#TBT: The Summer of '79

In 1979, we had moved (again) to a new neighborhood where I knew not a soul. I spent most of that summer, holed up in my room, enjoying a life-changing Christmas gift, my Bert & Ernie radio.

That was the summer I discovered my own music. It sounded nothing like the Hee-Haw 1970s Country/Western stuff my parents listened to. It was there I got introduced to Rod The Bod:



It was where I started to sing about Bad Girls...



I also learned how to rock...



I found Blondie...



And of course... it was where I first heard and loved Journey.



Every Saturday after cartoons were over...





And I had my fill of Sid and Marty Krofft...



And, of course, American Bandstand...



I would retire to my pink paradise of a bedroom, turn up America's Top 40 and lose myself with my toys. Over the course of my childhood, I had collected a few favorites. One was my Fisher-Price Little People house...

Along with the Fisher-Price Little People village...

And my McDonalds playset...

With these toys, I could create an entire world. And it was kinda the best thing ever.

Now, whether it was the fact that I was regularly watching General Hospital by 1979...



Or the sexy new rock-n-roll (devil's music) I was indulging, or the fact that I had been exposed to things well beyond my young years by the grand ol' age of nine, I had no real interest in telling fairy tales.

(Still don't.)

The stories that compelled me were the ones that colored outside the lines of my 1970s, conservative, religious, southern background. Instead... I wanted to mix things up a bit.

This girl....

...decided to tell stories that involved interracial relationships, teen runaways and *gasp* living in sin.

If you are familiar with my writing, this will come as NO surprise. If you're new to my writing, this serves as a broad warning of what you're in for.

During the summer of 1979, my pig-tailed redheaded LP ran away from her nice, Suburban home and family to live with her African-American boyfriend in the city. In telling this story, I sympathized with that teen character. She fell in love and wanted to live a life of her own, free from the shackles of her conservative family.

That, in a nutshell, is what THIS redheaded, pigtailed girl grew up to do.

This is how I look at the world. Even back then, I didn't care that the Willis' were a mixed-race couple. I didn't bat an eye when Jodie dated men on Soap.

To me, it wasn't odd or icky, it was just different.

And I find different fascinating.

In fact, the more people want to throw shade at things that are different, the more I want to play around with the "why." Why do we, as a society, decide that our expectations of how others should live supersede the happiness of an individual who is living exactly the way they want? It's the fence around anyone who dares to march to the beat of their own drum, and even at 9, I knew that was the kind of person I wanted to be.

So I've been rattling cages for a LONG, LONG time.

Nothing has thrilled me more in my life than fucking with expectations. If it is forbidden, for no other reason than a group of people has decided that it should be (i.e., it harms no one, just makes people who are different uncomfortable), then I want to splash around in those waters. And I kinda really don't care who I get wet in the process.

When talking with my BFF earlier this week, talking about these early stories that were there WAY before I even knew I had any kind of affinity to write them down, I immediately wanted to share this on the blog. The most common question I'm asked as an author is, "When did you decide to become a writer?"

The truth of the matter is I made no such decision. I was born a storyteller (and hell-raiser) and simply learned the skills that would best serve that inner calling.

Thanks to all of YOU I am privileged to do this for a living, which is mind-BOGGLING and quite humbling. That girl is a lot older now, and her entire existence is playing with mental toys to create fictional worlds that hopefully - if I'm doing my job right - will help people who are different have a voice, and people who are new to different learn that these things aren't really all that different after all.

Every story has the capacity to be beautiful. And everyone gets to define their happily ever after. These are the only rules I follow.

Thanks to all of you, I can spread this message on a much grander scale that I could have ever imagined way back in 1979.

In honor of this musical #TBT, your featured freebie for the week is GROUPIE, which Maryse, of Maryse's Book Blog, called a "FANTASTIC frenzy inducer!!!!!"

Pick up your copy of GROUPIE, the first book of my first published trilogy, on Amazon, B&N, iTunes, Kobo, or Smashwords.

See you next week, when we'll talk a bit about my scandalous Barbies. ;)