Hello! And welcome to D’s brain!
Okay, it’s only a portion of my brain, but I think it’s the best of my brain! Oh man! Now Best of My Love by the Emotions is going through my head!
For reals, though, this is my first blog post and I’m not totally sure what to say, but I suppose I’ll start with who I am.
I’ve called myself many things over the course of my life. Musician, actor, artist, waitress, and teacher. I call myself a writer now, but I think, maybe, I always was one. If you’ve read my bio, you know I started off as an actor and ended up writing a novel by accident, so I won’t bore you with that.
I will tell you that it wasn’t that easy, and it was a long time coming. Back in my acting days, I had a great professor (I’m talking to you, Dr. Owen) who often encouraged me to become a sketch comedy writer. But I never thought I was clever enough or organized enough to really write, let alone be funny about it. Yet, I was secretly doing it all the time, writing biographies for all my characters and keeping diaries as them, too. I also adapted scenes for performance from books I liked, finding ways to make the stories my own without deviating too far from what I thought the authors in question had intended.
I kept writing long after I gave up acting, all the while devouring everything I could in the genres I was interested in and studying what it takes to be a great writer. I was writing some fan fiction (I know! *groan*), but then I started writing a Gothic romance that would become my first novel. I kept finishing novels, going to writer’s conferences, submitting my work to agents to get representation, getting requests for full manuscript reads, and rewriting said manuscripts to suit the agents who wanted to see changes to them. After about twelve years of that, I sort of lost hope for a while.
That’s a long, boring story that I’m saving for another blog post! 😉
But I made a comeback in 2016! I decided that I would go back to one of my early novels and get it ready for publication. Then I became affiliated with DA BEEZ KNEEZ, a small publishing house, and we released This Pale Mortal Shell on April 30th, 2019. I’m planning on doing some pretty quick releases of more books over the next eighteen months or so, so keep your eye out!
The first in my romantic urban fantasy series The Selkie Chronicles, Only Skin Deep is coming out this fall, and I plan to release the first in my Regency romance trilogy The Talbot Trio, Uncovered the following spring.
I’d like this blog to be a place for me to share my crazy thoughts on a variety of things, not the least of which are details on upcoming releases and general advice on the craft of writing. In terms of that, I hope to not only let all of you in on my process, but also get feedback from you. Whether you’re a fellow artist or just a fan who wants to understand what goes on inside the crazy-ass head of this writer.
Until next time!
Coming in September: Soundtracks for Your Novels
