First day of Holidailies!

As both of my loyal readers know, I tend to be a sporadic blogger. I’ve been doing this online journaling thing since long before it was known as “blogging.” My first post was back in 1997, on a plain html text page. Most of my entries back then were focused on my then-fledgling attempts to Be A Writer, but by the next year I’d learned how to create a more aesthetically pleasing website, and began posting entries about my personal life as well. From 1998 to 2002, I posted fairly regular entries on everything from Clarion West, my divorce, my experiences as a police officer, the death of my father, and meeting my now-husband. I fell off of the blogging radar for a short time during my pregnancy (which I’m still kicking myself over!) and then picked it back up again in 2004 after my daughter was born. Since then I’ve gone through phases where I post several times a week, and others where I’m lucky to get a single post a month.

But through most of that time, I’ve participated in Holidailies. (I’m fairly certain I missed 2003.) I like the fact that I usually pick up a few new readers–because, after all, blogging really is something of an ego-trip–and I also like that I usually find new blogs to follow through the Holidailies site. But, as a writer, I enjoy the challenge of putting together something vaguely interesting every day for a month. As a fiction writer, I usually write every day, but that’s a different sort of challenge. A day’s work may end up being a few thousand words on the screen, but it’s seldom a cohesive work that can stand on its own.

Anyway, enough about my blogging philosophy. It’s traditional to give an introduction on the first day of Holidailies, but if you go to my Bio page, that pretty much covers the high points. But, the short form is: I worked in a casino for about six years, then left that to become a cop (loved it!) During my law enforcement career I worked in patrol, investigations, computer forensics, and crime scene. After seven years, and for a variety of reasons (about which I still have conflicting thoughts at times,) I left law enforcement to work for the Coroner’s Office. There I worked as a forensic photographer, morgue assistant, and general computer-help person.

I’ve been writing pretty much all of my life, but I started actually trying to get published a little over ten years ago. I wrote a couple of books, wrote a bunch of short stories, went to Clarion West, wrote some more, got bummed out and burned out and stopped trying to get published, wrote very little for the next several years but in the meantime managed to collect scads of Life Experience, started writing again, entered the Writers of the Future contest and won First place on my first try, attended the workshop and realized that I really did love writing and that I wanted to be a professional writer, wrote another book, shopped it around, and found an awesome agent who later sold it and a sequel to Bantam.

At this point my husband and I did some talking and made some decisions, and about a month later I gave notice at my job with the coroner (which, frankly, I was more than ready to leave anyway because it had degenerated into Major Suck.) So, I am now a full-time writer! My first book, Mark of the Demon, is coming out June 23, 2009 from Bantam, and a sequel, Blood of the Demon, is scheduled for February 2010. I’m hoping to have more Demon books after those two, but that will depend on how sales of Mark of the Demon go. I’m also currently deep in the throes of writing a crime thriller, which I’m hoping to have finished up and ready to give to my agent early next spring.

I think that about covers it for now. Check back tomorrow for more happy funtime blogginess!