Hey again, folks!

It's so nice to be back blogging with the pens!

For those of you who don't know me, I write the Jane True series for Orbit Books. It's urban fantasy and it's super fun.

Writing the books has also changed my life. I wrote Tempest Rising sort of out of the blue after I finished my PhD. I hadn't planned on becoming a popular fiction writer (I was a literary critic, who studied modernism and post modernism) and I'd even gotten my first job as a full time professor teaching modernism.

That first job was at Louisiana State University in Shreveport, and I loved it. I loved teaching my field, Shreveport turned out to be super fun, and I eventually made a really good home here. Unfortunately, I was also writing these books that were getting published, and yet they didn't count as publications toward my getting promotions at work. So when a job came up teaching in an MFA for popular fiction, I eventually realized I had to jump on it. Luckily, I got that job, and it definitely suits my new life as a writer/professor better.

But it was also in Pennsylvania, way far away from Louisiana and the life I'd made here.

So writing the books really has changed my life, in pretty substantive ways. Becoming a writer changed my goals, my job, where I live. But it's also allowed me so much more freedom and opportunity. Which is why I'm delighted to find myself back in Shreveport as a writer, invited to give a talk to LSUS's honor's program.

For that's been the best thing about writing. I'm blogging with Pens Fatales because I was lucky enough to meet three of the Pens, initially, at a convention. I met most everybody else later, when I would visit my initial Pens Friends in the Bay area. Writing has created for me so many opportunities for friendship, for travel, and for adventure. Who knew I'd love Kansas City so much? Who knew I'd have friends all over the country after five years? When I was stuck in Houston yesterday for a bit, and it looked like there was a chance my flight would be canceled, it was no big whoop--I've got good friends in Houston these days, after all.

So it's great to be back in Shreveport, where my career as a writer really began. It feels like coming full circle and it's a reminder to me that things don't have to end. They do have to change, but they don't have to end.

If you're in the Shreveport area and would like to come see me, here's a link to the public signing. There'll be punch!