I never had imaginary friends as child.

Did you? If not, read this to understand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_friend

But I read and read and read. My family lived in small communities, sparsely populated and countrified.

My psychologist friends tell me that I am fortunate: as the oldest child I was allowed to read and play, not conscripted as caregiver to my three younger sibs. All had language-learning disabilities…hence my career, ya think? My mother, my first writing coach, is my hero.

I read biographies of famous women, propelling me beyond cloister, in imagination. I went to college and excelled, selected for a new Honors program at Purdue University based upon my written essay on the entrance exam. I am the person you hated in college, the one that wrote an A paper with what looked like little effort.

In my career as a speech-language pathologist I wrote thousands of clinical reports, and some of them contained fabulous fiction. Had to yank the heartstrings of a medical insurance reviewer to gain coverage. My reports were confined to one page and rapidly sent to the referring physician, to spur the pipeline of his/her referrals to my private practice, my personal project that thrived for twenty-five years. A profession I adored, fully purpose-driven.

How to bridge to retirement was an issue: how to achieve my dual needs of self-actualization and fun?

I enrolled in a free memoir-writing class, soon discovering that I had lived a white bread life, not the stuff of engrossing memoirs. Within months I met Meredith and Barbara and Carol and many others who help me hurdle the distance that medical writing demands. I wrote and wrote and wrote.

I published a novel, STASHES, in 2014, placing its full-on fiction in the Midwest because I believed my relatives would be the book’s sole purchasers. It’s logline: “Baby Boomer parents gallivant around the country in a Winnebago, leaving the family farm in the care of their immature son and his conniving wife. What could go wrong?”https://www.amazon.com/Stashes-PJ-Colando-ebook/dp/1631920901/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1474912459&sr=1-1&keywords=Stashes

By early 2015 I missed my community of imaginary friends, the core of six who channeled the malarkey and mayhem. One tapped my metaphoric shoulder to say: “What about me?”

Oops, my creativity—and my desire to be done—left an unclosed plot loop, and HASHES & BASHES began. Interestingly, while my style was decidedly expository and mere steps out of ‘tell’ when I started in 2010, HASHES & BASHES sailed from my thoughts to the keyboard almost entirely as conversation. I knew and loved my imaginary friends.

HASHES & BASHES logline: “A charismatic outsider visits a farm family, claiming to be kin, and hashes and bashes begin.

Please pre-order your print book https://www.amazon.com/Hashes-Bashes-Jackie-Steve-Colando/dp/0692758976/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1474912767&sr=1-1&keywords=hashes+and+bashes or buy an ebook today.