Bio Blurb

This week we were asked: “You’re the headline speaker at a writers’ conference, and you need to submit a short bio for the program. What will you include?”

I will never forget the first time that I had to submit a bio with a piece being published…

I PANICKED!

I literally panicked. When I THOUGHT that I had calmed down, I contacted the assistant of a famous writer I know who had been very friendly. I didn’t hear right back, and I got embarrassed. Then the writer emailed  me and said she was sorry, but she was in a cabin in the woods and her communications had been broken up. Still in the cabin with her family, she took the time to give me advice…

advice which I was unknowingly still too panicked to be able to recall now.

The only thing that I do remember was telling her how awkward I found doing it in the third-person was and she said, yes, that she thought so, too, but that is the way to do it.

In past times dust jacked bios were dry. Even my author uncle-by–marriage had the then obligatory black and white profile photo of him in a bench with the empire state building behind him and a very  formal bio which did not explain anything much about himself or why/how he came to write the book, which would have been helpful. [See: “Giving Books Second Chances…or More” https://fourfoxesonehound.wordpress.com/2019/09/27/giving-books-second-chancesor-more/]

One best-selling author’s husband collaborated with her in a few projects and you can tell on one that she wrote his bio and he wrote hers, and they are both terribly funny.

I don’t know if I will ever have the credentials to speak at a writers’ conference, (let alone headline), but I certainly don’t now. I have been told that I have had an interesting life, but not compared to many that I could mention, and truly, most of my varied experiences may lead to me writing, but they inspire ME, not others, I would think.

We’ll give it a weak shot:

Tonette Joyce was raised in the Washington, DC suburbs where she was privileged to meet people from around the country and from around the world. She was often at her Italian mother’s elbow and so spent her childhood mostly in the kitchen or tucked away reading books and writing them.
After varying jobs, she moved to Idaho with family, where she started writing in earnest, mostly  song lyrics. She married her old boyfriend from Virginia and moved to Denver, where she continued to read while she homeschooled her sons, as she began writing for homeschool concerns. She also did bookkeeping from home and studied baking in earnest.

After relocating to North Central Kentucky, Tonette worked in several food-related jobs, then ran  her own bakery/restaurant, all the time writing in her head. She found that many people did not know that they could actually cook and entertain if given guidance, so to that end, she started  a book, which turned into a blog. She began putting stories into print and was invited to join a writers’ blog as well, where she has been inspired and supported to try her hand at publication of her fictional works. She now enjoys the privilege of meeting writers from all over the world and greatly enjoys interviewing them. She has won an award from a prestigious songwriting competition, and has (so far) had number of poems and non-fiction pieces published, and is looking forward to publishing more short stories, novels and children’s books.

(Now to get her family and health concerns tucked away and get her patootie in gear to resubmit/finish/polish more of her works!)

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