I was first published as a paranormal author back in the early 1990s. I was one of the founders of that original wave of paranormal and am the leader of the new wave of paranormal that started at the beginning of this century.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I've been a huge fan of all things paranormal my whole life. For me, it was always a question of when, not if, I was going to write a paranormal series. I dipped my toe in the genre by incorporating a mystical curse into the 'MacCarrick Brothers Trilogy.'
I love the paranormal, because there, every genre I write can become one beacon for my imagination.
I think I'm always going to be a paranormal girl at heart. I'm always going to be intrigued by it.
It wasn't until I was in my teens that I started admiring writers as inspirations for my own work, and my earliest influences there were Stephen King, Marion Zimmer Bradley and Richard Adams.
In the early Seventies, I started writing a little autobiographical novel about my childhood - I made it into a mystery story.
From a young age I was obsessed with the mysterious, the esoteric, the paranormal.
I was writing at a really young age, but it took me a long time to be brave enough to become a published writer, or to try to become a published writer. It's a very public way to fail. And I was kind of scared, so I started out as a ghost writer, and I wrote for other series, like Disney 'Aladdin' and 'Sweet Valley' and books like that.
'Paranormal Activity' was a unique project in that I made it basically on my own, with a little help, and I had no exposure to the filmmaking world when I made it.
In all honesty, at that time, I never saw myself as an author... I was just a Mom in a state of panic, trying to enter a short story contest to win the prize money in order to keep the lights on in my home.
I coauthored my first nonfiction book by the time I was 25. I have been involved in nonfiction documentaries, newspapers, TV and internet since that time.