How I Got Here

As far as blogging goes, I'm about as inexperienced as they come. Never mind that I'm social-media-challenged, but I also hate talking about myself. So, it's no wonder it's taken me so long to start a blog. I've thought long and hard about what topic my first official blog post should be on, and I finally settled on writing. More specifically, I want to talk about why I first started writing and my road to publication.

My story:

I've always been a jabberer. In fact, my nickname growing up was Motormouth. I've also always had an extremely active imagination. I read like nobody's business, and would hide books in my desk at school so I could sneak a page or two whenever no one was paying attention. I might just have been the only second-grader to ever get in trouble for reading in class. In middle school, I went through the compulsory angst-ridden poetry phase and eventually segued into short stories. But, I never considered writing in terms of professions.

It wasn't until I was in college that I decided to pursue becoming an author with any sort of seriousness. One day, I woke up and decided I wanted to be an author. That was it; my mind was made up. It should be easy, right? All I had to do was write the book and send it to the publisher. Then I could just sit back and bask in my authorly successes.

Wrong.

My first attempts at writing novel-length material were horrible. Garbage. To this day, those manuscripts sit, locked in the vault of I'll-never-admit-I-wrote-that. I cringe just thinking about some of the things I submitted to agents and publishers. But something happened during the ten years since I had my fiction-piphany. I grew.

I learned what makes writing stronger -- how to avoid things like telling, and passive voice. I learned how to write a [halfway]decent synopsis and craft a query letter. I learned how to research agents and editors. And ultimately, I learned how to edit. You see, what I didn't realize ten years ago is that garbage happens. All the time. The best tool I could ever have is the ability to edit my garbage.

I also learned to draw inspiration from real life.

During one incredible nap (I love my naps), I had an amazing dream about my significant other, in which, we were both sleeping with the same woman. As a heterosexual woman, I was flabbergasted when I woke up and realized how exciting that dream had felt. I wanted to recapture the raw emotion. So I wrote. And I edited. I had people read my work and I edited some more. Eventually, I had a submission-ready manuscript.

Then came the task of finding the right publisher for my manuscript. Along the way, I found Entranced Publishing and I knew I was home. I sent my manuscript off to Ashley Christman the Executive Editor of Entranced and crossed shaky fingers that she would like it. She did.

Now, here I am, almost a year later and that manuscript that started as a dream (literally) is about to be published. Danny releases in just under a month, on May 20th, 2013!