Once upon a time I wanted to be a writer when I grew up.

I fell in love with the written word early. From the time I read about Dick, Jane, Sally and Spot all on my own I was absolutely addicted.

I was a lonely kid, largely isolated outside of school, books (along with food but that is a whole other issue) became my closest friends. Sometimes it felt as if they were my only friends. It didn’t take long for me to journey from Fun with Dick and Jane to Goosebumps to devouring Stephen King novels like candy.

So it wasn’t really a surprise that I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. Or any surprise that I wanted to write horror.

I started carrying around 5 subject notebooks and I wrote, and wrote and wrote and wrote. I filled up so many notebooks with so many snippits and stories and ideas. And everyone in my age group ridiculed me because of it. Just one more thing to be bullied about. Because kids are cruel.

My Daddy knew I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. He supported me in that I COULD, but that I probably would never make a living off of it.

But he still supported me.

I grew up poor, but somehow Daddy paid for a correspondence course on creative writing that I remember nothing about, he paid for me to be in not one but TWO vanity press poetry collections (which at the time I thought I had gotten in them on the merit of my writing skills, bless his heart for never telling me any different) and he bought me an electric typewriter.

I LOVED that typewriter. It was used and abused. Everything I scribbled in my notebooks I typed up.

I wrote hundreds of stories. I wrote one I thought was good enough to be published and I got a pretty nasty rejection letter in response.

I didn’t quit writing, but for 30something years from that point I didn’t submit anything for publication. Instead I started a series of blogs on which I shared my writing for free. I never gained a following on any of them

But I grew up. I met a man. I moved to a different city.

Along the way I lost my typewriter. Then in 2012 I lost my Dad. And somewhere in between I quit writing.

Real life is hard and adulting is expensive. So I did what most adults do. I got a “real” job.

I never quit wanting to be a writer when I grew up. I just quit writing much other than dribbles and drabbles and failing at NaNoWriMo year after year. That was just more proof for me that I would never be a “real” writer.

In 2023 I wrote I story I thought was good. I thought it was VERY good. So I found somewhere it fit and submitted it.

Four months later I got my second rejection letter. But this one was full of praise. They gave me the exact reason it was decided against (which had to do with an underlying theme I hadn’t noticed when writing it and had nothing to do with my writing itself) and encouraged me to submit to them again.

Knowing that my story didn’t suck, when another chance to submit it came up, I took it.

This time it was accepted. Someone paid ME to be in their anthology instead of me paying to be in it. And it has reinfected me with the “I want to be a writer” bug.

I’ve been telling everyone at my “real” job that my story, “Being the Eldest Daughter” was accepted into an anthology called Books of Horror Community Anthology Vol. 4 part 1 and it is alongside people who are new like me, but also people with full writing careers of their own.

I’m starting to look for other anthologies to try my hand at being in, and I think one of my stories might have what it takes to be a novella.

I have never felt more like a “real” writer in my life. Of course I wish my dad was here.

I mean, he would absolutely hate my story (he never understood my obsession with horror) but I’d like to think he’d be very proud of me.