My guest today is Lesli Richardson, the author of Trouble Comes in Threes, which was released February 20, 2009 and sold 600 copies the first week.
It’s a quarter till five in the afternoon and the insurrection has begun. Bubbles the bulldog starts “talking” to me in the whining bark that she only uses for dinnertime. To anyone else, it’s merely annoying. To me it screams, “Get your fat ass off the laptop and FEED ME, Mom!”
Of course, when Bubbles starts, that’s the signal for my other five dogs to chime in. (Yes, I have six dogs. No, I don’t want another one. Yes, it’s a lot of dogs. And yes, it’s a long story. Actually, I currently have seven dogs because I’m babysitting one for a good friend of mine.)
I wouldn’t get up from behind the computer if it wasn’t for my dogs and my husband and son. And trips to the coffee pot.
Coooofffeeeeee.
Ahh, the elixir of life.This is my day job. I’m a writer. I knew way back when that I wanted to be a writer. Ever since I was a kid. (And my twentieth high school reunion is this year, if that tells you anything.) Yes, I spent a few years writing non-fiction full-time. I let my fiction slip to the side because I didn’t have time to “play” with my writing. I never stopped honing my craft, never stopped learning, and never stopped trying to better my writing and editing skills.
I’m nobody special. I’m a wife and mom and staff to six dogs (and two birds and a cat that shall remain nameless because he’s the spawn of something evil). I have worked my patookie off to get where I am today. Am I making Stephen King money? No. (I wish!)
Am I paying my bills? Thankfully.
What frosts me is sometimes when people hear that some of my books are e-books, they say, “Oh, I thought you wrote real books.”
Um, according to my mortgage company, it’s real money.
I love what I do. I am living my dream—writing fiction full-time. I love that I can take people and drop them into an imaginary world and they willingly come along for the ride. I really love it when I get an email from a reader saying they couldn’t put my book down.
My equivalent of scoring a touchdown and getting to spike the ball is when a reader emails me and says I made them laugh or cry or that they read my book more than once and can’t wait to see what happens next if it’s a series.
I love that.
Not that my dogs could give a hoot. As long as kibble magically appears in their bowls by the appointed hour, they’re happy. Otherwise, the daily insurrection starts.
My dogs don’t care that I’m a writer. It’s humbling. No chance of me getting a swelled head when a black Lab has his nose stuck in my face while another tries to make off with my trackball. I tried to explain to them and negotiate with them that by writing, it allows me to buy them the quality homeopathic kibble that doesn’t contain chemicals, and hence maybe just once the insurrection could happen a little later, at least until this scene is written?
Bubbles and the gang couldn’t care less.
I love that I can wear my Sponge Bob pajamas all day and have a ten-foot commute. I love that I don’t have drive to get to work. I love that I can spend all day long playing with imaginary people and get paid to do it.
I love making people feel the way I feel when my characters come to life in my imagination. It’s a good feeling. Especially in economic times like these, knowing that I’m taking someone’s mind off of the “real world” for a while is really cool. I feel honored that people trust me with their time.
And I’m thankful beyond measure to readers, who are the reason I’m blessed enough to be able to do what I do. I can’t begin to express how much I appreciate that.
My dogs appreciate it too, although they might not say so in quite that way. Now please excuse me while I go rescue my MP3 player from a felonious canine.
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Lesli Richardson is a bestselling author writing in several genres as herself and under the name Tymber Dalton. She's a snarky, stubborn native-Floridian Taurus who lives in southwest Florida with her husband, son, and a houseful of neurotic, misfit animals. She currently has over a dozen current and contracted releases, including "Doggy Style," "Love Slave for Two," "The Reluctant Dom," and "Cross Country Chaos." Available on Amazon.com. You can find her websites at: http://leslirichardson.com and http://tymberdalton.com
