Virginia Lathan

A Little About Me...the Author I’m a born writer. This was evident when I was a young child and used to write plays and cast the neighborhood children in them. However, this is before you could ma...view moreA Little About Me...the Author I’m a born writer. This was evident when I was a young child and used to write plays and cast the neighborhood children in them. However, this is before you could make copies easily, so all the children in my plays had only one script to read from. Needless to say, these productions never really got off the ground. When I first started writing seriously, I wrote short stories. Most of them had strange storylines, and the characters in them were sometimes even stranger, like a story I wrote about a teenage girl who had a tail. But as I continued to grow as a writer, I started to want the characters in my stories to grow. I wanted them to start thinking “outside the box,” so they could experience their lives in more fulfilling ways. Like the story I wrote about an elderly couple that left their crime-ridden neighborhood because they decided to buy a RV rather than an expensive car that would look good to their neighbors and would become a theft magnet to the local car thieves. A number of these stories were published in fiction anthologies that included works from other writers. The first book I wrote is a nonfiction book that stemmed from having worked as a court reporter in Sacramento, California. I never really liked doing court reporting, but I made the best of it and left the profession with a published book―“The Deposition Handbook: A Guide to Help You Give A Winning Deposition,” which is in its fourth edition and still selling. I followed that book up with “Preventing Sexual Harassment: A Training Manuel for the Workplace.” “Laughter Kills...Laughter Heals” is my first novel. I wrote it because I think of myself as being a woman of principle, and writing the book gave me the opportunity to put forth so many of my ideals and thoughts about how wonderful life can be if people dealt with each other more caringly and conscientiously. Plus, like almost all writers, I’m a sucker for a good story. So as my maternal grandmother would say: “She put her foot in this book to give us one of the best!” Other than writing books, I also conduct writing workshops for writers (beginning and experienced ones). In promoting “Laughter...” I also regularly do book-signings and appear at book discussions hosted by book clubs. And, even though I reside in Chicago, I routinely travel to other locations to do these type activities. To find out more about any of these ventures, please visit my publisher’s website at www.CurryCo.cjb.net, or email me directly at CurryCo50@hotmail.com. And when I’m not writing, I have fun performing as a storyteller, being active in a home school community I belong to, and playing tennis.view less