Each week I'm going to choose a subject that will, hopefully, interest my readers and get them to know me and my writing a little better.  Here's the first installment of my new blog:  (So I know I've had some traffic, if some of you would be so kind, please clilck the title of this blog and leave a comment.  Thanks!)

WHEN AND WHY DID I START WRITING?

As a kid I read every Nancy Drew Mystery I could get my hands on.  In fifth grade, I was going to be the next Carolyn Keene, Nancy's current creator.  I sat on my front porch, feverishly penciling a first, then a second chapter of my mystery that had me coming home from school to find my parents KIDNAPPED!  However, my writing  ended abruptly when I had no idea where to go next.  Hence my first and ONLY attempt to write mystery.  :D 

In my thirties, I decided to try again, with a Red Dawnish (i.e. the movie with Patrick Swayze) type novel that wound up with so many characters I lost control and gave up after several chapters.  Hence, my second quest to be a writer ended no farther along than four or five chapters.  (At least I was making progress :D) 

However, after reading numerous books written by one author that suddenly seemed to become the same book over and over again, I decided I COULD DO THAT!  So I wrote ECHOES IN THE DARK, my Vietnam era novel.  I was going to be able to quit working, pad down the hall, turn on my computer and go to work WRITING.  Well, it didn't work out quite the way I'd hoped, but it got me started writing in earnest.  But hey, they say "The third time's a charm!" right?  Thankfully, it was for me--and hopefully for you, too.

 After trying for several years to get ECHOES picked up by a "traditional" publisher (long before the internet) I was almost ready to quit, but was told over and over "don't quit" and "when you finish one book start another and another."  So I took the advice and did.  Before I knew it I had three books under my belt.  ECHOES, THE JOURNEY (my romance), which needed work, and another that will never see the light of day.  Without realizing it, I was finding my genre in Historical Fiction.

Having discovered my genre I wrote TOMORROW'S PROMISE.  It began my original  WHITE OAKS TRILOGY, but morphed into THE WHITE OAKS SERIES.  Why?  Because you, my readers, told me it wasn't enough, that you wanted more.  So I wrote another and another and the original trilogy became the seven book WHITE OAKS SERIES that is still going strong.

So THANK YOU MY READERS for giving me a reason (and a BIG push!) to keep writing, because without you, there'd be no more.