My First Finished Novel

I've wanted to be a writer since I was 12 years old. I was in fifth grade and reading behind my age level when I discovered The Hobbit. We were only allowed to check one book out from the school library at a time, but the very strict nun who was my teacher made a singular exception for me.  I checked out The Hobbit and read it 4 times that year alone as well as dozens of other books. By the next year I was reading  a year ahead of my level. By eighth grade I was reading at a college level and writing my own stories.

 

Writing a novel is a whole different kettle from writing some short stories. I didn't manage to complete a whole novel until I was 32. 9/11 happened and suddenly I realized I had a story screaming to be told. I was already obsessed with firefighters so there's my hero, Jack. Nice guy who really needs a new apartment because he's suddenly got a dog and his place doesn't accept them.

 

I went to school to be a teacher and there was my heroine, high school English teacher, Katherine. I had actually seen her picture in the paper a few years earlier. Ok, it wasn't really her, but the photo stuck with me. A cop was killed on a routine traffic stop in downtown Cleveland at a gas station I passed every day for a year on my way to work. The Cleveland Plain Dealer had what I considered to be the bad taste to run a photo of the widow in hysterics on the church steps after her husband's funeral. My heart still goes out to that woman. She became Katherine, only Katherine hadn't married her cop so she wasn't a widow, but she still got her picture in the paper and all the bills from their community property without the death benefits. So she's renting out half her house to make the bills and swearing never to marry another professional hero.

 

Enter Jack, and his dog. He's going to save her from bankruptcy. He's her hero. 

 

Dammit.

 

I'd really appreciate some reads (and votes, don't forget votes) on my Romance First Chapters entry, Three Alarm Tenant.

 

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977092428

 

My first finished novel (there's been 6 since then), my first contest entry and, with a little help, my first published book. Many thanks.