From being a lawyer to publishing romance novels, Mary Strand has chosen to take a detour and do what she loves; write.

Cooper’s Folly, published by Bell Bridge Books, is about a man named Cooper who one day decides to take a chance. Cooper was a lawyer who had practiced for many years, but one day, on a whim, he decided to quit. As part of a dare with his close lawyer friend, he opens up the newspaper and states he will take any job his finger lands on. To his dismay, it lands on a job to be a nanny, but now because of his bragging, he has to follow through with it.

Strand, an Eau Claire native who now lives in Minneapolis, said this book – and what the main character was going through with his career – is something she could relate to.

“I was practicing law at the time, around 15 years into it, and what lawyers do is fantasize about what they would do when they are no longer practicing law. That is probably the number one fantasy of lawyers,” said Strand, a graduate of UW-Eau Claire and Georgetown University Law Center.

She also said she had nannies for her children when they were younger and it was fun to continue on with certain aspects of her life.

“Usually people assume a male writer identifies more with the male character and vise versa for women, and actually I think I related more to Cooper, although when I am in the head of a character I relate to that character no matter who it is,” Strand said.

For her, writing isn’t about a specific formula.

“It’s called seat of the pants, it truly is,” Strand said. “I have a sense of what I think I want to do, but then truly each day I sit down and write and the things that happen that day are almost always completely unplanned.”

Having no specific plan on how to write may worry some, but Strand keeps a positive attitude.

“It’s a very scary way of writing, but it works out,” Strand said. “I have faith that it will work out, and I go with it no matter what happens.”

She said the hardest part about writing this book is that it was her first.

“The hardest thing is knowing that you can get to the last page and realize that yup, there is a story there,” Strand said.

Strand enjoys her publisher and hasn’t had many problems with the process so far.

“The line edits from my main editor were great and helpful,” Strand said. “I’m kind of a grammar freak and so the copy edits were sometimes a struggle for me because I would think that I was more grammatically correct than the copy editor was, but nothing worth losing sleep over.”

She said choosing to write romance was a flip of a coin. She said she loved reading almost any genre and looked at writer’s organizations to find out what ones stood out as the best. She concluded that the two best national organizations were Romance Writers of America and Mystery Writers of America.

This won’t be the end of Strand’s journey into writing novels; she is now working on writing more romance novels along with books for teens as well.