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A look at my Vonna Harper banner makes it pretty clear that I don't write inspirationals or children's book. Yep, I'm one of 'them', an erotica author. Funny thing, I've been doing so for around four years and am in the groove, but I'm still amazed that my career has taken this turn.

My first published work came in the form of confessions, you know, those 'true' first person stories bundled in monthly magazines with names like True Story and True Confessions. I confessed some 30 times (including one called "I Was An Unwed Teenage Father) until I flat out ran out of possibilities. My mother thought it was great. My husband appreciated the money since I was staying home with two young children at the time. As for me, although I found the format easy, I wasn't sure that qualified me as a real writer. Books, that's what I wanted to paste my name on, books.

That came about because I was in the right place at the right time when category romance publishing took off in the United States. I still remember screaming to my husband after hanging up the phone, "I've done it, I've done it!" After mucking around in ignorance and isolation while pounding the typewriter (remember typewriters?), I discovered RWA and an invaluable network. Happy camper indeed, I focused on the longer stories with plot and adventure and romance, but life is always throwing us curves. My manuscripts didn't always lead to a contract and the wait to hear on a submission became longer and longer. Finally my agent suggested the writing was on the wall and it was time to take another turn.

Thanks to her insight and persistence, I found a home for a series of Native American historicals. As daunting as the research was, I loved the worlds I entered and became passionate about NA spirituality. My name started showing up on Hardcovers. I was invited to conferences, workshops, trade shows, etc. I even won a couple of awards. Yep, you guessed it, here comes another curve. For reasons I'll never understand, the bottom fell out of the NA market. No one was reading them any more.

Arg! There I was, an orphan again. A writer with nothing to write. Well, that wasn't completely true. I did a number of nonfiction articles and finished a young adult fiction that has never sold. Because, like everyone else, I had bills to pay, I took on that instruction gig I wrote about earlier. The checks started coming in, but I was focusing on other people's writing and not so quietly going mad.
Another career turn arrived, this time at an EPIC conference. EPIC is for writers who are electronically published, something I knew almost nothing about. I went because a dear, dear friend was up for several awards and she needed a driver. That's where I met Kate Douglas (Queen of paranormal erotica and one swell gal). She sat me down and said in no nonsense terms that it was time to stop feeling sorry for myself and jump on the erotica bandwagon. Maybe it was in its infancy, but this kid was going to grow up fast and be big.

More tomorrow about how right she was.

Vonna