Denise L Meyer

Denise Meyer utilized her communications degree from The University of Toledo as an ad agency Creative Director, newspaper marketing assistant, regional magazine editor, and college and high school communications instructor. She has also penned numerous articles for such publications as National Jeweler, InStore, The Blade, and Toledo Metropolitan Magazine. Now retired, she has written and published five novels and is the author of a blog, The Competent Writer, on the arts-based website, deviantART.com. The widowed mother of two and grandmother of five was born in Toledo, Ohio and now lives in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota.

That's the short version.

Nicknamed Mistress Plot Twist by my writing compatriots, my evolution from traditional career woman to eccentric retiree with her head in other worlds is a more improbable read than even I can dream up. Truth is? I was forced to become a novelist in order to save myself from an eternity in hell. An exaggeration, but not by much. Let’s step into the Wayback machine for a recap.

It began as an itch in childhood—a nagging desire to turn my imaginary friends into characters in a book. But the girl grew up and the idea was put aside while I earned a degree in education, moved on to teach hundreds of others how to write their stories, married, had two beautiful babies, and through an accident even the Hallmark Channel would have found too tragic, became a widow.

Every time I have to tell someone the man I loved died two days before Christmas after a fall from the roof of our home while changing a string of once jolly—now burnt out—holiday bulbs, I get that blank stare. The one that says, She has to be making that up. I'm not, though I wish I were. The sad details are recounted in my work of creative nonfiction, Dying to Stay. Suffice it to say, the sudden loss of a husband at age 33 wakes you up to exactly how short life can be.

Enter the imaginary friends, an electric typewriter, and a gallon of Witeout. Tackling my first novel, I hoped, would keep my mind from wandering to "What the heck will I do now without Jim?"

Ah, but time and grief do pass. Children grow up, and a new job opportunity opens—one away from the classroom and closer to the heart’s desire to write. A job as Senior Editor for a regional magazine morphs into a copywriting gig at a large local promotions firm which in turn evolves into a position as Creative Director at an area ad agency. A slight deviation from the agency path finds our Mistress becoming sidekick to the Director of Marketing at the city’s major newspaper, then bouncing back to the previous much-loved agency. It’s fun, it’s satisfying, it fills every spare moment of the day.

So those imaginary friends? Tucked away in a file drawer while a burgeoning career and single motherhood take center stage.

Here’s where the threat of hellfire drops into the plot. Daughter hits high school, delves into mom’s stash of old manuscripts (looking for something to “borrow” for a class project?), finds a particularly dusty and tattered stack of pages. Long hours of reading ensue and daughter confesses to mom what she has found. Asks where the rest is. Just HAS to know how the story ends. “Sorry, sweetheart, that’s all there is.” A debate follows as to why: no time for personal writing, the plot is dated, no one would care to read it (outside of a loyal daughter with a passion for fantasy). “Besides, it’s 300 typewritten pages. Who has time to enter all that into a computer?”

Turns out, the daughter does. What do you do when someone hands you a disk and says, “No more excuses. If you don’t finish this before you die, you are going straight to hell”? Right. You finish it. But not immediately. Some additional stalling occurs over the years. Paying the mortgage and ushering two teens into and through college takes precedence. Besides, one issue still nags: “This story is too dated. NO ONE today would read it.” Daughter just won’t take no. Behind mom’s back she posts the opening chapters of Fellowship of Psys on an international social media site dedicated to the arts. Three days and 5,000 views later, the nagging stops. Others are clamoring for the rest. Daughter smiles smugly. Mistress Plot Twist is born.

And with her birth comes a host of characters and stories that span the arc from urban fantasy to erotic thriller. Jonesing for a tale about a society of murdering psychics? Want to spend an hour or two with a time-traveling modern day Scrooge in search of a lasting love? Or if you've got a taste for something spicy, meet Jon No-H, a male prostitute who finds immortality and fame as an online porn star, while being held captive by his producers. It's a crazy menagerie, and you’ll find them all in the Meyer lexicon.

Five books and a lot of years later, the woman looks back in wonder. Wow, how did I manage to do all that? Was it the determined daughter? A really thick thesaurus? Steady infusions of alcohol? Maybe it was all of the above—mixed heavily with Witeout.

I may never know. But looking ahead, one thing is for certain. I will not need to pack sunscreen when I die.