My second novel, Bake Until Golden, is the sequel to Half Baked Women. In reality, the writing seemed to flow out easily, once I convinced myself there were more stories to investigate about my four central characters: Carney, Breeze, Nikki and Margaret. I moved their lives along five years later. We find them slugging through that difficult post college transition, as they move from classes and studying to the real life struggle of finding jobs and soul mates, hoping to support themselves financially and emotionally. They meet with mixed success. Each follow different career paths that eventually separate the four friends. It was fascinating going through the decisions made by these four very different ladies. The characters seemed to make their own decisions for me; I was just the conduit bringing their actions and dialog to life. It has been a fascinating process.

About a chapter into my debut novel, Half Baked Women, it hit me how writing fiction frees you of any constraints you may have. You can indulge a fantasy, embellish a minor story into something that goes beyond the norm, you can change the outcome of an event. That is quite an uplifting power. I have to keep pushing myself each day to go a bit beyond the edge and not stick to just what I know, but seek out the unexpected.

My favorite novel of the last few years has been Abraham Verghese's, Cutting For Stone. The vast scope and depth of this story amazes me. The three novels by Khaled Hosseini have also made my cake topper list, with The Kite Runner, still the top contender by this author. I loved the circus images and unique characters in Sara Gruen's, Water for Elephants. For historical fiction and a touch of spy and espionage, I have plowed through all of Ken Follet's books over the years, and Geraldine Brooks seems to be able to put us in another time and place as well.

For writing, I have a fairly large and lovely office space, but my writing desk is a mess. I am terrible at organizing and I allow medium sized piles of paper to stack all around me, leaving room for just my arms, elbows and keyboard. I have to say I am a procrastinator in the filing category. It's just too boring. Perhaps if I had drawers, my life would at least appear more categorized, but my desk is just a large trestle table, with no cubby-holes for tucking away miscellaneous papers.

I work full-time in retail management, and have for a number of years. It can be physically draining, with chaotic scheduling, but I love the newness of fresh product, the daily changes and working with the public. Many customers have become dear friends and have often shared their joys and sorrows with me. I like working where there are always stories to share.

I heard a radio interview on NPR a while back that involved the stories of a few successful independent authors. They all kept talking about new opportunities for authors without access to traditional publishers and this intrigued me. I had always wanted to write but had often heard how difficult it was to ever get published. A friend directed me to another multi-author video discussion that revolved around this same topic. I decided to investigate Smashwords, which was the site that some of these authors had mentioned. The format seemed ideal for me. l decided to take the plunge.