Well today was supposed to be launch day for Samara’s Song. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. Thanks mostly to an adorable little 4.7lb monster who had mama laid up in the hospital for a day. No worries, we’re both in exceptional health now. But forced bed rest (“bed” being a euphemism for torture device in this instance) gave me time to actually step away from my work and come back at it with a much needed fresh perspective. I’ll now be releasing the book by August 7th, using the extra time to strengthen the weak points and hopefully make a good story into a great one.

But, really. Who could blame that face?

So instead of today being an excited post about launching a new novella we’re going to shift gears and make it a narcissistic post in which I spend several paragraphs just talking about little old me. But we’ll do it in bullet format, because for some reason people really prefer reading lists and are intimidated by unbroken chunks of text.

• I grew up writing: Kind of. I actually grew up thinking. I have this issue with a runaway imagination and decided to attempt transcribing my fantasies at a young age. It’s been a bit of a love/hate relationship since then. Yes, I said it. Writing is not always fun. Sometimes it’s down right excruciating.
• I made attempts at journalism in high school: Funny story, I signed up for Newspaper my sophomore year. I raved about it all summer and then nearly crapped myself on the first day of class when I realized journalism involved interviewing strangers. You see, I forgot I was an introvert (which, at the time, seemed like a damn shame to be). I then subsequently forgot that fact three years in a row. Yep. I took that class every single year. Why? Because I discovered I was pretty darn good at writing editorial pieces. I may not have been able to form a coherent sentence face to face, but behind the pen, I realized I had a voice worth listening to.
• I developed an elitist view of nontraditional creative writing in college: Oh boy did I ever. My main focus in college was on classic prose poetry: Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarme. I adored the inaccessibility of Gertrude Stein. I wanted my writing to challenge readers – and if it was too challenging, that was your fault, not mine. The only word I can think of that accurately describes my writing in college is pompous.
• Writing led me to dropping out of college: Look at me, using writing as a scapegoat. That’s only a slight truth. I dropped out of college after four years without a degree because I’m fickle. Because I wanted to bake. Because creative writing is a vanity degree. Because I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. Because I didn’t need a slip of paper for validation. Because. Because. Because… Because I made a mistake. One which I will be correcting this fall.
• I spent the last several months working as a ghostwriter: I thought I had found my dream job until I spent two very long, exhausting weeks working on a romance novella for a client, only to submit the work and never receive my measly $500 paycheck. It’s funny how quickly disillusionment can set it. I had two main focuses: outlining and content. I was producing 60k words a month on top of developing the characters/concepts/plots from scratch. It took me four months to figure out that I was being duped. Why the hell wasn’t I running away with these stories and publishing them myself? They were entirely my babies and I wasn’t even making very much money giving away my right to them. It was that train of thought that led me here (and I must apologize profusely to the few clients that I just dropped willy nilly in a hormonal rage – Kevin, you included).
• Ghostwriting led me to self-publishing: As I said, my journey over the last several months has landed me here. Ghostwriting has taught me some valuable lessons in terms of being an indie author: what sells, the need to be prolific, the discipline to put in the hours, etc. This is the latest stage in my history with writing and it’ll either be just another notch on the pole or the last first step to building a career out of something I love.

And there you have it – a very small glimpse into the ongoing affair I’ve had with writing and literature.