I’m happy to have author Allison Knight on my blog today. Welcome, Allison. Please tell us a little about yourself.

I began my career like many other authors when I read a book I didn’t like. My children scoffed when I announced I was going to write a book, but, after lots of rewrites and the support of the world’s greatest husband, I garnered a three book contract for my first historical romances. And from a big New York publisher at that.

Today, with my husband’s continued support and to the delight of my children, I write the genres I love to read, musing about my writing life on my own blog or as a guest blogger and eagerly praising the growing digital market and the convenience of an e-reader. In fact many nights, my husband and I spend the time in our recliners, listening to music and reading from our readers.

My first contemporary romance for Champagne Books, “Betrayed Bride” was released earlier this year. This kind of plot happens when a writer ends up in the hospital and wants to recall some of the sounds and commotion that go with a lengthy hospital stay. This writer will use just about anything to assist in plot development, from people watching to cooking disasters.

I’m glad to hear you found your hospital stay beneficial. Now, the blog is yours. Take it away!

I never dreamed I would one day be a novelist. Maybe a dancer, a singer, a movie star, all the kinds of things kids my age dreamed of becoming. As I grew older, I knew I wanted to teach and I wanted to teach what I loved – cooking and baking. But it didn’t stop there. I wanted to know what chemical reactions occurred when you cooked food. So I became a teacher with degrees in Chemistry and Home Economics. If I planned to write anything, it would have been a cookbook.

But teaching and raising a family is hard work, and to relax, I read. My reading choice was anything historical. When historical romances hit the shelves, I began to devour those books. I could forget all the trouble I might be having with a particular student, or one of my own children and descend into a world of make believe where I just knew I’d get a happy ever after ending.

But one of the books I read really bothered me. I stuck with it to the end, because the plot was decent, in fact a little different, but the writing was stilted, the characters poorly developed and toward the end of the book, several of those characters disappeared. I sat holding that book and thought to myself, “I bet I could do a better job.”

Several weeks later, as I drove the 150 miles to my parents’ home for the weekend, my husband asleep in the seat beside me, I heard a news broadcast naming a city in South Carolina as a sister city to a town in my home state of Indiana because they shared the same name. For years, I had known that my grandparent’s farm had been a stop in the underground railroad before and during the Civil War. At that moment a plot for a historical romance using those facts magically surfaced. I played with the idea over the weekend and when we got home, I pulled out my electric typewriter – there were no home computers back then – a package of paper and declared a corner in the dining room mine so I could write.

My daughter wanted to know what I was doing and I told her I was going to write a book. Of course, at fifteen, my daughter knew her teacher-mother couldn’t possibly do something like that so she laughed and said, “Yeh, Mom. When cows fly.”

Two years later I came home from school one afternoon to find a stuffed cow with added wings, hanging from the moving blades of our family room ceiling fan. I had just sold the first book I wrote to a publisher that had rejected that same manuscript the year before. It seemed “Cows could fly.”

The kid who wanted to be a dancer, or a movie star, even a singer is a published author. But guess what? It takes the same amount of dedication and discipline to be an author as any one of the other professions I considered as a child. Now, I proudly proclaim, yes, I’m a published author and I write romance novels so women just like me can escape into a world of make believe and forget their work or troubles for a bit.

I really enjoy hearing how authors began, and isn’t it strange how things turn out? Please tell us about your latest book.

Allison’s debut contemporary romance, Betrayed Bride, is available now.

In the hospital they keep calling her Sam and telling her she’s married to Alex Porter but she doesn’t know this Alex. Then she discovers she’s lost more than a year of her life and Alex can’t, or won’t, tell her what happened. He refuses to let her see or talk to her father and there is also something very important about Samantha, she can’t remember.

Alex Porter can’t explain how Sam was either pushed or jumped from a moving car traveling away from him, or why Sam’s memory disappeared but he’s sure her father played a role. All he can do is offer support as she recovers and wait for her to come to him as she had before the accident, hoping against hope, Sam’s father has not ruined his marriage and driven away the woman he is starting to love.

Betrayed Bride is available now from Champagne Books and from Amazon.

You can learn more about Allison and her books by email at allisonknight@mchsi.com and by visiting her website
and her blog. You can also follow her on Facebook.

Thanks so much for visiting today, Allison. Best of luck with Betrayed Bride.