I started writing when I was old enough to know my alphabet. Junior high school book reports? Blah. I wrote a book in lieu of ’em. It wasn’t a good book, but it told me I could sustain an idea and tell a story to spread over an entire notebook.
Along the way, my authorship ambitions got hijacked by my kids – or at least, the need to feed them. Then, at a time when the money from work was more urgent than the need to stay home with the kids, I was more or less dared to audition for a stint on the radio.
I got the job.
I started out as a deejay trainee, eventually working my way up to News Director. It involved reading on the air, and writing and editing news reports. Lots and lots of writing, and plenty of editing. All in all, I spent nearly two decades on the air before leaving the industry for good.
Oh, I still wrote outside of work, too. It was sort of a joke to my kids: Mom always had a pen and notebook in her purse. I filled well over a hundred notebooks over the years. Some of it was journaling, to keep from losing my mind through horrendous living conditions. However, plenty of the notebooks were home to stories and poems, too.
By the late 1990s I’d used computers at work and had at least heard of the Internet. I officially went online at a friend’s house, where I discovered the world of fanfiction. I read some of it and realized I could do better.
So I did. And I developed a following on that basis. It was my first inkling that yes, Virginia, it was possible for me to write things other people wanted to read.
Eventually I would discover self-publishing and dip my toes in. Granted, if I knew then what I know now…
Nowadays I hold down a full-time “day” job, write, design book covers, mentor other authors and book-cover designers, and more. My publishing knowledge has grown enough for me to develop my own label over the past few months. I’m partnering with my spouse on his series of MITS/slice-of-life literature, and we launched our own line of blank creative journals.
Whatever the future holds for us, I think it’s safe to say it’ll have a few more books in it!
