Dear Friends,

 

Since this whole website business is really new to me, I shamelessly scoured the wonderful web pages of my author friends to see what they’d written in their Dear Reader letters. Their notes ran from touching to downright funny, and were all fabulous illustrations of their writing skills--text certain to send every reader scrambling to bookstores everywhere to buy their current releases. Well, you won’t get that from me.<g>

 

I’d like to tell you a little about what drove me to writing in the first place. I mean, why would a woman with only a high school education think she could write well enough to be published? The answer is, it happened by accident.

 

The day I celebrated my thirty-third birthday, my husband Mike and I went for a walk on our country road because I was suddenly weepy about turning 33 and thinking--wrongly--that I hadn’t done anything important with my life to that point. It wasn’t that I’d forgotten about the three great kids who were eating us out of house and home, or the terrific guy I married. I’d just always wanted to do something for myself--something creative. When Mike asked what I thought I’d like to do, I told him I’d like to illustrate children’s books. He said simply, “Then do it.”

 

At the time, being greener than spring grass, I didn’t know that most publishers have their own stable of artists. But after numerous queries, I connected with a publisher who agreed to look at my sketches if I also wrote the tale. By the time I finished “Arthur the Claustrophobic Ant”--a positively awful short story that will never see the light of day, and which I typed on my daughter’s Tom Thumb typewriter--I was hooked on fiction writing. In a matter of days, Mike replaced the Tom Thumb with an Underwood typewriter (which I will never part with), and I’ve been pounding one keyboard or other ever since.  Was I an overnight success?  Not exactly. Though I was fortunate to eventually sell quite a few short mysteries and romances to national magazines, it was 17 years before Silhouette Books bought my first novel, ACCIDENTAL HEIRESS, book #1 in a trilogy about a contemporary Montana ranching family.  Happily, many other books followed.

 

Thanks for visiting with me today. And remember--if there’s something you want, something that’s evaded your grasp so far--don’t give up. Chances are it won’t take you 17 years to attain it...but if it does and it’s what you want, the time spent is well worth it. I’m living proof that persistence--and a fair amount of luck--really do pay off.

 

Until next time...

 

Wishing you peace, love and happy reading,

 

                                     Lauren