ELKHART — Just like the main character in her book, “A Luna’s Dark Past,” author Kira Metzger has a less-than-ideal past, nonetheless, she’s risen to new heights in a career she never expected.

“I wasn’t always the perfect child,” she admitted about her father and stepmom’s struggles. “I wasn’t the easiest child to raise. I rebelled a lot.”

A former Elkhart Central High School student, Metzger was pulled out and homeschooled, and enrolled in the LIFE program. She’d hoped to join the military, but when she found out she was going to be a teen mom, she dropped out of school and got her GED, and started college but never finished due to a second pregnancy.

In 2016, she found herself homeless, spent a short stint in jail due to a bench warrant issued for a missed hearing on a water bill while she was at Riley Children’s Hospital caring for an ailing child. She moved in with her biological mother in Huntington and that’s where she got another chance.

“That’s when I started getting my act together for my children and that’s when my book came to me in a dream,” Metzger said. “It literally just came to me in a dream. I was sleeping and, in my dream, I was writing this book. It wasn’t in any type or order, but when I woke up, I wrote the first few chapters.”

The book is a werewolf fantasy, about a teen who discovers after the death of her mother that she’s a powerful werewolf.

“She got thrown into a world she never knew existed and now she’s expected to protect a whole pack that she does not know,” Metzger explained. “Have you ever wondered what it would be like if just everything you thought you knew was nothing you knew?”

Her sister read it, but it fell on the backburner for about two years, while Metzger worked to create a new life in Huntington.

“My bosses at the time, they were amazing,” she said. “I was working at Rodeway Inn in Huntington. I struggle with severe anxiety but my boss realized that my writing helped control my panic attacks so she encouraged me to write. She would edit the chapters, give me pointers on how to make it better, and send it back to me.”

Her fiancé, one of his biggest supporters, would help her write the adult content, then it was time to send the work to her biggest supporter, her dad.

“Once it was all said and done, I sent it to my father because he loves me but he is brutally honest and doesn’t spare my feelings,” she said. “He told me to send it to a publisher.”

Austin Macauley Publishers, a hybrid publishing group, accepted the book and began publishing in July 2021.

“I’m shocked with myself,” Metzger said. “I used to write poetry growing up and got a few awards for it, but I never actually took the time to sit there and write a story. My dad was proud of it and loved it and encouraged me to keep doing it.”

She’s working on four books now, and readers are begging her to finish the second for this series.

“I doubt myself in a lot of ways,” she said. “It’s still a shock to me that I was able to come this far and I have publishers wanting more. I keep getting hounded about, ‘When book two is coming out for this?’ and I’m like honestly, I can’t give you a day. It took me a whole year for the first one.”

Metzger attributes her successes in large part to her fiancé and her father. Now 30, with four children, Metzger spends her days writing.

“(My fiancé) encourages me,” she said. “He’ll watch the kids just so I can write. He just lets me focus on my writing. I don’t know if it’s normal for other people but I don’t preplan anything. I read the previous chapter I wrote and then I go. My ideas just come from dreams or random thoughts or random sentences and I’m able to transform it into this awesome book. I don’t think my dad has ever been so proud of me in his life. He brags about me on his (video) games.”

Metzger’s books are available on the Dreame App on the Apple App Store and Google Play ahead of publishing and in some cases, as she writes chapters. “A Luna’s Dark Past” is available for purchase on Amazon and Barnes & Nobles and has sold out several times.

Source: The Goshen News.