Original painting by Jo Ann Brown-Scott  titled “Choosing the High Road” copyright 2015, all rights reserved, which will be used in the cover design for her book titled A CANARY FLIES the CANYON copyright 2015, all rights reserved.

I am nearing the publication of my third book, this time a novel, and I am pregnant with anticipation. It is a time-consuming process and it seems to go slower the closer I get to the goal. Sorry this has been so long in coming – I promised an excerpt weeks ago.

Well hey, first of all it is difficult to decide WHERE to excerpt from  – what tidbit is the best, especially for the first one? Should it come from the first chapter, necessarily, or not? Should all the excerpts come to you in chronological order? I guess so…. How many is enough? How much should they reveal?

The book has many moods. It can be black and white, multi-colored, highly textured and patterned with humor, melancholy and every emotion known to human kind.  It will be taking you along on a journey…the story of one young girl’s life that unfolds toward an artistic career. Of course that journey is fraught with random (or not?) surprises and challenges. Life does seem, at times, to be pre-planned (almost scripted, with an agenda in mind, hmm…) and so this young girl begins to question the random-ness of things. But then she questions everything….

Excerpt from the novel  A Canary Flies the Canyon, copyright 2015, all rights reserved.

After great consideration, I offer you the first excerpt from Chapter Two called “Blind Spots”; a quote from Annie.

“I have thought long and hard about who my female role models were as I was growing up and I cannot think of a single one. I loved my mother, and much later saw her as accomplished and courageous to have done what she did, but I did not idolize her and she never talked with me in conversations of any length or significance. If she had ever once just sat me down and requested a heart to heart girl talk with me about life, or about anything that might have guided me toward a course to follow, our relationship would have been a far different one. There was not a single male or female who ever took me aside and truly talked to me, mentored me about my future, gave me advice, encouragement or became a person in whom I felt I could confide. I think that has been part of my problem. I was always rudderless, sailing through life on a free-spirited wing and a prayer, hoping to somehow stumble upon the Northern Star. I never found it; certainly not by choice it became my norm to depend upon no one, and that closed the door to my soul a little bit. I was starting out brave but naïve; smart but innocent. I was often lonesome, seldom in meaty conversations with anyone and primarily a visual person, an observer of life. I did not know it at the time but these are the ideal characteristics and circumstances for feeding creativity and artistic development. A person goes inward and learns everything the hard way.”

Author BIO

Jo Ann Brown-Scott, born in Ohio, is an artist and a writer living in the Denver, Colorado area. Her degree from the University of Colorado emphasized studio art, art history, literature and psychology. In conjunction with her art and literary careers she has taught interior design at a community college in Denver and was an instructor of mixed media collage in California. She has years of experience in sales and marketing including gallery director positions, event planning, client acquisition and book publishing.

Jo enjoys travel to favorite places such as Singapore, Cambodia, Thailand and Italy among others, finding that travel feeds and informs her art and writing. She believes that painting and writing have much in common, both requiring that a story be told in a unique voice with a distinctive vocabulary and palette. Brown-Scott’s abstract, mixed media paintings and collages have been exhibited throughout Colorado and the west; her work is currently shown by appointment.

She has published two previous non-fiction books on the subject of self-realization and creativity, specifically involving true stories of life-changing epiphanies. Her second book, The Creative Epiphany, Gifted Minds, Grand Realizations, won Best Books Award Finalist in the non-fiction narrative category of the National USA Book News awards.

She has two grown children who are each gifted with literary and artistic skills.

Blog www.thecreativeepiphany.wordpress.com

Art Originals & Prints http://joann-brown-scott.fineartamerica.com

Book http://joannbrownscottauthor.com – coming soon

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