Hello world! I’m Mimi and I’m an author.
I never thought I would say those words. By the time I was in my mid-40s, I figured my time had come and gone. I couldn’t be an author, not a published one anyway. It was too late for me. Everybody knows there’s a small window for pursuing your dreams and it closes in your 30s. Right?
For a long time, I believed that. Dreaming big was for younger people, not for me. Until one day, I said “F**k it,” and decided I would chase that dream, regardless of how old I was. So, four years ago, at 48-years-old, I sat down at my computer and did something I never thought I would do. I submitted my work to a publisher in the hope they would want to work with me.
It took a lot of guts for me to take that step. More than anyone can imagine.
I wrote a lot in high school. I usually had three or four notebooks I carried with me, filled with my inner thoughts. Somehow, as the years progressed, I stopped writing. I was busy going to school, then being a wife and mother of three. While I loved to read, I never thought about writing again. Nothing inspired me.
Until I discovered Supernatural. I came into it later, the summer after season seven. I binged the first seven seasons in about nine weeks. I was obsessed. Ideas filled my head, ideas I couldn’t stop thinking about. I started to write, trying to get the thoughts in my head on paper. Before I knew what happened, I had written a 400,000 word Supernatural fan fiction. A year later, I started posting my fan fiction online.
For the next six years, I devoted my time to writing fan fiction as a part of the Supernatural fandom and, eventually, the Marvel fandom. I’m a Dean girl through and through and I’ll never stop loving Steve Rogers. During those six years, I wrote over two million words of Supernatural fan fiction and close to a million words of Marvel fan fiction. What can I say? I love demon hunters and superheroes.
According to some people in the fandom, I was far too old to be writing steamy fan fiction for monster-hunting brothers or Marvel superheroes. Eventually, those comments got to me, discouraged me, and put me on a path of self-imposed mediocrity. I bought into the idea that I was too old to do what I was doing and I was definitely too old to try something new. I would go weeks without writing and when I would write, it was subpar and not my best work. I struggled every day to get the words out.
Then fate intervened and set me on an alternative path.
A publisher followed my author’s account on social media. At first, I thought it was a scam, but as I looked into them and their work, I realized they were legitimate. And maybe, just maybe, they might be interested in me and my work. An idea took hold, that maybe I could submit something to them. Even if it was just for fun.
It was a ‘why not?’ moment for me. The worst that could happen was they would say no. I’d been rejected before and I knew, even if nothing came of it, at least I could say I did it. So, I faced my fear, emailed off the first 10,000 words of one of my finished books, held my breath, and waited.
When the response to my email came in, I stared at my phone for a full five minutes before I opened it. Even though I’d prepared myself for the inevitable rejection, I didn’t want to see it staring back at me in black and white. No one wants to be rejected, even if you know it’s going to happen. It took everything in me to open that email.
Guess what? They didn’t say no. They said yes.
It’s been almost four years since I opened that email and my life changed forever.
I now have eight books published, with a ninth releasing in September. My Loves of Lakeside small town romance series is set in my home state of Montana. I live the Hollywood dream vicariously through my characters in my Second Chances in Hollywood series, and I delve into the dark side of the world in my Massachusetts Mafia series. I recently turned in my tenth book, the first book in a novella series about finding love via the internet called Sweet Connections. I am currently working on my next three books.
I left my full-time job a year ago to work part-time and devote more time to writing. I have book ideas coming out of my ears. At least it feels like it some days. Since becoming a grandmother a month ago, I’ve even had a few ideas for children’s books. I would love to hand my grandson a picture book one day and tell him, “Mimi wrote that for you.” I’m also diving into script writing. I hope to one day see my books on screen—big or small, I don’t care. A lot has happened in four years. It’s been a wild, crazy, whirlwind ride. I wouldn’t change it for anything.I’m proud of all I’ve accomplished and I’m excited about what’s coming. But more than anything, I proved to myself and to everyone that said I was “too old” that you are never too old to go after your dreams. I’m in my 50s and I’m having the time of my life. Bring on the next fifty years. I can’t wait to see what they have in store for me.
