MsSheWrites... OK... MsSheWrites Sometimes... This is the story of my writing journey.

I've had writer dreams and aspirations every since I read, The Winter Women by Mary-Rose Hayes. I think I was 13 or 14 at the time. As a child my father had us read bedtime stories to him once we were like 8. My sister and I would sit on his side of the bed and just read from whatever book package we'd subscribed to. It was great bonding time, my father was my hero and I would read to the moon and back if it would've put a smile on his face. Understanding the importance of literacy was paramount in our household. But with age those book reading sessions turned into real literature about Pan-African movements, African history and all this things that would instill a sense of purpose about uplifting the race but wasn't fun. So I stopped enjoying it. And then some classmate in my 7th grade science class was reading Flyy Girl by Omar Tyree. It must have been their mom's because I myself was only 11 or 12 years old at the time. Everyone was so excited and I couldn't wait for my turn. As expected, I was not let down. It was every bit as much as the adult book it was meant to be even if the main character was a spoiled black teen. I knew Tracys— had a handful of Tracys in my family. In any case, we spent the remainder of the year swapping our parents/ older sibling's books. Novels turned into Sunday night Million Dollar movies also played an enormous role into my slip, trip, and dip into romance genre. Must have watched a dozen Daniele Steel movies prior to realizing that they were books. My grandma, a small woman in her eighties was a fan of romance. She had a huge library. So after much thought, I asked for one and then I was hooked solely on romance. Mainstream White American romance, the idea that two people could meet, fall in love and live happily ever after was ingrained into my soul. Etched in my heart. And there was no going back.

But this is about when I realized I wanted to write so we'll save my love of romance for another post (if I'm able to separate the two). I remember reading Winter Women, it was such a long book but it had glamour and riches, it had betrayal, it had love and deceit, it also had Davis (named one of my very 1st male characters after him). After that, I was convinced that I too could write a book so I started. My 1st work was in some composition notebooks. It was about a black girl named Starr who was an up and coming Supermodel and she'd left the mean inner city streets of urban Philadelphia for sunny Los Angeles. My cousin Toya was the first person to read it and it made me feel good that she liked it. I hit what I now identify as writer's block when I realized, I knew absolutely nothing about Los Angeles or modeling except for what I had seen on TV. There was no internet at our fingertips the way it is today. So I scrapped that book and put myself to better use telling the stories of the people around me. I wrote about the street life and poetry, about love and heartbreak.

I read.

I kept reading; Nora Roberts, Joann Ross, Susan Wiggs, Debbie Macomber, and Susan Johnson and many more authors I could get my hands on.

Enter Love is Blind (currently unpublished because the 38 year old me is now fully realized and the perception of 16 year old me has me cringing... Just a little bit.) The story centers around two teenage girls, Aylonah and Briannah during their senior year of high school. They should be worried about prom, but instead, they are dealing with entirely more than college selections. It was my blood, sweat, and tears summed up in 209 pages 12 pt. Times New Roman font. It has themes that touch on parental neglect, abuse, teenage love, friendship, and betrayal. It possibly took me six months to write it. Then one day my dad came home with a Comqac Presario computer from Radio Shack (an upgrade from our Tandy color computer with the green screen). It was for the entire house and he'd even gotten us some dial-up connection to use to have access to the internet. I used it to my advantage and every single night, I would type what I'd written during the day. I spent hours on hours perfecting that story. But I didn't think I could write for a living. It was fear, mixed with my lack confidence. So, I gave up that dream and settled on a new one. I'd read several Nora Roberts books and was a superfan, so much so that reading the Dream trilogy is what influenced my decision to go to college for Hospitality Management. I wanted to own a luxury hotel empire just like the Templeton’s. That seemed more likely to take place than me becoming a famous writer like Terri McMillan. Fast forward my freshman year of college, I still remember the pride I felt going to Copies Now on the campus of Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) to print out the results of my labor of love. There is nothing that can describe the sense of accomplishment I felt in that moment. I'd printed out pages before and had let Marlon read it. He was a male and he had loved it. But this was a bound result, an actual book. Throughout college I wrote, did spoken word and worked on my degree. I remember being home one summer and had happened to run into Daaimah Poole sitting out at a vendor table outside of Horizon Books in the Gallery Market east. (Not that she would remember) I remember asking and her telling me about her chance meeting with Karen Quiones Miller. I stood in awe. Here she was a brown girl just like me showing me her book, Yo Yo Love, the pay off to her persistence. Her determination making her a voice in African American literature. I wanted to jump on the subway to go home, get my book, and bring it back to her to ask her to read. But I was too afraid. So, afraid of rejection that of course I didn't. And then I never tried, still afraid of the word NO from traditional publishers. Still just afraid of trying, of being successful. Fear is an ugly mofo. You hear meeee? And it stayed that way until 2010, I was still writing and reading about happily ever afters, trying to figure out when I was going to get mine. There was a lot of reading, me devouring romance novels, there was less writing. Do you know how many times my family and people I knew asked about when my book was going to come out? It was embarrassing to have to reply, I'm still writing. It's really hard to get an agent, to get signed. (Even harder when the effort isn't being put forth) Then I joined some writing communities on Facebook. The book publishing business was changing in a major way. In a way where I didn't necessarily need a Yes from a publishing house to get my work out there. Writers weren't asking traditional publishing houses to sign them, there were making their own way. So I decided to make mine too. I got serious and used the second book I was working on during college and brought No Ordinary Love to life. My homegirls from North Philly. I self-published this in 2012 and has been my most successful release to date. I fell off, I couldn't write about love and happiness when the happy I'd built seemed to be falling apart. I wasn't reading as much, if at all and I was focused on my physical, emotional self. I shed 80 lbs in the process. And I couldn't finish anything that I started. I have like 10 WIP due to this. So I suffered through three years of writer's block before I had enough life experience for Hurricane to jump onto the pages. I felt l like I had put everything I had inside me into that novel and because the book business had changed once again, I struggled to find a space to fit in. Can't even claim that after 3 more years and another book Changing Stiles that I have found that niche. All I want to do was write about African Americans finding true love the way they had in all my Caucasian novels growing up. My number one muthafudgn' problem is being in my own way. I've always been told that the 1st step to any successful program is acceptance. 1. I'm not consistent enough even though I "try". 2. I'm not disciplined enough and it shows. 3. I need to write more so I'm committed to writing something everyday. Even today as I one finger type (had surgery on my right/ write hand) this blog, I wish I had full range use of my hand to pick up a pen and a pad. There's nothing like not physically being able to write to get your characters jumping, yelling at you for attention. In closing, I promise to be consistent. I am MsSheWrites and I will perpetually spin the tales of black love in an effort to cultivate the idea that we deserve love too.