I want to thank my husband for insisting we stay in India just one more year. If I didn’t have that extra year of small cafés and hiding inside from the blistering heat, I may have not taken on the task of writing a book a month for a year. This is the first of those books to be finished and meet the world. While I want to thank him for being supportive, he’s an engineer and the concept of fictional worlds and writing fantastical tales doesn’t make much sense. Still, he tries his best and knows when I go for the second round of French Press coffee, he better be quiet. I jest, because in reality, he’s my soulmate, my best friend, my favorite souvenir from seven years of travel, and in his own way, my biggest fan. He even said, “I want to buy a copy of your book! I may not read it, but I’ll buy it.” And that’s okay with me. I don’t want to discuss my writing with someone who knows me better than anyone.
To my small town of Bargersville, Indiana, just on the edge of Franklin, thank you for summer nights, two lane chip and oil roads through hills of cornfields, hot summer nights loaded with fireflies, and instilling a deep need to explore the world on my own. If you weren’t so damn beautifully boring, I may have never spent my teens and twenties taking random road trips around the US, and I’m pretty sure I never would have bought that handful of one-way tickets around the world in 2011. I still haven’t come “home”, and maybe my inner Blossom never will.
Finally, to all of my fellow dreamers, doers, and doubters who dare, thank you. We may not be perfect, but we are perfectly flawed. May we continue stumbling, flying, and cutting our own path because we own our worlds.
About The Author
Dionne Abouelela is a dreamer with a chronic case of wanderlust. She has an affinity for lukewarm coffee laced with cinnamon, eating ice cubes, petting puppies, and anything with a dinosaur. She now lives in Munich, Germany, with her Egyptian husband and adorably naughty street dog rescued during her six years living in India and one in Uganda.
Dionne founded Pen Name Publishing in 2014 while in the midst of finishing her Master’s Degree. She is an internationally certified Life Coach, specializing in Goal Achievement and Lifestyle Design. After working with amazing authors, she focused her coaching practice on helping authors develop their business with the creation of Happy Writing Co (https://happywriting.co).
You can chat with Dionne every Sunday on Twitter for #HappyWritingChat, or join Happy Writing on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/groups/happywriting).
Dionne blogs about lifestyle design for renaissance souls, creativity, and personal development at Girl Vs. City (https://girlvscity.com), and you can reach her on any social media channel under GirlVsCity.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
THE END
Acknowledgements
About The Author
The Wrong Side of Twenty-Five Page 24