My Writing Journey

I started writing monster romance before I knew it was a genre.

My love of writing started as a hobby and blossomed from the friends I made in middle school. My closest friend dreamed of becoming an author and from her, my excitement to write my own stories grew.

Granted, my writing back then was squarely in the young adult category, but even then, the stories featured beastly heroes who longed to find love and became complete cinnamon rolls for the women who captured their hearts. Beauty and the Beast was one of my favorite stories, as was the tale of Persephone and Hades.

I didn’t realize spicy stories existed until I was sixteen and found one of my mom’s romance novels (The Gift, by Julie Garwood). I cracked it open right in the middle of a spicy scene. My mind was blown! I took it to my mom and cautiously asked, “hey, do you mind if I read this?” And she took one look at the book I’d picked and said exuberantly, “oh yeah! That’s a good one!”

I spent the rest of my spare time reading all my mom’s romance novels and took her whole collection with me when I went off to college. I still have it on my shelf to this day.

Although writing has always been a hobby the idea of publishing anything was never on my mind until I had my daughter. During those long, lonely nights of breastfeeding I stumbled upon the sci-fi romance genre to help keep me awake. I ended up looking forward to those midnight sessions, (and 2am and 4am and 6am…) because it meant I could keep reading.

As my daughter got older and those sleep-deprived days eased away, my creative drive returned and with it came a whole new series of books that, for the first time, I wanted to share.

I wanted to publish not for myself, but for others. To throw my books out there in hopes that they could be the thing that helped get readers through whatever rough patch they were slogging through. Because who doesn’t need to escape into a novel sometimes?