Wednesday, August 16, 2006
When I first started...I've been writing for as long as I can remember. I vividly remember seeing a vampire comic book at the local card shop that sold magazines and books, and going home and writing and illustrating a story about it. Some time in elementary school I got a book out of the library that had Homecoming in it by Ray Bradbury. I loved that story so much I wanted to read it over and over, so I set out to copy it by hand (no copiers way back then) so I'd have it to read. Along the way, writing it in pencil on lined paper, I decided to change a few things here and there. The story wasn't quite the way Mr. Bradbury had intended it.
When I was in fifth grade (I think) blank books became popular and oh, how I coveted one. My parents bought one for me with a picture of a unicorn on the front. Others followed, and I wrote my first stories in there. Mostly Star Wars fan fiction. AHAHA!
When I was 12 or so I was madly in love with a boy named Donald Byrne. He volunteered at the library on Tuesdays. I went to the libray every Tuesday so he could check out my books for me. (Rumor has it he became a priest...)Anyway, it was the summer and I wanted something to read at the pool, so my parents let me read The Stand by Stephen King.
I was hooked.
At 12 I said, hey, people really make a living writing books. That's what I want to do. And that's what I've always wanted to do, ever since.
I wrote my first "novel" the summer I was 16, a story for a boyfriend who was going away for the summer. He didn't last but the story did, and it eventually became An Exaltation of Larks.
I wrote mostly short fiction for awhile, horror and SF mostly. They started getting a sexy edge to them eventually. I wanted to write romance because I loved reading sexy romances, usuaslly by Johanna Lindsay. In college I majored in journalism, wrote short stories and bad poems.
When my daughter was born and I decided to stay home, it was a good time to start really writing. I began seriously pursuing it in 1998. I have worked steadily through a pregnancy, building a house, raising two kids and the chaos that follows.
I hope I never have another job again.
M
