The author's story is personal yet universal and chronicles her life at Lake Livingston for a year. Her search follows the seasons and her growing awareness that humanity is a part of nature, with all its divine mysteries. She gently offers the wisdom of her own spiritual questions. With her quiet humor and honesty, she invites you to go with her into the rhythms of the seasons. She reveals her own experiences in the ups and downs of the writing life and gives the reader generous amounts of inspiration as she unmasks her shadow. As she deals with living alone and her fears of solitude (her best advice is to think lofty thoughts and grit your teeth), she gradually begins to understand that she writes for reasons other than success. She reaffirms that her ability to write is a calling, a gift from God, and He never promised all books would be bestsellers. This internal story could have taken place anywhere, but it has been especially molded by her being at Lake Livingston. Not because it is the only place she could have done it, but because the Big Thicket is a natural area of silence and beauty and has a special sense of place. The book does not end with a summary of her current blockbusters. It ends with the author admitting that the best part of writing is the process itself. Anyhow, it hurts too much to quit. She feels somewhat better about her writing, but she can never be cured. Because what ails her is a life question, not a simple economic query.
About the Author: Jackie Woolley's articles have been published in numerous national publications. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in college literary publications. Word Books published her nonfiction book, All The Things You Aren't...Yet, under the name Jackie Humphries. For her master's thesis, she wrote an early version of her novel manuscript, What Death Can Touch, University of Houston, Clear Lake. A earlier version of a fiction manuscript The Sound of Windmills won semi-finalist in the prestigious William Faulkner Creative Writing Competition in 2002. She worked as a language facilitator and educator in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and wrote feature stories about her experiences in a foreign land. At the University of Houston, Clear Lake City, she co-edited the university's literary publication, Bayousphere. She taught literature and writing for community colleges in Oregon and Texas. For the next twenty years, as co-owner of Professional Engineering Inspections, she edited engineering reports on houses in the Houston area. Her story, "The Love of Her Life," appears in The Noble Generation, Vol. II, Stories of the American Experience, Barnes & Noble, Georgetown, Texas. She regularly writes for Story Circle Network's publications. She currently holds writing workshops and is a facilitator for various writer's groups. Her life story based on her childhood farm in Texas, "My Belonging Place," appeared in the collection, A Land Full of Stories, in the book, What Wildness is This, Women Write About The Southwest, University of Texas Press, Austin. Now in 2011, The Sound of Windmills and Sex, Lies, & Stories, memoir of a frustrated writer, is published.