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I've got to say, a lot of times I feel like I'm all alone on my writer's path.

Okay, most writers feel like they labor in a solitary profession, and to some extent that's true. But this is more than that.

I belong to a couple wonderful critique groups through Pennwriters, but because of where I am on my particular path, I have so many issues/problems/questions that they can't help me with, most of them having yet to be published. Other writers in Pennwriters, of course, are published and might have some advice, but they're traditionally published, so they tend to look down on the way I've chosen--indie publishers.

I'm a little fortunate, in that I'm not one of the "self-published." (see today's post from Kristen Lamb on this always-controversial subject.) I have contracts and royalty agreements for every one of my novels, with varying levels of support from the different small press publishers. And I have six novels coming out THIS YEAR. Six. It's crazy. I'm trying to write and promote all at the same time. I just finished a trip across the country for research and booksignings in person during the same period I'm running a 38-stop online blog tour. I've just turned in one contracted book for next year, I'm writing another, I have edits waiting on my book coming out in September and I have another set of edits due by November 1.

Oh, and there's the day job. And the family. And the bills, etc. Like everyone else.

Granted, I wanted to be a published writer. Now I am. I have no grounds to complain, and this isn't really a complaint at all, but just a cry of despair in mid-journey, feeling overwhelmed.

Thanks to Red Tash for this blog today, which really made me feel a little better. I am alone, but there are people out there who understand what I'm going through. You came along at just the right time, friend. :)

This is an article that appeared in our local paper--something very similar appeared in the Peru Tribune a month or so ago. But because neither made their stories available on the Web, I wanted to share them with you here. I was pretty tickled!


Most authors are excited to publish one novel, or maybe two in a lifetime. Writer Barbara Mountjoy will see six novels published this year, two of them this month.  

Mountjoy, a family law attorney in Meadville, Pennsylvania and mother of seven, is pleased to be a working novelist at last.

“This is definitely my life’s dream come true,” she said. “I’ve written legal briefs, I’ve written articles and reviews, but seeing my novels come to reality makes all the work worthwhile.”

 Because she still practices law, she uses pseudonyms for her fiction work, Lyndi Alexander for her fantasy and science fiction stories, and Alana Lorens for her romances and women’s fiction.

 “If I were writing legal thrillers, like John Grisham, I might use my professional name, but when I’m writing about elves, space battles and other fantastic stories, it felt right to create another identity.”

She wrote her first novel at the age of fourteen, but didn’t receive a contract for one to be published until 2010. Plenty of rejections in the intervening years discouraged her from time to time, but she persevered, knowing there was a market out there for her work, and readers who would be delighted by her words. The five-star reviews she’s received for the novels already out show her determination has paid off.

 June brings the romantic suspense novel CONVICTION OF THE HEART from the Wild Rose Press, the first in the Pittsburgh Lady Lawyers series, a book that draws heavily on her twenty-five years’ experience as a family law attorney to set up the story about a lawyer who takes on a case involving domestic violence and politics, nearly losing her client’s life and her own in the process.

 Then in July, SECOND CHANCES, a women’s fiction novel about a lawyer who gets laid off during the economy downturn, and recovers her life with the help of a young Iraq war veteran with cancer. The two help each other cope with the tragedies impacting their lives, in this second volume in the Pittsburgh Lady Lawyers series, released by Zumaya Publications.

 “Lawyers often are exciting heroines for novels, and these two are no different. They hold a position in society that hangs between a seat of power and a genuine vulnerability,” Mountjoy said. “Both stories involve a real sense of danger, generated from the cases the lawyer takes on. In the family law arena, the stakes for your clients are so high that emotions and trigger points are quite volatile.”

Mountjoy has been a published writer for more than thirty-five years, publishing her first paid piece in the Peru Tribune in 1975. She completed a novel as her senior honors thesis at Kent State University in 1977, and went on to work as an editor and reporter at the South Dade News Leader in Homestead, Florida for several years before law school at the University of Miami. Since then, she’s practiced law in Florida and Pennsylvania, but her first love has always been writing.

Her urban fantasy books, the Clan Elves of the Bitterroot series, are set in the forests just north of Missoula, Montana, and her first science fiction novel, TRIAD, was released in February of this year.

 There’s no indication that the prolific writer will slow down any time soon. “Now that I’ve finally hit my stride, I don’t intend to let up. Not as long as stories are still coming to my fingertips!”

 Still coming this year are LOVE ME, KISS ME, KILL ME, a horror story with vampires coming in August, and contemporary romance THAT GIRL’S THE ONE I LOVE in September.

Scheduled for 2013 are the first two books in a post-apocalyptic young adult series, THE COLOR OF FEAR—PLAGUE, and THE COLOR OF FEAR—SURVIVORS, and also the fourth book in the Clan Elves series, THE ELF GUARDIAN.  She has also just signed a contract for a contemporary romance with Desert Breeze Publications, BY ANY OTHER NAME, that will be released in March 2013 as well.

 For more information and updates, see Mountjoy’s writer’s websites at http://clanelvesofthebitterroot.com, http://lyndialexander.wordpress.com and http://alanalorens.com