A Brief Introduction to Rena Diane Walmsley, Featured Author in This Weekend's Free Kindle Nation Short

We'll let novelist Rena Diane Walmsley's hometown paper handle the introductions with this recent article that appeared recently in he Attleboro, MA Sun Chronicle: She was never particularly starstruck. Sure, Rena Walmsley Gordon admitted in her early 20s that she had once dreamed of becoming Miss America, but didn't all little girls? But when she did win the crown of Miss Massachusetts in 1973, after reigning as Miss Attleboro in 1973 and Miss Foxboro the year before, she stunned interviewers who asked if she was considering a future in acting - yes, she said, in little theater (a promise she has kept from time to time, to the joy of community stage production audiences in Sun Chronicle country.) The only way Rena Gordon's head was in the clouds was in her choice of profession, as a flight attendant for Delta. And she certainly never expected to become a best-selling author. And certainly not in the field of erotica. "It would have made me blush in my contestant days," says Walmsley, whose first novel, "Girl on Fire," has climbed as high as Number 2 on the erotic bestseller list for Kindle, the electronic book label of Amazon, and has been in the top 10 of Kindle romantic suspense books. "The truth is that this novel might even have gotten me thrown out of the pageant." "Girl on Fire" is the coming-of-age story of Alicia Wentworth, a frisky teenage heiress at an elite school in Concord who volunteers with a creative writing group at a state prison. She falls in love with Teddy Hawk, a handsome and immensely talented 21-year-old inmate. We'll avoid spoiling the plot except to say Alicia finds a way to get close to Teddy. (If you simply have to have a moral in your story, Alicia does grow up to be a minister.) It's inevitable - for this gossip-hungry scribbler anyway - to wonder if there's any autobiographical basis to the novel. After all, Gordon, a King Philip grad, former Wrentham resident and longtime North Attleboroean has never lived all that far from the prisons in Norfolk and Walpole. "There's not a shred of truth to it," she assures me. "It's all fiction." Personal connections, though, do help shape the book. If Gordon shows more insight into the criminal justice and correctional systems than you'd expect, it could be the result of the influence of her husband Bruce, a major with the Massachusetts State Police, or son Nick, an attorney in Mansfield. Personal connections, though, do help shape the book. If Gordon shows more insight into the criminal justice and correctional systems than you'd expect, it could be the result of the influence of her husband Bruce, a major with the Massachusetts State Police, or son Nick, an attorney in Mansfield. Gordon has always been a voracious reader, but her writing had been mostly confined to poetry and short stories written in college. Sixteen months ago, she seized the "Girl on Fire" idea - although at that point "Girl..." was one of five potential titles - and took on the writing task as a labor of love, going at it fulltime. When it was finished it got into the hands of her friend Steve Holt, founder of Harvard Perspectives Press in Arlington and a pioneer in the Kindle field. "Maybe I can do something with this," he said. Such offers from friends are often given in a kindly spirit, but on March 4 Gordon got a call from Holt announcing that "Girl..." had been published on Kindle. The book shot up to Number 6 on the erotic bestsellers, then advanced to 2. But the electronic book market is an ever changing place - "the ratings change hourly," says Gordon, who has also seen "Girl..." fall to Number 33. "I'm enjoying the ride," she says with a laugh. It's a ride that may get longer and more exciting. In the last few days "Girl on Fire" has been made available by Amazon in paperback for the non-Kindle-equipped, and a sequel may be in the offing. Meantime, Maj. Gordon has a deft answer when colleagues comment that his wife is writing porn. "It's erotica," he tells them.