I am so proud of my "big sis," Julie. I have watched over the years her blog change and morph into just the ideal showcase for her. Above-the-Norm: Bizarre Arizona is a great tribute to all things spooky, abandoned, urban legends, creepy stories and awesome photography, as well as reporting our crazy road trips and ghost hunts on the AZ roads.
As an off-shoot of all that she does, she is in the process of writing a book "Dead and Buried" about all the things you find in AZ's land from ancient tribes pottery to buried outlaws, from geology and abandoned places to gold!
The real showcase of all that she does as an artist and photographer and lover of all things desert is her Etsy shop: Backroads Treasures. As someone who hits the roads with her, I am thoroughly impressed how she could photograph these bleak landscapes, abandoned buildings, mining towns and then take bits and pieces from the sites and incorporate them into art. It is very reflective of the book we did together:
"Abandoned Places: Abandoned Memories (Desert Edition)" is out on Kindle and Nook now. Our book showcases her photographs of 12 abandoned sites in the desert with my psychic readings from the sites, bringing to life a moment in time long forgotten.
I say it all the time, but it's true. When you take your life experiences and tack them together, what you end up doing makes perfect sense. Julie was raised in Arizona and her view of the desert is one from the eyes of someone who sees it as home. She has always been an artist and photographer, but her love of history and ghost hunting had her hooking up with me and hitting the road to photo document the states's weirdness. It seemed to make perfect sense that as I did psychic reads on locations, we decided to document them. As well, her beautiful photographs and mementos from the sites made beautiful art that brings to life what we experienced in the desert, just the way our book does.
I believe in intelligent serendipity as a way of the universe and my big sis is living up to her potential and knows herself and her experiences and talents in such a way that she's sharing it with us. I am so thankful for that because every time I look at the things in her shop, I am reminded of our trips and as a psychic, the objects from the site make them even more viscerally alive.