It all started with a nightmare… I come from a family of readers. My parents always encouraged us to read, read, and read some more (after the chores were done, of course). We could read at breakfast and at lunch, but not dinner. Paperbacks were great because they could fit into my pocket. The library was amazing. All those books…. And then, at 15 years old, I started to work -- and discovered bookstores. I could own books. Underline passages that made me laugh or cry. Make notes in corner. Bend down the corner of a page to mark my place. I made two early attempts at writing fiction. The first one happened when I was in grammar school. I remember sitting at a royal blue portable typewriter which, for some reason, only had a red ribbon. I pecked out three chapters of a science fiction novel before giving up. From what I remember, it was very similar to The Stand. Stephen King must have found it in the trash and finished it! (You owe me, buddy!) My second attempt came in high school. I wrote a few chapters of a romance novel. Fortunately, that's gone, too. After that, I never gave another thought to writing. Then the nightmare happened. I was living in North Carolina and hating my life. (I have nothing against North Carolina, it's a beautiful place -- personal and professional circumstances made me hate what I was doing and where I was living.) One night, I had a nightmare. In a life blessed by peaceful, deep sleep, the nightmare disturbed me. In a totally out-of-character move, I wrote it down. And made up a person who had the nightmare. And made up a reason why. And made up a way to solve her problems. And after six months of this, I thought, "I'm writing a book." And the rest, as the cliché goes, is history. P.S. I left out the part where I gave it up for about six months. Thanks always to my friend, Ginny, for telling me to finish writing the book so she could read the ending. |
