In 1989, I moved to Los Angeles with my then boyfriend, Dan.
We had a couple of hundred dollars in our pocket and a car we owned free and clear. Texas had become a dead end for us, particularly for Dan, who had been injured at a factory job and his settlement money was almost gone. I was doing time at a minimum wage slave job (Burger King) and Dan was trying to find anything he could. When he decided to head west, there was no way I'd let him just ride on out of my life after a two-year campaign to convince him to love me.
When you're nineteen, you still believe in that "Don't Want to Miss a Thing," I can't breathe without you kind of "love" that Diane Warren became famous for writing. You really think life begins and ends with that one person, and you'd risk any kind of hardship or struggle to make it work, and make every single boneheaded decision you can think of to go for broke and make it work.
It doesn't help that when you're nineteen you're usually a complete idiot. You don't really have the life experience under your belt to understand cause and effect. Everyone else has been saving your bacon your entire existence, you don't understand the idea of sacrifice and commitment. You still think you're invincible, and the rules don't apply to you.
When my relative who lived in LA said we were not welcome, and pointed us to the nearest welfare office, we ended up homeless. We knew that didn't even have enough money to move back to Texas, so we had to make it work where we were with what we had.
We lived out of a Pontiac Bonneville, parked behind a grocery store next to a railroad on an isolated road in Van Nuys. While we did go to that welfare and sign up for services, we were in no way willing to be "dependent" upon the system to sustain us. The best that the "system" could do was ensure we had a few bucks in our pocket we wouldn't have had otherwise, and a handful of foodstamps so we didn't have to panhandle or dumpster-dive for food. In addition to that, Dan worked day labor jobs so that we could get a motel room once a week and eat on a daily basis, while I went to classes I found through the unemployment agency, which had been amicably named E.D.D. For downtime, we killed time at the beach or in Griffith Park, places where you didn't generally need money as an excuse to stay for long periods of time.
For everything else, there was the car.
It was in this car that I got the idea for my first full-length novel. I had already written a novella at 14, so of course I knew a book was in me somewhere. What better way to deal with the painful reality of homelessness than to funnel all that angst and fear and shame into a story? When "Welcome to the Jungle" came on the radio, the story gelled within that four-minute song. I knew I wanted to write about a runaway who got in way over her head after making a desperate escape to Los Angeles.
Talk about writing what you know. I was getting a crash course in the subject. I had unintentional research every time I woke up in the back seat of that car, where we used towels to block out any unwanted attention.
We ended up seeing a side of L.A. that many people who can afford hotels and apartments or have family don't really see. When you see homeless people "littering" your sidewalks, parks and freeway onramps, you can appreciate their destitution without feeling a hint of their despair. To live it is a whole other thing. You live with fear and vulnerability on a minute-to-minute basis when you don't have anywhere to belong. We learned about the importance of community, with the people who were either likewise homeless or those who had a heart for those who were, who stuck their necks out in order to help their fellow man. We passed this sense of community on where we could. Even if we scoured the floorboard for enough change to buy a $0.33 taco just to have something fresh to eat (rather than eating expired food recovered from the dumpsters behind the grocery store,) Dan especially would give literally his last dime to another person down on his or her luck who asked.
We also learned the pain of becoming invisible to everyone else, as forgotten souls who were best left out of sight. Tinseltown was definitely tarnished. The promise of a relaxed life under swaying palm trees was quickly replaced with a rat race I was not equipped to win. Not alone, anyway. So every single line of that GnR song hit like a fist as I went to the only place I knew as a 19-year-old to process everything: my writing.
I wrote that book longhand on notebook paper, transferring it to a floppy disk whenever I had access to a computer. Months later my mom rescued us from life in our car, and right around that time I got pregnant with my son, Tim. We abandoned Los Angeles altogether, heading north to the San Joaquin valley to begin the next phase of my young life as a mother. Dan went back to class and after a difficult pregnancy, I took full-time care of our son. We moved to Texas and back to Fresno, bouncing from place to place, relying on a network of friends and my mom, to create a better existence for ourselves. We went through all our trials and tribulations. I had my second son. Life "happened." I would be 22 before I finished this epic first novel (with a partial handwritten sequel,) on an old word processor (not quite a computer but a lot more efficient than a typewriter) that my mom got from a department store to help me with my endeavors.
After I finished my novel, I was sure it was ready. I was sure I was ready. I expected to send it in to an agent and have it sell almost immediately with a progressive heroine and timely story. I opened up the Fresno phone book and let my fingers do the walking. Remarkably, I did find a literary agent based in Fresno. I took this as a positive sign and promptly fired off a query and packaged up my manuscript for her perusal. I expected that the hardships were over. My professional life as a writer was sure to begin. How could it not? I had done the work. I had paid my dues. I was 22 but I was *ready.*
Or so I thought.
She wrote me back with a very polite "thanks but no thanks." She outlined where she felt the manuscript was weak and what I had to do to make it stronger, which, looking back was one of the best things she could have ever done. Many times you barely get a "no," much less something so personalized. But she had taken the time to review the work and wanted to give me, as a young writer, some tips to help me in my career.
Even MORE remarkably, she read the whole thing and used a red pen to edit the crap out of it. Editors these days cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars, and it's virtually unheard of for an agent who decides NOT to represent you to invest this kind of time and effort. Looking back I know it's because she saw something in me, all that potential that my teachers talked about for years, that I squandered on teenage angst and drama that got me nowhere.
At the time, though, it was the most painful indictment of my abysmal failure there could ever be. I was the perennial good girl, a people pleaser to the NTH degree. And anything that had anything to do with my writing talent and intelligence? I had always been aces and gold stars whenever I held my work up for inspection.
There wasn't a page of that manuscript that didn't have blood-red ink dripping from it. My ego was battered by the time I read it all the way through. I. Was. Mortified. I thought I had a chance to become a real writer?? This professional found me completely inept... or so I thought.
I promptly shelved that project and would not pick up writing again until after my third son, Brandon, passed away in 1995.
Years later I would get an agent and revive my hopes that I actually DID have what it took to make it, but I never revisited this first story. Not because it was painful, my ego eventually healed and I got over myself.
But because of how much this story meant to me, I wanted it to be *perfect.* I wanted to do justice to these characters I loved like they were my own kids. It stayed on the backburner until this year, when I finally felt I could tell this story the way that it was meant to be told.
There were times as I wrote it where I would literally cry as I typed, with GnR or Bob Seger in my ear, these songs that have long been the soundtrack for my fictional family. I saw these characters rise from the page, taking me by surprise and teaching me things about them I could NEVER have known at 19 or 22.
I was excited to release it for all of you by the 15th of August, and finish the series by the end of the year. We were going to go on this journey together, and I couldn't wait.
But life, like it always has, introduced a different path.
A writer friend of mine, and in fact, my greatest cheerleader since 1996, had been trying to hook me up with her manager, a virtual powerhouse who had been working wonders with her career. We'd talked off and on for a couple of years, but on July 13, my friend pitched one of the ideas I have brewing for next year and I sparked this manager's interest.
But it was my new book, the rewrite of that first book, that captured her interest most.
We had an epic phone conversation and two days later I had a contract to sign sitting in my email inbox. I was about to be what I always wanted to be: a writer with representation. And I knew I was plugged in to someone who was as passionate about my career as I am, so I was hopeful that we were about to see some amazing things happen.
We started with my brand. With her advice, I began an "image overhaul," changing my personal photos and half the covers of all my books, as well as doing a final edit on my now completed novel.
We worked closely and I took her advisement to heart on every single matter.
As we left for a weekend trip to Arizona yesterday, I felt confident in all the changes made. I developed a bunch of plans to share all the new stuff with you all, thinking this would be the biggest news for August.
While we were somewhere in between Palm Springs and the Arizona border, my manager called me, said to put her on speaker phone, and told us all the unbelievable news: after only weeks, my book, Chasing Thunder, had a publisher.
I now have a new contract to sign, this time with a traditional publisher.
Twenty-five years after I first heard that song and put a pen to paper, the Wyndryder saga finally won the respect of professionals in my field.
To say it was mind-boggling is an understatement. When I sent the text to my son, I included the :O emoticon to show my level of shock at how fast it all happened (an overnight success after two some-odd decades.) He wrote back and asked why the mad face? I said that's not a mad face. That's the I'm crapping myself because I just won both showcases on the Price is Right jubilation face.
I still have that face. I'm still in shock. I'm ecstatic and over the moon, but still in UTTER shock. Yesterday was the biggest day in my writing career yet, and I've had some doozies in the past few years.
So naturally I wanted to share it with everyone who has been with me thus far. And that's all of you. :)
Here's where things stand now:
The publication date of Chasing Thunder, the first book in the Wyndryder MC trilogy, has been postponed to a date TBD by the publisher. My other stand-alone novel, The Leftover Club, WILL release shortly (hopefully August, but I'm still ironing out the details). It has a brand new cover:
As a hybrid author, I will still self-publish my romance novels, including a brand NEW series by the end of the year. Get ready for the Southern Rocker Romance books, which will hopefully be published in their entirety by December/January:
I have a whole new website and new covers to about half of my books, including the GROUPIE and FIERCE trilogies:
... as well as several stand-alones:
And now I can publicly announce that the incomparable and unstoppable Italia Gandolfo is my literary manager. If this is the kind of magic she can manifest after a few weeks, I can't WAIT to see what kind of miracles she'll make happen next.
Ironically I posted a photo on FB yesterday that said, "I can. I will. End of story." I added, "I can, I will, I am," and encouraged everyone to do one thing every day toward their dream and "watch the magic unfold."
It may take 25 years, but I am living proof if you hold onto your dreams, and are willing to work like a beast, you can make it happen.
So make it happen.
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