Samhain Publishing Ltd Weblog

How I Became A Writer

Howdy! First I want to say thanks for giving me the opportunity to blog here today! I’m a very happy Samhain author and happy to be a part of such a wonderful family. I feel fortunate to work with such great people (authors, artists, editors, and everyone else in between!).

Since I’ve never blogged here before, I thought it’d be good to give you a little background on who the heck I am and how I started writing. I’ll try not to bore you to tears. haha

I’m not one of those writers that wanted to write since the day I could hold a pencil. In fact, the writing bug hit me kind of late in life. Does high school count as late in life? Anyway…

I was a freshman in high school. Gosh, that seems like a very long time ago. heh heh I wrote my first short story in English class. I had this first-year teacher who was kinda green and I was, well, bored. So I discovered—and quickly—I could write stories and look like I was doing my school work. Man I looked busy!

It was some lame story about a princess stuck in a tower (ala Rapunzel).

I dabbled in writing some after that, mostly with fanfic (Star Trek…yeah I was a total nerd). And then by the time I hit tenth grade, I started my first novel.

It was a science fiction story about a girl that got sucked into a portal. Through a mirror. Isn’t that so clichéd? She was immersed in a battle against Good and Evil and, lucky for her, she was with the Good Guys—two strapping young lads she couldn’t resist. Eventually, she had to pick which one she wanted to spend eternity with (because she couldn’t get back home). It was sort of my version of Star Wars but with the romantic twist.

This “novel” was all handwritten on about 250 notebook pages, front and back. I have no idea what happened to that story. It’s long gone, I’m guessing. I ignored my Algebra and Chemistry teachers to write this book (and did I mention I flunked out of Chemistry? Science and Math were never my strong subjects—wonder why? haha).

After that, my then-best friend and I started writing more fanfic. This time, we made our own Indiana Jones adventures, complete with illustrations. She was the artist, not me (because I can barely draw a stick figure). And of course, we starred with Indy in the adventures. I mean, what’s an adventure without putting yourself into the story? It was total fun.

After high school I sort of lost the bug to write. I was busy trying to find my way in the world and figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. Eventually, I started writing again. I took a novel writing workshop and learned the basics of writing a novel from start to finish. It was the workshop I ended up writing my first real fantasy (with romantic elements of course!) and is still unpublished (hey—I’m still rewriting it, five years later).

I sold my first contemporary romance, TALK DIRTY TO ME, to Samhain and it was released July 2006. My next book, a time travel adventure story called A BEND IN TIME, was released in ebook and print. You can follow the adventures of my duo, Skye and Dane, in the conclusion of the story, A BREAK IN TIME, which will be out in ebook on October 2. And if time travel really isn’t your thang, check out my contemporary hot romance, NICE GIRLS DO, releasing in November.

I enjoy writing the contemporaries but my heart still lies with those fantasy romance stories. I still write about dragons and magic and princesses. And even though I finally know what I want to be when I grow up, I still haven’t decided which genre I like best. So you know what? I just write both because that way I don’t have to pick.

Thanks for reading and hope you stop by my blog to say hello sometime!