About Dee Therese
Growing up in Germany
One of the perks and consequences of growing up in a military family was that I moved around a lot. Some of my first memories were of Germany. Though, due to my age, I was not able to experience much of the rich culture or scenery while I was there, but it did have an effect on my pallet. Some of my favorite food are favored dishes from Bavaria.
Though one part of German culture did follow me back to the States when we returned. They start school at 4 years of age. So upon entering a new school, I was help back a grade due to starting kindergarten at an early age. I am not sure by what logic this was decided, however, I was particularly excited to enter second grade.
School in the States
Through my school years, I entered a total of nine elementary schools. I suspect this was a major reason for my struggles with reading and writing. Not that I was incapable. On the contrary. I imagine it was a lack of effort on my part. I found ways of getting out of reading homework, which didn’t go over well when my father found out. As far as writing, I tried to do as little as possible.
But soon High School came and writing became a necessary evil to an undisciplined mind. This is where I began developing my love for stories. Though, it did not evolve in the usual way. It was at this time that I was introduced to heavy story telling in the form of Anime. With this as inspiration, I began my short career as a Fanfiction Writer. I know. Shocker.
Writing Inspiration
The particular Fanfiction that I focused on will not be revealed here for the sake of saving myself the cringe of having to explain my fascination with that particular anime and character. However, I did discover through writing this story that I was creating more content not canon to the original than using what was already there. The notion of writing something on my own was still a foreign thought to me, but this was the first hint of my abilities to come.
After graduation, I began at a junior college in town to get my basics out of the way before pursuing a degree in Vet Tech. But, like most stories, things must be thrown in the way of the heroin for them to grow. My home life became unstable and I had to move across the country in order to secure a place to live and go to school.
Becoming an Adult
Having to work a full time job and go to school full time was a difficult decision, but one that was necessary. Though my writing took a backseat to pressing matters in real life, I always came back to it as a means of grounding myself and expressing my creativity. While working, I met my now husband.
We shared an interest in Anime and history and became friends/ roommates. Unusual, yes, but we were platonic for two and a half years before we started dating. Then a few years after that we became engaged. But before the wedding, I became pregnant with our son. Deciding to concentrate on the birth, we held off getting married till the following December after our son was born. Within four years, he was diagnosed with Autism.
First Novel
Despite the challenges of raising an Autistic child, the creativity and drive to write never left me. I spent the majority of my writing time in the evenings when he was in bed or while he was taking a nap, but I always tried to write something as often as possible. But things didn’t always go as planned and my story was put by the wayside in favor of being there for my son. Before I knew it, nearly ten years had passed since I started my young adult series without finishing the first book, originally called REACHING.
Now that my son was school aged and doing well, I spent my days off from work working on my manuscript, editing and reediting till it was the story I wanted to tell, renaming it A SONG OF RESONANCE. However, despite all of that work, it was not picked up after querying over 40 agents. So I went back to the drawing board after some advice about the length of the novel.
More Writing
Having worked on the same story for so long, I needed a break from it. So onto the back burner it went so I could clear my mind. During that break I decided to try my hand at Adult Romance. Strange enough, it was listening to Reddit posts on Youtube videos that inspired the next story I wrote.
It was a heart breaking tale about a pregnant woman finding out that her dedicated husband was cheating on her with her childhood best friend. Though an epic story in it’s own right, I didn’t want to write someone else’s story like that. So I thought about what other stories impacted me in the same way and Jane Austin came to mind. My favorite book by her is PERSUASION. So I used some tropes from that story with the influences from that Reddit post and SOMETHING LIKE PERSUASION was born.
With the completion of SOMETHING LIKE PERSUASION came a load of ideas to write re-imaginings of the rest of Jane Austin’s books. I want to emulate the variety of stories she created by writing them in different ways. Though I hope to be able to have my books published one day, there is always the dream of having this as my job. I understand that it’s rare to be able to support yourself with a career as an Author, but I at least wish to one day see one or more of my stories out there for people to enjoy.