My Author Journey
Today on Instagram, I noticed an Author Timeline post by fellow author Morgan Hubbard that inspired me to write down a little bit about my own journey as a writer. I thought this would be a short post that I could easily repurpose into an Insta carousel, but… maybe it’s a bit too long for that! Instead, I decided to share the full version here.
Let’s jump in…
* 1991 - 1st Grade - Invited to a young author’s conference for a picture book I wrote based on one of my dad’s bedtime stories - a funny twist on The Three Little Pigs. (Maybe I’ll actually publish it one day!)
* 1995 - 5th Grade - Spent most of the school year writing and illustrating picture books with one of my classmates. Our teacher regularly displayed them on the bulletin board, and now I wonder whether I still have copies…
* 1997 - 7th Grade - Began writing song lyrics and filling notebooks with poetry. Secretly hand-wrote fan fiction in notebooks, which I later destroyed out of embarrassment. This was the year when I truly started discovering and leaning into the things I was passionate about: writing, history, and music. I can trace my decision to double-major in Professional Writing and History back to two amazing teachers I had over the course of this school year.
* 1999 - 9th Grade - Moved from the city I’d grown up in to the county for high school. We only lived 15 minutes away, but I still lost most of my old friends and struggled to adjust to my new school. During this year, I rediscovered fan fiction. I immersed myself in writing, music, and reading to cope with life changes and major growing pains.
* 1999-2003 - High School - I got serious about writing novel-length fan fiction in a few different genres and made some incredible friends online who helped me cope with a less-than-ideal school situation (and I had a few amazing IRL school friends who got me through, too). Discovered Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and (re-discovered) The Chronicles of Narnia. Wrote poems, plays, sketches, and short stories. Co-wrote books and stories with friends who I’m still close to today.
* 2003-2007 - College - I enrolled in college with plans to pursue a degree in graphic design…and pivoted into professional writing & history by my sophomore year. While I wrote some original short stories during this time, most of my creative energy went into school work and songwriting. I was beginning to doubt my ability to write my own fiction, and over time, I stopped believing in myself.
* 2007-2016 - Professional Detour - After getting married in 2007 and becoming a mom in 2010, I put fiction on the back burner. Right out of college, I’d begun a career in a technical publications environment, and I couldn’t seem to get invested enough in any of my fiction ideas to complete them. I started and scrapped a few book ideas during this time. As a young parent, I turned my focus to working remotely and began building a career in digital marketing.
Ultimately, I fell away from reading most fiction for years (except Twilight and The Hunger Games) until a friend recommended Elise Kova’s Air Awakens series. That’s when I rediscovered my love for fantasy fiction and began devouring romantic fantasy books as fast as I could read them.
* 2016 - Birth of The Witness Tree Chronicles - I began writing Defender of Histories in 2016 after a good friend from college encouraged me to follow the idea. Originally titled “The Witness Tree,” the first draft was wildly different than it is now. I never finished draft one, because I realized that I’d begun the story too late and it needed a stronger beginning. Once I started adding to the beginning of the story, the book took a wildly different turn and (eventually, after 3 years of writing) became what it is today.
* January 2020 - It took a while to complete Defender, but I was determined to finally take my original work seriously and finish a novel of my own for once. Defender of Histories (The Witness Tree Chronicles, Book 1) was published in January of 2020.
* Summer 2020 - Ballad of Stallions (A Witness Tree Chronicles Novella) was released.
* November 2020 - Keeper of Keys (The Witness Tree Chronicles, Book 2) was released.
* 2021-2022 - Writing Vow of Magic (The Witness Tree Chronicles, Book 3) was the most challenging experience of my author career so far. I rewrote it more than once until the story was a full & true reflection of the characters’ journeys. Losing momentum after book 2 was incredibly discouraging, as I’d hoped to shorten my time to publication rather than lengthen it. Health challenges, delays outside my control, and the need to continue pouring into my copywriting business (which is still my main bread & butter) all created the perfect storm, and it took until…
* November 2022 - Vow of Magic was finally published, and I’m still so incredibly proud of the final story.
* 2023 - Finally, we’ve made it to this year! My plans to tighten up my publishing pace were again derailed by ongoing health issues, business demands, and other personal challenges. I knew that I needed to write another prequel to follow Vow of Magic’s end (IYKYK), so I dove into that first. My hope is to give my readers a good story as often as possible, even (especially) if that means my longer novels need extra time to develop. So I paused drafting Sovereign of Clans (The Witness Tree Chronicles, Book 4) in favor of a new novella-turned-novel, Ruse of Heirs - the first book in my Tales of Rodhlan standalone series.
* Winter 2023/2024 -Ruse of Heirs is on its way to you soon, so stay tuned!
Y’all… I have been writing for a long time. BUT I didn’t publish until I was 35 years old! That was after a lifetime of writing, years of discouragement, and finally being inspired to take my art seriously. If you haven’t finished your book (or even started yet), there’s still time. There’s still time to publish. There’s still time to get your art out into the world.
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Happy reading, my friends!