One of my earliest memories is the night when my mother was tucking me into bed and I told her the idea I had for a novel I wanted to write. I must have been about 5 or 6 years old, but even then I had the desire to write.
As I got older I was always interested in creating stories. I created my own cartoons, my own comic books, and certainly acted out my ideas in play. One childhood friend told his mother that he liked playing with me because I “always had the best ideas.”
By the time I reached high school and college my ability to write was so limited because of the requirements of life – work, family, social obligations, schooling, and so on. I also was so intimidated by the concept of writing a novel that I intended to focus my work on short stories only. I recall that Jaws was the first novel I read, and it impressed me with how the side stories, the characters’ backgrounds and nuances were presented. It opened me up to the possibility of actually writing novels.
It really wasn’t until my late 20s that I tackled the novel, starting with what was intended to be a fantasy trilogy (ala Tolkien). I am not at all pleased with that first effort and intend to totally revise the work some day.
Eventually I wrote my first novel – Gabriel – followed by my second – God’s Wife. These two collected dust while I began with Fear of Normal. I was so inspired by the ideas that the writing went quickly, but the ideas had taken nearly 20 years to ferment and gel in my head.
E.V. Lohring 
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