BY: Andrea Thompson

Kayla Perrin began her career as an author at an age when many kids start their first paper route.

“As soon as I could hold a pencil, I was penning stories,” says Perrin, speaking from her home in Toronto. “I was 12 when I saw an ad in the paper about a novel writing contest, and that was when the light bulb went on, and I thought, Oh my goodness! People get paid to write books!”

At 13, after seeing the publisher’s address in the front of a schoolbook, Perrin sent her hand-written, illustrated manuscript to Scholastic Publications. Her first rejection letter followed. Far from being discouraged, Perrin was thrilled that her package got through and decided to send them two more books.

This time Perrin’s efforts were more fruitful. Both books were passed on for further consideration. Eventually Scholastic decided against Perrin’s work, but the experience of being taken seriously fueled her confidence. “Knowing that they were considering it, before they ultimately rejected it, told me that maybe I could do this. I was over the moon.”

Perrin’s father was less enthusiastic. “He figured that a couple of rejections might be too hard for a young person to take, and that I’d be better off concentrating on schoolwork. He would say, ‘You know, people don’t really make a living doing this; it would be better to have a stable nine-to-five job.’”

But Perrin, undaunted, still believed in her dream. “I was pretty determined and motivated,” she says. “Firstborn child, a little stubborn.”

As she got older her father’s advice hit home. After graduating with a BA from the University of Toronto in English and sociology, she went on to get her bachelor of education. “I’d also got into law school, but I knew in my heart that I really wanted to write. I thought if I got a teacher’s job, I wouldn’t mind teaching English, instilling creativity in kids, with time in the summer to work on my calling. That was the plan.”

But fate had another plan for Perrin. After graduating from teachers’ college, she found she couldn’t find work in the mid-’90s era of teacher layoffs. “I volunteered at two school boards and didn’t even get an interview. I said, ‘Why am I doing this?”

The setback was a blessing. Out of this “failure” she decided to dedicate herself to writing. “It was New Year’s Eve, 1996. I made myself a resolution to get a publishing contract by year’s end. And that’s exactly what happened.”

Perrin began by researching the business of publishing. “I learned that romance is pretty much the largest genre of novels out there. You can do romance with mystery, romance with history, romance with comedy.”

To date, she’s written in a variety of genres, including mainstream fiction, suspense, erotica and children’s fiction. “I don’t like to be pigeon-holed. I’ve always had a lot of interests, whether it was acting or painting or drawing. I like to be able to tell the stories I want to tell. But romance opened up a lot of the doors for me.”

The stories Perrin tells are not autobiographical, but she admits that themes and situations from her real life often find their way onto the pages of her books. Her life as a single mother to her four-year-old daughter, Chloe, provided much of the fodder for her novel Single Mama Drama.

“My characters experience some of the things that I’ve experienced. In my book Getting Even, one of the characters basically goes through the same break-up of a marriage that I had gone through.” For Perrin, that break-up became the catalyst for her move to Miami, where she now lives part-time. Perrin confides: “When things fell apart, I knew I needed a different scene. It was October, it was starting to get gloomy and grey, and I didn’t want to go to the places we used to hang out, and my family was like, oh it’s so sad, oh it’s so awful.” But Kayla refused to wallow. “I just wanted to have sunny days, and a positive mindset in someplace unfamiliar, and hopefully get back on the creative path without the distractions of what had gone on.”

If living well is the best revenge, Perrin certainly got hers. With 30 books to her credit, including titles featured on the USA Today and Essence bestseller lists, Perrin is now at the top of her game. In addition to receiving awards and honours, her work has been praised in Publisher’s Weekly, Entertainment Weekly and the Globe and Mail, and has been translated into German, Italian and Portuguese.

Perrin has also had some success as an actor in film, television and theatre. Acting was just another extension of her creative spirit. In 1995, she starred in Making Change, which premiered at TIFF. In the future, she hopes to combine her love of film with her passion for writing by producing her first feature film. “I’ve met my publishing goals, so I need to take on another challenge.”

Befriend Sway on Facebook

Sway with us on Twitter