Come Meet New Author Theresa McClinton!

Hi Danica! Thanks so much for inviting me to your amazing blog today!

My name is Theresa McClinton. I’m twenty-six years old, live in central Ohio with my husband, three kids, cat, and bunny rabbit. Yes, I know. I’ve got a lot going on. On top of all the normal chaos in my house, I’m also a YA paranormal romance writer. Actually, that’s the calm part of my life! 

 

I was never a big reader. In fact, when I was a kid, I would much rather someone read to me, rather than on my own. Why? It was a combination of several factors. The main one was that we moved around so much in my childhood, I barely had enough time to adjust to one school before we packed our bags and relocated to another. This pattern left me with less motivation to pick up a book, because all those big words were just too intimidating. I’ll tell you a secret. To this day, I am a terrible speller. (Thank God for word processors!)

But when we did settle down, it was on the glorious island of Kodiak Alaska. See, when my mom married my amazing stepfather, he had been living on Kodiak for thirty plus years. So instead of staying in Washington, where we didn’t really have any reason to dig in our heels and stick around, we relocated. By then, we were used to it.

Fast-forward seven years, and I just completed my freshman year of high school. Again, we move, this time to North Carolina. Here is where my interest in reading and writing really sprouted and bloomed.

I’ll never forget sitting in English class, listening to my teacher talk about the subtle undertones in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. My eyes suddenly opened, and for the first time in my life, I saw the true potential in books.

Not just books, but stories. Epic ones. Stories so submerging, you forget to eat. Books that force you bring it to the bathroom because you can’t bear to set it down, but you really have to go! Stories that not only kept you completely entwined, but emotionally invested. I learned to love books, their characters, their stories, and I learned how to care if one of them was in pain. In fact, with some really fantastic stories, I’ve hurt with them.

Fast forward another two years, and I’m tearing through novels. Now I’m involved with my high school newspaper, The South Wind. Not only involved, but I’m a features editor and features reporter. Another year later, I applied for an internship at our local newspaper.

With my hopes high and my ears more wet than a baby seal, I waltzed into the newspaper, ready to tackle the project of becoming a real life newspaper reporter; the one with scarlet red lipstick and six inch stilettoes.

Too bad that once I was done with my internship, I loathed journalism. On my last day, I passed through the double doors, walked across their oddly set parking lot, unlocked my little Toyota, and made a decision.

No more editor-in-chief breathing down my throat, no more writing about things I was deathly bored with, no more being assigned projects. I was going rogue. I was going to write novels.

Eight years of a crazy life later, here I am! Self taught, motivated, and completely in love with what I do, I get to play with my kids during the day, and weave paranormal romance stories at night. It’s the best life I could ask for.

  

Please feel free to visit with Theresa on her website, where she talks about her upcoming debut novel, The Stone Guardian. 

Happy Reading!