Annette Bower has always told and repeated stories. As a child, she was often reprimanded for being a tattletale. She recalls finding a quiet place and making up stories for her own entertainment. She wrote and produced a high school play and she wrote teenage angst poetry in high school and nursing school. Then life took over and she lost her confidence in her imagination. On occasion she would send poems or stories away and they would be rejected. She didn’t realize that there are many reasons for rejection and that it didn’t mean that she wasn’t a writer.

She hung the writer dream in the back of the closet until her forties when she carefully unpacked it and shook it out again. In 1993 she wrote the first 60 pages of a novel on a brand new computer only to lose it in cyberspace. She cried and cried and told her husband that she would either have to get a job or a divorce. He suggested she return to University to study English. She did. Then she started to write short stories so that she could attend writing workshops close to home. But she also wrote her first romance novel which had been twice requested in full but rejected. She continues to revise. Then she wrote her second romance which was also requested and rejected and is waiting for a turn for revisions. For the time being, she receives affirmation from her short stories that are published in anthologies and magazines in Canada, the United States and the UK.

Sometimes she wonders if it is time to retire from writing. She’ll still be 60 and 65 and 70 but her life won’t be as rich or exciting and she would only bother her family by trying to run their lives rather than the lives of her characters. Her family encourages her to continue telling her stories.