As a child, I wanted to be a teacher. I realized around the beginning of my teenage years I didn't have the temperament to be a teacher. It wouldn't have ended well for me if I'd followed that past. I had to figure out a new path. My aunt had given me book certificates every year for my birthday and Christmas. Books were my jam! I loved YA, mostly Christopher Pike and R. L. Stine, but the occasional teen romance. I mean I was a teen, so YA was a natural fit. I found a Harlequin Romance by Carole Mortimer when I was thirteen. I wasn't allowed to read it until my mom gave it a read to make sure it was age appropriate. Thankfully, it was. Engaged to Jarrod Stone was the book that made me say 'I can write this!' My first attempt was a short story about my besties and I with our favorite celebrity crush staying overnight in a haunted mansion. It was five pages. What can I say it was a rough go! The next story was about my friends and I on a deserted island with another celebrity crush. Hey, I was a teenager, that was our thing! Over time the stories changed. I moved from my friends and celebrity crushes to slightly longer stories. I gave myself goals to increase my word count. My first vampire book was Forever and the Night by Linda Lael Miller. I loved it! Over time I read every vampire book I could. A few years back a dear friend recommended Twilight. Just because I'm older doesn't mean I can't dive into a YA novel ever now and then. I'd seen the movie but didn't know it was based on a book. The thrift store I worked at got in one of the mass market copies of Twilight with the movie cover. I took it as a sign. I read it and was hooked. Thankfully, it was after all the books had been released. Patience isn't one of my virtues. I loved them! That was the only copy of that particular edition of Twilight to be donated during the time I was at that job. Witches have always appealed to me. I can't say what it is about them, the powers, or the spells; maybe it's the flying. Whatever the reason I decided to give a short story about witches a try. Nothing overly complicated. It was a little fantasy about an ordinary girl hiding the fact she was a witch and the boy next door. I loved writing it. I took a chance and combined my love of vampires and witches and suddenly the Spellbound Saga was born. After many rejection letters I decided to give self-publishing a chance. I didn't like it. My dream had always been to be a published author in the traditional sense. I saw a sponsored advertisement on Facebook for a Christmas writing contest with Words Matter Publishing. I thought about entering it but didn't. After seeing the same advertisement again and again, I took it as another sign and entered on the last day. Then I forgot all about it. When I finally remembered months had passed. I checked and found Spellbound in the top twelve. Over the next few days, the list was cut again and again. Each day I wondered when my day was coming. Then I got an email saying I had WON! I was shocked and excited and overwhelmed. I'm sure you have felt that way at some point in your life. It was one of those WOW moments! My second book, Always, is a romance; after all it was a romance novel that got me to writing in the first place. Always is very dear to me. It took me 16 years to live and only six months to write. I poured my heart and soul into it, kind of opened up both and showed them to the reader. Always has some truth in it, but it isn't Non-Fiction. Where once I had trouble finding words, now I have an overabundance of them. This journey has barely begun, but I can't wait to see where it goes. I hope you'll come along for the ride.