My Path To Publishing

Welcome! I’m happy you dropped by. To get things rolling, let me tell you the tale of how I came to be an author. It started when I was very young…you see, in my household I was the youngest of four girls, and I can’t remember a time when someone wasn’t reading. My parents led by doing, both were avid readers and instilled my love of books I still hold today. I owe them my success, and wish they were here to witness the achievement of a life long goal.

Reading, mostly in the fantasy and science fiction genre, of course, led to writing. I remember a short story written in elementary school, “Whatever Happened To Ellen?” blossoming into a radio show complete with sound effects and music in college. It was my first foray into monsters and mayhem. I wrote all through my education, almost majoring in English Literature, but my life took a different turn with music.

It was after I graduated college I had my first sale, and a first big score it was. A simple short story (slightly over 1200 words) called “Does The Shoe Fit You Now”, a Cinderella sequel, was bought by one of my favorite authors, Marion Zimmer Bradley, for her Sword & Sorceress anthology, specifically book 12. Not only did I sell to the first place I submitted, it was actually my first submission ever! It turned out to be beginners luck…

As life would have it, I soon had to concentrate on my career as a music editor for television and film, in order to eat and keep a roof over my head. But I still kept writing, in fact, I decided to try my hand at long fiction and tackled writing my first novel. It took many years to write (remember I needed a shelter and food), but complete at 100,000 words, “Valley Fever” was born, a contemporary fantasy set in Southern California. Proud of my child, I sent it out into the world, querying agents and ultimately submitting to three different publishers.

I was not idle waiting to hear if someone would give me a shot, I started my second novel, “Walking Through Fire”, a paranormal romance with a hunky Scottish ghost. Already I could tell this was a better effort than my first, so when everyone passed on “Valley Fever”, it didn’t deter me. I would lead with my stronger story. But how to get someone to buy it?

I decided on a different path than I had taken with my first manuscript. Querying agents and sitting in slush piles hadn’t done the trick. I needed editors and agents to take notice, so I took the contest path. Researching who the final judges would be, I entered several with promising results. I was a finalist in the paranormal category of Utah's “Great Beginnings”, then struck gold in 2013 by winning Florida’s “Golden Palm” contest, and coming in second in Chesapeake’s “Finish That Damn Book”, both in the paranormal categories again. This got me two full requests by two different editors.
how I envision my path...

On April 1st (yup, I’ll never think of April’s Fool’s Day the same way again!) I got “The Call” from Amanda Barnett, senior editor for the Faery Rose line at The Wild Rose Press. Yes, I was doing the snoopy dance; someone wanted to buy my novel.
And that my friends, was my paranormal path to publishing.
Now years later, I have a seven book series in the "Fire Chronicles" with the first three published. "Valley Fever" is my foray into Indie publishing. And, I'm an author and editor of a collaborative horror anthology "31 Overlook Hotel".