Writing

I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember—my mom showed me once a story I wrote as soon as I could spell. I dabbled over the years with journaling and writing short stories, and published my first short story collection, Jumping on the Trampoline, when I was in college. I used what I thought was a reputable traditional publishing company at the time, but my royalty checks were few and far between, and I thought the book bombed.

I came to a crossroads in college as to what to pursue for a career: writing or science. I decided to continue my trek into the Biology world and minored in creative writing. I went on to grad school, receiving my Masters in Biomedical Science with an emphasis in Microbiology & Immunology, and working a little on a PhD. Throughout all of that, writing was my companion, my stress relief. When tasks got too overwhelming in the lab, I would take a break from the logic and bust out my creativity when I got home. I have copious amounts of stories from my undergrad and grad school days, and many more in the following years.

After school I did a short stint in a lab focused on researching an obesity gene in mice, then worked in a recruiting office and learned the ropes of a different type of internet research and resume writing. Throughout I did side hustles writing articles and papers for websites. Eventually I made my way into teaching, landing my first Microbiology college class. I wasn’t the greatest teacher starting out, but I worked hard and expanded my repertoire to include other classes such as Biology and Anatomy & Physiology. Soon I was adjuncting at up to four different colleges a semester, taking on any Biology related class that needed an instructor. Throughout all of this I continued to write.

With a few years teaching under my belt, I met the man I was going to marry. We had awesome adventures together, and still do. He convinced me to take a full-time high school teaching job, and for six years I taught both college and high school before returning to just teaching college.

One day I sat down at my computer and decided to look over my stories I had written throughout the years. They seemed quite good to me. Around this time I found out the traditional publishing company I went with for my first book was being sued for scamming authors out of their royalties. This and other signs pointed me to start publishing my works again, but this time I would go the self-publishing route instead.

Fast forward to now: I have published multiple books so far and have more in the works. My passion for writing reignited around 2019 as I wrote each story and sought out resources. I was not a newbie writer, but an author getting back into the game. My plan was to pursue my writing and see where it took me. And for a while, my star burned brightly.

Until burnout happened. With this plus starting a new teaching position, I was parched for time to get any real writing done. My books sat on the backburner while I let myself recover. Sometimes rest is the best way (as you’ll see in some of my blog posts). Now I’ve shaken off the dust and am making a quiet comeback, putting in more relaxation time when needed so as not to feed the burnout dragon again. I’ve got a business plan mapped out, and if I can carve enough time in my free time to work on writing, well, maybe this will go somewhere. Care to join me on this journey?

Art

When I was younger my parents bought my siblings and I the Disney art books. Back then these were the crème of the crop, the stills and sketch copies from artists that drew out the movies. They were like gold to me. I spent a lot of time immersed in their pages, going over the lines, following the images with my fingers. Then I would get out my sketchbook and draw the pictures that I saw, not tracing, but copying the image. This is what I was good at—I could take something I saw and copy it in my notebook. While I wasn’t the best at drawing from memory, or getting new poses down, I could copy animals really well.

When I took up writing again as a side hustle, I started doing my own ads and images, and I began to play around with Photoshop. Here my mind’s eye opened up like a flower and I saw so much potential in creating images, particularly with my favorite subject, cats. And it was so relaxing, creating these images. There are days I go back through my large collection of kitty pics, choose a few that are amusing, and let my imagination run wild with all the settings. It really is a cool experience.

But what to do with all these cool pictures? I was already selling my books, so I shopped around for a website that would help with selling merchandise and shipping. Now when I have time I get to share my art with fellow cat lovers and spread the mews around! You can click here to check out my shop.

TLDR:

I’ve been writing my whole life and am getting back into writing and publishing after dealing with burnout. I’m a college professor by trade who teaches the upper-level sciences mostly, and that takes up the majority of my time.

Why cats? I love cats, always have; they make me happy and they’re fun and entertaining. A great independent pet with silly antics to hook you in their claws. They make me laugh and I like making others laugh as well, plus they’re relaxing to write about.

I’ve got some horror/thriller on my M.G. Spear pen name, but mostly I’m going to be focusing on M.G. Rorai with the cat themes. Not all poetry, but definitely all amewzing.