Pitch Wars 2014 (Potential) Mentee Bio

Hi everyone! Joining in on the Mentee Bio Madness for Pitch Wars. Welcome to my little blog, a mere speck on the all-powerful internet. *coughcough* I may be given to dramatics at times.

Anyways, for my regular readers, I entered Pitch Wars, hosted by the lovely Brenda Drake once again. TINMAN has been revamped and renamed. It's now JANE CASSIDY, FEMALE DETECTIVE. It's still set up for a series, which will hopefully remain The Tinman Series. The first novel focuses more on Jane, so it seemed appropriate to rename it, and hubby agreed. Our lovely detective has earned her stripes and will return to earn more.

For everyone hopping over here because of Pitch Wars, a little about me:

I'm a mother of two wonderful (if sometimes crazy) kids. My oldest, Wesley, is occasionally referred to as Monkey Boy. My youngest, Bridget, is always referred to as Bug. (She even has her own Tumblr.)

Me and hubby have been married 9 years. We met while we were working at a Renaissance faire. Believe it or not, we were cast as husband and wife. I was returning cast and helping out with costumes, he was cast because the previous actor wasn't able to perform that year. Our director told us we needed to spend more time together so our onstage relationship was believable. Ummm...yeah, we got into our roles.

My writing is all over the place. I hate being labeled as a certain type of writer. Most of my stories spring from a phrase bopping around in my head until I have to write it down or go insane. Those ideas and phrases turn into books ranging from children's all the way to adult. No Middle Grade or Chapter Books. I've tried writing these and haven't been able to. They are my weakness. ;-)

I have self-published. My children's book WHO WILL DANCE WITH ME? came out in November of 2012 and I'm currently gearing up to self-publish an adult novel that started as a 'Blovel' - a novel written on my blog. (You can read about it here, if you're so inclined.) I also have short story being published in the Dark Carnival anthology from Pen & Muse Press in October.

Outside of writing, I spend my time playing clarinet and alto clarinet with two community bands. One runs during the summer and the other during the school year, so no rest for the weary. Once a band geek, always a band geek!

Besides being a band geek, I'm an everything else geek, too. All the Fandoms!! Highest on my list is all things Jim Henson. My dream since I was small was to work with the Henson company, so much so that I entered the Dark Crystal Author Quest last fall. (Made the top 25, but that's as far as I got, sadly.)

I think that's pretty much me in a nutshell. Thank you for stopping by and checking me out, now go check out some of the other hopefuls on Dannie Morin's blog.
Em