Telling The Tales, One At A Time #OpenBook Blog Hop

Sept 30, 2024

A suggestion from Kelly:

My daughter asked: How did you decide that you finally wanted to write your stories?

I’ve told this story before.

Let me clarify before I get started. Kelly is one of the founding members of this hop, and it was her daughter who came up with this topic. Now on to the post.

I started writing poetry back in the dark ages, when music filled the air and everyone wanted to learn to play guitar. My voice wasn’t good enough to become a folk singer, but I wanted to make my words tell stories. I had some luck getting my poetry published and won a few local awards for it.

But as I got older and become involved with the computer field, the words got harder and harder to put together. I spent my spare time playing with math, and numbers took over. I was even running subnet equations (getting computers to talk to each other) in my sleep. There wasn’t room for poetry in my head, and I missed it.

Somewhere along the way, I ran into information about National Novel Writing Month.

I didn’t participate the first year after I heard about it, or the second. But one mid-October day, as I was going for my afternoon walk, and despairing for the words in my head that wouldn’t fashion themselves into a poem, it hit me. Why not write them as a story instead?

And that’s what I did. Come November 1, I grabbed a notepad and in between work duties, I started writing. I didn’t ‘win’ that year. Winning means writing 50,000 words by the end of the month, and I only wrote 49,000. I ran out of time and words.

But I didn’t give up. I rewrote that story several times, including  from different points-of-view. And I got hooked. That story will never see publication, but I learned a lot along the way. 

And I decided that maybe – just maybe – someday I would let the world read a what I’d written. 

Here I am, getting ready to release my twelfth book.

Coming soon – I’m shooting for November 2nd – Edwards Investigations, The Rimer File, will be added to my bookshelf. (My editor/formatter was in the path of the hurricane, so things may change.)  Please sign up for my newsletter to get the first peek at it. (See the link on the right.)

By the way, every now and then I will still write a poem. Maybe once a year, when inspiration strikes. I haven’t tried to publish any of the recent ones. They are more for my satisfaction  than anything else.

How about the other authors on this hop? What made them decide to write their stories? Find out by following the links below. 

And as always, until next time, please stay safe.

A suggestion from Kelly: My daughter asked: How did you decide that you finally wanted to write your stories?

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