This week I'm skipping my normal posts to honor the life of my mother-in-law. She was born in Pawtucket, RI. She was 88 when she left us on Feb 7th, 2016.
When I met her son, John who is now my husband of 30 years, June and her husband were moving to California. While she was there she decided to take classes on writing. She joined RWA and worked hard on the craft. When my niece was born in 1991 my in-laws came into town to meet her. My father-in-law fell in love and knew they had to come back to Virginia.
June came back with a plan. She wanted to continue her membership with RWA and join a local chapter here. Luckily one had just started. June had no idea that I had been writing scenes with a high school friend and we had been mailing them back and forth for years. At this point I had no aspirations to write professionally. We had been doing the our scenes and that was our way of keeping in touch and escaping for a little while.
My sister-in-law and I think June decided she needed drivers because she paid for our RWA membership as well as the and our local chapter membership for that first year. I had never thought about writing professionally so decided to go to the meetings with her just to see what was what.
One program the chapter decided to have members send in five pages of the WIP to be critiqued. I went hmmm. This would be the perfect chance. I was going out of town to visit my writing partner so I knew I wasn't going to be there. If they hated it I could slink off into the sunset and never be seen again. If they liked then I would pursue writing.
She was so excited for me. When I called home to speak to my hubby she grabbed the phone and gushed over how everyone loved my writing. It was raw but good. She was so excited for me and that got me to pursue a writing.
My mother-in-law was a big influence in my writing. Here I am - sixteen published books later and I have her to thank for that. I'm going to miss her.
June's books:
Shannon's Creek
Elegant Swan
Wyngate Manor
No comments:
Post a Comment