A former librarian turned freelance writer and indexer, I am an eclectic scholar with degrees in classical studies, drama, library science, and organizational communication. I am committed to the concept of "Everyman Theater," bringing life's lessons to the world via good storytelling, whether it is in the form of novels, plays, or puppet theater. I began writing novel-length stories in 1991, drawn into writing by my love of science fiction. After making a handful of attempts at submitting to publishers, I pretty much put it all on the back burner and began focusing my creative energies on community theater, where I did everything from light crew to stage props to orchestra pit. A need for a job led to graduate school followed by a career in academic librarianship, which, because of scheduling conflicts, put theater on the back burner, giving me the opportunity to redirect my creative energies back into writing fiction.It was at a 2009 meeting of the Heartland Chapter of the American Society for Indexing that I got the inspiration to really make a go at serious writing, though. At dinner the night before the meeting, I met our keynote speaker, an indexer who is also a several-times published romance writer. Her advice? If you want to get published, write romance. So I did. Two months later, I had my first contemporary romance, and while waiting to hear back from a publisher during the summer of 2010, I wrote a second.But in the meantime, I still had these sci fi novels, and I couldn't figure out quite how to pitch them. Looking over my writing, though, I quickly realized it is really all romance--my novels, my plays, my short stories. Whether contemporary, science fiction, paranormal, comedy, or drama, a thread of romance runs through it all. But the question remained: How do I pitch them? Then I heard about Amazon's CreateSpace from a friend and decided, why not self-publish them? So, four books later, I have some of my sci fi and paranormal on Amazon.com, and you are reading this!And my contemporary romances? Well, that second book I mentioned above, A Chance for Life, has been published by Tate Publishing, and will be available on Amazon starting September 18, 2012; and after multiple rewrites, I am pitching the first book, Words To Love By, to agents. I have also started the sequel to A Chance for Life, and I woke up with another group of completely unrelated characters in my head just this morning, so it continues...I was born near Philadelphia, but we moved to Kitsap County, Washington State, when I was five, so I've always considered myself a Northwesterner, even if most of my family is still in the East. We were first-generation pioneers! My dad quit his job, we sold our house, put everything in the back of the station wagon, and headed west, tent camping along the way. Our first Washington home was a campsite at Fay Bainbridge State Park, where my mom, my sister, and I hung out all day while my dad (an architect) put on a suit and tie and rode the ferry to Seattle to look for a job. Thirty years later I left Washington to head to the "fly-over zone," first for Library School at Indiana University, Bloomington, and then to Kentucky for a job. Thirteen years later, I decided to get out of higher education and started a business, LAEindexing.com, providing back-of-book indexing, abstracting, and proofreading services. I am also writing up a storm again, here in Kentucky, where I share a home with my retired parents and seven adopted stray cats.For more information and some writing samples, please see my Web site at LauraAnneEwald.com. I'd love to hear from you, so don't hesitate to use the contact form to reach me!