[Forward]

First things first - I'm Lauren Dane and I write books. I do other stuff like laundry and my kitchen floors. Oh and I chase my kids around. But apparently I'm here at Behind the Scenes this week so settle on in while I tell y'all a little story.

I wish I could say I sit in a quiet room with lit candles, soft music and sweet smelling lavender and the ideas floated down to me from my hot muse, Clive who oiled himself up hourly and fed me calorie free chocolate while flexing.

But reality is always messier than fiction.

It all sort of looks like this:

A few years ago I got the surprise of my life, who is now nearly four and currently harassing her dad to brush her unicorn’s hair. But while she lived in my body, she was very cantankerous (should have been a hint) and I spent a great deal of time on bedrest. So instead of putting my pretty suits back on and heading back to work when my son went to school, I thought, “Well why don’t I give this writing thing a try?”

So my husband brought me home a second hand laptop and I started to write this idea I’d gotten when I was in New Orleans the spring before. That idea was Triad, my first book.

My plan to write professionally wasn’t something I’d agonized over, it happened because of a set of circumstances and everything came together just right.

I’d known Anya Bast at Livejournal and she suggested I send the book to Ellora’s Cave. The person who read it liked it enough to hand it up to Raelene Gorlinsky, who then contacted me to say if I was willing to clean it up and make a few changes, she thought they’d want to buy it. So I made the changes and sent it back and in another two weeks I learned I’d sold the book to EC.

Right person, right place, right book and right time.

Writing and the creative process is really about the right book landing on the right person’s desk at the right time.

This is not to say I don’t work my booty off. I do. Every author I know who is successful is a hard worker. You can’t make if it you aren’t. Still, there’s an element of fate/luck/fairy dust to this whole thing that is entirely unpredictable.

Now, I’m as Type A as they come and “unpredictable” is not a word I favor much when it comes to goals and achieving them. Always in my life I make lists and plans, work hard and accomplish what I set out to do. So imagine what happens when this Type A, list making girl ends up in an industry where words have no real common parlance and where hard work isn’t all you need!