12.17.15 - On The Two Words You Need to Cope with Fear, Negativity, and Creative Career Challenges

As we close out 2015, which has been a challenging creative year for me, I wanted to give you some inspiration, some food for thought. This essay was first written as a keynote speech for the Heart of Dixie annual luncheon, and I’ve given it a few times since. There might even be audio of it floating around out there. I’ve been asked several times to share the text, which I’ve never done. So I decided to publish it here today, with light edits to make it more universal. I think the message is an important one, especially if you’re struggling with your creativity, and I hope it gives you what you need to go forth and create great things. 

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I want to talk to you today about the creative journey.

Honestly, if there’s only one concept you take away from this talk, one little thing that makes a difference to your writing, your life, your world,  it’s this:

Reckless Abandon.

We’re all here because we love books. And by love, I mean loooove. They’re our drug of choice. We live for them. We would do anything for a good story, transportation to a different time, for a sexy hero to sweep us off our feet, to find true love, to stop a madman, to revel in a villain.

We read them, we write them, we obsess about them.

Story is in our blood.

It used to be that story was enough. Writers would pen a story, publishers would publish it. It’s all changed. We live in dangerous times. Ebooks and digital presses and Facebook and Twitter. We can’t just write a story and send it out to the world; we must promote it, and endure public reviews, and scathing criticism from people who don’t know what their biting words do to us. We can no longer stay cocooned in story.

How do we navigate this world? How do we juggle our careers and our lives? How do we roll with the challenge of hate and derision and its Janus twin, love and adoration? How do we make decisions, good decisions, when there’s a Greek chorus singing on our shoulders all day, second guessing everything we do?

Reckless Abandon.

When you sit down to write, open your work in progress and face that blank page . . . what are you thinking?

Are you calm and focused, ready to tackle the day’s work?

Are you nervous and edgy, uncertain and afraid?

Or are you cocky and confident, anxious to get the words down because they’re flying out of your head and through your fingers onto the page so fast you’re misspelling everything in your haste?

I am all three of these writers. We all are. Every day is different. Every time you sit down to the computer, you’re a different person. You’ve changed, be it from something your husband or wife said to you at dinner the night before, or something your kid shared before you took him or her to school, or that dream you had, you know the one I mean, where Benedict Cumberbatch calls and wants to option your book, and work with Spielberg on it.

Because you change from moment to moment, you need to recognize that each day you come to the page will be different. Some days, the words flow and the story clicks, and all is right in the world. And some days, everything sucks. It’s trash. It’s the worst tripe in the history of mankind, and no one will want to read it.

And that’s okay.

Reckless abandon are the two words every writer needs to remember, whether the day is going well or badly. They should be tattooed on the inside of your arm, a place you can hide with a sleeve if you need to. Someplace just for you, so when things get rough, or you forget why you’re on this road, you can look at them and remind yourself.

You want permission to follow your heart? Need to trash that chapter you wrote yesterday? Murder your darlings? Fire your agent?

Permission granted.

There. It’s just that easy.

Reckless abandon gives you permission to do whatever you need to make your story work. If that’s taking the afternoon off to read something juicy and fun, or having lunch with your friends, or going shopping, do it. If that’s editing the previous day’s work, do it. If that’s acknowledging you need to make a huge career move so you can write what you love, do it.

Do what you need to make your world work.

And then, you return to the page the next day, refreshed and ready.

Too many of us torture ourselves into a finished manuscript. That’s crazy. We’re writers. We have the best job in the world. And that has nothing to do with being able to work in your pajamas.

OK, maybe it has a little to do with that.

In all seriousness, I see too many writers who are holding their hands in the flames, cringing and crying and hurting themselves to get their work done. There are ways to have a career in this industry that don't include self-flagellation.

When I start a manuscript, it’s hell. Though I’ve done it (eighteen) times now, each time it’s the same. I forget how to write a book. The first ten thousand words are like digging fossils from rocks. They’re clunky, and shallow, and purple, and the metaphors stink. They sound like a third grader with her mommy’s thesaurus, stringing together consonants into nonsense.

But I grit my teeth and know that if I come to the page every day, day in and day out, by some miracle, I will have a finished draft in X number of days. And once there’s a draft, and words to edit, I can do anything.

You can’t edit what doesn’t exist. I can’t tell you how many writers fall into the trap of trying to make that first draft perfect. I fall into this trap myself, all the time. Then I remind myself how much I love revising and push on.

Take the pressure off yourself. Nothing will be perfect your first time through. It might be close, but I only know of two or three writers who actually turn in their work when they type The End. The vast majority edit.

You can edit your work into brilliance. You can’t edit a blank page.

Something else I’ve been noticing lately that upsets me is the self-deprecation of our writerly selves. We need to be humble, right? We need to be likable. It’s an artist thing, partially, but it’s also a lot easier to have 1000 or 10,000 or 50,000 friends now than it ever was before.

And pride’s a sin . . . 

It’s a conundrum. We want to be writers, capital W. We want to share with people that we’re writers. We want to sell a gazillion copies of our books and be lauded for our efforts. But we can’t sell ourselves, or brag about our good reviews, or tell people when we’re having a crappy writing day, without worrying about how it makes us look.

All that must go away. It’s about you, and the words. You and your story. That’s it.

We are our own worst enemies when it comes to taking ourselves seriously. We’re so good at finding ways to talk ourselves OUT of success.

The truth of the matter is this: no one will take you seriously if you don’t take yourself seriously.

Take yourself seriously, and your passion for your work will bleed through.

Reckless Abandon. It’s another term for boundless passion, isn’t it?

We talk around it, like our passion for writing is a bad thing. Or makes us a little unbalanced. But without passion, what else do we have? Passion — equals drive — equals success.

And some people don’t have it. I think the difference between the one-offs and the glory seekers and real writers is our unique brand of passion. For literature. For books and bookstores and readers. For creativity. For living on the soul-sucking edge of the pit of despair and dancing with fairies on the tips of the Himalayas — which is basically how we spend all of our days, teetering between the two. For the words, man. The words.

I’ve been on a Hemingway kick lately, and one thing you can NEVER accuse that man of is lacking passion. He lived for his words. They made his life bearable. Even through the alcohol and the women and wars and the eventual pain that chased him into the grave, the words were what made him complete, and tore him apart.

And he had a habit, a schedule. Done by twelve, drunk by three.

It might not be healthy, but it’s a schedule. Find a schedule, and stick to it, no matter what. Schedules become habits. Habits create consistent output. And consistent output allows you to have a successful career. No one can buy your brilliant novel if you don’t sit down and write the thing.

But passion and output aren’t enough. Another habit you must cultivate is confidence. Believing in your work, and believing in yourself. Not allowing the brown noise that oozes through the Internet to leak into your delicate ears. Tune it out. Tune out the naysayers, and the shouters and the chest-beaters. Don’t let them influence you. Write for you, not for the market. Write what you’re passionate about. Do it well, and your work will find a home. Do it well, again and again, and you’ll have a career.

The next time you catch that urge to demean your writing, or your writing life, or distract yourself because you’re scared, stop. Remember the passion that drove you to write in the first place. Embrace it. Give thanks for it. Take it out for dinner. Maybe even buy it a new pair of shoes. Never, ever, EVER, put yourself and your writing down. And persevere. This isn’t an easy path. Only the strong survive.

I was twenty when I presented my senior thesis to a room full of English majors and professors. It was the culmination of three years of creative writing: a group of twenty poems, the best I could glean from those years of work, and my first attempt at a short story. I was, like now, in a Hemingway phase. The short story, “The Lighthouse,” was a murder mystery set in England, overlaid with a gothic, penetrating fog that whisked away souls. Hands shaking, gorge rising, I stood in front of the room and tried to read without passing out — public speaking wasn’t exactly my thing.

When it was over, my peers clapped, but their applause was outstripped by the dour expressions of the faculty. They’d already read my thesis, already formed their opinions. The chair of the department pronounced the short story “too informed by B-grade detective fiction.” Yes, the voice was dark; yes, it was a clumsy first attempt at fiction. But my voice was there already. And I thought I wanted to be a writer.

So I asked my thesis advisor for a recommendation to an M.F.A. program, and she shook her head sadly and sighed. “This isn’t the path for you. Your work isn’t good enough to be published.”

Stupidly, I listened. Instead of spending the next several years writing fresh material, honing my craft, finding my voice, I believed her. And I quit writing.

I went to graduate school in Politics instead, met my future husband the first night of class, worked in the White House, the Department of Commerce, Lockheed Martin.

There was a common theme to each position. I struggled. I chafed. I was good at what I did, but I despised doing it. Time and again I found myself in meetings with superiors who asked what the problem was. I had no answers. The problem was not them. The problem was the voice in the back of my head that screamed at me all day and all night, This isn’t you. This isn’t right. This isn’t who you want to be.

It can take only one person, and one sentence, to crush the creative flame entirely. If my professor had just said, “You need more time to find your voice; keep writing, and try again in a few years,” I would have done that. If she’d given even the tiniest bit of encouragement, perhaps I would have written a drawer full of manuscripts. But I didn’t. Eight long years went by without writing.

The farcical means by which I returned to a life as a writer — adopting a stray cat, going to work for the vet who saved her life, mopping up dog urine and assisting in castrations, and then, on day three of this unique torture, herniating a disc and needing back surgery — is fit for fiction itself. During the recovery, I discovered a writer named John Sandford, and something clicked. My magnetic poles shifted, and I had one, simple, arrogant thought.

If he can do it, so can I.

Ah, hubris. My professor was right, of course. I wasn’t good enough to be published. Not then, and not when I started writing again. I dabbled for a couple of years, but in 2003 I began in earnest, deconstructing crime novels to see how the structure worked, laying down words, joining a critique group.

And I wrote a book.

Or what I thought was a book.

I made every rookie mistake in the industry: submitting a half-baked novella directly to New York editors (who rejected me), calling up local writers at home to ask advice, and being an all-around idiot. I didn’t know about writers’ organizations, or awards, or — let’s be honest here — anything.

But I learned. I joined Sisters in Crime; began to write for a group blog, Murderati; tossed the half-baked novella in the trash; and wrote a proper book. An agent saw my work online and, as fate would have it, asked to read my book just as I was crafting a query letter to him. Serendipity.

But he couldn’t sell my first book, and I was immediately plunged back into the abyss I’d spent eight years trying to crawl out of. That voice came back. You aren’t good enough. You simply are not good enough.

This negativity lurks every minute of every day for us creatives. We allow others to make judgments for us. We allow reviews and acceptances and complete strangers who hate our work, or love our work, to define us.

To be a writer, to come daily to the page, to slough off the voices of the naysayers, takes more than just a talent for stringing words together and machinating stories. It takes a determination to ignore the critics, the pettiness of your own muse, the collective voice of the chorus singing your daily demise. It is a process of natural selection, and only the adaptive survive. It takes courage, and a wee bit of denial, and a roaring ego. We have to believe the story we’re telling is interesting enough to capture the attention of the reader. With any luck, hundreds of thousands of readers.

So, when I finished wallowing in self-pity, I got back to it. I wrote my agent a new book, and he sold it. I was 37 when ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS released. It has been published in 24 countries and 12 languages so far.

The past 13 years have been a ride, with ups and downs like every writing career. But a career it is. Right now, I’m working on my 18th novel. Twelve are out in the world, with 13, 14, and 15 all coming in the next few months. My  first standalone   will be out in March 2016, and that first book, the one that didn’t sell? Comes out in June 2016. (I nearly passed out when I wrote this paragraph, mind you. I don’t know how the hell that happened.)

In case you’re not familiar with my work, I write three series — one with Nashville homicide lieutenant Taylor Jackson, one with Dr. Samantha Owens, medical examiner extraordinaire, and the third, big international thrillers featuring Nicholas Drummond — a Brit in the FBI — with Catherine Coulter. And as I mentioned, now I’m delving into the standalone market with a domestic thriller called NO ONE KNOWS. I write for four publishers, one of which is my own house, Two Tales Press; do short stories for anthologies whenever I’m able; and generally drive myself batty trying to meet all my deadlines.

But I come to the page daily with hope, and with a whopping dose of humility, because I recognize how very lucky I am. I’m doing what I love. That haunting voice, the one who screamed at me for eight years, who knew I shouldn’t have given up, is gone, replaced by the purring of my muse.

I wake each day with gratitude and excitement, knowing I am, at last, doing what I was put on this earth to do. I don’t have eight years of work in a drawer, and that is a shame. But I have the future, and I refuse to let someone else decide my life for me again.

Teddy Roosevelt said, “Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failures, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”

Perhaps a better way of saying this is my most favorite quote in all the world. Master Yoda, that great mystic, said, “Do. Or do not. There is no try.”

Do. Or do not. There is no try.

Listen, you want this to work, you have to take chances. You must give in to your impulses every once in a while, trust your gut, know your own soul. You need to ignore the fact that the drop off the cliff is mighty, and jump anyway.

Fear can inhibit your growth, not only as a writer, but as a person, as a lover and friend, as a parent.

Fear is the most dangerous part of life.

Allow me one of my earnest moments. I do my level best to make sure fear doesn’t get in my way. I would so much rather fail, put it all out there and fall flat on my face, than never try at all. Better to have loved and lost, right?

If you’re failing, or being rejected, it means you’re trying. The more you do, the more those failures will turn into successes. You have to believe in yourself, believe you’ll make it, that you’ll break through and have what you want.

One of my biggest fears was working on more than one project at a time. I was working on the first Taylor novel, and the head of my critique group kept pestering me to try writing a short story. I had a total deer-in-the-headlights reaction — I can’t.

I can’t deviate from my novel to try something else. I’ll get pulled off track. I’ll fall into the abyss and never return. I’ll never finish anything. The men will come and find me quivering in a corner, a trail of half-eaten sandwiches strewn throughout the house.

But all that is simply resistance rearing its ugly head. Of course you can work on more than one thing at a time. And if you want to be a successful author, you’ll have to master that skill. The more you output, the more money you make, the greater your reputation grows, the more you’ll have to juggle.

Is it easy?

No.

It’s a constant struggle. Writing one book, editing another, promoting a third — that’s the standard for anyone on a one-a-year schedule — is hard. Multiply that by two for two-a-years, etc. And you’ll not only be expected to write your books, but do shorts and anthologies. Add in touring and blogging and Facebooking and Tweeting and newslettering. Not to mention, for many of you, work and family. All of this takes time, and a concerted effort to stay on track.

But if you respect your muse, she will respect you.

You can do this. I promise. If you come to the page every day, she will reward you.

I want you to take a moment and envision what you want from this life. What kind of writer, what kind of person, do you want to be? What sort of career do you want? What is your dream? What is your goal? What is your perfect day?

Close your eyes. Go on, close them. Dream for a moment. Give yourself permission to embrace reckless abandon with your writing, and with your life.

Think of these things, and realize the universe wants to give you what you want. It’s out there for the taking. The glorious person you just envisioned? The one who’s content and happy, who writes every day and works hard, who learns how to prioritize and juggle and stay sane? Who has a successful career writing books you love?

That’s you.

Right now. You’re already that person, that writer.

Revel in this truth.

Like I said — there are two words every writer needs. Reckless Abandon. And it’s easy to achieve. Live for your story. Respect your writing time. Sit down every day and pound out those words. Let everything else go. Let the universe give you what you want.

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If you like what you read today, please consider leaving a tip on the way out. No pressure. But unicorns wearing roses might show up if you do! 

12.10.15 - Building a Publishing House with Vellum

I have a quick suggestion for those of you planning to indie publish your work. It’s a fantastic little app called Vellum.

My friend Alethea Kontis turned me on to Vellum when she was staying with us a few months ago. I saw her working on one of her books in it, and she showed me the app and raved about it. I downloaded it from the app store, and within 5 minutes I’d imported a short story and started to play.

It took me a grand total of one afternoon to learn the quirks of the system. I imported one novel and three short stories, did their formatting, inserted backmatter, built the links, and tied my accounts into the system.

I immediately saw the possibilities. I could make an ebook and upload it with literally a few clicks.

There are books written on how to do this. People specialize in it. I’ve paid for it before – hundreds of dollars.

Vellum is the professional book formatter’s worst nightmare.

It doesn’t take any special skills to make it work. It is intuitive, simple, and straightforward. It shows you what your ebook will look like on all the devices, too, which is one of the biggest bugaboos formatters have faced before.

When I realized what I could do with this program, I immediately decided to move forward on a project that’s long been on my back burner: re-editing, rebranding, and republishing a bevy of short stories, and finally getting myself positioned to release several new stories that hadn’t been uploaded yet.

I taught my assistant Amy how to use the program and set her free to do what she would with the interiors. While we were in Florida for the NINC conference, Vellum training was front and center, and she learned some of the super-cool internal tricks, like evergreening links and how to import backmatter across all titles so you don’t have to recreate the wheel with every book. The ease of uploading ebooks is the real secret here – anytime you need to make a change, all you do is fix the file and reupload – a service Vellum provides at an additional cost.

While the app itself is free, if you plan on using it for your publishing ventures, I highly recommend you purchase their unlimited program. I’m telling you, you’ll spend less on that than a single formatting job by a professional.

When Vellum asked Amy and I to dish on their product, this is what we said:

“I’ve never seen a program more intuitive, flexible, and easy to use than Vellum. The end results are elegant and stunning, and the program is helping my business run smoothly. What more could you ask for?”
–New York Times bestselling author J.T. Ellison

“As a former Big 5 publishing professional, I thought only XML-fluent designers were capable of creating an ebook. Vellum empowers any author or content creator to make a beautiful, commercially viable product in just minutes. I’ve never been so glad to be wrong.”
–Amy Kerr, Publisher, Two Tales Press

I could go on and on and on about how great I think Vellum is, but it would be easier to just show you. You can see the results of Vellum’s gorgeous interface at my publishing house, Two Tales Press.

P.S. The good people of Vellum didn't pay me to say this. I just love their product!

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If you like what you read today, please consider leaving a tip on the way out. No pressure. But unicorns wearing roses might show up if you do! 

12.3.15 - On Self-Care and the Writer

As I write this, instead of happily crashing on the second week of NaNoWriMo, I am sitting in a hospital room in Florida.

My mum had a knee replacement/revision originally scheduled a month from now, but the doctor had an opening and things were suddenly moved up four weeks. I had to drop everything and rush down for the surgery and the first week of post-op. Hey, my mum needed me. That’s what we daughters and sons do when our parents need us. 

I’m trying to work, which isn’t going as well as it could be. We’re taking the hospital in shifts, so someone is with mum most of the time, so I’ve had some quiet time, but I can’t concentrate. I’m worried about her, worried about my dad, worried about my husband at home, worried about my brother, who isn’t as well-versed with this process as I am. (Thank you, pre-med and years of Web MD and multiple surgeries, for giving me the vocabulary to actually speak with doctors and nurses.) There have been 50,000 conferences with 10,000 doctors and nurses and CPAs and students and anesthesiologists and speech therapists and rehab facility case managers and care workers and chaplains, and I’ve been present for them all.

We’ve been eating hospital cafeteria food, doing laps down hospital corridors, dodging men with IV poles and milky-white bottoms peeking through their open gowns, and spending too much time sitting in uncomfortable chairs watching Mum hurt. 

What I haven’t been doing is taking decent care of myself.

There has been no yoga, no walks outside, no vegetables outside of a few salads. Sleep is preciously guarded, but it’s been cut short, too, by late nights and early mornings. There’s been too much caffeine, too much sitting, and way too much guilt about not getting the work done that I desperately need to do. My to-do list is growing and growing and growing, and my stress levels are going through the roof.

Moments ago, it struck me that outside of my mother and myself, no one actually expects me to write this week.

Who can write in these situations? Maybe if you had a chance to prepare yourself for the pain and indignity and general annoyances that crop up every ten seconds when you’re trying to be a caregiver, you’d be able to stay in a creative flow. Maybe if I was a Wonder Woman who really could ignore the sighs and squeaks and knocks and beeps and groans, then I could work. Maybe if I scheduled more than an hour of writing time in the morning, or could stay awake for more than five minutes at night, I’d be hitting my 1666 words a day. (I think there’s a reason NaNoWriMo has a 666 in the daily word count. Just sayin’.)

I had planned to do this post a couple of weeks ago, with warm, nurturing advice about how writers in particular need to practice self-care. One of my favorite yogis, Tara Stiles, founder of Strala Yoga, recently released a cookbook filled with delicious, healthy, easy recipes. Because I pre-ordered the cookbook, I received a complimentary yoga video entitled "Chilling Out." How perfect, I thought. I will share her cookbook, make suggestions for writers to do yoga and get plenty of sleep, water and vegetables, and all will be well in the land. We will all chill out. Chilling out is how the writer can truly exercise self-care. 

Yeah. Like that works.

Maybe what I need to be talking about right now isn’t what I originally planned. Self-care isn’t necessarily about eating healthy and getting enough exercise, though they do go a long way in helping you cope when things do get out of balance.

Maybe self-care is more about finding the right balance.

Maybe it's about forgiveness. About not beating yourself up when you can’t make words flow under difficult circumstances. About accepting life with a little grace, and not trying to force everything into doing exactly what you want it to do.

I got upset with my brother yesterday when he interrupted my “writing time”. I’d stayed home to get some words down, and he came back unexpectedly, turned on the TV, and proceeded to be very distracting. I told him I was trying to work, and he said, “Just do it later.”

Of course, that pissed me off. “I didn’t write 18 book in 10 years by just doing it later,” I retorted, huffing off to the hospital because I had a better chance of working there than at home. I mean, Mum does sleep sometimes. 

I didn’t get anything done there, either.

So here I sit, writing my weekly blog instead of creating, telling myself that exact thing – I’ll just do it later (tomorrow, this weekend, next week) - and I’m trying to find some grace in that.

The world won’t end if I don't make my word count this week.

I will have to double up on work next week to stick to my goals, but that’s okay. I’m needed in a different way this week than normal, and the work can wait.

And maybe that’s okay. Just this once.

_________

I’ve been blogging weekly for eleven years now. I often get requests to advertise on this site. Because I don’t particularly want to clutter up the blog with lots of endorsements and buttons, I’ve always declined. The thing is, writing these blogs takes time away from my creative writing. The second thing is, I love doing it. That’s why I’ve always done it for free. The third thing is, many, many bloggers I greatly respect and admire either allow advertising, or have instituted Tip Jars. I am a writer, which means I’m a copycat, so I’m going to institute this solution as well. Eventually, if I get enough tips, I might just make a book of non-fiction and other cool stuff from the past several years of my writing journey, just for you!

If you like what you read today, please consider leaving a tip on the way out. No pressure. But unicorns wearing roses might show up if you do! 

11.12.15 - On The Writer and ROI: Return on Investment

I was talking to a writer friend the other day about the sacrifices we have to make in order to have long and storied careers as writers. I mentioned the idea of a Writer's ROI, that everything we do is adding another quarter to the piggy bank of our careers, and she asked me to write more about it. I think it's a useful topic to think about, so here goes. 

ROI, or return on investment, is a common financial term. Its formula is thusly explained: ROI= (Gain from investment — Cost of Investment) / Cost of Investment.

In other words, it’s very easy to gauge how much money you’ve made on an investment if you subtract the gain from the cost and divide it by the initial cost. Positive ROI means you’ve made a good investment. Negative ROI and you’ve messed up somewhere.

So how does this term apply to the writer’s life?

In simplest terms, your publisher is certainly running ROIs on you. They look at a book, run a P&L (profit and loss statement — excellent examples here from Jane Friedman) decide what it’s worth to them to publish you, make an offer of advance against royalties (which you will either accept, negotiate, or reject.) Assuming you come to terms, you then need to help sell said book in order to make their investment worth it.

The way you do this is by writing a kick ass book, obviously, but also in the courtship of readers: through direct means (social media), through booksellers, conferences, and the like. All the while, you’re writing a new book for them, one that will get an even bigger advance, and so on, and so on. Every sale counts against that advance you were given, in the general range of 8% - 12% of cover price for physical copies, and 25% of net for an ebook. The readers are investing in you just as the publisher is, helping you grow, to earn out those contracts, and keep getting new contracts. (The goal of your personal ROI is to keep you writing, in case you hadn't picked up on that.) 

Everyone at some point in this process has the moment of — OMG, my book is going to make the New York Times list, become a blockbuster film starring Angelina Jolie-Pitt, be publishing simultaneously in 50 territories, and I will retire and rest on my laurels forever!  This happens, sure it does, but if you’re approaching your writing career thinking you’re going to write a single book and the rest will take care of itself, you’re 99.9% in for a rude awakening.

The sad thing is, many truly excellent authors get discouraged if the scenario doesn’t play out the way they’ve envisioned. Or this scenario *does* happen, and then they’re paralyzed to create anything new, so they do rest on their laurels, and find out the universal truth of life — this too shall pass.

So for the rest of us, thinking about your career, your trajectory, your responsibilities to yourself and your readers, can be looked at in terms of your own personal ROI. You invest in yourself. You build your career, one word at a time, one deadline met at a time, one book sold at a time. You stay humble and focused and write hard. You help other authors by shamelessly promoting their work; you mentor newbies. If the big breakthrough doesn’t happen immediately, you still know that you’ve done it all right, and you’re going to keep plugging away until you do have that breakout book.

Building isn’t always fun. It’s hard. There are many sacrifices. Trips to conferences take time away from family and cost a lot of money. Honoring your writing time can be seen as being selfish (especially for women.) Books are published poorly, or orphaned. Life gets in the way.

But if you take this career seriously, if you take yourself and your art seriously, you will plan for these inevitabilities. You will make the appropriate sacrifices, at the appropriate times. You will manage your expectations. Your investment in yourself will begin to grow, to show fruit.

Your next book advance might be a little bigger. The reviews might be a little better. The publisher might ask you to meet with some booksellers, or attend a trade show. And you’ll do it, willingly, because you take yourself and your craft and your career seriously.

And so on.

Maybe another term for ROI, one creatives may be more familiar with, is *paying your dues*.

You pay your dues in this industry so you’re not a flash in the pan. You became a writer because you wanted to write, not because you thought you’d be feted in Hollywood. Right? *Right?*

So you write. And you sacrifice. And you recognize that you are climbing the mountain, one glorious step at a time. You are earning your way to the top. Your ROI is growing a nice little nest egg by the point, too. The money is getting better. The work is getting harder, though — something you must prepare yourself for.

Let me say it again. **The work gets harder**. The more your ROI increases, the more demands there will be on your time. The more the publisher will ask for, the more your readers will expect. You have to juggle the career, the social media and marketing and conferences and bookseller meetings and tours, with writing another book that surpasses the one you’ve just been out selling to the world. It can be rough. It can seem nigh on impossible sometimes.

This career — earning the moniker of author — it’s not for the faint of heart. It’s hard. There are speed bumps. Careers wax and wane. The industry shifts. Genres that were once wildly popular fall out of favor. Editors leave to have babies. There are takeovers and mergers. Publishing is cyclical if nothing else, and understanding that is the key to having a long, fruitful career.

And as for your ROI, you might not have a lot to show for it right away.

But if you keep investing in yourself, in your art, in your career, one day soon, you will hit the mark you’ve set for yourself.

So write hard, my friends. The world is your oyster, and you, you are the shining pearl. (A black pearl, of course, because if you’re a writer, you’re a damn renegade, so own it!)

11.3.15 - On New Ventures: Welcome to Two Tales Press

We are in a glorious time for writing.

Writers now have immediate access to readers—not only through books, but through a vast compendium of outlets: magazines, newspapers, blogs, social media, and now ebooks. The Internet has given us freedom to create and share our work directly, and this unfettered access is unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.

I was an early adopter of the idea of independent publishing, selling my shorts on Amazon as individual stories and anthologies.

Content wasn’t hard to come by—instead of quipping on Facebook and Twitter, writers spent their down time trying to impress each other with clever and scary short fiction. One of the saddest casualties of the social media storm were the smaller online sites and magazines, run by laypeople, writers all, that encouraged writers to share their free-form work. Flash fiction, a very short form, usually less than 1,000 words, was a hit, with multiple websites supporting authors, published and not, who wanted to try their hand at the challenge: tell a complete story without breaking the fixed word count.

Many of us took the challenge, myself included. There was something magical about sharing these quick little stories, written the same day as they appeared online. Of course, now that we can publish a novel the day after we finish it (thought I wouldn’t recommend that course—editing is still paramount, and that takes time) the novelty of flash fiction has worn off.   

I’ve long looked to short stories as a way to have a bit of fun with my writing, to step outside my comfort zone.

I call it my Johnny Depp career path, doing only what I love, and what’s fun. First person, horror, flash fiction—these are the ways I get my jollies on the side. I’d written three novels before I ever tried my hand at short fiction. But when I did, I discovered an entirely new world, and my love of the short form grew from there. I began placing stories in magazines, writing for anthologies, for the online forums, the works. I love the freedom and limitations of the form, and I still use it as a playground of sorts, a way to stretch my wings and explore genres I wouldn’t normally write in.

My short stories are little slices, vignettes. Crimes of the heart, the mind, the soul.

They’re the bits and pieces that fall from my mind while I’m writing long form novels, the ideas that don’t have a place in my current work. Some are quite short, others have bloomed into novellas. Some have been published before, some are brand new.

I decided to start my own publishing house, Two Tales Press, so you could get a taste of these sweet little lies, too.

Many of the stories have been published before in some manner, whether digitally or in anthologies, but I wanted you to have access to all my work, at an affordable price, through whichever digital store you prefer. We're on Kindle, Nook, iBooks, and Kobo so far.

There are two Taylor Jackson stories, which appeared first in SLICES OF NIGHT and STORM SEASON, with Erica Spindler and Alex Kava, plus a brand new story, THE NUMBER OF MAN (a shorter version of this appeared in Thriller 3, but this is the very first time this story has been available digitally in this enhanced, rewritten version.)

Each story has a few extras, too, most importantly -- an EXCLUSIVE sneak peek at my new standalone thriller, NO ONE KNOWS. 

There are ghost stories and stalkers, creepy and poignant, and even some that are a bit autobiographical. I hope you enjoy these, and I will be adding to them soon. Two Tales will be the spot for my new short content forevermore. Come visit us!

And a brief note about the website, covers, and the logo. My incredible assistant Amy designed the beautiful, functional website. The divine Kim Killion designed the covers, and knocked it out of the park. And the logo is her work as well. What could be better than a book that is also a cat? If you look closely, you’ll see three pages which are cats’ ears. The book itself represents Jade, Thrillercat, who was my impetus for starting to write; and the two additional pages are Jameson and Jordan, the Thrillerkittens, aka Two Tales. But this logo represents my love for all my kitty babies, past and present, including Jiblet, Jezebelle, Jasmine, and Jemima, too. The title might be Two Tales, but there are many, many tails in the history of our logo.