Gin, did you always want to be a writer?
No. I just wanted to read or draw. Every week, without fail, my mother took us kids to the library to check out our five-book limit, but I always wanted more. I think the first thing I wrote was probably a note telling my mother I needed more books from the library. That was in Little Rock, Arkansas, where we lived for a time. We were always packing the old station wagon and heading to some other state as my father climbed the corporate ladder. That lifestyle didn’t promote long-term childhood friends, and I spent a great deal of time alone, reading and painting, dreaming of places I could go—places with dragons, talking animals, and spaceships. I went to five schools before graduating high school, and during those years, I wrote the required essays on subjects dictated by others, but when allowed free rein, my stories mimicked my dreams. When I left home, my own life was so hectic, I didn’t write, but I never stopped dreaming. I kept running stories in my head—stories in which I led other lives. One day I shared a story with a friend…not on paper but verbally. I think that’s what made me into a storyteller. Ten years later I began writing it down. Then life got in the way and I put it aside. Until forty years later, a very dear friend, who happens to also be a retired librarian and very nosey, was spending the weekend with me and began rummaging in my library. She found an old binder full of yellowed paper and hollered, “What the hell is this?” and “You didn’t tell me you were a writer?” followed by, “Oh, you have got to finish this story.” What started as a peaceful evening of binge watching Austin movies and eating chocolate turned into the first planning session with my new alpha reader, Celeste. Suffice it to say, she got the ball rolling, but it took another four years and three revisions before the manuscript was ready to submit for publishing. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done…and the most rewarding. So, no, I didn’t want to be a writer. But I became one. How I did it is another story. Stay tuned…