We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Heather Webber a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Heather, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

A dream.

That’s how my writing career started.

Literally.

I woke up one morning in the late 1990s with a vivid image of a plot, characters, and dialogue in my head. I immediately thought the dream would make a great movie—then changed my mind. A book. It had to be a book—so none of the good parts would be left out. When I told my husband about it, he listened intently, and then encouraged me to be the one to write the story.

Me?

I truly had no business writing a book. I was a young stay-at-home mom who had all of three weeks of higher education. But I was young enough and naive enough to try. To try…and to dream.

Don’t look for that book in stores—it’s tucked into my office closet where it leads a happy coexistence with the dust bunnies. Writing it, however, sparked my love of the craft, and to this day, it’s still one of my favorite stories.

After that first manuscript, I continued to write. I joined several professional writing organizations and also joined a critique group. I learned all I could about the business of writing and the craft of writing (and I’m still learning!). I queried numerous agents and editors. I received a lot of rejections.

It took nearly five years for The Call that a book of mine was finally going to be published. That was in 2002.

My thirty-fifth novel will be released next year.

A dream come true.

Heather, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

When I was younger I’d rush home from school every day to watch two shows: General Hospital at three PM and Quincy M.E. at four.

Quincy is my favorite fictional TV detective. A medical detective, yes, but you knew, just knew, that by the end of the episode he’d find the source of the botulism, salmonella, Ebola, and save the country from certain (excruciating) death. He let no murderer go unpunished, let no rare poison go uncovered. He was clever, cranky, and oddly loveable.

I was so convinced I wanted to be just like Quincy that I entered college as pre-med.

As it often does, life interrupted that plan and I dropped out of college.

Six years later, I had a dream that changed my life, and I embarked on a writing career. My first three books were historical romances. The inspiration had come from Tall Stacks, a former steamboat festival in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Then, with age came wisdom—I finally realized that I had loved the *mysteries* in Quincy more than the medical aspects of the show. I switched to writing cozy mysteries.

I wrote five books before adding a little magic into my stories. From there, I wrote more than a dozen other magical mysteries. With each book, however, I found I was focusing more on the characters than the mystery.

It was then I decided to start writing standalone novels that feature average, everyday people who are just a little bit broken and in need of healing. All these books include a little romance, mystery, and magic—all the things I love to write about.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I have to confess, there are many times in my career when I almost walked away from it. Chose something else. Something more stable. But true writers know that’s nearly impossible to do. Because the stories keep coming.

There have been several pivots in my career. The first came early on, when I was writing my first mystery series. I was writing book number five in that series when the news came that the publisher was closing their paperback cozy line. I had to quickly come up with another series idea and try to find a new publisher.

With my new series, I was contracted for three novels. After the first came out, I learned that my contract would not be renewed. Pivot!

For yet another publisher, I started writing magical mysteries under the pen name Heather Blake. I had ten books with them before word came that this publisher was closing their paperback cozy line, too.

I had a decision to make. Come up with another mystery series or take a leap of faith and write the standalone I’d been thinking about for years. I took the leap and am happy I did. I currently have six standalones and more are on the way.

Change isn’t always easy but sometimes it’s for the best.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

One of the things I find challenging as a creative person is that there isn’t an off switch. If I’m not writing, I’m thinking about writing. It’s truly hard to take a vacation! Years ago, I started crocheting, because if I’m counting stitches, it gives my brain something else to think about. Yet, it’s another creative outlet, so the cycle just continues.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.heatherwebber.com
• Instagram: @booksbyheather
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/heatherwebberbooks
• Other: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/heather-webber