How
I Became
an Author

I began dabbling in poetry the first time I got my heart broken at 15. Writing about my pain through rhyming words seemed to make me feel better; it was a wholesome outlet that saved the offender from my scorn.
I kept writing poems to air my feelings and began to gift them to loved ones at celebrations.

In college, I took a photojournalism course and was asked to write for the campus newspaper. I apparently had a knack for capturing the essence of a story.

As my skills grew, I was hired as a reporter for a local newspaper. They gave me the human-interest section that highlighted feel-good news, but each story would spark my imagination to tell a more intriguing ending.

Years later, I was sifting through old Polaroids with my mother, and noticed a picture of a Caucasian man holding me with his wife nearby. I was about three. My mom said she met them at the hospital when I was born, they became good friends, and I became their Goddaughter. According to my mom and dad, they were a well-to-do family who made promises to my parents about what they would do for their little darling, me.

It turned out that my Godfather died a few years after the photo was taken. It was a shock to my mother who reached out to his wife, but she no longer wanted anything to do with us. When he died, so did the relationship and everything they were going to do for their little darling.

This was how I developed my main character, Marie Perry. It started with a girl who inherited a fortune from someone she barely knew. My first novel, Family Secrets was loosely based on what I learned about my Godparents.

I basically forced myself into the literary world. I say forced, because although I had a knack for writing a good story, I had no idea how to write a book. I willed my way through it, learning everything I could; it was a labor of love that took six years.

I think it was a testament to, “where there is a will, there is a way.” I wasn’t giving up after deleting my first manuscript on the new Windows 95. There were more accidental erasures, thank God we now have thumb drives. Date nights turned into late nights. Early mornings with stacks of books from the library for research and asking my husband a million questions so I didn’t have to look things up. Google hadn’t come out until 1998. It was a long road, but I wouldn’t change it for anything, I found my passion and now I am compelled to share it with you!

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