ABOUT
From reader to romance writer
A bookworm from way back
I have been a reader as long as I can remember.
As a teen, I was the kid reading under my covers at night.
I read everything.
In high school, I was obsessed with Sweet Valley High books, collecting the first 40, along with a few specials.
Then it was Jackie Collins, Jeffrey Archer and the Flowers in the Attic series.
While I kept reading, the senior years of high school and needing to dissect every book dampened my love of reading.
That one time my writing was recognised
I loved creative writing at school. I don’t think IÂ thought of it as a serious career, even though I wrote some good stories.
Perhaps it was that good story that put me off.
I was in Year 10, still dealing with a crush I’d had since Kindergarten.
So I wrote a short story.
It was good. So good that my teacher felt the need to read it out to the whole class.
The class that he was in.
If the floor of my second story classroom could have caved in about then, I’d have been happy.
I survived, there was still no romance and in the years to come, I’d save my writing for letters when travelling, and then a career in the public service.
Career and lifestyle change
In mid-2014, I left my 15 year career after a 3.5 year posting in Hanoi, Vietnam.
We returned to Australia and took a chance on moving to the Barossa Valley in South Australia.
I’d been studying a Masters in Arts and Event Management, but by the time I finished, I knew it wasn’t for me.
Fortunately, chance meetings in a small town led to the decision to start a blog, and then launch a consulting business.
Around the same time, I was watching the writing career of a good friend take off. She introduced me to NaNoWriMo and convinced me to start writing fiction. With her encouragement, I started a series of messy first drafts and realised that writing a novel was something I wanted to do.
I kept blogging, and famously had a blog about my son’s photoshopped teeth go viral. And while I ‘won’ NaNoWriMo in 2017 (ie: I wrote 50,000 words in November), I still wasn’t taking my creative writing too seriously.
Business, milestone birthdays and romance writing
The need for more regular income saw me close my consulting business and start working for a wine maker. It was an interesting insight into small business and I often described my job as everything by making wine.
Then in 2018, a chance introduction led to my first copywriting job. I’d been trying to launch a feature writing career with no luck. And suddenly, I was being paid real money to write.
Finally in early 2019, my business Angela Pickett Copywriter was born. I started out subcontracting and writing blogs, before specialising in search engine optimised (SEO) website copy and sales page copy.
After years of trying to write historical and literary fiction, I decided to embrace my love of the happy ending and focus on romance.
Turning 50 in mid-2024 and the chance to attend the Romance Writers of Australia Conference provided the inspiration to reinvent my old blog website, and create a website for my writing adventures.
So here we are.
I hope you’ll join me on the ride.
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