I began writing in 2004 with the intention of creating a stand-alone story about dragons for my oldest son, Nick, because he loved reading and was really into Harry Potter. Well, those who know me know how easily I get sidetracked, and one book (Dragon's Blood) soon turned into two (The Prisoner) then three (Dragon's Tear)... yea, you get the picture. After book three in my Denicalis Dragon Chronicles series, I decided to take a break and write a book about my life as a military veteran and wife, and My Blissful Life As a Submariner's Wife was born. Once that was published, I went back to the dragon series and wrote book four, Dragon's Breath. I was happy with my progress but I soon discovered I had a writer's block of sorts, so I wrote a short book (which I lovingly refer to as "my wannabe book"), called Dead Reckoning. The words flew onto the page as I wrote, and I was on a roll.
Right around this time, my husband and I were teaching a 2nd writing class to a wonderful group of homeschooled kids in Thomaston, CT. In the class, we directed the children to write a story, any length, with at least 3 characters, and their creation needed to be some form of a mystery. They all knew that I was an author, and I told them I would also write a story with them. We mentored them through their writing journey, helping with brainstorming, character details, and eventually fine-tuning their masterpieces. When the writing was completed, we compiled their stories into a single book, an anthology, and published it (it was only published and distributed to the class). Once we all had our own copy of the book, we had a book signing party, where every child autographed everyone else's books on their story's title page. In the end, every one of us went home a published author, the proud owner of a book that had multiple authors signatures! What GREAT fun Ryan and I had teaching that class!
Our grand idea for this class was that everyone would write a 10-20 page story - some were more, some were less. The page count wasn't important, but having a beginning, a middle and an end was. I planned for my story to have these guidelines as well, but (as I said above), I tend to get sidetracked easily, and my "short story" turned into a 194-page novel, Into Thin Air, A Bobbie Farnsworth Mystery!
I really enjoyed writing this YA Mystery, the first in a new series, but knew I needed to finish the dragon series. I've worked on book 5 in the dragon story here and there, but have a lot of loose ends to find. In the meantime, I decided to submit Into Thin Air into the Mom's Choice Awards, and I won SILVER! Yahoo!
As for my husband and I, we currently live in rural Ohio and love it! Stay tuned for updates on my writing adventures and hopefully a new book in 2020!