You can see in her picture that my guest blogger is a vivacious, contagiously enthusiastic patriot who is prepared to launch with a smile. M. J. Scott has a body of books published to inspire others, one of which (Sport’s Alien Fantasy) is a novel based on a wild road trip that she had in the 1980s. Her latest offering, Double Feature!, delivers two journals of advice, tribute and home-spun humor. First up is “Just Call Me Mom” which brings into intuitive focus what being a mother really means in our stressed and emotionally fragmented world. She follows that up in her hilarious account of life with a talking garment in “The Purple Bathrobe.” Author M. J. Scott (Marilyn) now delivers you a message and an offering from her latest book:

M. J. Scott, USA

My introduction to you as my audience is to ask, “Are you a reader?”
People race through life and forget that they were taught to figure out how to convert letters into word sounds as a beginning to visualizing the language of their speaking since the age of two. My own memory of this is the mental photograph of me on the upturned seat in a big classroom so far back that I couldn’t see the chalk board. My eyes were bad, but I got a paddling for not learning! That’s right, we have erasable boards and I- pads now and many ways to overcome learning disabilities. Despite the paddling, when I was eight years old I announced that I was going to be an author. That was a hidden passion that burst forth from a contest recognition. Later, my work spun around this planet and into space in my Soliloquy of the Year 2002. (I will release that in a blog in a future date).

Why not join me in my creative hopscotch of written thoughts? What a joy it would be to add you to my treasure chest of happiness! Begin by visualizing how you want to present yourself as author of your future body of work. My pen name has an origin when, as a teacher in the principal’s office, I was told, “You aren’t going to New York for your first marketing interview!” I thought about my birth into a Scottish family and decided upon my name despite its commonality with other known authors of the same name. I, as M. J., arrived on the scene when the issue of females being recognized in the writing arena was a scarce probability. So, gentlemen, thanks to you, I’m M. J. Scott, USA. Don’t forget to include USA, as that’s where I hang my hat!

Excerpt from “Just Call Me Mom!

Entry Fifty-One from this Journal in Double Feature!

“Hi, Family of Readers! There’s a full moon just after midnight, and this warm fuzzy feeling just must be shared after a day when I can honestly reply to the question, “Where are you from?” Just call me Mom from all fifty states, where indelible memories pounce into word pictures.
We’ll skip across the country like freely racing thoughts, where cranberry bogs were in little fiords higher than the roadway on a full moon night, too. You could almost feel the water ready to enter the roadway in a great sweep to be lost in the night. We’ll see the redwood forests where the moss-covered trail winds down to the ocean and the sea air delivers its fresh history in whispered, private stories. Then the redwood chip under the thumbnail at a remote laundry, and an old woodsman looks up from his murder mystery and pulls out his knife. Gone the chip and gone my nerves.
Hiking along a trail in the Sonoran Desert and hearing rattles like little drums to learn that is the rattlesnake signal. Strangeness, too, at the end of the road in Canada when tracks are discovered that perhaps match a bear of mythical Sasquatch size. Not to mention the highlands where there is no movement of people and the autos sit silently. Remember with me the blueberries for picking by the handful or oranges strewn under the trees like little toys ready to play. My heart skips a beat when the armadillo crosses the marshy path from the clothesline and backs under the house. The next morning, the alligator swims in the Officers Club swimming pool. The military guns focus on a highway where protection is required.
There are so many mental pictures! The mountains surveying the valleys hold whipped-cream snow on their tops from a winter storm that also buttered the wheat, corn and soy fields. We recall rocks for climbing and hunts for gems; the fear of high, curvy mountain roads in unfamiliar surroundings; and hot brakes smoking.
Smell the glory of spring blossoms filling the air like a just-opened-perfume bottle! Or the lilac fragrances filling the airplane as it begins to land in northern country. The memories of Mom just keep coming: Lifting a video camera and taking charge of a wedding held in a little New England church in the woods. That perfect painters’ paradise. The old antique stores speaking of auctioneers selling history, but now impossible to take a card. The beauty of the sea coast that lingers, meanders and follows the shoreline.”

Visit M. J. Scott, USA, Amazon Central Page!

Learn more about Marilyn’s books and life on the page where you can get her books in e-mail or print! Simply click on this cover of M. J. Scott’s very first book: