Many thanks to Joanne Ellis for providing this guest post. Like Joanne, I have always loved to read and it started with Enid Blyton. Read on to find out more about Joanne.
How to introduce myself? What to write? Well the best place to start I guess would be to say I have always loved to read. As a child I fell in love with Enid Blyton and The Magic Faraway Tree which moved onto stories such as Deenie by Judy Blume and then sweet teen romances. The love affair continued and although my range of genre choice is diverse, romance is my first love. Authors such as Nora Roberts inspired me to write romance. My favourites in Paullina Simons (The Bronze Horseman series, Tully and The Girl in Times Square) and Nicholas Sparks inspire me to be better.
Reading has always stimulated my imagination and I have always had a huge one. Being an only child encouraged me to create characters and stories in my mind but I never felt confident to put pen to paper. So what gave me the courage to give it a go? Being a stay at home Mum I found although challenged with everyday life, I need an outlet. I sat one day, pad and pen in hand (yes my first book was hand written as notes, I have not done any this way since) and jotted down an idea and basic characters. Two weeks later the first draft of Spoilt was complete. With a surge of creativity, a floodgate opening of ideas, I wrote three more which follow on in quick succession. Three others completed novels, several short stories, three works in progress, dozens of notes for further stories, two years and a lot of polish on Spoilt, I am being published by Night Publishing.
How did I get to this point? I joined the Harper Collins hosted website authonomy, a peer review ranking system that sees the top five books each month selected for review by a HC editor and a nice gold star replacing the ranking. After eight months of meeting fantastic people, learning to review other’s work, receiving very helpful advice and tons of editing I received my gold star and my review. Overall I was pleased with the advice I was given and the encouraging comments from HC. I discovered I could perhaps write pretty well and I wasn’t wasting my time.
During this time, I joined Night Reading, the blog based website hosted by Night Publishing. After two months on the site Spoilt was selected for the monthly poll in April/May and much to my surprise I won. I was then offered a contract for Spoilt and I once again was shocked and stunned. Excitement soon followed and I still think I’m floating about happily in disbelief.
The editing process was a rewarding experience and I learnt a lot from Tim. So now I await the proof and then Spoilt will be ready to go to press. It is a dream come true (yes cliché I know but I am a romance writer after all) and I hope I can now give back to readers what my favourite authors have given me over the years.
Thank you once again, Joanne.
And please, don’t forget to check out Joanne’s author profile by clicking here
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