Bermudian LaVette Phillips-Fuentes, aged "forty and something", is on her way to a new singing career with no apologies.

Mrs. Phillips-Fuentes is in the middle of making her first R&B album with a New York company called Stadium Red.

"I am a real jazz buff," she said. "Jazz is my first love, but the album is more R&B. You will catch certain things I do with my style that has jazzy elements.

"It is better for me as a performer to incorporate that since I love it so much. The name of the album is still a secret, but it will be released in 2011."

Mrs. Phillips-Fuentes said she has been singing forever. "I did a lot of singing as a child, in church and in school," she said. "I also come from an entertaining family. Everyone in Bermuda remembers the Four Deuces. My uncle, Jim Hayward, was in that.

"Also, I had four sisters who, back in the day, used to sing at the Salvation Army. They tell me that they used to really hold it down. I was the youngest of the bunch."

She attended Hunter College in New York and worked there for a number of years in publishing as a copy editor, and later for newspapers in Virginia as a circulation manager. Although the rest of her family was musical, no one knew that Mrs. Phillips-Fuentes could sing until she returned to Bermuda in 1999 and performed a solo at a relative's funeral.

She returned to Bermuda to live after her mother, Nora Hayward Phillips, became ill. Mrs. Phillips was also living abroad at the time. "She wasn't that well so I ended up coming home with her in 2000," said Mrs. Phillips-Fuentes. "Unfortunately, she passed away. That was how I ended up back in Bermuda."

She became involved in a number of theatrical productions in Bermuda including Pat Pogson Burnett's Emancipation Day performance of 'Stick it to the Wicket' in 2004 and last year's 'Vermont: The Untold Story'.

In 2008, she was working full-time at Argus Insurance Company when she decided that her real passion was singing, and she wanted to take a chance and pursue it as a career. "I found Stadium Red on the Internet," she said. "I went to New York and recorded a song with them called 'My Marriage Is Over'.

"I recorded that song because I thought it would resonate with a lot of women, not just in Bermuda, but in the entire world. It is an epidemic really. I have had a wonderful response from it."

She admitted that her husband, Jose Fuentes, was a little bit surprised by the title she had chosen for the song.

"When I told him the title of it, he did say 'honey, you aren't trying to tell me something'," she laughed. "I said 'no'. I was actually thinking about what happened to Tiger Woods and Sandra Bullock.

"Sandra Bullock had just won [an Oscar award] and then her husband came forward and said he was having an affair. Today, people tend to be a bit negative about marriage saying 'why bother, you'll only break up anyway'. But I still think the institution of marriage is still something to be held sacred."

'My Marriage Is Over' has had a lot of air time on local radio stations, and the feedback has been positive.

"People just love it and that has made me feel good," said Mrs. Phillips-Fuentes. "I wasn't even going to let people hear it. I was just going to come back, get some money and then go back to finish making the album.

"But Bermudian audiences are the hardest to please, so I thought I would try them out by sending it to the local radio station."

It cost around $20,000 to produce an album with Stadium Red. Mrs. Phillips-Fuentes was forced to sell her car to make her dreams a reality.

"You have to do what you need to do," she said. "I have had people who have been very supportive. For a start, my husband, Jose Fuentes, has been very supportive. "He is a teacher at Spice Valley Middle School. I had the opportunity to sing locally on productions like 'Bermuda Idol' and 'Dream Girls' but I knew that I could go further.

"That is the reason I am trying to do what I am doing. I just wanted people to be aware that this is going to happen. I am looking forward to the CD coming out."

She said the biggest challenge was making the lyrics she'd written fit the music that had been picked out for it. But she said she learned to deal with this, especially with the help of the studio.

"The writing for me is very easy," she said. "I write a lot from personal experiences, and experiences I know that others share. I write so that my songs will resonate with other people so they will say, 'hey, that is me too'.

"I want other women to know that it is not too late to follow their dreams. My philosophy is I want everyone to feel that there are no apologies for what you are."

Mrs. Phillips-Fuentes hopes to hold her first concert sometime next year and plans to throw a release party when the album is completed.

She also hopes to soon get some of her songs on iTunes and other music websites.

"I must apologise, because there are so many people who have been asking for my single, but I didn't want to put it out because I didn't have the full album yet," she said. "Hopefully, the album will be on the shelves next spring."