What inspired you to start writing, and how did you discover your passion for storytelling?
When I attended high school in journalism I loved to write. It was so easy because the teacher always had a topic for us to write on. But when I got out of school and wanted to write I just couldn't find anything to write on or about. So I just dropped the idea. When my husband's mother was diagnosed with cancer in the end of 2020 we (he and I) decided to let our adult son stay at our home in Brogue and we took our necessities with us to Dover to stay with his mother. We helped her do many things. But I had a lot of free time on my hands so I had purchased 3 books from Amazon that were written by our neighbor's daughter who wrote them. As I laid down one night to read the books and not knowing their genre I was a bit uncomfortable reading them. In the middle of the night I woke up with an idea that was flying around in my mind. I couldn't write down the ideas fast enough. Looking back I now know that it was God asking me to write books that anyone could read. So I contribute all of my work to God! He is my inspiration and my passion. And to this day I keep coming up with more and more ideas. At last count and this is only the ones I have pulled from my notes I keep with my tablet and from within my drafts in my email, I am up to 50 books. But I have a fairly large stack of notebooks with ideas written in them as well.
As a wife and mother, how do your family experiences influence the themes and characters in your books?
Actually there are a few things that are all about me and our family. All of the food ideas are my favorite foods. I grew up with a pony. That's where my love of horses comes from. There is a bully situation in my Sydney's Passion series. I had to make a few visits to our school because we taught our kids that you don't bully and you stand up to bullies who bully other kids and both of our girls were being bullied for standing up for other students who were being bullied. Both of the girls in my Sydney's Passion series are bullied. The one girl is the targeted one and the other girl just falls victim because they are like each other's shadows because they do everything together. Like best friends tend to do. So there is that aspect that kinda falls from our family life. And there are many more.
Can you tell us about your first published book and the series it belongs to? What motivated you to create this particular series?
My very first book was Sydney's Passion. As I stated earlier it came to me from God after reading a more mature adult book. I literally sat straight up in bed and was frantically try to get all of the thoughts in my head down onto paper and the next day I was doing research on race tracks in Kentucky for horses, the main people female and male names you would hear in Kentucky. And many other parts of the ideas for my book that I thought I knew or was curious about to find the best answers for my book. Sydney's Passion is the series and it's an inspirational fiction series that is also a continuous series.
You mentioned working on multiple books across different genres. How do you manage to switch between genres while maintaining your unique writing style?
So I have a stack of paper notebooks some are for specific books, some are split up with different sections throughout the notebook for notes on different book ideas. But most recently like maybe 2 months or so ago I started going to my email and I would make like I was going to send a new email but then save it as a draft. (It's free unlimited space to use and they are all together) so I have just from my notes to my email drafts 50 different story ideas. But I know I have more I'm guessing like maybe another 8-10 possibly that I need to add to the list. But I am also a conscious writer. So my current books that I am working on are always in my mind. But when I decide to take time to write (or things slow down enough I can find time to write) I just read the last page or couple of paragraphs and I am right back into the swing of things. Because I am a conscious writer I may have an idea but my consciousness may take it to a whole other route depending on how I feel as I write.
How has your writing evolved over the years, and what lessons have you learned along the way?
I feel as though my grammar, spelling, and creativity has increased since I started writing in January of 2021. I have taken various writing classes to try to perfect my writing. It turns out that I am already doing everything that they have mentioned in their classes. If anything when I took their classes I just came up with more ideas to write about.
