelming sadness. The leaders of our great nation have erred to such a grave degree, in my opinion, Americans are in dire danger.

September 11th may not have been the nightmare I envisioned. I saw more than I have said. I saw cities where there were no people, where even the dogs and pets had left nothing behind but their waste. Can we change it, if in fact, something worse is in our not so distant future? A nuclear attack is too awful to consider, but we must. There are some decisions that cannot be amended. We have created a global situation where we are now hated, and not my simply radical groups.

I have an ageless, wise friend named Mary. Long before 9/11, she sent me a package containing useful things, but somewhat odd, almost like a survival kit. I was baffled, so we spoke, and she told me she "took me to the alter because it was time to pray." I have prayed, and I will continue to pray, but what I wish I could do is to take action. The question on all of our minds is what can we do about the state our country is now in, and the seemingly ominous road that lies ahead of us? Who will, or can, steer the ship back on course? Have we sailed too far to turn back?
Nancy Taylor Rosenberg - Writing a Bestseller

MY RACE CAR SIDE

When I attended Gulf Park College in Gulf Port Mississippi years ago, I used to date a race car driver. I fell in love with racing and speed. If you're out there, Charles Victor Smith, I'm still mad at you. Just kidding. I'm certain he's not around. When you publish a book, or get your name in the media, people come crawling out of the woodwork. When Katrina hit, I got another wave of mail from people I went to school with. My middle name is Camille, and I used it on the Internet. After Katrina, I decided it was in poor taste, as Hurricane Camille destroyed many lives.

I loved both the racing movies that came out this year, even though they were spoofs.The Will Ferrell movie, "The Ballad of Ricky Bobby," was hilarious, and there was some real race car footage. I know its called Talledega Nights or something like that, but whoever named it should have realized that no one could pronounce it, let alone spell it. I liked the French Formula One driver. Formula One was the only cool racing events in my day. People who drove stock cars were considered hicks, kind of the way they are depicted in the Will Ferrell movie. Of course, today, they're all multi-millionares. The other movie both my husband and I loved was "Cars." It was orignal and refreshing.

I did a really stupid thing, which I'm prone to do quite often. I got my new husband, Dan, a gift certificate to drive a race car for Christmas. Well, you got it, he went nuts. Then I decided I hated fast cars and racing because I was afraid he'd get hurt or we'd get sued. Basically, we argued about his car a lot. It was a new Vette and he was constantly complaining about it. Turns out, he wasn't just being picky as always. The car was a lemon and we got our money back. Now he has a Porsche. He got a ticket the other day for going 92 or something in a Honda Civic. I'd always told him he was going to get a ticket in the Vette, but he never did. He's depressed because he can't drive fast anymore outside of the track.

I'm already over the speed thing. I got two or three tickets for going over 90 mph and that was the end of sports cars for me. I had a genuine reason for speeding a few times. My Mom had called me from Bakersfield and asked me to come. When my mother needed me, or anyone needs me that I care for, I fly to their side. Mother's gone now and I miss her terribly. She was beautiful up until the moment she died. It's wonderful to see a person who has led a good life die. My sister was with her, but I saw her at the end and know she had a good death.

Everyone should lose their fear of death and try to spend more time with the dying. To some, this might sound silly, but God speaks through the dying, just as He speaks through children. And if you see a good person leave their shell of a body behind, you will catch a glimpse of the Divine. I think people don't believe because we have created a society which both glorifies death on one hand and want to pretend it doesn't exist on the other. No one wants to read a book, or see a movie where the main characters dies. Right? I know because I wrote two books where the characters died and it almost sank my career. People die and we need to learn how to handle it, and see that its part of the overall beauty of life. More importantly, we need to learn to understand death.

As a child, I lived inside books. I've always been introverted. I would spend all my free time reading, and read far into the night. Perhaps that's why I slept under my coat on the playground during recess. The stories I read were so vivid and real, I became an adult at a very young age. Back then, characters died and we cried. This is one of the ways I prepared myself when I faced my the first loss of a loved one.

I'm a HUGE Mother Theresa fan. If you study her life, the simplicity of it is breaktaking. Her belief in God was so is unshakable, and the way she lived her life, to be she approached the embodiment of a female Christ. She said that when she or her sisters ministered to the dying people on the streets of Calcutta, they thought of them "as Jesus in distressing disuise." I try to remember these words when I see a person passed out on the street, their few meager possessions in shopping bags, their clothes stained with excrement. Yes, I want to shake my head and turn away. I refuse to take the position so many people do -- which is to say they brought their situation on themselves. They were drunks, drug addicts, criminals, etc. That isn't always true, and inside, most people know it. Some may have been in mental institutions and would rather live on the street than to go back. Hey, maybe they're crazy and maybe they're not. Have you ever been locked up in a mental hospital? In prison, you have rights. In the funny farm, you have nothing. If you don't have loved ones to protect you, you can meet a fate worse than you could ever imagine.

I'm sorry. I tricked you with the race cars and now I'm preaching. There's another Saint named Theresa (and Mother Theresa is a saint, regardless if the church has made it officia, which of course they willl). This one is Theresa of Avila, a fifteen century Spanish nun. She was a strong-willed woman, and when reading her works, you have to remind yourself that she lived so long ago. She sounds like a modern woman. One line I think is fantastic. "May we all be mad for Him, who for love of us was deemed mad. Prepare yourself so that you might receive this blessing." Of course, she was speaking about Jesus.

For those who are not Christian, I have great respect for all people of faith. I love Judiasm and consider myself a Judeo/Christian. I believe any seeker will eventually find God if they stay the path. Following Christ, or what the saints referred to as "cross to resurrection" is a difficult but straight path.

People wonder how I can speak so openly in a public forum. Those people don't know me. With me, what you see is what you get. When I was seventeen, I got pregnant. The guy promised to marry me, then told me he was married to someone else. He disappeared for six months, then sent me a letter and told me to get rid of the baby. This was, trust me, the single worst day of my entire life. I've suffered terrible injuries, undergone serious and pain surgeries, given birth to children, had boils on my back from malnutrition. But to be seventeen back in my day and have to make the decision to keep, give away, or abort a baby, when the father has dumped you toward the end of the pregnancy is shattering. The wonderful part about this story is my son. All my children are great, but this child will always be special. We have a bond that can never be broken. A few years back, I taught him how to write and he completed his first novel. We had so much fun writing together. I think back of all these incredible moments, where I was there for him and he was there for me, and how hard it is to remember even one instance when we didn't agree. All these happy occasions would never have occurred had I aborted my baby. This super man would never have walked this earth, where he has touched so many lives, had I not been willing to give up my dream of becoming a doctor and eagerly accepted my role as a mother. I've made so many terrible mistakes in my life. Its good to know that this wasn't one of them.

Nancy

TRYING TO PUT IT BACK TOGETHER

I had to break down and go to the doctor today. I've been sick an entire week. Now I have to try and find all my parts and get back into the book again. I've had a lot of dump distractions, like cable guys who don't show and then do show, which is sometimes worse.

I don't know about all writers, but I'm sensitive as to who comes into my environment. Everyone has some kind of energy attached to them, and sometimes it really bothers me. I had an agent once who was a really nice person, but very frenetic. He was constantly interrupting me. He never did understand that his energy was so scattered that it had a negative effect on me. I like people involved in my career to do their job and more or less keep their distance. I can be a pain myself, though, and I used to have a temper. My divorce was a nightmare, which most divorces are. My new husband is so mellow that I don't get annnoyed or upset much anymore. Besides, I had to let go of a lot of things involving my career. The books are either going to sell or they're not. Sure, I can promote them and keep my fingers crossed, but its really hurts when you have a book that doesn't perform well, particularly if its a good book, and people say most of mine fit the bill. That's another problem being in the entertainment industry. What makes one book soar to the top of the bestseller list while another far better book sells five copies? Why does a song hit #1 and another doesn't? No one really knows. Sometimes its mega advertising, of course, or the person has become so well known that people just buy anything they write because they don't want to think about picking out a new author. What gets me are writers who aren't even writing their own books anymore, and the readers know it, but still buy them. I work very hard to put together a good book. Trust me, writing a novel isn't easy, no matter how much experience you have.

There's one hugely successful writer who started out mocking the reading level of the American public with his titles, which were all nursery ryhmes. He had chapters which consisted of only one paragraph! This means people were buying more paper than book. Hey, I'm happy for other people's success. Its just there are so many deserving writers out there and no one is reading them. Many of are still unpublished and that's sad.

I haven't been able to run and that really bothers me. I love to pound the pavement. I started wheezing tonight, and I went to the doctor because I was coughing up blood. I'm fine, though. I have a body filled with all kinds of medical devices, but I am still atheletic. I can't jump horses anymore since my accident, but that's my decision. I also gave up skiiing. I've had far too many brutal accidents to keep taking risks. I am a little mad when it comes to things like that. I'm an excitement junky. Before I had my back surgery, I went paragliding AND skiiing. Now that I'm fixed, running is good enough. I would like to be able to dance more. I used to go out dancing all the time when I was single. I would write until nine or ten and then hit a club by myself. I don't care what you look like, when a single woman walks into a club, they get a lot of attention. That's what I keep telling my single girlfriends. When they go with another girl, it isn't as easy for a guy to approach them. I wasn't looking for guys, though. I just wanted to dance and have fun, so that's what I did mostly. When I'd had enough, I just left. I did follow some smart rules. I parked in a well lit lot, and I made certain no one followed me. Of course, I do know how to defend myself. I used to carry a hammer or wrench in the side pocket of my car. You can do a lot of damage with a hammer, by the way. If someone tries to jack you, just smash their brains out. When I run at night, I strap on a buck knife, and wear a bright light on my head that also can be set to flash if I get into trouble. I'm not really afraid of anything or anyone. I know God looks after me, and if He sends me trouble, I'm there to handle it. If your a girl and you go out alone, use your head when you befriend someone, and don't give your number out and never take the guy home with you. See him in the light of day in a public place and get to know him. You can do anything you want if you take the right precautions.

Nancy

PUBLIC SPEAKING

One thing I keep forgetting to mention is that I have extensive experience as a PUBLIC SPEAKER. I do not charge a fee, only transportation and lodging if I have to travel. I prefer not to speak to less than a hundred people, and I would like to be the KEYNOTE SPEAKER. You can listen to one of my speeches on my website. Look in the sections called "NANCY'S WRITING PROGRAM". It's called FIGHT TO WRITE, and has biographical information about my life that I've never revealed before.

I've also made various TV APPEARANCES. PRIME TIME LIVE did a special on me. I was on GOOD MORNING AMERICA, CNN's TALKBACK LIVE, GERALDO LIVE, and numerous other shows. Since I live in LA, I can also fill in for no shows at the last minutes. Since I spent fourteen years in law enforcement, I can talk on a myriad of subjects.

NEW PHOTO

My best friend, Heather, took this pix of me a few days ago, holding my Italian greyhound, Gracie. I've been sick for three days, but I'm on the mend and will dive back into the book first thing in the morning.

FW:

4017235

MY WRITING BUDDIES

There's an interesting story about my two precious dogs I'd like to share after I tell you what I decided tonight about the second chapter in my book. My husband and I spent the day at Sea World, and on the drive back I began writing in my head, something I'm constantly doing when I'm working. Meaning, I'm in the zone, but I still have to function as a normal person some of the time, so I've learned to keep my focus and only momentarily divert for outside activities.

My novel will probably take about six months to get to first draft. Since this is my thirteenth book, my first drafts are pretty good. One of the reasons is that I keep going back over the same material almost every day, something not a lot of writers will take the time to do, particularly novices. That doesn't mean, however, that there won't be a second and third draft before the book is ready to be copy edited.

The second chapter is extremely important as this is the first time the reader meets my lead character. What I wrote the other day wasn't bad, but I failed to follow one of the cardinal rules of writing, which is to show not tell. This occurred because very early on, the primary focus is on developing the characters. I personally enjoy interior dialogue (the character's thoughts). For writers with some experience, but perhaps not as seasoned as myself, some of the things I explain may be old hat. I want the novice writer to learn, so I'm going to try to make things as clear as possible. If you have questions about one thing or the other, you can email me at nancy@nancytrosenberg.com, and I'll do my best to answer your questions.

Now that I've figured out a new approach to the second chapter, I'll have to rewrite it, making the scenes more dynamic. This is something I'm always willing to do to make it better. My main character is a strong willed, independent, and outspoken former homicide detective who has only recently transferred to the FBI. She's a knockout and likes to dress anyway she wants. She also has a great sense of humor, which readers should enjoy. This is what meakes her so suitable to work in the Investigative Support Unit, where agent burnout is a major concern. Most peope know it as the Behaviorial Science Unit from movies and books, but it was renamed the Investigative Support in 1965.

Compared to most police departments, where I once worked, the atmosphere at the Bureau is more formal and stuffy. My character has plans to get her coworkers to lighten up, regardless of the horrible crimes they have to deal with. At the moment she's called in her supervisors office because of compliants as to how she dresses.

Remember, as we go on, I'll be concentrating on how to write a novel. Hopefully, you'll get something out of this and want to read the book, especially since you've followed its progress and the unfolding events in my life from start to finsh. Not the finish of my life, I hope, just the book. Also, it you're interesting in more writing tips and information on how to get published, on my website, www.nancytrosenberg.com, check under the section marked "Nancy's Writing Program" for a live speech entitled FIGHT TO WRITE which I made at the Southwestern Writers' Conference. It contains invaluable information about new authors and how to get their work pubished.

I'm pretty bushed tonight after the Sea World trip, but I will tell you the cute story about my little dogs. When my husband was a child, one of his relatives had a chihuahua named Chico, which he really liked. He admired the dog because it went up against two German Sheppards and managed to dominate them. Then his relative decided to bread Sheppards and although Chico, the dog's name, fought ferocioudly to remain top dog with four or five Sheppards, they finally killed him. When he died, bless his heart, the little dog had lost almost all his teeth fighting.

One day about two years ago, my husband and I were driving and I saw a pet store and yelled, "Stop!" We hadn't really planned on getting a dog, as training a new pub takes a lot of time. I also have a 150 gallon aquariam. I used to have birds, but they weren't much fun and were far too messy. As you can tell, I love animals. We didn't see a price tage on the chihuahua pup, so we asked the owner and she said she'd been thinking of keeping him. She's already named him Chico, the same name as the dog my husband loved as a kid. Well, of course, we knew we had to have him. And we were right, as he is adorable and loving.

A few weeks later, I was in the park and saw a young man walking an Italian Greyhound, a fairly rare breed. We chatted and he told me he had a female that was somewhat small that he was thinking of selling, as the dogs were cooped up all day in a condo. Then he told me her name was Gracie, and I knew I had to have her, as Gracie was the name of my dog who died.

As it turned out, my husband and I both got substitutes for the pets we once loved.

Have a great weekend.

Nancy

LEFT SIDE OF MY BRAIN

The book is on its way, as I'm now utilizing the left side of my brain more than the right. When this occurs, I feel spacy and disconnected, almost as if I'm on some kind of drug. Once when I was deep in a book, my husband asked me a question and I told him to wait a minute. When I finally answered, he told me an entire day had passed. Granted, this is somewhat extreme, but it does happen. Even when you're talking on the phone, shopping, or involved with other people, you're only half there. The rest of you is writing. You're thinking of characters, crafting sentences, finetuning plot points. I know people who feel they have to write down their thoughts right away or they will forget them. I never worry about that. If its good, I'll remember it. If its not, I'll come up with something better.

One thing you must do to write a novel is be ready to throw away days, weeks, even months of work. Personally, I think this is the single most important trait a novelist must have. One of my writing professors at UCLA, a genius named Leonardo Bercovici, called it "killing your babies." That's what writing a novel is all about, a constant state of evolution. Every day I start on page one. Most people couldn't or wouldn't take the time. To get a seemless novel, you have to start over each day.

Later,

Nancy


Left Brain behaviors respond to:
Recognizing and remembering names
Verbal instructions/information
Processing information sequentially
Evaluating their performance to some standard
Serious, systematic problem-solving
Critical, analytic reading/listening
Problem-solving through logic
Remembering through language
Reading for details and facts
Realistic stories
Leaning through systematic plans
Outlining rather than summarizing
Remembering verbal qualities
Well-structured assignments
Independent

Right Brain behaviors respond to:
Descriptive, concrete
Recognizing and remembering faces
Visual and kinesthetic instruction
Emotional responses (strong)
Producing humorous thoughts/ideas
Processing information subjectively and in patterns
Emphasize second person when writing
Playful problem-solving
Problem-solving through intuition
Demonstrational instructions/information
Remembering though images / pictures
Reading for main ideas/overviews
Fantasy, poetry, myths
Learning through exploration
Summarizing rather than outlining
Open-ended assignments
Sensitive
Prefers an overview of a chapter, book, story before receiving the big picture

GETTING IN THE ZONE

Well, I can't write here for long, as I'm in the Zone and working on the book. I escaped this weekend because I had unexpected company. I'm still working on the first chapter. If I'm going to grab a reader, this is the place to do it. Hopefully, by tomorrow, I can begin Chapter Two.

I was distracted by the news on the JonBenet case, but I was only waiting for them to announce it. I've worked with murders and knew he was lying. No one who murders a kid sticks their face in a camera and courts the media. Sadly, this guy is just a freak and everyone overreacted. I have long held my own opinion as to what happened, but I don't have time right now to tell you.