My whole life, I have loved to write. Papers stapled together, creating books entitled anything from “The Hockey Game” to “All About Birds.” I would shove them into the hands of anyone who would read them (like my parents). My first two years in grade school, my school had an event where the best ‘authors’ in each grade shared their stories with each other. That kind of encouragement was just the inspiration a young writer needed, and I haven’t forgotten the thrill of getting to read my story to other kids. I still have the “Shelter Bay Author” pencil I was given that day (you can see it in the picture!).
Some years of my life have been story-full than others, but in Grade Seven, I became absolutely hooked on writing again. I wrote my first full length novel, putting my pencil to paper for the first sentence on March 28, 2016. It’s still my favourite made-up holiday. The years following, I couldn’t stop – wrote a sequel, then a threequel, stories of all genres and lengths, and my friends pleaded for more, declaring I was their favourite author.
It’s been less than a year that I had my “publishing epiphany”- when I realized that I had a unique story to share with the world. Even more recently that I discovered that a website can help me connect with my readers even before I am published.
Starting up a website was a whole new adventure into the unknown – far more unknown than writing stories – because I have never been much of a techie. I remember fondly the day I learned how to play a movie from the DVD player all by myself. I was 14. There was a lot of yelling for help and pressing random buttons.
Now that the website is set up (whew!), I can’t wait to record this journey. Thank you for being here, readers, and I hope you follow along in this great writing adventure: to publishing…. and beyond!
(What is beyond publishing? I can hardly wait to find out.)
-Abby Ciona, Writer.
Abby Ciona 