I just wanted to share with you the new logo for the concert and show I am putting together.
It wouldn’t be so amazing if I hadn’t had the wonderful help from an amazing artist, Susan Cooper of Finding Our Way Now. Her artwork is one of a kind and will be applauding her everywhere I go and raising a glass of vino to her! Susan… Salute!!!
I chose a scarab beetle because it represents transformations (i.e. Healing from Abuse) and the Egyptians believed it was the ‘Protector of the written word’ and purple is the color of the Domestic Violence Ribbon.
It’s going to be on T-Shirts, caps and banners etc!!
It has been submitted into the library of Suffolk County Coalition Against Domestic Violence,
SCCADV is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing safety and support services to victims of Domestic Violence in Suffolk County, Long Island , New York.
Last summer my Blackberry died and I was so sad. It had become my little electronic friend through to quote the “It was the best of times. It was the worse of times” of two years. It rarely crashed and I loved the little keyboard. However, when I went to the store with my husband who had recently upgraded to Android, the store representative suggested I should change to the Android too.
Vin said that as my business had changed from PDF downloads and using Word for my finance business I should consider the Android as it would be a lot more helpful for the new media outlets I would now be using i.e. Facebook, WordPress, my website etc.
Reluctantly, I agreed. I say reluctantly because some of my finance clients had struggled with it when they first started to use it, I think looking back they struggled with the Qwerty screen being a tap and swipe rather than easy little buttons.
I took my new little friend home and started to try and develop a relationship with it, sometimes a frustrating one as swipe texting can drive me insane some times! Vin suggested I talk the text… but… seriously? With my accent? People don’t always understand me let alone a phone! LOL
I did however discover some really cool aspects to it though. We have Vin’s seventeen year old daughter live with us and he was worried in Summer as to where she was going, if she was safe, what would she do if she had an accident or something happened outside of her control… Would she be able to call for help in time.
This is when we discovered Life 360 an App for Android, iPhone and Blackberry. It’s an amazing little app! You register your phone number to it after downloading it to your phone with easy walk through instructions and viola! We are all mapped! Gone were the phone calls between us of “Where are you?” “How long will it take you get home?” etc. It’s a simple tap and it shows you on a map where we all are. It incorporates and a red tap button for alerts if you need help. It also has a “Check In” so family members can “Check in” with each other! And if that wasn’t enough you can register your phone in case it gets lost or stolen, it will be tracked and found! And it shows all your local police precincts/stations, Fire houses and sex offenders in your vicinity! How beautiful is that!?
Now for those who have been in difficult situations before I think it’s a wonderful tool and seriously wished I’d had it available when I was being stalked and threatened. It would have been a lot easier than running through town trying to find a Police car… Which one night I did, surprising the hell out of them by banging on their window screaming for help! They let me into their car and called the officer who was looking after my case, who was a sweetheart because apparently he was having dinner with his family! He told them to escort me back to my car and follow me home so I arrived back safe.
Sorry I digressed for a moment there… flashbacks can certainly jump upon you suddenly!
I strongly suggest this app for everyone and not just women, I mean everyone can find themselves in truly terrible and horrific times in life without any notice at all.
It has won numerous awards too, Mobile Apps Showdown 2012, The National Parenting Center 2012 Seal of Approval Winner, National Parenting Publications Awards Gold Seal Winner, RCRWireless News Innovation Award, Mom’s Choice Awards Gold Seal Winner, About.com 2012 Readers’ Choice Awards Coolest Parenting & Teens Gadget Winner, The Webby Awards People’s Voice Winner for Best Use of GPS or Location Technology, Facebook fbFund “Technology Winner”, Babble Top 25 Apps for Moms, Google Android Developer Challenge Grand Prize Winner, PTPA. Winner.
Tell what do you think to these apps? Are they a blessing or a curse? Would it make you feel more empowered? Or do you feel they are an invasion of privacy?
Rather than post up a video about it from Life 360, I posted this one from a father who loves and shows you how easy it is to use.
This has been one crazy week! Just when you think you have completed one Author page, there’s another.. and there are not two minute pieces of work either I found out! They are full of uploads and copy and pastes and… and… Phew!
Any hoo… I think I’m there with it… sorta… kinda… finally, but I’m sure after Sunday I’ll be saying “Oh Wow! I forgot…” lol
So here we go!
Sunday I’ll be drawing a name out of a hat on video and posting it here for one lucky person who ‘Liked’ my Facebook page to receive a signed copy of the book A Broken Ring… Yay!
It has been one crazy ride slowly picking up speed as I go lol
I so hope you can join me on Sunday because after all you were with me the whole journey of tears, confessions, freaky moments and laughs! I also want to thank Dennis Golden of IM-Safe for being so incredibly supportive, he is a true hero!
But we did it and just in time for this years Domestic Violence Awareness Month!
It arrived today! The book… My book! A Broken Ring
Vin asked me earlier to day while I was quietly waiting for it to arrive how I felt… A total mixture of excitement, trepidation of will it be how I imagined? Will it look okay? to the simple crazy of… Will it look like a book?! lol.
Well… it has pages with writing on it so that’s a start, I looked again… yes they are my words I chose to write it! It looks like it did online lol.
It is a book, my book and I’m in disbelief as now it’s reality, no more talking about writing or editing , even formatting,,, it is a complete book and to top it off, it’s glossy. Sweet!
I checked the first couple of pages and there is the Dedication I wrote to Vin and my children.
Dedications in A Broken Ring
Secondly I checked the Acknowledgments and yes they are there too. The first to my father who was my rock, the second to my sister, thirdly to Dennis Golden of IM-Safe for his encouragement and inspiration and lastly but by no means least one of the most important people who have been in my life over the last few months as I traveled this journey… YOU GUYS!!!
Acknowledgments in A Broken Ring
Thank you so much for being there for me with encouragement with words of wisdom, support and love.
I love you and huge hugs to you!!!
(Please excuse the quality of the pictures so excited we used the camera phone so they are a little fuzzy! lol)
I’m holding a competition!!! Yay So it’s really simple…
I’m going to out all the names of people who have ‘Liked’ my C. L. Cappetta Facebook page into a hat on September 23rd and the winner will receive a free signed copy of my book ‘A Broken Ring’
If you want to take part and haven’t been to the page yet it is www.facebook.com/CLCappetta and click ‘Like’ to enter. Please spread the word! Thank you
After a lot of hard work going through Creative Common’s legalities of using pictures on various websites I decided it would just be easier to develop my own!
I read about how it was easy to use a background already created for use but when you through the small print it slowly bleats on like a baa-ing sheep that you can’t do this and you can’t do that. You can only use for eBooks and not for print and if you do and we find you we will sue the hind quarters off you and if you sell more than ‘baa baa’ copies we will either have to sue you again or charge a crazy amount of money that we ourselves determine… baa baa baa…
Can you tell I have been on a merry-go-round? lol
I asked myself this “If you can write a novel… then why the heck can’t you design your cover?!” DUH!
This is coming form a woman who knows she’s not good at graphic design or websites… if I was I would be able to place my Blog Award pictures using some ‘widget’ in my side bar on this blog… Trust I have tried and ended up a creating a graphics picture and placing them into a “Page” instead… which I managed to do today! lol
So I took photographs, downloaded, tweaked and this is the final product still keeping a similar theme to the last one of fireflies and the ‘Out of the darkness and into the light theme”
I really hope you like this one as much as you did the last!
Please let me know what you think as I have actually tried to simplify it too so it won’t be a blur when it becomes a thumbnail.
If you new to my journey I have posted the 1st chapter of A Broken Ring in to a page which can be found at the top of this post.
At the very beginning of my journey writing, it was to be a healing tool for myself. It wasn’t meant to be shared with the world, just my story. My husband suggested I should do it so that I could understand what had happened to me in the past a little easier and if I was really lucky, maybe find some peace within it. I told him he was crazy but he kept pushing on the issue. I had another friend who kept telling me that with my experiences I should write a book. My reaction was to laugh with the reply of “Who on earth would want to read my about my life?”
Well, I started slowly and it built momentum. I learned about PTSD and RTS (Rape Trauma Syndrome, which I know a lot of people don’t like that title, but for me it fits) I’ve learned about my own personal issues and “Zones” as I call them as to how I react to certain situations. I have cried many tears and laughed out loud with joy, as the journey built into this blog and my Facebook page:C.L.Cappetta. I then turned my Linkedin page from finance to my writing and joined different groups about writing, blogging and violence/abuse. I suddenly started to make make new amazing friends who all had similar views. This was amazing as I had always thought I was alone!
One day I was introduced to a wonderful man called Dennis Golden. He is the CEO of the IM-SAFE Institute based in Connecticut with his daughter, Jennifer Lownik. They can be found at:im-safe.com. It is designed to help teach people self defense and personal empowerment by holding different types of self defense workshops. Some of their clients have ranged from Johnson & Johnson, ESPN, Cisco Systems, to name just a few! Their slogan words ring “Keeping women and those they love safe”.
They also have a forum for women to join, to discuss issues they have encounter regarding abuse and trauma,IM-SAFE forum. It is entirely confidential for sharing stories, events and most of all help and support.
I was absolutely delighted when Dennis Golden so very kindly gave me an excellent review for, A Broken Ring!
And here it is! TA-DAH!!!
“An engaging and riveting journey that impacts both the mind and heart. The reader is immediately captivated from the opening lines and is launched on a journey of discovery and empowerment.
I guarantee you will be overcome by your need to read what happens next. This is a powerful story of discovery and hope for anyone who has been impacted (directly or indirectly) by abuse.”
Dennis E. Golden, CEO, IM-SAFE®
Keeping Women And Those They Love Safe
I have to say I feel so incredibly blessed! After he sent me the review, we organized a call. My first time talking to him and I am excited to say we will be collaborating together in the future on some exciting ventures to help keep women safe and spread the word about self-defense and empowerment.
I can’t believe it’s Thursday already! Where did this week go? It was supposed to be an easy quiet, laid back time… guess that went out the window!
Monday started off quietly enough, I spent some time catching up on emails, blogs I love to follow. I cruised articles and websites, thinking about how this week was going to be fun developing the cover for my book. I told myself a few ‘tweaks’ on the original cover I posted at the beginning of this blog journey should do it… (http://clairecappetta.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/the-rough-draft-of-the-book-cover-drum-role/)
Until I realized while looking for the picture I had used had been wiped from my computer… hmm.
I took the boardwalk picture while visiting a friends beach house on my Blackberry. One problem, the Blackberry died on me a month ago. It was sad. I’d had for over 2 years, seeing me through a lot of times and fitted snugly in the back pocket of my jeans on the rare occasions I went out! My husband and the store recommended that I move to Android now that my business had changed so much from reviewing documents to social media and pictures. Sorry, I digress.
Anyway, I truly thought I had emailed the picture to myself (I do this in case my computer dies). Well my laptop caught a cold a couple of months ago which in order to ‘heal’ it, was set back to factory settings. Hence I lost my original picture, completely! Vin and I scoured every where to try and find it but to no avail. Of course, the picture I uploaded to the blog wasn’t good enough to use either, so back to the drawing board!
After several ideas and pictures I developed this below. It’s of an evening with fireflies Perfect!
It brought to mind the light coming out of the dark, how apt as the story is one of a woman’s journey from abuse to empowerment.I put a little broken gold ring in the center, representing the circle of life and it’s journeys ( getting deep now, huh?) I’ve put the script in yellows and golds to also represent the light, but at the foot of the cover I wrote “The ride to Liberty series” in purple, to represent the purple ribbon of abuse, (http://clairecappetta.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/one-good-reason-to-wear-purple-this-month/)
The story was originally going to be called “Broken Ring” which I changed to “The Ride to Liberty”, then after discovering the story was becoming a much bigger picture, it is now going to become a trilogy, (http://clairecappetta.wordpress.com/2012/05/02/a-ride-to-liberty-aha/)
Keeping up with me so far? lol ( I have put in links to back posts to explain for new readers here)
So there you go, an explanation as to why I chose and designed this cover the way it is. I wanted it to convey a message of empowerment and inspiration:).
TA-DAH!
I want to thank you.
For all the love and support I have received from you all on this journey I embarked on, with this blog, a little over 4 months ago. I have laughed and cried my way through it but it would be nothing without you.
English: a love heart in water (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Your mind knows only some things. Your inner voice, your instinct, knows everything. If you listen to what you know instinctively, it will always lead you down the right path ...Henry Winkler.
