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Hello Novelspotters! I’m Dawn Montgomery, multi-published author with several pseudonyms, and your host for this week’s Behind the Scenes. Yesterday I told you how I turned to writing at a hard point in my life. With a marriage failing and a 9-5 that was slowly eating away at my sanity I needed to find something.

The years of travel had left an impression on me, a wanderlust I couldn’t shake. I missed seeing new people and experiencing new things but I was locked into a commitment, one that kept me stuck in the cubicle Hell I’d avoided for so many years. As jobs go, it was a fabulous one, but my itch to move started crumbling happiness around me.

I met a wonderful group of ladies at the EHarlequin Luna forums. I adored the new fantasy imprint and wanted to learn more about it. Shortly after I arrived a group of us convinced the host to create a writing encouragement room. We did round robins and I tentatively reached out and wrote a few snippets. The enthusiastic responses led me to try more.

I began writing in earnest, tearing through everything I’d ever thought I knew about writing, sculpting this beautiful piece of fiction out of nothing. Full time day job, part time student and full time writer. Trust me when I tell you this was not an easy path to tread.

I penned several short stories and the beginning of a book, THE book that would change everything, but not in the way I thought it would…

Curve ball.

You see, the summer of 2005 changed my life, the way I looked at writing, and what could be a career. Several things happened.

1. A group of us from the LUNA forums began an Ezine, Enchanted Ramblings…wow was that an adventure. I quickly learned the ins and outs of editing, formatting, and frustration of deadlines and those who wouldn’t get them in on time LOL. Since I’m not saint, I’ll admit…deadlines were not new to me, but creative deadlines were. It was a successful year, but many things went wrong. I’m thankful for the experience, for the introduction to the editor’s side. This would help me later on.

2. My divorce finalized. That, in itself, was a miracle. In my earlier post I’d mentioned that we’d separated amicably, but the court systems are a complicated bear to work. Amazing how getting married is extremely easy but getting divorced not so much. With the new apartment and the new life, I had more time to do the things I wanted to…

3. I entered three contests. All three taught me several things: I had a lot to learn, showing instead of telling was something I needed to understand, and I wasn’t as ready to take on this writing thing as I’d first thought. It was time to go shopping for some books...my favorite passtime!

4. I was contacted by Cynnara Tregarth. On hers and another’s (I’ll call her A) recommendations, I had been given an invitation to Morgan Hawke’s Writing the Novella class…My world was about to shift on its axis.

Dawn Montgomery
http://www.dawnmontgomery.com/blog