Introducing TravelinOma

"Glad to meet you."

Marty Halverson began blogging before she knew what it was. Long "story emails" filled in-boxes until her overwhelmed son said, "You ought to start a blog." After exploring the Blogosphere TravelinOma discovered a world inhabited by kindred spirits: she had found her medium.

"Creative is a term I used to associate with crafts," she says. "I reserved it for people who produced a work of art you could hang on a wall, or tell your kids not to touch. My craft is with words. I write because I can't help it. It's like talking but it doesn't bother anybody. All the great ideas I've collected in my head all these years, from zillions of sources, can tumble off my fingers, be rearranged and organized onto a page, becoming a collage of my thoughts.

"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes, and art is knowing which ones to keep. The Blogosphere is a friendly place to make a mistake, toss it, practice, and finally polish a work of art. It's where I come for my daily creative writing class." Blogging is Marty's art form.

TravelinOma's Mission Statement says in part:

"Everyone has influence, and I want my influence to be for good. My blog will be my legacy, a memoir of significant experiences, told with humor and hope. I will encourage and support young mothers, be an advocate for strong, loving families, discern beauty in the dailiness of living and have fun."

Marty met her husband Dee in Salzburg, Austria where she developed a love for all things European. Sixteen years and seven kids later, they moved their family to York, England for a year, where she developed a love for all things English. Now, with twenty-one grandkids spread across the country, she is a traveling Oma. She thinks it would be fun to teach kindergarten (part-time only, with a couple of aides who would do all the cutting,) design window displays, model make-up for make-overs or compile songs for CD collections.

Marty and Dee have a history company, and do research all over the USA, Canada, Europe, and the British Isles. Marty has written a historical novel about a family in the old west, called Son of a Gun, which was released in 2011. Currently she is co-authoring a biography, and working on a second historical novel. "Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else."