My Writing Journey - Nicole Zoltack

I'd like to introduce Nicole Zoltack as today's guest blogger. Nicole is a fellow DBP author. I love her story...it reminds me of my daughters. And it's the perfect story to get us motivated for Nano Writing Month. Thanks Nicole for sharing this with us.

I started writing stories when I first learned how to write. Seriously. My mother used to sit my one sister and I down and gave us paper and pencils and we would just write. One of the first stories that I finished combined two holidays: Thanksgiving and Halloween. The family used to dress up as food objects for Thanksgiving. The father was always turkey. And the little girl, her name was Megan but her nickname was May (I loved both those names when I was younger and could never pick one over the other), couldn't decide what to dress up as. Her mother had ideas and so did her father but none of them were good enough for her. Finally, she picked mashed potatoes. (Coincidentally, mashed potatoes were my favorite part of the Thanksgiving meal And for you curious ones, my favorite holiday was actually Christmas.) I no longer have the story but I was rather proud of it when I first wrote it. Not that I know how one would go about dressing up as mashed potatoes. A fat ghost maybe?

During classes in the sixth grade, I began to write a YA fantasy novel. It was my pride and joy and I carried the handwritten pages everywhere. I even wrote during class. High school came around and I drifted away from writing stories and wrote many poems. The poems were awful, just dreadful. I would be embarrassed for anyone to read them, they are that bad.

College. I returned to writing fiction. I worked some more on my YA fantasy novel, reworked the beginning and finished it the summer before junior year. I'm still tinkering it and will be sending it out to agents by the end of the month. My sister (the one mentioned above) told me about Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month). Nano is when writers around the world try to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. I did Nano 2004-2007 and won each of those 4 years. I wrote less than 1,000 words in November 2008 but I had a one month old baby so I didn't expect to win.

One of those Nano stories, after much editing and adding 38,000 more words, turned into Woman of Honor, a medieval fantasy romance that is available from Desert Breeze Publishing. But that wasn't my first published work. I had always liked writing short stories and one day, I did a search for short story submissions. I found a call of submission for a sweet romance anthology from Freya's Bower. I wrote a short story and sent it in but was rejected. The editor, Faith Bicknel-Brown, sent a nice rejection letter and mentioned at the end that if I wanted to, I could send another story. So I wrote another one and this time, it was accepted. Little Cowgirl, under the pen name Nicolette Zamora is in One Touch, One Glance: A Sweet Romance Anthology.

I am currently working on Woman of Honor's sequel, Knight of Glory. Then I have some short stories that I would like to write for anthologies and other calls. Maybe I'll finish another Nano story soon. Regardless, I know I will be writing for a long, long time.

And my sister that used to write beside me? She wants to be a writer too. And I know that someday, she'll be one. And it's all Mom's fault. Thanks, Mom.

My website is http://www.NicoleZoltack.com and my blog is http://nicolezoltack.blogspot.com I am also on facebook, myspace, and twitter. Thanks so much for allowing me to share my writing journey, Shawna!

Nicole ZoltackWoman of Honor, Desert Breeze PublishingOne Touch, One Glance, Freya’s BowerMy blog Facebook Myspace Twitter