For as long as I can remember, my mother would haul my two younger brothers and me down the hill to the local library. We'd fill our red Radio Flyer wagon with armfuls of picture books and then head uphill back home. Reading books was as important to our family as eating food or taking baths.
Fast forward to about age ten when I discovered my first Agatha Christie. My passion for the murder mystery began and so did my hero-worship of a woman who died just days before my second birthday. To this day she stands as my all-time inspiration for becoming a writer and I'm gutted I will never have the chance to meet her. Not in this lifetime, anyway. Who knows? Maybe one of my alternate selves had the opportunity! :-)
It's up for debate as to which was greater, my passion for mysteries or my passion for science fiction. I cut my eye teeth on Battlestar Gallactica and Buck Rogers. Of course, as I grew older I wanted to see a little more romance, a little more heat. Fortunately as a young woman I found my first romance. My favorites of the genre quickly became paranormal romances and scifi romances. Bring on Dara Joy, Linda Howard and Maggie Shayne! I couldn't get enough of them.
As I hit my late 20s and moved into my 30s, I moved away from romance and back to mysteries and scifi. I also discovered fantasies and thrillers and, dare I say, horror! I especially discovered a long hidden passion for post-apocalyptic adventures. Not sure what that says about me, but there you go. If there's a sudden zombie apocalypse, I am so going to be in my element.
And finally in my mid-30s my true passion has emerged: the urban fantasy. Somehow this one little sub-genre combines everything I most love about novels: fantasy, action, murder, mayhem, romance, alternative history, a little bit of scifi, and a whole lot of crazy and the occasional apocalypse (not necessarily of the zombie variety). From Nalini Singh to Alyssa Day to Ann Aguirre, I have so many books and authors I love these days, I can hardly keep them straight!
Somehow that love of books and stories cooked and simmered away in the back of my mind until finally it was ready to unleash itself on the world. Oh, sure, I've never stopped writing since the day I first learned to spell my name. I've written poetry, song lyrics, novels that never made it past rough drafts, recipes and articles. For the last three years I've worked as a part-time free-lance ghost writer and my articles are all over the web. Not always under my name, of course. :-) I've even co-written an e-book on personal development.
Yet my true love remains the novel. And out of that love birthed a germ of an idea which today is an urban fantasy novel. After a year and a half of writing, re-writing and more re-writing, that novel is finally ready to go and Bailey Morgan lives at last.
The hunt for an agent begins....
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