By day, Gainesville resident Dianne Farb is a practicing attorney, but by night, she trades her legal name in for her pen name, Rebecca Heflin, and writes romance novels.
Heflin is the author of three books, and her third and newest book, “Dreams of Perfection,” was published May 5 on Amazon.com as an e-book for the Kindle. Her two paperback books, “The Promise of Change” and “Rescuing Lacey,” can be found at Barnes & Noble. The book is the first in the “Dreams Come True” series.
Heflin said that having a day job in addition to her writing job is one word: stressful.
“It’s pretty jam-packed, but writing is an outlet,“ Heflin said. “Having that creative outlet helps me stay sane.”
Writing was something that Heflin said she always wanted to give a try, but she didn’t always have the courage.
“Writing is a matter of pulling the pieces of fabric together with pieces of more fabric,” Heflin said. “I might not know what fabric I’ll use until the end when I try to fill in the scenes.”
But the support she said she has received for her writing in Gainesville has been incredible.
“I’ve been in Gainesville for 13 years. I love the community, the support. It’s a great place to live,” Heflin said.
Although Heflin loves Gainesville, her stories are set in different locations that don’t resemble the city, such as England and Costa Rica.
“Dreams of Perfection” costs $2.99 on Kindle and is not yet available as a paperback.
UF’s anthropology librarian Richard Freeman said, through traditional publishing, there is an entire selection process that has to happen through many editors at the press.
People might have a stigma toward self-publishing, he said, but the author could also just be a genius who doesn’t want to play that game.
Freeman said he knows a professor who self-published on Amazon. The professor had a love for Haitian literature.
“Self-publishing was another great venue to disseminate information,” Freeman said.
No matter what form of publishing people use, if more people are able to get art into the world to share then it is a good thing, Freeman said.
[A version of this story ran on page 10 on 5/15/2014 under the headline "Gainesville resident self-publishes new book under pen name"]
