You can blame it on my Grandmother.

I used to spend a lot of time with her and my grandfather when I was growing up. A lot of time. As in, a few nights a month, and up to a week at a time over the summer. I have a preference for people who spoil me. What can I say?

My grandmother had two types of books around her home- kid’s picture books and romance novels. This was fine with my grandpa, because after all the years married to my grandmother, he read them too. At some point or another, I picked one up just for the sake of having something to read.  And I fell in love. I was probably 13 at the time. Yeah, my mom was thrilled.

Since then, I have read hundreds of romance novels. If given a day to myself, I can read several in one day. When I was younger (and not yet a mom) I often did. Even if the plots all seemed to mimic each other, and some of the writing was horrible, I still read them. I didn’t have much of a social life. Obviously.

I have been nursing the dream of becoming a romance novelist almost for as long as I’ve been reading romance novels. Many of my earlier ideas lacked the plot and characters necessary to making a decent story. But some of them were really good.

There was one male main character (mc) that has stuck with me for years. And I am finally really writing his story. Okay, well, the story really belongs to my main heroine, but you know what I mean. I am now 21,500 words, and about 40 pages typed (so 80-100 pages in a regular book) of my first novel. Which is further than I’ve ever gotten in any of my other novels before this.

My goal is to have the first draft completed by September 1st. I have a little over 75,000 words to go. From there, I have a lot of editing to do, but the ultimate goal is that I can begin querying possible agents by next January. I’m hoping to get to that point a little sooner than that, but I really don’t want to rush the editing process. Because what I’m writing now would never make it in the publishing world. lol. It needs a whole lotta TLC to get it up to the point of being a marketable piece.

And now you all know. Which will hold me accountable. Because, at this point, if I never mention the novel again, or if I get half way through, and then quit, I’ll have to deal with the fact that I talked about my goal of finishing a novel, and then walked away. The guilt will keep me from giving up.

Or something like that. It made more sense before I tried to write it out.

As I get closer to finishing, I’ll probably give you all a better idea of what I’m writing about. For right now, we’ll just leave it at this:

I’m writing.