Terri DuLong

http://www.terridulong.com

News
November 10, 2009
Terri Dulong | There Is A Season

E-mail me when Terri DuLong releases a new book.

Blogging at Fresh Fiction

Terri Dulong | There Is A Season
November 10, 2009
I’ve always loved the words from Ecclesiastes that begin: To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the  Read More...

Terri was born and raised in the Boston area . . . Salem, the Witch City, to be exact. An only child, she relied on imaginary friends for playmates. All these years later, Terri believes those playmates (and her love for books) led her to her passion for writing.

Married young, with three children, then divorced, Terri went to college to become a legal secretary. After remarrying, with the children getting older, she decided to pursue a career as a Registered Nurse. She also continued her love for reading women's fiction. As for her own writing, well it was limited to extremely long letters to friends and keeping a journal. After working in Critical Care as an R.N., the thought of writing "seriously" became stronger, and Terri took a creative writing class at college. Encouraged by the professor, Terri began writing with the hope of publication.

With the transfer of her husband's job to the Tampa, Florida, area, she began to work part-time as a home health RN and devote more and more time to writing. She began attending writers' conferences to not only improve her craft of writing but also to understand the complicated world of publishing.

Attending more and more writers' conferences, networking, reading, always working on her writing, Terri never gave up. She couldn't. Writing was her passion and filled her soul. Queries went out; rejections came back. But she noticed the rejections were now not form letters but very nice personal correspondence. Believing there had to be an agent, editor or publisher out there who would love her work, she kept writing.

When Terri's husband retired in 2004, the couple relocated two hours north to Cedar Key, an island off the west coast of Florida. They knew from many previous visits that the small town, surrounded as it is by Mother Nature, was the perfect place for them. And Terri's muse went into high gear . . .

lots of quirky characters, people who actually waved to you and knew your name, a place that touched her soul. She was in her element.

She wrote a women's novel set in Cedar Key, and then she attended the Romance Writers of America Conference, summer 2007. Upon returning home, she sent off a query to Kensington Books with the required first three chapters, promptly forgot about it and got on with life . . . until December 11.

That was when Terri received an e-mail from her editor's assistant, requesting the full manuscript. And on Feb. 26, 2008, Terri was offered a two-book contract from Kensington. Her women's fiction novel--the first in her Cedar Key series--will be released Oct. 27, 2009.

As for Terri, well, her motto remains: "Believe in yourself and make great things happen."

Books: