Hello and Welcome!

Hello and welcome to The Calm In Storm blog.

Calm In Storm came about because the publisher that was going to publish my first book went out of business. As the journey to that point of finding a publisher had taken many years, I decided that I was going to self- publish my  first book- The Magic that's Ours. Due to circumstances that you will read about later, I wrote and self- published a follow on book - The Power that's Ours. Calm In Storm was formed and registered as a publishing company with this site being a part of it.

Many people have asked me about the process of self publishing and through this blog I will tell you of my journey up until this forever moving point. Please feel free to send through comments and I will try my best to follow up on any inquiries. 

I hope you enjoy the story...

To start with is my talk from the official launch of The Power that's Ours held in Cape Town on the 14th March.

As I felt like someone at the Oscar Ceremonies, but wasn’t, the “Thank You’s” are included.....but not too many...

Good morning to you all

Thank you for coming to the launch of my book- TPTO

As most of you know TPTO is self published and there have been many people who were involved in helping me get it out there.

Unfortunately the list is too long to mention all individually, but thank you to everyone

involved.

I would however like to thank Wordsworth, for endorsing this book and allowing

me the use of their store for my launch.

To Young Amy Falconer who was one of the important reviewers of the final manuscript. And I’m happy to announce that Amy has kindly agreed to read from TPTO a little later.

And to Robin Malan. Thanks for being the guest speaker at my launch. And for those of you who don’t know, Robin is a very established author and more importantly advocates tirelessly anything to do with children’s book writing, illustrating, publishing and reading. South Africa needs more like you...

The Power that’s Ours is the follow on to my first book The Magic that’s Ours. Using the same characters as the first book, TPTO introduces children aged 11 upwards to the concepts of Goal setting, visualisation and Affirmation. These concepts can work in funny ways… and I’m going to tell you a story.

Initially when I had a publisher for TMTO, their one concern was that they thought the story was a bit thin and needed more chapters. So I sat down and wrote 4 more, all of which touched on goal setting, visualisation and affirmation.

The publisher loved the newer version, the final manuscript was agreed upon and the contracts signed.

You can only imagine my feeling of pride and sense of achievement. I was about to become a published author.

Life was fantastic!

A few weeks later just as I was about to send the final manuscript and illustrations up to JHB, the publisher phoned to tell me that they were going out of business and that they could no longer publish the book.

In one brief phone call my reality shifted to the depths of despair. I had come so close to realising a dream that I could taste it. And now it was not to be...!

For days, I wandered around in my head.

Why me..?

What have I done to deserve this..?

Why is life so un-fair..?

In those few days of absolute despondency I think I reached a whole new level of how much one can feel sorry for oneself. It seemed as if the world hated me.

But for many years I’d been an active goal setter. I’d done the courses, read the books and listened to the tapes. I was even writing about the stuff. It was then that I realised it was time to quit feeling sorry for myself and actually trust and put into practice what I was writing about. Goal setting, visualisation and affirmation. So I set a big goal for myself - to self publish my book.

After getting feedback from friends, teachers and librarians I decided that TMTO would go back to its original length and if all went well I’d use the added chapters another time.

A funny thing this goal setting stuff !

At a time when all seemed lost, and I had lost my publisher, I set a goal of publishing one book and here I am with my second one.

If you have a dream, belief, passion and a plan, the universe will conspire to help.

I’m sure you’ve heard of or seen the movie Slumdog Millionaire. Well the producer Christian Colson said this, “We had passion and we had belief, and if you have those two things, truly anything is possible.

Jake White, Coach of the world cup winning Springboks said: “We spent four seasons planning, preparing and visualising winning the Webb Ellis Trophy”

Combine what Jake White says with that passion and belief, then surely anything is possible.

Through my experience of publishing my first book I’ve come to understand the power of these concepts and I only wish that I’d learnt about them so much earlier. That is why I‘ve written this book for children. Because I know if I’d learnt about this sooner, my life would have been fuller and richer.

What is important about TPTO is that it is written as a story with the emphasis on having fun. I’m not going to go into it now because you’re all going to buy it and read it soon. The goal setting activities are an add on so the book can either be read as a story enjoying the adventures of Joel, Jina and Magic or it can be used as a work book putting into practice that what Magic teaches the siblings. Either way what I hope to accomplish with this book is to show young people that goal setting doesn’t have to be this huge task that is no fun at all.

I don’t know if writing about and publishing a book makes me an expert on the subject, but then again the so called experts once thought the world was flat so I’m not too attached to being one. What I do know is that we all set goals, constantly. It might be a small goal like to mow the lawn tomorrow or clean out the garage. Or it might be a more realistic goal of booking a holiday or buying a house. Sometimes we just think about them, and sometimes we actually take the time to write them down and plan them. But if we take a moment to look back on our lives, haven’t we all achieved pretty much what we set out to?

Among others, I had a goal of self publishing one book. At the time, for me this was huge, and just like Rob Zipplies, the author of bending the curve, likened the publishing of his book to that of child birth. I now feel like I’m the proud parent, of two books. Even though at times it did feel like I was birthing twin bowling balls. But as I stand here with my new addition in my hands, the slight bumps and small deviations that occurred along the way are fast becoming long distant memories. Achieving this goal, and this launch is only a part of it, has made me more courageous for my next goal, whatever that may be.

I sincerely hope that the readers of this book will understand that we do have the power to achieve what we set out to. And as they achieve their goals, either big or small their self belief, continues to grow. Because once we have harnessed that-self belief- there can be no stopping us.

Someone was once asked to define happiness. Their response was that happiness is the feeling one feels when achieving a pre-set goal. If this is true then the two times I have felt the happiest is, firstly, when I was presented with the copy of The Magic that’s Ours, and the second time is today.

Thank you for being here today and sharing this moment with me. And now it is with great pleasure that I’m able to introduce Amy Falconer to read from The Power that’s Ours.

ENJOY!