I began to love to write when I was about 8 years old. I was already an enthusiastic reader, and I loved to read a book then write a book report about it. My 3rd grade teacher, Mrs. Landis, gave our class daily writing assignments, and each evening at dinner I would tell my family the latest story or chapter I had written that day. My mom once remarked, "You tell it as if you read it or watched it, like it was new to you, too." I told her that I didn't know in advance what was going to happen - my stories had lives of their own. I knew I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. I dreamed of having a job where I could write, write, write. My real dream was to be a novelist, writing all night, as my stories and their characters came to life. I wrote my first book, "Carrie, Marie and Tacy," when I was 10 years old, my second book at age 13, and my 3rd when I was 17.
While in college, I took a program called "The Novel Experience." I anticipated this program with excitement, which was a collection of classes designed to mold and train authors. All summer I searched for and read the 26 books on the reading list, only to be disappointed on the first day of class to discover that the reading list had changed (when?), and I was the only one in class who had read all the wrong books! (The ones I read were excellent books, but not the ones we discussed in class.) Back in the 1970s, books weren't so readily available, and I could only find a few of the titles on the revised reading list, which left me lost during the class discussions.
From the first day, I felt that my teacher didn't like me, and in those days when I was still so shy, this made it difficult for me to like her. I focused on the things that bothered me - the little hairs that clung to all her clothing, all over, as if she were covered with feathers, and her general chicken-smelling scent, and the fact that she never looked directly at me nor did she acknowledge me in any way. I felt invisible again, the same way I felt during my junior high years, but this time it was the teacher ignoring me, not the students. I struggled with my writing because I felt crushed, not encouraged. The final blow was at the end of the class when she told me, "You will never finish a novel."
Instead of taking that as a challenge, I believed her! I switched my academic focus to "Matter and Motion," math, physics, chemistry, computers, and I loved every moment of it. My secondary interest was TV production, which became my first love, so when I graduated, I found a job in a TV station and later transitioned naturally into computers and technology for my career. I wrote several short stories over the next ten years.
In 2003, I learned about National Novel Writing Month. I was ready! I had a novel inside me that was aching to be born! I wrote my first novel, "Kissing a Dead Man," that year and since then have written a novel every November in my spare time, proving my college teacher to be wrong. I put my dad's collection of poems into book form and created a cover for it, and 7 more books of his poetry followed. I love working with words and layout and editing and everything to do with books.
Now, in 2024, I have completed and published 25 books. Life is going on right now, so I am not writing regularly as I would like. Occasionally I do write late into the night when my creative rivers are flowing and projects eventually get finished.