I am writing.
And writing and writing and writing...
I'm starting to feel like that girl from The Red Shoes. About two years ago a friend of mine from the mommy boards started dabbling with writing. Then another girl mentioned a friend of hers doing this crazy thing called self publishing. I read the free preview of her wildly successful book and thought, why not?
So I set out on this writing journey and tossed a novel together in about a month. You may or may not have heard of it, I don't blame you if you have...Reverse Cowgirl. I thought it was a clever title, it was an uninspired sweet love story, I slapped some hot cowboy abs on the cover, had some friends with zero publishing knowledge edit it for me, and hit publish.
It was rewarding and I could finally say I was a published author. Check that one off the bucket list.
But then something happened.
I sold a book, and then another, and then another, and shit, people seemed to not hate it.
By then I was paying attention to things like market trends and industry analysis and thought I'd better throw another book out there. If I could write six or eight books a year, and they each bring in roughly a hundred a month, that would be a few hundred extra cash each and every month. Big money back then!
My second book was a new adult long assed cliffhanger because I'd read that 1) NA was THE genre to write in, 2) people wanted long books, and 3) people wanted series.
It wasn't well received, it hurt like a motherfucker at the time, but looking back I read those scathing one star reviews and I'm like, "Damn, they were right, the fuckers." (That's the thing about one star reviews, the might sting at the time, but with some distance and perspective, you can see why they didn't like the things they didn't like. Don't pander to your audience, be true to your characters, but listen to everyone. As I always say, let the five stars feed your ego, and the one stars feed your craft. But that's another blog post for another day.)
So a little over a year ago I published Dirty Little Freaks and started to be more *me* online than *author me*. And lo and behold, people liked it. People bought DLF more than my other two combined and I was buoyed by the positive feedback.
At this time, my other businesses started to suffer. I noticed I no longer cared about renewable energy resources and their application to agriculture, I no longer obsessively combed horse sale sites looking for a foundation mare for my Gypsy Vanner breeding farm, I no longer worked that hard on our Bed and Breakfast business plan, I no longer wanted chickens, goats, sheep, cows, basically I wanted nothing but to write.
And it only got worse.
The Beast was published in March of last year and was insanely popular. It still sells. A lot. Every month. Unfortunately I was also blocked by Amazon at that time and lost my momentum, but that book alone earned me more than all my other titles combined.
Since then I've been consistent in earnings, enough that I make more than I would teaching at the college or running the farm/B&B full time. Sounds peachy keen, right?
Some days, yes, I love it.
Some days I feel like those fucking red shoes, I can't get them off my feet and I can't stop dancing!
Only I can't stop writing.
I have SO MANY books in my head, so many people coming out. I think I've lost that balance between interacting with people and doing takeovers and having fun online that I had a year ago, and lately it's been feeling more and more like a dark obsession.
The good news is that you'll have more of my crazy mind fuck twisted shit to read.
The bad news is that I have to scale back on social media. I can't do both.
So, if you like something I write, help a possessed author out. Read it, love it, leave a review and tell everyone you know about it! :)
I'll be around of course, probably just as much as I have been. lol But right now I'm feeling the tug of writing more than marketing.
But marketing sells books.
And selling books keeps me in business.
And so...
I seek the balance.
Right after I get a few thousand words out of my head.
