Me . . . in a nutshell
Everything
you've always wanted to know about
Bonnie Turner, and then some.
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Thus, with that explanation out of the way, I will attempt to nutshell myself for the benefit of my faithful readers. The short answer to the question "Who are you?" is: I am a nut in a shell. I am the original square peg in the round hole, whose middle brother once said, "Bonnie, you're my sister and I love you. But I will never understand you."
Not since I slipped into this world one dark, rainy, cold Halloween night (with a party in progress), have I felt truly at home on this planet. My birth town is Independence, Missouri. I've also lived in California, Michigan, Iowa, Nebraska, and currently reside in Wisconsin. Still, I am a peanut-size (4' 11") free spirit with an oddball mind that seems to operate on two levels at once: spiritual and physical; right brain and left (or simply, no brain). It certainly makes interesting story fodder for my poor old muse, but what's the use when few humans understand me?
I have always been a reader, a writer, a thinker, a what-have-you from early childhood. My dad's family were poets and painters, and I suppose I inherited some of that talent. A great-great-grandfather in Wales was known as the "Bard of Horeb," and by some stretch of my imagination, I can picture myself actually sitting down with him to discuss life's oddities, one of which is myself. My writing activity began in elementary school and continued through high school. I wrote what I now know was therapeutic poetry, and probably should christen myself the "Bard of Horrid."
Like many children seeking to understand themselves, I spewed out this dreadful verse on a daily basis. Looking back, I see how ugly most of it was. But it was a start. If my ancestors could use their creative minds, so could I. In fact, I also had a bit of talent for drawing pictures.
It was difficult to choose which course to pursue—art or writing. Feeling that I should choose one or the other, in order to become halfway proficient, I decided to write. I would enjoy the best of both, because a writer is an artist who paints pictures with words. Finally, I discarded the paintbrushes and took up my pen in pursuit of profound words to share with humanity.
Writers write. Their muses are on call at all times of the day or night (and sometimes those lazy muses don't even come when called, but that's another story). Even while inside a nutshell, writers attempt to write. Their problem is to get their literary gems out of that shell and into the publishing stream. Writing is the easy part; finding a publishing professional who digs the work is a crazy circus.
In a nutshell, I am a writer. I've always been one. Someday I'll write "The End" and go join my ancestor, the "Bard of Horeb," to discuss what each of us has written before the nutshell cracked open and spewed our inflated egos into the ether.
In the meantime, my interests are many and varied: yoga, meditation, metaphysics, astronomy, astrology (Scorpio—what did you expect?), graphology, geology, all the other "ologies," history, science, the environment, global warming, and any other subject that hits me on the spur of the moment. I am a Jill-of-all-Trades, a Mensa-almost, a Green-Bay Packers football fan—and a special fan of Brett Favre, who now quarterbacks for the Pack's most evil rival, the Minnesota Vikings. Arrrgh!
I also love carpentry (my dad was a carpenter), and have a knack for working with machines (but not cars). I love sculpturing, and someday hope to sit down and whittle some useless artifact my kids can fight over when I'm no longer around to tape their mouths shut. My dad was a whittler, so I'll be Whittler's Daughter.
I'm the mother of five grown children, the grandmother of five wonderful grandsons and one granddaughter (who had nothing to do with her poor granny for the first year of her life). I am a young-looking, young-thinking senior who refuses to act her age—I prefer not to reveal that age, nor the wrinkles I've accumulated; thus, the embossed image of a year 2009 "me" on my first page of this site. I have hazel-eyes and medium ash-blonde hair with a few streaks of silver—highlights some women pay their stylist good money to fake.
I love music with a passion, especially classical, opera, and jazz. My favorite authors include: Mark Twain, James A. Michener, poets Robert Service and Edgar A. Guest, and many more too numerous to recall offhand. Some of my favorite books: Giants in the Earth (O.E. Rolvaag), Steamboat Gothic (Frances Parkinson Keyes), Chesapeake (Michener), the epic poem, The Odyssey of Homer, and Harvest Home (Thomas Tryon). Favorite genres: historical, young-adult, literary, humor, Americana, mainstream/commercial—almost anything except violent, gory tales. No vampires! No monkey-brain-eating ghouls!
My nutshell is beginning to crack now—I feel the kernel struggling to get out. Please visit my webpage again . . . and again, and feel free to send me an email. I'll do my best to reply.
My résumé:
* High school graduate (Northeast High School, K.C., Missouri—mascot the Vikings)
* Self-educated beyond high school—no college degree, but hungry for learning!
* I've written a few one-act plays, a couple of human-interest articles, many poems, two nonfiction books, six adult novels, three children's novels, letters to editors, kids' picture-book stories, scads of rent and utility checks, scribbled autographs, and grocery lists (writers love to eat!). After all that, I am still learning to write. When writers stop writing, they stop learning.
* My first published children's novel: The Haunted Igloo (Hardcover, Houghton Mifflin, 1991, now OP) For this book, I visited grade schools with a handmade Eskimo doll and lectured students on the importance of reading and writing—and offered "polar bear" hugs along with my autograph. What great fun! If I learned one thing from all this, it's that many children don't get enough hugs.
* Four self-published print-on-demand books (which are also Kindle editions): The Haunted Igloo (paperback), Spirit Lights, Down the Memory Hole, and Footprints in Time: A Walk in Sacajawea's Moccasins
My current writing projects:
* FACE THE WINTER NAKED: an adult novel set in the Great Depression
* DRUM DANCE: a young-adult novel set in the Arctic
* JAZZBABY: historical novel set during the flapper era—on the horizon.
So there you are . . . Bonnie Turner . . . in a nutshell.
Revised & edited 11/16/2009