Discovering the Life I was Meant to Live: My story in Coping Magazine

Welcome to my blog!  

If you’re visiting because you read about me in the March/April edition of Coping Magazine and are curious about my children’s cancer book you may find it by visiting Tickles Tabitha's Cancer-tankerous Mommy (Available FREE on Kindle April 1-3) or for information about Crack Open a Book! link to School Programs. The curriculum is available at no cost to non-profits or anyone who lists the book in their resource library.

As the article in Coping Magazine said, I didn’t get the life I thought I wanted, but the one I was meant to live.  It appears I’m meant to do everything I declared I would never do.

When I said, my cancer diagnosis set me on a course for a career I never planned, and even prepared me for the nausea that accompanied it, I meant it literally!   If you read the article in Coping then you know it was my experience with cancer and the lack of resources that were available to me as a mother with young children that inspired me to write the Tickles Tabitha story. 

Available FREE on Kindle
April 1-3 

I’m also the author of a children’s picture book about…drumroll…nuclear power plants.

With my career and reputation as a cancer awareness author and advocate it was a huge surprise to even some of my closest friends when a decade after my first title was published I released Nuclear Power: How a Nuclear Power Plant Really Works! © 2011.

My technically inclined son, Jordan is rolling his eyes, and any former science teachers are wondering who the ghostwriter was. One of the things I enjoyed most about college was that my major had zip to do with science, technology, engineering and math.

On Kindle for a limited time at $1.99

Consequently my very first professional job after college was doing public relations at a nuclear power plant, surrounded by STEM professionals.

One of my job assignments was to do an elementary school program about how a nuclear power plant would work. To haul all the school program equipment I drove a van, and once they even leased a station wagon for me. A colleague ribbed me about it, and my infamous response was the last thing I ever wanted was a wagon load of kids to haul around.

Several years later I was driving down the road in a Jeep with my own two kids strapped in the back seat.  Every day I do something I was never going to do! Like all the writing, self-promotions and public speaking gigs necessary to sell a children’s picture book.

Another infamous statement I made upon exiting my public relations job at the nuclear plant: “this is going to be the last time I ever do public speaking.”

Just as I was getting over the nausea brought on by all those interesting life experiences I encountered when publishing my first book, the least of which was public speaking, I decided to do a children’s book on nuclear power plants.

The idea had been in the back of my mind ever since I worked in the nuclear industry. I always wished there was something more creative than the yawn-provoking brochures I handed out to my students. Back then I never imagined I would be the one to write it.

I never imagined the backlash I would encounter when I did either. That backlash, the fake news stories, and downright bullying are some of the things I’ve been writing about and will be sharing in a soon-to-be released blog about why I’m supporting the March for Science. 

While their topics are very different, there are a several things my children’s books on cancer and nuclear power plants have in common, both books:

• helped to pioneer resources for young children.
• were controversial when published.
• establish a dialogue between children and adults.
• are fictitious stories that offer factual information pertaining to sensitive topics.
• still provoke the praise and/or wrath of complete strangers.
• are the basis for a school program.
• just recently went LIVE on Kindle!  Woot woot! 

Futhermore both books have the ability to make me fluctuate between giddy gratitude and queasiness…as does being a long-term cancer survivor.

I’ve decided queasy is good; it’s how I know my books and I are still alive and provoking havoc.

Jillian Michaels is glaring accusingly at me from her exercise video.

Earth Day is approaching and if I’m going to March for Science, it’s time to get myself off the sofa and onto the exercise mat.

If you’re still reading, please connect with me on Facebook: at Author Amelia Frahm. I’d love to hear your survivor story! We all have them, and I’m not just talking about cancer.

More on my story may be found by visiting Nutcracker Publishing Company.

Why a Children's Book Author is Marching for Science!

Earth Day is April 22, 2017. What on earth will you be doing? I plan to be Marching for Science.

A post shared by March for Science (Official) (@sciencemarchdc) on Mar 18, 2017 at 6:05am PDT

"I'm an author, advocate, educator, and cancer survivor. My award-winning children’s book "Nuclear Power: How a Nuclear Power Plant Really Works!" was released in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The book and I received harsh criticism from people who literally judged a book by its cover. It was the STEMS who defended me. The book is a creative spin on a schematic found in some science text books. Fear and fake news are fueled by misinformation and a lack of knowledge." #scienceisknowledge #sciencemarch #nuclearliteracy #childrensbooks #nuclear #scienceeducation Thanks to Amelia for sharing why she's marching for science. Want to share your story on the sciencemarchdc Instagram? Send your picture and a description to us at sciencemarchdcinsta@gmail.com!

More about Amelia's experiences publishing her children's book on nuclear power plants can be found by visiting  Go Nuclear or Environmentalist for Nuclear.

     


Nuclear Power How a Nuclear Power Plant Really Works! and Tickles Tabitha's Cancer-tankerous Mommy are now available on Kindle. 

The Sweet Life

I’ve spent the first couple of months of 2017 doing what matters, and asking myself—why is it that anything that matters to me is so much work?

You’d never guess it by the number—or rather the lack—of blogs I’ve posted, but I’ve spent the last month on writing projects.  I can tell because my clothes fit snugger.  I can’t write without chocolate and coffee. 

The projects I’ve been working on pertain to cancer awareness and nuclear literacy.  One day soon I hope to share them, but until then here’s a look behind the scenes at the sweet life of a writer and some of its technical aspects. (The reasons I need coffee and chocolate.)

The author’s desk:                                            Coffee table where I really work:

 Reality:                                                                         Author Pic: 

        

                                                         

Since relocating from North Carolina to Tennessee via a detour in Alabama, I have neglected certain aspects of my writing career. 

2017 Goals:

• Format Tickles Tabitha'sCancer-tankerous Mommy for POD.

• Format both Tickles Tabitha and Nuclear Power: How aNuclear Power Plant Really Works! for Kindle.

I spent last year transferring my website to a new server. Living off-the-grid without an internet connection in Tennessee does not make these projects easy, or my Verizon bill cheap. 

In 2001, when Tickles Tabitha’s Cancer-tankerous Mommy was first launched, Kindle, Publish on Demand (POD) and social media as we know it did not exist. It wasn’t until 2014 that Amazon invited authors to publish children’s picture books on Kindle.

I may have learned a thing or two since my first book was published. I’m pretty sure the guy I hired to help update and format the Tickles Tabitha book wishes I were still clueless.  I feel as if I’ve nitpicked him to death.

My real goal is to have it all automated, so I can concentrate on other things. Like watching the contractors working on the house… in case I have to dial 911. 

Seriously, working on the side of a mountain is not for wussies.  Our Tennessee home is finished, but the outdoors is a work-in-progress. 

 It ain’t easy gazing into a computer screen when I could be looking at this:

Do Something Meaningful: See YOUR Calling!

Surfing through my Instagram feed I saw that my entrepreneuring friend Elizabeth Braswell had taken on a new venture, so I scrolled through to see what she was up to this time. The beautiful photo above and the following post caught my attention:

   White Buck Lodge

Sometimes that thing you're called to is just staring you in the face...day after day after day. This was our mantle for two years. A white buck. A gathering sign. A clock. The time had not come yet...but when it did it came fast and furious. If  I was a betting girl...I’d bet some of you are sitting on couches and club chairs...journaling and contemplating that call on your life...and it's probably right there...in front of you...staring at you until at just the right time you SEE IT. Like really...REALLY see it. #mountainlife#lodgelife #whitebucklodge....Elizabeth Braswell

From the couch where I was sitting I rolled my eyes and thought to myself, “You’re so full of it!”  and felt annoyed because… well,  I had been contemplating my life, feeling in limbo, and at odds with myself! Only my calling wasn’t right in front of me. My life was just never that easy.

Feeling piqued, I returned to the article I had been working on for a cancer awareness magazine.  There staring at me in the words I had written and reread a few hundred times was my own calling and mantra for 2017. 

Do Something Meaningful

This is not a new calling for me, and a few paragraphs later I had also written an explanation for why I all too often choose not to SEE IT!  

What I thought I wanted and what I was meant to do were often at odds.

January doesn’t just usher in a new year for me, but also my Breast Cancer Anniversary.

This year it will be 23 years since I was first called to Do Something Meaningful and got shoved by cancer down a path to becoming an author, publisher, speaker, and advocate.

In 1994 my Do Something Meaningful meant watching my children grow up, and if –God forbid– I didn’t get to, to leave them something that would remind them how much their mother loved them.

There were days when Do Something Meaningful meant having the courage just to get out of bed and face the world. (🎶 Mama said, there’ll be days like this…) So much has changed, but this still holds true. 

This year I have resolved once again to quit wasting whatever time I have left and to Do Something Meaningful with it. Meaningful is such a beautiful word, and like art its beauty and significance is in the eye of its beholder.

This beholder plans to write more often, worry less, and try to find the courage to get out of bed and do what I was meant to do even though it’s all too often NOT what I thought I wanted!

Here’s to finding meaning in 2017!

The awe-inspiring Elizabeth Braswell and her husband Keith, traded rat race for slow pace, city life for mountain life, titles for time, stress for rest....Now they are following their calling and RE- igniting a mountain lodge in Moravian Falls, North Carolina. Follow their journey at WhiteBuckLodge.com.

More info about me, can be found at Nutcracker Publishing.Com

Cyber Monday: How Santa's Elves Charge their Gadgets!

Nuclear Power: How a Nuclear Power Plant Really Works!

BREAST Cancer: Yesterday’s Risqué - Today’s Yawn

Artist AleXsandro Palombo  series called “Survivor” that imagines what well-known female cartoon personalities ...

A few decades ago I deleted an entire segment in the TicklesTabitha’s Cancer-tankerous Mommy manuscript, because talking about breasts in a children’s book about breast cancer was just too risqué.

When it comes to addressing topics others deem risqué or offensive, it appears I’m no longer a step ahead of popular perception, but have fallen on my unbleached butt and can’t get up.

I've fallen and can't get up!

Now that I’m almost retired, I spent my summer arranging potential “Summer Adventures 2016” journal entries for my grown children, ensuring my landscaping survived the hottest East TN summer in years, doing DIY projects in the basement, and -every once in a while- checking in to see what type of stories and/or experts the media is looking for these days.

Some of what I learned sure was… educational.

For example, I learned that freelancers were looking for experts on butt bleaching. Even more enlightening, I learned that I need not have bothered running a google search on butt bleaching, I could have just asked my children what that was.

In my previous blog, I gave some of the backstory and backlash regarding the controversy surrounding my children’s book about nuclear power plants.  In the wake of Fukushima it is not difficult to understand why a children’s book about nuclear power plants might not be a welcome edition on everyone’s book shelf, but a children’s book about cancer?  

“Why would you ever want to do a book about nuclear power,” asked one of my colleagues, “after establishing a career based on a sweet, beloved, children’s book about cancer?”

His comment only goes to show: Yesterday’s controversial and risqué is today’s yawn.

In the late 1990’s, when I first pitched my sweet, beloved children’s book about cancer it was not considered so sweet. It is unimaginable today, but back in 1994 when I was diagnosed with breast cancer, it was discussed in hushed tones amongst adults, over the heads of bewildered children.

Talking to children about nuclear power would have been far less controversial than a children’s book about cancer. Especially one that included the emotional mood swings (depression) pictured in Tickles Tabitha’s Cancer-tankerous Mommy.  If cancer wasn’t depressing enough, one critic (another writer) told me the mommy in my story (a nicer version of myself) was just too mean!  

I did receive some positive critiques from several well-respected mainstream publishing houses. They loved the story, but there just wasn’t a market for it. After all, young mothers with children didn’t usually get breast cancer… I was just unlucky.  They left out the part about me being unlucky.

I didn’t know it at the time, but for any unknown aspiring author to receive any comments at all from an editor was huge. I thought they felt sorry for the cancer mommy, so I packed up my manuscript and focused on LIVING.  

Today it’s common knowledge that young women do get breast cancer, good moms aren’t always nice, and even moms without cancer get depressed. If you’re in the book business you know that editor’s affiliated with large publishing houses care about marketing potential and not the feelings of aspiring writers, whether they are dead or alive!  

Just about everything I experienced back then sounds unbelievable to young people today, and makes for humorous story-telling. If only living it had been as funny! This October it will be fifteen years since my children's book on cancer was published, and made its debut on the Rosie O Donnell talk show. 

We used to have a saying when I was a kid: Last laugh’s the dog’s laugh.  Woof, woof, is sort of how I feel when I reflect on my experience writing and publishing Tickles Tabitha’s Cancer-tankerous Mommy!  

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month! 

And a reminder to women of all ages to examine their breasts!

Radiation: Friend or Foe?

That’s the controversial question asked in the fall edition of Talking Story, an e-newsletter for educators. Talking story is published by authors Carol Baldwin and Joyce Moyer Hostetter. Most of their readers are teachers, media specialists, or homeschool parents.  They stuff every issue with links, books, learning activities, GIVEAWAYS, and people related to a particular theme. 

I’m radiating with happiness to announce that one of the people featured in their newsletter’s fall edition on radiation is Andrew Handley!  Andrew is the talented, young graphic designer who illustrated my children’s book, Nuclear Power: How A Nuclear Power Plant Really Works! 

According to Joyce, the goal of Talking Story is not to promote one opinion or another about radiation, but rather to encourage students to take a look at the use of radiation in medicine, energy production, warfare, etc.  They hope to stimulate students to thoughtfully consider the various ways radiation is used in our society and to connect them to literature and writing activities on the topic.

This is what I love about writers and authors like Joyce and Carol who are also educators.  Whether they agree with a topic or not, they understand the importance of allowing a child to learn about it. 

After all, one way to learn about, understand, and give an educated opinion on a topic is to study both sides of an issue, right? Who wouldn’t want a child to do that?

As I have discovered during my career as a children’s book author: Plenty of people!

So many that when Joyce contacted me regarding using the illustration featured in her newsletter, I ran a google search on both her and Carol before replying.

I wasn’t always so jaded, but then a children’s book about nuclear power plants wasn’t always so controversial.

In fact, when I first started marketing my book about nuclear power plants, its topic was perceived as so lackluster the book almost didn’t get published. Not even the nuclear industry, due in part to the United States post- Three Mile Island safety record, was all that thrilled about a children’s book about nuclear power plants.

Community relations and educational school programs on nuclear power plants like the one I had created and administered in the 1980’s were no longer deemed necessary. 

In the 80's our  school program was front page news.

This came as a surprise to me.  Elementary education was well funded back in the days I worked in the nuclear industry. We fielded requests not only from schools, but all types of civic groups who were interested in learning how the local nuclear plant worked.  

In 1983, that's me
 presenting to a class of sixth graders.

Back then nuclear power was a hot topic, (pun intended) but this didn’t make the information I was required to teach any less yawn-provoking.  The book I eventually wrote—and Andrew so brilliantly illustrated—is a creative spin on a brochure I used to hand out to my students. 

Nuclear Power: How a Nuclear Power Plant Really Works! is the type of book I had wished for back when I was doing my school programs about nuclear power plants.  I wanted to pique the interest of children who didn’t always grasp the technical, but responded to art or stories.  (Kids like me.)

One of the illustrations that sold me
on Andrew, but is not pictured in the book.

I had forgotten all about this book idea, until 2002 when my family moved from Minnesota to North Carolina where not too far from our home was a nuclear power plant.  While other children spent summers at the beach, mine got visits to the nuclear plant.  (This is where my children would insert what they call “my evil laugh.”)

The book had been work-in-progress for years by the time I hired Andrew to illustrate it, and started to seriously market it.  What most laypersons do not realize about publishing a book is that sales, marketing, industry reviews, and a host of other things begin years before the book is actually published.

It was during this time that I decided there just wasn’t enough interest in my book to justify publishing it.  I told my husband I was going to pay Andrew for his work, and just forget about it, until the “nuclear renaissance” that was often mentioned in the media actually happened.  Maybe then there would be more interest.

A young boy I spied reading my book,
while I was at the Dentist. 

The words were hardly out of my mouth when Japan was hit by a tsunami, and the Fukushima nuclear accident occurred. If ever there was a time children might need, and parents might want an explanation about how a nuclear power plant worked, I thought that might be it.

I soon discovered not everyone felt the way I did.  I can laugh about it now, but try to imagine spending years on a story you wrote for good intentions, and then being publicly bullied for it on social media.  Most of my critics had never even read the book. I know this because at the time they commented the book had not been released to the public yet.  The only way to obtain a copy was via its author …that would be me.

So when Joyce contacted me regarding permission to use one of Andrew’s illustrations from my book, and said their next issue was going to be titled Radiation: Friend or Foe?  I ran a quick “friend or foe” google search, and immediately (before they could change their mind) responded that I was more than grateful to her for addressing the topic without prejudice. Then I gave myself permission to glow… with happiness.