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Happy Publishing Anniversary!

 

I nearly missed this anniversary...again! Four years ago, I had a novel that I had written the previous year for NaNoWriMo. I’d edited it, let it sit, edited it again, and then shared it with betas and early readers. I wondered if it was shit despite their positive notes, made too many not-great covers for it...

But then I made a decision. I had a short story and a tiny flash collection published from an online course I did. Let’s see what would happen if I put my novel baby into the world and really marked myself as a writer.

 

Good things, apparently. People liked it. There was more work to be done on it (I’ve revised it twice since then, once for grammar and once for formatting... the more you know!) 

 

It's interesting because it’s not really my typical genre; yes, it’s a thriller, but it’s crime-based with a dash of police procedural, neither of which really gets featured in my books these days. 

 

These days it makes most of its sales at my in-person events, where readers are keen to read my first book. There was a time I considered not carrying it at my table any longer, more proud of my newest books and the direction they are going in, but Excite is part of my journey and totally worthy of its table space. Yes, my writing is better now; that’s the nature of the game, but the book that made me an author deserves a chance to shine too. I stand by it as a good story, and I still think about that world from time to time and wonder if there are more stories to tell. Maybe someday.

 

Putting that first book out into the world was the hardest. Giving people a chance to read what I had written and asking them to judge me for it (please leave reviews!) was a wild feeling—one that still prickles up with each new release but also gets easier each time. 

 

I didn’t know if I could write a book people would find worthwhile (Excite was NOT my first completed manuscript; maybe I’ll talk about TaTA someday, my true first “The End” on full-length fiction... not without fatal, insurmountable plot holes, sadly) But Excite still gets attention at each and every event and it has led down a path of no return.

 

My fourth thriller will come out next year, and my seventh romance is coming later this month. Looking back, I can’t believe it was only 2020 when this all started; it feels like forever ago and, at the same time, just yesterday.

If you want to read Excite, you can find it here: books2read.com/Excite