Marie Ellen Pacha Marie Ellen Pacha is 55 years old and was born and raised in Iowa. Marie started writing in high school, but like a lot of people, put that interest aside for a number of years as she dealt with work and survival. About 5 years ago, she went back to college with the idea of studying business and computers. Although she was doing fine in her course work, she found it boring. A year later, some friends talked Marie into submitting some poems to a publisher, which were subsequently accepted for publication. She arranged a poetry reading in the Bronx even before the book was published, and followed that reading with another reading at a Barnes and Noble store in Yonkers, NY, just after the book was released. Between those readings, Marie finished and submitted a fantasy novella to the same publisher. Both these books are no longer in print.

During the time period that she was still in college and raising two teenage boys, Marie focused her writing efforts on paying freelance jobs, including two ghostwriting contracts, writing trivia questions for an international website, several articles in various periodicals and a chapter in a book, Writer Profits: How I Got the Gig, Volume I.

So, how do I get writing assignments? Answers to this question can be found inside each chapter of Writer Profits: How I Got the Gig. You will hear from part-time writers, fulltime writers and those who write for fun more than profit, each one committed to the writing life in some way. Some chapter authors share their personal journeys from struggle to triumph. Others jump in full force with detailed how-to information that gets them gig after gig after gig. Whether you are an aspiring writer just starting out, or an established writer looking for ideas to attract new or different assignments, there is something for each of you in Writer Profits: How I Got the Gig.

Chapter authors for Writer Profits: How I Got the Gig bring a wealth of experience in diverse writing genres. We invite you to search on individual author names to learn more about each chapter contributor. Contributing Authors: Cheryl Wright, Shara Rendell-Smock, Patrick Kennedy, Marie Pacha, Amy Krug, Michael Allen, Resmi Jaimon, Jenny Burr, Cynthia Lueck Sowden, Jacqueline Seewald, Sue-Ellen Davison, Kevin Rux, Sharon Greenaway, Chuck Baker, Susan M. Carter.

With the boys safely off to college, Marie finally settled on a mountainside in West Virginia and she is now ready to focus full time on writing. The work she does for herself is mostly light fantasy/fiction, fantasy, poetry, and literary nonfiction, and she has a cookbook nearly completed. Marie has also studied screenplay writing, business writing and technical writing. When she's not working on writing she sketch and paint anything from faces to murals.