The Loneliest Journey?

It has been said that writing is the loneliest profession and I have to agree. I have been sitting down in front of a blank screen - I started out with a yellow legal pad and a #2 pencil - for nearly as long as I have been alive. I could read long before I started school and pretty soon I was scratching out words on whatever paper the grownups would let me have.

Luckily I had a grandmother who set type at a book factory and she brought home endless supplies of paper trimmed from schoolbooks of various sizes. My love affair with books started soon after when she enrolled me in a book-of-the-month club for children. I cut my big girl teeth on the brothers Grimm and Lewis Carroll. Pretty soon I was reading the magazines that came into the house - Reader's Digest, Life and the Saturday Evening Post. I was interested in everything and being near-sighted, I suppose it was only natural for me to end up with my nose in a book - that was where my eyes focused best!

I won't say we had a lot when I was a child. My dad worked in factories, Mom stayed home, and toys came at Christmas. The rest of the time we entertained ourselves if we couldn't manage to play together nicely... never mind.

What with all that reading, I soon made up my mind that I wanted to write stories when I grew up - and I have. I wrote for a newspaper, I wrote poems, and songs, and grants, and articles and most of all - I wrote books. I can account for 16 novels in print or as e-books. (There were a couple of others that got lost in my search for the home of my heart!)

This year, I published two books. Book four of the Chesapeake Heritage series is the story of Jewel, a blind girl who has to learn to run two plantations after the Civil War was published last winter.

This summer I published Drama Queen Rules, the story of a redneck gal from a trailer park who wants a better life and works hard to get it - despite what the drama queens in her life have to say about it. (There is a lot of my life in this one!)

I work alone, and I guess that is to be expected. My favorite prayer is to connect all my hard-working, brave heroines with all the women in the world who are working toward better lives. YOU CAN DO IT!

And so, while life sometimes seems lonely, I know there are lots of people out there who want to improve their lives, so I am here to tell their stories and to say this: Keep on the sunny side girl - your miracle is coming! Terry