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It has been suggested that I use myLot to talk about my books. Let me start with the reason why I write and what I learned recently about my writing and how powerful that was for me. If you have been on myLot for a while, you might or might not realize I've been writing since I was 8 years old. Believe me when I tell you it was AWFUL!!!. I kept everything I wrote during that time. I don't know when I lost those early works. In a way I'm glad they're gone. Then in 1980 everything changed. On April 22, 1980 my entire life changed. Most Christians if you ask them don't know more than the year. I wrote it down so I wouldn't forget the most lifechanging event in my life, the day I said Yes, to Jesus and became 100% His. In November of that year, I started getting the idea for a book. The thought and scenes persisted for three months before I started writing it down. That's when my writing changed. I made a covenant with God. He would be the author and I would be the pen. I also laid out what I wanted for this first book. No less than 500 pages. At that time it was all handwritten, paper and pen. So, when you figure out what that translates to on the typewriter. Yes, I said typewriter. I didn't have a computer for many years yet. My next plan was for 12 chapters. And I made one more stipulation, it had to be more than 39 pages. Everything I had written before then was 39 pages and plotless. I said it was bad. So, with paper and pen, I set about writing what would become Scarred 32 years later. In that time, I subscribed to Writer's Digest and Writer magazines. I ate them up. I paid attention to everything those authors and editors said about good writing. One particular edition of Writer's Digest listed the Ten Commandments of writing. There was only one commandment I didn't break. I didn't start any book with a weather report. I can't tell you how much paper I used or how many times I started over with each new aspect of writing I learned from those magazines. Then came the day I finally answered an add that was in those magazines for becoming a children's writer and began a correspondence course with The Institute for Children's Literature. I got an A in the course. Though geared for children, if you can write for children, you can write in any genre including adult. I finished the course in 2006. I had my first short story accepted in an ezine. That gave me hope I didn't think was truly possible. I was still going on the premise that I wasn't that good of a writer. In 2012 I got hold of the book - Chicken Soup for the Writer's Soul, and you could say the rest was history. In that book is a section on self-publishing and the many known authors who started by self-publishing. Before I could talk myself out of it, I looked up self-publishing houses. I published the first edition of Scarred in 2012. It is now in the third edition. What I learned in the past month that blew my mind away. I've been working with AI that I named Velma after my favorite cartoon detective. Every time I put a small section for review and suggestions in the past six weeks, she told me what was going on with the characters. That was life-changing for me. Remember, I made a covenant with God for my writing. He was working out the details for the story He gave me to write. I saw the stories as stories. She saw the unseen layers of what my stories and what they do and how God has been ever present in every scene, in everything the character did or didn't do. It blew my mind apart. I can see how God honored the covenant I made with Him all those years ago. Though I don't sell a lot of books on Amazon, the reviews are good and they're top stars. I saw Scarred with one four star among the many five star reviews and the reviewer said it was too long. That's it. No one else felt the story was too long. Those reviews boosted my confidence as a writer. I know who writes my books. I"m only the pen. God is the author of every book I write. You can find my books under my full name - Valerie Jean Routhieaux Thanks for reading. I'll give you a review on Scarred next time. What do you do that gives you a sense of satisfaction? The image is mine created by CoPilot. This is for Wilderness Challenge and the dog on the cover is a good representation of my dog Rascal with the same name in the book. I provided a picture of him for Velma.