Tuesday Chatter-Notions

Long ago, maybe twenty-five years, maybe even thirty-five years ago, the writing bug bit me. Probably around February's Valentine Day, a print magazine, I think it was Redbook, ran a love story contest. I called mine Romantic Notions and with high hopes mailed it in. I don't remember what the prize was, maybe publication, maybe a few dollars and as I recall there was no entry fee. I do remember my struggle to type a clean copy with a carbon copy for myself. I told you it was a long time ago!
Since it was my first or second effort to write a story, predictably I didn't win. Through the years I hung on to that story, the premise always appealed to me. I kept writing others and finally one, not a romance, was printed in a magazine. Other things like continuing to work a job to make a living, different life events, caused writing to be a kind of spasmodic affair.
Then the modern marvel of personal computers burst on the scene. No more struggle with sheets of paper and carbons that smeared. Clean, relatively speaking, since in the beginning it was ink jet printers which can smear, printed matter! But who can really fathom the wide-reaching effect of the mushroom growth of the internet. Online magazine, ezines, sprang up. And several accepted some of my stories!
I kept copies of all the stories I wrote on five and a half inch floppy disks, then the smaller three inch ones. And occasionally tinkered with that first romance story. I also kept submitting stuff to agents and publishers, but only a couple of stories made it into print. But again, through the marvel called 'the internet,' I was eventually able to publish real books! With my name on them! And finally traditional independent publishers accepted some of them, too.
Fast forward to this year. I'm about to release the book that has germinated for all these years from that first love story. It's still a love story, but also became what is now my favorite genre, mystery, and named Sweetwater Deception.