I’ve decided to be a bit more, well…me. At least, I’m going to try. It’s quite hard, you see.
Let me explain.
Back before I was a PUBLISHED author (and yes, you should read that in a big booming voice, because that’s how it feels to you before you’re published), I had a blog. In fact, you could call me an early adopter. I’d had a blog for years. The majority of those posts have actually been imported into this blog now (under the category My Old Writing/Personal Blog — it’s all from when I lived in Kentucky and Florida and was writing but not published).
I was interesting (some of the time). Funny, even (not always intentionally). Random people I didn’t know read my blog. But most of all, I was me, warts and all (I don’t literally mean warts, because that would be kind of gross–no offense to anyone who actually has warts or anything–I mean it in a metaphorical kind of way…and here I’ve figured out I should probably just have skipped the warts thing entirely. Oh well.). I didn’t sugarcoat things (much). When I was feeling ambivalent or scared or excited or whatever, that was how I posted. Nowadays, there’s the pressure to put up a good front. We’re not supposed to talk about the bad things (oooooh scary shivers). We’re supposed to put a positive spin on things. We’re not supposed to piss anyone off.
So when I had to share with fans that (some of whom write me on a daily or weekly basis) that my old publisher would not be publishing any more Sucks to Be Me books, I had to do it in as positive a way as possible when, if I’m being honest, I feel really sucky and miserable about it (don’t get me wrong, I love my editor and I don’t blame her at all…it comes down to business decisions and publishing is a business. And they’ve gone back to just publishing their core D&D stuff.). And when I talk about possibly releasing the third book in serialized eBook format myself, I’ve tried not to let on how much that really terrifies me and worries me that it will be a complete waste of time, even if it would make some diehard fans really happy.
Or, on the flip side, when talking about the new book I’m working on, I’m supposed to keep it all close to the vest and not let out too many details. So I’ve talked about my Sekrit Project or the dark thing I’m working on rather than actually coming out and saying, hey, I’m working on a new book. My working title is Ask Me. It’s quite dark, but I’m pretty excited about it. It’s got a girl heroine who starts out really kind of paralyzed by her situation and her otherworldly abilities and it’s got a couple of hunky guys, each of whom may or may not be a murderer. It’s got some funny moments, but mostly it’s dark. I kinda worry that it’s different than what my fans are expecting, but on the other hand, it may open doors to me because, honestly, it’s got a really good hook and could probably be considered really commercial. There’s one big publisher potentially interested in it already based just on the hook alone which, yeah, I didn’t actually share just now, but that’s because even though I’ve decided to share more, I do have to keep some things back and this is the big wild and wooly Internet.
So. Anyway.
I really am going to try and be much more me. There may be more sentence fragments and there’s definitely an excellent chance there will be a plethora of parentheses.
Feel free to ask me any questions. I’d love to answer ‘em. You know, in the spirit of openness and whatnot.
and has 19 books under his belt whereas I only have three (counting Cat Girl’s Day Off coming next year! Woot!). He’s also planning on making tweaks to the story based on reader input, which is something I was planning as well. Heck, a character is based on a fan (Astrid, after she won the contest).
