I never planned to write historical fiction; it just happened.
In fact, the whole writing thing just happened. Sort of. But maybe there were hints in the fact that as a kid, I wrote my own Supergirl and Wonder Woman comic books, and lots of stories featuring characters from popular TV series. Of course, the real hero of my adolescent stories was always, always a feisty young girl who made the older (male) protagonist look like a schmuck. (Example: There are probably a handful of decrepit fellow Boomers out there who remember the Raymond Burr TV series IRONSIDE about a wheelchair-bound detective. I wrote a story in which Ironside can’t quite keep up with a spunky, also wheelchair-bound twelve-year-old girl who just happens to be better at solving crimes. He goes to her hospital bed to cheer her up --“It’s okay, little girl, life isn’t so awful without the use of legs” – and as thanks, she solves a case that’s been tormenting him for years.)
I had it hammered into me that writing was no way to make a living, so as I got older I told everyone I was going to become a doctor. Throughout highschool, I spent my afternoons and Saturdays working as an assistant to a local pediatrician and took pride in the fact that I remained stoic and self-assured in the face of puke and poop and pee and blood. I assisted with sutures; I learned to give shots. My mother even bought me a Merck Manual. I savored words like inguinal and tenesmus and borborygmy. I bought a Gray’s Anatomy coloring book and carefully filled it in with Crayola pencils. (You have a medical emergency? Call me. I’m a rock.)
In the end, I chickened out of med school. Too much work; at the university, I was struggling mightily to pull B’s in the chemistry and calculus classes, while blithely acing all the language classes. By the final quarter of my junior year, I had taken so many language courses as electives that I easily switched majors from Microbiology to Russian and graduated on time. From there, I went on to get a double Master’s – in Linguistics and Teaching English as a Second Language.
So I became a teacher, because, as everyone knows, you can’t make a living as a writer. I taught English as a Second Language at the university level for five years and absolutely adored it.
And then I got fired.
It was a good thing, too. The best part was that I could not land another teaching job anywhere else, because the semester had already started and all the positions at all the universities in the area were already filled. Plus I was blackballed (and fired) because I had helped the teachers organize a union. I was officially unemployed and unemployable.
So my husband said, “Well, you’ve always said you could write a book. Why don’t you give it a shot? You’ve got nothing to do for a semester.”
So I wrote a book, in a semester. A STAR TREK book. Truth is, I’m an old Trekkie (yes, I know some prefer the more sophisticated term “Trekker,” but fer cryin’ out loud, it’s a TV show, people, and we are its obsessive fans). And I had been surreptitiously eyeing the STAR TREK novels that had just begun to appear on the shelves of my local Waldenbooks. Finally, I yielded to the pull and picked up a copy of THE ENTROPY EFFECT by Vonda McIntyre, an original novel featuring Kirk, Spock and McCoy. I loved it. I studied it, as well as a copy of WRITERS MARKET and several how-to books about writing novels. And I sat down and wrote a TREK novel, and shipped it off to the appropriate editor in New York. I used my maiden name, Dillard, and my initials, J.M., in honor of my favorite STAR TREK screenwriter, D.C. (Dorothy) Fontana.
My central character was a tough, kick-butt female. Of course. She was SO kick-butt that she pretty much out-kicked Captain Kirk. Spock and McCoy trembled in awe of her. Hah.
Happily, the editor at Pocket Books didn’t seem to mind. In fact, thirteen months after I sent off my manuscript – long after I had reconciled myself to the fact that the book was so horrible that the editor couldn’t bring herself to send me a rejection letter -- I got the phone call that literally dropped me to the floor.
That’s how I became a Published Author. So what, you are asking, does that have to do with history being a bitch, or with anyone named Mary Sue?
Ah, well, that would be another story…
