The New
Year. Everyone excited to see what happens next? I am hopeful. Looking forward
to the new adventure I’m about to embark on and I thought I’d take this first
post about the whys. I’m spoke a little about it on fb and if you’ve read my
newsletter then you’ll understand a little more, but here’s the full story.
I have been
a published author coming on my third year. I published my first short story in
January 2014 with Loved by a Werewolf, not the best thing I've ever written but
I went into that world with an open heart. That year I published 12 short
stories which died down to 6 the year after and I believe 4 last year. This is
because I struggled with the fact that I wasn't getting seen, but more so, I
struggled with the idea of who I am as an author. I have never put a whole heap
of stock in the idea of flash fandom, I've always been happy to wallow and
continue on in a hope that people will find me, and love me. I am still that
person, I have no need for the money this side will or won’t bring me, it's
just a bonus.
However as
the two years went on I was lost in the self-deprecating notion of wanting
more, of needing more. The jealousy that came from nothing and was pointed at
even less. I am very good at lying to myself and I have spent the last two
years doing just that. Telling myself that I am what I’m presenting to the
world, and failing with each new release.
Quoting “I
write a scene not a full story” “I don’t know what my characters look like,
they are just defaults of the plot, the story” “It’s an open ending, not a
cliff-hanger” these things have run through my head over again and I’ve said
out loud more times then I should without them ring back into my ears. But they
weren’t and I was left standing with a scene from a larger story trying to sell
it as if that’s all anyone wanted.
Then there
comes to the editing, the proofing and those lovely professionals turning
myself into something even less than what I was looking at. Even more proof I
didn’t want to see what I was doing, what I was trying to peddle myself out as
was the reason I was still broke.
Then words I
uttered changed everything. “I am not a romance writer” with a reply from
someone else “No, you’re not.”
Simple. Just
that simply and my whole world imploded as I had to actually look at myself in
a way I wasn’t able to before this moment.
Now I want
to take a moment out to say that I don’t mean anything bad about my publishers
or editors, they have all been great, done everything I’ve wanted, and been
happy to accept. This has nothing to do with them AT ALL it’s all about me. What
I am. Who I am.
At the end
of it I had to come clean with the facts. When I started writing I wrote, and
finished, 3 x 80K and 3 x 50K stories. And then I wrote a quick 12K short
stories for my blog, got it as good as I can get it and send it off to be
published. This was where I said and believed I was nothing more than a short
story writer, even tho the novelist in me has always shown itself, wanting to
come out and has made my sink deeper and deeper into the misery of what the next two years have become.
I’m sure you
can see where this is going. And it hasn’t hurt that I’ve been mentioning it
for last couple of weeks/months.
I am going
into this new year to become a novel writer, though it’s going to be a bit iffy
as a few of the stories I’m going to write might actually have an min word
count will be around 40K, though I’m hoping after I get into the swing of it
that I won’t even have that small a word count, but the stories I’ve got to
write first are swinging more towards short stories then novels and I’m having
a bit of trouble converting a few of them into that long a story.
So this post
is the start of my new beginning. I am writing new stories, before heading into
adding to the series I’ve already written. And tho only one of them is going to
be over 50K min I have hope that it will begin a brilliant next step towards
what I should have always been.
I will be
changing the blog, I am in the same position as I was last time and therefore
will be going towards the more traditional authors with posting things that
come to me, things that are about my writing are about realisation, therefore I
won’t be around a whole heap. Not really, and I’m hopeful that when I am it’ll
be insightful, information from my head that will help others if they have
doubts. Need inspiration, understanding that it’s not just you.
If you’d
wish to keep in contact with me another way, sign up to my newsletter, it’ll
have the post you on here thought out the month
And thank
you for hanging in, you all mean so much to me. Let’s look at 2017 to be something
better, something then what the last one was, and I’m happy and hopeful what I
end up publishing will hold more than anything you’ve read from me before.
I am not a
romance author, I’m a genre fiction writing, who just happens to have romance
as one of my genres *wink*