Tales From Burkeland: Tale One
I’m glad you’re joining me on my journey! For readers wanting to get to know the author behind the page, Tales from Burkeland is the place to be. Here you’ll find personal stories as well as publishing news and other writing-related content.
The Story Behind the Title
When I brainstormed titles for this blog, my thoughts kept going back to a couple things my mom says, “What’s going on in Leann’s world?” and, “Can I stay at Hotel Burke-Henry?” She’s been saying the first for years. The other she started after my husband and I bought our house. She asks it whenever she comes to visit. The answer, of course, is, “Yes!”
I played with a few title ideas that combined those statements, but none of them had the sound I wanted. Then, while I was wheezing on the elliptical machine at the gym (where I do a lot of creative thinking), Tales from Burkeland popped into my head. I said it out loud a few times, and it felt right. I had my title!
Why Am I a Writer?
The short answer: It’s all I’ve ever wanted to be.
Well, there was a brief time in elementary school when I wanted to be a killer whale trainer at Sea World. I checked out every book on orcas our local library had in the children’s section—a surprising number for an Indiana community. That dream fizzled quickly, but orcas are still my favorite marine animal.
By age nine, I’d decided to be a novelist. My elementary school participated in a young authors program where we created our own books out of blank board books. I fell in love with storytelling through those bright white pages. I wrote tons of short stories and a novel based on a game of make-believe I played in my backyard. None of that will ever see publication.
Despite that early fervor, my journey from young author to published fiction writer has been more of a Sunday drive down a winding Southern Indiana highway than a straight shot down an interstate.
In high school, well-meaning adults questioned if I’d be able to make a living as a writer. Determined to prove writing could produce a steady paycheck, I explored print journalism. I planned to write news articles by day and create fiction stories by night. I earned a Bachelor of Arts in writing from DePauw University and began my decade-long career in professional journalism with an internship at The Salt Lake Tribune. After graduating college, I moved to Southern Indiana where I worked as a staff reporter for The Dubois County Herald before transitioning to freelance work. I focused on hyperlocal journalism, telling the stories of everyday people in the small, rural communities in Dubois and surrounding counties. It’s a powerful yet often overlooked style of journalism that taught me the power of a free press and, more importantly, of the written word. I carry these lessons with me in my fiction.
I loved working in journalism, but after writing all day for my job, the last thing I wanted to do when I got home was write more. My dream of being a novelist burned in my soul, but it stayed mostly on the back burner.
In 2023, that changed.
After a combination of life events that included a small health scare, I got real with myself. Yes, I’d been writing for as long as I could remember. Yes, I’d been writing professionally for years. But my published work wasn’t the stories I yearned to tell. If I wanted to make my dream come true, changes had to be made.
I joined David Farland’s Apex Writers Group and the Midwest Writers Guild of Evansville, Indiana. In early 2024, I published my first fiction piece, “In Flames,” the Midwest Writers Guild’s 2023 anthology Rebirth of the Prose.
I also joined Wulf Moon’s Wulf Pack Writers and studied his Super Secrets of Writing. After applying his teachings, I sold “Rise of the Witches” to Flame Tree Press for Circe, part of their Myths, Gods, and Immortals series. It’s slated to publish in early 2025.
Remember that novel I wrote as a kid? It’s morphed into The Heirs Saga, a novel series currently in planning. Several short stories set in the same world are in various stages, too.
As you can tell, I have a lot of work to do. I’m still at least a few years from realizing my dream of being a published novelist. But it’s more real now than it’s ever been, and I can say that I’m a published fiction author.
For now, I’ll leave you with this: don’t sleep on your dreams. You can make them a reality.
It’s worth it.
Read Tales from Burkeland before anyone else.
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