People often ask me how I started writing and I tell them it was a dare from my daughter, who is now a junior in college.
When my daughter was a junior in high school her grades were not where they should have been and the reason was simple, she didn’t do her homework. She attended a small private school and the teachers took off a half or full letter grade it homework wasn’t turned in. So if she earned an A she got a B+ or B, if she got a B she got a C+ or C. Thus you can see the issue when applying to colleges in this extremely competitive world.
I asked her why she didn’t do her homework and she told me, “I don’t want to.” Not a good thing to say to a busy, working mom, because I promptly rattled of 50 things I did everyday that I didn’t want to do.
Then as people do she tried to deflect the conversation from her to me and said, “You. You need to write a book. Everyone tells you to write a book and all you do is read other people’s books.”
She was correct on both accounts. I have a background in insurance claims and have tons of real life stories of the crazy, ugly, immoral, criminal things that people do, prompting people to tell me to write a book when they hear then. Claims people have the best cocktail party stories. I also only watch the TV news when I exercise in the morning, other than that I never turn on the TV. I work or I read “other people’s books.”
So, being my daughter’s mother I told her, “Okay. I’ll write a book and you do your homework.” And that’s what I did. I literally picked up a pencil and legal pad and started writing. My daughter did her homework at one end of the table and I wrote at the the other. Initially, I was more diligent about writing than she was about homework, but eventually she got it and between better grades and terrific test scores she was accepted into all the colleges she applied to and presently goes to a small private school near Pittsburg. I wrote my book and discovered I love to write. I call it cheap therapy. It allows me to escape to a different place a few hours a day.
Writing, my family, and my furry friends are all great therapy, especially after a long day at work. I’m an insurance industry executive with a long history investigating insurance fraud. I apply my knowledge of the law, investigation, and human behavior to developing my story lines. And speaking of furry friends I have three cats and a very human dog.