Leigh Kimmel

I started writing stories in grade school because everyone was tired of listening to me tell them all about the world next door, where things went a little differently. Of course it was a long, hard road from those first eager scribbles about hidden worlds under or behind the ordinary one to my first professional sale. And then the sharp disappointment of watching it melt away to nothing when an embezzler stole the publisher's finances and the magazine died stillborn. Sometimes it seemed like success existed only to be snatched away from me, so that I could be scolded and punished when I expressed dismay at yet another sharp disappointment. But finally a few magazines and anthologies survived long enough to see my words into print.

Meanwhile, I discovered the success that could come from publishing non-fiction. For a brief time I was bringing in a decent income writing articles for ready-reference publications. And then the housing market crashed, libraries cut their budgets, and that stream of income dried up.

So I built websites. I blogged. I built under and fought the tendency to become bitter. And all the time I kept on writing about the world next door, where things go just a little differently than in the fields where we know.