It’s still hard for me to process the fact that after nearly 20 years of writing, putting it aside, editing, shelving it, and then returning to it, my novel is finally out in the world.

It has been a long road to get to this point. I started Daredevil during one of the busiest periods of my life. My PR/Communications consulting practice was taking off and I was juggling multiple clients, my daughters were both in elementary school, my husband was traveling fairly regularly for work, and I was also teaching aerobics classes three or four times a week – both because I loved it and for the free gym membership! Somehow, during that crazy time, I rediscovered my love for creative writing and began taking classes at my alma mater’s Writer’s Program.

In between two of my UCLA classes, I had a spark of an idea that came to me after spending time with some of the women in my little suburb of Westlake Village. Some of them would tell you that they had everything they’d ever wanted, but beneath the surface things weren’t quite as ideal as they wanted to believe. And some of them seemed downright lost and discontented. I wondered what it was they were missing in their lives and what lengths they might go to find it.

It was just a rough nugget of something but I sat down and started writing. Macy Reardon was born. I sent the first few pages to one of my instructors at The Writer’s Program. His response was more than I could have hoped for:

Holy Shit (that’s a term of praise). Don’t stop. Whatever you do. Don’t stop. It’s great. Really. Those 22 pages are just about perfect.

I was excited. It was the beginning of something. I didn’t yet know where it would go but I knew I had something and more importantly, I just wanted to keep going. I couldn’t stop writing. Every night after work, after getting the kids settled in bed, I would retreat to my desk and write.

I joined another class that the same writing instructor who’d read my first pages was leading. I workshopped the book in his class. I met two writers whose opinions I trusted and we formed a writer’s group. They helped me research ideas, critiqued my pages, and kept me honest. It took time but I finished the book. My former instructor said he’d be shocked if I didn’t sell it.

I had heard many stories of how persistent authors have to be to find representation. I thought I was prepared for the rejection and motivated for the long haul. I was wrong.

After hundreds of pitches and more than a year of trying, I took a break. A long break. I returned to it. Reworked it based on feedback. Tried pitching it again. Met with my writer’s group again. I took another class. And at the end of that one, I put aside the novel for years. It wasn’t that I wanted to let go of Macy Reardon – I thought about her all the time. But I couldn’t bring myself to look at the novel again nor could I write a new book. I wrote blogs and short stories during this time and of course, my full-time job continued to require lots of unrelated (and not creative) writing. But I figured Daredevil was dead.

And then one day, I pulled it off the shelf and reread it. I still saw something there. Macy’s story still called to me and I still believed her journey might resonate with others. I decided to give it another try, to put it through another edit, and to finally, push it out into the world.

Now Daredevil is available and holding the paperback book in my hand, hearing that people have ordered it from Amazon, that they are actually reading it is surreal. For better or for worse, I’ve finally birthed the baby and while it’s terrifying in many ways to have it out there, it’s also incredibly exciting to have finally accomplished what I set out to do so many years ago.