Molly Edwards Guest Post

First, I'd like to extend gratitude to Giovanni Gelati for allowing me to yap to ya'll today, and to ask ya'll to bear with this southern gal, as this is the first guest post I've ever written.

I started blogging in August of 2009 with no intention of taking it as far as I have. I simply read a book one day, loved it so much, and hoped on Amazon to post a review of it. While there, I looked at some of the other reviews, and noticed that some of the people posting those said reviews had what was called a blog. Well, this 28 year old (at the time) knew of Facebook and email, but blogging? What the heck was a BLOG?

Deciding to dig a little deeper, I hunted down some of the blogs I saw listed. Wow! I was totally surprised at what I found. Blogs about books, blogs about other blogs, blogs about animals....you name it, I saw a blog for it. But, my goal was to spread the word about books, so I concentrated on the book blogs. Liking what I saw, I started up my first ever book blog and called it Book Reviews By Buuklvr81.  That's where it all started.

After a year or so, I decided to change the name to Book Reviews By Molly, as I was getting more followers, and publishers were starting to contact me. It was during this time that my family started telling me that I should turn my hobby of review writing into writing a book. Well, knowing me, I just couldn't do it. I don't have faith enough in myself so I told them no. Then, in March of this year, I chose to make my blog a professional sounding site, so I purchased the domain and changed the name yet again to simply Reviews By Molly. Still, my family pressed for me to branch out into writing. And, again, I said no.

It was also around that time that I started learning about even more publishers, including one such publisher: Trestle Press. The first Trestle Press piece I ever read was Down Low-Dead by Vincent Zandri and Giovanni “G-Man” Gelati. I fell in love then and there with Trestle Press and digital shorts. I love them. Trestle Press is a wonderful publisher who publishes fantastic, and often humorous (with a side of seriousness, too!) pieces of work.

Just recently, Giovanni Gelati from Trestle Press emailed me and  asked me if I wanted to write a story. I honestly had every intention of turning him down. After all, I had turned down my own family when they encouraged me to write one. Why on earth would I tell Mr. Gelati okay? But, I must be utterly crazy, for I told him sure. Now, keep in mind, I am already a book review blogger, pharmacy technician, avid book reader, mommy of 2 boys (for some reason these two boys are ALL boy!), daughter and I'm venturing into the realm of Virtual Book Touring. Why oh why, did I agree to write a story? No matter why, I did it. I told him okay, to give me some time and I would work on a story.

The story came to me instantly, and I had it to him in about a 2 hour time frame. I decided it to keep it short, and to make more than one story. This first one is entitled The Willow Spring Killer.

How did I come up with the title? Well, I live in a town called Willow Spring, and my all time favorite genre ever, is....yep you guessed it. Suspenseful murder. So, I turned out a story about Josie Summerville, officer on the Willow Spring PD. I chose Josie for my main character because I always said if I had a daughter, her name would be Josie, so, thus, Josie Summerville was born for my story. I won't tell you what the story is about. Just that it's very different, very suspenseful and believe it or not, I'm proud of it. I am planning on making Josie a recurring character in a series, so there will be lots more where this story came from, though each one different than the one before it, as I find that I do better at writing short stories rather than a whole book.

Thanks for letting me ramble, Giovanni!