Episode Details

Wendy Corr:

Well, hey there folks, welcome to The Roundup. We're a Cowboy State Daily podcast, and we focus on interesting people in the cowboy state. And today, oh my gosh, this person is so interesting, and she's kind of hiding in plain sight - because she's a business person in Casper, but she has this amazing talent and this amazing other profession that is bringing her some real notice right now, and we're so proud to call her a Wyomingite.

This is Dana Volney. She is our guest today on the Roundup. And Dana not only has a marketing consulting firm in Casper, she is an author, and one of her books is being made into a movie with some big names in it. So I am just so thrilled today to introduce to those of you who don't know her, Dana Volney.

Hello, Dana. Welcome to the Roundup!

Dana Volney:

Hey, Wendy. I'm so excited to be here on your podcast with Cowboy State daily.

Wendy Corr:

Well, we're excited to have you, I have to say, I'm always looking for interesting people. And Todd Titus, who is our advertising manager, said, Hey, have you talked to Dana Volney? I said, I don't know who Dana Volney is. You need to know Dana Volney, and he started to tell me about her book.

And so Dana, let's start off with, you are a Wyoming girl. You were raised here. You're a Casper native. Tell us a little bit first about your background and what brought you kind of to this point in your career.

Dana Volney:

Well, I ended up in Laramie, of course, as most Wyomingites do.

Wendy Corr:

My daughter's there right now, yes.

Dana Volney:

Right. A great experience. Loved it. Go Cowboys. I decided to get a marketing degree because it seemed like the easiest, honestly, for me to get. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with it.

I was in property management at the time, and then after I graduated, I bopped around on my own. I would just move for different positions to Nebraska and to Seattle, where I traveled a ton, and then decided it was just time to come back, time to come home and move back to Wyoming.

And I used to read a ton when I would travel in Seattle. I mean, I always grew up reading. My mom would check out, you know what? You could check out 10 books at a time at the library, and so she always had stacks by her bed.

We grew up reading. She would always have Fabio cover books, which, at the time, like, you don't think twice about as a kid, I had no idea, like, either, they were just mom's books, I don't know. And then when I started reading in Seattle, I started very, like, prolifically reading.

Like, you know, three or four books a week, because I was traveling, and that was my entertainment. And so when I got back to Casper, I had been putting it on my list for a while to write a book, like my new year's resolutions. I'm a big goal setter, and one day, my sister was like, you have been putting this on your list for years. Just take a class, do something about it.

And so I signed up for a class at Casper College, like one of the night classes, like the outreach classes, and it was, of course, advanced fiction writing, which there was nothing advanced about me. And so I just dove, dove in headfirst.

And from the very first class, I just absolutely fell in love, because I had started stories before that, you know, throughout my life, when I was in Seattle, and that really taught me a lot about finishing a story, and we would read in class, and you would get critiques, and it was just fantastic. Fell in love. Have never looked back. That was in 2012, so 13 years ago,

Wendy Corr:

13 years ago a