How to be a Writer: Thea Harrison tells us how she got into writing

Reading has been a lifelong love of mine.

I taught myself to read when I was four, and when I was in my first year of school, I remember begging my parents for two books that were sold at the book fair. They were Lassie Come Home and Sleeping Beauty. I still remember whole passages from those books, along with the beautiful pictures. As I grew, I was allowed a greater range of distance to roam, and during school breaks I would ride my bicycle to my school which kept its library open for students. I would bring home ten books at a time and devour each one, until I knew almost as well as the librarian where each story was shelved.

In my teens we would travel to see family who lived deep in the country. My aunt read romances and my uncle read Zane Gray westerns, and voracious reader that I was, I read all of them. As I was reading them, I came to believe that I could write them as well. Then in the seventies I read a magazine article about successful romance writers and how they began—and I was hooked. When I was nineteen, I bought my first typewriter (yes, typewriter!). It was a portable electric machine with white correcting tape, and I wrote my first several books on it while I sat at our kitchen table late at night after everyone else had gone to bed.

I was extraordinarily fortunate; my first book was bought and published by Harlequin Mills and Boon in the UK, and my first career was as a Harlequin romance writer. Now, after a break from writing, I am fortunate all over again to explore the paranormal romance genre in my Elder Races series.

I’m having the time of my life, and I hope that I am able to share a small portion of that pleasure with you, my readers.

Oracle’s Moon by Thea Harrison is out now.