I'm a small town farm girl who spent a lot of time daydreaming when I was growing up. As a child, I used to entertain myself by making up stories in my head, especially at bedtime.  I devoured fictional books from an early age - the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, Walter Farley's Black Stallion books, and scores of other books by lesser known authors that caught myeye. I later discovered authors such as Stephen King, Dean Koontz and R.L. Stine, and subsisted on a literary diet of the macabre from that point on. I didn't actually begin to write down my own stories until much later in life, after a number of career paths eventually led me back to the only thing I've ever truly wanted to do - writing. At age 40, I realized that the dream of being an author 'someday' would never arrive unless I made it happen. The timing was perfect; the age of digital publishing was upon us and the dream was finally within reach. Logic dictated that I would gravitate toward writing the type of stories I liked to read, but the first book I published was not fiction. The Jealousy Game is a real-life tale of horror, based on a combination of my own personal experience with domestic abuse and that of many other women I have known throughout my lifetime. After that, I delved into the dark and disturbing fiction I have grown to love. My advice to aspiring writers: 'Someday' is today. If you want to be a writer, stop talking about it and do it. Make it happen.