My first book was written when I was fourteen. It was one big fantasy about a boy I had a crush on–all written down in an orange spiral notebook. Each week, I would write a chapter and my friends at school would read it. If I skipped a week, they’d get mad and give me a hard time. Shortly after graduating high school, I tucked the book away and joined the Air Force.
Years later, when I was stationed in Oklahoma, my sister Laura called and told me she had been in my old room, rummaging through a box of my old homework assignments from English class. Hidden under essays and short stories was that orange notebook. She told me, “You have potential. You should start writing again and do more with it.”
I thought about Laura’s words for a while. In school, writing stories was just another English assignment to me, and getting good grades and nice comments from my teachers made me smile. But no one had ever told me I should do more with my writing.
Then there was the orange notebook: it was a way to live out my fantasy–like Rosaline did in my first novel. I never paid much attention to the reactions my writing invoked, so to get encouragement from my sister motivated me. So I did more. I published the first edition of What the Storyteller Brings when I was twenty-four years old. After that, I had written several more books, but life happened: deployments to Saudi Arabia and Qatar during the war; moves from one geographic location to another, college degrees, marriage…divorce… and then two years ago, I finally looked in the mirror at a fifty-six-year-old woman and told myself, “I’m going to put writing first for a change, make some revisions, and bring What the Storyteller Brings back to life. Then, I’m going to work on the other books I need to dust off.” So that’s where I’m at right now, readers. I will no longer let life distract me from bringing my passion to light. Whether I can attract a handful of readers, or hundreds, I hope you enjoy my website; so let me bring you the stories and let me bring you the fiction…
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