As part of a large Irish/American family, in which spinning colorful yarns was commonplace, becoming a writer was a natural career choice for Ginna. "I grew up hearing so many fascinating tales, I was 11 or 12 before I realized that not everyone made up stories," Ginna says.
Throughout her school years, whenever Ginna turned in essay papers her teachers would say, "Ginna, you should be a writer," and she would always reply, "that's what I'm going to be."
However, Ginna explains, life has a way of getting in the way.
She married young, had a daughter, and divorced. As a single mom and the sole breadwinner, raising a child alone became her top priority. Ginna also managed to attend college part-time in the evenings, which left precious little time to pursue her dream of becoming a writer. However, during those years she continued to keep a journal and occasionally wrote short stories for her own gratification.
Then, after seven years of being single, Ginna met her soul mate. Following a lovely yearlong courtship, she and Brad married. They had planned to start a family immediately, but things don't always work out as you plan. Almost nine years later, long after they had given up any hope of having more children, Ginna gave birth to another daughter.
"Whenever people express surprise over the 17-year age gap between our daughters, my husband always tells them that we planned it that way," Ginna explains with a chuckle. "He then adds that the only way you can afford to educate kids these days is to spread them out."
With the birth of her second child, Ginna quit working and stayed home to be a full-time Mom, a luxury (and joy) that she did not have when her older daughter was an infant. For the next five years, Ginna continued to write for her own pleasure, but she did not submit anything. "I just didn't have the nerve," she says. "I thought you had to be a Hemingway or a Fitzgerald or someone of that ilk, otherwise editors would laugh at you."
Finally, however, after putting her youngest child on the bus for her first day of kindergarten, for the first time in her life she had no job to rush off to, no classes to take, and the house all to herself. "I realized it was now or never."
"I marched home from that school bus stop and plopped myself down in front of my 15-year-old typewriter and started my first novel. (At that point, I hadn't even heard of a personal computer. Since then I've gone through five of them.)"
There followed three years of rejections. "And rightly so," Ginna says. "The first novel I wrote was awful. The next one was better, and the one after that, better still, but not quite good enough. I knew that because the rejection letters were getting more encouraging and much more personal."
"I still have those first three efforts in a drawer, and every now and then I take them out and skim a few pages and laugh. Still, I consider those first attempts a valuable learning experience."
Ginna sold her first novel in 1983, after winning the Golden Heart Award, given by Romance Writers of America for the best unpublished novel in a category. She has been working as a full-time writer ever since. When she finishes her current contracts, Ginna will have written 33 books. She has also given many lectures and writing workshops, and judged in writing contests.
A native Texan, Ginna lived in Houston all her life — until 1993, when she and her husband Brad built their "dream home" and moved to the mountains of Colorado. Ginna also enjoys other creative activities such as oil painting, sewing, sketching, knitting, and needlepoint. "But my first love will always be writing. It is simply part of who I am."
