Tag: book

My Father’s Daughters

My Father’s Daughters

Judy Kucharuk

A work of fiction – releasing chapter by chapter. Scroll down to find discover the most recently added chapter.

MY FATHER’S DAUGHTERS

CHAPTER 1 Grace

The Ford Taurus lumbered along the Forestry road, the last pass of the grader had created a washboard effect and my back was killing me. I had abandoned my navy heels to the passenger seat and was now driving in bare feet, my expertly manicured toes looked out of place against the pedals of the Taurus. Had I known that I was going to have to go out to the lake following the funeral, I would have rented an SUV at the tiny kiosk in the airport.

The pickings were slim at the rental car company. The young girl who greeted me at the kiosk had obviously been midway through a construction project in the moments before her shift. There was sawdust clinging to curly red hair and her worn jeans were dirty where the denim had dragged in the mud. Her friendly smile was infectious and I couldn’t help but ask her what on earth she was doing before her shift.

“Oh! We were building a dog-house and I lost track of time. If I didn’t live so close I wouldn’t have heard the plane coming in and you would have been out of luck!” she said with a wink.

I handed her my credit card and requested the silver Acura that I had spied out the sliding airport doors.

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1, 2, 3…..LAUNCH!

Judy Kucharuk

Major Tom to Ground Control……we have a launch!

(my speech from the book launch – thank everyone for coming and sharing in my special day)

I would like to thank everyone for coming tonight. Family, friends, media and dare I say it out loud, “Fans”.

A couple of weeks ago, I admitted to friends on my Facebook page that I had been experiencing a reoccurring dream that was freaking me out. In my dream…or rather…my nightmare, I was pregnant. OH MY GOODNESS!!!!!

In my dream no one seemed very shocked about it except me and I woke each morning in a panic thinking, “Is isn’t possible….is it?” I am fairly certain that any leftover eggs I could produce would resemble a fuzzy peach candy and between the intense heat of the hot flashes I have experienced lately, they would be scorched and dehydrated like an old raisin. So I asked my friends about what it meant and they responded en masse with the suggestion that dreaming about being pregnant meant that I was about to birth a project.

Apparently dreaming about being pregnant was something that creatives tend to dream. What? I’m a creative? My friend Karen said something to the effect of, “Of course you are a creative – you wrote a book!”.

Honestly that is what it feels like to write a book. It is like you are giving birth to a baby and you are hoping that you don’t have an ugly one. You know what I mean…..those babies where people say, “Oh…your baby is so handsome” which is code for your baby is uuuuuugly because no one calls a baby handsome. They are cute, they are adorable, but if they look like a cabbage patch then they are “handsome”. A book is like that too! If someone reads your book and says, “It was nicely laid out”, you know you bombed because they were grasping at something nice to say to you without hurting your feelings.

I could say that I don’t care, but I would be lying. I do care what people think and I hope that I didn’t birth a cabbage patch baby. Regardless, I am this kids mother so ugly or not – I LOVE IT. I love the colour of it’s cover, the way it is so shiny and smooth. I love the original artwork that Catherine Ruddell created and I love the way Karen Thierson brought it all together with her amazing graphic design. I am in love with Naked Tuesday and it will always be my first born….sorry Amy….I mean my first book.

I want to share this moment with my mom, to whom I have dedicated this book. Her love, her support, her sarcasm, her sense of humor…..basically her DNA has made this book possible. Thank you mom.

I also want to share this moment with my husband Bob, an unwitting foil who doesn’t seem to fully understand how integral he is to my writing.

I also want to say thank you to each and every one of you who have stopped me in a grocery store or sent me a message and said, “hey Judy….I really liked your column this week” or “I can totally relate to what you are saying” because that validates what I do. I want to write something that is relatable. I want to write something that makes you laugh or makes your cry. Your support has given me the confidence to write Naked Tuesday and to realize that 50 is really fabulous and I am just getting started!

Thank you so much for being here tonight.