Like many authors who say they’ve been writing for as long as they can remember, I’m the same. You see, as a kid with an overactive imagination, I scribbled down silly little stories about all the childish characters running around in my head, but writing didn’t become important until my junior high school English teacher entered a short story I wrote for an assignment into a writing contest I didn’t know about, and I won. Of course, I thought that was cool, but it wasn’t until attending college (in my late twenties) because after graduating from high school, I chose to work, that the dream of becoming a real writer and not an endless scribbler took hold and wouldn’t let me go. However, I did the “sensible thing” I was encouraged to do, used my newly acquired degree in Psychology, and returned to doing a day job. But I soon found I needed an outlet and wrote during my downtime while working forty-plus hours a week. Then, in 2010, I gave in to a spur-of-the-moment decision and submitted a story to a small indie publisher for an anthology call, expecting a rejection letter, but to my shock, they accepted my manuscript. That acceptance began my official award-winning, international bestselling author’s journey. From there, I left the day job behind and wrote full-time for five publishing houses simultaneously. But over forty books later, I switched gears. This means I did the hybrid author gig—self-published and writing for a couple of publishers—leaving my original pen name behind in 2019 to write in the contemporary romance, Christian Fiction, inspirational, Historical fiction, and romantic suspense genres as D.L. Lane.

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Fast forward to September of 2024. 

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Due to health problems, I decided I was finished with my writing journey, put my laptop aside, began shutting everything down, and thought I would quietly fade away as an author. But a massive part of me was missing, and I found out it didn’t matter how many physical issues I had, how crazy the industry or the world had become; I was a painter of words, and that’s who I have always been.

 

After many prayers about my struggles and asking for guidance, I’m looking forward to where this new leg of the journey goes, still living my college dream in the beautiful Smoky Mountains of Tennessee with my husband and our diva of a cat we adore.