Hi, my name is Laura, and I’m a writer.  Even with the sale of my first novel, uttering those words aloud smacks of an AA meeting.  In years past, I’ve qualified that statement by comparing my profession to others who go to work every day, perhaps questioning their validity.  If you never make it out of Single A ball, are you still a professional baseball player?  Are astronauts still astronauts if they’ve never poked through the atmosphere, much less orbited the moon?  No doubt they’d answer with a resounding yes!  But maybe my angst comes from the spectrum of competition.  To be a baseball player or an astronaut requires a level of proven skill.  Writer?  Well, that’s a shingle anyone with the ability to string words together can hang out.  And at this point, unproven, I am no exception.

            I have a degree in journalism.  I’ve written for newspapers and magazines for years.  But those were jobs.  Novelist is a calling.  And during that time I’d be more apt to describe myself as somebody’s mother, writer following like the caboose on a train.  It’s cute, it’s red, it’s irrelevant to the train’s function.  We were in Las Vegas about five years ago.  I’d just completed my second novel, and before leaving received a request from a big time publisher asking to read the full manuscript.  Even so, when the woman we were dining with—a business associate of my husband who I did not know—asked what I did for a living, I shoved a bite of salad into my mouth and mumbled, “I’m a writer.”  In turn she crinkled her brow, smiled, and asked, “What kind of horses do you ride?”  I don’t know the difference between an Arabian and a pack mule, but I managed to carry on the rest of conversation as if I was Annie Oakley. 

            It wasn’t too many weeks after that I received a polite note and prompt rejection from the big time publisher.  While I considered a mid-life switch to the equestrian world, being as I’d demonstrated a supernatural ability to speak at length on the topic, I wisely decided that this was not for me.  Instead, I went back to work, back to practicing on paper, as well as in the mirror, the profession I claimed.  I wrote two more books.  I got better, I learned.  I went to writers’ conferences; I met people who know more than I ever will about the written word.  I’ll tell you now; I am awed by anyone with an MFA.  Those people bleed prose, they’ve read everything under the sun, and can discuss obscure literature as well as the latest commercial fiction with succinct authority.  I hope the majority of them do not read my book.

            No, wait.  I take that back.  I hope they all read my book.  While I may never have that MFA, and I will likely always be somebody’s mother before anything else, I am a writer.  I sold a book.  In some ways, I suppose I’ve been offered an at bat in the big leagues or been scheduled for a trip to the moon.  BEAUTIFUL DISASTER is a wonderful book—the characters are compelling and edgy, the story heartwarming and gripping.  I think it’s a page turner.    Even if you’re not much for a love story, I believe this one transcends the demands of hardcore mystery buffs and literary purists.  In hindsight, I’ve known what this book has had going for it since Flynn and Mia were an outline of the concrete characters they now are.  I know this because BEAUTIFUL DISASTER is the same book—rewritten and reworked—that said big time publisher passed on years ago.