I never wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a horse.

It’s not that I didn’t want to be a writer. I’d just never thought of it when I was a little kid because I was wholly enthralled with horses. My mom will tell you my first word was horse, not the customary, momma. I would grow up to be a horse-girl.

In elementary school we were made to make crayon drawings of what we aspired to be when we grew up. (First off, who says I had to grow up?) Of course, I drew horses. Herds of them. Black ones, brown ones, palominos, and paints, my diverse herds raced across the smooth surface of the newsprint paper, over green humped hills, under a yellow sun that took up the top corner of the paper. My interspecies goal was humored, but not accepted so my next choice was to be a rodeo queen. I was destined for a cut glass tiara and flashy costumes until it was explained to me that racing around an area hanging half off your saddle and waving to the crowd wasn’t a paid position. Eventually settled on becoming a veterinarian…until I realized I was squeamish, but at least I understood pay-grade. After that, all I really wanted to do, was draw.

So that’s all I did, every day. I drew sceneries with scalloped waxy clouds you couldn’t really see. I tried my hand at sketching life-like horses, but the hand doesn’t always draw what the eye sees. Haunted houses and graveyards drawn with a white Crayola on black construction paper became my specialty. Maybe it was concern over my repetitive theme of choice that piqued my teachers to request short stories to accompany my morose depictions. I’d scribble whatever came to mind to satisfy the requirements in order that I might keep drawing spooky scenes. Halloween is my favorite holiday.

So it was eventually decided that indeed I wasn’t a budding psychopath, nor was I crying out for help, that I was just an odd kid with an active imagination. But it was also discovered that I had a skill with words and proclivity for telling stories. Both my mother and my teachers urged me to harness this talent and become a writer. I heard them, but seriously…when have I ever done as told? I barely even take suggestions.

Writer, author, wordsmith – never my goal, intention, or dream. No archives of my youthful musings and tales exist to rival my amassed artworks. Outside of school, they never did. Not once did I aspire to create worlds, spin yarns, or publish books. But, as it turns out, in a

truth-is-stranger-than-fiction plot twist, writing wanted me.

I really should have seen this coming, but I didn’t.

Have you had one of those moments that you knew, deep down, was bigger than you? An experience that becomes defining, a delineation in time – there’s life before the event, and here’s life after? Mine happened in 2001.

My husband and I enjoyed a date-night one Saturday evening, travelling to the city to see the second installment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Two Towers. A major Tolkien fan, I was enamored by the films thus far. The director had stayed true to Tolkien’s story, the acting superb, and at three-hours long, we definitely got our moneys-worth.

Walking back to the car and chatting about the movie (as you do), I remember saying, “If Peter Jackson never does another project in his life, he’s left his mark. He will forever be known as the man who tackled J.R.R.’s work, and did so, so very brilliantly.” I do remember a fleeting thought, a temporary contemplation, “What mark will you leave?” The reflection was there, then immediately gone again, never to be revisited.

But seeds of contemplation, once acknowledged, take on a life of their own. I’d no idea what I’d planted that evening with my pondering; no way of knowing how it would germinate

and grow.

The next morning dawned pea-soup foggy and grey. There was no sunshine in my life – both literally and metaphorically. I couldn’t muster myself out of bed and when I finally did rally, it was only a far as the floor in the next room. Mentally, I was stuck, drowning in the rapids of misery whose headwaters were a complete mystery to me. Up to that point, and not for a single moment since, had I ever peered over the edge of oblivion into the pit of darkness where self-harm and life-ending thoughts thrive and grow. The worse part was that I understood the permanence of those decisions and it didn’t upset me because relief, and eternal peace were also found there.

I couldn’t fathom how the next day would happen and I wasn’t sure I wanted it to. In a wicked sense of timing only the Universe can get away with, my two late uncles came to mind, one from each side, both having succumbed to the allure of their own dark abyss. It frightened me that I understood them so well in that moment.

Terrified, and confused about what was happening, I tried to reason my way out. Was I having a mental breakdown? Postpartum depression delayed by three years? A chemical imbalance? Or was there something else going on, something bigger than me and so far out of my control, I couldn’t recognize it for what it was? All I really knew was I was fighting to stay above the waters of my mental suffering, and felt myself slipping under.

Then something unexpected happened. An unexpected lifeline was thrown.

There was a voice (for a better explanation of The Voice, might I direct you to my previous blog, A Psychotherapists Wet Dream…Yeah, I’m Aware). This voice wasn’t fun-adventure time, but authoritative and left no room for mistranslation when it ordered me to get up off the floor, go sit at the computer, open a word doc, put my fingers on the keyboard, close my eyes…and breathe. With nothing to lose but myself, I followed the etheric instructions and put my fingers on the keyboard, closed my eyes, and just breathed. I sat like that for a short time then…my fingers began moving. For the first time all day I felt a spark of…hope? The light at the end of the tunnel? I opened my eyes sometime later to a screen filled with words.

My first novel, Death by Association, was born that very evening. Jesus…talk about

freaking labor pains.

I never wanted to be a writer, but the stories inside me demanded life and they did everything they could to get my attention, literally bringing their demands to a life-or-death level. They wanted to live and pushed the issue until I had no choice but to listen. I often wonder what would have happened if we’d had date night at an arcade, or a concert in lieu of that film.

What event would have brought me to this same point? I’ll never know, because here I am and now, I’ve two published thrillers, Death by Association, and Death by Hostility, and Death by Retribution due out early 2024. I never wanted to be a writer. Writing wanted to be me.

-Dani