My "ah-ha" moment came almost ten years after I started selling. Despite all the praise about my "voice", I had no idea what my voice was like. I knew for continued success, I had to stay true to my voice, but without knowing what it was, I didn't have a clue how to write to something I couldn't identify.

Then at my local RWA chapter's 2004 retreat, we had a speaker, Laura Abbott, who spoke about voice. Somehow, the way she explained it gave me my "ah-ha" moment. She made me see that my voice was all the things that made me me. My values, my training, my political beliefs, my background. With this, I could rewrite the stories in TALES OF TWO CITIES, LITTLE WOMEN, or THE LITTLE TRAIN WHO COULD and they wouldn't read the same as the original books. Why? Because just as I'm unique, so is my voice. And that's what makes my books mine.

Jackie Kramer