Second Chances Can Make a World of Difference.

I've been writing since the time I was a little girl. During my teenage years my focus was on teen romance, poems, children's books, and music lyrics. I'm also a singer but have total stage-fright. I'll save that story for another day. I've always been passionate about writing love stories because romance fills my heart. It makes me weepy, happy, brings me up, down, you name it, love makes me feel it. When I was put on bed rest with my third child, I got more serious about writing and wrote a full-length novel which I eventually converted into two books. Once I had my son, I put the writing aside for obvious reasons, lack of time being the major one. About a year and a half later, I returned to those two books. I edited them, gave them to others to read, re-edited them, then submitted them to publishers. Sadly, I received multiple rejections. Trust me, like all rejection, it sucked. It was during that time when I went on a cruise with my husband and kids that the idea about Destiny came to me. I ran with it, putting those others two books on the back burner for the time being. It took months to write, edit, allow others to read and provide feedback, edit, and edit some more before I finally took the leap of faith and submitted Destiny to various publishers. Again, rejection. Again, it sucked. But this time I didn't give up and put the script aside. I believed in the story and more importantly, wanted to share Jordin and Noah's love with others. I took the advice of an editor, incorporating all of the changes she suggested and asked if she'd be willing to reread the script. She did and the book was accepted, as were Purity and Diversity several months later. I will forever be grateful to that woman, Ann, who I acknowledge and will continue to acknowledge in every future book that bears my name, because she gave me a second chance to fulfill a lifelong dream, which has always been to share my characters with others. If readers can feel my passion while reading my stories that I feel in creating them, I have truly succeeded and accomplished my mission as a writer. I guess the two biggest lessons I learned from this experience, ones that I share with my children repeatedly, are to never give up on what you believe in and to give second chances when appropriate because doing so might just change your's and someone else's life in the best way possible. It certainly did in mine.