Victoria Chames

ALLi Author Member

When I was very young, I was drowning in a lonely marriage and not brave enough to break away. I began to write poetry in secret. It was not very good, but what I wrote began to show me who I was. It was not who I wanted to be.
Rumi said "When the knife reaches bone, the life must change."

Since then I've been a wanderer, a seeker, a flower-child, a thinker, dreamer, fashion model (for a minute) photographer, teacher, firefighter for 8 yearss and emergency medical hospital E.R Tech and field caregiver for 20. None of those things defined me, but they expressed who I was for a while. They set the challenges of the hour and marked the places on the path. They were how I learned things.

I had loved to write as soon as I learned how to read at age six, totally wowed with words, how you could make pictures and stories out of them. I collected them like seashells, I wrote them down in little notebooks. I decided, "When I grow up I'm going to be a writer and write books." (I also wanted to be a jockey and ride racehorses.)

I grew up, went to college, got married and handed over my life to someone else and then spent four and a half years supporting him through graduate school. We were both artisits, but I was the woman, so of course I gave up my career goals for his.

When my husband was finally thru school and got his first teaching joband I was sure he could make it on his own, I got a divorce and set out to find a life of my own, beyond the shadowy periphery of his. That life became a zig-zag path. I had adventures, I made mistake. After 30+ years and several careers, I finally made the commitment to writing, with decades of stories to tell, and that's where I am now.

Through the hardest times, in the dark nights of the soul, I turned to the empty page when there was noplace else to go and no one else to tell. I wrote poetry in secret. In the times so lost that I could not even speak, I wrote, and what I wrote began to tell me who I was. It was not who I wanted to be. To the empty page I poured out my loneliness, my regret, my despair at the life I had made, and my fragile hopes for something more. Poetry was my refuge, my therapy, my one true mirror, my small voice singing in the silence, and ultimately, my salvation.
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I've written and published essays and creative nonfiction narrative. A book of poetry titled: A Space Between Rains: Poems About Endings and Beginnings, and two books of essays: More About This: Metaphysical Thoughts and Questions of the Heart. And INCHWORMS: Poems, Sketches, and Storiies.

Now working on a literary memoir that has become more than I expected. I took an immense leap of faith and absurd bravery to write and publish it as a Trilogy. The first book has been published: Victory Is My Name, Book One: The Burning Barrel.
(Paperback 978-0-9841730-9-9 and Ebook 978-0-9841730-4-4.

You are welcome to vist my WriterBlog, http://w2w.victoriachames.com or http://northberkeleywriters.wordpress.com
or my personal "essays-about-everything" blog: moreaboutthis.wordpress.com

I'm seeking Beta readers for the first draft of Victory Book 2. Your feedback is also welcomed on Book One. Readit free, as my gift, at
http://www.darkhorsepress.com/betareaders.html
Click "download" for the Ebook.

Thank you sincerely, Victoria C.