How I Became an Author

This isn’t going to be a seedy sordid tale of all my past traumas and experiences. It’s just a few little anecdotes that give a little bit of background on how I became an author.

I grew up in Texas. When I was three years old and September rolled around, my mother buckled me up in the car and we drove my eight-year-old brother to his first day of third grade. Mom had been talking about the “first day of school” for a couple of weeks and I thought I was going to school.

Imagine my utter disappointment when I found out that only brother was going, and I was going back home again with my mother who wouldn’t allow me to attend! It wasn’t that I particularly wanted to go to school, but I oh-so-desperately wanted to be taught to read.

I remember standing in the parking lot while mom told brother to “Have a good day!” as I glared at her with the kind of fury that only a threenager can muster. I don’t remember the rest of that day, but I can tell you I remember that time in the parking lot vividly.

My mom was no pushover, but she could see I was serious about this. When the next year came upon us, and I was only four years old (Kinder in those days only took 5-year-olds) so my mom found a private school that would allow me to enroll in Kinder at four.

I was intensely interested in the phonics lessons, and I soaked up all things like a sponge. It was 1980 and the other kids were learning “See Spot run” for ages and ages, but by the end of the year I was reading chapter books. I thought I would die if I had to listen to another of my peers stumble over reading about Dick and Jane aloud to the class.

Two or three years went by, and I kept reading.

My mom read to us a lot at night. She read “Little House on the Prairie”, “Pilgrim’s Progress”, and any other thing she deemed wholesome and verbose enough to teach us something.

I wasn’t so interested in those tales, but I was interested in putting my hands on the things in the library and soaking up any clandestine story I could read without an adult. I read “Sweet Valley High” and anything L.M. Montgomery wrote.

My grandmother started to take me to the library often – she was a voracious reader – and would check out books for me from Jane Austen to Stephen King and everything in between. I was probably too young for all of those books, being perhaps eight or so at the time, but she encouraged me to read any and everything.

Around mom I read Beverly Cleary and E.L. Konigsburg, but when I was with Grandma, and I was a good deal of the time, all bets were off, and I could read whatever my little heart desired.

Grandma’s house was full of boys. My dad, my uncles, my brothers, and all my boy cousins. I was the first girl born into the family in over fifty years, and even though I would eventually and gratefully welcome two girl cousins into our family, it was just me for a while.

Because of this distinction, I had a lot of Grandma’s attention when I was with her. She poured into me all of her womanly wisdom and shared all of the things she loved with me.

At night, she would have me sleep next to her in her giant king-sized bed because all the boys slept all over the rest of the house and she said girls shouldn’t have to put up with the snoring and farting all night long. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that she snored, too, but I didn’t mind. It became a comforting rhythm that ushered me into dreamland for many a night.

Sometimes, she would tell me stories at bedtime. I thought, for a while, that she was just telling me stories she’d read once upon a time. They were always so unique and unlike anything I’d read before. Eventually, I caught on that she was making up the stories, because when I asked for a repeat of one, it was never the same twice. I asked her about it once, and she said she did make them up, but she never could remember what she’d told me and that’s why they were the same characters, but different stories.

When she passed away last year at 94 years old, I knew I would miss her tremendously. I deeply mourned her loss, but I also mourned that such an epic storyteller had left this world never having shared her creative worlds and stories with anyone but me.

When I started high school at thirteen years old, I had a fantastic English teacher. Miss was medium height but seemed taller because of her heels and upright posture. She was middle-aged and willowy with fluffy, thick yellow-blonde curls and dressed in a dark bohemian-esque style. She wore flowing skirts and off the shoulder blouses, more often in shades of black and gray than not.

When we were asked to write short stories, she’d often read them aloud to the class and throw some of her stories in the mix as well. She always asked after each story who we thought wrote that one. When she read my stories, the class always guessed they were hers.

It never occurred to me that I could write anything well, but she was constantly marking on my papers that I should keep writing after the year was over. She said that I had talent and skill, and she would love to see me nurture that talent.

I took her words to heart and began writing in earnest. I soon discovered that writing was something that I needed to do. If I went too long without creating something with my words, then I would feel lost and aimless.

Aside from my time with my grandparents, my childhood was a strange mix of things. My mom forced us to church every Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday night. Three times a week, without fail, we went unless we were dying.

This was strange because at home, though mom was a woman of faith, my dad was a drug addict who often disappeared for days or flew into rages. There were many other dark things going on in that aspect of our family, but mom protected us the best she could. Finally, she divorced dad, but kept sending us to my grandparents, dad’s parents, who continued to be a huge influence in our lives.

I won’t say much about the stuff that happened when I was growing up – it was a lot, it was difficult, and there was definitely trauma. I’m honestly surprised I came out of it alive, but my saving grace was my grandmother and how often she kept us at her house.

I started to show her my writing and she was enthralled. She encouraged me to keep writing more and devoured every word I produced on paper.

Over the next thirty plus years I wrote dozens of novels, poems, screenplays, songs, and more, but I rarely showed them to anyone. I worked in many industries: corporate travel, airlines, office management, marketing management, indie film, and photography.

I traveled extensively and I had lots of relationships with men that weren’t healthy and stumbled through this part of my life for a long time. Eventually, I met my husband, who showed me what it was like to be seen, understood, respected, and supported. He encouraged me to get therapy before we could deepen our relationship, and I’m thankful that he did. I came out of that knowing more about who I was made to be than ever before.

That amazing man and I have now been together over twenty years and have two wonderful children together.

Three years ago, a big wrench got thrown into the mechanism of our lives when my heart started going haywire. Following this struggle, my lungs stopped working properly, too. I’ve now had three heart procedures and I’ve been on full-time oxygen for over a year. I sleep on a ventilator at night and the last three years has been a struggle health-wise.

When it all started those three years ago, I was sitting in our shared office (mine and hubby’s) and going through a box of old things I’d written and reading some of them out of nostalgia. Somewhere in the pile of manuscripts and screenplays I found a little printed scrap of paper that was folded in half with a list on it.

It was a list of ten things that I wanted to accomplish in my life. I’d forgotten I ever made that list when I was nineteen years old and dreaming of the future. It was a pleasant surprise to me that I’d accomplished seven out of ten things on the list. But the one that stood out to me, like it was clawing its way off the paper and into my skin, was the one that said, “Publish at least five novels.”

Oh, I had written novels – boy had I written them. But no one got to read them, and I’d never published a thing. Over the next few days, it nagged at me – those five words flashing through my brain like a neon marquee that burned itself into my retinas: “Publish at least five novels.”

So, I said “eff it”. I’d been reading novels on Inkitt and Galatea for a while, but now I was going to try to write one for people to actually read.

My health was bad, I was homeschooling my kids (one special needs), and I couldn’t go fifteen minutes without one of the kids needing something from me, but I didn’t care. I was going to do it anyway.

I sat down every day and wrote 2-5 chapters directly into Inkitt then I’d copy and paste it into a document on my computer to save it. I spent hours developing my characters and getting to know them intimately, and I just kept writing.

At the end of twenty-eight days, I published my last chapter in the first draft of “Wolf County, USA: Jane” on Inkitt, which I knew was going to be book one of a six-book series. I’d even taken time to develop those sequels’ characters and outline those books in detail between my daily chapters. And I wrote it all in fifteen-minute increments between the times my kids needed me.

It took over two years to edit it into something I felt was good enough to publish in paperback on Amazon and digitally on Kindle, but with the help of my bestie (an amazing artist and writer) we got it done. When I came home from my last heart procedure a couple of months ago, I finalized everything and enjoyed the privilege of ordering my own first paperback novel in May of this year.

In the meantime, I’ve been working on four other novels, including the second one in my Wolf County, USA series, and I quickly wrote “A Winter Dream” in seven days for one of Inkitt’s contests entries. It’s still up in its first draft format. Eventually, I’ll get around to editing that and publishing it in paperback, as well.

My health is slowly improving, but I’m not out of the woods yet. I’m working hard to get better and be here for my kids as they grow, but also to accomplish my goals to publish many books that will help brighten your day.

Thanks for reading a little piece of my story, and please read my work. Because it was written for you to enjoy.