T.J. Patterson

Writing has been a part of my life, in one way or another, for many years. As a child, I enjoyed writing the occasional poem or song, or very short story. As a young adult, I wrote and edited technical manuals at a data processing company that was associated with a bank, and that writing experience ended up paying off when I entered graduate school. For a good number of years, I had toyed with the idea of writing a novel. At some point while my husband and I were raising our two children, I started plotting and planning a story but never really had a serious commitment to the project. A few more years passed, and with my children grown, I once again jotted down some ideas. Finally, in March of 2013, the moment was right, and I was inspired--not by a book, but by a movie that sparked just the right passion in me. The writing process began. I sat at my desk for hours on end. Any time when I wasn't working at my teaching position, I could be found sitting at my computer, typing, with ideas flowing almost faster than I could type them. Both a book and an author were being born. While I was writing my first novel, Whisper Independence, I often joked that it was writing me.

Whisper Independence started out as a journey into the question of other planets in the universe. Would the progression of inventions follow the same general path as ours? Could other planets' inhabitants already have the cure for cancer or other diseases, but perhaps not have computers? Once I got serious about the story, it didn't take long before it morphed into a sci-fi dystopian novel with supernatural elements, all underpinned by a bit of romance. I read my share of romance novels as a young adult, and the romance kept creeping into my novel. So I let it. But the premise is quite serious in the Trilogy, despite the exciting sci-fi and psychological aspects and a few romantic elements.

Actually, I started out thinking that I would publish the book by traditional means, either with the help of a literary agent or directly through a publisher. The more I looked into it, what I found was that agents and publishers make decisions about what the public wants to read, based on prior sales and based on subjective opinion. This makes sense from their standpoint, but it restricts the kinds of books readers can access. Publishers and agents also somewhat dictate how an author should approach a novel. Publishing as an indie author provides the freedom that authors are looking for. Let the readers decide.