My name is Naya Lionsong. I'm currently living in Australia with my husband and 3 year old daughter. I'm originally from the US (east coast girl) and hope to get back there some day, but I love it out here in Australia!
I've been writing since 1995. At first I wasn't sure where I wanted to go with it. I would never have even started writing if it wasn't for my college English teacher who told me he felt I had a talen for it. I wasn't so sure at first, but the more writing I did, the more I loved it.
My biggest hurdle at the time was getting over my shyness of having other people read my work. So I involved myself in online simulation role playing (SIMing for short), which inadvertantly involved a lot of writing. Needless to say I had to get over my shyness real quick, but at least I had a lot of fun doing it.
I didn't publish my first book until 2006. I had been working on a fiction story, called Arian's Secret (which is now on the backburner), but I was hit with writer's block really hard for quite a while. I was told at that point that nonfiction sold better than fiction, so I should write a nonfiction book first.
I'm not sure if it's true or not, but I figured I'd give it a try. It took me a while to come up with something to write about. I wanted to do something that hadn't been done before. I racked my brain for several weeks until it finally dawned on me to write about how Star Wars affected my life growing up. Thus The Force Within was born.
My second book, You Don't Have to Take It! A Kid's Guide to Understanding & Preventing Child Abuse , followed shortly after. Once I had those two published I began researching ways to market my books. Well... that took me off on a completely different tangent (I have a tendency to be easily distracted) and for the last couple of years I did very little writing.
Thankfully my little journey on the road of distraction actually gave the the idea and information I needed to write Gateway to Financial Freedom , which will show people how they can start their own online businesses while avoiding scams and many common pitfalls.
This coming November I will be participating in NanoWriMo and writing my first ever fiction novel, which you can read more about in Current Projects . Visit My Blog for regular updates and join me on the Lionsong's Den Forum . I'd love to get to know you!
Take Care,
Naya