Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

In September 2002, my son said these magic words “you should start a blog. I’ll set it up for you.” When I say “magic” I’m not exaggerating. I was a writer before 2002. I had even published a handful of poetry, short stories and book reviews in small literary magazines. But I was a novelist at heart, and that part of my writing career was going exactly nowhere.

Then came the blog. From the first day, I felt published in a way that was different. I wasn’t a published novelist yet, but I felt so close to that reality. It felt right around the corner. And blogging daily about my writing journey, about the novel I was working on at the moment and my attempts to find an agent or a publisher, kept that feeling front and center. I knew it would happen.

Lots of good things began happening almost…