Happy Birthday Desert Warrior

 

Twenty years ago this August, Desert Warrior made me a debut author. 

I wrote DW in a small notebook in whatever snatches of time I could manage, always aware that I was fighting a hard battle. Getting published when I began was difficult in the first place, and I was a young woman with no connections whatsoever who was submitting from a tiny dot of a country called New Zealand. 

I didn’t even know any writers in real life when I started. They were just names on books from faraway places.

The slush pile back then was a literal pile of paper, my submissions just one among thousands, tens of thousands.

I still tried anyway. Because we deserve to fight for our dreams. 

Then one day, a young editorial assistant named Diane wrote me back about a submission…and a year or so later, as an assistant editor, she bought DW. (Hi Diane! Thank you for being my first editor (and for one of the best phone calls of my life!))

I’ve now published millions of words across multiple series, but what drives me today is the same thing that drove the determined dreamer of a kid I once was: the love of writing, of stories, of books.

Thank you to every single one of you for reading my stories, whether you found me twenty years ago or today. You’re the reason that kid with stars in her eyes can live her dream. xo

Happy 20th birthday Tariq and Jasmine.