Some authors work through organized outlines, notes, rather involved research. For me, I sat at the computer and suddenly the story just flowed out. Now, I'm more prone to do the research and I do the notes but not outlines. Perhaps that is just my method, perhaps I'm just that way.

As you read my books, you'll find letters that give insight into my motivation but also my thinking. For example, I started "And The Mist Was on The Mountain" first, then just had an itch to write about the old west.

So I started a story about a cattle drive. As I continued, ideas came that would work with the old west book and others were good for the modern romance. As I say, this works for me.

As you'll find out, the major work, Hopefield Chronicles, grew when a character that was minor, suddenly could be used later in the that first western. Hopefield was that character. At first he was a throw-away minor character and suddenly, I could use him in the plot. But the more I wrote, the more I needed to understand how he became the hard, driven man he was in Wranglers' Promise. Suddenly, I was writing a backstory that became encompassing Stannis Hopefield becoming the man he is in the series of books.

As I write this, in addition to polishing the final books in the Chronicles, I have six other stories in process. What plot detail works in one book, doesn't in another.

My advice to you if you are at all motivated to create a story is just to start. It won't be perfect, but you'll fine-tune, wordsmith, revise many times until it is what you want. My style of writing is 'chatty', sentence structure is only a guideline. But for me, in my stories, it works.

In the end, write, revise, let someone you trust read, then revise and repeat! When you can, let it go! The glory of holding a book with your name on it is so exhilarating I can not describe it.