I’m new to She Writes so I’d like to introduce myself with the hope that I will fit in with all of you she writers out there. My name is Cindy McDonald and for twenty-six years my life whirled around a song and a dance: I have been a professional dancer/choreographer for most of my adult life and never gave much thought to a writing career until 2005. Don’t ask me what happened, but suddenly I felt drawn to my computer to write about things I have experienced (greatly exaggerated upon of course) with my husband’s Thoroughbreds and happenings at the racetrack.
Surprised? Why didn’t I write about my experiences with dance? Eh, believe it or not life at the racetrack is much more…racy. The drama is outrageous--not that dancers don’t know how to create drama, believe me, they do, but race trackers just seem to get more down and dirty with it which makes great story telling—great fiction.
I didn’t start out writing books, The Unbridled Series started out as a TV drama, and the Hollywood readers loved the show. The problem was we just couldn’t sell it. So one of the readers said to me, “Cindy, don’t be stupid, turn your scripts into a book series.” and so I did!
Last spring I took the big leap and exchanged my dancin’ shoes for a lap top—I retired from dance. It was a scary proposition, I was terrified, but I had the full support of my husband, Saint Bill. This past year has been a huge change for me. I went from dancing hard five hours a night to sitting in front of a computer. I still work-out and I take my dog, Harvey, for a daily run. I have to or I’d be as big as a house. Do I miss dance? Sometimes I do. I miss my students. I miss choreographing musicals, but I love my books. I love Westwood Thoroughbred Farm, the characters, and the sexual tension that I have created, and when someone tells me how much they enjoyed reading my first book, Deadly.Com, my heart over flows with pride and joy. I’m not alone in that, my husband has been stopped by people at his workplace to tell him how much they loved the book, and they quickly hand him their copy asking for a signature. He delivers the book to me with an ear-to-ear grin on his face and says, “You have to sign this right away for so-and-so.” He was thrilled to be married to a dancer, but somehow I think he’s even more delighted to be married to an author. Who knew?
Oh, and one more big change for me this year—I went from being a lifetime blonde to a redhead and back to blonde. Whew! What a great year!
I have just released my second book from my Unbridled series, HOT COCO. I’m waiting with bated breath to hear what my readers think about the chaotic Coco Beardmore. It’s been a year of change for me, which brings me to ask you… have any of you had any big life/life style changes in the past year or so?
