Sydney Webster's comfortable New England life comes crashing down when her husband dies suddenly, leaving her penniless and evicted. She had no idea about his huge gambling debts, and is getting no sympathy from her hurt and angry twenty something daughter. With nowhere else to turn, Sydney takes shelter at a college friend's B&B in Cedar key, Florida, where she begins to form a plan. As Syd turns her talent at spinning wool and knitting into a retail venture, other doors begin to open. She steps into the embrace of a community rich with love, laughter, friendship...and secrets. And soon she faces a choice: spin a safety net, or spin forward and never look back. Entertaining and heart warming, this superb debut will win readers over with its real-life challenges and quirky and compelling characters.
Author of the acclaimed women's fiction Cedar Key Series and NY Times/USA Today best seller, Terri DuLong is the author of Spinning Forward (Kensington Books, November 2009).
Born and reared in the Boston area . . . Salem, the Witch City, to be exact, DuLong was an only child, who relied on imaginary friends for playmates. All these years later, she believes those playmates (and her love for books) led her to her passion for writing.
Married young, with three children, then divorced, Terri went to college to become a legal secretary. After remarrying, with the children getting older, she decided to pursue a career as a Registered Nurse. She also continued her love for reading women's fiction. As for her own writing, well it was limited to extremely long letters to friends and keeping a journal. After working in Critical Care as an R.N., the thought of writing "seriously" became stronger, and Terri took a creative writing class at college. Encouraged by the professor, Terri began writing with the hope of publication.
With the transfer of her husband's job to the Tampa, Florida, area, she began to work part-time as a home health RN and devote more and more time to writing. She began attending writers' conferences to not only improve her craft of writing but also to understand the complicated world of publishing.
Attending more and more writers' conferences, networking, reading, always working on her writing, Terri never gave up. She couldn't. Writing was her passion and filled her soul. Queries went out; rejections came back. But she noticed the rejections were now not form letters but very nice personal correspondence. Believing there had to be an agent, editor or publisher out there who would love her work, she kept writing.
When Terri's husband retired in 2004, the couple relocated two hours north to Cedar Key, an island off the west coast of Florida. They knew from many previous visits that the small town, surrounded as it is by Mother Nature, was the perfect place for them. And Terri's muse went into high gear . . . lots of quirky characters, people who actually waved to you and knew your name, a place that touched her soul. She was in her element.
She wrote a women's novel set in Cedar Key, and then she attended the Romance Writers of America Conference, summer 2007. Upon returning home, she sent off a query to Kensington Books with the required first three chapters, promptly forgot about it and got on with life . . . until December 11, 2007.
That was when Terri received an e-mail from her editor's assistant, requesting the full manuscript. And on Feb. 26, 2008, Terri was offered a two-book contract from Kensington. Her debut women's fiction novel--the first in her Cedar Key series--was released Oct. 27, 2009. Now in its second printing, Spinning Forward has been named a finalist for "Long Contemporary Novel" in the 2010 New England Reader's Choice Bean Pot Awards. And Reader's Digest has bought the rights to release Spinning Forward in a Condensed Special Edition in December 2010.
Book 2 in Terri's Cedar Key series, Casting About, was published by Kensington Books Oct. 26, 2010. Readers can also catch Terri's first novella for Kensington--A Cedar Key Christmas--in the Fern Michaels holiday anthology, Holiday Magic, released November 2010 and a NY Times & USA Today Best Seller. Book 3, Sunrise On Cedar Key, was released November 2011 and Book 4 will hit shelves in 2012.
Meanwhile, Terri's motto remains the one that has made so many of her dreams reality: "Believe in yourself and make great things happen."
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