J.A Hornbuckle

My heart was beating so freaking fast. I could hear the murmurings of the crowd behind the curtain where I was hiding, that separated me from them.

I stepped my way carefully out onto the stage, my heartbeat the only sound my ears could hear.

"Hi," I mumbled into the microphone. "My name is Judy and I write as J.A. Hornbuckle."

Damn. My voice sounded as hesitant as I felt.

"Tha-thank you so much for your interest." I was fumbling. But, I'd done this before. The public speaking thingie. And I really hadn't ever been this nervous before. But, geesh, I'd had notes then.

Not now.

Deep breath, my mind instructed.

Okay, that I could do.

"I, ah, I don't know what to…uhm, I'm uncertain what I'm supposed to talk about," I began.

The fact that I couldn't see into the crowd was a problem. Talking to crowds is supposed to be like talking to other people. But I couldn't actually SEE the other people.

Crap.

Just start at the beginning.

"I started writing because of a migraine," I started, my voice reedy and thin even in the amplification of the microphone. "I'd read three crap books in a row and thought I could do better."

I cleared my throat which I hadn't realized beforehand would be captured by the speakers.

"Sorry," I mumbled and tried again.

"I read three books that convinced me that I could write better. I'm an avid reader. A voracious reader that consumed four to six fiction books a week. Three books, three crap books, meant that I had wasted fifty percent of my reading time. And I knew that I could do better, could write better."

The noise in the large room lessened as I spoke and I gained courage from that silence.

"As I laid on the floor of my walk-in closet because it, of all the rooms in my apartment, had no noise, no light, and with my frozen pack of corn on my head, thought of the book I might write."

I remembered that time of pain. Of hurting so bad that my stomach would roil, where every heartbeat was torture and I couldn't breathe without the air hurting my teeth.

"I started to think about Caitlin and Jake, about what was to become 'Pole Dance', and eventually I found that I could shove that pain to one side as I planned. I learned to stash a steno pad and pen in there with me and use my baby finger to hold the end of the steno pad and write in the dark."

I heard a couple of chuckles which made me bolder.

"I tried to capture the story on my computer in my 'dull roar' times. And, in a word? It was crap. I didn't know what I was doing. So I started to study. Read, absorbed. But you know what I found? Writing is like driving a car. You can read about driving, learning the rules of the road, reading about safety tips and precautions. But until you are actually behind the wheel? Oh, baby. Completely different story."

More laughs this time. My knees were steadier and I felt my voice strengthen.

I needed to finish up.

"My name is Judy. And I'm a new author who is learning by the seat of her yoga pants as she goes. Thank you so much for reading and reviewing my books. You mean a lot to me."

I smiled and waved into the glare that was hiding the group that had come to hear me speak.

Because I've never spoken so much and with such honesty from my heart at one time.