Everyone needs a mentor. Having an ambitious person with a solid focus and excellent results is what I seek. When choosing a mentor, I become very forward and somewhat aggressive. I have a handful of mentors because I'm striving to improve my personal and professional weaknesses. Aggression is something that isn't me but, when I meet someone with great credibility and a kind heart, I grab them quickly and immediately. They are usually busy and being a mentor isn't at the top of their list. In an effort to kill the middleman, I just tell them, "You're my mentor," with full confidence.
This was no different when I told my publisher, he was my mentor. This could be considered strange because I've known Eddie S. Pierce, M.F.A., since our years at Whitney Young Magnet high school. Our goals and lives seemed to mirror each other but, we took different routes to become established as book publishers.
Eddie and I knew each other in high school but, hung in different circles. He was more serious about his craft, while I was more serious about hanging out at the basketball court behind the school. Eddie was in the writing club, I traded my journal entries and short stories with my boyfriend.
Somehow, Eddie and I found ourselves at college together and majoring in English at Truman State University, in 1996. During these four years, our friendship solidified and he became a brother to me. Although I'm taller and a few months older than Eddie, I still follow his lead. His confidence, leadership, charisma, and knowledge make me admire him and look up to him, as a mentee should.
We both earned our Master’s of Fine Arts after college and he got published first. He wrote Something Infinite in 2011 and created The Love Series from 2011 – 2018. As he wrote these novels, Eddie opened Rainbow Room Publishing in 2013 and asked me to write the forward for Love Changes 3.0 and to edit it.
My mentor became DreamWritersInk!’s first customer and he fulfilled my author's dreams by offering me a 3-book contract. Being the business connoisseur that he is, Eddie offered me that contract not because he’s my friend but, because he saw I was a really good writer and my books would bring profits to the two of us. He believed in my writing dreams more than me.
I believe in him and his dreams for Rainbow Room Publishing and look forward to attending his next event:
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