I just looked back and realized that it’s been over two months since I posted Part 2 of this series.  Well, the theme is journeys, after all, and the last two months have been a whirlwind! More later.

So there I was, through high school and college, where my more creative writing had given way to scholarly pursuits. I married my one true love a few months after I turned twenty, and together we went to Hawaii, where we lived for about five years while he served his first tour in the Army.

While we were there, our first two daughters were born. New motherhood consumed most of my life, but I always kept a folder where I jotted down story ideas, plot lines and character names. Sometimes, if I were up late rocking a baby or doing the most mundane housework, I would spin chapters in my head. But few of those made it onto paper.  I managed a few short stories, which I shared with my mother and grandmother, since they were mostly for their benefit. I liked to write little vignettes that captured some emotion or family dynamics. Well, you write what you know. . .

After we left Hawaii, we moved to Wisconsin. Yes, you read that right. From the land of Aloha to the land of. . .snow. Dark. Cheese. There really wasn’t much writing, but it definitely influenced me. (An early draft of FEARLESS featured Tasmyn’s days in Wisconsin before she and her family moved to Florida.)

We moved back to New Jersey a few months before my mother-in-law died of lung cancer. Losing a parent, even one by marriage, is a devastating event.  I wrote a few more short stories that were largely informed by that loss. But beyond that, my writing energy was consumed by editing our church newspaper, and eventually, stretching out into some new non-fic areas. In the early days of the wider use of the internet, I fell into a group of fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, writing a column on Buffy fashion for an ezine.

As the web became more a part of our daily lives, I started writing for homeschooling groups, parenting blogs (when they developed) and other venues where I could use my particular area of expertise. By this time, we had four children, so that was definitely my area!

And all during this time, it goes without saying that I was reading as voraciously as ever. Since reading makes good writing, I look at that as the best prep ever.

In 2006, our annus horribilis began. We lost my dad, who had battled multiple myeloma for five years. My husband took a job in Florida, although the kids and I would remain in NJ so that our oldest daughter could finish high school. And then my mother was diagnosed with leukemia. She passed one week shy of the year anniversary of my father’s death, just a few weeks before we moved to Florida.

It was a devastating year, one that I never wish to relive. But at the same time, it was shaping me into the person I needed to become and preparing me for the next step on the journey.

Another Successful Blog Hijack!!!!

Psst! Jesi Lea Ryan here. Welcome to my sneak-attack blog tour!

Tawdra is off editing a new project and forgot to lock her computer. So I thought I’m taking over her blog for my own nefarious (shameless?) purposes. I have to hurry though before she comes back. (Hee, hee!) Read to the end and you have a chance to win a free e-book!

I want to take a moment to tell you about my new young adult, paranormal romance, Arcadia’s Gift.

Most people who experience death don’t live to tell about it.

When sixteen year old Arcadia “Cady” Day wakes in a hospital after experiencing what can only be called a psychic episode, she finds her family in tatters. With her twin sister gone, her dad moved out, her mom’s spiraling depression and her sister’s boyfriend, Cane, barely able to look at her, the only bright spot in her life is Bryan Sullivan, the new guy in school. When Bryan’s around, Cady can almost pretend she’s a regular girl, living a regular life; when he’s not, she’s wracked with wild, inexplicable mood swings. As her home life crumbles and her emotional control slips away, Cady begins to suspect that her first psychic episode was just the beginning…

I am so excited to share this book with the world! Cady is such an amazing character. I think what I like best about her is that she has to deal with some seriously heavy family issues in addition to her new gifts. Because of this, both teen and adult readers will be able to find different ways to relate to her on an emotional level.

Where did the idea for Arcadia’s Gift come from? I honestly don’t remember. I knew I wanted to write a young adult paranormal, since I read a lot of young adult literature. Vampires are a tad overdone right now and werewolves just don’t appeal to me. (Hello? Doggy breath is NOT sexy!) I seem to recall the character of Cady forming in my mind first. I wanted her to be as realistic as possible. I truly believe some people have psychic abilities, so it seemed natural to develop them in Cady. Once I figured out what those abilities would be, the story of how she got them unfolded naturally.

Why set the story in Dubuque, Iowa? My first novel, Four Thousand Miles, was set in England. While I have been to England and all of the places in my book, I had to do a ton of research into the setting, the culture and the speech. With Arcadia’s Gift, I chose to set the story in my hometown of Dubuque where I am intimately familiar with the city. Cady goes to the same high school I attended, lives in the neighborhood I used to live in and hangs out in the places my friends and I used to haunt on Saturday nights. What I discovered is that I felt a greater emotional connection to this story because I could draw on my sense of nostalgia.

The other reason I chose Dubuque is because it hasn’t been done before. I can’t think of another young adult novel set there, can you? Bordered by the Mississippi River on one side and the Great Plains on the other, Dubuque is unique to Iowa for its incredible bluffs and hills. It truly has a natural beauty. The landscape plays a strong role in the plot of the novel.

What’s next for Arcadia? Nice try! I’m not giving you any spoilers. I can tell you that Arcadia’s Gift is the first in a planned trilogy. The second book, Arcadia’s Curse, is planned to release in May or June 2013.

Oh, crap! I hear Tawdra coming, so I have to dash! Before I go, I’ll leave you with an excerpt from my novel. Tell me what you think of it in the comments and leave your email address for a chance to win a copy of Arcadia’s Gift!!

~Jesi Lea Ryan, Future Bestselling Author and International Hijacker of Blogs

Excerpt:

It felt like ripping… ripping through me, ripping from me. A deafening roar reverberated all around as I lay flat on my back, drowning the shrieks and screams echoing on the river valley walls. My eyes were wide open, unblinking, but all I could see were abstract forms in shades of black, gray and red. A searing burn cut across both of my thighs as if I’d been struck by a flaming hot iron. My flesh melted and bubbled, absorbing the phantom burning metal and shattering my femur bones like glass. Although I was screaming as loud as I could, the sound was distant, like someone screaming under water.

A hub of activity swirled around me, but I had the distinct feeling of being alone… alone in hell. I groped around on the cool soil at my sides, sparse patches of long grass and loose gravel, trying to remember where I was and what had happened to me. The pain prevented any coherent thoughts.

Voices. Panic all around me. Yet I was alone in my hell.

A flash of heat seared through my head, pounding rhythmically. Rust coated my tongue. The heat began to sink down my torso, leaking out of the stumps left under my hips. I sucked in jagged breaths as I realized that the heat was my blood, pumping through my arteries and spilling onto the cool ground.

No! I don’t want to die! Again, the screams tore out of me. No one answered my cries.

My body grew colder. The pain faded to numbness. They say when you know that you are dying, your life flashes before your eyes. I knew I was dying, but curiously, it was my twin sister Lony’s life that came to me in last minute mourning, not mine. I saw her love for me, even if we fought more than talked these days. I saw her fierce hope that our parents would reconcile their failed marriage and reunite, before nothing remained to salvage. I saw her boyfriend, Cane, and the lost promise of young love. A swell of love and pain filled my chest when I pictured Cane. It made no sense…I didn’t even like him.

The forms in my vision began moving more slowly, becoming even darker. I struggled to reach out to them, but my arms were as heavy as iron weights. I opened my mouth to scream again, but only rust flavored foam escaped my throat and rolled down the corner of my mouth and into my hair. The skin on my face broke into a cold sweat as I steadily bled out.

It was almost over. I wanted my mom.

A shock of pain ripped through my chest as my heart raced, running out of blood.

Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

The faster my heart pumped, the less time I had left. My back reared up, head scraping the ground. My lungs heaved, panting. The forms in my vision swirled so dark they blended with the night. I reached out desperately with my hands, fingers not even finding a hand to hold. Breath rattled in my chest as it left my body for the final time and the whole world faded to black.

Arcadia’s Gift is available for purchase at the following retailers:

Amazon
Barnes & Noble
All Romance
Smashwords

Let’s recap, quickly: after years of moving hither and yon, my family and I moved to a small town in New Jersey where our lives changed dramatically. It was there and during that time that I began making up stories, enjoying the characters and plot lines in my head.

I made it through elementary school. . .barely. I loved the academics, but I hated the social aspects. A particularly nasty few months (picture Mean Girls, the younger years) destroyed what little confidence I’d developed, and I went into middle school very unhappy. But I still had my books, and I still had notebooks with my stories.

On the first day of middle school, I met the brand-new librarian, who, as it turned out, would be my best friend during those three years. She had terrific ideas about a reading club and a library club, and I joined them both (big surprise!).

I also kept writing, and as much as I hated middle school, it was where I realized that I enjoyed and could do something that other kids my age didn’t like at all. It became a point of pride to earn the top grades on essays and reports. (Don’t ask about math and science; those were totally different stories.)  I entered the poetry festivals and won first prize all three years.

And then in October of seventh grade, the library sponsored a scary story contest. I wrote a story that was based on something my mother had once told me, about a beautiful old house that used to stand on the hill behind the Catholic church in our town. The hill still stood empty, and I had to walk past in my way home every day. In my story, the house re-appeared every October 31st. . .for one spooky evening only. . .

My story, “The Mystery of Bennett House”, won first prize, and unbeknownst to me, my librarian friend submitted it to a magazine called “A Child’s Life” (now defunct). Imagine my shock when she told me that my story would be published!

It was my first experience with seeing my own words in print. It was pretty exciting.  My parents had a copy of the magazine framed. (Yes, I still have it!)

That was the high point of my youthful writing life.  Two years later, having survived middle school, I began high school, where writing took on a whole new meaning. Research papers, long reports and test essays edged out any time for creative work. I was the editor of the school newspaper, but even there, it was almost completely non-fiction writing.

In spite of that, I credit my high school experience with having a huge influence on my work. I had three of the best English teachers who held us to impossibly high standards. Incomplete or run-on sentences earned a zero for any assignment. We were not permitted to use the word ‘get’ in formal writing; Mrs. McConnell told me that it was a non-word that could be replaced by something more descriptive in any case. She was right; I’ve yet to find any instance wherein ‘get’ can’t be replaced with something better.

These two women and one man introduced me to Shakespeare, encouraged what they called my ‘eclectic reading taste’ and made me passionate about proofreading and editing. Any time I write a decent sentence, it can be directly attributed back to Mr. Eck, Mrs. Barrett and Mrs. McConnell.

I was a senior when I began dating the man who would later become my husband. My college years were consumed with more non-creative writing and then I was married. . .an Army wife and mother. Who had time to write?

Maybe not me, but the stories continued to play out in my mind.  Sooner or later, they had to find an outlet.

“So how did you start writing?” It’s a standard question on most interviews, and I have a standard answer for it, too.

I usually say that I’ve been writing stories all my life, got sidetracked from fiction during college, early marriage and motherhood, stuck to non-fiction for a while, and then began writing stories again recently.

It’s all true, but it’s also much too neat. The longer answer is not one I can share in a pithy interview answer, but I’m going to share it here, in the hopes that it might inspire other writers who might need it.

My writing journey began, as I believe all writers’ do, as a reader. More accurately, as a listener. My father had long purposed that he would read to his children before bed every night, and he began with me, his first born, when I was barely old enough to sit still.

I can’t tell you what the first books he read to me were, but I can remember some of my favorites from the early years, from the time I was in kindergarten. We read the Katie John books by Mary Calhoun, the All of a Kind Family books by Sydney Taylor. Of course we read all of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series, long before they were on television.  (And if you haven’t read those books because the TV show turned you off, please, please read them. You will hardly recognize them as being even related.)

Throughout the years, my dad moved from early elementary literature through the classics (Edgar Allen Poe, Jane Austen–Daddy didn’t care for her–the Bronte sisters, Oscar Wilde, Sir Walter Scott, Shakespeare, Dickens) to more challenging books like those by Madeleine L’Engle and even Ayn Rand.  My father never hesitated to read me a book because he thought it might be over my head; he recognized that constantly challenging my comprehension and vocabulary made me a better reader and writer.

In addition to my dad, I also had a grandmother who told me stories all the time. I loved the tales from history, from her own childhood and her own adaptations of other classic stories that she shared. Add that to a mother who always had a book of some kind nearby and I was destined to be a reading addict.

The first time I remember inventing stories was after my family moved to New Jersey. We’d lived in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, California, Pennsylvania (again) although both of my parents had family back in South Jersey. We returned there when I was in fourth grade, and I joined a class who had been together since kindergarten. Kids of that age aren’t exactly welcoming to a newcomer, and I spent most of that first year very much alone.

It was then that I discovered the value of inventing stories. I couldn’t read as I walked alone to and from school, but I could make up the next part of my own story. I could invent characters and situations that were comforting and amusing and hopeful. Those stories saved my life that year, and from then on, I was always telling a story, whether or not I actually wrote it down.

But even so, I would never have believed that within a few years, I would actually be a published author.

There’s been a lot of buzz in the writing world in the last week or so about an interview author Sue Grafton gave to a Louisville, Kentucky website. In response to a question, she said, “Quit worrying about publication and master your craft. If you have a good story to tell and if you write it well, the Universe will come to your aid. Don’t self-publish. That’s as good as admitting you’re too lazy to do the hard work.”

Want to make a group of normally peace-loving people angry? Tell them they’re lazy.

I am not a traditionally published writer, but I’m sure they work hard. When I say that indie authors are the most intense, driven and focused people, I’m not taking anything away from non-indie writers. But I work with indie authors, many of my friends are indies, and I can tell you that it’s true. Most indie writers work diligently at their craft. . .and most also have at least one other job and families, some with small children.

That, my friends, is hard work. That’s not laziness.

Indie writers do all their own promotion. They keep their social media sites up to date, interact with their fans, work on blog tours, write guest posts, do interviews and run contests. They have to maintain both a virtual and a local presence, so when they’re not working on-line, they’re at local bookstores or author events or other conventions and conferences.

And the indie community is a strong and supportive one, so when writers are not promoting their own books, they’re cheering on their fellow indie authors, posting for them, tweeting and reviewing.

All of that is in addition the aforementioned ‘regular’ job most indie writers maintain, and of course their family and/or personal lives.

Oh, yes. . and then there is the writing. The editing. The revising. Choosing a cover, formatting and publishing, both in electronic and hard copy.

When do we sleep? Well, not often. And not for long.

And yet some authors would refer to us as ‘lazy’.

As I’ve said before here and will say again, I agree that writing is a craft. Are there independently published books that are poorly written, unedited and embarrassing? Most assuredly. Are there traditionally published books that could also fall into that category? Oh, yes.

The idea that the agents and editors are the lofty gatekeepers to the rarefied air of true publishing is antiquated. The notion that only those whom they admit are true writers who have paid their dues and know the reality of hard work is ridiculous and wrong.

I’m sure Ms. Grafton has her reasons for her opinion, to which of course she is entitled. But she might want to talk to a few of us and read a wider variety of our work before she jumps to any conclusions.