Happy New Year

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*