\tWriting is one of those things that\nwill drive you crazy until you sit down and put words on a screen.\nWriting strikes you at the most inconvenient times, in the most\ninconvenient of places. Middle of the night asleep. Middle of\ntraffic on the freeway. Middle of explaining to your cat why she\ncan’t be on the keyboard. Elbows deep in a sink full of dirty dishes\nand hot water. Or where I am now, editing the second book to make\nsense of the notes my co-author left for me. Sydney plots, I\ndecorate. It’s a winning combination. She’s good at it. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tSo why write? I was a little girl from\na small town living in book world. I loved books. I read everything I\ncould get my hands on. A lot of what my church going mother wished I\nwouldn’t read. My mother was a reader. Remember Reader’s Digests\nCondensed books? Maybe not. It was the 1970s. My mother had them all\nand I read them. She was fond of ‘the classics’. Then sorry I read\nthose as well. I gave my first oral book report in third grade on\nGone with the Wind<\/em> by Margret\nMitchell. I read some of the saucier passages to my classmates. If my\nmemory is accurate, that prompted a parent-teacher conference. When I\ndiscovered the horror and occult section at the local library, it was\nlove at first sight. Paranormal and supernatural genres would be my\nloves forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \tI grew up to be a mom of three with a\nfull time job that was often tedious. Spinning tales is a nice\nescape. It entertained my kids on car rides and kept me sane. People\nwho say sanity is overrated never considered how much insanity\ngetting a mortgage would create in their lives. It’s all about the\nbalance. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \tAs much as the books, the author\nbiographies interested me. Some where boring, but some were just as\nimaginative as the book. Why did they write? How did they fall into\nit? Was in on purpose? The most common theme seemed to be \u201cI wanted\nto find books I like to read. So I wrote one.\u201d It’s an empowering\nstatement. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \tSo over the decades I wrote. I wrote\nabout characters I liked, I wrote about situations that interested\nme. I even wrote a full length historical romance that survived the\nmany purges and several moves. It’s awful. I cringe when I see it\nhiding at the bottom of my night stand. Sometimes the typewritten\npages get shifted when I move things around and I see it there,\nrebuking me. I can’t appease it with salmon the way I can with the\ncat when she shuns me. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \tBy the way, whoever is my executor\nmust solemnly swear to either bury me with that monstrosity or burn\nit in effigy when I’m dead. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \tSydney and I even dabbled in fanfic\nbecause we’re huge Wolverine and Nick Fury fans. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \tI write because I want to tell\nstories. I want to make someone else fall in love with a character\nthat’s a little too imperfect. I want to make someone else look at\nthe sunsets the way I do, or the highway going past my office window.\n(For the record, I often daydream of driving breakneck down that\nhighway and never looking back. Sorry, kids.) I want someone to put\ndown my story and think to themselves, \u201cthat freeway outside my\nwindow is looking really good right now. Why don’t I write a book\nthat I want to read?\u201d \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n That’s the pay off. We write one or several. Someone else decides to write one. And another one. Books for everyone! Kind of feels like Oprah, right? \u201cAnd YOU get a book! And YOU get a book! EVERYBODY GETS A BOOK!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n -Dani<\/p>\n\n\n\n \t(P.S. Oprah, if you’re reading, we\nwould love to be on your book club recommendation list!) \n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Writing is one of those things that will drive you crazy until you sit down and put words on a screen. Writing strikes you at…<\/p>\n