Victoria McEwan thought she had it all figured out. All she had known was an established career and a fiancée with a taste for the finer things in life. That is, until she traveled to Scotland to fulfill her grandmother¡¯s final wish. Soon, she discovers the true meaning of happiness and that life is more than money and prestige.
If someone had asked me as a child what I wanted to be when I grew up, the answer wouldn't have been to be a writer. Although I'm sure I had quite a few stories to tell, they never made it to paper because I never thought to do it. I didn't have the patience to try. A story in my head went much faster than writing it down since I grew up before the age of computers. That's why I type out almost story idea or bits and pieces of research.
Hopefully, someone won't ask me about my writing training because I've had none. In school, I didn't take creative writing and I wasn't the best in English. I didn't read the assigned books and I skirted through any type of writing assignment. College was the same. I majored at a two year college in television production, not writing or journalism and I never took one course that had to do with English or Literature. Once out of college, I began my family and became a stay-at-home Mom.
It wasn't until early 2000 that I found I wanted to actually write. It all began as fanfiction, even though I didn't know to call it that. So, yes, even if the established novel writers' community laughs at it, I'm proud to say that I began with fanfiction.
I started writing for the KISS fandom after reading many of the short stories that others had posted to Yahoo groups (for my younger visitors, this predates Facebook and MySpace). Finally, I gave it a shot and posted my first story, Luck of the Irish under my pen name Jade McAlister. It was small, just around 12,000 words and I'd be so afraid for anyone to read it now considering I wrote it using Notepad (I didn't know about Word yet!) and its chock full of amateurish mistakes, clichés, lots of !!!exclamation points!!!, SHOUTING CAPS and overall fangirl gushiness.
No matter how bad it was, Luck of the Irish planted the writing bug and I soon gave birth to several more small stories including one called Curse of the Black Rose, that became my first self-published novella in 2001. After that, I wrote in Star Trek fanfiction using the alternate universe premise, before moving on in 2005 to write fanfiction for Phantom of the Opera. In fact, The Color of Night (future Book One of the Panthera series) began as a fanfiction which is still online called The Killing Moon.
Curse of the Black Rose, as well as my other published book, Forever Stirling was basic. Most everything I did was, at the time. The Mary Sue's were flying, long before I understood what a Mary Sue was. I know now that even in the fanfiction world, Mary Sues are frowned upon by more experienced writers. While I consider myself an experienced writer, I'm not one to be so strict. Writing fanfiction comes from the heart and if you want to insert yourself into the main character for purpose of fantasy, so be it. If someone spouts nothing but academics and no heart, then you end up with something that reads more like a newspaper article than a story. I'll read a Mary Sue any day over that.
Am I a reader as well as a writer? Yes and no. I've never been a voracious reader, so a book has to catch and hold my attention before I continue with it. I started out reading Stephen King as a teenager, now I tend to steer towards vampire novels. Guess that didn't take much to figure out. But, I also love period fiction, Regency right now being my favorites. So naturally, when the Classic Novel/Vampire crossovers came out, I wanted to read them. I was beginning with Mr. Darcy, Vampire when the urge hit to finish my book series. It, as well as the other books ready to read on my Kindle, are put away for now.
Let me just say that I've just been learning all of this as I go along. Whether or not some of it is right or wrong, I'm not sure. My only goal right now is to put my novels out there and if at least one person reads them, likes them and tells a friend, I'm happy. Perhaps you'll get something out of them, like I did when I wrote them.
And who knows, maybe someday, I'll be lucky enough to have a Wikipedia page devoted to me. One can dream.
