Before Pamela Thibodeaux Was Published

My Life In A Nutshell

As a child my life-long dream was to get married and have a family. I never dreamed of becoming a writer…all I wanted to do was stay home and be a full-time wife and mother.

Although I am a wife, mother, and now grandmother, the “stay home” part has eluded me.

In March of 1978 I left high-school to marry at sixteen and then obtained my GED in April that same year. At that point-between marrying and having babies- I began a career as a bookkeeper by keeping records for my father's construction business. In 1992 I earned an Associate Degree in Office Occupations, specializing in Computer Applications. Though I currently work as a Licensed Sales Producer in the Insurance industry, my past employment history is as colorful as my writing resume. I have operated in professions ranging from cashier in fast food restaurants and convenience stores to a full-charge bookkeeper and tax preparer.

In spite of all of the changes in my life (marriage, children, divorce, another marriage, and grandchildren), one thing has remained constant: Reading.

I've always been an avid reader, from Dr. Seuss before school age, to Walter Farley's "Black Stallion" series as a preteen, then on to romance where I found my passion. Mainstream, contemporary, historical...it did not matter. If it was a romance, I read it! They say 'don't judge a book by its cover' but I refused to listen....if it looked good, I read it.

One day while pregnant with my daughter I flung the book I currently attempted to devour in disgust and muttered, "I can do better than that!" I'm still not sure if the book was really that bad or if I merely had a hormonal moment, but thus began my writing journey.

That incident occurred more than twenty-five years ago and I must say I, as an author as well as a human being, have evolved a great deal in a quarter of a century.

For years I was a closet writer who wrote in 5-subject notebooks, shy and afraid of what people would think. I had no idea that there were rules to writing or anything similar. I simply wrote as the characters and story unfolded in my mind. Once I bought my first word processor, my secret was out. The one defining moment when I thought I just may be on to something was when my mother, also an avid reader but a sports fanatic, missed the Super Bowl to read my manuscript. If you know any sports fanatics you'll know that it takes something very special or drastic to pull them away from that game.

I've come a long way since those years as a closet writer. Today I am multi-published in romantic fiction and creative non-fiction. My writing has won awards such as Coeur de Louisianne's 1999 Diamond in the Rough and their 2000 Ruby and in 2001 I earned my RWA Pro Pin.

My romantic fiction novels have been tagged as, "Inspirational with an Edge!" and reviewed as, "steamier and grittier than the typical Christian novel without decreasing the message" and consistently receive high praise and good reviews.

My short stories have received awards such as Reviewers Top Pick from Night Owl Romance & Recommended Read from My Book Cravings.

My non-fiction has been featured in publications such as Cross & Quill, Fellow Script, and Vocational Biographies and much of it can be found online at Associated Content.

I've also contributed to publications such as Bylines Writers Desk Calendar, Crumbs in the Keyboard; Stories from Courageous Women Who Juggle Life & Writing and Penned from the Heart Daily Devotionals (volumes xi, xiii, & xiv).

Not much has changed since I have been published. I still long to stay home only now, that desire has changed from being a “stay home wife & mother” to being a full-time writer.

To find out more about my life and writing, visit my website and/or blog and sign up for my mailing list!

Until later…take care, God Bless! and remember….when the going gets tough, the tough get on their knees.

Pamela S Thibodeaux

“Inspirational with an Edge!”

My Life in a Nutshell

Terry Spears - Before She Was Published

Before I was Published

Terry Spear

Before I was published, I was a reserve Army officer, working to mobilize forces. But since I was young, I loved to create stories and I was an avid reader, took creative writing in junior high, but I never thought I’d be a “real” writer.

When my kids were little, I read to them all the time, and I thought, wow, I want to write a children’s book. I wrote them and sent them off and one even went to a senior editor. But she wrote back saying it was a great story but too similar to one already being published.

So I didn’t write for a number of years. Then I divorced and I had two small children to raise on my own. Sometimes great shakeups is what a body needs to finally get them on track.

I wrote the great American romance novel set in the old west…and then learned that historicals, especially western, didn’t sell well. Back to the drawing board.

At the time, paranormals were becoming popular and I’d always loved ghost stories and Dracula. But I wasn’t ready for the really hardcore stuff yet. I started with psychics. However, it was a ghost teen book and vampire and witches teen book that sold first. Good news.

Bad news? The company closed the line before the first of the two books came out. Undaunted, I knew I’d found my niche. And two years later, sold the first of a werewolf adult series. Heart of the Wolf spawned three more in the series, and my publisher bought all of them.

What makes them unique? The world. The characters are one with their wolf side and I did a lot of research into individual wolf behavior and group behavior. I’ve always loved doing research for my stories, so by incorporating werewolf legend and real wolf attitude, Heart of the Wolf and the rest of the series was born.

Terry Spear/Terry Lee Wilde

www.terryspear.com

www.terrywildeteenbooks.com