Three Years And Counting: My Beginning as a Romance Author


From the desk of romance author

Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy…..

            July arrived a few days ago with the expected amount of heat, some fireworks, a little barbecue and sunshine.  I’ll be celebrating my 19th wedding anniversary this month but there’s another milestone I’m marking too.  Three years ago this month I signed my first novel contract, a major event for me and it came at a time when I’d almost given up on the idea of making the transition from writer to author.

            Three years ago I wrote daily, one novel after another and subbed them, one by one.  One of them – Kinfolk – I had rewritten three times, had a beta read it, and submitted it to more than eighty agents and publishers without acceptances.  I’d had a few near misses but one day in July 2010, I sat down to check email and found a contract offer from Champagne Books.  By the end of the year, my first eBook, Wolfe’s Lady, released from Evernight Publisher and I had other signed contracts in hand.  My now primary publisher, Rebel Ink Press, marks their third anniversary in August and our association began early.

            I had to sit down and count to get an accurate total.  If I count full length novels I had out, including my just released Pink Neon, which already earned a best seller silver star on All Romance.com, and those under contract to debut later this year, there are fifteen from Rebel Ink Press and a total of twenty-one.  In addition, I have eight novellas or shorts out from Rebel Ink along with others to bring the total to sixteen or a grand total of 37 separate works available in eBook form.  Several of my novels are also out in paperback and one is out in audio format as well.  Add more than twenty-five anthology appearances and you can see my writing world exploded from that moment three years ago!

            A quick look at what’s coming includes Hear The Wind Blow, Love on September 3 from Rebel Ink Press, a historical romance set just after the Armistace in 1918, Comanche Forever, a paranormal (vampire) contemporary romance coming November 3, Scrooge’s Song, out for the holiday season, and two shorts, Lake Taneycomo 1924 and Dragoon’s Bride, no date yet. 

            Dreams can come true and mine did, three years ago this month and yours can too.

            Here’s a short little snippet from Pink Neon:

  • Whoever the hell this man might be, he kissed like a pro.  Cecily reveled in his intense mouth on hers.  Her body awakened from a long dormant slumber, alive and needy.  He brought out every ounce of horniness she’d ever possessed and increased it.  Willard Bradford the Fourth never made her body heat up like a street rod about to drag race.  His attempts at kissing didn’t send liquid fire burning through her veins or make her body limp as a discarded dish rag.  She savored the physical pleasure but sensed something beyond, a connection she couldn’t begin to understand.  If Daniel hadn’t stopped, she doubted she would’ve possessed the willpower to say no and they would’ve done the deed on the floor of the pier.  Probably filthy and fishy both but damn, I’d have laid down like a street hoochie for him.


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