Seeking Change

I'm sure some of my readers have felt, at one point of time in your lives or another, the desire for change.  We change different things in our lives constantly -- clothes, foods, routines, houses, jobs, and sadly, spouses -- and I've come to that point in my life where I want to change what I DO.  I'm a legal secretary and have been that for about 30 years.  I never wanted to enter the professional work force, but faced with caring for my young children by myself due to divorce, I had to find a field of work that would pay well and yield steady employment.  Browsing the newspaper convinced me that I should go into the secretarial field as there were multiple listings for all sorts of secretarial positions.  But I had no training, so I enrolled in a local business college and took a 9-month secretarial course, learning speedwriting, typing, and filing, as well as taking courses in English and accounting.  I also experienced mock interviews in preparation for the real thing.  A month before I graduated, I interviewed for and got a job in the legal field as a secretary for a father/son law firm.  Thus began my legal career.
I've been rather content through the years, but my heart has found a happier home in my writing.  Having written and self-published four books, I intensely yearn to be a professional writer.  The desire burns inside me. 
I took my birthday off from work earlier this month and did a little research on-line regarding publishers and found WestBow Press, which is a division of Thomas Nelson Publishing, one of the biggest names in Bibles and Christian materials.  I was very interested, but the cost of using their services made me choke a little; our finances have been hard-hit with my surgery, a rebuilt engine in my husband's work van, and having that leaning tree at our rental house cut down.  Doling out thousands more at this time makes me cringe.  But I completed a simple form for more information via e-mail, and the next day I was surprised with a phone call from one of their people.  As the call was on my cell phone, he left a message, and after listening to it, I left work 15 minutes early in order to return the call at home.  The rep and I spoke for over 50 minutes, and he was a wealth of information and encouragement to me.  During the next few days, he read the chapter of "Amanda's Hope" that is posted on Amazon.com.  He e-mailed me that it is very well written and that he hopes I'll pursue my dream by using that book to assist in the problem of teen pregnancy in our society.  He also gave me multiple ideas for marketing and promoting the book in order to raise the funds I need to have it published by WestBow.
So that finds me here, seemingly stuck between a rock and a hard place, needing to pursue being a public speaker at rotary clubs, women's groups, churches, doing TV and newspaper interviews, and little time to invest in those pursuits.  I'm gone from the house from 8:45 AM until 5:45 PM, then come home, cook dinner and clean up from dinner, and walk or exercise, necessary since surgery, as well as pay the bills, clean the house, and do the laundry.  I don't usually sit down until 9 PM, and by then I'm exhausted.  Where can I find the time to pursue the marketing and promotional venues that have been suggested to me?
Women who work full-time have two jobs, in my opinion -- their professional job for which they get paid, and their job as wife, mother, homemaker, for which there is no monetary reward, but a deeper, more meaningful reward instead.  I don't have children at home, and I don't know how working women succeed at holding down these two jobs.  Maybe they don't.  Maybe that's why the divorce rate is so high.  Maybe.
I've got to come up with a game plan for promotion and marketing of "Amanda's Hope."  I'm asking God for a miracle here; I'm not happy at my job, but stressed and exhausted.  I want to write, to make a difference in someone's life.  Change that is desired is vastly different than that which is forced, and I desire to be a professional writer, and with God's help, I know that it will come to pass -- in His timing.