How did I come up with the title for my latest book Four Ticket Ride?
Spoiler Alert: Preface
My friend Esther Isom told me this story one day as I rested in her salon chair for a pedicure which was always a guarantee for entertainment in addition to spa treatment on my feet. She swore the story was true.
Esther sat one morning in a doctor’s waiting area that was empty except for her and a petite elderly lady who had been in the room when she arrived. They waited and waited together without speaking, occasionally smiling at each other, but Esther decided to break the awkward silence by asking the older woman how she was doing that day.
“Honey, life’s a four ticket ride,” the older woman said with a smile – a reference to the State Fair’s being in town that week.
For the uninitiated in State Fair amusement rides, the more dangerous the ride the more tickets required to jump aboard. The four ticket rides were among the most adventurous with a mixture of highs and lows at dizzying speeds designed to take the thrill seeker’s breath away.
The following stories are my version of a few of life’s four ticket rides as seen through the eyes of a woman past 70 who bought and paid for enough tickets to ride all the rides in life…and some of them more than once.
Enjoy these rides with me. Buckle up, sit back, and hold on.
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My new book is short since most of us now expect major ideas to be conveyed through tweets which have reduced our attention spans to the length of a Geico commercial – readable in an hour in a single setting or a month of daily individual chapter doses like my 30 Days to Success Journal mentioned in chapter 1.
Here’s an overview of the major topics of flash nonfiction in Four Ticket Ride:
(1) I Have this Great Idea for a Book
(2) Life with Pretty
(3) The Magic of Sports
(4) What’s Happening with Us?
(5) Wouldn’t Take Anything for my Journey Now
Finally, this book is dedicated to a group of women I have never met in person but who have become loyal supporters of my writing over many moons in cyberspace and always appear on my blog roll. Ann, the Wayside Artist in Pennsylvania; Annie of Animal Couriers in France; Luanne of The Family Kalamazoo and Writer Site in Arizona; Rachel of The Cricket Pages in New York; and Susanne of Wuthering Bites in Canada. Writing is a solitary business and blogging is no exception; but these women take time to read, comment on my efforts and offer genuine encouragement in the process. I am deeply grateful to each of them for their own inspirational work and their support of mine.
And of course, every book I write is dedicated to Pretty. Without her love and support every day of my life, there would be nothing left to say. The End.
Stay tuned.
I'll Call It Like I See It 