Transcript
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Interviewer (1:05)
So Joanne, I always love talking to authors. Being a recent author myself, I know how hard and challenging the process can be and it can take a very long time and people don't realize how hard it is. And and I know you have a recent book that has come out A Messenger of the Light and it is about your son Warren and its artwork and thoughts from him. And I'd like to understand what was the journey like for you writing this book, knowing how challenging it could be, yet in the end how powerful it could be to others?
Joanne (Author and Mother) (1:43)
Well, let me just take a minute and say this all began when I received a notice that my son had died and this was unexpected. He lived in California, he worked with KTLA TB doing weather and traffic many years and he underwent surgery recently and we thought he was recuperating and preparing to come home for Christmas when I received this notice. I can't explain the immense pain, the thoughts, the memories, the feelings that come to you and it brought back so many memories of Warren when he was a child. He started with a lot of creativity. We were in Germany at that time and he would be two and a half I'm looking for him. He's laying under a Christmas tree, gazing up to the whole length of the tree, the tall watching the twinkling lights instead of from the outside. As he grew, he just kept producing movies and stage shows in his grandma's garage and then he went on to he wanted to write stories and develop films, and he did this. He graduated from Loyola. He worked with ktla, like I said, for a number of years. He loved this. I'll take a minute to say. Warren was a beautiful person and a wonderful son. He showed his love and compassion, especially for his friends and others. It just radiated from him. And I realized I had to go to California to look through his remaining personal items in his apartment and close it out. At that time, I found a whole notebook and collection of his artwork, and I found some of the words. He talked with me daily, and I knew he wanted to do stories that would help others. And he always believed that the. That some people have a light within them. And he felt like a lot of his friends and himself were chosen by the light. And I even found a handout that he did describing the characteristics of the light that shines within us. And I found many other meaningful words and thoughts. He believed that we were the eyes of Christ and that he. He followed us. If you had the light and saw what was happening on the earth, he had many words. So in the midst of feeling like this, so much pain, you had to do something. I said, I cannot just throw this away. So I felt I had to do this. I had to get his artwork and his personal words and his. Anything I found that was of importance. The handouts that he would have there, I took them. And I decided at that time that I would try to compile this in a book. I'd never had written a book before. So needless to say, I was very nervous and scared because I thought, wow. I was a social worker by my trade. I did a lot of interventions, but nothing like that. And so I would use prayers. And I talked to my husband a lot, and to my family, which included sisters who were still living and two friends, and to Warren. And I would just pray for guidance. And what I did was I compiled. I put sections together using his artwork. I chose some of his art, and then I put together some of his words. Like, he believed it, that God made us all to contribute something back to this world. And he believed in the light. And his. His words led me to the title of it, A Messenger of the Light. And that came from his words, but also his coloring. This is part of his artwork. He used certain colors, really beautiful colors. And this is for. He did a lot of artwork for your imagination, but it is the wings of an angel. And he used this in his artwork, and they put it together on his book. But it's a beautiful coloring. And with that I, I looked, well, okay, what do you do with this once you compile this? I took it to a copier printer. They did some typing for me. Then I knew nothing about publishing. I looked for advertisements. I looked for anything I could find of someone who might help me to get this out to the public. And with that I found that in addition to having this desire to share this with others, you had to have a lot of money also to get you to this point. So with, with prayers and with using some of Warren's deserved money that he, he got for working so many years at ktla. I was lucky to use the publishers in and find them to help me. And with that it came down to advertising it and eventually to your podcast. But he believed in his friends and others and he believed that we're all chosen to the light. And he wanted to help primarily with this book. And that's what I tried to cover in this. The obstacles that I came across. A lot of fear in myself, a lot of self doubt. Not having done this before, I didn't want to appear to. I didn't want to waste his money. I felt bad about using it. I didn't want to waste it. So there are a lot of fear. I relied so much on prayers and talking to war and I think I got guidance. I feel I really did. And I had people who were very interested, the publishers, they guided and helped. And his friends were very supportive. And I know that he loved them very much. And for them I wrote this also because I wanted them to have some remembrances of war. And he had so many good friends. He never knew a stranger, I think, and he loved the people we worked with at kla, so they were included in that. I wanted to give them all something to remember him by. But with that, I think his own artwork, his thoughts, they were just. He dated his art and he, he signed it and of course I've done artwork, but nothing like that. A little pit leave here, here and there. But his was so pronounced and so thought through. He. He'd even given a title like Creation. And he used a lot of his thoughts to combine with the spiritual thoughts of how we were created in the scientific manner. Space was always there in the back of his mind. At third grade he did a space colony. So with this book, his artwork shows a lot of his spirituality at the development of us in the relation to the world we live in and to our spiritual beings that we have in our heavens. And with that, I'll stop here and see if I'M I'm just.