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Rising Stars: Meet Elyse Bruce

Today we’d like to introduce you to Elyse Bruce.

Hi Elyse, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
When I was a child of 3, every time my family got in the car to go anywhere, everyone knew there would be another chapter told of “The Girl and the Bunny Who Live Behind the Barn.” But it wasn’t just car rides that drove my creativity. I also loved to draw for hours every day, and oftentimes I sang songs — some I learned, others I made up.

As I grew older, I began to write stories on scrap paper, and then in notebooks. I began to write my songs down, and I continued drawing for hours every day.

After years of bugging my parents to let me learn to play piano, they relented but only because my mother assured my father I would be bugging them twice as much by Christmas to let me quit taking piano lessons (they were mistaken on that point but it was a reasonable concept to run with in light of how many kids hate music lessons).

By the time I was a teen, I was performing live in all the typical venues a teen is allowed to be a musician, and at 15, I began to garner attention as a self-taught visual artist, winning 3rd place in a major art competition where 1st and 2nd place went to Fine Arts majors working on Master’s degrees in art at university.

Upon graduating from high school, my parents pushed for me to go on to post-secondary education and become a lawyer, but I chose to be a professional musician instead so, although classically trained, I joined a heavy metal band. Over the years, I went from being a band member to band leader to musical director for a country singer who built a nice following in Canada, to being a session musician. All the while, I kept on writing and arranging music, and placing songs with indie recording artists and in documentaries.

I married in the early 90s, became the mom of a special needs child in 1995 (autism and myasthenia gravis), and started a new phase in life as a single parent. That effectively put music on the back burner although I did record and release two CDs of instrumental music in the early 2000s.

Because my child spent so much time sick at home or hospitalized, I focused my attention on writing and art, and stories of “the girl” became a regular thing again. It wasn’t long before “the girl” was named Missy Barrett, and along with the Missy Barrett stories, I wrote other stories for a number of age groups.

January 2010 led to creating my blog “Idiomation: Historically Speaking” to help my teen better understand what peers and teachers meant when they used idioms while speaking. It wasn’t long before other teens at the school were accessing the blog and sending along questions about idioms they didn’t understand. That first month helped 18 people, and over the years, the numbers kept growing with the number of unique hits now being in the tens of thousands each month. Of course, finding out that my blog has been used as a credible resource in books by established authors and writers, in legal decisions and documents, and more is something I didn’t foresee happening back when I started the blog.

In 2013, I moved to East Tennessee and remarried, this time to a fellow author and artist. My now adult child decided he wanted to stay in Canada where he had friends, supports, and services secured.

Since settling here, Missy Barrett has gone on to success with encouraging people — not just middle grade readers — to be the best version of themselves. This includes participating in “International Missy Barrett Day: A Day To Do Good Deeds” which was established in 2017 and has a number of people, cities and counties in East Tennessee participating as well as micronations around the world.

Since 2019, we’ve had the “Missy Barrett and Friends’ Night Before Christmas” project where various individuals and businesses locally, nationally, and internationally help pack tote bags with much-needed essentials as well as fun items for 32 children 12 years of age or younger who fall sick or are injured and need to go to the Emergency Room at the LeConte Medical Center in Sevierville on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day..

My husband, Thomas Taylor and I were asked by the Sevierville Chamber of Commerce in 2015 to create the artwork for the Rose Glen Literary Festival poster. Our co-painted pieces created specifically for the Rose Glen Literary Festival adorned the posters for the 2016 event through to the 2019 event (four posters total).

Music, art, and literature have always been my life, and continues to be my life. Not many people can say that. My Irish grandfather used to say if you were going to hold down a job all your life, it was best to love what you were doing. That way it wouldn’t feel like work, and you’d see things as challenges instead of problems when things didn’t go as expected. He was right. Over the years, things haven’t always gone the way I expected, but my life has been a series of adventures that have taught me so much, and presented me with so many opportunities.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Everyone encounters struggles in life, and some people encounter more than others, however perspective is everything. The dictionary definition of struggle is ‘to experience difficulty and make a very great effort in order to do something.” However, most people feel that struggling has a negative connotation. Instead I choose to see struggles as challenges which has a more positive feel to it.

Has life sometimes been difficult for me? Of course, it has. Has it required great effort to make it through to the other side of the issue? Yes. But by seeing them as challenges, I have learned something each and every time.

Being a single parent to a child diagnosed with autism and myasthenia gravis was challenging. After all, myasthenia gravis is a rare, incurable, life-threatening neuromuscular autoimmune disease that strikes 2 in 1 million children (it strikes 1 in 100,000 adults) so getting my child through countless crises was challenging. And while raising my child as a single parent, I had to make sure I was bringing money in to cover our expenses. When the sole wage earner in the household is also the primary caregiver, it’s a challenge to find the perfect balance between the two expectations.

In comparison, all other challenges were not as intense and haven’t lasted as long. But as hard as some challenges have been, I embraced them as they happened, and I continue to move forward with the lessons those challenges taught me.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
What sets me apart from others is that I am accomplished in a number of creative fields: literature, art, and music. It’s part of what makes me a polymath (a person whose expertise spans a significant number of subject areas) which extends beyond literature, art, and music. I’m just different. You could say I’m a treasure trove of little known and long-forgotten details and facts.

I am best known for my fictional 9-year-old character Missy Barrett who lives in real life Sevierville. I’m proud that “the girl” from so many years ago has become an influential fictional character who has a positive effect on children, teens, and adults in East Tennessee as well as in various parts of the world. Missy Barrett continues to inspire me to write more Missy Barrett stories, and in 2022, new books as well as a new Missy Barrett series are planned.

I find it touching and humorous when I introduce myself to others and they nod their heads politely but as soon as I mention I write the Missy Barrett books, I am often greeted with, “I *know* Missy Barrett!!!!” as their eyes light up.

What I’m most proud of is the fact that I have lived my entire adult life in the creative arts industry. There aren’t too many people who can say they have done what they love doing all their lives. To that end, I have been blessed.

As for what I’m known for, it depends on the connection between myself and the person to whom you are speaking. People are often surprised to learn of the many other talents and skills I have beyond the talents and skills of which they are aware. I suppose you could say I specialize in surprising people in a good way.

How do you think about happiness?
What doesn’t make me happy? I believe every event in life is a neutral event, and the emotion a person attaches to that event determines if it’s a positive or negative event. I look for the silver lining in every situation, no matter how bad someone might think the situation is.

What makes me happy is being able to make a positive difference in people’s lives … one person at a time, no matter how young or old that person may be, no matter how able-bodied or differently abled that person may or may not be.

What also makes me happy is doing the right things in life, and encouraging others to do the right things in life. If others choose not to do what’s right, that’s on them, but if something I say or do makes a positive difference out there, that makes me happy … even when I don’t know I’ve had a positive effect on someone.

I have this long-held belief that you bring about what you think about, and for that reason I am a realistic idealist who knows there’s negativity and pessimism out there, but who focuses more on what is positive and realistic.

Contact Info:

Image Credits
My husband Thomas Taylor took my photo and the photo credit is on the photograh.

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