The Creative Edge Community Post: Let’s Get To Know One Another
Please introduce yourself, won’t you?
Happy New Year! I hope your holidays were fantastic and you are geared up for a great 2024.
I wanted to get 2024 off to a really lovely start for us all, and when I saw this fabulous introductory post idea on The Hyphen by
, I decided to borrow the idea.It’s rather simple. Between our Friday book discussions and the writing/craft posts, our community at The Creative Edge has grown leaps and bounds over the past year. You know a lot about me—my hopes, my dreams, my struggles—and I would love to know more about you!
What brought you here? Are you a writer, a reader? Both? Neither? What are some of your favorite books, or newsletters, or authors? Are you getting your money’s worth—figuratively and literally—from the Edge? Where are you in your life? Where are you in general? If you could do one thing from your bucket list, what would it be? Do you have a word/theme for 2024, or a resolution you’d like to share?
You get the idea. Anything goes. Pick as much or as little to share as you’d like. You can just wave if that’s more your speed.
I’ll leave this post pinned so new folks who wander into the party can chime in, too.
This should be so much fun! Happy New Year to you all! 🎉
What a terrific opening post for the year. I look forward to reading the other responses.
My short answer is that I am a reader first and a writer second.
My parents were readers, so books surround my earliest memories. I hate to guess how many times I read my well-worn copy of Where the Wild Things Are. After exhausting my Beverly Cleary stage, my parents gifted me my very own library card. The worlds of Asimov, Heinlein, Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke opened up to me.
When I was 11 (yes, 11), Stephen King published 'Salem's Lot. Three years later in 1978, The Stand hit the stores. I read it from cover to cover that first night. His ability to take ordinary people and put them in extraordinary situations mesmerized me.
Forty years later, in 2018, I stumbled across Taylor Jackson. Having spent my summers at my grandfather's farm outside Nashville (near the intersection of Hillsboro Pike and Old Hickory Blvd—hardly the country today), I loved seeing a town I knew depicted so well. I read nine more of your books that year, another five the next, and now never miss a release.
So, yes, I come here first as a fan of books.
As for writing, I've done that forever too. Other than a few short stories in school journals, though, I never tried publishing. That seemed a pipe dream to a kid growing up in a Southern mill town. Ignore the fact that I also read S.E. Hinton, who published The Outsiders as a teenager living in Tulsa.
In fairness, my writing was awful. I wrote my first novel in high school. I still have it, but it’s so dreadful it will never see the light of day. I think I keep it to torture myself. The second isn’t much better.
Instead, I did the "right" thing and went off to a finance career. Traveled the world, worked way too many hours, and scribbled tales in hotel rooms at night.
Nothing would have changed if it wasn’t for the internet and my dogs.
First on Usenet and then dog blogs, I found kindred spirits who liked to exchange stories about the antics of their canines. With a herd of rescued Siberian Huskies, my anecdotes of their misadventures practically wrote themselves. With a collection of their stories, a hobby in photography, and a desire to learn html, I launched their website in 2007. It reached a ridiculous level of popularity. Over and over, fans suggested I write a book.
In 2019, after way too much agonizing and help from a team of editors, I finally published my first novel. My expectations were low. Maybe I'd sell a dozen copies to friends and family. If I was lucky, 100.
When it sold its 10,000th copy, I decided I better get to work on the next novel. Early this year, I'll publish my fifth. I'll also turn 60. Better late than never, huh?
And so, yes, I’m also here as an accidental writer.
Sorry for such a long response, but my editors aren’t working today.
As long as I can remember, I wanted to be a novelist. Then I don't know exactly what happened, but I turned to screenwriting and developing stories (maybe after film school). A few years ago, I turned to writing novels––a bit late, but not too late 🤗. I still work as a development editor occasionally. My focus, however, is now righting novels. I write Upmarket Fiction (Book Club Fiction). Translation: I write in multiple genres. I work on several books at the same time (they're all in different stages). I write many drafts. And I'm terrible at marketing. Hey, I'm learning. Slowly. ~ I love reading thrillers, commercial fiction, women's fiction, and... I love reading. ~ 2024 is My Year of Writing (and Healing as it been a little tough in 2023). I have big writing plans. Let's see. Happy New Year to all of you. I hope this year is going to be great for you. 🩷🩷🩷