Thank you, Coffee Time Romance, for having me over today for a cuppa! My personal favorite is hot chocolate, and I’ve got a steaming cup of my special sort sitting right here in front of me!
We’ll get the “who in the world are you” out of the way, and then we can chat.
I’m a multipublished author with four books in print, and three either in edits or under contract. I began writing in 2006 during a midlife crisis (which continues to this day) when I quit a very lucrative, albeit stressful job, in mental health counseling and plopped myself down in the local bookstore, drinking…yes, you got it…hot chocolates and reading books with titles like “How to Make A Living Without a Job.”
I tried a little bit of freelance writing, imagining myself the next great humorist (me and a bazillion other people) and did sell several articles to magazines over the course of several months.
Until…one day, I saw a woman sitting across the large reading room, a computer on her lap. She alternately stared into space or hunkered back down and furiously clacked away in her keyboard. Aha! A writer, I thought.
I ended up meeting her over the next week or so as we’d run into each other at the local coffee (hot chocolate) joint, and I asked her the question. “Are you a writer?” Please, how can I be one, I thought? “Yes, I’m an “author.” I had no idea there was a distinction. “Oh, really? How many books have you written?” I want to be you, I thought. “I have eight romances with Harlequin Mills and Boon.” Like I knew who that was! 🙂 Sigh… The Golden Heart winner picked me up off my feet, wiped the drool from my face and directed me to the nearest chapter of the Romance Writers of America.
And that was it! I had the bug. I’m still not like Ann Elizabeth Cree, Golden Heart Winner, and author of eigth historical romances with Mills and Boon, but a girl has to have a goal, doesn’t she?
I’ll be back to talk about picking a genre in a jiff!
Bess McBride, www.bessmcbride.com
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