“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” – Oscar Wilde
Have you ever asked yourself that question? Who are you? Ten years ago, I was asked to do a post for a fellow writer’s blog answering that question. I came across it today and thought maybe you would find it interesting. I changed a few things because who hasn’t changed a little in a decade. So here goes. Hope who I say I am sort of matches who you think I am.
First, if you’re anything like me and since you’re reading this, I’m guessing you are, you like books. I’m also guessing that many of you are like me and enjoy hearing the who, what, and where of the names under the titles on the books you read. Since I’m hoping my name has been on a few books you’ve read, here goes with my own story on how that came about.
So who am I? I’m a country girl who grew up on a farm. I was one of three daughters and no sons, so we helped our dad out in the fields. I liked driving the tractor, but didn’t get to do that very often since I was the youngest. I married a farm boy and naturally, as soon as we could get a loan, we bought a farm for ourselves. I was a very young mother with two children (a boy and a girl 20 months apart) by the time I was nineteen and then I added another boy a few years later. The picture up top is me with my oldest son at about a year old.
From the time I was a kid, I wanted to write down stories. I filled countless wire-bound notebooks with my stories and kept a journal from the time I was a young teen. But that wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to publish my writing. I didn’t want to simply hide them away in a drawer. I wanted people to read what I wrote. With that goal, I began typing up my stories, stuffing them in manila envelopes and sending them out to magazines. (This was way before computers and everything digital days.) Now and again, I published a few of those short stories and personal experience pieces. Then I tried my hand at writing a novel and knew I’d found my writing niche. That’s what I wanted to write – big, long stories where I could stay with the same characters for months while they lived out their stories in my head.
In 1978, I experienced the magic of writing a story an editor actually decided readers might buy, and my first book, a mass market paperback historical romance, was published by Warner Books for the general market. That was followed by another historical romance and eleven young adult and middle reader books in the 1980s and 1990s. Then my writing magic seemed to lose its twinkle. Editors stopped thinking my stories were books their readers would want to read. One of my rejects said that there was nothing really wrong with my novel but nothing right about it either. Now that was helpful!
But even when my books weren’t finding loving editors, I kept writing. It seems writing is necessary for me to keep my happiness quotient at the proper level. After several years of no letters saying there was enough right about my books, I decided to take the age old advice and write what I knew. I quit worrying about markets and wrote a story I could love whether anybody else did or not. That story became my first inspirational fiction novel, Scent of Lilacs, published by Revell Books in 2005. It was repackaged and re-released in 2013. That novel and the follow up stories, Orchard of Hope and Summer of Joy have touched a lot of readers. They have recently been released in audio with the last two narrated by me. I had fun getting to be all my characters while reading the books for audio. Can you believe a reviewer said she enjoyed my Kentucky accent? What accent? LOL.
Then a book I wrote about the Shakers, The Outsider, was published. That was followed by seven more novels set in my fictional Harmony Hill Shaker Village. The Shakers, a unique and interesting religious group, made a great historical background for those novels. But I’ve found plenty of other stories in Kentucky history besides the Shakers to write about. I’ve written about the 1855 election riots in Words Spoken True. I borrowed my mom’s stories of growing up during the Great Depression for the background for my Rosey Corner books. I found a story, River to Redemption, in Springfield, Kentucky during the cholera outbreaks, and I’ve headed up into the hills of Eastern Kentucky for some stories. I’m back there again for the story to be released in June, Along a Storied Trail.
So where I am now is still where I’ve always been. Loving to share my stories. Taking walks with my dogs. Snapping pictures of wildflowers and all kinds of other things I spot on those walks to share with you all on social media. Loving visits from the grandkids. And smiling when I hear from readers like you.
Where am I going? I hope I’ll continue to have characters come to life in my imagination. Writing isn’t always easy. Sometimes the words are hard to dig out of my mind to tell those stories, but I can’t imagine not writing. It’s what I do. I hope some of you will go along with me on my story trails.
All right, now you tell me.
Do like hearing about how your favorite writers got started in the book business?
What didn’t I tell you that you would like to know about who I am?