Flower Child

Today we welcome author Sheila Deeth. She's going to chat with us about her new release, Flower Child. This is a very interesting story, so get comfortable, and we'll get right to it. Here's Sheila to tell us what her story's about.

Have you ever told someone you’re a “wannabe writer,” or worse, that you don’t really have a job? Friends would say to me, “You write, so you’re a writer,” but it never seemed that simple when it came to answering the question, “What do you do?” I got really brave though at a restaurant recently. “I’m a writer,” said I; then the questioner asked, “What do you write?” I told her I had an ebook coming out—my beloved Flower Child. And then she said, “What’s it about?” so I struggled to reply.

Of course I know what happens in Flower Child. I know it’s about… a mother who miscarries her first pregnancy and can’t quite let go of the memory. She feels like it’s disloyal to love her unborn child when she’s got a real child to care for—oh, and the real child couldn’t exist if the pregnancy hadn’t miscarried because… Luckily the lady asking was a) patient, and b) hungry, so she stayed at the table while we waited for desert.

But was that really what she wanted to know? It’s the topic of my book I guess, a starting point, an ordered (or slightly disordered) set of scenes. But a story’s surely more than just the sum of its events, just like being a writer’s more than creating shopping lists. Maybe she meant, “Why does your story matter?” rather than just, “What happens?” And maybe I should have spent longer thinking of answers before rushing to speak.

So now I’m touring the internet with Flower Child and asking myself, why does it matter? It matters to me because I wrote it of course—but I had to have a reason for setting it down. It matters, perhaps, because it explores a relationship I never quite resolved—the one between a mother and the child that might have been. It matters because it looks for answers to questions that run round my mind—do unborn babies really have souls? Can I mourn the child I never saw? And it matters because Angela’s quest for identity isn’t really so different from mine, or anyone else’s. We all want to know who we are, where we fit in, and why we’re here. We want ourselves to have some importance, to make a mark in the greater scheme of things, and for that to happen, we have to search inside ourselves and learn who’s behind the mask.

Angela wears the mask of someone who doesn’t believe she exists. Megan wears the mask of a mother who’s convinced she’s not good enough. I wear the mask of a writer sometimes, storyteller, Sunday school teacher, mother, daughter, wife… so many masks.

What’s Flower Child about? Identity, I think, which may well be the theme in quite a lot of my stories. It’s a tale of characters searching for truth behind their masks, for meaning, and for self. In the end, Flower Child’s about taking risks and stepping out into the world. It’s about realizing we don’t know it all, and accepting ourselves as less important, less wise, less perfect even, in order to find the truth that we’re more important than we think.

Thank you Sutton for inviting me to your blog. And I wish you the very best of luck with Christmas Holly in the 2012 EPIC Awards!  *blush* Awww, thanks, Sheila.

About Flower Child: When Megan miscarries her first pregnancy it feels like the end of everything; instead it’s the start of a curious relationship between the grieving mother and an unborn child who hovers somewhere between ghost and angel. Angela, Megan’s “little angel,” has character and dreams all her own, friends who may or may not be real angels, and a little brother who brings hope to her mother’s world. But Angela’s dream-world has a secret and one day Angela might learn how to be real.

Where to find Flower Child: http://gypsyshadow.com/SheilaDeeth.html#Flower

On Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Flower-Child-ebook/dp/B005PGMT4O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1317398482&sr=8-1

on Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/91467

About the author: Sheila Deeth grew up in the UK and has a Bachelors and Masters in mathematics from Cambridge University, England. Now living in the States with her husband and sons, she enjoys reading, writing, drawing, telling stories, running a local writers' group, and meeting her neighbors’ dogs on the green.

Sheila describes herself as a Mongrel Christian Mathematician. Her short stories, book reviews and articles can be found in VoiceCatcher 4, Murder on the Wind, Poetic Monthly, Nights and Weekends, the Shine Journal and Joyful Online. Besides her Gypsy Shadow ebooks, Sheila has several self-published works available from Amazon and Lulu, and a full-length novel under contract to come out next year.

Find her on her website: http://www.sheiladeeth.com

or find her books at: http://sheiladeeth.weebly.com

Thank you for spending time with us today, Sheila, and sharing your extraordinary story. We wish you much success with your book!