Duffy Barkley: Seek Well: Tales of Uhrlin Book 2 (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781463703448)

Before I ever dreamed of being a writer, I was a storyteller. I remember that the games I used to play with my brother and the neighborhood kids were not games of football or frisbee, but games of imagination. We would, in reality, be riding our bikes in circles around the block and the city park - but the whole time we would be following my imagination as the bikes became wild mustangs with names like "Singing Moon." We would wrestle a sled to the top of the monkey bars and sit balanced there while I told of our adventures in outer space aboard our spacecraft. We would clamp the metal roller skates to our tennis shoes and dart around the full basement, but we would be people who had been born with bone wheels on our feet and had become inventors simply to deal with the needs that created, a way to transport pants onto our bodies, a way to zip up mountains and so on. Then I lost my confidence in my stories. The kids at school did not understand how I played, and I became a bearer of "Dixie Fleas" who had to have invisible disinfectant sprayed on any desk I had occupied before another child would sit there. At school at least. I lost my voice. It wasn't until I was saturated in other people's stories, and love and support that I began to be brave again. Being a Mom and a wife showed me a world of love and joy. Writing the two Duffy Barkley books, and teaching kids every day, have allowed me to find, not only a voice, but a message. I want to share that the world is more filled with beauty and kindness than you will ever know unless you get out there and look for the good that is there for all of us to share.