Okay Okay I'm blogging

[Terri]

When I open my Crimespace page (which for some reason I keep reading as CrimeSpree) there's this big, pale yellow box telling me I haven't posted a blog yet...so...Okay...I'm blogging.

Now, if you came by to see if I have anything deep and meaningful to talk about you might as well count this as ten minutes you'll never get back...or however long it will take to read. I guess I just don't "get" the whole blogging thing. I'd rather talk to a live person, than jot my thoughts down like I'm talking to a live person. Even as a young girl I didn't have a diary....well, scratch that, I had one when I was about sixteen. It was one of those "year in the life" type diaries where you make daily entries, but the book only gives you like four lines, so if you had a really outstanding, memorable day you had to either write very small or roll it over onto the next day and hope the next day isn't as eventful. Anyway, I think I wrote in the book about three or four times. Even then I wasn't the touchy/feely/share your feelings type. Then one day my cousin John read the few pages I'd scribbled about my highschool crush and made fun of me, so there went the diary.

Anyway, thanks to cousin John I became more reluctant about expressing my feelings in anyway that would paint me "weak and feminine". I was somewhat tomboy-ish anyway--played sports, never wore a dress, wasn't into clothes that didn't have a Levis or Wrangler tag, didn't do any of the girlie things my friends did (like shop or wear makeup---which would explain my lack of social life in school)...and part of it was because I had no one to teach me these things until my senior year in highschool and I got a job where my bosses were women in their twenties and thirties and they took me under their Cover Girl wings...almost like My Fair Lady....although I'm no Hepburn.

So, anyway, all of that is what started me writing. I figured, if I can't have the fairy tale life, I can at least pretend, live vicariously through my characters. However, all of my stories were played in my head, daydreams if you will, nothing actually on paper. I was about five years shy of turning forty, the same age my mother was when she passed away, when I decided to actually put my stories on paper. Shortly after my fortieth birthday, and the realization that my life expectancy was longer, I completed my first two books, both romantic suspense. A year later I found an agent. (and that is a whole other crazy story)

I'm currently back at work on my third book, a thriller this time around, which had to be put on hold because of revisions to book one, an illness that knocked me down for two months, a job promotion that sent my husband off to Arizona for six months while the kids and I stayed in Texas and tried to sell our house, followed by a move during Christmas break....oh, and writing a 15K novella for an editor who thought I was good enough to be asked. Still awaiting word on that story.

I haven't decided exactly what kind of writer I want to be....meaning the genre. So far I have a romantic suspense, a romantic suspense with paranormal elements, a thriller, another romantic suspense on the table, a 'family saga' and the novella which is considered contemporary romantica...or something like that. But, for the most part, they are all "Latina" based characters (although I prefer the term Hispanic).

So, that's my blog and a brief look at me. Hopefully I'll have something more profound to talk about next time.

Thanks for reading.

[Terri]

Hi Lourdes,

Thanks. Yes, everything I write has Hispanic protagonists. And, for now, all my stories take place in Texas so they're more Tex Mex. I'll definitely let you know when one finally hits the shelves. ;-)

[Lourdes Fernandez]

Hi Terri,

Does the thriller also have Hispanic characters? I'll have to keep an eye out for your novels.

[Terri]

Thanks for staying awake through all that, Steve. ;-) The novella is for an anthology an editor at Kensington, who really likes my work but who is no longer at the house, was working on. However the anthology is still on the table and my story is still on the "maybe" pile.

[Steven Torres]

Interesting. Who publishes novellas? Is it an antho or a magazine? Or a free standing book?

Anyway, good post. Now you just have to do that again and again and again...