When I first started out, a very kindly editor gave me some advice I’ve never forgotten, not in ten years.

“You need to find a tone that fits you and stick to it.”

She said this to be helpful, of course, as she had read several submissions from me and apart frm the fact that I had much to learn, she also couldn’t in any conscience buy my books because she had no idea what to do with me.

My stories all seemed to come from different directions. Did I write hometown comedies? Or did I write gripping suspense (Or even just slightly compelling suspense—I was just starting out, after all)? She liked my voice quite a bit and she liked my sense of humor, she simply couldn’t see how all of it could come together inot a marketable author unless I stopped dancing through genres. Worse, I had to stop genre-dancing inside of singular books.

“You can’t have a suspense book with this kind of dark tone and have all this humor.”

Because I have a bad habit of creating sarcastic, smart ass people and putting them in bad situations. (What, those people are more fun.)

“Conversely, you can’t have a comedy with all these dark situations.”

Because apparently other people aren’t as prone to laughing while at funerals as I am.

Honestly, when I heard all that advice, I did my best to try to listen, but it seemed so…unrealistic to me. I’d been brought up not as an optimist, but as a make-the-best-of-it-ist. In my crazy clan, we laugh through our tears, we snicker through trouble and we store up stories of stupidity like badges of honor. As my Mom once put so well, “You have to find something to laugh at when times are hard, or you’ll never make it through. And you won’t appreciate the good times when you have them.”

So it’s not that I just wanted to be difficult with my writing, or that I’m terribly stubborn. (Well, ok, I’m a “little” bit stubborn) I wanted to give that editor what she was looking for, but I could never quite do it. In my mind—and as a result, in my books—life just rarely falls into neat little slices where only one tone exists. It does make me a little harder to market, she was right about that. But that’s okay. I’m good being “that writer you like who writes all those stories”.

In fact, I can’t think of a better way to be known! :)

So that’s about it from Dee folks!

If you want to find out more about Dee, you can always check out any of the following links:

To find out more about both books in the Resurrection series, you can always check out the trailers which can be found from here & here.

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