Welcome

Hi Everyone,

Welcome to my first web page: Where You Wish Upon A Star. It's been my dream for a long time, since I can ever remember, to write professionally one day. I wanted to write a biography, mystery and women's fiction novel. As a child, I used to write "creative stories" in a spiral notebook. When I went to camp, my friend Susie and I decided that our ghost writer names should be Last Initial, First Initial, Middle Name, and so the author H.C. Grace was born. I wrote everything. Stories about swimming and tennis and shopping. Mysteries about ghosts, villains and vampires. I read all the time, my earliest favorites being Judy Blume, Roald Dahl and Beverly Cleary. I also led a very active lifestyle, playing sports, neighborhood games, role play and make-believe. I had plenty of inspiration to draw upon.

When I was really young, my favorite stories were fairy tales, from the Brothers Grimm and Hans Anderson to Walt Disney. Now that I'm an adult, I'm well aware that life is not ever going to be like those fairy tales, sometimes a little too painfully aware, but it doesn't mean I can't still love, embrace and reiterate them. In fact, a lot of them have so many hidden meanings and messages in them that no child could possibly even contemplate, let alone understand. And so this is where I drew inspiration for my first web page, Where You Wish Upon A Star. It is where I can bring reality to my dreams, and please, feel free to share yours with me, too.

To put truth to one of my first dreams, the craft of writing, I have been getting back into the habit I maintained as a child of writing every day. My goal is to write a first draft of a full-length novel by the end of 2010. I have gotten so far as to write an outline, a brief summary, various character sketches and chapter one. I began writing the draft of this novel (To Be Titled) with a basic premise and storyline that i kept in my mind (and on scrap pieces of paper, sticky notes, loose leaf paper and many, many computer files). One day, after I finished reading a women's fiction/chick lit book and closed it with a smile on my face (as I so often do), I started to think more intently, "How can I write a book like this that leaves the reader so satisfied and happy? Sad that the story is over but satiated with the depth of its characters and plot?" and then it hit me. "Why not turn my novel from something I like into something I love?" Using the basic premise of the classic story of Sleeping Beauty, I decided to rework my outline to become a modern fairy tale. And what better place to share the day by day progress of my novel, to show the transformation of an idea into reality than "Where You Wish Upon A Star"?

To everyone out there who ever believed in wishing on stars, please share your dreams and how you are working on turning them into reality with me here and thank you for letting me share mine.