My Journey

My love for writing started just like any other writer's journey starts, with a love for reading. My parents used to read me books when I was too young to read them myself. As soon as I was old enough I begged my mother to bring me to the library. I used to check out as many books as I could at a time and go through them really fast. I remember Goosebumps being a big influence on me. I tried to read the books before the corresponding episode aired. I was writing little kid stories at the time too. I used to write about ghosts, vampires, and werewolves (I guess somethings never change). When I was about nineteen I decided that I wanted to be a published author. I started researching the publishing industry on sites like queryshark and agentquery. I also took a creative writing class at the Long Ridge Writer's Group, which some people say is a scam. I think it actually helped me, just not as much as it should have for the amount of money I ended up paying. If I could do it all over again I would just take a creative writing class at a local college. I did more research, and talked to authors in their Q&As whenever I could. My questions were always about publishing, which probably wasn't fair to the authors. I learned how to write a query letter and sent out some of my bad writing (I didn't think it was bad at the time). I'm sure that I ended up in a lot of agents' slush piles, but I did get told that my query letters were good. One of the rejection letters that I got was really bad. The person responding to me called me by the heroine's name. I decided that it was time to do more research. I shelved my book and started working on something else. I learned about self publishing, but at that time it was fairly new. I decided to read a few self published books before deciding if self publishing was the route for me.

I was working on several projects while juggling two jobs, which meant those projects weren't of the best quality. I was also doing more research than writing. I ended up putting my dreams almost on the back burner while I worked, which I wish I hadn't done. I would still find time to write every now and then, but I wasn't writing as much as I wanted to. I know now that I have to treat writing like a job. I ended up getting into a relationship with someone who wasn't the best for me, and my writing suffered as a result. When the relationship was over I was feeling really down on myself. I released a book because I wanted to feel like I'd accomplished something. This book was Zombie Bite (which is about to be released again). It was an unfinished mess that was far from my best work, and it also got attacked by Internet trolls. I learned a lot from that experience, like not to rush my writing. I started listening to writing lectures when I workout at the gym, and started leaving my work alone for awhile after it's finished. I hope my next project doesn't suffer the same fate as Zombie Bite did.