Today is a big day for me! Today my novella, The Soulstice, the first book in The Dead of Winter series, went live on Amazon! It’s been a long journey to get here and oddly enough started with a Texas Hold ‘em poker tournament in Wendover about seven years ago.  

I know. Weird. What does poker have to do with writing? 

For most people, gambling is a vice, but for me it was the beginning of something really wonderful. I won about $700 in that tournament and I used the money for writing classes. I have an undergraduate degree in English, and have always loved creative writing, but had been away from school for a really long time. So, I started small with a Continuing Education class on beginning fiction writing.  

I remember how nervous I was that first class. I wondered if I would be any good, if anything I had to say was worthwhile. But that first time I put pen to paper, it was like this part of me that had been lying dormant was awakened again. I took more classes, found a writing group, and spent lots of time typing on the computer and drinking coffee. Writing was something that kept my imagination and mind active while raising my two children. And if you’ve ever been a stay-at-home parent, keeping your brain full of something other than Dora the Explorer and goldfish crackers can be a real challenge.  

And seven years later, I’ve written three novels (unpublished as of yet, but working on it) and I’ve won the Iron Pen competition for my fictional short stories at the Utah Arts Festival two years running. And today, it seems like my journey has reached an all time level of excitement. My novella is out there for the world to see. And I have to say this is about two parts exciting and one part terrifying. Any time you put your work out there for others to read and judge you make yourself vulnerable, which can be a little scary. But I keep thinking back to that first writing class, how many of my feelings today are the same as they were then. But just like then, today the joy of writing is definitely outweighing all the doubts.  

Thanks for reading my blog post, and I hope you’ll read and enjoy my novella, The Soulstice available now on Amazon for Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.