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Writing and Self-Publishing Cowboy Dad · Side Note...

• Melissa: Welcome to Side Note with Melissa, where personal stories spark deeper connections, conversations, and questions. Can I just start off with a tangent? I think the word passionate or passion, I think they're overused. This is reserved for something that truly just not only brings you joy, but you love doing it. Now what do you think my passion is? What do you think I'm most passionate about? How many of you think it's lavender? My passion is not lavender. Now, don't get me wrong, I love lavender. I'm the lavender lady, of course. I love the aroma, the way that it looks, even the little details of it. It kind of sparkles. It has something on the buds that when they dry, it kind of sparkles like glitter in the sun. I love the way that it makes people feel. And I have created this life with lavender. But it is just a platform for me that allows me to work and indulge in and participate in what I am truly passionate about. My true passion is words, sentences, writing, stories, storytelling. Not only writing them or telling them, but hearing them. I truly am a lover of words. And I love creating or reading the perfect sentence. And the lavender and the lavender store allows me to have that. I'm so nitpicky even with the selection of words that I truly believe that we should mean what we say and say what we mean. That's why I get so weird about the word passionate. But the lavender has done that for me and has Created this life so that I can hear these stories every day in my store. In fact, a lady came into my store just today, and it was her and her husband, and they were here visiting from out of town. And she was kind of playing with the lavender buds that I have sitting right there at the front where people check out. And I do that on purpose because there is something magical, something magical about the lavender buds. And the feeling and the aroma, and people start talking. And she even said, I don't know why I'm telling you my whole life story. And she was. She was telling me a story that she probably wouldn't normally just start sharing with a stranger, but I was engaged and I was listening and it was interesting. And it was a random story, but it was a good story. And that's what the lavender does. And so it is a platform for me to work in my true passion. As a creative, that is storytelling. So the questions that you've been sending me the last several weeks about my episodes got me excited because a lot of the questions are about me as a writer and a storyteller. And do you want to know my process? You've asked about how and when. I wrote Cowboy Dad. You've asked me about self-publishing. So let's talk about. All of that. Welcome to Side Note. This is episode 11, and we are actually coming to the end of season one. And I have a surprise for you at the end of this episode. But first, let's do a recap. So, through the episodes, I have talked about my book, Cowboy Dad, My Passion, My Heart. That is at the center of everything I do. It is literally in the center of my store. And the story of Cowboy Dad has nothing to do with lavender. But if you listen to my episodes and you know me personally, you know that there are all these connections in my life and in your life too. And so you know that while Cowboy Dad has nothing to do with lavender. There are ways and reasons of it being connected to me being a lavender farmer now. But again, to recap, I wrote Cowboy Dad in my 30s, and I wrote it after my dad passed away from alcoholism. And I go into the story and details of my grief. in my 30s, and I talk about that in previous episodes. And I encourage you to listen to those just for context. I really through the years have done things that lead me to accomplishing my goals and pursuing my passion. And one of the main things I did in my 20s was move to Santa Barbara. I really believed in moving to the place where The people are that are doing what you want to do. And Santa Barbara is full of successful authors. And so I've actually worked for a few authors, and boy, do I have stories about them, which were on the previous episodes. But I do talk about cowboy dad in my 30s, how I wrote about my dad who was a cowboy and an alcoholic. Towards the end of my thirties, I had lost my teaching job in Santa Barbara. And I decided that this was a good time to write Cowboy Dad. So I moved to Wyoming. And I go into the details as to how that happened, but I lost my job and I had been diagnosed with skin cancer. And so the universe or God was basically saying, You gotta go to Wyoming. I had no job, I had no money, but it was in the middle of winter, and that's when and where I wrote Cowboy Dad. Now, side note, I think it's important to define memoir, books, or writing. I think a lot of people know what it is, but I I think it's still important to define it. So I like to read and write nonfiction. Specifically, I love memoirs. I do read a little bit of fiction, but my main jam is nonfiction and memoir. And that basically means nonfiction is true. There it's true stories. And memoir specifically is when you're telling a story about another person from your perspective. So in my case, my book. Was about my dad from my perspective. So it's how I saw him, it's how I saw the disease, and how that affected my childhood and my adulthood. And the challenge, oftentimes, with memoir, and you talk about this a lot in workshops that you might go to or writers' conferences. A lot of authors who write memoir are often asked about this. And that is the challenge. Of memoir and telling your truth and your perspective because oftentimes it's something that might be a little like, we don't talk about that. Maybe it's abuse from childhood, in my case, addiction from childhood. And maybe somebody in the family doesn't want you to talk about it or write about it. And so oftentimes writers are thinking about how do I want to handle that? Do I even want to write about it? Do I limit what I share? So this is a a conversation with people who are writing memoir. In my case, I will tell you that I feel and felt at the time really confident about telling my story. I knew that it was my truth and my perspective, and I wanted to share it. And I did not hesitate. I have had some. uncomfortable conversations with my mom who may not have remembered it the same way or didn't understand why I thought of it that way or told it that way. And that's okay because it's my perspective. I am the daughter. I was the child of an alcoholic and then the adult daughter of an alcoholic. So that's gonna be a different perspective than the mom or the wife or something else. So that's the recap. A lot of you asked about my process, self-publishing, all of really good questions, enough that I can make a whole episode. So the first thing I want to talk about that a couple of you asked about is if I studied writing in college. And the answer is no, I did not. I do not have an undergraduate in English. I don't have a master's degree in MFA and writing or creative writing. Side note, if I could do it over again, I think I probably would. I have, of course, thought about going back to graduate school to get an MFA. Chances of me doing that at this point are slim, but that's another conversation. I have had other types of training for writing, but I have always been a writer. And in fact, my dad was also a good writer. And that's kind of interesting to know and surprises people because he was a cowboy. He was in the rodeo, he was a rancher. He loved writing and he had written through the years little articles for local newspapers and also poems and letters to his mom and so he was definitely kind of a poet also. So I'd been writing since I was little. And I'd even written, for example, a poem that I'd written in junior high, had gotten an award. It was a simple little poem. It was a simile. Similes usually use the same sounds of words when you put them together in a poem. It was called winter. And it goes like this. The freezing frost is like silver. The silent snow makes me shiver. And as the winding wind whistles through the air, I think of winter. And so that's something I wrote in junior high. And I'd also been praised by teachers and other adults regarding my writing from the time I was little. I have done trainings for narrative therapy and narrative medicine. And narrative therapy is a psychology modality. So again, if you've heard my episodes, you know that I have a background in mental health and psychology. And I'm very interested in memoirs that are mental health related as well. But narrative therapy is a modality that therapists use to talk about our narratives and how we think of our lives and the narratives that we tell ourselves. It's a little bit with cognitive behavioral therapy. I have also had Trainings in narrative medicine. And narrative medicine is this amazing new concept, I would say, in the last maybe 15 years. Columbia has a great program in narrative medicine. And it's the study of medicine that basically looks at this idea of bedside manner, right? So narrative medicine comes in and says if you actually, as a practitioner, try to understand the story of your patient. Who are they? Where did they come from? Their diagnosis. Let's say, for example, it's cancer. Who are they? What is their background story? How does that contribute to maybe their diagnosis and their treatment and how they get through that treatment and get well? Or maybe don't get well. And so narrative medicine really examines this and trains practitioners in sort of this. sharing stories of patients and weaving that through their practice. It is a beautiful subject. And then of course through the years I've written articles for newspapers. I've had short stories published, for example, Chicken Soup for the Soul. So nothing big, but actively writing throughout my life. Side note story, I'll never forget it. This I wrote about in Cowboy Dad, but In junior high, we were as a family living on a ranch where most of my childhood was, and the alcoholism was pretty bad. At the time, my parents thought that moving away to a different state, Arizona in our case, would solve our problem. So essentially running away would fix the problem. Now, of course, we know how that ends. But in the story, I talk about how my dad quits his job at the ranch and we moved from Meadow This beautiful cattle ranch in Colorado to hot desert Arizona. It was like hell. It was awful for us as a family. And in Cowboy Dad, I tell you about the things that happened during the time that we lived in Arizona. And it was just not good at all. But I'll never forget it. I was still kind of seeking shelter, so to speak, in my writing. I was in seventh grade. And we were learning about story writing and we were learning about beginning, middle, end, and we were learning about first draft, second draft, and how the teacher gets the edits back to you and then you improve it. And so we were learning about that whole process. We got our assignment to write a short story, and it was the first draft. When the teacher gave it back to me. She had written some really beautiful notes on my paper. I wish I would have saved it, but I did not. She said to me, if this is your first draft, I cannot wait to see your final. And that meant so much to me. So that stuck with me. And I just continued writing through the years. So a lot of people asked me how long it took me to write Cowboy Dad. This is a common question. And there's kind of two answers. One answer is it took me about A year to two years to write. After my dad passed, I started writing, moved to Wyoming, worked with the editor, and that was about one to two years. The second answer is that it took me several years, like my entire life. And that's because when I was little, I think the youngest that I can remember doing this was probably around fifth grade. My dad had started doing things or I started kind of paying attention to the things that he had been doing and drinking and his behavior. And I started taking notes. Now talk about being a natural born writer. I mean, I'm a fifth grader, maybe even younger, but I'm taking little notes in a notepad about things that happened with my dad. And I don't even know if I knew what I was gonna do with that. But and it wasn't even like a journal. It wasn't like a secret diary or anything. It was literally like, okay, I'm gonna jot this note down that I found him passed out on the tractor. I had done that for years. And as I got older, high school, college, twenties, my folder with notes was then on my computer. So then I had a file labeled bad. on my computer and I had transferred all the notes that I had from my notebooks to this file. And so I had years of notes on my dad. And that's much of what I use to write Cowboy Dad. So when somebody asks me how long did it take, there's two answers. People also want to know how I got an editor. Remember in previous episodes, I talked to you about how I was a spa writer. So there's another example of me writing. And this was in my 30s. My dad had already passed away. And I had gone to a spa. It was called OHI Valley Inn. It's one of the best spas in the U.S. It's always ranked usually top three, Ohio Valley Inn. And so I As a spa health writer, I was invited to OHI. They were having a day for journalists. And so I was invited, and these were always fun because they really rolled out the red carpet. And I got to do a yoga class and a chocolate tasting at the spa, and then you get a spa treatment. And yes, it's dreamy. Well, during that time, there was a lady, another writer, but she was saying she was a journalist, but a writer. So she and I met. Her name was Maureen. We got to talking and it was funny because she said to me, this was before I told her my name. She said, You know who you look like? And I'd heard this before. You look like Melissa Gilbert on Little House on the Prairie. I'm gonna call you Half Pint because we kind of got friendly and became friends at this this workshop that we were at. She had shared with me that she was an editor, a former editor of Random House. And side note story, but the big publishing houses let a ton of people go because of the way that the industry had changed. It's a whole other episode. But nevertheless, she left Random House, but she had been an editor for them. And so she said, I'm gonna call you Half Pint because Half Pint is the nickname that was Melissa Gilbert for Little House on the Prairie. Lori Ingalls, her dad would call her Half Pint. Anyway, if you know, you know. So I laughed and I said, Well, you're gonna think this is crazy, but My name is Melissa and my mom named me after Melissa Gilbert because she watched Little House on the Prairie every day she was pregnant with me. So she couldn't believe this. my gosh, my gosh, my gosh. And I had shared with her the story of my dad and cowboy dad. And at that point, I had just taken note, started writing a little bit, but just taking note. I hadn't lost my job yet. I hadn't been diagnosed with skin cancer yet. I hadn't moved to Wyoming yet. But she had said to me what I needed to hear. And she said, I wanna be your editor. I want you to start writing this book. Like she put me on a timeline. I want 50,000 words in a couple of months. I want you to give me the manuscript and we're gonna start working on this. And I thought I had just won the lotto. Right. This was a former editor from Random House, and I had already had all the notes, so I had all of the information that I needed to write this book. And all I needed, apparently, was somebody like her to say fifty thousand words. This is what you do, this is when I want it, and we're gonna work together. And I was so excited. And because of that, I was working hard to get it done. Now keep in mind, I had never actually written a full book. Before, like a real memoir. I had written articles, I'd written poems, short stories, things like that. But like an actual memoir, I knew I wanted to, but I didn't actually know what that meant or what that looked like. Turns out she was the stereotype of editors. Now, when I say that, if you're a writer and you've ever submitted a query letter for a book to be considered, you've probably experienced or heard of the horror stories. Editors and people in that book industry can be brutal and and just downright mean. And so that was my experience with her. And it shot me down. I thought it was the end of the world. Now of course looking back it all worked out just fine. But what ended up happening was I gave her fifty thousand word manuscript and what I thought was suitable to start. She emailed me and basically said, This is awful. This is terrible. You know, all the stuff. Nothing encouraging. Yeah. So that was it. I was just like, I cannot work with this lady. And I think something else was going on with her. I don't know what it was, but the communication dropped. I mean, God only knows what happened. I don't know. So then I've got this manuscript that obviously needs help. Maureen had told me before that. She's said, my gosh, this, this, you've got the story. When I was talking with her at O High Belly, and you've got this amazing story. It's so beautiful. And that's where she really encouraged me to get it done. So I knew from that, but I also just knew in my gut, in my heart, this was a good story. So I thought, my gosh, how am I gonna find a real editor? And this is a lot of people's question: how do I find an editor? How do I find an editor? And it's hard because I don't know the answer to that. The way that I found an editor is truly divine intervention. Let me tell you what happened. Crazy random story. I was at a yard sale in Ventura. Ventura is a town south of Santa Barbara. And I picked up this book called Writing Your Life Story. The author is Bill Roebach. I will link it in my comments. I read that book from cover to cover, and it was so So helpful to me, this book. So I highly recommend reading this book if you're wanting to write a memoir. I remembered that book when I was looking for an editor and I thought, okay, Bill Roebach. I'd found his website and I emailed him. So again, you know from my other episodes, I do things like this. I just, I'm gonna go for it. I'm gonna ask him, what's the worst that he can do? Say no. Well, it's kind of funny because I didn't know all the details. Now he wrote Writing Your Life Story. I don't know. Let's say it was in the eighties or the nineties. It was an old book. And I didn't really think about that. And so at the time that I had written him this email, that book was old. And Bill had actually had A lot of success in his writing. He's a New York Times bestselling author. I think he's also sold rights to his books, to HBO and things like this. I mean, successful. I didn't look any of that up. I just looked up Bill Robach. I found his website. I sent him an email and he was so gracious. Number one, a lot of authors, after that much success, they're not gonna even reply to you. They they don't have the time, they don't want to, they don't need to. So not only did he reply to me, he said something encouraging to me. Doesn't take a lot for me. I just need one little sentence of encouragement and I'm good. So he replied, he told me something encouraging, and he connected me with the person that I call my soulmate editor. And so when I emailed him, he replied and graciously said, Well, I don't have the time these days. to do any editing because I'd asked him to be my editor because I think on his old website it said that he had done that. Well at that point, of course he's not editing anymore. He doesn't need to. He's working on other projects of his own. But he was so gracious and he said, At this point I'm so sorry, I don't have any time to take on any editing projects. But I really like the information that you shared with me about your book. I really like the title. And he said, I think I have the perfect editor for you. In fact, it's an editor that I've worked with myself. And she has a master's degree from UT and Creative Writing. She actually has some personal experience with the content of your book. And I think she would be perfect for you. And sure enough, he connected me with Kristen and for Cowboy Dad, she truly was my soulmate editor. Not only is she an excellent editor, but she's an excellent writer, two different skills. She has the educational background, but she actually has the talent. But she also is a teacher of creative writing. Again, a third skill. So she's a writer and editor and a teacher of creative. Creative writing. And so every time I got an email back from her regarding edits, she was also teaching me, not just saying change this, do that. She was prompting me in ways that made me a better writer, just really crafting my sentences. And it was so lovely. That's what I'm talking about right there, the passion. That's passion. I loved it. The other thing that Bill did for me is I thought, well my gosh, this guy is being so gracious and so nice. I'm struggling a little bit with my subtitle. I'm gonna just ask him what he thinks. So I said, Well, it's Cowboy Dad, and I'm glad that you like the title, but I think I need a subtitle so people know what the book is about. And I'm really kind of struggling with that, and I think I'm overthinking that. And he replied back and he said, the subtitle should be Love, Alcoholism. And a dying way of life. And that is my subtitle. And that was given to me by Bill Roebach, New York Times bestselling author. Amazing. And that is how I found my editor. Now, side note, remember, I lost my job, I had no income, healing from skin cancer, living in Wyoming in the wintertime with my mom. I was getting an unemployment check because, of course, I had earned that and through. the jobs that I did have. So I did have unemployment coming through. And that is what I used to pay my editor. I also find it interesting that that poem that I wrote in junior high titled Winter. And then I wrote my cowboy dad book in the dead of winter in Wyoming. Now let's talk about self-publishing. That's a big one. Kristen, having worked with quote unquote real authors, meaning published by the big publishing houses, said to me, You have got to submit query letters to see if this can get published through the big publishing houses because I have worked with other writers with books that aren't as good as this and they have been published. I understood where she was coming from. I also wanted that. Who doesn't want that? But I also knew enough about the industry to know that there are piles and piles and piles of manuscripts sitting on editors' desks that never get looked at. In the world of writing and publishing, I was a nobody. So I didn't have an agent. I didn't have somebody who could make connections for me. And so I said, okay, let's I'll I'll make you a deal. For a year I will send query letters, as many as I can, to try to get somebody to publish this book. But if I don't hear back from anybody, Then I'm not going to keep trying. I'm gonna self publish it because this story needs to be shared with people and I don't want it to be sitting on somebody's desk. I was very confident in that. Of course, that's what happened. I got rejection after rejection after rejection for Cowboy Dad. A lot of times I didn't even hear back because I didn't have an agent. So I went the self publishing route. Now, the self-publishing route, you've got to be really careful of because back in the day, and I'm talking Pre two thousand, self-publishing the credibility for it was not good. And that's because, well, anybody can self-publish. I want to be an author. I want to be an author. So people write a story or a poem or whatever, and you just have it printed and all of a sudden, you know, you're an author. So self publishing did not have a good reputation. But I knew that I had the tool to deal with that. And that was a good editor. Somebody who was going to help me polish an already beautiful, great story. So I went the route of self publishing. Now, side note, in the world of self publishing, there is this thing called vanity publishing. So basically if you are Googling self publishing. All the companies that come up in that search are gonna be what we call vanity publishing. These are companies that say, well, for only twenty five hundred dollars or fifty five hundred dollars or whatever it is, it's a lot of money. For only X amount of dollars, we will Do your copyright for you. We will design your book cover. We will format the book for you. We will do the ISBN and we can even do editing services for you for an extra amount of money. Vanity Publishing is a ripoff for the most part, but you can see why people are drawn to it. Because for people who want to be an author, they really don't well gosh, how How do I get an ISBN? How do I do a trademark or copyright? How do I format a book? What how am I gonna get somebody to do the cover? I mean, it's a little overwhelming. But when you do some research, it's actually very doable on your own. I'll get to that. But you can see why vanity publishing is attractive. And so these companies say, you know, for X amount of money, we will do all of that for you. You don't need to worry about it. And that includes five hundred books or whatever. I had recently read or heard about a book called Ape, or it was an acronym for author, publisher, entrepreneur. Now I have the craziest side note story with this. The author of Ape, author, publisher, entrepreneur, is a guy named Guy Kawasaki. Guy Kawasaki, Japanese American. If I remember correctly, he was the VP of Apple. was Steve Jobs. Okay, so this guy, Guy Kawasaki, brilliant, techie, and also entrepreneur. Well, when I was an aesthetician instructor, I would always hand out an article to my students at the very beginning of the semester. And it was an article written by Guy Kawasaki on public speaking. And he gave these great tips on public speaking. Well, in my class assignments for the aestheticians, oftentimes they would have to get up in front of the class and speak. And so I wanted to share with them these tips on public speaking because most of them had never done that before and were freaking out about it. Now on this article that I printed out every semester was a little headshot of Guy Kawasaki. So I knew what he looked like and I saw his headshot every semester I printed out that article. Not only was he an entrepreneur and writing about public speaking, but also about business and all kinds of things. Well, he was a big time guru in self-publishing. So he wrote this book called Ape. So I had heard about this book and I wanted to get it, but I hadn't gotten it yet. I knew that I did not want to go with vanity publishing, but I was like, well How am I gonna do this? I don't know where to get an ISBN. I don't know how to format a book, blah, blah, blah. So get this. I was at a rodeo in Santa Barbara, Fiesta. It's a thing every year in August in Santa Barbara. It's a very specific audience that goes. And then a lot of people are like, I don't go to the rodeo. Well, of course, given who my dad was, I'd always gone to Fiesta and it's thousands of people at Earl Warren Showgrounds for this Fiesta Rodeo. I had already written the book and just doing this research on self-publishing. So here I am in the stands at the rodeo with a group of friends. Thousands of people and I look across several hundred feet okay several hundred feet and I see a face That looks very familiar. I mean, this is hysterical. Very familiar. And here I am among my friends. None of them are writers. None of them know, like, you know, my favorite authors or anything like that. And I go, my God, it's Guy Kawasaki. So my friends go, Who? I said, my God, it's Guy Kawasaki. I mean, here's this Japanese American man in the midst of this crowd. I saw him. you know, several rows away, I said, I I got I gotta go, I gotta go talk to him. I am walking through the crowds and I'm getting to him and I tap him on his shoulder and he turns around. I said, I'm so sorry for bothering you, but this is gonna sound so crazy. But are you Guy Kawasaki? And he got this big smile on his face and he kind of giggled a little bit and he goes, Yeah. I can't believe you recognize me at a rodeo. And I go, my gosh, my gosh, I knew it was you. I kind of, you know, did the star struck thing. And I said, I have been wanting to get your book because I'm gonna self-publish. And he said, Okay, well, I I can get it for you. And I was so excited. And then he looks at me and he goes, Hey, by the way, is this your first rodeo? It was this funny moment where we both laughed. And I said, actually, it's not my first rodeo. The book, actually, that I want to self publish is called Cowboy Dad. I grew up going to rodeos. And he just got this smile on his face. He goes, I'll be damned. And this was something that my dad always said. And it was this moment of divine intervention. There was no denying it. And he said, Okay. Give me your information. I'm gonna text my assistant. She's gonna email you the link to the book. You don't have to buy it. I couldn't believe it. And then because he's a techie, right? And he he used to work for Apple and he's like, my god. So then he kinda geeked out on his phone. He said, my my gosh, by the way, look at my new look at my new iPhone. And this was like in two thousand fifteen, I think. Look at my new iPhone. Look at my new iPhone. Let's take, let's take a selfie together. So I'll have to post it. I have a selfie with Guy Kawasaki, the author of Ape. He said, By the way, this is my first rodeo, and I can't believe you recognized me. This is how I came to understand self publishing. I listened to that book. I wrote down all the notes. It tells you step by step how to do everything that you need to. Free. You don't have to pay Vanity Publishing. It's print on demand. He talks about going through Amazon, which is print on demand through Amazon. And it's K it's called KDP. Again, I'll link all of this in the comments. And that is how I self published and how I continue to self publish. Now, again, do I want to be published by one of the big publishing houses? Of course. As a writer, that's the dream. Cause then you have a marketing machine behind you, although the marketing machine is not what it used to be. But still, it is a status thing. Of course I would love that. But just looking at what you make on a book when you self-publish versus the publishing house, if I sell my book for ten dollars, it costs me, I want to say two to three dollars to print. So I'm making six to seven dollars per book. You're making like $2 a book if if it's published by a big publishing house. Now, again, it's still different, as you know, because it's volume and they're going to be selling thousands and thousands and thousands of copies versus self-published. I'm selling, you know, copies in my store. Now, mind you, I've done a pretty good job of selling lots of copies the last 11 years. And I've done a good job for being a quote unquote nobody as far as in the writing world, but that is self-publishing. And that's just the tip of the iceberg as far as the information was self-publishing, but you get where I'm coming from. So after it was self-published and I did a book signing at Chaucer's that was extremely successful, had some articles written about Cowboy Dad. It was mentioned in Santa Barbara magazine and Santa Barbara Independent. And so it was it was successful. Then I started selling my book at the farmers markets. And there was another incident that happened that really really stuck with me. Now, again, keep in mind, here I am, the Lavender Lady at that point. I had already quit my day job and I was selling my lavender, making a living and growing my business, but this was a way that I could get my book out there. If you can picture, I was in Montecito. Montecito is where a lot of the celebrities live and producers and directors and authors. And I had a customer who bought lavender from me. And like all of my customers, she, my gosh, I love your lavender. I love this. I love that. And I love getting bundles from you. And one day she saw Cowboy Dad and she said, Well, what is this? And I told her, she bought a copy. She said, Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna take it home and read it. She said, you know, my neighbor is so and so and I said, Well You know, if you like it and you want to share it with somebody, please do. And that's what I'd learned to say because you just never know, but oftentimes it doesn't lead anywhere. But this lady came back the next week when I was in Montecito at the early morning, 7 AM Friday morning farmers market. Now again, this lady was always so excited about my lavender. This time was different. She came to my table and She looked at me kind of funny. Now, if you can imagine the setup at the farmers markets, we all pull in our cars. We open up the back of our cars. This is before I had my lavender van. So I had my Honda CRV. I think it was a 2008 Honda CRV. And people would open up the back of their vehicles and then you would set up your table. So in my case, it was set up the table, put out the lavender bundles and all the lavender stuff that I'm selling. She came back to my table and she said, I wanted to come back and tell you that I read your book. Now I could tell by the look on her face that she loved the book. And she said, I wanted to tell you I read the book and it was amazing. And then she paused and she looked behind me at my car. She kind of looked at my car. And then she kind of looked around at my table at all the lavender that she usually dotes over. And she said, I just have to ask you after reading your book, why are you selling lavender? Now I tell that story to people and some people go, my gosh, how rude. I didn't think it was rude at all. It spoke to my heart. It spoke to my passion. I felt seen. And she said, I'm gonna share it with so and so and they know this producer and that producer. Nothing ever came of it. It it often doesn't in Montecito or Santa Barbara. you get closer than a lot of people, but oftentimes it just doesn't. It it really all the stars have to align. Okay. But I tell you that because she could see the lavender and how lovely it is and how wonderful it is. But once she read my book, she saw that is your real talent. That is your real passion is writing. Now it is kind of funny also because you know she does live in a different world. I mean, why do I sell lavender? Because I needed to make a living. I mean, you know, it's like I live in a different world than she does, right? It's like and I said that carefully. I said, well, you know, this is my job and this is what I'm doing so that I can continue to write. But in her mind, it's like, why are you selling lavender? You should be writing. Like, well, I I sell lavender because if I need to make a living and this is how I my bills, but I loved it. And I'd had another person who said something similar to me when I had my full-time job. I was working in mental health and it was during COVID. And they said if I didn't get the vaccine that they would fire me. And I quit. And that's when I became full-time at the farmers markets. But the CFO at that company, who I was actually very good friends with, something very similar happened. And we would always have these chats in the morning. I would show up at the office and I was managing a team of school-based therapists and I was very good at what I did. Was I passionate about it? No. But I was very good at it and I enjoyed it. And I had a great relationship with a therapist that I was managing. And so the CFO acknowledged this. She said, You're so good at what you're doing. You're you're such a great manager. you know, I wish that you would apply for such and such jobs so that you could get a promotion here. Have you thought about that? And I said to her, I have and I'm actually not going to because I like where I'm at and I like having enough time to work on my writing. So I shared with her about my book and my writing. So we got to talking about Cowboy Dad. She said, well, okay. Yeah, I I would love to read it. This was after she for a week said, This is what you should be doing as a manager, mental health. You're so good at it. You're gonna move up in the company. Do it, do it, do it. I gave her a copy of Cowboy Dad. She came back the next morning and she looked exhausted. And she said, Well, I'm exhausted. I said, Yeah, did you sleep at all last night? What's going on? And she said, I didn't get to bed till 3 a.m. I started reading your book and I couldn't put it down. And she said, I get it. I get it why you don't want to continue on the path of working in positions here. You're good at it, but I get it now. And again, I felt Seen and heard and acknowledged. So beautiful. So that is my passion. Writing. I am a lover of words and sentences and stories, and I love hearing a good story. So I teased you a little bit about a surprise that I want to share with you. And it is this. When I lived in Santa Barbara and people would read Cowboy Dad, I often heard from people saying, This is a movie. This is definitely a movie. And of course that had become a dream of mine, not only to become a New York Times bestseller, that is a dream, but also to see Cowboy Dad as a movie. And then I kept hearing that more and more. And then people would say, Well, you need to adapt it into screenplay. And I would say, Well, I'm not a screenwriter. I don't know how to do that. And oftentimes people would say, it's easy. If you can write a memoir like this, you can definitely write a screenplay. And I always just said, no, I just I don't really have the time to learn a new skill. It's just not, it's not really in my wheelhouse. I can't do it. And so my goal was to find somebody, you know, in the industry, maybe at the farmer's market that I'd happen to meet, a producer or director, and they would say, my gosh, we know a screenwriter and let's do this. That was what I thought my dream was. Until I moved to Texas. And I met somebody. Who is in the business? She is a producer, a director, a screenwriter, having lived once upon a time in LA and now has her own production company in Austin. And so I connected with her regarding Cowboy Dad. And she had encouraged me in the same way. And I said the same thing. I don't want to write the screenplay. I don't know how. I don't have the time. And she said something to me that nobody else had said to me before. And she said, if you don't adapt it and somebody else does, who's going to get the award? For example, who's going to get the Oscar for best screenplay adaptation? And I thought, my gosh. She said, it's not going to be you. The author of the original story. It's not going be you. It's going to be the person that adapted it. She said, I will mentor you. I will teach you. But I really think you need to be the one to write it. And so there it there it is. And I've been working on adapting Cowboy Dad for a year and a half with the mentoring of this amazing woman. Her name is Kat. And I'll share more about her and about the process of the adaptation, which is a whole other thing. But it has been so fun and so challenging. And I love it. It is definitely a different skill, different type of writing. But that is the surprise. And My goal is twenty twenty nine. That might be too soon, but there's a reason that I have in my heart and mind 2029. But that is the surprise that Cowboy Dad has been adapted into screenplay by me and we are just going through it with a ton of edits. I mean, over and over and over again. So my question to you after hearing that is what is your passion? Do you have a story to tell? Are you going to be writing a story? Are you going to be self-publishing? Thank you so much for listening to Side Note with Melissa. If these stories resonated with you, please share this episode with a friend. Don't forget to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube, and feel free to leave a comment. You can also follow and connect on my Instagrams, Side Note with Melissa or June Bloom Lavender. And I hope my crazy convoluted stories made you laugh, smile, and even reflect on your own chapters. This podcast is brought to you by June Bloom Lavender, a lavender speakeasy in the Texas Hill Country. June Bloom specializes in handcrafted lavender gifts and a premium skincare line made with lavender harvested each summer by owner Melissa Broughton, that's me, in Santa Barbara County, California.