Believe in your dreams No Matter hOw long it takes.

Twenty years ago (1999), I completed the first draft of A TIME TO LOVE (originally named "The Reunion" and written under a different pseudonym). It was the first novel I had ever finished, and it took 3 years. The reasons for that are varied, I may write about it in another post, but today I wanted to discuss believing in your dreams. Even though I'd spent 3 years of my life writing the story, I didn't think of myself as a writer (sounds insane, I know!).

Who was I to dream such a thing?

In 2011, I started writing a new, highly personal novel that, ironically, came to me via a dream. It took 1 year to complete. At the end of that year, I had a decision to make: did I want to try and get the story published or did I want to hide it away in the writing box I shoved every half-finished thing I'd been scribbling for over a decade? I went with the former. Two years of constant rejection, honing my craft, and persistence paid off. I signed a contract with Pan Macmillan's now-defunct Momentum Publishing division. SEE HER RUN was released to the world in 2015.

That was when I began to think of myself as a writer.

In 2018, I couldn't get the memory  of my first novel out of my mind. I pulled it out of the writing box, polished it off, and voila! Part of me still can't grasp that it is finally being published. It will be book number ELEVEN for the world even though it was book number ONE for me - something I never dared to dream when I first started writing that story. :-D

Keep dreaming. Believe in yourself. No matter how long it takes.

A.K. Leigh/Leigh Hatchmann/Alicia Leigh xo :-)