Spotlight on Boshemia

Today we shine the light on one of our newest members of the 100 Club, Boshemia.

1.  You write about so many interesting topics.  Which lens did you write first and why?

When I did my first lens, I had no idea what Squidoo was about so I did exactly what was suggested for our first lens, an about me lens.

Boshemia’s Bohemia: Who am I?

The about me lens really is an excellent way to get a feel for Squidoo and what you can do with it, it gives you a solid grasp of the modules and what you can do with them, and allows you to make your Squidoo experience more personal.

After that the sky is the limit. I didn’t know what I would write about, or if I had anything to say that someone else would actually want to read so I just experimented. I can’t really say I found my niche, because my niche found me.

Self-improvement and victim’s advocacy are topics near and dear to my own heart. I struggled with issues such as self-esteem and past abuse for a very long time before finally realizing that our lives are exactly what we make of them, nothing more, nothing less.

Happiness is within the reach of each and every one of us, we just have to reach out and grab it. So that’s what I do, try to help people figure out how to reach out and grab their own happiness.

2.   Tell us a little about your fiction writing and where we can read some of it?

Harm None is a novel I started for last years National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The concept was to take the subject of sexual abuse into a safe fantasy world, to address the feelings and emotions, the loss, the confusion and give young girls who have experienced abuse a heroine they can relate to without actually talking specifically about abuse.

Hence, Drea was born. Drea is a young girl with a secret, someone has been stealing her innocence one piece at a time. Her 12th birthday is coming up, and her secret will be revealed to the whole village if she doesn’t find a way to retrieve her lost items.

Adam is her best friend, and he finds himself lost somewhere between the child he is and the adult he is to become. The society they live in is steeped in tradition, and both children find themselves feeling like outsiders in a world they are supposed to serve to protect.

I based their culture on many ancient cultures, their laws were inspired by the Egyptian Book of the Dead, their rituals beased in those of the Native Americans, you will find some Greek and Roman influences, and some of it came from pure fantasy.

It is still in rough draft form, but when completed will be a full scale fantasy novel…

The first few chapters are available here…

Harm None – a novel on Squidoo

3.   Which of your over 100 lenses is your favorite and why?

Profile of a school shooter is based on two years of research for another piece of fiction. I wanted to take a chance to explore what happens to those who are left behind in the aftermath of a achool shooting. The survivors, the witnesses, and most of all the parents and family of the shooter.

In order to make my characters as real as possible I spent two years studying everything I could find with regard to school shooters, and for contrast other types of spree and serial killers. Studying the sociopath is a rather morbid hobby, I agree, but I needed as much realism as possible for my basis.

After studying 22 boys, in 20 different incidents I found a remarkable number of similarities, and most of all I found that what the media has told us about these boys is only a small part of the story. I didn’t find monsters… I found lost boys.

I found something wrong with the very society they were raised in, a society that pressures boys to be manly at all costs, and some get that idea twisted so deeply that they not only killed themselves, but they took so many innocent lives with them.

What I found surprised me, and it is bound to surprise you too…

4.    The chicken or the egg?

Welcome to my world.

When I ask myself a simple question, my mind goes on a journey. It wants to know why one even had to come first, it says an egg can’t possibly exist without a chicken, but a chicken can’t possibly exist without an egg either. I ask myself such questions all of the time.

I have finally come to accept that we don’t HAVE to know the answer to any of lifes questions, the big or the small, because in the end many questions don’t really have an answer. My answer may be far different than yours, and there is nothing wrong with that.

My mind can chase a solution for years, and never come up with a true answer but… I can be quite certain that it isn’t the answer that is the most important thing, but the journey to find that answer is what makes life worth living.

There is much I don’t know about this world, but I will never stop trying to find out.

When I write, I write from the heart. It comes from somewhere deep inside of me, I dig into thoughts and emotions that I’ve been told my whole life should remain hidden. I like to hit on some heavy topics, topics that many people shy away from. I don’t fear the unknown, I embrace it. When something frightens me or confuses me, I set out to try and understand it, and with understanding comes peace.

Thank you so much Squidoo, for helping me find my voice, for helping me find my audience, for helping me make connections I never would have had the courage to make otherwise. Thank you Squidoo for gathering so many wonderful people into a community that gave me a place to really belong for the first time in my life.

Thank you Squidoo for existing.

Thank you for taking the time to share with us Boshemia!

All new 100 Club members will be receiving a Spotlight interview request from me.  If you joined the 100 Club previously (before September 30, 2009) and you’d like to be featured here in the NEW more personal style, please contact me and I’ll send you some questions. robin(at)squidoo.com