Nothing is more beautiful than a smile on loved ones’ faces.
Biography: I was born in West Ukraine in 1959. I
grew up on a farm in a village nestled in the beautiful Carpathian Mountains.
As a child, I was surrounded by nature and the real world, without TV and toys.
I learned to read by the age of four, and books then became a huge part of my
life.
In my country
at this time, the post–World War II recovery was still in progress, and very
often, as a child of the ’60s, I ran after the truck delivering bread. The ice
cream truck did not exist in my part of the world.
To escape the
harsh reality of everyday hard farm labor, I created my own imaginary world
populated with characters from books. Once you enter the world of books, you
can be everywhere and everyone; you just have to imagine it.
I learned
very quickly that there was only one way out of the life I was born into:
education. Everything else can be taken away from you, but education will stay
with you forever. It is your investment for life. I studied hard, and at age of
16 I finished high school near the top of my class and entered business college.
I immigrated
to the United States in 1992 with my two small daughters. Not knowing the
English language and not having children’s books to read, I created my own
stories. At bedtime, I told those stories to my children. Unfortunately, we did
not write them down, and they disappeared from our memories.
I worked in
my own bakery for many years in Smithville, New Jersey, and recently retired. I
speak a few languages fluently, but was always terrified to write in English.
However, I love to write, so last year I decided to learn how to write in
English. I decided not to take any courses or go back to school. I did it fast,
like a surgeon—painful but curing.
Everything
happened at the same time: learning computer, typing, and writing in English.
One morning, I opened my daughter’s old computer and with two fingers started
to type my first children’s story. It was fun, mixed with frustration and
fright.
“What language are you writing in,
honey?” my husband asked one evening.
“English, I guess,” I answered
proudly. He read the first sentence and smiled, and then he began to correct my
written pages.
“Keep going, the story makes me
laugh.” He encouraged me day after day. Sweating over every sentence, many days
later, I finally got somewhere. I was able to send my first email to my
daughters, and for the first time, they did not call me to ask what I meant.
They understood every word I wrote.
It was a struggle at first, but I
found that learning to write in English was very rewarding, almost therapeutic.
It consumed all my bad energy and made me reconnect with my soul and my family.
We worked as a team, with me writing
and my family making corrections. They were the worst critics I had ever
faced. With the help of my husband and my daughters, I overcame my fears,
and while practicing English wrote a few children’s stories. Those close
to me encouraged me to publish some of them, and now you can be the judge.
The Mysterious
Life Inside a Closet, Carlo the Mouse, Book 2:Now We’re Talking!,
Carlo the Mouse, Book 3: What’s Going
On?, That Is How Things Are (two stories) The Autumn Wind and The Kitten and the Sparrow, and
three stories Who Is Most Important
in the Fridge will be published in 2016-2017. I am working on several new books for children, including more
adventures starring Carlo the Mouse
series, and my new short story A Taste of Bread.
All my published books are available
on Amazon and Barnes
& Noble. They’re also available for most popular E-devices as E-books.
Please check them out on my website.
