Whoever said "today is the first day of the rest of your life" was obviously right, but I am not sure they realized how much power that little sentiment could pack. Today, Wednesday August 26, 2008 really IS the first day of the rest of my life, and I have this deep-down feeling that I may be on the verge of something big. Well, big for me at least, if not for anyone else.

Since I'm new to IA, I'll elaborate a bit...

In 1984, after spending my elementary and middle school years as a typical class nerd who sat around in the shadows quietly dreaming up stories and writing poetry, I decided that writing was something I wanted to pursue. Just to see if I could actually do something about this strange new urge, I wrote a short article about Pete Rose (I'm from Ohio) and sent it to the local paper, The Springfield News-Sun. Now, bear in mind I know little to nothing about sports. But what I did know is that I had very strong opinions about some of Mr. Rose's behaviors outside the game - at least from my limited fourteen-year-old perspective. A few days later, I got a call from the Sports Editor at the newspaper. He didn't know how young I was, but he wanted to publish my editorial article in the Sports Pages. I was completely THRILLED when the paper was delivered promptly the next week and my family and friends started asking me about my byline. It didn't earn me one cent, and I'm rather certain it really didn't change any grand worldviews; but what it did do was inspire me to continue writing. And, so, I did just that.

By the end of my high school years, I had written op-ed pieces for the local paper, works for our school paper and entered several writing contests locally and statewide (not to mention acing the term papers and reports I had to write). I won the American Home Week Essay Contest, which resulted in my pocketing $400 and a new computer for my school's office; and that same year I also won the SADD Student Writing Competition. My writing "career" was really beginning to take off, even though I wasn't old enough to buy a beer, drive a car or cast a vote!

When I went to college at Clark State Community College with the help of two academic scholarships (which I am convinced I won because of the essays I wrote on the scholarship applications), it was more of the same. More good grades on term papers and bluebook exams, a win for the short story division of the Student Writing Competition and publication in the school's literary magazine. All this time, I continued writing op-eds for the local paper, and I also wrote a young adult novel, which I began to send out to publishers. If my novel had been accepted that year, I would not have continued my college education, as I was studying business while yearning to do something much more creative with my life. But, alas, the rejection letters piled in, and while there were some small rays of hope of my book, then titled Jerimy's Peace, getting published, it never happened. So, I promptly threw the manuscript in a box and swore never to write anything ever, ever again.

Fortunately, I didn't follow-through with that vow. In 2005, after a long hiatus of not writing much of anything beyond the op-eds I occasionally ranted to the local paper, I was encouraged by a co-worker/friend to dig the manuscript out, update it, and send it out again. But I didn't heed this advice. Instead, what I did dig out was a dusty old story I had written over a decade before, as an assignment for an English comp class. The professor who graded it told me at one point "This is almost publishable," but I didn't really believe him. So, in 2005, I sent it to a small press to prove the professor wrong and to justify my temper tantrum for my previous book's rejections so many years before. Only, it didn't work out that way.

The small POD publisher, Publish America, immediately offered to publish the short story as a novella, and by the end of 2005, it was sitting on my bookshelf, being carried at the local bookstores and showing up on Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble, and I was sitting at a book signing at a local author fair. Inspired by the publication of the novella, I dug the dusty young adult novel out of the slushpile, updated it and submitted it. Months later, what was now called Colby's Peace was a completed book as well. These two small successes rejuvenated my desire to write, and so I wrote once again. I entered contests and won many of them. I wrote for magazines, newspapers and websites. I worked as a columnist and contributing co-editor for several publications. I wrote content for sites like Associated Content and others. And I loved every minute of it...highlights being getting published in a Chicken Soup book, wining the global International Past Loves Day Writing Contest and having my first book turned into an independent film of the same name (The Monster's Mind), on which I was able to work as a production assistant, assistant casting director, assistant screen writer and even a movie extra! Who wouldn't love being able to pick an actor to play a killer you created!

...But one thing I noticed as I was undertaking all these writing efforts was that I was getting to meet a lot of other writers like me--that is to say, writers with no formal education in journalism--writers who were writing for the love of the craft and not supporting themselves with it, but just enjoying it for the opportunity to gain an occasional byline. I wanted to HELP these writers, but I wasn't sure how. I happily answered any questions I could about "How do I use the Writer's Market?", "What sort of margins does a manuscript have?" and things like "What's a subsidy publisher?" All things I knew from my years of getting my stuff published. Mostly, these burgeoning writers just wanted to hear from someone like themselves. I suppose all the writing reference books in the world are not quite as valuable as input from someone who has been there and done that.

In 2006, driven partially by desire to work with other writers and partially by the threat of not being able to pay the rent on my meager secretarial salary, I decided to go a step further. I placed an ad on a free writing newsletter I get called Writer Gazette. I said I would be happy to work as a proofreader/copyeditor for writers who want a second set of eyes to look at their work - and it would be a second set of eyes who has done a lot of writing herself. I really didn't expect anyone to respond to the ad. After all, what do I know? I don't have a degree in journalism or English. I am not and probably will never be on the bestseller's list. I don't have any real influence in the publishing world or know any publishers personally. But it didn't matter. I got one response. And that response from romance author Rosemarie Piemonte turned out to be a chain-starting project that put me on this threshold I am on today.

For a couple of months, I edited Rosemarie's second novel, Falling Roses: The Years Between. By editing, I mean proofreading, rewriting and reorganizing, fixing spelling, format, grammar, punctuation and style; checking for continuity and consistency, and whatever else Rosemarie needed. I found in doing this that I was able to use my uncanny sense of proper grammar (in gradeschool I LOVED to diagram sentences, which didn't get me into any popularity contests), as well as my desire to work creatively to help someone hone their work. And Rosemarie was floored by the results. She passed my name around to several people, two of them turning out to be my next two clients, Barb Flamm (gothic novelist) and Rachel Madorsky (medical author and speaker). And so, the writer from little ole Springfield, Ohio, who started off her career complaining about Pete Rose, was now helping other authors write and/or fix their books.

Next on the list was Frank Say, who I met in a Yahoo Books and Literature chatroom (the same chatroom where I met my now-husband). I edited Frank's 83,000-word novel in just ten days, and Nine Lives has just been published. Frank was followed by established British author Tony Thorne, who writes anthologies of sci fi and macabre stories. Then, Stan Marine, who got my name from a book printer in Florida; and Otto Wiche, a Canadian author who was given my name by a printer somewhere out in the western US. After Otto came a mass-marketing effort on my part, as I went through my Writer's Market, the Literary Marketplace, my Christian Writer's Marketplace and any other lists I could find to email a couple thousand book publishers and printers to let them know, "Hey, I can do editing for your authors - all for $1 a page - and I have the references to prove it!" Today, my client list is ever-growing, and I am working for two publishers as well as several independent authors all over the US, in the UK, in Spain and in Canada. Heck, just the other day, I got an email from an author in Ecuador because she got my name from a bookseller!

So, in a nutshell, there you have it. I am a writer by passion; a copyeditor by experience; a grammar nerd whose more than willing to pass her knowledge along; and someone who loves to have her own bylines and help people make their own a reality. For the time being, I am always looking for new clients, so email me at autiej@gmail.com if you have a manuscript that needs help...in the mean time, I'll be writing a book with my best friend Wes from the UK and keeping an eye out for run-on sentences from all over the world!

Autumn Conley

Writer, Copyeditor/Proofreader

3205 Buder Court

St. Ann, MO  63074

314-620-9627

autiej@gmail.com