Writer's Cred

I started as a technical writer which I started by accident. It happens. I've been dabbling in fiction since I was a kid. I knew I wanted to write. I didn't know how. So I taught myself as best I could. And I was ok, but only ok, so all I did was dabble in fiction. Still, I was developing a voice. I was involved in writing groups and they no doubt helped me strengthen my voice as a writer. A boss realized I could write and hired me to write a software manual for the internal system we used. I did so and then I wrote a few how-to articles for some crafting magazines, but that was as far as my writing career went.

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I left that job and had a couple of businesses, the first one outright failed, the second I failed. That is, I became burnt out. I had ideas to generate new business and couldn't find any motivation to do it. I decided I should shut down and liquidate, so that's just what I did. After I closed my second business I realized I had no idea what I wanted to do next. I looked at my husband after it was all over and asked, "What the hell do I do now?"

He asked, "Well, what do you want to do?"

I said, "I want to write my novel."

He replies, "So write it."

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And it was kind of the end game for me at that point. I wrote the novel. It wasn't very good and I knew it. I knew it could be so much better and I also knew not making this the very best I could would be doing it a severe disservice. So I started an MFA program in Fiction at West Virginia Wesleyan in 2019. Much to my surprise, my main focus of interest has been voice in narrative, specifically changing it to suit the story. I've done quite a bit of research on this and will be teaching a graduate level seminar on it next year when I graduate. It's an amazing program (in the top 20 in the US) and all my mentors and advisors have been incredibly valuable assets to my work.

Thanks to their help my novel has transformed into His Ordained Wife, a sequential collection of short stories that tell the larger story of Theodore Holsmyth, V, who is a deeply religious man. Ted believes God will deposit his wife in front of him when it is time. That doesn't happen until Ted is thirty seven years old. When he finds her she is twenty six year old Leokadia Dobrynczki, an immigrant from Poland with a five year old American daughter. The stories of these three begin far before they do and end in tragic and surprising ways. 

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Relentless and Thirsty  are both from the collection.