Bio of a Closet Writer Who’s Come out
I love reading, though I came to it later than most. I love writing even more. When I was in grade school, we moved so often, I seemed to keep changing schools just as the teacher was introducing the good stuff. Fortunately, I was quickly identified as in need of help and placed in a special one-on-one reading class with an amazing teacher. I learned quickly and by third grade I was reading well above my grade level and writing all the time.
I have been a dedicated reader ever since and a closet writer. It seems silly to imagine myself as a person afraid to admit that I love to write stories, poetry and books. I suppose that is why I teach creative writing to high school students. I want them to be proud to be writers and to get the chance to grow in their writing.
So what if it is cliche: my reading teachers opened up new worlds for me. Books hid me from stress, boredom and the frustrations of growing up. And writing let me make new worlds for myself. These days, I want to share those worlds with other readers. So books that I wrote years ago, I dusted off and redrafted. I wanted them to be not only just a world I can visit but also worlds that others will want to visit.
Fantasy has always been my other love from Tolkien to Lewis to Brooks. So I have ventured into fantasy writing with two series. The Sharded Boy was the first in my fantasy series Standing Stone. It was an idea I originally intended to be a short story, but I didn’t have time to write it, and it sat in the back of my mind gathering bits and pieces and characters and adventures until I just had to sit down and write it. Shortly after The Sharded Boy published, books 2 and 3 in the series began to bubble away in my head. Thus The Shifter Shard and The Heart of Lal drove my muse until their publication in 2017.
Most recently, I started a series of dragon fantasy adventures. The first is The Dragon Question which is a nod to the Beauty and the Beast trope, but breaking the curse isn’t everybody’s goal in this version. My solstice dragons specialize in healing magic, curses and bargains. They can be both troublesome and charming.
The second book Dragon Bone Ridge is more of a “how do I get this dragon out of my dreams and on his way?” sort of story with a little romance thrown in even if the dragon isn’t all that supportive in her getting to know the fellow that keeps showing up.
The third book, Dira’s Dragon, finds a young woman running away from an apprenticeship only to find herself taken under the wing of a dragon who deems her ill equipped to take care of herself. And the teacher the dragon arranges to instruct her in the ways of the world has his own issues. Dira’s Dragon will be out in early 2019.
What’s next? Good question. Either a new Students of Jump novel, a new Standing Stone novel, a new Solstice Dragon World novel, a new series or an anthology. It’s January 2019, and I’m having a bit of trouble deciding because the options are equally intriguing.
All of my books are available at Smashwords.com which distributes to many e-book sources (i.e., Sony, Barnes & Noble; Noble, Kobo, Apple, and libraries…), but I also separately publish on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo. Check my All Books menu tab to go to a specific retail site.
When I’m not teaching and writing, I’m on a tandem bicycle with my husband. We’ve been cyclists for years, and I find it adds to my creativity to see nature’s inventive beauty and the human interaction that makes us part of it.
Welcome to my writing world. I hope it adds to your own.