I was the typical “nerd” of the class all throughout elementary, middle and high school. I loved reading. I couldn’t get enough of books. I would read as I walked home from school in our town of 800 people. When I was in the fifth grade, I remember being bored at my uncle’s house over Christmas one year and trying to read Moby Dick, though it was too heavy (in numerous ways) for me back then.
I started writing in a journal when I was in elementary school, and I started writing stories in middle school. My family had this old Apple Macintosh computer from the early 1990s, and it was only good for typing on. I would sit on the arm of our old couch – since there wasn’t really room for a chair in that corner of the basement – and write. I wrote three novels on that computer, in multiple documents, since the word processor that was on there would only deal well with documents that were about 30 pages long.
After I went off to college, I started on a journalism degree, wanting to continue writing somehow in my chosen career. I didn’t think that I could be a novelist or a full-time author. That dream was too far out there. My younger brother, however, didn’t think so. He found those novels I had written on that computer when he was going through it – my family had finally decided to trash it – and thought they were good enough to be published.
At that time, we didn’t know much about publishing, but we started sending queries to publishing companies that accepted new authors. We got a lot of “no” answers at first, though two or three of them were, “We’ve reached our limit of new authors this year, but keep trying! This is worth publishing!” It was heartening to hear.
It didn’t really sink in that my dream of being a published author had come true until I had a real copy of my book in my hands. My first novel, Into Fire, about a teenager named Leora who discovers she can do magic, was published in 2011 by Silver Leaf Books. The second novel in the trilogy, continuing Leora’s journey, is set to be published next year. I’ll be working on the third and final novel during NaNoWriMo. I have the general plot figured out, but the only part I have written is the last chapter. (Yes, for some reason, that came through my brain clearly before the second book was even finished.) My overall goal is to finish it by Christmas, with the majority of it (shooting for more than 50,000 words) being done in November.
My day job is as a marketing coordinator for a manufacturing company and a wife to a wonderful engineer, craftsman and bug-killer. We just recently bought our first house in Sioux Falls, SD. My dream of being a full-time author is still out there, and I’m chasing it.
Find Brittany online:
Her facebook page
Her twitter account: BrWesterberg
Her Goodreads Author page
Her website/blog: brwesterberg.wordpress.com
Her Amazon Author page
Into Fire on Amazon
