Why You Haven't Heard from Me...

You may have noticed that I haven't posted anything recently about working on the next Wolfe & Vaughn book. That's because, as of right now, I'm not. Why? Well, there's a few reasons:

1. I'm burnt out.

This may come as a shock, but it turns out that getting a master's degree is HARD. Getting a master's degree while working full-time and dealing with life is even HARDER. And I didn't realize exactly the toll it took on my mind, body, and spirit until the moment I found out I passed my final class. Then it was like everything came rushing to the surface, and I suddenly realized that my heart raced and I felt sick and I couldn't breathe every time that I looked at the W&V4 outline. Which leads me to...

2. I hate the performance.

I've always maintained that anyone can get published, either traditionally or through self-pub, but that it isn't for the faint of heart. Authors are required to market themselves all the time (incessantly but not to the point of spam!) in order to make sales and grow their audience. This has always been true for self-pub and is now also true for traditional, as many publishing houses have put the onus on the author to market the book rather than, you know, paying a professional. I've never liked that aspect of sharing my books, and I like it even less now that I work full-time in marketing - I know how to do it and be successful, but why on earth would I want to fill my free time with more work? I love my job, but I do need separation between work and play. Additionally, there have been changes to self-pub processes and social media algorithms that make it even more difficult to gain traction and get my books in front of my current readers, let alone new ones or get reviews. And that's to say nothing of how expensive it is to self-publish a book now with the level of quality that I expect from myself and that you all expect from me. And that brings us to...

3. It isn't where my creativity is at.

Just because I'm burnt out on original work doesn't mean I've stopped writing - quite the opposite, in fact! I still write for work, obviously, but recently I fell head over heels into the Resident Evil franchise (games and CG movies, not those early-aughts nightmares), and with that came a resurgence for my love of fanfiction. That was where I "cut my teeth", so to speak, and anyone who has known me for a while knows that I often look to fandom spaces for comfort and companionship (with varying degrees of success, though I treasure all my friends who have stuck with me through multiple obsessions). I've found a group of good eggs this time around, and I'm thoroughly enjoying crafting stories for the sake of it, because that's what I love to do.

Conclusion: 

I've discovered that I love the act of storytelling itself more than I love being a self-published author, and that's okay. It needs to be, for my own sanity. This is not me saying I'm never going to write and publish a book again, because I probably will; after all, there's a perfectly good outline sitting on my computer. I'm just not sure when it's going to happen, and I thought you deserved to know that. But who knows, maybe I'll wind up posting more here instead? Either way, thank you for any and all support you've shown me and my books over the past 6 years - I hope you stick around for cats and video games and silly memes. 💕