The Love of Writing Friends

Around this time two years ago, I was writing alone. Writing alone and timidly stepping into the blogging world by visiting Seekerville and the wild and crazy women there. That is where I met my friend Pepper Basham. She was also writing alone and not so timidly stalking the Seekerville gals.
(Pepper here: Yes, I'm a stalker...and I was LONELY)
Yes indeed, she was lonely. Or so she told me when she emailed me. I couldn't find her original email, but here is one of early emails from her....should I have been afraid?

A touch of insanity goes a long way---that's all I'll say.
Oh, it's so good to find a similar soul. Bless God.
Not that your insane, I'll let you make that admission on your own ;-)....Pepper

Hhhhmmm, a friend who thinks I'm insane. I love her!!!!!!!!!!! 

(Pepper here: The above statement is still very true. Kindred spirits are allowed to be as crazy as they like, you know)

I love how God puts two souls together who have similar backgrounds (we are both minister's wives) and who both love to write romance (well, Pepper loves to write in ALL genres....she is very well-rounded)

(Pepper here: I'm really not going to make a comment about how physically accurate that last statement is...sigh) Ahem, Pep, we won't go there, because I prefer to say that we are just well-rounded...it sounds much better.

Anyway, we began emailing in 2009 and in March of 2010 Pepper thought it be would fun to start a group blog. So we started recruiting people we had met through the writing blogosphere and found a great group of women to join us at what we called The Writer's Alley. We started out with five awesome ladies: Pepper Basham, Casey Herringshaw, Mary Vee,  Krista Phillips, and ME. 

(Pepper here: because we're so well-rounded -except Casey, who is skinny as a rail, a country rail.:-)

Now we are ten women who love God and LOVE to write. 

For almost three years now God has developed as sense of family in this group we call  The Writer's Alley. Though some have left, God has always provided a perfect fit with a new sister to our family. Not only do we benefit from the encouragement from each other, we have the opportunity to encourage others along the way. (This was all Pepper here. Dictator!) (Literally) :) 

We have had some great things to celebrate! Krista is now a published author with her book, Sandwich, With a Side of Romance. And five of our gals are now agented!  (See the side bar for the list!) We've gotten many contest finals and semi-finals, as well as numerous rejections, but I'm sure there will more to celebrate in the coming months and years. We've got some mad talent in this group of writers, and it all started with two scheming brainstorming blog buddies!

As we come up on our third year anniversary at The Writer's Alley, we would like to hear from you! What new topics would you like to see at The Alley? What old things have we done well? Let us know your thoughts! We want to keep providing great content for YOU!

***This post is brought to you by Sherrinda Ketchersid & Pepper Basham, written on the couch at Sherrinda's home in Fort Worth, Texas.