It used to be a big thing to have a profession. To work at the same company for thirty years and retire from there and get a gold watch or something.
“What do you do?”
“I’m an architect.” “I’m an accountant.” “I’m a secretary.”
People in the town where I grew up in Fairfield County, Connecticut were fixated on their professions. Even the kids were fixated on their parent’s profession. You met a kid in school and wanted to bring him or her home to play and the first thing your mom asked was, “What does his father do?” No one asked what the kid’s mom did, because mothers didn’t work outside of the home.
My kids (if I had any, which I don’t) would be so screwed. Marty has been through more jobs and professions than I can count. A few highlights would be tree-climber and circus dude. Yeah. I married someone who actually did run off and join the circus when he was young. He was between marriages and wound up in Florida and didn’t really have a place to live so he got on the Ringling Brother’s train and shoveled circus animal poop and stuff. As for me… I’ve been a secretary, a service advisor in a garage, a data entry clerk, a work flow coordinator, escort, MIS operations manager, architectural design consultant, human resource manager, office manager, dispatcher, mobile home cleaner, AVON rep, property manager… and I’ve had zero formal education in any of those fields. I just figured if I was able to get the job, then I could figure out how to do the job. For example, I handle most of the legal issues now where I work. Do I have any kind of legal training or education? Not a minute worth but I know how to Google stuff and I watch lots of Judge Judy. So far I do pretty well in court. I’ve lost like ONCE.
One of the things I’m currently doing is WRITING BOOKS. I’ve written a detective series (four books), a horror series (third book coming out soon, fourth book in the works) and a couple of co-authored autobiographical pieces with my husband which are scarier than the horror novels. Seriously. We’ve been scary people. We calmed down once we hit 50 but there were some sketchy tales. Last, but not least I’m working on a lighthearted, darkly humorous look at my completely dysfunctional life. That one is called Deconstructing Tracy. I’m about halfway done with it. Having colon cancer and chemo kinda slows me down a little but it doesn’t stop me.
I’m kind of excited about working with Book Doctor, Elizabeth M. Capalbo again. She did some seriously good stuff with Cast Down; A New England Haunting and I think she’s going to make great contributions with Masked.
I’ve always loved horror stories; scary books, scary movies, anything scary I love. I wanted to write books that would creep people out. I wanted to write the kind of books that you have to put down once in a while. I remember reading IT when I was a teenager and actually throwing the book across the room at one point because it scared me so much. THAT is the kind of reaction I’m aiming for. I also wanted to keep the books clean. I wanted to keep obscenities out of the dialogue, I wanted to keep adultivity unseen. I think TV and movies have gone way too far, but maybe I’m being old fashioned. Remember the way prime time TV used to be? That’s what I write. But scary. The horror novels are about demons – oppression, possession… and the detective novels are mostly about serial killers, which is another area of fascination for me. So, I have no problem with things straight out of hell, or with people getting butchered but I really wanted to steer clear of the cussing.
My books are all available through the link at the end of the blog – on Amazon. If you have Kindle Unlimited you can read them all for free. If you’d rather have a paperback, they are there, too. Some of the books are even available in beautiful hard cover editions for old school reader like me! So, go grab some summer reading and let me know what you think.
What do I do? I’m a writer.
Tracy Petry 