I have always been interested in fantasy and began writing as a young girl with big dreams. My teachers hinted that I seemed to have a great talent for putting my ideas together and a vivid imagination. They were the ones who got me into reading the stuff as we students could spend the rest of our time reading whatever we chose if we had finished our work. I always chose a fairtales book or an adventure. Once in a while a mystery or one of the many heroic comics. I liked the barbarian series and superman and later the fantastic four.

My young mind went wild with all sorts of ideas in those days but I didn't have a good medium for writing. No typewriter or not much paper to use. I would write on anything I could get my hands on. My family was apt to find a story written on the clear sections of the cereal boxes, paperboxes and torn flour bags which were white on the inside. I wrote short short stories and poetry.

When I turned 14 my father felt sorry for me and borrowed money to buy a typewriter. He bought a huge pack of paper but I had several siblings who also began to spark some interest in doing something on paper when they saw it. It became a time of spreading my small writer wings and mostly art for my siblings who often asked me to draw cartoon stories that included some futuristic fantasy about them and some imaginary boyfriend or girlfriend. I was encouraging them to use their own imagination and write their own story but they preferred to attempt some of the cartoon stories.

As the years went by, I mostly began to write lyrics or song style poetry. By the time I was 18, I met my future husband and felt ashamed of my seemingly useless talents. He was not much interested in those kind of thngs so it seemed childish to me to talk about it or show him my efforts. I kind of allowed the writing desire to sink into dormancey for a long time.

Marriage and raising two children drained me for a while but when my sons were in their teens, it returned with a vengance. I had what I called story skeletons and some actual starts for many ideas (to keep the flavor and sense of the story) filling many notebooks. I would sit down when an idea hit me and begin the piece or outline, finish whatever chore I had to do and return to the idea until I had enough of it to capture its essence. I fully intended to write them at a later time when I had more time and a good means of putting them together. (again, I was without a typewriter. I had to save some money on the side as my husband considered my wanting one a waste of needed money)

I kept at it through the years, until we began to buy computers for our oldest son. It was a PCJr with such a little bit of ram. There was no windows operating system then and no writing software. But I used the screen to print out a third of the page, styling self-made books that these pages could fit in. I just wanted to get the idea of what it would look like in print and how others would respond to my stories.

Needles to say, there wasn't a lot of positive feedback. My "books" weren't "real" enough and my stories were for children. "Oh, I don't read." I would hear or "I'm not really into reading anything but romances or true stories." "Why don't you write about real stuff?" How could I tell them that I was stuck somewhere between Tolkien and the half belief that there really did use to be some kind of ancient truth to half of the folk stories and legends, and these kind of things stirred my imagination more than any "real" situation I could imagine.

I tried writing "real" but my heart just wasn't in it. Romance is doable but I tend to veer toward fantasy some with it. An instructor at an online writing school told me to stick with what I know best. I would become more skilled sooner and improve my style and capabilities with what I knew over time. So I stuck with fantasy. I love reading it and have a lot of favorite authors. I find fantasy far more interesting than any other genre as it can have all of the other genres in the body of each work to some degree. A good writer will often include all of the other styles of writing in his story to give it a well rounded fullness that the reader will enjoy more so than if these aspects were left out.

I like humor and some romance in the books I read to go along with the adventure. I have read dark fantasy too but these stories tend toward the less wholesome subjects and I tend not to enjoy them as much. So my own efforts tend to be as different from the norms as I can get them without being a new genre. Sometimes I write pure fantasy and pure imagination.

So most of my posts will be stories instead of articles about writing. You are welcome to read and respond as you see fit.