Amanda June Hagarty

Well, I guess I should not say completely unpublished. I have had many letters to the editor published in several newspapers, under both Amanda Fenrick (my first marriage, ugh) and Amanda Hagarty. A small town newspaper editor even highlighted an article of mine about iguanas in the little community voice feature he was running--which was totally cool!

I was also the editor of the newsletter of the "Westcoast Society for the Protection and Conservation of Reptiles" (WSPCR) for about 5 years. I liked to publish original pieces and I had very few submissions from anyone but myself. Does it count if you are the editor?

We had a newsletter exchange program with other reptile societies and I was pretty proud of the fact that my articles were often published in newsletters across North America. I had a lot of my articles appear in the Cold Blooded News which was the Colorado Herpetological Society newsletter.

But other than that I have never been published--unless all my web stuff counts...

Ok, when I say I haven't been published, what I really mean is that I would like to be a novelist and I have not finished writing any novels yet, let alone had them published. I do have a few in the queue though and am well on m way to having my first novel complete.

My aspirations to become a writer are, I believe, rooted in my love of reading and the many attempts made by adults to curb my reading in my childhood. I loved to read so much that I would get in trouble in school for it--yeah, that is possible.

I remember when I first came face to face with a "scan tron" test. You know, where you fill in the bubble with your number 2 pencil? I was thrilled. I picked up my pencil, filled in all C's and used the extra time as a bonus reading period. Apparently, that was not appropriate.

I loved me some sci-fi or fantasy. Some nights I wanted to read after it was bedtime. I would use my imagination to pick up where I left off with the story I was currently reading. Usually, I would insert myself as a character, and visualize a whole scenario unfolding with me as the heroine. I would do this during the day too. The teachers called it daydreaming. I called it a "workaround" when the rules said no reading.

By high school I began writing down some of my scenarios and I began writing a book based on the Dragon Riders series by Anne McCaffery. I never finished that and I have no idea what happened to the story. I realized, at some point, that if I wanted to write I had to come up with my own stuff. I started a new book in senior high, but when I went to college and became too busy and my writing, and even reading, took a back seat.

Mid-college I picked it up again briefly. There were 2 whole creative writing classes to take at my college and I took the opportunity to develop a few chapters on school time. Then I put it down again for about 10 years (the span of my first marriage coincidentally enough).

Almost every encounter I had with writers, book publishing or with telling people about my dreams of being a writer, ended up being a dream killer. Teachers, some of them writers themselves, said it was not a decent career. A class on the publishing industry which I took in university told me that nobody makes any money at it. Even my own mother who said I could be anything ( actually I am pretty sure she meant I could be everything, which I am starting to realize isn't actually possible in one lifetime) instilled the idea in me that writing could only ever be a hobby. So the world has beaten me down with "you can't" and "you shouldn't" for a very long time. Finally, I have had enough and I am beating back with "I can" and "I will!"

I have come to a place in my life where I realize it's important to do things while you have the time to do them. I also have a little more free time. So I have once again picked up the pen, or laptop in this case, and I am working finishing what I started. I am writing the same story but some 15 years later, so I have decided to do a complete rewrite. Meanwhile I had another story idea that came from a dream and is jotted down in a notepad file raring to go!

I did a little reading and learning on the subject of fiction writing. I have a much better grasp of it now than when I was in high school or even college. My favorite book was Make a Scene: Crafting a Powerful Story One Scene at a Time by Jordan Rosenfeld. My favorite Internet resource was Randy Ingermanson's "Snowflake Method" which I sort of adapted to suit my own style. Both of these opened my eyes and taught me a lot about writing. I have gained a lot of confidence from what I have learned and I am slowly making progress. Randy's regular e-zines (check it out) keep me motivated and prompt me to take steps toward developing myself as a writer--such as crafting an e-mail signature, attending writers conferences, etc.

Part of me doesn't even care if I ever get published. To have my story finally finished will be reward enough.

Ok, that's a lie. I really want to get published!

I am loving the process of getting my story down on paper, however. I am also loving getting something done that I feel is a very important to me. I am also having the time of my life!

I do a lot of different things on the Internet.

I create review sites where I take a look at various eBooks and give them a recommended or not recommended rating. You can an example of this at CanineSupertrainer.com

They call what I do in Second Life being a Virtual Land Baron--Baroness if you please! I own Virtual Land. Yes it's kind of like fake land if you want to think of it like that--but it's very real to the people who use it. We rent it out to the users of Second Life so they can build their dream homes, shopping malls, night clubs etc. At the moment we own about 50 islands and the income from this is enough that it covers our bills and prevents us from needing real jobs. You can see our website at SegarraEstates.com

You can find me in Second Life under the name Hottie Something--I was looking for a name people would not forget ;) That's her picture on the right.

I also help other people make money online. We specifically help network marketers who have poor uplines by becoming sort of like a surrogate upline for them. We teach them how to market on the Internet effectively and how to generate leads and earn money for whatever Network Marketing program they are involved in. They aren't required to switch their program to get our help. For that we have DABACashflowsolutions.com

We also have a few more projects in the works. I will post them as the become worth mentioning.

I am on Facebook though I only connect there with family or people I have met in person. For my public networking I use MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn. I have a Blogger space under the name Canadian Woman. My most active blog is Virtual Breadwinner.

I have relatively unused Flickr accounts for Hottie and myself. I have a Utube account somewhere. Ugh, these Internet things are getting excessive--and these are just the ones I thought it worth mentioning!

WIP

Yep, I am wild about reptiles--Herps, as they are called by those in the know.

I guess it started back when I was about 7. I spent my days in my home town of Richmond cruising the ditches. These were the places where one could find all the best frogs and snakes and slimy things. I was a professional frog catcher. I had it down to a science. I never really managed to keep anything I caught alive, however. I remember my first failed attempt at keeping a frog in a jar of water. It died, and I cried. My mom explained to me that frogs needed more than just water to swim in and so began an intense curiosity about animals and how they lived.

I kept fish and rodents and birds and dogs and cats growing up. I always wanted a horse, but it was explained to me that Santa could not fit a horse down the chimney. I never had a reptile pet until I was an adult and had moved out of home.

My first reptile was an iguana. I had some basic care sheets about iguanas from a vet so I thought I knew what I was doing. No matter how much I tried though, this iguana was like an alien to me. I understood mammals. I felt I could communicate with them and perhaps reach them on some emotional level--but the reptile persona of my iguana "Drake" eluded me.

After almost 2 years I was ready to give up--let my iguana be wild and unmanageable forever. Drake by then had earned the nickname "Drake-Monster." One night I had an epiphany and I decided I would look up information about iguanas on the internet. I found a fantastic web page about Iguanas by Melissa Kaplan. It helped me to appreciate Drake on a whole new level. All of a sudden her mind was not so alien to me. I understood her! Oh and I also learned that Drake was a girl.

I learned a lot about reptiles. Drake became tame and wonderful--with a lot of hard work and scratched arms on my part. It would have been so much easier if I had known it all from the beginning. Taming a 2 year old 4 foot iguana, who has never had the proper regular human contact it takes for any animal to be a pet, takes dedication and willingness to be injured, but is still possible.

Soon Drake earned the nickname "Baby-Drake." I would describe the personality of an iguana as cat-like. They tend to enjoy being around people and action, but mostly prefer to watch from a comfy perch. Snuggling is not going to happen but you might find one day if you let your iguana roam about while you watch TV that she will choose to come to the arm of your chair and watch with you. You might also find that she will just love to try to climb up on your head--but this is about the worst thing you can let her do as far as your relationship goes. Never let an iguana perch above your head. She needs to know you are top ig in the house or she will walk all over you--literally!

I also learned that there was a heck of a lot more to learn about iguana care than I knew. My basic care sheet was just enough to raise Drake to be a fairly healthy adult iguana but even so she has a slight scoliosis in her back. I had to learn some really serious and in depth nutrition, physiology and natural habitat information. I mean like hard core!

Owning a reptile was more of a chore than owning any other animal ever was--but I loved every minute of it. After iguanas I graduated to omnivorous lizards, then carnivorous snakes. It was great. I had bearded dragons, water dragons, green basilisks, frilled dragons, japaluras, curly tailed lizards, crested geckos, skinks, monitors, grey-banded kingsnakes, sand boas and boa constrictors. I even bred several of these successfully.

At the time I had a lot of critters. In addition to the reptiles I also had a thriving rat colony, 2 doves, 4 cats and 2 dogs. The rats were feeders but I loved them and treated them like pets until the end.

For something like 10 years I was a reptile keeper, breeder, and highly active member of the local reptile society--the WSPCR (don't ask--its too long!) I worked at Night Owl Bird Hospital, an exotic vet hospital, as a tech and The Greater Vancouver Zoo as a volunteer reptile keeper's assistant. I did reptile rescue and rehab. I fostered and adopted them to loving homes. I helped organize, and volunteered as an educator at, hundreds of educational community outreach programs. I fought city bylaws meant to ban reptiles and even had a hand in writing some good ones meant to protect both reptiles and reptile keepers. I wrote articles, ran the reptile society newsletter, and had my picture on the front page of countless newspapers. I was very passionate about it all.

Then my ex and I split and I lost them all. It was the hardest thing I ever did but I had to get out of a bad situation and I had to choose between keeping my animals and my freedom and happiness. Though I chose happiness I was still brokenhearted to leave them behind. Being homeless is no kind of circumstances to bring some 30 reptiles into.

I am in a better situation now and hundreds of miles away. I am looking forward to the day I finally decide its time to take up my passion again and adopt a reptile in need. I know it will be soon.

I sit here and realize I have an awful lot to say about myself and who I am. That is probably one of my greatest flaws. I talk too much about myself and love to tell people stories. I talk so much that I often forget to listen. I was fairly un-socialized as a child in the sense that I only ever had one friend at a time and from about grade 9 through college and university I had no friends. So this whole socializing thing is actually something I work hard at every time I attempt it.

I do have friends now and I am finding that I like it very much. I work at reminding myself to ask questions about them and listen to their stories and all those social etiquette things that I never learned. A lot of times I end up going away from a social encounter thinking of how I could have done better.

Strangely enough all my passions and hobbies are for the most part solitary-type pursuits. I love cooking and baking and I have discovered that sharing it with others is actually the best part. I love animals and nature--hiking, bird-watching, kayaking etc. I am a dabbler in the art of herbalism and would love to get to the point where I actually use the art instead of just knowing about it. I garden and grow my own veggies. I am working to make my dream of having a hobby farm a reality.

Since about the age of 15 I have been a "Witchy Pagan" practicing my own solitary brand of Wicca. I feel a profound connection between both nature and spirituality. At the same time I know a lot about science and even survived a university class about debunking myth, magic and religion. In that class I had the realization that the scientific and the spiritual are completely different things which can exist side by side and should not ever be thought to overlap--that is the only way I came out of that class with my beliefs intact. As a psychology major I realized that, if your beliefs are not hurting anyone but rather help a person feel a wholeness or completeness or just plain happiness in their lives, then believing in Gods and Goddesses and Faeries and Spirits is not only acceptable but its also healthy and normal. Recently I have drifted towards Celtic Paganism and found a group of people who have become my Tribe and my friends. Not all of our beliefs are identical but we all share a love of ancient Celtic ways and I am no longer solitary as I celebrate Feast Days and my beliefs.

My goal in life, aside from enjoying it, is to leave a lasting mark on this world. My plan is to do this as mother (one day soon I hope), a teacher (I love to teach what I know!) and a writer. Life may be fleeting but I plan to live forever!