15th anniversary
Fifteen years this month WOLF SIGNS hit the ebook shelves, and my world changed in a radical way.
Time to reminisce!
If you don’t know the story, I fell into writing accidentally. I had a friend who wanted to try NaNoWriMo*, and wanted emotional backup. “We’ll meet on Sundays after church at a quiet coffee shop and write for three hours. No kids…”
SOLD.
I had no ideas for a book, no big story to tell except to expand my scant journal entries about a recent family trip. I figured I could work on that for a while. Only when I finished the journal in three days and we hadn’t had our first coffee meeting, I knew I had to come up with something quick.
Something was called “Secrets of Tarneth”: an epic, wordy, Young Adult fantasy about coming of age and magic, with river elves and invading armies and four friends fighting to save the world. Every day I’d write my required word count, and then a little more. A full chapter’s worth in fact because then I’d print it out and give it to my daughter. She’d read the story with big eyes and then deliver the most addictive words any new author can hear.
“What comes next?!?!”
I was hooked.
After that, I ended up writing a novella, submitting it, and after some back and forth, I sold the rights to a small ebook first publisher Samhain Publishing. The book released March 24, 2009, and that was the start of it all.
There are readers out there who have told me WOLF SIGNS was their first ebook. That it was their first romance they read, or their first paranormal, so that space in time was really a game changer for many of us. While I write contemporaries and westerns and other things as well, Granite Lake will always have a special place in my heart because it’s a real place.
A place where happily-ever-afters exist, and always will.
Thank you for coming on this journey with me. We have a lot more adventuring to enjoy into the future.
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*Nanowrimo: National Novel Writing Month. A challenge begun by a group of friends who told each other to stop talking about ‘someday I’ll write a book’ and just do it. It’s grown from that small group to a worldwide event each November.
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