I call myself that because unlike many, if not most, authors, I was never possessed of a burning drive to write. I'm still not. A burning drive to read - yes, absolutely, without question - that I have in spades. I can't remember a time when I didn't read. Reading has been my joy, my rock and my solace throughout my life. As a girl, I read while riding my bike to deliver newspapers; I read while on fishing outings with the family - I deliberately didn't bait the hook so fish wouldn't bother me while I sat on the river bank; I read while walking to and from school; I read during recess while all the other little girls were learning to skip, thus forever missing the opportunity to learn how to do double Dutch, though I could turn a mean rope if called upon. In sum, I found there were almost no activities that couldn't be improved with the addition of a book, and that really hasn't changed in my adult years.

So how did I evolve from rabid reader to published author? By accident, of course. Just as I cannot remember a time when I didn't read, I also could not remember a time when I didn't conjure up stories to put myself to sleep at night. Without intervention, however, those stories would never have seen the light of day. My brother-in-law initiated the whole thing when he introduced me to the wonders of the Internet in the late nineties. I gleefully absorbed the many stories and later, newspapers freely available on-line. At the time I was housebound, caring for my late husband who was disabled by MS. Between caregiver duties, it was normal for me to read my days away, only now on-line rather than solely with print books and newspapers.

I also began to tentatively reach out, and met a young woman on-line who, unlike me, couldn't remember a time when she hadn't been driven to write. We became friends, and after we had corresponded for several months, she began to urge me to try my hand at a story. It took her a few more months to convince me, but finally I wrote the first chapter of what would become Coming Home and sent it to her. For almost a year, my young mentor coaxed, cajoled and critiqued until, much to my amazement, I had written a novel-length story. Even then I had no intention of doing anything with it, but once again my friend altered my life as she arranged for it to be posted on-line, where it was noticed and, in the spring of 2000, published.

I'm still not, and never will be, a prolific writer. Unlike my first two novels, which each took about a year to write, my new novel (Kicker's Journey - winter of '08) was four years in the making. Hopefully the next won't take nearly as long, but I make no promises. I did discover early on that writing holds as many pleasures and rewards as reading. Creating characters and plots was something I had done for years inside my head. Moving them onto a page is a very natural, if not always painless, evolution.

The rewards of writing are often intangible, but for me, the greatest 'royalty' of all came when I was assigned an editor for Coming Home in January 2000. In April 2007, that woman, who still edits every word I write, became my wife. I still love reading best, but writing has proven to be one of the great delights of my life. So while I may be an accidental author, I am also a very grateful author.

Lois Cloarec Hart