GET TO KNOW L.L. PURCELL

A Lifetime of Stories

I grew up in a library. Like, actually. Mom was a librarian, so I spent full days, weeks, years in the library. And I never complained. How could I, with thousands of books waiting to be read? I'd run my finger along the spines at an excruciatingly slow pace, not wanting to skip a single title. I began spending all my time in the fiction section, searching for novels that both scared and moved me. 

The Dollhouse Murders by Betty Ren Wright was my favorite book, and I must have read it twenty times. I followed this by Francis Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden. Before long, it was Dean Koontz's The Watcher and VC Andrew's Flowers in the Attic. By the time I hit Stephen King and Jonathan Kellerman, I was hooked. 

And when life got to be too much, I wrote. Angsty, tear-jearking poetry when I got dumped. Perfect, idealized worlds stories when I had little control over my life. I wrote thrilling suspense stories when I wanted to experience chilling fear in a safe way.

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But I never considered being an author. 

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I pursued a degree in psychology, then received my Masters in Counseling. I worked with kids, parents, and adults in a variety of ways over the years. It wasn't until I was raising my own children that I returned to writing. And at that point, I discovered a million stories inside me, just waiting to escape into the world. Shaped, in part, by people I'd met, experiences I'd had, but also as a way to explore the fears and worries I held, and expose the hope and light that exists, even in the darkness.