At the end of this month, 3 years ago...

...I decided to write a book. The prior month I'd quit my 'high-powered' job to spend more time with my kids and 'relax'. I was going to take photography classes, I was going to learn how to sew, I was going to become more involved at the school, perhaps take up tennis and maybe *gasp* I might do some cooking.Yeah, that one probably wasn't going to happen. 6 weeks later I was stir crazy LOL. I had this romanticized idea of what it might be like to stay home, I dreamt about all the things I thought I was missing, and I fantasized about all the wonderful things I could do if I just had some time to myself. It might have taken a lot longer than 6 weeks for others, but it's hard to go from having 1,000,000 things to do to only having say... 50,000. I have 4 kids. It's not like I don't have enough to occupy my time, but I just needed something else, something cerebral. I'd always read, even snatches of 10 minutes here and there and it had been mostly romance.

I convinced myself I could write one of those. Sure, why not? I must have read hundreds of books. How hard could it be? It took me about 3 months to write Love's Fugitive. Now you're probably wondering...huh, I've never heard of that book. Well, there's a very good reason for that :). It. Will. Never. See. The. Light. Of. Day. At least in it's current form. You see, it's one of those I call 'it served it's purpose' manuscripts. Yeah, it served it purpose in proving to me I could actually write a full length book, because I did it. It's surprising the number of people that begin on this path and never actually finish a book. It was also a HUGE learning experience. Romance isn't easy to write, especially not straight contemporary. There aren't exaggerated plot devices you can use to amp up the tension, the interest, there's not much room for a bunch of secondary characters to add flavor. It just the hero and heroine and you better make them relatable, you better make him sexy and you better get the conflict right or the story is going to be a big yawn. It also helped me find my 'voice' because before you actually go through the torture effort of writing a book, especially that first one, your own voice is really hard to quantify. And voice is everything for an author, if you ask me.

Of course, at the time, when I finished the book, I thought it was the best thing ever. And it was for me at that point. I thought surely a publisher would snap it right up LOL. Um, no, that's not exactly how this works. The following year was a huge learning curve, particularly when it came to understanding how the publishing industry works and the business of publishing and exactly how freaking long it can sometimes take to get a response, any response.

It's weird to look back because I have learned so much. I've come a long way since that first manuscript. I've accomplished a lot of milestones, achieved a lot of goals. Of course, I've only just began on this journey and I'm nowhere near done. Not by a long shot!!