My Writing Timeline.....

 This is the timeline for my writing, before and after I became a professional....

1987: I was 11 years old. Writing chose me. I was on a trip, heading home with my maternal grandparents and younger sister. It was in the summer and we had just visited my uncle who lived in North Webster at the time. We lived just south of Decatur and my grandfather always took the back roads so the trip was pretty long. At least it felt that way lol. My sister and I brought a lot of paper, some pens and coloring pencils to draw with for the trip. I had a piece of paper and a pen in my hand as I stared out of the window in search of an idea to draw something. As I watched the fields pass us by, an idea popped into my head but it wasn't something to draw. I began writing the story like it was something I had been doing for years. It felt natural. By the time we got home, I had a few pages written. I went to my room and rewrote it on lined paper and continued writing the story. I had no idea if the story was any good so I asked my mother to read it. She went on about how she wanted to be a writer when she was my age and she set the story aside and began writing her own little story. She asked me to read her story. I don't remember reading it. She ended up losing the story I wrote and immediately after, she stopped writing her story.

1988: I was 12 years old now. Another story ended up coming to me so I wrote it. It wasn't that long, maybe 12 pages in longhand. I write with big letters so it wasn't really that long lol. I didn't ask my mother since she lost my last story. I found a magazine in my older sister's room and wrote down their address. I sent them the story for submission, not knowing what I was doing. A couple weeks later, they sent the story back and a letter with it. It was my first rejection. They liked the story but they said it wasn't the type of story they published in their magazine. I was like, "they liked it!" So I sat down and turned the short story into a chapter for a longer story. For the next year, I continued writing the story making chapters. There were 21 total chapters in the story and it was over 300 pages written on one side, double-spaced, loose filling paper made by Mead. When I was at school, I went to the library and asked about books on writing. I checked out the ones they had and read them. When I had a chance to go to the actual library in Decatur, I checked out more books on writing as I continued writing my story. I wrote the book as I edited for years, changing and improving as I went. It was finished so I wrote the second book, followed by the third, fourth-seventh (each book took about a year to write).

1992: Moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana.

1993: Chose my own classes and picked classes that would help me become a better writer. By this time, I had sent the story to several publishers, each of them rejecting the story but said the work was good just didn't fit what they were looking for. I studied Journalism, creative writing, typing, became a reporter for the school paper and continued to learn through reading. That year, I also entered a poetry contest and won third place which they called Honorable Mention. I received an award. Only the top three places got one so I thought that was really cool.

Fast forward to 1997. I lost all copies of the books that I had written including my notes for ideas for other books and all the poetry I had written. I was now a mother and married.

Fast forward to 2007. I gave up trying to publish my witch story and let another story shine. It was written and ready to go as well. I had several stories written at this time but was trying to get my witch story published first since it was my favorite. I had rewritten it after losing it. It was exactly 20 years after I began writing and a publisher accepted my story. It was called Cursed Blood. I cried, I was so excited. My husband couldn't wait to tell everyone we knew, he even told people we didn't know. He was so proud of me. When I did the paperwork for the publisher, my husband asked if I could use my married name as my pen name. I decided to combine the names together making my pen name Amber Rigby Grosjean (maiden name + married name).

2008: Another publisher accepted one of my books. Stolen Identity. It was Erotica. This one was funny because the house had rejected me and I forgot about it, and sent it to them again lol. A second agent loved it and accepted it. The owner sent me an email telling me why she had rejected it in the first place and told me if I was willing to change that part, she'd accept the story and publish it. I agreed. I learned so much about editing through them and improved my writing even more.

2009: Through a request, I wrote a sequel to Cursed Blood and called it Spawn of the Curse. The publisher who accepted Cursed Blood didn't want the sequel so I self-published it through Amazon.

2010: The book that I had spent so many years writing, losing it, and then rewriting it from memory was finally accepted. They didn't want the series though. I was happier than happy because I had read that the first book doesn't get published. I'm thinking, "seriously, mine was." I loved that I beat the odds. I learned more about editing and improved my writing even more.

There was a period where I didn't do any writing. Between having the children and being busy, I put my writing on the back burner and fell into abyss. No marketing. Every now and then I got paid but a lot of it had gotten lost. Contracts all expired. I was given permission to republish and I had every intention of doing so. I began making plans.

2017: I published Mother of the Dragons after writing the story for a couple years. At this time, I was writing multiple books at once. I decided I needed to focus on one book at a time because I wasn't finishing them. Finally, I finished this one and after editing I realized it was as good as it was gonna get. I published it on Amazon, under a new pen name (shortened it to A.R. Grosjean) adding AKA Amber Rigby Grosjean so people would know it was me.

2018: I republished Peterson Estate but this time, made it the series and gave it a sub-title. I didn't know how series titles worked so the title was messed up but I had learned since then. But I wanted the series to remain the same so I kept the titles the way I had made them. The second book was published later the same year.

2019: Published Peterson Estate 3 and 4. Rewrote and republished Cursed Blood, changing the title to Cursed Blood: Bloodline Curse and also its sequel changing its name to Spawn of the Curse: Bloodline Curse part 2.

2020-present: Published Peterson Estate 5, wrote and published the Dead Life, and rewrote Stolen Identity changing the title to Stolen and made it into a series as well. 

Next year (2021): Fairytale's Truth will be published. Peterson Estate 6 will be written and published. And I plan on writing and publishing another book called Murder Through Time. In that order