I have always had two passions deep within me, the passion to teach and the passion to write. For so many years, I have fuelled the fires to teach and let the fires to write flicker and slowly be dampened. I love teaching but it takes an enormous amount of time and effort to do well. So, for many years, I have been directing the majority of my creative efforts towards teaching even though there were stories deep inside me that were crying out to be written. I kept promising myself that someday I would find the time to write, but I always found good reasons to put that time off to some distant future.

I, sometimes, think I would have felt a greater incentive to carve out the time to write if I had seen writing as a way to escape from the daily grind of life. Alas, I love my life. I wake up every day excited to go to work - after all, I get paid for discussing literature and films with other people. What could be better than that? It took me many years to discover the answer to that question.

Sometimes, being so content in one’s life can be a definite impediment to change. I always knew that I could make a comfortable living teaching at the University of Manitoba and satisfy my need for change by continually creating new courses and teaching in different faculties. That took away the possibility of change occurring as a result of a negative situation in my life. Thus, I had to find a positive reason to make a change in my life, to become the writer that I had always known I was.

Eventually, I realized the sand in the oyster did not have to be an irritant but could be an enhancer; the sand could represent potential, the desire to create something better in my life. The hard part now is trying to find the balance between the need to make a living and the desire to satisfy all of my innermost passions. I still want to teach as it is a huge part of who I am, but I also want to send my stories out there for the world to read. That, of course, means I am going to have to carve out the time in my life to write them. So, this year, I have made the choice to cut down on my teaching load and use that additional precious gift of time to make changes in my life and resurrect the author within.

It takes courage to make a change when you have fallen in a rut that is comfortable and makes you content. However, I did find the answer to my question, what could be better than getting paid to discuss literature and films with other people? The answer is when the literature being discussed is something you have written.

Last fall, I finally published my first indie e-novel Resurrecting Cybele, which is about a woman who is unhappy in her life and makes the decision to recreate her reality in order to resurrect her life. As I now put on my publicist hat, I hope you will indulge me as I pitch Resurrecting Cybele to all my potential readers out there.

Once upon a time there was a female graduate student named Cybele who was extremely frustrated because she had not found her true passion in life. Every day, she thought of fun and interesting ways to make money and have a more exciting life. One day, she decided to resurrect an ancient Mother Goddess cult with herself as the High Priestess of her own religion. Because of that, she got suspected of being an eco-terrorist and being investigated by the Winnipeg Police Service. Because of that, her best friend decided to re-enact an apocalyptic ending to her cult in order to get rid of any evidence tying the cult to eco-terrorism. Until finally, Cybele was forced to confront her best friend and betray him too in order to save herself.

I hope you love reading Resurrecting Cybele as much as I loved writing it.